Editor's Choice: Scroll below for our monthly blend of mainstream and June 2025 news and views
Note: Excerpts are from the authors' words except for subheads and occasional "Editor's notes" such as this.
June 30
Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the Republican majority leader, seeks the votes to pass a sprawling domestic policy bill requested by President Trump
New York Times, Trump Administration Updates: Senate to Begin Voting on Policy Bill, as G.O.P. Grasps for Support, Catie Edmondson and Carl Hulse, June 30, 2025. The Senate will hold a marathon series of votes on Trump’s policy bill, with support in doubt. After a weekend session marked by sharp partisan conflict, Senate Republicans hoped to approve the measure and send it to the House. The bill extends nearly $4 trillion in tax cuts first passed in 2017 and partially pays for them by slashing spending on safety net programs.
Domestic policy bill: The Senate on Monday was poised to begin voting on a sweeping Republican-crafted economic and domestic policy bill, with President Trump’s first-year legislative agenda hanging in the balance. After a weekend session marked by sharp partisan conflict, 
Senate Republicans hoped to approve the measure and send it to the House, but it remained unclear whether the G.O.P. had the support to pass it.
A costly bill: The Senate version of the legislation would add at least $3.3 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said on Sunday. While that projection may change as differences are resolved, it is higher than for the version that squeaked through the House. Fiscal hawks, whose support is needed for the new version, already had serious concerns about its cost.
Tillis won’t run: Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, said he would not run for re-election next year, a day after Mr. Trump vowed to back a primary challenger over Mr. Tillis’s opposition to the policy bill. Mr. Tillis argued on the floor Sunday night that the bill would break the president’s promise not to cut Medicaid.
The Contrarian, Opinion: The worst bill in modern history, Jennifer Rubin, right, 
June 30, 2025. Democrats must make it a career-ender for Republicans.
Senate Republicans over the weekend decided to move forward on the big, ugly bill to rip healthcare coverage from 17 million people, deprive millions of food assistance, and use that money to pay (only partially!) for gigantic tax cuts for the super-rich. Their version is far worse than the House’s handiwork; Senate Republicans want to cut more than $1 trillion from Medicaid. Apparently, they concluded the House’s $700 billion cut did not throw a sufficient number of people off their healthcare coverage. An estimated 17 million (including those priced out of the Affordable Care Act exchanges) would lose healthcare coverage
Even those who mouthed concerns about the draconian cuts, including Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) fell into line, voting to move the bill forward. They are daring voters not to hold them accountable for their monstrous hypocrisy.
Lawmakers are not in the dark. Their constituents, rural hospitals, state and local officials, the Congressional Budget Office, conservative think tanks, the Wall Street Journal, and their Democratic colleagues have explained the bill’s horrid consequences. Republicans might parrot MAGA talking points, but when Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) distributes materials to fellow Republicans highlighting the devastation the bill will cause, only the truly deluded can imagine this is anything but horrid policy. (The Hill quoted a source familiar with the scene at Tuesday’s Senate Republican lunch: “Thom Tillis got up and he had a chart on what the Senate’s provider tax structure will cost different states, including his. His will lose almost $40 billion. He walked through that and said, ‘this will be devastating to my state.’”)
Senate Republicans have been hammered from all sides. On the right, the Committee for a Responsible budget found it would add $3.5-4.2 trillion to the debt and move the Medicare and Social Security trust funds a year closer to insolvency. Meanwhile, Republican senators with Democratic governors (e.g., Josh Stein in North Carolina, Laura Kelly in Kansas, Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, and Janet Mills in Maine) got slammed daily on the consequences of Medicaid, SNAP, and other cuts back home.
Aside from the disastrous policy objections, Republicans should not delude themselves about the political quicksand they stepped in. The reverse-Robin-Hood scheme is deeply unpopular in every recent public poll. A Fox News poll shows only 38% support it, while 59% oppose it. (Among independents, it is a stunning 22-73%.) Quinnipiac’s poll is even worse for MAGA (27-53%; among independents 20-57%.) KFF (35-64%; only 27% of independents support); Pew (49-29%) and The Washington Post and Ipsos (23-42%) are miserable as well.
Perhaps the scariest poll for Republicans was one from Maine showing Collins sure has reason for “concern”: Her favorability is a miserable 14% with disapproval at 57%. Mills, the strongest potential 2026 challenger, has a 51-41% favorability rating. Come to think of it, maybe Collins should forget “concern” and zoom ahead to full-blown panic.
Moreover, the longer the bill has been out in public, the less popular it has become. NPR reported that “83% of the public have favorable views of Medicaid. Just a few months ago, in January, that figure was 77% of the public.” Even three-quarters of Republicans now appreciate a program that covers children, the poor, seniors in nursing homes, and addiction recovery program participants. By 2026, a high percentage of voters should know exactly what this bill does to them.
Put simply, President Donald Trump might strong-arm enough Republicans to vote for a bill that constitutes not only the largest Medicaid cut in history but also a historic transfer of wealth from middle- and low-income Americans to the wealthiest. However, he cannot save them from voters. Not only obviously vulnerable Republicans (e.g., Tillis, Collins) but also Republicans who never imagined they would be in jeopardy (e.g. Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas) could well find this a career-ending vote. Senate Republicans might well regret gambling on voters’ short memories.
Democrats should make certain the culprits are held accountable. Democrats have had two goals throughout this process, only one of which was within their control.
First, they aimed to make the vote so toxic that this will be an albatross around Republicans’ necks in 2026. Judging from polls, they have succeeded in their herculean job challenging GOP provisions in the Byrd bath, pressuring senators, enlisting local stakeholders, and communicating to the public at large how horrible the bill truly is. They have positioned themselves for a blue wave in 2026 to sweep to control of the House and narrow, if not eliminate, their disadvantage in the Senate. Whether or not the MAGA GOP forces the bill down the throats of members, Democrats now have a perfect vehicle to lead their 2026 comeback.
The second goal—actually defeat a bill this monstrous to protect millions of fellow Americans—was a long shot from the start. Though they pulled off a stunning victory to prevent ACA repeal in 2017, in 2025 Democrats have fewer plausible allies on the Republican side. Trump has a tighter grip on the Senate now, and the current batch of Republicans is more spineless.
The Democratic base, rightfully underwhelmed by elected Democrats’ efforts earlier this year, should acknowledge Senate Democrats left nothing on the field in their battle to delay and upset the worst piece of legislation in history. The task for organizers, activists, and ordinary Democratic voters between now and 2026 is to make sure every voter knows who is responsible for this shambolic legislation and which party fought tooth and nail to stop it.
Elections have consequences, and the passage of a bill as damaging as this following Democrats’ 2024 defeat should remind every Democratic, independent, and disgusted Republican voter that the only way to halt and reverse the assault on America is to start defeating MAGA’s assault on average Americans.
New York Times, G.O.P. Bill Has $1.1 Trillion in Health Cuts and 11.8 Million Losing Care, C.B.O. Says, Margot Sanger-Katz, June 30, 2025 (print ed.). Analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that Republicans’ new version of the legislation would make far deeper cuts and lead to more people becoming uninsured than previous proposals.
Republicans’ marquee domestic policy bill that is making its way through the Senate would result in deeper cuts and more Americans losing health insurance coverage than the original measure that passed the House last month, according to new estimates from the Congressional Budget Office.
According to a report published late Saturday night, the legislation would mean 11.8 million more Americans would become uninsured by 2034. Federal spending on Medicaid, Medicare and Obamacare would be reduced by more than $1.1 trillion over that period — with more than $1 trillion of those cuts coming from Medicaid alone.
The fresh estimates make official what many analysts had already predicted and some Republican lawmakers had feared. The size and scope of the health care cuts in the bill, particularly from Medicaid, have been hotly debated, with fiscal hawks pressing for bigger reductions and other Republicans resisting them as they consider the impact on their constituents and health providers in their districts and states.
They are also at odds with President Trump’s vow not to touch Medicaid except to do away with waste and fraud.
The scale of the proposed reductions in Medicaid is unprecedented in the history of the program, which has tended to expand coverage over time since its creation in 1965.
The cuts in the bill are achieved through numerous provisions, but the bulk of the Medicaid savings come from two big features.
One would establish a new, strict national work requirement for some people on the program, who would need to demonstrate they had worked at least 80 hours the month before they sign up, or qualified for an exemption. The Senate version applies this provision to the poor parents of children older than 14 in addition to childless adults without disabilities, the group targeted by the House version. The budget office estimated that that provision alone would reduce federal spending by more than $325 billion over the decade.
The second big source of savings comes from new restrictions on a strategy many states use to finance Medicaid, by imposing taxes on medical providers to leverage a larger federal contribution. The bill’s restrictions on provider taxes and a related mechanism known as state directed payments would cut spending by a combined $375 billion, according to the report. The House bill would freeze the tax rate for most states, but the Senate version would require many states to lower their existing taxes, beginning in 2027.
The provider tax provisions are controversial among senators. Several who represent states with poor, rural populations have objected to the scale of the cuts, including Senators Susan Collins of Maine, Josh Hawley of Missouri, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina. Senate leaders added a last-minute provision Saturday to try to alleviate that concern — a $25 billion fund to support rural health care providers. But Mr. Tillis voted against a procedural move to advance the bill on Saturday, citing the Medicaid effects as too extreme for his state, and said he would oppose the bill.
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: June 29 [Trump's Big Bill], Heather Cox Richardson, right, June 30, 2025. There are four 
political stories people should know about.
First, President Donald Trump’s tariff war and weaker consumer spending translated to a contraction of 0.5% in the U.S. economy in the first quarter, even more of a drop than the 0.2% economists expected. The economy Trump inherited from President Joe Biden led the world in productivity.
Second, John Hudson and Warren P. Strobel of the Washington Post reported today that intercepted communications showed that senior Iranian officials said the U.S. attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities caused less damage than they had expected and that they wondered why the strikes were so restrained.
Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo also called out that at a press conference in the Netherlands last Wednesday, Trump said he had given Iran permission to bomb a U.S. air base in Qatar in retaliation for the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear weapons program sites. “They said, ‘We’re going to shoot them. Is one o’clock OK?’ I said it’s fine,” Trump said. “And everybody was emptied off the base so they couldn’t get hurt, except for the gunners.”
Marshall expressed astonishment that this admission has attracted very little attention. He suggested that, if it is true, it represents “the most shocking dereliction of duty one could imagine for the commander-in-chief,” and he wondered how Republicans would have reacted if a Democratic president had said he had let “a foreign adversary fire on an American military installation.”
Third, Jeff Stein of the Washington Post reported today that the Republicans’ budget reconciliation bill makes the biggest cut ever to programs for low-income Americans. Those cuts have made many Republicans skittish about supporting the measure.
After Trump attacked him yesterday for not supporting the budget reconciliation bill, Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) has announced he will not run for reelection next year, indicating his unwillingness to face a primary challenger backed by Trump. This puts the seat in play for a Democratic pickup.
In a statement, Tillis said: “In Washington over the last few years, it’s become increasingly evident that leaders who are willing to embrace bipartisanship, compromise, and demonstrate independent thinking are becoming an endangered species.” He wrote: “I look forward to having the pure freedom to call the balls and strikes as I see fit and representing the great people of North Carolina to the best of my ability.”
Tonight, Tillis told the Senate: “What do I tell 663,000 people in two years or three years, when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding’s not there anymore, guys?... [T]he effect of this bill is to break a promise.”
Fourth, the Senate parliamentarian has told senators that several of the provisions added to the Republicans’ budget reconciliation bill violate the rules for budget reconciliation bills. Those provisions include the ones added to the bill to win the support of Republican senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
Today, Trump pushed Republican senators to ignore the Senate parliamentarian, who judges whether proposed measures adhere to Senate rules. Trump posted on social media: “An unelected Senate Staffer (Parliamentarian), should not be allowed to hurt the Republicans Bill. Wants many fantastic things out. NO! DJT.”
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office today said the tax cuts in the budget reconciliation bill the Republican senators are trying to pass will increase the national debt by $3.3 trillion over the next ten years despite the $1.2 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other programs over the same period. Senator Raphael Warnock (D-GA) called the measure “Robin Hood in reverse…stealing from the poor in order to give to the rich, this massive transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top…. This is socialism for the rich.”
Trump has demanded the measure’s passage by July 4, in part because the Department of Homeland Security has blown through its budget and needs the supplemental funding the bill will provide. That funding adds an astonishing $45 billion for migrant detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to the current budget of $3.4 billion over the next five years, and $14.4 billion for transportation and removal on top of the current annual budget of $750 million.
Pro Publica, Investigations: Kristi Noem Secretly Took a Cut of Political Donations, Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan and Alex 
Mierjeski, June 30, 2025. A dark money group paid $80,000 to Noem’s personal company when she was governor of South Dakota. She did not include this income on her federal disclosure forms, a likely violation of ethics requirements, experts say.
In 2023, while Kristi Noem was governor of South Dakota, she supplemented her income by secretly accepting a cut of the money she raised for a nonprofit that promotes her political career, tax records show.
In what experts described as a highly unusual arrangement, the nonprofit routed funds to a personal company of Noem’s that had recently been established in Delaware. The payment totaled $80,000 that year, a significant boost to her roughly $130,000 government salary. Since the nonprofit is a so-called dark money group — one that’s not required to disclose the names of its donors — the original source of the money remains unknown.
Noem then failed to disclose the $80,000 payment to the public. After President Donald Trump selected Noem to be his secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, she had to release a detailed accounting of her assets and sources of income from 2023 on. She did not include the income from the dark money group on her disclosure form, which experts called a likely violation of federal ethics requirements.
Experts told ProPublica it was troubling that Noem was personally taking money that came from political donors. In a filing, the group, a nonprofit called American Resolve Policy Fund, described the $80,000 as a payment for fundraising. The organization said Noem had brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars.
There is nothing remarkable about a politician raising money for nonprofits and other groups that promote their campaigns or agendas. What’s unusual, experts said, is for a politician to keep some of the money for themselves.
“If donors to these nonprofits are not just holding the keys to an elected official’s political future but also literally providing them with their income, that’s new and disturbing,” said Daniel Weiner, a former Federal Election Commission attorney who now leads the Brennan Center’s work on campaign finance.
ProPublica discovered details of the payment in the annual tax form of American Resolve Policy Fund, which is part of a network of political groups that promote Noem and her agenda. The nonprofit describes its mission as “fighting to preserve America for the next generation.” There’s little evidence in the public domain that the group has done much. In its first year, its main expenditures were paying Noem and covering the cost of some unspecified travel. It also maintains social media accounts devoted to promoting Noem. It has 100 followers on X.
In a statement, Noem’s lawyer, Trevor Stanley, said, “Then-Governor Noem fully complied with the letter and the spirit of the law” and that the Office of Government Ethics, which processes disclosure forms for federal officials, “analyzed and cleared her financial information in regards to this entity.” Stanley did not respond to follow-up questions about whether the ethics office was aware of the $80,000 payment.
Stanley also said that “Secretary Noem fully disclosed all of her income on public documents that are readily available.” Asked for evidence 
of that, given that Noem didn’t report the $80,000 payment on her federal financial disclosure form, Stanley did not respond.
Before being named Homeland Security secretary, overseeing immigration enforcement, Noem spent two decades in South Dakota’s government and the U.S. House of Representatives, drawing a public servant’s salary. Her husband, Bryon Noem, runs a small insurance brokerage with two offices in the state. Between his company and his real estate holdings, he has at least $2 million in assets, according to Noem’s filing.
While she is among the least wealthy members of Trump’s Cabinet, her personal spending habits have attracted notice. Noem was photographed wearing a gold Rolex Cosmograph Daytona watch that costs nearly $50,000 as she toured the Salvadoran prison where her agency is sending immigrants. In April, after her purse was stolen at a Washington, D.C., restaurant, it emerged she was carrying $3,000 in cash, which an official said was for “dinner, activities, and Easter gifts.” She was criticized for using taxpayer money as governor to pay for expenses related to trips to Paris, to Canada for bear hunting and to Houston to have dental work done. At the time, Noem denied misusing public funds.
Noem’s personal company, an LLC called Ashwood Strategies, shares a name with one of her horses. It was registered in Delaware early in her second term as South Dakota governor, around 1 p.m. on June 22, 2023. Four minutes later, the nonprofit American Resolve Policy Fund was incorporated in Delaware too.
American Resolve raised $1.1 million in 2023, according to its tax filing. The group reported that it had zero employees, and what it did with that money is largely unclear.
OneFirst via Substack, Supreme Court Analysis (To make the U.S. Supreme Court more accessible to all of us): A New Kind of Judicial Supremacy, Steve Vladeck (right, Georgetown Law Center professor), June 30, 2025. The Supreme Court closed the balance of the October 2024 
Term with both actions and opinions that bespeak a new vision of how it exercises power—one that is as dangerous as it will be unpredictable.
The Supreme Court made a dizzying amount of news last week—handing down the last ten rulings in cases argued during the October 2024 Term. Obviously, the birthright citizenship/universal injunctions decision (about which I wrote Friday afternoon) is the lead story. But I wanted to use today’s issue to provide capsule summaries of all ten—and to offer at least a first take on a theme for the entire term.
Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh
In a nutshell, I think the most telling single opinion from the entire term is Justice Kavanaugh’s concurrence in the birthright citizenship ruling—which, in my view, can be fairly read to stand for the proposition that the Court will do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, never mind the procedural formalities that might get in its way. And I think that principle is fairly reflected in most of the Court’s big decisions from the term—including almost all of the headline-generating rulings respecting emergency applications.
Just like a stopped clock, a Court that does whatever it wants whenever it wants will every so often get things “right.” And at a more basic level, a Court that preserves its power to act when it wants to act will at least theoretically remain in a position to check other institutions of government (like a law-indifferent President) to a degree that a Court that formally ceded its power would not be.
But the more that the Supreme Court in general (and this Court, specifically) does whatever it wants, whenever it wants, the more that it is betting its future legitimacy on continuing public support for being subject to its whims.
That is a very different vision of judicial supremacy than the one to which I ascribe—and a vision that is not only deeply unstable in the long run, but that seems particularly ill-suited for the treacherous political and constitutional moment in which we find ourselves.
Paul Krugman via Substack, Opinion: We’re All Rats Now, Time to take a stand, again, against racism, Paul Krugman, right, June 30, 2025. Zohran 
Mamdani’s upset victory in New York’s Democratic primary has created panic in MAGAland.
Stephen Miller, the architect of Donald Trump’s deportation policies, waxed apocalyptic. Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary (shown above in a file photo), declared that New York is about to turn into “Caracas on the Hudson.”
And Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama basically declared New York’s voters subhuman, saying: "These inner-city rats, they live off the federal government. And that’s one reason we’re $37 trillion in debt. And it’s time we find these rats and we send them back home, that are living off the American taxpayers that are working very hard every week to pay taxes."
These reactions are vile, and they’re also dishonest. Whatever these men may claim, it’s all about bigotry.
Miller isn’t concerned about the state of New York “society.” What bothers him is the idea of nonwhite people having political power.
Bessent isn’t really deeply worried about Zamdani’s economic ideas. But he feels free, maybe even obliged, to slander a foreign-born Muslim with language he would never use about a white Christian politician, even if that politician were (like some of his colleagues in the Trump administration) a total crackpot.
And while Tuberville stands out even within his caucus as an ignorant fool, his willingness to use dehumanizing language about millions of people shows that raw racism is rapidly becoming mainstream in American politics.
Remember, during the campaign both Trump and JD Vance amplified the slanders about Haitians eating pets.
And now that they’re in office, you can see the resurgence of raw racism all across Trump administration policies, large and small. You can see it, for example, in the cuts at the National Institutes of Health, which are so tilted against racial minorities that a federal judge — one appointed by Ronald Reagan! — declared
I’ve never seen a record where racial discrimination was so palpable. I’ve sat on this bench now for 40 years. I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this.
You can see it in the renaming of military bases after Confederate generals — that is, traitors who fought for slavery.
You can even see it in a change in the military’s shaving policy that is clearly custom-designed to drive Black men — who account for around a quarter of the Army’s new recruits — out of the service.
So racism and bigotry are back, big time. Who’s safe? Nobody.
Are you a legal immigrant? Well, the Supreme Court just allowed Trump to summarily strip half a million U.S. residents of that status, and only a fool would imagine that this is the end of the story. Anyway, when masked men who claim to be ICE agents but refuse to show identification are grabbing people off the streets because they think those people look illegal, does legal status even matter? Does it even matter if you’re a U.S. citizen?
And the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is set to massively increase ICE’s funding — basically setting up a huge national secret police force.
Now, maybe you imagine that you yourself won’t suffer from this new reign of bigotry and imagine that everyone you care about is similarly safe. But if that’s what you think, you’re likely to face a rude awakening.
I personally don’t have any illusions of safety. Yes, I’m a native-born white citizen. But my wife and her family are Black, and some of my friends and relatives are foreign-born U.S. citizens.
Furthermore, I’m Jewish, and anyone who knows their history realizes that whenever right-wing bigotry is on the ascendant, we’re always next in line. Are there really people out there naïve enough to believe MAGA’s claims to be against antisemitism, who can’t see the transparent cynicism and dishonesty?
The fact is that the Trump administration already contains a number of figures with strong ties to antisemitic extremists. The Great Replacement Theory, which has de facto become part of MAGA’s ideology, doesn’t just say that there’s a conspiracy to replace whites with people of color; it says that it’s a Jewish conspiracy.
So I’m definitely scared of what the many antisemites inside or with close ties to the Trump administration may eventually do. And no, I’m not frightened at all by the prospect that New York may soon have a somewhat leftist Muslim mayor.
Anyway, my personal fears are beside the point. Everyone who cares about keeping America America needs to take a stand against the resurgence of bigotry. Because the truth is that we’re all rats now.
New York Times, Guest Essay: What the University of Virginia Should Have Done, Timothy J. Heaphy (the former university counsel for the University of Virginia), June 30, 2025. Protesters at the University of Virginia showed their support last week for President James Ryan, shown above in a file photo.
On Friday, Jim Ryan stood on the lawn of Carr’s Hill, the residence of the president of the University of Virginia, alone in the center of a crowd of supporters. He offered brief remarks about his inability to fight the forces arrayed against him, including the Trump administration. No one stood alongside him — it was just the university president, Mr. Ryan, explaining why he had made the difficult decision to quit.
The moment perfectly illustrated how Mr. Ryan was abandoned by the same people who were supposed to protect the university. Under investigation by the Justice Department, the university had a strong defense, if only it had the courage to assert it. Instead of fighting back against what I believe to be false accusations that the university was violating federal law, and the even more outrageous demand that Mr. Ryan resign as a remedy for those alleged violations, the university’s Board of Visitors pushed out a popular president. Instead of presenting facts and law, the board waved the white flag of surrender. Mr. Ryan’s resignation is a victory for intimidation and fear over the rule of law.
According to The Times, Mr. Ryan’s departure was prompted by “demands by the Trump administration that he step aside to help resolve a Justice Department inquiry into the school’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.” The Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department has been investigating the university for its alleged failure to eliminate D.E.I. programs and continuing to consider race and ethnicity in various programs and scholarships.
I served as university counsel at the University of Virginia from 2018 through 2022. During that time, it was my job to defend the university from unfounded allegations and investigations. The Justice Department has alleged that the university’s actions violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which states, “No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.” Had I been university counsel last week, I would have advised my client to challenge what I believe to be a false allegation that the university’s policies are unlawful.
Title VI prohibits racial classifications, quotas or programs that are exclusive to any one race, gender or protected class. It does not prevent federal contractors, such as universities, from pursuing the goal of creating a diverse community, one that ensures all individuals can participate in the learning environment regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, national origin or political ideology. Eligibility for programs and opportunities based on those and other immutable characteristics is illegal. Programs that create a pipeline of diverse applicants are not.Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.
Since President Trump’s executive order on D.E.I. and subsequent guidance issued by the Department of Education, the university has taken steps to ensure that it broadened eligibility for university programs, scholarships and services to all students, regardless of race, ethnicity or other classification. It redesigned (not simply relabeled) certain programs to ensure they fostered the valid policy goal of inclusive excellence, diversity of experience and perspective and ensuring that all students are welcome.
Mr. Ryan supervised this transition that observed the line between illegal discrimination and legal pursuit of the policy goal of ensuring a broadly diverse community.
While the university’s compliance with Title VI is clear to me, it was challenged by the Justice Department. Informed by the advocacy of the America First Legal Foundation, an organization founded by the current White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, the department alleged that the university’s compliance efforts were insufficient, a mere relabeling of D.E.I. programs that broke the law. The department’s proposed remedy was the resignation of the university’s leader — a shocking move that reveals the personal animus behind the investigation. The administration would rather oust a leader than force compliance with a particular policy.
The hammer wielded by the Justice Department was the potential cessation of federal grant funding. The university had viable legal options to block this effort, too. Harvard University has persuasively argued that the university has a First Amendment right to pursue programs that promote a broadly diverse community and deserves due process before grants are removed. While the Harvard case remains pending, most higher education lawyers predict success for the university.
Instead of asserting these valid defenses, the University of Virginia opted to capitulate to the demand for Mr. Ryan’s resignation, tacitly agreeing with the notion that the university somehow engaged in illegal racial discrimination.
Why? By law, the university and all state agencies are represented by the attorney general of Virginia. The current attorney general has been an outspoken opponent of D.E.I. programs. He joined Virginia’s governor, Glenn Youngkin, in applauding the university’s dismantling of D.E.I. programs in March 2025. This means rather than having an advocate loyal to the university and its interests, Mr. Ryan and the university were saddled with counsel aligned with the other side.
The university’s governing board took a similar position. The majority of the current board was appointed by Mr. Youngkin, who has said, “D.E.I. is done at the University of Virginia.” In failing to assert these valid legal defenses, the board abdicated its responsibility to protect the university and defend it against unfounded allegations.
In announcing his decision to resign, Mr. Ryan said, “I cannot make a unilateral decision to fight the federal government to save my own job.” His candor demonstrates the alliances at work here: the university’s leader standing alone against his own lawyer, the governing board, and the Trump administration. The crowd that gathered on Friday had Mr. Ryan’s back, but they did not have the ability to overcome biased advocates and overseers with a political agenda.
Mr. Ryan was known to urge the university to be both “great and good” in all its endeavors. His departure will result in a less inclusive university community, which will harm all students who choose the University of Virginia. It is a sad day for the university, which will suffer the consequences of this bad decision.
Proof, Investigative Commentary: Existence of a Secret, Hours-Long Eve-of-Iran War White House War Council Revealed, Seth 
Abramson, left, June 29-30, 2025 And It Was the Agents of Trump’s Business Partners Who AttendedThis revelation was revealed in a CNN report that buried it as unimportant—but it may be the biggest scandal of a scandal-ridden administration. It reveals a conspiracy this report unpacks at length.
As this report is being published on an emergency basis, some of the context critical to it appears at the link above, while some additional context must necessarily appear below in summary. Specifically, the following context is not only central to this report but is also (as importantly) undisputed:
President Donald Trump publicly made clear that his decision to enter into an undeclared war with Iran—initiated via an unprovoked and therefore illegal air invasion—was made at the last moment, meaning that he kept his options open (including an option to call off the attack) for the whole of the decision-making process.
By making an unusually cavalier openness to cancel an incipient war crime public, Trump made this critical intelligence about his decision-making process available not only to the Iranians whose land he was about to attack but also, and perhaps more importantly, to any other actors in the region who might have had reason to (a) want Trump to act against Iran, (b) be willing to heap various forms of largesse upon him to ensure his decision-making process landed on the one they favored.
Trump began his second term with the establishment of a crypto coin operation that allows foreigners to untraceably pay him infinite amounts of money in the form of bribes. (See further reports here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.) This corrupt enterprise has already received $2 billion from Trump’s government business partners in the United Arab Emirates, one of Iran’s primary enemies in the Middle East. The enterprise, World Liberty Financial, is run by five people, three of whom are related to either Trump or Trump’s chief negotiator worldwide on the subjects of Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and the Middle East generally, Steve Witkoff: 
Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and Zach Witkoff. As strong a statement as this may be, the universal assessment of ethics experts is that World Liberty Financial represents the single most corrupt act ever taken by any President of the United States. It is, in short—and quite openly—a vehicle for Bribery, one of only two impeachable offenses enumerated by name in the United States Constitution. (The other one is Treason, which is also relevant to the report below and applies to situations in which the U.S. is in a state of war.)
Putting aside for a moment the fact that Trump’s June 21, 2025 invasion of Iran’s sovereignty was constitutionally illegal, as it was done without any Congressional backing, the justification Trump has provided for doing so—that new intelligence had determined Iran posed an imminent threat that the White House couldn’t wait for Congressional authorization to deal with—was a knowing lie disputed by the entirety of the American intelligence establishment. As discussed in far more detail infra, not only was there no new intelligence indicating that a U.S. war in Iran had to happen in June 2025, but in fact Israeli Prime Minister and longtime Trump personal friend Benjamin Netanyahu decided to launch a war against Iran he knew Trump would join—per recent major-media reports—as soon as Trump was re-elected in 2024. Meanwhile, Trump has made clear to Netanyahu and other friends, allies, and business associates in the Middle East (see infra) that he’s open to an Iran War on a legitimate basis, no basis, a political basis, or an illicit one.
Most of the Middle Eastern autocrats U.S. media calls “political allies” of Donald Trump are in fact also his business associates—inasmuch as he’s relied heavily on such governmental actors’ special attention to (and often investments in) Trump Organization overseas business projects. (More here, here, here, here, and here.)
The Trump Family has massively lucrative business interests that require the aid and largesse of government actors in the autocratic (or in one instance, near-autocratic) Middle Eastern nations of Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Egypt (link), Türkiye (link), and Bahrain (link). Payments to many Trump Organization projects overseas are made through these autocratic governments’ sovereign wealth funds, so they are often treated as legitimate investments when (because the nations involved are autocracies whose wealth funds are controlled by discrete royal families) they are in fact bribes by foreign officials whose venal interests often have little to do with the national interests of their countries. The key figures in this regard are the leaders of Saudi Arabia (Mohammed bin Salman or “MBS”), the United Arab Emirates or “UAE” (Mohammed bin Zayed), Egypt (Abdel Fattah el-Sisi), Türkiye (Recep Tayyip Erdoğan), Israel (Netanyahu), and Qatar (controlled by the House of Thani).
In view of the foregoing, Trump and his aides were well aware that on and before the day the president gave the order to precipitate an Iran War his views on doing so could be influenced by direct or indirect interactions with his political allies and business associates in the Middle East—that is, his thinking could readily be influenced via anything from secret crypto donations to promises of beneficial permitting for future Trump multimillion-dollar projects, from the continued keeping of certain secrets about past illegal election interference by some the nations listed above (see here and the 2019 Macmillan New York Times bestseller Proof of Conspiracy generally) to the continued keeping of certain secrets about Trump himself.
But if any of these euphemistically designated “Gulf partners” were to have that sort of influence on Trump in the final hours before he made his deliberately last-minute decision to go to war with a nation he knew America had no reason to go to war with, it would have to have been through a late June 2025 meeting between Trump and/or his agents and the agents of these Gulf State allies and associates.
Conclusion
The question now is how all this continues to matter now that there’s a ceasefire—as shaky as it may be—between Israel and Iran, and now that President Trump has intimated that he might be (or also might not be) done with airstrikes against Iran.
The simple answer is this: it continues to matter because both the ceasefire and the statements made by Trump suggesting he won’t bomb again are a bunch of malarkey.
President Trump has made clear that he won’t allow Iran to have any sort of nuclear program, even a civilian one—a position he takes for venal reasons that he nevertheless gets away with because it’s the same one taken by war hawks inside the Pentagon whose commitment to America’s national security is (unlike Trump’s) not in doubt. (Proof notes here that Trump didn’t take this supposedly principled stance about North Korea during his first term, has never taken it about the nuclear-armed Israel, and for that matter doesn’t appear to take this view now regarding his Middle Eastern allies and business partners, literally all of whom are working as hard as they can to launch civilian nuclear programs—not for nothing, with Trump’s assistance.)
At the same time, American intelligence has made reasonably clear (or it did, before Trump closed the lid on any future intelligence releases to the public or Congress; it’s now unclear when we’ll see any more data from the American intelligence community on Iran) that Iran does continue to have a nuclear program. Which suggests that, if only to please Israel and Middle Eastern business partners, Trump must do something.
As observed above, one option on the table is to execute the “Grand Bargain” that was outlined to Trump by Michael Flynn, Thomas Barrack and several others (see Proof of Conspiracy) in the fall of 2015 and early 2016, which bargain was what animated the creation of the Red Sea Conspiracy—that illicit coalition of Trump business partners in the Middle East that worked in tandem with both the Russians and the Israelis to elect Trump in 2016, in 2020, and then (after 2020 was a bust) in 2024. It’s this cabal that Trump and his inner circle sought to obscure by at various points falsely accusing Joe Biden and/or unnamed Democratic Party officials of illegally conspiring with Iran, China, Ukraine, and Venezuela. (The very existence of the Red Sea Conspiracy more or less required that Trump try to find an equally large group of nations he could plausibly—or, candidly, not so plausibly—claim are working on behalf of Democrats.)
Trump apparently seeks to now execute a similar bait-and-switch: folding President Obama’s wildly successful 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal into the Red Sea Conspiracy’s 2015 Grand Bargain in an effort to (a) take credit for the very nuclear deal he already knows will work but he previously tried to destroy; (b) get a Nobel Peace Prize for more or less cribbing all of his foreign-policy homework from a more impressive man in every respect, Barack Obama; and (c) deliver for Israel, Russia, and his many Middle Eastern business partners the multilateral geopolitical endgame they thought they were buying when they first began illegally supporting Trump’s political career a decade ago.
Seen from this vantagepoint, it’s an oddly elegant solution to the fact that Trump in fact has no interest in—or aptitude for—public policy, and merely entered public service to enrich himself and his family A combination Iran Nuclear Deal-Grand Bargain gambit gives Trump the appearance of having a foreign policy of his own, even if the value to the United States of any part of that policy is impossible to detect—beyond, at least, the fixing of a series of foreign crises that Donald Trump and his friends were ultimately the authors of in the first instance.
If the president wants to finish the job he began with a midnight-launched offensive operation incompetently code-named Midnight Hammer—a name that, incredibly, gives away both the timing and the nature of the military operation it stands for—he has two options only, now:
Pretend the Iranian nuclear program was fully destroyed when he well knows it wasn’t. This is the elementary-school-sophistication-level plan Trump is trying on for size now. It’s doomed to fail because as President of the United States Trump is forced to deal with adults holding at least room-temperature IQs, not children; the Israelis, at a minimum, will shout to the heavens at the very first sign that Iran retains an active nuclear program or can quickly reconstitute one.
Go to war with Iran. This would involve not just a series of airstrikes, but some kind of full-blown war. If Iran won’t agree to inspections, and it currently isn’t; if it removes itself from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, as it’s currently in the process of doing; if it won’t reopen negotiations with Trump over the Iran Nuclear Deal, which it currently won’t; and if it refuses to tell Trump whether it still has enriched uranium stores and where they’re located—which is exactly what it’s currently refusing to do—what possible option does Trump have left except to have U.S. intelligence try to track down the location of such materials in the coming months, with Trump thereafter authorizing a ground invasion of Iran by small strike forces of Israeli and American commandos working in unison under cover of darkness? In other words, what option is he left with but a war?
What’s so unsettling about these being the only apparent options left to Trump—and, for that matter, the Israelis and all those Middle Eastern Trump business partners who relied on Trump to get a job done in Iran that he simply couldn’t—is that Trump remains wholly in control of them. If he wants to launch his full-blown Iran War just before the 2026 midterms, using the sudden involvement of the United States in an extended shooting war as an excuse to declare martial law, he’ll clearly be permitted to do so by the current U.S. Supreme Court; the only question is whether Trump would also need some sort of domestic terror attack that he can plausibly blame on Iran (the “Reichstag moment” Milley feared Trump had already begun looking for five years ago) to fully justify a foreign war having such immediate consequences for Americans’ freedoms here at home. In any case, it’s certainly not too tall a hill for the trickster Trump to climb, given that he’s repeatedly met with his aides and allies in the past to brainstorm how to pin vile acts on Iran that Iran didn’t do, culminating in an actual assassination that was based in such pretext. Trump faced no repercussions for lying to American voters about the Soleimani hit, so why would he fear consequences now?
In short, the Iran crisis isn’t over. Far from it. It’s only beginning.
New York Times, 2 Firefighters Killed in Idaho Sniper Ambush, Officials Say, Mike Baker, Mark Walker, Jack Healy and Bernard Mokam, June 30, 2025 (print ed.). Firefighters were responding to a blaze near Coeur d’Alene when the shooting happened, a sheriff said. At least one other firefighter was wounded.
At least two firefighters were killed in Idaho on Sunday afternoon after they were ambushed in a sniper attack while responding to a fire in a rugged mountain area, the authorities said.
Law enforcement agencies near Coeur d’Alene scrambled to evacuate the area — popular for weekend hikers — while trying to stop what might be multiple attackers who were still firing shots at emergency workers.
“We are actively taking sniper fire as we speak,” said Sheriff Robert Norris of Kootenai County in an afternoon news conference around 4:30 p.m. He was unsure how many people had been hit by gunfire but officials said the two people killed were firefighters.
As the shooting initially unfolded, firefighters pleaded for help after two of them went down with gunshot wounds, according to a feed posted on Broadcastify, a website that provides public access to emergency radio communications. One firefighter reported that they were hiding behind a firefighting rig. One voice could be heard saying that they thought the fire was set intentionally.300 mi.500 km.© Mapbox © OpenStreetMap
Officers who responded to the shooting reported that additional shots were coming from multiple directions, suggesting the possibility of multiple attackers, Mr. Norris said. He added it appeared that “high-powered rifles” were being used, with the attacker or attackers well prepared, blending into heavy brush.
Mr. Norris cautioned that if the authorities could not stop the suspects quickly, the operation could last multiple days. The fire that triggered the initial fire department response around 1:21 p.m. local time was still blazing, and law enforcement agencies urged people in the area to shelter indoors.
Kim Anderson, a spokeswoman for Kootenai Health hospital system, said that along with the two fatalities, one other person had been brought in for injuries from the shooting. She did not immediately have details on the condition of that person, but the International Association of Fire Fighters said a firefighter was in surgery.
Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: Democrats Launch 'Organizing Summer' in Key States Ahead of 2026 Midterms, Troy Matthews, June 30, 2025. Dems are organizing an army of volunteers to fight back against Trump's disastrous budget bill
The DNC announced today the kick-off of "organizing summer" in key states ahead of both the 2025 general election in November, and the 2026 midterms, to highlight the massive Republican transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in Trump's disastrous and unpopular budget bill.
The campaign aims to seize on Democratic enthusiasm after months of special election victories at the congressional and state level following the 2024 presidential election, along with global acts of protest like "No Kings Day," which saw over 13 million people in the U.S., and tens of thousands overseas, march in the streets against the authoritarian policies of Trump and MAGA Republicans.
The DNC, along with the DCCC, DSCC, DGA and ASDC, are launching coordinated live and virtual events to train up volunteers who are ready to take the fight to Republicans in multiple key states, including: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
"Donald Trump's tax scam is the least popular legislation to pass through Congress in 40 years, and the more people know about it, the less they like it," DNC Chair Ken Martin said in a statement. "Our job this summer is to make sure working families know exactly who is responsible for taking food off their table and ripping away their health care."
Additionally, "Organizing Summer" will include:
"We are deploying an army of thousands of volunteers to activate their communities, register voters, and make sure the Republicans who are putting billionaires ahead of working and middle class Americans lose their elections in 2025 and lose their seats in the midterms up and down the ballot," Martin said.
Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: 75-Year-Old Cuban Immigrant Dies in ICE Custody After Nearly Six Decades in U.S., Aaron Parnas, June 30, 2025. Isidro Perez’s death marks Florida’s fifth immigration detention fatality in 2024, raising questions about medical care and ICE oversight.
A 75-year-old Cuban man who first arrived in the United States in 1966 has died after spending three weeks in immigration detention in Miami, making him the fifth person to die in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody in Florida this year.
Isidro Perez, who was detained by ICE on June 5 during an unspecified law enforcement operation in Key Largo, passed away Thursday night at Florida Kendall Hospital. His death underscores a troubling trend: Half of all deaths in ICE custody nationwide in 2024 have occurred in Florida.
According to an ICE press release, Perez was arrested for immigration violations due to his ineligibility to remain in the country—citing two controlled substance convictions from the early 1980s. No other arrests were mentioned.
Following his arrest, Perez was taken to the Krome Detention Center in southwest Miami-Dade County, where, during routine medical intake, he was diagnosed with several health conditions. On June 17, he was hospitalized at Larkin Community Hospital for "unstable angina," a condition that restricts blood flow to the heart and can signal an impending heart attack. He was discharged on June 26, but the following evening complained of chest pain at Krome’s medical unit. He was transported to a hospital, where he died shortly after 9 p.m.
ICE stated that Perez received appropriate care and emphasized the agency’s commitment to "safe, secure, and humane environments" for detainees, noting that "at no time during detention is a detained illegal alien denied emergent care."
However, investigations by the Miami Herald have cast doubt on the adequacy of healthcare in ICE facilities. Earlier this year, two other detainees were reported to have died of “natural causes,” though journalists uncovered potential evidence of substandard or delayed medical treatment. Autopsies and medical records for the remaining three deaths—including Perez’s—have not yet been released.
Perez’s long life in the United States and his sudden detention raise larger questions about immigration enforcement practices, particularly when it comes to elderly or medically vulnerable individuals. His death adds urgency to the call for transparency and reform in ICE detention centers, especially in Florida, where the rate of deaths continues to outpace the rest of the nation.
June 29
New York Times, Trump Administration Updates: Senate to Debate President’s Policy Bill After Late Night Vote, Andrew Duehren, June 29, 2025. Where Things Stand.
measure had enough support to pass in the Senate and return to the House for final approval in time to meet the July4 deadline Mr. Trump has set. Democrats demanded a line-by-line reading of the bill, a task that was expected to stretch into the midafternoon. That would start the clock on 20 hours of debate on the legislation, meaning any final action in the chamber was likely to be on Monday at the earliest. Read more ›Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: June 28, 2025 [Trump's Unpopular Budget Bill], Heather Cox Richardson, right June 29, 2025. Last night just before midnight, Republicans released their new version of the omnibus budget reconciliation bill. It is a sign of just how unpopular this bill is that they released the new version just before midnight on a Friday night, a time that is the graveyard of news stories.
Over the course of today, the contours of the revised measure have become clearer. Democratic challenges and the Senate parliamentarian convinced Republican senators to remove policy provisions from the bill that either were especially incendiary or did not meet the rules for budget reconciliation bills. Those challenges preserved the Consumer Finance Protection Board, limited a rule that prevented states from regulating artificial intelligence, prevented the selling off of public lands, eliminated vouchers for religious schools, and so on.
Despite these changes, the final measure retains its original structure.
That structure tells us a lot about the world today’s Republican lawmakers envision. The centerpiece of the bill remains its extension of the 2017 tax cuts for wealthy Americans and corporations, making those tax cuts permanent. The tax structure in the measure funnels wealth from the poorest Americans to the top 1%.
According to Alyssa Fowers and Hannah Dormido of the Washington Post, the Senate slashed the apparent cost of the bill by using a new method to calculate the numbers. Under the traditional way of estimating the cost of a bill, the new measure would add $4.2 trillion to the national debt. But using the gimmick of ignoring the tax extensions by saying they are simply a continuation of policies already in place, the Senate claims the bill will cost $442 billion, just a tenth of what the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office calculates.
According to immigration scholar Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, the measure also provides an additional $45 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain migrants, on top of the current annual budget of $3.4 billion. It adds $14.4 billion for transportation and removal on top of the current annual budget of $750 million. It also adds $8 billion for new ICE hires and retention. Reichlin-Melnick notes that this budget will give ICE more money for detention than it gives the entire U.S. Bureau of Prisons.
The Department of Homeland Security reflected the heart of this budget today, when it posted on social media an image of four alligators wearing ICE hats—an apparent reference to the construction of a migrant detention facility in the Everglades in Florida—with the comment: “Coming soon!”
To offset some of the tax cuts in the measure, the Senate bill cuts $930 billion out of Medicaid—more than the House bill cut—and, according to Ron Wyden (D-OR), makes additional cuts to Medicare and the Affordable Care Act. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the measure will cause 11.8 million Americans to become uninsured, almost a million more than would have lost health insurance under the House version.
In Politico today, Meredith Lee Hill reported that “[e]very major health system in Louisiana is warning [House] Speaker Mike Johnson [R-LA] and the rest of the state’s congressional delegation that the Senate [Republicans’] planned Medicaid cuts ‘would be historic in their devastation.’” The Senate’s revised measure will hurt healthcare and undermine the state’s budget, they wrote. But “[t]hese economic consequences pale in comparison to the harm that will be caused to residents across the state, regardless of insurance status, who will no longer be able to get the care that they need.”
Tonight, fifty-one senators voted to advance the bill with forty-nine opposing it. Republicans Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Rand Paul of Kentucky voted with the Democrats to stop the bill from moving forward. Tillis has been clear that he could not support the bill’s cuts to Medicaid. Immediately, Trump said he would back a primary challenger to Tillis, saying he would be “looking for someone who will properly represent the Great People of North Carolina.”
After forcing changes to the measure through challenges accepted by the Senate parliamentarian, Democrats tonight called out Republicans for releasing the new bill in the middle of last night and then trying to call a vote on it in the middle of tonight. They are demanding that the entire 940-page bill be read on the Senate floor.
As the Republican attempt to hide the budget reconciliation bill suggests, it is enormously unpopular.
Defending Democracy, Interview with Sen. Chuck Schumer, Marc Elias, right, June 29, 2025. This week, I sat down with Senate Democratic Leader 
Chuck Schumer, shown above in a file photo, for an interview. We talked about the Supreme Court’s decision on nationwide injunctions, how Trump’s ‘big, ugly betrayal’ bill will harm Americans, Schumer’s first meeting with Trump as president and much more.
Marc: Senator Schumer, welcome to Defending Democracy.
Senator Schumer: Marc. Great to be here with one of the great lawyers in our country who has protected democracy in many ways and is fighting to do it at this moment, I am sure.
Marc: I appreciate that. Speaking of things that we are currently doing — Republicans seem intent on passing what appears to be an absolutely terrible bill. I’m not a policy expert, but my sense is they're trying to take away people's health care and, at the same time, give tax breaks to billionaires. What's going on?
Senator Schumer: Well, first, this is one of the worst bills that's happened in the last 100 years, and you summed it up correctly. If you had to say it in four words, you'd say: Billionaires win, families lose. This bill is just outrageous. It basically says that we're going to dramatically cut health care more than we've ever cut it before. 16 million people will lose their health care benefits. Many more who don't, who aren't on ACA or on Medicaid will have their premiums.
Even if you don't have Medicare or Medicaid, your premiums would go dramatically up because of what they've done. The cuts would decimate hospitals — we estimate one out of every three rural hospitals would close. Those are in Republican areas, most of them, and for many counties, we have counties like this in upstate New York, it's the largest employer and the only source of health care. But even big hospitals would close. The head of one of the biggest hospitals in the Bronx told me that they could close and over a million people will lose their jobs. Often, these are jobs that are ladders up. We see it when we go to hospitals. They get paid decent wages, oftentimes, because it's union labor, and they lose those jobs. It is just devastating across the board. But it's not the only thing they're doing. They're cutting food stamps. They're going to take food out of the mouths of hungry children. And in the bill, you'd probably get about $5 a day to feed a kid. Well, $5 doesn't buy a dozen eggs these days, with the prices going up in terms of clean energy, a bill that we passed two years ago, which was going to move America into an era of wind and solar and clean energy. They're cutting all that back because the fossil fuel industry hates clean energy, because they know it's the future — solar panels are the cheapest way to get new energy, the quickest. The oil and gas [industries] know that they're the past, and they want to kill this, and Republicans did now.
Why are they doing all these bad things and many more — cutting education, cutting housing, cutting so much? I'll tell you why: To give tax breaks to billionaires. There's a small, very rich, greedy group of billionaires, and they just don't want to pay taxes. They hate the government in general, because the government puts barriers. [The government] protects customers, workers, the land, air and water that we treasure, and they want to cut all of that out so that they can pay almost no taxes and have no barriers in their way. So basically, they're cutting your health care, cutting food from hungry children, cutting clean energy, which employs 840,000 people who would lose their jobs under that, all to give tax breaks for billionaires.
And one other thing more: the American people have begun to learn how bad this bill is. Donald Trump calls it his “big, beautiful bill.” We call it his big, ugly betrayal. He's betrayed the American people. The things he promised in the campaign, he's going back on and reversing.
Marc: Do they know that this is bad for them, and they don't care? Are they just sucking up to Donald Trump? What is the rationale when you hear Republican senators talk about this to their constituents?
Senator Schumer: It's a great question. Lisa Murkowski (right) summed it up best. She said, “We are all afraid.” She was the only honest one in the whole bunch. They are afraid. What are they afraid of? Retribution, vicious, nasty retribution by Donald Trump.
Here's what's been reported about Joni Ernst. It's a horrifying story. Joni Ernst was a farm girl from Iowa. She enlisted in the military. She was brutally raped. The military didn't do anything to go after the people who did it to her. So she ran for the Senate, and one of the things she ran on and wanted to change was how the military treats women who were abused. She won and to her credit, she did fix up some of the stuff in the military. Well, Hegseth is nominated. He’s been accused of rape multiple times and of course, it won't be prosecuted under a Trump Justice Department that doesn't care about rule of law. All they care about is backing up their friends who back up Donald Trump. And so she said she couldn't vote for this guy given her history. Joni Ernst felt so pressured by Donald Trump and Elon Musk to vote yes that she did, because they're all afraid. They're just afraid of Donald Trump.
Paul Krugman on Substack: Inequality, Part V: Predatory Financialization: How Wall Street increases disparities, Paul Krugman, right, June 29, 2025. My favorite line from the 1987 movie Wall Street comes when Gordon Gekko ridicules the Charlie Sheen character for his limited ambitions: I'm not talking about some $400,000-a-year working Wall Street stiff, flying first class, and being comfortable.
Adjusted for inflation, 400K in 1987 would be around $1.1 million now.What the line tells us that even in 1987, fairly early in the great post-1980 surge in inequality, many people in finance — working Wall Street stiffs — were already being paid very large sums, and a few people were acquiring extraordinary fortunes.
Last week I noted that the very biggest fortunes in America are now primarily based on technology quasi-monopolies. But go down the Forbes 400 list a bit and you see a number of plutocrats who made tens of billions in finance, especially hedge funds. These include people like Stephen Schwarzman, who compared efforts to close a Wall Street-friendly tax loophole to Hitler’s invasion of Poland, and Ken Griffin, a Republican megadonor.
The fact is that financialization of the U.S. economy has been a major driver of rising inequality.
What do I mean by financialization? Actually I mean two different but related things. One aspect is the extraordinary rise in the share of the U.S. economy devoted to financial activities as opposed to production of goods and services. A second is the pervasive way in which financiers and financial institutions like hedge funds and private equity have changed how even nonfinancial business operates. These changes have almost always increased inequality.
New York Times, Tillis Announces He Won’t Run Again as Trump Threatens Him With a Primary, Annie Karni, June 29, 2025. The day after President Trump castigated the North Carolina Republican for opposing the policy bill carrying his domestic agenda, the senator announced he would not seek a third term.
Senator Thom Tillis, right, Republican of North Carolina, announced on Sunday that he would not seek re-election next year, a day after President Trump threatened to back a primary challenger against him because Mr. Tillis said he opposed the bill carrying Mr. Trump’s domestic agenda.
Mr. Tillis’s departure will set off a highly competitive race in North Carolina that could be pivotal in the battle for control of the Senate. It was the latest congressional retirement to underscore the rightward shift of the G.O.P. and the reality that there is little room for any Republican to break with Mr. Trump.
“In Washington over the last few years, it’s become increasingly evident that leaders who are willing to embrace bipartisanship, compromise, and demonstrate independent thinking are becoming an endangered species,” Mr. Tillis said in a lengthy statement on his decision.
The announcement came as the Senate was wading into a debate over the large-scale tax cut and domestic policy bill that Mr. Trump has demanded be delivered to his desk by July 4. Mr. Tillis announced his decision the day after issuing a statement saying he could not in good conscience support the measure, which he said would lead to tens of billions of dollars in lost funding for his state, costing people Medicaid coverage and critical health services.
Mr. Tillis, 64, is serving his second term, and has been struggling with how to balance a potential re-election campaign with his desire, at times, to oppose Mr. Trump’s agenda.
In his statement, he said he was looking forward “to having the pure freedom to call the balls and strikes as I see fit and representing the great people of North Carolina to the best of my ability” in his remaining time in Congress.
In January, Mr. Trump made it clear that he was contemplating finding a potential primary challenger to run against Mr. Tillis after the senator expressed grave reservations about his nominee for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth. Mr. Tillis eventually fell in line and backed the president’s pick, surrendering to Mr. Trump’s demands for loyalty.
Mr. Tillis in his statement blamed the lack of any middle ground in Congress on both political parties, pointing to the recent departures of Senators Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, without naming them.
“When people see independent thinking on the other side, they cheer,” he said. “But when those very same people see independent thinking coming from their side, they scorn, ostracize and even censure them.”Editors’ PicksIs It Wrong to Push Ozempic on My Spouse?Wet Leg Became Indie Superheroes Overnight. Now They’re Acting Like It.‘Squid Game’ Review: Game Over
The dynamic has been much more acute for Republicans on Capitol Hill, where in recent years center-leaning lawmakers have headed for the exits. For instance, four of the Republican senators who worked with Democrats to pass a gun safety law in 2022 — Roy Blunt of Missouri, Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, Rob Portman of Ohio and Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania — all left Congress soon after.
Mr. Tillis in his statement added, “I haven’t exactly been excited about running for another term,” saying that his job was too much about “navigating the political theater and partisan gridlock in Washington.”
Mr. Tillis has played a key role in some major bipartisan legislation in recent years, including a compromise bill intended to stop dangerous people from accessing firearms that former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. signed into law in 2022. He was part of a bipartisan group of senators who worked to propose changes to how Congress counted electoral votes after the mob attack on Jan. 6, 2021.
1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, Trump Financial Commentary: Trump’s many, crypto hustles, explained, Zach Everson, June 29, 2025. On Friday, I joined Boston College history professor Heather Cox Richardson on a livestream to run through Donald Trump’s crypto ventures, how they overlap with his administration’s policies, and why this matters.
Not sure I realized it until I was preparing for this chat, but the breadth of his crypto entanglements is quite impressive: stablecoins, memecoins, crypto ETFs, tokens, NFTs, defi, bitcoin reserves, and, soon, wallets.
My latest article on his crypto dealings was published last week: “President Trump’s Crypto Firm Expands Relationship With Embattled Blockchain Billionaire.” I joined my colleague Brittany Lewis to discuss the story in Forbes Newsroom
Distilled, URGENT: The Latest Senate Bill Is Worse Than Climate Advocates Thought Possible, Michael Thomas, June 29, 2025. The bill could become law in the next 24 hours.
This is a special joint edition of Distilled and HEATED, a newsletter written by journalist Emily Atkin. HEATED is a must-read for anyone who cares about holding polluters accountable for the climate crisis. Sign up HERE.
Climate and clean energy advocates thought they had already seen the worst case scenario in previous versions of the Senate’s sweeping reconciliation bill. They were wrong.
The latest bill, released late Friday night, includes a new tax on solar and wind farms that analysts at Rhodium Group estimate will increase the cost of renewable energy projects by 10 to 20%. That’s on top of cost increases that will come from an aggressive phase out of tax credits that have led to a clean energy boom over the last decade.“
It’s a kill shot. This new excise tax on wind and solar is designed to fully kill the industry,” Adrian Deveny, founder and president of the policy advisory firm Climate Vision, told Politico.
The bill could become law as soon as this evening if the Senate succeeds at bringing it to the floor while most Americans are asleep.The bill wouldn’t just dramatically slow clean energy’s growth. It would also provide subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. One provision in the bill would exempt oil and gas drillers from paying any corporate taxes. Another provision offers coal producers a production tax credit. These giveaways would add to the hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies the industry has received from taxpayers over the last century.
The new fossil fuel subsidies in the bill come after a month of intense pressure from fossil fuel industry lobbyists and advocates. In a lunch with Republican Senators, fossil fuel advocate Alex Epstein successfully argued that Senate leaders should go further than the House did in slowing clean energy’s growth.
Last week, Epstein said wind and solar were “a cancer we have to get rid of” before referring to jobs created by the industry as “fentanyl jobs.” He told the New York Times his advocacy is funded by the fossil fuel industry.
The bill would cause irreparable damageIf passed, the Senate’s bill would set America back significantly in its effort to address climate change. By 2035 the United States would emit one billion tons of additional carbon pollution compared to its current trajectory, according to modeling from Princeton University. That’s equivalent to the annual emissions of Japan, the fifth largest greenhouse gas emitter.
The bill would also lead to a massive wave of clean energy project cancellations at a time when America is already running out of electricity due to a surge in demand from AI data centers. Less electricity supply would boost prices for American families and businesses in every state, with some experiencing price increases of 25% as a result of the legislation.
New York Times, U.N. Inspector Says Iran Could Be Enriching Fuel Again in a ‘Matter of Months,’ David E. Sanger and Tyler Pager, June 29, 2025.The assessment widens the divide with President Trump, who has claimed that Tehran has given up its nuclear ambitions after a U.S. attack.
The chief United Nations nuclear inspector has widened the divide with the Trump administration over how severely the United States set back Iran’s nuclear program, declaring that it could be enriching uranium in a “matter of months” even as President Trump repeated his claim that Tehran had lost interest in the effort.
“Frankly speaking, one cannot claim that everything has disappeared and there is nothing there,” Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said in an interview with CBS News that aired on Sunday.
He said that when the United States dropped 14 bunker-busting bombs on Iran’s two uranium enrichment centers, the damage was “severe” but not “total.” In previous interviews, he said he believed that all of the more than 18,000 centrifuges, buried in underground enrichment halls, had been destroyed or damaged and knocked out of operation.
But Mr. Grossi’s analysis — one that several European intelligence agencies share — is consistent with a preliminary assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency that was widely reported on last week. That report estimated that the strike set back the Iranian nuclear program by only a few months. The C.I.A. director said later in the week that the Iranian program had been severely damaged, and the U.S. intelligence agencies were continuing to assess the strike.
The Defense Intelligence Agency report appeared to focus on the enrichment process at the sites where the GBU-57 bunker-busters, among the most powerful in the U.S. arsenal, were used. Later analysis by outside groups suggested that the biggest loss for Iran might have been the destruction of facilities to turn that fuel into a weapon. In particular, damage to a laboratory under construction in the nuclear complex outside the ancient city of Isfahan, which is intended to convert enriched uranium into a metal, may prove a major bottleneck in Iran’s ability to convert highly enriched uranium into the metal that is needed to produce a weapon.
Rebuilding that capability, other experts have said, could take years. And much depends on whether Iran throws out I.A.E.A. inspectors — who remained in Tehran throughout the conflict with Israel earlier this month — or whether it decides to conduct its work in the open. Either way, it could be bombed again, as Mr. Trump has said in recent days he is quite willing to do.
Politico, Mamdani pushes back on Trump’s latest jab, Gregory Svirnovskiy, June 29, 2025. Trump called Mamdani a Communist and threatened to withhold federal funding from the city in case of a conflict.
Zohran Mamdani, right, is continuing to sell his progressive vision for New York City amid increasing pressure from President Donald Trump.
“I have already had to start to get used to the fact that the president will talk about how I look, how I sound, where I’m from, who I am, ultimately because he wants to distract from what I’m fighting for,” Mamdani told NBC’s Kristen Welker on Sunday on “Meet the Press.” “And I’m fighting for the very working people that he ran a campaign to empower, that he has since then betrayed.”
In the days since Mamdani’s upset victory in a New York City mayoral primary over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and others, prominent Republicans have pushed to make him the face of the Democratic Party, denouncing his policies as “radical” and “socialist.”
In an interview that aired on “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo,” Trump called Mamdani a Communist and threatened to withhold federal funding from the city in case of a conflict.
“I can’t imagine it, but let’s say this, if he does get in, I’m gonna be president and he’s going to have to do the right thing or they’re not getting any money,” Trump said. “He’s gotta do the right thing.”
Mamdani also vowed to uphold New York City’s sanctuary status if elected in November, even as the White House continues to push its aggressive immigration agenda in some of the country’s largest cities.
The Trump administration in February sued the state of New York over its sanctuary policies, alleging they interfered with federal deportation efforts. Meanwhile, Mayor Eric Adams has met several times with Trump’s border czar Tom Homan. Not long after the Department of Justice moved to dismiss a criminal bribery case against him in February, Adams moved to allow U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents back into the city’s Rikers Island jail complex.
“It’s a policy that had previously been defended by Democrats and Republicans alike, until the fearmongering of this current mayor,” Mamdani told Welker. “And it’s a policy that we’ve seen ensures that New Yorkers can get out of the shadows and into the full life of the city that they belong to, and it’s one that I will be proud to stand up for.”
New York Times, A Triumphant Supreme Court Term for Trump, Fueled by Emergency Rulings, Adam Liptak and Abbie VanSickle, June 29, 2025 (print ed.). Using truncated procedures, the six-justice conservative majority gave a green light to many of the president’s most assertive initiatives.
The Trump administration filed 19 emergency applications in the first 20 weeks of the president’s second term, the same number the Biden administration filed over four years and more than the eight applications filed over the 16 years of the George W. Bush and Barack Obama presidencies.Credit...Allison Robert for
The Supreme Court term that ended on Friday included an extraordinary run of victories for President Trump, culminating in a 6-to-3 ruling largely eliminating the main tool that his opponents have used to thwart his aggressive agenda.
In that case and others, the justices used truncated procedures on their emergency docket to issue decisions that gave Mr. Trump some or 
all of what he had asked for in cases dealing with immigration, transgender troops and the independence of government agencies.
The emergency rulings in Mr. Trump’s favor were theoretically temporary and provisional. In practice, they allowed the president to pursue his policies indefinitely and sometimes irreversibly.
In the first 20 weeks of Mr. Trump’s second term, his administration filed 19 emergency applications asking the justices to pause lower court losses while lawsuits continued. That is the total number of such applications the Biden administration filed over four years, and far more than the eight applications filed over the 16 years of the George W. Bush and Barack Obama presidencies.
The spike was a result of challenges to the blitz of executive orders issued by the administration since Mr. Trump took office. The upshot was a winning streak delivered by a court he remade in his first term, appointing three of the six conservative justices.
Many of the emergency decisions were based on rushed and cursory briefs, and came after the court did without oral arguments. They were usually delivered in orders containing scant or no reasoning.
New York Times, News Analysis: With Supreme Court Ruling, Another Check on Trump’s Power Fades, Charlie Savage, June 29, 2025 (print ed.). The court tied the hands of judges at a time when Congress has been cowed and internal executive branch constraints have been steamrolled.
The Supreme Court ruling barring judges from swiftly blocking government actions, even when they may be illegal, is yet another way that checks on executive authority have eroded as President Trump pushes to amass more power.
The decision on Friday, by a vote of 6 to 3, could allow Mr. Trump’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship to take effect in some parts of the country — even though every court that has looked at the directive has ruled it unconstitutional. That means some infants born to undocumented immigrants or foreign visitors without green cards could be denied citizenship-affirming documentation like Social Security numbers.
But the diminishing of judicial authority as a potential counterweight to exercises of presidential power carries implications far beyond the issue of citizenship. The Supreme Court is effectively tying the hands of lower-court judges at a time when they are trying to respond to a steady geyser of aggressive executive branch orders and policies.
The ability of district courts to swiftly block Trump administration actions from being enforced in the first place has acted as a rare effective check on his second-term presidency. But generally, the pace of the judicial process is slow and has struggled to keep up. Actions that already took place by the time a court rules them illegal, like shutting down an agency or sending migrants to a foreign prison without due process, can be difficult to unwind.
Presidential power historically goes through ebbs and flows, with fundamental implications for the functioning of the system of checks and balances that defines American-style democracy.
But it has generally been on an upward path since the middle of the 20th century. The growth of the administrative state inside the executive branch, and the large standing armies left in place as World War II segued into the Cold War, inaugurated what the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. coined the “imperial presidency.”
Presidential power waned in the 1970s, in the period encompassing the Watergate scandal and the end of the Vietnam War. Courts proved willing to rule against the presidency, as when the Supreme Court forced President Richard M. Nixon to turn over his Oval Office tapes. Members of both parties worked together to enact laws imposing new or restored limits on the exercise of executive power.
But the present era is very different. Presidential power began to grow again in the Reagan era and after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. And now Mr. Trump, rejecting norms of self-restraint, has pushed to eliminate checks on his authority and stamp out pockets of independence within the government while only rarely encountering resistance from a Supreme Court he reshaped and a Congress controlled by a party in his thrall.
The decision by the Supreme Court’s conservative majority comes as other constraints on Mr. Trump’s power have also eroded. The administration has steamrolled internal executive branch checks, including firing inspectors general and sidelining the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which traditionally set guardrails for proposed policies and executive orders.
And Congress, under the control of Mr. Trump’s fellow Republicans, has done little to defend its constitutional role against his encroachments. This includes unilaterally dismantling agencies Congress had said shall exist as a matter of law, firing civil servants in defiance of statutory limits and refusing to spend funds that lawmakers had authorized and appropriated.
Last week, when Mr. Trump unilaterally bombed Iranian nuclear sites without getting prior authorization from Congress or making any claim of an imminent threat, one Republican, Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, stepped forward to call the move unconstitutional since Congress has the power to declare war.
Mr. Trump reacted ferociously, declaring that he would back a primary challenger to end Mr. Massie’s political career, a clear warning shot to any other Republican considering objecting to his actions. Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, recently told her constituents that “we are all afraid” of Mr. Trump.
Shown above is a file photo of Russian President Vladimir Putin along with file photos of U.S. assassination victims Melissa Hortman of Minnesota, the top Democrat in her state's House of Representatives, and her husband, Mark. A politically motivated gunman also seriously wounded State Senator John A. Hoffman, another Democrat, and his wife, Yvette, in separate attacks at their homes in suburban Minneapolis on Saturday, June 14, 2025. The gunman also fired at police officers before fleeing.
New York Times, Minnesota Lawmaker and Her Husband Remembered for Their Shared Legacy, Jeff Ernst and Jack Healy, June 29, 2025 (print ed.). Melissa Hortman was eulogized by Gov. Tim Walz as a compassionate leader in a service that former President Biden and former Vice President Harris also attended.
Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, were remembered at their funeral on Saturday as “extraordinary public servants” who were killed in an inexplicable act of political violence.
Their wooden caskets rested side by side inside the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis as hundreds of political colleagues, friends and relatives sat shoulder to shoulder in the pews to say goodbye to the couple, who were assassinated at their suburban Minneapolis home earlier in June.
Former President Joe Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris joined the mourners for the somber Catholic funeral Mass, though neither spoke during the service.
Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, right, his eyes red from crying, delivered the eulogy. He praised Ms. Hortman, a former speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives, as a consequential and compassionate political leader and Mr. Hortman as her proudest supporter. He said their shared legacy included improving roads and bridges, and free school lunches and expanded preschool for children.ImageAn overhead view of two caskets and a room of people standing in rows.Their caskets rested side by side on Saturday.Credit...Pool photo by Jeff Wheeler
“Millions of Minnesotans will get to live their lives better because she and Mark chose public service,” Mr. Walz said.
More on the Shooting in Minnesota
He referred only obliquely to the June 14 attack that has forced people across Minnesota and the country to grapple with recent political violence.
Mr. Walz focused on the Hortmans’ political commitment and their love of gardening, playing billiards and making sourdough and margaritas, letting their lives stand in contrast with their killings.
“Maybe this is a moment when each of us can examine the way we work together, the way we talk about each other, the way we fight for the things we care about,” Mr. Walz said. “A moment when each of us can recommit to engaging in politics and life the way Mark and Melissa did: fiercely, enthusiastically, heartily, but without ever losing sight of our common humanity.”
Several people wiped tears during Mr. Walz’s eulogy, which included some moments of levity about the Capitol’s chilly, poorly lit rooms and Mr. Hortman’s love of ’80s music.
In his homily, Father Daniel Griffith said the Hortmans’ killings had made Minnesota ground zero for political violence and extremism in the United States, just as the murder of George Floyd in 2020 had made the state an epicenter for a national debate over racial injustice.
“Both of these must be decried in the strongest possible terms,” Father Griffith said. “They are, respectively, a threat to human dignity and indeed our democracy.”
The authorities say a 57-year-old suspect impersonating a police officer fatally shot the Hortmans at their home in the suburb of Brooklyn Park, the same night he shot and seriously wounded another Democratic Minnesota lawmaker and his wife. The suspect had named dozens of other potential political targets, the authorities said.
New York Times, How inaccurate claims by Trump were used to justify executive actions, Linda Qiu, June 29, 2025. Many executive actions reflect Mr. Trump’s messaging, in some cases closely echoing inaccurate claims that have long been a feature of his public appearances.
Since retaking office, President Trump has issued a pace-setting number of executive actions that have become a hallmark of his approach to governing.
Some of the 164 directives signed so far have had profound consequences while others largely express opinions. Some pertain to administration priorities like immigration and energy production, while others cover more niche topics like showerheads and seafood. Some have been challenged in courts.
Many reflect Mr. Trump’s public messaging. Some repeat nearly verbatim inaccurate claims that have long been a feature of his campaign rallies, news conferences and interviews. Here are a few examples.
Targeting sanctuary cities
Central to Mr. Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign were his claims that the Biden administration had allowed an “invasion” of villainous immigrants. Those claims typically exaggerated the number of migrants who entered the United States and used misleading statistics to imply broad criminality.
The Nation, Investigation: Alexandra Cooper Calls It Harassment, Ray Epstein, July/August 2025 Issue (June 25, 2025). A new Hulu-produced series by the podcast superstar documents years of sexual harassment and institutional cover-up within Boston University’s athletics department.
Marketed as a glimpse into podcast star Alexandra Cooper’s rise to fame, the Hulu-produced docuseries Call Her Alex instead exposes a legacy of sexual harassment and institutional cover-up within Boston University’s athletics department. Cooper is the host of Call Her Daddy, the world’s most popular podcast among women. The show normalizes taboo discussions around sex, love, and womanhood for a dedicated fanbase known as “the Daddy Gang.”
In the docuseries, she describes how her college soccer coach, Nancy Feldman, isolated and sexually harassed her until she left the team at the end of her junior year. Cooper’s parents maintained a written record of each allegation in support of their daughter’s claims. In 2015, when she first reported Feldman’s harassment to Drew Marrochello, the director of athletics at BU, she and her parents say they saw signs that he was aware of Feldman’s conduct. As Call Her Alex recounts, Marrochello refused to even look at the evidence her family presented, instead asking, “What do you want?”
After Cooper’s resignation from the team, BU allowed her to keep her scholarship—perhaps another indication that the school knew that her claims were legitimate. Yet she was never informed of any disciplinary action against Feldman. Feldman’s harassment of female soccer players reportedly persisted until she retired of her own volition in 2022 after she had been coaching for 27 years. The influx of similar stories surfacing online in response to Call Me Alex—comments and several videos describing nearly identical experiences appeared on Cooper’s social media—points to a pattern of dismissal and denial on BU’s part.
The docuseries provided a platform for Feldman’s other victims. Their stories all follow a similar arc—sustained harassment from Feldman. Cooper and others allege Feldman would insist on driving her chosen victims to class or practice where she’d pry into intimate aspects of their lives, call them into her office to discuss their sexuality and sexual experiences, comment on their bodies during gameplay review, and much more. They also allege institutional intimidation and retaliation from BU’s athletics department. This retaliation included threats to revoke scholarships, cutting playing time for star players who resisted her advances or attempted to report Feldman, and telling players that if they didn’t want to be around Feldman, they had no choice but to resign from the team.
June 28
The Hartmann Report, Don’t let this happen to us: The “Spiral of Silence” is invading America, Thom Hartmann, right, June 28, 2025. Has The 
Supreme Court dealt a “deathblow to the rule of law?”
Six radical, on-the-take Republicans on the Supreme Court have ruled that federal judges can no longer stop the Trump administration from committing crimes unless and until the cases reach the nation’s top court itself.
NYU Law Professor Melissa Murray noted in an appearance on MSNBC, “So make no mistake about this. The court has given this administration an enormous win. They have [tied] one hand behind the backs of those who are trying to fight against this administration, and they have dealt a deathblow to the rule of law.”
In their dissents, both Justices Jackson and Sotomayor essentially called out their rightwing colleagues as neofascist toadies of a wannabe dictator. As Justice Sotomayor wrote in her dissent, openly calling her Republican colleagues “lawless”: “Yet the order’s patent unlawfulness reveals the gravity of the majority’s error and underscores why equity supports universal injunctions as appropriate remedies in this kind of case.”
The Republicans on the Court also ruled that even though gay marriage is fully legal and the law of the land (and widely accepted), it’s an infringement of the religious rights of people subscribing to bigoted sects of Christianity, Islam, etc. (the complainants were Muslim) to expose their children to a story about two men who fall in love. The racist and homophobic zealots on this Court are determined to inflict their bizarre notions of morality on every American family in complete defiance of our Founders.
In other news,
— Trump has decided that it’s a crime to be unpatriotic and has also proclaimed the you have to be loyal to him to be patriotic. The good 
news is the fightback. Trump is threatening to sue The New York Times and CNN over what he calls “unpatriotic reporting” that revealed his exaggerations about the “obliteration” of the Iranian nuclear program. The Times answered with a no-nonsense, “No apology will be forthcoming.” Bullying the press is the first and most dangerous hallmark of a fascist regime attempting to end democracy in a free nation. Hopefully our press will continue to hold the line against these efforts at intimidation.
— Have Republicans reached the point of no return, no matter what they do? Outside of the pathetic cultists who only watch Fox “News” and consume rightwing radio and social media, most Americans now know that Republicans in Congress are planning to remove over 10 million people from Medicaid and hit Medicare with a huge mandatory cut just to help pay for another $5 trillion tax gift (also funded with borrowed money our kids will repay) to their billionaire donors. This widespread knowledge is becoming a problem for the GOP, with Republican senators like Thom Tillis (who at least knows how to spell his name right!) worrying out loud it could cost them the House and Senate in the 2026 elections. The big question is whether people who’re just marginally paying attention but know about the tax cut scam will even realize if congressional Republicans back away from gutting healthcare. Odds are that perception is now well-baked-in, which could double the danger to these clowns next fall.
— Now that Musk, Big Balls, and his merry band have fired so many people from the Social Security Administration that people are 
experiencing days-long wait times to sign up for benefits, the agency has stopped reporting wait times. Because of course they would; they don’t want Americans to know how badly they’ve kneecapped the organization in their zeal to gut “socialism” and reduce government expenses to pay for more tax gifts to the billionaires who fund the GOP. As Alex Lawson, President of Social Security Works and a regular guest on my program, told The Washington Post: “If they think this lack of transparency will fool the American people, they’re in for a surprise. People notice when they can’t get an appointment because their local field office has lost half its staff. When checks and decisions are delayed. When they get the runaround from an AI chatbot on the phone, instead of getting to talk to a real person.”
The danger here is that Republicans are correct in believing that if they can destroy the quality of Social Security’s service then people will gladly submit to the agency being privatized and taken over by a massive bank with GOP ties. The key to preventing this is public outrage: tell everybody you know about this nefarious scheme to steal our retirement funds and hand them off to banksters.
Lincoln Square Media, Political Opinion: What Did SCOTUS Do Now? Law Professor Sam Bagenstos talks to Susan J. Demas, June 28, 
2025. No, the Supreme Court didn't rule that Trump's attempt to end birthright citizenship stands. But the right-wing Court gave him a big win in his ongoing quest to exert executive power.
We have been absolutely blitzed with decisions from the Supreme Court this week, including cases on birthright citizenship, Planned Parenthood and Medicaid funding, parental rights and religious freedom in schools, and more.
“This is a very conservative Supreme Court,” says University of Michigan law professor Sam Bagenstos. “This is a Court that believes in executive power — at least when Republicans are president — and they have worked really hard to consolidate the power of this president.”Subscribed
Sam returned to Lincoln Square to break down several consequential cases with Executive Editor Susan J. Demas: CASA v. Mayorkas, Mahmoud v. Taylor, and Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic.
Democracy Docket, Pro-Democracy Advocacy, Trump has destroyed the Justice Department’s independence, Marc Elias, June 28, 2025. In another era of American history, President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice would have been the subject of a major ongoing scandal. It’s almost too easy to evoke John Mitchell, the former Attorney General whose 
loyalty to President Richard Nixon and role in Watergate landed him 17 months in prison.
You may also recall the firing of seven U.S. attorneys, several of whom declined to prosecute false claims of voter fraud, during the George W. Bush administration, which led to the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
Today that would be just another headline — one that could get lost among all of the headlines that sound similar. As Democracy Docket reported this week, Trump’s Department of Justice is working across the country to disenfranchise voters, suing district court judges who rule against them, and, according to a whistleblower, saying “f**k you” to court orders.
Under Attorney General Pam Bondi’s leadership (she is shown above in a file photo), the DOJ has turned into nothing more than a political weapon for Trump. As he lays the groundwork for the midterms, Trump knows that his best bet at victory is unfree and unfair elections.
Trump’s Department of Justice is working with North Carolina’s GOP-controlled elections board to force voters to take difficult and unnecessary steps to verify their identity — or risk disenfranchisement. In Orange County, Calif., the department is suing for sensitive voterinformation in a desperate effort to find evidence of noncitizen voting. In just a few months, DOJ’s voting section has been shifted from a unit that works to protect voting rights to one that works to undermine them.
But the GOP Congress is unbothered — if not happy to follow along with dear leader. And much of the legacy media isn’t too interested either — if not openly willing to capitulate with Trump’s demands.
It almost makes you yearn for the era of Watergate, when Attorney General Elliot Richardson and his deputy, William Ruckelshaus, resigned rather than fire the special prosecutor Archibald Cox. Almost.
We can’t allow ourselves to become desensitized to the Trump administration’s authoritarianism. We can’t allow ourselves to simply watch in shock as our democracy is torn down brick by brick.
It’s up to us to fight. It’s up to us to challenge this unconstitutional power grab. At Democracy Docket, I will continue to sound the alarm bell — and you should, too.
New York Times, Senate Convenes as Republicans Seek Votes to Pass Revised Policy Bill, Catie Edmondson, June 28, 2025. Senate Republicans are seeking the votes to pass a sprawling domestic policy bill requested by President Trump.
Policy bill: After releasing a 940-page version of their sprawling domestic policy bill overnight, Senate Republicans on Saturday were seeking the votes to pass it, a key step in advancing President Trump’s agenda. They cut deals with holdouts in their ranks that they hoped would be enough to speed the bill through the chamber as early as this weekend. The Senate reconvened at 2 p.m. on Saturday. Read more ›
Final cost of bill: If Senate Republicans begin debate on the sweeping bill on Saturday, they will do so without a full grasp of its costs. The recent revisions to the bill to win over holdouts could add or subtract to the overall costs of the package, and there is still no final fiscal breakdown from congressional budget watchdogs. Read more >
Haitian immigrants: The Trump administration has said it will end long-running deportation protections for Haitians in the United States by September. Haiti remains plagued by violence, but the Department of Homeland Security said on Friday that it considers Haiti safe for people to return. Read more ›
While Senate G.O.P leaders were scrambling to pass the sweeping domestic policy bill in time for Trump’s July 4 deadline, Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, said in an interview on Fox News that “there is no need to rush it.” He urged Senators to scrutinize the legislation “provision by provision.” “President Trump’s goal in the Senate was to make the big beautiful bill even better,” Johnson said. “I’d like it much better.”
New York Times, Domestic Policy Bill: The Latest House Bill Reconciliation, Explained, Ashley Wu, Andrew Duehren, Brad Plumer, Tony Romm, Margot Sanger-Katz and Michael Gold, June 28, 2025. Comparing How the House and Senate Bills Deliver on Trump’s Agenda.
Republicans are racing to deliver a sprawling domestic policy package for President Trump that cuts taxes, boosts spending on the military and immigration enforcement and slashes social safety net programs to help pay for it.
The House passed its version last month and senators released their latest draft just after midnight on Friday, hoping to tee up votes in the Senate in the coming days. There are big differences between the two chambers’ bills, and Republican leaders have toiled to resolve their disputes about critical pieces to keep the package on track. The measure must pass the Senate and then win final approval in the House to clear Congress.
New York Times, Trump Administration: Judge Strikes Down Trump Order Targeting Another Top Law Firm, Zach Montague, June 28, 2025 (print ed.). The ruling completed a clean sweep for the handful of law firms that took the risk of fighting the Trump administration in court, rather than accepting punitive conditions.
A federal judge in Washington ruled on Friday that an executive order President Trump signed imposing penalties against the law firm Susman Godfrey was unconstitutional, permanently barring the government from enforcing its terms.
The decision by Judge Loren L. AliKhan of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia effectively ended, at least for now, the president’s campaign to subjugate several of the nation’s top law firms.
It also completed a perfect record among those firms that risked fighting the administration in court, notching four decisive rulings from four separate judges, none of which the Trump administration has, so far, tried to appeal.
Like three of her colleagues in Washington, Judge AliKhan found that the Trump administration had tried to crush a law firm that had represented groups opposing Mr. Trump.
“The order was one in a series attacking firms that had taken positions with which President Trump disagreed,” she wrote. “In the ensuing months, every court to have considered a challenge to one of these orders has found grave constitutional violations and permanently enjoined enforcement of the order in full.”
Two of the judges who ruled against the Trump administration were nominated by George W. Bush, and the other two by Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr.
“The Court’s ruling is a resounding victory for the rule of law and the right of every American to be represented by legal counsel without fear of retaliation,” Susman Godfrey said in a statement.
In April, Mr. Trump went after Susman Godfrey with an order claiming the firm “spearheads efforts to weaponize the American legal system and degrade the quality of American elections” — an apparent reference to its work representing Dominion Voting Systems, a voting machine manufacturer, in a major defamation case against Fox News.
Around the same time, Mr. Trump lobbed nearly identical orders at other firms, including Perkins Coie, WilmerHale and Jenner & Block, all of which had ties to prominent Democrats or employed lawyers who clashed with Mr. Trump during his first term.
New York Times, Republicans Lavish Alaska With Benefits in Policy Bill, Grasping for a Key Vote, Catie Edmondson and Margot Sanger-Katz, June 28, 2025. New provisions that benefit whaling captains and rural hospitals appear to be aimed at winning over Senator Lisa Murkowski, the Alaska Republican who had said the bill would hurt her state.
When Senate Republicans released the latest version of their sprawling domestic policy package in the wee hours of Saturday morning, it contained a number of new provisions that might have seemed out of place — including a measure aimed at helping Alaskan whaling captains.
But the seemingly random items were anything but arbitrary; they appeared to be aimed at winning the support of a critical Republican holdout whose vote could make or break the measure: Senator Lisa Murkowski.
Ms. Murkowski, right, has made no secret of her problems with her party’s bill and the harm she believes it could bring to her state. Chief among her concerns were new work requirements for Medicaid recipients and a provision that would require states to pay for a share of nutrition assistance payments currently paid entirely by the federal government.
“I want to try to do what we can to address certain aspects of our entitlement spending,” Ms. Murkowski said in an interview last weekend on CBS. “We’ve got to do that. But doing it with the most vulnerable bearing the brunt of that is not the answer.”
As G.O.P. leaders scrounged on Saturday for the votes to pass the legislation, they seem to have addressed many of her concerns, insulating Ms. Murkowski’s state from some of its most painful cuts while including an assortment of other Alaska-friendly provisions in the bill.
The latest version, which leaders hoped to begin voting on as early as Saturday afternoon, would provide a new tax exemption to fishers from villages in western Alaska. There is now an exemption from new work requirements for food assistance. And several provisions have been added that would funnel federal dollars to Alaskan health care providers.
There is even a provision that would allow certain Alaskan whaling captains to deduct more of their expenses. Right now, people recognized by the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission as captains can write off $10,000 in whaling-related expenses, like buying explosive projectiles, as a charitable contribution. The Senate bill would allow them to deduct $50,000 of their costs this way.
The late-stage, state-specific giveaway has a long congressional history. When votes are tight on major pieces of legislation, undecided lawmakers have considerable leverage to demand special goodies. Some have even been memorialized with catchy nicknames, like the “Cornhusker Kickback,” a Nebraska-friendly provision Democrats added to the Affordable Care Act to win the vote of then-Senator Ben Nelson, which was ultimately excised from the bill when it was discovered.
But Ms. Murkowski appears to have secured an unusually large number of special provisions in the bill making its way through Congress.
Hopium Chronicles, Pro-Democracy Advocacy, "Time For Democrats To Go Offense": My Conversation With Senator Elissa Slotkin, Simon Rosenberg, right, 
June 28, 2025. Excited to introduce another rising star in the Democratic Party to you with Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin, above.
While she updates us on Iran and reconciliation, the bulk of our conversation is about a new speech and argument she made this week called a new “Economic War Plan.” You can find a video recording of the speech here.
As she says in the speech: “Defense is simply not enough. We need to offer a different vision and demonstrate an affirmative, positive plan for the country. That's our responsibility and what this moment demands of us.”
She won her election in 2024 despite Harris losing Michigan; she delivered a powerful and compelling State of the Union response in just her first weeks as a Senator; and now she is working hard to shape the national narrative and story for a Democratic Party that does indeed need to go on offense now and not just play defense.
New York Times, Concerns Grow Over Dire Conditions in Immigrant Detention, Miriam Jordan and Jazmine Ulloa, June 28, 2025. Mass immigration arrests have led to overcrowding in detention facilities, with reports of unsanitary and inhumane conditions.
Far from public view, the toll of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration is unfolding in overcrowded detention facilities across the country.
Some immigrants have gone a week or more without showers. Others sleep pressed tightly together on bare floors. Medications for diabetes, high blood pressure and other chronic health problems are often going unprovided. In New York and Los Angeles, people have been held for days in cramped rooms designed for brief processing, not prolonged confinement, and their lawyers and family members have remained in the dark about their whereabouts.
The nation’s immigration detention system is buckling under the weight of record numbers as the Trump administration intensifies its enforcement agenda with raids on workplaces and arrests at immigration courts. More than 56,000 immigrants were in government custody on June 15, exceeding the current capacity of 41,000.
“These are the worst conditions I have seen in my 20-year career,” said Paul Chavez, litigation and advocacy director at Americans for Immigrant Justice in Florida, which represents detainees. “Conditions were never great, but this is horrendous.”
At least 10 immigrants have died in ICE custody in the six months since Jan. 1, including two at a facility in Miami, the Krome detention center, where detainees earlier this month formed a human “S.O.S.” sign in the yard. At least two of the deaths were suicides, in Arizona and Georgia. (An average of about seven deaths a year occurred in ICE custody during the four years of the Biden administration.)
Immigration detentions have soared since late May, when Stephen Miller, the White House aide overseeing immigration policy, set a goal of 3,000 arrests per day.
To accommodate the swelling numbers, the administration has expanded contracts with prison operators and pushed for a substantial funding increase to secure additional capacity. The House version of the budget reconciliation bill proposes $45 billion for immigration detention, more than 10 times the current budget.
Many immigrants already have outstanding deportation orders, and others agree to voluntarily leave the country. In those cases, ICE officials are able to swiftly put them on planes or buses out of the country. But many others are entitled to court hearings, which take time, and ICE is either releasing those detainees on bond, which also requires a court hearing, or holding them in custody if they are deemed a flight risk.
The executive orders imposed a variety of tough penalties, using the full force of the federal government, such as suspending security clearances for some of the firms’ lawyers or directing agencies to review and cancel any contracts made with those firms. In all the cases to date, judges have described those terms as onerous enough, by design, to substantially harm those firms’ business.
Other firms that found themselves at odds with the president, such as Paul Weiss and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom took the opposite approach, offering millions of dollars in pro bono work for the White House in a bid to dodge a similar executive order.
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: June 27 [Trump Lies About Supreme Court Citizenship Decision], Heather Cox Richardson, right, June 28, 2025. After the Supreme Court today decided the case of Trump v. CASA, limiting the power of federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions, President Donald Trump claimed the decision was a huge victory that would permit him to end birthright citizenship, that is, the principle that anyone born in the United States, with very limited exceptions, is a U.S. citizen.
To reporters, he claimed: “If you look at the end of the Civil War—the 1800s, it was a very turbulent time. If you take the end day—was it 1869? Or whatever. But you take that exact day, that’s when the case was filed. And the case ended shortly thereafter. This had to do with the babies of slaves, very obviously.”
This is a great example of a politician rooting a current policy in a made-up history. There is nothing in Trump’s statement that is true, except perhaps that the 1800s were a turbulent time. Every era is.
The Fourteenth Amendment that established birthright citizenship came out of a very specific moment and addressed a specific problem. After the Civil War ended in 1865, former Confederates in the American South denied their Black neighbors basic rights. To try to remedy the problem, the Republican Congress passed a civil rights bill in 1866 establishing “[t]hat all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians, not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States; and such citizens of every race and color…shall have the same right[s] in every State and Territory in the United States.”
But President Andrew Johnson, who was a southern Democrat elected in 1864 on a union ticket with President Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, vetoed the 1866 Civil Rights Bill. While the Republican Party organized in the 1850s to fight the idea that there should be different classes of Americans based on race, Democrats tended to support racial discrimination. In that era, not only Black Americans, but also Irish, Chinese, Mexican, and Indigenous Americans, faced discriminatory state laws.
In contrast to the Democrats, Republicans stated explicitly in their 1860 platform that they were “opposed to any change in our naturalization laws or any state legislation by which the rights of citizens hitherto accorded to immigrants from foreign lands shall be abridged or impaired; and in favor of giving a full and efficient protection to the rights of all classes of citizens, whether native or naturalized, both at home and abroad.”
When Republicans tried to enshrine civil rights into federal law in 1866, Johnson objected that the proposed law “comprehends the Chinese of the Pacific States, Indians subject to taxation, the people called Gipsies, as well as the entire race designated as blacks,” as citizens, and noted that if “all persons who are native-born already are, by virtue of the Constitution, citizens of the United States, the passage of the pending bill cannot be necessary to make them such.” And if they weren’t already citizens, he wrote, Congress should not pass a law “to make our entire colored population and all other excepted classes citizens of the United States” when 11 southern states were not represented in Congress.
When Congress wrote the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, it took Johnson’s admonition to heart. It did not confer citizenship on the groups Johnson outlined; it simply acknowledged that the Constitution had already established their citizenship. The first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment reads: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
In the short term, Americans recognized that the Fourteenth Amendment overturned the 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford decision, in which the Supreme Court ruled that people of African descent “are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word ‘citizens’ in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States.” The Fourteenth Amendment established that Black men were citizens.
But the question of whether the amendment recognized birthright citizenship for all immigrants quickly became an issue in the American West, where white settlers were not terribly concerned about Black Americans—there were only 4,272 Black Americans in California in 1870, while there were almost half a million white Americans—but wanted no part of allowing Chinese men to be part of American society.
Western state legislatures continued to discriminate against Asian immigrants by falling back on the country’s early naturalization laws, finalized in 1802, to exclude first Chinese immigrants and then others from citizenship. Those laws were carefully designed to clarify that Afro-Caribbeans and Africans—imported to be enslaved—would not have the same rights as Euro-Americans. Those laws permitted only “free white persons” to become citizens.
In the late nineteenth century, state and territorial legal systems kept people of color at the margins, using treaties, military actions, and territorial and state laws that limited land ownership, suffrage, and intermarriage.
But despite the longstanding use of laws designed to perpetuate human enslavement to prevent certain immigrants from becoming citizens, the Supreme Court always upheld the citizenship of their children. In 1882, during a period of racist hysteria, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act agreeing that Chinese immigrants could not become citizens.
In May 2023, then–presidential candidate Donald J. Trump released a video promising that on “Day One” of a new presidential term, he would issue an executive order that would end birthright citizenship. He claimed that the understanding that anyone born in the United States is automatically a citizen is “based on a historical myth, and a willful misinterpretation of the law by the open borders advocates.”
It is actually a historical myth and a willful misinterpretation of the law that the Civil War ended in 1869, that birthright citizenship came out of a case filed on that exact day, and that the “case” was “very obviously” about “the babies of slaves.” But there were indeed echoes of the past in the administration’s position on immigration today. The administration's announcement that it is terminating Temporary Protected Status for half a million Haitians, stripping them of their legal status, seems to echo the ancient laws saying only “free white persons” can become citizens.
Meidas Touch Network, Random Thoughts on Last Night's News, Ron Filipkowski, 
right, June 28,2025. Elon Musk’s Tesla Issues:
Forbes reported that Elon Musk, above, has fired one of his top executives with sales slumping around the world - especially in Europe where it may have suffered permanent brand damage due to the CEO’s toxic right-wing rhetoric and interference in their elections.
Tesla’s Robotaxi, which Musk is counting on to make up for his Spruce Goose 2.0 Cybertruck debacle, has been getting negative reviews online and he refuses to discloses safety data he had to turn over to NHSTA.
Probably the best solution is for Musk to step down as CEO or for the Board to fire him, but he packed the Board with sycophants and his ego likely won’t allow him to resign. Tesla has also been the cash cow to fund his other projects (along with US taxpayer dollars) like 
SpaceX, his AI company Grok, Neuralink, and of course X (formerly Twitter), and he won’t give up control voluntarily.
Musk has certainly scaled back his rhetoric and political activity since his spat with Trump and exit from the WH, but everyone knows where he stands and it isn’t on the side of many of his former Tesla buyers.
Ron Desantis’s Alligator Alcatraz:
Lame duck governor Ron Desantis continues to desperately find a way to revive his failing political career, and has thrown some red meat to MAGA hoping to win back their approval after he burned bridges by running against Trump. What better way than to build an El Salvador-style concentration camp in the FL Everglades?
The camp is now open and Desantis is eager to fill up the facility in the swamp with migrants so he and other Republicans can use it for photo ops and Fox-ready video clips. Kristi Noem was on Fox last night talking about it, and she hasn’t been this happy since she shot her dog because he was untrainable for hunting.
Desantis also chose the name after Trump announced that he was going to reopen Alcatraz prison in SF Bay for migrants, then learned that the cost of doing so and the logistics made it unworkable. So Desantis created a new Alcatraz in the swamps, where trying to escape will likely make people alligator or anaconda food.
This isn’t going to revive Lame Duck Ron’s career though. His wife Casey is unable to run to succeed him as planned because of her charity fraud and Trump’s early endorsement of Byron Donalds. JD Vance has a commanding lead in the 2028 primary polling which is only likely to widen.
But Repulsive Ron did finally get back on Fox a few times, which has made him the happiest he has been since he sued Disney. There will not be an open Senate seat in FL, so maybe he can become a Fox host where he can put his charisma and likability to the test.
Iran Nuclear Fiasco:
It seems clear that the US and Israel did not destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Its enriched uranium was reportedly moved to a site that was not bombed, and centrifuges are scattered around the country at various sites. So there is really only 4 solutions:
Resume bombings. A likely scenario, but the problem is this like likely be less effective than before since Iran has taken every possible measure to secure and hide their capabilities and arrested hundreds who were suspected of spying and targeting for the Israelis and US. This would also make Trump look foolish after insisting repeatedly that everything has been “completely obliterated” already.The Big Bloated Budget Disaster:
With the Senate set to vote this weekend on a budget that with explode the deficit to record levels while making dramatic cuts to things like Medicaid and renewable energy initiatives so billionaires and huge corporations can get tax cuts, a new Fox poll - which they broadcast last night - showed just 38% agree with the bill and 59% disapprove of it. It is certainly big, but voters are not finding it all that beautiful.
The Senate Parliamentarian did Republicans a favor by stripping out several of the most odious things from the package, with outraged House Republicans who continue to call on John Thune to fire her (he won’t), but there is still plenty for people to not like. When people feel the brunt of this when it takes effect, and the bond market sees the final deficit numbers, the economy is likely to get even worse that the 
putrid Q1 that Trump engineered with his tariff madness.
Whatever they pass then goes back to the House, where things are expected to get really nasty next week between the two Chambers as they scramble to meet Trump’s July 4 deadline when he wants to do a big signing on a day when most Americans aren’t interested in partisan politics.
Meidas Touch Network, Court Victory Masks Political Freefall, Michael Cohen, right, June 28, 2025. As the President basks in Supreme Court 
victories and executive power grabs, his core supporters are peeling away—and the consequences may be deeper than he thinks.
I know what it’s like to believe your own hype. I lived it, peddled it, and got burned by it. But what we’re seeing now from President Trump and his ever-shrinking circle of yes-men and enablers isn’t just self-delusion; it’s something far more dangerous. It’s the kind of bubble-thick denial that not only sinks presidencies but corrodes democracy from the inside out.
The president is not as popular as his Truth Social blurts or Fox News megaphone would have you believe. Sure, his loyal base is loud. It chants, rallies, and buys the flags. But that base? It’s fractured. And not in the usual political way. I’m talking about the kind of break that no executive order or Supreme Court ruling can mend.
Just look at the recent decision by the Court—a win for Trump, at least on the surface. The justices greenlit the administration’s push to dismantle automatic birthright citizenship, or at least allowed it to edge forward by slicing the scope of nationwide injunctions. In typical Trump fashion, he called it a "monumental victory for the Constitution" while spinning it as a restoration of executive authority. But read the ruling closely—it doesn’t validate the order itself. It just tells the courts to make their roadblocks a bit more local. The legal merits of overturning the 14th Amendment haven’t been settled, and spoiler alert: they won’t be in his favor—or at least I don’t believe so.
Now here’s where things get murkier for Trump. Instead of this decision bringing unity or strength to his movement, it’s exposing cracks. Within hours, civil rights groups were back in court, filing class action suits, launching new challenges, and gearing up for the long fight. Trump and company might’ve won a battle, but they’re losing the broader war—not in court, but with the American public.
Even his own supporters are beginning to whisper what others have shouted for years: maybe, just maybe, this isn’t what they signed up for. The Proud Boys, a far-right group whose violence and loyalty once seemed carved in stone, have turned on him. Their messages on Telegram weren’t vague. They weren’t subtle. “F*** this sh*t,” read one post after the U.S. bombed Iranian nuclear sites. These are the same people Trump once pretended not to know, only to later wink and embrace after they stormed the Capitol. Now they’re mocking him—posting doctored images, comparing his leadership to someone unfit to serve.
These folks aren’t peaceniks. They aren’t Democrats. They’re the people who believed Trump was their battering ram against the establishment. So when even they begin peeling away, when their meme-warfare turns inward, we need to ask: how much longer before the illusion of an unbreakable base completely shatters?
Now let’s tie this all together, because none of these moments exist in a vacuum. The president is emboldened by this court decision, convinced that the legal leash has finally been loosened. But at what cost? We have no functioning Congress—just a performative theater of chaos where Republicans eat their own and Democrats struggle to build consensus. That vacuum of legislative power only feeds Trump's thirst for unilateral action. But even unchecked authority, if built on shifting sands, will collapse.
The court’s ruling didn’t validate Trump’s vision; it just enabled it to go on a little longer without adult supervision. It also signaled to every future president, from either party, that courts might not be able to halt a rampaging executive if he can pick off lawsuits one state at a time. Justice Sotomayor called it a “travesty.” Justice Jackson, more pointed, warned of “an existential threat to the rule of law.”
And where is Congress? Nowhere. Cowering. Bickering. Performing for cameras instead of standing up for constitutional balance. The president pushes forward with the assumption that inertia equals endorsement, but the long arc of history has never been kind to those who rule by force rather than persuasion.
Here’s what’s coming if this keeps up: not a civil war, not martial law, but something more quietly tragic—cynicism. Disengagement. A generation of Americans who no longer believe the system works for them, because they’ve watched it be hijacked by a man who interprets legal setbacks as personal attacks and victories as divine anointment.
Even Trump’s biggest courtroom win can’t hide the truth: he’s losing his grip—not on power necessarily, but on people. And when the people stop believing, stop buying in, stop showing up... that’s when the real collapse begins.
New York Times, Musk Wades Back Into Politics, Slamming Trump’s Domestic Policy Bill, Ashley Ahn, June 28, 2025. Weeks after ending his war of words with President Trump, Elon Musk called the president’s bill “utterly insane and destructive.”
Elon Musk waded back into the political fray on Saturday, slamming a major domestic policy bill that Senate Republicans are scrambling to pass, just weeks after he ended a feud with President Trump over the legislation.
In the wee hours of Saturday morning, G.O.P. leaders released a new 940-page version of the legislation to carry out the president’s agenda. Like the House version, the bill would slash taxes, scale back Medicaid, cut nutritional assistance and increase spending on the military and immigration enforcement.
But the Senate also included some new measures intended to mollify holdouts in the Republican ranks, including a fund to help rural hospitals that depend on Medicaid. Leaders in the Republican majority are hoping to push the bill through the Senate and win final approval in the House before Mr. Trump’s deadline of July 4.
Mr. Musk, the billionaire chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, had been relatively quiet since his blowup with the president this month, but as the Senate convened to discuss the package on Saturday afternoon, he re-entered the debate, calling the bill “utterly insane and destructive” in a post on X.
“The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country!” he wrote on X.
The bill lies at the center of his earlier feud with the president. Mr. Musk had said he believed that the package would significantly add to the national debt and would undermine the savings he claims were found by the Department of Government Efficiency, a federal government cost-cutting project he led. He called the bill a “disgusting abomination” that would make the country bankrupt.
The spat quickly became personal as both men unleashed a torrent of attacks at each other. Mr. Musk suggested that Mr. Trump was named in the government’s files on Jeffrey Epstein, the financier and convicted sex offender who killed himself in jail while awaiting trial. Mr. Trump said that Mr. Musk’s “crazy” behavior was linked to drug use.
The war of words came as Mr. Musk was taking a step back from his role in the Trump administration to focus on his companies, which had been struggling. Though Mr. Trump said he had no interest in repairing their relationship, Mr. Musk said a week after their dispute that he regretted some of his posts and felt that he “went too far,” signaling a possible truce.
It is unclear how much influence Mr. Musk wields over the Senate and what, if any, impact his views will have on the passage of the legislation. But his recent comments criticizing what Mr. Trump calls his “Big Beautiful Bill” certainly do not bode well for his relationship with the president.
Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: Lauren Boebert Calls for Epstein Files to Be Released, J.D. Wolf, June 28, 2025. The GOPcongresswoman, shown above in a file photo, warned that names may have been added or altered.
During an interview on Blaze TV’s Prime Time with Alex Stein, Rep. Lauren Boebert expressed support for releasing the full list of names tied to Jeffrey Epstein’s network but warned that the files may have been tampered with. The Colorado Republican said Americans “want to see the list, period” and called for transparency regardless of who is implicated.
“I don’t care what names are on it. I want to see what names are on it and why,” Boebert said. Boebert also floated suspicions about the integrity of the documents, implying that they may have been edited or manipulated over time. “You never know what has been removed or potentially even added,” she cautioned, noting that decades of secrecy make it hard to know what’s real.
“It’s really difficult to find the absolute truth when there’s been so many years of darkness," Boebert remarked. The GOP Congresswoman added, “You should always question what is going on and seek truth.” Trump, during his 2024 campaign, stated that he would look at releasing the files.
Trump's base and supporters like Lauren Boebert are demanding it, yet so far, the Trump administration has refused to release the information even after a "phase 1" binder stunt involving influencers brought to the White House. That information was already public.
Some Trump critics have suggested that his refusal to release the Epstein files and the clients list is because his name is all over them.
Wayne Madsen Report, Questionable non-Christian family they claim. He can't be mayor of New York they scream, Wayne Madsen, June 27-29, 2025. He's accused of being anti-Semitic by right-wingers, but he's endorsed by several prominent Jewish politicians and businessmen in New York. His foreign policy views are also challenged because he believes that the U.S. should champion human rights and not back fascist regimes abroad.
Although this description of a dynamic progressive mayoral candidate could very well apply to New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, it actually refers to a mayor who served almost a hundred years before. By defeating the disgraced New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in the recent Democratic primary, the Mamdani is walking in the very shoes of that progressive mayor of yesteryear.
The articulate 33-year old Mamdani, the Indian-American Muslim New York State Assemblyman whose accomplished parents immigrated to the United States from Uganda when their son was 7 does evoke memories of another political firebrand and mayoral hopeful who challenged and prevailed over his political enemies in the Big Apple.
This individual's mother was an Italian Jewish immigrant from Trieste, Italy and although her son was officially brought up as an Episcopalian, she taught him at an early age to recite the shema, the Jewish central prayer -- "Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one." This dynamic politician also spoke Yiddish perfectly. When a Jewish political rival accused him of being anti-Semitic, the political upstart challenged him to a debate -- in Yiddish. The Jewish opponent quickly backed down because he couldn't speak Yiddish.
This forceful political leader, like Zohran Mamdani, faced a barrage of insults about his parentage, his religion, and his ethnicity. The political upstart used radio, the emerging media of its day, to his advantage just as Mamdani effectively used social media to advance his mayoral candidacy. During a 1945 newspaper delivery strike in New York, the media-savvy mayor took to the radio airwaves to read the comics to the cartoon-starved children of the city.
To be sure, Mamdani is walking down the same progressive political path of the man who changed New York for the better almost a century ago and defeated the corruption-laden political clique known as Tammany Hall. If you've flown into Queens, you've landed at the airport named after this political powerhouse. Meet Fiorello LaGuardia, one of New York's most popular mayors. To quote the late Paul Harvey, "And now you know the rest of the story."
June 27
New York Times, Live Updates: Supreme Court Gives Trump Major Victory in Birthright Citizenship Case, Abbie VanSickle, Charlie Savage and Adam Liptak, June 27, 2025. The court limited the ability of federal judges to temporarily pause President Trump’s executive orders. But they made no ruling on the constitutionality of his move to end birthright citizenship, and stopped his order from taking effect for 30 days.
The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to allow President Trump to end birthright citizenship in some parts of the country, even as legal challenges to the constitutionality of the move proceed in other regions.
The 6-to-3 decision, which was written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett and split along ideological lines, is a major victory for Mr. Trump, and may dramatically reshape how citizenship is granted in the United States, even temporarily.
Justice Barrett, writing for the majority, says the executive order on birthright citizenship “shall not take effect until 30 days after the date of this opinion.”
The delay in the effective date of the court’s ruling gives time for another way to challenge the orders: class actions.
The case before the justices arose from an executive order signed by Mr. Trump on the first day of his second term, that appeared to upend the principle known as birthright citizenship, which has been part of the Constitution for more than 150 years.
The majority stressed that it was not addressing the merits of Trump’s attempt to end automatic citizenship for babies born on U.S. soil to undocumented migrants and foreign visitors without green cards.
Here’s what else to know:
In her dissent, joined by the other two liberal justices, Sotomayor accuses the majority of allowing the government to play games with constitutional rights. She writes: “No right is safe in the new legal regime the Court creates. Today, the threat is to birthright citizenship. Tomorrow, a different administration may try to seize firearms from law-abiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship. The majority holds that, absent cumbersome class-action litigation, courts cannot completely enjoin even such plainly unlawful policies unless doing so is necessary to afford the formal parties complete relief. That holding renders constitutional guarantees meaningful in name only for any individuals who are not parties to a lawsuit. Because I will not be complicit in so grave an attack on our system of law, I dissent.”
From the bench, Justice Sotomayor calls the decision “a travesty for the rule of law.”
The essence of the court’s holding today is that Congress, in creating the lower federal courts in the Judiciary Act of 1789, did not give district court judges the power to to issue nationwide or universal injunctions that prohibit the enforcement of a (likely illegal) government policy against anyone. Rather district court judges may only grant relief to specific plaintiffs.
But in a concurring opinion, Justice Kavanaugh notes that broader orders will still be permissible when there is a class action lawsuit, or if a plaintiff is asking a judge to set aside a new agency rule under the Administrative Procedures Act.
The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Ignoring Substance, SCOTUS Permits Lawlessness. . . and hands Trump dangerous victories,.Philip Rotner, June 27, 2025. 
As it closes out its term, the Supreme Court is continuing to find ways to let Donald Trump do whatever he wants without addressing the legality of the conduct in question.
In an opinion announced on Thursday, the Court permitted South Carolina to refuse to provide Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood without even pretending to address the legality of that conduct under a clearly applicable federal statute. Then, on Friday, the Court issued a decision that allowed the Trump administration to broadly implement its proposal to end automatic birthright citizenship, a right clearly guaranteed by the Constitution. Again, the Court did so without addressing the relevant issue, the constitutionality of the conduct in question.
These decisions, viewed together with the Court’s unexplained decision earlier in the week permitting the government to send noncitizens to countries with which they have absolutely no connection, constitute a clear pattern of the Court erecting artificial procedural barriers to the ability of the public—or anyone else, apparently—to challenge blatantly unlawful government behavior.
In Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, the Court permitted South Carolina to cut off Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood despite the fact that doing so was a violation of federal law. Both the district court and the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals had found that South Carolina’s conduct in this case was in violation of the federal Medicaid Act, which unambiguously requires states seeking Medicaid funds to ensure that “any individual eligible for medical assistance” may obtain it “from any [provider] qualified to perform the service.”
South Carolina cut off Planned Parenthood’s Medicaid funding not because the individual seeking medical services was not eligible, and not because Planned Parenthood was not “qualified to perform the service,” but because Planned Parenthood, in addition to all of the other medical services it provides, also provides abortions. By any rational interpretation, South Carolina’s conduct was unlawful, since federal law requires the state to provide funding to any eligible individual from any qualified provider. There is no ‘unless you don’t like the politics’ clause.
The Court didn’t even bother to address the elephant in the room, the legality of South Carolina’s conduct. Rather, its rationale for permitting South Carolina to act unlawfully is based on a convoluted and highly artificial semantic house of cards. Even though federal law explicitly requires states receiving Medicaid funds to make those funds available to “any” eligible individual who obtains medical services from “any” provider qualified to perform the services, the statute, according to the Court, doesn’t create a “right.”
Why not? Because the statute doesn’t use the word “right.” The Court is rather less succinct in making the point, but that’s what it boils down to.
Therefore, South Carolina (and presumably any other state) is free to violate the unambiguous terms of a federal statute, and nobody—certainly not either a patient seeking Medicaid assistance or a medical provider such as Planned Parenthood, who has been unlawfully deprived of funding—can challenge the unlawful conduct in court.
The Court's decision in the birthright citizenship case, Trump v. CASA, Inc., is similarly unmoored from the legality, or even the constitutionality, of the underlying conduct: the Trump administration’s threat to eliminate the constitutionally guaranteed right of birthright citizenship.
In that case, three different district courts had entered nationwide preliminary injunctions prohibiting the implementation of a Trump executive order announcing a new policy to no longer recognize as U.S. citizens certain individuals who were born in the United States. All three of the district courts found that the executive order violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause, as well as the Nationality Act of 1940. Three different federal appellate courts—the First, Fourth, and Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeals—agreed with the district court rulings and denied the Trump administration’s request to stay the injunctions.
Again studiously avoiding any discussion of the underlying issue—that Trump’s executive order violated the plain language of the Citizenship Clause, which states that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside”—the Supreme Court stayed the nationwide aspect of preliminary injunctions, limiting their applicability to the specific named plaintiffs in the three cases. The real-world effect of the ruling is to allow the Trump administration to strip thousands of individuals born in the United States of their citizenship, apparently unless each and every one of them inundates courts across the country with countless lawsuits. While there is some suggestion (both in the main opinion and in concurring opinions from Justices Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh) that a nationwide effect might still be accomplished by using class actions, it’s hard to see under the Court’s reasoning why in practice the Court would permit a nationwide injunction merely because a lawsuit has been restyled as a class action.
Democracy Docket, Trump DOJ Sues Every Federal District Judge in Maryland, Marc Elias and Paige Moskowitz, June 27, 2025. President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice sued every federal district judge in Maryland to challenge a standing court order that protects due process rights by temporarily barring the government from deporting people after they have filed a challenge.
New York Times, Justices Uphold Preventive Care Provision in Affordable Care Act, Charlie Savage and Abbie Van Sickle, June 27, 2025. The case stemmed from a lawsuit brought by conservatives seeking to block free preventive care, including medicine to prevent H.I.V. transmission.
The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a provision of the Affordable Care Act that requires insurance companies to offer some kinds of preventive care for free.
In a 6-to-3 decision, written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the majority ruled that a federal task force that determines which preventive health measures insurance companies must cover at no cost to the insured was constitutional.
The decision appears to safeguard coverage for tens of millions of Americans who receive some free health care services, including cancer and diabetes screenings, medications to reduce heart disease and strokes and eye ointment for newborns to prevent infections causing blindness.
The majority opinion was joined by two other conservatives, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, as well as the three liberals, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
The remaining conservative justices, Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch, dissented.
The case is the latest lawsuit targeting the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s central legislative achievement. The heath care law survived three previous major challenges at the Supreme Court, in 2012, 2015 and 2021. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. cast the decisive vote to save the law in 2012, a crucial milestone in which the justices upheld the law’s core mandate that most employers provide health insurance for their workers.
Politico, Former Supreme Court Justice Kennedy says ‘democracy is at risk,’ Josh Gerstein, June 27, 2025. The retired Reagan appointee joined a forum on threats to judges and the rule of law.Anthony Kennedy attends U.S. President Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress.
Former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, shown at right in a file photo, warned Thursday that acrimonious political discourse and threats to judges are eroding the ability of the United States to serve as an example of democracy worldwide.
“Many in the rest of the world look to the United States to see what democracy is, to see what democracy ought to be,” Kennedy said during an online forum about threats to the rule of law. “If they see a hostile, fractious discourse, if they see a discourse that uses identity politics rather than to talk about issues, democracy is at risk. Freedom is at risk.”
Kennedy, who stepped down from the court in 2018, avoided specifics during his 10-minute speech as part of a series of presentations by current and former judges.
However, the Reagan appointee’s remarks appeared to be triggered at least in part by strident attacks President Donald Trump has mounted against judges, including some whom he appointed during his first term, who have ruled against the administration’s policies on immigration, firings of federal workers and his implementation of broad-based tariffs.
In March, Trump attacked U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg as a “radical left lunatic” after he attempted to block the administration from deporting alleged Venezuelan gang members under a wartime presidential power Trump invoked. Trump also called for Boasberg, an Obama appointee, to be impeached.
Last month, Trump issued a social media post denouncing “USA-hating” judges as “monsters who want our country to go to hell.”
The extreme rhetoric has come alongside a spike in threats against judges, although administration spokespeople have said the president opposes any threats and the Justice Department will prosecute them.
“Judges must have protection for themselves and their families,” Kennedy said. “Our families are often included in threats.”
Some other participants were more explicit in calling out Trump’s salvos at the courts.
The Hartmann Report, Political Opinion: The Broken Man Who’s Breaking America, Thom Hartmann, right, June 27, 2025. Once constrained by grown-ups in the room, Trump now surrounds himself with suckups. The result? A perfect storm of immaturity, cruelty, and power…
Claiming that Donald Trump is a sociopath has become so common it’s pretty much a cliché these days. That said, most people don’t know what sociopathy is or what they can expect from — or how to identify — a sociopath.
I did a deep dive into Trump’s childhood and history to discover the roots of his behavior — and how we can deal with it and repair America from it — in my newest book The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink.
What I found was fascinating and provides an easy way for people with no training in psychology to identify not only Trump’s problem but to figure out who else in their lives may incline toward sociopathy (CEOs are particularly notorious; some suggest it’s what makes them ruthless but successful).
The easy way to describe sociopathy to a lay person is to explain that if young children were tested for the condition they’d often test positive for the disorder, which is referred to by professionals (and the DSM) as “Antisocial Personality Disorder” (ASPD). That’s because their personalities are still developing and they haven’t yet fully developed empathy, impulse control, or a stable sense of morality, traits that are still emerging during childhood and adolescence.
This is why clinicians are careful not to diagnose children with sociopathy or ASPD outright; instead, they may diagnose Conduct Disorder, especially if the child shows persistent patterns of aggression, deceit, or cruelty. If these behaviors continue into adulthood, and particularly if they begin before age 15, the diagnosis may later shift to ASPD/sociopathy.
According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), adults with ASPD or sociopathy display a consistent and persistent set of characteristics. Those include a pervasive pattern of disregard for the rights of others; chronic violation of social norms, rules, and laws; deceitfulness, impulsivity, and aggression; and a near-complete lack of remorse or empathy.
But the simplest way to explain this is to simply note that adult sociopaths usually tend to act like young children. Consider Trump’s public behavior.
He:— Ignores or apparently doesn’t care about the rights of other people or the impact of his actions on others. He’ll send non-criminals to a hellhole concentration camp in El Salvador or deport them to South Sudan, even though it may be a death sentence — and is certainly an open door to torture — apparently without a second thought or twinge of conscience. — Defies social norms, bragging about sexually assaulting women and how he could murder somebody on Fifth Avenue and get away with it. — Ignores or tries to get around laws and court orders with apparent delight. — Lies about those actions and decisions that hurt others or even damage our nation. — Makes things up on the fly, chronically lying when it’s not even remotely necessary. — Bullies judges, lawmakers, people who work for him, and anybody he considers disloyal.— Almost never, ever admits errors or wrongdoing and is so constantly wrapped up in himself that he doesn’t know how to experience what others are feeling.This is the behavior of a child who’s not yet been socialized, and in Trump’s case it’s rooted deep
in his childhood, having been raised by a troubled father and a distant mother.The leaders of Europe’s NATO countries appear to have figured this out (as did Putin, Musk, and the Saudis, Emiratis, and Qataris before them); when Trump showed up in The Netherlands this week, they lavished him with praise and positive attention, instead of shunning and implicitly or subtly ridiculing him like they did five years ago.
His response was exactly what they wanted; reconsidering aid to Ukraine and suddenly changing his position to embrace the US’s commitment to the mutual defense provisions embodied in Article 5 of the organization’s charter.
This doesn’t mean that Americans should coddle Trump’s tantrums, demands for revenge, and petty grievances. He will always and obsessively be preoccupied with getting his own childish needs met, and at the top of that list is avoiding discomfort and complexity.
Like the bully he is, when he’s seriously confronted — at least so far — he’ll back down (TACO) if the confrontation threatens to consume lots of his time, trouble, or money. This is why consistent and ferocious opposition to his most puerile actions is absolutely necessary.
History teaches us that when self-centered national leaders aren’t constrained by their own people, the results are usually tragic. During his first presidency, Trump had largely surrounded himself with normal adults who succeeded in moderating his behavior and restraining his worst impulses.This time, however, he’s succeeded in surrounding himself with people just as pathetically child-like, morally and developmentally, as he is. They’ll lie, cheat, or bully on his behalf, as we’ve recently seen with the public statements of many of his most senior officials.
As we’ve seen with their attacks on and arrests of a state judge, member of Congress, US Senator, and Newark’s Mayor, among others, when a troubled man like Trump succeeds in surrounding himself with other people who share his developmental stunting — and has disposed of “the adults in the room” — the results can be horrific.
The next three-and-a-half years will be both critical and dangerous for the future of democracy in our republic both because of Trump’s psychopathology and the willingness (or even enthusiasm) of the people around him to facilitate his infantile rages and desires.
In the book — and in future articles here — I lay out a variety of ways Americans can deal with this national mental health crisis and the consequences with which it hits average working class people. The first and most important step, though, is to identify his disability and spread the word.
Not only is that the first step toward constraining him and those around him, but it’ll also help voters avoid electing more troubled man-babies to public office in the future.
Politico, Supreme Court upholds FCC broadband fund, John Hendel and Josh Gerstein, June 27, 2025. The justices found the FCC setup didn’t violate the non-delegation doctrine.
The Supreme Court on Friday upheld the constitutionality of a multibillion-dollar fund used to expand telephone and broadband services.
The 6-3 ruling is a victory for the Federal Communications Commission, which operates the pot of money in question, known as the Universal Service Fund. It’s also a rare win at the Supreme Court for agency power, as the court’s conservative majority — which is often skeptical of independent agencies — passed up an opportunity to further weaken the administrative state.
Three liberal justices and three conservatives formed the court’s majority. Three other conservatives dissented.
The money in the Universal Service Fund comes from charges collected from telephone providers through a surcharge on customers’ bills. It is used for a mix of internet connectivity subsidy programs that help schools, libraries, low-income households and internet providers in rural areas.
In upholding the fund, the justices rejected a bid by some legal conservatives to weaken the administrative state by reviving a controversial theory known as the “nondelegation doctrine.” Under that doctrine, Congress has extremely limited authority to delegate policymaking decisions to executive branch agencies.
“For nearly three decades, the work of Congress and the Commission in establishing universal-service programs has led to a more fully connected country. And it has done so while leaving fully intact the separation of powers integral to our Constitution,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in the majority opinion.
The three justices often considered the court’s most conservative members, Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, dissented.
Writing for the dissenters, Gorsuch said the court effectively rewrote the law in order to deem it constitutional. “We wind up in much the same place, only now with judges, rather than Presidents or bureaucrats, making our laws,” he wrote.
Proponents of the nondelegation doctrine argued that Congress handed away too much power when it instructed the FCC to determine how much money to collect for the Universal Service Fund. And, they say, the FCC in turn handed away too much power when the agency established a private corporation to help administer the fund. In essence, the challengers argued, the fund represents an unconstitutional tax.
If the Supreme Court had fully accepted those arguments and endorsed an aggressive view of nondelegation, experts say it would have imperiled numerous programs across federal agencies.
But the high court, in a 6-3 vote, said the FCC setup didn’t violate the nondelegation doctrine.
“Consumers’ Research contends that the Act gives the FCC boundless authority, but the provisions it points to show nothing of the kind,” Kagan wrote for the majority, referring to the conservative nonprofit group that brought the case. “The test Consumers’ Research proposes also would throw a host of federal statutes into doubt, as Congress has often empowered agencies to raise revenue without specifying a numeric cap or tax rate.”
The justices’ ruling will be a relief for the many telecom players who felt threatened by the case. Supporters of the fund have long warned that a decision striking it down could put millions of beneficiaries at risk. The loss could have squeezed households particularly with lower incomes and in rural areas, where cutting off the aid could have driven up internet prices right as households lost a monthly subsidy helping them pay for it.
Politico, School choice, religious school tax carveouts run afoul of Senate’s Byrd rule, Juan Perez Jr., June 27, 2025 (print ed.). The Senate parliamentarian also determined that shielding religious schools — including Hillsdale College in Michigan — from federal college endowment taxes needs 60 votes.
A Republican proposal to enact a multibillion-dollar private school tax credit program would be subject to a 60-vote threshold if it is included in conservatives’ domestic policy megabill, the Senate parliamentarian advised early Friday in a significant challenge to what would be a sweeping federal school choice program.
Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, right, also determined that an effort to carve religious schools — including Hillsdale College in Michigan — out of a planned expansion of the federal college endowment tax does not meet the Senate Byrd rule’s criteria for the filibuster-skirting reconciliation process, according to Senate Budget Democrats.
Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee had proposed a permanent, $4 billion annual tax credit for individuals who donate to organizations that support educational expenses including private-school tuition, which was projected to cost $26.046 billion between 2025 and 2034, according to estimates from the Joint Committee on Taxation.
The tax credit scholarship plan, which is based on the Educational Choice for Children Act, would allow scholarships to students whose families make up to 300 percent of the area median gross income.
The committee also aimed to soften the blow of expanded taxes on private college and university endowments compared to a House-passed tax bill, though many qualifying private schools would still be in line to pay a tax rate of up to 8 percent of their net annual investment income.
It’s not yet clear if Republicans would try to rework some of the tax provisions that MacDonough found violated the Byrd rule, effectively blocking their inclusion in a GOP-only reconciliation measure. Republicans have successfully tweaked other proposals to the parliamentarian’s liking, but her rulings this week certainly helped upend GOP senators’ efforts to bring their fiscal package up for a vote.
New York Times, Justices Let Parents Opt Children Out of Classes With L.G.B.T.Q. Storybooks, Adam Liptak, June 27, 2025. Maryland parents have a religious right to withdraw their children from classes on days that stories with gay and transgender themes are discussed, the court ruled.
Public schools in Maryland must allow parents with religious objections to withdraw their children from classes in which storybooks with L.G.B.T.Q. themes are discussed, the Supreme Court ruled on Friday.
The vote was 6 to 3, with the court’s liberal members in dissent.
The case extended a winning streak for claims of religious freedom at the court, gains that have often come at the expense of other values, notably gay rights.
The case concerned a new curriculum adopted in 2022 for prekindergarten through the fifth grade by the Montgomery County Public Schools, Maryland’s largest school system.
The storybooks included “Pride Puppy,” an alphabet primer about a family whose puppy gets lost at a Pride parade; “Love, Violet,” about a girl who develops a crush on her female classmate; “Born Ready,” about a transgender boy; and “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding,” about a same-sex union.
At first, the school system gave parents notice when the storybooks were to be discussed, along with the opportunity to have their children excused. But school administrators soon eliminated the advance notice and opt-out policy, saying it was hard to administer, led to absenteeism and risked “exposing students who believe the storybooks represent them and their families to social stigma and isolation.”
Parents of several faiths sued, saying the books violated the First Amendment’s protection of the free exercise of religion. The books, their complaint said, “promote one-sided transgender ideology, encourage gender transitioning and focus excessively on romantic infatuation.”
New York Times, News Analysis: Trump’s Bill Slashes the Safety Net That Many Republican Voters Rely on, Jason DeParle, June 27, 2025 (print ed.). As they push for big cuts in Medicaid and food stamps, Republicans are making a big bet that they can avoid political backlash from working-class supporters who increasingly rely on those programs.
From the start of his second term, President Trump has bet that he can appeal to low-income voters while slashing safety net programs on which many of those voters depend.
The enormous tax-and-spending bill he is trying to push through Congress is a high-stakes test of that proposition, a gamble that Mr. Trump can retain the loyalty of his blue-collar supporters despite moves that could harm their immediate economic self-interest.
As approved by the House, the legislation cuts hundreds of billions of dollars in food benefits and removes nearly 11 million people from the health care rolls, while offering large tax cuts skewed to the rich and adding trillions to the national debt. Senate Republicans are considering a similar measure, with bigger Medicaid cuts and smaller reductions in nutritional aid.
Whether Republicans succeed in passing the bill — and whether voters punish them for lost assistance — could affect next year’s congressional elections and determine the long-term size and strength of the social welfare system.
Once mostly aimed at the indigent, aid programs were often derided by conservative critics as Democratic handouts for minority groups in urban areas. But some benefits now reach up the income ladder to working-class households, which Republicans increasingly court.
Enrollment has roughly doubled in two decades in Medicaid and food stamps (formally, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP). The Affordable Care Act, signed in 2010 by President Barack Obama, subsidized households up to 400 percent of the poverty line, and pandemic-era subsidies, which expire this year, went higher.
Some corners of the Republican Party are expressing concern that the cuts could prompt a blue-collar backlash. Tony Fabrizio, a pollster for Mr. Trump, warned that voters have “no appetite” for cutting Medicaid.
Democrats are hoping the blowback will help them recapture Congress and check Mr. Trump’s power. But political scientists say it is unclear whether the cuts will upset voters, or whether upset voters will blame Republicans, especially in a polarized age when few votes are truly up for grabs.
The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The Public’s Not With Trump, William Kristol, June 27, 2025. In case you hadn’t noticed, everything’s not great as we approach the celebration of our nation’s 249th birthday.
Donald Trump’s abuses get more brazen and his usurpations get more dramatic by the day. He is tightening his control of the executive branch and using its powers ever more aggressively to execute his authoritarian agenda. The other two branches of government don’t seem able or willing to do much to check or balance him, or even slow him down. And much of the private sector is too timid to embrace the cause of defending liberty and a free society.
Things could be worse. They’d be worse if the American people were enthusiastically supporting Trump’s actions. But they’re not. That might make the inability or unwillingness of their “leaders” to resist Trump more forcefully seem inexplicable. But there is also hope that with the public resisting, these leaders might eventually stiffen their spines a bit.
There’s some fresh evidence of public resistance in a new poll from Quinnipiac University. It shows 41 percent of voters approving of the way Trump is handling his job as president, while 54 percent disapprove.
More striking is this: On Trump’s signature issue of immigration and deportation—central in so many ways to his authoritarian project—64 percent of voters say they would prefer giving most undocumented immigrants a pathway to legal status, while only 31 percent say they prefer deporting most of them. In December 2024, those numbers were 55 percent versus 36 percent. So Trump has lost ground on his most high-profile initiative.
What’s more, 56 percent of respondents in the Quinnipiac poll disapprove of the way ICE is doing its job, 55 percent disapprove of sending National Guard troops to Los Angeles, and 60 percent disapprove of sending in the Marines. Again, cause for optimism but also befuddlement, too. After all: Couldn’t Democrats in Congress do more to point out that the “One Big Beautiful Bill” now before the Senate massively increases spending for the unpopular masked men of ICE and their deportation efforts?
Then again, maybe making this point is unnecessary. The Quinnipiac poll shows that the Big Beautiful Bill is already extraordinarily unpopular. An unusually high 71 percent of respondents say they have heard or read a lot (36 percent) or some (35 percent) about that legislation. And they don't like it. Fifty-five percent of voters oppose the bill while only 29 percent support it, and 16 percent are unsure or have no opinion.
I can recall no similar case when the signature legislation of a new president and his party in Congress had the support of only 29 percent of the public. Even Democrats in Disarray should be able to run successfully in 2026 against Republican members of Congress who’ve voted for this bill—and more broadly, against the Republican leadership in D.C. that insisted on it.
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It’s true that there are limits to how effective mere public disapproval can be in stopping an authoritarian push by a powerful executive. Presidents have a lot of power even if much of the public isn’t supportive. Still, if the public were on board, things would be worse.
But you know what would help a lot? Some elite disapproval—publicly and boldly expressed. While a successful democracy depends on some degree of reasonableness from voters, a successful liberal democracy also depends on some degree of responsibility and even courage from elites.
Next week will provide a case study of elite responsibility and courage. As Jefferson put it in his famous letter to Roger Weightman expressing regret that he wouldn’t be able to attend a celebration of the Declaration’s 50th anniversary:
I should indeed, with peculiar delight, have met and exchanged there, congratulations personally, with the small band, the remnant of that host of worthies, who joined with us, on that day, in the bold and doubtful election we were to make, for our country, between submission, or the sword; and to have enjoyed with them the consolatory fact that our fellow citizens, after half a century of experience and prosperity, continue to approve the choice we made.
Jefferson took pride in being one of the “small band,” the “host of worthies” who made their momentous choice and chose to approve the Declaration on July 4, 1776. They did so, of course, as representatives of their fellow citizens, who (mostly) approved of their choice then and later. But Jefferson’s letter is a reminder that the Declaration was a choice not at first of the people but of the signers. They were elites who individually pledged not to the people but “to each other” their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor.
Is it too much to hope that we might find similar worthies willing to make such a choice today?
New York Times, Newsom Sues Fox News for Saying He Lied About Call With Trump, Laurel Rosenhall, June 27, 2025. The lawsuit, which seeks at least $787 million in damages, comes as the California governor adopts an increasingly combative style with the president and his allies
Gov. Gavin Newsom of California sued Fox News on Friday, accusing the network of defaming him in its coverage of a phone call he had with President Trump this month.
The suit, filed in Delaware, where Fox News is incorporated, seeks damages of at least $787 million and a court order prohibiting Fox from broadcasting or posting segments that mistakenly say Mr. Newsom lied about his call with Mr. Trump.
Mr. Newsom has adopted an increasingly combative approach with the president since Mr. Trump sent military troops to Los Angeles this month amid his administration’s immigration crackdown. The governor, a Democrat, is taking a page from the president by suing a news media outlet over coverage.
Mr. Newsom’s lawyers also sent Fox News a letter demanding a formal retraction and an on-air apology from Jesse Watters, a host who said on his show that Mr. Newsom had lied about the call with the president. If those conditions are met, the letter states, Mr. Newsom will dismiss the lawsuit.
The punitive damages sought by Mr. Newsom mirror the amount that Fox News agreed to pay in 2023 to settle a lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems that accused the network of publicizing false election conspiracies that damaged the company.
“If Fox News wants to lie to the American people on Donald Trump’s behalf, it should face consequences — just like it did in the Dominion case,” Mr. Newsom said in a statement. “I believe the American people should be able to trust the information they receive from a major news outlet.”
Fox News responded by questioning the sincerity of Mr. Newsom’s lawsuit.
“Gov. Newsom’s transparent publicity stunt is frivolous and designed to chill free speech critical of him,” Fox News said in a statement. “We will defend this case vigorously and look forward to it being dismissed.”
The allegations at the heart of the lawsuit stem from volleys between Mr. Newsom and Mr. Trump after the president invoked a rarely used federal statute to seize control of the California National Guard over the governor’s objections to respond to protests against federal immigration raids.
The two leaders spoke by phone late at night on June 6 in California, which was after 1 a.m. June 7 on the East Coast, according to Mr. Newsom and a cellphone record provided by Mr. Trump. The president activated the National Guard less than 24 hours after the call.
The lawsuit claims that Fox News deliberately mischaracterized the disagreement between the governor and the president to harm Mr. Newsom’s political career. It says viewers who saw Fox’s false reports that Mr. Newsom had lied would be less likely to support him in future elections or donate to his campaigns.
Though Mr. Newsom and California are frequently criticized by Fox News hosts, the governor has made several high-profile appearances on the network in recent years. In 2023, Mr. Newsom sat for a lengthy interview with Sean Hannity, a Fox News host, and participated in a debate with Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida that aired on the network.
The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Mission Re-Accomplished, Andrew Egger, June 27, 2025. On May 1, 2003, President George W. Bush stood on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln to proclaim the success of the weeks-old invasion of Iraq, which had already resulted in the toppling of Saddam Hussein. A massive, star-spangled banner behind him was emblazoned with the words “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.” The visual has since become a cautionary tale against spiking the football too soon.
Now, as the entire Trump administration declares a fatwa on anyone saying its strikes on Iran were anything other than an overwhelming and permanent geopolitical triumph, it’s fair to wonder whether they’re falling into the same trap.
Trump, of course, always takes the path of maximum bombast, so it wasn’t exactly a surprise that he would spend the week crowing about the “TOTAL OBLITERATION” of Iran’s nuclear program. If some of his pronouncements verged into sheer wishcasting—“You know, they have guys that go in there after the hit, and they said it was total obliteration,” he told reporters in the Hague this week, referring to a supposed Israeli operation that appears not to have existed—well, just take a gander at the other shit the guy says. ¹
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Dan Caine took a more measured approach, advising that the full damage assessment would “take some time,” because he apparently lives in a world based on past experience and sanity. If the rest of the administration were sane and sober, they would acknowledge that a great deal of fog of war remains around the operation and that, while the strikes were an undeniable success, more work might have to be done to constrain and frustrate Iran’s nuclear-armed ambitions.
Instead, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has appointed himself Trump’s top enforcer against the dangerous, seditious, and unpatriotic notion that the U.S. strikes might have been anything less than a fatal blow to Iran’s nuclear program.
“What’s really happening is you’re undermining the success of the incredible B-2 pilots and incredible F-35 pilots and incredible refuelers and incredible air defenders who accomplished their mission, set back a nuclear program in ways that other presidents would have dreamed,” Hegseth scolded reporters at a press conference. “It’s like it’s in your DNA and in your blood to cheer against Trump because you want him not to be successful.”
When Fox News reporter Jennifer Griffin asked a straightforward, factual question—whether Hegseth could say for certain whether Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium had been destroyed in the strikes—Hegseth went nuclear. “Jennifer, you’ve been about the worst. The one who misrepresents the most intentionally,” he replied, visibly emotional.
It almost goes without saying that this is deeply stupid. Reporters trying to figure out what can be known about the aftermath of the strikes is no more unpatriotic than America’s intelligence agencies trying to answer the same questions. But it’s more than just stupid—it could prove dangerous.
With every passing day, the entire White House is committing itself to the argument that it is unthinkable Iran could bounce back from these strikes. In doing so, it is putting itself in a policy straitjacket. Months from now, if troubling intelligence reports start to bubble up that Iran did indeed manage to get its uranium to safety and intends to get back to further enrichment as quickly as possible, how will Trump and Hegseth respond? Will they allow this information to shape their thinking on the matter? Or will they thrust their heads back into the sand, waving it off as more treasonous nonsense from Deep Staters trying to make our great warfighters look bad?
AROUND THE BULWARK
Criminals Are Running DOJ… GEORGE CONWAY and JVL break down a stunning whistleblower complaint accusing former acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove of telling colleagues the DOJ should ignore court orders and deport migrants anyway.
Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, left, and his rival in New York City's mayoral Democratic primary on June 24, New York State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani (photos via CNN).
New York Times, Cuomo Doesn’t Blame Himself for Losing the Primary. Others Do, Nicholas Fandos, June 27, 2025. Even some of his supporters say Andrew M. Cuomo ran an aloof campaign for mayor that underestimated his chief rival, Zohran Mamdan.
For Andrew M. Cuomo, the rally rolling out a $20-an-hour minimum wage proposal was supposed to be a high point of his comeback campaign for mayor of New York City.
It did not go particularly well. On the stage of a claustrophobic conference room in Midtown, the former governor flubbed two key lines, at one point promising to “combat affordability.” Many of the laborers paid by their unions to attend appeared uninterested, chatting in the back throughout the speech.
And when it was over, Mr. Cuomo beelined to his waiting Dodge Charger, punched the gas past waiting reporters and made an illegal right-on-red turn.
He made no further public appearances that day last month, even with Primary Day weeks away.
Mr. Cuomo, who dominated New York for a decade as governor, entered the crowded field of Democrats back in March with the force of a steamroller and a commanding lead in the polls. He wore down the Democratic establishment until it lined up behind him, strong-armed unions and seeded a record-shattering super PAC that would eventually spend $25 million.
But even some of his allies said that up close, the campaign sometimes looked more like a listing ship, steered by an aging candidate who never really seemed to want to be there and showed little interest in reacquainting himself with the city he hoped to lead.
New Yorkers took note. And on Tuesday, a campaign that Mr. Cuomo, 67, had hoped would deliver retribution four years after his humiliating resignation as governor ended in another thumping rebuke instead. Voters preferred Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old state lawmaker whom Mr. Cuomo dismissed as woefully unqualified, by a comfortable margin.ImageZohran Mamdani spends part of Election Day passing out campaign literature to people on a crowded subway platform in Queens.Zohran Mamdani, canvassing on Primary Day, ran an energetic campaign that often found him on the streets or in the subway.Credit...Shuran Huang for The New York Times
Mr. Mamdani, a democratic socialist whose relentless focus on affordability and infectious campaign presence electrified younger voters especially, certainly deserves a great deal of credit for his victory. But a dozen allies and even some of Mr. Cuomo’s own campaign advisers agreed in interviews that if he was looking to assess blame for a loss that could end his political career, he needed to look at himself.
“It was a creaky 1970s political machine versus a generational talent,” said Howard Glaser, a former Cuomo lieutenant who has since fallen out with Mr. Cuomo. “He just couldn’t see it.”
“He tried to force redemption on an unreceptive public,” Mr. Glaser added.
The assessment now hangs over Mr. Cuomo as he deliberates whether to renew his campaign in the fall against Mr. Mamdani on a third-party ballot line. Some wealthy New Yorkers alarmed by Mr. Mamdani’s left-wing views and others are urging Mr. Cuomo to keep running.
But many of his allies said there would be no real point in carrying on if Mr. Cuomo treated the general election like the primary. People who worked on his campaign, who insisted on anonymity for fear of retribution, used words like “entitled,” “arrogant” and “aloof” to describe the former governor’s attitude. Another called the campaign “astonishingly incompetent.”
New York Times, Trump Justice Dept. Pressuring University of Virginia President to Resign, Michael S. Schmidt and Michael C. Bender, June 27, 2025 (print ed.). The Justice Department has demanded that James E. Ryan step down to help resolve a civil rights investigation into the school, three people familiar with the matter said.
The Trump administration has privately demanded that the University of Virginia oust its president to help resolve a Justice Department investigation into the school’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, according to three people briefed on the matter.
The extraordinary condition the Justice Department has put on the school demonstrates that President Trump’s bid to shift the ideological tilt of the higher education system, which he views as hostile to conservatives, is more far-reaching than previously understood.
The government’s extensive pressure campaign has stripped billions of dollars from elite universities, including Harvard, which has been the target of investigations from at least six different federal agencies. But this is the first time the administration has pushed a university to remove its leader.
The Justice Department has contended to the university that the president, James E. Ryan, right, has not dismantled the school’s diversity, equity and inclusion programs and misrepresented the steps taken to end them. A spokesman for the department did not immediately return a request for comment.
The demand to remove Mr. Ryan was made over the past month on several occasions by Gregory Brown, the deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights, to university officials and representatives, according to the three people briefed on the matter.
Mr. Brown, a University of Virginia graduate who, as a private lawyer, sued the school, is taking a major role in the investigation. He told a university representative as recently as this past week that Mr. Ryan needed to go in order for the process of resolving the investigation to begin, two of the people said.
Harmeet K. Dhillon, the Justice Department’s top civil rights lawyer, has also been involved in negotiations with the university. She received her law degree from the University of Virginia, where she was a student in the law school at the same time as Mr. Ryan.
The people briefed on the back-and-forth between the university and the Justice Department spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing negotiations that were supposed to remain private.
Mr. Ryan, hired in 2018 as the university’s ninth president, has leaned into issues like making the school more diverse, increasing the number of first-generation students and encouraging students to do community service. But his approach, which he says will make the university “both great and good,” has rankled conservative alumni and Republican board members who accuse him of wanting to impose his values on students and claim he is “too woke.”
New York Times, Campus Crackdown: Johns Hopkins Gets the Most Federal Money, but Now Much of It Is at Risk, Vimal Patel, June 27, 2025 (print ed.). The university is not a direct target of the Trump administration but faces some of the biggest cuts, as Republicans seek to trim government spending.
As President Trump unleashes dizzying firepower at the nation’s top universities, he and his supporters have made the argument that the institutions have brought such action onto themselves.
They turned into bastions of leftism hostile to conservative thought and lost the trust of the American people, according to the administration. The universities accrued massive endowments, becoming less like noble nonprofits spreading good to the world and more like corporations taking advantage of government largess, the argument goes.
Ronald J. Daniels, the president of Johns Hopkins University, which receives the most federal funding of any American university, has been listening.
For years, he has been warning that higher education should make efforts to attract more conservatives to the ranks. His school has pushed for more viewpoint diversity and has touted a partnership with the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.
Those efforts do not appear to have protected the university. Johns Hopkins, the first research university in the United States, has been one of the hardest hit by a Republican effort to reduce federal funding flowing to schools.
The Trump administration has not singled out Johns Hopkins with lists of demands or threats that it would be cut off from funding, as the administration has done with Harvard and Columbia. Still, Johns Hopkins has already laid off more than 2,000 people in the wake of an $800 million research cut. And officials of the university are bracing for deeper cuts to the $4.2 billion it receives in annual federal research money.
The university’s troubles show how a Republican campaign against higher education could decimate the nation’s research enterprise.
June 26
New York Times, N.Y.C. Mayor’s Race, ‘Re-elect Eric’: Adams Kicks Off Bid to Oppose Mamdani for Mayor, Jeffery C. Mays June 26, 2025. Just a few months ago, it appeared unlikely that Mayor Eric Adams of New York, above, who was facing federal corruption charges, would be in a position to seek a second term.
With the political world in New York City and beyond still abuzz over Zohran Mamdani’s ascendance as the likely Democratic mayoral candidate, the current mayor, Eric Adams, held a news conference on Thursday to deliver a countermessage: Don’t forget about me.
Mr. Adams appeared on the steps of City Hall to formally kick off an independent bid for re-election in November, with a crowd of supporters holding up “Re-elect Eric for Mayor” signs, echoing Mr. Mamdani’s campaign ads that primarily use his first name.
The obstacles the mayor faces are substantial. His approval rating was at historic lows even before he was indicted last fall on charges of bribery and soliciting illegal campaign contributions from foreign nationals. He grew more unpopular after the charges were dropped by the Trump Justice Department, leading to accusations of a quid pro quo that Mr. Adams has denied.
The mayor was denied public matching funds because of the charges of soliciting straw donations. His management of the city has been questioned. The diverse coalition he put together to win election in 2021 is completely fractured. And his third-party bid puts him at an immediate disadvantage in a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans six to one.
As evidence of his divisiveness, the mayor’s speech was repeatedly interrupted by protesters who called him a criminal and accused him of selling out the city to President Trump. Nearby in City Hall Park, protesters blew whistles and engaged in profane chants aimed at disrupting the announcement.
That Mr. Adams could consider himself a viable candidate might have seemed far-fetched last year. Exactly nine months ago, he gathered supporters under a tent outside Gracie Mansion to declare his innocence after federal prosecutors unveiled the five-count corruption indictment. Mr. Adams became the first sitting mayor in the city’s modern history to face criminal charges.
A victory would not only represent a Lazarus-type resurrection for Mr. Adams, 64, who is fond of comparing himself to biblical figures, but would also make him the first Black mayor to be elected to a second term in New York City.
“Eric has no shot,” said Trip Yang, a Democratic consultant who was not affiliated with any primary campaign. “Party loyalty reigns supreme for Democrats in a November general election, especially when Donald Trump is in office.”
The exact makeup of the November ballot is unclear. Mr. Mamdani, right, a 33-year-old state assemblyman from Queens, appears destined to be the Democratic nominee, after he shocked the city by gaining enough votes on the first ballot of ranked-choice voting to force a concession from Andrew M. Cuomo, 67, the former governor who had been leading in polls for months.
President Trump and his U.S. Health and Human Services Department Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Photo by Getty Images).
New York Times, New Kennedy Advisers Rescind Recommendations for Some Flu Vaccines, Apoorva Mandavilli, June 26, 2025. Critics saw in the move the beginnings of a more restrictive approach to providing vaccines to Americans.
An advisory panel recently appointed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. voted on Thursday to walk back longstanding recommendations for flu vaccines containing an ingredient that the anti-vaccine movement has falsely linked to autism.
The vote signaled a powerful shift in the way federal officials approach vaccines, putting into action Mr. Kennedy’s deep skepticism about their safety and delivering the first blows to a scientific process that for decades has provided effective vaccines to Americans.
Mr. Kennedy fired all 17 experts on the panel about two weeks ago, and then appointed eight new members, at least half of whom have expressed skepticism about some vaccines.
“We came to this meeting with no predetermined ideas, and will make judgments as if we are treating for our own families,” the panelists said in a statement.
To critics, the two-day meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices offered the clearest signs yet that the Trump administration intends to unravel the system that has long guided clinical decisions about vaccination.
“As a physician and scientist who has devoted my entire career to vaccines and preventing and treating infections, this meeting has been devastating to watch,” said Dr. Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos, an expert on vaccines who resigned from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier this month.
Dozens of studies have shown the vaccine ingredient, called thimerosal, to be harmless. It has not been a component of most childhood shots since 2001.
“The risk from influenza is so much greater than the nonexistent risk as far as we know from thimerosal,” said the lone dissenter, Dr. Cody Meissner, a professor of pediatrics at Dartmouth Geisel School of Medicine who is widely considered to be the most qualified member of the new committee.
New York Times, Kennedy Withdraws Funding Pledge to International Vaccine Agency, Stephanie Nolen, June 26, 2025 (print ed.). Robert F. Kennedy Jr.claimed that Gavi had “ignored the science” in immunizing children around the world.
The United States will withdraw its financial support of Gavi, a global organization that helps purchase vaccines for children in poor countries, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the United States secretary of Health and Human Services, told the group’s leaders on Wednesday, accusing them of having “ignored the science” in immunizing children around the world.
Mr. Kennedy made the incendiary remarks in a brief, prerecorded video message sent overnight to a gathering of health ministers and other leaders in Brussels focused on raising funds to support the work of Gavi. It was to be played for the group later on Wednesday.
“When vaccine safety issues have come before Gavi, Gavi has treated them not as a patient health problem, but as a public relations problem,” Mr. Kennedy said in the address.
Mr. Kennedy said that Gavi’s leaders had been selective in their use of science to support vaccine choices, and that the United States would not deliver on a $1.2 billion pledge made by the Biden administration until the organization changed its processes.
“In its zeal to promote universal vaccination, it has neglected the key issue of vaccine safety,” he said.
In a statement, Gavi’s leaders rejected the suggestion that its vaccine purchases were driven by anything other than the best available evidence.
“Any decision made by Gavi with regards to its vaccine portfolio is made in alignment with recommendations by the World Health Organization’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE), a group of independent experts that reviews all available data through a rigorous, transparent and independent process,” Gavi’s statement said. “This ensures Gavi investments are grounded in the best available science and public health priorities.”
Mr. Kennedy is a longtime vaccine skeptic who has upended policies on vaccination in the United States since taking over the top health job for the Trump administration. His comments to the meeting in Brussels came on the same day that a key vaccine advisory panel for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was to meet in the United States. Mr. Kennedy fired all 17 of the previous members of the panel and replaced them with members he chose, several of whom have voiced vaccine skepticism mirroring his own.
Nevertheless, his address to Gavi came as a surprise; the organizers of the summit learned of it just two days in advance and scrambled to figure out where to put it on their program, which was otherwise full of technical panels on how to increase vaccination rates and a pep-rally-style pledging event at which countries would announce their commitment to support Gavi’s mission.
Status Report, The '60 Minutes' Missive; Wintour Winds Down; Trump Threatens to Sue, Oliver Darcy, June 26, 2025. The correspondents of "60 Minutes" are rallying around Tanya Simon as their next executive producer and making it clear to their bosses at Paramount that she’s their choice—whether they listen remains to be seen.
Last month, all seven "60 Minutes" correspondents moved to take some collective action in an effort to safeguard the program that they so deeply care about. Quietly, the group of famed journalists—Lesley Stahl, Scott Pelley, Bill Whitaker, Anderson Cooper, Sharyn Alfonsi, Jon Wertheim, and Cecilia Vega—decided amongst themselves to write a letter to the powers that be at CBS News' parent company, Paramount Global. According to five people familiar with the matter, the missive addressed to Paramount co-chief executive George Cheeks made a simple request: name Tanya Simon executive producer of "60 Minutes."
Simon has been serving as interim executive producer of the program since April, when the newsmagazine's then-boss Bill Owens resigned in protest of what he said was editorial interference from Paramount. Simon’s roots at "60 Minutes" run deep. She began her career at the broadcast in 1999 as an associate producer and has steadily climbed the ranks over the past 26 years. In that time, she’s earned widespread respect from her peers and is now regarded as a beloved leader amongst the show’s tightly-knit staff. As one staffer put it candidly, “The next E.P. has to be Tanya. There will be a revolt if it’s not her.”
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: June 25 [Inside NATO Summit], Heather Cox Richardson, right, June 26, 2025. At The Hague, a city in the Netherlands, today for a summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Trump showed that he cannot let go of the intelligence assessment that his military strikes against Iran had set back Iran’s nuclear ambitions only by a few months. He appears determined to convince Americans that he has solved the problem of Iran’s nuclear ambitions overnight.
"It's gone for years, years,” he said. And then, turning to the news outlets that reported the early conclusions of Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the intelligence arm of the Pentagon, that the hits delayed production of a nuclear weapon by only a few months, he said: “CNN is scum. MSDNC is scum. The New York Times is scum. They're bad people. They're sick. And what they've done is they've tried to make this unbelievable victory into something less." Trump insisted that the U.S. hits caused “total obliteration.” He claimed he did not want the recognition of the effectiveness of the hits for himself, but rather for “the military.”
Trump equated the strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities with the U.S. bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters at the NATO summit that the FBI had launched a criminal investigation into who had leaked the DIA report, complaining that “CNN and others are trying to spin it to make the president look bad, when this was an overwhelming success.” Later in the morning, Trump’s social media account posted that CNN should fire Natasha Bertrand, one of the CNN journalists who broke the story that the attacks had done less damage than Trump claimed.
Marc Caputo of Axios reported this afternoon that the Trump administration will limit the classified information it shares with Congress after the leak of the DIA assessment, even though there is currently no evidence tying that leak to Congress. A senior White House official said: “We are declaring a war on leakers.”
Stephan Neukam and Andrew Solender of Axios reported that congressional Democrats, already angry that the administration delayed briefing Congress about the strikes on Iran past the legal deadline for such a briefing, see the announcement that the White House will limit the information it provides to Congress as an attempt to hide reality in order to bolster Trump’s narrative. “A senior House Democrat told the Axios reporters: “[T]his from a group of people who used Signal about actual war plans?”
On the Senate floor, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said: “The administration has no right to stonewall Congress on matters of national security. Senators deserve information, and the administration has a legal obligation to inform Congress precisely about what is happening right now abroad.”
Representative Jim Himes (D-CT), the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said: “The law requires the congressional intelligence committees to be kept fully and currently informed, and I expect the Intelligence Community to comply with the law.”
New York Times, News Analysis: U.S. Strikes on Iran Are Another Wedge for Divided Democrats, Robert Jimison, Updated June 26, 2025. President Trump’s strikes on Iran have resurfaced old rifts among Democrats over war and peace that have been inflamed by a newer schism inside the party, over support for Israel.
Less than two hours after President Trump announced on social media that he had ordered military strikes on Iran, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the ultraprogressive Democrat from New York, denounced the move as “disastrous,” a “grave” violation of the Constitution and grounds for his impeachment and removal.
The Democratic leaders in Congress, Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries, both of New York, were more muted in their statements. They castigated the president for not consulting Congress and warned that his action had “dramatically increased” the chances of a broader war in the region, but they didn’t condemn it outright.
The contrast reflected deep divisions among Democrats over how to respond to Mr. Trump’s decision, the latest dispute inside the party about the best way to counter a president who holds a lock on Congress and is eager to push the boundaries of his power.
The debate has resurfaced longstanding fault lines in the party over the use of military force and the role of Congress in exercising it, with antiwar liberals urging restraint and more hawkish centrists backing more aggressive action. But this time it is also fueled by a newer and more bitter political rift in Democratic ranks over support for Israel, which has become one of the most polarizing issues for the party.
Progressives like Ms. Ocasio-Cortez who have been outspoken about criticizing Israel and American support for the nation were among the first and most vocal in condemning Mr. Trump’s decision to back Israel’s war against Iran by striking its nuclear facilities. But party leaders and many pro-Israel Democrats in the rank and file, even as they were fiercely critical of Mr. Trump, worded their statements carefully, wary of saying or doing anything that could be construed as hostile to Israel.
New York Times, In New Assessment, C.I.A. Chief Says U.S. Strikes ‘Severely Damaged’ Iranian Program, Julian E. Barnes, Mark Mazzetti and Maggie Haberman, June 26, 2025. The administration suggested an initial report of less-severe damage was already outdated as the president continued to defend his assertion that key facilities had been “obliterated,” though no intelligence official has yet directly echoed his view.
Classified intelligence about the damage to Iran’s nuclear program from U.S. strikes was at the center of a political tempest on Wednesday as spy chiefs pushed out new assessments and President Trump continued to defend his assertion that Iran’s key facilities had been “obliterated.”
The C.I.A. director, John Ratcliffe, said the strikes had “severely damaged” Iran’s nuclear program, and the administration suggested that the initial report, by the Defense Intelligence Agency, was based on preliminary assessments and was already outdated.
The damage was also being assessed by other U.S. spy agencies. No information that has become public from those assessments has supported Mr. Trump’s description of the level of destruction from the U.S. attack, though they all confirmed that the damage had been substantial.
The D.I.A. report was based on information from little more than 24 hours after the American attacks on three of Iran’s nuclear sites.
It described the level of damage as ranging from moderate to severe, according to people briefed on or familiar with its contents.
New York Times, Iran’s Khamenei Makes First Public Comments Since Cease-Fire With Israel, Erika Solomon and Leily Nikounazar, June 26, 2025. Supreme leader strikes defiant tone in a video statement, after not being heard of or seen publicly in days.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei congratulated Iranians for what he described as a victory over Israel and the United States, in a defiant video message that appeared to be his first public statement since U.S. war planes bombed three of the country’s nuclear facilities.
Public alarm has been rising in Iran over the absence of Mr. Khamenei, who has the final say on key decisions for the country but has not been seen or heard from publicly in a week. Although he had issued two statements during Iran and Israel’s 12-day conflict, he had made no public statements or recorded messages since the American miliary attack on Sunday, Iran retaliated by firing missiles at a U.S. military base in Qatar, and Iran and Israel agreed to a cease-fire on Tuesday.
The lack of any comment from Mr. Khamenei had begun to raise questions among the Iranian public over his health and his whereabouts. Iranian officials had previously said Mr. Khamenei was sheltering in a bunker and refraining from any electronic communications in order to prevent assassination attempts against him.
There were no clear signs from the video as to when the recording was made. Mr. Khamenei spoke seated in front of a beige curtain, with an Iranian flag to his left and a photograph of the Islamic Republic’s first leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei, hanging above him — an identical setting to the last video message he released since the start of the recent conflict with Israel.
He did not address the extent of damage from the U.S. and Israeli strikes or the fate of Iran’s nuclear program. But the comment appeared to have been made after the United States attacked Iran, as he declared that Washington was forced to enter the conflict on Israel’s behalf.
Popular Information, Accountability Journalism, Landmark AI ruling is a blow to authors and artists, Judd Legum and Noel Sims, June 26, 2025. In television ads, AI tools appear to work like magic, generating useful information or smooth prose in response to a wide variety of prompts.
In reality, these tools, known as Large Language Models (LLMs), are trained by AI companies on enormous quantities of text and images produced by humans. These AI companies have billions in funding, but in nearly all cases, the authors of these works are not compensated.
In August 2024, three authors — Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson, filed a class action lawsuit against Anthropic, which created the popular AI chatbot Claude. Anthropic was founded by former OpenAI staff members. The splinter group believed a new company was necessary to refocus on the purported original mission of OpenAI: creating ethical AI that benefits everyone. The company says it makes "decisions that maximize positive outcomes for humanity in the long run."
Books are particularly valuable for LLMs precisely because humans have taken such care to produce them. If you want to teach a computer the nuances of many different topics — and how to write clearly — there is no substitute for books. But when it came time to train Claude, Anthropic did not start by buying books. Instead, it "downloaded for free millions of copyrighted books in digital form from pirate sites on the internet," including books by the three authors who filed the lawsuit.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei admitted there were "many places" where the company could have purchased the books, but it chose to steal them to avoid the "legal/practice/business slog." Over the course of a few years, Anthropic downloaded over seven million books to train Claude. In response to the lawsuit, Anthropic claimed that using these pirated works to train Claude was "fair use."
This week, a federal judge, William Alsup, rejected Anthropic's effort to dismiss the case and found that stealing books from the internet is likely a copyright violation. A trial will be scheduled in the future. If Anthropic loses, each violation could come with a fine of $750 or more, potentially exposing the company to billions in damages. Other AI companies that use stolen work to train their models — and most do — could also face significant liability.
But Alsup ruled in favor of Anthropic on a related issue that ultimately may prove more important. While Anthropic originally downloaded the pirated books, it reconsidered that approach. Anthropic began purchasing millions of books, tearing the pages from their bindings, and creating digital copies for training purposes. These new digital copies would then be duplicated multiple times to train various AI models.
Alsup found that as long as the original copy is purchased legally, books can be copied and memorized by AI models without the author's permission. In making this argument, Alsup anthropomorphized AI models, saying what Anthropic is doing is no different than a person reading a book and then using that information to write a new text:
Authors cannot rightly exclude anyone from using their works for training or learning as such. Everyone reads texts, too, then writes new texts. They may need to pay for getting their hands on a text in the first instance. But to make anyone pay specifically for the use of a book each time they read it, each time they recall it from memory, each time they later draw upon it when writing new things in new ways would be unthinkable. For centuries, we have read and re-read books. We have admired, memorized, and internalized their sweeping themes, their substantive points, and their stylistic solutions to recurring writing problems.
Of course, LLMs are not people. They do not read or write. They are software products created by corporations with billions in funding that are capable of storing the exact contents of millions of books. The models, once trained on these books, are capable of quickly producing exact replicas or similar works that could be used for the same purpose.
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Although Alsup claims otherwise, this could significantly degrade the value of the original work. For example, one of the authors who sued Anthropic, Graeber, published a book in 2018 called "The Breakthrough: Immunotherapy and the Race to Cure Cancer." The book documents the development of cancer immunotherapies that culminated in a Nobel Prize. Claude, in part because it was trained on Graeber's book, could create a narrative of the rise of cancer immunotherapies in the style of Graeber. Some Claude users could read that narrative instead of the book.
The ruling, should it be upheld on a likely appeal, would be a major blow not just for book authors but millions of other writers and creatives. The New York Times, for example, has sued OpenAI, alleging that its ChatGPT product uses the New York Times’ copyrighted reporting without permission. If Alsup's ruling were applied to the facts of that case, ChatGPT could train its models on the New York Times reporting for the cost of a single subscription. Similarly, major music labels have sued two companies that "released AI programs that enable users to generate songs from text prompts." Could a subscription to Spotify be all that's required to avoid liability?
Alsup's ruling does have some limitations, as it applies only to the training of AI models. Alsup is open to the possibility that the output of the models could violate copyright law if it were too similar to the original work. Alsup does not consider that issue with regard to Anthropic because the plaintiffs "do not allege… that any LLM outputs infringing upon their works ever reached users of the public-facing Claude service." The judge also says that Anthropic created filters to ensure "no exact copy, nor any substantial knock-off" from being delivered to users. That, of course, entirely depends on your interpretation of the word "substantial."
That argument could carry the day, however, in a lawsuit filed earlier this month by Disney and NBCUniversal against Midjourney, another AI tool that creates images. The lawsuit alleges that Midjourney's output displays "AI-generated images of their copyrighted characters."Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Reporting,Wayne Madsen19 of 9,830June 25, 2025InboxHeather Cox Richardson from
New York Times, Bill Moyers, Presidential Aide and Veteran of Public TV, Dies at 91, Janny Scott, June 26, 2025. Before becoming known as an unusual breed of television correspondent and commentator, he had a long association with President Lyndon B. Johnson.
Bill Moyers, who served as chief spokesman for President Lyndon B. Johnson during the American military buildup in Vietnam and then went on to a long and celebrated career as a broadcast journalist, returning repeatedly to the subject of the corruption of American democracy by money and power, died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 91.
To Americans who grew up after the 1960s, Mr. Moyers was known above all as an unusual breed of television correspondent and commentator. He was once described by Peter J. Boyer, the journalist and author, as “a rare and powerful voice, a kind of secular evangelist.”
But before that, Mr. Moyers was President Johnson’s closest aide. Present on Air Force One in Dallas when Johnson took the oath of office 
after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Mr. Moyers played a pivotal role in the inception of Johnson’s Great Society programs, and was the president’s top administrative assistant and press secretary when Johnson sent hundreds of thousands of troops to fight in the Vietnam War. They are shown at right.
Mr. Moyers resigned from the administration in December 1966 at age 32, finalizing an irreparable falling out between the hot-tempered, flamboyant Johnson, who demanded unwavering loyalty, and the cool, self-contained Mr. Moyers, whom Johnson had denied several foreign policy positions. The two men never reconciled. In his 1971 memoir, “The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency, 1963-1969,” Johnson mentioned Mr. Moyers only fleetingly, reducing him to little more than a footnote.
In his four decades as a television correspondent and commentator, Mr. Moyers, an ordained Baptist minister, explored issues ranging from poverty, violence, income inequality and racial bigotry to the role of money in politics, threats to the Constitution and climate change. His documentaries and reports won him the top prizes in television journalism, more than 30 Emmy Awards and comparisons to Edward R. Murrow, his revered predecessor at CBS.
Famously modest and self-deprecating, Mr. Moyers often invoked his humble small-town roots in Marshall, Texas. Yet he was ambitious, political, intense and shrewd. His Rolodex was once said to contain the names of every important person who ever lived, but he emphasized the importance of speaking to, for and about “regular people.” He could draw anyone out — from psychiatric patients to Supreme Court justices.
Mary Ferrell Foundation, More On Moyers Career: JFK, Alan Dale, June 26, 2025. Courtesy of Rex Bradford and The Mary Ferrell Foundation:
On November 25 1963, the day of the Kennedy funeral, Assistant Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach sent a memo to Bill Moyers of the new Johnson White House. He had begun writing it the day earlier, within hours after Oswald’s death at the hands of Jack Ruby.
The second paragraph stated: “The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial.”
Given that the authorities could not possibly by November 25 know these things to be true, and Katzenbach later admitted he knew very little at this stage, the memo is clearly advocating a political course irrespective of the truth of the assassination.
The motivation for this political course may be glimpsed in the succeeding paragraph:“Speculation about Oswald’s motivation ought to be cut off, and we should have some basis for rebutting thought that this was a Communist conspiracy or (as the Iron Curtain press is saying) a right-wing conspiracy to blame it on the Communists. Unfortunately the facts on Oswald seem about too pat–too obvious (Marxist, Cuba, Russian wife, etc.). The Dallas police have put out statements on the Communist conspiracy theory, and it was they who were in charge when he was shot and thus silenced.”
Katzenbach’s memo advocated a public FBI report to satisfy this “objective,” though he noted the possible need for “the appointment of a Presidential Commission of unimpeachable personnel to review and examine the evidence and announce its conclusions.”
He ended by advocating a quick public announcement to “head off speculation or Congressional hearings of the wrong sort.”
To many observers, the Katzenbach memo provides the blueprint for the cover-up which followed.
June 25
Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, left, and his rival in New York City's mayoral Democratic primary on June 24, New York State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani (photos via CNN).
New York Times, Mamdani Stuns Cuomo in New York Mayoral Primary, Emma G. Fitzsimmons and Nicholas Fandos, June 25, 2025. Zohran Mamdani, a little-known state lawmaker whose progressive platform and campaign trail charisma electrified younger voters, stunned former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City on Tuesday night, building a lead so commanding that Mr. Cuomo conceded.
Mr. Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist from Queens, tapped into a current of anxiety around New York City’s growing affordability crisis. His joyful campaign brought new voters into the fold who rejected the scandal-scarred Mr. Cuomo’s ominous characterizations of the city and embraced an economic platform that included everything from free bus service and child care to publicly owned grocery stores.
The outcome was not official, and even assuming Mr. Mamdani gains the nomination, he faces an unusually competitive general election in November.
Still, Mr. Mamdani declared victory at a rally early Wednesday in Queens, pledging to be a “mayor for every New Yorker” and framing his win as part of a movement powered by volunteers.
“Tonight we made history,” he said. “In the words of Nelson Mandela, it always seems impossible until it is done. My friends, we have done it.”
The decisiveness of New Yorkers’ swing toward Mr. Mamdani reverberated across the party and the country, at a time when Democrats nationally are searching for an answer to President Trump and are disillusioned with their own leaders.
Mr. Cuomo acknowledged his apparent defeat in a concession speech. “He won,” Mr. Cuomo told his supporters roughly 80 minutes after polls had closed and said he had congratulated Mr. Mamdani.
“Tonight was not our night,” he said, appearing deflated. “Tonight was Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani’s night.”
With 93 percent of the results in, Mr. Mamdani was the first choice of 43.5 percent of voters. Mr. Cuomo was in second place as the first choice of 36.4 percent of voters.Mr. Mamdani said he would use his “power to reject Donald Trump’s fascism” and struck a note of unity after a contentious primary.
“Whether you voted for me, for Governor Cuomo or felt too disillusioned by a long broken political system to vote at all, I will fight for city that works for you,” he said. “That is affordable for you. That is safe for you. I will work to be a mayor you will be proud to call your own.”
The official outcome still awaits the tabulation next Tuesday of ranked choices under the city’s relatively new voting system. Mr. Cuomo, who has collected signatures to run on a third-party line in November, conspicuously did not vow to carry on his campaign in the general election.
“I wanted to look at the numbers and the ranked-choice voting to decide about what to do in the future, because I’m also on an independent line,” he said in an interview with The New York Times. “And that’s the decision.”
A candidate must clear 50 percent of the vote on primary night to be declared winner; the final result is not expected until July 1, when voters’ alternative choices are taken into account.
It is expected to be exceedingly difficult for Mr. Cuomo to narrow the gap in the ranked-choice elimination rounds. Several candidates encouraged their supporters to list Mr. Mamdani on their ballots and to leave Mr. Cuomo’s name off, as did the Working Families Party and other left-leaning groups.
Political strategists agreed with Mr. Cuomo that he could not overcome Mr. Mamdani’s lead.
“This is the biggest upset in modern New York City history,” said Trip Yang, a Democratic strategist.
New York Times, A New Political Star Emerges Out of a Fractured Democratic Party, Liam Stack, June 25, 2025. The emergence of Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, is likely to divide national Democrats, who are already torn about what the party should stand for.
The national Democratic establishment on Tuesday night struggled to absorb the startling ascent of a democratic socialist in New York City who embraced a progressive economic agenda and diverged from the party’s dominant position on the Middle East.
As elections go, Tuesday’s party primary for mayor was a thunderbolt: New York voters turned away from a well-funded familiar face and famous name, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, and in doing so made a generational and ideological break with the party’s mainstream. They turned to a 33-year-old, three-term state assemblyman, Zohran Mamdani, right, who ran on an optimistic message about affordability and the rising cost of living that has eluded many national Democrats.
What became vividly clear on Tuesday, as votes were counted across the racially and economically diverse neighborhoods of New York, was that Mr. Mamdani had generated excitement among some — though not all — of the traditional pillars of winning Democratic voter coalitions.
Democratic leaders badly want to win over young voters and minority groups in the coming 2026 and 2028 elections — two groups they have struggled to mobilize since the Obama era — but they also need moderate Democrats and independents who often recoil from far-left positions.
“It really represents the excitement that I saw on the streets all throughout the City of New York,” said Letitia James, the New York attorney general. “I haven’t seen this since Barack Obama ran for president of these United States.”
That Mr. Mamdani had such success while running on a far-left agenda, including positions that once were politically risky in New York — like describing Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide and calling for new taxes on business — may challenge the boundaries of party orthodoxy and unnerve national Democratic leaders.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Israel? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.
His views on Israel are likely to force some national Democrats into an uncomfortable position, said David Axelrod, a native New Yorker and Mr. Obama’s chief strategist. But he said that Mr. Mamdani’s relentless focus on economic affordability resonated widely and could be a playbook for the party’s success as well.
“There is no doubt that Trump and Republicans will try and seize on him as a kind of exemplar of what the Democratic Party stands for,” Mr. Axelrod said. “The thing is, he seems both principled and agile and deft enough to confront those sort of conventional plays.”
The primary results raised questions about how Democrats on the national level would react. Would they embrace Mr. Mamdani as a next-generation leader of the party who can articulate a resonant economic message in a way that former Vice President Kamala Harris failed to do in November? Or would they distance themselves from his democratic socialist ideas and move more directly toward the center to court independent voters?
The enthusiasm that Mr. Mamdani generated among a swath of New Yorkers looking for fresh leadership called to mind the insurgent campaigns of Senator Bernie Sanders in the 2016 presidential race and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in her upset victory in a 2018 House primary.
All three are democratic socialists, a once fringe movement popularized by Mr. Sanders that calls for reining in the excesses of capitalism and curbing the power of the wealthy.
Mr. Sanders and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, both of whom endorsed Mr. Mamdani, remain popular progressive figures but have had only limited impact on changing the Democratic Party’s agenda and messaging.
The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The Democrats’ Crisis—and Opportunity, William Kristol, below right, June 25,2025. A Wake-Up Call for the Dem Establishment.
Silly me. I was kind of looking forward to November 4, 2025.There’ll be two elections for governor that day, in Virginia and New Jersey, and in both cases the Democratic nominees—
Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill—are impressive individuals whom I admire, centrist liberals with whom I agree, and skilled candidates who are likely to win.Their victories would signify a Democratic party on the road back, a party at once embracing and updating the humane and tough-minded legacies of Harry Truman and Hubert Humphrey—and yes, for us ex-Republicans, of John McCain.And they do seem likely to win.
But as my Yiddish-speaking forebears would have told me: Mann tracht, un Gott lacht. Man plans, and God laughs.
And so, we get another type of Democratic nominee who now seems poised to become a face of the party: New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, a proud member of the Democratic Socialists of America, a vocal proponent of government-run grocery stores and a person unwilling to repudiate the phrase “globalize the intifada.”
Now to be fair, the good Lord didn’t nominate Mamdani last night. New York’s Democratic primary voters did. They did so partly because Mamdani really ran a heck of a race. He is a 33-year old state assemblyman who was at 1 percent in the polls in February and ended up scoring a comfortable victory over a three-term New York governor. His imaginative campaign, his skills as a communicator, and his abilities as a candidate are things everyone from every faction of the party in every part of the country should study.
It’s also the case that Mamdani was hugely helped by the fact that his main opponent was Andrew Cuomo, the aforementioned 67-year old former governor who’d resigned in disgrace after sex scandals, as well as after having mismanaged the pandemic and lied about it. The Emily Litella–like Democratic establishment looked at Cuomo’s baggage and decided: Never Mind. But the voters did mind.
As high as Mamdani is riding this morning, both he and his backers should recognize that New Yorkers are perfectly capable of rejecting the Democratic nominee in the general election. The Democratic nominee, after all, has lost seven of the last fifteen New York City mayoral races.
But the alternatives this time don’t seem as formidable as John Lindsay or Rudy Giuliani or Michael Bloomberg.
Mamdani’s challengers in the general include Cuomo, who does have another ballot line—but after the drubbing he just took, it seems unlikely now that he’ll ask voters for another look in November. But who knows? Otherwise, the November ballot will feature the incumbent mayor, Eric Adams, running as an independent, who’s a bit . . . problematic. There’s the wacky Republican, Curtis Sliwa, who lost to Adams in 2021. And there’s another independent who’s qualified for the ballot, a former assistant U.S. attorney named Jim Walden. He seems like a perfectly normal and reasonable alternative, so, given the world we live in, he presumably has little chance of gaining momentum.
In any case, beginning today and for the next five and a half months, Democrats in office and running for office all around the country are going to be asked whether or not they support Mamdani. If they say, ‘Yes,’ then the natural follow up will be: Well, do you endorse this or that statement or position of his? If they say ‘No,’ it will be: Aren’t you disrespecting the Democratic voters of New York?
Some will welcome the chance to speak up and get some attention. Others will desperately try to duck and weave. Either way, fun times for the media and for the Republicans. Democrats in disarray!
And I doubt that the natural dodge—“Hey, it’s just a mayoral race”—is going to work. The population of New York City is almost as large as that of Virginia or New Jersey. New York City has a larger budget and a larger GDP. It’ll be kind of hard to pretend what happens there doesn’t really matter.
Still, all may be well. In 1960, when John F. Kennedy ran for president, there were plenty of Democratic office holders at all levels who were segregationists and in some cases racists. He wasn’t. He managed to coexist with them, held the party more or less together, and won the presidency. In 1948, by contrast, the segregationists led by Sen. Strom Thurmond and the leftist fellow travelers led by former vice president Henry Wallace defected from the party, and the Democratic nominee Harry Truman won a four-way race.So Mamdani’s victory needn’t be some kind of death knell for a winning Democratic party coalition in 2026 or 2028. It needn’t be a death knell for a centrist party in the tradition—now that you mention it!—of Truman and Kennedy. It should be a death knell for an ossified Democratic establishment that needs to be put out of its misery. And it should be a wake up call for non-socialist Democrats to show some of the audacity and the ability of Mamdani.
New York Times, NATO Summit Live Updates: Trump Pushes Allies on Military Spending at NATO Summit, Tyler Pager, June 25, 2025. Spain said it was unwilling to spend more on its military, complicating President Trump’s plans. The cease-fire between Israel and Iran risked overshadowing the spending talks.
President Trump was meeting with NATO leaders on Wednesday at the alliance’s annual summit, where discussions about military spending in light of Russia’s assault on Ukraine were at risk of being overshadowed by the cease-fire between Israel and Iran.
Mr. Trump has demanded that NATO members, meeting in The Hague, raise the share of their economic output that they devote to military spending to 5 percent, up from 2 percent. Still, as he focused on conflict in the Middle East, the war in Ukraine — the main topic of recent NATO summits — seemed to fall in the list of priorities, despite Russia’s continued assault at the edge of the alliance’s territory.
The increase in military spending had been among the few agenda items that the NATO secretary general, Mark Rutte, hoped would be unanimously approved at the meeting. But it was unclear whether that would happen after Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, said that his country would put “no more, no less,” than 2.1 percent of its economic output toward military spending.
“Spain’s not agreeing, which is very unfair to the rest of them,” Mr. Trump said on Tuesday as he traveled to the Netherlands. Yet Mr. Trump has maintained that the United States — which spends about 3.5 percent of its economic output on its military — does not need to meet the 5 percent goal he has demanded of other countries.
Mr. Rutte said on Wednesday that he was not worried about Spain’s stance. “These are difficult decisions, let’s be honest,” he told reporters.
Here’s what else to know:
New York Times, Intel Report on Iran Upends Victory Lap Trump Was Hoping for at NATO, Tyler Pager and David E. Sanger, June 25, 2025 (print ed.). President Trump had been eager to celebrate the U.S. strikes on Iran, but a new report indicates the attack set back Iran’s nuclear program by only a few months.
As President Trump landed in the Netherlands on Tuesday for the annual meeting of NATO allies, he was desperate to hold together the fragile cease-fire between Israel and Iran, cursing and cajoling to make sure that history would remember him for bombing Iran’s nuclear sites over the weekend and brokering a peace deal days later.
But just hours after he landed, the leak of a new U.S. intelligence report cast doubt on his repeated claim that the American strikes had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear programs. Mr. Trump started using the word “obliterated” before he received his first battle damage report, and since then, he has closely monitored which members of his administration have used the same language.
The report’s finding, while preliminary, was particularly damaging because it emerged from inside the Pentagon, which had carried out the strikes, and it concluded that the military action had only set Iran’s nuclear program back by a number of months.
Mr. Trump had been eager to celebrate his success at NATO and revel in the fact that he had conducted an attack that none of his predecessors had dared to launch. His view was backed up by Mark Rutte, the secretary general of the alliance, who wrote Mr. Trump a private message thanking him for his “decisive action” in Iran.
“That was truly extraordinary, and something no one else dared to do,” Mr. Rutte wrote. “It makes us all safer.” The note, addressed to “Donald,” appeared to be a private correspondence, but Mr. Trump posted a photo of it on his social media account.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Iran, Israel and the Netherlands? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.
Mr. Rutte went on to tell Mr. Trump that he was “flying into another big success in The Hague this evening,” citing the alliance’s agreement that each nation would spend 5 percent of its gross domestic product on defense or defense-related spending, though they have a decade to reach the mark.
That is a major victory for Mr. Trump, who has pressed for the past decade for Europe to pay for more of its own defense. While the commitments increased under the Biden administration, Mr. Rutte has leveraged the concerns about Russia’s ambitions beyond Ukraine to convince countries to spend at levels that even six months ago they could not have imagined. And Mr. Trump’s unsubtle threats in his first term that he might abandon the alliance proved successful, even if they came at the price of diplomatic breaches with some of America’s closest allies.Editors’ PicksA TikTok Trend Promises to Erase Student Loan Debt. Heres Why It Doesn’t Work.‘Slumped Over, I Spotted Something Striped Beneath the Bench’How ‘Boots on the Ground’ Two-Stepped Onto Everyone’s Summer PlaylistImageMark Rutte, the secretary general of NATO, in the center of the group in a blue tie and glasses, praised Mr. Trump in a private message for the American strikes in Iran. Credit...Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times
By any measure, Mr. Trump’s actions in the past 72 hours underscored to those countries, however, how advanced the U.S. military was compared to the other forces that make up NATO. No other nation represented in the alliance has a military capable of flying halfway around the world to strike a distant, hardened target under a mountain in north-central Iran.
But the subtext of the meeting that opened in The Hague on Tuesday evening was clear: The other 31 NATO nations must adjust to an era in which they can no longer count on Washington as the linchpin of the 76-year-old alliance. The biggest source of tension at the session is Mr. Trump’s unwillingness to commit more military aid to Ukraine, and his frequent communications with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia make the allies nervous.
Mr. Trump woke up on Tuesday morning in a surly mood, as the cease-fire between Israel and Iran he had just eagerly announced hours before appeared to be collapsing. As he was leaving the White House, he berated Israel and Iran, saying they “don’t know what the fuck they’re doing” as the two sides launched missiles as the truce was set to begin.
Mr. Trump then called Mr. Netanyahu and later announced the cease-fire was back in place. He was in a much better mood then, posting a series of laudatory messages from others, including calls for him to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
The upbeat demeanor crumbled once the intelligence reports started to leak out, with Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, blasting the findings as “flat-out wrong” and a “clear attempt to demean President Trump.”
Later that night, Mr. Trump appeared to dig in, posting on social media a series of quotes from administration officials, as well as the front page of one newspaper, using the word “obliterated” to describe the damage.
“Our bombing campaign obliterated Iran’s ability to create nuclear weapons,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told CNN on Sunday, in one passage Mr. Trump posted. “Our massive bombs hit exactly the right spot at each target and worked perfectly.”
At The Hague, the president will face an alliance that he has long disdained in a setting — an international summit — that he has shown little interest in. For that reason, Mr. Rutte bent over backward to try and appease Mr. Trump. Mr. Rutte shortened the programming, corralled the alliance to meet Mr. Trump’s spending demand and worked to keep the policy communiqué as short as five paragraphs.
The Great Truth Social Tongue Bath, Andrew Egger, June 25, 2025. Some might argue there are saner ways for a world leader to manage a conflict between two hostile states than by screeching at them on his bespoke microblogging platform. But over the past few days, Truth Social has become a dramatic stage of geopolitical intrigue and a remarkable window into our president’s id.
Just take a gander at the offerings from the wild last few days. There was Donald Trump’s unexpected swerve into full military support for Israel as he bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities, then his hard redirection into time-for-peace rhetoric culminating in his hardball insistence that Netanyahu be the first to lay down arms. (For more on the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment of the impact of the strikes, see the Quick Hits below.)
And then came yesterday. Not even haters as hardened as we can deny the immediate-term effectiveness of Trump’s furious barrage of “everybody just be cool for two seconds” posts, which came as Israel and Iran were limbering up to immediately violate their fragile ceasefire deal.Also notable has been the acute, almost overwhelming desire that Trump has simultaneously exhibited for praise.
The president has spent so much time sharing the rapturous buttering-up he’s received. There are the usual suspects, of course—Trump reposted several calls from the likes of Charlie Kirk and Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.) insisting he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. But some of the other flatterers were significantly more interesting.
There was NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, who congratulated Trump in a private text on his “decisive action in Iran, that was truly extraordinary, and something no one else dared to do.”
Rutte, the former prime minister of the Netherlands, went on to tell Trump he was “flying into another big success in The Hague” (where the NATO summit is currently being held) and that “you will achieve something NO American president in decades could get done”: extracting larger military-spending commitments from other NATO member countries. “Europe is going to pay in a BIG way, as they should,” Rutte wrote, “and it will be your win.” Trump promptly tweeted out the entire text chain.
Former President Donald Trump, center, glowers during his New York criminal trial ending with his conviction on 34 felony fraud counts regarding hush money illegally paid to influence his 2016 election. He was, surrounded by his defense team, including (from left to right) future Justice Department executives Todd Blanche and Emile Bove, along with Susan Necheles (Pool photo by Jabin Botsford).
Popular Information, a newsletter dedicated to accountability journalism.Is Emil Bove the most unethical judicial nominee in modern history? 
Judd Legum, right, and Noel Sims, June 25, 2025. President Trump nominated Emil Bove, his former personal attorney, to be a federal judge on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals — one of the most powerful judicial roles in the country.
Announcing his nomination on May 28, Trump described Bove as "SMART, TOUGH, and respected by everyone."
But an explosive new whistleblower disclosure released Tuesday alleges that, in his current position as a senior official in the Department of Justice (DOJ), Bove is willing to ignore federal law to give Trump what he wants.
The 35-page letter was written by lawyers representing Erez Reuveni, formerly the DOJ's Acting Deputy Director for the Office of Immigration Litigation. In that role, Reuveni was tasked with defending the Trump administration's plan, under the Alien Enemies Act (AEA), to summarily deport undocumented immigrants to a notorious Salvadoran prison known for torture and human rights abuses.
During a March 14, 2025, meeting, Bove told Reuveni and others that "one or more planes containing individuals subject to the AEA would be taking off over the weekend" – meaning Saturday, March 15 and Sunday, March 16.
According to the whistleblower disclosure, Bove stressed "the planes needed to take off no matter what." During the discussion, Bove raised "the possibility that a court order would enjoin those removals before they could be effectuated." In that eventuality, Bove stated that the “DOJ would need to consider telling the courts 'fuck you' and ignore any such court order."
On March 15, the ACLU "filed suit on behalf of five Venezuelan men facing imminent deportation under the AEA and moved for a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) to prevent their removal" and the removal of other similarly situated immigrants. During the hearing, two flights destined for El Salvador took off — one at 5:26 p.m. and the second at 5:45 p.m.
After listening to arguments from both sides, the judge sided with the plaintiffs at approximately 6:30 p.m. Around 6:48 p.m., Reuveni emailed officials at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and advised them "the judge specifically ordered us to not remove anyone in the class, and to return anyone in the air." Over the next hour, Reuveni sent numerous emails with the same information to DOJ and DHS officials. He received no response.
The court issued a written order "memorializing its TRO" at 7:23 p.m.On March 16 at 12:23 a.m., Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign told Reuveni that Bove had decided the flights could continue to El Salvador and "no violation of the court order had occurred because the two planes left U.S. airspace before the court's written …order." Further, "Bove had advised DHS that under the court order, it was permissible to deplane individuals on the flights that departed U.S. airspace" before the written order was issued.
An order from a federal judge is binding regardless of whether it has been issued in writing. Bove followed through on his threat to ignore the courts so that the Trump administration could complete its scheduled deportations.
This is not the only time Bove has ignored the law or acted unethically to serve Trump.
A corrupt bargain
On September 24, 2024, New York City Mayor Eric Adams was indicted on "bribery, campaign finance, and conspiracy offenses." The detailed indictment alleged that Adams "abused his power and position for nearly a decade, obtaining personal benefits and illegal campaign contributions from foreign nationals, and others, giving them undue influence over him." In return for "illegal campaign contributions and luxury travel," the indictment alleges that Adams used his official position to benefit his patrons, including pressuring "the New York City Fire Department to facilitate the opening of a foreign government’s Manhattan skyscraper that had not passed a fire inspection."
After Trump took office, Bove directed then-acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York Danielle Sassoon to dismiss the charges against Adams. Bove suggested, without evidence, that Adams was indicted because he "criticized the prior Administration’s immigration policies." Bove said that, in exchange for the dismissal, Adams would provide support for the Trump administration's immigration policy.Sassoon refused to comply with Bove's directive. Instead, she submitted a resignation letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, stating that dismissing the charges against Adams was "inconsistent with my ability and duty to prosecute federal crimes without fear or favor and to advance good-faith arguments before the courts."
Sassoon said Bove appeared to be arguing that "Adams should receive leniency for federal crimes solely because he occupies an important public position and can use that position to assist in the Administration’s policy priorities."
A second federal prosecutor, Hagan Scotten, also refused Bove's order. In his resignation letter, Scotten wrote, "[O]ur laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials, in this way."
Ultimately, unable to find another federal government attorney to do his bidding, Bove was forced to appear in court and argue for dismissal himself.
Bove sought to dismiss the charges "without prejudice," presumably so the Trump administration could use the threat of refiling the charges to force Adams to comply with its directives. A judge granted the dismissal, but with prejudice, meaning the charges cannot be refiled. The judge decided he could not force the Department of Justice to prosecute the case, but found the legal rationale advanced by Bove was "fundamentally incompatible with equal justice under the law."
Purging DOJ staff who upheld the law after January 6, Bove issued two memos that described the successful prosecution of hundreds of people who participated in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, as a "grave national injustice." In furtherance of an executive order signed by Trump, Bove fired DOJ staffers who were involved in upholding the law.
New York Times, Promise of Victory Over H.I.V. Fades as U.S. Withdraws Support, Stephanie Nolen, June 25, 2025. A new drug that gives almost complete protection against the virus was to be administered across Africa this year. Now, much of the funding for that effort is gone.
This was supposed to be a breakthrough year in the 44-year-long struggle against H.I.V.
Decades of research and investment produced new approaches to vaccines that were going into their first significant clinical trials.
The hunt for a cure was homing in on key mechanisms to block the virus, which can lurk dormant and near-untraceable in the body for years.
Most critically, a breakthrough preventive drug, lenacapavir, a twice-yearly injection that offers total protection from H.I.V., was to be rapidly rolled out across eastern and southern Africa. The main target: young women. About 300,000 of them were newly infected with the virus last year — half of all new infections worldwide.
Every one of these plans has been derailed by the Trump administration’s slashing of foreign assistance.
There is more potential than ever before to end the H.I.V. epidemic, scientists and public health experts say. But now, H.I.V. programs across Africa are scrambling to procure drugs that the United States once supplied, replace lost nurses and lab technicians, and restart shuttered programs to prevent new infections.
“We imagined we would be in a different world right now,” said Dr. Leila Mansoor, a senior research scientist at the Centre for the AIDS Program of Research in Durban, South Africa. She had planned to spend 2025 analyzing data from one H.I.V. prevention trial, preparing for another and tracking how lenacapavir was transforming the epidemic — alongside colleagues testing new vaccines and cure strategies.
“And instead we’re moving backwards at warp speed,” she said.
Already, there are fears that H.I.V. infection rates are rising in the hardest-hit countries, but there is no clear way to measure the damage because data collection was mostly reliant on the terminated U.S. funding. Stocks of prevention drugs once supplied by the U.S. are running out across Africa.
In South Africa, which has led much of the H.I.V. work in close partnership with the United States, clinical trials of vaccines that had participants ready for their first shot have been canceled, the immunizations left in the back of lab refrigerators. Scientists leading cure studies have laid off their staffs and turned out the lights in their departments.Editors’ PicksIt’s Indian Mango Season, and the Cutthroat Selling Frenzy Is On‘Jaws’ Is a Masterpiece, but ‘Jaws 2’ Deserves a Legacy, TooDo Regular Facials Actually Improve Your Skin?
The Trump administration says that too much foreign aid is wasted by corrupt governments and bloated programs. The president and his allies have repeatedly said that the United States has shouldered an unfair share of responsibility for global health support and that other countries must do more.
June 24
New York Times, Strike Set Back Iran’s Nuclear Program by Only a Few Months, U.S. Report Says, Julian E. Barnes, Helene Cooper, Eric Schmitt, Ronen Bergman, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, June 24, 2025. Classified findings indicate that the attack sealed off the entrances to two facilities but did not collapse their underground buildings.
A preliminary classified U.S. report says the American bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites sealed off the entrances to two of the facilities but did not collapse their underground buildings, according to officials familiar with the findings.
The early findings conclude that the strikes over the weekend set back Iran’s nuclear program by only a few months, the officials said.
Before the attack, U.S. intelligence agencies had said that if Iran tried to rush to making a bomb, it would take about three months. After the U.S. bombing run and days of attacks by the Israeli Air Force, the report by the Defense Intelligence Agency estimated that the program was delayed less than six months.
Former officials said that any rushed effort by Iran to get a bomb would be to develop a relatively small and crude device. A miniaturized warhead would be far more difficult to produce, and it is not clear how much damage to that more advanced research has taken place.
The findings suggest that President Trump’s statement that Iran’s nuclear facilities were obliterated was overstated, at least based on the initial damage assessment. Congress had been set to be briefed on the strike on Tuesday, and lawmakers were expected to ask about the findings of the assessment, but the session was postponed. Senators are now set be briefed on Thursday.
The report also said much of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was moved before the strikes, which destroyed little of the nuclear material. Some of that may have been moved to secret nuclear sites maintained by Iran.
Some Israeli officials said they also believe that Iran has maintained small covert enrichment facilities that were built so the Iranian government could continue its nuclear program in the event of an attack on the larger facilities.Sign up to get Maggie Haberman's articles emailed to you. Maggie Haberman is a White House correspondent reporting on President Trump. Get it sent to your inbox.
Officials cautioned that the five-page classified report is only an initial assessment, and others will follow as more information is collected and as Iran examines the three sites at Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan. One official said that the reports people in the administration had been shown were “mixed” but that more assessments were yet to be done.
But the Defense Intelligence Agency report indicates that the sites were not damaged as much as some administration officials had hoped, and that Iran retains control of almost all of its nuclear material, meaning if it decides to make a nuclear weapon it might still be able to do so relatively quickly.Editors’ PicksWhy Do Yemeni Coffeehouses Seem to Be Everywhere Lately?A Way for People With Low Credit Scores to Raise ThemCan You Know Princess Diana by Owning Her Things?
Officials interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity because the findings of the report remain classified.
The White House took issue with the assessment. Karoline Leavitt, a White House spokeswoman, said it was “flat-out wrong.”
“The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump, and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program,” she said in a statement. “Everyone knows what happens when you drop 14 30,000-pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration.”
Elements of the intelligence report were reported earlier by CNN.
The strikes badly damaged the electrical system at Fordo, which is housed deep inside a mountain to shield it from attacks, officials said. It is not clear how long it will take Iran to gain access to the underground buildings and then repair the electrical systems and reinstall equipment that was moved.
New York Times, Intel Report on Iran Upends Victory Lap Trump Was Hoping for at NATO, Tyler Pager and David E. Sanger, June 24, 2025. President Trump had been eager to celebrate the U.S. strikes on Iran, but a new report indicates the attack set back Iran’s nuclear program by only a few months.
As President Trump landed in the Netherlands on Tuesday for the annual meeting of NATO allies, he was desperate to hold together the fragile cease-fire between Israel and Iran, cursing and cajoling to make sure that history would remember him for bombing Iran’s nuclear sites over the weekend and brokering a peace deal days later.
But just hours after he landed, the leak of a new U.S. intelligence report cast doubt on his repeated claim that the American strikes had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear programs. Mr. Trump started using the word “obliterated” before he received his first battle damage report, and since then, he has closely monitored which members of his administration have used the same language.
The report’s finding, while preliminary, was particularly damaging because it emerged from inside the Pentagon, which had carried out the strikes, and it concluded that the military action had only set Iran’s nuclear program back by a number of months.
Mr. Trump had been eager to celebrate his success at NATO and revel in the fact that he had conducted an attack that none of his predecessors had dared to launch. His view was backed up by Mark Rutte, the secretary general of the alliance, who wrote Mr. Trump a private message thanking him for his “decisive action” in Iran.
“That was truly extraordinary, and something no one else dared to do,” Mr. Rutte wrote. “It makes us all safer.” The note, addressed to “Donald,” appeared to be a private correspondence, but Mr. Trump posted a photo of it on his social media account.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Iran, Israel and the Netherlands? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.
Mr. Rutte went on to tell Mr. Trump that he was “flying into another big success in The Hague this evening,” citing the alliance’s agreement that each nation would spend 5 percent of its gross domestic product on defense or defense-related spending, though they have a decade to reach the mark.
That is a major victory for Mr. Trump, who has pressed for the past decade for Europe to pay for more of its own defense. While the commitments increased under the Biden administration, Mr. Rutte has leveraged the concerns about Russia’s ambitions beyond Ukraine to convince countries to spend at levels that even six months ago they could not have imagined. And Mr. Trump’s unsubtle threats in his first term that he might abandon the alliance proved successful, even if they came at the price of diplomatic breaches with some of America’s closest allies.Editors’ PicksA TikTok Trend Promises to Erase Student Loan Debt. Heres Why It Doesn’t Work.‘Slumped Over, I Spotted Something Striped Beneath the Bench’How ‘Boots on the Ground’ Two-Stepped Onto Everyone’s Summer PlaylistImageMark Rutte, the secretary general of NATO, in the center of the group in a blue tie and glasses, praised Mr. Trump in a private message for the American strikes in Iran. Credit...Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times
By any measure, Mr. Trump’s actions in the past 72 hours underscored to those countries, however, how advanced the U.S. military was compared to the other forces that make up NATO. No other nation represented in the alliance has a military capable of flying halfway around the world to strike a distant, hardened target under a mountain in north-central Iran.
But the subtext of the meeting that opened in The Hague on Tuesday evening was clear: The other 31 NATO nations must adjust to an era in which they can no longer count on Washington as the linchpin of the 76-year-old alliance. The biggest source of tension at the session is Mr. Trump’s unwillingness to commit more military aid to Ukraine, and his frequent communications with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia make the allies nervous.
Mr. Trump woke up on Tuesday morning in a surly mood, as the cease-fire between Israel and Iran he had just eagerly announced hours before appeared to be collapsing. As he was leaving the White House, he berated Israel and Iran, saying they “don’t know what the fuck they’re doing” as the two sides launched missiles as the truce was set to begin.
Mr. Trump then called Mr. Netanyahu and later announced the cease-fire was back in place. He was in a much better mood then, posting a series of laudatory messages from others, including calls for him to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
The upbeat demeanor crumbled once the intelligence reports started to leak out, with Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, blasting the findings as “flat-out wrong” and a “clear attempt to demean President Trump.”
Later that night, Mr. Trump appeared to dig in, posting on social media a series of quotes from administration officials, as well as the front page of one newspaper, using the word “obliterated” to describe the damage.
“Our bombing campaign obliterated Iran’s ability to create nuclear weapons,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told CNN on Sunday, in one passage Mr. Trump posted. “Our massive bombs hit exactly the right spot at each target and worked perfectly.”
At The Hague, the president will face an alliance that he has long disdained in a setting — an international summit — that he has shown little interest in. For that reason, Mr. Rutte bent over backward to try and appease Mr. Trump. Mr. Rutte shortened the programming, corralled the alliance to meet Mr. Trump’s spending demand and worked to keep the policy communiqué as short as five paragraphs.
New York Times, For B-2 Pilots, a 37-Hour Nonstop Mission to Iran and Back, Greg Jaffe, June 24, 2025. The U.S. crews involved in attacking the nuclear site at Fordo probably trained for years. But dropping 30,000-pound bombs was almost certainly a new experience.
In the years before they flew their 37-hour mission to strike Iran’s nuclear site at Fordo, the U.S. Air Force pilots spent at least 24 hours straight in a B-2 bomber flight simulator that is a replica of their cockpit.
In the days or weeks leading up to the mission, they most likely ran simulated runs on a target made to look like the heavily fortified site buried deep in a mountain.
Almost everything about the mission, flown from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, would feel the same with just a couple of big differences, said retired Lt. Gen. Steven L. Basham, who flew the plane in training and combat missions for nine years.
In the real mission, flown in the early hours of Sunday morning in Iran, the pilots would “feel the clunk” of their weapons bay doors opening, briefly changing the shape of the stealth plane and potentially exposing it to enemy radar.
The B-2s that attacked Fordo were each carrying two Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs designed to disable the deeply buried target. When the two-person crews released their payload, weighing a total of 60,000 pounds, their B-2 most likely surged briefly upward, General Basham said.
For the pilots, it was almost certainly a new feeling.
Other bombers in the American arsenal, such as the B-1 and B-52, played big roles in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, dropping huge numbers of bombs in support of ground troops. But the B-2 — the most expensive plane in history, at $2.2 billion a copy — played a much more specialized role.
For some of the pilots, Sunday’s mission was possibly the first time that they flew the B-2 in combat and dropped bombs. The strikes also marked the first use of the GBU-57 bunker buster bombs in combat.
In the hours after the strike U.S. military and intelligence officials were still assessing the damage both to the site at Fordo and to the Iranian leadership’s psyche.
“Our hope is that the lesson that the Iranians have learned here is look, we can fly a bunker buster bomb from Missouri to Iran completely undetected without landing once on the ground, and we can destroy whatever nuclear capacity you build up,” Vice President JD Vance told Fox News in an interview on Monday. “I think that lesson is what’s going to teach them not to rebuild their nuclear capacity.”Editors’ PicksWhy Do Yemeni Coffeehouses Seem to Be Everywhere Lately?A Way for People With Low Credit Scores to Raise ThemCan You Know Princess Diana by Owning Her Things?
The first 30-plus hour B-2 missions took place during the 1999 war in Kosovo. At the time, the idea of flying a combat sortie and returning home in time to pick up the kids from soccer practice was still novel and a bit surreal for those flying.
“It is kind of weird to get dressed in your own bathroom and then go into combat,” one B-2 pilot told The Wall Street Journal in the early days of the Kosovo war.
Since then, B-2 pilots have flown combat missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. The B-2 bombers, which were built to carry nuclear weapons, regularly fly deterrence missions in Europe and Asia from their Missouri base.
The past 25 years have taught the Air Force and its pilots a lot about flying long missions. Today, staff doctors and physiologists at Whiteman Air Force Base specialize in helping B-2 pilots prepare their bodies to spend long stretches in the cockpit.
If they have sufficient notice, the pilots will try to adjust their sleep schedules so that their body clocks will be in sync with their mission.
Each B-2 is flown by a two-person crew. The small cockpit has room for a toilet and space behind the plane’s seats where a pilot can stretch out on a cot or a camping pad and take a brief nap. Both pilots are required to be in their seats during takeoff, landing, aerial re-fuelings and for the duration of their time over enemy territory.
The planes are also equipped with small heaters to warm food, but many B-2 pilots prefer simple meals like sandwiches on long missions. “You learn to drink a lot of water,” said General Basham, who flew combat missions into Kosovo.
The missions most likely played out in similar fashion to the sorties that B-2 pilots flew in earlier wars. In those earlier missions in Kosovo and Iraq, pilots saw antiaircraft guns and missiles in the sky beneath them. This time, Pentagon officials said the Iranians did not get off a shot at the B-2s or the F-35 fighter jet escorts.
In the earlier conflicts the B-2 pilots were dropping, at most, 2,000-pound precision-guided bombs. This time the B-2s each dropped two 30,000-pound munitions over their target.
General Basham could not help but wonder what it felt like to shed that kind of weight.
“It’ll be interesting to hear from the pilots,” he said.
New York Times, Live Updates: Cease-Fire Takes Hold After Trump Rebukes Israel and Iran, Patrick Kingsley, Isabel Kershner, Aaron Boxerman and Michael D. Shear, June 24, 2025. President Trump lashed out at both countries for launching attacks after his cease-fire announcement. Comments by Israel’s military and Iran’s president suggested the deal remained intact.
A cease-fire between Israel and Iran appeared to be holding on Tuesday, as Israel’s military lifted emergency restrictions imposed during the conflict and Iran’s president hailed “the end of a 12-day war that was imposed on the Iranian people.”
The nascent truce came hours after President Trump lashed out at Iran and Israel for launching attacks after he had announced an end to their brief war. Mr. Trump later took credit for bringing an end to the fighting in a post on social media, as a preliminary U.S. report cast doubt on one of his big claims: that U.S. airstrikes had destroyed key Iranian nuclear facilities and crippled the country’s efforts to develop an atomic weapon.
New York Times, News Analysis: Can Iran, Israel and the U.S. Now All Claim to Have Won? Farnaz Fassihi, Updated June 24, 2025. Iran’s response to the attacks on its nuclear facilities killed no Americans and each nation has a victory narrative. But an hours-old cease-fire appeared fragile and President Trump lashed out at Israel and Iran over the state of the truce.
Even before it fired missiles at an American base and President Trump attempted to broker a cease-fire with Israel, Iran was looking for a way out.
On Monday morning, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council held an emergency meeting to discuss striking back against the United States. The Americans had bombed three of Iran’s main nuclear facilities over the weekend, yet another serious blow after a week of attacks by Israel that had inflicted severe damage to Iran’s military leadership and infrastructure.
Iran needed to save face. From inside a bunker, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sent an order to strike back, according to four Iranian officials familiar with the war planning.
But the ayatollah also sent instructions that the strikes be contained — to avoid an all-out war with the United States, according to the officials, who were not authorized to speak publicly about the country’s war plans.
Iran wanted to hit an American target in the region, they said, but it was also keen to prevent more attacks from the United States.
So, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps chose the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar for two reasons, according to two members of the Guards: Since it is the largest American military base in the region, they believed that the base had been involved in coordinating the American B-2 strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities over the weekend.
But because it is in Qatar, a close ally of Iran, Iranian officials also believed that the damage could be kept fairly minimal.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Iran and Israel? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.
Several hours before striking, Iran started sending advance notice that a strike was imminent, passing the message through intermediaries. Qatar closed its airspace, and the Americans were warned.
To the public, Iran trumpeted its strike on the Americans as the cost of attacking Iran. In a televised speech, a spokesman for Iran’s Armed Forces said the attacks on the American base in Qatar had been carried out by the Revolutionary Guards Corps.Editors’ Picks27 No-Cook Recipes for a Heat WaveYou’ve Got ‘The Ick.’ Is Your Relationship Doomed?How to Stay Cool and Safe in a Heat Wave
“We warn our enemies that the era of hit and run is over,” said the spokesman.ImageA man and a woman look at a badly damaged car. Bunches of red roses have been placed on the car.A burned vehicle after Israeli attacks in Tehran on Monday.Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
Iranian state television played patriotic songs against the footage of ballistic missiles lighting up Qatar’s skies. The anchors theatrically spoke of Iran’s glory and victory in a war with imperial powers.
But behind the scenes, the four Iranian officials said, Iran’s leaders were hoping their limited attack and advance warning would convince President Trump to stand down, allowing Iran to do the same.
They also hoped Washington would pressure Israel to end its withering airstrikes on Iran, which began well before the American attack on Iran’s nuclear sites and were continuing as of Monday night, according to residents of Tehran, the Iranian capital.Middle East Tensions: Live UpdatesUpdated June 24, 2025, 11:56 a.m. ET10 minutes ago
Israel and Iran deny violating a nascent truce, offering their own versions of events. How Qatar helped broker the Israel-Iran cease-fire. Trump departs for NATO summit and ‘a new set of problems.’
Before firing on American forces in Qatar, one of the Iranian officials said that the plan was for no Americans to be killed, given that any deaths might spur the United States to retaliate, potentially leading to a cycle of attacks.
The plan seemed to work. Afterward, Mr. Trump said that 13 of the 14 Iranian missiles fired at Al Udeid had been downed, that no Americans there had been killed or wounded, and that the damage had been minimal.
In a remarkable statement, Mr. Trump even thanked Iran “for giving us early notice, which made it possible for no lives to be lost, and nobody to be injured.”
“They’ve gotten it all out of their ‘system,’ and there will, hopefully, be no further HATE,” he said.
New York Times, Trump's Cuts Could Leave the U.S. Exposed Amid a Heightened Threat From Iran, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Adam Goldman, June 24, 2025. The president has slashed the federal bureaucracy and reoriented much of the national security apparatus to help with his immigration crackdown.
Soon after the United States bombed Iran’s critical nuclear facilities, the Trump administration warned that Iran could seek revenge by inspiring violent extremists or launching cyberattacks against U.S. networks.
But many of the federal programs or resources that would defend the nation against such attacks have been scaled back significantly in recent months, after Mr. Trump slashed the federal bureaucracy and reoriented much of the national security apparatus to help with his immigration crackdown.
Mr. Trump has cut funding and specialists from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, which helps protect the nation’s power grids, elections and water utilities. In a sign of the heightened risk of a cyberattack, the F.B.I. directed officials in recent days to assist the cybersecurity agency in protecting critical infrastructure, according to an email obtained by The New York Times.
But that directive came after F.B.I. officials tasked with working on cybersecurity or counterintelligence were asked to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement on routine deportations.
The administration has also purged decades of experience at the highest ranks of the F.B.I., heightening concerns that the bureau might be unprepared to deal with myriad crises that the agency faces on a daily basis, let alone the possibility of Iran taking revenge on American soil.ImageKash Patel, wearing a dark suit and gray tie, sits before a microphone at a wooden table.The F.B.I., led by Kash Patel, has directed officials in recent days to assist the cybersecurity agency in protecting critical infrastructure.Credit...Anna Rose Layden for The New York Times
And the administration has proposed breaking up a little-known office tasked with detecting potential chemical, biological and nuclear attacks against the United States.
“We are less safe now than we were on Jan. 20 because of the indiscriminate cuts by DOGE, that shift in priority to focus exclusively on immigration and not on counterterrorism or other national security threats, and the loss of institutional knowledge about those national security threats,” said Mary Ellen Callahan, the former assistant secretary of homeland security for the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction office, which Mr. Trump has proposed disbanding. “We are less safe now and the risks are higher now.”
Mr. Trump’s aides maintain that his policies have restored national security to the United States by tightening its borders and pursuing sweeping deportations of immigrants in the country without legal status.Editors’ PicksA TikTok Trend Promises to Erase Student Loan Debt. Heres Why It Doesn’t Work.I’ve Heard Receipts Are Toxic. Is It Safe to Touch Them?‘Jaws’ Is a Masterpiece, but ‘Jaws 2’ Deserves a Legacy, Too
The Department of Homeland Security has been quick to publicize arrests over the weekend of 11 Iranians in the United States illegally, including one who was on a terrorism watch list. And the White House has sought to redirect attention to the Biden administration’s border policies, contending that the record number of migrants who crossed into the United States in recent years posed a significant risk to the nation.
“We’re doing everything that we can to keep our people safe,” Vice President JD Vance said on Sunday. “This is one of the reasons why border security is national security: is if you let a bunch of crazy people into your country, those crazy people can eventually take action. We’re going to do everything that we can to make sure that doesn’t happen and to keep Americans safe.”
The approach by the Trump administration, however, ignores some of the more modern ways that Iran or its proxy groups could target the United States, according to national security officials.
And even though Iran and Israel have agreed to a cease-fire, national security officials warned that the nation was still exposed to retaliation from Iran or its proxies, particularly one cloaked in sensitive computer systems.ImageA crowd of people outside, some holding flags and pictures of Iranian ayatollahs.A rally in support of the Iranian armed forces in Tehran on Tuesday.Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
“We are not out of the woods yet in terms of what Iran will try to do as payback,” said Thomas S. Warrick, a former counterterrorism official in the Trump, Obama and Bush administrations. “But there’s a host of D.H.S. programs that were intended to help defend the United States homeland from those attacks, and we’re going to find that many of those programs have been adversely affected.”
Mr. Trump and his allies have long held animosity for CISA, the agency he signed into law in his first term that would eventually declare the 2020 election was one of the best-run in history — undercutting Mr. Trump’s claims. In early March, Mr. Trump slashed more than $10 million in funding to two critical cybersecurity intelligence-sharing programs that helped detect and deter cyberattacks and alerted state and local governments about forthcoming attacks on cybernetworks.
CISA has also canceled contracts that affected more than a hundred cybersecurity specialists with a range of specialties. In its 2026 budget request, the administration also proposed cutting more than 1,000 positions from the agency, which is funded to hire more than 3,700 people.
“It takes a huge toll on our readiness to meet the challenges like what we may face if Iran chooses to retaliate in the United States in some way,” said Suzanne Spaulding, a homeland security under secretary for cybersecurity and critical infrastructure in the Obama administration. “Not only do you have a decimated work force and fewer people — you’ve lost experts and institutional knowledge, and expertise has walked out the door.”
In that budget request, the administration also proposed dismantling the office tasked with countering weapons of mass destruction and absorbing its functions into other parts of the department — an action that Ms. Callahan said would “dissipate the mission.”
At the same time, Mr. Trump is hoping to secure about $175 billion in new spending to enforce his ambitious anti-immigration agenda through his domestic policy legislation, which is still making its way through Congress. The administration has also redirected many federal agents to assist ICE for its deportation campaign, including F.B.I. agents who have been pulled from their usual tasks of cybersecurity, counterintelligence or criminal work.
The Bulwark, How Trump Killed the GOP’s Love of States’ Rights, Jonathan Cohn, June 24, 2025. From immigration to education to Medicaid, the new strategy is to impose a MAGA vision on America—whether or not states like it.
Beating up on California is nothing new for Trump, or for his allies. The state has been a conservative bête noire for decades, thanks to its leading role in causes like same-sex marriage and environmental protection. Today its embrace of immigrants and ties to Hollywood liberalism make it a symbol for everything the MAGA movement believes is wrong with America—a place to be denigrated and punished with rhetoric and, increasingly, with policy.
But the attacks on California have become so familiar it’s easy to miss that they are a sign of a broader shift away from what has been a bedrock GOP principle: states’ rights.
This is no small thing. The danger of federal overreach has been a staple of Republican rhetoric for most of the modern political era, deployed in order to block everything from the landmark civil rights efforts of the 1950s and ’60s to the environmental and consumer-protection laws of the ’70s and ’80s.
Instead of trying to curb the power of Washington, they’re deploying it so they can impose their governing vision on recalcitrant states—through the kind of actions Trump has been taking against California and, they hope, through the legislation they are now trying to get through Congress.
New York Times, Trump Administration Updates: Supreme Court Allows Trump to Deport Migrants to Third Countries, Adam Liptak, June 24, 2025 (print ed.). The government can deport a group of migrants to South Sudan, the justices say.ImageA wide view of a U.S. military aircrafts at a military base.
The Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Trump administration to deport migrants to countries other than their own, pausing a federal judge’s ruling that said they must first be given a chance to show that they would face the risk of torture and clearing the way for the administration to send men held at an American military base in Djibouti to South Sudan.
The court’s order gave no reasons and said the judge’s ruling would remain paused while the government pursues an appeal and, after that, until the Supreme Court acts. The court’s three liberal members issued a lengthy dissent.
In other news:
Some leading Democrats have reacted with outrage at Mr. Trump’s unilateral authorization, calling it an unconstitutional overstepping of his authority and demanding a briefing and a swift vote on whether to approve any further military action in Iran. Top Republicans, who have rushed to cede congressional power to the president at the start of his term, have instead called the strikes on Iran justified and appropriate, arguing that Congress should have no say in the matter.
“The commander in chief has Article II responsibilities,” Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters on Monday, referring to the section of the Constitution covering presidential power.
Voicing strong opposition to voting on a bipartisan measure to reassert Congress’s war powers, he continued: “They’re very serious and important, especially in times like this. I think he used that authority judiciously.”
He dismissed the resolution, sponsored by Representatives Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, and Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, as “all politics,” signaling that he was not inclined to allow their bid to force a vote on the military strikes. And he noted that presidents of both parties had undertaken significant military actions without congressional approval, often with little pushback from their allies on Capitol Hill.
Mr. Johnson’s comments came just after Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader, signaled support for such a vote and castigated Mr. Trump for his lack of consultation with Congress. He also claimed that the administration still had not given top leaders the customary classified briefing that accompanies such military operations.
June 23
New York Times, Live Updates: Iran Fires Missiles at U.S. Base in Qatar, Farnaz Fassihi, Jonathan Swan, Ronen Bergman, Aaron Boxerman and Adam Rasgon, June 23, 2025. The target was Al Udeid Air Base, the largest American military installation in the Middle East. Qatar said its air defenses intercepted the attack. Here are the latest developments.
Iran on Monday launched a military attack on an American base in Qatar, the largest American military installation in the Middle East, in retaliation for U.S. strikes on three critical nuclear sites.
Qatar said that its air defenses had intercepted the missiles and condemned the Iranian attack.
The strike stoked fears that the conflict with Iran could intensify, drawing in the United States further and expanding it across the region. The base, Al Udeid, serves as the forward headquarters for the U.S. Central Command, and was considered a prime potential target for Iranian retaliation after the U.S. strikes over the weekend.
Three Iranian officials said that Iran had given advance notice to Qatari officials that attacks were coming, as a way to minimize casualties. The officials said Iran needed to be seen striking back at the United States, but in a way that allowed all sides an exit ramp. They described it as a similar strategy to one used in 2020, when Iran gave a heads-up before firing ballistic missiles at an American base in Iraq after the assassination of its top general.
An Israeli official said that there was an early warning given by Iran about the attack, though the person did not say through which channel or to which country. The officials all spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence matters.
New York Times, Analysis: Iran’s Nuclear Dreams May Survive Even a Devastating American Blow, Mark Landler, June 23, 2025. Through revolution and upheaval, the program has become intertwined with the country’s security and national identity.
President Trump declared a “spectacular military success,” saying that American bombs had knocked out key pillars of Iran’s nuclear program. Even if he is right, the operation may not have delivered a death blow to a program that is deeply embedded in Iran’s history, culture, sense of security, and national identity.
Since Iran first embarked on an ambitious civilian nuclear program in 1974 under the shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, Iran’s leaders have viewed it as a proud symbol of the country’s leadership in the Muslim world, a reflection of its commitment to scientific research, and an insurance policy in its dangerous neighborhood.
What was true under the shah has been true under the theocratic rulers of post-revolution Iran. And it would be true, several experts on Iran said, of any potential future Iranian government, even if the current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, does not survive an escalating conflict with Israel and the United States.
“In the short term, under immense pressure, Khamenei or his successors will have to make concessions,” said Roham Alvandi, director of the Iranian History Initiative at the London School of Economics. “In the long run, any Iranian leader will come to the conclusion that Iran must have a nuclear deterrent.”
By joining Israel’s military campaign against Iran, Mr. Trump has greatly raised the costs for Iran’s leaders in refusing to accept stringent curbs on their uranium enrichment program. Yet however this conflict ends, he may have given them even more compelling reasons to seek a nuclear deterrent, experts say.
“Any strategic thinker in Iran, present or future, realizes that Iran is located in the Middle East, that its neighbors are Netanyahu’s Israel, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and M.B.S. in Saudi Arabia,” said Professor Alvandi, referring to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: June 22 [Fact-Checking White House Claims On Iran], Heather Cox Richardson, right, June 23, 2025.
Last night, exactly a week after his military parade fizzled and more than five million Americans turned out to protest his administration, President Donald J. Trump announced that the U.S. had bombed three Iranian nuclear sites: Fordo, Natanz, and Esfahan. He assured the American people that the strikes “were a spectacular military success” and that “Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.” “Iran,” he said, “must now make peace.”
For the first time in history, the United States dropped its 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs)—twelve of them—on another country.
It was a triumphant moment for the president, but as reporter James Fallows noted, the bombing of Iran would never seem as “successful” as it did when Trump could still say the nuclear sites were obliterated and Iran and its allies had not yet made a move.
Today administration officials began to walk back Trump’s boast. The Wall Street Journal reported that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine said it was “way too early” to assess the amount of damage. International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi said that “no one, no one, neither us, nobody else, could be able to tell you how much it has been damaged.”
Tonight David E. Sanger of the New York Times reported that there is evidence to suggest that Iran had moved both uranium and equipment from the Fordo site before the strikes.
In last night’s speech to the nation, Trump appeared to reach out to the evangelical wing of MAGA that wanted the U.S. to intervene on Israel’s side in its fight against Iran. Trump said: “And I want to just thank everybody and in particular, God, I want to just say we love you, God, and we love our great military, protect them. God bless the Middle East. God bless Israel, and God bless America. Thank you very much. Thank you.”
But while the evangelicals in MAGA liked Trump’s bombing of Iran, the isolationist “America First” wing had staunchly opposed it and are adamant that they don’t want to see U.S. involvement in another foreign war. So today, administration officials were on the Sunday talk shows promising that Trump was interested only in stopping Iran’s nuclear ambitions, not in regime change. On ABC’s This Week, Vice President J.D. Vance said explicitly: “We don’t want to achieve regime change.” On X, poster after poster, using the same script, tried to bring America Firsters behind the attack on Iran by posting some version of “If you are upset that Trump took out Obama’s nuclear facilities in Iran, you were never MAGA.”
This afternoon, Trump posted: “It’s not politically correct to use the term “Regime Change,” but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!”
On ABC’s This Week, Representative Jim Himes (D-CT) said: “It's way too early to tell what the actual effect on the nuclear program is, and of course, it's way too early to tell how this plays out, right? I mean, we’ve seen this movie before. Every conflict in the Middle East has its Senator Tom Cottons who promise us mushroom clouds. In the Iraq war it was Condoleezza Rice promising us a mushroom cloud. And initially—and this is true of every one of these wars in Libya, in Iraq, and Afghanistan—initially, things looked pretty good. Saddam Hussein is gone. Muammar Qaddafi is gone. The Afghan Taliban are gone. And then, over time, we start to learn what the cost is. Four thousand, four hundred Americans dead in Iraq. The Taliban back in power. So bottom line, the president has taken a massive, massive gamble here.”
There are already questions about why Trump felt obliged to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites right now. In March, Trump’s director of national intelligence, who oversees all U.S. intelligence, told Congress that the intelligence community assessed that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon. The U.S. and Iran have been negotiating over Iran’s nuclear program since April, and when Israel attacked Iran on June 12, a sixth round of negotiations between the U.S. and Iran was scheduled to begin just two days later, in Oman.
President Donald Trump addresses the nation, alongside Vice President JD Vance (L), Secretary of State Marco Rubio (2nd R), and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (R) on June 21, 2025, following the announcement that the US bombed nuclear sites in Iran. (Pool photo by Carlos Barria for AFP via Getty Images).
Popular Information, Accountability Journalism, A new war based on manipulated intelligence, Judd Legum, right, June 23, 2025. More than two decades after the Iraq War commenced, history is repeating itself.
On March 20, 2002, President George W. Bush began the bombing campaign in Iraq, justifying the attack with manipulated and bogus intelligence. Twenty-three years later, history is repeating itself.
The clear judgment of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) is that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon, and its leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has not authorized a nuclear weapons program. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, the nation's top intelligence official, said so publicly on March 25, 2025. "The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003," Gabbard asserted in her opening statement.
Last Tuesday, asked about Gabbard's testimony on Iran, Trump said, "I don't care what she said." On Friday, as his rhetoric became more bellicose, Trump was reminded of that March assessment and asked: "What intelligence do you have that Iran is building a nuclear weapon?" Trump did not say that the intelligence community had gathered new information since March. Rather, Trump said that "my intelligence community is wrong." He also publicly rebuked Gabbard again, adding, "She's wrong."
Now, to justify the bombing of several sites in Iran, top members of the Trump administration claim Iran is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. Appearing on Meet the Press on Sunday morning, Vice President JD Vance said that the administration believed "the Iranians were rushing toward a nuclear weapons program." That directly contradicts the March assessment by the IC that no such program had been authorized, much less commenced.
New York Times, Inside Trump’s Decision to Strike Iran, Mark Mazzetti, Jonathan Swan, Maggie Haberman, Eric Schmitt and Helene Cooper, June 23, 2025 (print ed.). When Israel began its assault on Iran, President Trump kept his distance. But within days he was on a path that led to an extensive bombing mission aided by political and military ruses.
Standing at the lectern in the White House briefing room on Thursday afternoon, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, read a message she said came “directly from the president.”
Because of the “substantial chance of negotiations” with Iran that could bring the United States back from the brink of jumping into the war in the Middle East, President Trump’s statement said, he would make a decision about whether or not to strike Iran “within the next two weeks.”
Mr. Trump had been under pressure from the noninterventionist wing of his party to stay out of the conflict, and was having lunch that day with one of the most outspoken opponents of a bombing campaign, Stephen K. Bannon, fueling speculation that he might hold off.
It was almost entirely a deception. Mr. Trump had all but made up his mind to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities, and the military preparations were well underway for the complex attack. Less than 30 hours after Ms. Leavitt relayed his statement, he would give the order for an assault that put the United States in the middle of the latest conflict to break out in one of the world’s most volatile regions.
Mr. Trump’s “two weeks” statement was just one aspect of a broader effort at political and military misdirection that took place over eight chaotic days, from the first Israeli strikes against Iran to the moment when a fleet of B-2 stealth bombers took off from Missouri for the first American military strikes inside Iran since that country’s theocratic revolution in 1979.
The Contrarian, Opinion: Trump ‘wags the dog,’ Jennifer Rubin, right, June 23, 2025. Risky military action disrupts the political dynamic.
Donald Trump, without authorization from Congress and without substantive consultation, took a fateful step in ordering the bombing of three Iranian nuclear sites, based on the false pretext that Iran was on the verge of completing a nuclear weapon.
The consequences of this move have yet to unfold, and the breathtaking array of outcomes—from another forever war to a failed state in Iran to a quickly negotiated nuclear deal—makes it impossible to predict how this will affect Trump’s agenda and his ongoing assault on democracy. His failure to get authorization for a strike in a war in which the U.S. was acting offensively, despite there being any immediate threat (no one with sense believes Trump’s contradiction of our own intelligence that Iran was on the verge of making a bomb) raises grave constitutional and political consequences.
Despite Trump’s war-talk Saturday night, Vice President JD Vance insists we are not at war. That, as even this crew understands, would require congressional action. On one level, such an assertion is preposterous—as we have indeed become combatants in an extended, ongoing war.
Whatever fiction the administration advances, as Tom Nichols points out, “the enemy gets a vote.” The most likely scenario, he suggests, is not as tidy as Trump would have us believe:
The Iranian regime will be wounded but will likely survive; the nuclear program will be delayed but will likely continue; the region will become more unstable but is unlikely to erupt into a full-blown war involving the United States.
Should we get bogged down in an extended war or face retaliation, Trump’s unilateral action based on a lie (not even DNI Tulsi Gabbard thinks Iran was on the verge of making a bomb) will be viewed as a gross error and a constitutional overstep.
In any case, Trump most certainly has violated the War Powers Resolution (WPR). Just Security explains:
Before the president involves U.S. forces in hostilities abroad (or circumstances where hostilities are likely), the WPR requires the president to “consult with Congress.” The WPR also requires the president to report to Congress within 48 hours whenever certain conditions are met that could lead to the United States getting drawn into a war that Congress hasn’t authorized.
Having failed to consult in any meaningful way, Congress must reclaim its authority.
“The heart of the WPR is its termination provision, which is intended to provide a mechanism to ensure the president does not continue to involve U.S. forces in hostilities without specific congressional authorization,” Just Security notes. “Under the WPR, the president must ‘terminate any use’ of U.S. Armed Forces that were introduced into hostilities … 60 days after the required notification unless Congress has specifically authorized that use of U.S. Armed Forces by statute, passed a law extending the 60-day period, or has been “physically unable to meet as a result of an armed attack upon the United States.”
Regardless of its constitutionality, Trump’s decision to proceed without Congress based on a false pretext is outrageous, especially when the American public overwhelmingly opposes another protracted Middle East war.
New York Times, In-Depth Report: What Remains of U.S.A.I.D.? Amy Schoenfeld Walker, Malika Khurana and Christine Zhang June 22, 2025 (Interactive). The few hundred programs that survived DOGE’s purge reveal the future of foreign aid.
Republicans have long wanted to shrink foreign aid, but President Trump took that desire to an extreme. These were U.S.A.I.D.’s projects when he took office.
What’s left after months of back and forth is a smattering of programs and still no realistic plan for how their work will move forward.
The grid returns to show program status as of May 7, with 891 programs that remained active worth $69 billion. Active programs are annotated by aid category, with 580 humanitarian aid programs, 167 health programs, 65 economic development programs, and 79 programs that fall into other aid categories.
As the United States Agency for International Development was being dismantled in early February, aid workers and officials in Washington and around the world set out to salvage what they could.
In the months since, there has been a widespread and under-the-radar effort to retain and restore some of the agency’s most critical work — including some projects favored by those who had the administration’s ear, a New York Times investigation shows.
Former President George W. Bush, who created the H.I.V./AIDS prevention program known as PEPFAR, called Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Leadership at the World Food Program called senators and ambassadors, and they said that millions of hungry people would die. Aid workers and foreign officials found programs that could be said to align with Mr. Trump’s America First agenda and flagged them for Republicans to pass on to the White House with a request to reinstate them.
The shell of U.S.A.I.D that is left today is the result of this chorus of pleas and negotiations, and of hasty decisions made by political leaders, many of whom had little experience in foreign aid.
Meidas Touch Network, Oil Futures Skyrocket as Iran Moves to Close Off Persian Gulf, Troy Matthews, June 23, 2025. Trump's war of choice is going to make gasoline very expensive in the U.S.
Oil futures spiked Sunday evening following the U.S. attack on Iran, after which the Iranian government voted to block shipping from the Persian Gulf by closing the Straight of Hormuz.
U.S. oil futures jumped 2.7% to about $75.80 per barrel at 9:30 pm ET Sunday night, opening Monday morning at $78 per barrel, a three month high. Brent crude oil futures, the international benchmark for oil prices, increased 2.44%, hitting $78.88 per barrel.
More than 25% of oil shipped globally passed through the Straight of Hormuz in 2024 and the first quarter of 2025. The U.S. imports roughly half a million barrels a day through the Straight. A disruption in oil shipments from the Persian Gulf will likely cause inflation to spike in the U.S. due to increased prices at the pump, right in time for summer driving season.
The price of gas typically rises by 2.4 cents per gallon when crude oil prices rise by $1, according to the Energy Information Administration, meaning a gain of over 20 cents per gallon at current levels for oil futures.
The Iranian parliament voted to close the Straight of Hormuz following the U.S. attack on Sunday, but the ultimate decision to close the Straight rests with Iranian military leadership.
Kiyv Post, ‘Meant to Protect Him’: Ukrainian Colonels Plotted to Kill Zelensky for Russia’s FSB: SBU Chief, Kateryna Zakharchenko, June 23, 2025. Two Ukrainian security colonels tasked with protecting Zelensky were secretly working for Russia’s FSB and plotting his assassination, SBU chief Maliuk said.
Two colonels from Ukraine’s State Guard Department (UDO), whose duty was to protect the country’s top officials, were working for Russia’s FSB and plotting to assassinate President Volodymyr Zelensky, said Vasyl Maliuk, head of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) in a conversation with journalists, Kyiv Post reports.
“Last year, we carried out a major operation. One of those detained was the head of a department within UDO — someone whose role is to protect this country’s leadership. Alongside him, another colonel was arrested. Both were working for Russia’s FSB, specifically its Fifth Service,” Maliuk said.
According to the SBU chief, the plan was to identify and recruit individuals to assassinate Zelensky at the President’s Office in Kyiv.
“This was an extremely complex operation on our part. We worked on it for nearly two years, essentially from the beginning of the full-scale invasion. We managed to infiltrate the group using a powerful agent-technical operation,” Maliuk said.
He also recalled another attempted assassination, this time in Poland. According to Maliuk, it involved a retired Polish military officer who had been recruited decades ago by the Soviet Union and was recently reactivated as a “sleeper agent” to eliminate Zelensky during his stay at Rzeszów Airport.
“The task was to physically eliminate President Zelensky at Rzeszów Airport. Several options were considered, including an FPV drone and a sniper rifle,” he said.Zelensky Arrives in UK for Talks with PM, MonarchOther Topics of InterestZelensky Arrives in UK for Talks with PM, MonarchZelensky arrived in London to meet King Charles III, Prime Minister Starmer, and UK officials to deepen defense ties. He will also visit Ukrainian troops training in Britain.
Maliuk added that Russian intelligence services had also been gathering and transmitting information, and were preparing assassination attempts against the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, as well as against Maliuk himself.
Earlier, the SBU officially reported the arrest of the two UDO colonels, who were part of a spy network run by the FSB’s Fifth Service and were plotting to kill the president.To suggest a correction or clarification, write to us hereYou can also highlight the text and press Ctrl + EnterKateryna ZakharchenkoKateryna Zakharchenko
Kateryna investigates today's most important topics, from geopolitical challenges and defense strategies to stories that change the course of events. She explores the secrets of Ukraine's intelligence services and shows the hidden side of global events. Her passion is uncovering secrets that change history. Born and lives in Kyiv.
Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: Newsmax Anchor Shared AI Video of Ford Mustang Driving Through Pride Parade, J.D. Wolf, June 23, 2025. The video was captioned “Best Mustang Ad Ford could use.”
Carl Higbie, a pro-Trump anchor on Newsmax, reposted a disturbing video to his Instagram Stories on Thursday. The clip, which appears to be AI generated, depicted a Black Ford Mustang speeding through what appeared to be a Pride parade of some 
sorts, plowing into a crowd of people waving rainbow flags.Carl Higbie
The caption over the video read: “Best Mustang Ad Ford could use,” suggesting that Ford should embrace the violent imagery as branding of running over people. Newsmax, which went public in March, boasts of Higbie in its pitch to sell ads to advertisers like Ford.
The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Virginia Candidates Show You Can Try to Kill DEI, But You’ll Fail, Jill Lawrence, June 23, 2025. Talk about a Lost Cause.
Virginians have chose their candidates for this fall’s election — and if you are trying to murder DEI, they are your worst nightmare. The demographic diversity is spectacular in both parties.
In a state whose first two governors were Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson, two women will face off for the top job: former congresswoman and CIA officer Abigail Spanberger, a white Democrat, and Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears, a black Republican, Jamaican immigrant, and Marine Corps veteran.
In the lieutenant governor race, it’s conservative talk-radio host John Reid, a Republican who recently came out as gay, vs. Democratic state Sen. Ghazala F. Hashmi, an Indian immigrant. As for attorney general, Democrat Jerrauld “Jay” Jones, a black former state legislator, will challenge the Hispanic Republican incumbent, Jason Miyares.
Is this (still) a great country or what?
When I read off those candidate demographics out loud, one straight white male in my vicinity joked that “this just proves everything’s turned to shit for white men.” And we all burst out laughing.
Don’t get me wrong, the Donald Trump–MAGA war on diversity, equity, and inclusion is deadly serious. The truth is that if those half-dozen people were Pentagon leaders instead of politicians running in a general election, they’d be ousted by now or, at the least, apprehensive about their career futures. If they were historic figures celebrated on federal websites, those pages would likely be wiped. If they were researchers in neglected health fields, their grants would be gone. Project leaders in “shithole” countries and continents, gone—them, their projects, and their web presence.
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The same day the Virginia results were finalized last week, the Supreme Court upheld a Tennessee ban on gender-affirming treatment for transgender minors. The straight-up ideological 6–3 majority said the ban did not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. And the Trump administration said it was canceling specialized guidance for LGBTQ callers on a national suicide hotline.
And yet, a couple of days earlier, federal judge William Young ruled that the Trump administration must immediately restore some eight hundred grants awarded by the National Institutes for Health to study topics such as racial disparities and transgender health. “I’ve sat on this bench now for forty years, and I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this. Is it true of our society as a whole, have we fallen so low? Have we no shame?” the Boston-based district judge asked in announcing his decision.
Young is 84. He was appointed by conservative hero Ronald Reagan. And in those remarks, Young was paraphrasing the line that finally brought down Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his “Red Scare” conspiracy hunts and blacklists that ruined so many lives and careers.
June 22
New York Times, Trump Claims Success After Bombing Key Iran Nuclear Sites, Maggie Haberman, Farnaz Fassihi, Eric Schmitt, Tyler Pager and Eric Nagourney, June 22, 2025. After hitting Iran’s most heavily fortified nuclear installation, President Trump warned of more strikes “if peace does not come quickly.” Iranian ballistic missiles wounded at least 10 in Israel, officials said. President Trump said the aim of attacking the three facilities was to destroy Iran’s nuclear capability. Iran said the sites (shown above in a New York Times graphic) had been hit but did not immediately describe the damage.
American warplanes and submarines attacked three key nuclear sites in Iran early Sunday, bringing the U.S. military directly into Israel’s war and prompting fears that the strikes could lead to more dangerous escalations across the Middle East.
President Trump said the objective of the strikes “was the destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world’s No. 1 state sponsor of terror.” He claimed success, saying in a televised address from the White House that the nuclear facilities had been “completely and totally obliterated.”
The strikes hit Iran’s two major uranium enrichment centers: the heavily fortified mountain facility at Fordo and a larger enrichment plant at Natanz, which Israel had struck several days ago with smaller weapons. A third site near the ancient city of Isfahan where Iran is believed to keep near-bomb-grade uranium was also bombed. Iranian officials acknowledged the sites had been attacked but the extent of the damage was not immediately clear.
Mr. Trump warned that more strikes were possible. “Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace,” he said. “If they do not, future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier.”
Iran had said before the strikes that America’s entry into war would bring retaliation, including the targeting of U.S. forces in the region or the acceleration of its nuclear program. On Sunday, foreign minister Abbas Araghchi, who is in Europe for diplomatic talks, said only that Iran “reserves all options to defend its sovereignty, interest, and people.”
Around the same time, air-raid sirens in Israel were warning of incoming Iranian ballistic missile fire. The Israeli authorities later said that at least ten people had been wounded in the missile barrage, one of many attacks that the two sides have exchanged since the Israeli military launched a surprise assault on Iran on July 13.
Iranians waking up to news of the strikes expressed concern on social media about potential radioactive leaks at the three nuclear sites that were bombed. But Iranian officials said on Sunday that the attacks posed no risk to public health, and the International Atomic Energy Agency said it had not detected any increases in radiation outside the sites.
New York Times, Live Updates: Strikes Caused ‘Severe Damage’ to Iranian Nuclear Sites, U.S. Officials Say, Maggie Haberman, Farnaz Fassihi, Eric Schmittm, Aaron Boxerman and Michael D. Shear, June 22, 2025. The Pentagon’s top leaders echoed President Trump’s claims of success but said it was too soon to say whether Iran still retains some nuclear capability. Iran condemned the strikes and has vowed to defend itself.
As António Guterres, the head of the United Nations, called the U.S. attacks a “dangerous escalation in a region already on the edge — and a direct threat to international peace and security,” Mr. Trump’s decision was reverberating through Congress.
Top Republicans were rallying behind him, calling the strikes a necessary check on Iran’s ambitions of developing a nuclear weapon. But senior Democrats and some G.O.P. lawmakers condemned the move as an unconstitutional one that could drag the United States into war.
Here’s what you need to know:
New York Times, More Live Updates: Fate of Iran’s Uranium Stockpile Unclear After U.S. Strikes, Staff Reports, June 22, 2025. Senior U.S. officials said the attack had severely damaged Iran’s nuclear facilities but conceded they did not know the whereabouts of its supply of near-bomb-grade uranium. President Trump suggested that a new government could take over in Tehran.
A day after U.S. bombers and submarines unleashed heavy strikes on a trio of Iranian nuclear facilities, the actual state of Tehran’s nuclear program remained unclear. Top officials said it was too soon to say whether Iran still retained the ability to make a nuclear weapon and the location of its existing stockpile of enriched uranium was unknown.
The U.S. strikes stoked fears of a dangerously escalating conflict across the Middle East and urgent calls from world leaders for diplomacy. But after his administration spent much of the day emphasizing that the United States did not intend to enter an all-out war with Tehran, President Trump raised the prospect of regime change in Iran.
“If the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change???” Mr. Trump wrote in a post on his social media site.
The Iranian nuclear sites — at Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan — sustained what Pentagon officials called “severe damage” from the U.S. strikes. But the status of Iran’s enrichment program remained murky, with senior officials conceding they did not know the whereabouts of Iran’s supply of near-bomb-grade uranium.
Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, said he believed the stockpile — which is stored in special casks small enough to fit in the trunks of about 10 cars — had been moved. There was also evidence, according to two Israeli officials with knowledge of the intelligence, that Iran had moved equipment and uranium from the site in recent days.
Iranian officials castigated the United States for the strikes, with the country’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, saying at a news conference in Istanbul that Iran “reserves all options to defend its security interests and people.” He declined to be more specific, including about whether Iran would retaliate against U.S. military assets in the Middle East, where more than 40,000 American military personnel are on bases and warships.
The U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, called for diplomacy at an emergency meeting of the Security Council, saying that the world now risked “descending into a rathole of retaliation after retaliation.”
But American military and intelligence officials had already detected signs that Iran-backed militias were preparing to attack U.S. bases in Iraq, and possibly Syria, in response. Iraqi officials were working hard to dissuade militia action, a U.S. official said on Sunday.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, thanked Mr. Trump during a news conference Sunday night, adding that Israel was “very close” to achieving its goals of removing the nuclear and ballistic threats Iran poses to Israel. But Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Amir Saeid Iravani, said the United States had “recklessly chosen to sacrifice its own security merely to safeguard Netanyahu.”
Mr. Iravani accused the United States, the only country to have ever used nuclear weapons in combat, of waging war on Iran under the “fabricated and absurd pretext” of preventing it from acquiring nuclear weapons. “What a bitter and tragic irony,” he said.
Here’s what you need to know:
The Contrarians via Substack, Opinion: Breaking News: U.S. enters war, Jennifer Rubin, right, June 22, 2025. A recording from Jennifer Rubin's live video with guests Steven A. Cook, Chief Policy Officer at J Street. He served as Vice President Kamala Harris's Special Advisor on the Middle East at the White House and Jewish Outreach Director on the 2024 Presidential campaign, and Ilan Goldenberg, Senior Fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies, Council on Foreign Relations.
Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: Trump Faces MAJOR BLOWBACK after DISASTER WAR PLAN, Ben Meiselas, June 22, 2025 (10:53 mins.). MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on the instant blowback Trump is receiving after his war plan against Iran is already backfiring. Iran is a nation of 90 million people. Iran still has a massive stockload of ballistic missiles.
President Donald Trump delivers an address to the nation accompanied by Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, at the White House in Washington, June 21, 2025, following U.S. strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities (Pool photo by Carlos Barria).
Politico, White House wary of Iran counterattack as Trump strikes triumphant tone, Dasha Burns, Nahal Toosi and Jack Detsch, June 22, 2025. “There’s a lot of risks here for escalation,” one person said.
President Donald Trump was triumphant Saturday night during his Oval Office address but within the administration the mood was less sanguine as officials braced for a potential Iran counterattack.
The decision to send American B-2 bombers to attack Iran, the most significant military action of Trump’s presidency, threatens to inject the United States into another Middle East conflict, the kind that Trump and Vice President JD Vance have long promised to avoid.
“We don’t know how much this is going to get us into something protracted,” said an administration official, who like others was granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberation. “Right now the message is we want to get rid of the nuclear capacity and focus on negotiations.”
Trump over the last few days had become increasingly convinced that he had a rare opportunity to take out Tehran’s nuclear capability with minimal risk to U.S. personnel, according to a senior White House official.
Plans for the attack, which Trump deemed “very successful” shortly after it was completed, were already in the works when the president said he’d decide “within two weeks” whether to join Israel in its efforts to destroy the Islamist regime’s nuclear sites, according to a second administration official and a person close to the White House.
But even as the president offered hope for de-escalation he was weighing military options, the first Trump administration official said.
“He looked at various strike packages and selected a narrow and tailored one,” the same official said.
The senior White House official earlier this week telegraphed that a “surgical” strike, one that didn’t put boots on the ground or directly jeopardize American lives, would not run afoul of the president’s pledge to avoid the kinds of long and costly wars that dogged previous administrations, “which are the sort of main thrusts of the things that a majority of Americans, would oppose in the medium to long term.”
In a brief speech on Saturday, Trump appeared to suggest that U.S. strikes on Iran were over, for now. Thanking U.S. service members who carried out the strikes, he underscored that he hoped their services would no longer be needed.
New York Times, News Analysis: With Military Strike His Predecessors Avoided, Trump Takes a Huge Gamble, David E. Sanger, Updated June 22, 2025. President Trump is betting the United States can repel whatever retaliation Iran orders, and that it has destroyed the regime’s chances of reconstituting its nuclear program.
Over the past two decades, the United States has used sanctions, sabotage, cyberattacks and diplomatic negotiations to try to slow Iran’s long march to a nuclear weapon.
At roughly 2:30 a.m. Sunday in Iran, President Trump unleashed a show of raw military might that each of his last four predecessors had deliberately avoided, for fear of plunging the United States into war in the Middle East.
After days of declaring that he could not take the risk that the mullahs and generals of Tehran who had survived Israel’s strikes would make a final leap to a nuclear weapon, he ordered a fleet of B-2 bombers halfway around the world to drop the most powerful conventional bombs on the most critical sites in Iran’s vast nuclear complexes.
The prime target was the deeply buried enrichment center at Fordo, which Israel was incapable of reaching.
For Mr. Trump, the decision to attack the nuclear infrastructure of a hostile nation represents the biggest — and potentially most dangerous — gamble of his second term.
He is betting that the United States can repel whatever retaliation Iran’s leadership orders against more than 40,000 American troops spread over bases throughout the region. All are within range of Tehran’s missile fleet, even after eight days of relentless attacks by Israel. And he is betting that he can deter a vastly debilitated Iran from using its familiar techniques — terrorism, hostage-taking and cyberattacks — as a more indirect line of attack to wreak revenge.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Iran and Israel? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.
Most importantly, he is betting that he has destroyed Iran’s chances of ever reconstituting its nuclear program. That is an ambitious goal: Iran has made clear that, if attacked, it would exit the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and take its vast program underground. That is why Mr. Trump focused so much attention on destroying Fordo, the facility Iran built in secret in the mid-2000s that was publicly exposed by President Barack Obama in 2009. That is where Iran was producing almost all of the near-bomb-grade fuel that most alarmed the United States and its allies.
Mr. Trump’s aides were telling those allies on Saturday night that Washington’s sole mission was to destroy the nuclear program. They described the complex strike as a limited, contained operation akin to the special operation that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011.
“They explicitly said this was not a declaration of war,” one senior European diplomat said late Saturday, describing his conversation with a high-ranking administration official.
But, the diplomat added, bin Laden had killed 3,000 Americans. Iran had yet to build a bomb.
In short, the administration is arguing that it was engaged in an act of pre-emption, seeking to terminate a threat, not the Iranian regime. But it is far from clear that the Iranians will perceive it that way. In a brief address from the White House on Saturday night, flanked by Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Mr. Trump threatened Iran with more destruction if it does not bend to his demands.Middle East Tensions: Live Updates
“Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace,” he said. “If they do not, future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier.”
“There will be either peace,” he added, “or there will be tragedy for Iran far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days. Remember, there are many targets left.” He promised that if Iran did not relent, he would go after them “with precision, speed and skill.”
In essence, Mr. Trump was threatening to broaden his military partnership with Israel, which has spent the last eight days systematically targeting Iran’s top military and nuclear leadership, killing them in their beds, their laboratories and their bunkers. The United States initially separated itself from that operation. In the Trump administration’s first public statement about those strikes, Mr. Rubio emphasized that Israel took “unilateral action against Iran,” adding that the United States was “not involved.”
But then, a few days ago, Mr. Trump mused on his social media platform about the ability of the United States to kill Iran’s 86-year-old supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, anytime he wanted. And Saturday night, he made clear that the United States was all in, and that contrary to Mr. Rubio’s statement, the country was now deeply involved.
Now, having set back Iran’s enrichment capability, Mr. Trump is clearly hoping that he can seize on a remarkable moment of weakness — the weakness that allowed the American B-2 bombers to fly in and out of Iranian territory with little resistance.
After Israel’s fierce retaliation for the Oct. 7, 2023 terror attacks that killed over a thousand Israeli civilians, Iran is suddenly bereft of its proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah. Its closest ally, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, had to flee the country. And Russia and China, which formed a partnership of convenience with Iran, were nowhere to be seen after Israel attacked the country.
That left only the nuclear program as Iran’s ultimate defense. It was always more than just a scientific project — it was the symbol of Iranian resistance to the West, and the core of the leadership’s plan to hold on to power.
Along with the repression of dissent, the program had become the ultimate means of defense for the inheritors of the Iranian revolution that began in 1979. If the taking of 52 American hostages was Iran’s way of standing up to a far larger, far more powerful adversary in 1979, the nuclear program has been the symbol of resistance for the last two decades.
One day historians may well draw a line from those images of blindfolded Americans, who were held for 444 days, to the dropping of GBU-57 bunker-busting bombs on the mountainous redoubt called Fordo. They will likely ask whether the United States, its allies or the Iranians themselves could have played this differently.
And they will almost certainly ask whether Mr. Trump’s gamble paid off.
Politico, ‘There was no imminent threat,’ Thomas Massie says in joining Ro Khanna in decrying Iran strike, Nicole Markus, June 22, 2025. “I’m always open to new intelligence, but the procedure should have been Congress be briefed before we decided to enter war and actually have a vote on it,” Khanna said Sunday.
Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) — two lawmakers with very different views and priorities on most issues — came together Sunday to decry President Donald Trump’s airstrikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities.
Khanna and Massie told host Margaret Brennan on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that Congress was not briefed ahead of the military action, which they see as unconstitutional. The pair introduced a resolution last week to block U.S. involvement in the conflict between Iran and Israel.
“I’m always open to new intelligence, but the procedure should have been Congress be briefed before we decided to enter war and actually have a vote on it,” Khanna said to Brennan. “The reality is, people want regime change in Iran, and they are egging this president on to bomb. I hope cooler heads will prevail.”
Politico, Rep. Jim Himes warns Iran strike could lead to ‘dead soldiers and sailors,’ Aaron Pellish, June 22, 2025. The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee addressed best- and worst-case scenarios.
Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, warned on Sunday that President Donald Trump’s decision to strike Iran could lead to a “worst-case scenario” that draws the U.S. into another prolonged conflict in the Middle East.
Himes, right, a Democrat, told host Jonathan Karl on ABC’s “This Week” the Iran strike is a “massive, massive gamble” that could embroil the nation in an overseas conflict similar to previous U.S. military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.
“We’ve seen this movie before,” Himes said, referencing the ascension of the Taliban in Afghanistan following the U.S. withdrawal in 2021 after maintaining a military presence in the country for 20 years.
Himes outlined the “worst-case scenario” as the possibility that Iran suffered minimal damage to its nuclear facilities and strikes back at U.S. military personnel leading to “dead soldiers and sailors in the region.”
On Sunday, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine said the U.S. inflicted “severe damage” on the three Iranian nuclear sites it targeted, but added it was too soon to determine whether Iran still possessed nuclear capabilities.
When asked if it’s possible that Trump’s strike on Iran would result in a best-case scenario, Himes conceded there is “some chance” of a positive outcome.
“But if you look at the history — and again, all we have is history to go on, if you look at the history of our military involvements in the region, they almost never end with the best-case scenario,” Himes said. “In fact, they usually end in something approximating the worst-case scenario.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson wrote on X Saturday that the president “fully respects” Article I of the Constitution, and the targeted strike follows “the history and tradition” of prior military actions. Massie said Johnson’s latter remark was likely referring to the War Powers Act of 1973, which allows for a president to take limited, targeted actions in a crisis without prior congressional approval, but that it was “peculiar” to hear this from the Speaker of the House.
“That’s been misinterpreted. There was no imminent threat to the United States which is what would authorize that,” Massie said. “We haven’t been briefed, they should have called us all back, and frankly we should have debated this war powers resolution that Ro Khanna and I offered instead of staying on vacation.”
Khanna said Massie was showing “courage” in speaking for parts of the MAGA base who have continually reiterated they do not want continuing wars in the Middle East. After Trump announced the airstrikes, MAGA largely fell in line with the action despite debates last week over the potential for U.S. military action in Iran amid continuing Israel-Iran missile exchanges.“The tragedy in this country is that we keep entering these overseas wars, we triumphantly declare the mission is accomplished the day after, and then we’re left with Americans bearing the consequences for decades,” Khanna said.
The Bulwark, Commentary: “I Found Out on Twitter”: Trump Kept Congress In The Dark on Iran Strikes, Sam Stein and Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) break down the administration’s decision to bypass Congress before striking Iran, June 22, 2025. They explore the constitutional concerns, the risk to U.S. troops, and what might come next.
Politico, MAGA largely falls in line on Trump’s Iran strikes, Joe Gould, Connor O'Brien, Ben Johansen and Gregory Svirnovskiy, Updated June 22, 2025. Meanwhile, Democrats challenged the constitutionality of the president’s actions.
President Donald Trump’s sudden announcement Saturday night that he bombed three Iranian nuclear sites has Republican skeptics of U.S. military action against Iran largely falling in line.
The prospect of strikes against Iran had sparked backlash from Democrats and days of infighting within Trump’s MAGA coalition, but afterthe president posted on Truth Social that the U.S. has bombed Iran, several GOP critics cheered the strikes as a limited action. Several top Democrats denounced the strikes as illegal and warned they could drag the U.S. into another Middle East war.
The prospect of U.S. strikes on Iran had sparked debate between Republicans pressing for the U.S. to aid in regime change and isolationist voices who warned a full-scale war would betray Trump’s “America First” approach.
“Iran gave President Trump no choice,” Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist and critic of GOP war hawks, said on X. “For a decade he has been adamant that Iran will never get a nuclear weapon. Iran decided to forego diplomacy in pursuit of a bomb. This is a surgical strike, operated perfectly. President Trump acted with prudence and decisiveness.”
Former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, Trump’s one-time pick for the attorney general post who had warned of the Middle East conflict turning into another drawn out war for the U.S., said on X that the president’s strike didn’t necessarily portend a larger conflict, and likened it to the strike of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani during Trump’s first term
“President Trump basically wants this to be like the Solimani strike — one and done,” Gaetz wrote. “No regime change war. Trump the Peacemaker!
Some Republicans had expressed doubts that bombing Fordow (also known as Fordo) would end the threats, including Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. But after the strikes, Sheehy called Saturday’s military action the “right decision.”
“To the naysayers out there, this isn’t starting a war, this is ending one,” he said. “Iran has been at war with America for 46 years. The Iranian people should rise up and put an end to this murderous regime.”
Rick Wilson's Intel and Observations, It’s War O’Clock, June 22, 2025 (30 mins.). Rick Wilson, right, is an American political strategist, media 
consultant, and author based in Florida. A former member of the Republican Party and co-founder of The Lincoln Project, he has produced televised political commercials for governors, U.S. Senate candidates, Super PACs, and corporations.
New York Times, Sheltering in a Bunker, Iran’s Supreme Leader Names Potential Successors, Farnaz Fassihi, June 22, 2025 (print ed). Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, shown above in a file photo, has not only picked replacements in his chain of military command in case they are killed in Israeli strikes, he has also named three senior clerics to replace him should he, too, be slain.
Wary of assassination, Iran’s supreme leader mostly speaks with his commanders through a trusted aide now, suspending electronic communications to make it harder to find him, three Iranian officials familiar with his emergency war plans say.
Ensconced in a bunker, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has picked an array of replacements down his chain of miliary command in case more of his valued lieutenants are killed.
And in a remarkable move, the officials add, Ayatollah Khamenei has even named three senior clerics as candidates to succeed him should he be killed, as well — perhaps the most telling illustration of the precarious moment he and his three-decade rule are facing.
Ayatollah Khamenei, left, has taken an extraordinary series of steps to preserve the Islamic Republic ever since Israel launched a series of surprise attacks last Friday.
Though only a week old, the Israeli strikes are the biggest military assault on Iran since its war with Iraq in the 1980s, and the effect on the nation’s capital, Tehran, has been particularly fierce. In only a few days, the Israeli attacks have been more intense and have caused more damage in Tehran than Saddam Hussein did in his entire eight-year war against Iran.
Iran appears to have overcome its initial shock, reorganizing enough to launch daily counterstrikes of its own on Israel, hitting a hospital, the Haifa oil refinery, religious buildings and homes.ImagePeople in orange hard hats and goggles stand outside a badly damaged multilevel concrete building.The aftermath of an Iranian missile strike in Haifa, Israel, on Friday.Credit...Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times
Iran’s top officials are also quietly making preparations for a wide range of outcomes as the war intensifies and as President Trump considers whether to enter the fight, according to the Iranian officials, who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the ayatollah’s plans.
Peering inside Iran’s closely guarded leadership can be difficult, but its chain of command still seems to be functioning, despite being hit hard, and there are no obvious signs of dissent in the political ranks, according to the officials and to diplomats in Iran.
Ayatollah Khamenei, 86, is aware that either Israel or the United States could try to assassinate him, an end he would view as martyrdom, the officials said. Given the possibility, the ayatollah has made the unusual decision to instruct his nation’s Assembly of Experts, the clerical body responsible for appointing the supreme leader, to choose his successor swiftly from the three names he has provided.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Iran and Israel? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.
Normally, the process of appointing a new supreme leader could take months, with clerics picking and choosing from their own lists of names. But with the nation now at war, the officials said, the ayatollah wants to ensure a quick, orderly transition and to preserve his legacy.
“The top priority is the preservation of the state,” said Vali Nasr, an Iran expert and professor of international affairs at Johns Hopkins University. “It is all calculative and pragmatic.”
Succession has long been an exceedingly delicate and thorny topic, seldom discussed publicly beyond speculations and rumors in political and religious circles. The supreme leader has enormous powers: He is the commander in chief of the Iran Armed Forces, as well as the head of the judiciary, the legislature and the executive branch. He is also a Vali Faqih, meaning the most senior guardian of the Shiite faith.Editors’ PicksIs There a Difference Between Architects, Designers and Decorators?A Traveler Waits in the Stars for Those Willing to Learn How to LookWas I Wrong to Tell My Dead Friend’s Son That His Father Sold Sperm to a Sperm Bank?
Ayatollah Khamenei’s son Mojtaba, also a cleric and close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, who was rumored to be a front-runner, is not among the candidates, the officials said. Iran’s former conservative president, Ibrahim Raisi, was also considered a front-runner before he was killed in a helicopter crash in 2024.ImageThe ayatollah is seen on a large TV screen near a bookshelf.Ayatollah Khamenei delivering a public message on Wednesday. His retreat into a bunker shows how furiously Tehran has been struck.Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
Since the war started, Ayatollah Khamenei has delivered to the public two recorded video messages, against a backdrop of brown curtains and next to the Iranian flag. “The people of Iran will stand against a forced war,” he said, vowing not to surrender.
In normal times, Ayatollah Khamenei lives and works in a highly secure compound in central Tehran called the “beit rahbari” — or leader’s house — and he seldom leaves the premises, except for special occasions like delivering a sermon. Senior officials and military commanders come to him for weekly meetings, and speeches for the public are staged from the compound.
His retreat to a bunker shows how furiously Tehran has been struck in a war with Israel that Iranian officials say is unfolding on two fronts.
One is being waged from the air, with Israeli airstrikes on military bases, nuclear facilities, critical energy infrastructure, commanders and nuclear scientists in their apartment buildings in tightly packed residential neighborhoods. Some of Iran’s top commanders were summarily wiped out.
Hundreds of people have also been killed and thousands of others injured, with civilians slain across Iran, human rights groups inside and outside the country say.
But Iranian officials say that they are fighting on a second front, as well, with covert Israeli operatives and collaborators scattered on the ground across Iran’s vast terrain, launching drones at critical energy and military structures. The fear of Israeli infiltration among the top ranks of Iran’s security and intelligence apparatus has rattled the Iranian power structure, even Ayatollah Khamenei, officials say.ImageThe sun shines low on the horizon as smoke rises in the distance, against a city skyline.Smoke north of Tehran after Israeli airstrikes on Monday. Hundreds of people have been killed and thousands of others injured, officials say.Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
“It is clear that we had a massive security and intelligence breach; there is no denying this,” said Mahdi Mohammadi, a senior adviser to Iran’s speaker of Parliament, Gen. Mohammad Ghalibaf, in an audio recording analyzing the war. “Our senior commanders were all assassinated within one hour.”
Iran’s “biggest failure was not discovering” the months of planning Israeli operatives had conducted to bring missiles and drone parts into the country to prepare for the attack, he added.
The country’s leadership has been preoccupied with three central concerns, officials say: an assassination attempt against Ayatollah Khamenei; the United States’ entering the war; and more debilitating attacks against Iran’s critical infrastructure, like power plants, oil and gas refineries and dams.
Should the United States join the fight, the stakes would multiply significantly. Israel says that it wants to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, but experts say that only the United States has the bomber — and the enormous 30,000-pound bomb — that might be capable of penetrating the mountain where Iran has built its most critical nuclear enrichment facilities, Fordo.
Iran has threatened to retaliate by attacking American targets in the region, but that would only risk a wider, and possibly more devastating, conflict for Iran and its adversaries.
The fear of assassination and infiltration within Iran’s ranks is so widespread that the Ministry of Intelligence announced a series of security protocols, telling officials to stop using cellphones or any electronic devices to communicate. It has also ordered all senior government officials and military commanders to remain below ground, according to two Iranian officials.
Almost every day, the Ministry of Intelligence or the Armed Forces issue directives for the public to report suspicious individuals and vehicle movements, and to refrain from taking photographs and videos of attacks on sensitive sites.ImageA large crowd waves flags outdoors near an ornate mosque with a gold-color dome.A demonstration in Tehran last week. Israel’s attacks have set off a resurgence of nationalism among many Iranians.
The country has also been in a communication blackout with the outside world. The internet has been nearly shut down, and incoming international calls have been blocked. The Ministry of Telecommunications said in a statement that these measures were to find enemy operatives on the ground and to disable their ability to launch attacks.
“The security apparatus has concluded that, in this critical time, the internet is being abused to harm the lives and livelihoods of civilians,” said Ali Ahmadinia, the communications director for President Masoud Pezeshkian. “We are safeguarding the security of our country by shutting down the internet.”
On Friday, the Supreme National Security Council took it a step further, announcing that anyone working with the enemy must turn themselves into the authorities by the end of the day on Sunday, hand over their military equipment and “return to the arms of the people.” It warned that anyone discovered to be working with the enemy after Sunday would face execution.
Tehran has largely emptied out after orders by Israel to evacuate several highly populated districts. Videos of the city show highways and desolate streets that are typically clogged with bumper-to-bumper traffic. In interviews, residents of Tehran who remained in the city said security forces had set up checkpoints on every highway, on smaller roads and at entry points in and out of the city to conduct ad hoc searches.
Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a reformist politician and a former vice president, said in a telephone interview from Tehran that Israel had miscalculated Iranians’ reaction to the war. Mr. Abtahi said that the deep political factions that are typically in sharp disagreement with one another had rallied behind the supreme leader and focused the country on defending itself from an external threat.
Old Goats via Substack, Opinion: Was Fordo Destroyed? Jonathan Alter (right, author, host of Old Goats, and longtime political columnist, June 22, 
2025 (3:55 mins.). The road from here depends on the answer to that question.
"Carthage must be destroyed." That's what Cato the Elder said in 150 BCE, just about a mile from where I am now in Rome. The question before us today is, was Fordo destroyed? It's two paths.
If Fordo was not destroyed, if the B2 was able to destroy the entrances and exits,but not the facility buried more than 200 feet below ground under this mountain. If it was not destroyed and can be rebuilt with Chinese help, and the Chinese are already sending large amounts of equipment into Iran, then we're in for a very rocky road. They will move with immense speed to rebuild their nuclear program and go as quickly as they can to obtaining a nuclear weapon.
And in the short term, of course, they will respond and American service personnel will die. That's a given. Iran simply must respond as a matter of national honor. But in the medium and longer term, the question is whether Fordo was destroyed or not.
And we won't know the answer to that question for a while. In war, the early reports are almost always inaccurate. So until we have an answer to that question, we won't really know where things go from here. If Fordo was destroyed, if the Bunker Buster bombs were able to penetrate further than expected, then this will be seen as an important and historic act by President Trump.
As I think many of you know, I despise and believe is a menace to our constitutional republic. In 1981, Israel took out the Osiric reactor in Iraq and deprived Iraq of its ability to move toward possessing nuclear weapons.
It's a good thing that Israel did this, and there were not any significant long-term consequences to doing so. So in the best of all circumstances, that's what would happen in this case. And essentially, the United States policy of the club is closed. The nuclear club, which contains nine members, is not open for any new membership.
And I believe that that's a rational policy for the United States to have. If we're able to close the club door, then Donald Trump will be credited by history for having done so. And I hope that that's the case. Trump has been lucky throughout his political life. And I think whatever we think of him ,we should hope that his luck holds and that Fordo was destroyed and the consequences in terms of a wider war are more limited than we fear.
White House Personnel Director Sergio Gor is reportedly Russian agent Sergey Goryachev
Wayne Madsen Report (WMR), Investigative Commentary: Trump's rapid Putinization of America with the help of a Russian agent in the White House, 
Wayne Madsen, left, author of 24 books and former Navy intelligence officer, June 20-22, 2025. Uniformed and plain-clothes officers roughing up elected office holders, mass arrests and detentions, assassinations of opposition politicians, intimidation of judges, and curbing independent media.
This is a description of the situation in Russia in 1999, the year ex-KGB colonel Vladimir Putin took over as Russian president.
In 2025, the United States has turned into Putin's Russia in the early part of Putin's rule. If the trend continues, it will not be long before 
America sees its states stripped of all power, its courts rendered as rubber stamps for the executive in Washington, its Congress becoming an echo chamber for executive propaganda, and its media answering to Trump and whoever might take his place in the future as the next MAGA tyrant.
Trump copycatting Putin is evident in how he has treated states with opposition party governors. Putin abolished the direct election of governors of Russian regions in 2004. After seizing the power to appoint regional governors, Putin then abolished the posts of presidents of the autonomous republics. Essentially, Putin overturned the sovereignty of non-Russian ethnic republics and in so doing reversed a Soviet guarantee established by Vladimir Lenin after the Bolshevik Revolution.
Trump has mirrored Putin's attack on regional sovereignty by threatening to arrest the Democratic governor of America's most populous and wealthiest state, California. He has also attacked the Democratic governors of Minnesota, Maine, New York, North Carolina, Kentucky, Illinois, Colorado, and Arizona.
Look for Trump's Moscow-directed policies to begin to thwart the power of the state governors. A step in that direction was the Ninth Circuit's decision to grant Trump full authority over the California National Guard, wresting control from Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom. This usurpation of gubernatorial authority will likely be repeated in other Democratic-run states, including Illinois, New York, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Oregon, and others.
It becomes more apparent every day that Trump takes his orders from Putin. These dictates have apparently included inserting Sergey Anatolyevich Goryachev, aka "Sergio Gor," into the position of the White House Personnel Director. Goryachev, born in 1980 in Saratov, USSR, has failed to submit his SF-86 security questionnaire and insists he was born in Malta on November 30, 1986 without any proof. The Maltese government has no record of Gor's birth in the island nation. A number of Maltese citizens claim that Gor is not a surname found among those who live in Malta or the neighboring island of Gozo.
Gor surfaced as a Republican provocateur against Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential election. He went on to serve on the congressional staffs of Republicans Randy Forbes, Michele Bachmann, and Steve King. Gor later worked as an Associate Producer for Fox News and Deputy Chief of Staff for GOP Senator Rand Paul. Gor also officiated the wedding of former Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, who has maintained his own questionable links to Russian oligarchs who have settled in Florida.
Make no mistake about it, Goryachev is to Trump as Nazi Reich Commissar Josef Terboven was to Nazi puppet leader Vidkun Quisling in Nazi-occupied Norway during World War II. Quisling did nothing in opposition to Berlin's wishes just as today Trump follows the dictates from Moscow.
Gor's major role in the Trump administration has centered around his hiring and firing of key administration officials. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has, like Goryachev/Gor been linked to a Russian email address:
Hegseth's Russian email address, which is facilitated by the Russian technology company VK, is also linked to a Russian phone number and a Proton Mail address. Proton is an email service based in Switzerland.
-----------
Update:
The Trump White House is ignoring the revelations about its personnel director and suspected Russian agent. Soon after Gor took over as personnel chief, he blocked other officials from completing SF [Security Form]-86 security questionnaire. Gor dubiously claimed that the form, which has been used for decades as the basis for granting access to classified information, was a method for the "deep state" to weed out Trump's appointments. In fact, the form is june-2022-2025-trump039s-rapid-putinization-america-themeant to bar agents like Gor from accessing classified information. Its requirement for detailed information on place of birth, all former places lived and visited, foreign contacts and family members, foreign finances, drug use, and other information is subsequently reviewed by the FBI and Department of Defense. Gor currently has an interim security clearance granting him access to the nation's most closely guarded secrets.
Some of the backlash against Gor stems from his decision not to yank the nomination of Elon Musk's close associate, Jared Isaacman, to be the director of NASA. Musk, whose own problems related to accessing classified government information became an issue for him and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team of neophytes, has echoed misgivings about Gor and his lack of a complete security background check. Musk has referred to Gor as a "snake." In response to a post on X that insisted Gor lied about being born in Malta, Musk wrote, "He deliberately lied about where he was born on Federal forms. That’s a serious crime.” In another X post, Musk stated that Gor's actual name is Goryachev.
It is noteworthy that when Donald Trump, Jr. and Charlie Kirk visited Greenland on January 7, Gor accompanied them on board Trump's private Boeing 757. Gor and Donald Trump, Jr. are co-owners of Winning Team Publishing. Trump, Jr.'s boyhood role model was his paternal grandfather Milos Zelnicek, who was also an informant for the Soviet KGB-allied Czechoslovak State Security, the Státní bezpečnost or StB. Gor often deejays at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club. Soviet KGB files indicate that Donald Trump was code-named "Krasnov" by his KGB handlers while the StB referred to him as "Donik."
It is known that while working for Senator Rand Paul in 2018, Gor and Paul visited Russia for two weeks in August. After returning to the U.S., Paul promoted Gor to his deputy chief of staff.
During his youth, Gor was known in his local community of Cospicua, Malta, as “the Russian boy” and that his family spoke an Eastern European language. He learned to speak Maltese albeit with a discernible accent to the ear of native Maltese.
Malta and Gozo have a combined population of 550,000 packed into 122 square miles. The nation's dense population means that there are few secrets. One thing is for certain, not one person in Malta recognizes Gor as native born. In fact, some Maltese recall that Goryachev did live in Malta for a period of time, but that it was after his parents emigrated from the USSR to Malta. In 1999, Gor and his parents moved from Malta to Los Angeles. Gor later enrolled at George Washington University in DC using another Russian surname, Gorokhovsky. It was in 1999 that former Soviet KGB colonel Vladimir Putin ascended to the post of president of Russia.
Gor's covering up two Russian surnames and his refusal to complete and sign his SF-86 demonstrates demonstrates deception on his part. In the past, that would have been sufficient for a denial of security clearance let alone referral to the Department of Justice for a national security investigation. With Gor/Goryachev/Gorokhovsky now calling the shots on who and who isn't given positions at the DoJ, FBI, and other law enforcement and intelligence agencies, this Kremlin agent-of-influence will continue to carry out his instructions from Moscow Center.
New York Times, Opinion: $4,785. That’s How Much It Costs to Be a Sports Fan Now, Joon Lee (previously covered sports for ESPN, Bleacher Report and The Washington Post), June 22, 2025. For most of my life, sports was one of the most accessible forms of entertainment in America. You turned on the TV, flipped to the game and cheered or booed — with your family, your neighborhood, your city. Being a fan was simple. It was community.
This community is dying, because some of its shared moments are disappearing.
For decades, our national sports leagues — the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League — operated more like civic institutions. These organizations may have always chased the mighty dollar. But they also wanted their sports to last, so they cared about strengthening such powerful intangibles as local pride, generational fandom and public ritual. Tradition was good business. Community built loyalty. Loyalty built value.
Then came the streaming wars. Starting in the early 2010s, live sports events were one of the last types of programming that guaranteed hundreds of thousands if not millions of real-time viewers, and the leagues began to be flooded with requests from streamers, such as Amazon Prime, Peacock and Max, begging for a piece of the pie. At the same time, the leagues were looking for a way to raise the cash required to invest in the lucrative opportunities offered by overseas expansion. And that’s when the business of sustaining sports in America took a back seat, and our country’s sports leagues stopped acting like caretakers and started thinking like asset managers.
The result is that dozens if not hundreds of games that make up America’s national pastimes are being sliced and diced and sold off to the highest bidder — be that a cable giant, or a streaming upstart, or a regional sports network or a subscription app. Games jump from one service to another with so little notice or apparent logic that even some of the biggest superfans struggle to track what’s available where.
The unraveling doesn’t have to happen. The leagues — the very institutions tasked with preserving and growing the games — chose this future for us. Fortunately, there are solutions.
Our state and federal legislators have bestowed the leagues with an extraordinary array of legal privileges, from a 1961 antitrust exemption allowing them to bundle the television rights of all of their teams to taxpayer subsidies for stadiums — often through tax-exempt municipal bonds — to limited oversight for financial transparency.
These privileges were given to these leagues on the understanding that they were propagating civic institutions, where stability and shared cultural moments were worth protecting. If leagues want to keep these privileges, they need to act more like institutions that serve the public.
June 21
New York Times, U.S. Enters War With Iran, Bombing Key Nuclear Sites, Eric Nagourney and Maggie Haberman, June 21, 2025. President Trump announced the United States had struck Fordo, Iran’s heavily fortified nuclear facilities, as well as two other sites.
Here are the latest developments.
The United States has entered Israel’s war against Iran.
American warplanes dropped bombs on three nuclear sites in Iran on Saturday, President Trump announced on Saturday night, bringing the U.S. military directly into the war after days of uncertainty about whether he would intervene.
“All planes are now outside of Iran air space,” he said in a post on social media, adding that a “full payload” of bombs had been dropped on Fordo, the heavily fortified underground facility in Iran that is critical to its nuclear program. “All planes are safely on their way home.”
The three sites that Mr. Trump said were hit on Saturday night included Iran’s two major uranium enrichment centers: the mountain facility at Fordo and a larger enrichment plant at Natanz, which Israel struck several days ago with smaller weapons. The third site, near the ancient city of Isfahan, is where Iran is believed to keep its near-bomb-grade enriched uranium, which inspectors saw just two weeks ago.
Three senior Iranian officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said that they believed American forces had bombed Fordo and Natanz at around 2.30 a.m. in Iran.
After a week of mixed signals, President Trump, who has long vowed to steer America clear of overseas “forever wars,” authorized U.S. forces to strike Iran’s most heavily fortified nuclear installation, deep underground. The goal, American and Israeli officials have said, is to prevent Iran from building a nuclear bomb.
For days, Mr. Trump had been weighing whether to provide Israel the powerful munitions needed to destroy Iran’s deeply buried nuclear enrichment facilities, at an installation known as Fordo. Only American bombs known as bunker busters are believed up to the job, and only American aircraft can deliver them.
Israel and Iran, sworn enemies for decades, have been exchanging attacks since Friday, when the Israelis launched a surprise assault that targeted Iranian infrastructure, including nuclear installations, and military leaders. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his nation had no choice but to act if it wanted to stave off a nuclear “holocaust.”
Iran responded with missile barrages of its own, as well as offers to resume negotiations over its nuclear development program.
Just days ago, the Trump administration appeared intent on distancing itself from the conflict. “We are not involved in strikes against Iran and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared.
But Mr. Trump, when he was not urging peace talks, began sounding increasingly belligerent.
On Tuesday, he went so far as to make a direct threat against Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, saying that “we know exactly where” he is and calling him “an easy target.” He said, “We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least for now.” But he warned, “Our patience is growing thin.”
Mr. Trump called for Iran’s “complete surrender.”
In what was considered a sign that the U.S. government was nearing a decision, Mr. Trump cut short his attendance on Monday at the Group of 7 summit in Alberta, Canada, and flew back to Washington — surprising American allies assembled for the meetings.
“Much was accomplished, but because of what’s going on in the Middle East, President Trump will be leaving tonight after dinner with Heads of State,” the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said in a statement.
Here is what else to know:
Saturday strikes: Israel launched a wave of airstrikes against missile sites, a nuclear facility and munitions storage sites in Iran, while Iran fired a barrage of ballistic missiles and launched drones into Israel. The southern region that Israel targeted in Iran would likely have been on any potential flight path used by U.S. warplanes on the way to strike Fordo.
White House Chronicle, Farewell to the U.S. as the World’s Top Science Nation, Llewellyn King, above, June 21, 2025. When I asked John Savage, the retired co-founder of the Department of Computer Science at Brown University, what the essential ingredient in research is, he responded with one word: “Passion.”
It is passion that keeps scientists going, dead end after dead end, until there is a breakthrough.
It is passion that keeps them at the bench or staring into a microscope or redesigning an experiment with slight modifications until that “eureka moment.”
I have been writing about science for half a century. I can tell you that passion is the bridge between daunting difficulty and triumphant discovery.
Next comes money: steady, reliable funding, not start-and-stop dribbles.
It is painful to watch the defunding of the nation’s research arm by roughly a third to a half; the wanton destruction of what, since the end of World War II, has kept the United States the premier inventor-nation, the unequaled leader in discovery.
It is dangerous to believe the status quo ante will return when another administration is voted in, maybe in 2028.
You don’t pick up the pieces of projects that are, as they were, ripped from the womb and put them back together again, even if the researchers are still available — if they haven’t gone to the willing arms of research hubs overseas or other careers.
The work isn’t made whole again just because the money is back. The passion is gone.
There are crude, massive reductions in funding for research and development across the government — with the most axing in the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Department of Energy (DOE). But the philistines with their metaphorical chainsaws have slashed wildly and deeply into every corner of science, every place where talented men and women probe, analyze and seek to know.
This brutal, mindless slashing isn’t just upending careers, causing projects to be abandoned in midstream, destroying the precious passion that is the driver of discovery, but it is also a blow against the future. It is a turn from light to dark.
The whiz kids of DOGE aren’t cost-cutting. They are amputating the nation’s future.
James Greenberg Opinion via Facebook, MAGA is more than a political movement, James Greenberg, June 20, 2025. It’s a symbolic system that answers dislocation with identity, confusion with clarity, and loss with belonging. If we want to push back, we need more than critique. We need a new story—and the civic infrastructure to support it.
When we talk about MAGA, the temptation is to simplify—reduce it to ignorance, racism, authoritarianism. And while those elements are undeniably present, that simplification blinds us to the layered reality of what we’re facing. MAGA is not a single ideology. It’s a fractured but potent worldview, stitched together out of fear, loss, and an offer of belonging.
There are openly authoritarian factions: white Christian nationalists, neo-Nazis, and political opportunists who see democracy as an obstacle to power. There are loyalists who have traded constitutional principle for partisan control. But beyond that are millions of Americans drawn in by something less clear-cut: a sense that the ground beneath them has shifted and that no one in power seems to notice
. For many, MAGA isn’t about policy at all—it’s about feeling seen.
From an anthropological perspective, MAGA functions as a symbolic system. Its power lies not in legislative detail, but in ritual, narrative, and identity. Flags are flown not just in support of a candidate, but as declarations of meaning. Rallies become performances of grievance and imagined redemption. Slogans operate like shared prayers. It’s not politics in the traditional sense. It’s belonging in the face of dislocation.This dislocation isn’t imaginary. It’s rooted in real structural shifts. The collapse of industrial jobs, the erosion of social mobility, the fragmentation of public education, the disappearance of local media—all contribute to a pervasive sense of loss.
Add to that climate disasters, housing precarity, and the stripping of rural and working-class communities by extractive economics, and you get fertile ground for stories that promise a return to order—even if that order is cruel.
The “stolen America” narrative—amplified by cable news, talk radio, and algorithmic social media—offers a simple explanation: you are losing because others are taking what’s yours.
It’s a lie, but a compelling one, because it replaces confusion with clarity. It locates blame. It gives identity to those who feel erased.
If we want to counter this narrative, we need more than facts. We need a coherent, grounded, and emotionally resonant alternative—one that offers a place to stand, not just something to reject.
That counter-narrative might begin like this:
But a story is only as strong as the infrastructure that supports it. And this is where we’ve fallen short. Over the past four decades, many of the institutions that once mediated American life—unions, local newspapers, public schools, even churches—have been defunded, privatized, or politically captured. Into the vacuum stepped commercial media, political spectacle, and ideological silos.
The storytellers changed—and so did the story.
We can’t rebuild a democratic culture without restoring its civic infrastructure. That means supporting local organizations that build trust, not division: libraries, mutual aid groups, community centers, labor cooperatives. It means creating spaces where people participate in shared projects that don’t rely on political affiliation—repairing parks, planting gardens, running food banks.
Rebuilding democracy also means widening the circle of belonging. Authoritarian movements draw power by narrowing it—by telling us who counts and who doesn’t, who belongs and who must be cast out.
But if we are serious about renewal, we need a deeper ethic. One that recognizes the interdependence of all people, communities, and even the living world we inhabit. A culture grounded in care—across lines of race, class, faith, geography, and species—isn’t idealistic; it’s necessary.
We cannot meet this moment with sharper divisions. We need a broader sense of connection, one that makes solidarity feel not just moral, but natural.It also means recognizing who carries informal authority in our communities. Teachers, nurses, veterans, clergy, small business owners—these are the people who can reach across narrative divides, not with slogans, but with lived credibility.
We must also shift what we reward. Our current information economy privileges outrage and spectacle. But social capital can be directed elsewhere. Let’s elevate those who mediate, who mentor, who build—those who quietly embody the kind of society we say we want.Democracy doesn’t live solely in Washington. It lives—or dies—in every community. In school boards and union halls, neighborhood councils and library basements. It thrives when we practice it, and withers when we stop showing up.
If we want to resist authoritarian narratives, we can’t wait for national leaders to save us. We have to rebuild the culture and practice of democracy from the ground up—not just as an ideal, but as a lived experience.This doesn’t mean everyone can be reached. Some are too deeply invested in grievance, or too entangled in conspiratorial thinking, to engage in good faith.
But many others are simply trying to make sense of a world that no longer feels coherent. For them, the challenge isn’t persuasion—it’s providing another path to belonging.The story of America is contested, as it always has been. But the storytellers have changed, and the stage has fractured. What we’re witnessing is not just a political fight—it’s a cultural realignment. The real battle is over meaning: who belongs, who decides, and what kind of future is worth building.
If we want to meet this moment, we need more than policy proposals. We need a public narrative rooted in dignity, care, and shared responsibility—and we need the material conditions that make that story believable. The vision is already out there, scattered across movements, communities, and everyday acts of solidarity. The task now is to gather those pieces, name them clearly, and begin again.
New York Times, U.S. Immigration: Judge Blocks Trump’s Tying of Transportation Funds to Immigration Enforcement, David W. Chen, June 21, 2025 (print ed.). Attorneys general in 20 states, most led by Democrats, had sued the administration. Similar suits have been filed over funding for other programs.
A federal judge has temporarily blocked the U.S. Department of Transportation from withholding billions of dollars in funding to states unless they complied with the Trump administration’s demands on immigration enforcement.
A coalition of 20 states, most led by Democrats, filed a lawsuit last month arguing that the administration was usurping Congress’s authority over spending and using that power of the purse to to force states to adopt its policies.
Judge John J. McConnell Jr., the chief judge of the United States District Court for Rhode Island, agreed with the states. In a preliminary injunction issued Thursday, the judge said that their claims “are likely to succeed because the Defendants’ actions here violate the Constitution and statutes of the United States.”
He also said that the states ”face losing billions of dollars in federal funding, are being put in a position of relinquishing their sovereign right to decide how to use their own police officers, are at risk of losing the trust built between local law enforcement and immigrant communities, and will have to scale back, reconsider, or cancel ongoing transportation projects.”
Rob Bonta, the attorney general of California, who is spearheading the litigation, said in a statement that President Trump was acting in an “immoral — and more importantly, illegal” way by treating crucial funding as a “bargaining chip.”
“I’m glad to see the District Court agrees,” he added, “while we continue to make our case in court.”
In a statement posted on X, Sean Duffy, the secretary of transportation, said: “I directed states who want federal DOT money to comply with federal immigration laws. But, no surprise, an Obama-appointed judge has ruled that states can openly defy our federal immigration laws. This is judicial activism pure and simple and I will continue to fight in the courts.”
Immigration law is enacted by Congress and enforced by the federal government. States rebuffing the Trump administration have said that they are limiting state or local cooperation with federal agents enforcing those laws.
Lincoln Square Media, Trump’s Army Parade Was Brought to You by Crypto Bros, June 21, 2025. The military-industrial-influencer complex is alive and well — and sponsored by Dana White.
This week, the Trump administration pushed further into dystopia, mixing corporate sponsorships with military patriotism, gutting Social Security by stealth, and sending ICE to stalk immigrants outside courtrooms in defiance of local law. All while Republicans abandoned their “fiscal hawk” cosplay to usher in a record-setting debt hike — one they hope you’re too busy doomscrolling to notice.
Meanwhile, the Middle East is at war. Again. But this time, the escalation between Israel and Iran is drawing in global powers at breakneck speed. Trump’s second term is starting to feel less like a presidency and more like a live-action rerun of history’s worst decisions.
Saturday’s $45 million military parade celebrating the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary didn’t just honor the troops — it advertised to them. UFC figurehead Dana White, Oracle, Palantir, and Coinbase all helped fund the event, with branding, logos, and product placements embedded into what should have been a solemn national commemoration. Energy drinks flowed freely, logos were beamed across giant screens, and “support” for the military doubled as a marketing pitch. Notably, all the sponsoring entities maintain cozy ties to Donald Trump — personal, political, or financial.
Ethics experts from both parties were appalled. Former Bush ethics chief Richard Painter and Obama adviser Norm Eisen warned that the event blurred — if not outright erased — lines between public office and private enrichment. It’s not just a bad look; it’s potentially illegal under federal regulations that ban using government platforms to promote non-governmental interests. But instead of acknowledging the criticism, the White House doubled down, framing the New York Times’ coverage as an insult to the military.
The message was unmistakable: The Trump administration sees no boundary between governance and grift. Public rituals are for sale, patriotic spectacle is just another sponsorship opportunity, and loyalty to the president buys you airtime on the National Mall. America250, the commission behind the parade, has yet to explain who paid what — but the cost to democracy is already evident.
Hopium Chronicles, Pro-Democracy Advocacy: Dems Need To Get Serious About Partisan Voter Registration - My Conversation With Tom Bonier, Simon Rosenberg, right, June 21, 2025. Starting off sharing a new presentation from our good friend Tom Bonier.
Tom put this presentation together a few weeks ago after all states had reported the vote of every individual voter in the 2024 election (that they voted, not how they voted). From that data, using Target Smart’s database of the vote history of all voters in recent years, Tom has developed new understandings of what happened in 2024.
There is one very big takeway from Tom’s new analysis: Republicans out-registered us from 2020 to 2024 and made the battleground states more Republican. In a very close election, this successful effort to make more Republicans mattered; and it tells us that we simply must make partisan voter registration -- making more Democrats -- a much higher priority in the coming years, particularly as this Republican machine that gave them these advantages is not going away.
The good news is that the new Ken Martin-led DNC is making partisan voter registration a major priority for the first time in decades. Some of the unprecedented support the DNC is providing to the state parties in all 50 states will go to launching party-led voter registration campaigns. For those of you who like to do voter reg work, please contact your state and local Democratic Parties and offered to help them stand up their efforts in your community. It is another way members of our plucky, proud and patriotic community can help us win this fall and in 2026.Subscribed
This is the first public showing of Tom’s presentation, and I will be working with him on ways to make the data and recommendations more accessible. My hope is that we combine his insights with some of what I presented alongside him at a recent gathering of the Democratic State Parties in Little Rock, Arkansas into a series of posts and discussions here at Hopium.
For reference, I’ve put together the highlights of my post-election analysis and recommendations into a single page here on Hopium. What follows is a piece of this analysis, my top 7 takeaways from 2024, something I’ll be updating soon:
1 - It Was A Very Close Election, and We Had Important Wins -- Trump won by 1.5 points and failed to reach 50%. 115,000 votes changing in MI, PA, WI and Harris wins. We picked up a seat in the House and were less than 4,000 votes from making Hakeem Jeffries Speaker. We had important downballot wins in AZ, NC, MI, NV, PA, WI. While we have work to do this was a narrow win not a landslide, and our road back is not insurmountable. I go deeper into all this here.
2 - Finding More Voters, Forging A New Majority - The dramatic gains Trump made with Latinos and young people (particularly young men) unraveled the coalition that had gotten us 51% of the vote on average over the last four Presidential elections. We will need to imagine and build a new majority coalition now and need a concerted party wide effort to make gains with voters of all kinds -- working class, rural, Latinos, young men, etc. As part of this strategy we need to make partisan voter registration a core responsibility of the Democratic Party at all levels once again and not leave this important work to outside, non-partisan groups.
3 - Getting On The Right Side Of Opportunity/Winning The Big Economic Argument: As I wrote the other day, we need a deep and long conversation about how we can win the big economic argument with MAGA in the coming years. Three consecutive Dem Presidents have left the country far better than we found it. Three consecutive GOP Presidents have been economic and societal wrecking balls. We should not be losing the economic argument to these guys, or losing ground with working class voters given our economic track record.
New York Times, Harvard and Trump Restart Talks to Potentially End Bitter Dispute, Michael S. Schmidt and Alan Blinder, June 21, 2025 (print ed.). Details about the discussions emerged after President Trump said the two sides, which have been locked in court battles for weeks, might reach a settlement soon. Among other conditions, the administration wanted Harvard to establish “merit based” hiring and admissions policies, and to see the influence of its faculty curbed.
Harvard University and the Trump administration have restarted talks to potentially settle the acrimonious dispute that led President Trump to wage a far-reaching attack on the school and raised stark questions about the federal government’s place in higher education, according to three people briefed on the negotiations.
The discussions began again this week at a meeting in the White House. At the meeting, Harvard representatives showed White House officials a PowerPoint presentation that laid out measures the school has taken on antisemitism, viewpoint diversity and admissions.
In turn, the White House signaled other steps it would like for Harvard to take on those subjects and later sent a letter laying out conditions that could resolve the conflict, according to one of the people.
It is unclear how Harvard plans to respond to the letter. A university spokesman declined to comment on the matter.
Harvard representatives sought a meeting after other higher education leaders expressed hope that it — on behalf of academia — would re-engage with the administration. And Harvard’s outreach came after Education Secretary Linda McMahon publicly raised the prospect of negotiations with a university she routinely criticized. Harvard officials sensed an opening and suggested a briefing on steps the school has taken in recent years, two of the people said.
It is unclear how close both sides are to a potential deal and the exact terms any final agreement would entail. In a post on Truth Social, Mr. Trump said it was “very possible that a Deal will be announced over the next week or so.”
Two people briefed on the discussions said it was highly unlikely a deal would be reached in the next week.
Harvard has been widely praised by Democrats, academics, its alumni and democracy advocates for fighting the Trump administration. But top Harvard officials, according to two people briefed on the matter, have become increasingly convinced in recent weeks that the school has little choice but to try to strike a deal with the White House.
New York Times, Trump Says He Wants to Fund More Trade Schools. Just Not These, Sydney Ember, June 21, 2025. The Job Corps program has long been the subject of debate, but it is now also a point of contention in the administration’s efforts to pull back the social safety net.
Late last month, the Labor Department sent a letter to dozens of Job Corps centers across the country. Its message was blunt.
“You are hereby notified that the subject contract is being terminated completely,” the department wrote. “You shall begin immediately all work necessary to provide a safe, orderly and prompt shutdown of center operations.”
The instructions threw into jeopardy the future of Job Corps, a Great Society-era job training program designed to help low-income young people enter the work force. Many of the program’s students do not have a high school degree or are homeless. Most live, free of charge, in dorms on Job Corps campuses and learn trades in construction, automotive repair, health care and the like. Its defenders claim it offers a lifeline to disadvantaged youths — some 25,000 are served at the 99 centers told to shut down — and provides an on-ramp to employment.
But the Labor Department published a “transparency report” in April that showed something else: low graduation rates and swelling costs. Using those shortcomings as justification, it ordered a “pause in operations” at the 99 Job Corps centers that are operated by outside contractors.
“The program is no longer achieving the intended outcomes that students deserve,” Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said in a statement announcing the shutdown.
The abrupt decision reignited a longstanding debate over the program’s merits and effectiveness. It also created a new point of contention in President Trump’s efforts to cut costs by dismantling elements of the social safety net. As Congress debates a budget bill that would reduce funding for federal anti-poverty programs such as Medicaid and food benefits, the White House is also proposing that the Job Corps, with its nearly $1.8 billion budget, be eliminated.
In addition, the department’s action stoked a power struggle between Congress and the president. Almost immediately, Job Corps became the subject of testy exchanges on Capitol Hill, during which members of Congress grilled Ms. Chavez-DeRemer on her decision. In a sharply worded letter, Democratic senators noted that funds had been appropriated for the program and reminded the secretary “of your obligation to faithfully implement the law.”
The National Job Corps Association, a trade group of Job Corps operators and other business, labor and community organizations, filed a lawsuit arguing that the Labor Department did not have the power to cancel Job Corps entirely and stating that “shuttering Job Corps will have disastrous, irreparable consequences, including displacing tens of thousands of vulnerable young people.” On Tuesday, the judge in the case extended a temporary order preventing the administration from closing Job Corps until next Wednesday.
New York Times, News Analysis: How Trump Treats Black History Differently Than Other Parts of America’s Past, Erica L. Green, June 21, 2025 (print ed.). Since taking office in January, President Trump has tried to reframe the country’s past involving racism and discrimination by de-emphasizing that history or at times denying that it happened.
On the occasion of Juneteenth, a day that commemorates the end of slavery, President Trump took a moment to complain that the national holiday even exists.
“Too many non-working holidays in America,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media, just hours after his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, made a point of noting that White House staff had shown up to work.
The president’s decision to snub Juneteenth — a day that has been cherished by generations of Black Americans before it was named a federal holiday in 2021 — is part of a pattern of words and actions by Mr. Trump that minimize, ignore or even erase some of the experiences and history of Black people in the United States. Since taking office in January, he has tried to reframe the country’s past involving racism and discrimination by de-emphasizing that history or at times denying that it happened.
Government websites have been scrubbed of hundreds of words, including “injustice” and “oppression.” Federal agencies eliminated or obscured the contributions of Black heroes, from the Tuskegee Airmen who fought in the military, to Harriet Tubman, who guided enslaved people along the Underground Railroad. School libraries were purged of writings by pre-eminent Black authors like Maya Angelou. Mr. Trump has assailed the Smithsonian Institution for what he characterized as “divisive, race-centered ideology” in its exhibits on race. He ordered the renaming of monuments to honor Confederate soldiers who fought to preserve slavery.
Meidas Touch Podcast, Commentary, Threat Posed By Trump, Ben Meiselas, This week, I sat down withCongressman Seth Moulton, a decorated Marine veteran and a member of Congress willing to speak bluntly about the authoritarian threat posed by Donald Trump.
We opened with Trump’s bizarre, short-lived appearance at the G7 summit in Alberta, where he lasted just 12 hours before bailing early to avoid meeting President Zelensky. Instead of strengthening alliances or coordinating with leaders on critical 
global security issues, Trump acted like a full-blown Kremlin mouthpiece, rambling about how the G7 should “really be the G8” and praising Putin at every turn.
As Congressman Moulton, right, put it: “Trump sounded like a Kremlin spokesman. He genuinely prefers the company of dictators to our allies.” And it shows. Just after Trump's cozy call with Putin, Russia launched a brutal attack on Ukraine’s energy grid. Meanwhile, Trump posted unhinged “orders” telling 9 million people in Tehran to evacuate, like a wannabe general playing war on Truth Social.
We also discussed Trump’s repulsive “dictator parade” through Washington, D.C.—a $40 million taxpayer-funded embarrassment meant to glorify himself while co-opting the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary. Congressman Moulton, who served multiple combat tours in Iraq, didn’t mince words: “The military hates parades,” adding, “If one leader, one political party controls the military, then you don't have a fair and equal democracy anymore.”
Even more alarming? Moulton shared that active-duty Marine officers are quietly discussing resigning their commissions. Why? Because they believe Trump’s latest orders may be unconstitutional. His advice: “Remember 
your oath.”
This isn’t hypothetical anymore. Trump is using the military as a political weapon, threatening American cities, spreading conspiracy-laced nonsense about “turning everyone trans,” and pushing the nation to the brink.
But we also talked about hope in the form of millions turning out for the No Kings protests across the country, including in small towns like Swampscott and Lynn, Massachusetts, where Moulton spoke.
Can we pause one moment to consider that this is just some of what happened in the last week alone?!
This moment demands all of us. We need courage. We need clarity. And we need to speak out every single day. So thank you for doing just that. Thank you for being part of this community. Thank you for watching these interviews and sharing our videos.
The Hartmann Report, Will we regret Trump being able to use a nuclear weapon? Thom Hartmann, right, June 21, 2025. America confronts two very weird aspects to Trump’s involvement in Netanyahu’s “stay out of jail” attack on Iran.
The first is that Russia — oligarchs friendly with Putin, specifically — built the Bushehr nuclear power reactor in Iran and currently has a contract to build eight more, bringing billions in revenue to Russia, Putin, and his buddy. Those billions could well go up in smoke with regime change in Iran, so it’s entirely possible that Trump’s sudden “two week pause” on deciding to bomb Iran is simply a favor to his owner and handler, Vlad.
After all, they’ve had two phone conversations in just the past few days, according to Trump, following Putin sending him a beautiful large portrait of Trump holding up his fist after being shot at and having his ear splattered with the blood of the man standing beside him who got hit with the bullet.
The second weird take is that an “anonymous” White House official is being quoted over on Fox “News” saying that Trump has not taken dropping a nuke on Iran off the table. Eli Clifton, one of the senior advisers over at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, tweeted, “The US is considering using a nuclear weapon for the first time since Hiroshima and Nagasaki because our client state murdered our Iranian negotiating partner and started a war?”
Is this all a distraction from the Big Brutal Bill like Congressman Mark Pocan asserted on my show this Wednesday? Or a distraction from ICE abuses? Or just more of the bizarre reality show that Trump’s running because that’s the only thing he’s ever successfully done in his life? Stay tuned…
— A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals backed Trump’s National Guard deployment to LA: what will this mean for other Blue cities Trump is trying to provoke to riot? The three judges — two of them Trump appointees — defied common sense and the reality we could all see live on TV and ruled that LA did not, in fact, have the ability to control the disturbances outside the Federal Building. Therefore, they argued, Trump could deploy the California National Guard in defiance of the governor, mayor, chief of police, and sheriff all asserting they had everything under control. Trump and his fascist minions are hell-bent-for-leather to create a large enough disturbance that they can invoke emergency powers to nationalize city government and end the power of elected officials to run the city. If you think that sounds too weird or even impossible, remember that that’s almost exactly what Republican Michigan Governor Rick Snyder did (without the riot) to Detroit, Flint, Benton Harbor, Allen Park, Pontiac, Highland Park and other cities in that state, replacing elected mayors and city councils with corporate-friendly “emergency managers” who then turned the resources of those cities to the benefit of Snyder’s political donors (who then managed to poison the children of Flint). There’s precedent here and — particularly since Trump has now promised to send troops into other Blue cities — we ignore it at our own peril.
— Look out! Retirees being forced into privatized, for-profit, rip-off Medicare “Advantage” plans. New York’s top court just ruled that the sordid deal NYC’s corrupt Mayor Adams worked out with a Medicare “Advantage” provider to force that city’s ~250,000 retirees off real Medicare and into the insanely profitable “Advantage” scam plans was completely legal. The so-called “Advantage” plans are generating hundreds of billions in profits for insurance companies — for many, it’s their primary profit center now — and some of that money is being recycled into “lobbying” for schemes like this one, leaving workers screwed, particularly when they get seriously ill and the “Advantage” providers begin denying payments for care. Republicans won’t do a thing about these scams because they’re also on the take from the insurance industry (and George W. Bush invented them), but if Democrats ever get back in control of the federal government they must make real Medicare reform and an end to the “Advantage” scam a top priority.
Politico, Republican plans to cap student borrowing could shatter an everyday profession, Rebecca Carballo, June 21, 2025. One GOP senator said anyone paying more than $100K to go to med school is “making a huge mistake.” But the median cost of attending one is more than double that for the class of 2025.
A series of changes to long-running federal student loan programs tucked into the Republican tax plan has doctors panicked and struggling to find GOP allies.
The Senate education committee’s portion of President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” bill includes a new cap on how much people can borrow for medical school and other professional programs that is well below the sticker price most students are facing. Lawmakers are also proposing to nix a class of federal loans graduate students use to cover housing and other non-tuition expenses.
For low-income and first-generation college students with aspirations of becoming physicians, these plans, if enacted, could squash their dreams, according to medical college leaders. As the full Senate irons out the bill and Trump rattles school finances with funding freezes, doctors’ groups are asking Congress to preserve the more generous loan options or risk a sharp drop in who’s studying medicine — a profession that’s already facing a shortage.
While part of the stress on poorer students comes from the ever-increasing cost of higher education, the bill would likely push more of them toward private loans that require a co-signer, which are out of reach for many, and come with steeper interest rates.
“A lot of our medical schools, mine included, have a lot of first-generation college students. When they come into medical education, more times than not, they don’t have co-signers,” said John L. Hummer, president of Burrell College of Osteopathic Medicine, a school with campuses in New Mexico and Florida for which 81 percent of students depend on the federal Grad PLUS program Republicans are looking to eliminate.
The Senate education tax bill establishes a $200,000 ceiling on federal student loans for professional degrees, like medicine. But the median cost of attending four years of medical school for the class of 2025 is $286,454 for public institutions and $390,848 for private schools, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.Sen. Roger Marshall asks a question at a hearing.
“You’re looking at a person, a first-generation college student, who went to medical school, and didn’t borrow money,” Sen. Roger Marshall said. “I worked my tail off." | Ben Curtis/AP
It’s a range that exceeds the costs many doctors now serving in Congress paid when they earned their degrees. Many did not respond to inquiries from POLITICO about how the One Big Beautiful Bill Act would affect medical school enrollment — and those that did were not sympathetic about student debt.
“You’re looking at a person, a first-generation college student, who went to medical school, and didn’t borrow money,” Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), who sits on the Senate HELP Committee, said. “I worked my tail off. Anyone who is paying more than $100,000 to go to school is making a huge mistake.”
Marshall graduated from the University of Kansas School of Medicine in 1987, when the average in-state tuition for a public medical school nationally was around $4,696. That sum in today’s dollars is about $13,300 — far less than what the Kansas program costs in 2025.
Members of the medical community believe limits on federal loans or steering students to borrow from private lenders will exacerbate a long-running national physician shortage the Association of American Medical Colleges projects could be as high as 86,000 doctors by 2036.
David Bergman, senior vice president of government relations and health affairs at the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine, said students at medical schools his group represents have said it’s been difficult to access private loans. Some lenders, like PNC Bank, hold student debt for which about 90 percent of private loans have a co-signer, while others had interest rates as high as 16 percent — nearly twice that of a Grad PLUS loan.
“The consequence of all this, of course, is that it’s the low-income students who are going to suffer the most,” Bergman said. “They may not have great credit, so then they may not be able to get the loans. Or they may get higher rate loans that put them further in debt.”
One former Trump administration official shares this concern.
“I do worry about the assumption that the private sector is going to step in,” said Diane Jones, a former Education Department official from Trump’s first term. “Maybe they would, but I’m not sure they would step in to make loans available to low-income students.”
He quickly earned enough to afford a seven-bedroom, lagoon-front mansion just north of Palm Beach in 2022 — a short drive from
The Hartmann Report, Astonishing: Give Trump a million dollars & you get to become an Army officer, complete with a uniform & everybody must salute you! Thom Hartmann, right, June 21, 2025.
You, too, can play warrior if you’re a large enough Trump donor! Hegseth’s Army just rolled out a new program called “Detachment 201: The Army’s Executive Innovation Corps” that says its goal is to “fuse cutting-edge tech expertise with military innovation.” That bullshit-speak for “we’re going to give tech billionaire Trump donors an officer’s commission and a uniform.” So far four tech moguls have jumped at the opportunity to strut around in uniform with Lieutenant Colonel’s silver oak leaves on their shoulders, forcing enlisted and inferior officers to snap to attention and salute them, and every one of their companies have shoveled at least a million into one of Trump’s slush funds. This is Kristi Noem-level corruption and cosplaying, funded with your tax dollars.
— Geeky Science. Will Children born now live in a world where the US can only produce half as much of its key food crops? Global warming takes a big bite out of crop yields, in part because of heat and in part because of weather extremes including droughts and flooding. A new eight-year-long study of the issue by the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability looking at six crops — maize/corn, soybeans, rice, wheat, cassava and sorghum — in more than 12,000 regions across 54 countries found that as warming continues it’ll devastate our ability to grow all of them except rice. The United States, they predict, could see as much as a 50% drop in production. This is particularly dangerous since these six crops represent about two-thirds of all the calories consumed by humans planet-wide. The consequences of fossil fuel executives and their paid-off Republican shills lying to us about climate change for a half-century are starting to come home to roost in a serious and deadly way.
The Hartmann Report, Bob Kennedy and his anti-vaccine freaks were just caught lying to Congress again about the COVID-19 vaccine, just as a new variant touting a “razor-blade sore throat” arrives,Thom Hartmann, right, June 21, 2025. NewsGuard Reality Check has again busted Kennedy and his anti-vax cultists for lying about scientific research.
This time, they claimed that getting the Covid vaccine increases chances of miscarriage and placental blood clots, citing 
two peer-reviewed published studies.
News Guard reached out to the authors of those studies and they called out Kennedy’s people’s lies, saying they’d never said any such things and that the actual science proves that getting Covid vaccines actually helps prevent Covid-caused miscarriages and blood clots. Republicans and the truth continue to operate in different universes.
June 20
New York Times, Record Debt Limit Increase Would Break Republican Precedent, Alan Rappeport, June 20, 2025 (print ed.). A proposed $5 trillion debt limit increase would underscore the ideological flexibility that many Republicans are willing to embrace when they are in power.
For years, Republicans have warned about the government’s reliance on borrowed money to pay its bills. That stance has often led to standoffs over raising the nation’s borrowing cap, with Republicans insisting that any increase in America’s so-called debt limit be paired with spending reductions.
This year, the party of fiscal conservatism is poised to discard that philosophy as Republicans prepare to press ahead with domestic policy legislation that combines nearly $4 trillion in tax cuts with a $5 trillion increase to the debt limit. An increase of that magnitude would be a record and underscore the ideological flexibility that many Republicans are willing to embrace when they are in power.
G.O.P. lawmakers are prepared to push through the debt limit increase with only votes from their party, through a budget process called reconciliation. That is making it harder for Republicans to maintain their fiscal hawk credibility, prompting some resistance from a few lawmakers who have warned that they may not vote for the bill if it includes such a large increase in the borrowing cap.
The national debt is approaching $37 trillion. This week, Senate Republicans unveiled legislation that would raise the debt limit by $5.1 trillion, higher than the $4 trillion increase that House Republicans voted for in their bill last month. Such an increase would likely extend the nation’s ability to borrow into 2028.
Most economists and analysts welcome a reprieve from debt limit brinkmanship that has destabilized the economy in recent years. However, raising the debt limit along with legislation that is projected to add $3 trillion to the national debt over a decade suggests that lawmakers are overlooking the nation’s long-term fiscal problems.
New York Times, ‘Little Lobbyists’ Urge Senators to Oppose Trump’s Bill Cutting Medicaid, Megan Mineiro and Margot Sanger-Katz, June 20, 2025 (print ed.). Children with disabilities and their parents who rely on the health insurance program took to Capitol Hill this week to warn that the proposed reductions could be ‘devastating.’
Landry Bell, a 1-year-old boy who was born with Down syndrome, wriggled and smiled in his big sister’s lap on the floor outside Republican Senator Mike Lee’s office this week as he took a break from going office to office with his mother while she explained how cuts to Medicaid would devastate their family.
Wearing a bright blue T-shirt emblazoned with the words “Little Lobbyists,” Landry was among a group of children with serious medical needs who crisscrossed the Capitol with their parents urging senators to vote “no” on the sprawling Republican bill carrying President Trump’s agenda. The legislation would cut deeply into Medicaid to help pay for large tax cuts that would benefit businesses and the richest Americans.
The Senate version of the legislation would make even more aggressive cuts to Medicaid than the version of the legislation that passed the House last month. Those proposed reductions, and the elimination of some clean-energy tax credits, are among the most contentious provisions driving debate on the bill among Republicans, as party leaders push to complete it and send it to Mr. Trump’s desk within weeks.
Lawfare, Armed Conflict Foreign Relations & International LawThe Law of Going to War With Iran, Scott R. Anderson, June 20, 2025.
Right or wrong, the executive branch likely thinks Trump has the legal authority to do it—at least until Congress or the courts say otherwise.
Last week, Israel launched a massive military campaign against Iran aimed (among other possible objectives) at crippling its nascent nuclear program, which Israel has long viewed as an existential threat. It’s a step that Israel has repeatedly threatened but never followed through on, in part due to objections by the United States.
The possibility that the United States might engage in military action against Iran is not new. During Trump’s first term in office, it was a perennially debated possibility—one that came to partial fruition in the 2020 targeting of Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani. But it is nonetheless causing an understandable stir. Trump’s own advisers and political allies are sharply split on the issue, with some conventional conservatives—many of whom have long pushed for regime change in Iran—urging Trump to back Israel while key members of his ascendant populist movement oppose it as unnecessary and unwise international interventionism, along the lines of the much-maligned 2003 U.S. military intervention in Iraq.
At this complex intersection of competing interests, fidelity to the law, both domestic and international, is likely to be just one consideration among many to shape the Trump administration’s response—and, in reality, probably not the most important one.
The traditional postures adopted by Congress and the federal courts give the executive branch an immense amount of discretion in interpreting its own legal authority to use military force, which it has done quite permissively. These interpretations are not necessarily correct as a legal matter, but they are what will inform any U.S. military operations unless and until they are superseded by Congress or corrected by the federal courts.
As a result, until circumstances compel the other branches of government to adjust their posture—and ongoing efforts in Congress arguably aim to do just that—the executive branch is unlikely to see itself as legally constrained from participating in Israel’s military campaign against Iran, if Trump ultimately opts to do so.
June 19
Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller, flanked by several federal agents who are holding his handcuffed arms behind his back. Two of them are wearing masks, and other people behind them are holding up their phones to record the incident.Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller, was arrested on Tuesday by federal agents at an immigration courthouse. (Associated Press photo by Olga Fedorova via the New York Times). Shown below a collage of photos showing federal agents man-handlling California's senior U.S. Senator, Democrat Alex Padilla, before forcing him to the floor and handcuffing him as he tried to ask a question at a press conference held by U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, shown also, in a Los Angeles federal office building that housed Padilla's district office suite.
New York Times, Images of Handcuffed Democrats Start to Pile Up in Trump’s Crackdown, Katie Glueck, June 19, 2025 (print ed.). Federal agents have arrested a growing number of the party’s elected officials, fueling liberal outrage and conservative accusations that Democrats are carrying out publicity stunts.
A United States senator forced to the floor and handcuffed by federal agents for interrupting a news conference. A mayor taken into custody by masked officials in military-style fatigues. A political candidate pushed against a wall and handcuffed in a dispute at animmigration courthouse.
With tensions rising over President Trump’s mass deportation policies, the government crackdown is extending to the political opposition.
As Democrats struggle to push back against the administration, federal agents have arrested or clashed with a growing number of the party’s elected officials. The scenes of chaos reflect the tinderbox nature of this political moment, and the expanding national battles over due process, the rule of law and the system of checks and balances.
“This is executive authority, especially in the Department of Homeland Security, running out of control,” said Senator Tina Smith, a Minnesota Democrat. “Do the members of Congress need security details to defend themselves from the executive branch? God, I hope not.”
The most recent instance came on Tuesday, when Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller and a mayoral candidate, was arrested at an immigration courthouse in Lower Manhattan as he tried to escort a migrant whom agents were seeking to arrest.
The Department of Homeland Security suggested that Mr. Lander, who has trailed in polls of the mayoral race, was seeking to “undermine law enforcement safety to get a viral moment,” and said that he had assaulted law enforcement, claims he denied after his release later Tuesday.
Certainly, plenty of politicians over the years have gotten themselves arrested in an effort to draw attention to themselves or their cause. Many elected Democrats have rushed to show how fiercely they are opposing Mr. Trump’s administration, and have been rewarded for doing so by the party’s base. Accusations of grandstanding flowed in quickly from Republicans on Tuesday.
“Stop using this as a means of self promotion in an effort to make yourself relevant in advance of an election,” Representative Mike Lawler, a New York Republican, wrote on social media.
But to many Democrats, the images of the suit-and-tie-clad Mr. Lander being manhandled showed a chilling turn in the country’s politics.
New York Times, Europe Pushes for De-escalation After Nearly One Week of War, Adam Rasgon, David E. Sanger, Natan Odenheimer and Jim Tankersley, June 19, 2025. ‘There was a massive boom’: A doctor recounts the missile strike on an Israeli hospital. Tehran residents describe the turmoil of living in a city under attack.
European officials are making a diplomatic push to de-escalate the conflict between Israel and Iran after nearly a week of deadly fighting, even as Israel’s defense minister warned on Thursday that the country’s military would intensify its strikes on “strategic targets” in Iran.
After days of back-channel discussions, the Europeans, who have been effectively sidelined since the war started, are now trying to exert what limited leverage they have as weapons suppliers or potential peacemakers to try to end the war.
At talks in Geneva on Friday, they are expected to urge the Iranians to return to negotiations, even as President Trump mulls the possibility of American military action against Iran. The meeting would be the first formal gathering between Iranian and Western officials since Israel began attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities.
The diplomatic efforts came as the Israeli military launched a wave of strikes on Thursday against targets in Iran, including a nuclear complex. Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, said the country would step up its attacks on Iran to “remove the threats to the state of Israel,” after a barrage of Iranian missiles hit several locations, including a major hospital complex in southern Israel.
New York Times, Iran’s Supreme Leader Threatens ‘Irreparable Damage’ if U.S. Joins War, Isabel Kershner, David E. Sanger and Ephrat Livni, June 19, 2025 (print ed.). Ayatollah Ali Khamenei rejected President Trump’s call for an “unconditional surrender” and vowed to “stand firm,” as signs grew that the United States was considering joining Israel’s bombardment of Iran.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Wednesday dismissed President Trump’s threats and rejected his call for an “unconditional surrender,” adding to fears of a wider conflagration in the Middle East.
“Intelligent people who know Iran, the nation and the history of Iran will never speak to this nation in the language of threats, because the Iranian nation cannot be surrendered,” he said in a televised statement, according to Iranian state media. “The Americans should know that any U.S. military intervention will undoubtedly be accompanied by irreparable damage.”
His remarks on the sixth day of the war were a defiant response to Israel and to President Trump, who has suggested that the United States could join Israel’s bombing campaign against Iran’s nuclear program.
Any potential U.S. military strike would likely have a much more devastating impact on Iran’s nuclear program than Israel can wreak alone, and Israel has been pressing for the U.S. military to assist its efforts.
Mr. Trump has long maintained that he opposes getting involved in foreign wars and expressed hopes for a nuclear deal with Iran. But he said on Tuesday that “our patience is wearing thin.”
Israel continued to pummel Iran in the early hours of Wednesday. More than 50 Israeli warplanes attacked targets across the Iranian capital, according to the Israeli military, which said that a nuclear centrifuge plant was among the targets. The Iranian authorities did not immediately comment on the claims, though the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog said it had information suggesting that two centrifuge production facilities had been hit.
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: June 18 [Juneteenth and American Freedoms], Heather Cox Richardson, right, June 19, 2025. Tomorrow is the federal holiday honoring Juneteenth, the celebration of the announcement in Texas on June 19th, 1865, that enslaved Americans were free.
That announcement came as late as it did because, while General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant of the U.S. Army on April 9, 1865, it was not until June 2 that General Edmund Kirby Smith surrendered the Trans-Mississippi Department, the last major army of the Confederacy, to the United States, in Galveston, Texas. Smith then fled to Mexico.
Seventeen days later, Major General Gordon Granger of the U.S. Army arrived to take charge of the soldiers stationed in Texas. On that day, June 19, he issued General Order Number 3. It read:
“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor.”
Granger’s order referred to the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863 (stated by President Lincoln, shown above), which declared that Americans enslaved in states that were in rebellion against the United States “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons.” Granger was informing the people of Galveston that, Texas having been in rebellion on January 1, 1863, their world had changed. The federal government would see to it that, going forward, white people and Black people would be equal.
Black people in Galveston met the news Order No. 3 brought with celebrations in the streets, but emancipation was not a gift from white Americans. Black Americans had fought and died for the United States. They had worked as soldiers, as nurses, and as day laborers in the Union army. Those who could had demonstrated their hatred of enslavement and the Confederacy by leaving their homes for the northern lines, sometimes delivering valuable information or matériel to the Union, while those unable to leave had hidden wounded U.S. soldiers and helped them get back to Union lines.
But white former Confederates in Texas were demoralized and angered by the changes in their circumstances. “It looked like everything worth living for was gone,” Texas cattleman Charles Goodnight later recalled.
In summer 1865, white legislators in the states of the former Confederacy grudgingly ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished enslavement except as punishment for a crime. But they also passed laws to keep freedpeople subservient to their white neighbors. These laws, known as the Black Codes, varied by state, but they generally bound Black Americans to yearlong contracts working in fields owned by white men; prohibited Black people from meeting in groups, owning guns or property, or testifying in court; outlawed interracial marriage; and permitted white men to buy out the jail terms of Black people convicted of a wide swath of petty crimes, and then to force those former prisoners into labor to pay off their debt.
Congress refused to readmit the southern states with the Black Codes in place, and in December 1865, Americans added the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Six months later, Texas freedpeople gathered on June 19, 1866, to celebrate the coming of their freedom with prayers, speeches, food, and socializing.
By then, congressmen had turned to guaranteeing that states could not pass discriminatory laws against citizens who lived in them, laws like the Black Codes. In 1866 they wrote and passed the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Its first section established that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” It went on: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
That was the whole ball game, the one that would put teeth behind the principles in the Emancipation Proclamation. The federal government had declared that a state legislature—no matter who elected it or what voters called for—could not discriminate against any of its citizens or arbitrarily take away any of a citizen’s rights. Then, like the Thirteenth Amendment before it, the Fourteenth declared that “Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article,” strengthening the federal government.
Rather than accept this new state of affairs, leading white southerners decided they would rather remain under military rule. So in March 1867, Congress passed the Military Reconstruction Act, calling for southern voters to elect delegates to new state constitutional conventions. And, for the first time in U.S. history, they mandated that Black men could vote in those elections.
Celebrations of Juneteenth declined during the Jim Crow years of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but as Black Americans from the South spread across the country during and after World War II, they brought Juneteenth with them. By the 1980s, Texas had established Juneteenth as a state holiday. Other states followed, and in 2021, thanks in part to pressure from activist Opal Lee, Congress made Juneteenth a federal holiday and President Joe Biden signed the measure into law.
But throughout our history, those determined to preserve a government that discriminates between Americans according to race, gender, religion, ability, and so on, have embraced the idea that true democracy means reducing the power of the federal government and centering the power of the state governments, where voters—registered according to state laws—can choose the policies they prefer…even if they are discriminatory. They have also insisted, as former Confederates did in the late 1860s, that any laws protecting the equal rights of minorities discriminate against the white majority.
In 2025, as the Trump administration echoes those people, celebrations of Juneteenth are being cut back or even canceled. Corporate sponsors and local governments, as well as the national government, are pulling back their support for festivals and Juneteenth events.
Our history matters. Juneteenth is the celebration of a new nation, one that would honor the equality of all Americans—and one that, 160 years after it was established, we are in danger of losing as those in power set about rewriting the record.
New York Post, Elon Musk rips Trump personnel director Sergio Gor as ‘a snake,’ Steven Nelson and Diana Glebova, June 19, 2025. Elon Musk, shown above in a file photo, 
blasted President Trump’s personnel director Sergio Gor following The Post’s report that Gor failed to submit to a standard background check despite serving as the administration’s top vetter of political appointees.
“He’s a snake,” the former Department of Government Efficiency leader tweeted late Wednesday.
Gor, 38, allegedly instigated Trump’s falling-out with Musk, 53, this month by convincing the president to yank the nomination of the SpaceX CEO’s personal friend Jared Isaacman to lead NASA shortly before the Senate was due to confirm him.Elon Musk at a press conference, wearing a black hat with "DOGE" on it. 6Elon Musk tore into President Trump’s top personnel official as a “snake” Wednesday. Francis Chung/POOL via CNP/INSTARimages.com
Musk and Trump have taken steps to walk back a stunning bout of insults that peaked June 5 when the billionaire endorsed Trump’s impeachment and the president threatened to cancel “Billions and Billions of dollars” of federal contracts for Musk’s companies.
Gor’s role in the clash outraged some of Trump’s key advisers who viewed him as allowing personal grievances to put the president’s political agenda at risk.Explore MoreJuror Janet Jimenez speaking in TV interview, left; at top right, Karen Read in blue suit in courtroom; bottom right, defense attorney David Yannetti in courtroom. Karen Read juror reveals she was leaning toward a guilty verdict— and the moment that changed her mindcomposite image suspect amanda kempton left in black slacks and orange sweatshirt with her hands cuffed in front of her being walked into court; right kempton smiling at the camera in a social media shot; inset victim sara burack Va. woman nabbed in hit-and-run death of hot shot real estate agent thought she hit traffic cone, choked back tears in courtGraphic of Nancy Pelosi with sunglasses with dollar signs on and money flying around her Pelosi raked in millions last year — and her portfolio out-performed every large hedge fund with stunning returnsDonald Trump and another man in tuxedos give thumbs up. A portrait of a man in a tennis outfit hangs in the background. 6Personnel director Sergio Gor allegedly helped cause Musk’s rift with Trump this month. Facebook/Sergio Gor
Musk was Trump’s top financial donor in last year’s election, pouring more than $250 million into the campaign.
Isaacman’s nomination was one of the few that Musk intensely cared about, sources said, and its revocation turned Musk’s tepid criticism of a bill packed with Trump’s campaign promises — including to cut taxes on tips, overtime and Social Security — into outspoken calls to “kill” the legislation, backed by a call to unseat those who vote in favor.President Trump meeting with U.S. ambassadors at the White House. 6Gor convinced Trump to pull the nomination of Musk’s friend Jared Isaacman to lead NASA, purportedly over his donations to Democrats. REUTERS
Gor, tasked with recruiting and vetting more than 4,000 executive-branch appointees, said Isaacman was pulled over his donations to Democrats and that Trump made the final decision.
A number of prominent former Democrats serve in Trump’s administration, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health and human services secretary and Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence.Illustration of a New York Post front page depicting a broken heart with photos of Donald Trump and Elon Musk, headlined "I HATE MY X!" and "Big, beautiful breakup—Trump-Elon bromance explodes into insults, threats." 6Trump and Musk bitterly fought this month before quietly walking back insults.
The presidential personnel chief, meanwhile, did not submit his Standard Form 86, or SF-86, to begin a standard security clearance background check — despite virtually all other White House aides doing so.
The form is typically submitted before officials begin work.
Gor, who has an interim security clearance, has now “completed” the more than 100-page questionaire for a permanent clearance, the White House says, though it’s unclear when he intends to submit it.Elon Musk and Donald Trump walking together.
The Bulwark, Marco Rubio, Velociraptor, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, June 19, 2025. It’s never good to see an opponent learn from his mistakes. So here’s some unsettling news: Like the Jurassic Park velociraptors opening the kitchen door, the White House is learning.
That’s one takeaway from the news yesterday, first reported by the Washington Post, that the administration will resume interviews for student visas for foreign students, but with more stringent requirements. All applicants will now be obliged to make their social media accounts public “to be scrutinized for hostility toward the United States.”
It’s a significant drawdown from the maximum-hostility interim posture the White House announced last month, when it canceled the issuance of all new student visas while it developed the policies announced this week. That change, in turn, came on the heels of the administration’s iron-fisted first iteration of the policy, which involved canceling current students’ visas on often flimsy pretexts before sending masked plainclothes officers to bundle them into unmarked vans and whisk them away.
The new policy represents a canny political retreat from such excesses. On the merits, it’s far more defensible. It’s hard to imagine the median voter objecting to the sentiment: We shouldn’t invite in immigrants, on student visas or otherwise, who openly profess hatred of America.
But while the new policy is less nakedly hostile than the former maximalist one, its impact may prove to be much the same. The State Department cable announcing the change, signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, requires students’ online presences be screened to “identify applicants who bear hostile attitudes toward our citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles; who advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists and other threats to U.S. national security; or who perpetrate unlawful antisemitic harassment or violence.” There’s obviously a massive amount of discretion here, and it’s not clear yet how stringently U.S. embassies and consulates, which are responsible for processing and distributing student visas, will apply the new standards.
But what is clear is that these requirements will greatly increase the administrative burden of the student-visa process. “If everyone has to now have their social media scrubbed for derogatory information,” a State official told the Post, “officers do not have that time.”
Indeed, Rubio’s cable cautioned consulates that they “should consider overall scheduling volume and the resource demands of appropriate vetting” and should schedule fewer student visa cases as necessary.The new policy is thus still a clampdown on the issuance of new student visas—and, therefore, foreign students studying in the United States. Instead of outwardly denying them entry, the government is now just tripping them up with endless red tape.
New York Times, French Lawmaker Says He Was Denied Entry Into the United States, Ségolène Le Stradic, June 19, 2025. Pouria Amirshahi, a leftist member of Parliament, hopes that the decision will be reversed so that he can travel to meet lawmakers to understand life under President Trump.
A French member of Parliament has urged American authorities to reverse a decision to deny him entry to the United States, after he said they rejected his request for a visa to meet with progressive lawmakers and intellectuals about life under the Trump presidency.
Pouria Amirshahi, a member of the Green party, said he had planned to travel to Washington D.C., New York and Boston this month. The trip was supposed to be the first taken by a member of La Digue, or The Dike, a group that he created a month ago with a handful of other leftist and centrist French lawmakers, to “counter the spread of neo-fascism” in liberal democracies.
At a news conference at the French National Assembly on Thursday morning, Mr. Amirshahi said he had told U.S. authorities that the purpose of his trip was to ask lawmakers, activists, professors and journalists to understand “what the new situation was in the country since Mr. Trump came to power.”
June 18.
The Hartmann Report, The Politics of Hate: How Trump Weaponized Our Darkest Instincts, Thom Hartmann, right, June 18, 2025. Why America must confront the corrosive force that Trump is trying to use to tear us apart.
Yesterday, I spoke with you about the importance of our government embracing free speech and not trying to stifle it or intimidate (or deport) people for unpopular political writings. Today, let’s examine the flip side of that argument: hate speech, the power and danger of hate itself, and how we defeat it as Trump tries to use it to manipulate us.
Hate is poison; it never makes anything better. It’s corrosive like an acid, eats away at our empathy and reason, and eventually destroys our very humanity. When nations are consumed by hate — like Germany was in the 1930s, or the American South was during Jim Crow — the result is invariably the destruction of civil society and its replacement with political, economic, and legal systems based in and dependent upon violence.
Hate killed a state legislator in Minneapolis this past weekend, nearly killed Paul Pelosi with a hammer, and fuels the same violent rage that burned through Charlottesville, stormed the Capitol on January 6th, and has been stalking school board meetings and statehouses across America for the past two decades.
Hate brought Senator Alex Padilla, left, to his knees; does anybody believe that if he’d been white he’d have been dragged out like that and beat to the ground? It inspired Senator Mike Lee, below right, and Elon Musk to essentially congratulate a would-be mass murderer. It just arrested the Comptroller of New York City for trying to defend a man seeking asylum in the United States.
Hate blew up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, took down the twin towers on 9/11, and keeps loading the chambers of mass shooters while whispering lies about enemies and conspiracies until blood spills in schools, synagogues, churches, and supermarkets.
So, why does Trump — and why do his followers, including those elected to federal and state office, and his cabinet members — so vigorously embrace hate?
Trump is the first president in American history to explicitly use hate as a campaign tool and then embrace it as the central focus of his rule. He launched his first campaign by calling Mexicans “rapists,” proposed a Muslim ban, called for violence at his rallies, and used dehumanizing language to describe immigrants, women, and political opponents. For Memorial Day, he posted a social media message calling the half of Americans who voted against him “scum.”
This wasn’t political strategy in the traditional sense — it was a revival of something far more dangerous: the politics of hate as a tool for seizing and maintaining power.
New York Times, House Policy Bill Would Add $3.4 Trillion to Debt, Swamping Economic Gains, Tony Romm, June 18, 2025 (print ed.). The updated findings from the Congressional Budget Office amounted to the latest dour report card for the president’s signature legislation.
House Republicans’ sprawling package to cut taxes and slash federal safety-net programs would add about $3.4 trillion to the debt, according to nonpartisan congressional analysts, who reported on Tuesday that the minor gains in economic growth under the bill would not offset its full fiscal impact.
The updated findings from the Congressional Budget Office amounted to yet another dour report card for the president’s signature legislation, which passed the House last month but now faces the prospect of significant revisions to its core components in the Senate.
In its current form, the House Republican bill would extend and expand a set of expiring tax cuts enacted by President Trump during his first term. It would pay for some of those expensive components with deep cuts to federal anti-poverty programs, including Medicaid and food stamps.
The C.B.O. report issued on Tuesday sought to project the ways the bill would interact with federal spending and the U.S. economy, building on its earlier finding that the House-passed measure carried a roughly $2.4 trillion price tag.
The nonpartisan analysts found that the House approach, if signed into law, would deliver a 0.09 percent boost to annual growth rate in the nation’s gross domestic product in the first few years after enactment, compared to current projections.
The budget office said that lower taxes would spur some American families and businesses to spend and invest more. But it also determined that the uptick in economic activity would not be sufficient to cover the costs of the legislation. Even after factoring in spending cuts, the proposal would still add nearly $2.8 trillion to federal deficits over the next 9 years, according to the official tally from C.B.O. The figure grows to about $3.4 trillion if the full costs of federal borrowing are included.
New York Times, The Senate Wants Billions More in Medicaid Cuts, Pinching States, Sarah Kliff and Margot Sanger-Katz, June 18, 2025 (print ed.). Republicans are seeking to limit a tax loophole that gives states more federal matching funds. Many state budgets could be hurt.
The Senate policy bill released Monday would cut billions of dollars more from Medicaid than the earlier, House-passed legislation — in large part by cracking down on a budgeting maneuver used by 49 states that congressional Republicans have called a scam or gimmick.
It does this by limiting Medicaid provider taxes, a loophole that states use to collect more federal matching funds for Medicaid, an insurance program for the poor that covers roughly 70 million Americans.
For decades, taxing providers like hospitals has been a major part of how states pay Medicaid bills, but this tactic has come under scrutiny in Congress this year as Republicans look for ways to help pay for President Trump’s tax cuts.
Cutting provider taxes would probably mean funding shortfalls of hundreds of billions of dollars for states over the next decade, leaving them with budget holes to fill. To offset the losses, states would most likely need to explore cutting other services or raising other taxes.
Wall Street Journal, Exclusive: Trump Privately Approved of Attack Plans for Iran but Has Withheld Final Order, Alexander Ward, Lara Seligman and Michael R. Gordon, June 18, 2025. The president is hoping that threatening to join Israel’s strikes will lead Tehran to abandon its nuclear program
The Bulwark, BREAKING: Trump APPROVED US Attack Plan On Iran, Sam Stein, June 18, 2025. The Wall Street Journal’s Alex Ward joins Sam Stein to break down his bombshell report: Donald Trump privately approved plans to attack Iran but paused before issuing the final order. They dig into the implications of Trump's public messaging and how it serves as a tool for negotiation, while also reflecting on historical precedents that may influence current decisions.
Hopium Chronicles, Pro-Democracy Advocacy, Trump Is Wagging All The Dogs He Can Find (Video), Simon Rosenberg, right, June 18, 2025. Hawley On Trump's Budget Bill: “It’s very bad policy, and it hurts poor people.”
Sharing a recording (above) of a great discussion I had yesterday with journalist Adam Klasfeld for his Substack, "All Rise News." We spent the bulk of the conversation talking about the argument I’ve been advancing that Trump is failing, weak and increasingly unpopular; a big blubbery baby man and anything but a strong man.
In our talk Adam referenced yesterday’s Double TACO post, and two more from last week (here, here) that go deeper into the argument. It’s a very meaty and intense dive into our current moment. Get to it when you can, and paid subscribers should sign up for our Thursday night event here.
A quick summary - other than breaking a lot of things and enriching himself Trump has very few wins he can point to right now.
His economic strategy is slowing the global and US economies, has caused our credit rating to be downgraded, threatens the fiscal integrity of the United States, raises prices on everyone and does not cutting them, and will cause tens of millions to lose their health insurance, tens of millions more will see their health care costs rise and the overall health care system will be dramatically weakened. He promised to end the Ukraine war, bring peace to the Middle East, end the Gaza conflict, 90 trade deals in 90 days, rip Greenland from Europe, make Canada the 51st state - none of that has happened, global leaders are not bending the knee and some are even mocking him to his face while visiting the Oval Office.
He keeps losing in court again and again, badly, and judges are growing far more ambitious in their rulings. He had to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia home. His bestie Elon tore into him, trashed his terrible budget bill and called on him to be replaced as President. No one came to his birthday parade. Rs keep losing and underperforming in elections. His cowardice and indecision has become a global meme - TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out).
His budget bill is wildly unpopular, and struggling to get through Congress. What may be the largest protest movement in American history has formed gainst him. It has become impossible to hide the buffoonery of his Star Wars bar cabinet. He looks terrible. His ties are longer, his pants higher and his Truths more unhinged. He fled the G7 on Monday.
Respected elected officials in America are getting arrested, charged, assaulted and assisniated. Marines are on the streets of an American city. Everything he is doing appears designed to make China and Russia - not America - great again. The circle of defiance to Trump’s agenda of sabotage, plunder and betrayal keeps growing and growing. The world, the American people and reality itself just aren’t bending the knee. Our democracy is proving more resisilient and our people more patriotic than he expected. This thing simply isn’t working as this delusional, vainglorious, sundowning old man thought it would. We, all of us, clearly do not understand how STRONG AND MIGHTY he is.
Two weeks ago Elon launched his multi-day attack on Trump and I think it shook an already struggling White House. The dramatic and completely over the top escalation in Los Angeles came shortly afterwards. Public opinion immediately turned against both the escalation and him. Last week polling on immigration and deportations turned sharply negative. His overall standing came down after weeks of modest recovery. His parade was a bust and millions marched, peacefully, joyfully, powerfully. The polls we’ve received this week confirm this downward trend and he is now polling at the lowest point of his second term. Look at the erosion he’s seen in the groups critical to his election victory:
Their first effort to wag the dog - change the subject - immigration enforcement escalation in Los Angeles and across the country - has so far backfired on Trump. The arrests, assaults and assassinations of Democrats may make them feel STRONG AND MIGHTY but the public is rejecting all this. His numbers keep dropping.
He chickened out on his tough enforcement due to complaints from his supporters over the weekend, but then on Monday he chickened out on his first chickening out and reinstated broad indiscriminate enforcement (a Double TACO!!!!).
The complains from his supporters, Ag and business interests these last few days have been loud and intense: “If we don’t watch out in this country, we’re going to start losing a lot more of our farmers,” said Sen. Jim Justice (R-West Virginia). “It will become a crisis like you can’t imagine, because we owe so much to the American family farm.”
The emerging Senate version of his budget bill - already incredibly unpopular - is somehow worse than the terrible House bill.
Telegraph (London), Maga splits over Trump’s Iran strategy, Cameron Henderson, June 18, 2025 (print ed.). Tucker Carlson sparks rift among supporters who propelled US president to power.
Daniel Davis Deep Dive, BUNKER BUSTER BOMB Myth, MIT Prof. Ted Postol & Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, June 18, 2025 (12:32 mins). The assumption is always we can do whatever we want and we are the best and the strongest. A lot of people think like that in the past and failed miserably.
Democracy Docket, Pro-Democracy Advocacy, Trump is targeting cities to weaponize government against the vote, Marc Elias, June 18, 2025. Donald Trump’s attack on free and fair elections took a dark turn this week
On Sunday night, Trump posted on social media that he wanted stepped-up immigration operations “in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York [because] These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base [and] cheat in Elections.”
Let’s be clear: Trump isn’t targeting these cities because of immigration. He is looking to cripple them as a source of the opposition party’s political power. That is why he called them a “power center,” and it is why he connects them to elections. Trump is laying the groundwork to misuse the federal government to undermine free and fair elections.
Trump repeated his intention again on Monday — while standing with world leaders at the G-7 summit in Canada: “Biden allowed 21 million people to come into our country… Most of those people are in the cities. All blue cities, all Democrat-run cities. And they think they are going to use them to vote. Not going to happen.”
Setting aside his bogus claims, Trump once again makes clear that his main concern is not immigration but rather electoral power. Whether you take Trump literally or seriously, the threat is the same: he is planning to use the force of the federal government to diminish Democratic power and limit its electoral success.
If this were simply another instance of Donald Trump lying about noncitizen voting, I would be less concerned. After all, Trump has been obsessively lying about noncitizen voting for as long as he has run for office. Following the 2016 election, he falsely claimed that if you deducted all the noncitizen votes, he had won the popular vote. He lost that election by 2 million votes.
What makes this far more dangerous is the use of those lies to justify abuse of governmental power. We saw Trump attempt that after the 2020 election, but his team was too disorganized, and enough institutional guardrails existed within his administration to prevent him from succeeding.
We will have no such luck in 2026. Trump has already purged his top advisors of anyone willing to stand up to him and invoke the rule of law or Constitution to limit his actions. His Attorney General is an election denier who will execute whatever plan he and the White House concoct.
With control of Congress in the balance, Trump has already sought to tip the scales in his favor ahead of 2026. His executive order attempting to dictate the rules of elections was fortunately blocked by a court. But his Department of Justice is currently serving as a wingman to the GOP’s voter suppression machine.
New York Times, Social Security’s Finances Erode Further and Could Spell Benefit Cuts, Tara Siegel Bernard and Margot Sanger-Katz, June 18, 2025. The nation’s key program for retiree benefits continues to see financing shortfalls. Unless Congress acts, those drops could lead to payment cuts in eight years.
The Social Security program faces a longstanding financing shortfall that, if left unaddressed, would slash millions of retirees’ crucial monthly benefit payments in just eight years.
The deteriorating financial outlook for the retirement program, which supports roughly 61 million Americans, was released in its annual trustees report on Wednesday. It is now expected to run out of money nine months earlier than previously projected, which means benefits could be reduced by 23 percent if Congress does not act to bolster the program.
That puts the Social Security Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund, which pays retiree and survivor benefits, on schedule to be depleted in 2033, or when today’s 59-year-olds turn 67. At that time, the program will have enough revenue coming in to pay only 77 percent of total scheduled benefits.
The most recent setback was driven largely by a policy change, known as the Social Security Fairness Act, which took effect in January and increased benefits for about 2.8 million government and public sector workers. But there were other factors: Government actuaries now assume that the birthrate will remain lower for longer, while projecting that workers’ compensation would weaken over time as they capture a lower share of the nation’s economic output.
A separate trust fund, which finances Social Security disability benefits for an additional 8.2 million people, is on more stable ground. It will be able to pay all of its bills through 2099, the report said.
The trustees also reported a slightly weaker financial outlook for the trust fund that finances hospital care for Medicare beneficiaries. They expect that that trust fund will be unable to pay all its bills in 2033, three years sooner than it had estimated last year. That change was driven mostly by increased spending on hospital care in 2024, a shift the trustees believe will continue into the next few years.
In their report, the trustees urged lawmakers to address the shortfalls in a timely way so that any changes could be phased in gradually, giving workers and beneficiaries time to adjust.
“Implementing changes sooner rather than later would allow more generations to share in the needed revenue increases or reductions in scheduled benefits,” the trustees said in the report.Editors’ PicksThe Ever-Evolving Juneteenth TableI Want to Use a Co-op as a Pied-à-Terre. Do I Need to Tell the Board?How We Juneteenth
Some policy experts say it’s hard to fully project Social Security’s outlook because the latest report doesn’t reflect many of President Trump’s policies, including his tariff and mass deportation plans, which are expected to worsen the program’s deficits.
New York Times, Sotomayor Writes the Court ‘Abandons’ Transgender Children to ‘Political Whims,’ Abbie VanSickle, June 18, 2025. Justice Sotomayor also read her dissent from the bench, a move typically reserved to emphasize a justice’s extreme displeasure with a decision.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, one of the court’s three liberals, wrote a scathing dissent criticizing her conservative colleagues’ decision to uphold a state ban on some medical treatments for transgender youths.
The justice said that the court had retreated from “meaningful judicial review exactly where it matters most,” adding that “the court abandons transgender children and their families to political whims.”
Justice Sotomayor also took the rare step of reading her dissent from the bench during the opinion announcement on Wednesday, a move typically reserved to emphasize a justice’s extreme displeasure with a decision.
She took issue with the majority’s view that questions about such medical treatments should be resolved by “the people, their elected representatives and the democratic process.” In her 31-page dissent, she argued that “judicial scrutiny has long played an essential role” in guarding against efforts by lawmakers to “impose upon individuals the state’s views about how people of a particular sex (or race) should live or look or act.”
Justice Sotomayor pointed to landmark Supreme Court cases that pushed back against discriminatory laws and policies. She cited United States v. Virginia, the 1996 case in which the court struck down Virginia Military Institute’s male-only admissions policy, along with Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 case that declared state laws prohibiting interracial marriage unconstitutional.
“Those laws, too, posed politically fraught and contested questions about race, sex and biology,” the justice wrote. In the interracial marriage case, she wrote as an example, Virginia had argued that if the court intervened in the matter, it would find itself in a “bog of conflicting scientific opinion upon the effects of interracial marriage, and the desirability of preventing such alliances, from the physical, biological, genetic, anthropological, cultural, psychological and sociological point of view.”
Her dissent was joined fully by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and, in part, by Justice Elena Kagan.
Although justices often include “respectfully” in the essay explaining their dissents, Justice Sotomayor wrote only this: “In sadness, I dissent.”
The Contrarian, Opinon: The Trump vendetta against Harvard: The government isn't acting on national security interests, Stephen Richer, June 17, 2025. It looks like an attempt to further punish Harvard for actions protected by law
The Trump administration is trying to ban international students from coming to Havard and revoke the visas of Harvard’s approximately 7,000 international students and researchers. Though I’m sympathetic to the idea of Making Harvard (more) American Again, that doesn’t seem to be the administration’s goal.
International students make up about 27% of Harvard’s student body. At the Kennedy School of Government (where I am), over 50% of the students are international.
A June 4 executive order aims to “restrict the entry of foreign nationals” to Harvard. The university immediately sued. And the latest chapter in the legal battle took place Monday, when Judge Allison D. Burroughs heard oral arguments on Harvard’s requested injunction against the government.
Six attorneys sat at the counsel’s bench for Harvard. Ian Heath Gershengorn, former acting U.S. solicitor general and current partner at Jenner & Block, argued on behalf of Harvard.
The government had only one attorney present: Tiberius Davis. Davis, who graduated from college in 2017, did a nice job under challenging circumstances, but I found it curious that the government dropped such a big, emotional, high-profile case in the lap of one attorney who might not yet be 30 years old.
Burroughs concluded the hearing by extending the existing temporary restraining order to Monday. She promised she would rule next week on a longer-lasting preliminary injunction against the Trump administration’s planned actions.
The government claims it has a national security interest in acting against Harvard’s international students.
Throughout its opposition brief, the government cited its broad authority to “suspend or restrict the entry of aliens,” and to regulate the “exclusion of aliens” that would be “detrimental to the interests of the United States.”
But here the government isn’t excluding aliens. These international students can enter the United States. They can go to the University of Alabama. They can go to Duke (bleh). They can even go to Columbia University.
They just can’t go to Harvard.
This makes no sense if it is the entrance of the “aliens” that poses national security concerns.
And it is inconsistent with examples the government cited in its brief. On page 18 of its brief, the government noted that it had previously lawfully barred Belarussians and Iranians.
But, again, these bans were predicated on the nationality of the alien, not the endpoint American destination (Harvard).
The government tries to square this round peg by alleging that Harvard “is particularly derelict at monitoring and disciplining foreign students” and that “the entry of certain foreign nationals to study at Harvard presents specific harms, including security risks related to data deficiencies, a breakdown in institutional oversight of visa holders, and increased threats of campus violence.”
But it offers scant information on how it reached these conclusions. And the claims look highly suspicious when, again, Harvard is the only school that these international students cannot attend.
Instead, what it looks like is an attempt to further punish Harvard for various protected-by-law reasons: because Harvard has a lot of liberals, because Harvard didn’t hand over certain information relating to students, because Harvard doesn’t want to quiz all students and faculty on their political affiliations, and because, worst of all, Harvard has defied President Donald Trump.
TVP Media (Poland), ANALYSIS: Protests after Poland’s closest election in decades become a stress test for democracy, Staff Report, June 17, 2025.
Following the official announcement of presidential election results by the State Electoral Commission, reports of voting irregularities have emerged, leading to approximately 30,000 electoral protests being filed with the Supreme Court–a significant increase compared to the 5,800 protests submitted after the 2020 presidential election.
According to a report released by the National Prosecutor’s Office on Wednesday, one polling station mistakenly recorded Trzaskowski’s votes, the centrist mayor of Warsaw and a leading figure in the Civic Coalition–the major ruling coalition group–as belonging to Nawrocki, the conservative president-elect supported by the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party.
In another case, 160 votes intended for Trzaskowski were placed in a sealed package of votes attributed to Nawrocki and subsequently misreported in the official election protocol.
Nawrocki won the presidency by a narrow margin of less than two percent in the runoff held on June 1, receiving nearly 370,000 more votes than Trzaskowski, who is not contesting the final result.
What happens now?
A state prosecutor participated in the recount and confirmed that the mistakes could constitute criminal offences. The case materials will now be sent to the Regional Prosecutor’s Office in Katowice, which will determine whether to open a formal investigation.
While the review of the contested polling stations does not appear to affect the overall outcome of the election, the findings have raised public concern about the transparency of the vote.
Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, addressed the issue on Wednesday following a meeting of the National Security Council, which included the outgoing president, Andrzej Duda, and president-elect Nawrocki. YOU MAY LIKE:PM Donald Tusk has warned against jumping to conclusions. Photo: PAP/Radek Pietruszka
Polish PM says ruling coalition isn’t questioning presidential election resultPolitics
Tusk, leader of the center-left government coalition, said he accepts the official results, but it was in the public interest to ensure there were no doubts.
“It cannot be that anyone – simply because they have suspicions – declares these elections invalid or that they need to be repeated,” Tusk said.
However, he added that citizens must have confidence that every vote was counted correctly.
Tusk added that resolving concerns about the electoral process was essential to maintaining trust in Poland’s democratic institutions. He said he had urged Duda and Nawrocki to support complete transparency and allow the judiciary to do its work without interference.
The Supreme Court is continuing to review other electoral protests.
New York Times, Karen Read Found Not Guilty of Murder in Boyfriend’s Death Outside Boston, Jenna Russell, June 18, 2025A jury cleared Ms. Read of charges related to the 2022 death of John O’Keefe, a Boston police officer, and convicted her only of drunken driving, in a trial that attracted wide attention.
A jury in Massachusetts acquitted Karen Read of murder and manslaughter charges on Wednesday, ending a legal saga that has gripped the Boston area since the death of Ms. Read’s boyfriend, John O’Keefe, a Boston police officer, in January 2022.
Prosecutors had accused Ms. Read, 45, of intentionally hitting Officer O’Keefe with her S.U.V. after an argument, and then leaving him to die in a blizzard.
Ms. Read tearfully embraced her attorneys after the verdict was read in a courtroom in Dedham, Mass., as the cheers of hundreds of her supporters erupted outside the courthouse.
The jury of seven women and five men, who began deliberating last Friday, convicted Ms. Read on one relatively minor charge, operating a vehicle under the influence.
They delivered their verdict almost a year after an earlier trial in the case ended in a mistrial. That jury was unable to reach a consensus after five days of deliberation.
The case attracted a fervent following far beyond Boston, made up of true-crime fanatics and others who were fascinated by the elaborate theory advanced by Ms. Read’s lawyers. They argued that Officer O’Keefe, 46, had been killed at a late-night house party in Canton, Mass., that was hosted by another Boston police officer, and that corrupt investigators covered up the truth and framed Ms. Read for the murder.
Ms. Read, who had worked at an investment firm and taught college finance classes, had pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating a vehicle under the influence of alcohol, and leaving the scene of an accident causing death. If convicted, she would have faced sentences of life in prison for the murder charge, five to 20 years in prison for manslaughter and 10 years for leaving the scene.
New York Times, They Said She Was Home-Schooled. She Said She Was Locked in a Dog Crate, Sarah Maslin Nir, June 18, 2025 (print ed.). A teenage girl fled her home last month after what she said was years of abuse. Prosecutors called what had happened to her “beyond heinous.”
It was dark out when the barefoot teenage girl barreled through the door of Susan Lacey’s cottage in Blackwood, N.J., and released a torrent of words.
She said she had been locked in a dog crate for a year and handcuffed to a toilet and not allowed to eat and didn’t go to school but she did get to take the dogs outside and her stepfather sometimes touched her but she got to listen to music and ate from a bucket but her little sister didn’t have to and she was really, truly Freddie Mercury, from Queen. She giggled.
Ms. Lacey sat her down on the couch and told her to breathe.
It took a moment for Ms. Lacey to recognize her: It was her neighbor’s daughter, and though the girl lived just feet away, she was rarely seen outdoors, and had been home-schooled for the past seven years. She was 18 years old, her hair was shaved close and uneven, and she smelled foul.
Ms. Lacey heated up a corn dog for her as the words kept coming. The girl’s jumbled mix of horrors and non sequiturs about pop music made Ms. Lacey and her adult son, who was visiting, wonder if what she was saying was true.
Then the teenager raised her hand toward her mouth to take a bite of the corn dog. There were marks on her wrists.
Had she tried to harm herself? Ms. Lacey asked. No, the girl replied. For the year she spent locked in the crate, she said, she had often had her hands cuffed behind her back. The cuffs had left scars.ImageSusan Lacey stands in front of her home with her hands clasped in front of her. She has a long ponytail draped on her left side.Susan Lacey, the next-door neighbor of Brenda Spencer and Branndon Mosley. A teenage girl ran to her after escaping from the couple’s home.Credit...Rachel Wisniewski for The New York Times
Now prosecutors say they believe the teenager’s claims of captivity and abuse. Camden County prosecutors have leveled more than 30 criminal charges combined against the girl’s mother, Brenda Spencer, 38, and stepfather, Branndon Mosley, 41, including aggravated assault, criminal restraint, kidnapping and weapons offenses. Mr. Mosley is also facing numerous counts of sexual assault. Both could face up to life in prison if convicted of some of the most serious charges.
In inmate jumpsuits — navy for him, red for her — the two sat silently at their back-to-back detention hearings in the Camden County Hall of Justice late last month as prosecutors presented a disturbing array of evidence of the teenager’s yearslong ordeal. It included her stepfather’s confession to the police detailing the way the couple had imprisoned her in a dog crate, his description of the silver cuffs they had used and how he had shaved her head as a punishment. When asked about the sexual abuse accusations, he had told the police he used to drink a lot.
“He couldn’t recall sexually assaulting her,” Kelly Testa, an assistant prosecutor for Camden County, said in court, “but said that it was possible.”
Ms. Spencer has denied all of her daughter’s accusations, according to the police. Her other daughter, 13, told the police she had not been abused. The couple remains in jail, awaiting trial.
That a girl could vanish, and her abuse go unnoticed for so long, could have implications beyond this case. Prosecutors, in part, blame the lax rules around home-schooling — New Jersey is one of many states with little oversight once a child leaves traditional schooling — for perpetuating her suffering.
“These are beyond horrific, absolutely abominable acts,” Grace C. MacAulay, the Camden County prosecutor, said in an interview after last month’s hearing. “What they did is beyond heinous, and it really is an act that would be analogous to what someone would suffer as a prisoner of war — it is true torture.”
June 17
New York Times, Live Updates: Trump Calls for ‘Unconditional Surrender’ From Iran, Michael D. Shear, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Adam Rasgon, Richard Pérez-Peña and David E. Sanger, June 17, 2025. Evidence continued to grow that the United States was considering joining Israel’s bombing campaign. President Trump threatened Iran’s supreme leader in a social media message.
Here’s the latest.
President Trump on Tuesday called for Iran’s “unconditional surrender,” cited the possibility of killing Iran’s supreme leader and referred to Israel’s war efforts with the word “we” — all apparent suggestions that the United States could enter the war against Iran.
Mr. Trump’s comments, in social media posts, came as Israel has been pressing the White House to intervene militarily in the conflict with Iran to put an end to that country’s nuclear program. The president has long professed opposition to getting involved in foreign wars and has expressed hopes for a negotiated agreement with Iran.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, wants the United States to drop its largest bunker-busting bombs on Iran’s Fordo nuclear site, which lies deep underground. Israel has neither bombs that big nor warplanes big enough to carry them.
In a post on Truth Social, Mr. Trump wrote, “we know exactly where” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, “is hiding,” but added, “we are not going to take him out (kill!), at least for now.” Boasting of Israel’s air superiority, which he suggested was based on American technology, he wrote, “We now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran,” associating himself with Israel’s war effort.
Earlier in the day, Mr. Trump said he was looking for something “better than a cease-fire” between Israel and Iran — “a real end, not a cease-fire.” Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Mr. Trump, who departed Monday, a day early, from a meeting of leaders of the Group of 7 nations in Alberta, Canada, said he wanted Iran to give up while insisting that Tehran abandon any effort to develop nuclear weapons. “I’m not too much in the mood to negotiate,” he added.
Here’s what else to know:
Nuclear site: Israeli airstrikes achieved “direct impacts” on the underground area of the Natanz nuclear site, where Iran enriches uranium, the United Nations’ chief nuclear monitor said on Tuesday, based on new satellite images. That indicates more serious damage than previous assessments of the attack on Friday.
G7 statement: Mr. Trump unexpectedly joined with the leaders of the Group of 7 countries in signing a joint statement on Monday night calling for de-escalation in the Middle East. The statement criticized Iran and backed Israel’s right to defend itself while affirming the importance of protecting civilians. Mr. Trump had refused to sign an earlier draft. New York Times, News Analysis: Trump’s Iran Choice: Last-Chance Diplomacy or a Bunker-Busting Bomb, David E. Sanger and Jonathan Swan, June 17, 2025 (print ed.). Iranian officials have warned that U.S. participation in an attack on its facilities will imperil any chance of the nuclear disarmament deal the president insists he is still interested in pursuing.
President Trump is weighing a critical decision in the four-day-old war between Israel and Iran: whether to enter the fray by helping Israel destroy the deeply buried nuclear enrichment facility at Fordo, which only America’s biggest “bunker buster,” dropped by American B-2 bombers, can reach.
If he decides to go ahead, the United States will become a direct participant in a new conflict in the Middle East, taking on Iran in exactly the kind of war Mr. Trump has sworn, in two campaigns, he would avoid. Iranian officials have already warned that U.S. participation in an attack on its facilities will imperil any remaining chance of the nuclear disarmament deal that Mr. Trump insists he is still interested in pursuing.
Mr. Trump has encouraged Vice President JD Vance and his Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, to offer to meet the Iranians this week, according to a U.S. official. The offer may be well received, and Mr. Trump said on Monday that “I think Iran basically is at the negotiating table, they want to make a deal.”
New York Times, How Trump Shifted on Iran Under Pressure From Israel, Jonathan Swan, Maggie Haberman, Mark Mazzetti and Ronen Bergman, June 17, 2025, President Trump spent the first months of his term holding back Israel’s push for an assault on Iran’s nuclear program. With the war underway, his posture has gyrated as he weighs sending in the U.S. military.
President Trump spent the first months of his term holding back Israel’s push for an assault on Iran’s nuclear program. With the war underway, his posture has gyrated as he weighs sending in the U.S. military.
New York Times, Iran Is Preparing Missiles for Possible Retaliatory Strikes on U.S. Bases, Officials Say, Julian E. BarnesFarnaz FassihiEric Schmitt and Helene Cooper, June 17, 2025. American commanders have put troops on high alert throughout the region as fears of a wider war grow.
Iran has prepared missiles and other military equipment for strikes on U.S. bases in the Middle East should the United States join Israel’s war against the country, according to American officials who have reviewed intelligence reports.
The United States has sent about three dozen refueling aircraft to Europe that could be used to assist fighter jets protecting American bases or that would be used to extend the range of bombers involved in any possible strike on Iranian nuclear facilities.
Fears of a wider war are growing among American officials as Israel presses the White House to intervene in its conflict with Iran. If the United States joins the Israeli campaign and strikes Fordo, a key Iranian nuclear facility, the Iranian-backed Houthi militia will almost certainly resume striking ships in the Red Sea, the officials said. They added that pro-Iranian militias in Iraq and Syria would probably try to attack U.S. bases there.
Other officials said that in the event of an attack, Iran could begin to mine the Strait of Hormuz, a tactic meant to pin American warships in the Persian Gulf.
Commanders put American troops on high alert at military bases throughout the region, including in the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The United States has more than 40,000 troops deployed in the Middle East.
More coverage below.
Politico, Trump abruptly leaves G7 summit after signaling deepening Iran-Israel conflict, Eli Stokols and Adam Cancryn, June 17, 2025 (print ed.).The change of plans added to the sense of uncertainty around the military operation in Iran.
President Donald Trump abruptly announced that he would leave the G7 summit a day early and return to Washington shortly after posting an ominous social media message that appeared to suggest more carnage in Iran.
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt, in a post on X, said that “much was accomplished” during Trump’s meetings on Monday with other leaders at the summit in Canada. But, she continued, “because of what’s going on in the Middle East, President Trump will be leaving tonight after dinner with Heads of State.”
The change of plans only added to the sense of uncertainty around Israel’s ongoing military operation in Iran, which Trump seemed to warn was about to intensify in an ominous and somewhat cryptic social media post after a day of meeting with world leaders.
“Iran should have signed the ‘deal’ I told them to sign. What a shame, and waste of human life,” Trump wrote in a TruthSocial post late Monday. “Simply stated, IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON. I said it over and over again!”
He closed it on an alarming note: “Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran!”
The post came after a long day of meetings with world leaders at the G7 summit, where European officials suggested that the U.S. was holding up a joint statement calling for an end to the burgeoning conflict between Israel and Iran.
It’s not clear what triggered the startling message, casually calling for the evacuation of a city of 10 million people — a warning that came just hours after Israel’s government issued its own evacuation order to citizens in northern Tehran warning them of its expanding campaign.
New York Times, Updates: Minnesota Man Is Charged With Murder of Lawmaker, Ernesto Londoño, Jeff Ernst and Yan Zhuang, June 17, 2025 (print ed.). Vance Boelter was captured late Sunday after a two-day manhunt that put the state on edge. He is expected to face first-degree murder charges in the attacks, which killed a state lawmaker and wounded another.
The largest manhunt in Minnesota’s history came to an end late Sunday when a man accused of assassinating a state lawmaker and shooting another was finally captured, after SWAT teams used drones to track him crawling through a wooded area outside Minneapolis.
The suspect, Vance Boelter, 57, was arrested and charged, concluding an extensive two-day search that rattled Minnesotans. Mr. Boelter surrendered near Green Isle, Minn., a town where he had a home with his wife and children. The police said they searched the area after a resident spotted the suspect on a trail camera.
President Donald Trump greets Russian President Vladimir Putin during Trump's first term at a conference in Japan in June 2019.
New York Times, Trump Renews Embrace of Putin Amid Rift With Allies, Erica L. Green and Zolan Kanno-Youngs, June 17, 2025. President Trump opened his remarks at the Group of 7 gathering of industrialized nations by criticizing the decision to expel Russia from the bloc after Moscow’s 2014 “annexation” of Crimea.
President Trump could have opened by talking about trade. He could have discussed the wars in the Middle East or the long-running, brutal war in Ukraine.
But there was something else that appeared to be top of mind for Mr. Trump during Monday’s meeting in Canada of the leaders of the Group of 7 industrialized nations: President Vladimir Putin of Russia.
“The G7 used to be the G8,” Mr. Trump told reporters, referring to the group’s decision to eject Russia in 2014, after it attacked Ukraine and “annexed” Crimea, a prelude to its full-scale invasion.
He went on to blame former President Barack Obama and former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada for kicking Russia out, and argued that its inclusion in the group would have averted the war in Ukraine. (Mr. Trump was wrong — it was not Mr. Trudeau, but rather Stephen Harper, who was the Canadian prime minister at the time of Russia’s expulsion.)
“I would say that was a mistake,” Mr. Trump said, “because I think you wouldn’t have a war right now.”
And with that, Mr. Trump’s troubled history with the alliance repeated itself. When he attended the summit the last time it was held in Canada, in 2018, he called for Russia to be readmitted to the alliance. The suggestion angered and appalled allies, setting off a rift before Mr. Trump left the summit early, telling reporters on his way out: “They should let Russia come back in. Because we should have Russia at the negotiating table.”
Mr. Trump’s remarks came one day before he was supposed to meet in Canada with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, whom Mr. Trump has repeatedly criticized for the invasion of his country and has even accused of not wanting the war to end.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Eastern Europe, North America and Northern Europe? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.
The White House announced on Monday that Mr. Trump would leave the summit early and return to Washington to deal with the war between Israel and Iran. In a recent interview, Mr. Trump said he was open to having Mr. Putin serve as a mediator in the Middle East conflict.
Mr. Trump’s argument on Monday was even more remarkable given that he returned to the summit three years after Russia escalated the aggression that got it ejected in the first place — launching an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with similar goals of seizing its territory.Editors’ PicksShining a Light on the World of Tiny Proteins4 Ways to Trick Yourself Into Taking a WalkShould I Tell My Sister What Our Brother Did to Me?
The scene on Monday illustrated how even more aligned Mr. Trump has grown with the Russian autocrat since his first time in office, and how alienated Mr. Trump has become from American allies who have rallied around Ukraine.
Asked about Mr. Trump’s decision to open his remarks at the summit by criticizing Mr. Putin’s expulsion from the bloc, a White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said Mr. Trump had long held that view and would share his opinion even if he were meeting with global leaders who feel differently.
Shown above is a file photo of Russian President Vladimir Putin along with file photos of U.S. assassination victims Melissa Hortman of Minnesota, the top Democrat in her state's House of Representatives, and her husband, Mark. A politically motivated gunman also seriously wounded State Senator John A. Hoffman, another Democrat, and his wife, Yvette, in separate attacks at their homes in suburban Minneapolis on Saturday, June 14, 2025. The gunman also fired at police officers before fleeing.
Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Reporting, Minnesota killer's possible Russia connections, Wayne Madsen, left, author of 24 books, and former U.S. Navy intelligence officer and NSA analyst, June 16-17, 2025. Vance Boelter, the pro-
Donald Trump far-right preacher wanted for the June 14 assassinations of Minnesota state Representative and Minnesota House Speaker emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark Hortman and the shooting of Minnesota state Senator John Hoffman, who survived nine bullet wounds, and his wife Yvette Hoffman, is suspected of having ties to mercenaries in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and members of the former Wagner Group active in Africa and Europe.
Wagner mercenaries have been folded into Russia's new Africa Corps after the mercenary group's founder, 
Yevgeny Prigozhin, launched an unsuccessful military putsch against Russian President Vladimir Putin in June 2023.
Boelter's assassination of Hortman has effectively flipped a tied Minnesota House of Representatives from Democratic to Republican control. That makes Boelter's choice to kill Hortman, who appeared first on a target list of some 70 Democrats, abortion rights advocates,and women's reproductive health doctors, a clear politically-motivated decision that is in the interest of the Republican Party and Trump.
Law enforcement officials revealed in a June 16 news conference that Boelter had visited the homes of two other Democratic state legislators and that one of them was away on vacation. Law enforcement officials stated that 45 members of the Minnesota legislature appeared on Boelter's target list. Others targeted lived outside of Minnesota. They included Michigan Democratic U.S. Representative Hillary Scholten, who canceled a scheduled June 16 town hall event out of caution. Law enforcement has not released the names of the two other legislators' homes visited by Boelter. Their residences are located in Maple Grove and New Hope, Minnesota.
Others on Boelter's target list include Minnesota Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan, Senators Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Amy Klobuchar, and Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), U.S. Representatives Kelly Morrison (D-MN), Mark Pocan (D-WI), Angie Craig (D-MN), Debbie Dingell (D-MI), Haley Stevens (D-MI), Shri Thanedar (D-MI), Veronica Escobar (D-TX), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Greg Landsman (D-OH). Minnesota Democratic state Representatives Nicole Mitchell and Esther Agbaje, former Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman, and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Jeff Bezos.
One of the other two residences visited by Boelter was that of Minnesota Democratic state Representative Kristin Bahner, who was not home. The fourth home visited was that of Democratic state Senator Ann Rest. Contrary to Trump media circles, no Republicans were targeted by the Trump supporting Boelter.
Some hastily-drawn "No Kings" flyers were found by police in Boelter's vehicle, an indication that Boelter was planning to infiltrate and commit violence at one or more of the anti-Trump "No Kings" protests being held in and around the Twin Cities on the same day that Boelter shot the Democratic legislators and their spouses, along with the Hortmans' dog.
Boelter is also affiliated as a preacher of Revoformation Ministries [sic], which is affiliated with the Christian nationalist New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) movement. NAR advocates spiritual "warfare" -- known as the "Seven Mountain Mandate" -- to ensure total Christian domination over politics, businesses, families, religion, education, media, and the arts.
Others associated with the NAR include House Speaker Mike Johnson, right, Republican hate monger Charlie Kirk, Minnesota-based pillow vendor Mike Lindell, left, White House Faith Adviser Paula White, Republican dirty trickster Roger Stone, and Republican Representatives Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Trump's disgraced former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who has repeatedly called for tribunals and potential executions of 
Democrats and others who oppose Trump. Vice President JD Vance, a 2019 convert to Catholicism, maintains close ties to the NAR.
In 2022, Boelter spoke before a business seminar sponsored by the sponsored by the DRC government, the Minnesota Africans United, and Global Minnesota in Moanda, located at the mouth of the Congo River. He represented himself as the CEO of the Red Lion Group, a private military company active in the DRC and should not be confused with a UK charity bearing the same name.
Boelter explained on his Facebook page that in 2019, his associate, McNay Nkashama, introduced him to the DRC ambassador to the United States, who was visiting Minneapolis and Worthington, Minnesota. In Moanda, Boelter, emulating Trump's many false claims, said he and his firm could "create a lot of jobs fast" in the Congolese fishing, farming, media, security, and, motorcycle-taxi sectors. He also bizarrely claimed that Red Lion had partnered with "400 farmers who are ready to go on a farming project . . . we’re doing a fishing project that works with like 500 fishermans [sic] . . . that’s off the coast of Rwanda." In fact, Rwanda is a landlocked country that has no coastline on any ocean.
Boelter also preached to an NAR-affiliated religious congregation in Matadi, not far from Moanda, which is located in an area that has seen rebel activity in the nearby Angolan exclave of Cabinda, as well as in the Republic of Congo. [see video]. Boelter also claimed that he is the CEO of Praetorian Guard Security Services and that he has held several positions related to the food services industry.
A deeper dive into Boelter's activities in the DRC yields information that incriminates others closely associated with the Trump regime. The only Red Lion Group active in the DRC is connected to one Horatiu Potra, a Romanian mercenary connected to not only the Wagner Group but also to the Blackwater mercenary firm's founder Erik Prince. Prince is the brother of Trump's first administration Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
Prince was also active as an adviser to Trump's 2016 and 2024 presidential campaigns. Potra also served as a bodyguard of Romania's disqualified presidential candidate Calin Georgescu. Romania's Constitutional Court annulled the results of Romania's November 24, 2024 first-round presidential election, in which Georgescu received a plurality of votes, because of Russian meddling in the election. That meddling included campaigns on TikTok, Discord, and Telegram aimed at denigrating Romania's pro-Western presidential candidates, condemning Romanian support for Ukraine and Romania's membership in the European Union and NATO.
Romanian investigators discovered that in addition to Red Lion's Potra, other former Wagner mercenaries on Georgescu's team included Marin Burcea, Eugen Sechila, and Dorina Mihai, all Romanian nationals. Potra and his team were suspected of organizing a January 6th-style insurrection following Georgescu's presidential election ban. Romanian police discovered a military-grade weapons arsenal and over $374 million in cash hidden in the basements, walls, and floors of Georgescu's Romanian properties. Included in the police haul was a stack of Congolese francs. Potra is now wanted by Romania pursuant to an INTERPOL arrest warrant. Potra has also been implicated in Russian-led destabilization efforts in Moldova and espionage oin behalf of Moscow in Ukraine. Potra was last seen in Dubai, from where he runs his Red Lion Group's operations in Africa. He has also been frequently seen in Moscow. Potra, who is also a citizen of France, has served in the French Foreign Legion and as personal bodyguard to the royal family of Qatar.
On June 16, Boelter's wife, Jennifer Boelter, and "several other relatives" were pulled over by officers of the Mille Lacs County Sheriff's Office while driving near Onamia, Minnesota. In the trunk of the vehicle were found passports, two handguns, ammunition, and $10,000 in cash but for unknown reasons Boelter's family members were permitted to go on their way. Also, the sheriff's office said they were not involved with searching the vehicle, revealing that "other law enforcement agencies" in the Twin Cities metro area conducted both the search and questioning of Boelter's family members.
If Boelter and his family were planning to leave the country, the details may never be known due to the politicization by Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi, above, and FBI director Kash Patel and deputy director Dan Bongino of the Justice Department and the bureau.
Don't look for any aggressive federal investigation of Boelter's African and other foreign ties. His connections with Red Lion Group in the DRC overlap with those of Prince, who, in April inked a deal with the DRC government for Prince's Hong Kong-based Frontier Services Group to collect taxes from mining corporations and provide security for mining operations in the DRC.
Prince's deal was coordinated with Trump's special envoy to Africa Massad Boulos, the father-in-law of Trump's daughter Tiffany Trump. Boulos (shown at left in a Gage Skidmore photo) and Prince have been pushing for the DRC to approve a "U.S. security for minerals" deal, not unlike that pushed by Trump on the government of Ukraine. The degree of separation of Boelter to the Oval Office is a narrow one.
Prince's mercenary company, Reflex Responses (R2), like Potra's company, is also based in the United Arab Emirates. R2 been involved in security operations in Africa, often overlapping with and complementing those of the former Wagner mercenary group and China's Belt and Road Initiative interests on the continent as well as the operations of the 1000-strong mercenary force battling against Rwandan-backed rebels who were advancing on the Congolese city of Goma in North Kivu province. Potra's mercenaries, who failed to defeat the rebels in Goma and weer forced to flee, have also been overseeing security operations in Burkina Faso, Niger, and Sierra Leone on behalf of the Romanian-Australian mining mogul Frank Timiș. Potra's security operations are also found in the Central African Republic, Sudan’s Darfur, The Gambia, and Senegal and he runs a series of shady companies based in Malta, Sierra Leone, Panama, the United Kingdom, DRC (including Red Lion Group), and Romania,
Boelter's planned assassination spree of the Hortmans, the Hoffmans, and some 70 other Democrats and others, who include Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, right, U.S. Senator Tina Smith, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, and U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar, becomes even more sinister when overlaid with his mercenary connections in Africa, where political assassinations are commonplace and often involve foreign mercenaries and intelligence services. Additionally, Boelter's NAR affiliations are also of concern when it is considered that a number of Seven Mountain Movement promoters have also expressed a desire to commit violence against political leaders and others it disagrees with.
It is clear that the Trump movement and its affiliated cult organizations like the Seven Mountain Movement and others, have as their agenda a massive attack on Democrats and any others who stand in their way of seizing total control of the United States. This action has, thus far, taken three avenues: arrest, physical assault, and assassination.
The arrests of Democratic Mayor Ras Baraka of Newark, New Jersey and the indictment of Democratic Representative LaMonica McIver of New Jersey represent the first gambit. The physical assault of Senator Alex Padilla, the senior senator of California, by federal officers in Los Angeles, represents the second mode of operation. Finally, the assassinations of Speaker emerita Hortman and her husband and the attempted assassination of state Senator Hoffman and his wife represent the third option.
Add into that mix mercenaries under the control of Putin and the risk to the American political system is exacerbated even more by the Trump regime's acquiescence to the Kremlin.
The Trump regime has declared war against every major institution in the United States. This is 1776 on steroids and it's past time to fight back.
New York Post, Powerful Trump aide who’s in charge of vetting thousands of staffers still hasn’t been fully vetted himself: sources, Steven Nelson and Diana Glebova, June 17, 2025. One of the most powerful men in the Trump administration, tasked with vetting thousands of staffers, hasn’t been fully vetted himself, The Post has learned.
Sergio Gor — the director of presidential personnel who recently convinced President Trump to yank an Elon Musk-endorsed nominee for NASA — has yet to submit official paperwork about his own background needed for a permanent security clearance, according to multiple sources.
Gor, 38, is in charge of picking about 4,000 executive-branch staff to implement Trump’s agenda — and he’s done so by poring over old tweets, political donations and remarks to ensure loyalty to the president.White House presidential personnel director Sergio Gor, right, applauds during a March 25 meeting with US ambassadors. 5White House presidential personnel director Sergio Gor (right) applauds during a March 25 meeting with US ambassadors. REUTERS
But three administration insiders told The Post that the vetter-in-chief has not turned in his Standard Form 86, or SF-86 — a more than 100-page set of questions required for officials who need security clearances.
Among the questions applicants must answer under threat of criminal penalties is where they were born and whether they have any foreign connections.
Gor claims to be from the island country of Malta, though an official there could not confirm his birthplace when provided his exact birthday, saying: “No acts are registered with the provided details.”Explore MoreJuror Janet Jimenez speaking in TV interview, left; at top right, Karen Read in blue suit in courtroom; bottom right, defense attorney David Yannetti in courtroom. Karen Read juror reveals she was leaning toward a guilty verdict— and the moment that changed her mindcomposite image suspect amanda kempton left in black slacks and orange sweatshirt with her hands cuffed in front of her being walked into court; right kempton smiling at the camera in a social media shot; inset victim sara burack Va. woman nabbed in hit-and-run death of hot shot real estate agent thought she hit traffic cone, choked back tears in courtGraphic of Nancy Pelosi with sunglasses with dollar signs on and money flying around her Pelosi raked in millions last year — and her portfolio out-performed every large hedge fund with stunning returns
Gor declined to divulge his birthplace to The Post, other than to say it was not Russia.
Sources describe Gor’s failure to submit the SF-86 as of the time of The Post’s inquiries as rare, if not unique, among White House aides. He currently has an interim security clearance, as do some other Trump officials who are awaiting the completion of background checks.
An SF-86 “is the first step in receiving a security clearance. Everyone — EVERYONE — fills one out, even if they’re not going into a role that will ultimately need an activated clearance [such as] random comms people, administrative staff [and] legislative affairs,” a fourth source said.Gor, pictured with president Trump on March 17 during a tour of the Kennedy Center, has not submitted security clearance paperwork. 5Gor, pictured with President Trump on March 17 during a tour of the Kennedy Center, has not submitted security clearance paperwork. Getty Images
“It seemed like a ‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks’-type situation. Like why are you going so crazy about not wanting to fill this out?”
Gor strongly opposed use of the SF-86 during the presidential transition, claiming he was concerned about the “deep state” weeding out Trump’s picks.
“He was actively working to convince everyone, including the lawyers, that the SF-86 was unnecessary and that Trump could just provide everyone with a clearance through his executive authority,” the fourth source said.
“He basically argued that the ‘deep state’ could corrupt the clearance process by weaponizing the SF-86 and background check investigations.”Gor, shown speaking at a May 19 event in the White House State Dining Room, has described himself as a Maltese immigrant, but the microstate's government says he wasn't born there. 5Gor speaks at a May 19 event in the White House State Dining Room. He has described himself as a Maltese immigrant, but the microstate’s government says he wasn’t born there. Bloomberg via Getty Images
The time-consuming form, which kicks off a review involving the FBI and Defense Department, is typically submitted by everyone who works in the White House, but rare exceptions can be made with presidential approval.
The form includes questions on place of birth and all former places lived, foreign contacts and family members, foreign funding, drug use and more.
Trump administration and White House officials canvassed by The Post as part of its investigation said they would have gladly skipped over the lengthy process, but that virtually everyone they know submitted the paperwork, which usually is done before starting work.
The White House told The Post that Gor has “completed the form” but would not say when he intends to submit it.
“Sergio was distrustful of the FBI, as were many others in the administration. However, to date, he has completed the form and he has an active security clearance,” said a White House official, referring to Gor’s interim security clearance.President Trump at a Kennedy Center board meeting. 5Gor’s decision not to submit the SF-86 form has spurred internal unease at the White House. Getty Images
White House counsel David Warrington added: “Mr. Gor is fully compliant with all applicable ethical and legal obligations. His security clearance is active, any insinuation he doesn’t maintain a clearance is false.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “Sergio Gor is a trusted adviser to President Trump and he has played a critical role in helping President Trump staff the most talented administration in history. It’s sad the New York Post is engaging in baseless gossip rather than focusing on how the Trump administration is tackling the issues impacting our country and world.”
Gor’s rising star: ‘He’s done a great job’
Gor’s wide-ranging vetting role spans from picking ambassadors to staffers who will implement Trump’s policies in every major federal agency, which sources said increases the need for trustworthy leadership.
“The PPO office controls every single political appointee in the government — anyone you hire, the buck starts and stops there,” said one source. “It’s quite a bit of power.”Scott Bessent and Sergio Gor walking on the White House South Lawn. 5Gor (right), pictured with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, is in charge of picking thousands of President Trump’s political appointees. Bonnie Cash/POOL via CNP/INSTARimages.com
Previously obscure, Gor burst into the national spotlight this month as he took the blame for Trump’s explosive falling-out with Musk.
Gor convinced the president to nix the Tesla founder’s pick to lead NASA, Jared Isaacman, over donations to Democrats — after allegedly nursing a personal grudge and speaking of payback against Musk for “humiliating” him at a cabinet meeting over his pace of hiring.
The aide denied seeking revenge against Musk, saying “those who actively supported Democrats in the last cycle have no place in this administration.”
Gor’s swift ascent from working as an aide to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) during Trump’s first term to occupying one of the most important roles in American politics has drawn admirers who view him as an effective enforcer of loyalty to Trump.
“Sergio has one of the toughest jobs in the administration,” one supporter said. “He has to say ‘no’ to a lot of people, including a lot of cabinet officials [and] a lot of times he’s telling people, ‘No, you can’t hire this person’ for their own good.’ … He has to say ‘no’ to a lot of officials who aren’t used to hearing the letters N and O put together.”
Gor rapidly rose in prominence — and wealth — in 2021 when he co-founded with Donald Trump Jr. a book publishing company, which
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: June 16 [U.S. Political Assassinations], Heather Cox Richardson, right, June 17, 2025. At a news conference today, acting U.S. attorney for the District of Minnesota Joseph H. Thompson, who was appointed by President Donald Trump just two weeks ago, said that Minnesota suspect Vance Boelter went to the homes of two more politicians than the two he eventually shot along with their spouses. One was on vacation with her family, and at another home, a police officer apparently scared him off.
Thompson said Boelter had “voluminous” writings that showed he had been planning the attacks for “quite some time.” “But,” Thompson added, “I have not seen anything involving some sort of political screed or manifesto that would clearly identify what motivated him. Obviously, his primary motive was to go out and murder people. They were all elected officials. They were all Democrats. Beyond that, I think it’s just way too speculative for anyone that’s reviewed these materials to know and to say what was motivating him in terms of ideology or specific issues.”
Zoe Sottile of CNN reported that Boelter is facing federal charges of two counts of stalking, two counts of murder, and two counts of firearms offenses. He is facing state charges of first-degree murder, second degree murder, and attempted murder.
MAGA loyalists have continued to radicalize in the wake of the shootings, spreading disinformation that blamed the violence on Democrats or joking about the event. Walker Orenstein of the Minnesota Star Tribune debunked the disinformation spread by MAGA loyalists, noting that Boelter was not close to Walz, who simply okayed his reappointment to a bipartisan board that then-governor Mark Dayton had put him on in 2016. According to his roommate, Boelter was a “strong supporter” of Trump.
Emily Anderson Stern and Robert Gehrke of the Salt Lake Tribune called out Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), right, for his behavior in the aftermath of the shootings. Lee joked about the killings and falsely blamed the violence on his political opponents, tying the shooting to Minnesota governor Tim Walz. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) responded: “This was an incredible woman, her husband, her two kids—yesterday on Father’s Day, there was no Father’s Day for them. They lost both their parents…. This is not a laughing matter, and certainly what we’re seeing is an increase in violence, and this evil man who did this—this is not a joke.”
Of Lee’s behavior, influencer George Takei wrote: “Utah voters: Are these really your values? Mike Lee is the best you can do?” After Lee pinned one of his disturbing tweets to the top of his social media timeline, Tim Miller of The Bulwark wrote: “This is less of a political matter than a sign of deep mental illness.”
As of this afternoon, Trump had not called Walz, calling him “a terrible governor” and “a grossly incompetent person.”
Trump drew criticism of his own incompetence today at the meeting of the Group of Seven (G7) in Kananaskis, Alberta, in Canada. The G7 is a forum of democracies with advanced economies that includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as the European Union. During today’s meetings, Trump seemed to think the United Kingdom and the European Union were the same thing.
Trump also parroted Russian talking points, telling reporters: “The G7 used to be the G8. Barack Obama and a person named Trudeau didn't want to have Russia in, and I would say that that was a mistake, because I think you wouldn't have a war right now if you had Russia in, and you wouldn’t have a war right now if Trump were president four years ago.”
In fact, the members of the G7 kicked Russia out of the forum after Russian president Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014. And former Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau didn’t take office until 2015.
On Friday, journalist Dean Blundell reported that Washington insiders and observers from abroad had noticed how rarely Trump appears in public and how often he falls asleep when he does, prompting speculation that he is not physically able to do the work of the presidency. Blundell suggested Trump’s team would look for a way to get the president out of the G7 early to avoid exposure.
Lincoln Square Media, Project 2025 Is Everywhere If You Know Where To Look, Hosts: Lisa Senecal and Andra Watkins, June 17, 2025. Once you see it, you can't unsee it.
One problem with calling the folks at the top of the Trump regime Radical Christian Extremists is that it sounds kinda crazy. One other problem is that it’s true. But the former problem allows for the latter problem to exist. In other words, people like Hegseth and Vought are counting on you thinking that the people calling them out are just being hysterical.
But here’s the thing: we still have to call them out. Andra Watkins has been doing this since she first saw Project 2025, the blueprint for a remaking of America into a white Christo-fascist state. As everyone who follows Lincoln Square knows, Project 2025 wasn’t some big conspiracy that a secretive cabal kept away from prying eyes. It was published for the world to see!
Not only that, the people who sit in the seats of power at this very moment wrote it.
Elon Musk, right, may have left the White House — but we now know that one of DOGE’s primary aims was to transfer an inordinate amount of government data to Palantir. What’s that, you ask? Why, it’s an AI software company founded by Peter Thiel, a far-right billionaire who just happened to give millions to Vice President J.D. Vance.Read full story
Amid immigration raids, a potential catastrophic war in the Middle East, widespread protests, and all the chaos happening everywhere-all-at-once, we have to continually revisit their playbook. All of that chaos? It’s in there. You just have to know where to look.
New York Times, Appeals Court to Consider if Trump Can Control National Guard in L.A., Charlie Savage, Laurel Rosenhall and Richard Fausset, June 17, 2025. three-judge panel will determine whether National Guard troops can remain under President Trump’s command in Los Angeles as protests against immigration raids continue.
A federal appeals court will hear arguments Tuesday to determine whether President Trump, against the wishes of Gov. Gavin Newsom, can keep using California’s National Guard to protect immigration enforcement agents and quell protesters in Los Angeles.
The hearing, convened by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, comes at a time when local organizers have vowed to continue protesting against immigration raids, though demonstrations in downtown Los Angeles have quieted since the weekend.
A district court judge, Charles Breyer, determined last week that Mr. Trump’s use of the National Guard was illegal and temporarily ordered the president to return control of the forces to Mr. Newsom.
But the Trump administration immediately appealed the ruling, and the Ninth Circuit panel stayed the lower court decision while it considers the matter. The panel consists of two appointees of Mr. Trump and one of former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
It may ultimately be up to the Supreme Court whether a president can bypass governors to deploy the National Guard in states under the law Mr. Trump invoked. The outcome of the case could carry significant implications for limits on the use of the military force on domestic soil.
The three-judge panel on Tuesday will consider the narrow, but consequential, matter of whether Mr. Trump can keep controlling the troops for now while the legal fight continues to play out.
Protests erupted earlier this month after Immigration and Customs Enforcement carried out workplace raids in Los Angeles as part of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Democratic leaders and activists have criticized ICE for raiding Southern California workplaces and carrying out indiscriminate sweeps in heavily Latino neighborhoods rather than focusing on people with serious criminal histories.
In response to the backlash, Mr. Trump invoked a rarely used statute to take federal control of the National Guard in the name of guarding immigration agents and facilities against protesters. Governor Newsom objected to that step, saying that it was needlessly inflammatory and that local and state law enforcement agencies could handle unruly elements within the larger group of protesters. Some demonstrations included a segment of people who vandalized property, threw objects and started fires, but most protesters were peaceful.
New York Times, News Analysis: Trump’s Iran Choice: Last-Chance Diplomacy or a Bunker-Busting Bomb, David E. Sanger and Jonathan Swan, June 17, 2025 (print ed.). Iranian officials have warned that U.S. participation in an attack on its facilities will imperil any chance of the nuclear disarmament deal the president insists he is still interested in pursuing.
President Trump is weighing a critical decision in the four-day-old war between Israel and Iran: whether to enter the fray by helping Israel destroy the deeply buried nuclear enrichment facility at Fordo, which only America’s biggest “bunker buster,” dropped by American B-2 bombers, can reach.
If he decides to go ahead, the United States will become a direct participant in a new conflict in the Middle East, taking on Iran in exactly the kind of war Mr. Trump has sworn, in two campaigns, he would avoid. Iranian officials have already warned that U.S. participation in an attack on its facilities will imperil any remaining chance of the nuclear disarmament deal that Mr. Trump insists he is still interested in pursuing.
Mr. Trump has encouraged Vice President JD Vance and his Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, to offer to meet the Iranians this week, according to a U.S. official. The offer may be well received, and Mr. Trump said on Monday that “I think Iran basically is at the negotiating table, they want to make a deal.”
The urgency appeared to be rising. The White House announced late on Monday that Mr. Trump was leaving the Group of 7 summit early because of the situation in the Middle East.
“As soon as I leave here, we’re going to be doing something,” Mr. Trump said. “But I have to leave here.”
What he intended to do remained unclear.
If Mr. Vance and Mr. Witkoff did meet with the Iranians, officials say, the likely Iranian interlocutor would be the country’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, who played a key role in the 2015 nuclear deal with the Obama administration and knows every element of Iran’s sprawling nuclear complex. Mr. Araghchi, who has been Mr. Witkoff’s counterpart in recent negotiations, signaled his openness to a deal on Monday, saying in a statement, “If President Trump is genuine about diplomacy and interested in stopping this war, next steps are consequential.”
“It takes one phone call from Washington to muzzle someone like Netanyahu,” he said, referring to the Israeli prime minister. “That may pave the way for a return to diplomacy.”ImageMen in black suits and black hats look at a destroyed concrete building.Iranian missiles have struck several Israeli cities, including Bnei Brak, east of Tel Aviv.Credit...Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times
But if that diplomatic effort fizzles, or the Iranians remain unwilling to give in to Mr. Trump’s central demand that they must ultimately end all uranium enrichment on Iranian soil, the president will still have the option of ordering that Fordo and other nuclear facilities be destroyed.
There is only one weapon for the job, experts contend. It is called the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, or the GBU-57, and it weighs so much — 30,000 pounds — that it can be lifted only by a B-2 bomber. Israel does not own either the weapon or the bomber needed to get it aloft and over target.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Iran and Israel? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.
If Mr. Trump holds back, it could well mean that Israel’s main objective in the war is never completed.
“Fordo has always been the crux of this thing,” said Brett McGurk, who worked on Middle East issues for four successive American presidents, from George W. Bush to Joseph R. Biden Jr. “If this ends with Fordo still enriching, then it’s not a strategic gain.”
That has been true for a long time, and over the past two years the U.S. military has refined the operation, under close White House scrutiny. The exercises led to the conclusion that one bomb would not solve the problem; any attack on Fordo would have to come in waves, with B-2s releasing one bomb after another down the same hole. And the operation would have to be executed by an American pilot and crew.
Democracy Docket, Pro-Democracy Advocacy, Marc Elias, June 17, 2025. There is a dangerous pathology that causes some otherwise intelligent people to bend over backward to excuse Republican voter suppression. Unable to defend it on the merits, they instead claim it is ineffective or even counterproductive.
This impulse is particularly noticeable in the legacy media, where both-sides coverage is all too common. But you also see it among some so-called election experts, who likewise find comfort in falsely insisting that both political parties are equally culpable for deploying unsavory tactics.
If our democracy does not ultimately survive this era, it may well be because performative neutrality killed it — or at least hid its murder from view and then claimed it is still alive. Yet, even now, recognizing that one political party is protecting democracy and the other is undermining it is too much for these individuals and legacy institutions to abide by.
There is no arena where this issue is more contentious, and the stakes are higher, than in Republican efforts to limit who can register, vote and have their vote counted. There is no question that the Republican Party, under Donald Trump, has prioritized voter suppression.
GOP-controlled legislatures have enacted new, draconian anti-voting measures. The RNC boasts that its top priority is running “election integrity” programs that make voting more difficult. We have seen a tidal wave of new litigation from the Republican Party and its allies aimed at purging voters, allowing more voter challenges, restricting voting and discarding lawfully cast ballots.
This has created a quandary for the both-sides crowd. They can’t plausibly argue that Democrats are engaging in comparable behavior. In fact, Democrats and their allies are at the forefront of fighting GOP efforts.
Instead, they have adopted a new, pernicious argument to discount the effect of the GOP’s mass disenfranchisement machine. They claim that voting laws and voter suppression programs make little difference to who votes or has their vote counted. Essentially, they argue that the GOP is wasting its money.
To declare a pox on both parties, practitioners of both-sides journalism — and those who support them — must proclaim that, despite the Republican Party’s efforts, the playing field on which the two parties compete is fair and level. This is awkward, to say the least.
Setting aside the morality of discounting a political party’s efforts to disenfranchise voters, this approach requires both political parties to misunderstand what is in their electoral interests. Indeed, both the Democratic and Republican parties must be wrong to conclude that voter suppression measures affect the outcome of elections. And they must both be wrong in the same direction.
It also requires that civil rights and voting rights groups — and their right-wing counterparts — have likewise misunderstood the effects (or lack thereof) of these laws and practices on voters. Finally, it means that hundreds of state and federal judges have been mistaken in evaluating evidence and setting these laws aside for negatively impacting citizens’ ability to vote.
If this seems unlikely, it is. And trafficking in this nonsense is not only wrong but dangerously immoral. It might have been excused when Republicans denied what they were doing or cloaked their voting law changes in the guise of reform. But those days have long passed.
Republicans spent five months trying to throw out more than 65,000 lawful votes to steal a North Carolina state Supreme Court election. When they failed, Donald Trump’s Department of Justice picked up the fight and filed a lawsuit. There are not two sides to what the GOP is doing. And there is nothing ineffectual about it.
Recently, the RNC sought to intervene in a lawsuit brought by the Democratic Party to block Trump’s illegal executive order that purports to prohibit states from counting ballots mailed by voters in advance of Election Day but received shortly thereafter. The RNC and its allies have been targeting these laws for years because they correctly believe that disqualifying these lawful ballots would advance their partisan electoral interests.
In support of their motion, the RNC submitted an affidavit from a senior party official stating unequivocally that “post-election mail-in ballot deadlines also specifically harm Republican candidates and voters [because] Democratic voters tend to mail their ballots later on average than Republican voters, which results in late-arriving ballots favoring Democratic candidates.”
Yet when the legacy media covers this issue — as with other issues involving voting — it largely ignores these direct statements from political parties in favor of so-called experts who offer more equivocal evaluations. Who would know more about the composition of these ballots? The Democratic and Republican parties, or journalists and the sources they select to fit their stories?
When it comes to voting rights, there is no topic the legacy media latches onto more quickly than voter ID. And, once again, those seeking to condemn both sides will cherry-pick laws with the fewest obvious partisan effects.
Yet, recently, the independent media outlet Bolts noted that a new voter ID law in Indiana, which bans the use of college IDs, would have a dramatic effect. According to the report, in the county where Indiana University Bloomington is located, “two-thirds of people who cast ballots at the only on-campus polling place this November used a student ID.” A review of past results from that precinct indicates that the law will disproportionately affect Democratic candidates.
So why, then, do so many in the legacy media continue to discount the effects of voter suppression on the outcome of elections?
Part of the reason is that people in the legacy media are unlikely to personally experience it and therefore discount its effects on others. Most journalists are college-educated and live in cities controlled by Democrats. They have reliable mail service. They have jobs that enable them to vote during the workday. They simply do not see voter suppression as a threat to them and thus discount it for others.
More importantly, those committed to a both-sides frame of reference cannot accept the effects of voter suppression as real without losing their ability to engage in performative neutrality. They can take a stand against the January 6 insurrection by justifying that not all Republicans supported it. They can decry election denialism by valorizing the few Republicans who condemn it.
There is no similar space when it comes to voter suppression. The entire GOP supports voter suppression. Every House Republican voted against anti-suppression legislation when it was before Congress. Every Republican governor and statewide Republican elected official in charge of elections supports it today. It is simply too big and pervasive within the GOP to maintain a both-sides approach — even when the GOP tells us what it is doing.
This lack of moral clarity around the most fundamental aspect of democracy is deeply problematic. It is why the legacy media has lost so much trust on issues of democracy. It is why I created Democracy Docket in 2020 and why it continues to expand its reach and coverage.
Republicans are not hiding what they are doing. They are telling us what they plan and who they are. As Maya Angelou advised, it is time we believe them.
In an impromptu press event with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer in Alberta, Canada on June16, 2025, President Trump (shown together with Starmer) dropped papers all over the place. At the G7, as it was at his parade, his ridiculous tie has gotten longer, his pants higher, and he looks ever more comical, cartoonish, far more like an SNL caricature than a serious leader.
Hopium Chronicles, Pro-Democracy Advocacy, Double TACOS, Dropped Papers, Declining Poll Numbers -- Monty Python Or American President? Simon Rosenberg, right, June 17, 2025. Our protests this weekend were dignified, joyous, enormous, peaceful. An affirmation of our great American democratic tradition. They were, and remain this morning, a searing counterpoint to the extraordinary chaos and repeated failure we continue to see from Trump. My overwhelming sense of the moment is that early Trump 2.0 is failing, they know it, and they have begun to panic.
Let’s just look at what happened in the last 24 hours.
The G7 - Trump went to the G7, arrived late for his first meeting, bent the Trumpian knee to Putin, tweeted that Tehran, a city of 10m, needed to evacuate, left a day early blowing off a meeting with Zelensky, refused to sign a joint statement on Iran and Israel, then signed it late last night.
In an impromptu press event with UK PM Keir Starmer, he dropped papers all over the place. At the G7, as it was at his parade, his ridiculous tie has gotten longer, his pants higher, and he looks ever more comical, cartoonish, far more like an SNL caricature than a serious leader: Trump fled the G7 in part because everything being discussed there was an implicit rebuke of him and a reminder of his many failures. He did not bring peace to Ukraine in 24 hours, as he repeatedly promised. He did not bring peace to the Middle East as he repeatedly promised. He did not end the Gaza war as he repeatedly promised. He has not negotiated “90 deals in 90 days” as he repeatedly promised. Europe has not ceded Greenland as he has demanded, nor has Canada agreed to become the 51st state. His tariffs have slowed the economy of every country in the world, including all those in the G7 and our own, something I am sure he was reminded of in the discussions yesterday.
Despite him having all this “strength” the world is not bending the knee to Trump, something all can see; while the world also seems him repeatedly, pathetically, urgently, bending the knee and all of his other ugly parts to Putin, again and again and again. Immigration Double TACO - As we got numbers in the last week that his immigration escalation was unpopular and the country was turning on him, Trump danced and wiggled. He announced a roll back of enforcement in rural areas and with some businesses. Then Sunday is one of his most unhinged posts of the year he said he was directing immigration resources against blue areas. Then this morning we learned that actually there is no roll back. Trump chickened out from his initial chickening out. Holy double TACO Batman! From The Washington Post this morning:
The Department of Homeland Security on Monday told staff that it was reversing guidance issued last week that agents were not to conduct immigration raids at farms, hotels and restaurants — a decision that stood at odds with President Donald Trump’s calls for mass deportations of anyone without legal status.
Officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including its Homeland Security Investigations division, told agency leaders in a call Monday that agents must continue conducting immigration raids at agricultural businesses, hotels and restaurants, according to two people familiar with the call. The new instructions were shared in an 11 a.m. call to representatives from 30 field offices across the country.
ICE and HSI field office supervisors began learning about a likely reversal of the exemption policy Sunday after hearing from DHS leadership that the White House did not support it, according to one person with knowledge of the reversal.
An official from DHS had sent an email Thursday telling agents to “hold on all worksite enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels.” That message went out hours after Trump suggested he was sympathetic to concerns raised by farmers and hospitality executives about his deportation plan. The Washington Post spoke with four people who confirmed that a call was held Monday with the agency’s leadership.
There will be no safe spaces for industries who harbor violent criminals or purposely try to undermine ICE’s efforts,” Tricia McLaughlin, an assistant secretary for DHS, said Monday. “Worksite enforcement remains a cornerstone of our efforts to safeguard public safety, national security and economic stability.”
Um, who is in charge of our government? Stephen Miller? Putin? Elon? Trump?
Terrible Polling - Last week Trump saw the worst polling of his second term. His approval was regularly double digit negative, his handling of deportations and immigration went sharply negative and a major poll of his terrible budget bill had it -20, even in worse shape than his handling of inflation and prices.
In the last 24 hours we’ve gotten five additional polls confirming this downward trend:
Economist/YouGov:
Two weeks ago: Trump 45% approve, 49% disapprove (-4)
Last week: 43%-52% (-9)
Today: 41%-54% (-13)
Look, Trump continues to do terrible things. One of his supporters attempted to assassinate four Democratic elected officials this weekend in Minnesota, and did end up killing one and gravely wounding another. A US Senator was assaulted by DHS staff. Marines are on the streets of Los Angeles. Hundreds of innocent people remain in a Salvadoran gulag. Somehow, incredibly, Senate Rs have agreed to even deeper Medicaid cuts than the House bill. He’s working to make Russia and China not America great again.
But in recent days we’ve all been reminded sometimes the wheels on the bus go round and round, and sometimes they come flying off. Trump has always been a ridiculous and cartoonish figure. The Emperor never had any clothes. He was always the old man behind the curtain and never the Wizard. And I just get the sense now that the buffoonish, dangerous, sundowning man we all see is now being seen by far more people. A door is opening, people are waking up to the awful reality of Trump and not the right wing noise machine roided version of him. You never know in politics what is the trigger that causes things to change, for new understands to emerge. I have always believed that there was a limit to how fast some of his weak supporters would have buyer’s remorse, and come to realize they got played. In fact I’ve been surprised how quickly and consequentially his numbers have come down. Down, however they are, even on what was his greatest strength - immigration.
Which is why we need to keep working as hard as we can people. He is stumbling, failing, getting panicky, looking weak and pathetic. An opportunity is emerging for us and we need to seize it.
Judd at Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: Trump's abrupt policy switch on immigration benefits top donors, Judd Legum and Noel Sims, June 17, 2025. Trump's abrupt policy switch on immigration benefits top donors.
During the 2024 campaign, President Trump excoriated all "illegals," calling them "animals" and claiming they were "poisoning the blood of our country." Appearing on NBC's Meet the Press, Trump said his goal was to deport every undocumented immigrant in the country. "I think you have to do it," Trump said. "They came in illegally."
In late May, top Trump aide Stephen Miller directed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to increase arrests to 3,000 per day — roughly triple the agency's previous high-water mark. The directive prompted ICE to begin targeting workplaces in industries known to employ a large number of undocumented workers, including agriculture, construction, hospitality, and textiles.
Then, Trump abruptly changed his policy. In a Truth Social post last week, Trump said his "very aggressive policy on immigration" was taking "very good, long time workers" away from the agricultural and hospitality industries. These workers, Trump said, are "almost impossible to replace." Therefore, "Changes are coming!"
Two days later, on June 12, a senior ICE official, Tatum King, sent a message to ICE staff formalizing the new policy: "Effective today, please hold on all work site enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels." There is an exception for investigations involving "human trafficking, money laundering, drug smuggling into these industries." But even in those cases "noncriminal collaterals" — any undocumented workers who are not implicated in a crime — are to be left alone.
The remarkable reversal directly benefits some of the largest donors to Trump's political operation.
Pilgrim's Pride, the second-largest poultry processor in the U.S., was the single largest donor to Trump's inaugural committee. It is the U.S. subsidiary of Brazilian agricultural giant JBS. The company's $5 million donation was more than "the contributions from Apple’s CEO plus Amazon, Meta, and Google combined."
Pilgrim's Pride, which processes one out of every six chickens in the United States, has a record of employing undocumented immigrants to keep its vast operations humming. According to a June 2024 investigation by Mountain State Spotlight, the company's chicken processing plant in Moorefield, West Virginia employed undocumented immigrants for decades. Mountain State Spotlight found that the immigrant workforce was exposed to extraordinarily dangerous conditions at the plant, and serious injuries were commonplace. But "some managers have leveraged… employees’ immigration status to keep them working."
In December 2007, ICE arrested "25 people involved in a scheme to secure jobs for illegal immigrants at Pilgrim's Pride plants in East Texas," including "human resources employees at the company." That was followed by April 2008 ICE raids "of Pilgrim's Pride plants in Texas, Florida, West Virginia, Arkansas, and Tennessee," which identified 338 undocumented workers. To settle the matter, Pilgrim's Pride paid $4.5 million to a federal law enforcement fund. (The company did not admit to any wrongdoing as part of the settlement.)
Ronald Cameron, the owner and chairman of Mountaire, the fourth-largest poultry producer in the United States, donated $3 million to pro-Trump super PACs during the 2024 election cycle: $2 million to Preserve America PAC in October 2024 and $1 million to Make America Great Again Inc. in July 2024. Cameron also donated $2 million to pro-Trump super PACs in 2016 and $1.3 million in 2020.
Mountaire also has a history of using undocumented workers to power its operations. A 2021 investigation by Scalawag Magazine found that Mountaire relied on third-party staffing agencies that "actively recruit undocumented immigrants." The arrangement allowed Mountaire "to outsource the liability of hiring undocumented workers directly."
These investigations just scratched the surface of the reliance of the meatpacking industry on unauthorized workers. Overall, according to an expert at the American Immigration Council, about "23 percent of workers in the meatpacking industry are undocumented."Hospitality for the undocumented
Trump has spent most of his career in the hospitality industry, operating numerous hotels, resorts, and golf courses under his brand. Not coincidentally, many of Trump's largest donors are his colleagues in the industry.
Miriam Adelson, the owner of the Las Vegas Sands corporation, which operates hotels and casinos, spent $136 million to elect Trump during the 2024 election. Robert Bigelow, owner of Budget Suites of America, donated over $14 million to a pro-Trump super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., and an additional $1 million to cover Trump's legal bills. Bigelow had a two-hour dinner with Trump at Mar-a-lago in 2024.
There is no direct evidence that either Las Vegas Sands or Budget Suites of America employs undocumented workers. But undocumented immigrants make up about 8% of employees in the leisure and hospitality industry. (Undocumented immigrants are employed less frequently by casinos than regular hotels, since the industry is highly regulated.)
Moreover, many of Trump's properties have a long history of employing workers without legal authorization to work in the U.S.
In December 2018, two housekeepers who had worked for Trump’s Bedminster, New Jersey golf resort came forward to say that they had been working for years for the Trump organization with phony papers. They told reporters that their supervisors had known about their immigration status and that they were far from the only undocumented workers employed at the Bedminster club. Over the next year, dozens of undocumented workers were fired from multiple Trump properties. But not before more reports emerged uncovering the extent of the reliance of Trump’s resorts on underpaid undocumented immigrants.
In February 2019, the Washington Post reported that since the Bedminster golf resort was opened in 2002, it had knowingly employed several undocumented workers to do construction, groundskeeping, and housekeeping. While the Trump family denied knowing about the legal status of some Bedminster employees, the Post found that supervisors were aware that their employees were providing them fake work-authorization documents and social security numbers.
When asked by reporters at the time whether he knew about the undocumented workers on his properties, Trump said, “Well, that I don’t know. Because I don’t run it… But I would say this: Probably every club in the United States has that, because it seems to me, from what I understand, a way that people did business.”Trump says immigration enforcement will target political opponents
First, Trump carved out exceptions to his immigration policies that benefit his political benefactors. Then, on Sunday evening, Trump posted on Truth Social that, moving forward, immigration raids will focus on areas populated by his political opponents:
[W]e must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside. These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center… These Radical Left Democrats are sick of mind, hate our Country, and actually want to destroy our Inner Cities.
Trump falsely claimed that Democrats "use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State." This is a version of the racist "great replacement" conspiracy theory, which posits that immigration is part of a plot by Democrats to marginalize and "replace" white Republicans.
Late Monday, the Washington Post reported that the Trump administration had reversed course again and would resume workplace raids in the agricultural and hospitality industry. The back and forth represents a power struggle between well-connected corporate interests and immigration hawks at the White House. NL-Header_DD-Premium2
The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Donald Trump, Welcome To The League of Globalists, William Kristol, Andrew Egger, Cathy Young, and Jim Swift, June 17, 2025. For Trump, America First isn’t an actual principle. It means whatever he says it means.
Minnesota is reeling from the shootings of several state lawmakers, but Donald Trump wants you to know he’s much too busy to call Gov. Tim Walz about the tragedy. After all, that’s time he could be using to slag on Tim Walz. “I think the governor of Minnesota is so whacked out,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One early this morning. “I’m not calling. Why would I call him? I could call and say, ‘Hi, how you doing?’ The guy doesn’t have a clue. He’s a mess. I could be nice and call, but why waste time?” Happy Tuesday.
The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Trump’s Iran End Game, William Kristol, June 17, 2025. Donald Trump believes, as we all know, in an “America First” policy. At 7:24 p.m. yesterday evening, with war raging in the Middle East and debate erupting among the president’s supporters as to what he should or shouldn’t do about it, the president took to Truth Social to explain what “America First” means. "AMERICA FIRST means many GREAT things, including the fact that, IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!"
Give credit where credit is due. “America First means many great things” is an elegant formulation for the fact that America First means whatever Donald Trump wants it to mean. And if you think — as I do — that a genuine America First policy would be today, as it was in 1940, foolish and dangerous, you’re pleased that Trump is basically throwing America First under the globalist bus.
In his post, Trump does tell us one thing unambiguously: Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. This is the long-established position of the foreign policy establishment of both parties—the foreign policy establishment that so many of Trump’s followers hate.
The question then is, of course, the same one the foreign policy establishment has faced for years: How do you stop Iran from having a nuclear weapon? Can diplomacy do it? Or does one have to be willing to use, or to support the use of, military force? Will Donald Trump end up being a tough-talking version of Barack Obama? Or is he a secret convert to the views of John McCain?
Trump has been trying to have it both ways.
Earlier yesterday, Trump told reporters at the G7 in Canada that Iran would like to talk about a nuclear deal, and that Iran “should talk, and they should talk immediately, before it’s too late.”
As the day progressed, and as Iran’s apparent offer of some flexibility in talks seemed to fall far short of what Israel would even begin to consider, Trump’s hope for a deal seemed to fade. So at 6:30 p.m., Trump repeated his criticism of Iran for not signing a deal earlier. He once again said that “simply stated, IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON.” And he added, “Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran!” That final sentence doesn’t sound as if its author expected a deal was imminent. On the way home from Canada, he told reporters that he’s not looking for a “ceasefire” but, rather, a “real end” to the standoff, which he defined as Iran “giving up entirely” on its nukes.
Soon after getting settled in at the White House, Trump had one last thought to share, this time at 1:15 in the morning:
Publicity seeking President Emmanuel Macron, of France, mistakenly said that I left the G7 Summit, in Canada, to go back to D.C. to work on a “cease fire” between Israel and Iran. Wrong! He has no idea why I am now on my way to Washington, but it certainly has nothing to do with a Cease Fire. Much bigger than that. Whether purposely or not, Emmanuel always gets it wrong. Stay Tuned!
Hmmm. Trump’s return “has nothing to do with a cease fire”?
Now it could be that Trump has something much bigger in mind than a cease fire: A grand bargain between Israel and Iran. But there’s not much indication such a deal is anywhere close to being in the cards.
So is Trump telling us that we might be getting ready to help Israel finish the job of denuclearization? Could he be getting ready to use U.S. assets to help ensure the complete denuclearization of Iran, and in the process possibly help the Iranian people to get rid of the terrible regime that afflicts them, that has killed many Americans, and that poses a constant threat to peace and stability in the region?
Who knows.
Last night, back in D.C., as rumors swirled that a U.S. action against Iran was underway, the Pentagon spokesman, Sean Parnell, posted this: “American Forces are maintaining their defensive posture and that has not changed. We will protect American troops & our interests.”
In saying that our defensive posture “has not changed,” Parnell implied it could change in the future—perhaps in the near future—if an offensive posture would help protect our interests.
The Bulwark, Will War in Iran Help Russia? Cathy Young, June 17, 2025. The fight between Israel and Iran is unfolding some 2,000 miles away from the battlefields of Ukraine—but the two wars are interconnected in many ways, and whether the new conflagration in the Middle East will benefit Ukraine or Russia is a complicated but important question.
If the ayatollahs’ regime in Tehran were to fall, this would be a massive political and geopolitical blow to Vladimir Putin (especially in the wake of losing a stronghold in Syria). But anything short of this scenario may benefit Russia in several ways.
Tehran is a key Kremlin ally, as well as an important source of imported weapons in Putin’s war: not only Shahed drones but aircraft and close-range ballistic missiles. Losing this resource could be a big problem for Russia, given the insane pace at which it is burning through its hardware. There are already reports that Iran has halted all weapons deliveries to Russia. However, it’s unclear how materially important this will be in Ukraine, given that by now Russia has learned to produce its own drones based on the Iranian Shahed design.
Of course, we should consider that the inverse could also be true: War in Iran may divert still more U.S. resources away from Ukraine. Russian propagandists are already making this case. The official government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta is crowing that “other than Iran itself, Ukraine will probably be the biggest military and political loser in this situation,” both because military aid from the United States is likely to be redirected to Israel and because the damage to Iran’s oil production capabilities will boost Russian oil exports.
One could counter that the Trump administration had repeatedly signaled its lack of commitment to sending military aid to Ukraine already. Indeed, the flow of weapons nearly stopped back in February. More recently, however, there have been hopes that the minerals deal between the U.S. and Ukraine would open the way to new shipments and particularly sales of equipment. These prospects will probably be affected by the conflagration in the Middle East. The Department of Defense has already rerouted to Israel some air defense systems meant for Ukraine.
Another alarming factor to weigh is Putin’s obvious eagerness to capitalize on the new conflict by offering to help resolve it, and Donald Trump’s equally obvious interest in that idea. “I would be open to it,” he told ABC News the day after Putin called to wish him happy birthday, adding that they “had a long talk about it” and Putin was “ready.”
You’d think Putin’s own appetite for wars of aggression would preclude such a role; but in Trump’s Washington, such earth logic no longer applies. Trump has made no secret of the fact that he wants a partnership with Russia; for Putin, of course, such a partnership is the ultimate dream, a way to come back as a major player and regain respect on the world stage. Can this happen? Too early to tell. But the fact that Trump is considering sending his envoy (and Putin fanboy) Steve Witkoff to Tehran for peace talks may be an alarm bell.
Paul Krugman via Substack, Lies, Damned Lies and Deportations, Paul Krugman, right, June 17, 2025. The truth about immigrants is catching up with Trump.
I wanted to say something about Donald Trump’s off-again-on-again deportation policies. Trump returned to power apparently convinced that America is being overrun with violent immigrant criminals. So all he had to do was order ICE to start rounding up these evildoers and kick them out.
However, tracking down undocumented immigrants who are also criminals has turned out to be a slow affair, because the great majority of immigrants — like the great majority of people in general — are law-abiding. In fact, the available evidence suggests that undocumented aliens are less likely to commit crimes than native born Americans. T
hings move a little faster if ICE ignores due process and just sends people it imagines might be criminals to overseas prisons. But this means sending people who may well be innocent — and legal residents — to horrifying gulags. And while such things don’t bother Trump or Stephen Miller, they do in fact bother many Americans.
Yet Miller, left, by all accounts, has been deeply frustrated at the slow pace of deportations. So the administration began just rounding up people who look to them like illegal immigrants. Again, the abandonment of due process and rule of law clearly didn’t bother them.
But the loss of an important part of the labor force bothered business interests. And so last week Trump suddenly announced that he wouldn’t be going after immigrant workers in agriculture and the hospitality industry, who are “very good, long time workers.”
What this meant, I guess, was that the dragnets will be limited to industries that employ large numbers of undocumented immigrants, but in which these immigrants are not a crucial part of the work force.
So I wondered how long it would take Trump to realize that there are no such industries. I mean, wait until he learned about who does the hard, dangerous work in the construction industry.
Sure enough, it only took a couple of days for the administration to reverse its policy of exempting farms and restaurants from immigrant raids. Anti-immigrant hardliners realized, even if Trump didn’t, that going easy on immigrants who are crucial to the economy would in effect mean abandoning the whole idea of mass deportation.
New York Times, Starmer Picks Up Trump’s Papers, and 2 Small Political Wins, Mark Landler, June 17, 2025. The British prime minister scrambled at President Trump’s feet in a viral moment, but he may be happier than the other Group of 7 leaders with his moment in the sun.
The image was unfortunate: Prime Minister Keir Starmer, right, crouching down to scoop up papers spilled by President Trump as he showed off a finalized trade agreement between the United States and Britain. Yet the inevitable comparisons of the British leader to an eager courtier belied a surprisingly successful outcome for Mr. Starmer at the Group of 7 meeting in Alberta, Canada.
In addition to the trade deal, Mr. Starmer won Mr. Trump’s assurance that the United States would not mothball a strategically important submarine alliance with Britain and Australia. Worries about the future of the alliance, known as AUKUS, had flared in London last week after the Pentagon began a review of it.
At a leaders’ gathering where Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada cut short a photo opportunity with Mr. Trump and the president said on social media that a “publicity seeking” President Emmanuel Macron of France “always gets it wrong,” Mr. Starmer emerged, improbably, as Mr. Trump’s best friend.
As often with Mr. Trump, friendship can feel rather casual. After telling reporters that he and Mr. Starmer had signed an executive order implementing the British-American deal, which was first announced in May, Mr. Trump said, “So we have our trade agreement with the European Union.”
Mr. Starmer blinked and kept his silence.
The executive order left several details unresolved: While it lowered American tariffs on British cars to 10 percent from 25 percent — a critical goal for Mr. Starmer — Mr. Trump stopped short of guaranteeing zero tariffs for British steel exports. And digital services remain outside the scope of the agreement, as do specific tariffs on pharmaceuticals.
Still, Mr. Starmer was able to brandish the deal as a win for Britain’s beleaguered automobile industry. And he got it done before Mr. Trump left the summit early to deal with the spiraling conflict between Israel and Iran. The president skipped a meeting with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia, which exposed Mr. Albanese to criticism from opponents back home.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Canada and the United Kingdom? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.
Mr. Trump played up the unlikely rapport he has developed with Mr. Starmer — something the prime minister has cultivated methodically since before Mr. Trump won the election last November. “We’ve become friends in a short period of time,” Mr. Trump said, adding, “He’s slightly more liberal than I am.”
The president also suggested that Britain would not face future tariffs because, he said, “I like them — that’s their ultimate protection.”
As insurance policies go, that may seem rather fickle, but British officials will take it. They negotiated furiously to be the first country in the world to announce a trade agreement with Mr. Trump after he imposed across-the-board tariffs on April 2. And Britain remains the only one with a deal, even if its scope is narrow and there are no assurances that Mr. Trump will not reverse course.
“Everything could always change, but at this point Starmer is handling Trump better than anyone expected, or any recent P.M. would or did manage,” David Henig, the director of U.K. Trade Policy at the European Center for International Political Economy, wrote on Tuesday in a post on social media.
New York Times, MyPillow Founder Mike Lindell Defamed Election Security Expert, Jury Finds, David Yaffe-Bellany, June 17, 2025 (print ed.). He was ordered to pay $2.3 million in damages to Eric Coomer, a former employee of Dominion Voting Systems.
The MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, who spread baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election, defamed a former employee of Dominion Voting Systems, a federal jury in Denver found on Monday.
The jury awarded $2.3 million in damages to the former employee, Eric Coomer, after a two-week trial, according to one of his lawyers, David Beller.
Mr. Lindell claimed without evidence that the vote had been rigged to prevent President Trump from winning re-election. Among his targets was Dr. Coomer, who is a former director of product strategy and security at Dominion, a Denver-based manufacturer of voting machines that was falsely accused of flipping votes from Mr. Trump to Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Mr. Lindell called Dr. Coomer “a traitor to the United States” and said he should turn himself in to the authorities, according to court filings. Dr. Coomer sued Mr. Lindell in 2022, arguing that those attacks had effectively ended his career in the election industry and led to “frequent credible death threats.”
“Mike Lindell not only hurt Eric Coomer with his baseless lies — he hurt the American people and the democratic process,” Mr. Beller said in a statement. “Dr. Coomer is now one step closer to putting his life back together.”
The verdict was the latest in a long string of legal rulings that have upended the false theory that the 2020 election was stolen from Mr. Trump. In 2023, Dominion reached a $787.5 million settlement with Fox News after filing a defamation suit against the network, which had spread misinformation about the company’s voting machines. That same year, an arbitration panel ordered Mr. Lindell to pay a forensics expert who had met his $5 million challenge to debunk claims about election interference.
Dr. Coomer became a target of election conspiracists partly because of posts on his Facebook page that were critical of Mr. Trump.
June 16
Shown above are assassination victims Melissa Hortman of Minnesota, the top Democrat in her state's House of Representatives, and her husband, Mark. A politically motivated gunman also seriously wounded State Senator John A. Hoffman, another Democrat, and his wife, Yvette, in separate attacks at their homes in suburban Minneapolis on Saturday, June 14, 2025. The gunman also fired at police officers before fleeing.
Lincoln Square Media, Analysis: The Latest from Minnesota after the Assassinations, Susan J. Demas, June 16, 2025. J. Patrick Coolican, the Editor of the Minnesota Reformer, talks about the right-wing disinformation echo chamber that sprang into action after the weekend shootings of Democratic lawmakers.
It was a historic weekend with Trump’s military parade and millions turning out across the country for “No Kings” rallies.
But before that, we awoke on Saturday, June 14 to the news that two Minnesota Democratic lawmakers and their spouses had been shot in what appear to be politically motivated crimes. Former state House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband are dead, while Senator John Hoffman and his wife are still hospitalized after being shot 17 times.
On Sunday night, police announced they had caught the suspected killer, had a list of other lawmakers in Minnesota and other states, as well as abortion advocates.
J. Patrick Coolican is the Editor of the Minnesota Reformer, which has been covering the assassinations and the No Kings protest. He joined Lincoln Square Executive Editor Susan J. Demas to update us on the latest news from the Twin Cities.Subscribed
Patrick last saw former Speaker Hortman on Thursday and described her as being in the mold of the late Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone, who is considered the godfather of the modern progressive movement.
“Melissa Hortman, I think will go down in Minnesota history as one of the more consequential speakers we've ever had and one of the more consequential progressive leaders,” Patrick told Lincoln Square. “I honestly think I'd put her up there with someone like Paul Wellstone.”
Although the suspect was reportedly a Christian nationalist and Trump supporter, right-wing influencers quickly ginned up a disinformation campaign on social media painting him as a Democrat or “Marxist” as Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah falsely claimed. So Patrick wrote a powerful column on Saturday to correct the record.
“It made me angry, and that's what I wound up writing a column about this,” he said. “It's one of the most despicable things that I've ever witnessed.”
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: June 15 [U.S. Political Assassinations and No Kings Marches], Heather Cox Richardson, right, June 16, 2025.Yesterday began with the horrific news that a gunman had shot two Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses in what Minnesota governor Tim Walz said appeared to be a “politically motivated assassination.”
State representative Melissa Hortman, who was the top Democrat in the Minnesota House, and her husband, Mark, both died in the attack at their home in Brooklyn Park, a city near Minneapolis. The gunman also shot Democratic Minnesota state senator John Hoffman nine times and his wife, Yvette, eight at their home in Champlin. The hospital reports they are in stable condition after surgery.
Law enforcement officers encountered the suspected gunman, 57-year-old Vance Boelter, coming out of Hortman’s house. He was dressed as a police officer. Officers exchanged gunfire with him before he fled, leaving behind his vehicle, which looked much like a police car. In it was a list of dozens of people he wanted to kill. They were mostly Democrats or people connected to abortion rights efforts. Law enforcement officers captured Boelter tonight.
MAGA Republicans are working hard to identify Boelter with what Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) called “Marxism” and Senator Bernie Moreno (R-OH) called “the extreme left,” but as investigative journalist Phil Williams of NewsChannel 5 Nashville notes, public databases show Boelter was in the past a registered Republican. His evangelical religion and his anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion stances reflect MAGA positions. Boelter’s roommate told reporters that Boelter was a “strong” supporter of President Trump.
Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) noted that MAGA has been “bathed in political violence” for the last five years. Trump’s pardoning of the January 6 rioters, including those convicted of extreme violence, “became a clear endorsement of violence committed in his name.” Trump has encouraged violence and cozied up to brutal dictators, while MAGA has fetishized guns. When he celebrates violence, unhinged people listen. Murphy points out that while people of all political persuasions commit violence, no Democratic leader encourages violence as a political norm the way Trump and MAGA have done, citing “a straight line from Jan 6 to the pardons to the assault on Sen[ator] Padilla to Minnesota.”
After the shootings, Andrew Solender of Axios reported that lawmakers of both parties are concerned about their own safety as political violence increases. The Minnesota attacks happened just days after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s security guard shoved Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA) to the ground and handcuffed him after he asked a question. This assault sparked apparent fury among the Democrats on Capitol Hill as they challenged their Republican colleagues—largely unsuccessfully—to speak up against the assault on a senator.
The entire Minnesota delegation to the U.S. Congress issued a joint statement on politically motivated shootings. Democrats and Republicans together wrote: “Today we speak with one voice to express our outrage, grief, and condemnation of this horrible attack on public servants. There is no place in our democracy for politically-motivated violence. We are praying for John and Yvette’s recovery and we grieve the loss of Melissa and Mark with their family, colleagues, and Minnesotans across the state. We are grateful for law enforcement’s swift response to the situation and continued efforts.”
After that start to the day, the country turned to the “No Kings” protests. In a dramatic rejection of Trump’s consolidation of power, at least five million Americans turned out for peaceful protests across the country. Cities turned out huge numbers of protesters at more than 2,000 planned events, and small towns, including those in Republican-dominated states, also boasted rallies. The mood was festive as people held signs with anti-Trump and pro-American images and slogans and sang Woody Guthrie’s famous American anthem, “This Land Is Your Land.” American flags were everywhere.
In contrast to the huge turnout for the protests, the military parade in Washington, D.C., was a bust. Although Trump had claimed it would be a celebration of the 250th anniversary of the American Army, it was also his 79th birthday and was widely interpreted primarily as a celebration of that occasion. Trump has wanted a parade since 2017, when he viewed the traditional Bastille Day military parade in Paris. At the time, he told reporters: “It was one of the greatest parades I’ve ever seen…. We’re going to have to try to top it.”
But organizers had had only two months to arrange for the parade, and the result was badly organized, with relatively few people turning out, especially after forecasts of storms that evening. Far from the crisp marching of the military parades that Trump seemed to want to top, the U.S. soldiers appeared to shuffle, leading to a social media debate over whether they had been ordered to march in an “at ease march” instead of a more rigorous step, or whether they were silently protesting. Photographers recorded empty bleachers and thin crowds. Few Republican lawmakers attended, but cameras caught Trump looking miserable and Secretary of State Marco Rubio yawning.
While Trump and his loyalists are trying to project an image of invincibility, their actual power seems to be faltering.
Paul Krugman's Substack, Opinion: Trump’s parade flopped. No Kings Day was a hit, Paul Krugman, right, June 16, 2025. Right now, images largely determine the outcome.
America is no longer a full-fledged democracy. We are currently living under a version of competitive authoritarianism — a system that (like Orban’s Hungary or Erdogan’s Turkey) is still democratic on paper but in which a ruling party no longer takes democracy’s rules seriously. As a result those in power violate those rules so often and to such an extent … that the regime fails to meet conventional minimum standards for democracy.
Trumpists, however, haven’t yet fully consolidated their hold. America still has a chance of reclaiming itself from the grip of brazen corruption, mindless destruction, and contempt both for the rule of law and for our erstwhile allies. We don’t have to become a country bullied into submission.
But we’re teetering on the edge, and one of the most important ways we can step back from that edge is for ordinary Americans to engage in mass protests.
On Saturday I, along with friends, joined the No Kings Day protest in New York. The protest was huge despite the rain, but I don’t know how to estimate crowd sizes. Others do, however. And the poll analyst G. Elliott Morris has worked with a number of independent journalists to produce rough estimates of how many people participated in the protests nationwide, and comes up with a number between 4 and 6 million. That’s a huge number. Remarkably, these massive protests were almost entirely peaceful.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump got the military parade he wanted for his birthday. And it was a box-office bust, probably attracting far fewer people than the 250,000 the White House claimed. In fact, the optics were simply embarrassing. As the Washington Post noted,
Some in the crowd filed out as the parade continued, the number of onlookers thinning before the president gave his remarks. Even bleacher seating for VIP guests, positioned directly across from a riser for news cameras, remained half-empty throughout the program.
Why does this matter? Is counting attendance in rival rallies just an exercise in one-upmanship?
No. Right now crowd sizes matter a lot because competitive authoritarianism rests largely on self-fulfilling expectations.
What do I mean by this? While there is a cadre of Trumpist true believers who will obey the Leader under any circumstances, most of those doing the dirty work of undermining democracy and the rule of law are cowards and opportunists. They’re willing to participate in the destruction of America as we know it because they believe that many others will do the same. As a result, they believe that they are unlikely to face any personal consequences for their actions and may even be rewarded for their lawbreaking.
And what of those who oppose Trumpism? While there are heroes willing to take a stand against tyranny whatever the personal cost, most anti-Trumpists are reluctant to stick their necks out unless they believe that they are part of a widespread resistance that will grant them some measure of safety in numbers.
In other words, the victory or defeat of competitive authoritarianism will depend to a large extent on which side ordinary people believe will win. If Trump looks unstoppable, resistance will wither away and democracy will be lost. On the other hand, if he appears weak and stymied, resistance will grow and — just maybe — American democracy will survive.
Although the tide may be turning, MAGA isn’t simply going to roll over and slink away. On the contrary, the administration’s power grabs will become even more aggressive and desperate, with growing efforts to intimidate, prosecute and even physically harm political opponents, as well as widespread efforts to suppress dissent with force.
Nonetheless, despite the difficult times ahead, America has just passed an important test. May freedom ring.
The Bulwark, The Triad, Opinion: It Was Worse Than You Think, Jonathan V. Last, June 16, 2025. We had a best-case scenario weekend and itwas still terrible.
1. As Good As It Gets
Here is a list of things that didn’t happen this weekend:
I know what you’re thinking: America was America for 48 hours. Do you want a cookie?
But it’s worth acknowledging that this string of non-events represents something like the best-case scenario. If you had offered me that list last Friday, I would have taken it a New York minute.
This morning I felt myself exhaling in gratitude. It felt like victory; like hope.
And yet, when you look at the list of things that did happen, it’s horrifying.
Here is how bad things are: We look at the last 48 hours and feel relief. But at any other point in American history, the events of this weekend would be understood as a sign that the country was falling apart.
This is the frog boiling in the pot. We are so deep into the decline of liberalism that warning signs feel like a reprieve.
But there’s more. And worse.
The Guardian, Investigation: ‘Extremely disturbing and unethical’: new rules allow VA doctors to refuse to treat Democrats, unmarried veterans,’ 
Aaron Glantz, June 16, 2025. Department of Veterans Affairs says the changes come in response to a Trump executive order ‘defending women.
Doctors at Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals nationwide could refuse to treat unmarried veterans and Democrats under new hospital guidelines imposed following an executive order by Donald Trump.
The new rules, obtained by the Guardian, also apply to psychologists, dentists and a host of other occupations. They have already gone into effect in at least some VA medical centers.
Medical staff are still required to treat veterans regardless of race, color, religion and sex, and all veterans remain entitled to treatment. But individual workers are now free to decline to care for patients based on personal characteristics not explicitly prohibited by federal law.
Language requiring healthcare professionals to care for veterans regardless of their politics and marital status has been explicitly eliminated.Members of the California National Guard stand behind shieldsTrump LA protest response risks turning US military into political force, veterans warnRead more
Doctors and other medical staff can also be barred from working at VA hospitals based on their marital status, political party affiliation or union activity, documents reviewed by the Guardian show. The changes also affect chiropractors, certified nurse practitioners, optometrists, podiatrists, licensed clinical social workers and speech therapists.
In making the changes, VA officials cite the president’s 30 January executive order titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” The primary purpose of the executive order was to strip most government protections from transgender people. The VA has since ceased providing most gender-affirming care and forbidden a long list of words, including “gender affirming” and “transgender,” from clinical settings.
Medical experts said the implications of rule changes uncovered by the Guardian could be far-reaching.
They “seem to open the door to discrimination on the basis of anything that is not legally protected”, said Dr Kenneth Kizer, the VA’s top healthcare official during the Clinton administration. He said the changes open up the possibility that doctors could refuse to treat veterans based on their “reason for seeking care – including allegations of rape and sexual assault – current or past political party affiliation or political activity, and personal behavior such as alcohol or marijuana use”.
The Department of Veterans Affairs is the nation’s largest integrated hospital system, with more than 170 hospitals and more than 1,000 clinics. It employs 26,000 doctors and serves 9 million patients annually.
In an emailed response to questions, the VA press secretary, Peter Kasperowicz, did not dispute that the new rules allowed doctors to refuse to treat veteran patients based on their beliefs or that physicians could be dismissed based on their marital status or political affiliation, but said “all eligible veterans will always be welcome at VA and will always receive the benefits and services they’ve earned under the law”.
He said the rule changes were nothing more than “a formality”, but confirmed that they were made to comply with Trump’s executive order. Kasperowicz also said the revisions were necessary to “ensure VA policy comports with federal law”. He did not say which federal law or laws required these changes.
Those views aren’t relevant to caring for patients. So why would we put anyone at risk of losing care that way?
Dr Arthur Caplan of New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine
Until the recent changes, VA hospitals’ bylaws said that medical staff could not discriminate against patients “on the basis of race, age, color, sex, religion, national origin, politics, marital status or disability in any employment matter”. Now, several of those items – including “national origin,” “politics” and “marital status” – have been removed from that list.
Similarly, the bylaw on “decisions regarding medical staff membership” no longer forbids VA hospitals from discriminating against candidates for staff positions based on national origin, sexual orientation, marital status, membership in a labor organization or “lawful political party affiliation”.
Dr Arthur Caplan, founding head of the division of medical ethics at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, called the new rules “extremely disturbing and unethical.”
New York Times, MyPillow Founder Mike Lindell Defamed Election Security Expert, Jury Finds, David Yaffe-Bellany, June 16, 2025. He was ordered to pay $2.3 million in damages to Eric Coomer, a former employee of Dominion Voting Systems.
The MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, who spread baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election, defamed a former employee of Dominion Voting Systems, a federal jury in Denver found on Monday.
The jury awarded $2.3 million in damages to the former employee, Eric Coomer, after a two-week trial, according to one of his lawyers, David Beller.
Mr. Lindell claimed without evidence that the vote had been rigged to prevent President Trump from winning re-election. Among his targets was Dr. Coomer, who is a former director of product strategy and security at Dominion, a Denver-based manufacturer of voting machines that was falsely accused of flipping votes from Mr. Trump to Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Mr. Lindell called Dr. Coomer “a traitor to the United States” and said he should turn himself in to the authorities, according to court filings. Dr. Coomer sued Mr. Lindell in 2022, arguing that those attacks had effectively ended his career in the election industry and led to “frequent credible death threats.”
“Mike Lindell not only hurt Eric Coomer with his baseless lies — he hurt the American people and the democratic process,” Mr. Beller said in a statement. “Dr. Coomer is now one step closer to putting his life back together.”
The verdict was the latest in a long string of legal rulings that have upended the false theory that the 2020 election was stolen from Mr. Trump. In 2023, Dominion reached a $787.5 million settlement with Fox News after filing a defamation suit against the network, which had spread misinformation about the company’s voting machines. That same year, an arbitration panel ordered Mr. Lindell to pay a forensics expert who had met his $5 million challenge to debunk claims about election interference.
Dr. Coomer became a target of election conspiracists partly because of posts on his Facebook page that were critical of Mr. Trump.
The Contrarian, Opinion: After an ugly week, an ugly bill, Jennifer Rubin, right, June 16, 2025. MAGA reveals the depths of its cruelty and greed.
The horrifying assassination of Minnesota state legislator Mellisa Hortman and her husband Mark, and the attempted assassination of state senator John Hoffman and his wife on Saturday followed a week in which the full magnitude of Donald Trump’s violence, cruelty, chaos, and insatiable quest to destroy American democracy as we knew it were on full view.
At a time when the country is in dire need of empathy, unity, and healing, MAGA Republicans will return to D.C. this week to pick up where they left off in their reconciliation debate wrangling: seeking to pass a bill that includes the most monstrous transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the uber-rich in recent history.
The Congressional Budget Office determined that if the House bill gets enacted, the bottom decile of Americans by income would lose about $1600 while the top 10 decile would gain more than $12,000. Meanwhile, the debt would balloon to 134% of GDP by 2034.
The MAGA reverse-Robin-Hood scheme would, among other things, remove 11 Million people from Medicaid, 5 Million from the Affordable Care Act exchanges, slash SNAP by more than $700M, “strip 4.5 million children who are U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents of eligibility for the Child Tax Credit,” and eliminate or reduce energy credits and subsidies, sending energy costs soaring, particularly in red states.
The bill targets certain categories of legal immigrants (e.g., TPS holders or asylum seekers) by removing them from access to ACA exchanges and stripping them of Medicare benefits (after they have paid into the system).
The party that once stood for federalism would bludgeon states to eliminate Medicaid benefits for these people, provoking the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ assessment that:
“This policy is a direct affront to state sovereignty, placing enormous pressure on states to reduce or terminate coverage programs that their lawmakers have adopted and that they have a legal right to provide or face devastating cuts to Medicaid expansion funding…It goes beyond coercion by imposing a direct, virtually unavoidable penalty on some states.”
Lincoln Square Media, Opinion: Winners & Losers: Mourning & Morning in America, Sam Osterhout, June 16, 2025. Last week will be named in the history books. But it's only the beginning.
Welcome back to your weekly leaderboard of losers. I’m writing this on Sunday, June 15, after one of the most consequential weeks in — perhaps — decades. I know, I know. Every week feels like the most consequential in history, and every news cycle brings new horrors. But last week, I think, was different.
A horrifying feature of the Trump years is a simmering background noise of terribleness, constantly burbling through our lives, punctuated by blazing hot explosions, the debris of which we spend the following months sorting through (and that create their own internal, simmering, persistent heat).
Think: the explosion of the feds raiding Mar-a-Lago, and the resulting years-long fizzle. Big news! And then … what? Simmering.
But last week, the breaking news was real breaking news with real impacts on real people. The constant stream of videos of masked ICE agents (were they actually ICE? Did they have warrants? Could they even name the moms and kids and dads they were disappearing?) breaking into homes and shoving people into unmarked vans; the horses trampling protesters underfoot; the stormtroopers hosing down peaceful protesters with pepper spray. This isn’t a story about classified documents, or grift, or tariffs — all of which are destroying our Democracy with a thousand tiny cuts. This is something different.
New York Times, Trump Administration Live Updates: Judge Rules N.I.H. Grant Cuts Illegal, Orders Funds Restored, Staff Reports, June 16, 2025. The Trump administration targeted research grants on topics such as racial disparities and maternal health in minority communities.
N.I.H. grants: A federal judge ordered the government to restore funding to hundreds of grants issued by the National Institutes of Health that had been cut by the Trump administration, ruling that the government had discriminated against minorities and L.G.B.T.Q. individuals. The judge said he would be “blind” not to call out the discrimination he had seen in the case. Read more ›
Trump at the G7: As the Group of 7 nations meeting opened in Canada, President Trump criticized the 2014 decision to expel Russia from the body, saying that the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine could have been averted if Russia had remained part of the group. Russia was expelled following its invasion of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada cut off questions soon after Mr. Trump spoke.
Travel ban: The Trump administration could add up to 36 countries to its travel ban list if they do not address what it described as security and diplomatic concerns, according to a diplomatic cable sent Saturday. The countries, mostly in Africa, have until Wednesday to provide remediation plans and two months to carry them out. Read more ›
Trump Mobile. Phone company is announced by the president’s family, but details are murky. President Trump’s family business announced Monday that it was launching a mobile phone and cellular service in the first family’s latest attempt to capitalize on Mr. Trump’s political base. The announcement by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest sons, who run the Trump Organization, left some basic questions unanswered.
The new $499 gold-toned Android phones would be designed and manufactured in the United States, but it was not clear how or where. The country lacks much of the necessary infrastructure to produce smartphones. One member of the new Trump phone team also said a $47 monthly cellular service plan would include 24/7 telemedicine. But the health services that the company says would be included typically cost much more than the entire monthly fee.
The plan calls for the Trump Organization to license the use of the family name to a separate business, called T1 Mobile L.L.C., that incorporated in Florida in late April. Although the Trumps are merely lending their name to the venture, the deal could still pose conflicts of interest as the president’s family moves into an industry regulated by his administration.
Trump Mobile is the latest in a string of Trump family deals that were inked or accelerated after Mr. Trump won his second term, including a digital currency that is now a significant source of his wealth. Governance experts have said that the projects pose an unprecedented array of conflicts of interest for an American president.
“Good luck getting a federal agency to hold the company accountable if service fails or things go off the rails,” said Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, a nonprofit watchdog group. Mr. Weissman also questioned how the phone could be manufactured in the United States, noting that only one phone, costing $2,000, is currently made here.
New York Times, Live Updates: Israel Says It Attacked Headquarters of Powerful Iranian Military Unit, Patrick Kingsley, Natan Odenheimer and Andrés R. Martínez, June 16, 2025. Israel’s military said it had struck the headquarters of the elite Quds Force. The claim, which could not be immediately confirmed, came as Iranian missiles struck several Israeli cities, killing at least eight.
Israel said on Monday that it had struck the command center of Iran’s elite Quds Force, as the fiercest and deadliest confrontation in the history of the Israeli-Iranian conflict entered its fourth day.
As civilian casualties climb on both sides, the war now seems likely to last for more than a week. Israel is intensifying its efforts to destroy Iran’s nuclear and military capabilities and Iran continues to return fire with huge barrages of ballistic missiles, leaving civilians on both sides increasingly fearful and bracing for what is to come.
“Everything’s uncertain,” said Meisam, 41, a poet and writer who joined the crowds of people fleeing Tehran.
The attack on the Quds facility in Tehran, and the extent of any casualties or damage, could not immediately be verified independently. It came as Iranian missiles struck several Israeli cities early on Monday, killing at least eight people, according to Israeli officials.
The volleys were the latest since Israel began attacking Iran on Friday. Since then, Israeli strikes have killed at least 224 people in Iran, according to the country’s health ministry, and injured more than 1,400 people. In Israel, at least 24 people, identified as civilians, have been killed in retaliatory barrages by Iran, with roughly 600 injured.
New York Times, France’s Acute Palestinian Dilemma, Roger Cohen, June 16, 2025. The French-Israeli relationship has always been turbulent, but the prospect that President Emmanuel Macron may recognize a Palestinian state has brought tension to a new level.Listen to this article · 8:59 min Learn more
Turbulent relations between France and Israel are nothing new, but even by those historical standards the crisis caused by President Emmanuel Macron’s apparently imminent readiness to recognize a Palestinian state is acute.
The postponement, as a result of fighting between Israel and Iran, of a United Nations conference this week convened to explore the creation of a Palestinian state has deferred any announcement but appears to have redoubled Mr. Macron’s resolve. “Whatever the circumstances, I have stated my determination to recognize a Palestinian state,” Mr. Macron said on Friday. “That determination is whole.”
“We must reorganize it as soon as we can,” he said of the conference, which he was to chair with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia. French officials close to Mr. Macron say he has told the crown prince of his firm intention to recognize a Palestinian state.
Vilified by Israel as leading “a crusade against the Jewish state,” and spurned in his peacemaking efforts by the United States, which is implacably opposed to the conference and has urged countries to shun it, Mr. Macron is confronted by a diplomatic predicament that will test his renowned adaptability, viewed by some as wobbliness.
Mr. Macron — outraged, like much of the world, by the almost 56,000 Palestinians killed by Israel in Gaza since the start of the war, and by its near or total blockade of the strip in recent months — has spoken of “a moral duty and political requirement” to recognize a Palestinian state.
In the absence of Israeli plans for Gaza, and in the face of Israel’s bombardment of Iran aimed at destroying its nuclear program, Mr. Macron believes that only a strong political commitment to Palestinian statehood can open the way to a two-state peace, persuade Hamas to lay down its arms and eventually advance regional stability.
Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Reporting, Minnesota killer's possible Russia connections, Wayne Madsen, left, June 16-17, 2025. Vance Boelter, the pro-Donald Trump far-right preacher wanted for the June 14 assassinations of Minnesota state Representative and Minnesota House Speaker emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark Hortman and the shooting of Minnesota state Senator John Hoffman, who survived nine bullet wounds, and his wife Yvette Hoffman, is suspected of having ties to mercenaries in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and members of the former Wagner Group active in Africa and Europe.
Wagner mercenaries have been folded into Russia's new Africa Corps after the mercenary group's founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, launched an unsuccessful military putsch against Russian President Vladimir Putin in June 2023.
Boelter's assassination of Hortman has effectively flipped a tied Minnesota House of Representatives from Democratic to Republican control. That makes Boelter's choice to kill Hortman, who appeared first on a target list of some 70 Democrats, abortion rights advocates, and women's reproductive health doctors, a clear politically-motivated decision that is in the interest of the Republican Party and Trump.
Law enforcement officials revealed in a June 16 news conference that Boelter had visited the homes of two other Democratic state legislators and that one of them was away on vacation. Law enforcement officials stated that 45 members of the Minnesota legislature appeared on Boelter's target list. Others targeted lived outside of Minnesota. They included Michigan Democratic U.S. Representative Hillary Scholten, who canceled a scheduled June 16 town hall event out of caution. Law enforcement has not released the names of the two other legislators' homes visited by Boelter. Their residences are located in Maple Grove and New Hope, Minnesota.
Others on Boelter's target list include Minnesota Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan, Senators Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Amy Klobuchar, and Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), U.S. Representatives Kelly Morrison (D-MN), Mark Pocan (D-WI), Angie Craig (D-MN), Debbie Dingell (D-MI), Haley Stevens (D-MI), Shri Thanedar (D-MI), Veronica Escobar (D-TX), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Greg Landsman (D-OH). Minnesota Democratic state Representatives Nicole Mitchell and Esther Agbaje, former Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman, and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Jeff Bezos.
One of the other two residences visited by Boelter was that of Minnesota Democratic state Representative Kristin Bahner, who was not home. The fourth home visited was that of Democratic state Senator Ann Rest. Contrary to Trump media circles, no Republicans were targeted by the Trump supporting Boelter.
Some hastily-drawn "No Kings" flyers were found by police in Boelter's vehicle, an indication that Boelter was planning to infiltrate and commit violence at one or more of the anti-Trump "No Kings" protests being held in and around the Twin Cities on the same day that Boelter shot the Democratic legislators and their spouses, along with the Hortmans' dog.
New York Times, The Trumps Promote a New Crypto Venture: Bitcoin Mining, David Yaffe-Bellany, June 16, 2025. The debut of American Bitcoin, a mining firm backed by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., has heightened the ethical concerns swirling around the Trump presidency.
On a Wall Street conference call in April, Eric Trump made a pitch for the newest venture in his family’s rapidly expanding cryptocurrency empire.
Mr. Trump, the president’s second son, said he was joining forces with the crypto firm Hut 8 to start a company focused on Bitcoin mining, the business of running energy-guzzling machines to generate new coins.
Bitcoin mining is a notoriously difficult industry. But in the pitch, Mr. Trump made clear that the policies of his father’s administration would give the new company, American Bitcoin, a “competitive advantage.”
“We’re doing it in America with a government that’s dedicated to low-cost energy,” he said, later adding, “We’ve got the best energy policy in this country. That policy is only getting better.”
Virtually every aspect of the Trump family’s business portfolio is fraught with conflicts of interest that have blurred the boundary between government and industry. The debut of American Bitcoin, which is set to merge with a publicly traded company later this year, has heightened those concerns, introducing new ethical questions and pulling the Trumps even deeper into crypto, a business the White House has aggressively championed.
President Trump is already financially intertwined with two other crypto ventures — a so-called meme coin created by a longtime business partner, and a separate company, World Liberty Financial, that he and his sons founded before the election. At the same time, he has ended a yearslong enforcement campaign against crypto companies by the Securities and Exchange Commission and vowed to sign legislation that would advance the industry’s priorities.
Now his family is seeking to profit from a branch of the industry tied directly to Bitcoin, a famously volatile asset that has seen its price surge based on the president’s pronouncements. Eric Trump serves as chief strategy officer for American Bitcoin. A business entity he formed with his older brother, Donald Trump Jr., controls 20 percent of the new company.
Over the last month, the Trump brothers have embarked on a promotional tour, trumpeting American Bitcoin at high-profile corporate conferences in Las Vegas and Toronto, where a giant company banner hung over the convention hall.
Lance’s Substack, Opinion: The Latest In The Fetterman Chronicles...Seen Having Dinner With Steve Bannon At A DC MAGA Hangout, Lance F Rosen, June 16, 2025. Senator John Fetterman (D-PA), shown above in a file photo, is out eating dinner in public with Steve Bannon now? What is this, and how long will we just 
write it off as a “sad” consequence of his stroke and battle with depression? There is something else at work here.
The question must be asked, at what point does the Democratic Senatorial leadership take action to discipline or force the resignation of this 6 ft. 8 in. tall trash dumpster teeming with the theoretical "primordial slime" written about by that great biologist Oparin?
Bannon is an unrepentant and avowed fascist, was a planner of January 6th, and somehow manages to look like a bigger slob than that putrid performative pile of Putinism, his mentor, Russian intelligence recruiter Alexandr Dugin. What could Fetterman and Bannon possibly be talking about? We wonder, is Fetterman lining up a gig as a news presenter on Russian State TV when/if he's removed from office by his fellow Pennsylvanians? Or is he just there to get some of Bannon's tips on personal hygiene?
You can see this in his quotes and interviews, and the high volume of his Senate office staff resignations. (which if he had a revolving door could be hooked to a generator and provide all of the needed electrical power for the entire Amish population of Central Pennsylvania so they could phase out those 17th century oil lamps at long last) He knows what he is doing, and is in no way a victim of his neurological condition. He is both a willing and cognizant participant in betrayal and lies, undermining our cause, his party, and the people who voted him in.
"To me it is not just about him, rather it's a case study in political fraud, deception, ambition and corruption. He is now a symbol of something dangerous and rotten, and the color of it is "purple." That's why I'm dwelling on the subject of his so-called change, and deemphasizing his stroke to point toward the more destructive factor of the corruption in modern politics which empowers people like him, Trump, and his new BFF Bannon.
His pre-stroke profile, personna, public image, self-marketing, friendships, possibly his marriage, (with eyewitnesses now reporting on his domestic abuse of his wife) and career choices were a carefully constructed set of lies and sleight of hand. He built out a movie set which was his life, because he is like Trump, a narcissist, whose pursuit of celebrity status was the driving force behind his career decisions. He was fake from the beginning, and many of us who go by the label on the package got ripped off when we bought it. So in that sense what has gone wrong with him highlights our own superficiality and suggestibilty in the realm of politics, the reason we are so easily misled both by politicians and used car salesmen.
It is not just that some of his positions and policies have gone bad. He has devolved into a toxic personality, an abuser who no one wants to work for, and who aggressively stopped giving a shit about his supporters or voters on a personal level in general. They are just "numbers" to him now, like social media "clicks and likes." He does nothing that Senators are supposed to do for their states or voters, he stopped maintaining the appearance of even trying, and now is reported to be a lazy bum. He does no work, all he does is network with GOPers to maneuver himself as the new Joe Manchin.
He is positioning to capture people who hate both parties in order to build his own vehicle, to take over what was calling itself "No Labels" last year. He might not even be "the guy" who emerges as the leader of it, and may in fact be a stalking horse used by some others still in the background in order to test the waters and absorb the initial blowback from liberal Democrats who feel betrayed. That's what makes him dangerous and the reason I want to nip his operations in the bud.
Trump is using the fact of him being a centrist Democrat who "works with him" to “sanewash” himself, just like he used Kim and Kanye to win over black celebrities, and uses black politicians and ministers to prove he is not racist. Trump's campaign against anti-semitism is the same thing, a Stephen Miller scripted fictional narrative to discredit those who rightly describe them as Nazi-like racists and fascists. Trump wears his so-called support for Israel as a "beard" to deflect from his own life-long affinity for Hitler and the Third Reich.
Politico Magazine, Commentary: The Next Conservative Civil War Is Coming, Ankush Khardori, June 16, 2025. Trump’s nomination of Emil Bove to be a federal judge has sparked a larger battle within the conservative legal movement.
The next flashpoint in President Donald Trump’s battle to reshape the federal judiciary is coming — and it’s dividing the right.
Trump recently appeared to declare war on the Federalist Society, the powerful conservative legal advocacy organization that played an essential role in his election both in 2016 and 2024. After one of his first-term appointees ruled against him in a major challenge to his tariffs, Trump launched a public tirade against the former chair of the group, Leonard Leo, who Trump described as a “sleazebag” who “probably hates America” before blaming the group for “bad advice they gave me on numerous Judicial Nominations.”
But the more tangible potential rupture with at least parts of the conservative legal movement is coming over Trump’s decision to nominate Emil Bove — formerly Trump’s criminal defense lawyer, currently Trump’s enforcer at the Justice Department — to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Prominent members of the conservative legal movement have been publicly speaking out against Bove’s nomination, arguing that he would be more loyal to Trump than the rule of law. That in turn has sparked a backlash against Bove’s critics from Trump allies eager to install a new set of judges who may be less tied to the old guard on the right.
It’s a remarkable turn, and it threatens to further destabilize an alliance between Trump and the establishment conservative legal community that has been critical to his presidency and that has produced one of Trump’s most durable political achievements: stocking the judiciary with conservative judges and securing sweeping wins at the Supreme Court, from abortion to affirmative action and presidential immunity.
The outcome of this clash could also have a real impact on how Trump’s second term unfolds. It could influence not just Trump’s next wave of judicial appointments, but how the president’s most aggressive attempts to dramatically expand presidential authority — from the dismantling of huge swathes of the federal government to the unprecedented deployment of the U.S. military in Los Angeles — fare in the courts.
Amid Trump’s swipes at Leo and his calls to impeach judges who have impeded his agenda, the nomination of Bove may seem like a modest step in the president’s never-ending legal drama. But it has raised serious red flags among longtime members of the Federalist Society — as well as concerns about the long-term trajectory of the federal courts and even the Supreme Court.
The conservatives’ issue with Bove is not about ideology, but about his fitness to be a judge.
Most notably, Bove was responsible for dismissing the criminal case against New York Mayor Eric Adams using arguments that were — according to the presiding judge — “unsupported by any objective evidence,” “pretextual” and “unsubstantiated.” The controversy appears to have resulted from Trump’s decision to give Adams a pass in order to ensure the mayor’s support for the administration’s immigration crackdown and perhaps to thumb his nose yet again at the Biden Justice Department, which brought the charges against Adams in the first place.
“His involvement in the Adams prosecution is really troubling, and it suggests someone who’s eager to do the bidding of his political masters before seriously looking at legal constraints and ethics,” Gregg Nunziata, a Federalist Society member who once served as a senior aide to Senate Republicans on judicial nominations, told me.
Bove also dismissed or transferred DOJ career officials, gathered the names of FBI agents who had worked on the Jan. 6 investigation, and is one of the leads on DOJ’s so-called Weaponization Working Group, which is reviewing the conduct of the federal prosecutors and FBI agents who pursued Trump and investigated the siege of the Capitol on Jan. 6.
In a social media post announcing the nomination, Trump praised Bove as a MAGA foot soldier: “Emil is SMART, TOUGH, and respected by everyone. He will end the Weaponization of Justice, restore the Rule of Law, and do anything else that is necessary to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.”
According to Nunziata, Bove’s handling of the Adams case alone warrants serious reservations about putting him on the bench, but the concerns run deeper. That is because the nomination comes “more broadly in an environment where the administration seems more and more hostile to law, and elements of the conservative legal movement — supporters and allies of the president — have been pushing the president to nominate judges that are committed not to a neutral application of the law, but to the president’s agenda.”
“It makes this nomination a real test case of whether the Senate will allow the president to fill the bench with loyalists,” he said.
It remains unclear how that test will shake out.MOST READtrump-newsom-40480.jpg
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I recently surveyed the entire Senate Republican conference to ask whether individual senators would vote for or against Bove, and few replied. The only substantive response I got was from Utah GOP Sen. Mike Lee’s office, which said that Lee “supports the nomination of Emil Bove, and looks forward to voting for him.” In fairness, the nomination is still in its early stages, and the Senate Judiciary Committee has yet to hold a hearing. For now, it’s easiest to withhold comment.
“I haven’t heard people saying that they’re kind of pre-committed to supporting the nomination,” Nunziata said. “I’ve heard people saying they understand the concerns and they want to hear from the nominee and see how he presents himself.”
But based on how Trump’s second term has gone so far, it’s clear Senate Republicans will be reluctant to tank one of his nominees.
That’s particularly true because the opposition to Bove has produced an aggressive defense from Trump’s most ardent defenders in the conservative legal community. The Article III Project quickly produced a stream of articles and commentary supporting Trump’s choice — largely, it seemed, on the grounds that Bove would be a reliable supporter of Trump’s political agenda and legal positions.
Mike Davis, the group’s founder and onetime counsel to Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), lauded the appointment while tweaking both ends of the opposition. “The left fears Emil Bove because he’s effective,” Davis said. “The establishment right resents him because he refuses to play by their rules.”
Ankush Khardori is a senior writer for POLITICO Magazine and a former federal prosecutor at the Department of Justice, where he specialized in financial fraud and white-collar crime. He has also worked in the private sector on complex commercial litigation and white-collar corporate defense. His column, Rules of Law, offers an unvarnished look at national legal affairs and the political dimensions of the law at a moment when the two are inextricably linked.
New York Times, Three People Killed, Including 8-Month-Old, in Shooting at Utah Festival, Claire Moses, June 16, 2025. The other victims were an 18-year-old man and a 41-year-old woman, the police said. The gunfire stemmed from a verbal altercation.
Three people, including an infant, were fatally shot Sunday night after a verbal altercation led to gunfire at an annual festival in West Valley City, Utah, according to the West Valley City police.
Around 9:20 p.m. local time, officers at the festival, held in a Salt Lake City suburb, saw two groups of people arguing, the police said.
“As they approached to break up the altercation, a 16-year-old male from one of the groups pulled out a gun and fired,” the police said on social media late Sunday.
An officer also fired a gun, the police said, but did not hit the gunman. The West Valley Police said they had taken a 16-year-old boy into custody.
The gunman hit five people. Two bystanders — a 41-year-old woman and an 8-month-old child — were killed, as was an 18-year-old man in one of the groups involved in the fight, police said.
Two other teenagers — 17 and 15 — were shot in the arm, the police said. They added it was unclear whether those teenagers were part of the groups involved in the fight.
The shooting happened on the final night of WestFest, which celebrates the establishment of West Valley City as well as its cultural diversity. West Valley City is Utah’s second-largest city, after Salt Lake City, with a population of about 145,000 people.
The fatal shooting came a day after a bystander was killed at a “No Kings” protest in Salt Lake City. Armed security workers saw a man handling a rifle near a crowd and fired at him, killing a bystander in the process. The man with the rifle was taken into custody and charged with murder.
New York Times, The Bureaucrat and the Billionaire: Inside DOGE’s Chaotic Takeover of Social Security, Alexandra Berzon, Nicholas Nehamas and Tara Siegel Bernard, June 16, 2025. The drama offers a case study in how Elon Musk’s team sought to run a critical government agency through misinformation and social media blasts — and how longtime employees responded.
Elon Musk stood before a giant American flag at a Wisconsin political rally in March and rolled out an eye-popping allegation of rampant fraud at the Social Security Administration. Scammers, he said, were making 40 percent of all calls to the agency’s customer service line.
Social Security employees knew the billionaire’s claim had no basis in fact. After journalists followed up, staff members began drafting a response correcting the record.
That’s when Leland Dudek — plucked from a midlevel job only six weeks earlier to run Social Security because of his willingness to cooperate with Mr. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency — got an angry call from the White House, according to several people familiar with the exchange.
“The number is 40 percent,” insisted Katie Miller, a top administration aide who was working closely with Mr. Musk, according to one of the people familiar with the April 1 call. President Trump believed Mr. Musk, she said. “Do not contradict the president.”
Throughout the early months of this Trump presidency, Mr. Musk and his allies systematically built a false narrative of widespread fraud at the Social Security Administration based on misinterpreted data, using their claims to justify an aggressive effort to gain access to personal information on millions of Americans, a New York Times investigation has found.
Their work has led to the departures of thousands of employees, thinning an already overstretched work force and setting off a wave of public anxiety over the state of an agency administering politically sacrosanct retirement benefits that Mr. Trump has vowed to protect.
Mr. Musk has left Washington amid a blowup with Mr. Trump, and some of his top aides at DOGE have also departed, leaving federal workers and the public to assess what Mr. Musk’s tornadolike path through Washington yielded. At Social Security, Mr. Musk’s efforts amount to a case study in what happened when his team of government novices ran a critical government agency through misinformation and social media blasts.
The Times’s investigation found that Mr. Musk became fixated on the program in early February after members of his team misread government spending data — a pivotal and previously unreported moment that DOGE believed had exposed massive fraud inside the agency.
In response, Mr. Musk’s team mobilized dozens of Social Security employees to affirm their views about fraud and began a project to ensure dead people were properly classified so they weren’t mistakenly paid — even though DOGE officials acknowledged in an internal memo that payments were not being made in those cases.
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DOGE leaders pressured agency executives to hire a 21-year-old former intern at Palantir, a data analysis and technology firm, and grant him access to the personal data of every Social Security cardholder despite the executives’ concerns that he lacked sufficient training to handle such sensitive information.
Mr. Musk’s deputies became so intent on their work at Social Security that they pushed employees to continue giving them access to sensitive agency data even after a federal judge demanded that DOGE’s access be cut off, according to two people familiar with the events. The Supreme Court ruled this month that DOGE’s access can resume.
The Times also reviewed previously unreported emails that showed how DOGE members used the agency for political aims, directing Mr. Dudek to cancel important contracts in Maine after the state’s governor, a Democrat, clashed with Mr. Trump.ImageElon Musk speaking in the Oval Office while wearing a black hat, black blazer, and black T-shirt.
June 15
Proof, Investigative Commentary: Over 250 Photos From Around the Nation and the World From the Historic “No Kings Day” Protests, Seth Abramson, left, June 15, 2025. Almost no one showed up to Donald Trump’s surprisingly timid, depressing, and generally lackluster birthday party in Washington, but protests against him were bursting at the seams across the globe.
The Minutemen of the American Revolution had the Gadsden Flag. The Americans of the Donald Trump era—who like their forebears are doing all they can to achieve a lasting democracy in America, now have the No Kings Flag.
No Kings Day may well go down in history—and should arguably be celebrated in the future on every June 14, given that that’s Donald Trump’s birthday… and his birthday is a day that should be obliterated from America’s collective memory if at all possible.
While June and July already have several holidays, from Juneteenth to July 4, at least until Trump is gone from American life by peaceful, legal means it seems No Kings Day is worth its own celebration, as it’s less a remembrance of the past than a promise regarding America’s future. There’ll be no kings in America but the American people.
With all this in mind, I’ll say that what follows may be my favorite piece of curatorial journalism of all those I’ve ever done. It’s certainly the first one ever to actually make me happy.
I decided to try to find crowd photos of as many of the over 2,000 No Kings Protests as possible, not just the ones held in the U.S. but those held around the world on June 14, 2025.
That’s right: the photos below aren’t just from America but all over the globe. It’s hard to articulate what a historic moment No Kings Day was, but saying that it was a global celebration is probably a good start.
Compiling these photographs turned out to be a massive undertaking. For all that Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post hilarious claimed that only “thousands” were showing up to the thousands of No Kings protests, it was, of course, millions. And that means that there were in fact so many protests that trying to find photographic evidence of them all is an impossibility. So my goal here was to at least find hundreds of protests that in total would at a minimum show hundreds of thousands of anti-Trump protesters.
I hope readers will understand why the repository below is only for Proof subscribers: while I of course only used photographs that had been made public, I certainly don’t want to risk any of the MAGAs who spent No Kings Day watching the saddest parade in American history (the birthday bash that Donald Trump threw for himself at the American taxpayer’s expense) deciding to harass any of the thousands and thousands and thousands of people who appear along with their hometowns in the photographs below.
On the subject of The Saddest Parade in History, it’s the one that happened in D.C. as the nation was protesting Trump’s openly fascist agenda. Trump aimed to celebrate his birthday (a birthday that makes him about the age Joe Biden was when Mr. Trump began saying Biden was too old to be President of the United States) by spending tens of millions of taxpayer dollars and causing tens of millions in damage to Washington’s roads on a parade that was short in every way imaginable. It was short timewise and it was short in terms of its route, which was only 1,600 meters.
It was also lackluster in ways even I couldn’t have imagined beforehand. On Twitter and Bluesky I compiled some of the chatroom comments that were made during the event in (of all places) a conservative chatroom: the online site of Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post. You’ll truly be stunned at how universally Trump’s parade was panned.
But after all, why not? Below you can see a photo from the extremely scattershot and extremely slow-moving parade whose only intention, apparently, was to force soldiers to dress up in awkward period costumes for a would-be dictator. Certainly, the crowd was sparse (see image below) and the event itself so sluggish that many online were seen to wonder—in all earnestness—whether the same few tanks were being driven around the block several times to make the whole event seem more robust than it was.
As for the music? It wasn’t music at all but muzak—lyric-free almost-covers of well-known hits that had been carefully calibrated not to provoke civil lawsuits. Picture lots of unremarkable guitar solos. In fact, the music was so horrid that many online wondered if much of the $45 million Trump had demanded for his parade had instead been pocketed by him and/or his pals. It certainly wasn’t spent on any licensing fees.
Yes, the structure at the background of the bottom photo is the Presidential Viewing Stand; so in looking at the photo you are, in fact, looking at the very thickest part of the paltry crowd at Trump’s birthday bash. Even as his fans crowed online that the claimed attendance (apparently a White House-provided figure) was 200,000—if past is precedent, the White House was simply using a jazzed-up version of the number of meaningless digital RSVPs as an attendance quote—observers, including this author, suspect that the total number of attendees was likely in the thousands only. (And if this is to be believed, which is a mystery as yet unsolved, some of those in attendance may have been paid as seat-fillers; certainly, Donald Trump loves to secretly do what he has long accused his political opponents of doing, and he continues to falsely say that Democrats pay protesters when in fact he’s the only U.S. politician who has been caught doing so in recent years.)
By contrast, as someone born in 1976 I think I can safely say that I’ve never seen so many large, enthusiastic, diverse, festive, and truly dynamic protests across America as we saw on No Kings Day. And there were virtually no reports of property damage or arrests, despite some sinister far-right LEO folks seemingly hoping there would be.
Editor's Note: See GIF by Medha Murtagh via Substack here.
And just to cleanse your palate, now, here’s a small sample of my favorite No Kings Day photographs (with the full photo archive below the subscriber fold a bit further down).
President Trump, age 79, accompanied by First Lady Melania Trump and aide Walt Nauta, slumps on the reviewing stand for the June 14 parade celebrating both the U.S. Army and Trump's birthday. Bulwark analyist Will Sommer said: "Trump looks like, 'Why did I do this? I thought this was going to be cool.'"
The Bulwark, Opinion: Trump’s Parade FLOPS as MILLIONS Protest Nationwide, June 14-15, 2025 (17:47 mins). Trump’s Parade FLOPS as MILLIONS Protest Nationwide. Jonathan V. Last, Sarah Longwell, Will Sommer, and Andrew Egger talk Trump’s sad, sparsely attended military/birthday parade in Washington, DC while ‘No Kings’ protests across the country draw unprecedentedly massive crowds.
Andrew Egger: This is the guy who's [allegedly] channelling the popular will. He is the avatar and embodiment of "America." Because that's the specific argument he's made, the optics of this becomes much more important.
Will Sommer: "You had soldiers handing out cans of Dana White's energy drink."
Jonathan V. Last (JVL): "What a world ....One of the things this may have helped with is just making people feel like they're not crazy and they're not alone."
Sarah Longwell: "The idea that he was humiliated today -- 'cause I guarantee that it matters so much to him -- that's one of the things we get to feel good about it."
Cynthia J Krueger @cynthiakrueger.bsky.social: Minnesotans were told to stay home, an assassin was at large. We did not bow down. #NoKings
Shown above are assassination victims Melissa Hortman of Minnesota, the top Democrat in her state's House of Representatives, and her husband, Mark. A politically motivated gunman also seriously wounded State Senator John A. Hoffman, another Democrat, and his wife, Yvette, in separate attacks at their homes in suburban Minneapolis on Saturday, June 14, 2025. The gunman also fired at police officers before fleeing.
New York Times, Like School Shootings, Political Violence Is Becoming Almost Routine, Lisa Lerer, June 15, 2025 (print ed.). Threats and violent acts have become part of the political landscape in the U.S., still shocking but somehow not so surprising.
The statements of shock and condolences streamed in eerily one after another on Saturday after the assassination of a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband, and the attempted murder of another lawmaker and his wife.
“Horrible news,” said Representative Steve Scalise, who was shot at a baseball game in 2017. “Paul and I are heartbroken,” said former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose husband was bludgeoned with a hammer in 2022. “My family and I know the horror of a targeted shooting all too well,” said former Representative Gabby Giffords, who was shot in the head in 2011.
Still more came from Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania (arson, 2025), Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan (kidnapping plot, 2020) and President Trump (two assassination attempts, 2024).
“Such horrific violence will not be tolerated in the United States of America,” the president said.
And yet the expanding club of survivors of political violence seemed to stand as evidence to the contrary.ImageBullet holes in the door of State Senator John Hoffman’s home in Chaplin, Minn., on Saturday.Credit...Tim Gruber for The New York Times
In the past three months alone, a man set fire to the Pennsylvania governor’s residence while Mr. Shapiro and his family were asleep inside; another man gunned down a pair of workers from the Israeli Embassy outside an event in Washington; protesters calling for the release of Israeli hostages in Boulder, Colo., were set on fire; and the Republican Party headquarters in New Mexico and a Tesla dealership near Albuquerque were firebombed.
And those were just the incidents that resulted in death or destruction.
Against that backdrop, it might have been shocking, but it was not really so surprising, when on Saturday morning, a Democratic state representative in Minnesota, Melissa Hortman, and her husband, Mark, were assassinated in their home, and a Democratic state senator, John A. Hoffman, and his wife, Yvette, were shot and wounded.
Slowly but surely, political violence has moved from the fringes to an inescapable reality. Violent threats and even assassinations, attempted or successful, have become part of the political landscape — a steady undercurrent of American life.
For months now, Representative Greg Landsman, Democrat of Ohio, has been haunted by the thought that he could be shot and killed. Every time he campaigns at a crowded event, he said, he imagines himself bleeding on the ground.
“It’s still in my head. I don’t think it will go away,” he said of the nightmarish vision. “It’s just me on the ground.”
The image underscores a duality of political violence in America today. Like school shootings, it is both sickening and becoming almost routine, another fact of living in an anxious and dangerously polarized country.
New York Times, Suspect in Minnesota Attacks Is Detained, Ending Manhunt, Mike Baker, Mitch Smith, Yan Zhuang and Christina Morales, June 15, 2025. Here’s the latest. One state lawmaker was killed and another was wounded in the shootings, and the manhunt for the suspect put Minnesota on edge.
A man suspected of assassinating a Minnesota state lawmaker and shooting another was in custody on Sunday, according to three officials who were briefed on the situation, ending a two-day manhunt that rattled the state.
State officials had pursued the suspect, identified as Vance Boelter, 57, throughout the weekend, as Minnesotans reeled from the killings of Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark. In a separate attack, the gunman also wounded State Senator John A. Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, at their home in the Minneapolis suburbs.
Hours after the shooting on Saturday, investigators had zeroed in on a residence in Plymouth, Minn., about 12 miles west of Minneapolis, where they sent a SWAT team that night. And then on Sunday, tactical teams conducted a search in Sibley County, about an hour’s drive away from the site of the attacks, where investigators found a vehicle and hat belonging to the suspect.
Officials said the gunman had impersonated a police officer during the attacks, wearing a rubber mask and a bogus badge, and had a notebook that mentioned the names of about 70 potential targets that included both of the lawmakers. They said he fired at officers responding to one of the homes before escaping.
Associated Press via Politico, Protester shot and killed at ‘No Kings’ rally in Utah, police say, Staff Report, June 15, 2025. The victim was a bystander to a confrontation.Demonstrators carry signs and chant while marching during a “No Kings” protest on June 14, 2025, in Salt Lake City.
A man believed to be part of a peacekeeping team for the “No Kings” protest in Salt Lake City shot at a person who was brandishing a rifle at demonstrators, striking both the rifleman and a bystander who later died at the hospital, authorities said Sunday.
Police took the alleged rifleman, Arturo Gamboa, 24, into custody Saturday evening on a murder charge, Salt Lake City Police Chief Brian Redd said at a Sunday news conference. The bystander was Arthur Folasa Ah Loo, 39.
Detectives don’t yet know why Gamboa pulled out a rifle or ran from the peacekeepers, but they accused him of creating the dangerous situation that led to Ah Loo’s death. The Associated Press did not immediately find an attorney listed for Gamboa or contact information for his family in public records.
Redd said the man who dressed in a neon green vest and was believed to be part of the peacekeeping team fired three shots from a handgun at Gamboa, inflicting a relatively minor injury but fatally shooting Ah Loo.
The gunshots sent hundreds of protesters running, some hiding behind barriers and fleeing into parking garages and nearby businesses, police said in a statement. “That’s a gun. Come on, come on, get out,” someone can be heard saying in a video posted to social media that appears to show the events.
“No Kings” protests swept across the country Saturday, and organizers said millions rallied against what they described as President Donald Trump’s authoritarian excesses.
Confrontations were largely isolated. They included a driver of an SUV who authorities said struck a woman who was participating a “No Kings” demonstration and sped away in Riverside, California, east of Los Angeles. The woman had “significant injuries” but was stable police said, adding that they were still searching for the driver.
Outside the Arizona statehouse, a social media video showed protesters jeering at and then skirmishing with a masked man Saturday, who eventually pulled out a handgun, causing the crowd to scatter. Another video showed Arizona Department of Public Safety officers taking the man into custody.
The Utah chapter of the 50501 Movement, which helped organize the protests, said in a statement on Instagram that they condemned the rifleman in Salt Lake City, and thanked first responders and “our safety team” for the quick response.
The Utah chapter did not immediately respond to AP questions about the peacekeeping team. It was unclear who hired them, whether they were volunteers or what their training was prior to the event. Redd said that the peacekeepers’ actions are also part of the investigation.
The shooter and another person in a neon vest allegedly saw Gamboa separate from the crowd of marchers in downtown Salt Lake City, move behind a wall and withdraw a rifle around 8 p.m., Redd said.
When the two men in vests confronted Gamboa with their handguns drawn, witnesses said Gamboa raised his rifle into a firing position and ran toward the crowd, said Redd.
That’s when one of the men dressed in the vests shot three rounds, hitting Gamboa and Ah Loo, said Redd. Gamboa, who police said didn’t have a criminal history, was wounded and treated before being booked into jail.
Police said they recovered an AR-15 style rifle, a gas mask and a backpack at the scene
New York Times, Manhunt for Minnesota Suspect Enters 2nd Day as State Mourns Victims, Mitch Smith and Yan Zhuang, June 15, 2025. The police are searching for a 57-year-old man after the killings of a Democratic state lawmaker and her husband, and the separate shooting of a state senator and his wife.
Authorities in Minnesota were searching early Sunday for a man suspected of killing a Democratic state lawmaker and her husband, in what the governor called “a politically motivated assassination,” and a separate attack on another state lawmaker and his wife.
Officials identified the suspect as Vance Boelter, 57,shown above. The authorities said the gunman impersonated a police officer and was carrying a list of about 70 potential targets, including politicians and locations of Planned Parenthood clinics. He was believed to still be in the Twin Cities area on Saturday but might be trying to flee, they said.
The suspect killed Representative Melissa Hortman of Minnesota, the top Democrat in the House, and her husband, Mark, and wounded State Senator John A. Hoffman, a fellow Democrat, and his wife, Yvette, in separate attacks at their homes in suburban Minneapolis on Saturday. The gunman also fired at police officers before fleeing.
“This was an act of targeted political violence,” said Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota.
The attacks shook leaders from both political parties and shocked a state that prides itself on political civility. They were the latest in a series of attacks on political figures across the United States, and took place hours before demonstrations in cities across the country against President Trump’s policies, including his deployment of the military in Los Angeles to quell demonstrations against immigration raids.
Speakers at a rally outside the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul, Minn., on Saturday paid tribute to Representative Hortman. Other rallies in the state were called off, and the police said that the gunman may have planned to target them.
New York Times, Minnesota Suspect Carried List of Potential Targets, Chris Hippensteel, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Ernesto Londoño and Mike Baker, June 15, 2025 (print ed.). The man suspected of shooting two Democratic state lawmakers in Minnesota early on Saturday had served on a state board with one of the victims, records show.
The suspect identified by the authorities, Vance Boelter, 57, was appointed several times by Minnesota governors to the Workforce Development Board, where he served with State Senator John A. Hoffman, who was shot and survived.
Mr. Boelter and Senator Hoffman attended a virtual meeting together in 2022 for a discussion about the job market in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic, minutes from the meeting show.
Drew Evans, the superintendent of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, said investigators did not yet know how well the two knew each other, if at all.
New York Times, Live Updates: Israel and Iran Trade Strikes in Increasingly Deadly Attacks, Natan Odenheimer, Farnaz Fassihi and Aaron Boxerman, June 15, 2025. Israel and Iran were assessing the damage on Sunday from a wave of attacks. Israeli fighter jets bombarded Tehran overnight, setting the sky ablaze with the flames of burning fuel reservoirs, while Iran launched volleys of ballistic missiles at Israel.
After a fearful, sleepless night for many people, Israel and Iran on Sunday were assessing the damage from a wave of increasingly deadly attacks, with both sides bracing for more in a conflict that is expanding in scope and intensity.
Israeli fighter jets overnight bombarded the Iranian capital of Tehran, setting the sky ablaze with the flames of burning fuel reservoirs from the country’s vital energy industry, while Iran launched volleys of ballistic missiles at Israel, some of which eluded the country’s air defenses.
The strikes were some of the fiercest and most prolonged in the history of the decades-long enmity between Israel and Iran, raising fears of a wider war that could draw in the United States and other powers.
New York Times, As Trump Celebrates Army’s Founding, His Critics Take to the Streets, David E. Sanger, June 15, 2025. President Trump held a military parade the same day that hundreds of protests took place, in what amounted to a split-screen show of force.
President Trump presided over a show of American military might in the nation’s capital on Saturday evening, a celebration of the 250th anniversary of the United States Army that became a test of wills and competing imagery, with demonstrators around the country decrying his expansion of executive power.
Mr. Trump sat in a reviewing stand on Constitution Avenue as armored vehicles dating from two World Wars and overflights of 80-year old bombers and modern helicopters shook downtown Washington. The city was locked down, divided by a wall of tall, black crowd-control fences designed to assure that the parade, the first of its kind since American troops returned from the Gulf War in 1991, was an uninterrupted demonstration of history and American power.
It went off without a hitch, but also without even a nod to the current moment. When Mr. Trump left his seat between his wife, Melania Trump, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, it was to swear in new soldiers — “Have a great life,” he told them after the brief ceremony — and then, at sundown, to recall the Army’s greatest moments.
He invoked George Washington and recalled Gettysburg. Yet he spoke more to the Army’s power than to its purpose. “Time and again, America’s enemies have learned that you threaten the American people, soldiers are coming for you. Your defeat will be certain, your demise will be final, and your downfall will be total and complete.”
Hours before he left the White House, the day had already encapsulated the sharpness of America’s divide over immigration, free speech and Mr. Trump’s determination to reshape the government, universities and cultural institutions to adopt his worldview.
By design, military parades are part national celebration and part international intimidation, and Mr. Trump has wanted one in Washington since he attended a Bastille Day parade in Paris in 2017. Formally, the parade celebrates the decision by the Second Continental Congress on June 14, 1775, to raise a unified, lightly armed force of colonialists after the shock of the battles with British forces at Lexington and Concord. That army, which George Washington took command of a month later, ultimately expelled the far larger, better armed colonial force.
But no celebration of history takes place in a political vacuum. And protesters in large cities and small towns from Seattle to Key West showed up in overwhelmingly peaceful demonstrations against how Mr. Trump was making use of the modern force. His decisions over the past week to federalize the National Guard and call the Marines into the streets of Los Angeles, in support of his immigration roundups, has supercharged a debate about whether he is abusing the powers of the commander in chief.
The Bulwark, Opinion: Dems Figure Out #Resistance Under Trump 2.0, Lauren Egan, June 15, 2025. I spent yesterday morning at the “No Kings” rally in Nashville and wanted to write about how protest culture has changed since the first Trump administration.
When Trump was inaugurated for the second time, it felt like the energy had been zapped from the anti-Trump protest movements. But yesterday’s protests around the country offered a clear sign that public outrage is there, it just looks different this time around.
YESTERDAY’S NATIONWIDE “NO KINGS” protest against Donald Trump was, by all accounts, a smashing success. Millions of people showed up at hundreds of events in red and blue state houses and town centers across the country all in the spirit of rallying against the Trump administration.
The crowds dwarfed those that came to Washington D.C. to participate in Trump’s combination birthday/armed forces parade. And while that certainly provided Trump’s opponents with a fair share of schadenfreude, it also raised the question: Why hasn’t this type of resistance risen up sooner?
After all, Trump’s first term saw opponents sprinting to the nation’s airports within weeks of his inauguration to protest his ban on travel from Muslin-majority nations. When Trump did a more expansive version of that same policy several weeks ago, the response was relatively mild and diffuse. Though there have been glimpses of real grassroots energy—from the Tesla Takedown movement to the “Hands Off!” rallies—these moments of light and heat showed how dim and cold the once-ubiquitous #Resistance movement had become during Trump’s second term.
That is how it was, at least, until Saturday. The “No Kings” protests offered the first real sign that the grassroots resistance to Trump hasn’t died—but it does look different from how it did, and it may, perhaps, be taking a more strategic form.
“The first time around there were a lot of [protests], like March For Science, Families Belong Together,” said Amanda Litman, the cofounder of Run For Something, which recruits and trains first-time Democratic candidates. “This time around, people are being more targeted and asking themselves: ‘What will actually move the needle?’”
There are a variety of reasons anti-Trump protest culture looks dramatically different from eight years ago. One reason is that Trump made more inroads politically and culturally during his 2024 run for office, and he has since used his newfound power to browbeat major institutions into acquiescence.
But activists on the left also acknowledge that their side has changed, too. Sustaining outrage during a presidency designed to produce continuous outrages is an exacting proposition. The Democratic base is not immune to becoming desensitized to Trump’s actions.
Presented with the challenges that come with Trump’s flood-the-zone strategy, organizers have tried to be more selective in the way they protest.
“It’s different, not less,” Deirdre Schifeling, the ACLU’s chief political and advocacy officer, said of the protests under the second Trump administration. “This time around, people are not shocked. They have lived through four years of this . . . and so, I think protest is taking a different form.”
In addition to fighting exhaustion and choosing their moments, organizers during the second Trump term have tried to appeal to a broader coalition. That’s meant trying to get more moderates, independents, and working-class voters to show up, especially in red parts of the country—not just the college-educated MSNBC-addicts who were largely the face of the 2017 protests. It’s required organizers to shed some of the defining features of the original #Resistance, like the pink pussyhats.
“There’s a little bit more of an all-hands-on-deck approach and a clear understanding that you ain’t winning this with a bunch of base Democrats this time,” said Democratic strategist Joel Payne.
“That requires work on the part of the people driving the opposition, because you have to check your desire for purity at the door. You have to check your desire to have everyone conform,” Payne continued. “You don’t want it to be so homogenized that it makes it feel like it’s something easy to write off and disregard.”
Organizers estimated that, across the country, three million people participated in the April “Hands Off” rallies, and five million turned out for the “No Kings” demonstrations—which would make Saturday one of the largest single-day demonstrations in U.S. history. (Around four million people were estimated to have joined the Women’s March in 2017.)
“We’re here to defend our Constitution, our way of life, to show the world that Trump is not in favor with a whole lot of people,” said Charles Bowers, a former U.S. ambassador to Bolivia during the George H.W. Bush administration, as he attended the Nashville “No Kings” protest. Bowers, who wore a “Gulf of Mexico” T-shirt and waved an American flag among a sea of protestors chanting anti-authoritarian slogans within earshot of the Tennessee State Capitol, said he showed up out of a belief that “our country is under greater threat than it’s ever been by its own people.”
ONE REASON THAT IT MAY FEEL as though the anti-Trump protest movements have been late in arriving this go-round is that the opposition party itself has had trouble deciding how best to harness them. Democrats spent the early weeks of Trump’s second term in a state of soul-searching, and on some issues they have sought accommodation, fretful that they had badly misjudged the social and economic currents that resulted in Kamala Harris’s loss.
New York Times, Two Top Union Leaders Quit D.N.C. Posts in Dispute With Chairman, Shane Goldmacher and Reid J. Epstein, June 15, 2025. Randi Weingarten, head of one of the nation’s most influential teachers unions, and Lee Saunders, the president of a large union of public workers, each pointed to Ken Martin’s leadership.
The leaders of two of the nation’s largest and most influential labor unions have quit their posts in the Democratic National Committee in a major rebuke to party’s new chairman, Ken Martin.
Randi Weingarten, the longtime leader of the American Federation of Teachers and a major voice in Democratic politics, and Lee Saunders, the president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, have told Mr. Martin they will decline offers to remain at-large members of the national party.
The departures of Ms. Weingarten and Mr. Saunders represent a significant erosion of trust in the D.N.C. — the official arm of the national party — during a moment in which Democrats are still locked out of power and grappling for a message and messenger to lead the opposition to President Trump. In their resignation messages, the two union chiefs suggested that under Mr. Martin’s leadership, the D.N.C. was failing to expand its coalition.
Both labor leaders had supported Mr. Martin’s rival in the chairmanship race, Ben Wikler, the chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party. Mr. Martin subsequently removed Ms. Weingarten from the party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, a powerful body that sets the calendar and process for the Democratic Party’s presidential nominating process.
New York Times, What to Know About Trump’s Meeting With Global Leaders in Canada, Matina Stevis-Gridneff, June 15, 2025. The Group of 7 nations and allies from around the world are heading to a summit in Alberta in Western Canada on Sunday.
Canada is rolling out the red carpet for some of the world’s biggest powers and their allies amid a perilous escalation in the Middle East and President Trump’s reshaping of global alliances.
The annual meeting of the Group of 7 nations — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States — is an important forum where the United States and many of its traditional partners have in the past met to find common ground on critical issues. It begins on Sunday in Kananaskis, a stunning resort in the Canadian Rocky Mountains in Alberta, and will run until late Tuesday.
While the agenda includes wildfires, the global economy and Ukraine, most leaders will attend with one goal in mind: to meet Mr. Trump and, if they do, to avoid any unpleasantries.
Some past summits have offered little more than polite handshakes and a cheerful group photo. Others have seen unscripted high drama.
The 2018 gathering, also held in Canada, was memorable for the spectacular fallout between Mr. Trump and Justin Trudeau, who was then Canadian prime minister. It also produced an iconic photo of the German chancellor at the time, Angela Merkel, leaning over Mr. Trump as they disagreed over allowing Russia to attend the group’s meetings. The image captured the world leaders’ concern over Mr. Trump.
The G7 summit is attended by leaders from the seven member countries and the European Union, but leaders of other important global allies are also invited. This year attendance will be unusually high. Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada, who this year holds the G7 presidency, has invited the leaders of several nonmember countries: India, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico, Ukraine, Australia and South Korea, and the head of NATO.
The G7 leaders will focus on the global economy on Monday. They are also set to discuss problems like wildfires, which are currently raging near Alberta, as well as drug and migrant smuggling.
On Tuesday morning they’re scheduled to add Mr. Zelensky and Mr. Rutte to their group to discuss the war in Ukraine, and later on Tuesday they will expand their group to invite the other leaders.
Both the global economy and Ukraine will be difficult topics this year. Mr. Trump’s tariffs on all the countries who will be represented in Canada is threatening to tip the world close to a recession, while the United States has said it wants Europe to pick up much more of the responsibility for providing military support to Ukraine.
Consequential talks are likely to happen in smaller or bilateral meetings. Mr. Trump is likely to meet with Mr. Carney and Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico to talk about the future of the United States-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement. That pact is in tatters after Mr. Trump imposed tariffs on imports from America’s two top trading partners, undoing decades of North American trade integration.
G7 summits have seen substantive action, too. For the past two years, they were the forum in which leaders agreed to joint sanctions against Russia over its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
But Mr. Trump’s approach toward global trade and foreign policy, and America’s shift away from the global order it created over the past few decades, means that the leaders do not expect to be able to agree on much.
Canadian officials said they were scrapping hopes to issue a joint communiqué — the traditional statement leaders put out at the end of such meetings.
Democracy Docket Founder and Defending Democracy Host Marc Elias with guest Leah Litman, the University of Michigan Law School professor and "Strict Scrutiny" podcast host
Democracy Docket, Legal Commentary: My conversation with Leah Litman: SCOTUS, Big Law, Dems’ Joe Rogan and more, Marc Elias, June 15, 2025. This week, I sat down with Leah Litman — law professor at the University of Michigan and co-host of the popular Supreme Court podcast, Strict Scrutiny — for an interview on our YouTube channel.
We talked about her exclusive insights into the Supreme Court’s strategy, how she approaches teaching the next generation of lawyers during the worst possible time for the law profession, her new book and much more.
I thought you’d enjoy reading a written version of the interview (ad free) and hope you find our conversation as compelling as I did. Let me know if you enjoyed this format and want more like it — you can just reply to this email (or send in other thoughts!) I count on your feedback, the good and the bad, because we want to make sure we’re providing content that you value.
Marc: All right, I've got so many things I wanna talk to you about, but first we're gonna start with your book. You wrote a terrific book about the Supreme Court. And for people who don't know, Leah was actually a Supreme Court clerk for Justice Kennedy, which is very rarefied air. What made you decide to write a book about the Supreme Court?
Leah: Two reasons. One is, in some ways, I think this book is really coming out of my experience clerking at the Supreme Court. I was there when the Court heard the big constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act and almost struck down that entire law based on this idea that one day the government would make you buy and maybe even eat broccoli. Watching the justices come within one vote of almost blowing up so many people's health care and life-saving health insurance based on ignoring past precedent and just misassessing the risks was very eye opening for me. And I think it really influenced how I think about the Court, teach law and whatnot.
And then second is seeing people all of a sudden pay attention to the Court when they overruled Roe v. Wade, but still in my mind, not really appreciate the Court's long game and where these decisions were coming from and where the justices might go next.
Marc: Does each justice have their own long game? Or do like five justices have a long game together? Do all nine of them? Sometimes I notice this with Justice Thomas, he'll seem to write something like, “geez, it'd be really great if we eventually got a case that said this.”
Is that just him musing or is that part of a broader strategy?
Leah: I think that there is some individualization and then some coordination. I think that Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and the Chief all have some issues in which they are particularly interested and trying to signal they would like to hear. Justices Alito, Thomas and Gorsuch really want the Court to take a Second Amendment case and to chip back on what they said in Rahimi. There are some individual preferences, but I think the long game is that there are certain key issues that have been so much ingrained in the modern conservative legal movement that on those issues, the justices are really on the same page and moving as a body.
New York Times, Syrian General Questioned in Case of Missing American, Adam Goldman, Haley Willis, Erika Solomon and Christiaan Triebert, June 15, 2025. The general, Bassam Hassan, is said to have shared grim news about the fate of Austin Tice, an American journalist and former Marine who went missing in 2012.
A top Syrian general under President Bashar al-Assad before his ouster has surfaced in Lebanon, where he told U.S. investigators that Austin Tice, an American journalist who went missing in 2012, was dead and provided the possible site of his grave, according to people familiar with the matter.
In meetings with the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., the former commander, Bassam Hassan, a top adviser to Mr. al-Assad who was accused of facilitating the country’s chemical weapons attacks on civilians, disclosed in recent weeks that Mr. al-Assad, the authoritarian leader who was toppled in December, had ordered the killing of Mr. Tice. The journalist was kidnapped more than a decade ago at a checkpoint in a suburb of Damascus.
The claims made by Mr. Hassan could not be independently verified, but the disappearance has long frustrated the American government.
For more than a decade, the United States has hunted for information about Mr. Tice’s whereabouts, holding out hope that he survived Syria’s brutal prison system, where torture and killings were routine. The rapid collapse of Mr. Assad’s reign after more than a half-century of family rule helped renew the search for Mr. Tice, with American investigators believing they might finally learn his fate.
Nearly a dozen people, including former and current U.S. officials, as well as past associates of Mr. Hassan familiar with the events, spoke to The New York Times on the condition of anonymity to discuss details intended to remain private or because they feared retribution.
American intelligence agencies have long believed that Mr. Hassan played a critical role in Mr. Tice’s imprisonment. His name was one of several the Biden administration gave the rebel group that toppled the Syrian government in the hopes it could obtain information about Mr. Tice. Mr. Hassan, American officials believe, could provide clues about not only Mr. Tice but also other matters of importance to the United States and its allies.
A former senior American official familiar with the Tice case said there should be skepticism about what Mr. Hassan told investigators because of a possible desire to cast blame on Mr. al-Assad.
Mr. al-Assad fled to Moscow after the collapse of his government, leaving behind some of his most ardent supporters. Several Syrian and Lebanese officials with ties to the former al-Assad government expressed similar concerns over Mr. Hassan’s testimony.
Indeed, former American officials who handled the case say that over the years they have received conflicting information about whether Mr. Tice is alive or dead.In a statement, the F.B.I. declined to comment, citing an open investigation. It added that it remained “steadfast in our determination to locate and bring home hostages or their remains to their families.”
June 14
New York Times, Live Updates: Minnesota Lawmaker Is Assassinated in Targeted Attack, Governor Says, Mitch Smith and Jonathan Wolfe, June 14, 2025. Melissa Hortman, a Democratic state representative, and her husband (shown above) were fatally shot, Gov. Tim Walz said, and a separate attack targeted a state senator. Officials warned that the gunman was at large.
Two Democratic state legislators and their spouses in Minnesota were found shot early Saturday in what the state’s governor described as an apparent politically motivated assassination attempt.
One of the lawmakers, State Representative Melissa Hortman, died, as did her husband, Mark. State Senator John A. Hoffman, right, and his 
wife Yvette were shot multiple times, but remained alive as of Saturday morning.
The authorities were searching for an assailant who targeted two long-serving lawmakers who had prominent roles in the Minnesota Capitol, where Democrats and Republicans hold nearly equal numbers of seats. Officials said the assailant was impersonating a police officer, and shot at officers who were arriving at one of the lawmakers’ homes.
“This was an act of targeted political violence,” Gov. Tim Walz said. “Peaceful discourse is the foundation of our democracy. We don’t settle our differences with violence at gunpoint.”
Ms. Hortman, a lawyer by training and a legislator for about 20 years, served as the speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives for a six-year period ending earlier this year. A resident of Brooklyn Park, just outside Minneapolis, she represented a safely Democratic district and routinely won re-election by more than 20 percentage points. Ms. Hortman was married with two children, according to her state legislative bio.
Ms. Hortman helped Democrats pass several key policies on abortion rights, marijuana and medical leave and other issues in 2023 and 2024, when her party briefly held full control of the state government. After last year’s elections, when Republicans made gains in legislative races and Mr. Walz lost his bid for vice president, Ms. Hortman defended Democrats’ record leading the state.
“I wouldn’t change what we did because we invested in Minnesotans,” Ms. Hortman said. “We made child care cheaper. We made getting housing built a high priority. We made some pretty considerable investments in state infrastructure projects.”
Mr. Hoffman, a fourth-term state senator from Champlin, another Minneapolis suburb, chairs the Senate’s Human Services Committee. His home address was published on his bio page on the Senate’s website. He won his most recent election by 10 percentage points.
“A hallmark of my approach is collaboration across the aisle,” Mr. Hoffman wrote in a letter to constituents ahead of last year’s legislative session. “I firmly believe that the path to progress for our state involves considering input from all perspectives, regardless of which party holds the majority.”
Mr. Hoffman, who has a daughter, also owns a business consulting firm in Minnesota. Before being elected to the Senate, he served on a local school board in the Minneapolis suburbs.
Lance’s Substack, First Thoughts On Hearing Reports Of The Politically Motivated Assassinations In Minnesota, Lance F Rosen, right, June 14, 2025. It is heartbreaking, and I am outraged personally. I wish I had words to console the families and friends whose loved ones were taken from them in such fashion.
The people of Minnesota who are sheltering in place right now have every right to be frightened, but because they are a strong people and have real leadership, they will come out of this shaken but undeterred.
You will all be deluged with news coverage of these shootings, and most of it will be "facts only," vacuous, sterile and ambiguous. Or it will be limited to the "human interest" side of it, which will abide by the usual rules of mainstream media "objectivity" that serves to cut the heart out of the actual reality underlying this tragedy, which I see as the following:
1. The warnings leading up to today's "No Kings Marches" nationally were loud and clear that the far right was planning violent attacks. They were openly making threats on their platforms which were publicized by various media. The shooter (whose profile is not yet available to me as of this posting) had in his vehicle leaflets advertising the local No Kings March, a manifesto which he wrote, and a hit list of prominent Democrats including Governor Walz, so we know these shootings were not random or on impulse. The shooter's disguise as a policeman indicates significant forward planning. It should also be in the front of our minds that Governor Walz is a prospective Democratic Presidential candidate who is one of Trump's leading rivals in 2028.
2. Beginning in March, Trump, Patel, Bondi, Miller, and Gabbard proceeded to dismantle specific FBI programs and to end the use of tools 
for tracking and pre-empting domestic terrorism by white supremacist groups and individuals. Let that sink in. The Trump regime both incited and allowed these shootings. Simultaneously they are also deliberately provoking violence coming from their opposition in order to justify their plans for martial law and dictatorship. I have no hesitation in saying it, just like that.
3. They blinded federal law enforcement which had eyes on those who might perpetrate this kind of attack. They pardoned the far-right terrorists who attacked our Capitol and are making them into patriotic heroes. They have demonized Democratic leaders as communists, child predators, baby-killers, insurrectionists, allies of the drug cartel and China, and have told their supporters that they will use the military domestically and are at war with drug and human traffickers allowed into the US by Joe Biden and the Democrats.
4. Every single drop of blood spilled in Minnesota today is on the hands of the above-named figures of the Trump administration, one which embodies the ideals of white supremacy and employs strategic violence in pursuit of an authoritarian state. Remember the names of the victims because their assassinations demand justice. And be clear, this was no "lone nut." The regime has a private army of many more like this shooter, and there will be more casualties. The shooter was clearly associated in some fashion with an organized network operating on social media, and their purpose is nothing other than terror.
5. The initiative to go after these terror networks must now come from the states and local governments, simply because the Trump regime has obstructed federal agencies from doing it. They have weaponized political, religious, and ideological race-hatred, and are using strategic violence to neutralize their growing political opposition, just like the Nazis did. This is a two-pronged strategy carried out by both their federal law enforcement shock troops of ICE, and Donald Trump's private army of stochastic Nazi terrorists. The power of state Governors, Attorney Generals, and District Attorneys to investigate, arrest, and prosecute, is our main guardrail against this increased threat of political violence.
6. Nazis and white supremacist networks in Police and Sheriff's departments are active and well known. They are often part of local militias, and covertly assist them by tipping them off about investigations, exposing law enforcement informants and agents when they infiltrate, and operating generally as a terrorist fifth column. White supremacists in law enforcement must be exposed and purged, across the board. They wear their white nationalist and Neo-Confederate tattoos proudly and flaunt their associations. They are a security risk and their views should be judged as a danger to the public safety, not as first amendment protected speech.
7. It is a mistake to see this as an isolated attack by someone with a political grudge or mental health issue. These are the opening shots of a war. The elected leadership of the blue states, cities, and local governments need to deploy their resources to protect their citizens from both the violent terrorists of the far right in their backyard, and those wearing government uniforms being sent in by Donald Trump. And these states must coordinate their actions and reactions to insure maximum support for the others. We as citizens have both the obligation and ability to exert the pressure where it is needed to bring these urgent changes about. We are not pushing for blue state secession, because the US Constitution must be defended, not nullified.
8. I am not an advocate of violence. But law enforcement has a duty to protect and defend the public. The removal of their "bad apples" is long overdue, for reasons which came boiling to the surface five years ago, ironically exploding first in Minnesota. Now we have even more reason to do so, because there are more shooters out there who are part of networks planning more of the same types of tragedies as we have seen today.
9. Our state and local governments will need to disarm, raid, arrest, prosecute, and jail the fascist militias which advocate and carry out violence, and to do so lawfully. This will likely lead to multiple forms of armed conflict, which frankly was going to happen anyway. And our biggest obstacle in doing that will be the the federal government currently headed up by Donald Trump. That is where we are.
10. It is both a time to grieve, and to also take stock of what we are doing. The times ahead will require us to form new alliances, to carefully rely upon trusted information, and to find those sources of courage which will be needed for what awaits us in this unfolding nightmare. When your enemy resorts to terrorism and violence it is a sign that they are weakening and desperate. Don't Look for "good news." Let's work together to make some.
Associated Press, Authorities still searching for suspect in shooting of 2 Minnesota state lawmakers,Tim Sullivan, Steve Karnowski and Alanna Durkin Richer, June 14, 2025. Hundreds of law officers fanned out across a Minneapolis suburb Saturday in pursuit of a man who authorities say posed as a police officer and fatally shot a Democratic state lawmaker in her home in what Gov. Tim Walz called “a politically motivated assassination.”
Authorities identified the suspect as 57-year-old Vance Boelter, shown above and at lower right, and the FBI issued a reward of up to $50,000 for information leading to his arrest and conviction.
Authorities displayed a photo taken Saturday of Boelter wearing a tan cowboy hat and asked the public to report sightings. Drew Evans, superintendent of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, said investigators obtained video as well.
He did not give details on a possible motive.
Boelter is a former political appointee who served on the same state workforce development board as Hoffman, records show, though it was not clear if or how well they knew each other.
The early morning attacks prompted warnings to other elected officials around the state and the cancellation of planned “No Kings” demonstrations against President Donald Trump. Authorities said the suspect had “No Kings” flyers in his car and writings mentioning the names of the victims as well as other lawmakers and officials, though they could not say if he had any other specific targets.
A Minnesota official told The Associated Press that the suspect’s writings also contained information targeting prominent lawmakers who have been outspoken in favor of abortion rights.
Lincoln Square Media, Pro-Democracy Advocacy: 'It's Our America': LIVE from the 'No Kings' Protests Across the Country, Susan J. Demas, June 14, 2025. Today is a good day to celebrate our democracy.
Many of us in Lincoln Square/Lincoln Project family have fanned out at “No Kings” protests on Saturday, June 14 in what organizers are calling the largest single-day mobilization since Trump returned to office.
While he’s celebrating himself with a military parade, millions of Americans are exercising our First Amendment rights at more than 2,000 demonstrations across the country.
Here’s our first update. [More coverage below.]
New York Times, Live Updates: Israel and Iran Defy Calls for De-Escalation With 2nd Day of Attacks, Staff Reports, June 14, 2025. It’s the most intense fighting in decades between the two countries, fueling fears of a wider conflict that could draw in the United States and other major powers.
Warning of a protracted fight, Israel and Iran carried out waves of deadly attacks on Saturday, with neither side showing any sign of heeding international pleas for an immediate de-escalation of hostilities.
In sweeping attacks that started early Friday, Israel has struck at the regime in Tehran, hitting Iranian nuclear and military assets. The Israeli strikes have killed more than 70 people, including four top security chiefs, and damaged Iran’s main nuclear site at Natanz.
Iran, in turn, has launched barrages of ballistic missiles and drones at Israel, targeting what it says are military assets, but with less apparent success. At least three people have been killed and dozens wounded in the attacks.
It is the most intense fighting in decades between the two heavily armed countries, and has stirred anxiety over the prospect of an increasingly deadly conflict that could draw in the United States and other major powers.
The Israeli attack came as the United States and Iran were negotiating terms for a new diplomatic agreement to curb Iran’s nuclear program. Israel has argued that Iran — its main regional opponent — was making progress toward building a nuclear weapon, which Israel regards as an existential threat.
Residents of Tehran, Iran’s capital, reported hearing explosions on Saturday morning, and Iranian air defenses were activated. The Israeli military said it had conducted a wave of strikes against the air defenses around Tehran. The Iranian state news media said that the Israeli targets overnight had included a military jet hangar at Tehran’s Mehrabad airport.
Across Israel, people huddled in reinforced bomb shelters as air-raid sirens wailed outside, warning of incoming missile fire. Loud explosions reverberated overhead as Israel’s antimissile defenses intercepted many of the incoming missiles.
Israel has conducted roughly 150 strikes on Iran over two days, while Iranian forces have fired roughly 200 ballistic missiles at Israeli territory in addition to scores of drones, according to an Israeli military official.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said earlier that Iran was punishing Israel for the assault. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards 
Corps, a powerful Iranian state security body, said the targets were Israeli military sites used to attack Iran.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, right, has vowed that the campaign will last for “as many days as it takes” and told the Israeli public to prepare for a difficult struggle. He maintained in a video statement on Friday night that Iran had “never been weaker.”
Here’s what else to know:
Politico, Federal prosecutors now charging immigrants who don’t submit fingerprints under dormant 1940s law, Hassan Ali Kanu, June 14, 2025. The Alien Registration Act requires non-citizens to register with the federal government. That provision hadn’t been enforced in 75 years.
Federal officials have begun carrying out President Donald Trump’s orders to enforce a World War II-era criminal law that requires virtually all non-citizens in the country to register with and submit fingerprints to the government.
Since April, law enforcement in Louisiana, Arizona, Montana, Alabama, Texas and Washington, D.C., have charged people with willful “failure to register” under the Alien Registration Act, an offense most career federal public defenders have never encountered before. Many of those charged were already in jail and in ongoing deportation proceedings when prosecutors presented judges with the new charges against them.
The registration provision in the law, which was passed in 1940 amid widespread public fear about immigrants’ loyalty to the U.S., had been dormant for 75 years, but it is still on the books. Failure to register is considered a “petty offense” — a misdemeanor with maximum penalties of six months imprisonment or a $1,000 fine.
In reviving the law, the Trump administration may put undocumented immigrants in a catch-22. If they register, they must hand over detailed, incriminating information to the federal government — including how and when they entered the country. But knowingly refusing to register is also a crime, punishable by arrest or prosecution, on top of the ever-present threat of deportation.
“The sort of obvious reason to bring back registration in the first place is the hope that people will register, and therefore give themselves up effectively to the government because they already confessed illegal entry,” said Jonathan Weinberg, a Wayne State University law professor who has studied the registration law.
New York Times, Inside Trump’s Extraordinary Turnaround on Immigration Raids, Tyler Pager, Hamed Aleaziz and Zolan Kanno-Youngs, June 14, 2025. President Trump’s decision to pause most raids targeting farms and hospitality workers took many inside the White House by surprise. It came after intensive lobbying by his agriculture secretary.
On Wednesday morning, President Trump took a call from Brooke Rollins, his secretary of agriculture, who relayed a growing sense of alarm from the heartland.
Farmers and agriculture groups, she said, were increasingly uneasy about his immigration crackdown. Federal agents had begun to aggressively target work sites in recent weeks, with the goal of sharply bolstering the number of arrests and deportations of undocumented immigrants.
Farmers rely on immigrants to work long hours, Ms. Rollins said. She told the president that farm groups had been warning her that their employees would stop showing up to work out of fear, potentially crippling the agricultural industry.
The next morning, he posted a message on his social media platform, Truth Social, that took an uncharacteristically softer tone toward the very immigrants he has spent much of his political career demonizing. Immigrants in the farming and hospitality industries are “very good, long time workers,” he said. “Changes are coming.”
Some influential Trump donors who learned about the post began reaching out to people in the White House, urging Mr. Trump to include the restaurant sector in any directive to spare undocumented workers from enforcement.
Inside the West Wing, top White House officials were caught off guard — and furious at Ms. Rollins. Many of Mr. Trump’s top aides, particularly Stephen Miller, his deputy chief of staff, have urged a hard-line approach, targeting all immigrants without legal status to fulfill the president’s promise of the biggest deportation campaign in American history.
But the decision had been made. Later on Thursday, a senior official with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Tatum King, sent an email to regional leaders at the agency informing them of new guidance. Agents were to “hold on all work site enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels.”
It remains to be seen how effective the order will be and whether Mr. Trump will stick with his decision. Raids at other work sites, like the one in Los Angeles’s garment industry that led to mass protests, are still allowed.
But the president’s decision to shield farmers and the hospitality industry — a business he knows well from his years as an owner of luxury hotels — reveals the tension between his deportation efforts and concerns about maintaining crucial support in his political coalition.
This account of Mr. Trump’s retreat is based on interviews with 11 people, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions.
The scope of Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown has unsettled some Republicans as the raids on farms began disrupting operations. More than 40 percent of the nation’s crop workers have no legal immigration status, the Agriculture Department has estimated.
Associated Press via CBS News, Cities brace for crowds at "No Kings" protests nationwide, Staff Report, June 14, 2025. Cities large and small were preparing for major demonstrations Saturday across the U.S. against President Trump — events being promoted as "No Kings" protests. The gatherings come as officials urge calm, National Guard troops mobilize and Trump attends a military parade in Washington, D.C., to mark the Army's 250th anniversary.
A flagship "No Kings" march and rally are planned in Philadelphia, but no events are scheduled to take place in Washington, D.C., where the military parade will take place on Trump's 79th birthday. Organizers of the protests say they want to take attention away from the parade.
The demonstrations come on the heels of protests flaring up around the country over federal immigration enforcement raids that began last week and Trump ordering National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles where protesters blocked a freeway and set cars on fire.
Police in Los Angeles responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and flash-bang grenades while officials enforced curfews the city and Democratic governors called Trump's Guard deployment "an alarming abuse of power" that "shows the Trump administration does not trust local law enforcement."
Governors and city officials vowed to protect the right to protest and to show no tolerance for violence.
"New Yorkers may have different emotions right now," said New York City mayor Eric Adams in a briefing on Friday. NYC is expected to see hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, organizers said. "And they have a right to express that, but we want to be clear you do not have a right to engage in violence and lawlessness."What is No Kings Day?
The "No Kings" theme was orchestrated by the 50501 Movement, to support democracy and against what they call the authoritarian actions of the Trump administration. The name 50501 stands for 50 states, 50 protests, one movement.
Protests earlier this year have denounced Trump and billionaire adviser Elon Musk. Protesters have called for Trump to be "dethroned" as they compare his actions to that of a king and not a democratically elected president.
The No Kings Day of Defiance has been organized to reject authoritarianism, billionaire-first politics and the militarization of the country's democracy, according to a statement by organizers. The event was promoted by Walmart heiress Christy Walton, herself a billionaire, in a full-page advertisement she took out in the New York Times last Sunday. No Kings Day merchandise has cropped up for sale on Amazon, Temu and other online retailers.
Organizers intend for the protests to counter the Army's 250th anniversary celebration — which Trump has ratcheted up to include a military parade, which is estimated to cost $25 million to $45 million that the Army expects to attract as many as 200,000 people.
New York Times, Live Updates: Protests Against Trump Policies Kick Off Across the Country, Mike Baker, Sean Keenan and Rick Rojas,June 14, 2025. Demonstrations have started in Nashville, Houston, Atlanta and Newark, N.J. Los Angeles said it was preparing for a turnout that “may be unprecedented” after days of sustained protests against the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration.
Protesters began filling plazas and streets in cities across the country on Saturday morning, mobilizing for mass demonstrations to counter the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, cuts to federal services and a large military parade in Washington that coincides with the president’s 79th birthday.
In Atlanta, thousands of people packed into Liberty Plaza, carrying signs that included the message “Stop Trump’s Terrorism” and singing a rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” adjusted with the words “Take Trump out of the White House.” In Nashville, where more than 1,000 people gathered near the Tennessee State Capitol, a cheering crowd recited the Pledge of Allegiance.
The authorities in Los Angeles, which has emerged as the epicenter of anxiety over immigration enforcement and seen days of sustained protests, said they were bracing for the possibility of crowd sizes that could be “unprecedented.”
The collective action on Saturday — called “No Kings” demonstrations by organizers — encompasses some 2,000 planned events spread through all 50 states, from big cities to small towns. Those protests come amid building outrage over raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Los Angeles that led to mass demonstrations and conflicts with law enforcement. The Trump administration has now shifted the focus of its mass deportation campaign, telling immigration officials to largely pause raids and arrests in hotels, restaurants and the agricultural industry.
The protest organizers avoided calling for demonstrations in Washington, where the military parade is set to go on despite a forecast of possibly severe storms. Mr. Trump warned that anyone seeking to protest at the parade would be met with “very big force.”
Elected leaders and law enforcement officials in California and across the country encouraged protesters to remain peaceful, and organizers of the “No Kings” demonstrations called on participants to focus on “nonviolent action.” Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles warned that demonstrations that turned destructive would only feed into an unfounded portrayal of Los Angeles as gripped by unrest.
“We want to make sure that everybody understands that Los Angeles is united,” Ms. Bass, a Democrat, said at a news conference on Friday night.
We heard your feedback and added an audio version of this premium newsletter! Check it out on the members-only section of our website. We’ll make sure to add this to all premium content going forward so you can listen on the go.
A year ago I started sending you a weekly Saturday reading list. Each week I tried to give you a sense of what stories I was reading that might not be garnering the most attention in the legacy media. From time to time, I offered suggestions about books, articles, and newsletters.
This week I want to try something a little different. As Democracy Docket has expanded its original reporting, many of you have asked for greater insight and context about what the team is covering and why it matters. I am always open to your feedback and suggestions.
Democracy Docket, Commentary: Democracy Docket Scoop: DHS Said to Brief Cleta Mitchell’s Group on Citizenship Checks for Voting, Marc Elias, June 14, 2025. The Democracy Docket team reported exclusively on Thursday that a top Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official gave a private briefing to Cleta Mitchell’s voter suppression group on how election officials can use a DHS database to check voters’ citizenship. That’s according to an email obtained by Democracy Docket’s Matt Cohen, who keeps a close eye on the world of anti-democracy activism.
Mitchell, of course, is the far-right lawyer who played a key role in Trump’s failed effort to steal the 2020 election and is mobilizing an army of volunteers to monitor the polls next year. I have said repeatedly, that the GOP voter suppression war machine is grinding away and that the Trump administration will do whatever it can to help them win.
Separately, Matt explained the impact of another Trump administration move to restrict voting: Trump’s repeal, on his first day back in office, of a transformative executive order issued by President Biden, which urged federal agencies to take steps to get new voters on the rolls. Biden’s order spurred numerous agencies to expand access to voter registration and made clear for the first time that the federal government has a responsibility to help make voting easy. It also spurred several lawsuits in 2024 aimed at preventing this expansion of voting rights to take place. It is no surprise then that Trump focused on repealing this initiative.13 of 9,174No Kings Day LIVE!Inbox
The Contrarian, Advocacy: No Kings Day LIVE!, Jennifer Rubin, right, and April Ryan, June 14, 2025. You don’t need to watch that self-aggrandizing, wasteful birthday party Trump’s throwing for himself.Instead, join us for real-time, coast-to-coast coverage of the United States protesting tyranny—because true Americans don’t bow to kings.
Our friends at Indivisible say that over 2,000 events are planned, with millions expected to take to the streets to reject “authoritarianism, billionaire-first politics, and the militarization of our democracy.”
We’ll welcome some of our favorite Contrarians to talk about how we got here, what’s happening in real time, and where we go from here.
Special Guests:Heather Cox RichardsonRep. Jamie RaskinGov. Wes MooreJim AcostaAmy McGrathDavid LittDan PfeifferLeah Greenberg, Co-Founder, IndivisibleSusan Shapiro, Organizer, Indivisible Northern ArizonaL
White House Chronicle, Commentary: Europe Knows Russia and Is Deeply Afraid, Llewellyn King, above, June 14, 2025. That was the message at a recent meeting of the U.K. Section of the Association of European Journalists (AEJ), at which I was an invited speaker.
It preceded a stark warning just over a week later from NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, also speaking in London, who said the danger from Vladimir Putin’s Russia won’t recede even if there is peace in Ukraine.
Rutte said defense spending must increase across Europe and recommended that it should reach 5 percent of GDP. Singling out Britain, he said if the Brits don’t do so, they should learn to speak Russian. He said Russia could overwhelm NATO by 2030.
The British journalists’ session reflected fear of Russia and astonishment at the United States. There was fear that Russia would invade the weaker states and that NATO had been neutered. Fear that the world’s most effective defense alliance, NATO, is no longer operational.
There was astonishment that America had abandoned its longstanding policies of support for Europe and preparedness to keep Russia in check. And there was disillusionment that President Trump would turn away from Ukraine in its war against Russian aggression.
The tone in Europe toward the United States isn’t one simply of anger or sorrow, but anger tinged with sorrow. Europeans see themselves as vulnerable in a way that hasn’t been true since the end of World War II.
They also are shattered by the change in America under Trump; his hostility to Europe, his tariffs and his preparedness to side with Russia. “How can this happen to America?” the British AEJ members asked me.
In many conversations, I found disbelief that America could do this to Europe, and that Trump should lean so far toward Putin. In Europe, where Putin has been an existential threat and where he invaded Ukraine, there is general amazement that Trump seems to crave the approbation of the Russian president.
Speaking to the journalist’s meeting via video from Romania, Edward Lucas, a former senior editor of The Economist, and now a columnist for The Times of London and a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy, said, “Donald Trump has turned the transatlantic relationship on its head. He wants to be friends with Vladimir Putin. We are in a bad mess.”
He said he saw no realistic possibility of a ceasefire in Ukraine in the near future, and he said Trump had made it clear that he was prepared to walk away from trying to bring peace “if it proved too hard.”
Lucas suggested that if European nations continue to back Ukraine after a Russian-dictated peace offer endorsed by America, Trump will punish them. He might do this by withdrawing U.S. assets from Europe, pulling back large numbers of troops from the 80,000 stationed there, and refusing to replace the American supreme commander of Europe.
“Then we will see how defenseless Europe is,” he said.
In Washington, it seems there is little understanding of the true weakness of Europe. No understanding that money alone won’t buy security for Europe.
Europe doesn’t have stand-off capacity, heavy airlift capacity, ultra-sophisticated electronic intelligence or anything approaching a defense infrastructure.
Trump has equated defense simply with money. But in Europe (although 27 of its nations are part of the European Union), there is no cohesive structure in place that could replace the role played by the United States.
Within the EU there are disagreements and there is the spoiler in the case of Hungary. Its pro-Russia ruler, Victor Orban, would like to try to block any concerted European action against Russia. The new right-wing Polish president’s hopes for good relations with Orban are a worry for most EU members.
I have long believed that there are three mutually exclusive views of Europe in the United States.
The first, favored by Trump and his MAGA allies, is that Europe is ripping off America in defense and through non-tariff trade barriers and is awash in expensive socialist systems embracing health, transportation and state nannying.
The second, favored by vacationers, is that Europe is a sort of Disney World for adults, as portrayed on PBS by Rick Steves’ travelogues: Watch the quaint people making wine or drinking beer.
The third is that Europe has been encouraged by successive administrations to accept the U.S. defense umbrella, as that favored America and its concerns, first about Soviet expansion and more recently about expansion under Putin.
Now Europe is alone in defense terms, naked and very afraid -- afraid of Trump’s pivot to Putin.
June 13
Letters From An American, Historical Analysis: June 12 [Militarization of United States], Heather Cox Richardson, right, June 13, 2025. At a press conference for Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, aboveleft, in Los Angeles today, Noem’s security assaulted Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA), dragged him into the hallway, forced him to the floor, and handcuffed him as he tried to ask the secretary a question.
Senator Padilla, shown above right and below being rfoughed up by Noem's security detail, is the highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on immigration, citizenship, and border safety. That subcommittee has “oversight of federal agencies with citizenship, asylum, refugee, and immigration enforcement responsibilities.”
After the attack, Senator Padilla explained: “I'm here in Los Angeles today, and I was here in the federal building in the conference room, awaiting a scheduled briefing from federal officials as part of my responsibility as a senator to provide oversight and accountability. While I was waiting for the briefing…, I learned that Secretary Noem was having a press conference a couple of doors down the hall. Since the beginning of the year, but especially…over the course of recent weeks, I—several of my colleagues—have been asking the Department of Homeland Security for more information and more answers on their increasingly extreme immigration enforcement actions. And we've gotten little to no information in response to our inquiries.
“And so I came to the press conference to hear what she had to say, to see if I could learn any new additional information…. At one point, I had a question. And so I began to ask a question. I was almost immediately forcibly removed from the room. I was forced to the ground, and I was handcuffed. I was not arrested. I was not detained.
“I will say this. If this is how this administration responds to a senator with a question, if this is how the Department of Homeland Security responds to a senator with a question, you can only imagine what they're doing to farm workers, to cooks, to day laborers out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California and throughout the country. We will hold this administration accountable.”
Secretary Noem implied that neither she nor her security knew who the senator was, but even if she had forgotten speaking with him in Senate hearings, a video of the encounter records him saying clearly: “I’m Senator Alex Padilla. I have a question for the secretary.” Senator or not, he did not behave in a way that suggested a threat to the secretary. The Department of Homeland Security said Padilla “chose disrespectful political theater and interrupted a live news conference” and claimed that he “lunged” toward the secretary.
Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) answered: “This is a lie. We all saw the video. The Senator clearly identified himself, and he did not ‘lunge’ toward anyone.” She added: “If these miserable propagandists will lie to you about roughing up a U.S. Senator in a room full of reporters, what won't they lie to you about?”
The assault on Padilla comes days after the Department of Justice under Trump indicted Representative LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) on federal charges saying she impeded immigration officers outside a New Jersey detention center.
While Democratic senators and representatives are outraged, they are having little success getting their Republican colleagues to join them. House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) suggested that Padilla had charged Noem—the videos show no such thing—and suggested the Senate should censure Padilla for “wildly inappropriate” behavior.
While much focus has been on the assault itself, what Noem was saying before Padilla spoke out is crucially important. "We are not going away,” she said. “We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city."
In other words, the Trump administration is vowing to get rid of the democratically elected government of California by using military force. That threat is the definition of a coup. It suggests MAGA considers any political victory but their own to be illegitimate and considers themselves justified in removing those governmental officials with violence: a continuation of the attempt of January 6, 2021, to overturn the results of a presidential election.
Members of the National Guard, who are Californians pulled from their normal lives, sleep in Los Angeles amidst reports that their deployment was so poorly planned by the Trump-run Defense Department that scant provisions weremade for their food, water, sleeping and toilet necessities.
Priscilla Alvarez and Natasha Bertrand of CNN reported today that, although the Trump administration said its federalization of the National Guard and mobilization of Marines into Los Angeles was an emergency response to rioting, in fact White House officials began talking about using the National Guard and the military as support for immigration enforcement as early as February. White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and officials from the Department of Homeland Security led the talks. They also want to use military facilities to hold detainees.
Andrew Gumbel of The Guardian reported today that the National Guard troops and Marines deployed to Los Angeles do not want to be caught in a political battle and are deeply unhappy about their position. Marine Corps veteran Janessa Goldbeck, who runs the Vet Voice Foundation, told Gumbel: “The overall perception was that the situation was nowhere at the level where marines were necessary.”
Yesterday, Trump’s hand-picked chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired Lieutenant General Dan Caine, told the Senate that the United States is not, in fact, “being invaded by a foreign nation,” the argument Trump used to send Venezuelans to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador. Caine said: “[A]t this point in time I don’t see any foreign state-sponsored folks invading.” Asked by Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) if there was “a rebellion somewhere in the United States,” he answered simply, “I think there’s definitely some frustrated folks out there.”
Alvarez and Bertrand note that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday confirmed what California governor Gavin Newsom has been calling out: that Trump’s Saturday order activating the National Guard was not specific to California. It could apply to other states. “Part of it was about getting ahead of the problem, so that if in other places, if there are other riots, in places where law enforcement officers are threatened, we would have the capability to surge National Guard there, if necessary,” Hegseth said on Wednesday.
Earlier this week, Texas announced plans to deploy 5,000 troops, and Dionne Searcey of the New York Times reported today that Missouri’s Republican governor, Mike Kehoe, activated the Missouri National Guard as well. “While other states may wait for chaos to ensue, the State of Missouri is taking a proactive approach in the event that assistance is needed to support local law enforcement in protecting our citizens and communities,” Kehoe said in a press release.
It certainly appears as though militarization is no longer about deportations. This morning, Trump posted on social media: “Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace. In many cases the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy are applying for those jobs. This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!”
This afternoon he told reporters: “Our farmers are being hurt badly by, you know, they have very good workers, they've worked for them for 20 years, they're not citizens, but they've turned out to be, you know, great. And we're going to have to do something about that. We can't take farmers and take all their people and send them back because they don't have maybe what they're supposed to have, maybe not. And you know what's going to happen and what is happening? They get rid of some of the people, because, you know, you go into a farm and you look and people don't, they've been there for 20, 25 years and they've worked great, and the owner of the farm loves them and everything else. And then you're supposed to throw them out, and you know what happens? They end up hiring the people, the criminals that have come in. The murderers from prisons and everything else. So we're gonna have an order on that pretty soon, I think. We can't do that to our farmers and leisure too, hotels. We're gonna have to use a lot of common sense on that.”
So if it is no longer administration policy to engage in the sweeps that are causing such chaos and sparking protests, why are Republican authorities mobilizing troops?
After today’s events, Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD), a constitutional scholar, stood in front of the Capitol and reminded Americans: “We have no kings here, we have no queens here, we have no emperors, we have no dictators, we have no despots, and we have no serfs and no slaves and no subjects, and none of us is a subject to Donald Trump. None of us is a subject to Mike Johnson. We are all citizens, those of us who aspire and attain to public office are nothing but the servants of the people. And the minute that somebody in public office thinks that they're a king, they're a queen, they're an emperor, they're a dictator, that is time for the people to evict, eject, reject, impeach, try, convict, and start all over again, because the most important words of our Constitution are the three first words of the Constitution: ‘We the people.’”
Tonight, U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer ruled that Trump broke the law when he federalized the California National Guard and that he must return those troops to the control of California governor Gavin Newsom. Breyer granted California’s request for a restraining order but delayed enforcement of his order until Friday at noon. Just before midnight Eastern Time, a panel of the 9th Circuit granted a stay that permits Trump to retain control until a June 17 hearing.
Tonight, Israel launched what it called “a pre-emptive strike on Iran, and declared a state of emergency in Israel” in anticipation of a retaliatory strike. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is also currently Trump’s national security advisor, issued a statement for the White House saying that the U.S. was not involved in the strikes and that “our top priority is protecting American forces in the region.” He urged Iran not to “target U.S. interests or personnel.”
The Warning with Steve Schmidt, Opinion: Handcuffing A U.S. Senator Undermines Our Entire Democracy, Steve Schmidt, above, June 13, 2025. After being forcibly removed and handcuffed from a Kristi Noem press conference, Senator Alex Padilla has shown what will happen to those willing to speak out against this administration. Steve Schmidt reacts to Padilla's forced removal and explains why it signals the end of American ideals.
The Hartmann Report, Opinion: Noem, the FBI & Trump Just Sent a Message to America: the Police State is Not Coming—it’s Here, Thom Hartmann, right, June 13, 2025. Senator Alex Padilla asked a question. The regime answered with fists, lies, and a chilling promise: “We’re not going away.”
We’re now living in an early-stage police state. After California Senator Alex Padilla was assaulted for saying, “I’m Senator Alex Padilla and I have question for the Secretary,” DHS Secretary and notorious puppy murderer Kristi Noem went on Fox “News” and lied to the American people, saying that he hadn’t identified himself, she didn’t know who he was, and that he was “lunging into the room.”
The violence inflicted on Padilla was the point. And it’s being celebrated in real time by MAGA, Fox, and the Trump administration. After all, dictators can’t be dictators without first cowing the people, terrifying even elected officials, and asserting their absolute and unlimited power to use violence any where, any time, and under any circumstances they choose.
“We are not going away,” Noem, left, said in a snarling comment that provoked the question from Padilla. “We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialist and the burdensome leadership that this governor [Newsom] and that this mayor [Bass] have placed on this country.”
For the record, the job of the federal government is not to “liberate“ cities from the leaders they themselves have elected. That’s what Putin did when he forced all the elected governors of the Russian states (oblasts) to resign and replaced them with men he had appointed. Even suggesting it is deeply and profoundly unAmerican.
This is the Trump administration once again nakedly asserting that they are above the law, are committed to acting without ethical or moral restraint, and that they have no obligation to honor the constitutionally-defined oversight role of members of Congress. That they are intent on running a dictatorship here in America, not a democratic republic.
They have arrested and are prosecuting a member of the House of Representatives who was simply doing her job at an immigrationdetention center. They are ignoring explicit orders by federal judges and the Supreme Court. They are literally disappearing people, including American citizens, off the streets of our cities. And now they’ve taken an United States Senator to the ground.
This is not what the people who fought and died to create and sustain this country had in mind.The genius of the Founders was Montesquieu’s idea of three branches of government with checks on each other’s power. It’s essential to democracy. Trump (2nd branch) has been trashing judges (3rd branch) and has now violently attacked a congresswoman and a US Senator (1st branch).
He’s spitting on the graves of the Framers of our Constitution. And to emphasize their ignoring the Constitution and its requirement that both Congress and the courts can exercise oversight of the president, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “The courts should have no role here. There is a troubling and dangerous trend of unelected judges inserting themselves into the presidential decision-making process.”
Similarly, they refuse to respect the right of American citizens to protest that’s laid out in the First Amendment, “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Trump came right out and said that if anybody in Washington, DC tries to protest his birthday parade, he will meet them with violence:“ For those people that want to protest, they’re going to be met with very big force. Very big force!”
That wasn’t a threat against vandals or even people who might try to disrupt Dear Leader’s birthday celebration: it was a threat against people who may “protest.” This echoes the behavior of Hitler’s goons in the early 1930s as they set out to violently intimidate anybody — particularly members of Parliament — who may challenge him. Or Bull Connor as he bloodied protestors in Birmingham in the 1950s and 1960s.
Under Trump and Noem, federal agents have been given carte blanche to use violence against nonwhite people (it’s probably no coincidence that Senator Padilla is a brown-skinned son of Mexican immigrants), including kidnapping them in broad daylight and sending them to foreign concentration camps with no access to due process whatsoever. Noem could easily have taken the Senator’s question, or just said, “I’m happy to meet with you after this press conference.“ Instead, she chose escalation and violence, which is why Democrats are today calling on her to resign.
Now, in response to the violence Noem and the FBI directed against a US Senator, the professional propagandists at Fox “News” are peddling rationalizations and repeating Noem’s lie that she didn’t know who Padilla was. FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino issued a statement “thanking” the men who beat Padilla to the ground.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, right, implied Padilla was trying to inflict violence on Noem and called for him to be censured by the Senate. It appears that Republicans are circling the wagons, defending the assault on Padilla, Trump’s illegal infliction of armed troops on the streets of Los Angeles over the objections of the governor and mayor, and his and Noem’s efforts to stir up trouble in California that they can then exploit Reichstag Fire-style.
Are there any John McCain Republicans left? Any patriots who revere the Constitution and respect the rule of law? Any who are willing to call out Trump’s brutal dictator-inspired corruption and excesses? The question is an urgent one, because right now the only people who can stop America’s descent into tyranny are the Republicans in the House and Senate. If just a small handful grow a spine, Trump could be stopped in his tracks.
Will it happen? History suggests that massive public opinion holds the answer to that question. It ended, for example, both the presidency of Richard Nixon and the Vietnam War.As Abraham Lincoln famously said in his debate with Stephen Douglas:“In this age, in this country, public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed. Whoever molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces judicial decisions.”Saturday will be this era’s most visible expression of public opinion. Stay tuned and stay peacefully active.
New York Times, Trump’s Use of National Guard in Limbo After Court Rulings, Charlie Savage, Kellen Browning and Laurel Rosenhall, June 13, 2025. Judge Charles Breyer ordered the administration to return control of the National Guard to the California governor. But he also ruled that it was premature to restrict the use of active-duty Marines.
A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked the federal government’s mobilization of the California National Guard to protect immigration agents from protesters in Los Angeles. He ruled that the Trump administration had illegally taken control of the state’s troops and ordered them to return to taking orders from Gov. Gavin Newsom.
In an extraordinary 36-page ruling, Judge Charles Breyer of the Federal District Court in San Francisco severed Mr. Trump’s control of up to 4,000 National Guard troops, hundreds of whom are already deployed in the streets of Los Angeles on his orders. The judge said the administration’s seizure of them violated required procedures in a federal statute.
President Trump’s “actions were illegal — both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution,” Judge Breyer wrote. “He must therefore return control of the California National Guard to the governor of the state of California forthwith.”TROOPS IN L.A.Read a federal judge’s ruling striking down Trump’s taking control of the California National Guard.
The directive would have taken effect at noon Pacific time on Friday. But the Trump administration immediately filed a notice that it was appealing Judge Breyer’s decision. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit agreed to stay the ruling while it reviews the case, temporarily blocking it from taking effect.
The ruling, which accused Mr. Trump of setting a “dangerous precedent for future domestic military activity,” was the latest in a series of judicial rebukes to Mr. Trump’s expansive claims of wartime or emergency powers over matters ranging from deporting people without due process to unilaterally imposing widespread tariffs. Court rulings blocking his actions as likely illegal have enraged the White House.
Judge Breyer’s ruling on the National Guard went beyond what California had asked for. While the state’s lawsuit had contended that Mr. Trump’s mobilization of the National Guard was illegal, its specific motion was for a temporary restraining order limiting military forces under federal control to guarding federal buildings in the city and no other law enforcement tasks.
Judge Breyer blocked Mr. Trump from using California’s National Guard at all. But he also rejected a request by the state and Governor Newsom to restrain a separate group of active-duty Marines, which the administration has also mobilized to counter the protesters.
Read the Judge’s Ruling 36 pages.
Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense (shown above in a collage), mobilized 700 Marines from a base in California to participate in suppressing protests, and thestate had wanted the judge to restrict them from accompanying immigration agents on the workplace raids that sparked the protests. But the active-duty troops so far have merely been staged in a neighboring county and have not gone into the city.
Judge Breyer said it would be inappropriate to issue any order restricting the Marines’ actions when they have not done anything that would violate the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally makes it illegal to use federal troops for law enforcement on domestic soil. He said that the state would need to return within a week to try to turn his temporary order into a longer-lasting injunction, allowing time for events to develop.
“As of now, the court only has counsel’s speculation of what might happen,” the judge wrote.
Standing in front of the California flag at a news conference in the lobby of a state courthouse after the ruling, Mr. Newsom hailed the decision.
“Today was really about a test of democracy,” he said. “We passed the test.”
Mr. Newsom said that he would direct National Guard members to resume the duties that they were carrying out before they were redirected by Mr. Trump, which included border control and forest management to reduce wildfire risk.
“They will be back under my command,” he said, “and Donald Trump will be relieved of his command, at noon tomorrow.”
The press offices of the White House and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Complicating matters, the judge issued his directive to the Trump administration to relinquish control of the National Guard in the form of a temporary restraining order, a short-term tool that is normally not appealable, unlike a more durable preliminary injunction.
Sometimes, however, courts treat consequential temporary restraining orders as injunctions and permit appeals of them anyway. If the Ninth Circuit rejects the appeal, the executive branch could then file an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court — where Republican appointees hold a six-to-three supermajority — seeking to block the judge’s move.
Judge Breyer, who was nominated by President Bill Clinton in 1997, had telegraphed his focus on the legality of Mr. Trump’s calling up the National Guard at a hearing earlier on Thursday.
The statute President Trump cited as the authority for his move says that such orders must go “through” governors. But Mr. Hegseth instead sent the directive to the general who oversees the National Guard, bypassing Governor Newsom.
At the hearing, the Justice Department lawyer, Brett Shumate, argued that Mr. Hegseth had complied with the National Guard call-up statute. But even if he hadn’t, Mr. Shumate said, Mr. Trump had the legal authority to order the National Guard into federal service anyway.
Sporting a light-blue bow-tie, Judge Breyer interrupted the Justice Department’s lawyer repeatedly and at one point waved a small copy of the Constitution in the air. Some of his pointed replies drew laughs from the packed courtroom of more than 100 people.
When it came, his ruling was scathing.
The state of California “and the citizens of Los Angeles face a greater harm from the continued unlawful militarization of their city, which not only inflames tensions with protesters, threatening increased hostilities and loss of life, but deprives the state for two months of its own use of thousands of National Guard members to fight fires, combat the fentanyl trade, and perform other critical functions,” he wrote.
No president has deployed troops under federal control over the objections of a state governor since the Civil Rights era, when Southern governors were resisting court-ordered desegregation.
Since being federalized and deployed, some National Guard troops have accompanied ICE agents on raids while others have primarily stood outside federal buildings in downtown Los Angeles during protests.
The legal face-off comes amid escalating political tensions between the Trump administration and the California governor. After Mr. Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, threatened to arrest Mr. Newsom, Mr. Trump endorsed the idea on Monday, saying, “I’d do it.” Mr. Newsom on Tuesday said in a televised speech that “democracy is under assault right before our eyes.”
Mr. Newsom, after the ruling, forcefully rebuked the tactics that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have employed to arrest and deport undocumented immigrants, describing conversations with children who had been separated from their parents and family members whose relatives had suddenly disappeared without a trace.
“That’s Donald Trump’s America,” he said, calling it “indiscriminate cruelty.”
Semafor Flagship, Analysis: Israel’s huge Iran strike The impact on geopolitics… …and markets, Staff and Wire Reports, June 13, 2025. Israel launched a huge attack on Iran’s nuclear program, hitting uranium-enrichment facilities and wiping out Tehran’s top military leadership in the biggest strikes on Iranian soil in decades.
Hundreds of jets carried out the attack, which also reportedly included drone strikes launched from within Iran: The targets included the site where Tehran has produced the majority of its atomic fuel, while top nuclear scientists and military commanders were killed, forcing what one analyst described as “generational turnover” in Iran’s leadership.
Tehran called the assault a “declaration of war,” and launched more than 100 drones in response, but Israel said it intercepted all of them. World powers urged de-escalation following Israel’s attacks, which were notably carried out without US support.
Israel’s stunning attack on Iran threw regional diplomacy into chaos, upending nuclear negotiations and drawing long-held alliances into question. The attack likely undermines protracted American efforts to reach a deal with Tehran over its nuclear program: It was unclear whether negotiations due to be held in Oman on Sunday would go ahead, talks Israel views as a delaying tactic by Iran in order to strengthen its nuclear capabilities. Israel carried out the strikes without Washington’s support, a move likely to amplify tensions with the US.
The two allies have grown distant in recent months, disagreeing over how to respond to Iran’s nuclear program as well as over Israel’s conduct and strategy in its war in Gaza.
New York Times, Analysis: Israel’s Ambition: Destroy the Heart of Iran’s Nuclear Program, David E. Sanger, Updated June 13, 2025. It may take days, or weeks, to assess how far Israel has set back Iran’s atomic capabilities.
When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, said Thursday evening that Israel had struck “Iran’s main enrichment facility in Natanz,” he was signaling the scope of his country’s ambitions in the largest strike it has ever aimed at Iran: It sought to destroy the beating heart of the Iranian nuclear program.
The Natanz facility is where Iran has produced the vast majority of its nuclear fuel — and, in the past three years, much of the near-bomb-grade fuel that has put the country on the threshold of building nuclear weapons.
There are no reports yet of whether Iran’s other major enrichment site, called Fordow, was targeted as well. It is a much harder target, buried deep under a mountain, deliberately designed to be out of Israel’s reach.
As a result, it may take days, or weeks, to answer one of the most critical questions surrounding the attack of Iran’s facilities: How long has Israel set back the Iranian nuclear program? If the program is delayed only a year or two, it may look as if Israel has taken a huge risk for a fairly short-term delay. And among those risks is not only the possibility of a long-lasting war, but also that Iran will withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, take its program underground, and race for a weapon — exactly the outcome Mr. Netanyahu was out to prevent.
History suggests such attacks have unpredictable results. Even the most ingenious attack on the program 15 years ago — a cyberassault that put malware into the system, destroying centrifuges — only slowed Iran for a year or two. And when the program came back, it was bigger than ever.
New York Times, Much of Iran’s Nuclear Program Remains After Israel’s Strikes. At Least for Now, David E. Sanger, June 13, 2025. The first phase of the attack did not hit the most likely repository of Iran’s near-bomb-grade nuclear fuel.Israel badly damaged one of Iran’s key nuclear sites and killed a startling array of top military and nuclear officials in the attacks that started on Friday morning. But when the sun rose after that devastating assault, it was also clear how much of Iran’s nuclear program remained, at least for now.
The Israeli strikes appear to have destroyed an aboveground nuclear fuel production site and electrical supply centers at Iran’s largest uranium enrichment center, at Natanz. The killing of some of Iran’s top nuclear scientists continues a long-running Israeli campaign targeting the expertise needed to build a bomb. But the first phase of the Israeli attacks did not hit the most likely repository of Iran’s near-bomb-grade nuclear fuel — and that may have been deliberate.
That stockpile is stored at a vast complex outside the ancient former capital of Isfahan, according to international inspectors who are charged with measuring and monitoring it. Israel’s 100 fighters and swarms of missiles and drones stayed away from Isfahan in their first wave, even though it is one of the largest nuclear sites in the country and, according to Western intelligence services, one of the centers of Iran’s secret weapons research programs.
The Israel Defense Forces issued a news release on Friday afternoon saying that in a second wave of attacks, it had hit Isfahan, but not the fuel stockpile. Instead, it focused on laboratories that worked on converting uranium gas back into a metal — one of the last stages of building a weapon. But it said nothing about hitting the area where the fuel itself is stored.
The mystery is why Israel avoided hitting the stockpile, which gives Iran its fastest pathway to producing a small nuclear arsenal. And it was the core of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s justifications early Friday for ordering the strike, after two decades in which Israel has always stopped short of pulling the trigger.
“The fact that Israel did not bomb a known uranium production facility at Isfahan,” said Jon Wolfsthal of the Federation of American Scientists, which tracks Iran’s nuclear progress closely, “suggests either that Bibi was worried the bombing might cause a radiological incident or that they actually think this will lead Iran to surrender its uranium stocks voluntarily.”
New York Times, Kennedy’s New Vaccine Advisers Helped Lawyers Raise Doubts About Their Safety, Christina Jewett and Sheryl Gay Stolberg, June 13, 2025. Three of the health secretary’s picks to replace fired members of an influential panel that sets U.S. vaccine policies have filed statements in court flagging concerns about vaccines.
Three of the new advisers appointed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to guide the government on immunization policy took part in lawsuits casting doubt on the safety or efficacy of vaccines, public records show.
In dismissing all 17 members of an influential Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory panel on Monday, Mr. Kennedy cited what he said was a history of conflicts of interest that he claimed made those experts a “rubber stamp” on approving vaccines. But adding members who assisted in legal cases that were either against vaccine makers or that suggested widespread vaccine-caused harm raises questions about a different form of potential bias.
While the legal involvement of the three new panelists does not appear to violate the rules, critics of Mr. Kennedy said it created the appearance of a conflict.
“He’s invoking the language of ethics and integrity to get rid of these experts and now is installing people who may have their own biases — that he apparently does not want to recognize,” said Kathleen Clark, a law professor and ethics expert at Washington University in St. Louis.
One of Mr. Kennedy’s appointees, Vicky Pebsworth, is a nurse who serves on the board of a nonprofit dedicated to raising awareness about vaccine injuries. She certified to a court that, in her professional opinion, a survey of families of unvaccinated children supported the hypothesis that a rise in the number of recommended childhood vaccines explained an epidemic of chronic disease. Mr. Kennedy has espoused the same theory.
Another, Dr. Robert Malone, a physician and biochemist whose criticism of mRNA Covid-19 vaccines catapulted him into the spotlight during the pandemic, was a paid expert witness on behalf of company whistle-blowers who claimed that Merck, one of the nation’s largest vaccine manufacturers, had covered up evidence casting doubt on the effectiveness of the mumps vaccine.
A third, the biostatistician Martin Kulldorff, also became caught up in pandemic politics after writing an anti-lockdown treatise. He too served as an expert witness, asserting that Merck’s Gardasil shot, which protects against human papillomavirus, was not tested adequately, as Reuters first reported. It’s an area of vaccine-related litigation that Mr. Kennedy himself was deeply involved in before he was confirmed as health secretary.
Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: Trump Fundraises Off Deploying Military to L.A., Attacks Gavin Newsom, J.D. Wolf, June 13, 2025. Campaign email: “I said send in the troops.”
Donald Trump is now explicitly fundraising off the military deployment to Los Angeles, telling supporters in a campaign email that he “sent in the troops” to stop the city from burning “to the ground.”
The email — sent under the subject line “I said send in the troops” — falsely claimed that California was overrun by rioters and personally attacked state and national Democratic leaders. “American flags BURNED. Cars TORCHED. Property VANDALIZED,” the email reads. “Rioters were HURLING CINDER BLOCKS at our Cops and Troops. This is happening RIGHT NOW in California.”
Trump singled out California Governor Gavin Newsom — referred to as “Gavin Newscum” is his email — for suing over the unauthorized deployment of troops, calling the lawsuit “SICK.” He also attacked Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren who refused to adopt MAGA's sensationalist riots narrative to describe the vast number of peaceful protesters.
The email then pivots to a WinRed fundraising form and loyalty survey, asking: “AFTER GAVIN NEWSCUM SUED ME, DO YOU STILL STAND WITH TRUMP? Five minutes left to respond to RESPOND TO TRUMP.”
The blast is a clear attempt to weaponize the military deployment for campaign cash, even as legal challenges mount over Trump’s invocation of the Insurrection Act. His deployment of Marines and National Guard units has been challenged in court by California’s governor and civil liberties groups.
Former President Donald Trump is shown in a photo collage with columnist E. Jean Carroll, who won civil suits against him in New York City on claims of sexual battery and defamation.
Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: 2nd Circuit Denies Trump’s Appeal in E. Jean Carroll Case, Aaron Parnas, June 13, 2025. Full bench rules against president; Supreme Court is now the final possible venue. In a decisive legal setback for Donald Trump, the full bench of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has denied the president’s appeal challenging the civil verdict in favor of writer E. Jean Carroll. The ruling upholds a jury’s finding that Trump was liable for defaming Carroll after she accused him of sexual assault.
The Second Circuit, based in New York, reviewed the appeal en banc—meaning all active judges on the court participated in the decision. Their ruling effectively reaffirms the trial court's conclusions and the jury's award of damages to Carroll.
Carroll, a longtime journalist, accused Trump of raping her in a department store dressing room in the 1990s. Trump denied the allegation, publicly attacking Carroll’s credibility and motives. Two separate juries found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation, leading to substantial monetary penalties.
In a new statement, Carroll's attorney, Roberta Kaplan states: “E. Jean Carroll is very pleased with today’s decision. Although President Trump continues to try every possible maneuver to challenge the findings of two separate juries, those efforts have failed. He remains liable for sexual assault and defamation.”
Trump’s legal team had argued that his statements were made in the scope of his duties as president, and therefore shielded by presidential immunity and other legal protections. The Second Circuit rejected those arguments.
With this ruling, Trump’s last legal recourse lies with the U.S. Supreme Court. It is unclear whether the justices will agree to hear the case, as they receive thousands of petitions each term and accept only a small fraction.
If the Supreme Court declines to take the case—or upholds the lower court’s rulings—Trump will have no further legal avenues to overturn the verdict. This would solidify one of the most significant legal defeats faced by a U.S. president in modern history.
New York Times, Trump Administration Live Updates: Judge Pauses State Dept. Plans for Mass Layoffs, Staff Reports, June 13, 2025.
State Department cuts: A federal judge in California ordered the State Department to temporarily hold off on firing nearly 1,900 employees as planned. Read more ›
Voter ID: A federal judge on Friday indefinitely blocked President Trump’s stringent new voter ID requirements, which he issued via executive order in March. Mr. Trump’s order demanded that new voters supply proof of citizenship and withheld funding from states that counted ballots beyond Election Day. The ruling blocks the president’s order from taking effect until the case, brought by a group of states, is resolved. Read more ›
Security meeting: Following Israel’s major strikes against Iran, Mr. Trump warned Tehran that the country “must make a deal, before there is nothing left.” Follow live coverage ›
Abrego Garcia case: A federal judge has signaled she was open to granting bail to Kilmar Abrego Garcia a week after the Maryland immigrant was returned to the United States to face criminal charges following his wrongful deportation to El Salvador. But even if the judge decides that Abrego Garcia isn’t a flight risk or a danger to the community, he is likely to be taken into custody by immigration officials, she said.
New York Times, National Parks Are Told to Delete Content That ‘Disparages Americans,’ Lisa Friedman, June 13, 2025. Internal documents reviewed by The New York Times say that “negative” information at parks and other national site must be removed or covered by Sept. 17.
The Interior Department plans to remove or cover up all “inappropriate content” at national parks and sites by Sept. 17 and is asking the park visitors to report any “negative” information about past or living Americans, according to internal documents.
It’s a move that historians worry could lead to the erasure of history involving gay and transgender figures, civil rights struggles and other subjects deemed improper by the Trump administration.
Staff at the National Park Service, which is part of the Interior Department, were instructed to post QR codes and signs at all 433 national parks, monuments and historic sites by Friday asking visitors to flag anything they think should be changed, from a plaque to a park ranger’s tour to a film at a visitor’s center.
Leaders at the park service would then review concerns about anything that “inappropriately disparages Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times),” according to slides presented this week at a meeting with park superintendents. By Sept. 17, “all inappropriate content” would be removed or covered, according to the presentation.
The signs already are up at many national parks, including sites that commemorate difficult periods in American history like the Minidoka National Historic Site in Idaho, where more than 13,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated after being forcibly removed from their homes without due process during World War II.
“Our history isn’t always perfect,” said Theresa Pierno, the president of the National Parks Conservation Association, a nonprofit group that supports national parks and opposes the planned changes. “How do you talk about Martin Luther King without talking about racism?”
Ms. Pierno said she thought Americans who visit historic sites want to know all the facts. “We have faith as Americans that we can tell these stories, even the hard-to-tell stories, and we learn from them,” she said.
President Trump has sought to root out “wokeness” and change the way American history is told. An executive order he signed in March entitled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” directed the removal of “improper, divisive or anti-American ideology” from the Smithsonian Institution museums.
Over the past six months Mr. Trump has tried to take over cultural institutions like the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the Library of Congress. Federal agencies have removed or changed thousands of government websites related to issues like hate crimes, diversity, gay rights and environmental justice.According to the National Parks Conservation Association, dozens of federal web pages have been scrubbed or altered. They include: “L.G.B.T.Q. America: A Theme Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer History.” That site, which has been removed from the National Park Service website, featured an academic study that, among other things, identified people, places, and events that shaped the modern L.G.B.T.Q. rights movement.
Paul Krugman's Substack, Opinion: Reverse Robin Hood and Trumpian Totalitarianism, Paul Krugman, right, June 13, 2025. House Republicans have passed Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
After having spent decades covering Republican domestic policies, I have a pretty jaundiced view of their intentions. But this bill is so cruelly regressive that it shocked even me. This bill is truly unprecedented in the extent to which it takes away from the have-nots and gives to the ultra-haves. It slashes Medicaid, taking health care away from millions. It slashes food stamps, ensuring that many will go hungry. At the same time it gives huge tax cuts to the wealthy.
Those of us who followed the legislation knew that it would be highly regressive. New estimates from the Congressional Budget Office, a non-partisan agency of economic technocrats, confirm in detail just how bad the OBBBA is.
C.B.O.’s numbers, released yesterday, are startling. Here’s the percentage change in households’ purchasing power by decile of the income distribution caused by the OBBBA:
That 4 percent income decline for the poorest 10 percent of Americans is the scale of economic damage you’d expect from a severe recession. But here it is being deliberately inflicted on the poorest Americans.
In the OBBBA, pain on the least well-off Americans is not a price that is being paid in order to reduce the U.S. budget deficit. Remember, the benefit cuts for those in the bottom decile of the income distribution are being paired with tax cuts at the top of the income distribution. So the net effect will be a large increase in the U.S. budget deficit.
Wait, it gets worse. The CBO’s analysis doesn’t consider the effect of the Trump tariffs on household incomes. This is important because tariffs are taxes — regressive taxes, that fall more heavily on lower-income than higher-income families. I’ll be writing about the distributional impact of tariffs in the future. But for now here’s the Yale Budget Lab’s estimate of the combined effect of the OBBA and Trump tariffs on US household incomes:
What this graph shows is that the tariffs magnify the regressive effect of the OBBA: the poorest households are made even worse off. The loss inflicted on the bottom 10% of the income distribution goes from 4% of their income to 6.5%. Overall, the bottom 80% of households suffer a loss of income from the combined effects of the tariffs and the OBBA. Only the top 10% are clearly better off from a bill that increases the budget deficit. That’s quite a trick.
Republicans have already denounced the C.B.O.’s estimates as fake. (Arithmetic has a well-known liberal bias.) They claim, as they always do, that tax cuts for the rich will supercharge economic growth — a claim that has been tested to destruction, and I do mean destruction, over and over again at both the federal and state levels. It has never yet been vindicated.
The fact is that there’s no reasonable way to dispute the basic conclusion of the C.B.O.’s analysis. The Big Beautiful Bill is an immense exercise in reverse Robin-Hoodism, taking resources away from those who need them and giving the money to the already rich while driving up the deficit, increasing interest rates and crowding out investment..
The OBBBA is, in fact, so terrible that we need to ask how any party in a democracy imagines that it could get away with taking money away from 80% of the American public.
My answer is that the G.O.P.’s vicious tax and spending plans can’t be separated from the party’s contempt for democracy. The House has just enacted legislation that is desperately unpopular and would be even less popular if the public understood it fully. Why, then, did House members vote for it? Because they fear Donald Trump more than they fear the voters or because they don’t believe we will ever have fair elections again. Or both.
Also, what’s with the bill’s peculiar name? And yes, it is officially the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” While it might seem odd to focus on its name, there is a real, important link between a certain kind of vulgar tackiness and authoritarian rule. Milan Kundera, author of “The unbearable lightness of being,” called it “totalitarian kitsch.” By giving their bill a ludicrous name, because those were Trump’s words, G.O.P. politicians were engaging in performative self-abasement, demonstrating their willingness to humiliate themselves in order to curry favor with the Leader.
So by calling the legislation the One Big Beautiful Bill Act Republicans were in effect confirming that yes, Washington has turned into Pyongyang on the Potomac, where political survival depends on slavish flattery of the dictator.
New York Times, Trump, Who Has Likened Himself to a King, Bristles at ‘No Kings’ Protests, Chris Cameron, June 13, 2025. “I don’t feel like a king, I have to go through hell to get stuff approved,” President Trump said of the planned demonstrations against his administration.
President Trump bristled on Thursday at the mention of a series of “No Kings” protests against his administration scheduled for the day of his planned military parade in Washington — coinciding with his 79th birthday.
“I don’t feel like a king, I have to go through hell to get stuff approved,” Mr. Trump said to laughter from an audience of Republican lawmakers and political allies in the White House, arguing in essence that the opposition he faces from Democrats proves that he is not able to rule like a king.
He continued, “A king would say ‘I’m not going to get this.’ A king wouldn’t even have the California mandate to even be talking,” referring to the joint resolutions of Congress that he had just signed blocking California’s effort to phase out gasoline-powered vehicles.
“No, no. We’re not a king,” Mr. Trump said. “We’re not a king at all, thank you very much.”
In February, Mr. Trump likened himself to a king in another fight with Democrats in a blue state. As Mr. Trump sought to end congestion pricing for vehicles in New York City, the president declared on social media “CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!”
The official White House account on X, the social media website, amplified the message with an illustration of Mr. Trump wearing a crown. A federal judge later blocked Mr. Trump from attempting to end congestion pricing while the courts weighed in — demonstrating one of the constitutional checks to presidential power.
Roll Call, Ex-Rep. Long confirmed as Trump’s IRS commissioner, David Lerman, June 13, 2025 (print ed.). Long to serveremainder of term running through 2027.
Former Missouri Rep. Billy Long, right, won confirmation Thursday to be the next commissioner of the IRS, leading an agency that will play a key role in administering new tax breaks if Congress passes the “big, beautiful” reconciliation package.
Included in that package could be tax exemptions for tips and overtime, a top priority of President Donald Trump, along with an extension of the 2017 tax cuts.
Republicans pushed the nomination across the finish line on a 53-44 vote. But Long’s nomination sparked some heated pushback from Democrats, who said the former Republican congressman lacked tax policy experience and had ties to firms hawking phony and fraudulent tax credits.
“After leaving Congress, Mr. Long lined his pockets in the tax scam industry, where he peddled fake tax credits and took advantage of small businesses,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the floor Wednesday. “The American people don’t want the IRS to be run by a tax cheat.”
Finance Chairman Michael D. Crapo, R-Idaho, at a meeting earlier this month, praised the former six-term GOP lawmaker and sought to distance Long from allegations that he had promoted phony “tribal tax credits” as well as questions about recent donations to his 2022 Senate campaign. The Finance Committee approved the nomination June 3 on a 14-13 party-line vote.
After leaving Congress, Long promoted employee retention tax credits enacted during the pandemic, a program so ridden with fraudulent claims, thanks in part to promoters that encouraged businesses to apply regardless of eligibility, that the IRS stopped accepting new claims temporarily.
Long also received payments from Capitol Edge Strategies and White River Energy Corp., according to his financial disclosures. White River Energy, an Arkansas-based oil and gas exploration firm, allegedly promoted phony “tribal tax credits.” Long during his confirmation hearing denied knowing that the tax credits were fake.
The former congressman said he worked through Capitol Edge Strategies, a tax consulting firm, on the tax credits and never met or interacted with anyone at White River Energy. He told the committee his “tax advisory work” was limited to providing referrals, that he never offered tax advice and always advised people to consult with their own attorneys or accountants.
June 12
New York Times, Live Updates: Israeli Strikes Target Iran’s Nuclear Program, Patrick Kingsley, Aaron Boxerman and Farnaz Fassihi, June 12, 2025. Iran said the commander in chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was among top officials killed. Israel says it was a pre-emptive strike against Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
Israel carried out a major attack on Iran’s nuclear program on Friday morning, killing top Iranian military officials as well.
The strikes raised fears the long-simmering conflict between the two countries could escalate into a war involving the most powerful militaries in the Middle East. The commander in chief of Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Gen. Hossein Salami, was among the dead reported by state media.
Residents of Tehran, the Iranian capital, reported hearing huge explosions, and Iranian state television broadcast images of smoke and fire billowing from buildings. One Iranian senior official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Iran’s fighter jets had taken off to intercept the Israeli warplanes.
Several Israeli officials described the attacks as a pre-emptive strike intended to keep Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb. The Israeli military said the strikes had targeted sites critical to Iran’s long-range missile capabilities and its nuclear program.
The Israeli military said it struck Iran early on Friday morning, attacking dozens of military targets, including nuclear sites, in different areas of the country.
The scale of the attacks and the damage they caused were not immediately clear. But the strikes raised fears that the long-simmering conflict between the two countries could escalate into an all-out war involving the most two powerful militaries in the Middle East.
A critical question is whether the U.S. will play an extensive role in defending Israel from an Iranian counterattack, as the Biden administration did when those countries exchanged blows last year. Secretary of State Marco Rubio made no mention of such a role in a statement tonight, saying that “our top priority is protecting American forces in the region.” Some prominent Trump supporters are already calling for the United States to stay out of the conflict. Without U.S. assistance, Israeli defenses could be overwhelmed by a barrage of Iranian ballistic missiles, leading to major damage within Israeli cities.
New York Times, Judge Blocks Trump From Deploying National Guard in L.A., Jack Healy, Jill Cowan, Jesus Jiménez, Kellen Browning and Charlie Savage, June 12, 2025.The ruling orders the administration to return control of the National Guard to the California governor. It takes effect on Friday.
A federal judge issued an order late Thursday blocking President Trump from deploying members of the California National Guard in Los Angeles, and ordered the administration to return control of the forces to Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The restraining order from District Judge Charles R. Breyer, which takes effect Friday at noon Pacific time, delivered a sharp rebuke to President Trump’s effort to deploy thousands of troops on the streets of an American city, a move that has contributed to nearly a week of political rancor and protests across the country.
“His actions were illegal — both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution,” Judge Breyer wrote of Mr. Trump’s orders. The administration filed a quick appeal.
The ruling came hours after images of a Democratic senator from California being grabbed and handcuffed by federal agents touched off another round of political furor. Unrest also flared on Thursday night at a privately run immigration detention center in Newark. And in Chicago, hundreds of people marched through the city in opposition to the Trump administration’s immigration raids and attempts to quell dissent.
Rob Bonta, the attorney general of California, touted the state’s success in stopping the Trump Administration from expanding presidential power.
“They like to say there are rebellions or invasions or emergencies or insurrections, because that triggers more executive authority, and that’s really the end goal for them,” he said in a livestreamed news conference. “But unfortunately for them and fortunately for us, we are stopping them when they take unlawful actions.”
The Trump administration has filed a notice that it is appealing the judge’s order barring it from using California’s National Guard in Los Angeles and requiring it to return control of the troops to Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Here’s what we’re covering:
New York Times, LA Protest Updates: Senator Is Forced to Floor and Handcuffed After Confronting Noem in L.A., Karen Weise, Richard Fausset, Yan Zhuang, Jesus Jiménez, Charlie Savage and Patricia Mazzei, June 12, 2025. Senator Alex Padilla had briefly interrupted a news conference by the homeland security secretary. A judge will hear California’s request to limit the role of the military in immigration raids.
A U.S. senator from California was forced to the ground, handcuffed and removed by federal agents after interrupting a news conference by the homeland security secretary in Los Angeles on Thursday. It was the latest sign of the rising political tensions as authorities across the country geared up for more demonstrations and California and the Trump administration prepared to meet in federal court.
Democratic politicians in California and Washington reacted with outrage to the video of Senator Alex Padilla’s treatment by federal agents. The secretary, Kristi Noem, was speaking about ongoing federal immigration enforcement efforts in the city when Mr. Padilla, right, yelled that he had questions, prompting his removal.
The encounter, the latest in an increasing series of Democrats speaking out against ongoing workplace raids and President Trump’s military deployments on U.S. soil, came as troops prepared to mobilize in several states, while the spreading protests against the administration’s immigration crackdown showed no sign of slowing.
Ms. Noem said later in the news conference that she would try to have a conversation with Mr. Padilla, adding that his attempt to intervene “wasn’t appropriate.” Throughout the news conference, Ms. Noem cast California’s Democratic leaders as obstructionist and more concerned with politics than with law and order.
“Today it’s Senator Padilla, and you know what, tomorrow it can be any one of us,” Senator Angela Alsobrooks, Democrat of Maryland, said in an impassioned speech on the Senate floor as Democrats continue to line up to speak out against the removal of their colleague from Secretary Noem’s news conference. “These people must be held to account for what happened to Senator Padilla today,” she added.
A day after officers on foot and on horseback fired flash bangs and foam bullets to disperse a large protest in downtown Los Angeles, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas said that he had ordered more than 5,000 National Guard troops to be “strategically positioned” to assist law enforcement in his state. And a federal judge in San Francisco was scheduled to hear arguments in California’s challenge the Trump administration’s extraordinary use of the military to support officers conducting immigration raids in Los Angeles.
On Thursday afternoon, the state is expected to request an order limiting the National Guard troops and U.S. Marines deployed by President Trump in Los Angeles to protecting federal buildings. National Guard troops have accompanied federal agents on immigration enforcement raids since Mr. Trump deployed them last week over the objections of state officials. The Justice Department argues that California’s move is an attempt to restrict the president’s power.
At the White House, Mr. Trump said the troops’ presence was having an effect, and took credit by falsely stating that “nobody showed up” to protest on Wednesday in Los Angeles “because we were there.”
Demonstrations against the immigration raids were planned in several cities across the country on Thursday. Hundreds of people have been arrested across the country since the protests began in Los Angeles last week, and officials are bracing for even more protests this weekend. Many of the protests on Saturday have been planned for weeks, to coincide with a military parade in Washington that is taking place on President Trump’s 79th birthday.
Here’s what else to know:
Lincoln Project, Opinion: OUTRAGEOUS: US Senator Padilla ATTACKED at DHS Presser, Rick Wilson, right, June 12, 2025 (12:36 mins.). If a US 
Senator is not safe from being handcuffed and detained for free speech, none of us are safe.
The Lincoln Project is a leading pro-democracy organization in the United States — dedicated to the preservation, protection, and defense of democracy. Our fight against Trumpism is only beginning. We must combat these forces everywhere and at all times — our democracy depends on it.
New York Times, Russian Scientist Released After Four Months in Federal Custody, Ellen Barry and Maya Shwayder, June 12, 2025. Kseniia Petrova, above, a Harvard researcher, still faces criminal charges for failing to declare scientific samples she was carrying in her suitcase.
Kseniia Petrova, the Russian scientist who spent four months in detention after failing to declare scientific samples she was carrying into the country, was freed on bail from federal custody on Thursday by a magistrate judge in Boston.
Since her detention at Boston’s Logan Airport in February, Ms. Petrova has been transferred to detention centers in Vermont, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and, briefly, Rhode Island, before returning to Boston early Thursday.
“Welcome to Massachusetts,” said the judge, Judith G. Dein.
Ms. Petrova, who was handcuffed and dressed in an orange jumpsuit for the hearing, emerged from custody in a T-shirt that read “Hakuna matata,” and embraced Marc Kirschner, the scientist who heads her laboratory at Harvard Medical School.
“Obviously, it’s hard to explain why someone like Kseniia had to be jailed for four months,” said Gregory Romanovsky, her immigration lawyer. He added that her release “means that the legal process, even though it may be slow, is working, which is great.”
Ms. Petrova’s release is a victory, but a temporary one. She is still facing a two-pronged prosecution: The Trump administration began deportation proceedings against her in February, and around three months later, after she challenged the move in court, filed criminal smuggling charges against her.
Lawyers for the government have said they intend to deport Ms. Petrova to Russia, a country she fled for political reasons in 2022. She has said that if she returns, she fears arrest or even death because of her activism.
In a detention hearing before Judge Dein on Thursday, Nadine Pellegrini, an assistant U.S. attorney, said the government had agreed with Ms. Petrova’s defense on terms of release, allowing her to return home to her Boston apartment while awaiting her next court date, which is scheduled for next week.
In brief remarks outside the courthouse, Ms. Petrova thanked her friends and colleagues for visiting her and sending her books while she was in detention.
“People started contacting me and sending me letters, sending me messages of support — without which I wouldn’t be able to survive,” she said. “I never felt really alone even for a minute.”
Ms. Petrova is unable to work, for now, because of her visa status, and Mr. Romanovsky, her immigration lawyer, said she had not yet decided whether to stay in the U.S.
“She has offers from different countries around the world, countries that are eager to support the research that she is doing,” he said. “She is weighing her options at the moment and she is very grateful to be out.”
New York Times, Trump Administration Sues New York Over Law Barring ICE From Courthouses, Luis Ferré-Sadurní, June 12, 2025. State lawmakers passed the ban in 2020 when President Trump in his first term escalated arrests of undocumented immigrants at state and local courts.
The Trump administration sued New York on Thursday over a state law that largely blocks immigration agents from conducting arrests in state or local courthouses, arguing that the measure is an unconstitutional effort to stymie immigration enforcement efforts.
Lawmakers in New York passed the law in 2020 as Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers escalated arrests of undocumented immigrants at state and local courts during President Trump’s first term. The measure — which says law enforcement officers can arrest people at or near courthouses only if the officers have a court order or criminal warrant signed by a judge — makes it harder for ICE to conduct immigration arrests, which are civil matters.
Pam Bondi, the attorney general, cast the state law as a left-wing measure that shielded criminals and endangered public safety. The lawsuit came four months after Ms. Bondi, in one of her first moves, sued New York over another state law that allows undocumented immigrants to get a driver’s license.
“Lawless sanctuary city policies are the root cause of the violence that Americans have seen in California, and New York State is similarly employing sanctuary city policies to prevent illegal aliens from apprehension,” Ms. Bondi said in a statement. “This latest lawsuit in a series of sanctuary city litigation underscores the Department of Justice’s commitment to keeping Americans safe and aggressively enforcing the law.”
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Albany, is the latest move by the Trump administration in its quest to topple local policies that it argues are unlawfully interfering with its widening immigration crackdown. The White House is looking to force more cooperation from states and cities that are dominated by Democratic officials. Many of those states have large immigrant populations and have passed so-called sanctuary laws that restrict how much local officials can engage with federal immigration authorities.
The administration has already sued some sanctuary jurisdictions, including Chicago; threatened to charge local officials who resist immigration enforcement; and recently released a list of nearly 400 localities it says are interfering with immigration enforcement actions.
Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: DHS Unveils Fascist WWII Era Propaganda Poster, Troy Matthews, June 12, 2025. DHS is drifting into some dark territory with its call to report "foreign invaders."
Donald Trump's Department of Homeland Security circulated a creepy propaganda poster calling on American citizens to report all "foreign invaders."
The poster, which DHS posted to X on Wednesday, features an image of Uncle Sam with the words: "Help your country and yourself...REPORT ALL FOREIGN INVADERS." The post read: "Help your country locate and arrest illegal aliens. To report criminal activity, call [ICE Phone Number]."
The poster is a callback to fascist Europe in the 1930's and 1940's, which encouraged citizens to report on their neighbors to the government, in order to root out Jewish individuals, left-wing leaders, homosexuals, and other "undesirables."
The poster is especially notable considering the actions of DHS towards Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA) on Thursday, who was forced to the floor and handcuffed inside the federal building in Los Angeles after trying to ask a question of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem at a press conference.
Noem's DHS has been cosplaying as a United States Gestapo; more focused on instilling fear in our communities than performing their function of keeping Americans safe.
Raw Story, FBI may have pictures of Trump and Epstein with young girls: biographer, Martin Pengelly, June 12, 2025. The FBI 
may possess photographs showing Donald Trump with Jeffrey Epstein and “girls of an uncertain age,” the reporter and bestselling author Michael Wolff said.
“They were in the safe, and I have seen him [Epstein] on other occasions take them out of the safe,” Wolff said, discussing visits to late financier and sex offender's home in New York.
“And I think it's certainly not unlikely that they were in the safe when the FBI came in after his arrest and took everything from the house, including everything that was in the safe.”
Wolff was speaking to former Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal and Princeton historian Sean Wilentz on their podcast, The Court of History.
Epstein was arrested on sex trafficking charges in New York in July 2019, midway through Trump’s first term as president.
The next month, Epstein killed himself in custody in Manhattan.
Epstein’s connections to powerful men including Trump have long been the subject of speculation.
FBI director Kash Patel and deputy director Dan Bongino, appointed by Trump, have angered conspiracy theorists by pouring cold water on claims about Epstein and his supposedly unreleased files, thought to detail links to powerful figures.
Patel recently told the podcaster Joe Rogan: “Do you think that myself, Bongino, and others would participate in hiding information about Epstein’s grotesque activities?
“The problem is there’s been like 15 years of people coming in and creating fictions about this that doesn’t exist.”
If confirmed, FBI possession of photographs of Trump and Epstein with young girls, as suggested by Wolff, would contradict such claims.
On Thursday, the FBI declined to comment.
Trump’s links to Epstein seem sure to remain in the headlines.
Last week, the Tesla billionaire, Republican donor and sometime Trump aide Elon Musk fell out with the president, then made explosive accusations on social media.
"Time to drop the really big bomb: Donald Trump is in the Epstein files," Musk wrote. "That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!"
Trump told NBC Musk’s allegations were “old news,” saying: “Even Epstein's lawyer said I had nothing to do with it … and as you know, I was not friendly with Epstein for probably 18 years before he died. I was not at all friendly with him.”
Later, Musk backed down and his posts about Epstein were removed.
Wolff previously described the pictures he says Epstein showed him, to The Daily Beast last month.
Speaking to Blumenthal and Wilentz, Wolff said he spoke to Epstein “on and off from 2014 through to the Trump campaign, and then the first year of the Trump administration, when I was writing my book Fire and Fury, in which Epstein became a very, very helpful source, because Epstein and Trump had been the best of friends for almost 15 years.
“So, I mean, that's at the center of … trying to make this connection to Trump and Epstein, is that they came from the same place … they were instrumental, I think, in each other's rise.
“But at any rate, at one point after Trump had been elected [in 2016], I was sitting talking to Epstein, and he said, ‘Wait a minute, I gotta show you something.’
“And then he went into his safe and he came out with photographs. They were Polaroids, I think, and he kind of spread them out like playing cards. And it was Trump.
“I think there were a dozen of them and, and it was Trump with girls of an uncertain age at Epstein's Palm Beach house, where all of the things that [Epstein] would ultimately be accused of took place.
“And I remember very vividly three of them. There are two in which … topless girls are sitting on Trump's lap, and then a third in which he has a stain on the front of his pants, and the girls are kind of pointing at it, sort of bent over laughing … three or four girls, and those are the ones I specifically remember.”
Wolff told Blumenthal and Wilentz the photos were taken “either in 1999 or 2000, 2001 possibly,” and said it was “likely” Epstein showed them to other people.
Wolff also noted that such photos have been described by the Spectator, a British magazine.
Wolff discussed Epstein’s habit of boasting about relationships with world leaders, including “[Fidel] Castro, the Pope [and] MBS,” Mohammed Bin Salman, crown prince of Saudi Arabia, and former president Bill Clinton.
Wolff added: “I remember at one point he said he was going to see [Vladimir] Putin and he described the … flight pattern that he was taking, his flight to such and such a city, and then on from there via … possibly Putin's plane.”
Trump’s relationship with the Russian president has been the source of intense speculation, since US intelligence determined that Moscow interfered in Trump’s favor in the 2016 U.S. election.
Asked if Epstein claimed a “personal relationship” with Putin, Wolff said: “Let's not go overboard on these things … there was a reality, and then there was the somewhat augmented reality. I would say he didn't shy away from improving on a story.”
Speculation persists that Putin may have kompromat, or compromising material, on Trump. Asked if Epstein would have discussed his supposed pictures of Epstein and Trump with Putin, Wolff said he did not know.
But he said Epstein “very much liked to gossip, and I think one of the things that drew so many people to his house, so many powerful people, was that Jeffrey was within that circle … incredibly indiscreet and incredibly funny and incredibly entertaining.”
Offering an example, Wolff said former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak “knew everything about Jeffrey. They were very close friends. And certainly, I have been involved in discussions between Epstein and Ehud Barak in which the subject was Trump, and Ehud was interested in knowing everything possible that Jeffrey could tell him about Trump.”
New York Times, Over 260 Dead After Air India Crash, Official Says, With at Least One Survivor, Suhasini RajIsabella, KwaiPragati, K.B.John Yoon and Mujib Mashal, June 12, 2025. The London-bound Boeing Dreamliner went down moments after takeoff in Ahmedabad, India, with 242 people aboard. India’s home minister said he had met with a survivor. The victims included students at a medical college where the plane crashed.
Rescuers were combing the smoldering wreckage of an Air India passenger jet that crashed moments after takeoff Thursday in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad, killing more than 200 passengers and dozens of people on the ground.
A senior police official in Ahmedabad, Vishakha Dabral, said early on Friday that 269 bodies had been brought to the main hospital thereso far. Mr. Dabral cautioned that the exact toll would emerge only after DNA testing.
New York Times, A Billionaire Island Where Bezos and Kushner Live Is Fighting Over Sewage, Mike Baker, June 13, 2025. Indian Creek Village, the “Billionaire Bunker” near Miami, couldn’t get approval to discharge its waste into a neighboring town’s sewer lines. So the village quietly persuaded state lawmakers to come to the rescue.
On a man-made island north of Miami, the titans of various industries have found their refuge. Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder, has collected a trio of properties along the same shoreline as the football legend Tom Brady and President Trump’s daughter and son-in-law, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.
A community of only a few dozen homes, the latest of which sold for $110 million as a vacant lot, Indian Creek Village has emerged as the nation’s premier enclave for billionaires willing to pay any price to achieve the pinnacle of privacy, security and luxury. A gated bridge blocks the public from access, and a police force uses cameras and radar to monitor anyone who approaches.
But one amenity of modern life has remained surprisingly elusive. In a place where many of the estates have more than 10 toilets, nobody has quite figured out how to dispose of what comes out of them.
Septic systems along the shores of Biscayne Bay have for decades been a source of pollution. In Indian Creek, known by locals as the “Billionaire Bunker,” leaders finally came up with a plan to get rid of their septic tanks and export the island’s waste through the sewer pipes of the neighboring town, Surfside. But to Indian Creek’s surprise, Surfside wanted $10 million for the privilege.
Officials there contended that the fee was a contribution to the historical cost of a system that Surfside created and maintained. Indian Creek leaders called it extortion. Quietly, they went to the State Capitol to pursue a much cheaper solution.
Stocks and Jocks Radio, Courts Stories, Boeing Crash, Host: Tom "Chief" Hough, June 12, 2025 (180 mins.). Chief and Lou Michaels start with court stories which are stranger then fiction. Then talk about Boeing 757 crash in India today. Lou spoke about the issues of a plane taking off the ground. Wayne Madsen and Andrew Kreig start talk about the Trump Administration effects on colleges. Then pick up about embassy life is like. They final follow with the state of Congress today.
New York Times, Opinion: Red-State Universities Will Get Hit by Trump’s Cuts, Too, Richard Florida (visiting professor at Vanderbilt University, a professor at the University of Toronto and a fellow of the Kresge Foundation), June 12, 2025.
A few weeks ago, on social media, President Trump wrote, “I am considering taking Three Billion Dollars of Grant Money away from a very antisemitic Harvard, and giving it to TRADE SCHOOLS all across our land. What a great investment that would be for the USA.”
The message was, presumably, that by going to war with Harvard, he’s getting a twofer: sticking it to “woke” blue-state elites while also making blue-collar workers in red states a priority. He’s not wrong that we should invest more in vocational education and do more to improve the economic conditions for working-class Americans.
But his joust with Harvard — his moves, in particular, to freeze more than $2 billion in federal research funding and cancel federal contracts with the university — is just the most visible part of a wider assault on institutions of higher learning. Last month, Nature reported that the administration has proposed cutting over $20 billion from the budget for the National Institutes of Health; The Times reported that grants funded by the National Science Foundation were down more than 50 percent compared with the average from 2015 to 2024.
Rather than striking a blow for red-state America, these cuts would actually take a heavy toll on many of the communities in states that went for Mr. Trump in the last election — whose research universities serve as crucial anchors for industry and innovation.
If Mr. Trump wants to make all of America great again, he shouldn’t cut funding for scientific research. He should increase it.
According to a recent report, over the past decade, N.I.H. research funding, which in large part is distributed to universities in the form of grants, has helped generate $787 billion for the American economy and an average of more than 370,000 jobs each year. Every dollar of N.I.H.-funded research generates a total of $2.56 in economic activity.Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.
In the fiscal year 2023, nearly $30 billion, roughly half of the federal funding for higher education research and development, flowed to states Mr. Trump carried in 2024. Texas received about $3.6 billion in federally funded academic research and development. Pennsylvania received about $3.4 billion. North Carolina received about $2.5 billion, Georgia got around $2.2 billion, and Ohio got nearly $2 billion. Florida, Missouri, Tennessee, Wisconsin and Indiana each received more than $1 billion.
The administration’s seeming inclination to discount the importance of university research and development and to emphasize, instead, the loss of traditional manufacturing jobs is understandable given the long-running separation of innovation and production in America. Industries such as steel, automobiles and consumer electronics have declined in the face of global competition and automation. Our economy has shifted away from these industries and toward semiconductors, software, biotechnology and internet commerce, including social media.
Concentrated in Silicon Valley and other tech hubs, these industries have specialized in research, innovation and design while outsourcing manufacturing; the meaning of the words “Designed by Apple in California” — emphasis on “designed” — is unmistakable. The United States has maintained global leadership in many breakthrough technologies, but between 1979 and 2019, we lost more than six million factory jobs.
It didn’t have to be that way; countries like Germany and Japan have applied advanced technologies to modernize legacy industries such as automobiles and steel. And their commitment to manufacturing allowed them to surpass the United States in various high-tech sectors. For instance, flat-panel display technology — now ubiquitous in televisions, laptops, smartphones and countless other devices — was incubated in American labs, including those at RCA and Westinghouse. Yet American companies trying to mass-produce this technology were eventually overtaken by Japanese corporations like Sharp, whose manufacturing capabilities propelled them to global leadership before ceding ground to producers in Korea and later China.
If the United States wants to compete with other countries for manufacturing jobs, our best strategy is to leverage our exceptional university research capabilities to rebuild our manufacturing base.
New York Times, Trump Acknowledges Israel Could Attack Iran Soon, David E. Sanger, June 12, 2025. But President Trump cautioned that he does not want Israel to launch an attack while negotiations were going on.
New York Times, Iran Is Breaking Rules on Nuclear Activity, U.N. Watchdog Says, Steven Erlanger, June 12, 2025. The decision comes as officials say they believe that Israel is preparing to launch a military attack on Iran. Tehran condemned the vote.
The International Atomic Energy Agency declared on Thursday that Iran was not complying with its nuclear nonproliferation obligations, the first time the U.N. watchdog has passed a resolution against the country in 20 years.
The long-anticipated censure vote by the agency’s board of governors in Vienna came at a time of high tension over Tehran’s nuclear program, with American and European officials saying they believe that Israel may be preparing an imminent military strike against Iran.
Iran condemned the vote, calling it political in a joint statement from its foreign ministry and national atomic energy agency. The resolution “completely called into question the credibility and prestige” of the nuclear watchdog, they said.
The statement added that Iran will “launch a new enrichment center in a secure location and replace the first-generation machines” at another site with more modern equipment.
The agency’s resolution was put forward by the United States, Britain, France and Germany and passed easily, with 19 votes of the 35-nation board. Russia, China and Burkina Faso voted against, and 11 other countries abstained, while two did not vote.
June 11
New York Times, Trump Threatens Any Protesters at Military Parade With ‘Very Big Force,’ Erica L. Green and Maggie Haberman, June 11, 2025 (print ed.). “I haven’t even heard about a protest,” at the Saturday event in Washington celebrating the Army, he said, but “this is people that hate our country.”
President Trump said on Tuesday that protesters who assembled during a military parade he planned in Washington on Saturday for the Army’s 250th birthday would be met with “very big force” — a dark warning that made no distinction between peaceful demonstrations and violent confrontations.
In remarks from the Oval Office before he left for North Carolina, where he was scheduled to participate in events at Fort Bragg related to the anniversary, Mr. Trump boasted about the “amazing day” he planned before saying that any demonstrators would be dealt with harshly.
“For those people that want to protest, they’re going to be met with very big force,” Mr. Trump said. “And I haven’t even heard about a protest, but you know, this is people that hate our country, but they will be met with very heavy force.”
Mr. Trump’s comments came after the president spent several minutes praising his administration’s deployment of thousands of National Guard and Marines in response to protests that had broken out over the weekend in Los Angeles against sweeping federal immigration raids.
The episodes of unrest have included burned cars, concrete chunks hurled at officers and robberies at spots like an Apple store. Supporters of the California protests who oppose Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdowns have said the protests were largely peaceful, and that the episodes of violence have been amplified by Mr. Trump’s allies and administration.
New York Times, News Analysis: Trump Declares Dubious Emergencies to Amass Power, Scholars Say, Adam Liptak, June 11, 2025 (print ed.). In disputes over protests, deportations and tariffs, the president has invoked statutes that may not provide him with the authority he claims.
To hear President Trump tell it, the nation is facing a rebellion in Los Angeles, an invasion by a Venezuelan gang and extraordinary foreign threats to its economy.
Citing this series of crises, he has sought to draw on emergency powers that Congress has scattered throughout the United States Code over the centuries, summoning the National Guard to Los Angeles over the objections of California’s governor, sending scores of migrants to El Salvador without the barest hint of due process and upending the global economy with steep tariffs.
Legal scholars say the president’s actions are not authorized by the statutes he has cited and are, instead, animated by a different goal.
“He is declaring utterly bogus emergencies for the sake of trying to expand his power, undermine the Constitution and destroy civil liberties,” said Ilya Somin, a libertarian professor at Antonin Scalia Law School who represents a wine importer and other businesses challenging some of Mr. Trump’s tariffs.
Crisis is Mr. Trump’s brand. When he took office the first time, he promised to end “American carnage.” When he announced his most recent re-election campaign, he said he would reverse “staggering American decline.” Ever since he first ran for president in 2015, he has argued that only he can restore the country to greatness.
Now in office again, he is converting that rhetoric into policy. Mr. Trump says that events and circumstances largely considered routine amount to emergencies that allow him to invoke powers rarely sought by his predecessors but embedded in statutes by lawmakers who wanted to ensure presidents could act quickly and aggressively to confront authentic crises.
Frank O. Bowman, a law professor at the University of Missouri, said the laws Mr. Trump has invoked were premised on a presumption that the flexibility they granted would not be abused.
“Genuine emergencies do occur, and Congress knows that it’s slow,” Professor Bowman said. “It wants presidents acting in good faith to move with rapidity.”
But Professor Bowman said Mr. Trump’s approach was different. “Declaring everything an emergency begins to move us in the direction of allowing the use of government force and violence against people you don’t like,” he said.
Politico, Hogg declines to run again for DNC vice chair after new election is called, Elena Schneider, June 11, 2025. The 25-year-old activist said he will devote his efforts to Leaders We Deserve.
David Hogg will not run again for his Democratic National Committee vice chairman position, he announced on Tuesday, amid a firestorm the 25-year-old activist sparked over his pledge to take on “ineffective” Democratic incumbents.
DNC members removed Hogg and Pennsylvania state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta through a virtual vote on Wednesday night, stemming from a procedural complaint unrelated to Hogg’s primary activities.
In a statement, Hogg said “there is a fundamental disagreement about the role of a Vice Chair — and it’s okay to have disagreements.” But, Hogg continued, “what isn’t okay is allowing this to remain our focus when there is so much more we need to be focused on.”
Hogg said he would now focus his efforts on Leaders We Deserve, the group he co-founded, which said it would take on “asleep-at-the-wheel” Democrats by pledging to spend $20 million on safe-seat Democratic primaries. Hogg’s plan, announced in April, triggered a wave of anger from elected officials and DNC members, who argued that Hogg’s role as a party leader conflicted with the decision to take on incumbents.
DNC Chair Ken Martin, who clashed with Hogg, released a statement, “commend[ing] David for his years of activism, organizing, and fighting for his generation, and while I continue to believe he is a powerful voice for this party, I respect his decision to step back from his post as Vice Chair. I have no doubt that he will remain an important advocate for Democrats across the map. I appreciate his service as an officer, his hard work, and his dedication to the party.”
The DNC will hold new elections for the two vice chair roles beginning Thursday — the vote for the new male vice chair will take place from June 12 to June 14 and then vote for a second vice chair of any gender from June 15 to June 17. With Hogg declining to run, Kenyatta is now running unopposed for the male vice chair role.
Three other candidates for DNC vice chair — Shasti Conrad, Kalyn Free and Jeanna Repass — submitted candidate videos to compete for the second vacancy, according to one DNC member granted anonymity to describe private details.
Earlier this week, Hogg’s group endorsed Virginia state Del. Irene Shin in the special election for Virginia’s 11th District to replace Democratic Rep. Gerry Connelly, who died last month.
The internal drama within the DNC reignited again over the weekend, when POLITICO obtained audio from a DNC meeting in which Martin told Hogg and other DNC leaders that his leadership has suffered due to the clash. The vice chair, Martin said, had “essentially destroyed any chance I have” to show national leadership. Several of the DNC leaders who participated in the call expressed support for Martin and accused Hogg or his supporters of leaking it. Hogg, for his part, denied he shared it.
Meidas Touch Network, Trump Amplified Truth Social Group Peddling Neo-Nazi Propaganda and Holocaust Denial, J.D. Wolf, June 11, 2025. Trump’s repost of a Biden clone theory led directly to a QAnon group promoting Hitler
The movie, created by a leader in the European Neo-Nazi movement, claims Jews are trying to engineer the destruction of the Aryan race by introducing interracial relationships.
The film also claims Jews started WWII by provoking Nazi Germany. Trump Amplified AccountTrump Boosts Account That Amplified Hitler and Nazi Propaganda VideosRead More
Europa: The Last Battle also minimizes the crimes of the Nazi regime and engages in Holocaust denials. Other post reviewed by MeidasTouch from the Q group explicitly denying the Holocaust and spreading antisemitic conspiracies.Antisemitic Posts from Truth Social Group Amplified by Trumpscreenshot 33Gallery3 Images
One post from the Truth Social group suggested Jews ordered the Boulder attack, where a suspect lit protesters on fire, in order to "pass more antisemitism laws." The attacker injured 15 people gathered for a solitary walk for hostages held by Hamas.Antisemitic post from Truth Social group amplified by Trump
Poitico, Antisemitic post from Truth Social group amplified by Trump, Trump’s decision to amplify the account to his followers adds to a long pattern of boosting QAnon-linked content and engaging with extremist figures. However, this instance crosses a darker threshold: it directly connects the former president to a group promoting open neo-Nazism and Holocaust denial and his own social media platform.
Washington Post, RFK Jr. picks new members of vaccine committee after purge, Lena H. Sun and Lauren Weber, June 11, 2025. Kennedy said they will demand “definitive safety and efficacy data” for vaccine recommendations. His picks include at least two critics of mRNA coronavirus vaccines. In other news:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth faced pointed questions from senior Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday, in his second appearance on Capitol Hill this week.
Lawmakers criticized Hegseth for failing to submit a detailed Pentagon spending request for the fiscal year 2026, while the G.O.P.-controlled Congress struggles to agree on a budget reconciliation package. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the top Republican on the committee’s defense panel, and Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, the top Democrat, also criticized the Pentagon for not including additional military assistance to Ukraine in its budget request.
The Hartmann Report, Opinion: Germans, Hungarians, Russians, Italians all Waited Until it was Too Late: Are Americans About to Join that Tragic Club? Thom Hartmann, right, June 11, 2025. Step by Step, MAGA Is normalizing repression and setting America up for tyranny. Will we wait, like so many before us, until the knock comes to our own door?
Eventually, people in countries that are in the process of flipping from democracy to fascism figure out that they’re now living in a dictatorship; by then, however, it’s usually too late.
For people in Hungary, it was May, 2020 when Orbán started arresting people for their Facebook posts. For folks in Russia it was when Navalny and his supporters were first assaulted in public and then arrested and sent to brutal gulags in Siberia. For Germans, it was July 14, 1933 — six months after he became chancellor — when Hitler outlawed all political parties except his own.
But at first, the steps from democracy to fascism and tyranny always seems like “just another thing the government has to do to deal with a very real problem.” Something that reasonable people would understand and can’t reasonably object to. Something that, even if weird, makes a certain amount of sense.
Until suddenly the mask is dropped and the twisted face of hateful fascism peers out at the country with laser-red eyes and a bloody mouth filled with threats and lies. Wearing camouflage, face masked, carrying handcuffs.
We’re there. Trump and his neofascist enablers started with quiet cat’s feet; now they’re holding a rifle and using a bullhorn.
How do we know that Trump is doing something very different from America’s past, something that inevitably leads somewhere other than democracy?
During the first three months of President Obama’s presidency, he deported 63,257 people for being in the country without documentation; Trump’s first three months of 2025 saw roughly 61,060 deportations.
Why is Trump getting headlines — and protestors — with his arrests and deportations while Obama didn’t, even though he deported even more people than Trump has?
Because, for Trump, this isn’t about deportation or purging the nation of “illegals”; instead, it’s about making Americans comfortable with authoritarian, police-state tactics. The immigrants are just props, albeit ones that appeal to the racist MAGA base.
Obama deported people based on so-called Morton Memos, also known as “enforcement priority memos,” which required ICE to focus entirely on those undocumented aliens who posed either “national security” or “criminal” threats to America.
While those arrested and immediately turned back at the border didn’t get a day in court, the people Obama targeted within the US were detained after warrants were issued based on probable cause they had committed a crime or were a threat to America, as the Bill of Rights and US law requires, and each had their day in court where they could claim that they’d been arrested and held without legal justification.
Obama also started Operation Cross Check, organizing coordinated raids across the country targeting aliens with established criminal records, and each arrest required proper legal documentation or warrants.
He also operated his immigration enforcement efforts equally well in Red states as Blue states.
The Biden administration also largely followed the legal structures — court hearings, due process, and enforcement priorities — established under Obama.
But under Trump, in complete defiance of the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th Amendments of the Constitution, ICE officers are arresting people without warrants and imprisoning or deporting then without an opportunity to contest their detention or removal from the country in a court of law.
Why would Trump do this, when both Obama and Biden were able to deport as many or more people while simply following the law?
Because it’s really not at all about undocumented aliens or deportation: Instead, it’s all fascism theater designed specifically and intentionally to get us ready to accept what’s next.
New York Times,Trump Says Army Bases Will Revert to Confederate Names, Chris Cameron, June 11, 2025 (print ed.). The move would reverse a yearslong effort to remove names and symbols honoring the Confederacy from the military.
President Trump, during a speech at Fort Bragg, N.C., said on Tuesday that he would restore the names of all Army bases that were named for Confederate generals but were ordered changed by Congress in the waning days of his first administration.
His move skirts the law mandating the removal of Confederate symbols from the military through the same maneuver used to restore the name of Fort Bragg, which was briefly renamed Fort Liberty. In a statement, the Army said it would “take immediate action” to restore the old names of the bases originally honoring Confederates, but the base names would instead honor other American soldiers with similar names and initials.
For example, Fort Eisenhower in Georgia, honoring President Dwight D. Eisenhower — who led the D-Day landings during World War II — would revert to the name Fort Gordon, once honoring John Brown Gordon, the Confederate slave owner and suspected Ku Klux Klan member. This time around, however, the Army said the base would instead honor Master Sgt. Gary Gordon, who fought in the Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia.
Mr. Trump, however, contradicted that explanation in his announcement, at one point saying that the Army would be “restoring” the name of one Army base in Virginia — Fort Gregg-Adams — to “Fort Robert E. Lee,” previously named for the commander of the Confederate army. The Army said in its statement that the base would be renamed to honor Pvt. Fitz Lee, a member of the all-Black Buffalo Soldiers who was awarded a Medal of Honor after serving in the Spanish-American War.
Mr. Trump made the announcement as he took a victory lap for the renaming of the Army installation at Fort Bragg, N.C., which had been originally named for Braxton Bragg, the Confederate general. Fort Bragg was renamed to Fort Liberty after Congress moved to strip the base of its Confederate name in 2020, mandating a new one.
“Can you believe they changed that name in the last administration for a little bit?” Mr. Trump asked, as soldiers in the crowd loudly booed. “Fort Bragg is in. That’s the name. And Fort Bragg it shall always remain. That’s never going to be happening again.”
Delivering a campaign-style speech surrounded by hundreds of Army troops, Mr. Trump sought to turn the page on what was an embarrassing political defeat late in his first term. An overwhelming majority of Congress — Democrats and Republicans — overrrode his veto amid the fallout of protests after the murder of George Floyd to pass a bill that included a provision to rename the nine Army bases honoring Confederate generals.
Those bases were ultimately renamed for people who “embody the best of the United States Army,” according to the naming commission that recommended the initial changes. They included decorated officers, enlisted troops who survived harrowing trials in battle, and one civilian: Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, a Civil War surgeon and the only woman ever awarded a Medal of Honor.
One of the officers, Lt. Col. Charity Adams Earley, was honored by Congress earlier this year, with Speaker Mike Johnson presenting an award for the Six Triple Eight — the only all-Black, all-female Army battalion to serve in Europe during World War II — to her descendants.
New York Times, Trump Administration Live Updates: Fulbright Board Quits After Accusing Trump Aides of Political Interference, Staff Report, June 11, 2025. The dozen board members of the prestigious Fulbright program, which promotes international educational exchanges, were said to have resigned, citing political interference by the Trump administration.
The members were said to be concerned that political appointees at the State Department, which manages the program, were acting illegally by canceling scholarships for almost 200 American professors and researchers based mainly on their research topics.
In a statement, board members stated:
It is our sincere hope that Congress, the courts, and future Fulbright Boards will prevent the administration’s efforts to degrade, dismantle, or even eliminate one of our nation’s most respected and valuable programs. Injecting politics and ideological mandates into the Fulbright program violates the letter and spirit of the law that Congress so wisely established nearly eight decades ago.
In other Trump Administration news:
Hegseth testimony: The top Republican and Democratic members on a Senate panel hearing testimony from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth criticized the Pentagon for not including additional military assistance for Ukraine in its budget request. Before a House panel on Tuesday, Mr. Hegseth defended the deployment of nearly 5,000 Marines and National Guard troops to Los Angeles.
Musk’s regrets: Elon Musk, the world’s richest person and a former Trump adviser, said that he regretted some of his incendiary comments last week about the president. Mr. Musk said on X that some of his posts “went too far.”
L.A. protests: More protests were expected Wednesday in cities across the country, in solidarity with those in Los Angeles against the administration’s immigration policies.
New York Times, Mexican Flags Have Become Republican Fodder, but Protesters Keep Waving Them, Shawn Hubler and Orlando Mayorquín, June 11, 2025. As images of protests in Southern California have flooded television and social media in recent days, a key question has emerged: Why are so many protesters carrying Mexican flags at an American political protest?
The sea of red, white and green Mexican flags at anti-deportation protests this week in Los Angeles has been seized upon by conservatives who argue that the demonstrations are inherently un-American, causing some protesters to consider leaving them at home.
Photos of masked provocateurs waving Mexican flags atop burning Waymo taxis spread instantly across conservative social media this weekend. Republicans pointed to them as a prime example of why President Trump called in the National Guard and how immigration had gone too far in California.
“Look at all the foreign flags,” Stephen Miller, the deputy White House chief of staff and the architect of Mr. Trump’s domestic agenda, said Sunday on X. “Los Angeles is occupied territory.”
To many Americans, including those on the left, it might seem a bad strategy to fight deportations of undocumented immigrants by waving the flag of another country.
But protesters said this week that they see the Mexican flag as a symbol of defiance against Mr. Trump’s immigration policies or of solidarity with other Mexican Americans. The flag has become so ubiquitous in recent decades that it is a part of the Southern California landscape, adorning pickup trucks and flapping from bridges
June 10
The Warning with Steve Schmidt via Substack and YouTube, Opinion: Trump WILL Unleash Our Military Against American Citizens, Steve Schmidt, above (former Republican presidential campaign strategist), June 10, 2025. (13:40 mins.). The Warning will tell you what happens in politics before it happens.
Meidas Touch Network, EXCLUSIVE: Governor Newsom ADDRESSES State and Nation LIVE, June 10, 2025. California Governor Gavin Newsom addresses California and the Nation about urgent matters involving Donald Trump’s recent orders.
Cornell Daily Sun, ‘The Answer Is Us’: Town Hall Responds to Local Impacts of Federal Spending Cuts, Cereese Qusba, June 10, 2025.
New York Times, L.A. Protests Updates: L.A. Mayor Imposes Curfew for Parts of Downtown, Staff Reports, June 10, 2025. The restriction in Los Angeles came as the authorities tried to quell the protests that had been intensifying overnight. Demonstrations spread to at least two dozen cities.
Mayor Karen Bass announced a curfew for a small section of downtown Los Angeles after several days of demonstrations against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, mandating that people in certain zones stay indoors from 8 p.m. Pacific time until 6 a.m. She said she expected the curfew in the area, measuring one square mile, to last several days.
The demonstrations, which have resulted in vandalism and violence that Ms. Bass called “significant,” spread beyond Los Angeles on Tuesday night, with thousands of people gathering in at least two dozen cities.
Thousands gathered in Chicago, chanting anti-ICE and anti-Trump slogans while marching through the city. In New York, blocks of demonstrators walked together through the streets after assembling in Lower Manhattan near a large government building that houses federal immigration offices and the city’s main immigration court.
The protests came as a federal judge in California set a hearing for Thursday afternoon on the state’s request to restrict the federal government’s use of Marines and National Guard troops in the Los Angeles area, limiting them only to protecting federal property.
The request had sought an emergency order by 1 p.m. Pacific time on Tuesday declaring that the Marines and other troops could not accompany immigration agents on raids or perform other law enforcement activities, such as operating checkpoints. But the judge, Charles S. Breyer, declined to meet that deadline.
The Marines’ arrival on Tuesday, after a night of small and mostly peaceful protests in Los Angeles, enraged Democratic leaders in California. They say city and state law enforcement departments have been able to handle the unrest.
While speaking to troops at Fort Bragg, N.C., on Tuesday, President Trump addressed the protests, calling Los Angeles “a trash heap” and promising to “liberate” the city.
Here’s what else to know:
Everyone is entitled to my own opinion, Commentary: A police state, but with morons, Jeff Tiedrich, right, June 10, 2025. Donny and 
his Sewer Clowns suck at fascism — like everything else they do.
When Donny Bone Spurs sent the National Guard to quote-unquote ‘bring order’ to the completely-avoidable ‘crisis’ he manufactured, do you know what he didn’t send along with them? Anything for the Guard to eat, or drink. any place for them to sleep, or shit.
He just unceremoniously dumped them in the middle of Los Angeles without planning or forethought, and said, Sayonara, fucknuggets, you’re on your own. Why? Because Donny is an incompetent imbecile, and that’s how incompetent imbeciles roll.
Look at this dumb-assery. That’s the California National Guard, trying to sleep on the floor of a warehouse basement in downtown Los Angeles. This is your National Guard, ladies and gentlemen. hungry, tired, thirsty, and forced to sleep piled up on top of one another — because apparently, it didn’t dawn on anyone at the top that food, water, or places to sleep and shit might be necessary for the Guard during an open-ended deployment.
“This is what happens when the president and (Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth) demand the National Guard state assets deploy immediately with no plan in place … (and) no federal funding available for food, water, fuel and lodging,” the source said. “This is really the failure of the federal government. If you’re going to federalize these troops, then take care of them.”
Never forget that as powerful as the position of United States President is, Donny totally fucking sucks at his job — and all his Sewer Clowns suck at their jobs, too.
Here’s a fun fact: When called into federal service, the National Guard becomes part of the Department of Defense
That means that the federalized Guard in Los Angeles is currently the responsibility of the Fox News dunk-tank clown who the Mad King decided would make the perfect Secretary of Defense.
New York Times, Southern Baptists Endorse Effort to Overturn Same-Sex Marriage, Ruth Graham, June 10, 2025. The nation’s largest Protestant denomination was motivated by conservative Christians’ success in reversing Roe v. Wade,
Southern Baptists voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to call for the overturning of the Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage, with strategists citing the successful effort that overturned the right to legal abortions as a possible blueprint for the new fight.
The denomination has long opposed gay marriage, but Tuesday was the first time its members have voted to work to legally end it. Expanding on conservatives’ success in overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022, the vote signals growing evangelical ambitions to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court ruling that was handed down 10 years ago this month.
“What we’re trying to do is keep the conversation alive,” said Andrew Walker, an ethicist at a Southern Baptist seminary in Kentucky who wrote the resolution.
Mr. Walker leads the Southern Baptist committee that gathers proposals from Baptists around the country to be debated and put to a vote at the meeting. Baptists, he said, are taking the long view, inspired by the tactics of the anti-abortion movement. Roe v. Wade granted a constitutional right to abortion that stood for nearly 50 years before activists and legal strategists defeated it, powered by support from Christian conservatives.
The Baptists’ vote against Obergefell took place at the end of the first day of the denomination’s annual meeting, which is being held this year at a convention center in Dallas. Attracting thousands of pastors and church members from large and small congregations across the country, the meeting is being closely watched as a snapshot of evangelical sentiment on a range of political, theological and cultural issues.
New York Times, Fake Images and Conspiracy Theories Swirl Around L.A. Protests, Steven Lee Myers, June 10, 2025. Disinformation spreading on social media platforms has stoked an already tense situation.
Misleading photographs, videos and text have spread widely on social media as protests against immigrant raids have unfolded in Los Angeles, rehashing old conspiracy theories and expressing support for President Trump’s actions.
The flood of falsehoods online appeared intended to stoke outrage toward immigrants and political leaders, principally Democrats.
They also added to the confusion over what exactly was happening on the streets, which was portrayed in digital and social media through starkly divergent ideological lenses. Many posts created the false impression that the entire city was engulfed in violence, when the clashes were limited to only a small part.
There were numerous scenes of protesters throwing rocks or other objects at law enforcement officers and setting cars ablaze, including a number of self-driving Waymo taxis. At the same time, false images spread to revive old conspiracies that the protests were a planned provocation, not a spontaneous response to the immigration raids.
The confrontation escalated on Monday as new protests occurred and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced — on X — that he was mobilizing 700 Marines from a base near Los Angeles to guard federal buildings. They are expected to join 2,000 members of the California National Guard whom Mr. Trump ordered deployed without the authorization of the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, who normally has command of the troops.
The latest deployments prompted a new wave of misleading images to spread — some purporting to show Marines and the military service’s weapons in action. One was a still from “Blue Thunder,” a 1983 action-thriller about a conspiracy to deprive residents of Los Angeles of their civil rights. It features a climactic dogfight over the city’s downtown.
New York Times, Live Updates: 700 Marines Head to L.A. After Night of Scattered Protests, Jesus Jiménez, Orlando Mayorquín, Mimi Dwyer, Francesca Regalado and John Yoon, June 10, 2025. President Trump ordered the Marines to Los Angeles as the police broke up demonstrations against his immigration crackdown. California’s governor called sending in the Marines “a blatant abuse of power.”
Hundreds of Marines were expected to take up positions in Los Angeles on Tuesday, joining National Guard troops there and sharpening an extraordinary confrontation between the White House and California leaders over the response to protests against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
The 700 Marines were being sent to protect federal law enforcement officers and property in greater Los Angeles, the U.S. military’s Northern Command said in a statement. Some of the protests in Los Angeles over the last four days, including a rally on Monday afternoon, centered on a group of federal buildings downtown.
The use of military force on domestic soil is rare and is usually reserved for the most extreme situations. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California called the use of active-duty Marines illegal and said that he would sue to prevent their deployment. The state has already sued to block the use of National Guard troops.
The Trump administration has doubled its deployment of National Guard troops in the Los Angeles area to around 4,000. So far, the troops appear to have largely stayed out of confrontations between protesters and local police, who broke up protests downtown late Monday night.
Here’s what else to know:
Letters from an Americane, Historical Commentary: June 9 [Replacing American Government], 2025, Heather Cox Richardson, right, June 10, 2025. At 10:19 last night, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller posted on social media: “Stand with ICE. Pass the B[ig] B[eautiful] B[ill].”
And there it is. The Republicans’ “One Big, Beautiful Bill” is the MAGA regime’s attempt to replace the American government we’ve had since the 1930s with one that reflects the antidemocratic values of Project 2025. The measure is unpopular. According to a new CBS News/YouGov poll, 60% of Americans think the bill will help wealthy people, while 54% think it will hurt poor people. Forty-seven percent think it will hurt the middle class, while only 31% think it will help the middle class. As Simon Rosenberg of Hopium Chronicles noted, it’s “[s]tunning how badly Trump and the Rs have lost the debate on what their reconciliation bill will do.”
The measure changes the nature of the American government by extending tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations and adding significantly more money to immigration enforcement and defense spending. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the measure will add as much as $2.4 trillion to the deficit over ten years; with interest costs of that new debt, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget concluded the measure would increase the debt by nearly $3 trillion.
At the same time that it moves money upward and into the white nationalist project of expelling immigrants, the measure guts federal policies and agencies that serve the American people, apparently with the goal of pushing such policies and agencies to the states. The CBO estimates that as many as 13.7 million Americans will lose healthcare coverage if the measure passes, and cuts of nearly $300 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program will mean cuts of about 30% to the programs on which millions of Americans depend.
Miller’s post underscores the administration’s need to change the conversation around the measure, whose 1,000-plus pages lay out the MAGA vision for the United States. “Don’t kid yourself,” Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) posted. “[T]hey know they are absolutely getting cooked politically w[ith] their terrible bill and rising prices, and they want to create a violent spectacle to feed their content machine. It’s time for the mainstream media to describe this authoritarian madness accurately.”
Maanvi Singh of The Guardian put the right lens on events in Los Angeles today, noting “Trump’s dramatic escalation” and his vow “to crush opposition to his immigration raids.” Singh identified the administration’s escalation as the trigger for “a roaring backlash.”
New York Times, In Trump’s ‘Patriotic’ Hiring Plan, Experts See a Politicized Federal Work Force, Eileen Sullivan, June 10, 2025. Political appointments inherently take into consideration loyalty to the president or the party. But expanding those types of questions to the career civil service is a significant departure.
Republicans have long complained that the federal government is filled with ideologically opposed bureaucrats who stand in the way of their policies and are too hard to fire. Presidents from both parties have kicked off their time in office with a hiring freeze, looking to put their own stamp on personnel strategies.
But President Trump is the first to ask federal job applicants to describe their allegiance to administration policy in an essay or to mandate training for senior government officials on White House executive orders, experts said. Senior agency officials, who are often political appointees, are to be directly involved in the hiring process, which has not previously been the case.
The guidelines, released last month, arrived at a time when the Trump administration was beginning the process of filling vacancies left by the vast and indiscriminate job cuts of the last four months.
The plan has long been to replace career civil service employees, whom Mr. Trump refers to as the “deep state,” with workers who are more in line with his agenda and have an allegiance to him. Another piece of that effort is already underway, converting some senior positions to “at will” employment so that they are easier to get rid of. Taken together with the new guidelines for traditionally nonpartisan hires, critics see a blueprint for politicizing the bureaucracy.
The provisions are just two of many that appear in the 53 total pages of guidance released by the Office of Personnel Management, the government’s human resources division, and the White House. But their startling implications, experts said, dwarf the good ideas in the guidance, such as focusing on skill-based hiring.
“It’s the screening for ideological agreement and the training for ideological message that’s unique about the Trump hiring plan,” said Donald F. Kettl, an emeritus professor at the University of Maryland who studies the civil service. “The bureaucracy is certainly accountable to the president and his executive orders, but the bureaucracy is also accountable to the law and to the existing body of regulations, as well as to the professional standards for which they were hired.”
Democracy Docket, Tracking Trump’s six front war on democracy, Marc Elias, June 10, 2025. In 2019, Steve Bannon laid out the “flood the zone” strategy that Donald Trump has successfully deployed in his second term:
All we have to do is flood the zone. Every day we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done. Bang, bang, bang. These guys will never — will never be able to recover. But we’ve got to start with muzzle velocity.
Most observers have interpreted this primarily in terms of policies — the administration signed multiple executive orders at once, making it hard to focus on and fight them all successfully. But this is also the strategy the Trump administration is deploying to capture or destroy the rights and institutions necessary for democracy.
As Bannon suggested, he is attacking them on multiple fronts all at once — at muzzle velocity, he would say. Some have resisted and still look strong. Others capitulated from the start. Most are somewhere in between.
My tip for this week (and the rest of Trump’s term): Pay attention to six key institutions. How well these institutions hold up over the next three and a half years will determine whether our system of government survives. Settle in with a cup of coffee because this is longer than usual, but I have a lot to share.Trump v. Executive Branch
The least surprising of Trump’s attacks has been on the executive branch. Project 2025 was a blueprint for what he would do, and the administration has been following through. Under Pam Bondi’s reign, the Department of Justice has turned into an army of Trump sycophants. They do not pretend to represent the interest of the American people — they serve Trump, and anyone who isn’t ready to fall in line has got to go.
Through DOGE’s mass firings, Trump axed over 200,000 dedicated federal employees. And through his proposal to adopt Schedule F — rebranded as Schedule Policy/Career — which will reclassify career civil servants, the damage will be worse.
Trump’s power grab is extending to independent agencies, too. Agencies like the Consumer Product Safety Commission are designed to be shielded from the White House, but Trump’s executive order shatters that standard.
Only four months into his second term, and Trump is successfully working his influence into every corner of the executive branch. It is the area he most closely controls and one that the courts seem least inclined to protect.Trump v. Congress
It is often said that we have three co-equal branches of government. As Jaime Raskin, a congressman and former constitutional law professor, is quick to point out, this is not exactly right. The founders envisioned that Congress would be the most powerful branch.
They could not have imagined that Congress would someday be controlled by today’s feckless GOP. Congressional Republicans have repeatedly bent the knee and ceded power to Trump. He is trampling on Congress’ most important power — the power of the purse — by ignoring their directives and refusing to spend on federal programs.
The midterm elections threaten to reset this balance of power. That is why Trump is already focused on ensuring GOP majorities.Trump v. Courts
The judiciary branch has posed the greatest threat to Trump’s illegal and unconstitutional power grab. He’s losing a lot — even before federal judges he nominated. In lawsuit after lawsuit, judges nationwide are standing up for the rule of law and democracy, and Trump is not happy about it.
Trump’s reaction has been evasion, bullying and, when necessary, outright defiance. While the courts have so far held their ground, it is too early to know how this will turn out.
Worse still, Trump is already nominating new federal judges. With the American Bar Association and even the Federalist Society sidelined in this process, the only test these new judges will need to pass is complete loyalty to Trump.Trump v. States
Every student learns in Civics class that we live in a federal system. Indeed, historically, concepts of federalism — often expressed as state rights — have been championed by the right.
In 2013, Chief Justice Roberts relied on federalism to strike down a key pillar of the federal Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder. The following year, he reiterated this view: “In our federal system, the National Government possesses only limited powers; the States and the people retain the remainder.”
With Trump now in power, federalism has fallen out of favor with the GOP. Suddenly, the prospect of Democratic-controlled states exercising power seems less appealing while dictates from Washington, D.C., are in order.
Last weekend, Trump stepped over Gavin Newsom’s head in sending 2,000 National Guard troops in response to protests in Los Angeles. The move was an alarming overreach and abuse of power — but also a warning to governors everywhere. Trump doesn’t see their authority as relevant and is unfazed by any traditional state powers in his quest for a dictatorship. Trump v. Civil Society
As Trump battles for control, it makes sense for him to target major areas of influence: the media, universities, and law firms. So far, we’ve been disappointed by the lack of courage by so many large institutions. Paul Weiss caved, Columbia University wavered and then rolled over, and recently, several media organizations have abandoned journalistic independence to curry favor with Trump.
National Press Club, National Press Club Condemns Police Targeting of Journalists Covering Los Angeles Protests, Bill McCarren, 
Updated June 10, 2025. Following multiple disturbing incidents in which Los Angeles police and sheriff’s deputies targeted, injured, and obstructed journalists covering public protests, National Press Club President Mike Balsamo issued the following statement today:
“Police cannot pick and choose when the First Amendment applies. Journalists in Los Angeles were not caught in the crossfire — they were targeted.
A CNN reporter and crew were forcibly removed from a protest zone in downtown Los Angeles, despite journalists being exempt from dispersal orders under California law, and security personnel working with a CNN team were briefly detained. In another widely viewed incident, an Australian television journalist was struck by a less-lethal round fired by police while reporting live on air. Other journalists were injured, blocked from continuing to report, or denied safe access to observe police activity and arrests.
When police target journalists, they are targeting the public’s right to know. With protests continuing in Los Angeles, police must ensure that reporters can safely do their jobs — not obstruct them or place them in harm’s way. The public depends on their reporting to understand what is happening on the ground.
The National Press Club is calling on Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell and Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna to immediately:
Stop targeting, detaining, or obstructing journalists. Guarantee that journalists can safely observe and report on public demonstrations. Investigate these incidents and hold those responsible accountable.
Thousands of LAPD personnel have received training that includes instruction on how to work safely with journalists during public demonstrations. We urge officers to put that training into practice, and to respect the critical role of the press in keeping the public informed.
A journalist struck by a police-fired round while reporting live. Reporters detained for doing their jobs. A free society depends on a free press — and police must respect that.
Los Angeles officials must act now. The world is watching.”
Associated Press, Florida agency tells newspaper to halt reporting angle on foundation associated with governor’s wife, Mike Schneider, June 9, 2025. Florida’s child welfare agency sent a letter to a Florida newspaper telling it to “cease and desist” its reporting on foster families for a story about a nonprofit associated with Gov. Ron DeSantis’ wife that is the subject of an investigation.
New York Times, At Least 10 Dead After Shooting at Austrian High School, Police Say, Christopher F. Schuetze and Jim Tankersley, June 10, 2025. Those killed included students and at least one adult, according to Graz’s mayor in remarks reported by the Austria Press Agency. The police said the shooter was among the dead, in an apparent suicide.
June 9
New York Times, Analysis: Trump Jumps at the Chance for a Confrontation in California Over Immigration, Tyler Pager, Updated June 9, 2025. The situation has all the elements that President Trump seeks: a showdown with a top political rival in a deep blue state over an issue core to his agenda.
It is the fight President Trump had been waiting for, a showdown with a top political rival in a deep blue state over an issue core to his political agenda.
In bypassing the authority of Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a Democrat, to call in the National Guard to quell protests in the Los Angeles area over his administration’s efforts to deport more migrants, Mr. Trump is now pushing the boundaries of presidential authority and stoking criticism that he is inflaming the situation for political gain.
Local and state authorities had not sought help in dealing with the scattered protests that erupted after an immigration raid on Friday in the garment district. But Mr. Trump and his top aides leaned into the confrontation with California leaders on Sunday, portraying the demonstrations as an existential threat to the country — setting in motion an aggressive federal response that in turn sparked new protests across the city.
As more demonstrators took to the streets, the president wrote on social media that Los Angeles was being “invaded and occupied” by “violent, insurrectionist mobs,” and directed three of his top cabinet officials to take any actions necessary to “liberate Los Angeles from the Migrant Invasion.”
“Nobody’s going to spit on our police officers. Nobody’s going to spit on our military,” Mr. Trump told reporters as he headed to Camp David on Sunday, although it was unclear whether any such incidents had occurred. “That happens, they get hit very hard.”
The president declined to say whether he planned to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act, which allows for the use of federal troops on domestic soil to quell a rebellion. But either way, he added, “we’re going to have troops everywhere.”
ABC News, Trump escalates fight with Newsom with arrest threat over LA protests, Alexandra Hutzler, June 9, 2025. California's Democratic governor called it a "step toward authoritarianism."
President Donald Trump said Monday he thinks it would be a "great thing" if border czar Tom Homan arrests California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
President Donald Trump and California's Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom escalated their confrontation on Monday over the handling of protests in Los Angeles triggered by Trump's immigration crackdown.
After Newsom had objected to Trump sending in the National Guard without his consent, Trump on Monday afternoon ordered hundreds of Marines into the city as well.
Earlier Monday, arriving back at the White House after spending the weekend at Camp David, Trump had told reporters he would arrest Newsom if he were "border czar" Tom Homan -- hours after Homan said there had been "no discussion" about arresting Newsom.
"I would do it if I were Tom. I think it's great," Trump told reporters on the South Lawn.MORE: LA immigration protests live updates
Newsom quickly fired back.
"The President of the United States just called for the arrest of a sitting Governor," Newsom posted on Instagram along with a video of Trump's comments. "This is a day I hoped I would never see in America. I don't care if you're a Democrat or a Republican this is a line we cannot cross as a nation -- this is an unmistakable step toward authoritarianism."
At a White House event Monday afternoon, Trump was asked by ABC News White House Correspondent Karen Travers what crime Newsom had committed that would warrant his arrest.
"I think his primary crime is running for governor because he's done such a bad job," Trump responded.President Donald J. Trump in Washington, June 9, 2025 and California Governor Gavin Newsom in Compton, Calif., June 5, 2025.EPA-EFE/Shutterstock/Reuters
Homan himself earlier Monday pushed back on the idea he was going to arrest Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, both Democrats.
In an interview with NBC News over the weekend, Homan had not ruled out the possibility -- prompting Newsom to respond: "He knows where to find me."
Homan on Monday morning, during an interview on Fox, commented further on his remarks to NBC.
"The reporter asked about, 'Could Governor, Governor Newsom, or Mayor Bass, be arrested? I said, 'Well, no one's above the law, if they cross the line and commit a crime. Absolutely they can.' So, there was no discussion about arresting Newsom," he said.MORE: National Guard troops arrive in Los Angeles after immigration protests turn violent
"I've said it many times, You can protest, you got your First Amendment rights, but when you cross that line, you put hands on an ICE officer, or you destroy property, or ICE says that you're impeding law enforcement ... That's a crime, and that the Trump administration is not going to tolerate. You cross that line we're gonna see prosecution in the Department of Justice," Homan said.
Trump on Monday also doubled down on his decision over the weekend to deploy the National Guard to California, over objections from Newsom.
Trump said in 2020 that a request from a governor was needed to send in the National Guard. ABC News asked Trump what changed between his statement then and now.
"Well, the biggest change from that statement is we have an incompetent governor," Trump said.
Trump has long expressed a desire to quash protests he considered dangerous by using the military, though the use of federal troops on U.S. soil is mostly prohibited by the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act. Trump deployed the National Guard in this situation under Title 10 of the U.S. Code.
Asked if he would deploy Marines to Los Angeles on Monday, Trump had said "we'll see what happens."
New York Times, Kennedy Removes All C.D.C. Vaccine Panel Experts, Apoorva Mandavilli, June 9, 2025. The U.S. health secretary chose to “retire” members of a committee that makes significant decisions about who receives immunizations, including the vaccines for children.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. health secretary, on Monday fired all 17 members of the advisory committee on immunization to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, saying that the move would restore the public’s trust in vaccines.
About two-thirds of the panel had been appointed in the last year of the Biden administration, Mr. Kennedy pointed out in announcing his decision in an opinion column for The Wall Street Journal.
The C.D.C.’s vaccine advisers wield enormous influence. They carefully review data on vaccines, debate the evidence and vote on who should get the shots and when. Insurance companies and government programs like Medicaid are required to cover the vaccines recommended by the panel.
The committee was supposed to meet June 25 to 27. It’s unclear when the new members will be announced, but the meeting will proceed as planned, according to a statement posted by the Department of Health and Human Services.
This is the latest in a series of moves that Mr. Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic, has made to dismantle decades of policy standards for immunizations. An advisory panel more closely aligned with Mr. Kennedy’s views has the potential to significantly alter — or even drop — the recommendations for immunizations to Americans, including childhood vaccinations.
The decision directly contradicts a promise Mr. Kennedy made to Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, during his confirmation hearings, when he said he would not alter the panel, called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
“Of course, now the fear is that the ACIP will be filled up with people who know nothing about vaccines except suspicion,” Senator Cassidy wrote on X.
Speakers at Friday's town hall (June 6, 2025) included Tompkins County Legislators Rich John and Deborah Dawson, author and organizer Andrew Kreig and Cornell professor Risa Lieberwitz (Photo by Cereese Qusba / The Ithaca Voice).
The Ithaca Voice, Town hall focuses on local impacts of federal spending cuts — so far, Cereese Qusba, June 9, 2025. Fifteen lost truckloads of food pantry supplies. A billion dollars in federal research funding cuts. ICE arrests carried out in Ithaca despite itssanctuary city status.
The Trump administration’s policies have begun to trickle down to the local level, and the impacts are poised to deepen in the coming months.
Tompkins County residents flocked to a town hall on Friday, featuring a Cornell University professor, county legislators, and nonprofit leaders discussing the local and statewide implications and threats of the Trump administration.
The event was organized by Andrew Kreig, a Cornell graduate and a longtime nonprofit executive and author. Kreig offered an opening address, focusing on the influence of media and media framing. He was followed by Risa Lieberwitz, a professor at the Industrial Labor Relations School at Cornell, who argued that the Trump administration is systematically attacking higher education as part of an authoritarian agenda.
“Authoritarian regimes always attack higher education,” Lieberwitz said. “Because universities are where we find critical thinking, questioning the status quo and organizing for social justice.”
On Apr. 8, the federal government froze over $1 billion in funding for Cornell amid Title VI investigations led by the U.S. Department of Education.
In a statement to the Cornell University community on May 7, University President, Michael Kotlikoff, said that significant medical and military research is halted in response to the federal funding freeze.
“To date, federal agencies have stopped work on or terminated more than 100 research projects at Cornell, abruptly ending ongoing research grants with no official notice of their future status,” Kotlikoff said.
Lieberwitz emphasized the Trump administration’s misuse of civil rights law, remarking that “Trump has weaponized Title VI of the Civil Rights Act—not to protect civil rights, but to silence political speech and dismantle Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs.”
Rich John, the chair of the county’s Public Safety Committee, highlighted the Trump administration’s disruption of relations between local law enforcement and federal law enforcement, especially when it comes to immigration enforcement.
“So we now appear to be in a fundamentally different world where mutual trust, as we’ve operated under, is not valued,” John said. “The courtesy and respect that was ordinary is not, and we’re not being asked for collaboration.”
John noted that public safety in the local community is built on cooperation, trust and respect, which he said have been eschewed by President Donald Trump’s high-handed tactics. He warned that the administration has militarized immigration policy not just to pursue deportations, but to intimidate and bypass due process, even threatening local leaders.
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: June 8 [Tanks Into DC; Troops Into LA], Heather Cox Richardson, right, June 9, 2025. Flatbed train cars carrying thousands of tanks rolled into Washington, D.C., yesterday in preparation for the military parade planned for June 14. On the other side of the country, protesters near Los Angeles filmed officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) throwing flash-bang grenades into a crowd of protesters.
The two images make a disturbing portrait of the United States of America under the Donald J. Trump regime as Trump tries to use the issue of immigration to establish a police state.
In January 2024, Trump pressured Republican lawmakers to kill a bipartisan immigration measure that would have beefed up border security and funding immigration courts because he wanted to campaign on the issue of immigration. During that campaign, Trump made much of the high immigration numbers in the United States after the worst of the coronavirus pandemic, when the booming U.S. economy attracted migrants. He went so far as to claim that migrants were eating people’s pets.
Many Trump supporters apparently believed officials in a Trump administration would only deport violent criminals, although Trump’s team had made it clear in his first term that they considered anyone who had broken immigration laws a criminal. Crackdowns began as soon as Trump took office, sweeping in individuals who had no criminal records in the U.S. and who were in the U.S. legally. The administration worked to define those individuals as criminals and insisted they had no right to the due process guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.
There is real weakness behind the regime’s power grab. Trump’s very public blowup with billionaire Elon Musk last week has opened up criticism of the Department of Government Efficiency that Musk controlled. In his fury, Musk suggested to Trump’s loyal followers that the reason the Epstein files detailing sexual assault of children haven’t been released is that Trump is implicated in them. Trump’s promised trade deals have not materialized, and indicators show his policies are hurting the economy.
And the Republicans’ “One Big, Beautiful Bill” is raising significant opposition. Today Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) complained about the excessive spending in the bill for ICE, prompting Stephen Miller to complain on social media and to claim that “each deportation saves taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.” But David J. Bier of the libertarian Cato Institute on Friday estimated that the deportation plans in the measure would add almost $1 trillion in costs.
There is no doubt that as their other initiatives have stalled and popular opinion is turning against the administration on every issue, the Trump regime is trying to establish a police state. But in making Los Angeles their flashpoint, they chose a poor place to demonstrate dominance. Unlike a smaller, Republican-dominated city whose people might side with the administration, Los Angeles is a huge, multicultural city that the federal government does not have the personnel to subdue.
Paul Krugman's Substack, Economic Commentary: Nobody Expected the MAGA Inquisition, Paul Krugman, right, June 9, 2025. But it’s here, and will destroy American science.
It was obvious, if you thought about it, that the second Trump administration would be hostile to science and intellectual endeavor in general.
After all, look at some key elements of the MAGA coalition. Fossil fuel interests don’t want anyone studying climate change. Conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones make much of their money selling quack medical remedies, which makes them hostile to conventional medicine. (And partisan orientation became a key factor determining whether people were willing to be vaccinated against Covid.) Practitioners of voodoo economics don’t want anyone looking into the actual results of cutting taxes on the rich. Nativists proclaiming an immigrant crime wave don’t want anyone examining who commits violent crimes. And so on.
Even so, the extreme nature of the assault has caught almost everyone by surprise. American scientific leadership and the prestige of our research universities are key pillars of U.S. power and prosperity. Corporate America certainly understands that our scientific and educational institutions contribute to its bottom line. So you might have expected even MAGA enthusiasts to be a bit cautious about killing this particular golden-egg-laying goose.You would have been wrong. Everything points to an effort to effectively destroy U.S. science — not gradually as part of a long-term plan, but over the next year or two.
Start with the money. The preliminary budget the Trump administration released last month called for a cut of almost 40 percent in funding for the National Institutes of Health, more than 50 percent in the budget of the National Science Foundation, the virtual elimination of federal spending on climate and ecological research and a drastic cut in NASA’s research budget. All of this was for fiscal 2026, which begins in October — that is, something like half the federal government’s financial support for science would be eliminated within a few months.
Then there are the attacks on elite universities. First, the administration in effect demanded control over Harvard’s hiring and its curriculum. The university has refused, and has faced a series of attempted punitive actions, most recently a proclamation that the administration will refuse to issue visas for international students trying to attend Harvard and possibly revoke the visas of student already there.
And the administration is threatening to revoke Columbia’s accreditation, which is not a power it legally has, but these days, who knows?
Finally, there’s what clearly looks like an attempt to politicize whatever scientific funding remains. Medical journals have received threatening letters from the Justice Department. An executive order issued May 23, titled “Restoring Gold Standard Science,” purports to be about restoring “scientific integrity,” but would give political appointees the right to “correct scientific information” and to “forward potential violations to the relevant human resources officials for discipline.”
And can you think of a group you’d trust less to “correct” science and decide who to discipline than Trump and his people?
As an open letter signed by thousands of scientists says, there are obvious parallels between what the Trumpists are trying to do and the corruption of science by past totalitarian regimes.
So it’s clear what they’re doing.
Lincoln Square Media, Opinion: From the Biden Book to the Budget Bill, Democrats Keep Falling into the Same Trap, Susan J. Demas, June 9, 2025. Repeat after me: Journalists aren't your friends.
MAGA has always had a kink for Orwellian doublespeak, so it’s not surprising that Republicans formally named their budget reconciliation legislation the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”
Sure, the bill is a massive executive power grab that yanks health care from millions, shovels tax breaks to billionaires, adds billions to the national debt, and more. But millions of Americans will never read what’s in the 1,100-page monstrosity (indeed, several Republican lawmakers who voted for it now admit they’ve never laid eyes on the text.)
For many, the only passing contact they’ll have with the legislation is hearing its name. And because the “Big Beautiful Bill” sounds positive, it’s easy to tune out criticism or assume it’s overblown.
Let’s face it: That’s a diabolically shrewd move in an era where people’s attention span is measured in milliseconds. No, it’s not thirteen-dimensional chess. But Trump and his minions have a keen understanding of how to message to low-information voters, as the last election just proved.
Many Democratic leaders and strategists are loath to admit this. They find Trump’s tactics as crass and vulgar as he is — and they’re not wrong. But he knows how to tap into people’s basest emotions and his communication style is undisputedly effective. Trump has dominated American politics for a decade; what more proof do we need?
But because so many Democrats can’t help but look down upon Trump’s rhetoric, they fail in their own messaging. Referring to it as the “Big Beautiful Bill,” even sarcastically, just reinforces the name. Liberals have a long, tortured history of accepting the right-wing’s terminology and frame for issues (see the death tax, death panels, welfare queens, special rights, reverse discrimination, etc.) As a result, they’re always fighting from a defensive crouch.And dismissing the budget as the “Big Ugly Bill” is the equivalent of Chuck Schumer’s “strongly worded letter” to Trump in the face of growing authoritarianism — it’s laughably weak and easy to ignore.Take some ownership of the language you deploy.
Tell people the stakes. Be blunt. Call it the “MAGA Murder Bill,” like Joe Trippi and Rick Wilson do. That’s a term that’s hard for people to ignore — even those who hate politics. You can’t help but wonder what’s so bad about it. And we know that the more people learn about the budget, the more they hate it (again, even Republicans who voted for it.)
But here’s a caveat: If you go full firebrand, you have to say “MAGA Murder Bill” with your whole chest. You have to tell your constituents why you’re going to the mattresses over this bill — and be prepared for them not to believe you about just how bad it is. It’s your job to make the case — and not just with numbers. Tell them what this means for their lives, appealing on an emotional level. You can’t be too good to sell your ideas. People can tell — and they absolutely will not trust you.
And yes, you should be prepared for snickering and pushback from the media, which are well-accustomed to thermonuclear language from Trump — (fallen soldiers are “suckers and losers,” Mexicans are “drug dealers, criminals, rapists,” etc.). But naturally, Democrats are held to a higher standard. (This will be particularly challenging for senators who live to be invited on the Sunday shows.)
Do you want to win or not? That’s what it comes down to. And if you do, you owe it to everyone to play the best hand you have. Of course, the right messaging doesn’t guarantee an ideal outcome. There are a million variables in politics, but you control what you can.
One thing you can’t control is the fact that many legacy news outlets have adopted Trump’s terminology for the bill, even though Journalism 101 is not doing PR for any party or cause. Yes, it’s infuriating. Yes, it’s another example of obeying in advance.
June 8
New York Times, L.A. Protests: Tensions Flare Between Protesters and Law Enforcement in L.A, Staff Reports, June 8, 2025. Federal agents clashed with protesters near a detention center in downtown Los Angeles, as confrontations stretched into a third day. About 300 National Guard troops were deployed across the city.
Federal law-enforcement officials fired canisters of tear gas at a group protesting immigration raids in Los Angeles on Sunday, a day after President Trump ordered the National Guard to help quell demonstrations over the objections of California officials.
Video from the scene showed Department of Homeland Security officers and at least three from Immigration and Customs Enforcement also firing other crowd-control munitions outside a detention center in downtown Los Angeles where members of the California National Guard had also been deployed. The smoking canisters forced some of the hundreds of protesters to flee, while others helped fellow demonstrators wash their eyes. It was not immediately clear what prompted the escalation.
The confrontation was the latest between government agents and protesters, whose demonstrations have been largely peaceful but nonetheless prompted Mr. Trump to announce the deployment of at least 2,000 members of the National Guard. The president said that any protest or act of violence that impeded officials would be considered a “form of rebellion.”
Mr. Trump made rare use of federal powers to bypass the authority of Gov. Gavin Newsom in announcing the deployment on Saturday. Mr. Newsom, a Democrat, called the president’s decision “purposefully inflammatory.”
Roughly 300 members of the National Guard had been deployed to the city as of Sunday morning, according to Mr. Newsom’s office. Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles called the deployments a “chaotic escalation” on Sunday, adding that the only other time she had seen the National Guard patrolling city streets, besides to help with disaster recovery, was during the 1992 riots, when they were requested by state and local officials. “There’s no reason for them to be on our streets now,” she said.
New York Times, L.A. Protests Analysis: The Legal Issues Surrounding Trump’s Plan to Use Troops to Suppress Protests, Charlie Savage, June 8, 2025. President Trump has long mused about using troops to crush violent protests or riots in blue-state cities. He is now moving to do so in Los Angeles.
Setting up a rare use of military force on domestic soil, President Trump ordered the Pentagon on Saturday night to send at least 2,000 National Guard troops to respond to protests in Los Angeles set off by his immigration crackdown.
Mr. Trump has long mused about using military force on domestic soil to crush violent protests or riots, fight crime and hunt for undocumented migrants — a move that his aides talked him out of during his first term. Between his two presidencies, he said that he would do so without the consent of state governors if he returned to power.
The order is a significant step in that direction, but for now it stops short of invoking the most expansive power Mr. Trump could claim a right to use. It remains unclear how matters will play out on the ground — and, potentially, in court.
The Bulwark, Opinion: Trump Wants Riots to Unleash His Authoritarian Playbook, Sam Stein and Bill Kristol, June 8, 2025. Bill Kristol and Sam Stein look at the growing authoritarian impulse behind Trump’s immigration policy, the targeting of journalists, and the political fight with California. The tactics may vary but the strategy is clear and it is accelerating.
The Atlantic, Political Commentary: For Trump, This Is a Dress Rehearsal, David Frum, June 8, 2025. Ordering the National Guard to deploy in Los Angeles is a warning of what to expect when his hold on power is threatened.
Yesterday, President Donald Trump ordered the National Guard to quell disorderly protests against immigration-enforcement personnel in Los Angeles. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth declared his readiness to obey Trump by mobilizing the U.S. Marines as well. These threats look theatrical and pointless. The state, counties, and cities of California employ more than 75,000 uniformed law-enforcement personnel with arrest powers. The Los Angeles Police Department alone numbers nearly 9,000 uniformed officers. They can surely handle some dozens of agitators throwing rocks, shooting fireworks, and impeding vehicular traffic.
If and when those 75,000 uniformed personnel feel overmatched by the agitators, California can request federal help of its own volition. When California has asked for needed federal help—during the wildfires earlier this year, for example—Trump has begrudged that help and played politics with it. Trump is now forcing help that the city and state do not need and do not want, not to restore law but to assert his personal dominance over the normal procedures to enforce the law.
But if the Trump-Hegseth threats have little purpose as law enforcement, they signify great purpose as political strategy. Since Trump’s reelection, close observers of his presidency have feared a specific sequence of events that could play out ahead of midterm voting in 2026
The Hill, Trump says he’s meeting with military leaders at Camp David, Colin Meyn, June 8, 2025. President Trump told reporters on Sunday that he’s heading to Camp David to meet with military and other leaders, shortly before he posted a message online calling Los Angeles protesters an “insurrectionist mob.”
During a gaggle before boarding Air Force One, Trump would not rule out invoking the Insurrection Act, which could allow the military to be deployed domestically, but he suggested the protests against immigration raids were not yet an insurrection.
Trump wouldn’t say what the meetings would be about or whether any foreign officials would be joining.
Shortly after the gaggle, Trump issued a statement on Truth Social claiming that “violent, insurrectionist mobs are swarming and attacking our Federal Agents to try and stop our deportation operations.”
Trump said he had already deployed some 2,000 National Guard members to quell the protests, a move that has drawn criticism from California leaders, who say it’s not necessary and risks adding to the chaos.
The military is generally barred from carrying out domestic law enforcement duties. Declaring the Insurrection Act is seen as a potential path around those restrictions.
Trump took the rare step of federalizing the California National Guard in order to send them into Los Angeles, effectively bypassing Newsom, who typically commands the state forces.
Newsom mocked Trump on Sunday for claiming the National Guard had done a “great job” before any of its members arrived in the city.
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: June 7 [Perverting History Vs. Presenting History], Heather Cox Richardson, June 8, 2025. In April, John Phelan, the U.S. Secretary of the Navy under President Donald J. Trump, posted that he visited the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial “to pay my respects to the service members and civilians we lost at Pearl Harbor on the fateful day of June 7, 1941.”
The Secretary of the Navy is the civilian head of the U.S. Navy, overseeing the readiness and well-being of almost one million Navy personnel. Phelan never served in the military; he was nominated for his post because he was a large donor to Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. He told the Senate his experience overseeing and running large companies made him an ideal candidate for leading the Navy.
The U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, is famous in U.S. history as the site of a surprise attack by 353 Japanese aircraft that destroyed or damaged more than 300 aircraft, three destroyers, and all eight of the U.S. battleships in the harbor. Four of those battleships sank, including the U.S.S. Arizona, which remains at the bottom of the harbor as a memorial to the more than 2,400 people who died in the attack, including the 1,177 who died on the Arizona itself.
The day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States entered World War II.
Pearl Harbor Day is a landmark in U.S. history. It is observed annually and known by the name President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called it: “a date which will live in infamy.”
But that date was not June 7, eighty-four years ago today.
It was December 7, 1941.
The Trump administration claims to be deeply concerned about American history. In March, Trump issued an executive order calling for “restoring truth and sanity to American history.” It complained, as Trump did in his first term, that there has been “a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth. This revisionist movement seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.”
The document ordered the secretary of the interior to reinstate any “monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties” that had been “removed or changed to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology.” It spelled out that the administration wanted only “solemn and uplifting public monuments that remind Americans of our extraordinary heritage, consistent progress toward becoming a more perfect Union, and unmatched record of advancing liberty, prosperity, and human flourishing.”
To that end, Trump has called for building 250 statues in a $34 million “National Garden of American Heroes” sculpture garden in order to create an “abiding love of country and lasting patriotism” in time for the nation’s 250th birthday on July 4, 2026. On May 31, Michael Schaffer of Politico reported that artists and curators say the plan is “completely unworkable.” U.S. sculptors tend to work in abstraction or modernism, which the call for proposals forbids in favor of realism; moreover, there aren’t enough U.S. foundries to do the work that quickly.
Trump is using false history to make his followers believe they are fighting a war for the soul of America. “[W]e will never cave to the left wing and the left-wing intolerance,” he told a crowd in 2020. “They hate our history, they hate our values, and they hate everything we prize as Americans,” he said. Like authoritarians before him, Trump promised to return the country to divinely inspired rules that would create disaster if ignored but if followed would “make America great again.” At a 2020 rally, Trump said: “The left-wing mob is trying to demolish our heritage, so they can replace it with a new oppressive regime that they alone control. This is a battle to save the Heritage, History, and Greatness of our Country.”
Trump’s enthusiasm for using history to cement his power has little to do with actual history. History is the study of how and why societies change. To understand that change, historians use evidence—letters, newspapers, photographs, songs, art, objects, records, and so on—to figure out what levers moved society. In that study, accuracy is crucial. You cannot understand what creates change in a society unless you look carefully at all the evidence. An inaccurate picture will produce a poor understanding of what creates change, and people who absorb that understanding will make poor decisions about their future.
Those who cannot remember the past accurately are condemned to repeat its worst moments.
The hard lessons of history seem to be repeating themselves in the U.S. these days, and with the nation’s 250th anniversary approaching, some friends and I got to talking about how we could make our real history more accessible.
After a lot of brainstorming and a lot of help—and an incredibly well timed message from a former student who has become a videographer—we have come up with Journey to American Democracy: a series of short videos about American history that we will release on my YouTube channel, Facebook, and Instagram. They will be either short explainers about something in the news or what we are releasing tonight: a set of videos that can be viewed individually or can be watched together to simulate a survey course about an important event or issue in American history.
Journey to American Democracy explores how democracy has always required blood and sweat and inspiration to overcome the efforts of those who would deny equality to their neighbors. It examines how, for more than two centuries, ordinary people have worked to make the principles the founders articulated in the Declaration of Independence the law of the land.
Those principles establish that we have a right to be treated equally before the law, to have a say in our government, and to have equal access to resources.
In late April, in an interview with Terry Moran of ABC News, Trump showed Moran that he had had a copy of the Declaration of Independence hung in the Oval Office. The interview had been thorny, and Moran used Trump’s calling attention to the Declaration to ask a softball question. He asked Trump what the document that he had gone out of his way to hang in the Oval Office meant to him.
Trump answered: “Well, it means exactly what it says, it’s a declaration. A declaration of unity and love and respect, and it means a lot. And it’s something very special to our country.”
The Declaration of Independence is indeed very special to our country. But it is not a declaration of love and unity. It is the radical declaration of Americans that human beings have the right to throw off a king in order to govern themselves. That story is here, in the first video series of Journey to American Democracy called “Ten Steps to Revolution.”
I hope you enjoy it.
MeidasTouch Network, Political Opinion: Constitution Meets Kevlar — What Could Go Wrong? Michael Cohen, above, June 8, 2025. ICE raids spark protests in Los Angeles, across the countryTrump just deployed 2,000 National Guard troops to California—not for wildfires or floods, but to intimidate protesters. The crack of boots comes before the crackdown.
Let me tell you something, straight up: When the government sends in the troops not to defend the nation but to silence its own people, we’re not just flirting with fascism. We’re buying it dinner, sending flowers, and inviting it to move in. And that, my Substack community, is exactly where we are right now in Trump’s America 2.0. Yesterday, 2,000 National Guard troops were dispatched to Los Angeles—not to provide disaster relief or support wildfire containment, but to suppress protests. Protests, mind you, against the very agencies ripping families apart and deporting people in the dead of night. Against ICE raids that are snatching people from their homes, from hospitals, from houses of worship, even from school pick-up lines.
This isn’t law and order. This is state-sponsored trauma.Subscribed
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again louder for the cult in the back: protest is not only legal in America, it’s sacred. It’s as American as baseball, bad coffee, and political corruption. From the Boston Tea Party to Black Lives Matter, protest has always been the pressure valve of a democracy under strain. But here comes President Trump, stomping through the Constitution in steel-toe boots, declaring protest to be the enemy of the state.
And what set him off this time? Peaceful protesters in Los Angeles and New York City who dared to speak up against the inhumane deportations and raids carried out by ICE. I watched as mothers cried in the streets, students linked arms in front of buses, and clergy begged officers to remember their own humanity. In return? Tear gas, rubber bullets, and arrests. As if shouting “let them stay” is a threat to national security.
But Trump wasn’t satisfied with local cops cracking skulls. No, the moment California’s governor resisted using the National Guard to enforce his immigration crackdowns, Trump pulled a move straight out of the despot’s playbook: he federalized California’s Guard. Just like that. With a stroke of a pen and the smirk of a man who believes democracy is a punchline, he stripped a sovereign state of its control and has called up an army of 2,000 soldiers to “restore order.”
Restore order from what? From people holding signs and chanting slogans?
This isn’t “tough on crime.” This is political theater, starring soldiers in camo and directed by a man who knows deep down that his grasp on power relies on suppressing yours.
New York Times, With Trump, Bacon Says He Won’t Follow His Party ‘Off the Cliff,’ Annie Karni., June 8, 2025. The Nebraska Republican’s dissent makes him one of a disappearing breed in the G.O.P. — and suggests he may head for the exit.
Representative Don Bacon, Republican of Nebraska, has publicly accused President Trump of treating Russia with “velvet gloves,” criticized him for gutting AmeriCorps and questioned his power to impose tariffs without congressional approval.
He has described Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of Signal to share sensitive military operations as “unacceptable.” And he was the sole House Republican to vote “no” on a bill to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.” He said he thought it was stupid.
Mr. Bacon’s willingness to publicly disagree with the president make him an anomaly in the tribal House Republican Conference, where members tend to fall in line behind Mr. Trump’s agenda and actively seek out ways to demonstrate their loyalty to him. In a Republican-led Congress that has been reluctant to challenge Mr. Trump on almost anything, the Nebraskan is among the last of a disappearing breed in his party. And his recent statements and actions strongly suggest he may be headed for the exit.
In an interview in his office last week, Mr. Bacon, at 61 serving his fifth term in Congress, would not say whether he voted for Mr. Trump last year. He also likened members of his party to people following someone off a cliff, compared himself to Winston Churchill speaking out against Adolf Hitler in the 1930s and criticized the billionaire tech tycoon Elon Musk, who has bankrolled many of his Republican colleagues.
“I sort of blame him for that disaster,” he said of Mr. Musk, referring to Mr. Musk’s exhorting Republicans late last year to tank a spending deal that was intended to avert a government shutdown.
New York Times, Opinion: Justice Jackson Just Helped Reset the D.E.I. Debate, David French, June 8, 2025. At the heart of the debate over diversity, equity and inclusion is a question: How much should the law treat a person as an individual rather than as a member of a group?
For a very long time, American law and American institutions answered that question unequivocally. People were defined primarily by the group they belonged to, and if they happened to be Black or Native American or a woman, they were going to enjoy fewer rights, fewer privileges and fewer opportunities than the people who belonged to the categories white and male.
That was — and remains — a grievous injustice. At a minimum, justice demands that a nation and its institutions cease and desist from malicious discrimination. But doesn’t justice demand more? Doesn’t it also require that a nation and its institutions actually try to provide assistance to targeted groups to help increase diversity in employment and education and help targeted groups overcome the systemic effects of centuries of discrimination?
On Thursday the Supreme Court unanimously decided a case that was directly relevant to the latter question, and while the outcome wasn’t surprising, the court’s unanimity — and the identity of the author of the court’s opinion — certainly was.
The facts of the case, Ames v. Ohio, are simple. In 2004 the Ohio Department of Youth Services hired a heterosexual woman named Marlean Ames to work as an executive secretary. By 2019, she’d worked her way up to program administrator and set her sights higher — applying for a management position in the agency’s Office of Quality and Improvement.
The department interviewed Ames for the job but decided to hire someone else, a lesbian. The department then demoted Ames and replaced her with a gay man. Believing she’d been discriminated against on the basis of her sexual orientation, she filed suit under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
She lost her case in the trial court and at the court of appeals. So she appealed to the Supreme Court. She argued that the lower courts had applied a discriminatory standard to her simply because she was straight.
Ordinarily, Title VII discrimination suits are resolved through what’s called a burden-shifting framework. Initially, the plaintiff, in this case Ames, bears the burden of demonstrating a prima facie case of discrimination, providing facts “by producing enough evidence to support an inference of discriminatory motive.”
If the employee can clear that bar, the burden shifts back to the employer for it to show that it had a “legitimate nondiscriminatory reason” for its actions.Editors’ PicksOverlooked No More: Hong Yen Chang, Lawyer Who Challenged a Racist SystemFather’s Day Is Coming. Here’s What to Get.Is It OK to Earn Rental Income From an ICE Holding Facility?
When an employer makes its case, the employee then gets a “fair opportunity” to show that the employer’s justifications were mere pretext for discrimination.Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.
During my law practice, I litigated a number of Title VII cases, and let me share a typical example of how the law operates. Imagine you represent a group of Black plaintiffs who claim they were fired because of their race and you present evidence that the last five employees who were fired were Black, even though Black employees were only a small percentage of the work force.
The employer admits that it fired the employees, but it presents evidence that each was guilty of absenteeism; they had skipped work.
That’s game over, right? If there’s evidence employees had skipped work, then shouldn’t they lose? Not so fast. You were ready for this defense and present evidence that white employees were retained in spite of much worse disciplinary records, including worse records of absenteeism.
By doing so, you’ve established that absenteeism was just an excuse. The real reason for the adverse job action was racial animus.
That’s the normal rule. But in the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit — the federal court of appeals that covers Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee and Kentucky — the rule was different for members of so-called majority groups.
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And the Sixth Circuit wasn’t alone. Four other circuits also had longstanding rules imposing heightened evidentiary requirements on majority groups.
If you were a member of a majority group — such as a straight person claiming to be the victim of sexual-orientation discrimination — you had an extra legal burden. You had to establish “background circumstances to support the suspicion that the defendant is that unusual employer who discriminates against the majority.”
The result was a two-tiered system of justice, with different legal tests dependent on whether you were a man or a woman, white or Black, gay or straight.
In its ruling, the Supreme Court rejected the Sixth Circuit’s test. It held that all plaintiffs approach the law equally, regardless of their group identity, and all plaintiffs have to meet the same legal burdens to win their case. There can be no extra hurdle for members of majority groups.
I wasn’t surprised by the outcome, but I was at least mildly surprised that it was unanimous. And I was definitely surprised by the author of the majority opinion — Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, one of the court’s most liberal members.
Jackson’s words were clear. Nondiscrimination law is focused on protecting individuals. Quoting previous Supreme Court cases, she wrote, “Discriminatory preference for any group, minority or majority, is precisely and only what Congress has proscribed.” As a consequence, “Congress left no room for courts to impose special requirements on majority-group plaintiffs alone.”
New York Times, ABC Suspends Terry Moran for Calling Stephen Miller a ‘World-Class Hater,’ Michael M. Grynbaum, June 8, 2025. Mr. Moran made the comment in a late-night social media post that also derided President Trump. It drew a rebuke from Vice President JD Vance.
ABC News suspended the network correspondent Terry Moran on Sunday after he wrote on social media that Stephen Miller, the deputy White House chief of staff, was “a man who is richly endowed with the capacity for hatred” and called him “a world-class hater.”
Mr. Moran made the comments in a late-night post on X, in which he also referred to President Trump as “a world-class hater.” The post was later deleted, but screenshots circulated on social media and drew a quick rebuke from Mr. Trump’s allies, including Vice President JD Vance, who called Mr. Moran’s post an “absolutely vile smear.”
An ABC News spokeswoman said on Sunday that Mr. Moran “has been suspended pending further evaluation.”
“ABC News stands for objectivity and impartiality in its news coverage and does not condone subjective personal attacks on others,” the network said in a statement. “The post does not reflect the views of ABC News and violated our standards.”
Mr. Moran could not immediately be reached for comment.
Mr. Moran, whose title is senior national correspondent, interviewed Mr. Trump in the Oval Office in April. He joined ABC News in 1997.
In his lengthy post, Mr. Moran said of Mr. Miller that “you can see that his hatreds are his spiritual nourishment. He eats his hate.”
Mr. Trump and members of his political movement often accuse major news organizations of anti-conservative bias. In Mr. Vance’s response on Sunday, he urged Americans to remember Mr. Moran’s comments “every time you watch ABC’s coverage of the Trump administration.”
Last year, ABC News, which is owned by the Walt Disney Company, agreed to pay $16 million to settle a defamation lawsuit that Mr. Trump had filed against the network over on-air comments by the anchor George Stephanopoulos. At the time, the agreement was viewed as a remarkable concession to a politician by a broadcast network.
June 7
New York Times, More Federal Workers Are Flooding the Job Market, With Worsening Prospects, Eileen Sullivan and Lydia DePillis, June 7, 2025 (print ed.). The drastic, sudden pullback in federal dollars is collapsing opportunities for many who’ve spent years in public service.
After Matt Minich was fired from his job with the Food and Drug Administration in February, he did what many scientists have done for years after leaving public service. He looked for a position with a university.
Mr. Minich, 38, was one of thousands swept up in the mass layoffs of probationary workers at the beginning of President Trump’s second administration. The shock of those early moves heralded more upheaval to come as the Department of Government Efficiency, led by the tech billionaire Elon Musk, raced through agency after agency, slashing staff, freezing spending and ripping up government contracts.
In March, about 45 minutes after Mr. Minich accepted a job as a scientist in the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, the program lost its federal grant funding. Mr. Minich, who had worked on reducing the negative health impacts of tobacco use, observed that he had the special honor of “being DOGE-ed twice.”
“I’m doubly not needed by the federal government,” he said in an interview.
He is still hunting for work. And like hundreds of thousands of other former civil servants forced into an increasingly crowded job market, he is finding that drastic cuts to grants and contracts in academia, consulting and direct services mean even fewer opportunities are available.
Some states that were hiring, another avenue for former federal government employees, have pulled back. So, too, have the private contractors typically seen as a landing place. The situation is expected to worsen as more layoffs are announced, voluntary departures mount and workers who were placed on administrative leave see the clock run out.
June 6
New York Post, White House staffer went on a revenge tour against Elon Musk, fanning flames with Trump — while bragging about Tesla stock drop, Diana Glebova and Steven Nelson, June 6, 2025. A top White House aide is catching the blame for helping trigger President Trump’s fiery clash with Elon Musk — after speaking for months about giving the billionaire “payback” and even gloating to colleagues when Tesla’s stock price dropped, The Post has learned.
Sergio Gor, Trump’s director of presidential personnel, was instrumental in the president’s decision late Saturday to yank the nomination of Musk’s personal friend Jared Isaacman to be NASA administrator, turning a contained disagreement on legislation into a firestorm of insults, five sources inside or close to the White House tell The Post.
Isaacman’s donations to Democrats — including $100,000 in 2021 to a PAC linked to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) — would disqualify most nominees under Gor’s standard vetting process. But Isaacman wasn’t pulled by Trump until hours after Musk left his unpaid White House role, at Gor’s urging.
Musk was Trump’s top financial backer in the 2024 election and this week’s clash has put the president’s legislative agenda at risk — and even threatens long-term political damage after Musk endorsed Trump’s potential impeachment.
Musk and Gor disliked each other since before Trump reclaimed power on Jan. 20 — with the Tesla and SpaceX CEO describing Gor as “sleazy” during the transition and questioning his staffing picks. But the world’s richest man had the president’s ear and friendship through last week.Explore MoreGraphic of Nancy Pelosi with sunglasses with dollar signs on and money flying around her Pelosi raked in millions last year — and her portfolio out-performed every large hedge fund with stunning returnsTwo photos showing Christina Formella in the 2024-2025 yearbook. Accused perv teacher Christina Formella makes high school yearbook despite charges for raping teencomposite image suspect amanda kempton left in black slacks and orange sweatshirt with her hands cuffed in front of her being walked into court; right kempton smiling at the camera in a social media shot; inset victim sara burack Va. woman nabbed in hit-and-run death of hot shot real estate agent thought she hit traffic cone, choked back tears in court
Simmering behind the scenes was a grudge nursed by Gor over a March 6 Cabinet meeting, during which Musk “humiliated” him by slamming the pace of staffing the administration, said the sources, each of whom have interacted closely with Gor.
“He was bragging to other people that he was going to get one last shot at Elon out the door. He was going to get Elon back for making him look bad,” said one source.
“Elon was always telling the president, ‘Sergio’s not moving fast enough to hire people. He’s not the right guy for the job.’ In front of the entire Cabinet he said that. It’s not just humiliating, but the president starts looking at him like, ‘Why aren’t you doing your f—ing job?’”Elon Musk and Donald Trump watching a SpaceX Starship launch. 5Donald Trump and Elon Musk watch the launch of the sixth test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket on November 19, 2024 in Brownsville, Texas. Getty Images
Another said: “Sergio was upset about Elon dressing him down at the meeting and said he was going to ‘get him’. [Isaacman’s nomination being pulled] was the modern-day equivalent of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. Sure, Sergio got a scalp, but what did [Trump] get?”
Three sources say Gor’s intensely personal dislike of Musk was illustrated by his periodic celebrations when Tesla’s stock cratered.
“He’d go around showing Tesla stock prices going down and laugh about it, like he was responsible for taking the Tesla stock down,” one source revealed, adding that Gor would “randomly” bring up the topic inside the West Wing and the Oval Office — even calling up the “Stocks” app on his phone whenever an uncomplimentary story about the mogul emerged.
Another said they heard from Gor repeatedly when Tesla stock tumbled, saying the official would text screenshots of the Wall Street thumping to friends along with negative articles about Musk.Elon Musk leaving the U.S. Capitol Building. 5White House Senior Advisor to the President and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk departs the U.S. Capitol Building on March 5, 2025 in Washington, DC. Getty Images
A third source described in detail two text messages that they received from Gor mocking Tesla’s share price fluctuation.
“Elon was, like, his obsession, and he would plant a story on Elon and he would send me the link and then send me a screenshot of Tesla’s stock price with a laughing face,” this person said. “I own Tesla stock, so this is not a good thing for me!
“It showed how intense that fight had become, and how committed and obsessed with it Sergio was, and that’s what I don’t think anybody has really captured.”
Shortly after the March 6 meeting, this source said, Gor forwarded a New York Times article describing how Cabinet secretaries had aired concerns about Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — an account that made no mention of Musk chiding Gor.
Along with a link to the Times article, Gor “screenshotted a graph of the stock and showed it red,” the tipster said, adding that Gor also mocked the occasion when Trump publicly purchased a Tesla from Musk on the White House driveway on March 11.
“Sergio was making fun of it. He sent this image of it from the TV, and it showed Elon standing there with Trump, and the way he captured the picture made Elon look like he’s sad … and then he sends the stock price screenshot behind it, as if to say … that [Musk has] basically got to go out to try to get the president to pitch his cars to people, because of the stock price.”
June 4
New York Times, Trump Administration Updates: Musk Calls Trump’s Signature Bill an ‘Abomination’ That Will Swell Deficit, June 4, 2025 (print ed.). Elon Musk, the billionaire who led President Trump’s effort to cut government spending, condemned the president’s signature domestic policy bill as a “disgusting abomination” that would swell the “already gigantic budget deficit.”
Elon Musk lashed out on Tuesday against the far-reaching Republican bill intended to enact President Trump’s domestic policy agenda, posting on X that it was a “disgusting abomination” and telling House members who voted for it: “You know you did wrong.”
The tech billionaire’s criticism of the bill, one of Mr. Trump’s top priorities, was another indication of a widening rift between Mr. Musk and the president. Mr. Musk — who has left his governmental role leading the Department of Government Efficiency — largely presented a united front with the Trump administration until recently.
Last month, Mr. Musk started publicly criticizing Mr. Trump’s bill, saying in an interview with CBS News’s “Sunday Morning” that he was disappointed in the legislation’s size and impact on the deficit.
On Tuesday, Mr. Musk ramped up his criticism, writing on X: “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore.” He called the bill “massive, outrageous, pork-filled.” In follow-up posts, he said, “It will massively increase the already gigantic budget deficit,” and “Congress is making America bankrupt.”
“The president already knows where Elon Musk stood on this bill,” said Karoline Leavitt, a White House spokeswoman. “It doesn’t change the president’s opinion. This is one big, beautiful bill, and he’s sticking to it.”
Mr. Trump has urged swift passage of the legislation — officially called the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act — which would slash taxes, providing the biggest savings to the wealthy, and steer more money to the military and immigration enforcement. As written, the legislation would cut health, nutrition, education and clean energy programs to cover part of the cost.
Mr. Musk’s criticism comes at a critical moment for the bill, which passed the House in the face of a strong pressure campaign by Mr. Trump. As Speaker Mike Johnson corralled several competing Republican factions, the president summoned recalcitrant holdouts to the White House, and his staff likened Republican opposition the bill to “the ultimate betrayal.”
But Republican senators have already made clear that they planned to make changes to the bill, which outlines spending and tax cuts. Fiscal conservatives, alarmed at estimates that the bill would add trillions to the national debt, have demanded further changes and cuts to Medicaid and other programs that could help rein in deficits.
New York Times, After Muscling Their Bill Through the House, Some Republicans Have Regrets, Michael Gold, June 4, 2025 (print ed.). The sprawling legislation carrying President Trump’s domestic agenda squeaked through the House with one vote to spare, but some Republicans now say they didn’t realize what they voted for.
When Republicans muscled their sweeping domestic policy bill through the House by a single vote after an overnight debate, they breathed a sigh of relief, enjoyed a celebratory moment at sunrise and then retreated to their districts for a weeklong recess.
Not even two weeks later, the victory has, for some, given way to regret.
It turns out that the sprawling legislation to advance tax and spending cuts and to cement much of President Trump’s domestic agenda included a raft of provisions that drew little notice or debate on the House floor. And now, Republicans who rallied behind the bill are claiming buyer’s remorse about measures they swear they did not know were included.
Last week, Representative Mike Flood of Nebraska admitted during a town hall meeting in his district that he did not know that the bill would limit judges’ power to hold people in contempt for violating court orders. He would not have voted for the measure, he said, if he had realized.
And as lawmakers returned to Washington on Tuesday after their weeklong break, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia said that she had been unaware that the mega-bill she voted for would block states from regulating artificial intelligence for a decade.
“Full transparency, I did not know about this section,” Ms. Greene posted on social media, calling it a violation of states’ rights and adding that she “would have voted NO if I had known this was in there.”
The remorseful statements highlighted the realities of legislating in the modern age. Members of Congress, divided bitterly along partisan lines and often working against self-imposed political deadlines, have become accustomed to having their leaders throw together huge pieces of legislation at the very last moment — and often do not read the entirety of the bill they are voting on, if they read any of it at all. At the same time, the polarization of Congress means that few pieces of legislation make it to the floor or to enactment — and the few “must pass” bills that do are almost always stuffed full of unrelated policy measures that would otherwise have little hope of passing on their own.
In the case of the 1,037-page bill the G.O.P. is calling the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Republicans barely cobbled together the votes to pass it after a protracted fight within their ranks and significant pressure from Mr. Trump to advance some of his top domestic priorities.
New York Times, Smithsonian’s Reaction to Trump’s Firing of Its Museum Director: Silence, Robin Pogrebin, Graham Bowley and Zachary Small, June 4, 2025 (print ed.). Since President Trump announced he was dismissing the head of the National Portrait Gallery on Friday, the Smithsonian has weighed whether to challenge Mr. Trump on his legal authority to fire a museum director employed by the institution.
At an emergency meeting on Monday, the Smithsonian’s board and Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III discussed how to respond to the president’s announcement that he had fired Kim Sajet, the longtime director of the National Portrait Gallery, which is part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.
But so far, the Smithsonian, which is not an executive branch agency, has been silent on whether it will dispute a presidential announcement that is distinctly at odds with how the institution has long regarded its independence in hiring and firing.
When Mr. Trump announced the firing on social media, he called Ms. Sajet “a highly partisan person, and a strong supporter of DEI, which is totally inappropriate for her position.” And the White House has compiled a list of grievances that it says led to the president’s action, outlining what it described as acts of partisanship and support of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, including public comments about racial and gender inequality in America.
The list, which was provided to The New York Times, includes Ms. Sajet being one of four authors of a book called “The Obama Portraits” and her social media posts with prominent Democrats such as Hillary Clinton and Barack and Michelle Obama; one post shows Ms. Sajet attending a reception at Kamala Harris’s home when Ms. Harris was vice president. Some of those activities were part of Ms. Sajet’s official duties, but the White House also referred to her political campaign contributions of $3,982.40 to Democrats, including Mrs. Clinton and Joseph R. Biden Jr.
The Smithsonian’s leadership is being forced to review, not so much the president’s rationale, but his authority to make such a high-level personnel change. If the president has the power to replace Ms. Sajet, he would seem to have similar sway over the executives who operate the institution’s 20 other museums, plus libraries, research centers and the National Zoo.
Two leading House Democrats have disputed Mr. Trump’s power to fire employees of the Smithsonian, calling any such effort “illegal.”
New York Times, U.S. May Strip Harvey Milk’s Name From Navy Vessel, Karoun Demirjian and John Ismay, June 4, 2025 (print ed.). Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered a review of ship names honoring Mr. Milk, a gay rights pioneer, and other leaders. In Mr. Milk’s case, the move is intended as a rebuke of Pride Month.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the Navy to review the names of vessels honoring prominent civil rights leaders, including Harvey Milk, who was one of the country’s first openly gay elected officials and a Navy veteran.
Mr. Milk is one of several trailblazers whose name has been identified for possible removal from naval vessels. According to a senior official familiar with a memo from John Phelan, the secretary of the Navy, they include Thurgood Marshall, the first Black Supreme Court justice; Ruth Bader Ginsburg, another Supreme Court justice, who became a feminist icon; Harriet Tubman, who, after being born into slavery, became an abolitionist instrumental in the Underground Railroad; Lucy Stone, a prominent abolitionist and suffragist; Medgar Evers, a civil-rights leader who was assassinated by a member of the Ku Klux Klan; Cesar Chavez, a labor leader; and Dolores Huerta, another labor leader.
Representative Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House, condemned the move.
“Our military is the most powerful in the world — but this spiteful move does not strengthen our national security or the ‘warrior’ ethos,” Ms. Pelosi, a California Democrat, wrote on social media. “It is a shameful, vindictive erasure of those who fought to break down barriers for all to chase the American Dream.”
June 3
The Daily Telegraph (UK), Investigation: Trump official who shut down counter-Russia agency has links to Kremlin, Benedict Smith, June 3, 2025. Darren Beattie, shown above, was appointed acting under-secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs in February at the U.S. Department of State.
Darren Beattie, who alarmed the State Department with his pro-Moscow views, is married to a woman whose uncle has ties to Vladimir Putin Yulia Kirillova is Darren Beattie’s wife
The Daily Telegraph (UK), Investigation: Trump official who shut down counter-Russia agency has links to Kremlin
Darren Beattie, who alarmed the State Department with his pro-Moscow views, is married to a woman whose uncle has ties to Vladimir Putin549Darren Beattie and Yulia Kirillova10:55am BST
A senior official who dismantled the US government’s Russian disinformation unit is married to a Russian woman with links to the Kremlin, The Telegraph can reveal.
Darren Beattie has provoked alarm within the State Department since being appointed in February for his ardent pro-Russian views.
He has been noted for his focus on destroying the agency tasked with tackling Kremlin propaganda.
Mr Beattie, the acting under-secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, is married to a woman whose uncle has taken several roles in Russian politics and once received a personal “thank you” message from Vladimir Putin.
In the years before joining the government, Mr Beattie wrote social media posts suggesting Western institutions should be “infiltrated” by Putin, while he also attacked what he described as the “globalist American empire”.
Donald Trump is under pressure from many in his party, particularly senators, to take a tougher stance on the Russian leader while he continues to refuse to sign a ceasefire deal as the war in Ukraine drags on.
Many of Mr Beattie’s social media posts also concern China, repeatedly calling on the US to surrender Taiwan to Beijing, and labelling Britain a “poor and pathetic kingdom” that would be “far better off under Chinese dominion”.Darren BeattieDarren Beattie was appointed acting under-secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs in February Credit: US Department of State
State Department sources expressed scepticism over whether he had undergone security vetting, a process which has been relaxed under Mr Trump.
Mr Beattie was a member of the first Trump administration, but after being sacked in 2018 for allegedly attending a white nationalist conference, he reinvented himself as an “alt-Right” media figure.
In May 2021, public records show, he married a Russian woman called Yulia Kirillova in a ceremony in Broward County, Florida.
Ms Kirillova, who according to her Facebook page was educated in Moscow before studying abroad in Canada and Washington DC, is the niece of Sergei Chernikov, a Russian drinks magnate who part-owns a flat with her mother, Natalia.
Mr Chernikov, whose net worth was estimated to be $150 million in 2005, reportedly received a letter of thanks from Putin for his help in the election campaign which first brought the Russian leader to power.Yulia KirillovaYulia Kirillova is Darren Beattie’s wife
The same year, Mr Chernikov took his first step into politics, taking a role in the ministry of natural resources, before becoming deputy governor of the Nenets region in Siberia.
From 2008 to 2010, he was a member of Russia’s civic chamber, which was founded following a proposal by Putin and is notionally meant to scrutinise the activities of the Russian government.
When the chamber was set up, critics claimed that it would be staffed by Kremlin allies and used to diminish a rival power base in the Russian State Duma.
Both before and after his marriage to Mr Chernikov’s niece, Mr Beattie has repeatedly attacked what he called the “globalist American empire” while praising both Russia and China as counterweights to its “woke” ideology.
“The rise of non-woke (China) and anti-woke (Russia) geopolitical competitors to the Globalist American Empire is not a bad thing,” he wrote in October 2021.
He also said he looked forward to its “prestige and power” collapsing on the world stage and claimed that its “position in the global order [is] rapidly deteriorating”.Sergei ChernikovSergei Chernikov is Ms Kirillova‘s uncle
Mr Beattie, and Revolver, the news outlet he founded after leaving the first Trump administration, argues that the US has sought to engineer “colour revolutions” around the world – a common trope in Russia and China to dismiss pro-democracy movements as Western-backed coup attempts.
The businessman has claimed the US is running “colour revolution ops” in Ukraine, Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Myanmar, and that an American “colour revolution brigade” is pushing for a “forever war in Ukraine”.
Two months before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he said: “Imagine the whining from the Globalist American Empire if Putin ‘invades’ Ukraine… I love it when our national security bureaucrats fail!”
He has also praised Putin as “brave and strong”, and claimed the Russian leader had “done more to advance conservative positions in the US than any Republican”. He also declared: “Nato is a much greater threat to American liberty than Putin ever was.”
“The funny thing is just about every Western institution would improve in quality if it were directly infiltrated and controlled by Putin,” he wrote in September 2021.
Many of his posts focus on Britain, claiming it treats white people “far worse” than the Uyghur population that Chinese authorities have imprisoned in camps in Xinjiang.
He has labelled Britain a “sewage pit” and “the most utterly repulsive dystopia on earth”.Darren BeattieDarren Beattie claims the US has sought to engineer ‘colour revolutions’ around the world
In a post more than two years after the outbreak of war in Ukraine, he criticised the UK’s policy of “antagonising Russia”.
All of these social media posts were still online at the time of writing, although Mr Beattie has deleted disparaging tweets about Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, having previously claimed his now-boss attended “gay foam parties”.
According to Ms Kirillova’s Facebook page, she moved to Washington on Jan 28, roughly a week before her husband began his role at the State Department.
Despite his wide-ranging brief at the heart of the US government, Mr Beattie is said to have focused a disproportionate amount of time on seeking to dismantle the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference hub, known as R/Fimi, while building cultural ties with Russia.‘Censorship network’
R/Fimi, which tracked and countered propaganda from sources including Russia, China and Iran, was a relatively small agency with a budget of just over $50 million at the time it was shut down.
The US’s adversaries are estimated to spend tens of billions of dollars a year on foreign disinformation.
Mr Beattie’s news outlet Revolver had spent years attacking R/Fimi, accusing it of being part of a “censorship network” designed to silence conservative voices.
Sources said Mr Beattie had doggedly pursued the agency after being appointed, taking it apart piece by piece.
Contractors were sacked and officials were ordered to stop communicating with others in the State Department or external partners without explicit permission.
Even before it was disbanded in mid-April, when Mr Beattie told staff in a brief speech that it was “severely misaligned” with the administration’s priorities, its work had essentially wrapped up.
Mr Rubio confirmed in an interview distributed by the State Department the same day that Mr Beattie had played a major role in abolishing R/Fimi.
At the same time as Mr Beattie was working on dismantling the agency, he is said to have pushed to rebuild relations with Russia, insisting on instituting cultural exchange programmes in fields such as ballet and hockey.
He is also said to have taken a significant interest in classified material related to Russia, prompting widespread concern about turning over sensitive information to him.
Sources were highly sceptical if it had undergone a security vetting process, which the State Department’s website notes can take anywhere from a couple of months to over a year to complete.Beattie limited to 210 days in post
On his first day in office, Mr Trump unilaterally granted top-secret security clearances to personnel in the Executive Office of the President citing a backlog in processing. The office is not part of the State Department.
MIT Technology Review reported this month that Mr Beattie had launched a sweeping effort to obtain records from R/Fimi staff shortly before it closed, apparently with the intention of characterising it as an organisation dedicated to smearing conservatives.
He asked for communications with or about reporters who write about foreign disinformation, along with references to Mr Trump and his allies. One official said the move amounted to a “witch hunt”.
Mr Beattie would need confirmation by the Senate to take on the under-secretary role full-time: as an acting official, he is limited to 210 days.
Allies in the media have suggested he is unlikely to survive his time in the spotlight, and have suggested permanent posts where he could be installed without requiring backing from senators.
A senior State Department official said: “No one in America cares about a British gossip column. This is all fake news and low even for tabloid standards.
“Darren is a tremendous colleague who is committed to advancing President Trump’s America First agenda.
“In a few short months, he has been able to spearhead high-level projects that have been critical in advancing a foreign policy that puts our national interests first.”
Mr Chernikov and Ms Kirillova have been approached for comment.
Mr Beattie described the allegations as “malicious defamatory trash that is beneath the standards of even the British tabloid press.”
New York Times, Judges in Deportation Cases Face Evasion and Delay From Trump Administration, Alan Feuer and Glenn Thrush, June 3, 2025. Administration officials have either violated orders or used obfuscations and delays to prevent federal judges from deciding whether violations took place.
New York Times, Analysis: As Trump Says He’s Stamping Out Antisemitism, He Advances Similar Tropes, Peter Baker, June 3, 2025. President Trump’s effort to punish Harvard over antisemitism is complicated by his own history of amplifying white supremacist figures and symbols.
In the Oval Office one day last week, President Trump renewed his no-holds-barred attack on the nation’s oldest university. “They’re totally antisemitic at Harvard,” he declared.
Just 10 hours later, he posted an image of himself striding down a street with the caption, “He’s on a mission from God and nothing can stop what is coming.” Shown in the shadows, watching with approval, was a cartoon figure commonly seen as an antisemitic symbol.
The appearance of the figure, the alt-right mascot Pepe the Frog, was the latest example of Mr. Trump’s extensive history of amplifying white supremacist figures and symbols, even as he now presents himself as a champion for Jewish students oppressed by what he says is a wave of hatred on American college campuses.
As a younger man, Mr. Trump kept a book of Adolf Hitler’s speeches in a cabinet by his bed, according to his first wife. During his first term as president, he expressed admiration for some aspects of the Nazi Führer’s leadership, according to his chief White House aide at the time. In the past few years, he has dined at his Florida estate with a Holocaust denier while his New Jersey golf club has hosted events at which a Nazi sympathizer spoke.
Since reclaiming the White House, Mr. Trump has brought into his orbit and his administration people with records of advancing antisemitic tropes, including a spokeswoman at the Pentagon. His vice president, secretary of state and top financial backer have offered support to a far-right German political party that has played down atrocities committed by the Nazis. And just last week, Mr. Trump picked a former right-wing podcaster who has defended a prominent white supremacist to head the Office of Special Counsel.
Even some prominent critics of Harvard’s handling of antisemitism on its campus find Mr. Trump to be an unpalatable and unconvincing ally. In their view, his real motivations in using the power of the federal government to crush Harvard, seen by the political right as a bastion of America’s liberal, multicultural order, have little to do with concern about a hostile environment for Jewish students.
New York Times, Dutch Government Collapses Over Migration Dispute, Claire Moses, June 3, 2025. The governing coalition in the Netherlands collapsed on Tuesday after the populist leader Geert Wilders withdrew his party over a dispute about migration policy, ending a rocky 11-month rule by the country’s first far-right government and triggering early elections.
The move by Mr. Wilders, right, shows how the debate over unauthorized migration continues to roil European politics, a decade after a large-scale influx of people fleeing wars or seeking better economic opportunities unsettled the region.
The coalition’s collapse was confirmed by Prime Minister Dick Schoof, who said he would present his resignation to King Willem-Alexander. He said he would stay on as the leader of a caretaker administration, without Mr. Wilders’s party, until elections and the formation of a new government.
“I think it’s unnecessary and irresponsible,” Mr. Schoof said of Mr. Wilders’s decision.
It was not immediately clear when new elections would take place, but they appeared unlikely to happen before October, plunging the country into political uncertainty for at least the rest of the year. Mr. Wilders’s party has been dropping in Dutch polls lately.
Mr. Wilders announced the withdrawal of his Party for Freedom from the four-party coalition on X, saying it was because of his partners’ refusal to sign off on a new list of proposals to curb migration. “No signature for our migration plans,” he said.
The political crisis comes as the Netherlands prepares to host a NATO summit on June 24 and 25.
New York Times, Ukraine Says It Struck Crimea Bridge, Marc Santora, Maria Varenikova and Sanjana Varghese, June 3, 2025. It would be the third such attack. The claim comes two days after one of Ukraine’s most ambitious operations of the war, deep inside Russia.
Ukraine said on Tuesday that it had struck the Crimean bridge for the third time since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, after spending months planting explosives on support structure beneath the water.
The extent of the damage was not immediately clear, but the Security Service of Ukraine, the intelligence agency known as the S.B.U, released a statement and a video that it said showed one of the detonations.
“Today, at 4:44 a.m., without any civilian casualties, the first explosive device was detonated,” the agency said in a statement. “The underwater support pillars were severely damaged at the seabed level — aided by the equivalent of 1,100 kg of TNT.”
Surveillance footage released by the agency and verified by The New York Times shows an explosion under the Kerch Strait Bridge, which connects Russia’s mainland and the Crimean peninsula. The attack appeared to target support features of the bridge.
It was not immediately clear how much damage the bridge sustained. A photo from the agency shows some damage to its railing.
New York Times, U.S. Lit a Beacon for Science. Under Trump, Scientists Fear It’s Dimming, Kate Zernike, June 3, 2025. As America cuts budgets and restricts immigration under President Trump, China and Europe are offering researchers money and stability.
Many scientists just setting out on their careers, however, fear there is no other option but to leave.
Scientific leaders say that’s risking the way American science has been done for years, and the pre-eminence of the United States in their fields.
China and Europe are on hiring sprees. An analysis by the journal Nature captured the reversal: Applications from China and Europe for graduate student or postdoctoral positions in the United States have dropped sharply or dried up entirely since President Trump took office. The number of postdocs and graduate students in the United States applying for jobs abroad has spiked.
A university in France that created new positions for scientists with canceled federal grants capped applications after overwhelming interest. A scientific institute in Portugal said job inquiries from junior faculty members in the United States are up tenfold over the last two months.
“We are embarking on a major experiment in restructuring the innovative engine in America, and China is the control,” said Marcia McNutt, a geophysicist and the president of the National Academy of Sciences, which was established by President Abraham Lincoln to advise the government on science policy. “China is not going to cut its research budget in half.”
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: June 2 [GOP Reconciliation Bill], Heather Cox Richardson, right, June 3, 2025. The Republicans’ giant budget reconciliation bill has focused attention on the drastic cuts the Trump administration is making to the American government.
On Friday, when a constituent at a town hall shouted that the Republicans’ proposed cuts to Medicaid, the federal healthcare program for low-income Americans, meant that “people will die,” Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) replied, “Well, we are all going to die.”The next day, Ernst released a video purporting to be an apology. It made things worse. “I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that, yes, we are all going to perish from this Earth. So, I apologize. And I’m really, really glad that I did not have to bring up the subject of the tooth fairy as well. But for those that would like to see eternal and everlasting life, I encourage you to embrace my lord and savior, Jesus Christ," she said.
Ernst blamed the “hysteria that’s out there coming from the left” for the outcry over her comments. Like other Republicans, she claims that the proposed cuts of more than $700 billion in Medicaid funding over the next ten years is designed only to get rid of the waste and fraud in the program. Thus, they say, they are actually strengthening Medicaid for those who need it.But, as Linda Qiu noted in the New York Times today, most of the bill’s provisions have little to do with the “waste, fraud, and abuse” Republicans talk about. They target Medicaid expansion, cut the ability of states to finance Medicaid, force states to drop coverage, and limit access to care. And the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says the cuts mean more than 10.3 million Americans will lose health care coverage.
Paul Krugman via Substack, We Are No Longer a Serious Country, Paul Krugman, right, June 3, 2025. “If you’re explaining, you’re losing.” This line is usually attributed to Ronald Reagan. Whoever said it definitely had a point, and not just about politics. If you’re trying to explain to people, be they voters or bond investors, that you aren’t really as bad or untrustworthy as you seem, you’re already in deep trouble.
So when I saw Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary, declaring Sunday that “The United States of America is never going to default, that is never going to happen,” my reaction was, “Uh-oh.”
And it’s not just me. For generations investors have treated U.S. government debt as the ultimate safe asset. Whenever disaster strikes — even if it’s disaster largely made in America, like the 2008 subprime crisis — bond buyers pile into U.S. Treasuries, because America is a serious country, and the idea that we would fail to honor our debts was unthinkable.
But are we still that country? Markets seem to have doubts.
Yesterday the Financial Times had a neat chart showing that there used to be a clear relationship between U.S. interest rates and the international value of the dollar.
Why are markets beginning to treat America as unreliable? It’s not just the debt numbers. Yes, we have large debts, but we’re an immensely wealthy country that, among other things, has lower average taxes than most of our peers. So we certainly have the resources to honor our debts.
But do we have the political will? Maybe even more important, do we have the political seriousness?
Why, next thing you’ll be telling me that key policy decisions, leading to layoffs of hundreds of thousands of federal workers and many deaths around the world, have been made by a presidential crony whose erratic behavior may have reflected massive consumption of ketamine, Ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms. Oh, wait.
Trump appointee Elon Musk, whose companies receive billions of dollars in U.S. government contracts, prances with a chainshow at a CPAC convention in February to demonstrate his eagerness to slash other federal government spending as Argentina's right-wing president Javier Milei cheers him on.
Lincoln Square Media, What DOGE Gets Wrong about Tech and Government, Don Moynihan, June 3, 2025. Members of the DOGE network rarely offer thoughtful accounts that depart from the Musk narrative (government is broken, full of talentless hacks, DOGE is fixing things).
So I was interested to see a DOGEr express genuine circumspection. This came from Sahil Lavingia, a startup founder, who was interviewed by Ernie Smith about his experience with DOGE.
Lavignia left his start-up, Gumroad, to join Veteran’s Affairs. Here is the key passage:
Now that he’s there, he says he finds himself surrounded by people who “love their jobs,” who came to the government with a sense of mission driving their work. “In a sense, that makes the DOGE agenda a little bit more complicated, because if half the government took [a buyout offer], then we wouldn’t have to do much more,” he says, implying software can replace departing employees. “We’d just basically use software to plug holes. But that’s not what’s happening.”…when it comes down to it, what he’s found is a machine that largely functions, though it doesn’t make decisions as fast as a startup might.
For his troubles, Lavingia was fired from DOGE shortly after his interview was published. DOGE employees can have massive conflicts interest, traffic in false conspiracy theories, post racist vitriol online or threaten public employees and be fine. The one thing they cannot do? Admit that government is working better than they expected.
As Elon Musk and other senior members announce their departure from DOGE, it is worth offering a provisional assessment of some key mistakes it has made.
Welcome to Popular Information, 19 companies pulling back their support for Pride, Judd Legum, Rebecca Crosby, and Noel Sims, June 3, 2025. For years, major corporations publicly celebrated the LGBTQ community. \
Corporations regularly highlighted the contributions of LGBTQ employees, facilitated LGBTQ resource groups, donated to pro-LGBTQ charities, and sponsored Pride Month parades each June. This was supposedly part of a principled commitment to inclusion, including the full spectrum of sexual orientations and gender identities.
But, in recent years, many Republicans, including President Trump, have decided that valuing diversity, including the LGBTQ community, constitutes discrimination against straight white men. Pride parades, fun events about accepting people for who they are, were rebranded by these Republicans as part of a nefarious scheme to indoctrinate children. Trump has issued several executive orders targeting the LGBTQ community and pressured corporations to end diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI) activities.
The pressure campaign appears to be working. Numerous corporations that have previously presented themselves as champions of the LGBTQ community have pulled their support for Pride parades this month, a Popular Information investigation reveals.
New York Times, A Stephen Miller Staffer and Tough Talk: Inside Trump’s Latest Attack on Harvard, Michael S. Schmidt and Michael C. Bender, June 3, 2025 (print ed.). The Justice Department opened an investigation into the student-run Harvard Law Review. The startling accusations show how the Trump administration is wielding power in pursuit of its political agenda.
The Justice Department quietly approached Harvard University last month with startling claims, even by the extraordinary standards of the Trump administration’s monthslong assault on the elite college.
The department signaled that it was reviewing claims of discrimination against white men at The Harvard Law Review, and accused the renowned publication of destroying evidence in an open investigation. The administration demanded that Harvard “cease and desist” from interfering.
In a series of letters that have not been previously reported, the government also disclosed that it had a “cooperating witness” inside the student-run journal. That witness now works in the White House under Stephen Miller, the architect of the administration’s domestic policy agenda, Trump officials confirmed.
The Law Review is independent of Harvard University. The allegations nonetheless deepened fears among Harvard officials that the administration appeared eager to escalate one of its civil investigations into a criminal inquiry, underscoring how the university’s problems with President Trump extend far beyond the loss of billions in federal funding.
But the aggressive language in the letters from the Justice Department’s two top civil rights lawyers appeared to have overstated the allegations in pursuit of an additional way to punish Harvard. In that way, the episode fits a broader trend in how the administration is wielding federal investigatory powers to impose its political agenda.
New York Times, South Korea’s Opposition Leader Likely to Be Next President, Exit Polls Show, Choe Sang-Hun and Jin Yu Young, The campaign of Lee Jae-myung, a center-left candidate, rode a wave of anger against Yoon Suk Yeol, who was ousted for imposing martial law.
After months of political turmoil, Lee Jae-myung, the center-left candidate, is predicted to win the presidential election by a wide margin on Tuesday, according to the results of an exit poll conducted by South Korea’s three main television stations.
South Koreans turned out in large numbers to vote in an election whose winner will face daunting challenges, including trying to fix a sputtering domestic economy and navigating tensions between the United States, a key ally, and China.
June 2
Lance’s Substack, Opinion: People Ask Me "What Can I Do, How Can I Resist..." Who Wants To Hear The Answer? Lance Rosen, right, June 2, 2025. One Year Ago I Warned The Democrats That They Were Repeating The Awful Mistakes Of The German Left In Failing To Stop Hitler...I Wasn't Loud Enough.
There will be no more pulling of punches. My greatest concern right now is not so much what Trump & Co. are doing. It is what we are not doing, because we are following too many of the wrong people and fighting on the wrong battlefields at the wrong time. So I have a few conceptual points to make about "resistance" with which to reintroduce this year old article, and my purpose in doing so is not to be popular or to get "hearts and likes." Shares would be more useful.
1. Political resistance, and likewise armed resistance such as what the US is currently supporting in Ukraine, is generally not defined by our day-to-day choices of strategy and tactics. It is a state of mind, and we are either in it, or not in it. The decisions about “what” to do flow from our internalizing the strategic, historical and moral importance of doing something effective as part of an organized force.
2. The future determines the present. There is no prospect for changing anything in the here and now unless it is grounded in a longer range future orientation.
3. Since we want to move people to take action, to sacrifice, to take risks, to be self-starters, they need a reason to believe it will be effective in changing or inspiring other people, and in creating increased potential for accomplishing good things through a movement. Resistance is by definition a social act. The higher strategic purpose of it is to get others to do the same, not for reasons of self-satisfaction. You will need to be part of a network because isolated efforts rarely succeed and are a prescription for disaster if we are living under an actual police state. In short, don't just narrowly focus everything we are doing on our hopes for future elections, because building our movement is the only thing which will insure that elections even occur.
The Bulwark, Opinion: The Secret Police Are Here, Jonthan V. Last, right, June 2, 2025. Trump is losing on policy and the law. But he’s 
winning on power.
1. Masked Men: Dan Goldman represents the 10th Congressional District of New York. Before he entered Congress he was an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York. He has spent most of hisprofessional life working hand-in-hand with law enforcement. He’s not a show-pony or an activist. He’s a law-and-order guy.
Three days ago he spoke to the media about his interactions with agents purporting to represent the Department of Homeland Security. You can watch his no-nonsense speech here, but I’m going to give you a transcript just in case:
Goldman (shown above in a file photo):
Let me focus on some of the interactions I had with the ICE agents. I was a federal prosecutor for ten years. . . . I worked with Department of Homeland Security, I worked with ICE agents, I worked with Homeland Security’s investigations. I have never seen any plainclothes officer wearing a mask. And I asked them, “Why are you wearing a mask?”
One person told me, “Because it’s cold.”
I asked him if he would testify to that under oath. And he walked away and wouldn’t respond to me.
Another person admitted that they’re wearing masks so that they are not caught on video.
And my question to them is: If what you are doing is legitimate, is lawful, is totally above-board, why do you need to cover your face?
There are only two kinds of society in which armed agents of the government routinely conceal their identities:
(1) Lawless failed states, where criminals openly contest the government’s hold on power.
(2) Authoritarian states, where the government has total, unchecked power.
2. Refractory Period
This morning Heather Cox Richardson pointed out the duality of this moment. On the one hand, the Trump administration appears to be losing momentum. The courts have largely ruled against it. Trump’s most important ally, Elon Musk, has been badly wounded and driven out of the government. Congressional Republicans are barely capable of passing a single bill.
But all of that is happening at the legal and policy levels.
Yet while Trump is losing in the places where politics normally happens in America, he is making gains in three places which have historically been considered out of bounds.
(1) Federal law enforcement. Trump is in the process of transforming federal law enforcement into an explicitly political force.
(2) Pardons. Rather than waiting until the final days of his term to issue pardons, as is the norm, Trump has already made extensive use of the pardon power to reward his allies—including people convicted of using violence in support of his goals. The obvious goal here is to create an incentive structure to encourage people to take illegal actions on Trump’s behalf.
(3) The military. Trump’s secretary of defense has worked to purge the military’s leadership of flag officers who might place loyalty to the Constitution over loyalty to Trump. He fired the sitting chairman of the Joint Chiefs and replaced him with a general believed to be loyal. He has fired a number of senior officers. And he has taken a chainsaw to the JAG corps, dismantling the legal affairs branch of the military that would, under normal circumstances, advise officers of their duty to defend the Constitution and refuse unlawful orders.
American politics has never been contested in those realms. Federal law enforcement has long been nonpartisan and walled off from the White House. The pardon power has never been deployed as a tool to mold paramilitary and extralegal supporters. No one has concerned themselves in a serious way with the loyalties of the Army since the Civil War.
New York Times, News Analysis, In Russia Airfield Attacks, Ukraine Aims for Strategic and Symbolic Blow, Marc Santora and Devon Lum,.June 2, 2025. While the full extent of the damage is still unknown, the operation shows how Kyiv has been able to adapt and evolve over the war using drones.
Ukraine’s drone attack on airfields deep inside Russia on Sunday was a strategic and symbolic blow that military analysts said was designed to slow Moscow’s relentless bombing campaign and to demonstrate that Kyiv can still raise the cost of war for the Kremlin.
There were calls for a swift response across Russian media, and Ukrainians braced for retaliation even as they celebrated an operation that gave the beleaguered nation a much needed morale boost.Attacks Across Russia
Ukraine carried out attacks in five regions across Russia, according to a statement from Russia's Defense Ministry on Sunday. Several aircraft caught fire at air bases in Murmansk and Irkutsk.
The extent of the damage of the simultaneous attacks was not fully known, with both sides putting out assessments that were not immediately verifiable.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said that 117 drones were used in the attacks, known as Operation Spiderweb — with a corresponding number of operators involved in remotely piloting the aircraft.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Russia and Ukraine? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.
Ukraine’s security services, known as the S.B.U., said that 41 Russian aircraft were destroyed or damaged, which Mr. Zelensky said accounted for 34 percent of the strategic cruise-missile carriers at air bases across three time zones.
Russian military bloggers played down the damage. One influential Russian military blogger, Rybar, run by Mikhail Zvinchuk, put the number of damaged Russian aircraft at 13, including up to 12 strategic bombers. Another one, Fighterbomber, believed to be run by Capt. Ilya Tumanov of the Russian Army, said in a post on Monday that only “a handful” of strategic aircraft were hit, but even such a loss was “huge for a country that doesn’t make them.”
The Russian Ministry of Defense said that Ukraine attacked airfields in the Murmansk, Irkutsk, Ivanovo, Ryazan and Amur regions, and that it thwarted attacks at three of the bases. The New York Times verified videos that showed successful strikes at Olenya Air Base in the Murmansk region and Belaya Air Base in the Irkutsk region and damage to at least five aircraft, four of them strategic bombers.
Lincoln Square Media, Opinion: A Party of Psychopaths, Susan J. Demas, June 2, 2025. Joni Ernst was everyone’s favorite farm girl next door. Now the Republican senator scorns voters concerned about people dying from health care cuts.
When Joni Ernst, right, was running in a crowded Iowa Senate Republican primary back in 2014, she released an unorthodox ad boasting about castrating pigs on the farm that changed the race.
The spot went viral, but more importantly, it seemed authentic. Voters couldn’t get enough of Ernst delivering the punchline with apple-cheeked aplomb: “When I get to Washington, I’ll know how to cut pork. Washington is full of big spenders. Let’s make ’em squeal.”
Months later, Ernst became the first female U.S. Senator in Iowa history. In the decade since, she’s enjoyed political success — easily winning reelection in ever-reddening Iowa, but she’s also faced scandal for her relationships with military officials who lobbied her committee.Subscribed
And as an Iraq war veteran who’s survived sexual assault, Ernst has flirted with standing on principle, but she typically falls short. Last year, she introduced Nikki Haley at a key campaign event, but declined to offer an endorsement to help build momentum in the fight against Trump, who had recently been found liable for rape.After Trump was elected in November, Ernst expressed serious concerns about his pick to run the Pentagon, Fox News host Peter Hegseth, who allegedly had a long history of drinking and sexually assaulting women. But faced with the prospect of a MAGA primary challenge in 2026, Ernst backed down yet again.
All of these fraught capitulations seemed to have worn on the junior senator from the Hawkeye State, who seemed rather peevish with her constituents at a town hall last week. When she was questioned about Trump’s budget bill kicking millions off Medicaid, Ernst argued that it really just impacts “illegals.”
"People are going to die,” someone from the audience shouted.
That’s when Ernst went full Karen on the crowd, like someone had just cut in front of her during a Black Friday sale at Hobby Lobby. "Well, we all are going to die,” she declared. “For heaven's sakes, folks.”
And she smiled, even while her constituents jeered.
So Ernst made the bet to double down on her smugness at the town hall with a direct-to-camera social media video filmed in a cemetery (which undoubtedly was the brainchild of some shitposting MAGA intern).
"I would like to take this opportunity to sincerely apologize for a statement that I made yesterday at my town hall,” she announced.
"I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that yes, we are all going to perish from this earth. I'm really, really glad I did not have to bring up the subject of the tooth fairy, as well. But for those that would like to see eternal and everlasting life, I encourage you to embrace my lord and savior, Jesus Christ.”Trump and his crew are nutsInbox
Trump appointee Elon Musk, whose companies receive billions of dollars in U.S. government contracts, prances with a chainshow at a CPAC convention in February to demonstrate his eagerness to slash other federal government spending as Argentina's right-wing president Javier Milei cheers him on.
The Contrarian, Opiniion: Trump and his crew are nuts, It’s time to stop rationalizing the craziness, Jennifer Rubin, right,June 2, 2025. According to a jaw-dropping New York Times report, during the 2024 campaign, Elon Musk “told people he was taking so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that it was affecting his bladder, a known effect of chronic use.”
He allegedly took a smorgasbord of drugs, including ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms, while toting around his “daily medication box… [that] held about 20 pills, including ones with the markings of the stimulant Adderall”. While the Times could not confirm Musk’s drug abuse continued into his stint at the White House, we could all see that Musk “exhibited erratic behavior, insulting cabinet members, gesturing like a Nazi and garbling his answers in a staged interview.” In layman’s terms, the guy has acted nuts and continued to do so in full sight of Donald Trump, whose judgment when it comes to associates has long been abominable.
In a responsible media environment, the act of delegating enormous power and access to the most sensitive government and individual data to someone so manifestly unwell would set off demands for investigation—if not impeachment—of the president who had so cavalierly entrusted him with the federal government’s operations. And yet, the corporate and billionaire media continue to obsess over a former president who ran a successful, competent administration with entirely sober and qualified advisers.
“The ever-so-apt term ‘sanewashing’ was born to describe what was going on, and the media’s role. Talk about a cover-up,” wrote Margaret Sullivan regarding 2024 campaign coverage. “Trump’s rallies were exercises in lunacy, as he spun tales about sharks and Hannibal Lecter, rambling for hours.” Sullivan added that “coverage seldom came close to getting across the reality. Instead, we’d hear descriptions about his ‘freewheeling’ style or ‘brash’ approach.”
As lax as the Trump coverage was, consider how much more egregious has been the sanewashing now that he is exercising power in ways that reveal his broken psyche. Even worse, Trump’s entire cohort—whose lunacy is on display every day—get the same treatment.
According to a jaw-dropping New York Times report, during the 2024 campaign, Elon Musk “told people he was taking so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that it was affecting his bladder, a known effect of chronic use.” He allegedly took a smorgasbord of drugs, including ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms, while toting around his “daily medication box… [that] held about 20 pills, including ones with the markings of the stimulant Adderall”. While the Times could not confirm Musk’s drug abuse continued into his stint at the White House, we could all see that Musk “exhibited erratic behavior, insulting cabinet members, gesturing like a Nazi and garbling his answers in a staged interview.” In layman’s terms, the guy has acted nuts and continued to do so in full sight of Donald Trump, whose judgment when it comes to associates has long been abominable.
In a responsible media environment, the act of delegating enormous power and access to the most sensitive government and individual data to someone so manifestly unwell would set off demands for investigation—if not impeachment—of the president who had so cavalierly entrusted him with the federal government’s operations. And yet, the corporate and billionaire media continue to obsess over a former president who ran a successful, competent administration with entirely sober and qualified advisers.
“The ever-so-apt term ‘sanewashing’ was born to describe what was going on, and the media’s role. Talk about a cover-up,” wrote Margaret Sullivan, right, regarding 2024 campaign coverage. “Trump’s rallies were exercises in lunacy, as he spun tales about sharks and Hannibal Lecter, rambling for hours.” Sullivan added that “coverage seldom came close to getting across the reality. Instead, we’d hear descriptions about his ‘freewheeling’ style or ‘brash’ approach.”
CNN, Boulder attack suspect used a flamethrower in antisemitic attack, Paula Reid Betsy KleinBy Danya Gainor, Jamiel Lynch, Josh Campbell, Paula Reid, Betsy Klein, Zoe Sottile, Hanna Park, Matt Rehbein and Antoinette Radford, June 2, 2025. A man used a flamethrower and Molotov cocktails to set people on fire Sunday at a Jewish community event in Boulder, Colorado, held in support of hostages in Gaza. He injured at least eight people ranging in age from 52 to 88 before being detained.
Suspect identified: The FBI identified the lone suspect as Mohamed Sabry Soliman and said he yelled “Free Palestine!” during the attack. He faces multiple felony charges and is expected to appear in court later this afternoon.
Suspect’s history: Soliman had applied for asylum in the US and was denied a visa to enter the country in 2005, sources told CNN. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said Soliman had “illegally overstayed” a tourist visa, although it’s unclear when the tourist visa was issued.
Community outcry: Jewish leaders called for action against attacks on their community in the wake of rising antisemitic violence and threats. Less than two weeks ago, two Israeli Embassy staff members were shot dead in Washington, DC, by an attacker who yelled “Free Palestine!” while being arrested.
CNN, Attack suspect was in the US illegally, DHS official says Lauren Mascarenhas, June 2, 2025. The suspect charged in the Boulder attack, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, was in the US illegally, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said Monday.
“He entered the country in August 2022 on a B2 visa that expired on February 2023. He filed for asylum in September 2022,” McLaughlin wrote on X.
New York Times, Supreme Court Turns Down Challenge to Ban on Semiautomatic Rifles, Adam Liptak, June 2, 2025. The case from Maryland was the court’s latest opportunity to apply its recently announced history-based test for assessing the constitutionality of gun control laws.Listen to this article · 5:32 min Learn more
The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it would not hear a major Second Amendment challenge to a Maryland law banning semiautomatic rifles like the AR-15. As is the court’s practice, its brief order gave no reasons.
The move, over the objections of three conservative justices, let the ban stand and reflected the court’s intermittent engagement with gun rights. It has issued only three significant Second Amendment decisions since recognizing an individual right to own guns in 2008.
The Maryland law was enacted in 2013 in response to the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut the previous year. It banned many semiautomatic rifles and imposed a 10-round limit on gun magazines.
In dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas said the court should have considered the question, which the justices have repeatedly declined to resolve.
Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that the government can disarm people subject to restraining orders for domestic violence, limiting the sweep of its Bruen decision. Only Justice Thomas, the author of the majority opinion in Bruen, dissented from the domestic-violence decision.
The ruling, United States v. Rahimi, represented a modest retreat from what had been an unbroken series of major rulings favoring gun rights that started in 2008, when the court first recognized an individual constitutional right to keep firearms in the home for self-defense.
New York Times, Sidebar: A Fiery Brief Fueled by Conservatives Helped Put Trump’s Tariffs in Peril, Adam Liptak, right, June 2, 2025
. A coalition including leading figures on the right said the president’s program did violence to the Constitution. One judge cited it eight times.
A powerful sign that President Trump’s tariff-driven trade war is at risk came in a friend-of-the-court brief filed in April by a coalition that included many prominent conservative and libertarian lawyers, scholars and former officials.
The brief was also a signal of a deepening rift between Mr. Trump and the conservative legal movement, one that burst into public view last week with the president’s attacks on the Federalist Society, whose leaders helped pick the judges and justices he nominated in his first term.
Among the people who signed the brief in the tariffs case was Richard Epstein, who teaches at New York University and is an influential libertarian legal scholar.
“You have to understand that the conservative movement is now, as an intellectual movement, consistently anti-Trump on most issues,” he said.
Others who signed the brief, filed in the U.S. Court of International Trade, included Steven G. Calabresi, a founder of the Federalist Society; Michael B. Mukasey, a former federal judge who served as attorney general under President George W. Bush; and three former Republican senators — George F. Allen, John C. Danforth and Chuck Hagel. The brief was signed by liberals, too, including Harold Koh, a former dean of Yale Law School.
“The brief unites big-name constitutional law scholars across the political spectrum in a way I have rarely seen,” said Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University and a lawyer for a wine importer and other businesses that sued over the tariffs.
“I never would have expected to see Richard Epstein, Steve Calabresi and Harold Koh all on the same brief on a major issue,” he said. “But here they are, together, opposing ‘taxation by proclamation.’ Donald Trump brought them together.”
The brief was prepared by Michael W. McConnell, a former federal appeals court judge appointed by Mr. Bush who teaches at Stanford Law School, and Joshua A. Claybourn, a lawyer and historian. It said Mr. Trump’s program did violence to the constitutional structure.
New York Times, Nationalist Is Elected Poland’s President, in a Setback for the Centrist Government, Andrew Higgins, June 2, 2025. The victory of Karol Nawrocki, who is backed by the previous right-wing governing party, will complicate Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s efforts to advance his liberal agenda.Listen to this article · 4:40 min Learn more
A nationalist who is hostile to Poland’s centrist government has eked out a narrow win in a runoff election for the presidency, delivering a severe setback to Prime Minister Donald Tusk, according to official results released on Monday.
The winner, Karol Nawrocki, a historian and former boxer who is backed by Poland’s previous governing party, Law and Justice, captured 50.9 percent of the vote on Sunday, adding momentum to a right-wing populist movement in Europe. President Trump had endorsed Mr. Nawrocki before the election.
He came out just ahead of Rafal Trzaskowski, the liberal mayor of Warsaw, who was supported by Mr. Tusk’s party, Civic Platform. Mr. Trzaskowski had 49.1 percent of the vote.
That outcome leaves Poland bitterly divided with two power centers — the government and the presidency — pulling in opposite directions.
The two sides agree that Poland should provide weapons to Ukraine for its war against Russia and build up its military, but diverge sharply on most domestic issues, including abortion, which was all but banned during eight years under the right-wing Law and Justice government.
The Polish runoff came just two weeks after voters in Romania rejected a nationalist candidate in a presidential election, a result that raised the hopes of Polish liberals that Europe’s right-wing populist wave was receding.
Mr. Nawrocki’s win left those hopes shattered and will also disappoint mainstream forces in the European Union, which are aligned with Mr. Tusk, a former senior official in Brussels with strongly pro-European views.
The Polish presidency has no say in setting economic or other policy, which are the preserve of Mr. Tusk and his ministers, but it has veto power over legislation that allows it to stymie the program of the separately elected government. Mr. Tusk, a veteran centrist, became prime minister in December 2023 after Law and Justice lost its parliamentary majority.
The departing president, Andrzej Duda, like Mr. Nawrocki, is an ally of Law and Justice, and frequently vetoed laws passed by Mr. Tusk’s majority in Parliament or sent them for review by courts stacked with loyalists of the previous government. He was ineligible to run again because of term limits.Editors’ PicksPride Events in New York: Here’s How to Celebrate36 Hours in MarseilleShould I Feel Bad About Running Errands During Work Hours?
The election of Mr. Nawrocki to replace Mr. Duda is likely to harden the logjam and further obstruct Mr. Tusk’s efforts to carry out his government’s agenda. The government, a fractious coalition of liberal, leftist and conservative parties, has a majority in Parliament but not the three-fifths of the seats needed to override a presidential veto.
There is little chance that Mr. Nawrocki, a pugnacious novice politician, will wave through laws that had been blocked by Mr. Duda. Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
June 1
New York Times, Unease at F.B.I. Intensifies as Patel Ousts Top Officials, Adam Goldman, June 1, 2025. Senior executives are being pushed out and the director, Kash Patel, is freely using polygraph tests to tamp down on news leaks about leadership decisions and behavior.
Before being confirmed as the director of the F.B.I., Kash Patel made clear his intent to remake it in his own image, reflecting a larger desire by the White House to bend the agency to its will.
“The F.B.I. has become so thoroughly compromised that it will remain a threat to the people unless drastic measures are taken,” he wrote in his book “Government Gangsters,” asserting that the top ranks of the bureau should be eliminated.
Behind the scenes, his vision of an F.B.I. under President Trump is quietly taking shape. Agents have been forced out. Others have been demoted or put on leave with no explanation. And in an effort to hunt down the sources of news leaks, Mr. Patel is forcing employees to take polygraph tests.
Taken together, the moves are causing worrisome upheaval at the F.B.I., eliciting fear and uncertainty as Mr. Patel and his deputy, Dan Bongino, quickly restock senior ranks with agents and turn the agency’s attention to immigration. Their persistent claims that the bureau was politicized under previous directors, in addition to their swift actions against colleagues, have left employees to wonder whether they, too, will be ousted, either because they worked on an investigation vilified by Trump supporters or had ties to the previous administration.
The actions have obliterated decades of experience in national security and criminal matters at the F.B.I. and raised questions about whether the agents taking over such critical posts have the institutional knowledge to pursue cornerstones of its work.
Democracy Docket, Legal Commentary and Advocacy, The Department of Justice no longer represents the best interests of the American people, Marc Elias, June 1, 2025. Under Bondi, it has been transformed into little more than a cog in the authoritarian machine doing Donald Trump’s bidding. It has abandoned independent judgment and fealty to the law and replaced it with unquestioned obedience to the White House.
After only five months in office, Trump has transformed the Department of Justice into an instrument for voter suppression. This should come as no surprise.
When Trump nominated Pam Bondi, right, as Attorney General, Democracy Docket described her as an “election denier” who helped spread “voting conspiracy theories and false allegations of election fraud.” Meanwhile, The Washington Post editorialized that she should be confirmed because she was “qualified” and “serious.”
Sadly, we were right, and much of the corporate legacy media was woefully wrong.
Since taking office, Bondi has appointed Harmeet Dhillon, a Republican lawyer with her own history of supporting anti-voting litigation and election denialism, as head of the Civil Rights Division. The most recent addition to the voter suppression team is Maureen Riordan, who recently helped lead a prominent anti-voting legal group. As Democracy Docket reported, she is now the acting head of the Voting Rights Section.
The first sign of the new regime’s focus came last week in North Carolina. Republicans spent six months trying to steal a state Supreme Court election by throwing out more than 65,000 ballots, claiming the voter registrations were incomplete.
Eventually, a federal judge nominated by Trump stepped in and ordered the state’s Board of Elections to certify the Democratic candidate’s victory. Republicans ultimately conceded the battle, but Trump’s DOJ is now engaged in the war.
On Tuesday, the DOJ filed a new lawsuit against the North Carolina State Board of Elections, echoing the claims made by the Republican Party. The goal of this lawsuit is to disenfranchise tens of thousands of voters in future elections. The fact that North Carolina will feature marquee Senate and House midterm elections seems an unlikely coincidence.
When I founded Democracy Docket in 2020, the most important litigation involved efforts to make voting easier in the middle of a pandemic. Though the Republican Party opposed these efforts, the Department of Justice remained on the sideline.
Margaret Chase Smith became the first woman ever to serve in both the House of Representatives and the Senate—and the first senator to stand up against Joseph McCarthy's Red Scare (Photo via Library of Congress).
U.S. Sen. Joe McCarthy (R-Wisconsin) and U.S. Sen. Margaret Chase Smith (R-Maine) (File photos via Washington Post.)
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: May 31 [Decrying political character assassinaation], Heather Cox Richardson, right, June 1, 2025. “I would like to speak briefly and simply about a serious national condition,” Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine told her colleagues on June 1, 1950. “It is a national feeling of fear and frustration that could result in national suicide and the end of everything that we Americans hold dear…. I speak as a Republican, I speak as a woman. I speak as a United States senator. I speak as an American.”“
Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism,” she pointed out. Americans have the right to criticize, to hold unpopular beliefs, to protest, and to think for themselves. But attacks that cost people their reputations and jobs were stifling these basic American principles, and the ones making those attacks were in her own party.Wisconsin senator Joe McCarthy, who was sitting two rows behind her, led a faction that had cowed almost all of the Republican Party into silence by accusing their opponents of “communism.”
Senator Smith wanted a Republican administration, she explained, but to replace President Harry Truman’s Democratic administration—for which she had plenty of harsh words—with a Republican regime “that lacks political integrity or intellectual honesty would prove equally disastrous to this nation.”
Other Republicans quietly applauded Smith’s courage but refused to show similar courage themselves with public support.
In a statement in honor of the 75th anniversary of Smith’s Declaration of Conscience, Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD), right, noted that our time resembles hers, and decried the “character assassination, baldfaced lies, petty insults, and round-the-clock disinformation” of MAGA Republicans.
“[T]he hollowing out of American political language…tracks the corruption of American government and the disappearance of serious policy debate,” he wrote. “These movements of thought are not just part of one politician’s campaign for power. They are in service of a ruling public philosophy, which treats the government as an instrument for class plunder and private self-enrichment, a get-even-filthier-rich-quick scheme for the president and his family and friends.”
But for those who believe “that the government should be an instrument for the common good of all and the defense of our freedoms and civil rights, the state of politics in the country is a…serious threat to the survival of democratic institutions and the possibility of democratic progress.”
“The essential work of democracy is being trashed by the rule-or-ruin politics of the MAGA party,” Raskin wrote. “This is not a partisan exercise we are engaged in today to save and strengthen democracy in America…. MAGA and [the Department of Government Efficiency] are engaged in a hostile takeover of all the political institutions and programmatic achievements of American democracy.”
“Here in America we have a supreme Constitution, not a supreme leader,” Raskin wrote. “Democracy is not just a static collection of rules and practices. It is an unfinished project in motion, a constant work in progress. And we must never forget that democracy is the political system in service of human freedom.”
New York Times, Large-Scale Ukrainian Attack Targets Air Bases in Russia, Authorities Say, Maria Varenikova, Anastasia Kuznietsova and Nataliya Vasilyeva, June 1, 2025. Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Sunday that Ukrainian drones attacked airfields in five regions, and that several aircraft had caught fire.
Ukraine on Sunday launched one of its broadest assaults of the war against air bases inside Russia, a coordinated operation that targeted sites from eastern Siberia to Russia’s western border and left several Russian aircraft in flames.
The Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian airfields came as Kyiv suffered a damaging blow of its own on Sunday, with Russia striking a Ukrainian military training base and killing at least 12 soldiers. The day’s violence showed that the fighting between the two adversaries was only escalating even as they are expected to sit down for another round of cease-fire negotiations on Monday in Istanbul.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Sunday that Ukrainian drones had attacked airfields in five regions stretching across five time zones. Several aircraft caught fire in the regions of Murmansk, near the border with Norway, and Irkutsk, in eastern Siberia, the ministry said in a statement. It said that the other attacks were repelled, and that there were no casualties.
The attack in Irkutsk, on the Belaya air base, was the first time any place in Siberia had come under attack by Ukraine’s drones since the war began in February 2022. The Olenya base in the Murmansk region is one of Russia’s key strategic airfields, hosting nuclear-capable aircraft.
The details in the Russian Defense Ministry’s statement could not be independently verified. The statement came hours after an official in Ukraine’s security services, known as the S.B.U., said that a large-scale drone operation was underway targeting airfields in four Russian regions.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive intelligence operation, said that dozens of aircraft had been damaged in the strikes. It was not immediately possible to independently confirm that claim.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Russia and Ukraine? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.
The official said that Ukrainian officers had secretly transported drones into Russian territory on trucks and launched them from those vehicles. That claim also could not be confirmed, but Russia’s Defense Ministry said that drones used in the Murmansk and Irkutsk attacks had been launched from the immediate vicinity of the airfields.
Russian military bloggers were quick to declare the Ukrainian attacks a significant failure of Russia’s defenses.
“Today will later be called a black day for Russian long-range aviation,” read a post on the Telegram channel called Fighterbomber, which is believed to be run by Capt. Ilya Tumanov of the Russian Army. It added: “And the day is not over yet.”Editors’ PicksWe Watched ‘Mission: Impossible’ With a Former SpyHow Megan Hilty, a Tony Nominee, Spends Her Show DaysIs It Cheaper, or More Expensive, to Travel Now? Both, It Turns Out.
The deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Iryna Vereshchuk, said that the security services had “set a new bar of skill in conducting large-scale combat operations on enemy territory.”
“This is not a knockout, but a very serious knockdown for the enemy,” she wrote on Telegram.
Earlier on Sunday, Ukraine’s military said that a Russian missile attack on a training base killed at least 12 soldiers and wounded more than 60 others — a rare statement acknowledging casualties within its ranks.
The commander of Ukraine’s Ground Forces, Maj. Gen. Mykhailo Drapatyi, submitted his resignation after the attack on the base, in the Dnipro region, saying in a statement that he felt a “personal sense of responsibility for the tragedy.”
This Weekend in Politics, Bulletin 142 [Historic Ukraine Attack], Ron Filipkowski, June 1, 2025. Ukraine executed a brilliant attack inside Russia that was over a year in the planning, destroying a big chunk of the bombers used to launch cruise missiles at civilian population centers in Ukraine.
New York Times, Iran Ramps Up Uranium Enrichment While Continuing Nuclear Talks With U.S., David E. Sanger, Farnaz Fassihi and Maggie Haberman, June 1, 2025. The U.S. sent a nuclear deal proposal to Iran, hours after U.N. inspectors reported an Iranian initiative had multiplied Tehran’s stockpile of near-bomb-grade uranium.
The United States presented its first formal proposal to Tehran for elements of a nuclear deal on Saturday, just hours after U.N. inspectors reported a major surge over the past three months in the size of Tehran’s stockpile of near-bomb-grade uranium.
The document was described by officials familiar with the diplomatic exchanges as a series of bullet points but not a full draft of an agreement. It calls for Iran to cease all enrichment of uranium and proposes the creation of a regional consortium to produce nuclear power that would involve Iran; Saudi Arabia and other Arab states; and the United States.
The offer marked the first time since negotiations began in early April that the lead American negotiator, Steve Witkoff, had put forth a proposal on paper.
New York Times, Over 20 Killed Near Aid Distribution Site in Gaza, Palestinian Health Officials Say, Aaron Boxerman, June 1, 2025 It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the attack. The Israeli military denied any of its fire had harmed people within the site.
New York Times, A Close Polish Election Is a Bellwether for Populists, Andrew Higgins, June 1, 2025. Here’s what to know about Poland’s presidential runoff, which sets up a showdown between the governing party and resurgent nationalists.
Poland votes on Sunday in a tight runoff vote for the presidency. It is a largely ceremonial post, but its veto powers have made the election of vital importance to Prime Minister Donald Tusk and to his centrist government, which is still trying to reverse the legacy of its hard-right predecessor.
The most populous economic and military power on the European Union’s eastern flank, Poland plays an important role as a bellwether. Its election is being closely watched as a sign of whether populist nationalism is a rising or receding force on the continent.
The two candidates represent starkly different political outlooks: Rafal Trzaskowski, 53, is the liberal, multilingual mayor of Warsaw and the son of a prominent jazz musician. Karol Nawrocki, 42, is a nationalist historian and former boxer.
Mr. Trzaskowski is supported by Mr. Tusk’s party, Civic Platform, and, if elected, would work closely with his government.
Mr. Nawrocki, a political novice, is hostile to Mr. Tusk and is backed by Poland’s previous governing party, Law and Justice.
If elected, Mr. Nawrocki would most likely use the powers of the presidency to block Mr. Tusk’s agenda, as the departing president, Andrzej Duda, has. He was able to obstruct it by vetoing legislation passed by Parliament or referring it for review by courts stacked with Law and Justice appointees.
This has stymied efforts by the government to uproot what it sees as the most damaging legacy of its predecessor: a politically compromised legal system.
New York Times, Analysis: How Mexico’s Vote on Nearly 2,700 Judges Could Empower One Party, Jack Nicas and Emiliano Rodríguez Mega, June 1, 2025. The election to overhaul Mexico’s courts could result in a justice system more beholden to the nation’s dominant party, Morena.
Over the past seven years, a leftist political party called Morena has accomplished a remarkable takeover of the Mexican political landscape.
It has elected two consecutive presidents, secured supermajorities in Congress, made sweeping political moves that cemented its authority and left the opposition so badly beaten that it is clinging to life.
Now, Morena could take one of the most important steps yet in its consolidation of power. On Sunday, Mexicans will head to the polls to elect every federal judge in the nation and many local ones — 2,682 justices, judges and magistrates in all — a first-in-the-nation vote to overhaul the judiciary.
Morena leaders said they decided on the election to fix a justice system rife with corrupt judges who served the elite, rather than everyone, and who kept frustrating the party’s plans. In the process, they could eliminate the final major check on Morena’s power.
Many legal and political analysts in Mexico expect candidates aligned with Morena to dominate the election, filling judgeships from local courthouses to the Supreme Court and giving the party effective control over the third branch of government.
New York Times, Trump Amplifies Outlandish Robot Biden Conspiracy Theory, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, June 1, 2025. President Trump reposted another user’s false claim that the former president had been “executed” in 2020 and replaced by a robotic clone.
President Trump shared an outlandish conspiracy theory on social media on Saturday night saying former President Joseph R. Biden had been “executed in 2020” and replaced by a robotic clone, the latest example of the president amplifying dark, false material to his millions of followers.
Mr. Trump reposted a fringe rant that another user had made on the president’s social media platform, Truth Social, just after 10 p.m. on Saturday. The White House did not respond to requests for comment on the post about Mr. Biden, whom Mr. Trump has targeted for criticism almost daily since the start of his second term.
The president has blamed Mr. Biden for all manner of societal ills and assailed his mental acuity, including with the specious theory that Mr. Biden’s aides used an autopen to enact policies and issue pardons without Mr. Biden’s knowledge. (Mr. Trump has acknowledged that his administration uses the autopen system on occasion.)
Mr. Trump has long had a penchant for sharing debunked or baseless theories online, but his embrace of conspiracies is not limited to social media. He has also elevated false claims inside the White House and surrounded himself with cabinet officials promoting such theories.
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Andrew Kreig
JIP Editor
The Justice Integrity Project (JIP) researches official misconduct
Broadcast and lecture audiences can count on the Project's director to deliver blunt, entertaining and cutting-edge commentary about public affairs, with practical tips for the millions of Americans caught up in unfair litigation or regulation.
Based in Washington, DC, Andrew Kreig is an accomplished fighter for the public interest. Learn from his decades of reporting, analysis and advocacy:
• Shocking tales of recent corruption, deception and cover-up by both parties in communities ranging from small towns to world capitals; and
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