Opening summary: Trump overseeing a ‘fascist regime’, says Lander
Brad Lander, New York City’s comptroller and a mayoral candidate, has lashed out at Donald Trump and “his fascist regime”, after he was arrested on Tuesday by masked federal agents while visiting an immigration court and accompanying a person out of a courtroom.
Posting on X, Lander wrote:
We will all be worse off if we let Donald Trump and his fascist regime undermine the rule of law.
Lander was arrested, according to video footage of the incident, as he and his staff walked with an immigrant – who he later identified as “Edgardo” – who had their case dismissed pending appeal earlier in the day, per AMNY.
Lander can be seen and heard in videos of the incident asking the immigration officials if they have a judicial warrant. Additional footage of the arrest shows Lander telling the officials:
I’m not obstructing. I’m standing right here in the hallway. I asked to see the judicial warrant.
In a statement to the Guardian, assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin from the Department of Homeland Security said Lander “was arrested for assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer”.
Upon his release, Lander said he “certainly did not” assault an officer.
In an interview with CNN after his arrest, Lander said:
All I was trying to do was the things I had done [in] the prior two weeks of just accompany people out to safety. That was my goal today. I sure did not go with any intention of getting arrested.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is expected to meet Pakistan’s army chief, Asim Munir, for talks today. The meeting is expected to take place in the White House cabinet room at 1pm Washington time.
It comes after India’s prime minister Narendra Modi told Trump late on Tuesday that a ceasefire between India and Pakistan after a four-day conflict in May was achieved through talks between the two militaries and not US mediation.
Trump had said last month that the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours agreed to a ceasefire after talks mediated by the US, and that the hostilities ended after he urged the countries to focus on trade instead of war.
“PM Modi told President Trump clearly that during this period, there was no talk at any stage on subjects like India-US trade deal or US mediation between India and Pakistan,” Indian foreign secretary Vikram Misri said in a press statement, according to Reuters.
More on both of these stories in a moment, but first, here are some other developments:
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Israel’s war on Iran appeared to be approaching a pivotal moment on Tuesday night after five days of bombing and retaliatory Iranian missile strikes, as Donald Trump demanded “unconditional surrender” from Tehran and weighed his military options. Trump convened a meeting of his national security team in the White House situation room after a day of febrile rhetoric in which the president gave sharply conflicting signals over whether US forces would participate directly in Israel’s bombing campaign in Iran.
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An unlikely coalition of lawmakers has moved to prevent the president from involving US forces in the conflict without Congress’s approval. Republican congressman Thomas Massie, whose libertarian-tinged politics have often put him at odds with Trump, joined several progressive Democrats to introduce in the House of Representatives a war powers resolution that would require a vote by Congress before Trump could attack Iran. Democrat Tim Kaine has introduced companion legislation in the Senate.
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“Effective today, I am lifting the curfew in downtown Los Angeles,” the city’s mayor, Karen Bass, said in a statement on Tuesday afternoon.
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A federal judge in Boston ruled that transgender and intersex people can obtain passports that align with their gender identity during litigation that seeks to overturn Trump’s executive order that US passports must conform to the sex citizens were assigned at birth.
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Ukrainian diplomats have been left frustrated – and in some cases embittered – at Donald Trump’s refusal to make Ukraine a priority after Volodymyr Zelenskyy flew 5,000 miles to the G7 conference in Canada only for the US president to return home the night before the two leaders were due to meet. Trump said he needed to focus on the Israel-Iran conflict.
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Donald Trump has abandoned his brief immigration and customs enforcement (Ice) reprieve for farm and hotel workers, ordering the agency’s raids in those sectors to resume after hardliners crushed a pause that lasted just four days.
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A federal appeals court in San Francisco heard arguments on Tuesday in Trump v Newsom, to determine whether the Trump administration must return control of the California national guard troops deployed to Los Angeles by Trump to the state’s governor during protests over federal immigration raids.
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Bernie Sanders has endorsed the leftwing New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani in the latest boost to his insurgent campaign.
Key events
US Senate Democrats demand Kennedy explain canceling bird flu vaccine contract
US Senate Democrats have demanded health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr make public the reviews on which his department said it based its decision to cancel a contract for developing a bird flu vaccine.
Donald Trump’s administration last month canceled a $590m contract awarded to Moderna in January by outgoing president Joe Biden’s administration for the late-stage development of its bird flu vaccine for humans, as well as the right to purchase shots.
“This is a grievous mistake that threatens to leave the country unprepared for what experts fear might be the next pandemic – and there appears to be no rationale for this decision other than your ill-informed and dangerous war on vaccines,” senators Elizabeth Warren and Tammy Duckworth wrote in a letter seen by Reuters.
The cancellation endangers American lives and will likely contribute to a 20% rise in the price of eggs this year, they wrote to Kennedy, who has a long history of questioning the safety of vaccines contrary to scientific evidence.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services at the time said the contract was canceled after a comprehensive internal review determined the project did not meet the scientific standards or safety expectations required for continued federal investment.
Warren and Duckworth demanded Kennedy make the review public, alongside a similar review the department cited when it cut funding of a $258m program researching an HIV vaccine. They also asked for a detailed description of how the department decided to end the contracts, and a staff briefing.
“You have failed to justify either of these moves to cripple vaccine research,” Warren and Duckworth wrote. “Furthermore, these decisions appear to be part of your larger, unfounded vendetta against mRNA technology.”
Kennedy named eight members last week to serve on a panel of vaccine advisers to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including some who have advocated against vaccines, days after abruptly firing all 17 members who had been serving on the independent committee of experts.
Several of his appointees specifically oppose the mRNA vaccine technology used in some of the newest immunizations such as the Covid-19 vaccine, including by Moderna.
Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov warned on Wednesday that direct US military assistance to Israel could radically destabilise the situation in the Middle East, where an air war between Israel and Iran has raged for six days.
In separate comments, the head of Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service, Sergei Naryshkin, was quoted as saying that the situation between Israel and Iran was now critical.
Ryabkov warned the US against direct military assistance to Israel or even considering such “speculative options,” according to Russia’s Interfax news agency.
“This would be a step that would radically destabilise the entire situation,” it cited him as saying.
Earlier, a source familiar with US internal discussions said president Donald Trump and his team were considering a number of options, including joining Israel in strikes against Iranian nuclear sites.
On Tuesday, Trump openly mused on social media about killing Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but said “We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now.”
Rachel Leingang
A group of white male lawmakers were playing cards in a back room while their female colleagues gave speeches on the Minnesota house floor. They weren’t paying attention, and Melissa Hortman had had enough.
“I hate to break up the 100 percent white male card game in the retiring room,” Hortman said in 2017. “But I think this is an important debate.”
The comment upset some Republicans, who said it was racist for her to call them white men and wanted her to apologize. Her response: “I’m really tired of watching women of color, in particular, being ignored. So I’m not sorry.”
The moment went viral – people made shirts and rallied in support of her comments. The Republican men knew that they had lost, Minnesota senator Tina Smith said about the incident. “Melissa won the day.”
“I think you have to call bullshit when you see bullshit,” Hortman said at the time. “And we see plenty of it.”
It was one of many moments Hortman’s friends and colleagues have shared since the 55-year-old longtime legislator and her husband were murdered in what appears to be a politically motivated shooting spree in suburban Minnesota on Saturday.
Her friends and colleagues have remembered her legislative accomplishments – an ability to bring people together, stay organized, find common ground and, perhaps most of all, actually get things done. She injected humor and levity into her work. She was whip-smart. She raised two kids and had a beloved rescue dog, Gilbert.
Khamenei warns of ‘serious irreparable consequences’ if US strikes Iran
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei responded on Wednesday to US president Donald Trump’s call for the country to surrender, warning that any US strike will have “serious irreparable consequences”.
In his first remarks since Friday, when he delivered a speech broadcast on state media after Israel began bombarding Iran, Khamenei said peace or war could not be imposed on the Islamic Republic.
“Intelligent people who know Iran, the Iranian nation, and its history will never speak to this nation in threatening language because the Iranian nation will not surrender,” he said.
“The Americans should know that any US military intervention will undoubtedly be accompanied by irreparable damage.”
Kendra Wharton, a former member of president Donald Trump’s criminal defense team who serves as the Justice Department’s senior ethics official, plans to leave the department in July, she told Reuters.
Wharton replaced Bradley Weinsheimer, the department’s career designated ethics official who resigned in February after Justice Department leaders reassigned him along with about a dozen other senior lawyers to a newly created Sanctuary Cities Working Group.
The designated ethics official serves as a crucial gatekeeper who provides advice to department employees about potential conflicts of interest, including whether they should be recused from working on particular cases.
That role is also responsible for reviewing disciplinary recommendations by the Office of Professional Responsibility, which investigates attorney misconduct, and referrals for discipline or prosecution from the Office of the Inspector General.
In other Trump news, the president posted overnight that he will be installing two flag poles at the White House’s north and south lawns.
He has described the poles as both “beautiful” and “magnificent”.
He posted on Truth Social:
It is my Great Honor to announce that I will be putting up two beautiful Flag Poles on both sides of the White House, North and South Lawns. It is a GIFT from me of something which was always missing from this magnificent place.
The digging and placement of the poles will begin at 7:30 A.M. EST, tomorrow morning. Flags will be raised at approximately 11 A.M. EST. These are the most magnificent poles made – They are tall, tapered, rust proof, rope inside the pole, and of the highest quality.
Hopefully, they will proudly stand at both sides of the White House for many years to come!
Chris Stein
As Donald Trump publicly threatens to join Israel in attacking Iran, an unlikely coalition of lawmakers has moved to prevent the president from involving US forces in the conflict without Congress’s approval.
On Tuesday, Republican congressman Thomas Massie, whose libertarian-tinged politics have often put him at odds with Trump, joined with several progressive Democrats to introduce in the House of Representatives a war powers resolution that would require a vote by Congress before Trump could attack Iran. Democrat Tim Kaine has introduced companion legislation in the Senate.
“This is not our war. But if it were, Congress must decide such matters according to our constitution,” Massie wrote on X in announcing the resolution. Democrats Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez replied “signing on” to the tweet, while Massie’s office later announced that several others, including chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Greg Casar, would also sponsor the resolution.
The resolutions’ introductions came hours after Trump left a G7 summit in Canada early to return to Washington DC and demand Iran’s “unconditional surrender” following days of Israeli airstrikes that have targeted its top military leaders and nuclear facilities.
The White House later denied media reports circulating that the US had decided to become involved in the conflict, with spokesperson Alex Pfeiffer saying:
American forces are maintaining their defensive posture, and that has not changed. We will defend American interests.
However, US military aircraft and sea vessels have moved into the Middle East, and Iran’s deepest nuclear facilities are thought to be penetrable only by a bunker-busting bomb possessed by the US alone.
The Federal Reserve wraps up its two-day policy meeting later today, with most analysts expecting that the central bank will leave its benchmark borrowing rate alone for the sixth straight meeting.
Traders are now largely betting on the possibility of just one or maybe two cuts to interest rates this year by the Fed if any. That’s down from expectations of potentially six cuts, AP reports.
A Fed policy statement and projections are expected at 2pm, followed by press conference by its chair Jerome Powell at 2.30pm.
For context, US president Donald Trump has been putting pressure on Powell to cut interest rates in a bid to ‘supercharge’ the economy after his tariffs.
Julian Borger
Israel’s war on Iran appeared to be approaching a pivotal moment on Tuesday night after five days of bombing and retaliatory Iranian missile strikes, as Donald Trump demanded “unconditional surrender” from Tehran and weighed his military options.
Trump convened a meeting of his national security team in the White House situation room after a day of febrile rhetoric in which the president gave sharply conflicting signals over whether US forces would participate directly in Israel’s bombing campaign over Iran.
He told journalists in the morning that he expected the Iranian nuclear programme to be “wiped out” long before US intervention would be necessary. Later he took to his own social media platform, Truth Social, to suggest that the US had Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in its bomb-sights, and could make an imminent decision to take offensive action.
“We know exactly where the so-called ‘Supreme Leader’ is hiding. He is an easy target, but is safe there – We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now,” Trump said. “But we don’t want missiles shot at civilians, or American soldiers. Our patience is wearing thin.”
In a post a few minutes later, Trump bluntly demanded “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER”.
It was not just Trump’s all-caps threats that triggered speculation that the US might join offensive operations. They were accompanied by the sudden forward deployment of US military aircraft to Europe and the Middle East, amid a general consensus that Iran’s deeply buried uranium enrichment facilities could prove impregnable without huge bunker-busting bombs that only the US air force possesses.
“If Iran does not back down, complete destruction of Iranian nuclear programme is on the agenda, which Israel cannot achieve alone,” German chancellor Friedrich Merz told ZDF television a day after meeting Trump at the G7 summit in Canada.
Appeals court likely to keep Trump in control of national guard deployed in LA
A federal appeals court on Tuesday seemed ready to keep Donald Trump in control of California national guard troops after they were deployed following protests in Los Angeles over immigration raids.
Last week, a district court ordered the US president to return control of the guard to Democratic governor Gavin Newsom, who had opposed their deployment. US district judge Charles Breyer said Trump had deployed the Guard illegally and exceeded his authority. But the administration quickly appealed and a three-judge appellate panel temporarily paused that order.
Tuesday’s hearing was about whether the order could take effect while the case makes its way through the courts, including possibly the supreme court.
It’s the first time a US president has activated a state national guard without the governor’s permission since 1965, and the outcome of the case could have sweeping implications for Trump’s power to send soldiers into other US cities. Trump announced on 7 June that he was deploying the guard to Los Angeles to protect federal property following a protest at a downtown detention center after federal immigration agents arrested dozens of immigrants without legal status across the city. Newsom said Trump was only inflaming the situation and that troops were not necessary.
In a San Francisco courtroom, all three judges, two appointed by Trump in his first term and one by Joe Biden, suggested that presidents have wide latitude under the federal law at issue and that courts should be reluctant to step in.
“If we were writing on a blank slate, I would tend to agree with you,” Judge Jennifer Sung, a Biden appointee, told California’s lawyer, Samuel Harbourt, before pointing to a 200-year-old supreme court decision that she said seemed to give presidents the broad discretion Harbourt was arguing against.
Even so, the judges did not appear to embrace arguments made by a justice department lawyer that courts could not even review Trump’s decision.
It wasn’t clear how quickly the panel would rule.
Opening summary: Trump overseeing a ‘fascist regime’, says Lander
Brad Lander, New York City’s comptroller and a mayoral candidate, has lashed out at Donald Trump and “his fascist regime”, after he was arrested on Tuesday by masked federal agents while visiting an immigration court and accompanying a person out of a courtroom.
Posting on X, Lander wrote:
We will all be worse off if we let Donald Trump and his fascist regime undermine the rule of law.
Lander was arrested, according to video footage of the incident, as he and his staff walked with an immigrant – who he later identified as “Edgardo” – who had their case dismissed pending appeal earlier in the day, per AMNY.
Lander can be seen and heard in videos of the incident asking the immigration officials if they have a judicial warrant. Additional footage of the arrest shows Lander telling the officials:
I’m not obstructing. I’m standing right here in the hallway. I asked to see the judicial warrant.
In a statement to the Guardian, assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin from the Department of Homeland Security said Lander “was arrested for assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer”.
Upon his release, Lander said he “certainly did not” assault an officer.
In an interview with CNN after his arrest, Lander said:
All I was trying to do was the things I had done [in] the prior two weeks of just accompany people out to safety. That was my goal today. I sure did not go with any intention of getting arrested.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is expected to meet Pakistan’s army chief, Asim Munir, for talks today. The meeting is expected to take place in the White House cabinet room at 1pm Washington time.
It comes after India’s prime minister Narendra Modi told Trump late on Tuesday that a ceasefire between India and Pakistan after a four-day conflict in May was achieved through talks between the two militaries and not US mediation.
Trump had said last month that the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours agreed to a ceasefire after talks mediated by the US, and that the hostilities ended after he urged the countries to focus on trade instead of war.
“PM Modi told President Trump clearly that during this period, there was no talk at any stage on subjects like India-US trade deal or US mediation between India and Pakistan,” Indian foreign secretary Vikram Misri said in a press statement, according to Reuters.
More on both of these stories in a moment, but first, here are some other developments:
-
Israel’s war on Iran appeared to be approaching a pivotal moment on Tuesday night after five days of bombing and retaliatory Iranian missile strikes, as Donald Trump demanded “unconditional surrender” from Tehran and weighed his military options. Trump convened a meeting of his national security team in the White House situation room after a day of febrile rhetoric in which the president gave sharply conflicting signals over whether US forces would participate directly in Israel’s bombing campaign in Iran.
-
An unlikely coalition of lawmakers has moved to prevent the president from involving US forces in the conflict without Congress’s approval. Republican congressman Thomas Massie, whose libertarian-tinged politics have often put him at odds with Trump, joined several progressive Democrats to introduce in the House of Representatives a war powers resolution that would require a vote by Congress before Trump could attack Iran. Democrat Tim Kaine has introduced companion legislation in the Senate.
-
“Effective today, I am lifting the curfew in downtown Los Angeles,” the city’s mayor, Karen Bass, said in a statement on Tuesday afternoon.
-
A federal judge in Boston ruled that transgender and intersex people can obtain passports that align with their gender identity during litigation that seeks to overturn Trump’s executive order that US passports must conform to the sex citizens were assigned at birth.
-
Ukrainian diplomats have been left frustrated – and in some cases embittered – at Donald Trump’s refusal to make Ukraine a priority after Volodymyr Zelenskyy flew 5,000 miles to the G7 conference in Canada only for the US president to return home the night before the two leaders were due to meet. Trump said he needed to focus on the Israel-Iran conflict.
-
Donald Trump has abandoned his brief immigration and customs enforcement (Ice) reprieve for farm and hotel workers, ordering the agency’s raids in those sectors to resume after hardliners crushed a pause that lasted just four days.
-
A federal appeals court in San Francisco heard arguments on Tuesday in Trump v Newsom, to determine whether the Trump administration must return control of the California national guard troops deployed to Los Angeles by Trump to the state’s governor during protests over federal immigration raids.
-
Bernie Sanders has endorsed the leftwing New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani in the latest boost to his insurgent campaign.
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