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      Trump news at a glance: president tells Iran’s supreme leader he is ‘an easy target’ as US weighs options

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      Donald Trump boosted speculation over whether the US could become involved in Israel’s conflict with Tehran on Tuesday, warning Iran’s supreme leader that he was “an easy target” and that America’s “patience is wearing thin”.In a post on his Truth Social platform, the US president wrote:“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 added: “But we don’t want missiles shot at civilians, or American soldiers. Our patience is wearing thin.”The president followed up the post by bluntly calling for Tehran’s “unconditional surrender”.Here are the key stories of the day:Trump demands ‘unconditional surrender’ from IranIsrael’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.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 sights, and could make an imminent decision to take offensive action.Read the full storyRepublicans and Democrats try to block US involvement in IranAn 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.Read the full storyTrump G7 exit leaves Ukraine in lurchUkrainian 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.Read the full storyStarmer says he picked up Trump’s dropped papers to avoid security scareKeir Starmer said he rushed to pick up papers dropped by Donald Trump at the G7 summit in Canada mainly to avoid anyone else stepping forward to do so and being tackled by the US president’s security team.Speaking to reporters in Kananaskis a day after Trump fumbled some of the documents about a UK-US trade deal, letting a sheaf of papers tumble to the ground, Starmer said he had little choice but to bend down and help out.Read the full storyTrump orders Ice raids on farms and hotels after pausing them days earlierDonald 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.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Brad Lander, a top New York City official and a mayoral candidate, was arrested on Tuesday by masked federal agents while visiting an immigration court and accompanying a person out of a courtroom.

      A journalist who lost his job at ABC News over his comments about about Trump adviser Stephen Miller said he posted it on social media because he felt it was “true”.

      Bernie Sanders has endorsed the leftwing New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani in the latest boost to his insurgent campaign.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 16 June 2025. More

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      New York mayoral candidate Brad Lander released after arrest sparks outcry – US politics live

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      New York City comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander was just released from federal custody and was seen leaving the federal building in lower Manhattan with his wife, Meg Barnette, and New York governor Kathy Hochul. He is now addressing the media outside.Lander says he’s fine, the non-profit newsroom The City reports. “I will be fine but Edgardo will not be fine,” he says in reference to the man taken by Ice outside an immigration courtroom earlier. Lander was detained for insisting that the Ice agenst show a judicial warrant authorizing that immigrant’s arrestAlthough a homeland security spokesperson said Lander was arrested for allegedly assaulting a federal officer, he said he has not been charged at this point.The New York Comptroller’s office is now streaming live video of Lander’s comments on X, here:CNN reports that the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, was taken to a hospital in Washington on Tuesday in an ambulance.Noem is reportedly conscious at the hospital and has spoken with her security detail, a source told the broadcaster.Earlier on Tuesday, a group of Democratic senators reportedly called on her to testify about the rough detention of senator Alex Padilla of California at her news conference in Los Angeles last week.“Effective today, I am lifting the curfew in Downtown Los Angeles”, the city’s mayor, Karen Bass, said in a statement on Tuesday afternoon. “As we continue to adapt quickly to the chaos coming out of Washington, I’m prepared to reinstate it if necessary. The safety and stability of LA remains my top priority.”“The curfew has been an effective tool in helping us maintain public safety in the Downtown Los Angeles area and deter those looking to exploit peaceful protests for criminal activity” the chief of the Los Angeles Police Department Jim McDonnell added. “The LAPD will maintain a strong presence in the area and continue to monitor conditions closely to protect lives, uphold the right to lawful assembly, and safeguard property”.In a brief news conference outside the federal building in lower Manhattan, Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller and mayoral candidate who was detained by federal immigration officers earlier, expressed shock when a reporter told him that a department of homeland security spokesperson said that he had been arrested for putting his hands on a federal officer.“Seriously?” Lander said.It remains unclear whether any charges will actually be filed, but New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, told reporters: “to my knowledge… there are no charges; the charges have been dropped; he walks out of there a free man”.Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller and mayoral candidate who was detained by federal agents while attempting to escort a man out of immigration court in lower Manhattan on Tuesday, was just asked to comment on the claim, from a homeland security spokesperson, that he was attempting to create a viral moment.He explained that he was simply attending immigration court hearings to support the due process rights of immigrants who were following the law, and was escorting people out of the building after their hearings.“My goal was to walk Edgardo out of the building”, he said, in reference to the immigrant Lander was escorting out of the immigration courtroom when Ice agents seized both of them.Lander also said that the same spokesperson’s claim, that he had assaulted a federal officer, was obviously false, and urged people to watch video of the incident. “I was simply asking them to show me the judicial warrant”, Lander said.He will be speaking shortly at a rally in Foley Square.New York City comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander was just released from federal custody and was seen leaving the federal building in lower Manhattan with his wife, Meg Barnette, and New York governor Kathy Hochul. He is now addressing the media outside.Lander says he’s fine, the non-profit newsroom The City reports. “I will be fine but Edgardo will not be fine,” he says in reference to the man taken by Ice outside an immigration courtroom earlier. Lander was detained for insisting that the Ice agenst show a judicial warrant authorizing that immigrant’s arrestAlthough a homeland security spokesperson said Lander was arrested for allegedly assaulting a federal officer, he said he has not been charged at this point.The New York Comptroller’s office is now streaming live video of Lander’s comments on X, here:Gwynne Hogan, a reporter for The City, an independent, nonprofit newsroom covering New York, reports on Bluesky that New York governor Kathy Hochul just asked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents what the delay is with releasing the New York City comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander, who was detained by them outside an immigration court in the federal building in lower Manhattan.“How long is this going to take?” Hochul was overheard asking. “I don’t think he has a long rap sheet”.According to a homeland security spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, Lander “was arrested for assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer”, but video of the incident shows that Lander was arrested after asking officers leading someone away outside an immigration courtroom to produce a judicial warrant.Trump’s meeting in the Situation Room with his national security team has come to an end, after more than an hour, CNN and Reuters are reporting.Kathy Hochul has been in Federal Plaza speaking to Brad Lander’s wife Meg Barnette. She posted this photo to X saying: “New York will not back down.”The New York governor earlier called Lander’s arrest by federal agents at an immigration court “bullshit”.

      Donald Trump has spent much of the day so far weighing his military options, demanding an “unconditional surrender” from Tehran and threatening Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei. He said that the US is aware of Khamenei’s location and he’s an “easy target”, but said “we are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now”. “Our patience is wearing thin,” he warned. Trump had earlier said he was not seeking a ceasefire in Israel’s war on Iran but instead wants to see “a real end” to Iran’s nuclear programme, with Tehran abandoning it “entirely”. You can follow our live coverage on the crisis in the Middle East here.

      New York City comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander was dramatically arrested by masked agents while visiting an immigration court and accompanying a person out of a courtroom. The incident has been condemned by New York politicians who have called Lander’s arrest “political intimidation”, “fascism”, and “a shocking abuse of power”. The DHS said Lander “was arrested for assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer”. He is still in custody at the time of writing.

      It comes less than a week after US senator Alex Padilla was restrained and forcibly removed from a press conference when he tried to ask DHS secretary Kristi Noem a question in LA. Recounting that incident on the Senate floor today, Padilla urged Americans to “wake up”, and warned that what was happening to immigrants in California was just a “test case” for what Trump could do to any American anywhere in the country.

      Over 48 hours after a Minnesota state lawmaker was killed and another injured in a “politically motivated assassination”, Donald Trump was still refusing to call the state’s governor, Tim Walz, as a president usually would under the circumstances.

      Fewer than 10% of immigrants arrested by Ice this fiscal year have serious criminal convictions like rape, murder, assault or robbery CNN reported. According to Ice records, three-quarters had no criminal convictions beyond immigration or traffic offenses.

      The NAACP said it will not invite Donald Trump to its annual convention next month, the first time the 116-year-old civil rights organization has not asked a sitting US president to attend its convention.

      A CBS News investigation found that two-thirds of counties that have lost funding from Fema’s storm preparation program supported Donald Trump in the 2024 election.

      Bernie Sanders endorsed the leftwing New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani in the latest boost to his insurgent campaign. Sanders, a senator from Vermont and a powerful figure on the Democratic party’s progressive left, said: “At this dangerous moment in history, status quo politics isn’t good enough. We need new leadership that is prepared to stand up to powerful corporate interests and fight for the working class.”
      Earlier we brought you reported comments from Kathy Hochul, now the New York governor has reiterated her view on X. More

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      Trump brushes off US intel reports on Iran to align himself with Israel

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      Tulsi Gabbard, the US director of national intelligence, delivered a concise verdict during congressional testimony this March: the intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and supreme leader Khomeini has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003”.As he rushed back to Washington on Tuesday morning, Donald Trump swatted aside the assessment from the official that he handpicked to deliver him information from 18 US intelligence agencies. “I don’t care what she said,” said Trump. “I think they were very close to having one.”Trump’s assessment aligned him with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, who has warned that Iran’s “imminent” plans to produce nuclear weapons required a pre-emptive strike from Israel – and, he hopes, from the United States – in order to shut down the Iranian uranium enrichment program for good.It also isolates Trump’s spy chief, whom he nominated specifically because of her skepticism for past US interventions in the Middle East and of the broader intelligence community, which he has described as a “deep state”.Gabbard sought to tamp down on a schism with Trump, telling CNN that Trump “was saying the same thing that I said in my annual threat assessment back in March. Unfortunately too many people in the media don’t care to actually read what I said.”But as the Trump administration now appears closer than ever before to a strike on Iran, Gabbard has been left out of key decision-making discussions and her assessments that Iran is not close to a nuclear breakout has become decidedly inconvenient for an administration now mulling a pre-emptive strike.“UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” Trump wrote in a social media post on Tuesday. The US has dispatched another carrier group, KC-135 refueling tankers and additional fighter jets to the region. Those assets have been sent to give Trump “more options” for a direct intervention in the conflict, US media have reported.Deliberations over the intelligence regarding Iran’s breakout time to a nuclear weapon will be pored over if the US moves forward with a strike that initiates a new foreign conflict for the US that could potentially reshape the Middle East and redefine a Trump presidency that was supposed to end the US era of “forever wars”.Israel launched airstrikes last week in the wake of an International Atomic Energy Agency report that formally declared Iran in breach of its non-proliferation obligations for the first time in 20 years and said the country had enriched enough uranium to near weapons grade to potentially make nine nuclear bombs.Gen Michael Erik Kurilla, the head of US Central Command who has forcefully campaigned for a tougher stance on Iran, told members of the armed services committee in the House of Representatives last week that Iran could have enough weapons-grade uranium for “up to 10 nuclear weapons in three weeks”.Yet a CNN report on Tuesday challenged that claim. Four sources familiar with a US intelligence assessment said that Iran was “not actively pursuing a nuclear weapon” and that the country was “up to three years away from being able to produce and deliver one to a target of its choosing”.The skepticism over Iran’s potential for a nuclear breakout has also been reflected in Gabbard’s distancing from Trump’s inner circle. People often represent policy in the Trump administration and those with unpopular views find themselves on the outside looking in.Trump last Sunday held a policy discussion with all the top members of his cabinet on national security. But Gabbard was not there. Her absence was taken as a sign that US policy was shifting in a direction against Iran.“Why was Gabbard not invited to the Camp David meeting all day?” asked Steve Bannon, a member of Trump’s Maga isolationist wing that has pushed against the US launching a direct strike against Iran.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“You know why,” responded Tucker Carlson, an influential pundit in Trump’s America First coalition who had slammed “warmongers” in the administration including popular Fox News hosts like Mark Levin.Days after the Camp David meeting, Gabbard released a bizarre video in which she warned about the threat of nuclear war, saying that this is the “reality of what’s at stake, what we are facing now”.“Because as we stand here today, closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever before, political elite and warmongers are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers,” she said.The remarks could have referred to US involvement in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. But it is with Iran that US policy appears to be changing rapidly and avowed opponents of foreign interventions appear to be falling in line in order to avoid losing clout in the Trump administration.Trump “may decide he needs to take further action to end Iranian enrichment”, said the vice-president, JD Vance, who has publicly called on the US to avoid costly overseas interventions but has remained muted over Iran. “That decision ultimately belongs to the president.“But I believe the president has earned some trust on this issue,” he continued. “And having seen this up close and personal, I can assure you that he is only interested in using the American military to accomplish the American people’s goals. Whatever he does, that is his focus.” More

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      ‘I have never seen such open corruption’: Trump’s crypto deals and loosening of rules shock observers

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      Cryptocurrency multibillionaire Justin Sun could barely contain his glee.Last month, Sun publicly flaunted a $100,000 Donald Trump-branded watch that he was awarded at a private dinner at Trump’s Virginia golf club. Sun had earned the recognition for buying $20m of the crypto memecoin $Trump, ranking him first among 220 purchasers of the token who received dinner invitations.Trump’s much-hyped 22 May dinner and a White House tour the next day for 25 leading memecoin buyers were devised to spur sales of $Trump and wound up raking in about $148m, much of it courtesy of anonymous and foreign buyers, for Trump and his partners.Memecoins are crypto tokens that are often based on online jokes but have no inherent value. They often prove risky investments as their prices can fluctuate wildly. The $Trump memecoin was launched days before Trump’s presidential inauguration, spurring a surge of buyers and yielding tens of millions of dollars for Trump and some partners.Trump’s private events on 22 May to reward the top purchasers of $Trump have sparked strong criticism of the president from ethics watchdogs, ex-prosecutors and scholars for exploiting his office for personal gain in unprecedented ways. But they fit in a broader pattern of how Trump has exploited the power and lure of his office to enrich himself and some top allies via cryptocurrencies.“Self-enrichment is exactly what the founders feared most in a leader – that’s why they put two separate prohibitions on self-benefit into the constitution,” said former federal prosecutor Paul Rosenzweig. “Trump’s profiting from his presidential memecoin is a textbook example of what the framers wanted to avoid.”Scholars, too, offer a harsh analysis of Trump’s crypto dealings.“I have never seen such open corruption in any modern government anywhere,” said Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard University and an expert on authoritarian regimes who co-authored the book How Democracies Die.Such ethical and legal qualms don’t seem to have fazed Trump or Sun. The pair forged their ties well before the dinner as Sun invested $75m in another Trump crypto enterprise, World Liberty Financial (WLF), that Trump and his two older sons launched last fall and in which they boast a 60% stake.The Chinese-born Sun’s political and financial fortunes, as well as those of other crypto tycoons, have improved markedly since Trump took office and moved fast to loosen regulations of cryptocurrency ventures at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the justice department and other agencies to upend Joe Biden’s policies.As the SEC has eased regulations and paused or ended 12 cases involving cryptocurrency fraud, three Sun crypto companies that were charged with fraud by an SEC lawsuit in 2023 had their cases paused in February by the agency, which cited the “public interest” and reportedly has held settlement talks.Trump’s and Sun’s mutually beneficial crypto dealings symbolize how the US president has boosted his paper wealth by an estimated billions of dollars since he returned to office, and worked diligently to slash regulations fulfilling his pledges to make the US the “crypto capital of the planet” and end the “war on crypto”.After the 22 May dinner, Sun posted: “Thank you @POTUS for your unwavering support of our industry!”Although Trump’s crypto ventures are less than a year old, the State Democracy Defenders Fund watchdog group has estimated that as of mid-March they are worth about $2.9bn.In late March, Reuters revealed that WLF had raised more than $500m in recent months and that the Trump family receives about 75% of crypto token sales.Trump’s pursuit of crypto riches and deregulation represents a big shift from his comments to Fox News in 2021, when he said that bitcoin, a very popular crypto currency, “seems like a scam”.View image in fullscreenIn July 2019, Trump posted that “Unregulated Crypto Assets can facilitate unlawful behavior, including drug trade”, and noted that their value was “highly volatile and based on thin air”.Now, Trump’s new pro-crypto policies have benefited big campaign donors who lead crypto firms as well as Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, who spent almost $300m to help elect Trump, and who boasts sizable crypto investments in bitcoin through his electric car firm Tesla and his other ventures. Though Trump and Musk have since fallen out, the mogul’s crypto fortunes seem to have improved due to the president’s deregulatory agenda.Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, is a real estate billionaire who helped found WLF, in which he has a stake; Trump’s two oldest sons, Eric and Don Jr, and Witkoff’s son Zach have played key roles promoting WLF in the Middle East and other places.Trump’s use of his Oval Office perch to increase his wealth through his burgeoning crypto businesses while his administration rapidly eases regulations is unprecedented and smacks of corruption, say scholars, many congressional Democrats and some Republicans.“To me, Trump’s crypto dealings seem pretty explicit,” Julian Zelizer, a Princeton University professor who focuses on political history, told the Guardian. “Policy decisions are being made regarding parts of the financial industry that are being done not to benefit the nation, but his own financial interests … It’s hard to imagine what he’s doing benefits the nation.”Rosenzweig stressed that “not only do Trump’s extravagant crypto ventures benefit him personally as his administration slashes crypto regulations and takes pro-crypto steps at the SEC; they also benefit his tech bro backers who will take full advantage of the end of regulatory enforcement”.In Congress, leading Democrats, including Richard Blumenthal, a senator from Connecticut, and Jamie Raskin, a representative from Maryland, in May announced separate inquiries by key panels in which they are ranking members into Trump’s crypto dealings, and attacked Trump for using his office to enrich himself via his crypto operations.“With his pay-for-access dinner, Trump put presidential access and influence on the auction block,” Blumenthal told the Guardian. “The scope and scale of Trump’s corruption is staggering – I’ll continue to demand answers.”Last month, too, the Democratic senator Jeff Merkley, from Oregon, and the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, introduced the “end crypto corruption” bill, which 22 other Democrats have endorsed.“Trump’s crypto schemes are the Mount Everest of corruption,” Merkley told the Guardian. “We must ban Trump-style crypto corruption so all elected federal officials – including the president, vice-president and members of Congress – cannot profit from shady crypto practices,” which his bill would curtail.Some former congressional Republicans are also incensed by Trump’s blatant use of his presidency to peddle $Trump. “Nobody should be allowed to use their public positions while in office to enrich themselves,” said ex-Republican congressman Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, who once chaired the House ethics panel. “A member of Congress would not be permitted to engage in the kind of memecoin activities which the president has been doing.”Trump and his family have dismissed critics concerns about the 22 May events and his other crypto ventures.Before the 22 May dinner, Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told reporters that the president would attend his crypto gala in his “personal time” and it was not a White House event, but declined to release names of the many anonymous and foreign attendees.To allay criticism, the Trump Organization said in January that Trump’s business interests, including his assets and investments, would be placed in a trust his children would manage and that the president wouldn’t be involved in decision-making or daily operations. Trump’s family also hired a lawyer as an ethics adviser.But those commitments have been dwarfed by Trump’s public embrace of his crypto ventures and strong deregulatory agenda. In March, for instance, Trump hosted the first-ever “crypto summit” at the White House, which drew a couple dozen industry bigwigs who heard Trump promise to end Biden’s “war on crypto”.Trump’s crypto critics worry that the president’s strong push for less industry regulation may create big problems: the crypto industry has been battered by some major scandals including ones involving North Korean hackers and has been plagued by concerns about industry’s lack of transparency and risks.For instance, a report last December by leading research firm Chainalysis found that North Korean hackers had stolen $1.34bn of cryptocurrency in 2024, a record total and double what they stole the year before.The report concluded that US and foreign analysts believe the stolen funds were diverted in North Korea to “finance its weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs”.Other crypto fraud schemes in the US have spurred loud alarms.In an annual report last September, the FBI revealed that fraud related to crypto businesses soared in 2023 with Americans suffering $5.6bn in losses, a 45% jump from the previous year.Sam Bankman-Fried, who founded the now bankrupt FTX crypto exchange, was sentenced to 25 years in prison in March 2024 by a New York judge for bilking customers out of $8bn.Nonetheless, a justice department memo in April announced it was closing a national cryptocurrency enforcement team that was established in 2022, which had brought major crypto cases against North Korean hackers and other crypto criminals.The memo stressed that the justice department was not a “digital assets regulator” and tried to tar the Biden administration for a “reckless strategy of regulation by prosecution”. The memo stated that a pro-crypto Trump executive order in January spurred the justice department’s policy shift.Ex-prosecutors and ethics watchdogs worry increasingly that crypto scandals and conflicts of interest will worsen as the Trump administration moves fast to ease crypto oversight at the justice department, the SEC and other agencies.Some of WLF’s high-profile crypto deals have involved overseas crypto firms which have had recent regulatory and legal problems in the US, fueling new concerns, watchdogs and ex-prosecutors say.View image in fullscreenOne lucrative deal raised eyebrows when WLF was tapped to play a central role in a $2bn investment by Abu Dhabi financial fund MGX that is backed by the United Arab Emirates in the world’s largest crypto exchange, Binance.As part of the deal, the Abu Dhabi fund bought $2bn of a WLF stablecoin, dubbed USD1, to invest in Binance. Stablecoins are a popular type of cryptocurrency that are often pegged to the dollar.The WLF deal comes after Binance in 2023 pleaded guilty to violating US money-laundering laws and other violations and the justice department fined it a whopping $4bn.Furthermore, Binance’s ex-CEO and founder, Changpeng Zhao, pleaded guilty in the US to violating the Bank Secrecy Act and failing to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering program.Zhao, who still owns 90% of Binance, served a four-month jail term last year.WLF’s $2bn deal was announced at an Abu Dhabi crypto conference on 1 May that drew Eric Trump two weeks before Trump’s visit to the UAE capital, sparking concerns of foreign influence and ethics issues.Increasing WLF’s ties further with Binance, the crypto exchange announced on 22 May that it had begun listing the stablecoin for trading purposes. Binance got some good news at the end of May, too, when the SEC announced the dismissal of a civil lawsuit it filed in 2023 against the exchange for misleading investors about surveillance controls and trading irregularities.Paul Pelletier, a former acting chief of the justice department’s fraud section, noted that SEC moves back in February “to emasculate its crypto enforcement efforts sent crypto fraudsters a welcome mat of impunity”.He added: “The recent dismissal of the SEC’s lawsuit against Binance for mishandling customer funds, days after it began listing the Trump family’s cryptocurrency on its exchange, seemed to be the natural consequence of such enforcement laxity. Victims be damned.”Other agency deregulatory moves that favor crypto interests can boost Trump’s own enterprises and his allies, but pose potential risks for ordinary investors, say legal scholars.Columbia law professor Richard Briffault noted that as part of the Trump administration’s wide-ranging and risky crypto deregulatory agenda which can benefit Trump’s own crypto ventures, the Department of Labor in late May nixed a Biden-era “extreme care” warning about 401K plans investing in crypto.“[The labor department] has rescinded the red light from the Biden years for 401K retirement plans, which is another sign of the Trump administration’s embrace of crypto,” Briffault said.Briffault, an expert on government ethics, has told the Guardian more broadly that Trump’s crypto ventures and his 22 May memecoin bash are “unprecedented”.“I don’t think there’s been anything like this in American history,” he said. “Trump is marketing access to himself as a way to profit his memecoin. People are paying to meet Trump and he’s the regulator-in-chief. It’s doubly corrupt.”In late May, in a new crypto business twist, the Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent of Truth Social, said it had sealed a deal to raise $2.5bn to be used to buy bitcoin, creating a reserve of the cryptocurrency.Meanwhile, Trump’s stablecoin fortunes and those of many industry allies could get boosts soon from a Senate stablecoin bill, dubbed the “genius act”, that’s poised to pass the Senate on Tuesday but which critics have said loosens regulatory controls in dangerous ways unless amended with consumer protections and other safeguards.Senators Merkley and Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, led unsuccessful efforts to amend the bill to thwart potential criminal abuses, protect consumers and prevent Trump from using his office to profit his crypto businesses.“The ‘genius act’ fails to prevent sanctions evasion and other illicit activity and lets big tech giants like Elon Musk’s X issue their own private money – all without the guardrails needed to keep Americans safe from scams, junk fees or another financial crash,” Warren told the Guardian.“Donald Trump has turned the presidency into a crypto cash machine,” Warren said. The Genius act, Warren stressed, should have “prohibited the President AND his family from profiting from any stablecoin project.”More broadly, Kedric Payne, the general counsel and ethics director at the Campaign Legal Center, said: “President Trump’s financial stakes in the crypto industry at the same time that he is determining how the government will regulate the industry is unprecedented in modern history. This is precisely the type of conflict of interest that ethics laws and norms are designed to stop.” More

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      America had open borders until 1924. Racism and corporate greed changed that | Daniel Mendiola

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      The US immigration system is a scam that dehumanizes people for profit. Communities across the country have had enough.The protests in Los Angeles have invited a long overdue conversation about the true nature of the US immigration system. While the immediate catalysts for the protests were ramped up Ice raids attempting to meet Donald Trump’s arbitrary deportation quotas, the protests spring from a deeper history.In reality, the protests reflect decades-long frustrations with an abusive immigration system designed to dehumanize immigrants, weaken workers and keep wealth flowing upward. Ice’s recent tactics were only the last straw.Excellent articles have shed light on why Los Angeles in particular, with generations of immigrant communities and a history of immigrant rights movements, has emerged as an epicenter of resistance. Whether immigrants themselves, or families, neighbors, coworkers, or friends of immigrants, people in these communities have long experienced the trauma of a system that renders people “illegal” just for doing basic things like getting a job. Similar statements could be made for other major sites of protest such as New Jersey, New York, Chicago, Denver and Houston.While much of the news coverage has turned toward the US president’s mobilization of the military and what that means for his growing authoritarian tendencies, this is only half the story. To fully understand what is at stake in the protests, we can’t lose sight of the thing that drove people to protest in the first place: a violently unfair immigration system that is an affront to us all.It is worth noting that this immigration system is not an original component of US governance. Whereas the first government under the US constitution formed in 1789, there were no federal immigration laws until the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and even this law was limited in the sense that it banned a specific class of immigrants. The US did not have closed borders until the Immigration Act of 1924, which established national origins quotas across the board.The primary justifications for these early immigration laws were xenophobia, eugenics, and overt racism. By the 1990s, however, multinational corporations understood that closed borders – especially combined with free trade agreements freeing multinational companies to shop around for “cheap” workers, while at the same time constraining the options of workers to move around and look for better jobs – were a powerful weapon in their arsenal to squeeze ever more profit out of global supply chains. While cleverly hidden behind discourses of “security” and “sovereignty,” our immigration system is actually a scam rigged to guarantee an upward flow of wealth at the cost of human rights.The North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) illustrates this dynamic. Signed in 1992, Nafta created a free trade zone among Mexico, Canada and the US, specifically making it easier for goods, capital and corporations to move freely while conspicuously ignoring the movement of workers. Far from an oversight, as the scholar Bill Ong Hing has written, this was the whole point of the agreement.While no US labor unions or other human rights representatives had a seat at the table, the US advisory committee for trade and negotiations – composed almost entirely of representatives of multinational corporations – led the negotiations, ensuring that the agreement followed corporate interests. The drafters wanted easier access to cheaper Mexican labor, but they understood that if Mexicans had the same rights as companies to cross borders in search of better opportunities, then the “invisible hand” of supply and demand might make this labor less cheap. Accordingly, immigration restrictions helped to rig the game. In line with these interests, the Clinton administration, in power when the agreement took effect in 1994, not only went along with the plan to leave immigrants out of the deal, but also doubled down on closed borders with harsh new measures to restrict immigration through the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) of 1996.Ultimately, Nafta and the IIRIRA worked hand-in-hand to trap Mexican workers and give artificial negotiating advantages to multinational corporations. The mechanism made sure that Mexicans would have to either stay put on their side of the border and tolerate whatever working conditions were available, or live without legal status if they did “vote with their feet” to seek better opportunities in the US. In either case, they were far more vulnerable to exploitation. Unsurprisingly, this harmed workers all around, especially Mexicans, leading to stagnant wages, harsh working conditions, and irregular migration that forced people into an exploitative informal economy, even as productivity and corporate profits soared.Significantly, Nafta was not an isolated case, but rather an embodiment of how the US immigration system enshrines this major power imbalance between labor and capital. In fact, the same Clinton administration and private sector advisory committee that oversaw the implementation Nafta also played a key role in creating the World Trade Organization in 1995 following similar principles. Today, multinational corporations continue to move freely around the world, while people seeking a better life continue to face restrictive borders enforced by state violence.At the same time, we as taxpayers pay increasingly absurd sums of money for the violent border security measures that keep this system in place. The American Immigration Council has calculated that since 1994, the annual budget for the US Border Patrol has risen from $400m dollars to more than $7bn in 2024 – an increase of over 700% even when factoring in inflation. They further estimate that since the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2003, the federal government has spent more than $400bn dollars on the various agencies that carry out immigration enforcement.Under the current Trump administration, these numbers are set to soar even further. In the same “big, beautiful” spending bill that is already facing backlash for slashing public programs while offering enormous tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans, a massive increase in spending for Trump’s signature deportation plan is included. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that this will add $168bn to the deficit over the next five years – already an extreme amount – though the Cato Institute has noted that the CBO calculation left out key variables. In fact, Cato finds that the number could actually be closer to $1tn.In short, our immigration system is a massive grift. It divides communities, separates families, hurts workers, and subjects people to state violence for doing normal things like working at an Italian restaurant or going to church on Mother’s Day. And we as taxpayers subsidize the companies profiting on this abusive system.As I have previously written, the Trump administration has distinguished itself from previous governments by intentionally targeting legal immigrants. However, as protesters flood the streets with signs saying “No One is Illegal,” the deeper significance of this protest movement becomes clear. The message is that someone’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness shouldn’t depend on their immigration status. And it certainly shouldn’t depend on the whims of multinational corporations who have essentially coopted violent border enforcement for their own profits.As a final thought, I think people are also tired of all the gaslighting. Despite the barrage of official rhetoric claiming that tough immigration measures are for our own good – that they make our communities safer, that they protect jobs, that we shouldn’t feel bad because immigrants don’t deserve to be treated as we would want to be treated ourselves – we know from both academic analysis and our lived experiences that these are all vicious lies, and the policies that spring from these lies have deadly consequences for real human beings. For me, the recent protests demonstrate that communities across the country are standing up to reject these lies.As I think about the significance of this movement, I am reminded of a passage from Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s 2020 book The Undocumented Americans. Reflecting on the power of storytelling as a counterweight to the deluge of dehumanizing assaults immigrants face on a daily basis, she concludes: “What if this is how, in the face of so much sacrilege and slander, we reclaim our dead?”People are protesting because they are fed up. And they are right to be.

      Daniel Mendiola is a professor of Latin American history and migration studies at Vassar College More

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      Trump to leave G7 summit early and return to Washington – as it happened

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      Donald Trump will leave the G7 summit early and return to Washington DC on Monday, the White House said about an hour after the president said people in Iran’s capital Tehran should evacuate immediately.Trump’s evacuation warning on Truth Social followed a warning from the Israeli defense forces issued a formal evacuation order to residents of Tehran warning them of the imminent bombing of “military infrastructure”.Trump was originally supposed to arrive back in the US in the early hours of Wednesday morning, according to people familiar with the matter.That’s it for today. My colleagues are continuing coverage of the developments in the Middle East here.Here’s what happened today:

      Donald Trump is leaving the G7 Summit early and return to Washington DC on Monday. “You probably see what I see and I have to be back as soon as I can,” Trump said in an apparent nod to the intensifying conflict in the Middle East.

      President Trump has directed national security staff to convene in the situation room, both CNN and Fox News are reporting.

      Trump says ‘everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran’ and that Iran “should have signed the ‘deal’”.

      The Republican-run Senate Finance Committee published a modified text of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act that proposes Medicaid reforms and a new federal deduction for state and local taxes.

      Japan’s Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba met with President Trump on the sidelines of the G7 meeting on Monday to discuss import auto tariffs Washington imposed on Japan, Reuters is reporting.

      European leaders at G7 trying to bring Iran back to negotiating table. But Iran is demanding a joint ceasefire with Israel, while Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, is resisting the move, and Donald Trump praised the Israeli campaign, suggesting he did not yet believe it was time to relieve the pressure on Iran.

      Britain and the United States should finalize “very soon” the implementation of a trade deal agreed last month, Keir Starmer has said ahead of a meeting with Donald Trump in Canada.

      The US justice department has asked a federal appeals court to dismiss a lawsuit challenging race-conscious admissions at the US Naval Academy after the elite military school said it changed its policy under Donald Trump. The Naval Academy disclosed in March that it was no longer considering race or ethnicity in its admissions decisions following directives from Trump and defense secretary Pete Hegseth

      US House speaker Mike Johnson said he has postponed his planned 22 June trip to Israel to address its parliament, as an escalating battle between Israel and Iran has raised fears of a broader conflict.

      The American Bar Association has sued the Trump administration, seeking an order that would bar the White House from pursuing what the ABA called a campaign of intimidation against major law firms. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington DC, said the administration violated the US Constitution in a series of executive orders targeting law firms over their past clients and lawyers they hired.

      Minnesota shooting suspect had more than 45 names of elected officials, prosecutors say. Reuters reports that notebooks recovered from Boelter’s car, as well as the home where he had been staying, showed that he had meticulously planned the attacks for some time. He had the names and, in some cases, home addresses for more than 45 elected officials – “mostly or all Democrats” – according to an affidavit from an FBI agent.

      The suspect in the assassination of a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband this weekend drove to the homes of two other state politicians before he succeeded in killing one of the targets of his carefully planned attack, federal authorities said today.

      A federal judge has said she would issue a brief extension of an order temporarily blocking Donald Trump’s plan to bar foreign nationals from entering the US to study at Harvard University while she decides whether to issue a longer-term injunction.

      Trump once again complained about removing Russia from what was once the G8. Russia used to be a part of the exclusive club of major economies but was kicked out following its 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.

      Trump says Iran wants to talk about de-escalating hostilities with Israel, and he advises that they should do so immediately “before it’s too late”.

      Iran has been urgently signaling that it seeks an end to hostilities and resumption of talks over its nuclear programs, sending messages to Israel and the US via Arab intermediaries, the Wall Street Journal reports.

      The Trump Organization has launched a self-branded mobile service and a $499 smartphone, dubbed Trump Mobile, signaling a new effort to court conservative consumers with a wireless service positioned as an alternative to major telecom providers. The new mobile venture will include call centers based in the United States and phones made in America, the organization said.
      Trump aide Alex Pfeiffer said Israeli news reports that indicate US fighter jets are participating in airstrikes on Iran are not true.“This is not true,” Pfeiffer posted on X. “American forces are maintaining their defensive posture, and that has not changed. We will defend American interests.”“You probably see what I see and I have to be back as soon as I can,” Trump said in an apparent nod to the intensifying conflict in the Middle East, when asked why he’s cutting short his G7 trip and heading back to Washington tonight.President Trump has directed national security staff to convene in the situation room, both CNN and Fox News are reporting, citing a White House official. Trump will be leaving the G7 Summit in Canada early.There are few other details available.Donald Trump will leave the G7 summit early and return to Washington DC on Monday, the White House said about an hour after the president said people in Iran’s capital Tehran should evacuate immediately.Trump’s evacuation warning on Truth Social followed a warning from the Israeli defense forces issued a formal evacuation order to residents of Tehran warning them of the imminent bombing of “military infrastructure”.Trump was originally supposed to arrive back in the US in the early hours of Wednesday morning, according to people familiar with the matter.The scientist responsible for overseeing the CDC team that collects data on COVID-19 and RSV hospitalizations resigned on Monday.Dr. Fiona Havers told colleagues in an email that she no longer had confidence the data would be used “objectively or evaluated with appropriate scientific rigor to make evidence-based vaccine policy decisions,” according to Reuters.She resigned before a planned meeting of a new vaccine panel put in place by Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. after he fired all 17 members of the CDC’s independent vaccine advisory panel. Kennedy also dropped a recommendation to get the Covid shot for healthy children and pregnant women.A Health and Human Services spokesperson told Reuters that the agency is committed to “gold standard science.”Trump says everyone should evacuate Tehran and that Iran “should have signed the ‘deal’”.“I told them to sign,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “What a shame, and waste of human life. IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON. I said it over and over again! Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran!”Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said he thinks he and Trump will be able to wrap up a new economic and security deal between the US and Canada within 30 days. His office did not say whether that means he had accepted Trump’s earlier emphasis on tariffs.Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he ordered the deployment of additional defensive capabilities to the Middle East over the weekend “to enhance our defensive posture in the region,” according to a statement he posted on X on Monday. He did not disclose what military capabilities he sent to the region.“Protecting U.S. forces is our top priority and these deployments are intended to enhance our defensive posture in the region,” Hegseth posted.The Republican-run Senate Finance Committee published a modified text of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act that proposes Medicaid reforms and a new federal deduction for state and local taxes.The proposed changes will now be debated by Senate Republicans.Among the proposed changes are:

      An end to the $7,500 tax credit on new electric vehicles 180 days after the law is enacted. And an end to the $4,000 used-vehicle EV tax credit 90 days after the law is passed.

      A full phase-out of solar and wind energy tax credits by 2028, but an extension of the incentive for Trump administration-favored hydropower, nuclear and geothermal energy to 2036.
      Minnesota senator Ann Rest says she is “so grateful” for the work of law enforcement after learning that the shooting suspect, Vance Boelter, was allegedly parked outside her home before going to former Rep. Melissa Hortman’s home.“I have been made aware that the shooting suspect was parked near my home early Saturday morning,” Rest said in a statement. “I am so grateful for the heroic work of the New Hope Police Department and its officers. Their quick action saved my life.I am also thankful for the work of state and local law enforcement to apprehend the suspect before he could take any more lives.While I am thankful the suspect has been apprehended, I grieve for the loss of Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, and I am praying for the recovery of John and Yvette Hoffman.”At the G7 summit, Trump said a new economic deal with Canada was possible but that he wanted tariffs to be a part of it, according to Reuters.“I have a tariff concept. [Canadian Prime Minister] Mark [Carney] has a different concept … we’re going to see if we can get to the bottom of it,” Trump said when meeting Carney on the sidelines of a G7 summit in Alberta. “I’m a tariff person.”Canada is the top supplier of steel and aluminum to the United States and currently faces tariffs imposed by Trump on both metals as well as on auto exports.“We are in the middle of a discussion – we are not at the end of the discussion. Our position is that we should have no tariffs on Canadian exports to the United States,” Kirsten Hillman, Canada’s ambassador to Washington, told reporters after Carney met Trump.“We will continue to talk until we find a deal that is the best deal we can achieve for Canada,” Hillman said.Japan’s Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba met with President Trump on the sidelines of the G7 meeting on Monday to discuss import auto tariffs Washington imposed on Japan, Reuters is reporting.Tokyo is urging Washington to drop the tariffs because they threaten to slow Japan’s economy, the Japanese government said.Ishiba wants Trump to end the 25% auto tariff he imposed on Japanese cars and a 24% reciprocal tariff paused until July 9. More

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      Trump news at a glance: Axing Russia from G8 was a mistake, says Trump before leaving summit early

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      Donald Trump has told G7 leaders gathered for its summit in Canada that removing Russia from the former G8 was a mistake, and is lobbying for the country to be readmitted. Russia was thrown out of the group after it invaded Crimea in 2014.Trump’s defence of Russian leader Vladimir Putin came a day before he was scheduled to meet his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on the fringes of the summit.However, that meeting appears unlikely to go ahead after the White House said in a statement that the US president was leaving the summit early due to ongoing developments in the Middle East.Here are the key stories at a glance:Trump repeats call for Russia to be readmitted to G7Donald Trump has displayed his disdain for the collective western values supposedly championed by the G7 group of industrialised countries by again demanding that Russia be readmitted to the group. He also said the war in Ukraine would not have happened if Moscow had been kept in the club. Trump also announced he is leaving the G7 to return to Washington citing the conflict between Israel and Iran.Read the full storyIce agents detain US citizen as LA immigration raids continue: ‘It’s racial profiling’US immigration raids continued to target southern California communities in recent days, including at a popular flea market and in a Los Angeles suburb where US citizens were detained.Read the full storyTrump promises expanded immigration crackdown after protestsDonald Trump has promised an expanded immigration crackdown in several large Democratic-led cities as apparent vengeance for “No Kings” protests against his administration on Saturday that drew millions of people – despite questions over whether the agency in charge of the effort is set to run out of money.Separately, a prominent Spanish-language journalist in metro Atlanta who frequently covers Immigration and customs enforcement raids, will be turned over to Ice detention after being arrested by local police while covering the “No Kings” protests.Read the full storyTrump administration notches first big win in assault on higher educationThe Trump administration scored its most significant legal victory in its sweeping effort to reshape American higher education when a federal judge on Monday dismissed a lawsuit brought by faculty groups over the government’s cuts to Columbia University’s federal funding.Read the full storyDemocratic senator proposes curbing Trump’s war powers amid Israel-Iran conflictAs Iran and Israel exchange missile attacks for a fourth day, Democrats in Washington are moving swiftly to reassert congressional authority over US military engagement in the region amid fears of American involvement in a broader conflict.Read the full storySuspect in lawmaker killing visited other legislators’ homesA man accused of dressing up as a police officer and shooting two Minnesota state lawmakers in their homes – killing one and her husband – also showed up at the houses of two other legislators the same night intending to assassinate them too, authorities revealed on Monday.Read the full storyTrump Organization unveils $499 gold phoneDonald Trump has launched a mobile phone service and $499 gold smartphone, the latest monetization of his presidency by a family business empire now run by his sons. The Trump Organization unveiled Trump Mobile with a $47.45 monthly plan – both the service name and price referencing Trump as the 47th president.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      A federal judge ruled on Monday that the Trump administration’s termination of more than $1bn in research grants at the National Institutes of Health was “void and illegal”.

      Jane Goodall chimpanzee conservation project in Tanzania hit by USAID cut
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 15 June 2025. More

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      Trump and other Republicans mock Democrats after Minnesota lawmaker killings

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      Utah senator Mike Lee sounded like a lot of other Republican politicians after the fatal shootings of Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota this weekend.“These hateful attacks have no place in Utah, Minnesota, or anywhere in America. Please join me in condemning this senseless violence, and praying for the victims and their families,” he wrote on Twitter/X.That was from his official account. On his personal X account, he posted a series of memes concerning the attacks that left former Minnesota state house speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark dead, and state senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette seriously injured.“This is what happens When Marxists don’t get their way,” Lee posted, along with a photo of the alleged gunman, who was arrested on Sunday. He followed that up by posting the photo and writing “Nightmare on Waltz Street”, an apparent misspelling of Tim Walz, the state’s Democratic governor who became nationally known last year as Kamala Harris’s running mate.Such was the split screen that played out among Republicans after the Saturday morning shootings, which were the latest in a wave of political violence across the United States that has most recently seen two assassination attempts targeting Donald Trump as he campaigned for president, a flamethrower attack on a rally for Israeli hostages in Colorado and a slew of threats targeting judges who have ruled against the US president.While many in the GOP condemned the attacks in Minnesota, others have used it as an opportunity to poke fun at their Democratic opponents, or suggest that they somehow instigated the violence. Experts warn it may be the latter statements that reach the bigger audience.“I think there’s no question that these messages are representative of the modern GOP more so than any stock thoughts and prayers tweet that a staffer puts up,” said Jon Lewis, a research fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism.Democrats have been unequivocal in condemning the shootings, as have Congress’s top Republicans. “Such horrific political violence has no place in our society, and every leader must unequivocally condemn it,” said House speaker, Mike Johnson. Senate majority leader, John Thune, said he was “horrified at the events unfolding in Minnesota” and that “political violence has no place in our nation”.Minnesota’s Republican party condemned the shooting, as did the state’s entire congressional delegation.But when it comes to Trump and his most vociferous allies on social media, the message is more mixed. Trump initially condemned the attacks, saying on Saturday: “Such horrific violence will not be tolerated in the United States of America. God Bless the great people of Minnesota, a truly great place!”But the following day, he struck a different tone, telling ABC News that the shooting was “a terrible thing” but calling Walz “a terrible governor” and “a grossly incompetent person”. “I may call him, I may call other people too,” he added. On Monday afternoon, Walz’s office said Trump had not called.Meanwhile, on X, prominent rightwing figures were quick to promote conspiracy theories about what happened. Elon Musk, the erstwhile Trump sidekick who runs Tesla, shared a tweet from a pro-Trump account that read, in part: “The left has become a full blown domestic terrorist organization.”“The far left is murderously violent” Musk wrote in his reply, which Lee shared, adding: “Fact check: TRUE”.Laura Loomer, the rightwing extremist who is said to have played a role in encouraging Trump to fire national security officials, alleged the suspect had ties to the “No Kings” protests that took place nationwide on Saturday, and that Walz knew him.The spread of outlandish falsehoods and conspiracy theories on social media has been a hallmark of the atmosphere Trump has brought to US politics over the past decade, and Lewis believes the country is now at a point where such fabrications have more prominence than politicians’ carefully written statements.“The real problem now is that nothing matters, and I think that has been realized by the mainstream right in this country. There are no consequences for peddling disinformation or conspiracies,” he said.Robert Pape, director of the University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats, said that the United States had entered an era of “violent populism”, and if Democrats and Republicans want to stop it, they need to issue joint statements speaking out against atrocities like what happened in Minnesota.“You’ve got to start having some agreement here on negotiating these rules of the road, so to speak, because if each side continues to simply only accept unconditional surrender by the other, well, then just like in Ukraine, you’re not going to end this thing very, very soon, and things will just escalate,” Pape said. More