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      Anti-Trump conservative Don Bacon will not seek re-election to Nebraska congressional seat eyed by Dems

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      Republican congressman and vocal Donald Trump critic Don Bacon is reportedly not going to seek re-election during the midterm races in 2026.The conservative politician represents a swing district in Nebraska that includes Omaha, and word of his plans prompted Democratic figures to signal optimism that they could take the seat as the party tries to regain a House majority it has not had since 2023.Bacon’s decision was first reported on Friday by the outlets Punchbowl News and NOTUS before being confirmed on Saturday by the Washington Post. NOTUS and the Post cited anonymous sources familiar with the situation, with the former of those adding that Bacon would make a formal announcement in the coming days.While Bacon had not immediately commented on the reports, his verified social media account did engage with multiple posts expressing “good riddance” to him. He called the author of one such post “an idiot” and told another who claimed he was a thinly veiled Democrat that he was “the real Republican”, having supported the party since he was 13 in 1976.The second congressional district of Nebraska that Bacon represents voted for Kamala Harris when she lost to Trump during November’s White House race. It also voted for Joe Biden when he took the Oval Office from Trump four years earlier. And in May, Omaha elected its first-ever Black mayor: John Ewing Jr, who defeated three-term Republican incumbent Jean Stothert.Bacon’s politics have come to reflect those realities in his district to some extent. The retired US air force brigadier general in May demanded the removal of Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, after he shared information about military strikes on Yemen in a Signal messaging app group chat that inadvertently included the editor of the Atlantic.Though the president chose to keep Hegseth in place despite the so-called Signalgate scandal, Bacon told the Post in an interview that he “would have been fired” at any point in his military career for doing what Hegseth did.Separately, in a Post opinion column, Bacon criticized the brutal job and spending cuts that the Trump administration has inflicted within the federal government since the president retook office in January. He filed a bill aiming to hand Congress control over tariffs rather than continue leaving that power with the president as Trump upended financial markets by imposing substantial levies on some of the US’s largest trading partners.Furthermore, he stood as the lone House Republican to vote against a measure that would take Trump’s executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America” and make it law. “I’m not into doing silly stuff,” Bacon, who joined Congress in January 2017, wrote on social media. “It is sophomoric.”And he has said he and his family endured threats after he opposed Ohio Republican congressman Jim Jordan’s unsuccessful 2023 bid to become House speaker, which at the time had been endorsed by Trump in between his two presidencies.“I’d rather be a defender of the traditional conservative values than just be a team player,” Bacon said to Omaha’s KMTV news station in May. “I think – a team going in the wrong direction, you need somebody to speak up and try to stand for what’s right.”A statement distributed by Democratic congressional campaign committee spokesperson Madison Andrus on Friday said that Bacon’s foregoing re-election marked a “vote of no-confidence for House Republicans and their electoral prospects”.“The writing has been on the wall for months,” Andrus’s statement also said.In a separate statement, the Nebraska Democratic party’s chair, Jane Kleeb, said her party’s prospective candidates “truly represent the values of the district” Bacon’s seat is in.“We are ready for change,” Kleeb said. More

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      ‘It’s very concerning’: conservatives react to Zohran Mamdani’s New York primary showing

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      He is the democratic socialist who has been described as a gift to the Republican party.Zohran Mamdani’s stunning showing in the Democratic primary election for mayor of New York this week was seen by some as perfect fodder to whip up a new “red scare”. Donald Trump called him “a 100% Communist Lunatic”, writing on social media: “We’ve had Radical Lefties before, but this is getting a little ridiculous.”But at a gathering of religious conservatives in Washington on Friday, the first attendee interviewed by the Guardian expressed admiration for what Mamdani had pulled off in beating establishment favorite Andrew Cuomo.Kevin Abplanalp, who has worked on political campaigns, said: “He ran a fantastic ground game. I was very impressed with his grassroots work. Cuomo was a terrible candidate so it’s a combination of a repudiation of Cuomo and excitement over a younger guy with energy and different ideas.”Abplanalp, 49, executive director of the group Coalition for Liberty, added: “He’s a bit too socialistic for my taste but it is New York. They’ve had Marxists before. It is what it is.”Mamdani was endorsed by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, a leading progressive some believe could now be encouraged to mount a bid for the White House in 2028. But that prospect was met with complacency and ridicule at the Freedom & Faith Coalition’s Road to Majority conference.Abplanalp commented: “That is hilarious. I don’t think she has the requisite experience. We’ve had other presidents who don’t have the requisite experience: Jimmy Carter for one. Do people want to have another train wreck of someone that just talks a good game? There’s nothing on her résumé that screams executive capability.”The annual gathering was addressed by senators from Pennsylvania, Ohio and Oklahoma along with Virginia’a governor, Glenn Youngkin, and Trump’s border “czar”, Tom Homan. In the eyes of many delegates, Mamdani’s surprise victory was evidence of liberal eccentricity in New York that will not fly elsewhere.Andrea Moore, 55, from Virginia, said: “I’m a little surprised but at the same time it is New York.” She told an anecdote about an Uber driver who was upset about New York potentially giving people who illegally crossed the border “$2,000 a month of taxpayer money and the right to vote immediately”.As for Ocasio-Cortez running for president, she remarked: “I don’t think I’d fear it but I’d probably laugh about it.”Steven Perkins, 74, who is retired and from South Dakota, said: “It’s not just that we’re conservatives but we know our communities. You get out of the big core cities and people are pretty conservative and traditional and they aren’t ready for all of this much change to occur. There’s this big reaction. The Democrats better wake up.”Mamdani, 33, combined charisma and social media savvy with a policy agenda focused on New York’s affordability crisis. His plans include freezing rent for many residents, free bus service and universal childcare paid for by new taxes on the wealthy.Some at the Road to Majority conference found this affront to capitalism. Darin Moser, 56, from Mount Airy, North Carolina, said: “It’s very concerning. The United States was built on freedom and free markets and we need to stay on that because that’s what’s made us successful and the most successful nation in the world.”One attendee, who did not wish to be named, blamed the media for making socialism seem like the answer to their problems. He said: “If you repeat anything enough times people are going to believe it but it’s not been proven. Socialism or communism has proven to fail every time it’s been put into play. It comes around newly clothed but it’s the same worn-out policy.”The ascent of Mamdani, who would be New York’s first Muslim mayor, triggered an onslaught of Islamaphobic attacks across social media, including from some Republican members of Congress. Centrist Democrats remained nervous about backing him, fearful that he could damage the party in swing states.But in the view of Ronald Wilcox, 63, from Fairfax county in Virginia, Democrats have already embraced extremism and lost touch with reality. “The left has no limit to what they will vote for,” he said. “I trust no Democrat because there’s no limit to how bad a person can be and they’ll still support him.”Could the US ever elect a socialist president? Wilcox, who works in direct mail, replied: “I won’t say never but the mood of America, the new generation, is embracing Trump. The young generation is moving to conservative, the Asians are moving to conservative, the Latinos are moving to conservative because we share their values.” More

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      US Senate votes down resolution to restrict Trump from escalating Iran war

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      Senate Democrats failed on Friday to get a war-powers resolution passed to limit Donald Trump’s ability to single-handedly escalate the war with Iran. The resolution, “to direct the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities against the Islamic Republic of Iran”, was voted down 53-47.The vote on the resolution, introduced by the Democratic senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, split along mainly partisan lines. One Republican, Rand Paul of Kentucky, voted for it; one Democrat, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, voted against it.“Congress declares war,” Kaine said in a speech on the Senate floor. He stressed that the framers of the US constitution in 1787 were so wary of giving the power to start wars to one person that they did not even entrust it to George Washington, the first commander-in-chief.“They decided that war was too big a decision for one person,” Kaine said. “And so they wrote a constitution that said the United States should not be at war without a vote of Congress.”The measure would have compelled Trump to seek authorization from Congress before taking any further military action.Trump ordered airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities on 22 June. This directly followed Israel launching attacks on Iran, and Iran retaliating. Trump said that the US bombardment “totally obliterated” key nuclear enrichment facilities and deemed the mission a success, although some initial reports said the damage was minimal. Iran condemned the attacks.Trump claimed on Friday that Iran had halted its nuclear ambitions after the bombings. But, he said, he would “absolutely” continue to attack the country’s nuclear sites if he believed it was once again enriching uranium.“Time will tell,” Trump said at the White House. “But I don’t believe that they’re going to go back into nuclear anytime soon.”Later on Friday, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, rebuked Trump on social media. “If President Trump is genuine about wanting a deal, he should put aside the disrespectful and unacceptable tone towards Iran’s Supreme Leader, Grand Ayatollah Khamenei, and stop hurting his millions of heartfelt followers”, Araghchi wrote on X.“The Great and Powerful Iranian People, who showed the world that the Israeli regime had NO CHOICE but to RUN to ‘Daddy’ to avoid being flattened by our Missiles, do not take kindly to Threats and Insults”, Iran’s top diplomat added, in something approximating Trump’s own social media style. “If Illusions lead to worse mistakes, Iran will not hesitate to unveil its Real Capabilities, which will certainly END any Delusion about the Power of Iran.” More

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      Trump brings on Angolan journalist to praise him at White House event to mark Rwanda-DRC peace agreement – live

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      Donald Trump hosted top diplomats from Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo for the signing of a peace agreement between the two countries on Friday. The African nations have been in a conflict since 2021 that has led to the deaths and displacement of thousands.While Trump called the peace agreement “a glorious triumph”, the war reportedly shows little signs of abating on the ground, according to a report by NBC earlier this month.Trump has touted the US’s role as a peacemaker and said the agreement today was ushered through by Massad Boulos, a senior adviser for Africa for the State Department and the father-in-law of his daughter Tiffany Trump. The president said on Friday that the US stands to get “a lot of the mineral rights from the Congo” for its efforts.The event, which took place at the White House, kicked off with an unusual start. Trump asked Karoline Leavitt, his press secretary, to introduce a friend. Leavitt said she knew a reporter from the “continent of Africa”, who had a “story to share”. Trump then invited the reporter to stand next him, saying “Why don’t you come up here and talk, so they can see.”The reporter is Hariana Veras, who works for the national broadcaster of Angola. Veras praised Trump for his work on the peace agreement and said that African presidents have told her he should be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.When Veras was done speaking, Trump told her that Leavitt had said she was beautiful. He then added: “You are beautiful … I wish I had more reporters like you”.Immediately after, the White House clipped a video of Veras’s comments and posted it to its social media account on X.Federal agents appear to have blasted their way into a residential home in Huntington Park, California. A video released by the local NBC news station, shows what appear to be border patrol agents setting up an explosive device near the house and then detonating it – causing a window to be shattered. Then around a dozen agents charged toward the home.Jenny Ramirez, who lives in the house with her one-year-old and six-year-old kids, told NBC through tears that it was one of the loudest explosions she heard in her life.“I told them, ‘you guys didn’t have to do this, you scared by son, my baby,’” Ramirez said.Ramirez said she and her children are all US citizens. Apparently, the agents were searching for Ramirez’s boyfriend who was reportedly involved in a car crash with a truck carrying federal agents last week. He also lives in the home and is a US citizen, according to NBC.

      Donald Trump has abruptly cut off trade talks with Canada over its new digital services tax coming into effect on Monday that will impact US technology firms and said that he would set a new tariff rate on Canadian goods within the next week.

      Trump said he had not ruled out attacking Iran again and said he has abandoned plans to drop sanctions on Tehran.

      The supreme court, in a 6-3 ruling, delivered Trump a major victory by ruling that individual district court judges lack the power to issue nationwide injunctions, which Trump has complained have blocked federal government policies nationwide including his executive order purporting to end the right to automatic birthright citizenship.

      Speaking from the bench, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the decision “a travesty for the rule of law” and “an open invitation for the government to bypass the Constitution” in a scathing dissent.

      Trump called the ruling “a monumental victory for the Constitution, the separation of powers, and the rule of law in striking down the excessive use of nationwide injunctions interfering with the normal functions of the executive branch”. He said his administration “can now promptly file to proceed” with policies that had been enjoined nationwide. One of these cases would be ending birthright citizenship, he says, “which now comes to the fore”.

      US attorney general Pam Bondi said the birthright citizenship question will “most likely” be decided by the supreme court in October but said today’s ruling still “indirectly impacts every case in this country”, which the administration is “thrilled” about.

      United Nations secretary-general António Guterres said that the US-backed Israeli aid operation in Gaza is “inherently unsafe”, giving a blunt and grave assessment: “It’s killing people.” Guterres said UN-led humanitarian efforts are being “strangled”, aid workers themselves are starving and Israel – as the occupying power – is required to agree to and facilitate aid deliveries into and throughout the Palestinian enclave.

      Guterres’s intervention followed calls earlier today from Médecins Sans Frontières for the scheme to be immediately dismantled and for Israel to end its siege on Gaza, calling the Israeli-US food distribution scheme “slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid”. Israeli forces have repeatedly opened fire on crowds heading toward desperately needed food, killing hundreds of starving Palestinian people in recent weeks. The Israeli military has launched an investigation into possible war crimes following growing evidence that troops have deliberately fired at Palestinian civilians gathering to receive aid in Gaza.

      The Trump administration is planning to deport Kilmar Ábrego García for a second time, but does not plan to send him back to El Salvador, where he was wrongly deported in March, a lawyer for the administration told a judge yesterday. It is not clear when the deportation might occur or whether it would happen before the criminal case accusing him of smuggling migrants into the United States is complete. The justice department said there are no “imminent plans” to remove Ábrego García from the United States.

      The supreme court ruled in favor of Christian and Muslim parents in Maryland who sued to keep their elementary school children out of certain classes when storybooks with LGBT characters are read in a landmark case involving the intersection of religion and LGBT rights. The justices in a 6-3 ruling overturned a lower court’s refusal to require Montgomery County’s public schools to provide an option to opt out of these classes. Our story is here.

      The supreme court also ruled against challengers to a Texas law that requires pornographic websites to verify the age of users in an effort to protect minors after the adult entertainment industry argued that the measure violates the free speech rights of adults. Story here.

      The supreme court also preserved a key element of the Obamacare law that helps guarantee that health insurers cover preventive care such as cancer screenings at no cost to patients. Read more here.
      As well as abruptly cutting off trade talks with Canada over its new tax that will impact US technology firms, Trump said that he would set a new tariff rate on Canadian goods within the next week.“We will let Canada know the Tariff that they will be paying to do business with the United States of America within the next seven day period,” he wrote on Truth Social.The move plunges US relations with its second-largest trading partner back into chaos after a period of relative calm – only last week Canadian prime minister Mark Carney said he had agreed with Trump that their two nations should try to wrap up a new economic and security deal within 30 days.Canada is the US’s second-largest trading partner after Mexico, buying $349.4bn of US goods last year and exporting $412.7bn to the US, according to US Census Bureau data.In Trump’s surprise announcement that he was terminating trade talks with Canada, he accused Ottawa of “copying the European Union” with an “egregious” digital services tax on US tech firms.He wrote on Truth Social: “They are obviously copying the European Union, which has done the same thing, and is currently under discussion with us, also. Based on this egregious Tax, we are hereby terminating ALL discussions on Trade with Canada, effective immediately.”We’ve yet to hear Canadian PM Mark Carney’s reaction to Trump’s outburst, which imperils a trading relationship that, according to the office of the US trade representative, totalled about $762bn last year.The tax, which will take effect on 30 June and be applied retroactively from 2022, will impact both domestic and international companies, meaning American giants Amazon, Google, Meta, Airbnb and Uber will have to start payments from Monday.Last week Ottawa refused to delay the tax in the face of mounting pressure and opposition from the Trump administration during trade negotiations.At the press conference earlier, Donald Trump sharply criticized Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, dropped plans to lift sanctions on Iran and said he would consider bombing Iran again if Tehran is enriching uranium to worrisome levels.Trump reacted sternly to Khamenei’s first remarks after a 12-day conflict with Israel that ended when the US launched strikes last weekend against Iranian nuclear sites.Khamenei said Iran “slapped America in the face” by launching a – largely symbolic and forewarned – attack against a major US base in Qatar following last weekend’s US bombing raid. He also said Iran would never surrender.Trump said he had spared Khamenei’s life. US officials told Reuters on 15 June that Trump had vetoed an Israeli plan to kill the supreme leader. In a Truth Social post, he said:
      His Country was decimated, his three evil Nuclear Sites were OBLITERATED, and I knew EXACTLY where he was sheltered, and would not let Israel, or the U.S. Armed Forces, by far the Greatest and Most Powerful in the World, terminate his life. I SAVED HIM FROM A VERY UGLY AND IGNOMINIOUS DEATH.
      Trump also said that in recent days he had been working on the possible removal of sanctions on Iran to give it a chance for a speedy recovery. He told reporters today he has now abandoned that effort.
      I get hit with a statement of anger, hatred, and disgust, and immediately dropped all work on sanction relief, and more.
      Trump said he did not rule out attacking Iran again. When asked about the possibility of new bombing of Iranian nuclear sites if deemed necessary at some point, he replied:
      Sure, without question, absolutely.
      Trump’s border czar Tom Homan spoke at the end of the morning session at the Faith & Freedom Conference in Washington DC to applause and a standing ovation as he called for the prosecution of anyone who impeded his immigration enforcement, including lawmakers.Homan opened up by describing immigration enforcement as a moral duty – meant to stop the deaths, sexual assault and drug trafficking at the border. “In my 40 years I’ve seen a lot of terrible things,” he said. “Secure the border, save lives.”In a wide ranging, off the cuff speech, Homan touted his deportation figures and the lack of crossings at the border while defending Ice raids against non-criminals. “They’re in the country illegally so they’re on the table too,” he said. He attributed some of those arrests to sanctuary cities, where he said the lack of ability to arrest undocumented people in jail led to the increase of collateral arrests when Ice searched for them on the streets.Homan poked at protests, calling the Los Angeles protests misguided and misinformed and applauding Trump’s decision to deploy the national guard. He also called the protestors in his lake house town “morons” – those protests were followed by Ice releasing a family.Homan spent a good amount of his speech denouncing Biden’s policies and calling for the prosecution of anyone, including lawmakers who attempted to intervene with Ice enforcement. He said Alejandro Mayorkas, the head of the Department of Homeland Security under Joe Biden, should “go to jail”.
      You can hate Ice, you can hate me, I don’t give a shit. You can not agree with our priorities, but you better not cross that line.
      At the en,d Homan turned to his personal relationship with Trump, saying he respected the president as much as he does his own father.Lawyers for Kilmar Ábrego García have asked the judge to keep him in jail over deportation concerns. Prosecutors have agreed with a request by Ábrego García’s lawyers to delay his Tennessee jail release.Ábrego García’s lawyers asked a judge for the delay Friday because of “contradictory statements” by the Trump administration over whether he’ll be deported upon release. A judge in Nashville has been preparing to release Ábrego García to await trial on human smuggling charges. The judge has been holding off over concerns immigration officials would try to deport him.The justice department says it intends to try Ábrego García on the smuggling charges. A justice department attorney said earlier there were plans to deport him but didn’t say when. The Maryland construction worker previously was mistakenly deported to El Salvador.US representative Nydia Velázquez from New York called the supreme court ruling that individual district court judges lack the power to issue nationwide injunctions “an attack on the very foundation of our nation”. She wrote on X:“The Supreme Court just opened the door for Trump’s assault on birthright citizenship. As Justice Sotomayor warned in her dissent, ‘No right is safe in the new legal regime the Court creates.’ This ruling is an attack on the very foundation of our nation.”Representative Mark Takano of California expressed similar alarm. He wrote on X:“Today’s troubling ruling by the Supreme Court means that Trump’s un-Constitutional executive order denying many Americans their birthright citizenship will go into effect for anyone without the means to file a lawsuit to protect themselves.”Trump has accused Canada of a “direct and blatant attack” on the US after being informed that the country plans to tax US technology companies. Trump says the US will be “terminating all discussions on trade with Canada” as a result.Trump wrote on Truth Social:“We have just been informed that Canada, a very difficult Country to TRADE with, including the fact that they have charged our Farmers as much as 400% Tariffs, for years, on Dairy Products, has just announced that they are putting a Digital Services Tax on our American Technology Companies, which is a direct and blatant attack on our Country.They are obviously copying the European Union, which has done the same thing, and is currently under discussion with us, also. Based on this egregious Tax, we are hereby terminating ALL discussions on Trade with Canada, effective immediately. We will let Canada know the Tariff that they will be paying to do business with the United States of America within the next seven day period.”Environmental groups have filed a federal lawsuit to block the “Alligator Alcatraz” migrant detention center being built on an airstrip in the heart of the Florida Everglades.The lawsuit, filed Friday on behalf of the Center for Biological Diversity and the Friends of the Everglades organization, seeks to halt the project until it undergoes a stringent environmental review as required by federal law. The lawsuit filed in Miami federal court says there is also supposed to be an opportunity for public comment.Florida governor Ron DeSantis said Friday on Fox and Friends that the detention center is set to begin processing people who entered the US illegally as soon as next week.The Trump administration is moving to terminate Temporary Protected Status for half a million Haitians, claiming that Haiti is a “safe” country to return to, despite the reality that large portions of the country have been overcome by gangs and civil governance has collapsed.The Department of Homeland Security said on Friday that conditions in Haiti have improved, and Haitians no longer meet the conditions for Temporary Protected Status, which grants deportation protections and work permits to people from countries experiencing turmoil.“This decision restores integrity in our immigration system and ensures that Temporary Protective Status is actually temporary,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement. “The environmental situation in Haiti has improved enough that it is safe for Haitian citizens to return home.”

      The supreme court, in a 6-3 ruling, appears to have delivered Trump a major victory by ruling that individual district court judges lack the power to issue nationwide injunctions, which Trump has complained have blocked federal government policies nationwide including his executive order purporting to end the right to automatic birthright citizenship.

      Speaking from the bench, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the supreme court’s majority decision “a travesty for the rule of law”, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson delivered a scathing dissent.

      Trump called the supreme court’s decision “a monumental victory for the Constitution, the separation of powers, and the rule of law in striking down the excessive use of nationwide injunctions interfering with the normal functions of the executive branch”.

      Trump said his administration “can now promptly file to proceed” with policies that had been enjoined nationwide. One of these cases would be ending birthright citizenship, he says, “which now comes to the fore”.

      In a press briefing US attorney general Pam Bondi was asked whether the administration is going to try to implement Trump’s order banning birthright citizenship in states where there isn’t a legal challenge. Bondi said the birthright citizenship question will “most likely” be decided by the supreme court in October but that Friday’s ruling still “indirectly impacts every case in this country”, adding that the administration is “thrilled” about this.

      Former New York governor Andrew Cuomo reportedly plans to run as an independent candidate in New York City’s mayoral race, days after finding himself bested in the Democratic primary by progressive insurgent candidate Zohran Mamdani.

      The Trump administration is planning to deport Kilmar Ábrego García for a second time, but reportedly does not plan to send him back to El Salvador, where he was wrongly deported in March.

      Trump reiterated that Tehran wants to meet following US strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities last weekend, but gave no further details. More

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      Briefing on Iran strikes leaves senators divided as Trump threatens new row

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      Republican and Democratic senators have offered starkly contrasting interpretations of Donald Trump’s bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities after a delayed behind-closed-doors intelligence briefing that the White House had earlier postponed amid accusations of leaks.Thursday’s session with senior national security officials came after the White House moved back its briefing, originally scheduled for Tuesday, fueling Democratic complaints that Trump was stonewalling Congress over military action the president authorized without congressional approval.“Senators deserve full transparency, and the administration has a legal obligation to inform Congress precisely about what is happening,” the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, said following the initial postponement, which he termed “outrageous”.Even as senators were being briefed, Trump reignited the row with a Truth Social post accusing Democrats of leaking a draft Pentagon report that suggested last weekend’s strikes had only set back Iran’s nuclear program by months – contradicting the president’s insistence that it was “obliterated”.“The Democrats are the ones who leaked the information on the PERFECT FLIGHT to the Nuclear Sites in Iran. They should be prosecuted!” he wrote.The partisan divisions were on display after the briefing, which was staged in the absence of Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, who previously told Congress that Iran was not building nuclear weapons, before changing her tune last week after Trump said she was “wrong”.Instead, the briefing was led by CIA director John Ratcliffe, secretary of state Marco Rubio and defense secretary Pete Hegseth, who had publicly assailed journalists over their reporting on the strikes at a Pentagon press conference.With intelligence agencies apparently in open dispute over the strikes’ effectiveness, Thursday’s briefing did little to clear up the clashing interpretations on Capitol Hill.Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina senator and close Trump ally, said “obliteration” was a “good word” to describe the strikes’ impact.“They blew these places up in a major-league way. They set them back years, not months,” he said. “Nobody is going to work in these three sites any time soon. Their operational capability was obliterated.”But he warned that Iran would be likely to try to reconstitute them, adding: “Have we obliterated their desire to have a nuclear weapon? As long as they desire one, as long as they want to kill all the Jews, you still have a problem on your hands. I don’t want the American people to think this is over.”But Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, said Trump was “misleading the public” in claiming the program was obliterated and questioned why Gabbard had not attended the briefing.His skepticism was echoed by Schumer, who said the briefing gave “no adequate answer” to questions about Trump’s claims.“What was clear is that there was no coherent strategy, no endgame, no plan, no specific[s], no detailed plan on how Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon,” he said, adding that Congress needed to assert its authority by enforcing the War Powers Act.Gabbard and Ratcliffe had scrambled on Wednesday to back Trump, with Gabbard posting on X: “New intelligence confirms what POTUS has stated numerous times: Iran’s nuclear facilities have been destroyed.”The ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, Jim Himes, dismissed the destruction claims as meaningless. “The only question that matters is whether the Iranian regime has the stuff necessary to build a bomb, and if so, how fast,” he posted.The destruction response has also rankled Republican senators in the anti-interventionist wing of the party such as Rand Paul, who rejected claims of absolute presidential war powers.“I think the speaker needs to review the constitution,” said Paul. “And I think there’s a lot of evidence that our founding fathers did not want presidents to unilaterally go to war.”The Senate is expected to vote this week on a resolution requiring congressional approval for future military action against Iran, though the measure appears unlikely to pass given Republican control of the chamber.The White House also admitted on Thursday to restricting intelligence sharing after news of the draft assessment leaking.Press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters the administration wants to ensure “classified intelligence is not ending up in irresponsible hands”. Leavitt later said the US assessed that there “was no indication” enriched uranium was moved from the nuclear sites in Iran ahead of the strikes.Trump formally notified Congress of the strikes in a brief letter sent on Monday, two days after the bombing, saying the action was taken “to advance vital United States national interests, and in collective self-defense of our ally, Israel, by eliminating Iran’s nuclear program”.The administration says it remains “on a diplomatic path with Iran” through special envoy Steve Witkoff’s communications with Iranian officials. More

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      Trump makes case for ‘big, beautiful bill’ and cranks up pressure on Republicans

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      Donald Trump convened congressional leaders and cabinet secretaries at the White House on Thursday to make the case for passage of his marquee tax-and-spending bill, but it remains to be seen whether his pep talk will resolve a developing logjam that could threaten its passage through the Senate.The president’s intervention comes as the Senate majority leader, John Thune, mulls an initial vote on Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” on Friday, before a 4 July deadline Trump has imposed to have the legislation ready for his signature.But it is unclear whether Republicans have the votes to pass it through Congress’s upper chamber, and whether any changes the Senate makes will pass muster in the House of Representatives, where the Republican majority passed the bill last month by a single vote and which may have to vote again on a revised version of the bill.Trump stood before an assembly composed of police and fire officers, working parents and the mother and father of a woman he said died at the hands of an undocumented immigrant to argue that Americans like them would benefit from the bill, which includes new tax cuts and the extension of lower rates enacted during his first term, as well as an infusion of funds for immigration enforcement.“There are hundreds of things here. It’s so good,” he said. But he made no mention of his desire to sign the legislation by next Friday – the US Independence Day holiday – instead encouraging his audience to contact their lawmakers to get the bill over the finish line.“If you can, call your senators, call your congressmen. We have to get the vote,” he said.Democrats have dubbed the bill the “big, ugly betrayal”, and railed against its potential cut to Medicaid, the federal healthcare program for low-income and disabled people. The legislation would impose the biggest funding cut to Medicaid since it was created in 1965, and cost an estimated 16 million people their insurance.It would also slash funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), which helps Americans afford food.Republicans intend to circumvent the filibuster in the Senate by using the budget reconciliation procedure, under which they can pass legislation with just a majority vote, provided it only affects spending, revenue and the debt limit. But on Thursday, Democrats on the Senate budget committee announced that the parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, had ruled that a change to taxes that states use to pay for Medicaid was not allowed under the rules of reconciliation.That could further raise the cost of the bill, which the bipartisan Joint Committee on Taxation recently estimated would add a massive $4.2tn to the US budget deficit over 10 years. Such a high cost may be unpalatable to rightwing lawmakers in the House, who are demanding aggressive spending cuts, but the more immediate concern for the GOP lies in the Senate, where several moderate lawmakers still have not said they are a yes vote on the bill.“I don’t think anybody believes the current text is final, so I don’t believe anybody would vote for it in it’s current form. We [have] got a lot of things that we’re working on,” the senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, a top target of Democrats in next year’s midterm elections, told CNN on Wednesday.In an interview with the Guardian last week, the Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski declined to say how she would vote on the bill, instead describing it as “a work in progress” and arguing that the Senate should “not necessarily tie ourselves to an arbitrary date to just get there as quickly as we can”.Democrats took credit for MacDonough’s ruling on the Medicaid tax, with the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, saying the party “successfully fought a noxious provision that would’ve decimated America’s healthcare system and hurt millions of Americans. This win saves hundreds of billions of dollars for Americans to get healthcare, rather than funding tax cuts to billionaires.” More

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      Senators to meet security officials amid questions over Trump’s decision to attack Iran – US politics live

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      Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. My name is Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines.Senators are set to meet with top national security officials Thursday as many question president Donald Trump’s decision to bomb three Iranian nuclear sites — and whether those strikes were ultimately successful.The classified briefing, which was originally scheduled for Tuesday and was delayed, also comes as the Senate is expected to vote this week on a resolution that would require congressional approval if Trump decides to strike Iran again, AP reported.Democrats, and some Republicans, have said that the White House overstepped its authority when it failed to seek the advice of Congress and they want to know more about the intelligence that Trump relied on when he authorized the attacks.“Senators deserve full transparency, and the administration has a legal obligation to inform Congress precisely about what is happening,” said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, who said Tuesday that it was “outrageous” that the Senate and House briefings were postponed. A similar briefing for House members was pushed to Friday.CIA director John Ratcliffe, secretary of state Marco Rubio and defense secretary Pete Hegseth are expected to brief the senators on Thursday. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was scheduled to be at the Tuesday briefing, but will not be attending, according to a person familiar with the schedule.In other news:

      Trump weighed in on Zohran Mamdani’s win in New York, saying Mamdani was a “100% Communist Lunatic” and saying he and other progressive politicians were signs that “our Country is really SCREWED”.

      Trump has lit into journalists who are reporting on the doubts in the intelligence community that the US bombs actually decimated the Iranian nuclear sites. He has called for a CNN journalist to be fired over her reporting. CNN defended its journalist, Natasha Bertrand, and its stories on the matter.

      Emil Bove, a judicial nominee and justice department official, was grilled by a Senate committee and denied allegations in a whistleblower report about ignoring judicial orders and said claims of a quid pro quo for New York City mayor Eric Adams were false.

      Speaking of Eric Adams, he is expected to formally announce his mayoral run tomorrow. He is running as an independent. And he went on Fox and called Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor, a “snake oil salesman”.

      Mamdani, meanwhile, gathered congratulations (sometimes muted) from prominent Democrats after his upset win in the mayoral primary. On the right, Stephen Miller has cast Mamdani’s win as a symptom of “unchecked migration”.

      The Working Families Party called Mamdani’s win a “seismic shift” and shows that “voters are thoroughly fed up with the status quo”.

      Health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr’s new vaccine advisory panel is meeting today for the first time. More

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      Usha Vance: husband’s pick as Trump running mate came ‘like a bolt of lightning’

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      Usha Vance learned her husband, JD, had been selected to be Donald Trump’s running mate “maybe five minutes” before the news was made public – and just about an hour before he was formally nominated.“It really was like a bolt of lightning,” Vance said during an interview on Meghan McCain’s podcast, Citizen McCain. Nearly a year later, seated in the vice-president’s residence on the grounds of the US naval observatory, Vance reflected on how significantly her life has changed in ways big and small. “People call you ma’am,” she said. “No one’s ever called me ma’am before this.”Until last summer, Vance, the daughter of immigrants and a one-time Democrat, worked as a lawyer at a progressive law firm, raising her three young children in Ohio. Now, as second lady, she is escorted by Secret Service and can’t leave a gym class without being recognized in Washington.During the nearly hour-long interview, Vance was not asked to weigh in on the political or policy agenda of the Trump administration – the president’s decision to strike Iran, the immigration raids that have roiled her native California or the crackdown on colleges and law firms.Instead, Vance spoke about how the second couple is working to create a sense of normalcy for their three young children, and how she hopes to use her role to “make things just a little bit better for other people”. She talked about missing Ohio, trying to keep her kids off screens, her husband’s love for baking, and losing “that sense of being anonymous in public”.Asked about being a first – Vance is the nation’s first south Asian and Hindu second lady – she said it has “not been something that people are hyper-focused on”.“Maybe we’ve just sort of moved beyond trying to count firsts of everything,” she said, while also noting that many people have told her “how proud they are and how excited they are for this”.“That does give me a little bit of a sense of purpose,” she said.At the end of the interview, McCain, a former host of The View and daughter of the late Republican senator John McCain, raised what she called the “elephant in the room” and asked whether Vance had considered the prospect “that you could be our first lady in a few years”.“I’m not plotting out next steps or really trying for anything after this,” Vance said. “In a dream world, eventually, I’ll be able to live in my home and kind of continue my career and all those sorts of things. And if that happens in four years, I understand. If that happens at some other point in the future, I understand. [I’m] just sort of along for the ride and enjoying it while I can.”Vance so far refrained from choosing a single social cause or project to champion, as her predecessors have done, worried that the response would be to “attribute some kind of political motive or start to polarize around it”. Still, she offered a glimpse of the issues that she may want to focus on in her role. Her office is hosting the “Second Lady’s 2025 Summer Reading Challenge”, which she described as “the first of many small attempts” to encourage reading and help draw “children into the world of things and not of devices”.At one point in the conversation, McCain revealed that she was expecting a third child – a boy – and asked Vance to “share with me and women in America why having three kids is good”. Vance congratulated McCain warmly, and described how her children operated as a “pack”, playing together and taking care of each other. She assured McCain that the transition from two to three children was “shockingly, the easiest of all”. More