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      America is sleepwalking into another unnecessary war | Eli Clifton and Eldar Mamedov

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      As the United States inches closer to direct military confrontation with Iran, it is critical to recognize how avoidable this escalation has been. “We knew everything [about Israel’s plans to strike Iran], and I tried to save Iran humiliation and death,” said Donald Trump on Friday. “I tried to save them very hard because I would have loved to have seen a deal worked out.”As two of the last analysts from an American thinktank to visit Iran, just three weeks ago, we can report that Iran’s own foreign ministry and members of the nuclear negotiating team were eager to work out a deal with Steve Witkoff, the US special envoy to the Middle East, and showed no indication they were interested in slow-walking talks.Over the course of conversations held on the sidelines of the Tehran Dialogue Forum, high-level foreign ministry officials expressed concern about the potential for a spoiling effort by the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and various staff and officials showed themselves open to considering a variety of scenarios including a regional nuclear consortium for uranium enrichment under international oversight and bilateral areas of diplomatic and economic engagement with the United States.What we heard should have been cause for cautious optimism – yet instead, Washington squandered a rare diplomatic opening, seemingly allowing Israel to start a disastrous war of choice that may soon drag in the US. Contrary to the narrative that Iran was dragging its feet in negotiations, we saw no evidence of deliberate stalling. In fact, Iran’s worsening economic crisis had created a strong incentive for Tehran to strike a deal – one that would provide sanctions relief in exchange for limits on its nuclear program, with even the possibility of broader normalization with the US on the horizon. Middle-class Iranians we spoke with elsewhere in Tehran were frustrated with the economic situation and, despite a highly developed sanctions-resistant economy, eager for sanctions relief allowing them greater access to international travel and trade.Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, emphasized flexibility on nearly every issue outside Iran’s red line on low-level uranium enrichment. That was echoed in private conversations we held with foreign ministry staff and members of the nuclear negotiating team. Domestic enrichment is non-negotiable for Iran but they believed they had front-loaded their concessions to Witkoff, offering up a 3.67% limit on their enrichment with whatever monitoring and surveillance mechanisms were necessary for the US to feel confident the deal was being honored.Enrichment, even at a low level, is a matter of national pride, a symbol of scientific achievement and a defiant response to decades of sanctions, the red line consistently stated in our conversations and one which they thought was agreeable to Witkoff. Iran claimed to be completely blindsided by Witkoff’s 18 May statement that zero enrichment was the only acceptable terms for a nuclear deal but was open to returning to talks to discuss ways forward. After weathering immense economic pain to develop this capability, no Iranian government – reformist or hardline – could feasibly surrender to the zero enrichment demand. The idea that Tehran would dismantle its enrichment program in 60 days, as the Trump administration demanded, was never realistic.This was not mere stubbornness – it was rooted in deep mistrust sown by Trump. The US had already violated the 2015 nuclear deal (JCPOA) by unilaterally withdrawing during Trump’s first term, despite Iran’s verified compliance. Why would Tehran now accept another agreement requiring total denuclearization, with no guarantee Washington wouldn’t renege again?Iranian officials signaled openness to creative solutions, including shipping excess low-enriched uranium to Russia; forming a regional consortium for enrichment; allowing US inspectors to join International Atomic Energy Agency teams – a major shift from previous positions. Other ideas were also floated at the Tehran forum, albeit not from official sources – temporary suspension of enrichment and a pause on advanced IR-6 centrifuges as confidence-building measures. Araghchi’s expressed willingness to return to JCPOA-permitted enrichment levels (below 4%) – was a concession so significant that it drew criticism from Iranian hardliners for giving too much, too soon. This was not the behavior of a regime trying to stall; it was the posture of a government eager for a deal, engaged in an effort to avoid spoilers in Jerusalem, Washington and at home in Tehran, and knowing full well that long, drawn-out negotiations would offer more, not fewer, opportunities for enemies of diplomacy to strike.The US team, led by Witkoff and mediated by Oman, seemed to share this urgency. The Iranian government seemed empowered enough to make a deal – if the US had been willing to take yes for an answer. Yet here we are, on the brink of another Middle East conflict – one that was entirely preventable. Instead of seizing this rare moment of Iranian flexibility, the US chose escalation. The consequences may be catastrophic: a wider regional war, soaring oil prices and the total collapse of diplomacy with Iran for years to come.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIt is still possible to step back from the brink. Tehran has signaled willingness to re-engage in talks if Israeli ceases attack. Omani channels remain open. Yet, after the start of the Israeli bombing campaign, the political space for negotiations has shrunk.The US is sleepwalking into another Middle East quagmire, an open-ended war with unclear goals, loose talk of regime change and the potential for a regional conflagration if Iran attacks US military installations in the Persian Gulf. And this war comes after Iran extended a real offer for compromise. If Washington chooses bombs over diplomacy, history will record this as a war not of necessity, but of tragic, reckless choice.

      Eli Clifton is senior adviser at Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft

      Eldar Mamedov is non-resident fellow at Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and member of the Pugwash Council on Science and World Affairs More

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      Trump promised riches from ‘liquid gold’ in the US. Now fossil fuel donors are benefiting

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      Kelcy Warren was among the top donors for Donald Trump’s 2024 White House bid, personally pouring at least $5m into the campaign and co-hosting a fundraiser for the then presidential hopeful in Houston.Trump’s win appears to already be benefiting Warren and Energy Transfer Partners, the pipeline and energy firm of which he is co-founder, executive chair and primary shareholder.“We will be a rich nation again, and it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help to do it,” Trump said in his inaugural address.Though domestic fossil fuel production reached record levels under Joe Biden, his policies to boost renewable energy still sparked fear among oil and gas companies, said Mark Jones, a political scientist at Rice University in Houston, Texas. “There was a threat of moving toward a net zero world … maybe not now, but there was an idea that would happen if Democrats stayed in the White House,” said Jones.For Warren and other oil billionaires, Trump removed that fear, Jones said.Energy Transfer Partners reported a year-over-year increase in profits in the first quarter of this year. In an earnings call last month, company top brass praised the new administration and more supportive regulatory environment.Among Trump’s moves that have benefited the company: a day-one move to end Biden’s pause on liquefied natural gas exports, which enables Energy Transfer to proceed with a long-sought-after LNG project in Lake Charles. On 13 May, Trump’s Federal Energy Commission (Ferc) also granted a three-year extension for the LNG project, which the company said was necessary for the project to succeed.In the week after the Ferc decision, Warren’s wealth rose by nearly 10%, noted Sarah Cohen, who directs the climate and wealth inequality-focused non-profit Climate Accountability Research Project (Carp).“That decision wouldn’t have been possible under Biden’s LNG pause,” said Cohen, who calculated the change using the Bloomberg billionaires index.Since that Ferc decision, Energy Transfer Partners has also secured a 20-year deal to supply a Japanese company with up to 1m metric tons of LNG a year.Other Trump orders to “unleash American energy” and declare an energy emergency to promote fossil fuels despite already booming production, for instance, are set to benefit Energy Transfer Partners by making it easier to expand the use all kinds of fossil fuels, thereby boosting the demand for pipelines.Also fueling that demand: the projected boom in datacenters. Energy Transfer Partners has received requests to power 70 new ones, the Guardian reported in April, marking a 75% rise since Trump took office.View image in fullscreenBy appointing fossil fuel-friendly officials to top positions, such as the former energy CEO Chris Wright to head the energy department and the pro-oil and -gas Doug Burgum to the interior department, Trump has also “showed his allegiance to companies like Energy Transfer Partners”, said Cohen.“They’re really creating this environment that’s great for oil and gas,” she said. “The message is ‘We’ll give you what you want.’”Energy Transfer did not respond to requests from the Guardian to comment.Ties to TrumpWarren ranks among the richest 500 people in the world, with Forbes placing his net worth at $7.2bn. He has long deployed his wealth to support the GOP, including by becoming the 13th-largest corporate funder to Trump’s Make America Great Again Super Pac last year with a $5m donation.He has also spent his fortune in more eccentric ways. His $30m, 23,000 sq ft Dallas mansion includes a movie theater and bowling alley, and among his other assets are a 8,000-acre ranch near Cherokee, Texas, which is home to zebras, javelinas and giraffes; a 20,000-acre golf resort in Lajitas, Texas; a private island near Roatán, Honduras; and numerous private aircraft, including a Dassault Falcon 900 jet.A lover of folk music, Warren also started a record label in 2007 alongside the singer-songwriter Jimmy LaFave, with whom he has also written songs. “If you hear me now,” goes one song for which Warren penned the lyrics, “maybe you could pull some strings.”The pipeline mogul accumulated most of his wealth from Energy Transfer Partners, which owns and operates about 130,000 miles of energy infrastructure in the US. In recent months, the firm has been criticized by advocates for its successful lawsuit against the environmental non-profit Greenpeace, which in March yielded a verdict that threatens to bankrupt the organization.Warren has long enjoyed a relationship with the president, donating generously to his first campaign and attending closed-door meetings during his first term. Though Warren is not known to have attended the infamous May 2024 meeting during which Trump asked oil bosses for $1bn and pledged to overturn environmental rules, he did co-host a fundraiser for the president in Houston weeks later.He is one of a handful of the most powerful oil billionaires from Texas, where there are no limits on contributions to candidates and political committees.“Texas has always been kind of a testing ground for the most extreme politics and issues that the Republicans pursue,” said Matt Angle, founder of the Lone Star Project, a Democratic Pac in the state. “In Texas, people like him are used to being able to donate to get their way.”Unlike some other Texas energy barons, such as the Christian nationalist Tim Dunn, Warren is not driven by dogma, said Jones.“Kelcy Warren is not necessarily ideological,” he said. “He may be in sync with Trump on some other issues, but his support for Donald Trump is largely because of what Trump proposed to do [for] the energy sector.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOne big, beautiful billThe reconciliation bill, which the House passed last month and the Senate is now debating, is also expected to be a boon to Energy Transfer Partners and Warren. Known as the “one big beautiful bill”, it is expected to slash Biden-era incentives for renewable energy, tamping down competition in the energy market.A number of more esoteric provisions in the bill will also prove beneficial for the company, according to a review by Carp shared with the Guardian. One provision in the House-approved version, for instance, would allow the Department of Energy to determine that a proposed LNG export facility is in the “public interest” if the applicant pays $1m – something Energy Transfer Partners could afford to do. It’s a “pay to play” scenario, said Carp co-founder Chuck Collins.View image in fullscreenOther provisions would expedite the build-out of LNG export infrastructure, force the government to hold lease sales for fossil fuels even when demand is low and reverse protections to allow drilling in some areas without any judicial review. Still others would stymy federal agencies’ ability to implement new climate rules by requiring that major changes obtain congressional approval, allow gas developers to pay a $10m fee to bypass permitting processes, limit who can bring lawsuits over gas infrastructure and allow firms to pay taxpayers less to use public land, Carp found.The bill is also set to hand fossil fuel companies huge tax breaks – including by extending tax cuts in the Trump-backed 2017 reconciliation bill, from which Energy Transfer Partners reported a tax benefit of $1.81bn.In one example, the House’s version of the bill would reinstate 100% “bonus depreciation” for qualified properties, allowing companies such as Energy Transfer Partners to completely write off new infrastructure such as pipelines on their taxes, and see the benefits immediately. It’s also expected to apply to private jets, Collins noted.Other tax breaks in the proposal are expected to personally benefit ultra-wealthy Americans such as Warren.“The most wealth I’ve ever made is during the dark times,” Warren told Bloomberg a decade ago.PipelinesUnder Trump, Energy Transfer Partners will also probably save money on pipeline safety compliance. Since the president re-entered the White House in January, enforcement from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration has dropped. Across the pipeline industry, the PHMSA opened only four enforcement actions in April, and zero in March – marking the first month since the subagency’s 2004 launch when no cases were initiated, E&E News reported.“That fits right in with the philosophy or paradigm of the Trump 2.0 deregulation agenda,” said Carp’s Cohen.A lack of action from the body could lead to savings for Energy Transfer Partners, which has paid millions in fines to the PHMSA.In March, Energy Transfer Partners also sued the PHMSA, claiming that its enforcement system is “unconstitutional”. Success in the suit could mean the company is forced to pay fewer penalties.Shielded from tariffsAnother Trump policy from which Energy Transfer Partners will benefit: an exemption for oil and gas from his new tariffs. The president provided the industry wide shield after a meeting with the American Petroleum Institute lobby group, of which Warren’s company is a member.The firm’s profits may still be blunted by other tariffs, such as those on aluminum and other products needed for pipeline construction, but the energy sector expects those losses to be offset by the soon-to-be-passed reconciliation bill, Politico reported in April.“The energy companies would prefer not to have the tariffs, sure,” said Jones. “But those are not a negative that outweighs what they view as the existential threat that Democrats represent … the existential threat of net zero.” More

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      Appeals court likely to keep Trump in control of national guard deployed in LA

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      A federal appeals court on Tuesday seemed ready to keep Donald Trump in control of California national guard troops after they were deployed following protests in Los Angeles over immigration raids.Last week, a district court ordered the US president to return control of the guard to Democratic governor Gavin Newsom, who had opposed their deployment. US district judge Charles Breyer said Trump had deployed the Guard illegally and exceeded his authority. But the administration quickly appealed and a three-judge appellate panel temporarily paused that order.Tuesday’s hearing was about whether the order could take effect while the case makes its way through the courts, including possibly the supreme court.It’s the first time a US president has activated a state national guard without the governor’s permission since 1965, and the outcome of the case could have sweeping implications for Trump’s power to send soldiers into other US cities. Trump announced on 7 June that he was deploying the guard to Los Angeles to protect federal property following a protest at a downtown detention center after federal immigration agents arrested dozens of immigrants without legal status across the city. Newsom said Trump was only inflaming the situation and that troops were not necessary.In a San Francisco courtroom, all three judges, two appointed by Trump in his first term and one by Joe Biden, suggested that presidents have wide latitude under the federal law at issue and that courts should be reluctant to step in.“If we were writing on a blank slate, I would tend to agree with you,” Judge Jennifer Sung, a Biden appointee, told California’s lawyer, Samuel Harbourt, before pointing to a 200-year-old supreme court decision that she said seemed to give presidents the broad discretion Harbourt was arguing against.Even so, the judges did not appear to embrace arguments made by a justice department lawyer that courts could not even review Trump’s decision.It wasn’t clear how quickly the panel would rule.Judge Mark Bennett, a Trump appointee, opened the hearing by asking whether the courts have a role in reviewing the president’s decision to call up the national guard. Brett Shumate, an attorney for the federal government, said they did not.“The statute says the president may call on federal service members and units of the Guard of any state in such numbers that he considers necessary,” Shumate said, adding that the statute “couldn’t be any more clear”.Shumate made several references to “mob violence” in describing ongoing protests in Los Angeles. But mayor Karen Bass lifted a curfew for downtown Los Angeles Tuesday, saying acts of vandalism and violence that prompted her curfew a week ago had subsided.“It is essential that this injunction be stayed, otherwise, lives and property will be at risk,” Shumate said.Harbourt argued that the federal government didn’t inform Newsom of the decision to deploy the guard. He said the Trump administration hasn’t shown that they considered “more modest measures to the extreme response of calling in the national guard and militarizing the situation”.Harbourt told the panel that not upholding Breyer’s ruling would “defy our constitutional traditions of preserving state sovereignty, of providing judicial review for the legality of executive action, of safeguarding our cherished rights to political protest”.Breyer’s order applied only to the national guard troops and not the marines, who were also deployed to LA but were not yet on the streets when he ruled.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNewsom’s lawsuit accused Trump of inflaming tensions, breaching state sovereignty and wasting resources just when guard members need to be preparing for wildfire season. He also called the federal takeover of the state’s national guard “illegal and immoral”.Newsom said in advance of the hearing that he was confident in the rule of law.“I’m confident that common sense will prevail here: the US military belongs on the battlefield, not on American streets,” Newsom said in a statement.Breyer ruled the Trump violated the use of title 10, which allows the president to call the national guard into federal service when the country “is invaded”, when “there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government,” or when the president is unable “to execute the laws of the United States”.Breyer, an appointee of former president Bill Clinton, said the definition of a rebellion was not met.“The protests in Los Angeles fall far short of ‘rebellion,’” he wrote. “Individuals’ right to protest the government is one of the fundamental rights protected by the First Amendment, and just because some stray bad actors go too far does not wipe out that right for everyone.”The national guard hasn’t been activated without a governor’s permission since 1965, when President Lyndon B Johnson sent troops to protect a civil rights march in Alabama, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. 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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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      ‘It’s time to wake up’: Padilla recounts being handcuffed at Noem briefing in emotional speech

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      Alex Padilla took to the Senate floor on Tuesday to deliver a deeply personal speech, formally entering into the congressional record his account of being restrained and forcibly removed as he attempted to ask a question at a press conference held by the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, in Los Angeles last week.In emotional remarks, Padilla described the encounter that he hoped would serve as a “wake up call” for Americans – a warning, he said, of how quickly democratic norms can slip away when dissent is silenced and power is unchecked.“If that is what the administration is willing to do to a United States senator for having the authority to simply ask a question,” Padilla said, “imagine what they’ll do to any American who dares to speak up”.In his floor speech, Padilla said he was in Los Angeles to conduct congressional oversight of the administration’s escalating immigration operations in the city. He was at the federal building that morning for a scheduled briefing with US northern command’s General Gregory Guillot about the president’s order to deploy US marines to the city as part of its response to protests against immigration raids that left Latino communities shaken and afraid.When he arrived, Padilla said that he was met at the building’s entrance by a national guardsman and an FBI agent. He was then escorted through a security screening and into the conference room where the briefing would take place.When he learned Noem was holding a press conference “literally down the hall” – and that it was the reason his own briefing was delayed – Padilla said he asked to attend. He and his colleagues had many outstanding information requests about the department’s immigration enforcement tactics, and he said he hoped he might learn something from the secretary.“I didn’t just stand up and go – I asked,” he said.According to Padilla, the guardsman and FBI agent then “escorted” him into the room where Noem was giving remarks to reporters. “They opened the door for me. They accompanied me into the press briefing room, and they stood next to me as I stood there for a while listening,” he said.When Noem declared that the federal law enforcement and military personnel would “liberate” Los Angeles from its Democratic governor and mayor – what Padilla called an “un-American mission statement” – he said he could no longer remain silent.“I was compelled, both as a senator and as an American, to speak up,” the senator said. “But before I could even get out my question, I was physically and aggressively forced out of the room, even as I repeatedly announced I was a United States senator, and I had a question for the secretary, and even as the national guardsmen and the FBI agent who served as my escorts brought me into that press briefing room, stood by silently, knowing full well who I was.”He was dragged into a hallway and forced onto the ground, Padilla recalled, his voice catching as he described being forced onto his knees and then his chest pressed into the ground. “I was handcuffed and marched down a hallway repeatedly asking, ‘Why am I being detained?’ Not once did they tell me why?” he said. “I pray you never have a moment like this.”As this was happening, Padilla said his thoughts turned to his family: “What will my wife think? What will our boys think?” And then to his constituents – those in a city already on edge, militarized against the wishes of the governor and local enforcement – how would they react when they saw the images of their US senator – the first Latino elected to the chamber from California – in handcuffs.When asked about Padilla’s removal during the press conference, Noem said she didn’t recognize the two-term senator and said he hadn’t requested a meeting. Noem and Padilla met for for 15 minutes following the incident, according to DHS.The FBI has said its agents believed Padilla was an attacker and responded appropriately. They blamed the senator for not wearing a pin identifying him as a member of Congress. The Guardian’s requests for comment from the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, the National Guard and the Secret Service were not immediately returned.In a statement on Tuesday, the White House dismissed Padilla’s floor speech as a “temper tantrum”.“Alex ‘Pay Attention to Me’ Padilla is bouncing from one desperate ploy for attention to the next,” said White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson, adding: “Whether or not Democrats like it, the American people support President Trump’s agenda to deport illegal aliens.”But Padilla, who noted he has never had a reputation as a “flame-thrower”, challenged his colleagues in both parties to consider what the episode revealed about the state of American democracy.“If you watched what unfolded last week and thought what happened is just about one politician and one press conference you’re missing the point,” he said. Democrats and some Republicans condemned the incident. But administration officials – and many Republicans – blamed Padilla, with the House speaker Mike Johnson suggesting he should be censured for his actions.Padilla accused Trump of being a “tyrant” who had ordered National Guard troops and US marines into Los Angeles to “justify his undemocratic crackdowns and his authoritarian power grabs”. He said Trump was surrounded by “yes men” and a pliant Congress who refused to reign in the president tries everything to “test the boundaries of his power”.“If Donald Trump can bypass the governor and activate the National Guard to put down protests on immigrant rights, he can do it to suppress your rights too,” he continued. “If he can deploy the Marines to Los Angeles without justification, he can deploy them to your state too. And if you can ignore due process, strip away first amendment rights and disappear people to foreign prisons without their day in court, he can do it to you too.”Padilla, the “proud” son of Mexican immigrants, warned that what is happening in his state could spread nationwide.“I refuse to let immigrants be political pawns on his path towards fascism,” he said. He described the situation in California as a “test case” for what could happen to “any American anywhere in the country”.As Padilla spoke in Washington, images emerged from New York where Brad Lander, the city’s comptroller and a candidate for mayor, had been arrested by masked federal agents as he visited an immigration court.“It’s time to wake up,” Padilla said, urging Americans to continue to peacefully protest the administration. “If this administration is this afraid of just one senator with a question … imagine what the voices of tens of billions of Americans peacefully protesting can do.”The Democrats in the chamber erupted in applause. 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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      in US Politics

      ‘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