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    Trump considers forcing journalists to reveal sources who leaked Iran report

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    Donald Trump said he is weighing forcing journalists who published leaked details from a US intelligence report assessing the impact of the recent American military strikes on Iran to reveal their sources – and the president also claimed his administration may prosecute those reporters and sources if they don’t comply.In an interview Sunday with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo, Trump doubled down on his claim that the 21 June airstrikes aimed at certain Iranian facilities successfully crippled Iran’s nuclear program. He insisted the attacks destroyed key enriched uranium stockpiles, despite Iranian assertions that the material had been relocated before the strikes.Trump dismissed the leaked intelligence assessment in question – which suggested the strikes only temporarily disrupted Iran’s nuclear development – as incomplete and biased. The report, circulated among US lawmakers and intelligence officials, concluded that the damage inflicted was significantly less than what Trump’s administration had publicly claimed.The president has attacked both Democratic lawmakers and members of the media for sharing portions of the classified analysis. He then threatened legal consequences for those responsible.During the interview, Bartiromo referenced a post Trump had shared on social media days earlier, in which he wrote: “The Democrats are the ones who leaked the information on the PERFECT FLIGHT to the Nuclear Sites in Iran. They should be prosecuted!”Trump then reiterated on-air that “they should be prosecuted”.“Who specifically?” Bartiromo asked.Trump replied: “You can find out – if they wanted, they could find out easily.”In recent days, Trump has targeted CNN and The New York Times for their reporting on the strikes. He has condemned the coverage as “unpatriotic” and even floated the possibility of legal action.The two outlets, along with several others, reported that preliminary findings from the US’s Defense Intelligence Agency indicated the strikes had only limited success. The bombings delayed Iran’s nuclear ambitions by several months but stopped short of destroying the program outright, according to the assessment.On Sunday, a social media account belonging to the Iranian leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, accused Trump of needing to “exaggerate to cover up the truth and keep it secret” after the recent US military strikes “could not do anything”.Trump, in contrast, has repeatedly insisted that three nuclear facilities were “obliterated”.He elaborated on how his administration might pursue the sources of the leak.“You go up and tell the reporter, ‘national security – who gave it?’” Trump said. “You have to do that. And I suspect we’ll be doing things like that.”In the US, the constitution generally protects journalists from being compelled to reveal their sources – but there are limits to that reporter’s privilege, as it is colloquially known.The president had threatened to sue CNN and the New York Times for publishing articles about the preliminary intelligence report ahead of his comments to Bartiromo.In a letter to the Times, a lawyer for Trump said the article had damaged the president’s reputation and demanded that the outlet “retract and apologize for” the piece, which the letter described as “false,” “defamatory” and “unpatriotic”. More

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      Home discomforts send Trump rushing to project image of global patriarch

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      “Daddy’s home.” So said a social media post from the White House, accompanied by a video featuring the song Hey Daddy (Daddy’s Home) by Usher and images of Donald Trump at the Nato summit in The Hague.The US president’s fundraising allies were quick to market $35 T-shirts with his image and the word after Mark Rutte, the Nato secretary general, referred to Trump’s criticism of Israel and Iran over violations of a ceasefire by quipping: “And then Daddy has to sometimes use strong language to get [them to] stop.”Yet even as Trump seeks to project an image of global patriarch, there are signs of trouble on the home front. His polling numbers are down. His party is struggling to pass his signature legislation. Millions of people have marched in the streets to protest against him. Critics say the president who claims to put America First is in fact putting America Last.Trump is not the first president to find the foreign policy domain, where as commander-in-chief he recently ordered strikes on nuclear sites in Iran, less restrictive than the domestic sphere, where a rambunctious Congress, robust judiciary and sceptical media are constant irritants. But rarely has the gap between symbolic posturing abroad and messy politicking at home been so pronounced.“There’s two presidencies,” said Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota. “The one on the domestic front is gruesome and involves long-drawn-out and disappointing negotiations with Congress and that’s exactly what Donald Trump is engaged in now. What emerges from Congress is not going to be as ‘big’ or ‘beautiful’ as he promised.“Meanwhile you’ve got staggering photographs of bombs falling from the sky, Donald Trump’s flamboyant description of what he’s achieved in Iran and Europe. That’s the kind of Hollywood performance that Donald Trump wants.”The president stunned the world last Saturday by announcing, on his Truth Social platform, that he had ordered more than 125 aircraft and 75 weapons – including 14 bunker-busting bombs – to hit three targets in Iran to prevent the country obtaining a nuclear weapon.He followed up with a White House speech, choreographed to project an image of power, in which he declared: “Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success. Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.”View image in fullscreenThat narrative has since been cast into doubt by a leaked intelligence report suggesting that the operation set back Iran’s nuclear programme by only a few months. Still, Trump pivoted to the role of peacemaker, again using Truth Social to announce a ceasefire between Iran and Israel, prompting Republicans to gush that he should win the Nobel peace prize.Trump’s barrage of speeches, interactions with reporters and social media posts about the Middle East were likened by some to a daily soap opera, dominating Americans’ attention and distracting them from his one big beautiful bill, a budget plan that threatens to slash the social safety net that many of his own supporters depend on.Jacobs observed: “This is a classic deception. He’s like the carnival barker who’s waving his hands to keep the attention of the audience even as he’s hiding the part for the next trick.“What’s coming out of Congress is going to absolutely harm many of his voters. Politicians like to cover their tracks; there’s no covering the tracks here. There will be known cuts to widely used popular programmes like the healthcare for Medicaid and there will be no doubt as to who’s responsible. These are traceable, highly visible consequences of Donald Trump.”Now in the sixth month of his second presidency, Trump’s domestic honeymoon is over. A poll of 1,006 likely voters nationwide by John Zogby Strategies on 24 and 25 June found the president’s approval rating down three points to 45%. About 49% of voters approve of his handling of immigration while 47% disapprove but on the economy 43% approve and 54% disapprove.Asked if they expect Trump’s presidency will make them financially better off or worse off, 40% said better and 50% said worse. Zogby commented: “There is a lot of anxiety domestically, first and foremost on the economy. People are confused and insecure. The numbers are plunging.”View image in fullscreenConsumer confidence unexpectedly deteriorated in June, a sign of economic uncertainty because of Trump’s sweeping tariffs. The anxiety reported by the Conference Board was across the political spectrum, with the steepest decline among Republicans. And the share of consumers viewing jobs as plentiful was the smallest since March 2021.Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic senator, argued in a floor speech this week that Trump had broken him promise to lower costs “on day one”. She said: “American families don’t need another war – they need good jobs and lower prices, and that is what we should be focused on.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWarren listed 10 ways in which the One Big Beautiful Bill Act would raise costs for families, from rent to groceries to prescription drug prices, and warned that it will take healthcare away from more than 16 million people. Republicans in the House of Representatives and Senate continue to haggle over the contents of the bill as a 4 July deadline looms.Neera Tanden, president and chief executive of the Center for American Progress and a former domestic policy adviser to President Joe Biden, told an audience on Thursday: “This legislation is the greatest Robin Hood-in-reverse legislation that I have ever seen in my lifetime. It is cutting healthcare for working-class people and using those dollars to fund tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.”View image in fullscreenMeanwhile discontent is simmering over Trump’s signature issue of immigration, even among some of his own voters. Videos of people being snatched off the streets or beaten by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents have provoked widespread revulsion.There have also been cases such as that of Ming Li Hui, a popular member of staff at a restaurant in rural Missouri who was arrested and jailed to await deportation. Her friend Vanessa Cowart told the New York Times: “I voted for Donald Trump, and so did practically everyone here. But no one voted to deport moms. We were all under the impression we were just getting rid of the gangs, the people who came here in droves.”Meanwhile aggressive workplace raids are hurting hotels, restaurants, farms, construction firms and meatpacking companies, including in conservative states. The alarm recently got through to Trump, who admitted that some undocumented immigrants were actually “very good, longtime workers” and ordered a temporary pause, only to then yield back to hardliners in his administration.Wendy Schiller, a political science professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, said: “In a restaurant, if you lose your cooks, you can’t serve people and you lose money. If you are in a factory where people have been swooped up by Ice, you have to do more work.“It puts more of the burden on the same people who might have voted for Donald Trump – lower-income or middle-income factory workers or meat-processing people. They’re feeling the effects of this immigration sweep in ways that the administration did not anticipate.”View image in fullscreenTrump’s second term has been further marred by the tech billionaire Elon Musk leading a “department of government efficiency”, or Doge, that fired thousands of federal workers but fell far short of its cost-saving target before Musk left amid acrimony. The president’s authoritarian attacks on cultural institutions, law firms, media organisations and universities fuelled “No Kings” protests involving more than 5 million people in more than 2,100 cities and towns across the country on 14 June.In that context, it is perhaps not surprising that Trump should relish the global stage, where any world leader is just a phone call away and where he is now being feted as statesman and father figure. It has proven easier to drop bombs on Iran or pressure Nato to agree to a big increase in military spending than to tame Thomas Massie, a rebellious Kentucky Republican defying him over both Iran and the spending bill.Schiller added: “It is true for every president, Republican or Democrat, that when things are going south domestically they turn to foreign affairs. Trump feels in some ways more powerful on the global stage than he does trying to get Congress to do what he wants. The House Republicans are giving him a hard time. The Senate Republicans are giving him a hard time. He’s annoyed by this so then he goes, well, we’re a global military power.” More

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      I’m glad we have rules. I just don’t expect people to follow them | Dave Schilling

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      Rules are great. I think most of us over the age of five will agree that having them is preferable to not. Perhaps there are a few stragglers out there reading this who would love to cosplay a lesser sequel of The Purge, swinging baseball bats at strangers and urinating in the street, but I would imagine you are in the minority on that. Rules are the backbone of what we have left of society. I’m not happy about where we are, but I don’t make the rules. At least not yet. I just need to host a popular reality show – then my political career can really take off.A recent interaction has me reflecting on this. I was wandering over to my local coffee shop one morning, off a wide boulevard where motorists scream through intersections like the car from Ghostbusters late for a particularly aggressive haunting. A crosswalk, with accompanying yellow yield light, was recently installed to combat the minor issue of pedestrians being flattened by drivers on their way to the hair salon or texting about being late to the hair salon. The light has been mostly successful in preventing the human waffle-ironing, but it requires walkers to actually press the button to activate it. This is a step that people often dismiss, hoping and praying that the drivers out there are lucid enough to acknowledge the existence of others. Without the yellow light, we’re all operating on the honor system for not killing each other.That morning, someone confidently strolled into the intersection, and was mortified that the car screaming down the road didn’t immediately stop for him. The pedestrian hollered and moaned as the vehicle screeched to a halt. Once he was done cursing and spitting on the street, the man crossed and the befuddled driver carried on. Besides my relief at not witnessing a homicide, I was left wondering why the man was so upset. Was he expecting the driver to follow the rules? How naive. Let’s pray this guy never ends up involved in global foreign policy.I couldn’t help but think of this beautifully trusting pedestrian during the last week of nail-biting brinkmanship between the United States and Iran. A few bombs here, a couple of missiles there. Some erratic social media posts later, and we have something akin to a ceasefire for the time being. Donald Trump claimed the Iranian nuclear capability had been “obliterated”, though experts say the country’s program was only set back by a few months.It all comes back to the rules we make. We had an Obama-era deal to cap Iran’s atomic ambitions – but Trump pulled the US out of it back in 2018, drastically curtailing the west’s ability to hold the ayatollah to his promises. It’s like if Los Angeles decided to take the crosswalk out of my neighborhood and instead ask people nicely not to run each other over with giant piles of metal going over 40mph – and if someone got hit, to blow up the area with a bunker buster.We need rules, even if we assume people will break them early and often. Because the vast majority of us won’t. Most of us are too timid, too square or, in my case, too lazy. The alternative to rules is anarchy: a fistfight in the supermarket or a bachelor party in Atlantic City. Still, it’s time to expect that the arc of the universe will not bend in our direction, that our fellows might not be considering whether or not to slow down through the intersection of life.I don’t want to wade too deeply into the finer points of foreign policy, because, as I mentioned above, I have never hosted a reality television program. But I am highly qualified to complain about things, which I will continue doing in this space for the foreseeable future. Assume the worst, as I do, and your life will be much simpler. Expect those around you to fail and flout the rules that govern our world. Does this sound cynical? Of course it does. Does that mean it’s wrong? Absolutely not. Look around. Not just at the inside of your living room, the bathroom stall or wherever it is you’re reading this. I mean, look around metaphorically. Our institutions are wobbly, our trust in order is at an all-time low, and Vanderpump Rules might never come back for new episodes. Where is the justice?The Democratic primary victory of the New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has been the talk of the entire US, acting as a lighthouse of hope in the choppy pea-soup shit fog of 2025. But in order for Mamdani to win that primary, people had to show up. They had to vote for him and not assume someone else would. Better to assume everyone around you had a nasty fall on the head and can’t stop saying “Cuomo” over and over again. Expect the worst, then enjoy the surprise of being wrong.If I did host a reality show, and therefore became eligible for the presidency, this would be the primary tenet of my foreign policy. “If we bomb Iran, people will be upset. And upset people do nasty things” – sure, that won’t fit on a campaign button, but I’m sure I could hire someone to workshop it into something catchier. I’m obviously thrilled we all haven’t been vaporized, but decisions made today do have this pesky way of leading to calamities of the future. You only need to think back to the 1953 CIA coup that led to the overthrow of the Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh. Cleverer people than me (with a higher word-count maximum) could explain the connection between that regime change and Iran’s persistent conflict with the United States.What will be the long-term effects of the US-Israeli bombing campaign? Unfortunately, I’m stuck in the present and can’t give you a definitive answer. That is one of the many drawbacks of corporeal existence, another of which is getting hit by a car. Whatever happens next, don’t expect it to be fun.But if it is, and we’re all drinking champagne in Tehran in a decade, you can come back here and tell me I’m stupid. What a lovely surprise that would be.

      Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist 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 officials cite ‘new intelligence’ to back president’s claims of success in strikes on Iran

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      Donald Trump’s administration ratcheted up its defence of the US’s weekend attacks on Iran, citing “new intelligence” to support its initial claim of complete success and criticising a leaked intelligence assessment that suggested Tehran’s nuclear programme had been set back by only a few months.The growing row came amid reports that the White House will to try to limit the sharing of classified documents with Congress, according to the Washington Post and the Associated Press.“This was a devastating attack, and it knocked them for a loop,” Trump said on Wednesday, apparently backing away from comments he’d made earlier in the day, that the intelligence was “inconclusive”.Senior Trump officials publicly rejected the leaked initial assessment of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) which concluded key components of the nuclear programme were capable of being restarted within months. Director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said in a post on X that “new intelligence confirms” what Trump has stated.“Iran’s nuclear facilities have been destroyed. If the Iranians chose to rebuild, they would have to rebuild all three facilities (Natanz, Fordow, Esfahan) entirely, which would likely take years to do,” she said.CIA director John Ratcliffe in a statement said that new intelligence from a “historically reliable” source indicated that “several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years.”During a news conference at the Nato summit, Trump briefly ceded the stage to defence secretary Pete Hegseth, who lashed out at the media and claimed reporters were using the leaked intelligence assessment to politically damage Trump. “They want to spin it to try to make him look bad,” he said.In the wake of the leaked DIA report, the White House will reportedly to try to limit the sharing of classified documents with Congress, a senior official told the Associated Press.Democratic Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer criticised the reported decision to limit information sharing, saying “senators deserve information, and the administration has a legal obligation to inform Congress precisely about what is happening right now abroad”.Classified briefings for lawmakers had been scheduled to take place on Tuesday, but were postponed, prompting outrage from members of Congress. The briefings are now expected to take place on Thursday and Friday.The leaked DIA assessment also found that much of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, which would provide the fuel for making any future nuclear warhead, had been moved before the strikes and may have been moved to other secret nuclear sites maintained by Iran. That claim was backed up by the UN nuclear watchdog – the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – which said it lost “visibility” of the material when “hostilities began”.However, in an interview with French television, IAEA director-general Rafael Grossi said: “I don’t want to give the impression that it’s been lost or hidden.”View image in fullscreenOn Wednesday, the White House pushed back on those claims, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt telling Fox News the US had “no indication that that enriched uranium was moved prior to the strikes, as I also saw falsely reported”.“As for what’s on the ground right now, it’s buried under miles and miles of rubble because of the success of these strikes on Saturday evening,” she said.The US military said it dropped 14 GBU-57 bunker-buster bombs – powerful 13,600kg (30,000lb) weapons – on three Iranian nuclear sites. Since the attacks, Trump has repeatedly claimed that the sites were “obliterated”.The White House highlighted an Israeli statement that Iran’s nuclear efforts were delayed by years, while a spokesperson for the Iranian foreign ministry also said the facilities have suffered significant damage.On Wednesday evening, Trump said that Hegseth – whom he dubbed “war” secretary – would hold a news conference at 8am EST on Thursday to “fight for the dignity of our great American pilots”, referring to the pilots of the B2 bombers that carried out the strikes. He said that “these patriots were very upset” by “fake news” reports about the limited impact of the strikes.As the row grew over how much the strikes set back Tehran’s nuclear programme, diplomatic efforts to prevent Iran from rebuilding the programme also gathered pace.Trump said US and Iranian officials would meet soon, resuming a dialogue that was interrupted by the nearly two week war, even as he suggested that negotiations were no longer necessary.
      “I don’t care if I have an agreement or not,” Trump said, because Iran was too badly damaged to even consider rebuilding its programme. “They’re not going to be doing it anyway. They’ve had it.”View image in fullscreenThe IAEA has rejected an “hourglass approach” involving different assessments of how many months or years it would take Iran to rebuild, saying it distracts from finding a long-term solution to an issue that had not been resolved.“In any case, the technological knowledge is there and the industrial capacity is there. That, no one can deny. So we need to work together with them,” Grossi said, adding that his priority was the return of IAEA inspectors to the nuclear sites, the only way he said they could be properly assessed.Meanwhile, Iranian authorities are pivoting from their ceasefire with Israel to intensifying an internal security crackdown across the country with mass arrests, executions and military deployments, according to officials and activists.Iran’s intelligence services have arrested 26 people, accusing them of collaborating with Israel, state media Fars news agency reported.Some in Israel and exiled opposition groups had hoped the 12-day military campaign, which targeted Revolutionary Guards and internal security forces as well as nuclear sites, would spark a mass uprising and the overthrow of the Islamic Republic.While numerous Iranians expressed anger at the government, there has been no sign yet of any significant protests against the authorities.With the Associated Press and Reuters More

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      Trump is not interested in listening to US experts on Iran’s nuclear program

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      When Donald Trump ordered the US military to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities over the weekend, the debate among intelligence officials, outside experts and policymakers over the status of Tehran’s nuclear program had largely been frozen in place for nearly 20 years.That prolonged debate has repeatedly placed the relatively dovish US intelligence community at odds with Israel and neoconservative Iran hawks ever since the height of the global war on terror.For nearly two decades, the US intelligence agencies have concluded that while Iran has a program to enrich uranium, it has never actually built any atomic bombs. It is an assessment that has been at the core of its intelligence reporting on Iran since at least 2007. This has led to constant debates over the years over the significance of Iran’s uranium enrichment program versus “weaponization” or bomb-building.Israel and the Iran hawks have repeatedly said that the debate over enrichment versus weaponization is not significant, because Iran could build a bomb relatively quickly. But Iran suspended its weaponization program in 2003 and hasn’t tried to build a bomb since; it’s been clear for decades that the Iranian regime has seen that its own interests are better served by maintaining the threat of having a nuclear weapon rather than actually having one.Iran’s reluctance to build a bomb while still maintaining the threat of a nuclear program has clear parallels with the way that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein handled his supposed weapons of mass destruction program. Hussein got rid of his programs to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in the 1990s, following the first Gulf War, but never divulged that to the United States or the United Nations.He wanted other countries, particularly his regional enemy Iran, to think that he still had the weapons. US officials couldn’t understand that kind of thinking, and so badly miscalculated by assuming that Hussein still had a WMD program. That mindset led to the intelligence community’s greatest debacle – its false pre-war reporting that Hussen still had a WMD program, flawed intelligence which helped the George W Bush administration justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq.In the past, the US intelligence community’s assessments on the state of the Iranian nuclear program – developed in the aftermath of its failures on the Iraqi WMD issue – acted as a restraint on the actions of successive presidents, from Bush through Obama and Biden. All of them faced pressure from Israel to take action against Iran, or at least to let Israel bomb the country.The difference today is not that the intelligence reporting has significantly changed.It is that Trump is now more willing to listen to Israel than his predecessors and is also deeply suspicious of the Central Intelligence Agency. And by firing so many staffers at the National Security Council and conducting an ideological purge throughout the rest of the national security community since he returned to office, Trump has made it clear that he is not interested in listening to the experts on Iran and the Middle East. Trump underscored his skepticism of the experts when he recently told reporters that “I don’t care” about the US intelligence community’s latest assessment that Iran still wasn’t building a bomb.Without any evidence that Iran has actually been “weaponizing”, the arguments over Iran’s nuclear program have descended over the last two decades into a series of almost theological disputes over the significance of each change in the Iranian uranium enrichment program.This debate first flared into the headlines in 2007, at a time when the Bush administration – already mired in wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan – was considering bombing Iran to halt its nuclear program. In the midst of this debate, the key findings of the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear program were made public. The NIE – a report designed to provide the consensus view of the US’s 18 spy agencies on a major subject – found that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and had never built a bomb. While it found that Iran could still develop a bomb by 2010, it determined that its commercial nuclear fuel cycle – its enrichment program – was not part of an ongoing nuclear weapons program.In 2011, the findings of another NIE were made public, which slightly altered the intelligence community’s assessment. It said that Iran’s uranium enrichment program was probably being upgraded and could eventually be used to create weapons grade uranium. But the NIE also found that Iran had still not tried to build a bomb. The 2011 NIE broke with the 2007 NIE by not making a distinction between Iran’s uranium enrichment for commercial purposes and potential nuclear weapons work. Still, the new NIE found that there was not enough evidence to show that Iran had made a decision to restart its nuclear weaponization program and build a bomb.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionToday, the US intelligence community is still basically in the same place: Iran has an enrichment program but has not built a bomb. Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, testified to Congress in March that while Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was at its highest levels, the intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and [Iran’s] supreme leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003”.(After Trump ordered the Iran bombing, Gabbard rushed to defend his actions, even though there had still been no change in the intelligence agencies’ assessments.)And while Israel and the hawks continue today to insist that Iran could build a bomb quickly, the US intelligence community has long maintained that it could detect the effort in its earliest stages, long before it succeeded.After the weekend strike, Congressional Democrats focused on the fact that there was no new intelligence to justify Trump’s action, and no new intelligence showing an imminent threat to the United States.Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia and the ranking Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, said Trump had bombed Iran “without regard to the consistent conclusions of the intelligence community”. 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      US supreme court allows Trump administration to deport migrants to countries other than their own – live

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      The US supreme court has ruled that the Trump administration can continue deporting migrants to countries that are not their homeland and without giving them an opportunity to share the dangers they might face.The decision ended an injunction on such deportations issued by US District Judge Brian Murphy, who ordered the Department of Homeland Security to provide written notice to migrants explaining where they would be sent and stop deporting migrants to countries like South Sudan where the state department warns of “crime, kidnapping and armed conflict”, Reuters reports.The court’s three liberal justices – Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson – dissented.House Speaker Mike Johnson says a war powers resolution is not necessary and dismissed efforts to advance such legislation, Reuters reports.Last week, Republican representative Thomas Massie and Democratic representative Ro Khanna introduced a war powers resolution, which would prohibit US armed forces from taking direct action against Iran without explicit authorization from Congress or a declaration of war. Democratic senator Tim Kaine introduced a similar resolution in the Senate.Massie and Khanna have both said the United States’ strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities this weekend require congressional authorization.“I don’t think this is an appropriate time for a war powers resolution, and I don’t think it’s necessary,” Johnson told Reuters.Florida has asked the Supreme Court to grant the state an emergency appeal to enforce a law making it illegal for undocumented immigrants to enter the state, Politico reports. The news comes as the New York Times reports Florida is also building a migrant detention facility nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz”.US District Judge Kathleen Williams issued a stay on the state law in April. Although Florida attorney general James Uthmeier has appealed her ruling, he filed an emergency appeal with the Supreme Court to halt that stay while the case proceeds.At the same time, Florida is constructing a tent facility on a remote airfield in the Everglades to aid the Trump administration in its proposed mass deportations. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security told the New York Times that the facility will cost $450mn per year to operate, but that Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) funds could be directed to reduce those costs.The US supreme court has ruled that the Trump administration can continue deporting migrants to countries that are not their homeland and without giving them an opportunity to share the dangers they might face.The decision ended an injunction on such deportations issued by US District Judge Brian Murphy, who ordered the Department of Homeland Security to provide written notice to migrants explaining where they would be sent and stop deporting migrants to countries like South Sudan where the state department warns of “crime, kidnapping and armed conflict”, Reuters reports.The court’s three liberal justices – Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson – dissented.Top Democrats are calling for a classified briefing on Iran after the United States launched military strikes on the country’s nuclear facilities, the Washington Post reports. Democratic members of “the Gang of Eight” – eight congressmembers who the president must brief on classified intelligence – say they have not been briefed on the situation yet, although Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson was briefed this morning.“I’ve asked the Trump administration to give me a classified briefing to lay out the full threat picture, the intelligence behind Iran’s retaliation, and the details, scope, and timeline of any U.S. response,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement. “Most importantly, I’ve demanded they lay out exactly what measures they’re taking — right now — to keep our servicemembers safe.”“I asked for a Gang of Eight briefing. It has yet to occur, and it’s not clear to me what the administration is hiding from the Congress and from the American people,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries also said Monday.All members of Congress will receive a classified briefing tomorrow.Attorney General Pam Bondi appeared open to investigating threats against lawmakers, but also called Democrats incompetent during an appearance before the House Appropriations Committee today.In the aftermath of shootings targeting two Minnesota state lawmakers, Bondi said she would be willing to provide more prosecutorial assistance to investigate similar threats against members of Congress, the New York Times reports.Yet, when pressed on other Department of Justice policies, including proposed funding cuts and January 6 pardons, by Democrats, Bondi was confrontational, the Associated Press reports.After Democratic congresswoman Madeleine Dean called the “three hallmarks” of the Trump administration “incompetence, corruption and cruelty”, Bondi responded: “You want to talk about in incompetence? You’re the one that said Joe Biden on PBS was competent. You had to retract those words. So don’t talk to me, don’t insult me publicly.”Trump has publicly addressed Iran’s strike on the US military base in Qatar, calling the response “very weak” and saying that it was “very effectively countered.” The president also thanked Iran for giving the US notice ahead of time of the attack, which Trump says “made it possible for no lives to be lost.”Trump wrote:“Iran has officially responded to our Obliteration of their Nuclear Facilities with a very weak response, which we expected, and have very effectively countered. There have been 14 missiles fired — 13 were knocked down, and 1 was “set free,” because it was headed in a nonthreatening direction. I am pleased to report that NO Americans were harmed, and hardly any damage was done. Most importantly, they’ve gotten it all out of their “system,” and there will, hopefully, be no further HATE. I want to thank Iran for giving us early notice, which made it possible for no lives to be lost, and nobody to be injured. Perhaps Iran can now proceed to Peace and Harmony in the Region, and I will enthusiastically encourage Israel to do the same. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”Trump added in another post that no Qataris were killed or wounded in addition to no Americans being harmed.CIA director John Ratcliffe and director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard will brief members of Congress tomorrow on US military action in Iran.General Dan Caine, Christopher Landau and Steve Feinberg will also attend. Both the House and Senate will receive classified briefings.The briefings will come as many lawmakers have demanded answers about the intelligence ahead of Trump’s decision over the weekend to strike Iranian sites.Robert F Kennedy Jr, known for pushing anti-vaccine conspiracies, is set to speak this week at a fundraising event for Gavi, a public-private partnership which helps buy vaccines for the world’s poorest children, Reuters reports.Trump reportedly asked the health secretary to represent the US at the conference in Brussels on Wednesday, where Gavi will secure funding for its operations for the next five years. The Trump administration has previously indicated that it planned to cut its funding for Gavi, representing around $300 million annually.The source told Reuters that it was unlikely Kennedy would commit any new US funding contribution and would most likely discuss “the restructuring of foreign assistance.”Trump has cut foreign aid programs by around 80% since taking office in January, as part of his “America First” policy agenda.Health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr met with major health insurers today, extracting pledges that they will take additional measures to simplify their requirements for prior approval on medicines and medical services.Insurers including UnitedHealth Group Inc’s UnitedHealthcare, CVS Health Corp’s Aetna, Cigna Group, Blue Cross Blue Shield Association and Kaiser Permanente met with Kennedy along with Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator Mehmet Oz.The insurers announced they plan to reduce the scope of health care claims subject to prior authorization, standardize parts of the process and expand responses done in real time.“There shouldn’t be paper, there shouldn’t be faxes, there shouldn’t be letters being sent. They should all be done digitally and automatically, and 90-day continuity should exist for authorizations when patients switch insurers, so you never fall through the cracks again,” Oz said.“If the insurance industry cannot address the needs of pre-authorization by themselves, there are government opportunities to get involved,” he added.Federal officials are increasingly concerned about the possibility of retaliation from Iran on American soil, the New York Times reports.In an internal email, top officials at the FBI warned that Iran and its proxies have “historically targeted US interests in response to geopolitical events, and they are likely to increase their efforts in the near term”.The email urged field offices to monitor their collection platforms and stay in close contact with the defense department, including the national guard, “who may be targeted for retaliation” while “specific attention should be paid to” US military facilities connected to the strikes in Iran.House speaker Mike Johnson dismissed efforts by lawmakers to advance a measure to check Trump’s use of military force against Iran, after Tehran said it carried out a missile attack on the al-Udeid US airbase in Qatar.When asked whether he would allow the House of Representatives to vote on a bipartisan resolution, Johnson told reporters: “I don’t think this is an appropriate time for war powers resolution, and I don’t think it’s necessary.”Republican representative Thomas Massie and Democratic representative Ro Khanna introduced their resolution days before Trump ordered US strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities on Saturday and have since claimed that the president’s actions require congressional authorization.Iran’s military said today that it carried out a missile attack on US forces in Qatar, where explosions were heard across the capital.Democratic senator Tim Kaine has introduced a similar resolution in the Senate that he said lawmakers could vote on as early as this week.“Our War Powers Resolution has 57 cosponsors. Whether you like it or not, Congress will be voting on U.S. hostilities in Iran,” Massie said in a post on social media earlier today.Johnson and other Republicans insist that Trump had the authority to take unilateral action against Iran to eliminate a potential nuclear threat to the US and other countries.“The President made an evaluation that the danger was imminent enough to take his authority as commander in chief and make that happen,” the speaker said.Canada and the US could agree to a new economic and defense relationship soon but nothing is assured, Canadian prime minister Mark Carney said today.“We’re working hard to get a deal, but we’ll only accept the right deal with the United States. The right deal is possible, but nothing’s assured,” he told a televised news conference in Brussels after talks with senior European Union officials.Last Monday, Carney said he had agreed with Trump that their two nations should try to wrap up talks on a new deal within 30 days.France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, called for a return to diplomacy to end what he called “the spiral of chaos” after Iran targeted a US military base in Qatar.Macron wrote on X:“I express France’s solidarity with Qatar, which has been struck by Iran on its soil.I am in close contact with the country’s authorities and our partners in the region.I call on all parties to exercise the utmost restraint, de-escalate, and return to the negotiating table. This spiral of chaos must end.”Before Macron’s social media post, foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot told France 2 television that the missile strikes, which had not caused any casualties, were a “dangerous escalation” and he urged all sides to show restraint.Trump is attacking members of the media, several by name, on Truth Social. He appears angry over reports from several news outlets that the facilities struck in Iran may not have been completely destroyed by the US attacks.Trump wrote:“The sites that we hit in Iran were totally destroyed, and everyone knows it. Only the Fake News would say anything different in order to try and demean, as much as possible — And even they say they were “pretty well destroyed!” Working especially hard on this falsehood is Allison Cooper of Fake News CNN, Dumb Brian L. Roberts, Chairman of “Con”cast, Jonny Karl of ABC Fake News, and always, the Losers of, again, Concast’s NBC Fake News. It never ends with the sleazebags in the Media, and that’s why their Ratings are at an ALL TIME LOW — ZERO CREDIBILITY!”Trump’s media company plans to buy back up to $400m of its stock, which is down 46% this year.Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social, says that the acquisition will improve its financial flexibility. Trump is the largest stakeholder in Trump Media, with about 114m shares.The Florida-based company, which trades under the ticker DJT on both Nasdaq and NYSE Texas, saw shares rise just over 1%. But the shares appeared to peak about a month after the company went public in late March. Shares have been on a steady, downward trajectory since. More

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      Trump’s war with Iran signals perilous shift from showman to strongman

      by

      So the military parade that brought tanks to the streets of Washington on Donald Trump’s birthday was more than just an authoritarian ego trip. It was a show of strength and statement of intent.Exactly a week later, sporting a “Make America great again” (Maga) cap in the situation room, the American president ordered the biggest US military intervention in decades as more than 125 aircraft and 75 weapons – including 14 bunker-busting bombs – struck three Iranian nuclear sites. Trump called it a “spectacular military success” – but it remains unclear how much damage had actually been inflicted.Trump’s gamble was cheered by Israel and Republican hawks. It alarmed some in his Maga base who fell for his rhetoric promising to be an isolationist who would end forever wars. It left egg on the face of Pakistan, which only a day earlier had said it would nominate Trump for the Nobel peace prize.But there was no inconsistency for those paying close attention to the president’s war on democracy, which since January has included a draconian crackdown on immigration – including masked government agents grabbing people off the street and deporting them without due process – and the deployment of marines and national guard troops against protesters in Los Angeles.Trump’s strike on Iran was another example of both his disregard for public opinion – six in 10 Americans opposed US military involvement in the conflict between Israel and Iran, according to an Economist/ YouGov poll released on 17 June – and his contempt for Congress.Democrats were quick to point out that his actions were a clear violation of the constitution, which grants Congress the power to declare war on foreign countries. There was no evidence of an imminent threat to the US that might have provided grounds for Trump to act unilaterally.Adam Schiff, a Democratic member of the bipartisan Senate national security working group, noted there was no intelligence showing Iran had made the decision to build a nuclear bomb or was constructing the mechanism of a bomb. And in a breach of protocol, leading national security Democrats were not informed of the strikes until after Trump announced them on social media.But once again, Democrats find themselves shut out of power and shouting into the void. Many called for Congress to pass a measure based on the War Powers Act that seeks to block “unauthorized hostilities” in Iran. Congresswoman Summer Lee of Pennsylvania called it a necessary step to “rein in this out-of-control, wannabe dictator”. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York called for Trump’s impeachment.Fat chance. Republicans, who control the majorities of both chambers, are willing accomplices in their own subjugation. They remained mostly silent as Trump unleashed Elon Musk’s Doge on the federal bureaucracy, gutting USAID and other agencies under Congress’s purview. In the House of Representatives, they buried their differences to pass Trump’s signature “one big beautiful bill”.Therefore, do not expect Republicans to pull the emergency brake on a Trump train that might be hurtling towards world war three. Mike Johnson, the House speaker, and John Thune, the Senate majority leader, led a chorus of praise for the attack. Frequent Trump dissenters such as Nikki Haley and Mitch McConnell joined the commendation.Perversely, this most unconventional of presidents who ruined the party brand had reverted to Republican Original, taking the kind of action that would meet approval from George W Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton and John McCain.The America First wing, meanwhile, was mostly muted and subdued. Trump’s cult of personality typically trumps differences over policy – and that is not likely to change over a military operation that took place more than 7,000 miles away with apparent success. (A damaging Iranian retaliation, or any suggested of a need for US boots on the ground, could of course change that narrative.)After all, Trump’s isolationism has always been selective: there is Dove Trump and Hawk Trump. Last year, Dove Trump falsely claimed to be the only president in 72 years to have no wars; in fact, Jimmy Carter never declared war or lost a single soldier to hostile action. In his inaugural address in January, he said: “We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end – and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.”Yet Hawk Trump looks familiar enough to any student of US foreign adventurism. In his first term, he ordered cruise missile strikes in Syria, expanded military operations in Somalia, intensified the campaign against the Islamic State, dropped a Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb in Afghanistan and ordered a drone strike that killed the Iranian general Qassem Suleimani. In his second term, Trump’s bombing campaign in Yemen has led to the deaths of almost as many civilians in two months as in the previous 23 years of US attacks on Islamists and militants in the country.View image in fullscreenThese contradictions are where JD Vance, the vice-president, becomes a useful foil. He has been an outspoken isolationist, openly questioning why the US should care about Ukraine’s borders rather than its own. During the Iran crisis he has remained staunchly supportive of Trump, standing beside the president during Saturday night’s televised address and defending the intervention on Sunday’s Meet the Press programme on the NBC network.“We’re not at war with Iran; we’re at war with Iran’s nuclear programme,” Vance said, using the type of doublespeak that the Bush administration specialised in to conjure phantom weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.He added in the same interview: “I certainly empathise with Americans who are exhausted after 25 years of foreign entanglements in the Middle East. I understand the concern, but the difference is that back then we had dumb presidents and now we have a president who actually knows how to accomplish America’s national security objective.”Trump has called on Iran to “agree to end this war”, saying that “now is the time for peace”. It remains to be seen whether the strikes will push Tehran to de-escalate the conflict or widen it further.The former would allow Trump and his army of loyalists to declare victory. The latter would give him potential for a “rally around the flag” effect that puts Democrats in a bind. Nothing suits an authoritarian better than an external threat.The Trump who threw a birthday parade and used the military like a prop invited ridicule. The Trump who deploys troops to the streets of Los Angeles and drops bombs on Iran is altogether more dangerous.Exit the showman. Enter the strongman. More