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      US strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites only set back program by months, Pentagon report says

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      An initial classified US assessment of Donald Trump’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities over the weekend says they did not destroy two of the sites and likely only set back the nuclear program by a few months, according to two people familiar with the report.The report produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency – the intelligence arm of the Pentagon – concluded key components of the nuclear program, including centrifuges, were capable of being restarted within months.The report also found that much of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium that could be put to use for a possible nuclear weapon was moved before the strikes and may have been moved to other secret nuclear sites maintained by Iran.The findings by the DIA, which were based on a preliminary battle damage assessment conducted by US Central Command, which oversees US military operations in the Middle East, suggests Trump’s declaration about the sites being “obliterated” may have been overstated.Trump said in his televised address on Saturday night immediately after the operation that the US had completely destroyed Iran’s enrichment sites at Natanz and Fordow, the facility buried deep underground, and at Isfahan, where enrichment was being stored.“The strikes were a spectacular military success. Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated. Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace,” Trump said in his address from the White House.While the DIA report was only an initial assessment, one of the people said if the intelligence on the ground was already finding within days that Fordow in particular was not destroyed, later assessments could suggest even less damage might have been inflicted.Long regarded as the most well-protected of Iran’s nuclear sites, the uranium-enrichment facilities at Fordow are buried beneath the Zagros mountains. Reports have suggested that the site was constructed beneath 45-90 metres (145-300ft) of bedrock, largely limestone and dolomite.The White House disputed the intelligence assessment, which was first reported by CNN. “The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump, and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.The US vice-president, JD Vance, admitted on Sunday that Washington did not know where Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranian was, saying: “we are going to work in the coming weeks to ensure that we do something with that fuel”.Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Monday that the IAEA could no longer account for Iran’s stockpile of 400kg of uranium enriched to 60% purity.The Guardian revealed last Wednesday that top political appointees at the Pentagon had been briefed at the start of Trump’s second term that the 30,000lb “bunker buster” GBU-57 bombs meant to be used on Fordow would not completely destroy the facility.In that briefing, in January, officials were told by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency at the Pentagon that developed the GBU-57 that the bombs would not penetrate deep enough underground and only a tactical nuclear weapon would wipe out Fordow.The US strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities involved B2 bombers dropping 12 GBU-57s on Fordow and two GBU-57s on Natanz. A US navy submarine then launched roughly 30 Tomahawk missiles on Isfahan, US defense officials said at a news conference Sunday.Defense secretary Pete Hegseth repeated Trump’s claim at the news conference that the sites had been “obliterated”, but the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Dan Caine, who helped oversee the operation, was more measured in his remarks.Caine said that all three of the nuclear sites had “sustained severe damage and destruction” but cautioned that the final battle-damage assessment for the military operation was still to come. 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 judge blocks Trump plan to bar international students from Harvard

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      A federal judge on Monday blocked Donald Trump’s administration from implementing his plan to bar foreign nationals from entering the United States to study at Harvard University.US district judge Allison Burroughs in Boston issued an injunction barring Trump’s administration from carrying out its latest bid to curtail Harvard’s ability to host international students amid an escalating fight pitting the Republican president against the prestigious Ivy League school.The preliminary injunction extends a temporary order the judge issued on 5 June that prevented the administration from enforcing a proclamation Trump signed a day earlier that cited national security concerns to justify why Harvard could no longer be trusted to host international students.The proclamation prohibited foreign nationals from entering the US to study at Harvard or participate in exchange visitor programs for an initial period of six months, and directed Marco Rubio to consider whether to revoke visas of international students already enrolled at Harvard.Almost 6,800 international students attended Harvard in its most recent school year, making up about 27% of the student population of the university in Cambridge, Massachusetts.Trump signed the proclamation after his administration had already frozen billions of dollars in funding to the oldest and wealthiest US university, threatened Harvard’s tax-exempt status and launched several investigations into the school.Trump on Friday said his administration could announce a deal with Harvard “over the next week or so” to resolve the White House’s campaign against the university, which has waged a legal battle against the administration’s action.Harvard alleges that Trump is retaliating against it in violation of its free speech rights under the US constitution’s first amendment for refusing to accede to the administration’s demands to control the school’s governance, curriculum and the ideology of its faculty and students.The university has filed two separate lawsuits before Burroughs seeking to unfreeze around $2.5bn in funding and to prevent the administration from blocking the ability of international students to attend the university.The latter lawsuit was filed after Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, on 22 May announced that her department was immediately revoking Harvard’s student and exchange visitor program certification, which allows it to enroll foreign students.Noem, without providing evidence, accused the university of “fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party”.Her action was temporarily blocked by Burroughs almost immediately. While the Department of Homeland Security has since shifted to challenging Harvard’s certification through a months-long administrative process, Burroughs at a 29 May hearing said she planned to issue an injunction to maintain the status quo, which she did officially on Friday.A week after the hearing, Trump signed his proclamation, which cited concerns about Harvard’s acceptance of foreign money including from China and what it said was an inadequate response by the school to his administration’s demand for information on foreign students.His administration has accused Harvard of creating an unsafe environment for Jewish students and allowing antisemitism to fester on its campus. Protests over US ally Israel’s treatment of Palestinians during its war in Gaza have roiled numerous universities’ campuses, including Harvard’s.Rights advocates have noted rising antisemitism and Islamophobia in the US due to the war. The Trump administration has thus far announced no action over anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hate.Harvard’s own antisemitism and Islamophobia task forces found widespread fear and bigotry at the university in reports released in late April. More

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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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      Canada and EU sign defense pact amid strained US relations and global instability

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      Canada has signed a wide-ranging defence pact with the EU, as Donald Trump and global instability prompt traditional US allies to deepen their alliances.Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, on Monday joined European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, and head of the European Council, António Costa, in Brussels, where they signed a security and defence partnership, pledged more support for Ukraine, as well as joint work on issues from the climate crisis to artificial intelligence.At a cordial press conference, Carney described Canada as “the most European of the non-European countries” that “looks first to the European Union to build a better world”.Costa spoke in kind: “The European Union and Canada are among the closest allies in the transatlantic space. We see the world through the same lens. We stand for the same values.”Not mentioned was another leader in the transatlantic space: Donald Trump, whose disrespect for old allies appears to have galvanised what was an already healthy EU-Canada relationship.The US president is expected at the two-day Nato summit in the Hague starting on Tuesday, when members of the transatlantic alliance are called to pledge to spend 5% of GDP on defence.Carney, a veteran central banker turned politician, won a stunning victory in April pledging that Canada would not become the 51st US state, a proposal often floated by Trump.He said he had a mandate “to diversify and strengthen our international partnerships” and find new means of co-operation and co-ordination. The summit took place, Carney told reporters, “we might say in a hinge moment of history, a world that is more dangerous and divided, a time where the rules-based international global order is under threat”.The EU-Canada security and defence partnership opens the door to increased Canadian participation in the EU’s fledgling €150bn defence fund, known as Safe. Von der Leyen said the defence partnership meant working on joint capabilities, interoperability and joint procurement, referencing air defence. “The access of Canada to our joint procurement in the European Union, the door is open,” she said.The security pact is a Canadian version of the agreement the EU signed with the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, last month. The bloc already had similar arrangements with six other countries including Norway and Japan, but this is the first with any country in the Americas. The defence pact includes joint work on cyber, maritime and space security, arms control and support for Ukraine.Countries that have a defence and security pact with the EU can take part in joint procurement of weapons funded by the €150bn (£128bn, $173bn) Safe programme, although must negotiate a further technical agreement. Von der Leyen pledged both sides would “swiftly launch talks” on Canadian access to the joint procurement scheme.Carney said the agreement with the EU would help Canada “deliver on our new capabilities more rapidly and more effectively”. Canada has been one of the laggards of the Nato alliance: in 2024 it spent just 1.37% of GDP on defence, well below the 2% set in 2014.The two sides have a €125bn trading relationship, underpinned by the Ceta pact signed in 2016 that abolished 98% of tariffs. The agreement, however, has yet to be ratified by national parliaments in 10 EU member states, including Belgium, France, Italy and Poland, meaning elements of the deal have yet to enter into force.In advance of the meeting Carney and his wife, Diana Fox, Carney visited Schoonselhof military cemetery in Antwerp, where 348 Canadians are buried, “brave young soldiers who ventured across the Atlantic to defend the freedom of Europe”, Carney wrote on social media.The Carneys were accompanied by Belgium’s prime minister, formerly a long-serving Antwerp mayor, Bart De Wever, where they were given a tour of the ceremony and laid wreaths on behalf of Belgium and Canada. The last post was played by one of De Wever’s sons, according to local paper Het Nieuwsblad. More

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      Socialist Zohran Mamdani could be New York’s next mayor. This is what the western left could learn from him | Owen Jones

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      The Zohran Mamdani phenomenon should not be happening, if received wisdom is a reliable predictor of events. He’s the 33-year-old Muslim leftist and Queens assemblyman running for the New York mayoralty with the support of the Democratic Socialists of America, and the vitriolic campaign against him suggests his momentum has caused panic in gilded circles. His chief opponent for the Democratic nomination, Andrew Cuomo, could not scream party establishment more loudly: he’s New York state’s former governor – just like his father was – and a former cabinet secretary. He married into that classic Democratic royalty, the Kennedys; his endorsements include the former president Bill Clinton; and billionaires such as Mike Bloomberg are pouring millions into his Super Pac.In another age, someone like Mamdani would have been a no-hoper. What changed was the 2016 presidential campaign of the long-marginalised socialist senator Bernie Sanders, which re-energised the US left. But Donald Trump’s recent victory on a more extreme platform led to predictions of a general rightwing lurch in US politics, with progressive positions scapegoated for the Democratic loss (even though Kamala Harris ran on a squarely corporate, “centrist” ticket). I was scheduled to interview Mamdani on the night of the US presidential election, but his campaign asked to postpone as results started to come in suggesting a Trump victory was likely. Presumably, they wanted to reassess strategy in the coming US political winter.But just a few months later, Mamdani is surging, and his campaign offers lessons for the western left in an age of chronic economic insecurity, rising far-right authoritarianism, war and genocide. The primary election vote is tomorrow, but a poll released during crucial early voting shows Mamdani overtaking Cuomo in “ranked choice” voting: it’s within the margin of error, but five months ago the insurgent candidate was polling only 1% support. In only a month, Mamdani has leapt from 22% to 32%, particularly powered by a 2:1 lead among the under-50s.Yes, the millennial has been helped by Cuomo’s chronic liabilities – the former governor resigned in disgrace after an investigation by the state attorney general found that he had sexually harrassed several women – but rival candidates with bigger profiles and more political experience could have gained from that instead. The New York Times pleaded with readers not to rank Mamdani in the preferential voting system, rich New Yorkers are threatening to flee the city if he wins, he’s been attacked for inexperience, and smeared over his championing of Palestinian rights. “Zohran Mamdani is a public menace,” screeches rightwing magazine the National Review.So what’s the universal lessons for the western left? Three Ms are key: messaging, medium and movement. Grace Mausser is the co-chair of New York City Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). When I suggested that Mamdani’s campaign would surely originally have been driven by revitalising the left, rather than the prospect of an actual election victory, she disagrees.“When we started, we knew the path to victory was narrow,” she conceded. But, she emphasised: “We don’t run races for purely moral reasons or to make a point like the Green party in the US which has failed in their project.” Indeed, the DSA played a pivotal role in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s shock defeat of another Democratic luminary, the former chair of the House Democratic Caucus Joe Crowley back in 2018. In turn, Ocasio-Cortez has bolstered Mamdani with her endorsement, underlining how progressive victories feed off one another.“Super-clear messaging” is how Mausser sums up the Mamdani strategy. The early campaign settled on three main messages: “Fast and free buses, freeze the rents, free childcare. That’s so easy to remember. People know it, and it’s said over and over and over again.” Mamdani has other pledges, too – such as launching publicly run grocery stores – but key to his success are core, endlessly repeated commitments focused on a cost of living crisis triggered by a broken economic system.This strategy is essential in combating a “culture war” designed to force leftists into a defensive posture. It doesn’t mean abandoning marginalised minorities – Mamdani has unequivocally committed to transgender rights, for example. It just means emphasising unifying economic messages. Anger is redirected from the disenfranchised to thriving economic elites, whom Mamdani seeks to tax to fulfil his pledges. The campaign has settled, too, on not backing down to bad faith attacks: Mamdani has not given an inch in his pro-Palestinian advocacy.View image in fullscreenThen there’s the medium. What Mausser calls “high-quality video production” has been pivotal. Across the west, the far right has proven adept at using platforms such as TikTok to radicalise supporters, with the left mostly not even playing catch-up. Mamdani’s campaign made slick videos that are witty, sassy and snappy, communicating its messages to wide audiences. “All the conversations after the election [were] about needing a ‘Joe Rogan of the left’, how people aren’t getting their news from traditional media, how they’re getting their news from TikTok, Instagram and YouTube,” says Democratic strategist Waleed Shahid. “And that is exactly the story of Zohran.”When Sanders endorsed Mamdani, he declared how he was “very impressed by the grassroots movement that he has put together”. Mamdani’s campaign has an army of door-knockers, often visiting districts traditionally ignored by Democratic machine politicians. For many of these canvassers, this is their first political experience. Mausser reports: “If you ask them, ‘How did you hear about Zohran?’, it’s like: ‘Oh, I saw his video on Instagram or TikTok.’” The message and the medium raised an army. There’s another factor, too: Mamdani, like Ocasio-Cortez, is charismatic and telegenic. It’s not fashionable to discuss this on a left which prioritises the collective over the individual, but we need compelling communicators who look the part.Mamdani may not win the Democratic nomination. Even if he does, Cuomo will stand as an independent candidate, although the socialist challenger may do this, too. His campaign’s weaknesses reflect those of the wider US left: too little inroads among Black and older voters, as well as those with little online political engagement. But Mamdani’s against-the-odds success underlines why the far-right surge doesn’t have to weaken the left – far from it. Indeed, Mamdani positions himself as best-placed to resist Trump, rather than kowtow to his agenda. When the Republicans won, one of Mamdani’s first viral videos was visiting local districts where Trump enjoyed his biggest swings.Whatever happens, Mamdani shows that the US left lives on after what Shahid calls “a shitty year”: along with Trump’s triumph, there have been dispiriting primary defeats of progressive representatives Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush at the hands of notorious pro-Israel lobbyists Aipac. Mamdani has built a movement in New York, but his campaign has also given a shellshocked western left a gift: a strategy to take on the establishment even in adverse circumstances.

      Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

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      House Democratic veterans back moves to limit Trump’s military authority

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      A group of 12 House Democratic military veterans have thrown their weight behind efforts to constrain Donald Trump’s military authority, announcing they will support a War Powers Act resolution in response to the US president’s go ahead for airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.The veterans – some of whom served in Iraq and Afghanistan – were strongly critical of Trump’s decision to launch what they called “preventive air strikes” without US congressional approval, drawing explicit parallels to the run-up to some of America’s longest recent wars.“Twenty years ago, in their rush to appear strong and tough, politicians – from both parties – failed to ask the hard questions before starting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” they wrote in a letter led by Representative Pat Ryan to Trump sent on Monday. “We refuse to make those same mistakes.”Their intervention comes as multiple war powers resolutions are gaining momentum on Capitol Hill, with the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, pushing for a vote as early as this week to rein in the president’s military actions. The veterans did not specify which measure they would support, as competing versions are being drafted by different Democratic factions alongside a bipartisan effort.The War Powers Resolution of 1973 was enacted to limit the US president’s ability to commit armed forces to fight abroad without congressional consent in the form of a vote.Representatives Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, and Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, have been championing one bipartisan resolution, while the ranking Democrats on the House foreign affairs, armed services and intelligence committees are preparing an alternative, according to Punchbowl News.Democratic aides described the latter to the outlet as providing cover for members uncomfortable with backing the Massie-Khanna approach, though lawmakers will not be discouraged from supporting both measures.The adamance against the legality of America’s involvement has only intensified since Trump’s Saturday night strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites, and the line from centrist to progressive Democrats has been to charge the president with executive overreach.The New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called for Trump’s impeachment, describing the attacks as “a grave violation of the constitution and congressional war powers”, while the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, accused the president of misleading Americans and dramatically increasing the risk of war.For the 12 veteran House members, the issue cuts to the heart of their military oath.“We all swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Article 1 Section 8 explicitly requires a vote by Congress to declare war,” they wrote, demanding clear answers about military objectives, estimated costs and potential American casualties before any escalation.The signatories included representatives Gilbert Ray Cisneros Jr, Eugene Simon Vindman, Chris Deluzio, Jimmy Panetta and Ted Lieu.Still, their letter walked a careful line on the broader Middle East conflict, labeling Iran as “evil” and pledging continued support for Israel while warning against the strategic limitations of military action. “While destroying nuclear sites may achieve initial tactical success, it far from guarantees longterm strategic victory,” they argued.The dispute has built on uncomfortable divisions within Trump’s own party, most notably with conservative influencers and independent news media that lean to the right, with Massie and senator Rand Paul emerging as Congress’s most vocal Republican critics of the Iran strikes.But Trump has since escalated his rhetoric, posting on Truth Social about potential “regime change” in Iran and asking: “MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!”Congressional leaders have also expressed frustration over the administration’s failure to provide adequate consultation before the weekend operation.While Schumer received a call from Trump officials, he was reportedly not told which country would be targeted, and Jeffries “could not be reached until after” the strikes had begun, according to the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt. More

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      Militarized LA: troops here to stay as Trump doubles down on deployments

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      Shortly before last November’s presidential election, before anyone could envision him defying his “America first” political base and launching a bombing raid on Iran, Donald Trump offered a preview of how and why he would want to deploy the military on US soil.It was, the president said, to deal with “the enemy within”.“We have some very bad people. We have some sick people. Radical left lunatics,” he said in a Fox News interview that prompted widespread condemnation at the time. “I think it should be very easily handled by … national guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.”Trump did not specify what it was he didn’t want to let happen – only that while he promised to put an end to America’s “forever wars” overseas, he regarded domestic political adversaries, perhaps like the ones who have been protesting in massive numbers in Los Angeles and across the US this month, as a national security threat worthy of a military response.When thousands of protesters took to the streets of Los Angeles earlier this month to protest against his administration’s heavy-handed immigration sweeps targeting workers in factories and car washes, he wasted little time making good on what he had promised.The reality of Trump sending thousands of national guard troops and US marines into LA earlier this month has not matched his rhetoric – yet the shock of it may have been dulled by the headlines coming out of the Middle East. The troops have largely kept a low profile, their duties restricted to guarding federal buildings and, at least according to the administration, accompanying immigration enforcement agents and other federal officials as they go about their business.Still, as the dust settles on two weeks of impassioned street protests and occasional vandalism and violence in downtown Los Angeles, the deployment continues to unnerve California’s political leaders, national Democratic party figures worried about who might be next, as well as many ordinary citizens and influential figures within the military itself.“The US military exists to defend the nation from foreign threats, not to police American streets or intervene in political disputes at home,” a group of retired four-star generals and admirals and high-profile former Pentagon officials said in a statement, signalling just how far Trump has strayed from precedent.The group, including a former secretary of the army, a former secretary of the navy, and Michael Hayden, a retired air force general who led the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency under presidents of both parties, are part of a lawsuit seeking to reverse the deployment, which they say “puts both service members and civilians at risk of harm and violates longstanding constitutional limits on government power”.Some observers have gone further, seeing a direct link between Trump’s willingness to send troops into American city streets and his decision to involve the United States in the growing conflict between Israel and Iran. “That kind of authoritarian aggression [rarely] stays inside the country’s borders,” Julia Ioffe, a national security expert and founding editor of Puck News, said of the California deployment on 11 June. “Didn’t think I’d be right so soon,” she wrote on Friday, as Trump’s war plans for Iran were ramping up.The Trump administration has vowed to keep the troops in place for at least 60 days, to ensure – as Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, told a House defense appropriations subcommittee – “that those rioters, looters and thugs on the other side assaulting our police officers know that we’re not going anywhere”.The threat of a more muscular military confrontation with “the enemy within” has not gone away, either, though one of the questions remaining is whether the military or the many agencies under the control of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – immigration enforcement, border patrol, FBI – are more likely to take the lead.Two days before the No Kings rallies, Kristi Noem, the DHS secretary, was in Los Angeles and said the federal government’s goal was not just to maintain order on the streets but “to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country”. Seconds after delivering these lines at a news conference, FBI agents under Noem’s authority manhandled and handcuffed Alex Padilla, a California senator who interrupted her to ask a question.Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar”, has threatened to arrest the governor, Gavin Newsom, and LA’s mayor, Karen Bass, if they stand in the way of the immigration sweeps. At least two elected officials, the New Jersey congresswoman LaMonica McIver and New York City comptroller, Brad Lander, have indeed been arrested for alleged interference in Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations.The military has so far stayed out of these headline-grabbing events, their role largely eclipsed by continuing immigration raids conducted by masked federal agents refusing to disclose their names or badge numbers, but experts and constitutional scholars say their very presence risks destabilizing what is already a volatile and politically charged situation. “The risk of escalation, or of someone making a mistake, is always present and in these situations actually quite high,” said Chris Mirasola, a national security expert at the University of Houston Law Center. “Just the deployment itself is escalatory.”View image in fullscreenIn deciding to take charge of the California national guard, over Newsom’s objections, Trump stopped short of invoking the Insurrection Act used by past presidents to help quell civil unrest, most recently during the 1992 LA riots when marines rode alongside southern California police patrols in burning neighborhoods.Rather, he invoked a rarely used power to mobilize the military to “temporarily protect” federal property and personnel. Lyndon Johnson used the same protection power to guarantee the safety of civil rights demonstrators in Alabama in 1965, in defiance of the state’s segregationist governor, George Wallace, and Richard Nixon used it in an ill-fated attempt to get the national guard to deliver the mail during a postal strike in 1970. But scholars said they were not aware of it being used any time since.Mirasola said he was a little perplexed, given the vehemence of Trump’s rhetoric about “violent, insurrectionist mobs”, that the president opted for this softer approach. “Maybe he just wanted the theatrics of getting the military on the streets,” Mirasola said. “This is a way of doing that while still preserving some space to continue to escalate.”It was also possible, he suggested, that Trump could not talk his military commanders into taking a more aggressive approach. “The military establishment is extremely allergic to the Insurrection Act,” he said. “It’s one of the few things bred into every single officer.”According to veterans and advocacy groups for service members being deployed to Los Angeles, the military also prides itself on being entirely apolitical and has no appetite to be drawn into a political conflict involving Trump or anyone else. Perhaps for this reason, the national guard and the marines have been barely visible in Los Angeles.At the first big downtown protest, on 8 June, the Los Angeles police moved protesters away from the national guard’s staging area at a federal courthouse complex and parked their patrol cruisers in such a way that the guardsmen could not come out and intervene.Six days later, in the final stages of the No Kings protest, a hard core of protesters briefly faced off against a line of marines stationed on the front steps of the downtown federal building. “Leave LA!” the crowd chanted, prompting the marines to deploy riot shields and push the protesters away from the building. The Los Angeles police quickly issued a dispersal order, sent in officers on horseback, and fired volleys of teargas to send most of the crowd scattering.Otherwise, the only reported incident has involved a military veteran who inadvertently crossed a line of police tape outside a federal building in west Los Angeles. One of the marines on guard wrestled him to the ground and cuffed him, but he was released shortly after and told reporters he was treated “very fairly”.California has sued the Trump administration over the military deployment and seemed to score an early win in court last week when a district judge said the president had exceeded his authority and needed to return control of the state national guard immediately. An appeals panel has since reversed that ruling, however.Part of California’s problem in arguing its case is that the national guard has been pressed into non-traditional activities with increasing frequency in recent years, undermining the notion of a strict separation between military and civilian activities.Several states, under both Republican and Democratic leadership, have drafted the guard into border patrol duties despite severe morale issues among the troops and opposition from the military brass. New Mexico has asked its national guard to work as substitute teachers in understaffed schools. Florida has had them filling in as prison guards, and New York has seconded its guard to police the New York City subway.Supporters of California’s lawsuit argue that none of these scenarios are appropriate. And deploying the national guard for non-military purposes is even more inappropriate, they say, when it happens for an overtly partisan purpose over the objections of the state governor. “The military shouldn’t be in the business of domestic law enforcement. That’s not what they’re trained to do,” said Beau Tremitiere, a lawyer with Protect Democracy, an advocacy group supporting the suit.“If Americans weren’t aware of the risks posed by politicized domestic deployments by the military before the events in Los Angeles, they certainly are now. Healthy and respectful civil-military relations are yet another bulwark of US democracy that the president is trying to erode. We’re all on notice.” More