After announcing the “very successful” US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan, United States President Donald Trump addressed the nation.
Here is the full transcript of his speech on Saturday evening:
A short time ago, the US military carried out massive precision strikes on the three key nuclear facilities in the Iranian regime: Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan.
Everybody heard those names for years as they built this horribly destructive enterprise. Our objective was the destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world’s number one state sponsor of terror.
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. Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace.
If they do not, future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier.
For 40 years, Iran has been saying, “Death to America, death to Israel”.
They have been killing our people, blowing off their arms, blowing off their legs with roadside bombs – that was their speciality.
We lost over a thousand people, and hundreds of thousands throughout the Middle East and around the world have died as a direct result of their hate, in particular, so many were killed by their general, Qassem Soleimani.
I decided a long time ago that I would not let this happen.
It will not continue.
I want to thank and congratulate Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu.
We worked as a team like perhaps no team has ever worked before, and we’ve gone a long way to erasing this horrible threat to Israel.
I want to thank the Israeli military for the wonderful job they’ve done and, most importantly, I want to congratulate the great American patriots who flew those magnificent machines tonight, and all of the United States military on an operation the likes of which the world has not seen in many, many decades.
Hopefully, we will no longer need their services in this capacity. I hope that’s so. I also want to congratulate the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan “Razin” Caine – spectacular general – and all of the brilliant military minds involved in this attack.
With all of that being said, this cannot continue.
There will be either peace or there will be tragedy for Iran far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days.
Remember, there are many targets left. Tonight’s was the most difficult of them all by far, and perhaps the most lethal, but if peace does not come quickly, we will go after those other targets with precision, speed and skill. Most of them can be taken out in a matter of minutes.
There’s no military in the world that could have done what we did tonight, not even close. There has never been a military that could do what took place just a little while ago.
Tomorrow, General Caine, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, will have a press conference at 8am (12:00 GMT) at the Pentagon, and I want to just thank everybody, and in particular, God.
I want to just say, “We love you, God, and we love our great military. Protect them.” God bless the Middle East. God bless Israel, and God bless America.
This year’s presidential race will be won or lost in a handful of states that have swung between Democrats and Republicans over the years. Here’s our guide to the battlegrounds and how their political landscapes could hand them to either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
For each state we’ve included the estimated percentage of the electorate that is white (a group that favors Trump overall), the percentage of white college-educated voters (a subset typically won by Republicans but now leaning toward Clinton) and the results in 2008 and 2012. The figures come from the Cook Political Report.
Florida is where close presidential contests are won or lost, sometimes by razor-thin margins. (See: Bush vs. Gore and the hanging chad).
There are signs that Clinton is positioned to edge out a victory here. For starters, the state’s significant Latino population is changing — there are more Puerto Ricans, who often lean Democratic, and fewer Cuban Americans, who are more reliable Republican voters.
Could Trump still win here? The part-time Floridian, whose Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach has been the site of numerous campaign events, needs turnout among black and Latino voters to lag behind previous elections.
Ohio has a well-earned reputation as a political bellwether — it’s voted for the winner in every presidential contest except one since 1944.
But this year could be different. First, the state’s population is less representative of the nation than before, becoming older and whiter as the rest of the country diversifies. That should be a boost for Trump.
However, he’s been unable to unify the state’s Republican Party around his candidacy, and not even the state’s popular governor, John Kasich, voted for him.
North Carolina tends to be out of Democrats’ reach in presidential elections — Obama won, barely, in 2008, then lost in 2012. But Clinton seems intent on turning the state blue with the help of high-profile supporters such as President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama.
A major issue has been protests in Charlotte after police fatally shot a black man, pulling the city into a nationwide debate over race and criminal justice. It’s possible the political ripples could benefit Clinton, who has pushed for policing reforms and is counting on strong support from black voters.
As one of the whitest states in the country, Iowa is fertile terrain for Trump, who has struggled with black, Latino and Asian voters. He could also benefit from a united Republican front that has eluded him in some other battlegrounds.
Clinton doesn’t have a strong track record in the state. She lost the state’s first-in-the-nation caucuses in 2008 when she ran against Obama, then narrowly edged out Bernie Sanders this year.
Pennsylvania has been a blue state for more than two decades,but there were concerns among Democrats that Trump could boost his numbers with white, working-class voters.
That doesn’t seem to have materialized, and Clinton has maintained a strong base of support among black voters in places such as Philadelphia. The city is such a Democratic bastion that Mitt Romney didn’t earn a single vote in 59 precincts in 2012.
In addition, Clinton’s campaign has set its sights on the Philadelphia suburbs, where Republicans are usually more competitive but Trump has struggled.
It wasn’t long ago that Democrats were ready to write off Colorado. But the state has been rapidly transformed by an influx of Latinos and young, highly educated transplants — demographics that make it a much safer bet for Clinton.
Also hurting Trump is his low support among women disgusted with his sexist remarks. Even though he may be able count on support from conservative strongholds such as Colorado Springs, the growing suburbs around Denver could be slipping out of Republicans’ reach.
Trump’s name already looms over Las Vegas from the candidate’s hotel, but winning the state is another matter. Nevada is home to an increasing number of Latinos who have been turned off by Trump’s hard-line immigration stance and his derogatory comments about Mexicans and other immigrants.
The Clinton campaign has invested heavily in a state organization to balance out the enthusiasm among Trump supporters. Voters here have a strong anti-establishment streak, something the New York businessman and first-time candidate could turn to his advantage.
Democrats have regarded Georgia like a big, fat, juicy peach, just waiting to ripen and fall. Their expectation has been the increased clout of the state’s growing black, Latino and Asian populations would turn this reddest of states blue sometime over the next decade or so.
Some hope that day could come this year if Trump repels enough minority and women voters. However, it’s less than an even-money bet for Clinton.
Donald Trump’s steady slide in the polls has made this normally Republican state vulnerable to turning blue this year. He’s lost the support of Sen. John McCain, and he was never endorsed by the state’s other senator, Jeff Flake.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign is trying to take advantage of a rare opportunity, with appearances by First Lady Michelle Obama, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and the candidate herself. A Democratic victory would likely rely heavily on Arizona’s growing number of Latinos, who have heavily favored Clinton over Trump.
“There will be either peace or there will be tragedy for Iran, far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days.” US President Donald Trump thanked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and God after the US conducted strikes on Iran.
As president, Ronald Reagan spoke movingly of the shock and horror he felt as part of a military film crew documenting firsthand the atrocities of the Nazi death camps.
The story wasn’t true.
Years later, an adamant, finger-wagging Bill Clinton looked straight into a live TV camera and told the American people he never had sex with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
He was lying.
Presidents of all stripes and both major political parties have bent, massaged or shaded the truth, elided uncomfortable facts or otherwise misled the public — unwittingly or, sometimes, very purposefully.
“It’s not surprising,” said Charles Lewis, a journalism professor at American University who wrote a book chronicling presidential deceptions. “It’s as old as time itself.”
But White House scholars and other students of government agree there has never been a president like Donald Trump, whose volume of falsehoods, misstatements and serial exaggerations — on matters large and wincingly small — place him “in a class by himself,” as Texas A&M’s George Edwards put it.
“He is by far the most mendacious president in American history,” said Edwards, a political scientist who edits the scholarly journal Presidential Studies Quarterly. (His assessment takes in the whole of Trump’s hyperbolic history, as the former real estate developer and reality TV personality has only been in office since Jan. 20.)
Edwards then amended his assertion.
“I say ‘mendacious,’ which implies that he’s knowingly lying. That may be unfair,” Edwards said. “He tells more untruths than any president in American history.”
The caveat underscores the fraught use of the L-word, requiring, as it does, the certainty that someone is consciously presenting something as true that they know to be false. While there may be plenty of circumstantial evidence to suggest a person is lying, short of crawling inside their head it is difficult to say with absolutely certainty.
When Trump incessantly talks of rampant voter fraud, boasts about the size of his inaugural audience or claims to have seen thousands of people on rooftops in New Jersey celebrating the Sept. 11 attacks, all are demonstrably false. “But who can say if he actually believes it,” asked Lewis, “or whether he’s gotten the information from some less-than-reliable news site?”
He tells more untruths than any president in American history.
— George Edwards, editor of Presidential Studies Quarterly
Reagan, who is now among the most beloved of former presidents, was famous for embroidering the truth, especially in the homespun anecdotes he loved to share.
In the case of the Nazi death camps, there was some basis for his claim to be an eyewitness to history: Serving stateside in Culver City during World War II, Reagan was among those who processed raw footage from the camps. In the sympathetic telling, the barbarity struck so deeply that Reagan years later assumed he had been present for the liberation.
Even when he admitted wrongdoing in the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal, which cast a dark stain on his administration, Reagan did so in a way that suggested he never meant to deceive.
“A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages,” Reagan said in a prime-time address from the Oval Office. “My heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.”
Clinton, who famously parsed and tweezed the English language with surgical precision, offered a straight-up confession when admitting he lied about his extramarital affair with Lewinsky, which helped lead to his impeachment.
“I misled people, including even my wife,” Clinton said, a slight quaver in his voice as he delivered a nationwide address. “I deeply regret that.”
President Obama took his turn apologizing for promising “if you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it” under the Affordable Care Act; millions of Americans found that not to be true, and PolitiFact, the nonpartisan truth-squad organization, bestowed the dubious 2013 “Lie of the Year” honor for Obama’s repeated falsehood.
“We weren’t as clear as we needed to be in terms of the changes that were taking place,” Obama said in an NBC interview. “I am sorry that so many are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me.”
Speaking at CIA headquarters, President Trump falsely accused the media of creating a feud between himself and the intelligence community.
(Andrew Harnik / Associated Press)
Trump, by contrast, has steadfastly refused to back down, much less apologize, for his copious misstatements. Rather, he typically repeats his claims, often more strenuously, and lashes out at those who point out contrary evidence.
“There’s a degree of shamelessness I’ve never seen before,” said Lewis, the American University professor, echoing a consensus among other presidential scholars. “There’s not a whole lot of contrition there.”
Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, has suggested Trump is unfairly being held to a more skeptical standard by a hostile press corps. “I’ve never seen it like this,” he said at one of his earliest briefings. “The default narrative is always negative, and it’s demoralizing.”
Gil Troy, a historian at Montreal’s McGill University, agreed the relationship between the president and those taking down his words has changed from the days when a new occupant of the White House enjoyed a more lenient standard — at least at the start of an administration — which allowed for the benefit of the doubt.
That, Troy said, is both Trump’s fault — “he brings a shamelessness and blatancy” to his prevarications that is without precedent — and the result of a press corps “that feels much more emboldened, much more bruised, much angrier” after the antagonism of his presidential campaign.
Since taking office, there has been no less hostility from on high; rather, echoing his pugnacious political strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, Trump has declared the media to be the “opposition party.”
“We’re watching the birth pangs of a new press corps and a new series of protocols for covering the president,” Troy said.
June 21 (UPI) — President Donald Trump announced successful attacks on three nuclear sites in Iran and said all planes have exited Iranian airspace.
Trump announced the military intervention after returning to the White House on Saturday and scheduling a meeting with his national security team on Sunday. He also has scheduled a televised address at 10 p.m. EDT on Saturday.
“We have completed our very successful attack on the three nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz and Eshafan,” Trump said in a Truth Social post at 6:50 p.m. EDT.
“All planes are safely on their way home,” Trump said. “Congratulations to our great American Warriors. There is not another military in the world that could have done this.”
The U.S. military has moved several B-2 Spirit stealth bombers and refueling aircraft to Guam, which may be a precursor to aerial strikes against Iran’s most important nuclear facility.
The deployment comes after President Donald Trump announced a two-week pause to allow for potential cease-fire negotiations to end the hostilities between Israel and Iran.
Trump also has said the U.S. knows where Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is sheltering but won’t target him with a military strike for the time being.
Israel has gained aerial superiority in the skies over Iran, but Israel’s conventional munitions can’t effectively penetrate the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant site in a mountainous area in central Iran, according to reports.
B-2 bombers armed with bunker-buster bombs, however, can penetrate the site and the deployment of B-2 bombers and refueling aircraft to Guam raises the potential for eventual U.S. military intervention in Iran.
Guam is about 5,900 miles from Tehran, and B-2 bombers have a range of nearly 6,900 miles with a cruising speed of 559 mph, according to the U.S. Air Force.
When supported by refueling aircraft, the bombers have plenty of range to target Iran’s remaining nuclear facilities, or they could be moved to forward bases that are closer to Iran.
Each bomber can carry bomb loads of up to 40,000 pounds, which makes them capable of deploying 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs against the Fordow site.
The bunker-buster bombs can penetrate “any mixture of earth, rock and concrete before the bomb itself then explodes” deep beneath the Earth’s surface and obliterate a target, cause its support structure to collapse, or both.
It’s unknown if the B-2s flying to Guam also are carrying bunker-buster bombs or if such munitions might have been shipped there or to other regional bases.
Formidable Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant site
Iran’s Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant is located near Qom in central Iran and about 100 miles south of Tehran.
The facility has 3,000 centrifuges that are located about 300 feet beneath the area’s mountains, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Saturday said Iran refuses to reduce its nuclear enrichment “under any circumstances,” The New York Times reported.
Iran is “ready to talk and cooperate” with world leaders but will continue its retaliatory attacks against Israel, Pezeshkian said.
The Iranian president’s position runs counter to that of Trump’s and other U.S. leaders.
Trump “hates nuclear proliferation, [and] I hate nuclear proliferation,” Vice President JD Vance told attendees at the Munich Leaders Meeting held in Washington, D.C., on May 7.
Vance advocated for meeting with Chinese and Russian officials to reduce the number of nuclear arms in the world.
“There is no way you get to that conversation if you allow multiple regimes all over the world to … enter this sprint for a nuclear weapon,” Vance said,
“If the Iran domino falls, you’re going to see nuclear proliferation all over the Middle East,” he added. “That’s very bad for us. It’s very bad for our friends, and it’s something that we don’t think can happen.”
Vance asked attendees which nation has “civil nuclear power” but does not also have nuclear weapons. “The answer is: No one,” Vance said.
“We don’t care if people want nuclear power,” he said. “But you can’t have the kind of enrichment program that allows you to get to a nuclear weapon, and that’s where we draw the line.”
Houthis would resume attacks on U.S. vessels
If the U.S. attacks the Fordow site or otherwise intervenes in the war between Israel and Iraq, the Houthis have said they will resume attacks on U.S.-flagged commercial and military vessels in the Red Sea.
“Any U.S. aggression or attack in support of the Israeli enemy against Iran serves this goal and therefore cannot go unanswered,” the Houthis said in a statement on Saturday.
“Remaining silent would mean surrendering the freedom and dignity of the [Iranian] nation and allowing its wealth to be plundered,” the statement continued.
“This is a battle for the entire nation and a salvation for all its people.”
The Houthis agreed to stop targeting U.S.-flagged vessels in May after enduring a weeks-long aerial campaign by the U.S. military against Houthi targets in Yemen.
Iranian officials also have threatened to target U.S. bases in the Middle East if the U.S. military intervenes in the war.
They remained silent when he flooded their city with federal agents, chief marketing officer Lon Rosen refusing to comment on the racist kidnapping sweeps terrorizing the very community that helped them break attendance records.
And what did the Dodgers receive in exchange for betraying their fans and sucking up to President Trump?
A knock at the door from immigration enforcement.
The Dodgers learned what many Trump voters already learned, which is that Agent Orange doesn’t always reward subservience.
So much for all of their front-office genius. So much for staying out of politics.
Federal agents in unmarked vehicles formed a line at Dodger Stadium’s main entrance on Thursday, apparently with the intention of using a section of the parking lot as a processing center for detainees who were picked up during a morning immigration raid.
The Dodgers could look away when ICE was causing havoc in other parts of town, but even the morally compromised have limits. More than 40% of Dodgers fans are Latino. Transforming Dodger Stadium into ground zero for the administration’s war on brown people would be financial suicide for the franchise.
The agents were denied entry, according to the team.
There was speculation in and around the organization about whether the presence of the federal agents was a form of retaliation by a notoriously vindictive administration. Just a day earlier, the Dodgers said they would announce on Thursday plans to assist immigrant communities affected by the recent raids. In the wake of the visit, the announcement was delayed.
Ultimately, what did the Dodgers gain from their silent complicity with Trump?
They further diminished their stature as vehicles of inclusion, a tradition that included the breaking of baseball’s color barrier by Jackie Robinson and the expansion of the sport’s borders with the likes of Fernando Valenzuela, Hideo Nomo and Chan Ho Park.
They broke their sacred bond with the Latino community that was forged over Valenzuela’s career and passed down for multiple generations.
They at least resisted immigration agents’ efforts to annex their parking lot, but how much damage was already done? How much trust was already lost?
Consider this: When photographs of the unmarked vehicles in front of Dodger Stadium started circulating online, the widespread suspicion was that federal agents were permitted by the Dodgers to be there.
That was later revealed to be untrue, but what does that say about how the Dodgers were perceived?
Federal agents stand outside Gate E of Dodger Stadium on Thursday.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Their announcement about their impending announcement looked like a cynical effort to reverse a recent wave of negative publicity, which started with Rosen refusing to comment on the immigration sweeps.
Asked if the Dodgers regretted visiting the White House, Rosen said, “We’re not going to comment on anything.”
On the day of the “No Kings” demonstrations, a 30-year-old performer named Nezza sang a version of the national anthem in Spanish that was commissioned in 1945 by the U.S. State Department under President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Nezza, whose full name is Vanessa Hernández, later posted a video on her TikTok account showing a Dodgers employee directing her to sing in English. She disobeyed the order, explaining that because of what was happening in Los Angeles, “I just felt like I needed to do it.”
In subsequent interviews, Nezza said her agent was called by a Dodgers employee, who said Nezza was to never return to Dodger Stadium.
The Dodgers later clarified that Nezza wasn’t banned from the ballpark, but the incident nonetheless struck a chord. Reports of American citizens being detained or harassed have surfaced, creating a feeling the raids are as much about making brown-skinned people feel unwelcome as they are about deporting undocumented migrants. Nezza’s experience symbolized this feeling.
The incident resulted in widespread calls for a Dodgers boycott, which, coincidentally or not, was followed by the Dodgers teasing their announcement of support for immigrants.
The divisive environment created by Trump forced the Dodgers to take a side, however passively. Now, they have to win back angry fans who pledged allegiance to them only to be let down. Now, they have to deal with potential retaliation from the Mad King they pathetically tried to appease.
Former Columbia University student was released from a detention centre on Friday after being held for more than three months.
Former Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil has pledged to continue protesting Israel’s war on Gaza, as well as the United States’s support for Israel’s military operations.
Khalil, who was released on Friday night after being detained for more than three months at a detention centre, told reporters at New Jersey’s Newark International Airport on Saturday that the government was funding “this [Gaza] genocide, and Columbia University is investing in this genocide”.
“This is why I will continue to protest with every one of you. Not only if they threaten me with detention. Even if they would kill me, I would still speak up for Palestine,” he said.
“Whether you are a citizen, an immigrant, anyone in this land, you’re not illegal. That doesn’t make you less of a human.”
Born in Syria to Palestinian parents, Khalil, 30, was arrested by immigration agents at his university residence in March and swiftly became the image for President Donald Trump’s harsh crackdown on pro-Palestine student protesters and their possible deportation in the name of alleged anti-Semitism.
The government has claimed that the grounds to detain and deport Khalil, a legal US citizen, were that there were inaccuracies in his application for permanent residency.
But District Judge Michael Farbiarz said it was “highly, highly unusual” for the government to continue detaining a legal US resident who was unlikely to flee and had not been accused of any violence.
Under the terms of his release, Khalil is not allowed to leave the country except for “self-deportation” and faces restrictions on where he can go in the US.
The government condemned the decision to release Khalil and filed a notice that it was appealing the decision.
Trump has repeatedly said he averted a nuclear war, saved millions of lives – and grumbled that he got no credit for it.
Pakistan says it would recommend United States President Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, an accolade that he has said he craves.
In May, a surprise announcement by Trump of a ceasefire brought an abrupt end to a four-day conflict between nuclear-armed foes India and Pakistan.
Trump has since repeatedly said that he averted a nuclear war, saved millions of lives and grumbled that he got no credit for it.
Pakistan agrees that US diplomatic intervention ended the fighting, but India says it was a bilateral agreement between the two militaries.
“President Trump demonstrated great strategic foresight and stellar statesmanship through robust diplomatic engagement with both Islamabad and New Delhi, which de-escalated a rapidly deteriorating situation,” Islamabad said in a statement posted on X.
“This intervention stands as a testament to his role as a genuine peacemaker and his commitment to conflict resolution through dialogue.”
Governments can nominate people for the Nobel Peace Prize. There was no immediate response from Washington, DC, or New Delhi.
Some analysts in Pakistan said the move might persuade Trump to think again about potentially joining Israel in striking Iran’s nuclear facilities. Pakistan has condemned Israel’s action as a violation of international law and a threat to regional stability.
In a social media post on Friday, Trump gave a long list of conflicts he said he had resolved, including India and Pakistan and the so-called Abraham Accords in his first term between Israel and some Muslim-majority countries. He added: “I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize no matter what I do.”
Pandering to Trump’s ‘ego’?
Trump has repeatedly said that he is willing to mediate between India and Pakistan over the disputed Kashmir region, their main source of enmity. Islamabad, which has long called for international attention to Kashmir, is delighted.
But his stance has upended US policy in South Asia, which had favoured India as a counterweight to China, and put in question previously close relations between Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Pakistan’s move to nominate Trump came in the same week its army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, met the US president for lunch. It was the first time that a Pakistani military leader had been invited to the White House when a civilian government was in place in Islamabad.
Trump’s planned meeting with Modi at the G7 summit in Canada last week did not take place after the US president left early, but the two later spoke by phone, in which Modi said “India does not and will never accept mediation” in its dispute with Pakistan, according to the Indian government.
Mushahid Hussain, a former chair of the Senate Defence Committee in Pakistan’s parliament, suggested nominating Trump for the peace prize was justified.
“Trump is good for Pakistan,” he said. “If this panders to Trump’s ego, so be it. All the European leaders have been sucking up to him big time.”
But the move was not universally applauded in Pakistan, where Trump’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza has inflamed passions.
“Israel’s sugar daddy in Gaza and cheerleader of its attacks on Iran isn’t a candidate for any prize,” said Talat Hussain, a prominent Pakistani television political talk show host, in a post on X.
“And what if he starts to kiss Modi on both cheeks again after a few months?”
BOSTON — A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from making drastic cuts to research funding provided by the National Science Foundation.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston on Friday struck down a policy change that could have stripped universities of tens of millions of dollars in research funding. The universities argued that the move threatened crucial work in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, semiconductors and other technology fields.
Talwani said the change, announced by the NSF in May, was arbitrary, capricious and contrary to law.
An email Saturday to the National Science Foundation was not immediately returned.
At issue are “indirect” costs, expenses such as building maintenance and computer systems that aren’t linked directly to a specific project. Currently, the National Science Foundation determines each grant recipient’s indirect costs individually and is supposed to cover actual expenses.
The Trump administration has dismissed indirect expenses as “overhead” and capped them for future awards by the National Science Foundation to universities at 15% of the funding for direct research costs.
The University of California, one of the plaintiffs, estimated the change would cost it nearly $100 million a year.
Judges have blocked similar caps that the Trump administration placed on grants by the Energy Department and the National Institutes of Health.
Claudia Aragon was headed home after dropping her puppy off at obedience school when the first text came in early on Friday, June 6.
“Ice showed up at the Home Depot in cypress park. Want to make sure we can help people,” an immigrant service provider texted her. “this is awful claudia.”
Aragon, who has directed Mayor Karen Bass’ Office of Immigrant Affairs since March 2023, had been sick and was planning to stay home that day.
But she lives only a few miles from the Cypress Park site and decided to drive over.
She arrived outside the Home Depot in the aftermath of the raid — an environment she described as akin to “calm after the storm” in the wake of a natural disaster.
“Everyone’s kind of trying to find their bearings and looking around like, ‘What happened?’ Some of the food vendors that were there were sort of putting things back,” Aragon said.
There would be little calm for Aragon over the next days and weeks.
Within an hour or so of getting home that Friday morning, Aragon’s phone rang again, with someone telling her that federal authorities were at a sprawling fast-fashion warehouse in the Garment District.
Far from being isolated incidents, the Cypress Park Home Depot raid and the arrests at Ambiance Apparel were initial blasts in what would be much broader upheaval, as the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement teams descended on Los Angeles and a military deployment soon followed.
Through it all, Aragon’s phone kept buzzing, as she connected with activists and a host of immigrant service providers.
The next few hours were a surreal and overwhelming frenzy, as Aragon, immigrant advocacy groups and the city all tried to piece together what was happening with little communication from the federal government.
Aragon, who worked in Bass’ congressional office before joining the mayor’s office, has known and collaborated with many of her community counterparts for years.
Those relationships were battle-tested early in Aragon’s city tenure, as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott began sending buses of migrants to Los Angeles in 2023. Aragon was responsible for coordinating the response, as the city, faith and nonprofit partners helped situate the new arrivals.
A day or two after Donald Trump was elected to a second term in the White House, Aragon also sat down with the mayor’s senior staff to strategize on how the city could prepare for potential immigrant raids, since Trump had made no secret of his intentions during the campaign.
The city’s immigrant affairs office is currently a lean two-person team, with Aragon and a language access coordinator. The department was first created under Mayor James Hahn and then resurrected by then-Mayor Eric Garcetti.
Aragon herself is “a very proud immigrant,” having come to the United States from El Salvador when she was 7.
“To be here with Mayor Bass, having the opportunity to elevate the immigrant community through policy, through funding to provide support for providers who champion the community — my community, for families that are like mine — is amazing and an honor,” Aragon said.
It can also be painful at this particular moment in history, when the promise of the immigrant American dream that made her life possible now seems in existential jeopardy and so many are living in fear.
“People can’t even go down the street without being detained … I can’t even look at them and tell them they’ll be okay,” Aragon said.
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State of play
— THE CHAOS CONTINUES: Federal immigration raids continued across L.A. County this week, reaching into Hollywood, Pico Rivera and other locations. In San Fernando, L.A. Councilmember Monica Rodriguez and San Fernando Vice Mayor Mary Solorio went on Instagram Thursday to spread the word about residents being swept up from the areas around a Home Depot in San Fernando and a Costco in Pacoima, in hopes of alerting their families.
“We only have first names of some of the individuals,” Solorio said. “Those individuals are Omar, Elmer, Antonio, Saul and Ramiro.” Rodriguez read out contact information for immigrant defense groups, saying: “We need to protect one another in these very scary times.”
In Hollywood, L.A. Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez voiced his fury over a raid in his district at the Home Depot on Sunset Boulevard.
“Despicable doesn’t even begin to describe what this is,” he told The Times. “You hear about this happening in military dictatorships and totalitarian governments. To happen here in the second-largest city in America is — I don’t have words, just outrage.”
— ‘PROFOUND HARM’: Several people were also detained at a bus stop near a Winchell’s Donut House in Pasadena, evoking angry responses from County Supervisor Janice Hahn and U.S. Rep. Judy Chu. Hahn, who chairs Metro’s transit board, worried that residents will be too afraid to go to work, attend church and, now, hop on public transit. “The fear they are spreading is doing profound harm in our communities,” she said. Metro officials underscored those concerns, saying the transit system has seen a 10% to 15% drop in bus and rail ridership since immigration enforcement activities began.
— BEHIND THE MASK: County Supervisor Kathryn Barger voiced fears this week that some of the masked men pulling over Angelenos may not be immigration agents but rather “bad players” impersonating federal law enforcement. “I tell you this story because we don’t know if they were ICE agents or not,” she said at Tuesday’s board meeting. Hahn wasn’t convinced, replying: “Make no mistake about it: It isn’t people impersonating ICE. It is ICE.”
— DODGER MANIA: Yet another part of the city caught in the uproar was Dodger Stadium. Raul Claros, a community organizer now running for an Eastside seat on the City Council, held a press conference Wednesday to demand that the team do more to help families devastated by the raids. “The largest economic engine in this area is silent!” he told ABC7 and other news outlets. “Wake up! Do better!”
The Dodgers later signaled the organization was willing to help. Before the team made its announcement, federal law enforcement agents were spotted outside the stadium, generating new protests. “People are out here because they don’t want to see their families torn apart,” Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez said in an interview with NBC. The team, in a statement on X, said it had denied entry to those agents. (Dodgers referred to them as ICE, federal officials said they were from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.)
— DOWNTOWN SETTLES DOWN: Confrontations between law enforcement agencies and anti-ICE protesters tapered off this week, prompting Mayor Karen Bass to scale back, and then repeal, her curfew order for downtown, Chinatown and the Arts District. But those showdowns have caused legal and financial shock wages.
— RISING PRICE TAG: For example: City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo reported Friday that the costs of the protests to the city had jumped to more than $32 million, including $29.5 million in costs to the LAPD. The City Council voted 12-3 on Wednesday to loan the LAPD $5 million from the city’s reserve fund to cover the associated police overtime. Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, who represents downtown, voted no, as did two of her colleagues: Hernandez and Soto-Martínez.
— A NEW GIG: Former Mayor Eric Garcetti (who, until recently, was serving as U.S. ambassador to India) has been named Ambassador for Global Climate Diplomacy on behalf of C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group.
— HEADING TO COURT: Free speech advocates have begun filing lawsuits to stop what they call the “continuing abuse” of journalists covering protests in L.A. One federal lawsuit, which targets the city, described instances where journalists have been tear-gassed, detained without cause and shot with less-lethal police rounds.
— THROUGH THE ROOF: The overall cost of legal payouts reached a new peak for City Hall this year, driven in large part by lawsuits over policing and “dangerous conditions,” such as cracked or damaged streets and sidewalks.
— TOURISM TURMOIL: The battle between tourism workers and a coalition of airline and hotel groups intensified this week, with the hotel employees’ union launching a pair of new ballot measures. Unite Here Local 11, which recently won approval of a $30 minimum wage hike for its members, proposed an ordinance to require voter approval for any hotel project that adds 80 or more rooms. Union co-president Kurt Petersen portrayed the measure as a response to an ongoing effort by the L.A. Alliance for Tourism, Jobs and Progress, a business group, to repeal the $30 wage.
— THAT’S NOT ALL: Unite Here also unveiled a ballot proposal to hike the minimum wage for employees in non-tourism industries. Under city law, hotel employees currently receive a minimum wage of $20.32 per hour, compared to $17.28 for most non-tourism workers. The union’s new proposal would bring every worker in L.A. up to their level, jumping first to $22.50 and eventually reaching $30 in 2028.
— ALL ABOARD: Officials with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority plan to lease 2,700 buses to get people around the city for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The agency needs $2 billion to make that happen — and is hoping to secure the funding from the federal government.
— COLE FOR THE SUMMER: Chief Deputy Controller Rick Cole is stepping down on July 11 from his job with City Controller Kenneth Mejia. In his announcement on LinkedIn, Cole called Mejia an “inspiring young leader” who “blazed a new path for transparency and accountability.” He also acknowleged the demands he’s faced since winning a seat on the Pasadena City Council, which he called a “more-than-part-time role.” “Kenneth has been incredibly flexible and supportive but I recognize that I couldn’t do justice to both jobs indefinitely,” he wrote.
MAKING THE ROUNDS
In the wake of the protests and weeklong curfew, L.A.’s mayor has been offering support to businesses in Little Tokyo, the Civic Center and other areas hard hit in downtown by vandalism, graffiti and theft. Bass spent about half an hour on Wednesday visiting restaurants on 1st Street, whose windows were covered in plywood.
Bass dropped into Far Bar, Kaminari Gyoza Bar and other spots, chatting up the proprietors and posing for photos with customers. Afterward, she made an appeal to Trump to withdraw the U.S. Marines, saying things were safe and stable.
“In light of the fact that L.A. is peaceful, there are no protests, there isn’t any sign of vandalism or violence, I would call on the administration to please remove the troops,” she said.
Bass was quickly interrupted from Clemente Franco, an Echo Park resident who said he was frustrated with the state of the city — dirty streets, broken sidewalks, streetlights that are out because of copper wire theft.
“A year and a half with no lights,” he told deputy mayor Vahid Khorsand, who attempted to form a buffer between Franco and Bass. “A year and a half the lights have been off. They took the wires. The whole street is black.”
Khorsand asked Franco to provide him a list of problem locations.
QUICK HITS
Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program to tackle homelessness did not launch any new outreach operations this week, according to her team.
On the docket for next week: The council’s transportation committee is set to meet Wednesday to take up a proposal to regulate public space around L.A.’s “ghost kitchens,” which have generated complaints about unsafe traffic behavior and other neighborhood woes.
Stay in touch
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WASHINGTON — A federal judge Friday blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to keep Harvard University from hosting international students, delivering the Ivy League school another victory as it challenges multiple government sanctions amid a battle with the White House.
The order from U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs in Boston preserves Harvard’s ability to host foreign students while the case is decided, but it falls short of resolving all of Harvard’s legal hurdles to hosting international students. Notably, Burroughs said the federal government still has authority to review Harvard’s ability to host international students through normal processes outlined in law.
Harvard sued the Department of Homeland Security in May after the agency abruptly withdrew the school’s certification to host foreign students and issue paperwork for their visas, skirting most of its usual procedures. The action would have forced Harvard’s roughly 7,000 international students — about a quarter of its total enrollment — to transfer or risk being in the U.S. illegally. New foreign students would have been barred from coming to Harvard.
The university said it was experiencing illegal retaliation for rejecting the White House’s demands to overhaul Harvard policies related to campus protests, admissions, hiring and more. Burroughs temporarily had halted the government’s action hours after Harvard sued.
Less than two weeks later, in early June, President Trump tried a new strategy. He issued a proclamation to block foreign students from entering the U.S. to attend Harvard, citing a different legal justification. Harvard challenged the move, saying the president was attempting an end run around the temporary court order. Burroughs temporarily blocked Trump’s proclamation as well. That emergency block remains in effect, and the judge did not address the proclamation in her order Friday.
“We expect the judge to issue a more enduring decision in the coming days,” Harvard said Friday in an email to international students. “Our Schools will continue to make contingency plans toward ensuring that our international students and scholars can pursue their academic work to the fullest extent possible, should there be a change to student visa eligibility or their ability to enroll at Harvard.”
Students in limbo
The stops and starts of the legal battle have unsettled current students and left others around the world waiting to find out whether they will be able to attend America’s oldest and wealthiest university.
The Trump administration’s efforts to stop Harvard from enrolling international students have created an environment of “profound fear, concern, and confusion,” the university said in a court filing. Countless international students have asked about transferring from the university, Harvard immigration services director Maureen Martin said.
Still, admissions consultants and students have indicated most current and prospective Harvard scholars are holding out hope they’ll be able to attend the university.
For one prospective graduate student, an admission to Harvard’s Graduate School of Education had rescued her educational dreams. Huang, who asked to be identified only by her surname for fear of being targeted, had seen her original doctoral offer at Vanderbilt University rescinded after federal cuts to research and programs related to diversity, equity and inclusion.
Harvard stepped in a few weeks later with a scholarship she couldn’t refuse. She rushed to schedule her visa interview in Beijing. More than a month after the appointment, despite court orders against the Trump administration’s policies, she still hasn’t heard back.
“Your personal effort and capability means nothing in this era,” Huang said in a social media post. “Why does it have to be so hard to go to school?”
An ongoing battle
Trump has been warring with Harvard for months after the university rejected a series of government demands meant to address conservative complaints that the school has become too liberal and has tolerated anti-Jewish harassment. Trump administration officials have cut more than $2.6 billion in research grants, ended federal contracts and threatened to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status.
On Friday, the president said in a post on social media that the administration has been working with Harvard to address “their largescale improprieties” and that a deal with Harvard could be announced within the next week. “They have acted extremely appropriately during these negotiations, and appear to be committed to doing what is right,” the post said.
The Trump administration first targeted Harvard’s international students in April. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem demanded that Harvard turn over a trove of records related to any dangerous or illegal activity by foreign students. Harvard says it complied, but Noem said the response fell short and on May 22 revoked Harvard’s certification in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program.
The sanction immediately put Harvard at a disadvantage as it competed for the world’s top students, the school said in its lawsuit, and it harmed Harvard’s reputation as a global research hub. “Without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard,” the lawsuit said.
The action would have upended some graduate schools that recruit heavily from abroad. Some schools overseas quickly offered invitations to Harvard’s students, including two universities in Hong Kong.
Harvard President Alan Garber previously said the university has made changes to combat antisemitism. But Harvard, he said, will not stray from its “core, legally-protected principles,” even after receiving federal ultimatums.
WASHINGTON — Republicans have suffered a sizable setback on one key aspect of President Trump’s big bill after their plans to gut the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau and other provisions from the Senate Banking Committee ran into procedural violations with the Senate parliamentarian.
Republicans in the Senate proposed zeroing out funding for the CFPB, the landmark agency set up in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, to save $6.4 billion. The bureau had been designed as a way to better protect Americans from financial fraud, but has been opposed by many GOP lawmakers since its inception. The Trump administration has targeted the CFPB as an example of government overregulation and overreach.
The findings by the Senate parliamentarian’s office, which is working overtime scrubbing Trump’s overall bill to ensure it aligns with the chamber’s strict “Byrd Rule” processes, signal a tough road ahead. The most daunting questions are still to come, as GOP leadership rushes to muscle Trump’s signature package to the floor for votes by his Fourth of July deadline.
Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), the chairman of the Banking Committee that drafted the provisions in question, said in a statement, “My colleagues and I remain committed to cutting wasteful spending at the CFPB and will continue working with the Senate parliamentarian on the Committee’s provisions.”
For Democrats, who have been fighting Trump’s 1,000-page package at every step, the parliamentarian’s advisory amounted to a significant win.
“Democrats fought back, and we will keep fighting back against this ugly bill,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the Banking Committee, who engineered the creation of the CFPB before she was elected to Congress.
Warren said that GOP proposals “are a reckless, dangerous attack on consumers and would lead to more Americans being tricked and trapped by giant financial institutions and put the stability of our entire financial system at risk — all to hand out tax breaks to billionaires.”
The parliamentarian’s rulings, while advisory, are rarely, if ever ignored.
With the majority in Congress, Republicans have been drafting a sweeping package that extends some $4.5-trillion tax cuts Trump approved during his first term, in 2017, that otherwise expire at the end of the year. It adds $350 billion to national security, including billions for Trump’s mass deportation agenda. And it slashes some $1 trillion from Medicaid, food stamps and other government programs.
All told, the package is estimated to add at least $2.4 trillion to the nation’s deficits over the decade, and leave 10.9 million more people without healthcare coverage, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office’s review of the House-passed package, which is now undergoing revisions in the Senate.
The parliamentarian’s office is responsible for determining if the package adheres to the Byrd Rule, named after the late Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who was considered one of the masters of Senate procedure. The rule essentially bars policy matters from being addressed in the budget reconciliation process.
Senate GOP leaders are using the budget reconciliation process, which is increasingly how big bills move through Congress, because it allows passage on a simple majority vote, rather than face a filibuster with the higher 60-vote threshold.
But if any of the bill’s provisions violate the Byrd Rule, that means they can be challenged at the tougher 60-vote threshold, which is a tall order in the 53-47 Senate. Leaders are often forced to strip those proposals from the package, even though doing so risks losing support from lawmakers who championed those provisions.
One of the biggest questions ahead for the parliamentarian will be over the Senate GOP’s proposal to use “current policy” as opposed to “current law” to determine the baseline budget and whether the overall package adds significantly to deficits.
Already the Senate parliamentarian’s office has waded through several titles of Trump’s big bill, including those from the Senate Armed Services Committee and Senate Energy & Public Works Committee.
The Banking panel offered a modest bill, just eight pages, and much of it was deemed out of compliance.
The parliamentarian found that in addition to gutting the CFPB, other provisions aimed at rolling back entities put in place after the 2008 financial crisis would violate the Byrd Rule. Those include a GOP provision to limit the Financial Research Fund, which was set up to conduct analysis, saving nearly $300 million; and another to shift the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which conducts oversight of accounting firms, to the Securities and Exchange Commission and terminate positions, saving $773 million.
The GOP plan to change the pay schedule for employees at the Federal Reserve, saving $1.4 billion, was also determined to be in violation of the Byrd Rule.
The parliamentarian’s office also raised Byrd Rule violations over GOP proposals to repeal certain aspects of the Inflation Reduction Act, including on emission standards for some model year 2027 light-duty and medium-duty vehicles.
Mascaro writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.
With the Friday notices, 85 percent of Voice of America’s workforce had been slashed.
Layoff notices have been sent to 639 employees of Voice of America (VOA) and the United States agency that oversees it, effectively shutting down the outlet that has provided news to countries around the world since World War II.
The notices sent on Friday included employees at VOA’s Persian-language service who were suddenly called off administrative leave last week to broadcast reports to Iran following Israel’s attack.
Three journalists working for the Persian service on Friday, who left their office for a cigarette break, had their badges confiscated and weren’t allowed back in, according to one fired employee.
In total, some 1,400 people at VOA and the US Agency for Global Media, or 85 percent of its workforce, have lost their jobs since March, said Kari Lake, Trump’s senior adviser to the agency. She said it was part of a “long overdue effort to dismantle a bloated, unaccountable bureaucracy”.
“For decades, American taxpayers have been forced to bankroll an agency that’s been riddled with dysfunction, bias and waste,” Lake said in a news release. “That ends now.”
VOA began by broadcasting stories about US democracy to residents of Nazi Germany, and grew to deliver news around the world in dozens of languages, often in countries without a tradition of free press.
But President Donald Trump has fought against the news media on several fronts, with the complaint that much of what they produce is biased against conservatives. That includes a proposal to shut off federal funding to PBS and NPR, which is currently before Congress.
‘Death’ of independent journalism
Most VOA employees have been on administrative leave since March 15, their broadcasts and social media posts mostly silenced. Three VOA employees who are fighting the administration’s dismantling of VOA in court were among those receiving layoff notices on Friday.
“It spells the death of 83 years of independent journalism that upholds US ideals of democracy and freedom around the world,” plaintiffs Jessica Jerreat, Kate Neeper and Patsy Widakuswara said in a statement.
The Persian-language employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing legal case, was in the office Friday when colleagues were barred from re-entry. The person was afraid to leave for the same reason – even though authorities said their work had been halted – until receiving a layoff notice.
Steve Herman, VOA’s chief national correspondent who was in the process of retiring to take a job at the University of Mississippi, called the layoffs an “historic act of self-sabotage with the US government completing the silencing of its most effective soft-power weapon”.
It’s not clear what, if anything, will replace VOA’s programming worldwide. The Trump-supporting One American News Network has offered to allow its signal to be used.
Although plaintiffs in the lawsuit called on Congress to continue supporting VOA, Herman said that he is not optimistic that it will survive, even if a Democratic president and Congress take over. For one thing, every day it is off the air is another day for viewers and readers to get into another habit for obtaining news.
“I believe that the destruction is permanent,” Herman said, “because we see no indication in the next fiscal year that Congress will rally to fund VOA.”
By the time another administration takes power that is more sympathetic to the outlet, “I fear that VOA will have become forgotten,” he said.
How did MAGA become Trump’s biggest opponent of a US strike on Iran? The Republican base is split over Trump’s rhetoric about getting involved in another foreign war. Conservative stalwarts like Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon are pushing back. Could a US strike on Iran be a blow against Trump at home?
US president doubles down on claim Iran is building nuclear weapon, again contradicting US intelligence community.
United States President Donald Trump has said his director of national intelligence was “wrong” when she testified that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon and that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had not re-authorised the country’s suspended nuclear weapons programme.
The comments come after Trump earlier this week cast doubt on Tulsi Gabbard’s March 25 report to Congress, in which she reiterated the US intelligence community’s assessment. On Tuesday, Trump told reporters, “I don’t care” that the intelligence community’s finding contradicted his own claims, saying Iran was in the late stages of developing a nuclear weapon.
But speaking on Friday, Trump went further.
A reporter asked, “What intelligence do you have that Iran is building a nuclear weapon? Your intelligence community said they have no evidence.”
The president responded, “Then my intelligence community is wrong. Who in the intelligence community said that?”
“Your DNI [director of national intelligence], Tulsi Gabbard,” the reporter replied.
“She’s wrong,” Trump said.
It is extremely rare for a US president to openly contradict the country’s intelligence community, with critics accusing Trump of flagrantly disregarding evidence to justify potential direct US involvement in the fighting, according to Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara.
“This is not just one person, one team saying something,” Bishara said. “It’s the entire intelligence community in the United States. That he would dismiss them … it’s just astounding.”
Speaking on Friday, Trump also appeared to downplay the prospect of the US brokering a ceasefire agreement between Iran and Israel, saying he “might” support such a deal, while adding, “Israel’s doing well in terms of war, and I think you would say that Iran is doing less well.”
“It’s hard to make that request right now. When someone’s winning, it’s harder than when they’re losing,” he added.
Reporting from Washington, DC, Al Jazeera’s Heidi Zhou Castro noted that Trump was “really making a point that he’s not going to make an effort to ask Israel to ease up on its aerial bombing of Iranian targets”.
“It seems that Trump is very squarely on Israel’s side as things are progressing, and … it appears that he is not leaning towards the diplomacy route, though, again, he is giving himself that two weeks’ time to make a final decision,” she said.
Trump on Thursday said he would take two weeks to decide the US response to the conflict. Experts say the decision would likely be transformative.
The US is seen as one of the few countries with the leverage to pressure Israel to step back from the brink of wider-scale regional war.
At the same time, the involvement of the US military is seen as key to Israel’s stated mission of completely dismantling Iran’s nuclear programme, which hinges on destroying the underground Fordow enrichment plant.
A successful attack on the facility would require both Washington’s 30,000-pound (13,000kg) GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator and the B-2 bombers needed to deliver it.
Speaking to reporters on Friday, Trump also downplayed the potential role of European countries in de-escalating the situation. That came hours after Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met the top diplomats from France, the UK, Germany and the EU in Geneva.
“Europe is not going to be able to help,” the US president said.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday joined President Trump and congressional Republicans in siding with the oil and gas industry in its challenge to California’s drive for electric vehicles.
In a 7-2 decision, the justices revived the industry’s lawsuit and ruled that fuel makers had standing to sue over California’s strict emissions standards.
The suit argued that California and the Environmental Protection Agency under President Biden were abusing their power by relying on the 1970s-era rule for fighting smog as a means of combating climate change in the 21st century.
California’s new emissions standards “did not target a local California air-quality problem — as they say is required by the Clean Air Act — but instead were designed to address global climate change,” Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote, using italics to described the industry’s position.
The court did not rule on the suit itself but he said the fuel makers had standing to sue because they would be injured by the state’s rule.
“The fuel producers make money by selling fuel. Therefore, the decrease in purchases of gasoline and other liquid fuels resulting from the California regulations hurts their bottom line,” Kavanaugh said.
Only Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson disagreed.
Jackson questioned why the court would “revive a fuel-industry lawsuit that all agree will soon be moot (and is largely moot already). … This case gives fodder to the unfortunate perception that moneyed interests enjoy an easier road to relief in this Court than ordinary citizens.”
But the outcome was overshadowed by the recent actions of Trump and congressional Republicans.
With Trump’s backing, the House and Senate adopted measures disapproving regulations adopted by the Biden administration that would have allowed California to enforce broad new regulations to require “zero emissions” cars and trucks.
Trump said the new rules adopted by Congress were designed to displace California as the nation’s leader in fighting air pollution and greenhouse gases.
In a bill-signing ceremony at the White House, he said the disapproval measures “will prevent California’s attempt to impose a nationwide electric vehicle mandate and to regulate national fuel economy by regulating carbon emissions.”
“Our Constitution does not allow one state special status to create standards that limit consumer choice and impose an electric vehicle mandate upon the entire nation,” he said.
In response to Friday’s decision, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said “the fight for fight for clean air is far from over. While we are disappointed by the Supreme Court’s decision to allow this case to go forward in the lower court, we will continue to vigorously defend California’s authority under the Clean Air Act.”
Some environmentalists said the decision greenlights future lawsuits from industry and polluters.
“This is a dangerous precedent from a court hellbent on protecting corporate interests,” said David Pettit, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute. “This decision opens the door to more oil industry lawsuits attacking states’ ability to protect their residents and wildlife from climate change.”
Times staff writer Tony Briscoe, in Los Angeles, contributed to this report.
The court declined to fast-track the review of the dispute over Trump having legal power to impose broad tariffs.
The United States Supreme Court has declined to speed up its consideration of whether to take up a challenge to President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs even before lower courts have ruled in the dispute.
The Supreme Court denied on Friday a request by a family-owned toy company, Learning Resources, that filed the legal challenge against Trump’s tariffs to expedite the review of the dispute by the nation’s top judicial body.
The company, which makes educational toys, won a court ruling on May 29 that Trump cannot unilaterally impose tariffs using the emergency authority he had claimed. That ruling is currently on hold, leaving the tariffs in place for now.
Learning Resources asked the Supreme Court to take the rare step of immediately hearing the case to decide the legality of the tariffs, effectively leapfrogging the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Washington, where the case is pending.
Two district courts have ruled that Trump’s tariffs are not justified under the law he cited, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Both of those cases are on appeal. No court has yet backed the sweeping emergency tariff authority Trump has claimed.
Trump revives longstanding grievance as the White House is consumed by a foreign policy decision on whether to get directly involved in the Israel-Iran war.
US President Donald Trump has called for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the 2020 election won by Democrat Joe Biden, repeating his baseless claim that the contest was marred by widespread fraud.
In a post on Truth Social, the president criticised Biden on immigration issues and said he lost the 2020 presidential election by a “LANDSLIDE”.
“Biden was grossly incompetent, and the 2020 election was a total FRAUD!” Trump said. “The evidence is MASSIVE and OVERWHELMING. A Special Prosecutor must be appointed. This cannot be allowed to happen again in the United States of America! Let the work begin!”
Trump’s revival of his longstanding grievance, which comes as his White House is consumed by a hugely substantial foreign policy decision on whether to get directly involved in the Israel-Iran war, is part of an amped-up effort by him to undermine the legitimacy of Biden’s presidency.
Earlier this month, Trump directed his administration to investigate Biden’s actions as president, alleging aides masked his predecessor’s “cognitive decline.” Biden has dismissed the investigation as “a mere distraction”.
The post also revives Trump’s claim that the election was stolen, even though courts around the country and a Trump attorney general from his first term found no evidence of fraud that could have affected the outcome. The Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity arm pronounced the election “the most secure in American history”.
And in 2022, the House of Representatives January 6 committee’s final report asserts that Trump criminally engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election and failed to act to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Trump’s repeated, false claims of widespread voter fraud resonated with his supporters, the committee said, and were amplified on social media, building on the distrust of government he had fostered during his four years in office.
It was unclear what Trump had in mind when he called for a special prosecutor, but in the event Attorney General Pam Bondi heeds his call, she may face pressure to appoint someone who has already been confirmed by the Senate.
A Department of Justice spokesperson declined to comment Friday.
The Justice Department, in recent years, has appointed a succession of special counsels – sometimes, though not always, plucked from outside the agency – to lead investigations into politically sensitive matters, including conduct by Biden and Trump.
Last year, Trump’s personal lawyers launched an aggressive, and successful, challenge to the appointment of Jack Smith, the special counsel assigned to investigate his efforts to undo the 2020 presidential election and his retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
A Trump-appointed judge agreed, ruling that then-Attorney General Merrick Garland had exceeded his bounds by appointing a prosecutor without Senate approval and confirmation, and dismissed the case.
That legal team included Todd Blanche, who is now deputy attorney general, as well as Emil Bove, who is Blanche’s top deputy but was recently nominated to serve as a judge on a federal appeals court.
