WASHINGTON — President Trump on Friday 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.
“Biden was grossly incompetent, and the 2020 election was a total FRAUD!” Trump said in a social media post in which he also sought to favorably contrast his immigration enforcement approach with that of the former president. “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 post, made as his Republican 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 a long-running grievance by Trump 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.”
It was unclear what Trump had in mind when he called for a special prosecutor, but in the event Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi heeds his call, she may face pressure to appoint someone who has already been confirmed by the Senate. A Justice Department spokesman 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 into conduct by Biden and by 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, Fla. A Trump-appointed judge agreed, ruling that then-Atty. Gen. 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.
How has Project 2025 shaped Trump’s second term? Marc Lamont Hill speaks to its former director, Paul Dans.
Project 2025 became a flashpoint during the 2024 presidential campaign. The sweeping conservative policy blueprint aims to overhaul the federal government and reshape United States society.
How closely is President Donald Trump following its direction? And how much does it test the limits of the Constitution?
Marc Lamont Hill talks to Paul Dans, the former director of Project 2025 at the Heritage Foundation.
This past week Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and President Trump spoke at a rally. Trump’s speech seemed familiar: Disparage Los Angeles (“trash heap”). Criticize Gov. Gavin Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass (“incompetent, and they paid troublemakers, agitators and insurrectionists”). Restate grievances about the 2020 election (“rigged and stolen”). Chide the crowd to support the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (“You better push your favorite congressmen”).
But this speech was different from his others. The location was Ft. Bragg in North Carolina — and the audience was mostly soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division, the “All Americans.” Internal unit communications revealed soldiers at the rally were screened based on political leanings and physical appearance. “If soldiers have political views that are in opposition to the current administration,” the guidance advised, “and they don’t want to be in the audience then they need to speak with their leadership and get swapped out.”
So what followed was to be expected. A sea of young soldiers in uniform — selected for their preference for the president — cheering and clapping for partisan commentary. This obviously violates Defense Department regulations. Heck, it’s even spelled out in a handy Pentagon FAQ:
Q. Can I ever wear my uniform when I attend political events?
A. No; military members must refrain from participating in political activity while in military uniform in accordance with both DoDD 1344.10 and DoDI 1344.01. This prohibition applies to all Armed Forces members.
But what happened during Trump’s appearance at the Army base is worse than breaking regs. The commander in chief forced an important unit to choose sides. He broke the All Americans in two. In essence, his statement to the troops there was: “Those who like me and my politics, come to my rally. The rest of you — beat it.” (Maybe we should start calling them the “Some Americans.”)
Imagine what it was like the day after. The soldiers who chose not to attend wondered how their next rating would go. Some lieutenant from California worried if his commander now has a problem with where he’s from — and is checking whether he was at the rally. Maybe it’s better if he wasn’t, and he instead chose to abide by Defense regulations?
No matter which way you lean, that speech injected partisan acid into the 82nd Airborne. And it will drip down and corrode from the stars at the top to the lowest-ranking private.
Militaries require extraordinary cohesion to function in combat. For those of us who’ve chosen this profession, one thing is burned into our brains from that very first day our hair’s shorn off: We’re all we’ve got. There’s nobody else. When you are hundreds and thousands of miles away from everyone else you’ve ever known, and you’re there for weeks and months and a year, you realize just how important the person next to you is, regardless of where they’ve come from, who their parents are, or whether their community votes red or blue.
Fighting units are like five separate fingers that form a fist. Partisan acid burns and weakens our fist.
Then there are the indirect effects. This speech damaged the military’s standing with a large swath of America. The image of soldiers cheering the partisan applause lines of a commander in chief who just sent thousands of troops to Los Angeles over the state’s objections? Not a good look.
These optics risk ruining the military’s trust with roughly half of America. The military is the last remaining federal institution that a majority of Americans trust “a great deal.” But it’s been slipping since the last Trump administration and may fall under 50%. Yet the military requires firm trust to fund and fill critical needs.
That’s important because not everyone wants to serve in the military. Many would prefer not to think about the expected self-sacrifice, or the daily discomforts of military discipline. Moreover, not everyone is even able to serve in the military. Roughly three-quarters of young Americans can’t qualify.
What if someone who would have been the next Mike Mullen — Los Angeles native, Navy admiral and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs — gets turned off by this rally and opts against the Naval Academy?
Then zoom out a little. What if much of California takes offense at this speech, not to mention at the soldiers and Marines so recently forced upon the local and state governments?
California hosts more active-duty troops than any other state — by a wide margin. It’s also the biggest donor state in the country, contributing $83 billion more to the federal government than it receives. The bases and other strategic locations up and down the Pacific Coast are beyond value. California is America’s strong right arm.
To sever California’s support for the military is simply unthinkable. It just can’t happen. We’ve got to fix this.
The first fix is simple. Hold troops to the accepted standards. Hegseth’s most recent book argued that the Defense Department has “an integrity and accountability problem.” Here’s the secretary’s chance to show America he stands for standards.
But we know mistakes happen, and this could become a powerful teachable moment: When the commander in chief orders troops to such an event, the only acceptable demeanor is the stone cold silence the generals and admirals of the Joint Chiefs display at the State of the Union, regardless of their politics and regardless of what the president is saying. Just a few years ago, two Marines in a similarly awful situation did just this right thing.
A further fix calls for more individuals to act: The roughly 7,500 retired generals and admirals in America need to speak up. The military profession’s nonpartisan ethic is at a breaking point. They know the old military saying: When you spot something substandard, and you fail to correct it, then you’ve just set a new standard.
The reason many of these retired senior officers often don’t speak out is their fear that defending neutrality risks having a political impact. Yet their continued silence carries a grave institutional effect — the slow-motion suicide of the profession that gave them their stars.
The president mentioned Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in his speech, and it’s too bad his speechwriter didn’t include a certain anecdote that would’ve fit the occasion. When the Civil War was over and terms were being agreed upon at Appomattox Court House, Lee noticed Col. Ely Parker, a Tonawanda Seneca man serving on Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s staff. Lee quipped, “I am glad to see one real American here.”
To which Parker replied, “We are all Americans.” Since that very moment, we’ve been one country and one Army, All Americans, indivisible and inseparable from society.
If only we can keep it.
ML Cavanaugh is the author of the forthcoming book “Best Scar Wins: How You Can Be More Than You Were Before.” @MLCavanaugh
President Donald Trump hails decision as ‘big win’, but Governor Gavin Newsom promises to pursue legal challenge.
A United States appeals court has ruled the administration of President Donald Trump could keep control of National Guard troops in Los Angeles, over the objections of California Governor Gavin Newsom.
The decision on Thursday comes against a backdrop of heightened tensions in California’s largest city, which has become ground zero of Trump’s immigration crackdown across the US.
In a 38-page unanimous ruling, a three-judge panel said Trump was within his rights earlier this month when he ordered 4,000 members of the National Guard into service for 60 days to “protect federal personnel performing federal functions and to protect federal property”.
“Affording appropriate deference to the President’s determination, we conclude that he likely acted within his authority in federalising the National Guard,” the panel of the San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeal said.
Trump, a Republican, had appointed two of the judges on the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit panel while his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, had named the third, according to US media reports.
Last week, a lower court judge had ordered Trump to return control of the California National Guard to Newsom, saying the president’s decision to deploy them during protests over federal immigration detentions in Los Angeles was “illegal”. That decision by US District Judge Charles Breyer on June 12 prompted the appeal.
On Thursday night, Trump hailed the appeal court’s decision in a post on his Truth Social social media platform, calling it a “BIG WIN”.
“All over the United States, if our Cities, and our people, need protection, we are the ones to give it to them should State and Local Police be unable, for whatever reason, to get the job done,” Trump wrote.
‘Not a king’
The state of California had argued that Trump’s order was illegal because it did not follow the procedure of being issued through the governor.
It was the first time since 1965 that a US president deployed the National Guard over the wishes of a state governor.
The judges said Trump’s “failure to issue the federalisation order directly ‘through’ the Governor of California does not limit his otherwise lawful authority to call up the National Guard”.
But they said the panel disagreed with the defendant’s primary argument that the president’s decision to federalise members of the California National Guard “is completely insulated from judicial review”.
“Nothing in our decision addresses the nature of the activities in which the federalized National Guard may engage,” it wrote in its opinion.
Newsom could still challenge the use of the National Guard and Marines under other laws, including the bar on using troops in domestic law enforcement, it added.
The governor could raise those issues at a court hearing on Friday in front of Breyer, it also said.
In a social media post after the decision, Newsom promised to pursue his challenge.
“Donald Trump is not a king and not above the law,” he wrote.
“Tonight, the court rightly rejected Trump’s claim that he can do whatever he wants with the National Guard and not have to explain himself to a court.
“We will not let this authoritarian use of military soldiers against citizens go unchecked.”
June 20 (UPI) — A federal judge has blocked President Donald Trump‘s attempt to make federal transportation funding contingent on state compliance with his immigration policies.
In his ruling Thursday, Chief U.S. District Judge John McConnell of Providence, R.I., said not only does the Department of Transportation lack the authority to tie grant funding to immigration enforcement, but the directive also usurps Congress’ power of the purse while being “arbitrary and capricious.”
“Congress did not authorize or grant authority to the Secretary of Transportation to impose immigration enforcement conditions on federal dollars specifically appropriated for transportation purposes,” the President Barack Obama appointee said in his brief ruling.
The ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by 20 state attorneys general challenging an April 24 directive sent to all Department of Transportation funding receipts, stating they must comply with an Immigration Enforcement Condition when applying for future grants.
The letter specifies that as recipients, they have “entered into legally enforceable agreements with the United States Government and are obligated to comply fully with all applicable Federal laws and regulations,” particularly those relating to immigration enforcement and diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
“Adherence to your legal obligations is a prerequisite for receipt of DOT financial assistance,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s letter states.
“Noncompliance with applicable Federal laws, or failure to cooperate generally with Federal authorities in the enforcement of Federal law, will jeopardize your continued receipt of Federal financial assistance from DOT and could lead to a loss of Federal funding from DOT.”
The 20 Democrat-led states filed their lawsuit against the directive in May, arguing the Department of Transportation has no authority to tie grants to federal civil immigration enforcement, as the two are unrelated.
In his ruling, McConnell agreed with the plaintiffs.
“The IEC, backed by the Duffy Directive, is arbitrary and capricious in its scope and lacks specificity in how the States are to cooperate on immigration enforcement in exchange for Congressionally appropriated transportation dollars — grant money that the States rely on to keep their residents safely and efficiently on the road, in the sky and on the rails,” he said.
“[T]he IEC is not at all reasonably related to the transportation funding program grants.”
California Attorney General Rob Bonta applauded the ruling while chastising Trump for “threatening to withhold critical transportation funds unless states agree to carry out his inhumane and illogical immigration agenda.
“It’s immoral — and more importantly, illegal,” the Democrat said. “I’m glad the District Court agrees, blocking the President’s latest attempt to circumvent the Constitution and coerce state and local governments into doing his bidding while we continue to make our case in court.”
Since returning to the White House, Trump has led a crackdown on immigration, with many of his policies being challenged in court.
Trump’s base is splintering from GOP hawks over possible US strikes on Iran. While some Republicans push for military action and regime change, key MAGA allies warn war could derail Trump’s domestic agenda. Trump says he’ll decide within two weeks on action in Iran.
June 20 (UPI) — A federal appeals court ruled late Thursday that President Donald Trump may maintain control of thousands of National Guard troops deployed to Los Angeles, a blow to the state’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, who is fighting to keep the soldiers off his streets.
The three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals was unanimous, ruling that Trump’s order federalizing members of the California National Guard was likely legal.
The court though disagreed with the Trump administration’s argument that the president’s decision to federalize the troops was insulated from judicial review but acknowledged that they must be “highly deferential” to it.
“Affording the President that deference, we conclude that it is likely that the President lawfully exercised his statutory authority,” the court said in its 38-page ruling, though it added “nothing in our decision addresses the nature of the activities in which the federalized National Guard may engage.”
The panel included two Trump-appointed judges, Mark Bennett and Eric Miller, and President Joe Biden appointee Jennifer Sung.
The ruling stays a lower court’s order that had directed the Trump administration to remove the troops deployed to Los Angeles streets.
Trump celebrated the ruling as a “BIG WIN” on his Truth Social media platform.
“The Judges obviously realized that Gavin Newscum is incompetent and ill prepared, but this is much bigger than Gavin, because all over the United States ,if our Cities, and our people, need protection, we are the ones to give it to them should State and Local Police be unable , for whatever reason to get the job done,” Trump said in the post, referring to the California governor by an insulting moniker he invented.
Trump — who campaigned on mass deportations while using incendiary and derogatory rhetoric as well as misinformation about immigrants — has been leading a crackdown on immigration since returning to the White House.
On June 6, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents began conducting raids in Los Angeles, prompting mass protests in the city.
In response, Trump deployed some 2,000 California National Guardsmen to Los Angeles to quell the demonstrations and to protect ICE agents performing immigration arrests. The number of troops deployed has since increased to 4,000, despite protests having abated.
The deployment was met with staunch opposition, criticism of Trump for continuing an extreme right-wing slide into authoritarianism and a lawsuit from Newsom, who was initially awarded a stay ordering the troops to be removed from the Los Angeles streets.
However, an appeals court hours later issued a preliminary injunction, which late Thursday was made a stay.
Newsom, in a statement, expressed disappointment over the ruling while highlighting the court’s rejection of Trump’s argument that his decision to deploy the troops is beyond judicial review.
“The President is not a king and is not above the law,” Newsom said, vowing to continue to fight the deployment in court.
“We will press forward with our challenge to President Trump’s authoritarian use of U.S. military soldiers against citizens.”
The deployment by Trump is the first by a president without a governor’s permission since 1965.
US Senator Chris Van Hollen argues that the Trump has made his administration ‘a junior partner’ to Netanyahu.
US President Donald Trump has made his administration “a subcontractor, a junior partner” to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s objectives in the Middle East, argues Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen.
As the president mulls further involvement in Israel’s attack on Iran, Senator Van Hollen tells host Steve Clemons that “This notion that you can just drop a few big bombs and be done with it misunderstands history, because there is a real risk that the United States will get dragged deeper and deeper into this war.”
Van Hollen also criticised the US-Israeli Gaza Humanitarian Foundation as “death traps” for Palestinians.
Islamabad, Pakistan – Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, has held an unprecedented one-on-one meeting with United States President Donald Trump at the White House, where the two leaders spoke for more than two hours, according to the Pakistani military.
In a statement issued on Thursday by Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the Pakistani military’s media wing, the meeting, originally scheduled for one hour, was held in the Cabinet Room over lunch and then continued in the Oval Office.
After Wednesday’s meeting, the ISPR said, Munir expressed “deep appreciation” for Trump’s efforts in facilitating a ceasefire between India and Pakistan after a four-day conflict in May between the two nuclear-armed neighbours. According to the ISPR, Trump welcomed Pakistan’s cooperation against “terrorism”.
While the White House did not release any statement on the meeting, which was held behind closed doors and without news media photo opportunities, Trump spoke to reporters briefly after his talks with Munir. He thanked the army chief and said he was “honoured to meet him”.
Yet amid the bonhomie and the promise of a sharp uptick in relations after years of tension between Washington and Islamabad, Trump also referred to the ongoing military conflict between Israel and Iran, which the US president has said his country might join.
The Pakistanis, Trump said, “know Iran very well, better than most”, adding that they are “not happy”.
For Pakistan, analysts said, that comment underscored how the reset in ties with the US that Islamabad desperately seeks will be tested by two key challenges. Iran and the current crisis with Israel will force Pakistan into a diplomatic balancing act, they said. And Islamabad’s close relations with China could similarly pull Pakistan in conflicting directions.
What did Trump and Munir talk about?
According to the ISPR, Munir spoke to Trump about a range of areas where the two nations could strengthen cooperation, including “economic development, mines and minerals, artificial intelligence, energy, cryptocurrency, and emerging technologies”.
But the Pakistani military conceded that the two leaders also held “detailed discussions” on the escalating tensions between Iran and Israel with both Munir and Trump – according to Islamabad – emphasising the need for a peaceful resolution.
Munir was accompanied by Pakistan’s national security adviser, Lieutenant General Asim Malik, who also heads the country’s premier intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
On the American side, Trump was joined by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the president’s top negotiator in the Middle East, Steve Witkoff.
Marvin Weinbaum, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute (MEI), said the lack of a media presence during the lunch could be interpreted as suggesting that “the nature of the conversation was such that neither party wanted photo opportunities”. Weinbaum told Al Jazeera that neither side likely wanted to reveal much about “what was discussed, though my read is it was perhaps the US wanting to know about Pakistan’s role on what follows in Iran during this ongoing situation”.
Later on Wednesday evening, Munir attended a dinner hosted by the Pakistani embassy with nearly three dozen figures from think tanks, policy institutions and diplomatic circles. Al Jazeera spoke to several participants, who all requested anonymity to discuss what Munir said at the dinner.
One participant said Munir did not divulge specifics from his meeting with Trump but he remarked that the conversation was “fantastic and could not have gone any better”. Munir added, according to this person, that Pakistan’s relations with the previous administration of President Joe Biden had been “among the worst” historically.
Another attendee told Al Jazeera that Munir said the US “knows what it needs to do regarding Iran” and reiterated that Pakistan’s view is that “every conflict is resolvable through dialogue and diplomacy”.
‘Significant upswing’
For the moment, experts said, the meeting represents a major gain for Pakistan in its bid to improve ties with the US.
Pakistan has been a close US ally since gaining independence in 1947. They worked closely together in Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion in 1979 and then again after the US invasion of Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks.
While the US has provided more than $30bn in aid in the last two decades to Pakistan, it has repeatedly accused Islamabad of “duplicity” and of not being a reliable security partner.
Pakistan, in turn, has argued that Washington constantly demands it “do more” without fully acknowledging the losses and instability Pakistan has suffered due to regional violence.
Elizabeth Threlkeld, director of the South Asia Program at the Stimson Center in Washington, DC, said Munir’s visit marks a “significant upswing” in US-Pakistan ties under the Trump administration.
“Given President Trump’s central role in shaping foreign policy and his preference for personal relationships, this visit has allowed Field Marshal Munir to solidify a rapport built during the recent crisis,” she told Al Jazeera.
Sahar Khan, a Washington, DC-based security policy expert, said that while the meeting was significant, it doesn’t mean the two countries are “now friends”. However, it does indicate a “thaw in the relationship”.
She added that although Trump is unpredictable, Pakistan should consider striking a deal with him to prevent unrealistic demands regarding regional issues.
“For now, Munir’s message to the Trump administration is, take the time to understand Pakistan and stop viewing it through the lens of India, China or Afghanistan,” she said.
Making that message stick, though, won’t be easy, analysts said.
China, the real strategic dilemma
China remains Pakistan’s most critical partner, with whom it enjoys deep economic, strategic and military ties. But simultaneously, over the past three decades, Beijing’s rise as a global superpower has made it Washington’s principal rival.
Muhammad Faisal, a South Asia security researcher and China expert at the University of Technology in Sydney, said managing ties with both powers will test Islamabad’s commitment to a policy of “no-camp politics”.
China has invested $62bn in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a large infrastructure project connecting western China to the Arabian Sea via Pakistan.
On the military front, Pakistan procures more than 80 percent of its weaponry from China, and some of those products, particularly Chinese jets and missiles, showcased their worth in the recent conflict with India.
“In the long run, both [China and the US] are crucial for Pakistan in their own right,” Faisal told Al Jazeera. And while the US and China might each want Islamabad on their side, the fact that Pakistan is sought after by both has its own advantage. It “gives Islamabad considerable diplomatic space to expand cooperation with both Beijing and Washington”, he said.
The Iran challenge
Iran, currently under an intense Israeli assault that has targeted key infrastructure and senior military and nuclear figures, presents another sensitive challenge for Pakistan.
Field Marshal Asim Munir held a meeting with Major General Mohammad Bagheri, chief of the General Staff of the Iranian military, last month. Bagheri was killed on June 13, 2025, in an Israeli air strike. [Handout/Inter-Services Public Relations]
Analysts argued that Pakistan’s proximity and ties to Tehran position it as a potential mediator between the US and Iran.
“It is in Pakistan’s interest to play a mediating role. It cannot afford another adversary on its western border, given its internal challenges,” Khan said.
Last month, Munir travelled to Iran along with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. During the visit, he met Major General Mohammad Bagheri, chief of General Staff of the Iranian military. In the first wave of strikes by Israel on Friday, Bagheri was one of the several military officials who were killed.
Since the Israeli strikes began, Pakistan has strongly defended Iran’s right to self-defence, describing the Israeli strikes as violations of Iran’s territorial sovereignty and calling them “blatant provocations”.
Home to nearly 250 million people, Pakistan has a significant Shia minority – between 15 percent and 20 percent of the population – who look to Iran for religious leadership.
Faisal noted that these demographic and geographic realities would constrain Pakistan’s public support for any US military intervention.
“Islamabad can continue to call for diplomacy and cessation of hostilities to contain the conflict. As a neighbour, instability in Iran isn’t in Pakistan’s interest,” he said. At the same time, Faisal added, “a spike in sectarian tensions [in Pakistan] can test internal security. Thus, Islamabad will be wary of pro-American public posturing.”
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided Thursday to leave troops in Los Angeles in the hands of the Trump administration while California’s objections are litigated in federal court, finding the president had broad — though not “unreviewable” — authority to deploy the military in American cities.
“We disagree with Defendants’ primary argument that the President’s decision to federalize members of the California National Guard … is completely insulated from judicial review,” Judge Mark J. Bennett of Honolulu, a Trump appointee, wrote for the appellate panel. “Nonetheless, we are persuaded that, under longstanding precedent interpreting the statutory predecessor … our review of that decision must be highly deferential.”
Legal scholars said the decision was expected — particularly as the 9th Circuit has moved from the country’s most liberal to one of its most “balanced” since the start of Trump’s first term.
“It’s critically important for the people to understand just how much power Congress has given the president through these statutes,” said Eric Merriam, a professor of legal studies at Central Florida University and an appellate military judge.
“Judges for hundreds of years now have given extreme deference to the president in national security decisions, [including] use of the military,” the expert went on. “There is no other area of law where the president or executive gets that level of deference.”
The appellate panel sharply questioned both sides during Tuesday’s hearing, appearing to reject the federal government’s assertion that courts had no right to review the president’s actions, while also undercutting California’s claim that President Trump had overstepped his authority in sending troops to L.A. to quell a “rebellion against the authority of the United States.”
“All three judges seemed skeptical of the arguments that each party was making in its most extreme form,” said Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Liberty and National Security Program at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice.
“I was impressed with the questions,” she went on. “I think they were fair questions, I think they were hard questions. I think the judges were wrestling with the right issues.”
The ruling Thursday largely returns the issue to U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer.
Unlike Breyer, whose temporary restraining order on June 12 would have returned control of the National Guard to California, the appellate court largely avoided the question of whether the facts on the ground in Los Angeles amounted to a “rebellion.”
Instead, the ruling focused on the limits of presidential power.
Bennett’s opinion directly refuted the argument — made by Assistant Atty. Gen. Brett Shumate in Tuesday’s hearing — that the decision to federalize National Guard troops was “unreviewable.”
“Defendants argue that this language precludes review,” the judge wrote. “[But Supreme Court precedent] does not compel us to accept the federal government’s position that the President could federalize the National Guard based on no evidence whatsoever, and that courts would be unable to review a decision that was obviously absurd or made in bad faith.”
He also quoted at length from the 1932 Supreme Court decision in Sterling vs. Constantin, writing “[t]he nature of the [president’s] power also necessarily implies that there is a permitted range of honest judgment as to the measures to be taken in meeting force with force, in suppressing violence and restoring order.”
Shumate told the judge he didn’t know the case when Bennett asked him about it early in Tuesday’s hearing.
“That is a key case in that line of cases, and the fact he was not aware of it is extraordinary,” Goitein said.
Merriam agreed — to a point.
“That’s a nightmare we have in law school — it’s a nightmare I’ve had as an appellate judge,” the scholar said.
However, “it’s actually a good thing that the attorney representing the U.S. was not planning to talk about martial law in front of the 9th Circuit,” Merriam said.
One thing Thursday’s ruling did not touch is whether the administration violated the Posse Comitatus Act by deputizing the military to act as civilian law enforcement — an allegation California leveled in its original complaint, but which Breyer effectively tabled last week.
“The Posse Comitatus Act claim has not been resolved because it was essentially not ripe last Thursday,” when troops had just arrived, Goitein said. “It is ripe now.”
“Even if the 9th Circuit agrees with the federal government on everything, we could see a ruling from the district court next week that could limit what troops can do on the ground,” she said.
In the meantime, residents of an increasingly quiet Los Angeles will have to live with the growing number of federal troops.
“[Congress] didn’t limit rebellion to specific types of facts,” Merriam said. “As much as [Angelenos] might say, ‘This is crazy! There’s not a rebellion going on in L.A. right now,’ this is where we are with the law.”
Members of the Italian soccer team Juventus visited with President Trump in the Oval Office on Wednesday afternoon.
Exactly why the gathering took place remains largely a mystery.
Six of the team’s players (Weston McKennie, Timothy Weah, Manuel Locatelli, Federico Gatti, Teun Koopmeiners and Dusan Vlahovic), their coach Igor Tudor, a handful of team executives and FIFA president Gianni Infantino stopped by hours before Juventus’ FIFA Club World Cup game against United Arab Emirates’ Al Ain that night at Audi Field.
Trump was presented with a Juventus jersey and one for next year’s World Cup, which the United States will be co-host with Canada and Mexico. But as Trump took questions from the media for about 15 minutes during the event, very little soccer was discussed.
Later that night, speaking to a different group of reporters after his team’s 5-0 victory over Al Ain, Weah called the White House experience “a bit weird” and implied he and the other players weren’t given the option of declining the visit.
“They told us that we have to go and I had no choice but to go,” said Weah, a U.S. men’s national team member whose father George is a past winner of the prestigious France Football Ballon d’Or award and was the president of Liberia from 2018-2024. “So [I] showed up.”
FIFA declined to comment. The White House and Juventus did not respond to requests for comment from The Times.
While Weah said he thought his first White House visit “was a cool experience,” he added that “I’m not one for the politics, so it wasn’t that exciting.”
“When [Trump] started talking about all the politics with Iran and everything, it’s kind of like, I just want to play football, man,” Weah said.
Juventus players Weston McKennie, left, and Tim Weah take a selfie outside the White House after they and other team members met with President Trump in the Oval Office on Wednesday.
(Alex Brandon / Associated Press)
“I don’t think that Trump is the right one for the job as the president,” McKennie said at the time. “I think he’s ignorant. I don’t support him a bit. I don’t think he’s a man to stand by his word. In my eyes, you can call him racist.”
Still, during his introductory comments, Trump briefly singled out Weah and McKennie as “my American players” when he mentioned that night’s game.
“Good luck,” he said while shaking both of their hands in what had the potential to be an awkward moment. “I hope you guys are the two best players on the field.”
That’s not to say, however, that there weren’t any awkward moments. Because there were — none more so than when Trump brought up “men playing in women’s sports,” then looked over his right shoulder and asked: “Could a woman make your team, fellas? Tell me. You think?”
When no players answered, Trump said, “You’re being nice,” then turned to face the other direction and asked the same question.
“We have a very good women’s team,” Juventus general manager Damien Comolli replied.
Trump asked, “But they should be playing with women, right?”
When he got no response, Trump smiled and turned back toward the reporters.
“See, they’re very diplomatic,” he said.
Trump made a couple of other attempts to involve the soccer contingent in the discussion. At one point, the president used the word “stealth” when discussing U.S. military planes, then turned around and remarked, “You guys want to be stealthy tonight. You can be stealthy — you’ll never lose, right?”
The players did not seem to respond.
For the final question of the session, a reporter favorably compared Trump’s border policy to that of former President Biden and asked, “What do you attribute that success to?”
Trump looked behind him and stated, “See, that’s what I call a good question, fellas.”
Once again, the players did not appear to respond.
BEERSHEBA, Israel — As Israel and Iran exchanged more attacks on Thursday, President Trump sought to keep open the door to diplomacy on Tehran’s nuclear program, saying he would make up his mind within two weeks on whether the U.S. military will get directly involved in the conflict.
“Based on the fact that there’s a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told reporters, reading out Trump’s statement.
Trump has been weighing whether to attack Iran by striking its well-defended Fordo uranium enrichment facility, which is buried under a mountain and widely considered to be out of reach of all but America’s “bunker-buster” bombs.
Earlier in the day, Israel’s defense minister threatened Iran’s supreme leader after Iranian missiles crashed into a major hospital in southern Israel and hit residential buildings near Tel Aviv, wounding at least 240 people. As rescuers wheeled patients out of the smoldering hospital, Israeli warplanes launched their latest attack on Iran’s nuclear program.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz blamed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for Thursday’s barrage and said the military “has been instructed and knows that in order to achieve all of its goals, this man absolutely should not continue to exist.”
“I can tell you that they’re already helping a lot,” Netanyahu said from the rubble and shattered glass around the Soroka Medical Center in Israel’s southern city of Beersheba.
The open conflict between Israel and Iran erupted last Friday with a surprise wave of Israeli airstrikes targeting nuclear and military sites, top generals and nuclear scientists. At least 639 people, including 263 civilians, have been killed in Iran and more than 1,300 wounded, according to a Washington-based Iranian human rights group.
Iran has retaliated by firing hundreds of missiles and drones, killing at least 24 people in Israel and wounding hundreds.
More than 200 wounded, including dozens in the hospital strike
At least 240 people were wounded by the latest Iranian attack on Israel, including 80 patients and medical workers wounded in the strike on the Soroka Medical Center. The vast majority were lightly wounded, as much of the hospital building had been evacuated in recent days.
Israel’s Home Front Command said that one of the Iranian ballistic missiles fired Thursday morning had been rigged with fragmenting cluster munitions. Rather than a conventional warhead, a cluster munition warhead carries dozens of submunitions that can explode on impact, showering small bomblets around a large area and posing major safety risks on the ground. The Israeli military did not say where that missile had been fired.
Iranian officials insisted that they had not sought to strike the hospital and claimed the attack hit a facility belonging to the Israeli military’s elite technological unit, called C4i. The website for the Gav-Yam Negev advanced technologies park, some 2 miles from the hospital, said C4i had a branch campus in the area.
The Israeli army did not respond to a request for comment. An Israeli military official, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, acknowledged that there was no specific intelligence that Iran had planned to target the hospital.
Many hospitals in Israel, including Soroka, had activated emergency plans in the last week. They converted parking garages to wards and transferred vulnerable patients underground.
Doctors at Soroka said that the Iranian missile struck almost immediately after air raid sirens went off, causing a loud explosion that could be heard from a safe room. The strike inflicted the greatest damage on an old surgery building and affected key infrastructure, including gas, water and air-conditioning systems, the medical center said.
The hospital, which provides services to around 1 million residents of Israel’s south, had been caring for 700 patients at the time of the attack. After the strike, the hospital closed to all patients except for life-threatening cases.
Iran has fired 450 missiles and 1,000 drones at Israel since the conflict began, according to Israeli army estimates, though most have been shot down by Israel’s multitiered air defenses.
Iran rejects calls to surrender or end its nuclear program
Iran has long maintained its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. But it is the only non-nuclear-weapon state to enrich uranium up to 60%, a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%.
Israel is widely believed to be the only country with a nuclear weapons program in the Middle East, but has never acknowledged the existence of its arsenal.
In the last few days, the Israeli air campaign has targeted Iran’s enrichment site at Natanz, centrifuge workshops around Tehran, a nuclear site in Isfahan and what the army assesses to be most of Iran’s ballistic missile launchers. The destruction of those launchers has contributed to the steady decline in Iranian attacks since the start of the conflict.
On Thursday, antiaircraft artillery was clearly audible across Tehran and witnesses in the central city of Isfahan reported seeing antiaircraft fire after nightfall.
In announcing that he would take up to two more weeks to decide whether to strike Iran, President Trump opened up diplomatic options with the apparent hope Iran would make concessions after suffering major military losses.
Already, a new diplomatic initiative seemed to be underway as Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi prepared to travel Friday to Geneva for meetings with the European Union’s top diplomat, and with his counterparts from the United Kingdom, France and Germany.
But at least publicly, Iran has struck a hard line.
Iran’s supreme leader on Wednesday rejected U.S. calls for surrender and warned that any American military involvement by the Americans would cause “irreparable damage to them.”
Parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf on Thursday criticized Trump for using military pressure to gain an advantage in nuclear negotiations.
“The delusional American president knows that he cannot impose peace on us by imposing war and threatening us,” he said.
Iran agreed to redesign Arak to address nuclear concerns
Israel’s military said Thursday its fighter jets targeted the Arak heavy water reactor, some 155 miles southwest of Tehran, in order to prevent it from being used to produce plutonium.
Iranian state TV said there was “no radiation danger whatsoever” around the Arak site, which it said had been evacuated ahead of the strike.
Heavy water helps cool nuclear reactors, but it produces plutonium as a byproduct that can potentially be used in nuclear weapons. That would provide Iran another path to the bomb beyond enriched uranium, should it choose to pursue the weapon.
Iran had agreed under its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers to redesign the facility to alleviate proliferation concerns. That work was never completed.
The reactor became a point of contention after Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal in 2018. Ali Akbar Salehi, a high-ranking nuclear official in Iran, said in 2019 that Tehran bought extra parts to replace a portion of the reactor that it had poured concrete into under the deal.
Israel said strikes were carried out “in order to prevent the reactor from being restored and used for nuclear weapons development.”
The International Atomic Energy Agency has said that due to restrictions imposed by Iran on inspectors, the U.N. nuclear watchdog has lost “continuity of knowledge” about Iran’s heavy water production — meaning it could not absolutely verify Tehran’s production and stockpile.
Mednick, Melzer and Gambrell write for the Associated Press. Melzer reported from Tel Aviv, and Gambrell from Dubai. AP writer Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv and Ellen Knickmeyer in Washington contributed to this report.
And, to be safe, every doughnut shop in Los Angeles should be closed pending investigation.
Some Dodgers fans might be undocumented, which could explain why federal agents were camped near Dodger Stadium on Thursday but denied entry.
Or there could be another reason.
Roughly a quarter of the players in Major League Baseball are from outside the country. Those foreigners have visas, as I understand it, but these days, the Trump administration has made clear that temporary protected legal status is no guarantee against ejection. Not from a game, but from the country.
Has anybody checked Shohei Ohtani’s papers lately? Or those of Teoscar Hernández, Kim Hye-seong or Yoshinobu Yamamoto?
And what about the doughnuts?
It’s no secret in Los Angeles that a lot of doughnut shops are run by immigrants. So it can’t be a coincidence that, on Wednesday, agents arrested several men at a bus stop near a Winchell’s Donut House in Pasadena.
State Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park) posted comments and video on social media.
“As you can see, these ICE agents are pointing guns at innocent individuals, no warrants, no explanations, just fear and intimidation,” Chu wrote, adding that agents “masked and armed like a militia” constitute an “absolutely vile” abuse of power.
This country is under threat like never before. Immigrants playing baseball, making doughnuts, hustling construction jobs at day laborer sites, changing the diapers of seniors with physical and cognitive disabilities.
But for all of that, it can be a little difficult at times to follow the Trump administration’s thinking.
Then Trump quickly reversed course, saying raids on farms, hotels and restaurants would be curtailed because he learned in a shocking revelation from employers that “our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace.”
First of all, it’s worth noting that consistency has long been an issue for the president, so much so that he should be wearing flip-flops at all times. To the Oval Office, to the golf course, to bed. Everywhere.
And yet, although we’re used to him saying one thing and doing another, I think something else is at play here.
Trump has kept some campaign promises, but struck out on key vows, and he’s not a guy who handles defeat well.
Grocery prices were supposed to drop on Day 1, and a new age of American prosperity was about to begin.
How’s that going, folks?
He was going to end the war in Ukraine before he even took office, and then put an end to the war in the Middle East.
Hmmmmmmmm.
He was going to usher in a new era of budget accountability with his buddy Elon Musk leading the way.
Well, that was a quick and ugly divorce, and Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” adds $3 trillion to the national debt.
We know Trump loves to watch television, so we can only assume that after he threw himself a birthday party with a military parade on Saturday, he had to have caught news clips of millions of Americans marching at “No Kings Day” rallies across the country, including in red states.
Ouch.
I’m wondering if Trump saw the same sign I saw at the El Segundo demonstration, which was about a certain wife who hasn’t spent much time in the White House: “If Melania doesn’t have to live with him, America shouldn’t have to either.”
Weak men, under duress, flex their muscles.
Trump can deport, and so he will. It could ruin the economy, but that won’t stop him.
Catch a Dodgers game while you can, and stock up on doughnuts.
United States President Donald Trump will decide on whether his country will join the Israel-Iran conflict in the next two weeks, the White House has said, amid growing speculation of US involvement and fears of wider escalation.
On Thursday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Trump had shared a message: “Based on the fact that there’s a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks. That’s a quote directly from President Trump,” she said.
“The president is always interested in a diplomatic solution … he is a peacemaker in chief. He is the peace through strength president. And so if there’s a chance for diplomacy, the president’s always going to grab it. But he’s not afraid to use strength as well,” the press secretary added.
The US described its ally Israel’s initial June 13 strike on Iran as a “unilateral action”. But Trump himself has signalled that he knew of the attack in advance and supported Israel’s military campaign.
At the same time, according to the Reuters news agency, which cited three unnamed diplomats, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff has spoken to Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi several times on the phone since Israel began its attacks.
Amid the talk of diplomacy, Tel Aviv and Tehran have continued to trade attacks.
On Thursday, Israel targeted Iran’s Arak heavy water nuclear reactor. Iran, in turn, hit the Soroka Medical Centre, which it claimed was near an Israeli military and intelligence centre.
At the same time, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz threatened to eliminate Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “Such a person is forbidden to exist,” he said in a statement cited by the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.
‘Camouflaged’ intentions
Over the past few days, Trump has hinted at joining Israel’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites, but at the same time has proposed a swift diplomatic solution in a confusing message from Washington.
Following a report by the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday night that Trump had already signed off on striking Iran but had not decided on when they would do it, the president took to his Truth Social social media account to deny the report.
“The Wall Street Journal has No Idea what my thoughts are concerning Iran!” Trump wrote.
But Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara said that Leavitt’s comments could well be a ploy, and if so, Trump would be able to use it as a “pretext in order to camouflage whatever his intentions are and attack tomorrow”.
As Araghchi is expected to meet his British, French and German counterparts in Geneva on Friday, along with the European Union’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, to discuss Tehran’s nuclear programme, Bishara said Trump could be waiting to hear the outcome of those talks before making his decision to attack.
“If one has to over-interpret, I would say the following: He’s giving the Europeans some time so that everyone could save face,” Bishara said.
Al Jazeera’s Doha Jabbari, reporting from Doha, said the lack of trust between Tehran and Washington will make it difficult for the Iranians to fully believe Trump is open to diplomacy.
“Assuming that the Israelis have the green light from the Americans to carry out these attacks inside Iran, there is going to be very little trust there,” Jabbari said.
“But really, this is the diplomatic game they have to play,” she added, referring to the upcoming talks in Geneva. “If they [Iran] don’t go, they’re going to be accused of basically saying we’re not going to talk, we just want war. They’re going to have to travel, and the Europeans are acting as a mediator between Iran and the US.”
At the same time, Russia and China have repeatedly warned against the US’s involvement in the conflict and called for a ceasefire.
A White House spokesperson has delivered a message from President Trump, saying he will decide whether to attack Iran “within the next two weeks”. Karoline Leavitt says US and Iranian officials are still in contact and US action rests on the outcome of talks.
WASHINGTON — President Trump honored Juneteenth in each of his first four years as president, even before it became a federal holiday. He even claimed once to have made it “famous.”
But on this year’s Juneteenth holiday on Thursday, the usually talkative president kept silent about a day important to Black Americans for marking the end of slavery in the country he leads again.
No words about it from his lips, on paper or through his social media site.
Asked whether Trump would commemorate Juneteenth in any way, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters: “I’m not tracking his signature on a proclamation today. I know this is a federal holiday. I want to thank all of you for showing up to work. We are certainly here. We’re working 24/7 right now.”
Asked in a follow-up question whether Trump might recognize the occasion another way or on another day, Leavitt said, “I just answered that question for you.”
Trump’s silence was a sharp contrast from his prior acknowledgment of the holiday. Juneteenth celebrates the end of slavery in the United States by commemorating June 19, 1865, when Union soldiers brought the news of freedom to enslaved Black people in Galveston, Texas. Their freedom came more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln liberated slaves in the Confederacy by signing the Emancipation Proclamation during the Civil War.
Trump’s quiet on the issue also deviated from White House guidance that Trump planned to sign a Juneteenth proclamation. Leavitt didn’t explain the change. Trump held no public events Thursday, but he shared statements about Iran, the TikTok app and Fed chairman Jerome Powell on his social media site.
He had more to say about Juneteenth in yearly statements in his first term.
In 2017, Trump invoked the “soulful festivities and emotional rejoicing” that swept through the Galveston crowd when a major general delivered the news that all enslaved people were free.
He told the Galveston story in each of the next three years. “Together, we honor the unbreakable spirit and countless contributions of generations of African Americans to the story of American greatness,” he added in his 2018 statement.
In 2019: “Across our country, the contributions of African Americans continue to enrich every facet of American life.”
In 2020: “June reminds us of both the unimaginable injustice of slavery and the incomparable joy that must have attended emancipation. It is both a remembrance of a blight on our history and a celebration of our Nation’s unsurpassed ability to triumph over darkness.”
In 2020, after suspending his campaign rallies because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump chose Tulsa, Okla., as the place to resume his public gatherings, and scheduled a rally for June 19. But the decision met with such fierce criticism that Trump postponed the event by a day.
Black leaders had said it was offensive for Trump to choose June 19 and Tulsa for a campaign event, given the significance of Juneteenth and Tulsa being the place where, in 1921, a white mob looted and burned that city’s Greenwood district, an economically thriving area referred to as Black Wall Street. As many as 300 Black Tulsans were killed, and thousands were temporarily held in internment camps overseen by the National Guard.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal days before the rally, Trump tried to put a positive spin on the situation by claiming that he had made Juneteenth “famous.” He said he changed the rally date out of respect for two African American friends and supporters.
“I did something good. I made it famous. I made Juneteenth very famous,” Trump said. “It’s actually an important event, it’s an important time. But nobody had heard of it. Very few people have heard of it.”
Generations of Black Americans celebrated Juneteenth long before it became a federal holiday in 2021 with the stroke of former President Joe Biden’s pen.
Later in 2020, Trump sought to woo Black voters with a series of campaign promises, including establishing Juneteenth as a federal holiday.
He lost the election, and that made it possible for Biden to sign the legislation establishing Juneteenth as the newest federal holiday.
Last year, Biden spoke briefly at a holiday concert on the South Lawn that featured performances by Gladys Knight and Patti LaBelle. Former Vice President Kamala Harris danced onstage with gospel singer Kirk Franklin.
Biden was spending this year’s holiday in Galveston, Texas, where he was set to speak at a historic African Methodist Episcopal church.
Superville writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Calvin Woodward contributed to this report.
President Trump on Thursday signed an executive order giving TikTok a 90-day extension to work out a deal with the U.S. government that addresses security concerns over the app’s ties to China.
Significant pressure has been placed on TikTok, known for its popular social video app, after a law was signed in 2024 that required TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell its U.S. operations of TikTok or the app would be banned in the U.S.
The new order signed by Trump will give TikTok an extension until Sept. 17. During that period, the Justice Department will not enforce the 2024 law that would have banned TikTok in the country or impose penalties on companies that distribute TikTok, the order said.
“We are grateful for President Trump’s leadership and support in ensuring that TikTok continues to be available for more than 170 million American users and 7.5 million U.S. businesses that rely on the platform as we continue to work with Vice President Vance’s Office,” TikTok said in a statement.
TikTok has a large presence in Southern California, with offices in Culver City that serve as the company’s U.S. headquarters, and many video creators in the L.A. area produce content for TikTok.
The app has interested buyers, including Amazon and an investment group led by Frank McCourt, a former Dodgers owner, whose bid includes “Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary. San Francisco artificial intelligence company Perplexity said in March it wants to “rebuild the TikTok algorithm.”
Speaking with reporters on the White House lawn, President Donald Trump played coy when asked if he would bring the United States into Israel’s war on Iran.
“I may do it. I may not,” he said on Wednesday.
US officials and the president’s allies have stressed that the decision to get involved in the war – or not – lies with Trump, stressing that they trust his instincts.
“He is the singular guiding hand about what will be occurring from this point forward,” Department of State spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told reporters on Tuesday.
But antiwar advocates have been arguing that it should not all be up to Trump and Congress must be the ultimate decider over war and peace, according to the US Constitution.
As Trump increasingly appears to hint at the possibility of US engagement in the conflict, some lawmakers are seeking to reassert that congressional role under the War Powers Act.
But what are the laws guiding a declaration of war, and could Trump get the US involved in the war without the consent of Congress?
Here’s what you need to know about the laws that govern decisions about war in the US.
What does the US Constitution say?
Section 1 of the US Constitution, which established the legislative branch of the government and outlines its duties, says Congress has the power to “declare war”.
Some advocates take that provision to mean that lawmakers, not the president, have the authority over US military interventions.
When was the last time the US formally declared war?
In 1942, during World War II. Since then, the US has gone to war in Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf, Afghanistan and Iraq while carrying out strikes and interventions in numerous countries – Serbia, Libya, Somalia and Yemen to name a few.
What authority does the president have when it comes to war?
According to Article II of the constitution, the president is designated “commander in chief” of the armed forces.
Presidents have the power to order the military to respond to attacks and imminent threats. Beyond that, their war-making powers are constrained by Congress. Article II empowers them to direct military operations once Congress has authorised a war. They are responsible for mobilising the military under the guidelines of lawmakers.
That said, successive presidents have used the ability to direct the military on an emergency basis to carry out attacks that they frame as defensive or in response to threats.
How has the US sent soldiers into Iraq and other places without formal declarations of war?
Short of a declaration of war, Congress may grant the president powers to use the military for specific goals through legislation known as the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF).
For example, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in 2001, Congress passed an AUMF that gave then-President George W Bush broad powers to conduct what would become the global “war on terror”.
And one year later, it passed another AUMF allowing the use of the military against the government of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, which became the basis of the 2003 invasion.
The two authorisations remain in place, and presidents continue to rely on them to carry out strikes without first seeking congressional approval. For example, the assassination of top Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in 2020 in Baghdad was authorised by Trump under the 2003 AUMF.
During Trump’s first term, there were concerns that he could use the 2001 AUMF to strike Iran under the unfounded claim that Tehran supports al-Qaeda.
When was the War Powers Act passed?
Despite the articles outlined in the constitution, presidents have found ways to sidestep Congress in war matters. So in 1973, after decades of US intervention in Vietnam and elsewhere in Asia, lawmakers passed the War Powers Resolution to reassert their authority over military action.
The law restricts the president’s war-making powers – or that was its intention at least.
A jogger passes US flags on the National Mall in front of the Capitol Building in Washington, DC [Will Oliver/EPA-EFE]
What are the key provisions of the War Powers Act?
The federal law was designed to limit the US president’s power to commit the US to armed conflict.
Enacted over Nixon’s veto, the resolution requires “in the absence of a declaration of war” that the president notify Congress within 48 hours of military action and limits deployments to 60 or 90 days unless authorisations to extend them are passed.
Before US troops are committed abroad, Congress must be consulted “in every possible instance”, it says.
Why is the War Powers Act relevant now?
With the possibility of a US intervention in Iran mounting, lawmakers have been eyeing the five-decade law and pushing for their own version.
On Monday, Democratic Senator Tim Kaine introduced a bill requiring that Trump, a Republican, seek authorisation from Congress before ordering military strikes against Iran. That was followed by a similar bill put forward in the House of Representatives on Tuesday by US Representatives Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a Republican, and Democrat Ro Khanna of California.
A No War Against Iran Act, introduced by Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, seeks to “prohibit the use of funds for military force against Iran, and for other purposes”.
But even as some polls find Trump supporters are against war with Iran, passage of such bills in the Republican-controlled legislature remains unlikely.
Why is new legislation needed if it’s in the constitution?
Despite the constitutional separation of war powers, the executive and legislative branches have jockeyed over those roles throughout US history.
The most prominent of these incidents – and the last time such a case made it to the Supreme Court in fact – took place in 1861 at the start of the US Civil War when President Abraham Lincoln blockaded southern ports months before Congress legally declared war on the Confederacy. The highest court eventually ruled the president’s acts were constitutional because the executive “may repel sudden attacks”.
Throughout history, formal congressional declarations of war have remained scarce. There have been just 11.
Instead, Congress has traditionally authorised a wide range of military resolutions.
Does the War Powers Act have any teeth?
Almost since its passage, the 1973 law has been viewed by some critics as deeply ineffective – more of a political tool for lawmakers to voice dissent than as a real check on power. (In the 1980s, then-Senator Joe Biden led a subcommittee that concluded the law fell short of its intent.)
Congressional resolutions seeking to end military involvements unauthorised by Congress are subject to a presidential veto, which can be overridden only by two-thirds majority votes in the House and the Senate.
Others have argued the law served an important role in asserting Congress’s rights and creating a framework for speedy, presidential reporting to Congress. The more than 100 reports that have been sent to Congress since 1973 offer a semblance of transparency.
How do presidents view the act?
While Nixon was the most vociferous in his opposition to the War Powers Act, he’s hardly the only president to appear critical. Modern presidents have routinely sidestepped the act, using creative legal arguments to work around its requirements.
The executive branch has since steadily expanded its war-making powers, particularly after the September 11, 2001, attacks.
The 2001 AUMF and the 2002 Iraq AUMF have been used to justify attacks on “terrorist groups” in at least 19 countries, according to the Friends Committee on National Legislation.
“The executive branch has stretched this authorization to cover groups that had no connection to the 9/11 attacks, including those such as ISIS [ISIL], which did not even exist at the time,” Heather Brandon-Smith, the nonprofit’s legislative director of foreign policy, wrote in a briefing.
And while organisations like the International Crisis Group have urged a rehaul or repeal of the AUMF, successive administrations have shown little interest in doing so. In recent years, congressional efforts to repeal the 2001 and 2002 AUMFs have only begun chipping away at the acts.
The Senate in 2023 voted to repeal the 2001 AUMF although the move was largely viewed as symbolic. The House similarly voted to repeal the 2002 AUMF in 2021. But both laws still remain in effect.
Can the War Powers Act stop Trump from going to war with Iran?
That remains to be seen, but it does not seem likely.
During Trump’s first term in office, Congress sought to limit presidential war authority for the first time since the Vietnam War.
In 2019, Congress approved a bill to end US support for the Saudi-United Arab Emirates war in Yemen, which Trump quickly vetoed.
A year later, a similar situation played out after Trump ordered the drone strike that killed Soleimani.
In response, both houses of Congress passed legislation seeking to limit a president’s ability to wage war against Iran.
That legislation was vetoed by Trump, and once again, there were not enough Republicans to meet the two-thirds majority necessary in both houses to override the veto.
With the balance of power in Congress since then fully shifting to the Republicans in Trump’s second term, the newest war powers resolutions face an even stiffer battle.
In his ongoing war on “woke,” President Trump has instructed the National Park Service to scrub any language he would deem negative, unpatriotic or smacking of “improper partisan ideology” from signs and presentations visitors encounter at national parks and historic sites.
Instead, his administration has ordered the national parks and hundreds of other monuments and museums supervised by the Department of the Interior to ensure that all of their signage reminds Americans of our “extraordinary heritage, consistent progress toward becoming a more perfect Union, and unmatched record of advancing liberty, prosperity and human flourishing.”
Those marching orders, which went into effect late last week, have left Trump opponents and free speech advocates gasping in disbelief, wondering how park employees are supposed to put a sunny spin on monuments acknowledging slavery and Jim Crow laws. And how they’ll square the story of Japanese Americans shipped off to incarceration camps during World War II with an “unmatched record of advancing liberty.”
At Manzanar National Historic Site, a dusty encampment in the high desert of eastern California, one of 10 camps where more than 120,000 Japanese American civilians were imprisoned during the early 1940s, employees put up a required notice describing the changes last week.
Like all such notices across the country, it includes a QR code visitors can use to report any signs they see that are “negative about either past or living Americans or that fail to emphasize the beauty, grandeur, and abundance of landscapes”.
An identical sign is up at the Cesar E. Chavez National Monument in Kern County, a tribute to the struggle to ensure better wages and safer working conditions for immigrant farm laborers. Such signs are going up across the sprawling system, which includes Fort Sumter National Monument, where Confederates fired the first shots of the Civil War; Ford’s Theater National Historic Site in Washington, D.C., where Abraham Lincoln was assassinated; and the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Park.
So, nothing negative about John Wilkes Booth or James Earl Ray?
In response to an email requesting comment, a National Park Service spokesperson did not address questions about specific parks or monuments, saying only that changes would be made “where appropriate.”
The whole thing is “flabbergasting,” said Dennis Arguelles, Southern California director for the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Assn. “These stories may not be flattering to American heritage, but they’re an integral part of our history.
“If we lose these stories, then we’re in danger of repeating some of these mistakes,” Arguelles said.
Trump titled his March 27 executive order requiring federal sign writers to look on the bright side “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” He specifically instructed the Interior Department to scrutinize any signs put up since January 2020 — the beginning of the Biden administration — for language that perpetuates “a false reconstruction” of American history.
Trump called out signs that “undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.”
He specifically cited the National Historical Park in Philadelphia and the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C., as bowing to what he described as the previous administration’s zeal to cast “our Nation’s unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness” as “inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.”
His solution? Order federal employees and historians to rewrite the “revisionist” history with language that exudes patriotism.
“It all seems pretty Orwellian,” said Kimbrough Moore, a rock climber and Yosemite National Park guide book author. After news of the impending changes began circulating in park circles, he posted on Instagram a sign he saw in the toilet at the Porcupine Flat campground in the middle of the park.
Across from the ubiquitous sign in all park bathrooms that says, “Please DO NOT put trash in toilets, it is extremely difficult to remove,” someone added a placard that reads, “Please DO NOT put trash in the White House. It is extremely difficult to remove.”
Predictably, the post went viral, proving what would-be censors have known for centuries: Policing language is a messy business and can be hard to control in a free society.
“Even the pooper can be a venue for resistance,” Moore wrote.
Islamabad, Pakistan – In his first address to a joint session of Congress on March 4 this year, after becoming United States president for a second time, Donald Trump made a striking revelation.
He referred to the deadly Abbey Gate bombing at Kabul airport in August 2021 – which occurred as thousands of Afghans tried to flee following the Taliban takeover – and said the alleged perpetrator had been apprehended.
The country he credited with the arrest: Pakistan. “I want to thank especially the government of Pakistan for helping arrest this monster,” Trump declared.
A little more than three months later, Trump hosted Pakistan’s army chief Asim Munir for lunch at the White House on Wednesday — the first time a US president has hosted a military chief from Pakistan who isn’t also the country’s head of state. Munir is on a five-day trip to the US.
For a country that Trump had, just seven years earlier, accused of giving the US “nothing but lies and deceit” and safe havens to terrorists – and one that his immediate predecessor Joe Biden called “one of the most dangerous nations” – this marks a dramatic shift.
It’s a reset that experts say has been in the making for weeks, under Trump’s second administration, and that was solidified by the brief but intense military confrontation between India and Pakistan in May, during which the US tried to mediate a ceasefire.
Some analysts warn that the evolving relationship should be viewed as a product of Trump’s personal position, rather than institutional policy.
“We are dealing with an administration which changes its tune by the hour. There is no process here,” Marvin Weinbaum, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute (MEI), told Al Jazeera.
“One minute the US has no interest, and the next minute priorities change rapidly. You’re dealing with an administration that is mercurial and personalised, and you don’t associate that with traditional US foreign policy,” he added.
However, others point out that even the optics of Trump hosting Munir are significant.
“Trump’s lunch invite to Pakistan’s army chief isn’t just protocol-breaking, it’s protocol-redefining,” said Raza Ahmad Rumi, a distinguished lecturer at the City University of New York (CUNY). “It signals, quite visibly, that Pakistan is not just on Washington’s radar, it’s in the inner circle, at least for now.”
Reset amid regional crises
The meeting between Trump and Munir came amid heightened tensions in the Middle East, where Israel has been conducting strikes inside Iranian cities since June 13. Iran has retaliated with missile attacks of its own on Israel.
The Israeli offensive – targeting Iranian generals, missile bases, nuclear facilities and scientists – has killed more than 200 people. Iran’s missile and drone attacks on Israel over the past six days have killed about 20 people.
The Benjamin Netanyahu-led Israeli government has been urging the US to join the offensive against Iran, which shares a 900-kilometre-long (559-mile) border with Pakistan.
Speaking to the media in the Oval Office after the lunch with Munir on Wednesday, Trump noted that the Pakistanis “know Iran very well, better than most,” but added that they are “not happy”.
According to Trump, however, the main reason for meeting Munir was to thank him for his role in defusing the May conflict between Pakistan and India, a confrontation that brought the region, home to more than 1.6 billion people, to the brink of nuclear war.
“The reason I had him here was that I wanted to thank him for not going into the war [with India]. And I want to thank PM [Narendra] Modi as well, who just left a few days ago. We’re working on a trade deal with India and Pakistan,” said Trump, who is known to enjoy a warm relationship with Indian leader Modi.
“These two very smart people decided not to keep going with a war that could have been a nuclear war. Pakistan and India are two big nuclear powers. I was honoured to meet him today,” he added, referring to Munir.
The crisis had begun after an April attack in Indian-administered Kashmir that killed 26 Indian civilians. India blamed Pakistan, which denied the charge and called for a “credible, independent, transparent” investigation.
On May 7, India launched strikes inside Pakistani and Pakistan-administered Kashmir territories. Pakistan responded via its air force, claiming to have downed at least six Indian jets. India confirmed losses but did not specify numbers.
The conflict escalated as both sides exchanged drones for three days and eventually launched missiles at military targets on May 10. It ended only after intense backchannel diplomacy, particularly involving the US, led to a ceasefire.
Trump reiterated his role on Wednesday. “I stopped the war between Pakistan and India. This man [Munir] was extremely influential in stopping it from the Pakistan side, Modi from the India side, and others,” he said.
While Pakistan has acknowledged the US role, India insists the ceasefire resulted solely from bilateral dialogue. Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri stated on Tuesday that Indian PM Modi had spoken to Trump by phone to underscore New Delhi’s view that there was no US-led mediation between India and Pakistan.
Hours before meeting Pakistani army chief Asim Munir, US President Donald Trump spoke to Indian PM Narendra Modi by phone [Nathan Howard/Reuters]
Arif Ansar, chief strategist at Washington-based advisory firm PoliTact, said Pakistan’s military performance during the confrontation prompted Trump’s engagement.
“It demonstrated that despite its political and economic challenges, the country can outmanoeuvre a much bigger adversary,” Ansar told Al Jazeera. “This has led President Trump to engage with Pakistan’s traditional power centres based on core strategic interests.”
“Opportunity to reassert relevance”
That engagement has a long history.
Pakistan’s relationship with the US dates back to its 1947 independence, after which it aligned with Washington during the Cold War. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Pakistan supported US objectives there, and the two collaborated closely to support the mujahideen that eventually forced Moscow to pull out its troops.
Subsequently, Pakistan also backed the post-9/11 US “war on terror”.
However, over the years, many within the US strategic community also started questioning Pakistan’s credibility as a reliable security partner, especially after 9/11 architect Osama bin Laden was found in Abbottabad, close to Rawalpindi, home to Pakistan’s military headquarters in 2011.
Since the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021, the strategic partnership has waned further. Pakistan has increasingly turned towards China for economic, military and technological support.
But Weinbaum said that since Trump returned to office, Pakistan has been getting respect that was lacking under the previous Biden administration.
Trump wanted “counterterrorism assistance,” Weinbaum said – and seemingly got it.
On June 10, General Michael E Kurilla, chief of the US Central Command (CENTCOM), detailed how that cooperation led to the capture of the suspected Abbey Gate bomber.
“They [Pakistan] are in an active counterterrorism fight right now, and they have been a phenomenal partner in the counterterrorism world,” Kurilla said, in a testimony before the House Armed Services Committee in Washington, DC.
According to Kurilla, who also oversees the US military’s Middle East operations including Iran, this progress, including the arrest of the Abbey Gate bombing suspect, was made possible due to direct coordination with Pakistan’s army chief. “Field Marshal Asim Munir called me to tell me they had captured one of the Daesh-K [ISKP or ISIS-K] individuals,” he said.
As the icing on the cake for the bilateral relationship, Weinbaum suggested, Pakistan has thrown in “more goodies, such as a trade deal with no tariffs, offering rare earth minerals, and crypto“. Weinbaum previously served as an analyst for Pakistan and Afghanistan in the US State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research.
Rare earth minerals, critical for industries like defence, robotics and electronics, are among Pakistan’s assets now being offered to foreign investors, including the US and Saudi Arabia.
Pakistan has also recently formed a crypto council and held talks with US officials to attract investment and partnerships.
Rumi called the Munir-Trump meeting “historic”.
“The US wants Pakistan’s help in de-risking regional volatility without offering much in return. For Munir, it’s an opportunity to reassert relevance and perhaps negotiate manoeuvring space at home,” he said.
Transactional ties and democratic costs
Historically, Pakistan’s ties with the US have been largely transactional, particularly in the security sphere. US aid and investment often followed Pakistan’s alignment with US strategic goals, helping build its infrastructure and military.
But the relationship has also been marked by distrust, with US administrations accusing Pakistan of double-dealing, while Pakistan claims the US has failed to respect the sacrifices it has made while siding with them.
Whether this latest engagement proves to be another fleeting phase or a more durable alignment remains to be seen, say experts.
“Unless this relationship is institutionalised, beyond the security lens with which it is viewed, it’s another tactical romance. And like past dalliances, it could fade once strategic goals are met or regimes change,” he said.
Ansar added that Pakistan again stands on the brink of a major strategic choice amid the global power shift.
“Much depends on whether it leans toward China or the US. That decision is also tied to the evolving Israel-Palestine conflict and the role of Iran,” he said.
But Weinbaum, the former State Department official, described the reset in ties as temporary, as “nothing is permanent in this administration”.
“If Pakistan does play some role in the Iran crisis, they have could have more substantial meaning to these ties. But it needs to be prepared that there is nothing settled with this administration. It can change on a dime, at any hour,” he said.
Power behind the scenes
The military remains Pakistan’s most powerful institution, exerting enormous influence over politics and society.
It has ruled directly for more than three decades, and the current government, elected in a controversial vote last year, is widely seen as secondary to the military leadership under Munir.
Pakistan’s military leader General Pervez Musharraf maintained close ties with the United States under the Bush administration during the US invasion of Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks in the US [File photo: Jim Young/Reuters]
This is consistent with historical precedent. Pakistan’s first military ruler, Field Marshal Ayub Khan, had close ties with the US in the 1960s. Subsequent military rulers, including General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in the 1980s and General Pervez Musharraf in the 2000s, also maintained strong US relations. All three were hosted by US presidents at the White House – but only after they became heads of state.
Munir, now only the second Pakistani to hold the rank of field marshal after Khan, reinforces the perception that Pakistan’s real power remains with the military, despite the presence of a civilian government, say experts.
Still, CUNY’s Rumi said it was important not to “confuse symbolism with transformation”.
“This [Trump-Munir] meeting validates the enduring military-to-military track in US-Pakistan [ties], but it also bypasses the civilian setup, which should worry anyone rooting for democratic consolidation. If this is the “reset,” it’s one where khaki once again trumps ballot,” he cautioned, referring to the colour of the military’s uniform.
Ansar from PoliTact concurred, saying that the meeting reflects adversely on the civil-military balance in Pakistan, as it showed who remains the “real power bearer” in Pakistan.
“In the long run, these dealings in the past have led to tremendous political, economic and security-related repercussions for the nation [Pakistan],” he said.
“But additionally, it has promoted a norm that critical decisions impacting the nation must be made in private without discussion, consensus or public ownership. This results in increased societal and political disillusionment regarding the future of the country.”
