Heather Cox Richardson's Blog, page 29
June 20, 2025
June 19, 2025
June 19, 2025
Just a week ago, the Trump administration was preparing for a sixth round of negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, scheduled to be held in Oman on June 15.
In 2018, President Donald J. Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) negotiated in 2015 by President Barack Obama, under which the U.S., China, France, Germany, Russia, and the United Kingdom lifted economic sanctions against Iran in exchange for limits to Iran’s nuclear program. With the U.S. withdrawal, the agreement fell apart.
Trump launched a “maximum pressure campaign” of stronger sanctions to pressure Iran to renegotiate the JCPOA, which lasted throughout his first term. Back in office, Trump relaunched that campaign in February 2025. Then, in March 2025, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told Congress that the assessment of the Intelligence Community was that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon.
In the same month, Trump said on the Fox News Channel that he had written a letter to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, urging the Iranians to negotiate “because if we have to go in militarily it’s going to be a terrible thing for them.” Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said Iran would not “enter any direct negotiations with the U.S. so long as they continue their maximum pressure policy and their threats.”
But Iran’s allied militant actors Hamas and Hezbollah in Lebanon have been badly hurt by Israeli strikes since Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and Iran’s major ally in the Middle East, Bashar al-Assad of Syria, fell in December 2024. Discussions began in April of this year, and negotiators met for five rounds by the end of May.
Israel was not included in the negotiations, and on Thursday, June 12, it launched strikes against nuclear and military targets in Iran. The strikes killed a number of nuclear scientists and senior military personnel. Iran retaliated, and the countries have been in conflict ever since.
After the strikes, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who also became the acting national security advisor after Trump fired his first national security advisor for inviting a journalist onto a Signal chat about a military strike against the Houthis, issued a statement distancing the U.S. from Israel’s attack on Iran. “Tonight,” he said, “Israel took unilateral action against Iran. We are not involved in strikes against Iran and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region. Israel advised us that they believe this action was necessary for its self-defense. President Trump and the Administration have taken all necessary steps to protect our forces and remain in close contact with our regional partners. Let me be clear: Iran should not target U.S. interests or personnel.”
But by early Friday morning, Trump appeared to be trying to take credit for the strikes and demanded that Iran make a deal. The next day—Saturday, June 14—was the day of No Kings protests in which at least 2% of the U.S. population turned out to oppose his presidency, as well as the sparsely attended military parade in Washington, D.C., an embarrassing contrast for the president.
The U.S. possesses a 30,000-pound bomb that would perhaps be able to penetrate Iran’s underground nuclear sites, which are fortified against attack. According to Alex Horton, Maham Javaid, and Warren P. Strobel, the “Massive Ordnance Penetrator” (MOP) can penetrate the ground up to at least 200 feet. The U.S. B-2 Spirit stealth bomber is the only Air Force aircraft that can deploy the heavy MOP.
On June 16, while at the G7 meeting in Canada, Trump posted that Iran “should have signed the ‘deal’ I told them to sign.” He continued: “What a shame, and waste of human life. Simply stated, IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON. I said it over and over again! Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran!” More than 9 million people live in Tehran, with more than 16 million in the metropolitan area.
Then Trump abruptly left the G7 and on the trip home told reporters on Air Force One that he didn’t care what Gabbard said, and thought Iran was close to achieving nuclear capabilities. When France’s president Emmanuel Macron suggested Trump left to work on a ceasefire, Trump posted: “Wrong! He has no idea why I am now on my way to Washington, but it certainly has nothing to do with a Cease Fire. Much bigger than that. Whether purposely or not, Emmanuel always gets it wrong. Stay tuned!” Later that day, he posted that “[w]e”—a word suggesting U.S. involvement—“now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran,” and he credited U.S. weaponry with that dominance.
About a half-hour later, he posted: “We know exactly where the so-called “Supreme Leader” is hiding. He is an easy target, but is safe there—We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now. But we don’t want missiles shot at civilians, or American soldiers. Our patience is wearing thin.”
As Trump’s “Stay tuned!” suggested, his hints that he could bring the U.S. into the conflict monopolized the news. It has pushed the No Kings Day protests and the military parade to the background, putting Trump back on the front page.
Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo interpreted Trump’s shift to back Israel as a typical Trump branding opportunity: “Israel has got a product ready to go to market and they’ve offered Trump the opportunity to slap the Trump name on it.” In the short term, that product offers a quick way to get rid of the Iranian nuclear program, which has long been a U.S. goal.
But Trump’s flirting with joining a Middle East war has badly split his supporters. Led by Steve Bannon, the isolationist wing is strongly opposed to intervention and suggests that the U.S. will once again be stuck in an endless war.
In contrast, the evangelical MAGA wing sees support for Israel as central to the return of Jesus Christ to Earth in the end times. Earlier this month the U.S. ambassador to Israel, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, said the U.S. was abandoning its longstanding support for a Palestinian state. Huckabee is a strong supporter of the expansion of Israel’s settlements. After the Israeli strikes, Huckabee messaged Trump to urge him to listen to the voice of God. In an apparent reference to Truman’s decision to drop a nuclear weapon on Japan at the end of World War II, Huckabee told Trump: “No President in my lifetime has been in a position like yours. Not since Harry Truman in 1945.”
At the unveiling of two 88-foot-tall (26.8 meters) flagpoles at the White House yesterday, Trump told reporters who asked what he planned to do about Iran: “I mean, you don’t know that I’m going to even do it. You don’t know. I may do it, I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do.” He added, “Nothing’s finished until it’s finished. You know, war is very complex. A lot of bad things can happen. A lot of turns are made.”
He told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins: “I have ideas as to what to do, but I haven’t made a final—I like to make the final decision one second before it’s due, you know, because things change.”
Meanwhile, in a hearing yesterday at the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) pointed out to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that the $1 billion mission he led against the Houthis—who do not have a navy—has not restored the ability of U.S.-flagged commercial vessels to go through the Red Sea. Instead, it cost the U.S. two F18 Hornets, which cost $60 million apiece, and seven Reaper drones that cost another $200 million. Duckworth accused Hegseth of “blowing through money” and said: “Your failures…since you've taken office, have been staggering. You sent classified operational information over Signal to chest thump in front of your wife, who, by the way, has no security clearance, risking service member lives in the process…. You’ve created such a hostile command environment that no one wants to serve as your chief of staff or work with you in other senior lead [Department of Defense] leadership roles.”
“But what we should all be talking about more than all of this,” she added, “is that you have an unjustified, un-American misuse of the military in American cities, pulling resources and attention away from core missions to the detriment of the country, the war fighters, and, yes, the war fighting that you claim to love.”
Warren P. Strobel, Alex Horton, and Abigail Hauslohner of the Washington Post reported yesterday that Hegseth and Gabbard have been sidelined in discussions of whether the U.S. will get involved in the conflict. The White House is also operating without a full complement of professional staffers at the National Security Council, since Rubio fired many of them when he took over from Waltz, apparently with the goal of replacing the think-tank mentality of past NSCs with a group that would simply implement the president’s ideas.
Talking Points Memo’s Marshall noted Tuesday that “there is really, literally no one in the inner discussion of U.S. foreign policy today who has any level of foreign policy or military crisis experience at all.”
Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of lawmakers is pushing back on the idea that Trump can unilaterally decide to take the United States into a war. On Monday, Democratic senator Tim Kaine of Virginia introduced a measure to reassert Congress’s power over the authority to make war. The Constitution explicitly gives that authority to Congress, not the president, but presidents have chipped away at that power for decades. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introduced another measure to bar the use of federal funds for military force without authorization by Congress.
Today, after Iranian missiles hit an Israeli hospital, Trump seemed to change direction. He issued a statement through White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, falling back on his usual tactic of promising something “in two weeks.” “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.”
Stay tuned.
Marshall of Talking Points Memo noted today: “A through-line through the last five months is that uncertainty is Donald Trump's personal comfort zone, where he feels *his* power is maximized. But in basically every domain in which he operates uncertainty *in itself* is damaging to everyone else involved.”
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Notes:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/06/19/iran-israel-conflict-history/
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/an-offer-trump-cant-refuse
Donald J. Trump, Truth Social Post, June 13, 2025, 5:56 a.m.
Donald J. Trump, Truth Social post, June 16, 2025, 11:50 p.m.
Donald J. Trump, Truth Social post, June 17, 2025, 1:15 a.m.
Donald J. Trump, Truth Social post, June 17, 2025, 11:55 a.m.
Donald J. Trump, Truth Social post, June 17, 2025, 12:19 a.m.
Mike Huckabee, quoted in Trump, Truth Social post, June 17, 2025, 8:49 a.m.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-faces-uproar-maga-base-over-possible-iran-strike-2025-06-18/
https://time.com/7295241/trump-iran-israel-tucker-carlson/
https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/19/politics/trump-us-strikes-iran-israel-analysis
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/10/mike-huckabee-independent-palestinian-state
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/17/trump-us-iran-israel-war
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/16/trump-war-powers-iran-israel-conflict
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/05/23/national-security-council-trump-rubio/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-war-powers-act-congress-iran-israel/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/06/18/trump-flag-poles-white-house/84257902007/
YouTube:
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June 18, 2025
June 18, 2025 (Wednesday)
Tomorrow is the federal holiday honoring Juneteenth, the celebration of the announcement in Texas on June 19th, 1865, that enslaved Americans were free.
That announcement came as late as it did because, while General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant of the U.S. Army on April 9, 1865, it was not until June 2 that General Edmund Kirby Smith surrendered the Trans-Mississippi Department, the last major army of the Confederacy, to the United States, in Galveston, Texas. Smith then fled to Mexico.
Seventeen days later, Major General Gordon Granger of the U.S. Army arrived to take charge of the soldiers stationed in Texas. On that day, June 19, he issued General Order Number 3. It read:
“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor.”
Granger’s order referred to the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, which declared that Americans enslaved in states that were in rebellion against the United States “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons.” Granger was informing the people of Galveston that, Texas having been in rebellion on January 1, 1863, their world had changed. The federal government would see to it that, going forward, white people and Black people would be equal.
Black people in Galveston met the news Order No. 3 brought with celebrations in the streets, but emancipation was not a gift from white Americans. Black Americans had fought and died for the United States. They had worked as soldiers, as nurses, and as day laborers in the Union army. Those who could had demonstrated their hatred of enslavement and the Confederacy by leaving their homes for the northern lines, sometimes delivering valuable information or matériel to the Union, while those unable to leave had hidden wounded U.S. soldiers and helped them get back to Union lines.
But white former Confederates in Texas were demoralized and angered by the changes in their circumstances. “It looked like everything worth living for was gone,” Texas cattleman Charles Goodnight later recalled.
In summer 1865, white legislators in the states of the former Confederacy grudgingly ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished enslavement except as punishment for a crime. But they also passed laws to keep freedpeople subservient to their white neighbors. These laws, known as the Black Codes, varied by state, but they generally bound Black Americans to yearlong contracts working in fields owned by white men; prohibited Black people from meeting in groups, owning guns or property, or testifying in court; outlawed interracial marriage; and permitted white men to buy out the jail terms of Black people convicted of a wide swath of petty crimes, and then to force those former prisoners into labor to pay off their debt.
Congress refused to readmit the southern states with the Black Codes in place, and in December 1865, Americans added the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Six months later, Texas freedpeople gathered on June 19, 1866, to celebrate the coming of their freedom with prayers, speeches, food, and socializing.
By then, congressmen had turned to guaranteeing that states could not pass discriminatory laws against citizens who lived in them, laws like the Black Codes. In 1866 they wrote and passed the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Its first section established that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” It went on: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
That was the whole ball game, the one that would put teeth behind the principles in the Emancipation Proclamation. The federal government had declared that a state legislature—no matter who elected it or what voters called for—could not discriminate against any of its citizens or arbitrarily take away any of a citizen’s rights. Then, like the Thirteenth Amendment before it, the Fourteenth declared that “Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article,” strengthening the federal government.
Rather than accept this new state of affairs, leading white southerners decided they would rather remain under military rule. So in March 1867, Congress passed the Military Reconstruction Act, calling for southern voters to elect delegates to new state constitutional conventions. And, for the first time in U.S. history, they mandated that Black men could vote in those elections.
Three months later the federal government, eager to explain to Black citizens their new voting rights, encouraged “Juneteenth” celebrations, and the tradition of Juneteenth began to spread to Black communities across the nation. The next year, the addition of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution remade the United States of America.
In 1865, Juneteenth was a celebration of freedom and the war’s end. In 1866 it was a celebration of the enshrinement of freedom in the U.S. Constitution after the Thirteenth Amendment had been ratified. In 1867, Juneteenth was a celebration of the freedom of Black men to vote, the very real power of having a say in the government under which they lived.
Celebrations of Juneteenth declined during the Jim Crow years of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but as Black Americans from the South spread across the country during and after World War II, they brought Juneteenth with them. By the 1980s, Texas had established Juneteenth as a state holiday. Other states followed, and in 2021, thanks in part to pressure from activist Opal Lee, Congress made Juneteenth a federal holiday and President Joe Biden signed the measure into law.
But throughout our history, those determined to preserve a government that discriminates between Americans according to race, gender, religion, ability, and so on, have embraced the idea that true democracy means reducing the power of the federal government and centering the power of the state governments, where voters—registered according to state laws—can choose the policies they prefer…even if they are discriminatory. They have also insisted, as former Confederates did in the late 1860s, that any laws protecting the equal rights of minorities discriminate against the white majority.
In 2025, as the Trump administration echoes those people, celebrations of Juneteenth are being cut back or even canceled. Corporate sponsors and local governments, as well as the national government, are pulling back their support for festivals and Juneteenth events.
Our history matters. Juneteenth is the celebration of a new nation, one that would honor the equality of all Americans—and one that, 160 years after it was established, we are in danger of losing as those in power set about rewriting the record.
To make sure people can still get the real story of Juneteenth and why it matters, my team produced this short video.
Wishing you all a meaningful Juneteenth.
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Notes:
https://www.archives.gov/news/articles/juneteenth-original-document
J. Evetts Haley, Charles Goodnight: Cowman and Plainsman (1949; rpt. University of Oklahoma Press, 1981).
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/13th-amendment
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/14th-amendment
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp
https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/juneteenth
https://www.tsl.texas.gov/ref/abouttx/juneteenth
https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation/transcript.html
https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/18/us/juneteenth-cancelations-trump-dei-rollbacks
https://apnews.com/article/juneteenth-trump-diversity-e441197492e4360f3b7a8cbbc00b5c79
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/475
https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation/transcript.html
June 17, 2025
June 17, 2025
Yesterday at the meeting of the leaders of the Group of Seven (G7), a forum of democracies with advanced economies, President Donald Trump told reporters: “The UK is very well protected. You know why? Because I like them, that's why. That's the ultimate protection.”
Commenters often note that Trump talks like a mob boss, but rarely has his organized-crime style of governance been clearer than in yesterday’s statement.
Also yesterday, Ana Swanson and Lauren Hirsch of the New York Times reported that Trump has taken unprecedented control over U.S. Steel. Japan’s Nippon Steel has been trying to take over U.S. Steel since 2023, but the Biden administration blocked the deal for security reasons. In order to move it forward, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick demanded an agreement that gives to the president and his successors, or a person the president designates, a single share of preferred stock, known as class G, or “gold.” The deal gives the president permanent veto power over nearly a dozen actions the company might want to take, as well as power over its board of directors.
Swanson and Hirsch note that the U.S. government historically takes a stake in companies only when they are in financial trouble or when they play a significant role in the economy. “We have a golden share, which I control, or the president controls,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Thursday. “Now I’m a little concerned whoever the president might be, but that gives you total control.”
This kind of deal echoes those of the authoritarians Trump appears to admire. His ongoing support for Russian president Vladimir Putin was on display at the G7, when he echoed Russian talking points that blamed European countries and the United States for Putin’s war against Ukraine, rather than acknowledging that it was Russia that attacked Ukraine after giving assurances that it would respect Ukrainian sovereignty in exchange for Ukraine’s giving up the Soviet nuclear weapons stored there.
Also yesterday, Rene Marsh and Ella Nilsen of CNN reported that officials from the Environmental Protection Agency under Trump have been telling staff in the Midwest—which the authors note has a legacy of industrial pollution—to “stop enforcing violations against fossil fuel companies.” At the same time, the Department of Justice has cut its environmental division significantly, leaving “no one to do the work.”
Trump vowed that if he were reelected he would slash the oil and gas regulations he claims are “burdensome.” Now, one EPA enforcement staffer told Marsh and Nilsen, “The companies are scoffing at the cops. EPA enforcement doesn’t have the leverage they once had.”
Also yesterday, outdoor journalist Wes Siler reported in Wes Siler’s Newsletter that while language inserted in the Republicans’ budget reconciliation bill requires the sale of up to 3.3 million acres of publicly owned land, an amendment authorizes the sale of 258 million acres more over the next five years. The amendment comes from the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and was written by Senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Steve Daines (R-MT).
It includes Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service lands in 11 states: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. As Siler notes, while the measure does not currently include national monument lands, the Department of Justice under Trump is arguing that the president can revoke national monument protections. If it did so, that would make another 13.5 million acres available for purchase.
Siler notes the process for selling those lands calls for an enormous rush on sales, “all without hearings, debate, or public input opportunities.”
Today, Eliot Brown of the Wall Street Journal reported that Mukesh Ambani, the richest man in India, is now one of the many wealthy foreign real estate developers “pouring money” into the Trump Organization. Brown noted that the Trump family is aggressively developing its businesses while Trump is in the White House, reaching past real estate into cryptocurrency and other sectors.
The growing power of international oligarchs to use the resources of the government for their own benefit recalls a speech Robert Mueller, then director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, gave in New York City in 2011. In it, he explained that globalization and modern technology had changed the nature of organized crime. No longer regional networks with a clear structure, he said, organized crime had become international, fluid, and sophisticated, with multibillion-dollar stakes. Its operators were cross-pollinating across countries, religions, and political affiliations, sharing only their greed. They did not care about ideology; they cared about money. They would do anything for a price.
These criminals “may be former members of nation-state governments, security services, or the military,” he said. “They are capitalists and entrepreneurs. But they are also master criminals who move easily between the licit and illicit worlds. And in some cases, these organizations are as forward-leaning as Fortune 500 companies.”
These criminal enterprises, he noted, were working to corner the market on oil, gas, and precious metals. And to do so, Mueller explained, they “may infiltrate our businesses. They may provide logistical support to hostile foreign powers. They may try to manipulate those at the highest levels of government. Indeed, these so-called 'iron triangles' of organized criminals, corrupt government officials, and business leaders pose a significant national security threat.”
The FBI’s increasing focus on organized crime and national security is what prompted its interest in the connections between the Trump campaign and Russia in 2016.
The willingness of Republicans to enable Trump’s behavior is especially striking today, since June 17 is the anniversary of the 1972 Watergate break-in. On that day, operatives associated with President Richard M. Nixon’s team tried to tap the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in Washington’s Watergate complex. Early in the morning of June 17, 1972, Frank Wills, a 24-year-old security guard, noticed that a door lock had been taped open. He ripped off the tape and closed the door, but on his next round, he found the door taped open again. He called the police, who found five burglars in the Democratic National Committee headquarters located in the building.
The story played out over the next two years with Nixon insisting he was not involved in the affair, but in early August 1974 a tape recorded just days after the break-in revealed Nixon and an aide plotting to invoke national security to protect the president. Republican senators who had not wanted to convict their president of the charges of impeachment being considered in the House knew the game was over. A delegation of them went to the White House to tell Nixon they would vote to convict him.
On August 9, 1974, Nixon became the first president in U.S. history to resign.
Chris Geidner of LawDork notes that despite the lawmakers in our own era who are unwilling to stop Trump, “the pushback…is very real.” Geidner notes not just the No Kings Day protests of the weekend, but also a lawsuit by the American Bar Association (ABA) suing Trump for his attacks on law firms and lawyers, calling Trump’s actions “unprecedented and uniquely dangerous to the rule of law.”
Geidner also notes that lower court judges are upholding the Constitution, and he points especially to U.S. District Judge William Young, an appointee of Republican president Ronald Reagan. In a hearing yesterday, Young insisted on holding the government accountable “for both Trump's actions and the follow-up actions from those Trump has empowered to act.”
Young called cuts to funding for National Institutes of Health research grants “illegal” and “void” and ordered the NIH to restore the funds immediately. “I am hesitant to draw this conclusion—but I have an unflinching obligation to draw it—that this represents racial discrimination and discrimination against America’s LGBTQ community. That’s what this is. I would be blind not to call it out. My duty is to call it out.”
“I’ve never seen a record where racial discrimination was so palpable,” Young said during the hearing. “I’ve sat on this bench now for 40 years. I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this.” He added: “You are bearing down on people of color because of their color. The Constitution will not permit that.… Have we fallen so low? Have we no shame?”
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Notes:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/15/us/politics/golden-share-us-steel-nippon-trump.html
https://www.cnn.com/politics/epa-stop-policing-oil-and-gas-midwest
Wes Siler’s NewsletterLee, Daines Up Public Land Sell Off To 258 Million AcresAn amendment to the budget reconciliation package written by Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Steve Daines (R-Montana) authorizes the sale of 258 million acres of BLM and National Forest land across 10 western states and Alaska. The move comes after a provision exempting land used for grazing from the sale was removed…Read morea day ago · 57 likes · 22 comments · Wes Siler
Law DorkTrump admin continues its destructive path, but groups, judges keep pushing back President Donald Trump’s efforts to dismantle wide swaths of the government and attack wide swaths of America have been going nonstop since January 20, but there have been particularly alarming escalations, especially of his anti-immigrant deportation plans, in recent days…Read morea day ago · 157 likes · 10 comments · Chris Geidnerhttps://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/16/judge-rebuke-trump-nih-cuts-00409095
https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/speeches/the-evolving-organized-crime-threat
Bluesky:
June 16, 2025
At a news conference today, acting U.S. attorney for the District of Minnesota Joseph H. Thompson, who was appointed by President Donald Trump just two weeks ago, said that Minnesota suspect Vance Boelter went to the homes of two more politicians than the two he eventually shot along with their spouses. One was on vacation with her family, and at another home, a police officer apparently scared him off.
Thompson said Boelter had “voluminous” writings that showed he had been planning the attacks for “quite some time.” “But,” Thompson added, “I have not seen anything involving some sort of political screed or manifesto that would clearly identify what motivated him. Obviously, his primary motive was to go out and murder people. They were all elected officials. They were all Democrats. Beyond that, I think it’s just way too speculative for anyone that’s reviewed these materials to know and to say what was motivating him in terms of ideology or specific issues.”
Zoe Sottile of CNN reported that Boelter is facing federal charges of two counts of stalking, two counts of murder, and two counts of firearms offenses. He is facing state charges of first-degree murder, second degree murder, and attempted murder.
MAGA loyalists have continued to radicalize in the wake of the shootings, spreading disinformation that blamed the violence on Democrats or joking about the event. Walker Orenstein of the Minnesota Star Tribune debunked the disinformation spread by MAGA loyalists, noting that Boelter was not close to Walz, who simply okayed his reappointment to a bipartisan board that then-governor Mark Dayton had put him on in 2016. According to his roommate, Boelter was a “strong supporter” of Trump.
Emily Anderson Stern and Robert Gehrke of the Salt Lake Tribune called out Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) for his behavior in the aftermath of the shootings. Lee joked about the killings and falsely blamed the violence on his political opponents, tying the shooting to Minnesota governor Tim Walz. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) responded: “This was an incredible woman, her husband, her two kids—yesterday on Father’s Day, there was no Father’s Day for them. They lost both their parents…. This is not a laughing matter, and certainly what we’re seeing is an increase in violence, and this evil man who did this—this is not a joke.”
Of Lee’s behavior, influencer George Takei wrote: “Utah voters: Are these really your values? Mike Lee is the best you can do?” After Lee pinned one of his disturbing tweets to the top of his social media timeline, Tim Miller of The Bulwark wrote: “This is less of a political matter than a sign of deep mental illness.”
As of this afternoon, Trump had not called Walz, calling him “a terrible governor” and “a grossly incompetent person.”
Trump drew criticism of his own incompetence today at the meeting of the Group of Seven (G7) in Kananaskis, Alberta, in Canada. The G7 is a forum of democracies with advanced economies that includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as the European Union. During today’s meetings, Trump seemed to think the United Kingdom and the European Union were the same thing.
Trump also parroted Russian talking points, telling reporters: “The G7 used to be the G8. Barack Obama and a person named Trudeau didn't want to have Russia in, and I would say that that was a mistake, because I think you wouldn't have a war right now if you had Russia in, and you wouldn’t have a war right now if Trump were president four years ago.”
In fact, the members of the G7 kicked Russia out of the forum after Russian president Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014. And former Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau didn’t take office until 2015.
On Friday, journalist Dean Blundell reported that Washington insiders and observers from abroad had noticed how rarely Trump appears in public and how often he falls asleep when he does, prompting speculation that he is not physically able to do the work of the presidency. Blundell suggested Trump’s team would look for a way to get the president out of the G7 early to avoid exposure.
After today’s meetings, at which it appears the U.S. was delaying a joint statement in which G7 members called for an end to the conflict between Israel and Iran, Trump posted on social media: “Iran should have signed the ‘deal’ I told them to sign,” although it was Trump who pulled out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the “Iran nuclear deal” that limited Iran’s nuclear program. He continued: “What a shame, and waste of human life. Simply stated, IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON. I said it over and over again! Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran!”
More than 9 million people live in Tehran, with more than 16 million in the metropolitan area.
Then Trump’s team announced the situation in the Middle East required the president to leave the G7 a day early.
Twelve minutes after his post about evacuating Tehran, Trump reposted a Newsmax story saying that Trump “deserves an A+ for his job performance so far,” and less than an hour later, he posted an attack on right-wing personality Tucker Carlson and then posted: “AMERICA FIRST means many GREAT things, including that fact that IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!” Just before midnight, he posted an attack on California governor Gavin Newsom.
It’s unclear what Trump’s abrupt departure from the G7 indicates for events in the Middle East and U.S. involvement in them. As Brian O’Neill of The Contrarian noted, Trump had said he hoped to negotiate a deal with Iran, and indeed, talks were scheduled for Sunday in Oman when Israel launched its attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities on Friday. O’Neill notes that when Israel struck Iran last Friday without U.S. coordination, the Trump administration was left “scrambling to respond.”
Being sidelined in foreign affairs at the same time as the American people turned out in huge numbers to protest his administration and as his military parade fizzled shows Trump has less power than he tries to project.
How decisions are being made in the administration is unclear. Notably, after Trump wrote last Thursday that “changes are coming” in deportation orders because it made no sense to deport workers who had been here for a long time and were vital to farms, hotels, and restaurants, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) today reversed that decision.
Carol D. Leonnig, Natalie Allison, Marianne LeVine, and Lauren Kaori Gurley of the Washington Post reported that after Trump’s post and comments to reporters, a DHS official told agents to pause raids on agriculture, including meatpacking plants, as well as restaurants and hotels. But on Sunday, DHS leadership suggested a reversal was coming because, as the journalists write, “the White House did not support” the new policy. In a call this morning, officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) told agents to continue immigration raids at the businesses Trump had said he was going to protect.
This shift makes it seem as if White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, a white nationalist who insists that the U.S. must deport a million immigrants this year, is determining White House policies, just as he did on the Signal chat about the military strikes on the Houthis in Yemen when his statement that Trump wanted a strike appeared to shut down any further debate of the question.
If Trump is leaving the work of the presidency to others, his family is certainly using the prestige of the presidency to make money. In what it says is in honor of the tenth anniversary of Trump’s trip down the Trump Tower escalator into presidential politics, the Trump Organization has launched a mobile phone service. As Nikki McCann Ramirez of Rolling Stone explains, the plan is essentially another licensing deal, with the disclaimer specifying that the service simply uses the Trump name after contracting with another provider.
The announcement claims that new made-in-America gold phones will be available in September, but as David Pierce of The Verge notes, the photoshopped image of the phone and the wonky specs on it, as well as the impossible promise to make them in America within three months, mean the phone “looks both bad and impossible.” The phone, too, is simply branded with the Trump name; the family business will not design or manufacture it.
The family was evidently in a hurry to get this venture up and running. Kelcee Griffis of Bloomberg reported that the Trump Organization only applied for the trademarks for it last Thursday.
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Notes:
https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/minnesota-shootings-manhunt-06-15-25
https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/minnesota-shootings-manhunt-06-15-25#cmbzbc7if002v3b6mcyozzw5i
https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2025/06/16/mineesota-shootinig-sen-amy/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/16/republicans-trump-minnesota-lawmakers-killings
Dean BlundellRumors of Decline: Trump’s Health Speculation Swirls Ahead of the G7 SummitDonald Trump is very unwell. Dementia. Incontinence, and safeguarding his serious physical and mental decline, is a MAJOR concern for the Trump Regime, the run-up to this year’s G7 Summit in Alberta: widespread speculation about President Donald Trump’s physical health and stamina…Read more3 days ago · 2096 likes · 60 comments · Dean Blundellhttps://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/16/trump-leaving-g7-early-00409449
Trump, Truth Social post, June 16, 2025, 6:30 p.m.
Trump, Truth Social post, June 16, 2025, 6:42 p.m.
Trump, Truth Social post, June 16, 2025, 7:18 p.m.
Trump, Truth Social post, June 16, 2025, 11:50 pm.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/16/politics/trump-israel-iran-g7-statement
https://apnews.com/live/israel-iran-attack#00000197-67c9-d583-a19f-7fcf30bc0000
The ContrarianThe split-screen presidencyBy Brian O’Neill…Read more20 hours ago · 185 likes · 10 commentshttps://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/06/16/trump-farms-hotels-immigration-raids/
https://www.theverge.com/gadgets/687492/trump-mobile-phone-t1
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/what-we-know-about-trump-organizations-mobile-service-2025-06-16/
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potustracker.us/post/3lrr4ntdpwv2q
June 16, 2025
June 15, 2025
June 15, 2025
Yesterday began with the horrific news that a gunman had shot two Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses in what Minnesota governor Tim Walz said appeared to be a “politically motivated assassination.” State representative Melissa Hortman, who was the top Democrat in the Minnesota House, and her husband, Mark, both died in the attack at their home in Brooklyn Park, a city near Minneapolis. The gunman also shot Democratic Minnesota state senator John Hoffman nine times and his wife, Yvette, eight at their home in Champlin. The hospital reports they are in stable condition after surgery.
Law enforcement officers encountered the suspected gunman, 57-year-old Vance Boelter, coming out of Hortman’s house. He was dressed as a police officer. Officers exchanged gunfire with him before he fled, leaving behind his vehicle, which looked much like a police car. In it was a list of dozens of people he wanted to kill. They were mostly Democrats or people connected to abortion rights efforts. Law enforcement officers captured Boelter tonight.
MAGA Republicans are working hard to identify Boelter with what Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) called “Marxism” and Senator Bernie Moreno (R-OH) called “the extreme left,” but as investigative journalist Phil Williams of NewsChannel 5 Nashville notes, public databases show Boelter was in the past a registered Republican. His evangelical religion and his anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion stances reflect MAGA positions. Boelter’s roommate told reporters that Boelter was a “strong” supporter of President Trump.
Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) noted that MAGA has been “bathed in political violence” for the last five years. Trump’s pardoning of the January 6 rioters, including those convicted of extreme violence, “became a clear endorsement of violence committed in his name.” Trump has encouraged violence and cozied up to brutal dictators, while MAGA has fetishized guns. When he celebrates violence, unhinged people listen. Murphy points out that while people of all political persuasions commit violence, no Democratic leader encourages violence as a political norm the way Trump and MAGA have done, citing “a straight line from Jan 6 to the pardons to the assault on Sen[ator] Padilla to Minnesota.”
After the shootings, Andrew Solender of Axios reported that lawmakers of both parties are concerned about their own safety as political violence increases. The Minnesota attacks happened just days after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s security guard shoved Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA) to the ground and handcuffed him after he asked a question. This assault sparked apparent fury among the Democrats on Capitol Hill as they challenged their Republican colleagues—largely unsuccessfully—to speak up against the assault on a senator.
The entire Minnesota delegation to the U.S. Congress issued a joint statement on politically motivated shootings. Democrats and Republicans together wrote: “Today we speak with one voice to express our outrage, grief, and condemnation of this horrible attack on public servants. There is no place in our democracy for politically-motivated violence. We are praying for John and Yvette’s recovery and we grieve the loss of Melissa and Mark with their family, colleagues, and Minnesotans across the state. We are grateful for law enforcement’s swift response to the situation and continued efforts.”
After that start to the day, the country turned to the “No Kings” protests. In a dramatic rejection of Trump’s consolidation of power, at least five million Americans turned out for peaceful protests across the country. Cities turned out huge numbers of protesters at more than 2,000 planned events, and small towns, including those in Republican-dominated states, also boasted rallies. The mood was festive as people held signs with anti-Trump and pro-American images and slogans and sang Woody Guthrie’s famous American anthem, “This Land Is Your Land.” American flags were everywhere.
In contrast to the huge turnout for the protests, the military parade in Washington, D.C., was a bust. Although Trump had claimed it would be a celebration of the 250th anniversary of the American Army, it was also his 79th birthday and was widely interpreted primarily as a celebration of that occasion. Trump has wanted a parade since 2017, when he viewed the traditional Bastille Day military parade in Paris. At the time, he told reporters: “It was one of the greatest parades I’ve ever seen…. We’re going to have to try to top it.”
But organizers had had only two months to arrange for the parade, and the result was badly organized, with relatively few people turning out, especially after forecasts of storms that evening. Far from the crisp marching of the military parades that Trump seemed to want to top, the U.S. soldiers appeared to shuffle, leading to a social media debate over whether they had been ordered to march in an “at ease march” instead of a more rigorous step, or whether they were silently protesting. Photographers recorded empty bleachers and thin crowds. Few Republican lawmakers attended, but cameras caught Trump looking miserable and Secretary of State Marco Rubio yawning.
The contrast between the protests and the military parade suggested an important shift in political culture. The momentum and the joy, as well as the American flags, were on the side of those protesting Trump’s growing authoritarianism. Trump looked weak and discouraged, and the crowds were clearly on the side of the protesters. Today, social media, including a Russian account, got into the act of making fun of Trump’s military parade.
At the Philadelphia Inquirer, Will Bunch noted that “the flag is mightier than the tank.”
The rejection Trump faced yesterday, podcaster Jack Hopkins noted, “was a big tub of rock salt poured on his wounds of lifelong insecurity.” That profound injury to Trump’s sense of self braced observers for a lashing out of epic proportions as he tries to demonstrate that he is, in fact, powerful.
We got that anger and fear in a social media post at 8:43 p.m. tonight. In a post almost certainly not written by Trump, his account backed off on Trump’s recent retreat from mass deportations. Instead, the account said “ICE Officers are herewith ordered, by notice of this TRUTH, to do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History.”
The account then declared war on Democrats. The day after a gunman shot two Democratic lawmakers and their spouses in their homes, Trump’s account posted:
“[W]e must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside. These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State, robbing good paying Jobs and Benefits from Hardworking American Citizens. These Radical Left Democrats are sick of mind, hate our Country, and actually want to destroy our Inner Cities—And they are doing a good job of it! There is something wrong with them. That is why they believe in Open Borders, Transgender for Everybody, and Men playing in Women’s Sports—And that is why I want ICE, Border Patrol, and our Great and Patriotic Law Enforcement Officers, to FOCUS on our crime ridden and deadly Inner Cities, and those places where Sanctuary Cities play such a big role. You don’t hear about Sanctuary Cities in our Heartland!”
The post promised ICE that “REAL Americans are cheering you on every day” and urged them to “reverse the tide of Mass Destruction Migration that has turned once Idyllic Towns into scenes of Third World Dystopia.” It doubled down on the neo-Nazi idea of “REMIGRATION” and concluded: “To ICE, FBI, DEA, ATF, the Patriots at Pentagon and the State Department, you have my unwavering support. Now go, GET THE JOB DONE! DJT”
Will Trump’s demands swing people behind him? Americans have already turned against Trump’s handling of immigration and deportations by significant margins. G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers summarized the polls from June 9–13. Answering the question “Do you approve of the way the president is handling…immigration?” respondents for YouGov/Economist were the only ones to produce a majority—of just four points—saying yes. For AP-NORC, Quinnipiac, and Washington Post/GMU, the answer was no by as much as 15 points. On every other question dealing with immigration, more people opposed Trump’s policies than supported them by as much as 16 points.
Trump’s other policies are underwater—meaning more people oppose them than approve of them—as well. Only 27% of registered voters support the Republicans’ budget reconciliation bill, while 53% oppose it. As for Trump himself, a Quinnipiac Poll from June 11 showed that 38% of registered voters approve of the way he is handling the job of the presidency, while 54% disapprove. Only 30% of registered voters approved “strongly” of the way he is handling the job, while 49% strongly disapprove.
While Trump and his loyalists are trying to project an image of invincibility, their actual power seems to be faltering.
Ten years ago tomorrow, on June 16, 2015, Trump rode down the escalator at Trump Tower to a lobby filled with extras, to announce he was running for president. One reporter called his speech, in which he claimed that Mexico was sending criminals and rapists to the United States, “eccentric.”
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Notes:
https://www.fox9.com/news/minnesota-lawmaker-shootings-who-is-john-hoffman
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgj83q2e562o
https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/minnesota-shootings-manhunt-06-14-25
https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/14/us/minnesota-shootings-manhunt-vance-boelter-invs
https://www.axios.com/2025/06/14/minnesota-melissa-hortman-john-hoffman-congress
https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/13/politics/military-parade-donald-trump
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/14/us/protests-cities-no-kings.html
https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/06/politics/trump-military-parade-washington-dc-streets
Saadia Mirza That “Parade”…military fail—or a message?Something about yesterday’s military parade didn’t sit right with me. I’m not military but even I could tell this wasn’t sharp. It wasn’t crisp. The lines were messy, the timing was off. Then there were videos going around of a squeaky tank. A squeaky tank… Listen now15 hours ago · 18 likes · 2 comments · Saadia Mirzahttps://apnews.com/article/minnesota-lawmakers-shot-8ce70a94c9eb90688baaa1a71faef6cc
Donald J. Trump, Truth Social post, June 15, 2025, 8:43 p.m.
Strength In NumbersAll the polls on the LA protests and Trump's response so farDear readers…Read more3 days ago · 99 likes · 10 comments · G. Elliott Morrishttps://poll.qu.edu/images/polling/us/us06112025_usfa29.pdf
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/16/donald-trump-announces-run-president
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