Closing summary
This concludes out live coverage of the second Trump administration, on a day when the wheels fell off its planned concert series to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding. Here are the latest developments:
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A jury in Spokane, Washington found an Afghanistan War veteran and two others guilty of federal conspiracy charges on Thursday for their part in a protest last June outside the city’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility.
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New Jersey’s governor, Mikie Sherrill, said that state health inspectors were denied full access to the privately run Delaney Hall immigration detention center in Newark, where detainees are staging a hunger and labor strike over health and sanitary conditions, and protesters rallying outside have been tased, pepper-sprayed and detained.
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At least six of the nine featured musical acts recruited to play on the National Mall in Washington DC this summer, in a concert series planned by the Trump administration to mark the nation’s 250th anniversary, have dropped out of the concert series, just one day after the lineup was announced.
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US vice-president JD Vance on Thursday told reporters that Washington was “not there yet” with Iran but he said the parties were close, adding that the US was in a position where it could substantially set back Tehran’s nuclear program. Earlier, Iran’s Tasnim news agency, citing a source close to the negotiating team, said the text of a potential memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the two countries had not yet been finalised or confirmed.
After video of former border patrol chief Greg Bovino arriving at Newark Airport on Thursday was posted on social media by the conservative video journalist Brendan Gutenschwager, a Democratic New Jersey congresswoman, Bonnie Watson Coleman, responded with a two-word comment: “Outside agitator”.
Earlier on Thursday, Bovino had posted that he was on his way to Newark, where protesters have rallied outside an ICE detention facility, and asked his social-media followers: “Should I just handle this myself?”
Country music star Martina McBride drops out of Trump-linked concert series
Country music star Martina McBride is the latest musician to announce that she will not be taking part in the Trump-linked Great American State Fair concert series on the National Mall in Washington DC this summer.
In a social-media statement, McBride told her fans that she wanted to “clear the air”.
“I will not be performing at the Great American State Fair on June 25th. I was presented with an opportunity to perform at a nonpartisan event but that turned out to be misleading,” she said.
“I asked lots of questions and was assured this was a nonpartisan event that was meant to celebrate ALL 50 states,” she added. “Yesterday things started changing and what we were told is, in fact, not what is happening.”
“It greatly upsets me that any fan who has been moved by my music may now feel like I’m abandoning the meaning behind those songs. I assure you, that is not the case. I appreciate every single fan who has reached out. I hope to get back to the DC area very soon.”
McBride is the sixth of nine featured performers announced on Wednesday to say that she will not take part in the event organized by Freedom 250, a group created by Donald Trump and staffed by his allies.
In response to McBride’s Instagram post, Jason Isbell, an Alabama musician who performed at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, commented: “WHEW 🙌” and the country musician Ashley McBryde added, “Amen”.
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At White House briefing, pro-Trump reporters for partisan outlets helped Bessent promote administration's agenda
The Trump administration’s effort to remake the White House press corps, by granting credentials to a host of reporters from openly partisan, rightwing outlets and regularly calling on them to ask questions that bolster Donald Trump’s agenda, has been so successful that it is rarely mentioned in news accounts these days.
But Thursday’s briefing, led by treasury secretary Scott Bessent, was remarkable for how it started.
After Bessent began with a pitch to promote a new app for managing Trump accounts, a type of investment account created by the administration for children, who get a one-time federal contribution of $1,000, he turned to his right and called on Beni Rae Harmony, a correspondent for the far-right network Real America’s Voice invited by the White House to sit in seats beside the stage reserved for staff.
Harmony, a former employee of the Republican advocacy group Turning Point USA, who claimed last year that her tearful on-air tribute to the late Charlie Kirk got her suspended (though the station denied that), asked Bessent to expand on how the new investment accounts would help “working-class Americans”.
“Great question”, Bessent responded, before continuing to promote the administration policy.
Bessent then called on a Fox Business correspondent, using his first name, “Ed”, and the Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy.
A few minutes later, after taking two questions from nonpartisan reporters for ABC and CBS, Bessent pointed to the right side of the room and picked out Cara Castronuova, a former reality TV fitness trainer now working as White House correspondent for LindellTV, the pro-Trump outlet created by Mike Lindell, the pillow salesman who played a key role in Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Castronuova asked Bessent another softball question, inviting him to explain how the administration is putting in place safeguards for cryptocurrency, “to make sure new digital payment systems protect Americans privacy and freedoms”.
After Bessent assured the viewers of LindellTV that crypto will be safe for them to use, he turned further to his to his right and asked another invited guest he referred to by his first name, Jack Posobiec, of Turning Point and Real America’s Voice, to help him move along to what looked like a prepared moment.
Posobiec, who first gained prominence in 2016 as a Republican activist spreading the anti-Democrat conspiracy theory known as Pizzagate, asked Bessent to explain the origins of the $1.776bn fund created by the Department of Justice to compensate people who claim that they were the victims of politically motivated prosecutions by the Biden administration.
“Thank you for the question. This is going to be the only question I’ll take on this matter today,” Bessent replied. He then looked down at the podium, apparently to read a prepared statement on the matter without opening himself up to adversarial questioning.
“There’s ongoing litigation, so, it would be inappropriate for me to comment,” he continued. “President Trump is a great American who has endured more than ten years, ten years, of nonstop harassment and weaponization from federal and state government actors.”
“The Department of Justice represented Treasury and the IRS in this matter, and I’m going to have to refer any questions to acting attorney general Todd Blanche,” Bessent said, and then pointed to Steve Nelson, a reporter for the reliably pro-Trump New York Post.
Later in the briefing, Bessent picked out Reagan Reese, of the Daily Caller, which was created by Tucker Carlson, who asked the secretary for an update on the investigation into “who’s funding Antifa”.
Posobiec and Harmony then went outside the briefing room to do a live segment for Real America’s Voice promoting the Trump accounts under the banner headline: “MEDIA IS WRONG: TRUMP ACCOUNTS IS FOR ALL FAMILIES”.
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An anti-crime taskforce ordered by Donald Trump on to the streets of Memphis has been accused of targeting community observers with widespread intimidation including “immense force”.
Agents have been “retaliating against, intimidating, and harassing” observers attempting to monitor the federal taskforce’s activity, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Tennessee, which alleges that officials have tailed cars, surveilled homes and even “falsely arrested” a community observer.
The ACLU filed a lawsuit this month against Tennessee state and federal officials administering the anti-crime initiative.
Additional declarations filed on Thursday by six community observers detail “cowboy tactics” they say have been used in recent months, from bumper-riding their cars in unmarked vehicles and pretextual traffic stops to an arbitrary arrest.
The taskforce was launched last September by Tennessee’s Republican governor, Bill Lee, following an executive order by Trump, who cited the persistently high rate of violent crime in Memphis. Lee promptly activated the national guard and flooded his state’s second-largest city with more than 2,000 state and federal police officers.
US vice-president JD Vance on Thursday told reporters that Washington was “not there yet” with Iran but he said the parties were close, adding that the US was in a position where it could substantially set back Tehran’s nuclear program.
Earlier, Iran’s Tasnim news agency, citing a source close to the negotiating team, said the text of a potential memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the two countries had not yet been finalised or confirmed.
Donald Trump has circulated a draft peace agreement for the war with Iran among allies including Israel as both sides try to prevent fresh breaches of the ceasefire escalating out of control and scuppering any deal.
The US vice-president told reportersthere were a couple of sticking points in talks with Tehran about its enriched uranium stockpile and the question of enrichment.
“It’s hard to say exactly when or if the president is going to sign the MOU. We’re going back and forth on a couple of language points,” Vance said.
“I can’t guarantee that we’re going to get there, but right now I feel pretty good about it,” he said.
Anti-ICE protesters, including Afghanistan War veteran, found guilty of conspiracy to ‘impede or injure a federal officer’
A jury in Spokane, Washington found an Afghanistan War veteran and two others guilty of federal conspiracy charges on Thursday for their part in a protest last June outside the city’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility.
The US military veteran, Bajun Mavalwalla, told the Guardian in March that he had refused to plead guilty and was ready to face justice.
The right to protest is “supposed to be fundamentally American”, he said.
“It’s among the rights that when I joined the military, I thought I was joining to protect,” he said. “You can’t do it violently. You can’t do it in a way that harms other people, but you have a right to stand up for what you believe in.”
Mavalwalla, 36, now faces six years in prison, three years supervised release and a $250,000 fine for conspiring to “impede or injure a federal officer” when he joined other demonstrators who sought to block the transport of two Venezuelan immigrants who had been arrested by ICE at a routine immigration hearing in Spokane in June 2025.
Young MC, the Commodores, C+C Music Factory and Milli Vanilli follow Morris Day in saying they will not play in Trump's Freedom 250 bash
At least five of the nine featured musical acts recruited to play on the National Mall in Washington DC this summer, in a concert series planned by the Trump administration to mark the nation’s 250th anniversary, have dropped out of the concert series, just one day after the lineup was announced.
The first to drop out, hours after the announcement, was Morris Day, who called his scheduled participation a baseless “rumor”.
Later on Wednesday, Young MC posted a message that began: “I have informed my agents that I will not be performing at the Freedom 250 event”.
“The artists were never told about any political involvement with the event,” he added, before casting doubt on the claim from the Trump-appointed organizer that the series was nonpartisan.
So far on Thursday, the Commodores, C+C Music Factory and Milli Vanilli have all either dropped out or expressed surprise that they were ever booked.
“The Commodores will not be performing”, the group said in a statement. “Our music has always been our voice and we choose not to publicly affiliate with any single political party.”
Freedom Williams, C + C Music Factory’s lead rapper, said in a video statement apparently recorded in a bathroom that he had been blindsided by texts from friends and fellow celebrities horrified that he was “doing the Trump Freedom show” and “fucking with Trump”.
“I’m like, ‘What? What are you talking about?’” Williams said he replied to people “I’ve know for years, who know I don’t fuck with Trump”.
“I’m God Cipher Divine, I know where I stand. I know who the fuck I am,” he added, before explaining that his agent had not mentioned any connection with Donald Trump when he pitched the show.
After going online to research the series on Wednesday, Williams said, he told his agent he was out.
Williams went on to attack Trump, saying, as a New Yorker, “I know the type of fucking anarchy he creates” and brought up the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis by an ICE officer. But Williams reserved his most intense anger for Democrats who threatened to cancel him if he did not drop out of the series. He went on to also attack Barack Obama and covid vaccines, before suggesting that he might still change his mind and perform with the “Maga crew” out of spite, even though the event was in honor of “250 years of motherfucking capitalism and death; it’s 250 years of straight murder.”
Milli Vanilli singer Jodie Rocco told the Associated Press that no one had even asked her or her sister Linda Rocco or anyone else in the current group to perform. “My sister and I were shocked to see our name, ‘Milli Vanilli’, as one of the performers”, Rocco wrote to the AP in an email.
The poster for the Freedom 250 series included an image of Milli Vanilli’s former frontman, Fab Morvan, who just lip-synched the band’s hits and has been performing apart from the group.
At least one of the featured performers, Vanilla Ice, said in an Instagram video that he was still in. “I’m super honored to do this concert with everybody”, he said, on the apparent assumption that he will not, in the end, be performing alone. The rapper has performed at multiple New Year’s Eve shows at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago beach club.
Last December, as the deadly immigration crackdown by federal ICE agents ramped up, the two leaders of the effort, Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem, were filmed singing along with the rapper to his hit 1990 “Ice, Ice Baby.”
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New Jersey health inspector denied full access to Delaney Hall immigration detention center in Newark, governor says
New Jersey’s governor, Mikie Sherrill, said that state health inspectors were denied full access to the privately run Delaney Hall immigration detention center in Newark, where detainees are staging a hunger and labor strike over health and sanitary conditions, and protesters rallying outside have been tased, pepper-sprayed and detained.
“The New Jersey Department of Health today sought to conduct a health inspection of Delaney Hall, but it was denied full access and was allowed to inspect only a limited part of the facility,” Sherrill, a Democrat elected last year in a landslide said.
“As I’ve said repeatedly, refusing to provide full access raises serious questions about what ICE is trying to hide from public view,” she continued. “New Jersey believes in the rule of law, will uphold the Constitution, and Delaney Hall should be closed down. I am calling for ICE to immediately de-escalate the situation as I continue working to keep New Jersey residents safe.”
The Department of Homeland Security tried to push back on reports, like one this week from our Guardian colleagues José Olivares and Julius Constantine Motal, that document complaints from 300-400 Delaney Hall strikers over inedible food containing worms, a lack of air conditioning and proper ventilation, a persistent flu and other viruses spreading throughout the facility, delayed medical care and lags in their immigration cases.
In privately-run ICE detention centers nationwide, detainees perform cooking, cleaning and laundry work, getting paid as little as $1 an hour.
In response to reports about harsh conditions at the center, Markwayne Mullin, the DHS secretary, recorded a social media video in which he scoffed at the concerns of Democratic elected officials, including the governor and senator Andy Kim, who was pepper-sprayed by masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel outside the facility this week.
In the video, Mullin claimed that the detentions were necessary because of the alleged violent crimes committed by a list of eight foreign nationals the department has arrested “recently”.
The secretary appeared to have some trouble making it through his prepared text in the video, however. There were 21 edits in the first 35 seconds of the published video, to cover apparent flubs in delivery, and Mullin so badly mispronounced the name of one country he said a detained man came from, “Wallamala”, that it was only possible to parse his meaning by consulting the on-screen text, which read: Guatemala.
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Hakeem Jeffries, the top US House Democrat, has said a $250 bill with the president’s portrait is a “hard no,” on a post on X. He said:
Get over yourself. The upcoming July 4th anniversary is not about a wannabe King. It’s about celebrating the American journey.
Here's a recap of the day so far:
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Trump shared a draft Iran peace deal with Israel and other allies. Trump circulated a draft peace agreement for his war with Iran among allies including Israel, as both sides try to prevent fresh breaches of the ceasefire escalating out of control and scuppering any deal.
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The Bureau of Economic Analysis released the latest Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index, excluding food and energy. The PCE price index rose in April at an annual rate of 3.8% – that is an increase from 3.5% in March and 2.8% in February.
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Support for the military is why Trump “is insistent on increasing defense budget to $1.5tn”, says JD Vance during his commencement address at the US Air Force Academy. Vance also brought up Trump’s golden dome and the use of AI in warfare, during his speech.
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Scott Bessent held White House press briefing in which he said “I don’t think there’s anything untoward about having the president’s face on the 250th anniversary bill.”
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Trump refiles $10bn defamation suit against Wall Street Journal over its reporting on his ties to Jeffrey Epstein. A judge threw out an earlier version of the suit over legal deficiencies. The lawsuit is one of several that the president has brought in his personal capacity against news organizations.
Political appointees at the Treasury Department told staff at the agency’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing to prepare prototypes of the $250 bill with the president’s portrait, according to current and former employees of the Department, the Washington Post reported Thursday.
At a press briefing Thursday afternoon, Treasure Secretary Scott Bessent said legislation would have to be passed by the Senate, to produce the bill because “no living person can be on US currency,” according to law.
If the proposed legislation is passed, this would be the first appearance of a living person on a US currency in over 150 years.
Bessent said the decision with the $250 bill is not up to the president or the Treasury Department, in fact, “it’s all up on Capitol Hill.”
The Department does “prepare for everything if it gets passed,” he said.
Meanwhile, the US Mint said that Trump’s gold coins won’t be ready before celebrations of the 250th anniversary begin, The Hill reported. The Mint is still designing the coin, and there is no official sell date yet.
The AI executive order that Trump almost signed last week called for AI companies to voluntarily consult with the US government regarding their latest models, reported Politico Thursday.
Companies would allow the federal government to preview the models before they are launched.
Since the delay in signing the order, three camps have formed in the White House about how to regulate AI.
The first favors less regulations to help the industry compete with China – this includes AI leader David Sacks. It was Sacks who urged the president to delay the order last week.
The second camp want there to be more barriers to Mythos-type models – they are concerned that the technology could be used by China. This camp includes Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and his undersecretary Emil Michael.
The third camp including chief of staff Susie Wiles and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent are standing in the middle ground, they want the AI companies to voluntarily provide the government a glance at their new models, according to the Politico’s reporting.
When asked about California governor Gavin Newsom’s 100% tax on money from Trump’s anti-weaponization fund, Bessent said: “There’s no cure for stupid.”
That ended this week’s press briefing.
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On sanctions on Russia, Bessent said that Biden’s sanctions on the country were “mild” and that “no one has done more sanctions that the Trump administration on Russian oil.”
'I don't think there's anything untoward about having the president's face on the 250th anniversary bill,' says Scott Bessent
When asked for a third time about Trump’s face on the $250 bill, Bessent said “we prepare for everything if it gets passed,” but added that the decision is up to House and Senate, not the treasury department. He added:
I don’t think that there’s anything untoward about having the President of the United States’ face on the 250th anniversary bill.
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When asked about an update on an investigation about who is funding Antifa, Bessent said significant progress has been made and there’s going to be a lot to report in the coming weeks and months.
On sanctions on the Cuban government, Bessent said the answer lies with the Cuban government.
That’s going to be up to the Cuban government. They can go up, they can go down. We tried to get humanitarian aid in and the regime rejected because they wanted to go through their corrupt system, so they could go up, they could go down.
On the skirmishes and ceasefire violation that have been ongoing this week, Bessent said “President Trump always prefers a peace deal, so everything we have done thus far has been defensive, and at present that is what we will continue doing.”
He said: “We can’t talk about reconstruction in Iran until we reach a peace deal.”
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On rising oil prices, Bessent said these are short-term challenges and oil prices have already come down “substantially.”
Bessent said the Trump administration inherited “the worst budget deficit in history, when we were not in a recession or not at war”. He said it was at 6.7% and this administration brought that down to about 5.5% or 5.4% this year.
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On the peace deal with Iran, Bessent said “it’s always a mistake to get out ahead of the president, so it is all going to be the president’s decision.” He said as he understand there could be no deal without Iran giving up its highly enriched uranium and nuclear program, and that is what the president is working towards.
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On the IRS settlement and Trump’s Anti-Weaponization Fund, Bessent said he would only take one question on this topic today:
President Trump is a great American who has endured more than 10 years of nonstop harassment and weaponization from the federal and state government actors. A bad actor at the IRS leaked tax returns, including the Trump family’s and that’s how we got here. Now, no American should be targeted for political reasons, and every citizen deserves fair treatment and full protection of the law.
On a possible conflict with Oman, Bessent said that he spoke to the Omani ambassador this morning, and the ambassador told him there were no plans for tolling the strait. He said:
Our countries have had 200 years of good relations. He wants to have another 200 more.
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On President Trump’s face being on the new $250 bill, Bessent said that “no living person can be on US currency,” so there is proposed legislation to change that first requirement, from the House, in front of the Senate.
“So it’s all up on Capitol Hill,” he said.
It’s not up to the president, he said, adding that it’s up to the House and the Senate.
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Bessent said the US is experiencing sustained and resilient GDP growth.
Real GDP has risen 2.6% over the past four quarters. Atlanta Fed’s GDP now predicts 3.8% for this quarter, second quarter.
He added that the the US is also dominating on energy.
“We are more resilient to energy price fluctuations due to President Trump’s energy dominance and deregulatory agenda,” he said. “The United States is now the world’s largest energy exporter.”
He also said that the average 401k is up and the president’s new TrumpRX are already saving lives.
On tax cuts, Bessent said this government passed the largest tax cuts in US history and the “average refund this filing season is nearly $3,300 an 11% increase from last year.”
Treasury secretary Scott Bessent began his press briefing by talking about Trump accounts – he described the accounts as “the most important benefit for young people since the GI Bill. Today, the app is now available on all major platforms bringing the president’s vision directly to American homes.”
Bessent said nearly 6 million American children have signed up for the accounts which will launch on July 4.
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Scott Bessent holds White House press briefing
Treasury secretary Scott Bessent is expected to hold a White House briefing at 2pm EST.
Bessent will at the podium hours after the White House has circulated a draft peace agreement for the US war with Iran among allies including Israel. The agreement comes as both sides look to stop new ceasefire violations from derailing negotiations.
We will be bringing you updates from the briefing once it starts.
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Dozens of former federal judges have joined the push to thwart Donald Trump’s creation of a $1.776bn “anti-weaponization fund” that would funnel taxpayer dollars to the president’s political allies.
The bipartisan group of 35 judges filed a lawsuit in the southern district of Florida on Wednesday seeking to reopen Trump’s legal case against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) over the leaking of his tax information by a whistleblower who was later sentenced to five years in prison.
US inflation rose at fastest pace in three years in April as Iran war hikes up prices
US inflation increased at its fastest pace in three years in April, driven by higher energy prices amid Trump’s war against Iran, and cementing economists’ views that the Federal Reserve could hold interest rates unchanged well into next year.
Surging price pressures are eroding household income and could restrain consumer spending and economic growth this quarter. Income at the disposal of households after adjusting for inflation dropped for a third straight month in April, other data showed on Thursday.
Given the soaring cost of living, Americans are growing frustrated with Trump’s handling of the economy. A Reuters/Ipsos survey last week showed the president’s approval rating fell to nearly its lowest level since he returned to the White House, hit by a drop in support among Republicans. Trump won the 2024 presidential election in large part because of his promise to lower inflation.
The government yesterday also revised down the growth pace in consumer spending in the first quarter to 1.4% from the previously reported 1.6% annualized rate. Overall gross domestic product (GDP) growth was slashed to a 1.6% rate from the 2.0% pace estimated last month.
Inflation threatens his Republican party’s congressional majority in the November midterm elections.
Read the full report here:
Trump shares draft Iran peace deal with Israel and other allies
Earlier, my colleagues reported over on our Middle East live blog that Donald Trump has circulated a draft peace agreement for his war with Iran among allies including Israel, as both sides try to prevent fresh breaches of the ceasefire escalating out of control and scuppering any deal.
In an attempt to speed up the negotiations, Pakistan’s foreign minister, Mohammad Ishaq Dar, will fly to Washington tomorrow to meet his US counterpart, Marco Rubio.
Tehran targeted a US air base in Kuwait today after Washington struck what it described as an Iranian drone operation near the strait of Hormuz, highlighting the fragile situation as both sets of negotiators refuse to cede ground on final points of disagreement.
The draft Trump has shared is not vastly different to the one that has been circulating across the region for days, under which the strait of Hormuz would be opened to commercial shipping, the US blockade of Iranian ports would by lifted and Iran would be given access to as much as $12bn (£9bn) in frozen assets.
The aim would be for commercial shipping in the strait to return to pre-war levels within 30 days and for negotiations envisaged to last as long as 60 days to commence on the future of Iran’s nuclear programme. This would include discussions about its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, a time-limited suspension of further enrichment and supervision by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog.
China is pressing for the UN security council to ratify any agreement.
Here’s the Guardian’s diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour’s report:
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The vice president urged the graduating class to use artificial intelligence and technology wisely.
He brought up how Pope Leo recently issued an essay against AI, and “encouraged us as human beings not to outsource the most important moral decisions to digital technology.”
Vance said he doesn’t want AI to lead on the battlefield:
One of the things that makes Americans unique, that makes you as warfighters unique, is that we wage war justly. But when I say that we, all of us wage war justly, I mean fundamentally that you must do so because you are the ones who execute. You are the ones who lead on the battlefield. You are the ones who ensure that our lethality in war, which is amazing and necessary, but also coexists with our heart and with our conscience.
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Vance said people often talk about how reading the headlines about the state of the country is depressing, but that feeling can be chased away by looking at this graduating class:
When I look at you, when I look at the future of America, I feel great hope that we are and will remain the greatest country anywhere in the world.
Vance said this is the only commencement speech he is giving this year. He also spoke about how the airmen are distinguished from civilians:
Hundreds of thousands of your fellow Americans, most of them civilian, have celebrated or will celebrate graduations during this season, and almost none of them will have your responsibility, quite literally decisions over life and death.
Vance described the events of how an American pilot was rescued from behind enemy lines in Iran earlier this year. He said it was one of the most “daring and amazing" acts he’s ever seen:
I never told anybody this before. I was sitting in a secure conference room on the phone with our military leadership and our civilian leadership, and that operation hit a bit of snag, and I think a lot of us were looking around and saying, are we worried here, but it was an Air Force general who said I promise you we’re still going to get everyone out alive.
Support for the military is why Trump 'is insistent on increasing defense budget to $1.5tn', says JD Vance
Vance also brought up Trump’s golden dome during his speech.
You should expect some things out of your civilian leadership, out of the president, the Vice president, the Secretary of war. This is why we’ve pushed forward with Agenda 47 and the Golden Dome, and any number of new and advanced technologies. It’s why the president has made improving military quality of life such a central focus, why he’s insistent on increasing the defense budget to $1.5 trillion, and why he’s proud to support pay raises, new barracks, new hospitals and new schools on base.
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While giving his commencement speech, Vance spoke about the forces serving during Operation Epic Fury, Absolute Resolve, Southern Spear and Midnight Hammer and said:
They’ve accomplished things that the rest of the world quite literally thought were impossible. Trust me, I’ve seen the intelligence reports for predecessors have done things that other people thought were impossible, and they did them anyway.
Bringing up Iran, he said:
It is American airpower that allows us to penetrate Iran airspace and strike critical targets across enormous distances with speed and efficiency and precision. And when the president says he will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon, it is the men and women you will join in just 60 days to give force to that promise and to that guarantee.
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Vance spoke about how the graduating class was up against “an entirely new era of warfare, one shaped by autonomous systems, AI, and cyber operations technologies evolving far faster than military institutions have historically been accustomed to now.”
He said that the jobs they will hold would have sounded like science fiction two decades ago. He said:
They [the jobs] are now reality because our adversaries are studying this country every day. They’re studying our military doctrine. They’re studying our industrial capacity, they’re studying our political divisions, our attention span, and new graduates. They are studying you.
JD Vance delivers commencement speech at US Air Force academy
While speaking at the US Air Force Academy, vice president JD Vance thanked “the people who run Dover Air Force Base, the people who pilot and crew Air Force Two, the staff at my house, the person who delivered me my daily intelligence briefing, they are proud to be airmen or proud to be guardians.”
Vance also thanked the families of the graduating class:
So to the loved ones gathered here today. We will never forget that our nation’s airmen and guardians were your sons and daughters long before they were ours. So I hope you take pride in what they’ve become and know this. The administration will always have your back, just as these new officers have ours.
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White House pays bizarre tribute to Harambe 10 years after gorilla’s death.
The White House has posted on social media a tribute to mark Thursday’s 10th anniversary of the death of a figure it called “a true patriot”.
The hero concerned the infamous case of the 400lb western lowland gorilla that had been named Harambe, which was shot dead at the Cincinnati zoo after a toddler entered his enclosure and interacted with the animal.
In a lengthy post on Wednesday evening, what would have been the primate’s 27th birthday, the official government account mourned “an icon that became part of internet history, American culture, and an entire generation’s timeline”.
Security staff at the zoo shot and killed the male silverback on 28 May 2016 after the boy, three-year-old Isaiah Dickerson, climbed a fence, crawled through a hedge, and dropped 15ft into the enclosure holding Harambe and fellow gorillas. Video captured the gorilla pulling the boy, who received only minor injuries, through water.
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Vice President JD Vance is about to deliver the US Air Force Academy commencement address in El Paso County, Colorado Thursday morning.
Last week, President Trump delivered the commencement address at the US Coast Guard Academy.
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No Kings event set for 14 June, as Trump celebrates birthday with White House UFC bout
The No Kings movement has announced a nationwide event on 14 June, directly counter-programming Donald Trump’s 80th birthday celebrations and a Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) bout on the south lawn of the White House.
The centerpiece is a 90-minute concert at New York’s Town Hall featuring entertainer Bette Midler, songwriter Patti Smith, actor Jane Fonda, musician Rufus Wainwright and commentator Joy Reid – streaming free nationwide, while local groups host watch parties across the country. The event is co-presented by the Committee for the First Amendment, a coalition of artists and cultural figures, and frames the US’s 250th anniversary as a moment of democratic reckoning.
The plans put two very different visions for the occasion in direct competition.
The US president is billing UFC Freedom 250 as a historic national celebration: a star-spangled octagon arena on the south lawn of the White House, with 4,000 ticketed guests, and a fan festival on the Ellipse expected to draw up to 100,000 people. The weigh-ins are reportedly set to take place at the Lincoln Memorial.
Trump has claimed that demand for tickets, for an event which will feature a title fight between the lightweight champion Ilia Topuria and the interim champion Justin Gaethje, has been unlike anything he has seen. White House spokesperson Davis Ingle called it “one of the greatest and most historic sports events in history”.
In one of the opinions shared by the Supreme Court Thursday morning, the Court has ruled in favor of a Black man who claims that there was racial bias in the make up of the jury that convicted him.
In Pitchford v Cain, five of the Court’s justices sided with Terry Pitchford, a man sentenced to death for his part in killing a grocery story owner in Mississippi, over 20 years ago, reported AP.
Pitchford’s trial had one Black juror, after the prosecutor has dismissed four other Black jurors.
Supreme court to issue opinions at 10am ET
The supreme court will hand down opinions at 10am ET today. Here’s a reminder of the major cases we’re tracking closely.
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Trump v Cook: Donald Trump’s case for firing Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, as he continues to exert greater control over the US central bank.
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Trump v Slaughter: A case which examines the legality of Trump’s firing of a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) member, Rebecca Slaughter.
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Trump v Barbara: In which the court will decide if the administration’s attempts to restrict birthright citizenship are unconstitutional.
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The Detroit Regional Chamber’s Mackinac Policy Conference on Mackinac Island has begun and the Democratic candidates for Michigan’s Senate Haley Stevens, Mallory McMorrow and Abdul El-Sayed, among others, will debate each other at the conference Thursday, reported the Detroit Free Press.
The event has become a platform for political candidates to talk about their campaign during election year.
This year’s conference centers on the idea of “A Quest for Common Ground,” in a bid to bridge partisan divides and urge lawmakers and officials to set their differences aside for Michigan’s economic future.
PCE data shows a rise in inflation
The Bureau of Economic Analysis released the latest Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index, excluding food and energy, Thursday morning.
The PCE price index rose in April at an annual rate of 3.8% – that is an increase from 3.5% in March and 2.8% in February.
This is the first inflation report to be released under Kevin Marsh, the new fed chair.
The index is a measure of prices that people living in the US, or those buying on their behalf, pay for goods and services. It’s often called the core PCE price index, because two categories, food and energy, are not included to make underlying inflation clearer.
Abortion restrictions in the US have made it more difficult to access care for miscarriages, a new study stays.
The new research found that since the June 2022 Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overturning Roe v Wade, pregnancy care has fractured along state lines; it’s getting increasingly harder to access healthcare for miscarriages in US states with abortion restrictions.
In states where abortion bans went into effect following Dobbs, miscarriage management is shifting away from medications, especially mifepristone, and toward a wait-and-see approach, restricting the options for patients experiencing miscarriages and falling beneath standards of care in the US.
“We wanted to understand how, when you restrict access to abortion, that might affect people who are having a pregnancy loss or an early miscarriage,” said Maria Rodriguez, lead author of the study, professor of obstetrics and gynecology, and director for the Center for Women’s Health at Oregon Health & Science University. “What we found was that people had fewer choices to the type of care they got, and they were receiving lower-quality care as well.”
The study, published by the Journal of the American Medical Association on 18 May, looked at a total of 123,598 people with private insurance. Some 54,181 of the patients lived in states with restrictions on abortion after six weeks that were triggered by the Dobbs decision, while 69,417 lived in comparison states.
States with trigger bans saw a 2.8 percentage point increase in expectant management – meaning more patients were sent home to wait and see what would happen with their miscarriages – and a 2.2 percentage point decrease in medication management – meaning fewer people were prescribed standard-of-care medications for managing miscarriages. Patients who were prescribed medication, but lived in ban states saw a 13.8 percentage point increase in misoprostol-only treatment, which is safe but is not the standard of care in the US and may take longer, resulting in more discomfort.
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A judge on Thursday declined to block president Donald Trump’s executive tightening rules on mail-in voting in a loss for the Democratic party, whose lawyers argued that it could disenfranchise millions of voters.
The decision comes as Trump’s Republicans are locked in a tight battle to keep control of both houses of the US Congress in the November midterm elections.
Trump has for years pushed the false claim that his 2020 election defeat was the result of widespread voter fraud and has criticized voting by mail.
The executive order signed by Trump on 31 March directed his administration to compile a list of confirmed US citizens eligible to vote in each state and to use federal data to help state election officials verify who is eligible to vote.
It also required the US Postal Service to only deliver ballots to voters on each state’s approved mail-in ballot list, and required states to preserve election-related records for five years.
Donald Trump has threatened to “blow up” Oman if it fails to “behave” in a casual aside during a cabinet meeting, as the US scrambles to reopen the strait of Hormuz.
The US president made the threat after reports of talks between Iran and Oman about jointly charging a toll for ships passing through the crucial waterway, which has been all but closed since the start of the US-Israel war on Iran.
“The strait is going to be open to everybody,” Trump declared on Tuesday. “Nobody’s going to control it. We’re going to watch over it. We’ll watch over it. But nobody’s going to control it. That’s part of the negotiation that we have.”
In addition to Oman’s decades-long military and economic ties with the US, the Gulf nation of 5.3 million people has played a mediation role in the war and has itself come under attack from Tehran.
For more on this story, see our Middle East crisis live blog here:
California governor Gavin Newsom is looking to thwart Donald Trump’s $1.776bn “anti-weaponization fund” by imposing a 100% tax on any payout received by state residents.
In May, the Department of Justice (DoJ) announced a fund to compensate alleged “victims of lawfare and weaponization”. It’s unclear who qualifies under this category.
The fund was the product of a settlement reached between Trump and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) – the agency the president sued over his leaked tax returns.
Critics, including Newsom, have slammed the fund as a “boondoggle” designed to divert money to Trump’s allies. Speculation has swirled that its benefactors could include the individuals who were arrested in the 6 January 2021 siege of the US Capitol. The Trump administration has described the rioters as patriots and since pardoned many who were charged in relation to the attack.
“People who assault cops and overthrow democracy don’t deserve a taxpayer-funded payday,” Newsom wrote in a Wednesday post to X, after announcing his plan at a news conference.
Guatemala has agreed to conduct joint strikes with the United States against drug traffickers in its territory, the New York Times reported.
The move marks an escalation of US president Donald Trump’s crackdown on drug cartels operating out of Latin America.
Guatemalan president Bernardo Arevalo agreed to the strikes with US defense secretary Pete Hegseth in a call last week, the Times reported, quoting two people familiar with the talks.
The Central American nation has formally requested “cooperation in operations led by Guatemalan security forces against drug trafficking organizations” in a letter to Hegseth, Arevalo’s office told The Times.
The two officials told the newspaper that the United States and Guatemala had also agreed to “other military action” to target drugs gangs, without giving further details.
Trump refiles $10bn defamation suit against WSJ over report on Epstein ties
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
Donald Trump has refiled a defamation lawsuit seeking at least $10bn in damages against the Wall Street Journal over its reporting on his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, after a judge threw out an earlier version over legal deficiencies.
The lawsuit is one of several that the president has brought in his personal capacity against news organizations, part of what critics say is a wider pressure campaign against the media.
The lawsuit claims that the Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper tarnished his reputation with an article describing a birthday card to deceased sex offender Epstein as bearing Trump’s signature.
Trump and his lawyers said the card is fake, even after it was released by lawmakers investigating Epstein’s case, Reuters reported. The president is seeking at least $10bn in damages, according to the amended lawsuit - the same amount he had previously sought.
“At the time of publication, Defendants recklessly disregarded whether the Defamatory Statements were true and/or they purposefully avoided the discovery of the truth,” lawyers for Trump wrote in the amended complaint.
It comes as the Trump administration opened a criminal investigation into E Jean Carroll, the writer who accused the president of sexual assault, according to news reports.
Prosecutors, the New York Times and CNN reported on Wednesday, are looking into whether Carroll, 82, committed perjury in a 2022 deposition during her civil lawsuits against Trump, in which she said she did not accept outside financial support for her legal battles.
In other developments:
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In a new interview with CBS News, Jill Biden, the former first lady, said that she was “frightened” as she watched her husband, then-president Joe Biden, freeze up during his disastrous 2024 debate against Donald Trump. Pressed to explain what happened, Jill Biden said: “I don’t know what happened. I mean as I watched it, I thought, ‘Oh, my God, he’s having a stroke’. And it scared me to death.”
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Two House Democrats, Don Beyer of Virginia and Dina Titus of Nevada, announced that they plan to introduce a bill that would “explicitly prohibit construction of President Trump’s proposed ‘triumphal arch’ outside Arlington National Cemetery”.
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Cam Higby, a rightwing activist disguised as a pro-Palestinian activist, disrupted a news conference with the Democratic congressmen Jerry Nadler and Dan Goldman outside the Delaney Hall immigration detention center in Newark, New Jersey.
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