Closing summary
This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day. Here are the latest developments:
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The supreme court ruled in favor of the Trump administration’s bid to strip temporary protected status (TPS) from hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians, who were legally in the US and protected from deportation.
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The White House has requested Congress approve $87.6bn in new funding, much of which would go towards the costs of Donald Trump’s war against Iran, but a top Democrat has signaled the party will not support paying for an unpopular conflict that lawmakers never authorized.
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The White House claims video shot 10 days after the alleged vandalism of reflecting pool vindicates Trump - it does not.
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New evidence has emerged that Robert F Kennedy Jr was on a vaccine-related “mission” when he visited Samoa ahead of a deadly measles outbreak in 2019, raising further questions about whether the US health secretary lied to the Senate when he said the trip had “nothing to do with vaccines”.
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“If Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be a 12-hour news story,” vice-president JD Vance said during a discussion of his new book at the Richard Nixon presidential library in Yorba Linda, California. “The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy.” Vance also praised Nixon during the discussion, not mentioning that he had called the late president “a cynical asshole” in 2016.
California senators ask why Trump has not requested overdue disaster relief funding for areas devastated by wildfires
California’s two Democratic senators, Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, asked in a joint statement on Thursday why the Trump administration is requesting $87m in supplemental funding for its war ion Iran, but has still not provided disaster relief funding to communities impacted by the Eaton and Palisades fires, more than 18 months later.
The senators write:
“Most of the Administration’s $87 billion supplement spending request would defray costs incurred as a result of the President’s decision to go to war with Iran, a war not authorized by Congress or supported by the American people. That military funding does nothing to address the rising costs of living of the public.
“Nor does the bill provide any relief to Southern Californians still needing assistance to recover and rebuild after the devastating fires that took place eighteen months ago. Donald Trump’s desire to punish Los Angeles and the state of California for not voting for him, means once again that thousands of Angelinos are left watching this administration fight for anything but them, their businesses, and their communities.
“These fires did not discriminate based on party or political preference. Neither should this administration.”
California voters will get to decide in November whether billionaires should pay a one-time 5% tax, after a deadline passed on Thursday for its backers to withdraw the measure.
The so-called billionaire tax is among the highest-profile ballot efforts in the US this year taking aim at rising wealth disparities, and is set to be one of the state’s most contentious ballot initiatives. It has already spurred tech moguls to pour millions of dollars into attempts to stop the proposal.
State officials announced last week that the California Billionaire Tax Act had reached enough signatures to qualify for the ballot, but the elections process allowed the coalition backing the tax until 5pm on Thursday to decide whether to move forward with it.
Negotiations this week between the unions behind the effort and Governor Gavin Newsom failed to reach a deal by the cutoff, with California’s secretary of state subsequently confirming the tax proposal would go to voters. To get on the November ballot, backers of a measure must first gain a certain threshold of signatures from California residents in support of the initiative.
The ballot proposal was put forward by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW), which has argued it would fund the state’s healthcare, education and food assistance programs. Newsom and billionaire-backed groups opposing the tax allege that it would drive business out of California and harm the economy.
The billionaire tax has grown in prominence throughout the year as proponents gained over 1.55m signatures by April alone, more than double the requirement for getting on the ballot – something organizers say is testament to its popularity.
Trump repeats false claim 'We caught some people vandalizing our beautiful reflecting pool'
In 20 minutes of remarks at a Rose Garden dinner on Thursday, Donald Trump repeated his false claim that “We caught some people vandalizing our beautiful reflecting pool”.
“They took a cutter, a box cutter or something very sharp- can you imagine?” the president said. “And they threw a little fertilizer in the water, which is not good … But they caught them, they actually caught them.”
“They cut the bottom with a knife and pulled it and tried to do as much damage as possible.
In fact, the government has not arrested anyone for cutting the newly applied polyurea liner on the floor of the pool with a knife or a box-cutter, as the president says, and has produced no evidence that such a crime took place. There is also no evidence that the algae blooms were caused by fertilizer.
Instead, the US Park Police released a wanted poster for an unidentified woman who was caught on surveillance-camera video reaching into the pool and apparently removing a small piece of the polyurea liner last week, one day after reporters first documented the fact that chunks of the expensively applied liner had peeled away from the floor of the pool and floated to the surface.
The area around the reflecting pool was fenced-off and closed on Thursday, video recorded by the independent journalist Amanda Moore showed. Police officers and national guard troops sealed off the area as a second round of renovations began to repair the peeling liner and remove the algae blooms that appeared within a week of the project’s supposed completion earlier this month.
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'This used to be grass, beautiful grass, but it was useless', Trump tells dinner guests in the paved-over Rose Garden
Donald Trump began his remarks on Thursday evening to dinner guests assembled on the new patio he created in the Rose Garden by praising his own decision to pave-over the lawn.
“This used to be grass, beautiful grass, but it was useless”, the president told a group of cabinet officials, farmer and ranchers. “You couldn’t stand. It was always wet. You know, this used to be a wetland and the grass was wet. If it rained seven days before, the grass was soaking wet, and we’d have reporters there, female reporters would be holding their shoes… destroyed, ruined; men too.”
The president went on to describe his decision to start a war with Iran, which created a global economic crisis, not as an “excursion” but “a U-turn”.
He then repeated his claim that Iran would soon be using some of its unfrozen assets to buy American agricultural products. “We’re going to be taking some of their money, and we’ll spend it, and we’re going to be buying wheat, soybeans and corn, a lot of it” the president said.
Despite spending a good deal of time on social media, Trump appeared to have missed the message, posted on X earlier on Thursday, in which Iran’s chief negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said that is not going to happen.
“America falsely claims our unfrozen assets will buy their agriculture”, Ghalibaf wrote. ”Interesting. The only crop we’re harvesting is what you planted: decades of mistrust. It’s organic, abundant, and homegrown. But apparently the US only exports GMO soybeans, broken promises and trash talks.”
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Trump nominates Chris Klomp for deputy health secretary post
Donald Trump said in a social media post on Thursday that he is nominating Chris Klomp, a former health-care technology entrepreneur, to serve as deputy health secretary.
Klomp currently serves as both the head of Medicare, the federal health program for older Americans and people with disabilities, and reportedly impressed Trump so much by leading the government’s negotiations with drug companies to cut their prices that he calls him his “favorite Mormon” or just “my Mormon”.
Klomp’s biography on the Medicare website refers to his “extensive experience in healthcare payment reform and data sharing”.
Klomp began his career at the private equity firm Bain Capital. During the first Trump administration, Stat News reported, Klomp “contributed to early discussions, in 2020, about how to use data to monitor the Covid-19 pandemic.”
Vance praises Nixon, a decade after reportedly calling him 'a cynical asshole' like Trump
During his appearance at the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, California on Thursday, JD Vance told the crowd, “I’ve always liked Richard Nixon”.
That is not, strictly speaking, true, given that Vance wrote in a text message to a former roommate at Yale law school in February 2016: “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler.”
Those comments were revealed in 2022, when Vance was running for the Senate and his former roommate, Josh McLaurin, who is now a state lawmaker in Georgia, produced a screenshot of the text message from Vance.
At the time, Vance’s campaign manager did not contest the authenticity of the text, saying instead that Vance “not liking Trump six years ago” was hardly news, and insisting that he was “a genuine convert” to Trump
On Thursday, Vance, now Trump’s vice-president, went on to call Nixon, who was forced to resign in disgrace in 1974, “a political genius”.
“Nixon’s coalition in ‘72”, Vance said, “closely resembles the Trump coalition of 2024”.
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Near the end of a discussion of his new book at the Richard Nixon presidential library in Yorba Linda, California on Thursday, vice-president JD Vance scoffed at protesters “waving the Palestinian flag outside and hollering at us in Spanish”.
“By the way, the vice president can’t understand what you’re protesting about if you don’t speak the language of everybody else here”, Vance said as the crowd erupted in applause.
“Note to protesters”, he added, chuckling, “if you want the vice president to hear what you’re protesting about you’ve got to use a language I actually understand.”
White House claims video shot 10 days after alleged vandalism of reflecting pool vindicates Trump - it does not
The White House claimed on Thursday that a brief video clip of a woman pulling what looked like a small piece of the lining of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool out of the water on 19 June, 10 days after damage to the pool was reported to US Park Police, somehow vindicates Donald Trump’s very different account of a 350-ft long “slit” having been cut in the newly applied lining by vandals.
On social media, and in an email sent to reporters, the White House pointed to 22 seconds of surveillance video, which the park police said was recorded on the afternoon of 19 June, that showed a young woman reaching into the pool and removing what appeared to be a small piece of the new polyurea liner.
A slightly longer version of the clip, provided to Fox News and posted on social media by the White House, showed that the woman dipped her hand into the water in full view of workers in the pool and gave no indiction that she, or a man with her, had any sort of knife.
The date of the video, confirmed by the government, matters, because that means the incident took place one day after journalists, including Jonathan Karl of ABC News, Jen Bendery of HuffPost and the photojournalist Andrew Leyden first reported that chucks of the liner had peeled off and were floating on the surface of the pool, just a week after the renovation was called complete.
As Bendery also reported that day, pieces of the floating liner had already become attractive as souvenirs to people who were tearing off small chunks to commemorate the failure of Trump’s $14.2m renovation.
Importantly, the date of the video presented by the White House as proof that “Trump was right” also contradicts the timeline for the alleged vandalism offered to a federal court on Wednesday in a sworn statement from a National Park Service official.
In that court filing, the park service’s deputy operations director, Frank Lands, wrote:
On June 9, 2026, after the rehabilitation project was substantially complete, the U.S. Park Police responded to an NPS report of damage to the reflecting pool, including a caulk over the foam sealant that was cut with a sharp knife or razor and destruction of delaminating surface material.
Clearly, the woman seen in the video recorded on 19 June could not have been, as a Fox News report blasted out by the White House on Thursday claimed, caught “in the act” of causing damage to the pool liner that was first noticed on 9 June.
There are other problems with the White House timeline too.
First, the video shows the woman removing and holding up just a small piece of material, not much bigger than her hand, while Trump told reporters that there were “pictures” of vandals cutting a 350-ft gash in the lining. Visitors to the pool had been photographed tearing off similarly small strips of the peeling liner the day before, but there is no evidence that anyone cut the polyurea sealant loose in the first place.
Second, the woman in the video grabbed this apparent souvenir in broad daylight, one day after multiple pieces of debris had been spotted by reporters, at a time when multiple workers were in the pool, attempting to clean it of debris and algae, and the area was being guarded by federal officers, park police and national guard troops.
There is also evidence, from news photographs taken on 19 June, that at least one critic of the 47th president stuck their hand in the pool that day for another reason: to use the algae covered pool liner as a slate to express their desire for his presidency to end.
Third, on 9 June, when the park service first reported damage to the reflecting pool to the US Park Police, the renovated reflecting pool had not yet been opened to the public, and was still fenced off as workers power-washed the walkways around the pool.
On 8 June, the day before damage to the pool was noticed by the park service, no one from the public was allowed near the pool, but workers were photographed in it, near the area where the woman would be recorded 11 days later, vigorously cleaning the newly applied liner as the pool was refilled with water.
The final question raised by the video of the woman is why, if the pool area is covered by surveillance-cameras, the Trump administration has not released any video of any alleged vandalism being carried out before the damage was reported on 9 June.
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JD Vance doesn’t think the era-defining Watergate scandal would have lasted more than a single news cycle in today’s fragmented, hyperpartisan political environment – and certainly wouldn’t have led to a president’s downfall.
“If Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be a 12-hour news story,” the vice president said during a discussion of his new book at the Richard Nixon presidential library in Yorba Linda, California. “The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy.”
Watergate, the biggest political scandal of the 20th century, and the only one to cause a presidential resignation, began in 1972 with a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, DC, by operatives connected to Nixon’s re-election campaign.
Vance continued: “If you look at the story of how the deep-state took down Richard Nixon, it’s not all that different from what the same groups of people the same institutions tried to do to Donald Trump in the first administration. There is a parallel.”
Donald Trump was twice impeached during his first term: once for allegedly abusing his power to pressure Ukraininan president Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate his then-political rival Joe Biden under the threat of withholding military aid and a second time for inflaming the mob of supporters who stormed the US Capitol on January 6 after an unsuccessful campaign to overturn his election defeat.
Despite the longstanding view that Watergate was a triumph of the American system of government–accountability for abuse of power at the highest level – Trump and his allies have sought to rewrite the public understanding of the scandal. Trump, the 45th and 47th president, has previously claimed that Nixon only “may” have been guilty.
In Yorba Linda on Thursday, Vance called Nixon a “political genius” and drew a parallel between himself and the 37th president.
“Young senator. Vice president. Writes some bestselling books. Is hated by the media,” Vance said. “It kind of sounds like JD Vance.”
Vance, widely viewed as a 2028 White House hopeful, omitted, of course, the role Nixon is most famous for: president.
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Jeffries calls on Senate to pass bipartisan bill to restore TPS to Haitians after 'cruel' court decision
The House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries responded on Thursday to the “reckless” and “cruel” supreme court decision to allow the Trump administration to strip temporary protected status from hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians who fled violence at home by calling on the Republican-led Senate to immediately pass a bill to restore TPS to Haitians which passed the House in April with bipartisan support.
“TPS holders from Haiti and Syria are our hardworking neighbors actively contributing to our communities, supporting our small businesses and filling critical labor needs,” Jeffries said in a statement. “This decision harms them, their families and the communities all across America that rely on their participation in the healthcare workforce and beyond.”
“Over the objection of Donald Trump and Mike Johnson, House Democrats passed legislation in April to extend TPS for Haitians and protect our communities from the inhumane and unacceptable policies of this out-of-control administration”, Jeffries added. “The Senate should immediately move Rep Laura Gillen’s bipartisan bill in response to today’s reckless supreme court decision.”
Jeffries was referring to a bill directing “the secretary of homeland security to “designate Haiti for temporary protected status until” three months after a new president is sworn in 2029. That measure, introduced by a Democratic congresswoman from a part of Long Island, New York where there are over 30,000 Haitian residents, was put to a vote over the objections of Republican House leaders after a successful discharge petition. It passed with bipartisan support, 224-204, more than two months ago, but has not been put to a vote in the Republican-led Senate.
Gillen echoed the Democratic leader’s call in a statement of her own on Thursday.
“The supreme court’s cruel and harmful decision to end Temporary Protected Status for hardworking, law-abiding Haitians in this country now puts our friends and neighbors’ lives at risk, as they could be forced to face the horrific violence and chaos in Haiti,” the lawmaker wrote.
“Removing our neighbors would not just be a humanitarian catastrophe; it would hurt our economy. Haitian TPS recipients are a part of the fabric of our daily lives and pillars of our economy and faith communities. They are a fundamental part of our vibrant identity on Long Island,” she added.
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White House seeks extra funds for Iran war as part of $87.6bn request
The White House has requested Congress approve $87.6bn in new funding, much of which would go towards the costs of Donald Trump’s war against Iran, but a top Democrat has signaled the party will not support paying for an unpopular conflict that lawmakers never authorized.
The Trump administration’s supplemental funding request released yesterday comes amid a logjam in US Congress sparked by the president’s demand that the Senate pass a measure to impose sweeping new restrictions on voting nationwide.
The standoff intensified this week, when Trump refused to sign a major housing bill approved with bipartisan majorities until the voting bill advances, after previously linking its passage to renewal of a key foreign surveillance law.
In a letter outlining the Iran war funding request, the White House office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, wrote that $67.1bn of the funds would be used to cover costs related to the conflict with Iran, and would include $21bn for munitions procurement and the defense industrial base.
The request also contains $1.4bn to respond to the outbreak of Ebola in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, and $11.1bn for US farmers, who have been struggling with economic shocks related to the Trump administration’s tariff regime, as well as prices for fertilizer and diesel driven higher by the conflict with Iran.
The White House also wants Congress to codify in the proposal year-round sales of E15, a gasoline blend with higher ethanol content that can be cheaper but also cause more air pollution in warmer months.
The latest funding request comes on top of Trump’s proposed $1.5tn budget for the Pentagon, its largest in decades. While appropriators in the Senate and House of Representatives have advanced legislation to authorize $1.15tn of those funds, the White House’s request that the remaining $350bn be approved in a party-line measure has been met with skepticism from senior Republicans.
Democratic lawmakers have also scorned the idea of paying for the war with Iran, which Trump initiated in February alongside Israel without first requesting Congress’s permission. Surveys have shown the conflict is unpopular with the public, with a Reuters/Ipsos poll released this week finding that just a quarter of Americans believe the United States has emerged stronger from the conflict.
DeSantis boasts of deporting 21,000 as 'politically toxic' Alligator Alcatraz jail closes
Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, boasted today of deporting 21,000 people from Alligator Alcatraz, as he confirmed the closure of the notorious immigration jail hastily erected in the Everglades that became a byword for cruelty and human rights abuses and environmental damage.
Standing beside Tom Homan, Donald Trump’s so-called border czar, at a press conference at the now dismantled site in Ochopee in the environmentally sensitive region in south Florida, DeSantis presented its year-long operation as a victory for the president’s aggressive immigration enforcement agenda.
“Alligator Alcatraz fulfilled the role it was designed to serve,” he said, adding that all of the detainees held there until last week had been transferred into federal immigration custody elsewhere.
“When you start talking about 21,000 folks, that without question has made our state safer, and it’s made the country safer as well,” DeSantis added.
Critics, however, said the jail run by the Florida state, on which the governor was reportedly spending $1.2m a day of Florida taxpayers’ money, was a political liability for DeSantis.
There was a groundswell that publicity over the multiplying reports of “inhumane” treatment of undocumented detainees, including physical abuse and isolation from legal representation, was becoming untenable.
“Alligator Alcatraz is now shut down due to the relentless action of thousands of people who refused to stand idly by,” said Noelle Damico, director of social justice at the Workers Circle, an advocacy group that held a 47th and final weekly “freedom vigil” outside the remote jail on Sunday.
“We denounced the brutality, lawlessness, chaos and corruption that was Alligator Alcatraz. We, the people, made it politically toxic. We brought it to an end here, and we will bring it to an end everywhere.”
Read the rest of Richard’s report here:
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In another fiery exchange with DeLauro, Mullin talked over her multiple times as she tried to ask him questions about Fema. Things got so heated that the Republican chair had to interrupt Mullin mid-ramble to remind him, “Mr Secretary … Mr Secretary, the floor is hers.”
Amodei added: “Actually, I gave it to her. You know there’s a chairman of a committee? That’s me, I gave it back to her. She’s got it.”
Here’s the clip.
A reminder that Mullin was grilled over his temper during his confirmation hearing back in March. Senate homeland security chair Rand Paul said he was a “man with anger issues” after Mullin previously called him a “freaking snake” and said he understood why a neighbor attacked Paul in 2017. Mullin did not apologize.
Here’s Mullin clutching his stress ball at today’s hearing (with decidedly mixed results).
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This morning, Trump’s DHS secretary Markwayne Mullin got into some heated exchanges with Democratic lawmakers at his hearing before the House appropriations subcommittee on homeland security.
In one instance, he scolded ranking member Rosa DeLauro after the Connecticut Democrat criticized the administration’s efforts to reunite children separated from their families by its immigration policies.
DeLauro began to tell him that “3,900 children were separated from their families” at the US-Mexico border before Mullin interrupted her to claim: “450,000 kids were lost during the Biden administration and you didn’t say a word about it.”
“Mr Secretary! Do not interrupt,” said DeLauro, raising her voice. “Don’t you point your finger at me,” he retorted. “I will point my finger at you,” DeLauro replied. Mullin went on to call her a “hypocrite”.
“You should be as upset about the 450,000 kids that were lost. You didn’t say a word about it. For four years you never said a word,” Mullin yelled.
DeLauro then appealed to subcommittee chair, Republican Mark Amodei, “Could you put him in his place first?”
“You should be put in your place,” Mullin quipped, before he was shut down by Amodei, who allowed DeLauro to claim back her time.
“We are going to have something resembling order here. The time is the ranking member’s,” Amodei said, referring to DeLauro. To Mullin, he added: “If you would like to respond later on, there are methods to do that. but it’s not a who can respond louder into the mic.”
“Do not accuse me of lying,” DeLauro added. “Then don’t,” Mullin said.
Here’s the clip.
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New evidence casts doubt on RFK Jr testimony before Senate
New evidence has emerged that Robert F Kennedy Jr was on a vaccine-related “mission” when he visited Samoa ahead of a deadly measles outbreak in 2019, raising further questions about whether the US health secretary lied to the Senate when he said the trip had “nothing to do with vaccines”.
Records obtained by the Guardian show Kennedy’s colleague told Samoan officials in an email that he and Kennedy were coming as part of a mission to study the island nation’s medical records in the aftermath of a “discontinuity in vaccinations”.
“We all look forward to the opportunity to be of service to the people of Samoa with our mission,” Dr Michael Graven wrote.
Kennedy was at the time serving as chairman and chief legal counsel of Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit group known for its anti-vaccine activism. Graven was the group’s chief information officer. Spokespeople for Kennedy at the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) did not respond to messages seeking comment.
Kennedy’s trip to the Pacific island nation is among the most heavily criticised activities he undertook before being named health secretary by Donald Trump. Kennedy has frequently claimed that his reason for going to Samoa was not about vaccines and that his visit did not influence people’s decisions on whether to vaccinate. At his Senate confirmation hearing last year, he said: “You cannot find a single Samoan who will say I didn’t get a vaccine because of Bobby Kennedy.” Instead, he said he went to attend a Samoan independence celebration and to introduce a “state-of-the art” medical informatics system.
Samoan officials later said Kennedy’s visit bolstered the credibility of anti-vaccine activists. A measles outbreak, which tore through the Pacific island nation a few months after Kennedy’s visit, sickened thousands and killed 83 people, mostly children under age five.
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Summary of today's supreme court rulings
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The supreme court ruled in favor of the Trump administration’s bid to strip temporary protected status (TPS) from hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians, who were legally in the US and protected from deportation. In another boost to Donald Trump’s unprecedented hardline crackdown on immigrants, including many who have lived legally in the US for years, the court issued a 6-3 ruling powered by its conservative-leaning majority. The decision leaves Haitians and Syrians in the US on TPS vulnerable to deportation even if they have applications for other forms of immigration status in progress.
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New York’s attorney general Letitia James called the decision “a betrayal of our values”, and New York representative Mike Lawler argued that “the situation on the ground in Haiti is a humanitarian and political disaster and continues to warrant an extension.” Indeed, the state department currently warns against traveling to either Haiti or Syria, citing widespread violence, crime, terrorism and kidnapping. Here’s José Olivares’s report.
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In another major immigration ruling, the high court gave the Trump administration a green light to turn back asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border, in a decision that fundamentally reshapes the US asylum system. The Trump administration has sought for years to block migrants from setting foot on US soil, where federal law guarantees them the right to claim asylum and protection from persecution. The court’s 6-3 ruling will allow that practice to resume, concluding a battle that has spanned three administrations. Maanvi Singh reports.
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The supreme court also struck down a restrictive gun law in the state of Hawaii that bans people from carrying guns in certain public spaces and on private property without the permission of the property’s owner. The court’s 6-3 decision means that people can carry guns onto privately owned property like shopping malls and gas stations, unless the owners specifically say guns are banned at their establishments. Abené Clayton has the story.
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And finally, the court found in favor of the former Monsanto company in a ruling that is expected to block thousands of lawsuits filed by people alleging the key ingredient in the weed killer Roundup causes cancer. The chemical – glyphosate – has been scientifically linked to cancer in multiple studies, and was classified a probable human carcinogen by an arm of the World Health Organization in 2015.
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Kentucky Republican representative Thomas Massie called the decision a “blatant travesty of justice”. Democratic senator Cory Booker said the ruling was “a devastating blow” and allowed big corporations “to poison us with impunity”. Carey Gillam and Dharna Noor have this report.
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Reflecting pool liner was cut with a sharp knife or razor, National Park Service says
The liner along the bottom of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool was cut with a sharp knife or razor this month, causing damage to the foam sealant installed as part of Donald Trump’s $16m renovation project, a top official at the National Park Service has said.
This marks the first time the Trump administration has offered specifics for when and how the reflecting pool may have been damaged after work on the project was substantially completed, after Trump and other officials have repeatedly blamed, without evidence, unidentified “vandals” for peeling paint as well as a “350-foot gash” in the liner and other problems.
Six people have been arrested, Trump said earlier this week, without providing details, and the president has been under pressure to substantiate his claims of sabotage, particularly after claiming there was video and photo evidence.
The NPS reported the 9 June incident to US Park Police, said Frank Lands, deputy director of operations for the park service. Lands made the statement in a court document filed late yesterday as part of a lawsuit filed by a nonprofit organization to halt the Trump administration’s work on the project.
The police report indicates damage to the pool, “including a caulk over the foam sealant that was cut with a sharp knife or razor and destruction of delaminating surface material,'’ Lands said. About 70 fence post tops also were thrown into the pool, he said.
Trump pledged to beautify the century-old reflecting pool before the nation’s 250th birthday celebrations next weekend, draining its water and directing the bottom to be painted “American flag blue”. But since work was completed, the water has been plagued by algal blooms and pieces of the new coating peeling off the bottom.
Trump said yesterday that “sick people” had used razors and box cutters to slice portions of the lining.
The US Park Police posted surveillance footage yesterday evening and asked for help “identifying the individual depicted here in connection with a Destruction of Government Property investigation.” The grainy, 30-second video appears to show a person kneeling down, reaching into the reflecting pool and removing something from the water. Police said it was taken on Friday afternoon.
In his statement to the court, Lands said the parks agency plans to begin draining the reflecting pool following Independence Day celebrations to conduct repairs, including assessing and repairing any damage to the lining.
With the Associated Press.
The supreme court is continuing to face bipartisan backlash on its decision to allow the Donald Trump administration to end legal protections for Haitians and Syrians, with New York Republican representative Mike Lawler saying:
“While I have never disputed the ability of the President to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS), I strongly disagree with ending Haitian TPS at this time.
First, the situation on the ground in Haiti is a humanitarian and political disaster and continues to warrant an extension. The State Department has a level 4 travel advisory telling all Americans to evacuate and not travel there precisely because the gangs are in charge of the country, engaged in gun and drug trafficking, and kidnapping innocent Haitians. We want to root it out and allow for a stable government to be establish with a free a fair election, creating the conditions for a safe return for Haitians.”
He added that the ending of TPS for Haitians will “create a crisis in our hospitals, nursing homes, and in the I/DD community.” Lawler went on to urge the Trump administration to “allow for an orderly process by which Haitian TPS holders can maintain their work authorization while their immigration cases are adjudicated over the next six months, if the revocation of TPS moves forward.”
In addition to criticisms towards its ruling on the former Monsanto company, the supreme court is facing backlash towards its decision to allow Donald Trump’s administration to end legal protections for Haitians and Syrians.
Condemning the ruling, New York’s attorney general Letitia James wrote on X:
“The Supreme Court’s decision to strip TPS from Haitian and Syrian communities is a betrayal of our values and of the promise our country made to protect people from displacement and harm. I’ll never stop fighting for our immigrant neighbors and loved ones.”
The Trump administration’s plan to deny mail-in ballots to states that would not give their voter rolls to federal officials was blocked Thursday morning by a federal judge in Boston.
US district judge Indira Talwani ruled that the provisions of an executive order issued by Donald Trump on 31 March requiring the postal service to require the use of a barcode tracking system for ballot envelopes tied to US Citizenship and Immigration Services data was unconstitutional.
It comes amid a broader drive by the president and his officials to reshape rules and regulations around voting ahead of November’s midterm elections. Trump is pushing Congress to pass the Save America Act, which would impose new ID requirements on voters and curtail mail-in voting.
Voting rights groups, joined by 23 states and the District of Columbia, sued the administration to stop the proposed rule, arguing that the US constitution provides no authority for the president to issue orders governing the administration of elections.
Similarly, Democratic senator Cory Booker called the ruling a “devastating blow,” saying on X:
“This is a devastating blow in our fight to hold big pesticide companies accountable for the harm caused by their toxic chemicals.
It is terrible that the Trump Administration convinced the Supreme Court to provide a liability shield to big corporations like Bayer, allowing them to poison us with impunity. I fought this decision tooth and nail in the courts and stood with the MAHA movement on the Supreme Court steps to oppose it.
This is not a liberal vs. conservative or right vs. left issue - it is a right or wrong issue. Now Congress must quickly act to reverse this liability shield.”
Reactions are starting to roll in on the supreme court’s decision favoring former Monsanto company in a case that limits how people can sue pesticide companies for alleged illnesses.
On X, Kentucky’s Republican representative Thomas Massie called the decision a “travesty of justice,” saying:
“SCOTUS rules Monsanto/Bayer can’t be sued for omitting a warning even if their herbicides do cause cancer. Even if the legal reasoning of the court is sound in this case, it’s a blatant travesty of justice. Congress and the President can fix this and we absolutely should.”
Supreme court rules in favor of former Monsanto company in pesticide case
The supreme court has ruled in favor of the former Monsanto company in a closely watched case that limits the way for people to sue pesticide companies for alleged illnesses or injuries.
The decision was made in a 7-2 vote, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh offering the majority opinion and Justice Jackson writing the dissenting opinion, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch.
The case, Monsanto v Durnell, specifically dealt with the question of whether a federal law that gives the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulatory authority over pesticides preempts state claims that a company failed to warn users of certain product risks when the EPA itself has not required such warnings.
In its ruling, the court said the EPA controls pesticide labels to ensure nationwide uniformity, and because the agency evaluated Roundup and decided a cancer warning was unnecessary, state-level lawsuits demanding such a warning conflict with federal law.
The case at the heart of the decision deals with Monsanto’s glyphosate – a weedkilling chemical used in the popular Roundup brand and numerous other herbicide products sold by the former Monsanto company, which is now owned by Germany’s Bayer.
The chemical has been scientifically linked to cancer in multiple studies, and was classified a probable human carcinogen by an arm of the World Health Organization in 2015.
Bayer has spent the last decade fighting more than 100,000 lawsuits filed by people who developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma they blamed on exposure to the glyphosate weedkillers, and the company has paid out billions of dollars in jury awards and settlements. All of the cases include allegations that the company failed to warn that glyphosate could cause cancer.
Bayer maintains that its products don’t cause cancer, and also asserts that under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (Fifra), the EPA is the key authority for determining if its product necessitated a cancer warning. The EPA has not required such a warning and has taken the position that glyphosate is “unlikely” to be carcinogenic, so the company cannot be held liable for failing to warn, according to Bayer’s argument.
The court’s decision means the failure-to-warn claims included in several thousand lawsuits pending against Monsanto cannot go forward.
Similarly, thousands of such claims pending against pesticide maker Syngenta cannot proceed. In the Syngenta cases, plaintiffs allege they developed Parkinson’s disease due to exposure to the company’s paraquat weed killer. Syngenta maintains that the evidence linking paraquat to Parkinson’s disease is “fragmentary” and “inconclusive”.
The vote was 6-3, with conservative justices Samuel Alito, John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett concurring. The court’s liberal justices Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Sonia Sotomayor all dissented, with the latter penning a biting 35-page long dissent – notably almost twice as long as the Alito majority opinion.
US immigration law entitles migrants arriving in the US to seek asylum; the supreme court case hinged on what, exactly, it means to “arrive in”. When the court considered the case in March, chief justice Roberts and justice Barrett appeared to agree with the Trump administration’s argument – that to “arrive” in the US is to fully set food on US soil. If a migrant is turned back before they are able to cross the border, they are not entitled to asylum, the administration held.
Though much of the supreme court oral arguments about the case centered on the question about what it means to “arrive” in the US and whether the administration is entitled to deny asylum by preventing arrival, the court’s liberal justices also grappled with what it would mean to essentially end the proactive of providing asylum at the US border.
Justice Sotomayor compared the practice of turning away asylum seekers to the tragedy of the St Louis, a passenger ship with Jewish refugees that was turned away from the US right before the second world war. About half the passengers who were returned to western European countries were trapped and killed when Germany invaded.
In Alito’s opinion, he wrote: “In ordinary speech, no one would say that a person ‘arrives in’ a place ... before the person enters that place.”
Sotomayor pushed back strongly in her dissent, explaining the dire consequences of the decision, noting that the government may now circumvent a vast range of laws protecting asylum-seekers by simply blocking their entry at the border.
She wrote:
They may do so even if the asylum seeker is at the threshold of a port of entry designated to receive all noncitizens who seek entrance into the country. Even if the port of entry has ample capacity to inspect that person, including an available asylum officer trained to process asylum applications. Even if the asylum seeker is certain to be persecuted, or killed, if she is turned away.
The Court’s illogical interpretation is driven almost entirely by a fixation on a single word: ‘in.’ Words, however, must be read in context and with attention to how they fit into the statute as a whole. The majority ignores the statutory context and history, not to mention the longstanding position of the Executive Branch, all of which show that any noncitizen arriving at our doorstep and seeking admission must be inspected and allowed to apply for asylum, regardless of whether her foot has crossed the threshold. Because the Court today blesses the Executive Branch’s decision to slam the door shut on all who are fleeing persecution, despite the detailed inspection and asylum system that Congress enacted and commands, I respectfully dissent.
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Here’s my colleague Maanvi Singh’s report on the supreme court’s decision to give the Trump administration a green light to turn back asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border, in a ruling that fundamentally reshapes the US asylum system and concludes a battle that has spanned three administrations.
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Supreme court allows Trump administration to end legal protections for Haitians and Syrians
In a major ruling, the supreme court has allowed the Trump administration to end legal protections for migrants fleeing violence and natural disaster in Haiti and Syria, exposing hundreds of thousands more people to potential deportation.
The decision overturns lower court orders and allows the Department of Homeland Security to swiftly end temporary protected status, a program that protects a total of 1.3 million people from 17 countries.
The Trump administration argued that judges can’t second-guess immigrations officials’ decisions about the protections, which were intended to be temporary.
Immigration attorneys said the countries remain unsafe to return, and the administration ended them in an unlawfully hasty process tinged by racial animus. A reminder that during his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump amplified false rumors about Haitian immigrants.
The justice department appealed to the high court after judges postponed the end of the program for about 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians. The supreme court sided with the administration before and allowed it to end of the program for more than 300,000 people from Venezuela.
Federal authorities deny that racial animus played a role. They also cited a supreme court decision from Trump’s first term that rejected bias claims based on his social media posts and upheld a travel ban on several Muslim-majority countries.
DHS has ended the protections people from 13 countries since Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, including some that had been in place for more than a decade.
The terminations were made even though countries like Haiti and Syria remain dangerous, immigration attorneys said. Four Haitian women who were deported from the United States in February were found beheaded and dumped in a river several months later, lawyers said in court documents.
The House passed legislation with a rare bipartisan vote in April that would extend protections for Haitians, though the bill has languished in the Senate.
The US first granted protections to Haitians in 2010 after a catastrophic earthquake, and extended them multiple times amid ongoing gang violence that has displaced more than a million people, according to court documents.
Syrians, meanwhile, were first granted protected status in 2012, during a civil war that lasted for more than a decade before the fall of president Bashar Assad’s government in late 2024.
TPS was created by Congress in 1990 to prevent deportations to countries suffering from natural disasters, civil strife and other instability. It allows people already in the country to stay with work permits in increments of up to 18 months, but it doesn’t provide a path to citizenship.
With the Associated Press.
Here’s my colleague Abené Clayton’s report on the supreme court’s decision to strike down a restrictive Hawaii gun law that bans people from carrying guns in certain public spaces and on private property without the permission of the property’s owner.
Supreme court clears way for Trump administration to turn back asylum seekers at US-Mexico border
The supreme court has cleared the way for the Trump administration to potentially revive an immigration policy once used to turn back migrants seeking asylum at the US-Mexico border.
The justices overturned a lower court order blocking the practice that limited the number of people who could apply for asylum each day under the Obama administration and during Donald Trump’s first term.
Advocates said the tactic created a humanitarian crisis as thousands of people settled in unsafe makeshift shelters to await their turn. The Trump administration said it was necessary to deal with an increase of asylum seekers at the border.
The policy isn’t in place now, though authorities have imposed other restrictions on asylum seekers.
The administration argues that metering is a critical tool that’s been used by presidents of both parties and should stay available. Federal attorneys say people turned away at the border could come back later, though lines were thousands of people long when the policy was in place before.
Under federal law, migrants who arrive in the US must be able to apply for asylum and be screened for fear of persecution in their home countries.
The justice department argued that people stopped by authorities haven’t arrived, so immigration agents don’t have to let them apply.
But attorneys for people seeking asylum say the law has long meant anyone arriving at a port of entry should be screened, and blocking arrivals disregards the nation’s ideals.
Metering was first used during the Obama administration when large numbers of Haitians appeared at the main crossing to San Diego from Tijuana, Mexico. It was expanded to all border crossings from Mexico during Trump’s first term in the White House.
It ended in 2020 when the government introduced greater restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic, and Joe Biden formally rescinded it in 2021.
The same year, a California-based federal judge found that metering violated the asylum-seekers rights and the law requiring screening. A divided appeals court panel affirmed the ruling but nearly half of judges on the full San Francisco-based court voted to rehear it, a strong signal that might have caught the attention of the supreme court.
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Supreme court strikes down Hawaii's gun restrictions in major second amendment ruling
The US supreme court has struck down a Hawaii law requiring people to get permission to carry guns into stores and hotels, in its latest opinion backing second amendment rights.
The court’s 6-3 decision means that people can carry guns onto privately owned property like shopping malls and gas stations, unless the owners specifically say guns are banned at their establishments.
It comes after the court found last week that marijuana users can’t be completely barred from owning firearms.
Today’s ruling is a win for the Trump administration, which argued that the law violates the second amendment. Hawaii argued that the 2023 measure ensured private owners could decide whether they wanted firearms on their property.
The state passed the law as thousands more people got legal permission to carry guns in the wake of a 2022 supreme court ruling that opened the door for almost all law-abiding Americans to carry concealed and loaded handguns in public.
About four other states have enacted similar laws, though presumptive restrictions for guns on private property open to the public have also been blocked elsewhere.
Hawaii also restricts guns in places like parks, beaches and restaurants that serve alcohol, but those rules weren’t before the court. They are being challenged in lower courts, however.
The suit before the supreme court was filed by a gun rights group and three people from Maui. A judge originally blocked the measure, but an appeals court allowed it to be enforced. The Trump administration backed the supreme court appeal.
With the Associated Press.
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US judge blocks Trump's mail-in voting executive order
A federal judge in Boston has blocked implementation of Donald Trump’s executive order directing his administration to compile a national voter file and to restrict the use of mail-in ballots, preventing it from taking force ahead of November’s midterm elections that will decide control of Congress.
US district judge Indira Talwani sided with several Democratic-led states who argued that the president is trying to unlawfully interfere with the states’ administration of federal elections.
Trump signed the order on 31 March after calling for years for tighter rules on voting by mail and pushing the false claim that his 2020 election defeat was the result of widespread voter fraud.
Repeated studies and investigations have shown there is no widespread voter fraud, including fraud through mail-in voting. The president himself voted by mail the week before signing his executive order.
Under the US constitution, states are assigned the role of administering federal elections. His order directs the US Department of Homeland Security to compile and transmit to the states a list of confirmed US citizens eligible to vote in each state, derived from citizenship and naturalization records and other federal databases.
Trump’s order also requires the US Postal Service to only deliver ballots to voters on each state’s approved mail-in ballot list. USPS recently moved to implement Trump’s directive by issuing new proposed rules requiring states to provide the names and barcodes tied to their mail-in ballots.
The order also directs the US Department of Justice to prioritize the investigation and prosecution of state and local election officials who issue federal ballots to people deemed “not eligible” to vote.
Voting rights groups sued the administration along with 23 states and the District of Columbia, arguing Trump’s order is unconstitutional and that he lacks any legal authority to assert presidential power over election administration.
The states alleged that allowing Trump’s order to stand would force them to rush to overhaul their election systems before November, causing chaos and likely disenfranchising eligible voters.
Talwani, an Obama appointee, ruled after a different jurist, Trump-appointed US district judge Carl Nichols in Washington DC, declined to issue a preliminary injunction in a related lawsuit brought by Democrats challenging Trump’s order.
Nichols found that the Democrats’ request was premature as Trump’s order had yet to be implemented. They are appealing.
With Reuters.
Supreme court to release opinions with high-stakes cases still to be decided
The supreme court is due to release more opinions in the next few minutes, with the end of the term approaching and many major cases still to be decided, including Donald Trump’s highly controversial bid to end birthright citizenship, his efforts to end Temporary Protected Status for Haitians and Syrians in the US, and his firing of Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook. We’ll bring you all the key rulings here.
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A reminder that the restrictive voting bill passed the House but stalled in the Senate, where Democrats have vowed to oppose it, leaving it short of the votes needed to overcome the filibuster.
Yesterday, Mike Johnson unveiled an idea to try to get around that. He proposed to advance a grant program tied to the bill in a GOP reconciliation package, so that the majority party could bypass the filibuster. The House speaker said he had told Donald Trump that this could be the only path forward for the legislation.
But GOP hardliners are not happy. They argue that Johnson’s plan amounts an incentive program and is therefore insufficient as it would enact only a watered-down version of the Save America Act, creating a fund to encourage states to tap into in order to adopt provisions of the bill rather than enacting the full legislation.
The aforementioned Anna Paulina Luna, the Florida Republican leading the rebellion, wrote on X after Johnson’s press conference:
The save America act cannot be placed in reconciliation and I’m not drinking the Kool-Aid. Neither should you.
And representative Chip Roy of Texas, who is the policy chair of the far-right House Freedom Caucus and a major proponent of the bill, told The Hill he thinks “grant programs are what they are. They’re incentives.”
States who want to do it would take the incentive. States who don’t wouldn’t necessarily. Maybe it’s pressure. I’m not saying I’m opposed to putting something like that on if there is a moving vehicle that’s otherwise moving in order to get some elements of the election integrity done, but let’s not kid ourselves that it would be full Save. It wouldn’t be.
He added that “every effort should be made to attach the Save America Act to moving vehicles, for example, the housing bill.”
And as if Johnson’s pitch today wasn’t tricky enough, Trump was asked by reporters in the Oval Office yesterday if he would be open to a compromise of including provisions of the Save Act in a reconciliation bill. The president replied:
Not really, no, the Save Act should be … there’s no compromise, it’s voter ID, it’s proof of citizenship, and it’s also the mail-in ballots.
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Per our last post, House speaker Mike Johnson is meeting with the president at 2pm ET to try to find a way through the gridlock after a rebellion from GOP hardliners effectively shut down the floor yesterday.
The group of Maga loyalists, led by representative Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, is insisting that no other legislation can pass until the Senate clears the so-called Save America Act. She posted on X after the upper chamber abruptly went into recess last night:
It is 10pm and Thune just got unanimous consent (meaning not one senator objected) for the Senate to adjourn 19 days (July 13th) meaning the Senate is going home after tonight’s votes.
I will not be voting to re-open the floor until the Senate gets back to Washington. The Senate is literally running and not ONE senator objected to going on vacation before 4th of July.
[Senate majority leader] John Thune is running and hiding because he doesn’t want to get voter ID across the finish line.
If Donald Trump can’t help Johnson break the impasse, the House will also go on recess for the week, sources have told Politico.
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Trump to meet House speaker amid showdown on Capitol Hill
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
A dramatic day is in store in Washington DC as Donald Trump heads for a crucial meeting with Mike Johnson, the House speaker, in an attempt to break a legislative gridlock as huge political fireworks have detonated on Capitol Hill far ahead of anything resembling a Fourth of July celebration.
The US Senate abruptly went on recess for two weeks yesterday after a stormy lunch which the US president, who had not visited for a long time, attended. It descended into a shouting match over the US-Israel war on Iran and tests of loyalty. This followed Trump suddenly scrapping the signing of a pivotal bipartisan housing bill hours earlier. Trump’s demands that the Senate change the rules to pass his highly-controversial voter ID bill has led to a gulf between the White House and the upper chamber.
Johnson will attempt to get a reluctant House moving on Trump’s agenda today as a sop. A difficult task.
Here’s what else is happening:
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Maryland’s Democratic US Senator Chris Van Hollen is endorsing the progressive candidate Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan’s Senate primary, a split with Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, the Associated Press reports as an exclusive.
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The US supreme court is expected to issue opinions at 10am ET and most of the big cases have not yet been ruled upon. We await immigration and finance-related opinions in particular.
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Huge focus on the Hill where the House speaker, Mike Johnson, meets with Trump at 2pm, with both hoping the House will be persuaded to take a vote and end a rebellion from within the right wing of the Republican caucus over the Save Act to tighten up on who can vote in US elections.
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Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana got into a shouting match with Trump at the Senate lunch on Wednesday after Trump admonished four senators, including him, for backing a resolution to rein in the war in the Middle East. Cassidy reportedly responded: “You have not told the American people what’s going on” with the war, adding afterwards to reporters: “It was supposed to last four weeks. It’s lasted four months,” according to Politico.
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