Trump keeps national guard in LA for now
Good morning, and welcome to our blog covering US politics amid continuing protests across the country, legal wrangles over the national guard deployment, preparations for a huge military parade in Washington and, along with all that, a major escalation of the conflict in the Middle East as Israel attacks Iran’s nuclear and military sites. So stay with us for all the developments.
Donald Trump has welcomed an appeals court ruling that temporarily returned control of California’s national guard to him, claiming it would keep Los Angeles from “burning to the ground”. It blocked an earlier ruling by a federal judge that the president’s use of the guards to suppress protests in LA was illegal and banned it. The appeals court said it will hold a fuller hearing on the matter on Tuesday.
You can read our story here
Trump has posted on Truth Social this morning
The Appeals Court ruled last night that I can use the National Guard to keep our cities, in this case Los Angeles, safe. If I didn’t send the Military into Los Angeles, that city would be burning to the ground right now. We saved L.A. Thank you for the Decision!!!
In other news:
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Trump has urged Iran to make a deal over its nuclear programme, saying in a post on his Truth Social platform that there was still time for the country to prevent further conflict with Israel. He wrote: “Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left, and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire. No more death, no more destruction, JUST DO IT, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.”
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Trump has said he will attend the G7 summit in Canada which starts on Sunday. It is set to be the first major global gathering of his second term. Looking to avoid a dust-up, Canadian PM Mark Carney had set the agenda on largely uncontroversial themes such as building global supply chains for critical minerals. That now seems likely to be upended amid the Israel-Iran escalation.
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Alex Padilla, a Democratic California senator and vocal critic of the Trump administration’s immigration polices, was forcibly removed and handcuffed as he attempted to ask a question at a press conference held by Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, in Los Angeles on Thursday.
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Preparations are underway for an extravaganza of American military might featuring tanks and other armored vehicles rolling through Washington, thousands of soldiers marching the streets and military aircraft flying overhead on Saturday. It will be a celebration of the US army’s 250th anniversary, which also happens to coincide with Donald Trump’s 79th birthday.
Key events
Analysis: Israel’s strikes on Iran show Trump is unable to restrain Netanyahu
Andrew Roth
Israel’s unilateral strikes on Iran indicate a collapse of Donald Trump’s efforts to restrain the Israeli prime minister and have almost certainly scuttled Trump’s efforts to negotiate a deal with Iran that would prevent the country from seeking a nuclear weapon.
It also will probably lead to an Iranian retaliation that could develop into a larger war between Israel and Iran, a new conflict that Trump has publicly sought to avoid.
Washington officials and analysts had expected that Israel would hold off on launching strikes at least until after the US exhausted attempts to negotiate a deal with Iran. During a phone call on Monday, Trump had urged Benjamin Netanyahu not to attack Iran, the Wall Street Journal reported. But by Wednesday, Trump began to pull non-essential personnel out of embassies and bases in the Middle East within striking distance of Iran.
Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, was expected to travel to Muscat in Oman in order to conduct a sixth round of talks with Iran on Sunday in what was seen as a last chance for diplomacy.
And the strikes took place just hours after Trump had publicly urged the Netanyahu government not to attack Iran, with the US president saying that he believed an Israeli offensive would “blow” up the negotiations.
But, in a nod to speculation that the US was intentionally signaling an imminent attack against Iran, he noted that a strike could also compel Iran to make a deal that would limit its efforts to seek a nuclear weapon.
“It might help it actually but it also could blow it,” he said.
The attack was “clearly intended to scuttle the Trump administration’s negotiations with Iran,” said senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, and is “further evidence of how little respect world powers – including our own allies – have for President Trump”.
“This is a disaster of Trump and Netanyahu’s own making, and now the region risks spiraling toward a new, deadly conflict,” he added.
With Donald Trump’s deployment of more troops in response to protests in LA, and as plans come together for a military parade in Washington DC on the president’s birthday, journalist Judith Levine tells Jonathan Freedland why she believes the US has entered a new era of authoritarianism in this week’s edition of US Politics Weekly. You can listen here.
With predictions of as many as 200,000 attendees at tomorrow’s Washington parade, the Secret Service is preparing for protests by erecting 18 miles of anti-scale fencing and deploying drones to the city’s skies to keep watch.
However, organizers of “No Kings” protests are not planning to hold an event there but are arranging demonstrations around the country to counter the parade, which they contend is meant to feed Trump’s ego.
“The flag doesn’t belong to President Trump. It belongs to us,” the “No Kings” website says.
Their flagship event will be in Philadelphia, and organizers said they hope to draw attention away from what they paint as a strongman spectacle designed for Trump’s birthday, like a king.
Trump laughed off the idea on Thursday. “I don’t feel like a king,” he said. “I have to go through hell to get stuff approved.”
Trump says he had given Iran 60-day ultimatum before Israel’s strikes
Trump said he had given Iran a 60-day ultimatum on a nuclear deal before Israel’s strikes, but added Tehran now has a second chance.
In a post on Truth Social he has said:
Two months ago I gave Iran a 60 day ultimatum to “make a deal.” They should have done it! Today is day 61. I told them what to do, but they just couldn’t get there. Now they have, perhaps, a second chance!
You can follow all the latest developments on this and the region over on our Middle East live blog:
Israeli attack on Iran ‘excellent’, says Trump
Donald Trump on Friday said the Israeli attack on Iran has been “excellent” and warned there was much more to come, according to an interview with ABC News.
An ABC reporter on X quoted Trump as saying:
I think it’s been excellent. We gave them a chance and they didn’t take it. They got hit hard, very hard. They got hit about as hard as you’re going to get hit. And there’s more to come. A lot more.
‘Doesn’t affect tanks’: Trump shrugs off weather concerns for parade
Donald Trump’s desire for a grand military parade was scuttled in his first term over concerns about the high cost for the event. This time around, he is barreling past objections just like the tanks that will roll down Constitution Avenue.
Trump has dismissed concerns about the cost, reports Associated Press, about what message the display of military power sends and about the fact that it will take place on his 79th birthday.
One potential obstacle the president can’t control is the weather. There’s a chance the parade could be interrupted by thunderstorms. The White House has said it will go on rain or shine, but it could be delayed by lightning.
Trump said Thursday night that he hopes the weather is OK but if it’s not, “That’s OK too.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said at the White House.
Doesn’t affect the tanks at all. Doesn’t affect the soldiers. They’re used to it.”
Washington prepares for huge military parade
Tomorrow will see a parade fit for a king, writes my colleague David Smith – which is precisely why critics worry what message it will send the rest of the world about the future of democracy in America.
On Saturday there will be tanks on the streets of the nation’s capital as Washington hosts a celebration of the US army’s 250th anniversary, which happens to coincide with Donald Trump’s 79th birthday.
While the army has said it has no plans to recognize Trump’s birthday, the president will play a major role in a made-for-TV extravaganza that will reportedly also feature rocket launchers and missiles.
“He’s adopted not only the signifiers of dictator chic but the actual articles of its faith,” said Rick Wilson, a political strategist and co-founder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group. “North Korea: military parades. China: military parades. Russia: military parades.
“These aren’t parades to celebrate a victory and it’s certainly not to celebrate the United States army’s birthday. This is a parade to aggrandise Donald Trump’s ego. No one who knows either Trump or his pattern of behavior would think for a minute this is anything else.”
You can read David’s full, and excellent, article here
Millions expected at Saturday’s ‘No Kings’ protests
Rachel Leingang
Millions of people are expected to protest against the Trump administration on Saturday at roughly 2,000 sites nationwide in a demonstration dubbed “No Kings”, planned for the same day as the president’s military parade and birthday.
Interest in the events has risen since Trump sent national guard and US Marine Corps troops to Los Angeles to tamp down mostly peaceful protests against ramped-up deportations.
“We’ve seen hundreds of new events on the No Kings Day map since the weekend,” said Ezra Levin, co-founder of Indivisible, one of the groups behind the “day of defiance”. “We’ve seen hundreds of thousands of people register for those events.”
A website for the protest cites Trump’s defying of the courts, mass deportations, attacks on civil rights and slashing of services as reasons for the protests, saying: “The corruption has gone too far. No thrones. No crowns. No kings.” Actions are set for the country’s largest cities and small towns, dotting the map from coast to coast – part of a strategy to show that opposition to Trump exists in all corners of the US.
Read the full story here
Kilmar Ábrego García to appear in court
Kilmar Ábrego García, the migrant returned to the US last week after being wrongfully deported to his native El Salvador, is due in court on today to enter a plea to criminal charges of taking part in a conspiracy to smuggle migrants into the US.
The Justice Department’s decision to return him to the US to face criminal charges is a potential off-ramp for Trump’s administration from its escalating confrontation with the judiciary over whether it complied with a court order to facilitate Ábrego García’s return, Reuters reports.
The criminal proceeding will provide Ábrego García with due process by giving him the right to contest the charges contained in a grand jury indictment returned in secret on May 21. Still, his lawyers say his return to face criminal charges does not absolve the Trump administration of responsibility for wrongfully deporting him.
Ábrego García’s hearing on the criminal charges is scheduled to begin at 10 am CDT before US Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes in Nashville, Tennessee. In addition to entering his plea, Abrego Garcia is expected to contest a bid by federal prosecutors to have him detained pending trial.
Trump urges Iran to make a nuclear deal or face ‘more brutal’ attacks
Donald Trump has urged Iran to make a deal over its nuclear programme, saying in a post on his Truth Social platform that there was still time for the country to prevent further conflict with Israel:
“I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal. I told them, in the strongest of words, to “just do it,” but no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they just couldn’t get it done.
I told them it would be much worse than anything they know, anticipated, or were told, that the United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the World, BY FAR, and that Israel has a lot of it, with much more to come – And they know how to use it.
Certain Iranian hardliner’s spoke bravely, but they didn’t know what was about to happen. They are all DEAD now, and it will only get worse!
There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter, with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal, come to an end.
Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left, and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire. No more death, no more destruction, JUST DO IT, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE. God Bless You All!
We are covering all the developments over Israel’s attack on Iran in our Middle East crisis blog which you can see here:
Trump keeps national guard in LA for now
Good morning, and welcome to our blog covering US politics amid continuing protests across the country, legal wrangles over the national guard deployment, preparations for a huge military parade in Washington and, along with all that, a major escalation of the conflict in the Middle East as Israel attacks Iran’s nuclear and military sites. So stay with us for all the developments.
Donald Trump has welcomed an appeals court ruling that temporarily returned control of California’s national guard to him, claiming it would keep Los Angeles from “burning to the ground”. It blocked an earlier ruling by a federal judge that the president’s use of the guards to suppress protests in LA was illegal and banned it. The appeals court said it will hold a fuller hearing on the matter on Tuesday.
You can read our story here
Trump has posted on Truth Social this morning
The Appeals Court ruled last night that I can use the National Guard to keep our cities, in this case Los Angeles, safe. If I didn’t send the Military into Los Angeles, that city would be burning to the ground right now. We saved L.A. Thank you for the Decision!!!
In other news:
-
Trump has urged Iran to make a deal over its nuclear programme, saying in a post on his Truth Social platform that there was still time for the country to prevent further conflict with Israel. He wrote: “Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left, and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire. No more death, no more destruction, JUST DO IT, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.”
-
Trump has said he will attend the G7 summit in Canada which starts on Sunday. It is set to be the first major global gathering of his second term. Looking to avoid a dust-up, Canadian PM Mark Carney had set the agenda on largely uncontroversial themes such as building global supply chains for critical minerals. That now seems likely to be upended amid the Israel-Iran escalation.
-
Alex Padilla, a Democratic California senator and vocal critic of the Trump administration’s immigration polices, was forcibly removed and handcuffed as he attempted to ask a question at a press conference held by Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, in Los Angeles on Thursday.
-
Preparations are underway for an extravaganza of American military might featuring tanks and other armored vehicles rolling through Washington, thousands of soldiers marching the streets and military aircraft flying overhead on Saturday. It will be a celebration of the US army’s 250th anniversary, which also happens to coincide with Donald Trump’s 79th birthday.
