Which university is next?

TRUMP HAS FORCED THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA TO RESIGN. THOMAS JEFFERSON JUST ROLLED OVER IN HIS GRAVE TO SEE THE REPUBLIC HE ESTABLISHED TURNED INTO A FASCIST DICTATORSHIP.

The University of Virginia’s president, James E. Ryan, has told the board overseeing the school that he will resign in the face of demands by the Trump administration that he step aside to help resolve a Justice Department inquiry into the school’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, according to three people briefed on the matter.

For the leader of one of the nation’s most prominent public universities to take such an extraordinary step demonstrates President Trump’s success in harnessing the investigative powers of the federal government to accomplish his administration’s policy goals.

The New York Times reported on Thursday evening that the Justice Department had demanded Mr. Ryan’s resignation as a condition to settle a civil rights investigation into the school’s diversity practices.

In a letter sent on Thursday to the head of the board overseeing the university, Mr. Ryan said that he had planned to step down at the end of the next academic year but “given the circumstances and today’s conversations” he had decided, “with deep sadness,” to tender his resignation now, according to one of the people familiar with the matter who was briefed on the contents of the letter.

The King of Tariffs strikes out — again.

President Donald Trump ceased trade talks with Canada and will soon announce a new tariff rate the country will have to pay, he said in a Truth Social post on Friday.

The decision to end negotiations, which have been ongoing for several months, came after Canada announced a digital service tax, Trump said, calling it “a direct and blatant attack on our Country.”

“Based on this egregious Tax, we are hereby terminating ALL discussions on Trade with Canada, effective immediately. We will let Canada know the Tariff that they will be paying to do business with the United States of America within the next seven day period,” he said.

Digital services taxes are a way for countries to tax online services, in contrast to taxes on physical products. Countries with these taxes can collect revenue from large companies that operate online — even if the business is unprofitable. American firms, especially Big Tech companies such as Meta, Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft, are disproportionately affected by DSTs, according to a report published last year by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/27/business/trump-breaks-off-canada-trade-talks

Trump claims that he issued the order to bomb Iran because they were a few days away from producing a nuclear weapon.  He lies . . . as usual.

Trump bombed Iran because he was pissed off at the way the world reacted to his recent failures.  It wasn’t strategy, but ego.

Trump pulled the trigger following two globally embarrassing events.

FIRST: His $45 million  military parade had just become an international joke (a joke outside Fox, of course).

SECOND:  Equally awful for a strongman, Trump was roundly embarrassed at the G7 meeting in Canada while Netanyahu was enjoying extraordinary success in Iran.

In a grossly under-reported story, Trump said he left the G7 early to “deal with” the Israel-Iran situation, which meant posting childish and impulsive braggadocio on truth social. He beat his breast hard enough to signal Iran to move its 900 lb stash of enriched uranium before we bombed, putting Israel—and us—in further danger, the contours of which are not yet known.

Global press rejected Trump’s explanation for leaving the G7 early, reporting instead that he left early because the adults in the room refused to show him artificial deference. During the G7 opening press conference, Trump went on a tirade about the press and his other usual enemies so bizarre that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney interrupted him and ended the press conference. The Italian Prime Minister was seen rolling her eyes, and the world laughed at Trump’s petty insults against France’s Prime Minister Macron, of whom Trump appears to be jealous.

After all that, Trump tried to flex mob-boss strength to the press, announcing that the British Prime Minister had earned a trade framework protecting British trade because “I like them, that’s why. That’s their ultimate protection.” Those sound like words from a man who knows he’s just been insulted by people he doesn’t like.

Humiliated on the global stage by both events, which were NOT REPORTED TO  viewers at Fox, Trump desperately needed to recast himself as a strongman for the rest of the world. Some have speculated with credible evidence that Trump resented watching Netanyahu get all the glory, especially after it became clear that Israel’s aggression against Iran had been spectacularly successful. On June 13, while Israel’s bombs were falling, Trump told New York Times reporter Helene Cooper that he still held his “America First” isolationist, perspective.

The next day, however, after a full day of watching Fox lavish Netanyahu with praise, Trump changed his mind, even though no new intelligence had come in, and Israel was already winning its fight. One official told the NYT that Trump’s shift in attitude started early in the morning when he woke up and watched Fox News. When he saw how Netanyahu was being praised (so powerful, so strategic!), he wanted in on the action. The unnamed official stated that, “Israel was hitting all of these Iranian sites, it was taking out military commanders, nuclear scientists, and that was being presented on Fox as this huge victory. And (Trump) decided that he wanted a piece of it.”

In further support of this theory, Trump also started taking immediate credit for Israel’s success. He claimed on June 17 in a truth social post, days before bombing, that, “We” have taken control of Iran’s airspace,” and that a meeting with his national security advisers had cemented the decision to enter the war.

And there you have it folks – the most powerful nation on Earth is being “governed” by a person who is mentally a slow-learning 12-yer-old mixed with the self-control of a two-year-old.

SECDEF Hegseth — once again — proves he is ignorant and incompetent as well as proving the only reason he has the job is that he kisses Trump’s ass.

This morning’s press conference  (June 26) with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth featured an obviously angry – and possibly inebriated —  Hegseth yelling at the media for questioning  President Donald Trump’s claim that last weekend’s strikes against Iran had “completely obliterated” its nuclear weapons program. Hegseth seemed to be performing for an audience of one as he insisted on the made-for-television narrative the administration has been pushing. He said: “President Trump directed the most complex and secretive military operation in history, and it was a resounding success resulting in a ceasefire agreement and the end of the 12-day war.”

D-Day, the June 6, 1944, Allied invasion of France, took a year of planning, involved 156,000 Allied soldiers and 195,700 naval personnel, and required cooperation of leaders from thirteen countries. It remains the largest seaborne invasion in history.

After a Senate briefing on the strikes, Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) told reporters: “To me, it still appears that we have only set back the Iranian nuclear program by a handful of months. There’s no doubt there was damage done to the program, but the allegations that we have obliterated their program just don’t seem to stand up to reason…. I just do not think the president was telling the truth when he said this program was obliterated.”

Julian E. Barnes and David E. Sanger of the New York Times reported today (June 26)  that it remains unclear where Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium is.

Trump secretly wants a business deal with Iran

Zachary Cohen, Alayna Treene, Kylie Atwood, and Jennifer Hansler of CNN reported that the administration has been engaged in secret talks to ease sanctions on Iran, free up $6 billion in Iranian funds currently in foreign banks, and help Iran access as much as $30 billion to build a nuclear energy program, all in exchange for Iran freezing its nuclear enrichment program.

Trump ran his 2016 campaign in part by attacking President Barack Obama for the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which was a much more stringent deal than the one suggested in the CNN article.

But there is perhaps a different angle to this deal than the Obama administration’s. The idea of building nuclear power plants in the Middle East was central to Trump’s 2016 bid for office. Members of Trump’s inner circle, including Michael Flynn and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, hatched a plan for a joint U.S.-Russian project to build nuclear power plants in Saudi Arabia. In June 2016 they formed a company called IP3 International, short for International Peace, Power and Prosperity.

Voters are waking up to Trump’s dictatorship plans

The focus of the Trump administration on the concentration of wealth and power among the very richest people in the world is creating a backlash at home. Sahil Kapur of NBC News noted on Monday that polls show voters oppose the Republicans’ budget reconciliation bill by large margins. A Fox News poll released June 13 showed that only 38% of registered voters support the budget reconciliation bill that benefits the wealthiest Americans, while 59% oppose it. Independents oppose the bill by a margin of 22% in favor to 73% against, and white men without a college degree, Trump’s base, oppose the bill by 43% to 53%. That negative polling holds across a number of polls.

The Republicans are trying to pass their entire wish list in one giant package under “budget reconciliation” because in that form it cannot be filibustered in the Senate, meaning the tiny Republican majority there would be enough to pass it. Because budget reconciliation is one of the only forms of legislation that can’t be filibustered, Republicans have thrown into this measure a wide range of things they want.

The bill contains an extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, as well as cuts to Medicaid, to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and to energy credits designed to help Americans switch to sustainable energy. It also contains a number of policies designed to shape America as MAGA Republicans wish. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that the measure the House passed will increase the national debt by $2.4 trillion over the next ten years.

But the Senate has a nonpartisan officer known as the Senate parliamentarian, who interprets Senate rules and procedures and tries to keep measures within them. Senators can ignore the parliamentarian if they wish, but that is rare.

The current Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, has held the office since 2012. She has judged that many of the things Republicans have crammed into the bill do not qualify for inclusion in a budget reconciliation bill. This may be a relief for some Republicans, who did not want to have to vote on unpopular provisions, but will cause trouble in the conference as MacDonough said today that some of the measures Republicans counted on to save money, including big pieces of the Medicaid cuts, do not fit in a budget reconciliation bill. Republicans had counted on those cuts to save the government $250 billion, thus helping to justify further tax cuts.

Some Republican senators have called for overruling MacDonough, but today Senate majority leader John Thune (R-SC) said the Senate would not take that approach, instead looking at ways to fix the measure so it would be within the parameters necessary for a budget reconciliation bill.

The Senate hoped to begin voting on its version of the bill tomorrow (June 27)  in order to pass the bill by July 4, as Trump has demanded. One of the reasons for the hurry is that the administration has significantly overspent the budget for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The agency could run out of money by July, three months before the end of the fiscal year, potentially breaking the Antideficiency Act that prohibits federal agencies from spending more federal funds than Congress has appropriated.

The budget reconciliation bill provides about $75 billion in additional funding to ICE over the next five years.

Voters are through with the super-wealthy

The bill’s redistribution of wealth upward has made it enormously unpopular in an era when, according to the antipoverty charity Oxfam, the richest 1% of the world’s population has gained at least $6.5 trillion since 2015.

And, just as extreme exhibitions of wealth drew popular anger in the late-19th-century Gilded Age, the wedding this weekend of billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and journalist Lauren Sánchez in Venice, Italy, which Reuters reports will cost between $46.5 million and $55.6 million, has drawn protests against oligarchy.

Images from that wedding party contrast sharply with video of activists in wheelchairs arrested at the Russell Senate Office Building on Wednesday, hands zip-tied, as they protested cuts to Medicaid in the budget reconciliation bill.

Trump’s continued deportation of innocent people is not helping him

At the same time, the administration’s overreach on migrant deportations has also galvanized opposition. A new Quinnipiac poll shows that 64% of registered voters support a path to legalization for undocumented immigrants. Only 31% want most of them deported. That percentage has swung 9 points toward legalization since Trump took office. Trump is also underwater on immigration more generally, with 41% approving of his stance and 57% disapproving.

Nearly half of registered voters—49%—said they do not think democracy is working in the United States, while 43% say it is. Sixty percent of those who do not think it is working told Quinnipiac pollsters they blame Republicans, while 15% blamed Democrats. Twenty percent said they blame both parties.

Republicans go batshit crazy over NYC mayoral candidate

Voters in New York City showed their frustration with politics as usual on Tuesday when they elected 33-year-old New York state assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, to be the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor. Mamdani promised to address the cost of living, to raise taxes on the rich, and to “stop masked ICE agents from deporting our neighbors.”

Mamdani’s promise to change the political status quo echoes the one Trump used to win in 2016, but this time around, Trump is part of the status quo being challenged. On Wednesday, Trump called Mamdani “a 100% Communist Lunatic” who “looks TERRIBLE.”

Representative Andy Ogles (R-TN), who has falsely described himself as an economist and misrepresented his education as well as his work experience and who been under investigation for campaign finance irregularities, referred to Mamdani in a social media post as “little muhammad,” calling him “an antisemitic, socialist, communist who will destroy the great City of New York.”

Ogles asked the Department of Justice to denaturalize and deport Mamdani, saying a line in a rap song Mamdani performed showed “material support for terrorism.” Mamdani, who is Muslim, was born in Uganda to Indian-born Ugandan political scientist Mahmood Mamdani, who is now a professor at Columbia University, and filmmaker Mira Nair. Mamdani became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2018.

The Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee called Ogles’s post “racist drivel” and noted that Ogles faked a $320,000 campaign loan, lied about being an economist, and was fired from a law enforcement job for not showing up. Former Illinois Republican congressman Joe Walsh was more direct. Over Ogles’s post, he commented: “A sitting Member of Congress calling for an American citizen to be stripped of his citizenship & deported, all because of that American citizen’s political views. This is fascism.”

Now we learn that Trump did not want to bomb Iran because doing so would interfere with his secret negotiations with Iran and other Middle Eastern countries.  Read on.

On the afternoon of June 26, Zachary Cohen, Alayna Treene, Kylie Atwood, and Jennifer Hansler of CNN reported that the Trump administration has been engaged in secret talks to ease sanctions on Iran, free up $6 billion in Iranian funds currently in foreign banks, and help Iran access as much as $30 billion to build a nuclear energy program, all in exchange for Iran freezing its nuclear enrichment program.

Trump ran his 2016 campaign in part by attacking President Barack Obama for the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which was a much more stringent deal than the one suggested in the CNN article.

But there is perhaps a different angle to this deal than the Obama administration’s. The idea of building nuclear power plants in the Middle East was central to Trump’s 2016 bid for office. Members of Trump’s inner circle, including Michael Flynn and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, hatched a plan for a joint U.S.-Russian project to build nuclear power plants in Saudi Arabia. In June 2016 they formed a company called IP3 International, short for International Peace, Power and Prosperity.

Of course, the IP3 International plan included provisions for the Trump family to be included in the ownership, thereby ensuring a steady flow of cash into Trump’s pockets from nuclear power plants in the Middle East.

Americans can agree that our president (a) should obey the Constitution and (b) tell the truth to the American people.

Without regard to the merits or success of the attack on Iran, Trump (a) violated the Constitution in circumventing Congress’s authority to declare war, and (b) lied to the American people about the nuclear capabilities (to justify the attack and about the effectiveness of the attack in disabling Iran’s nuclear enrichment program.

The success of the US bombing of Iran’s uranium enrichment facility is contested at best and insignificant at worst. Indeed, the weight of the evidence suggests that a massive attack by the US has set back Iran only by a few months in its efforts to enrich uranium. Worse, the failed attack has created a new incentive for Iran to rush headlong into the development of a nuclear weapon (as opposed to enriching uranium).

Faced with multiple sources suggesting the US raids were largely ineffective, Trump’s press secretary has simply asserted that the US intelligence is “wrong” because it contradicts Trump’s claim that the Iranian facilities were “obliterated.”

The military success or failure of the attack on Iran is an issue separate from the questions of whether Trump violated the Constitution and repeatedly lied to the American people about the justification and results of the attack.

America is a stronger nation, a more reliable ally, and a more effective global power when its leader obeys the Constitution and tells the truth. Trump should not be lionized by anyone—the media, Netanyahu, or the American people—for acting in a lawless, deceitful manner in carrying out the attacks on Iran.

Trump should not only not be viewed as a heroic wartime president but should instead be viewed as a lawless, deceitful president who may have destabilized the Middle East and made all Americans less secure because he cannot be trusted–by anyone.

The mission to limit Iran’s nuclear ambitions could have been (and may yet be) successful, but the mission and its aftermath are built on a house of lies. That fact has made American democracy more fragile—to the detriment of all Americans and its allies.

The relevant details are these:

Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, testified that the US intelligence community concluded that Iran was not moving toward weaponization of its enriched uranium stockpile. See PBS News (6/17/2025), America’s spies say Iran wasn’t building a nuclear weapon. Trump dismisses that assessment.

Multiple sources are now reporting that Trump’s decision to attack Iran may have been precipitated by Fox “News” personalities who were praising the success of Israel’s air attacks on Iran. Per Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo,

[R]eporting by The New York Times and other publications seems to confirm my initial assumption, which was that the entire U.S. involvement in this conflict was driven by Fox News’s reporting of Israel’s onslaught against Iran’s military infrastructure and nuclear program.

Israel was “winning” and Trump wanted in on that winning. And that was really the entirety of it.

Motivated by Fox News to attack Iran, Trump had to reject the testimony of DNI Director Tulsi Gabbard to Congress—which he did. CBS News, Trump says intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard is “wrong” about Iran’s nuclear program.

After the attack, Trump claimed that Iran’s nuclear processing facilities were “obliterated.” That claim is false on multiple levels.

• First, Iran apparently removed most of the enriched uranium prior to the attack. JFeed, Did Iran Outsmart the U.S.? Tehran Says Uranium Was Moved Before Strike.
• Second, the attack did not collapse the underground bunker housing Iran’s nuclear processing facilities.
• Third, per a leaked US intelligence report, the attack set back Iran’s nuclear program only by a matter of months, not years. HuffPost, Trump’s Bombing Probably Set Iran’s Nuclear Program Back By Mere Months, Report Says. [But at least one international agency disagrees, saying that the attacks set back Iran’s processing capability by years. See Institute for the Study of War.]
• Fourth, Iran reports that the damage at main processing facility was “limited to surface structures and can be repaired.” MSN/Voice of Ukraine, Iran says nuclear program will continue despite U.S. and Israeli strikes

Trump’s press secretary has responded to the above by repeating that the facilities were “obliterated” and that the US intelligence is “wrong.” Press Secretary Karoline Levitt also said that the leak of the report was the work of a “low-level loser in the intelligence community,” a snarky attack that validated the authenticity of the leaked report. See The List, Karoline Leavitt Thought She Could Pull Off Trump’s Insult Game And It Was Her Biggest Blunder Yet.

In a sign that the Trump administration is scrambling to concoct a story to support Trump’s “obliteration” claim, the administration canceled a briefing for both chambers of Congress set for Tuesday. The hearings have been rescheduled for Friday, allegedly so that Sec. of State Rubio and Sec. of Defense Hegseth can testify.

Neither man has demonstrated the ability (or willingness) to testify truthfully to Congress on prior occasions. There is little reason to believe they will do so on Friday. The likelihood is that Rubio and Hegseth are being imported to replace career military officers who will tell the truth about the limited success of the US bombing mission.

The outcome of the US attack on Iran is far from clear—and may remain so for a long time to come. It is possible that the ultimate outcome could be beneficial to the security of the Middle East—which would be a welcome result. However, from an internal domestic perspective, the manner in which Trump decided to attack and report on the results continued his disregard for the Constitution and the norms of democracy.

That is the story that cannot be lost in the media’s mindless reporting that implies Trump acted with forethought and discipline. He did not. He acted because his fragile ego could not stand the thought of Bibi Netanyahu claiming credit for successful attacks on Iran. Let’s hope that Trump’s rash, lawless decision works its way to a successful outcome—in spite of Trump.

A senior Justice Department official, Emil Bove III, told subordinates he was willing to ignore court orders to fulfill the president’s aggressive deportation campaign, according to a whistle-blower complaint by a department lawyer who has since been fired.

The account by the dismissed lawyer, Erez Reuveni, paints a disturbing portrait of his final three weeks on the front lines of the Trump administration’s legal efforts to ship immigrants overseas, often with little notice or recourse. In Mr. Reuveni’s telling, Mr. Bove discussed disregarding court orders, adding an expletive for emphasis, and other top law enforcement officials showed themselves ready to stonewall judges or lie to them to get their way.

Mr. Reuveni’s account, which was obtained by The New York Times, was filed to lawmakers and the Justice Department inspector general on Tuesday, just one day before Mr. Bove is scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee for a nomination to a federal appeals court.

In March and early April, the filing states, Mr. Reuveni “became aware of the plans of D.O.J. leadership to resist court orders that would impede potentially illegal efforts to deport noncitizens, and further became aware of the details to execute those plans.”

Top officials at the Justice Department and the White House sought to defy federal court orders “through lack of candor, deliberate delay and disinformation,” his account states.

“Discouraging clients from engaging in illegal conduct is an important part of the role of a lawyer,” the account says. “Mr. Reuveni tried to do so and was thwarted, threatened, fired and publicly disparaged for both doing his job and telling the truth to the court.”

A pivotal meeting occurred on March 14, when Mr. Bove, a senior official in the deputy attorney general’s office, spoke bluntly about the administration’s plans. He informed his subordinates that Mr. Trump would soon invoke the Alien Enemies Act to rapidly fly a group of immigrants out of the country that weekend. Two other officials in that office, James McHenry and Paul Perkins, were in attendance, as well as Mr. Reuveni’s supervisors, Drew Ensign and August Flentje, according to the whistle-blower document.

For those of you not familiar with the practice of “speaking in tongues,” read this article.

Meanwhile – – –

Last night, exactly a week after his military parade fizzled and more than five million Americans turned out to protest his administration, President Donald J. Trump announced that the U.S. had bombed three Iranian nuclear sites: Fordo, Natanz, and Esfahan. He assured the American people that the strikes “were a spectacular military success” and that “Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.” “Iran,” he said, “must now make peace.”

For the first time in history, the United States dropped its 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs)—twelve of them—on another country.

It was a triumphant moment for the president, but as reporter James Fallows noted, the bombing of Iran would never seem as “successful” as it did when Trump could still say the nuclear sites were obliterated and Iran and its allies had not yet made a move.

Today administration officials began to walk back Trump’s boast. The Wall Street Journal reported that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine said it was “way too early” to assess the amount of damage. International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi said that “no one, no one, neither us, nobody else, could be able to tell you how much it has been damaged.”

Tonight David E. Sanger of the New York Times reported that there is evidence to suggest that Iran had moved both uranium and equipment from the Fordo site before the strikes.

In last night’s speech to the nation, Trump appeared to reach out to the evangelical wing of MAGA that wanted the U.S. to intervene on Israel’s side in its fight against Iran. Trump said: “And I want to just thank everybody and in particular, God, I want to just say we love you, God, and we love our great military, protect them. God bless the Middle East. God bless Israel, and God bless America. Thank you very much. Thank you.”

But while the evangelicals in MAGA liked Trump’s bombing of Iran, the isolationist “America First” wing had staunchly opposed it and are adamant that they don’t want to see U.S. involvement in another foreign war. So today, administration officials were on the Sunday talk shows promising that Trump was interested only in stopping Iran’s nuclear ambitions, not in regime change. On ABC’s This Week, Vice President J.D. Vance said explicitly: “We don’t want to achieve regime change.” On X, poster after poster, using the same script, tried to bring America Firsters behind the attack on Iran by posting some version of “If you are upset that Trump took out Obama’s nuclear facilities in Iran, you were never MAGA.”

This afternoon, Trump posted: “It’s not politically correct to use the term “Regime Change,” but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!”

On ABC’s This Week, Representative Jim Himes (D-CT) said: “It’s way too early to tell what the actual effect on the nuclear program is, and of course, it’s way too early to tell how this plays out, right? I mean, we’ve seen this movie before. Every conflict in the Middle East has its Senator Tom Cottons who promise us mushroom clouds. In the Iraq war it was Condoleezza Rice promising us a mushroom cloud. And initially—and this is true of every one of these wars in Libya, in Iraq, and Afghanistan—initially, things looked pretty good. Saddam Hussein is gone. Muammar Qaddafi is gone. The Afghan Taliban are gone. And then, over time, we start to learn what the cost is. Four thousand, four hundred Americans dead in Iraq. The Taliban back in power. So bottom line, the president has taken a massive, massive gamble here.”

There are already questions about why Trump felt obliged to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites right now. In March, Trump’s director of national intelligence, who oversees all U.S. intelligence, told Congress that the intelligence community assessed that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon. The U.S. and Iran have been negotiating over Iran’s nuclear program since April, and when Israel attacked Iran on June 12, a sixth round of negotiations between the U.S. and Iran was scheduled to begin just two days later, in Oman.

After Trump announced the strikes, Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) posted: “I was briefed on the intelligence last week. Iran posed no imminent threat of attack to the United States. Iran was not close to building a deliverable nuclear weapon. The negotiations Israel scuttled with their strikes held the potential for success.” He added: “We know—for certain—there is a diplomatic path to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. The Obama agreement was working. And as late as a week ago, Iran was back at the table again. Which makes this attack—with all its enormous risks—so reckless.”

On Friday a reporter asked Trump, “What intelligence do you have that Iran is building a nuclear weapon? Your intelligence community had said they have no evidence that they are at this point.” Trump answered: “Well then, my intelligence community is wrong.” He added: “Who in the intelligence community said that?” The reporter responded: “Your director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard.” Trump answered: “She’s wrong.”

At the end of May, Courtney Kube, Carol E. Lee, Gordon Lubold, Dan De Luce, and Elyse Perlmutter-Gumbiner of NBC News reported that Gabbard was considering turning the President’s Daily Brief (PDB) into a video that looked like a broadcast from the Fox News Channel to try to capture Trump’s attention. At the time, he had taken only 14 PDBs, or fewer than one a week (in the same number of days, President Joe Biden took 90). One person with direct knowledge of the discussions said: “The problem with Trump is that he doesn’t read.”

On June 17, Katie Bo Lillis and Zachary Cohen of CNN noted that while U.S. intelligence says Iran was years away from developing a nuclear weapon, Israel has insisted Iran was on the brink of one. A week ago, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Fox News Channel: “The intel we got and we shared with the United States was absolutely clear, was absolutely clear that they were working, in a secret plan to weaponize the uranium. They were marching very quickly.”

What will happen next is anyone’s guess. Iran’s parliament says it will close the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20% of the world’s oil travels, sending oil prices upward, but that decision can be overruled by the country’s Supreme National Security Council. Iran’s foreign minister announced today he was on his way to Moscow for urgent talks with Russian president Vladimir Putin. Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev wrote this afternoon that “A number of countries are ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear warheads.”

The Department of Homeland Security has warned that “[t]he ongoing Iran conflict is causing a heightened threat environment in the United States.” It linked those threats to the antisemitism the Trump administration has used as justification for cracking down on civil liberties in the United States.

One pattern is clear from yesterday’s events: Trump’s determination to act without check by the Constitution.

Democrats as well as some Republicans are concerned about Trump’s unilateral decision to insert the United States into a war. The Constitution gives to Congress alone the power to declare war, but Congress has not actually done so since 1942, permitting significant power to flow to the president. In the 1973 War Powers Resolution, Congress limited the president’s power as commander in chief to times when Congress has declared war, Congress has passed a law giving the president that power, or there is “a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.”

That same resolution also says: “The President in every possible instance shall consult with Congress before introducing United States Armed Forces into hostilities or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances.” If an emergency appears to require military action without congressional input, the president must brief the Gang of Eight—both party leaders in each chamber of Congress, and both party leaders of each chambers’ intelligence committee—within 48 hours.

Democrats and some Republicans maintain that while no one wants Iran to have nuclear capabilities, the strikes on Iran were not an emergency and the president had no right to involve the U.S. in a war unilaterally. Administration officials’ insistence that the attack was a one-shot deal is designed to undercut the idea that the U.S. is at war; Trump’s call for regime change undermined their efforts.

Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) said in a statement: “Trump said he would end wars; now he has dragged America into one. His actions are a clear violation of our Constitution—ignoring the requirement that only the Congress has the authority to declare war. While we all agree that Iran must not have a nuclear weapon, Trump abandoned diplomatic efforts to achieve that goal and instead chose to unnecessarily endanger American lives, further threaten our armed forces in the region, and risk pulling America into another long conflict in the Middle East. The U.S. intelligence community has repeatedly assessed that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon. There was more time for diplomacy to work.

“The war in Iraq was also started under false pretenses. It’s clear that President Trump has been outmaneuvered by Prime Minister Netanyahu, who opposed the JCPOA negotiated by President Obama and has long favored drawing America into a war against Iran. The United States has rightly supported Israel’s defense, but it should not have joined Netanyahu in waging this war of choice. Instead of living up to his claim that he’d bring all wars to an end, Trump is yet again betraying Americans by embroiling the United States directly in this conflict.”

Representative Sean Casten (D-IL) posted on social media: “​​This is not about the merits of Iran’s nuclear program. No president has the authority to bomb another country that does not pose an imminent threat to the US without the approval of Congress. This is an unambiguous impeachable offense. I’m not saying we have the votes to impeach,” he added. “I’m saying that you DO NOT do this without Congressional approval and if [Speaker Mike] Johnson [R-LA] doesn’t grow a spine and learn to be a real boy tomorrow we have a BFing problem that puts our very Republic at risk.”

But Representative Ronny Jackson (R-TX) told Maria Bartiromo of the Fox News Channel that Trump did not have to notify Congress because “[w]e do not have trustworthy people in Congress especially on the left side of the aisle.” If you give information to Democrats and those Republicans who oppose the president, he said, “you might as well put the [ayatollah] on the phone as well.” There is no basis for this statement.

In a quirk of timing, the satirical media outlet The Onion took out a full-page ad in the New York Times today that looks like a newspaper with the headline: “Congress, now more than ever, our nation needs your cowardice.” Journalist Marisa Kabas of The Handbasket got an exclusive look at the insert and reproduced its front page. It read in part: “Our republic is a birthright, an exceedingly rare treasure passed down from generation to generation of Americans. It was gained through hard years of bloody resistance and can too easily be lost. Our Founding Fathers in their abundant wisdom, understood that all it would take was men and women of little courage sitting in the corridors of power and taking zero actions as this precious inheritance was stripped away—and that is where we have finally arrived.”

Congress members will have a copy of the ad in their mailboxes tomorrow when they get back to work on the Republicans’ enormously unpopular budget reconciliation bill.

Masked men in U.S. Border Patrol vests take Santa Ana father after repeatedly hitting him

Source: KTLA-TV

LOCAL NEWS
Masked men in U.S. Border Patrol vests take Santa Ana father after repeatedly hitting him

by: Lily Dallow
Posted: Jun 22, 2025 / 03:31 PM PDT
Updated: Jun 22, 2025 / 04:23 PM PDT

In a graphic video that has since gone viral on social media, about seven or more masked men wearing U.S. Border Patrol vests are seen violently detaining a father in Santa Ana before forcing him into the back of an unmarked car on Saturday.

The violent incident sparked protests in the following hours, and an online fundraiser was started through GoFundMe, where family members identified the victim as Tustin resident Narciso Barranco, a father to three sons who are all U.S. Marines.

One of his sons, 25-year-old Alejandro Barranco, told KTLA that his father was pepper-sprayed in addition to repeatedly being punched in the face during his detention. According to Alejandro, Narciso was picked up by alleged federal immigration officers while he was working as a landscaper at the IHOP on Edinger Avenue and Ritchey Street.

The video shared by the Instagram account @SantaAnaProblems shows a group of men wearing hats and face coverings and police vests converge on Narciso, holding him down while one man repeatedly hits him on the head. Some men are standing guard around the scene before the group again seizes Narciso, with one man holding a baton at the back of Narciso’s neck to push him into the backseat of a silver SUV.

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Read more: https://ktla.com/news/local-news/masked-men-in-u-s-border-patrol-vests-brutally-beat-take-santa-ana-father/

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“family members identified the victim as Narciso Barranco, a father to three sons who are all U.S. Marines”

https://ktla.com/news/local-news/masked-men-in-u-s-border-patrol-vests-brutally-beat-take-santa-ana-father/