Trump administration lays off hundreds of Voice of America employees
The Trump administration sent layoff notices today to more than 600 employees at Voice of America, a federally funded news organization that provides independent reporting to countries with limited press freedom, the New York Times reports.
The layoffs will reduce the staff at the agency to fewer than 200, around one-seventh of its total at the start of 2025. The notices put journalists and support staff on paid leave until they are officially let go on 1 September.
In March, Donald Trump accused Voice of America of spreading “anti-American” and partisan “propaganda” and called it “the voice of radical America”. He later signed an executive order that effectively called for the dismantling of the agency and put nearly all Voice of America reporters on paid leave.
Key events
Joseph Gedeon
A fresh wave of violent threats and incidents targeting elected officials broke out in the US this week, prompting more urgent calls for increased security measures just days after the killing of a Minnesota state legislator and the shooting of another.
Amid a series of attacks involving federal and local officials, the latest incidents included death threats against Zohran Mamdani, a New York mayoral candidate; a purported road rage attack on Max Miller, the Ohio congressman; and an alleged kidnapping attempt targeting Paul Young, the mayor of Memphis.
The New York police department (NYPD) hate crimes taskforce is investigating multiple death threats against Mamdani, a Muslim democratic socialist candidate in the final stretch of his campaign who is endorsed by national figures such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The intimidation included threats to blow up his car and Islamophobic voicemails left at Mamdani’s office in the city’s Queens borough.
“The violent and specific language of what appears to be a repeat caller is alarming and we are taking every precaution,” his campaign said on Thursday, blaming the threats on “dehumanizing, Islamophobic rhetoric designed to stoke division and hate”.
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Donald Trump has once again brought up his baseless claim that the 2020 election was fraudulent, this time saying in a Truth Social post that he wants a “special prosecutor” to investigate the election.
Writing on his social media platform on Friday, Trump lashed out at his predecessor, saying:
“Biden was grossly incompetent, and the 2020 election was a total FRAUD! The evidence is MASSIVE and OVERWHELMING. A Special Prosecutor must be appointed. This cannot be allowed to happen again in the United States of America! Let the work begin!”
Trump’s latest attempts at reviving his longstanding grievance against Biden comes as his administration faces the critical decision of whether to involve the US in the Iran-Israel conflict, a question that many foreign policy experts have likened to the US decision to invade Iraq in 2003.
Andrew Roth
Elizabeth Warren has confronted the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, over reports that the state department is considering redirecting $500m from USAID to the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
In a letter addressed to Rubio and USAID’s acting administrator, Kenneth Jackson, the Massachusetts senator argued that the GHF, a self-proclaimed aid organisation that is backed by the Israeli and US governments, “marks an alarming departure from the professional humanitarian organizations that have worked on the ground, in Gaza and elsewhere, for decades”.
“The questions surrounding GHF – its funding sources and connection to the Trump Administration, its use of private contractors, its ability to serve and be seen as a neutral entity, its abandonment by its founders, and its basic competence in providing aid – must be answered before the State Department commits any funding to the organization,” Warren wrote in the letter, a copy of which was provided exclusively to the Guardian.
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222 Mexican nationals detained in US since LA Ice raids began, Sheinbaum says
At least 222 Mexican nationals have been detained in the US since a series of immigration raids in Los Angeles and subsequent protests against them started up in recent weeks, Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, said today.
She did not clarify where they had been apprehended or what their legal status was.
Vance travels to LA to meet with marines
JD Vance is traveling to Los Angeles today to meet with marines and visit various federal command centers.
The vice-president is expected to tour a multiagency Federal Joint Operations Center and a Federal Mobile Command Center. Vance’s office did not release a topic of discussion for his visit, but it is speculated to be related to the protests against the Trump administration’s mass deportation operations.
Trump deployed national guard troops to downtown LA earlier this month in response to the protests. The state sued for a temporary injunction to stop the deployment, but a federal appeals court ruled in the president’s favor on Thursday night while that legal challenge continues.
A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from withholding billions of dollars in transportation funds from states that don’t agree to participate in some immigration enforcement actions.
Twenty states sued after they said the US transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, threatened to cut off funding to states that refused to comply with President Trump’s immigration agenda. US district judge John McConnell Jr has barred federal transportation officials from carrying out that threat before the lawsuit is fully resolved.
An attorney for the Department of Transportation had argued that the department had the legal discretion to set conditions on states receiving the congressionally appropriated funds.
“The Court finds that the States have demonstrated they will face irreparable and continuing harm if forced to agree to Defendants’ unlawful and unconstitutional immigration conditions imposed in order to receive federal transportation grant funds,” wrote McConnell, adding that the states are “being put in a position of relinquishing their sovereign right to decide how to use their own police officers” and are “at risk of losing the trust built between local law enforcement and immigrant communities”.
What is Donald Trump’s plan for Iran? Is he about to break his campaign pledge of “no more wars”? And if he does, could this be the moment he loses some of his most loyal Maga supporters?
The Guardian’s Rachel Leingang and Andrew Roth discuss in the latest episode of the Politics Weekly America podcast.
US supreme court rules fuel firms can challenge California’s emission limits
Oliver Milman
Fossil fuel companies are able to challenge California’s ability to set stricter standards reducing the amount of polluting coming from cars, the US supreme court has ruled in a case that is set to unravel one of the key tools used to curb planet-heating emissions in recent years.
The conservative-dominated supreme court voted by seven to two to back a challenge by oil and gas companies, along with 17 Republican-led states, to a waiver that California has received periodically from the federal government since 1967 that allows the state to set tougher standards than national rules limiting pollution from cars. The state has separately stipulated that only zero-emission cars will be able to be sold there by 2035.
Although states are typically not allowed to set their own standards aside from the federal Clean Air Act, California has been given unique authority to do so via a waiver that has seen it become a pioneer in pushing for cleaner cars. Other states are allowed to copy California’s stricter standard, too.
But oil and gas companies, as well as Republican politicians, have complained about the waiver, arguing that it caused financial harm.
Trump calls for special prosecutor for 2020 election results and repeats unfounded claim of fraud
Donald Trump is once again repeating unfounded claims that the results of the 2020 presidential election were fraudulent, saying that the evidence is “massive and overwhelming” but not providing any of it. The president called for a special prosecutor to be appointed to the case.
He wrote on Truth Social this morning:
“Zero Border crossings for the month for TRUMP, verses 60,000 for Sleepy, Crooked Joe Biden, a man who lost the 2020 Presidential Election by a ‘LANDSLIDE!’ Biden was grossly incompetent, and the 2020 election was a total FRAUD! The evidence is MASSIVE and OVERWHELMING. A Special Prosecutor must be appointed. This cannot be allowed to happen again in the United States of America! Let the work begin! What this Crooked man, and his CORRUPT CRONIES, have done to our Country in 4 years, is grossly indescribable! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, accused Trump of “playing politics with people’s lives”, citing a report that details how the administration could make the state’s upcoming wildfire season more dangerous than previous years due to budget cuts.
He wrote in a post on X:
“Donald Trump isn’t just threatening CA’s disaster aid, he’s also pushing for dangerous cuts ahead of wildfire season –
A 63% REDUCTION in the U.S. Forest Service’s budget. A 30% REDUCTION in workforce – 10,000 employees. The agency is the nation’s largest firefighting entity. It oversees more than half of the state’s forestland.
He is literally playing politics with people’s lives.”
More than 400 AmeriCorps staff and volunteers were deployed following the January megafires around southern California that destroyed thousands of homes and businesses and killed 30 people. They helped 26,000 households affected by the fires and packed 21,000 food boxes. But in April, the agency placed about 90% of its staff on immediate leave.
The cuts were among the harshest carried out by Trump and Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge). But AmeriCorps is just one of several agencies involved in the response to emergencies such as the LA fires that have seen drastic reductions as the president has sought to slash costs across the federal government and shift disaster preparedness on to state and local governments.
Read more about how Trump’s cuts threaten California’s wildfire recovery efforts here:
This is President Trump’s schedule for the day, according to the White House:
11am – Trump will attend a national security meeting in the Oval Office
2pm – He will travel to Bedminster, New Jersey
7.30pm – Trump will attend a dinner for the Super pac Maga Inc at his golf course
Trump fails to mark Juneteenth
Joanna Walters
Donald Trump failed to mark Juneteenth, commemorating the ending of slavery in the US, until he posted on Thursday night that there are “too many non-working holidays” in the country.
The US president has put out statements previously as president and even tried to take credit for boosting awareness of the significance of June 19 before it became a federal holiday under the Biden administration.
But on this year’s Juneteenth holiday on Thursday, the garrulous president kept silent on all platforms about a day of particular importance to Black Americans until his late post.
Without mentioning Juneteenth by name, Trump complained on Truth Social about “too many non-working holidays” and said it is “costing our Country $BILLIONS OF DOLLARS to keep all of these businesses closed”. But most retailers were open on Juneteenth.
Tom Perkins
The Trump administration is moving to keep open two Michigan coal plants that emit about 45% of the state’s greenhouse gas pollution, which opponents say is an indication of how the US president plans to wield his controversial national energy emergency executive order.
Already, the US Department of Energy (DoE) has ordered the JH Campbell coal plant on Lake Michigan to remain open beyond its 31 May closure date, while the administration is expected to prolong the life of the Monroe power plant on Lake Erie, currently scheduled to begin closing in 2028.
Opponents say the order has little support in Michigan, could cost ratepayers hundreds of millions of dollars, and is ideologically driven. The state’s utilities have said they did not ask for the plants to stay online, and the Trump administration did not communicate with stakeholders before the order, a spokesperson for the Michigan public service commission (MPSC), which regulates utilities and manages the state’s grid, told the Guardian.
“The unnecessary recent order … will increase the cost of power for homes and businesses in Michigan and across the midwest,” the chair of the MPSC, Dan Scripps, said in a statement. “We currently produce more energy in Michigan than needed. As a result, there is no existing energy emergency in either Michigan or [the regional US grid].”
The massive and ageing facilities also release high levels of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and particulate matter into the air. Meanwhile, their coal ash ponds leach arsenic, lead, lithium, radium and sulfate into local drinking water and the Great Lakes. The Monroe power plant is responsible for more arsenic water pollution than any other power plant in the US.
DHS moves to restrict lawmaker visits to detention centers
Maya Yang
The US Department of Homeland Security is now requiring lawmakers to provide 72 hours of notice before visiting detention centers, according to new guidance.
The guidance comes after a slew of tense visits from Democratic lawmakers to detention centers amid Donald Trump’s crackdowns in immigrant communities across the country. Many Democratic lawmakers in recent weeks have either been turned away, arrested or manhandled by law enforcement officers at the facilities, leading to public condemnation towards Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (Ice) handling of such visits.
Lawmakers are allowed to access DHS facilities “used to detain or otherwise house aliens” for inspections and are not required “to provide prior notice of the intent to enter a facility”, according to the 2024 Federal Appropriations Act.
Previous language surrounding lawmaker visits to such facilities said that “Ice will comply with the law and accommodate members seeking to visit/tour an Ice detention facility for the purpose of conducting oversight,” CNN reported.
However, in the new guidance, the DHS updated the language to say that Ice “will make every effort to comply with the law” but “exigent circumstances (eg operational conditions, security posture, etc) may impact the time of entry into the facility”.
The new guidance also attempts to distinguish Ice field offices from Ice detention facilities, noting that since “Ice field offices are not detention facilities” they do not fall under the visitation requirements laid out in the Appropriations Act.
The Guardian has contacted Ice for comment.
Melody Schreiber
Amid controversial dismissals for independent advisers and staff at health agencies, alongside lackluster responses to the bird flu and measles outbreaks, experts fear the US is now in worse shape to respond to a pandemic than before 2020.
H5N1, which has received less attention under the Trump administration than from Biden’s team, is not the only influenza virus or even the only variant of bird flu with the potential to spark a pandemic. But a subpar response to the ongoing US outbreak signals a larger issue: America is not ready for whatever pathogen will sweep through next.
“We have not even remotely maintained the level of pandemic preparedness – which needed a lot of work, as we saw from the Covid pandemic,” said Angela Rasmussen, an American virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. “But now, we essentially have no pandemic preparedness.”
“I’m concerned on a number of fronts,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, professor of epidemiology and director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University School of Public Health.
Those concerns include a lack of quality information from officials, weakened virus monitoring systems, and public health reductions at the federal, state and local levels.
Edward Helmore
Donald Trump has denied a report in the Wall Street Journal that he has approved US plans to attack Iran, saying that the news outlet has “no idea” what his thinking is concerning the Israel-Iran conflict.
He also confirmed, later on Thursday, via his press secretary, that he’d be making a decision within the “next two weeks”.
The Journal reported late on Wednesday that Trump told senior aides a day earlier that he had approved attack plans but was delaying on giving the final order to see if Tehran would abandon its nuclear program. The report cited three anonymous officials.
On Thursday, Trump responded to the report, posting on Truth Social: “The Wall Street Journal has No Idea what my thoughts are concerning Iran!”
But Trump’s decision is dependent on whether the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) would destroy the Fordow uranium enrichment site, a US official told Axios. Fordow, which is built into a mountain south of Tehran, is a target of Israel’s, but they lack the “bunker-buster bombs” and aircraft needed to destroy it; the US has access to both.
“We’re going to be ready to strike Iran. We’re not convinced yet that we’re necessary. And we want to be unnecessary, but I think the president’s just not convinced we are needed yet,” a US official told the outlet.
Victoria Bekiempis
The Los Angeles Dodgers said on Thursday they denied US immigration enforcement agents access to the parking lot at Dodger Stadium earlier in the day.
“This morning, ICE agents came to Dodger Stadium and requested permission to access the parking lots,” the baseball team said in a post on X.
“They were denied entry to the grounds by the organization. Tonight’s game will be played as scheduled.”
But Ice said in a response to the Dodgers’ tweet that its agents “were never there”, and Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at the DHS, said in a statement that “this had nothing to do with the Dodgers. CBP vehicles were in the stadium parking lot very briefly, unrelated to any operation or enforcement.”
The back and forth only added to anxiety in a city left on edge by frequent and brazen immigration enforcement actions.
The homeland security presence came as immigrant communities in LA are on high alert as federal agents have raided workplaces, parking lots and a swap-meet in search of undocumented immigrants.
Since the department stepped up enforcement in the region, there have been persistent rumors that the stadium of the Dodgers, a team which has a large Latino fanbase, may be a target.
Court lets Trump keep control of California national guard for now
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and will be bringing you the news over the next few hours.
We start with the news that a US appeals court let Donald Trump retain control on Thursday of California’s national guard while the state’s Democratic governor proceeds with a lawsuit challenging the Republican president’s use of the troops to quell protests in Los Angeles.
Trump’s decision to send troops into Los Angeles prompted a national debate about the use of the military on US soil and inflamed political tension in the country’s second most-populous city.
On Thursday, a three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit court of appeals extended its pause on U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer’s 12 June ruling that Trump had unlawfully called the national guard into federal service.
Trump probably acted within his authority, the panel said, adding that his administration probably complied with the requirement to coordinate with Governor Gavin Newsom, and even if it did not, he had no authority to veto Trump’s directive.
“And although we hold that the president likely has authority to federalize the national guard, nothing in our decision addresses the nature of the activities in which the federalized national guard may engage,” it wrote in its opinion.
Newsom could still challenge the use of the national guard and U.S. Marines under other laws, including the bar on using troops in domestic law enforcement, it added. The governor could raise those issues at a court hearing on Friday in front of Breyer, it said.
In a post on X after the decision, Newsom vowed to pursue his challenge.
“The president is not a king and is not above the law,” he said. “We will press forward with our challenge to President Trump’s authoritarian use of US military soldiers against our citizens.”
Trump hailed the decision in a post on Truth Social. “This is a great decision for our country and we will continue to protect and defend law-abiding Americans,” he said.
“This is much bigger than Gavin, because all over the United States, if our cities, and our people, need protection, we are the ones to give it to them should state and local police be unable, for whatever reason, to get the job done.”
In other news:
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The Los Angeles Dodgers said they blocked US immigration enforcement agents from accessing the parking lot at Dodger Stadium on Thursday and got into public back-and-forth statements with Ice and the Department of Homeland Security, which denied their agents were ever there.
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The Department of Homeland Security is now requiring lawmakers to provide 72 hours of notice before visiting detention centers, according to new guidance. The guidance comes after a slew of tense visits from Democratic lawmakers to detention centers amid Trump’s crackdowns in immigrant communities across the country.
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A federal judge on Thursday blocked Trump’s administration from forcing 20 Democratic-led states to cooperate with immigration enforcement in order to receive billions of dollars in transportation grant funding. Chief US district judge John McConnell in Providence, Rhode Island, granted the states’ request for an injunction barring the Department for Transportation’s policy, saying the states were likely to succeed on the merits of some or all of their claims.
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The office of the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, requested “a passive approach to Juneteenth messaging”, according to an exclusive Rolling Stone report citing a Pentagon email. The messaging request for Juneteenth – a federal holiday commemorating when enslaved Black people in Galveston, Texas, learned they were free – was transmitted by the Pentagon’s office of the chief of public affairs. This office said it was not poised to publish web content related to Juneteenth, Rolling Stone reported.
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Depending on who you ask, between 4 and 6 million people showed up to last weekend’s “No Kings” protests. Now the real number is becoming clearer, with one estimate suggesting that Saturday was among the biggest.
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