Trump says he won’t call Minnesota governor after political shootings: ‘he’s a mess’ – US politics live

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Cuts to Fema's storm prep program hammer communities that voted for Trump - CBS News

Hurricane season is here, and a CBS News investigation has found that cuts to Fema’s storm preparation program by the Trump administration have hammered communities that voted for the president.

In particular, red state politicians are up in arms over the cancellation of the infrastructure program – known as Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, or BRIC.

The $4.6bn initiative was launched under the first Trump administration, and CBS’s analysis of Fema data revealed that two-thirds of the counties awarded grants voted for Trump over former Kamala Harris during the 2024 election.

Trump administration officials said they will claw back about $3.6m that has already been awarded but not yet spent, sending it back to the Treasury.

Fema said in a statement to CBS that the program was being scaled back for being “wasteful and ineffective” and “more concerned with climate change” than providing help to Americans affected by storms.

Per CBS’s story:

Projects that are now stalled as a result range from a plan to elevate six buildings on the main street in Pollocksville, North Carolina - population less than 300 - to a $50m project to prevent flash flooding in New York City.

The data suggests the elimination of the BRIC program will especially deprive vulnerable communities across the Southeast. In Florida, 18 of the 22 counties that stood to benefit from nearly $250 million in grants voted for Trump. Elsewhere in North Carolina, grants were canceled in areas ravaged by Hurricane Helene last year.

The scale of the cuts in ruby-red Louisiana - 34 grants totalling $185m - prompted the state’s Republican senior senator, Bill Cassidy, to publicly condemn the decision to cancel the program.

“We passed BRIC into law and provided funds for it,” said Cassidy in a speech on the Senate floor in April. “To do anything other than use that money to fund flood mitigation projects is to thwart the will of Congress.”

Last month, Cassidy joined more than 80 members of Congress in writing a letter to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, begging the administration to reinstate the program and arguing that not doing so “will only make it harder and more expensive for communities to recover from the next storm”.

In the letter, the bipartisan group of lawmakers cited research that showed every dollar invested in disaster mitigation can save up to $18 in response and recovery expenditures after a storm hits.

Analysis: the internal war that could decide Trump’s Iran response

As Donald Trump considers a direct intervention in Israel’s conflict with Iran, another war has broken out in Washington between conservative hawks, calling for immediate US strikes on uranium enrichment facilities, and Maga isolationists, who are demanding Trump stick to his campaign pledge not to involve the US in new overseas wars.

At stake is whether the US could target the mountain redoubt that is home to the Fordow fuel enrichment plant, a key uranium enrichment site hidden 80 to 90 metres underground that cannot be targeted directly by Israeli jets – although they can attack some of the infrastructure that allows the plant to operate.

A direct strike would require the US Air Force’s 30,000-pound class GBU-57/B massive ordinance penetrators and the US B-2 Stealth Bombers capable of carrying them, making Washington’s sign-on a key goal for Israeli officials.

“Mr Trump posted on social media Sunday that ‘we can easily get a deal done’ to end the war,” read a Wall Street Journal editorial this week. “But that prospect will be more likely if he helps Israel finish the military job.

“If Mr Trump won’t help on Fordow, Israel will need more time to achieve its strategic goals,” it went on. “A neutral US means a longer war.”

But the escalating conflict – and America’s possible role in it – has already led to a schism among vocal Trump supporters.

Some of Trump’s most powerful allies, including his vice-president, JD Vance, have called for the US to restrain itself from sending its troops to fight wars overseas. Powerful pundits like Tucker Carlson have condemned the potential for US involvement in a war in Iran.

The schism among Trump officials also runs through the Pentagon. Elbridge Colby, the undersecretary of defense for policy, is among the most prominent of a group of “prioritisers” who had hoped to focus US resources away from Europe and the Middle East towards the growing threat from China. The Pentagon has denied there are any disagreements on policy within the department.

With Trump rushing back to Washington from a G7 meeting in Canada to an emergency national security council meeting, the potential for a strike against Iran appeared as high as at any time since the beginning of the crisis.

“What’s happening here is some of the isolationist movement led by Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon are distressed we may be helping the Israelis defeat the Iranians,” Mitch McConnell, the former Senate Republican leader, told CNN. “I would say it’s been kind of a bad week for the isolationists.”

Bernie Sanders backs Zohran Mamdani in New York City mayoral primary

Bernie Sanders has endorsed the leftwing New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani in the latest boost to his insurgent campaign.

Mamdani, a democratic socialist like Sanders, is the main rival to the campaign of the former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, who is seeking to rehabilitate his political career after leaving office amid sexual harassment allegations.

Cuomo, 67, began the race as a dominant favorite but Mamdani, 33, has surged in recent weeks, netting the key endorsement of Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. One poll even showed him edging into the lead.

Sanders, a senator from Vermont and a powerful figure on the Democratic party’s progressive left, said:

At this dangerous moment in history, status quo politics isn’t good enough. We need new leadership that is prepared to stand up to powerful corporate interests & fight for the working class.

Mamdani replied on X:

As for so many across this country, @BernieSanders has been the single most influential political figure in my life. As Mayor, I will strive to live up to his example by fighting for the working class every day and hopefully make Brooklyn’s own proud.

The Democratic primary election to lead one of the biggest cities in the US will be held on 24 June, after early voting began on 14 June. The election will use ranked-choice voting, allowing voters to rank up to five candidates in order of preference.

New York’s current mayor, Eric Adams, who ran as a Democrat in 2021, is seeking re-election as an independent candidate and has been widely attacked by Democrats for his close relationship with Donald Trump.

The general mayoral election is set for 4 November.

'He's a mess': Trump says he won’t call Tim Walz after Minnesota shootings

Over 48 hours after a Minnesota state lawmaker was killed and another injured in a “politically motivated assassination”, Donald Trump is still refusing to call the state’s governor, Tim Walz, as a president usually would under the circumstances.

Trump told reporters on Air Force One of Walz, who was Kamala Harris’s running mate:

I think the governor of Minnesota is so whacked out. I’m not calling him.

Why would I call him? I could call and say, ‘Hi, how you doing?’ The guy doesn’t have a clue. He’s a mess. So I could be nice and call, but why waste time?

Here’s the clip.

Trump says he will probably extend TikTok deadline again

Donald Trump said on Tuesday he would likely extend a deadline for China-based ByteDance to divest the US assets of short video app TikTok.

The president said in May he would extend the 19 June deadline after the app helped him with young voters in the 2024 election. His comments to reporters on Air Force One on Tuesday reiterated that sentiment.

“Probably, yeah,” Trump said when asked about extending the deadline. “Probably have to get China approval but I think we’ll get it. I think President Xi will ultimately approve it.”

US transport secretary Sean Duffy said on Tuesday that he wanted civil aviation to return to a 1979 zero-tariff trade agreement, Reuters reports.

Speaking at the Paris airshow, Duffy said the White House was aware that the US is a net exporter in aerospace, but added that it was dealing with a complicated tariff situation.

Donald Trump has imposed tariffs of 10% on nearly all airplane and parts imports, and in early May the commerce department launched a “Section 232” national security investigation into imports of commercial aircraft, jet engines and parts that could form the basis for even higher tariffs on such imports.

Airlines, planemakers and several US trading partners have been lobbying Trump to restore the tariff-free regime under the 1979 Civil Aircraft Agreement.

Donald Trump not seeking ceasefire but wants ‘a real end’ to Iran’s nuclear programme

Donald Trump has said he is not seeking a ceasefire in Israel’s war on Iran but instead wants to see “a real end” to Iran’s nuclear programme, with Tehran abandoning it “entirely”.

The US president predicted Israel would not let up in its bombing campaign and suggested a decisive moment in that campaign was imminent, though he made clear he expected Israel to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities without US help.

“You’re going to find out over the next two days … Nobody’s slowed up so far,” he told CBS News, after abruptly abandonning a G7 summit in the Canadian Rockies, saying he was returning to the White House to deal with the conflict.

Speaking to reporters on the way back to Washington, Trump said he was seeking “an end, a real end, not a ceasefire”.

That would involve a “complete give-up” by Iran, he said. Trump’s negotiating position before the Israeli attack was that Iran should stop uranium enrichment entirely, and he blamed Tehran for not accepting that proposal.

Trump also stressed that any Iranian attack on Americans or US bases, something that Iran has threatened, would be met with overwhelming force, saying “we’ll come down so hard, it’d be gloves off.”

Read the full report here:

Here is a video of Donald Trump telling reporters he wants a “real end” to the Iran-Israel conflict, and not just a ceasefire (see earlier post).

US appeals court to rule on Trump's Los Angeles troop deployment

A federal appeals court will hear arguments on Tuesday on Donald Trump’s authority to deploy the national guard and marines to Los Angeles amid protests and civil unrest, days after a lower court ruled that the president unlawfully called the national guard into service, Reuters reports.

The lower court’s ruling last Thursday was put on hold hours later by the San Francisco-based 9th US circuit court of appeals, which will consider the Trump administration’s request for a longer pause during its appeal.

Protesters rally outside City Hall in response to a series of United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) raids, in Los Angeles on Sunday. Photograph: Stephen Lam/AP

US district judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco had ruled that the Republican president unlawfully took control of California’s national guard and deployed 4,000 troops to Los Angeles against the wishes of Democratic California governor Gavin Newsom. Trump also ordered 700 US marines to the city after sending in the national guard, but Breyer has not yet ruled on the legality of the marines’ mobilisation.

Breyer said Trump had not complied with the law that allows him to take control of the national guard to address rebellions or invasions, and ordered Trump to return control of California’s national guard to Newsom, who sued over the deployment.

Trump’s decision to send troops into Los Angeles sparked a national debate about the use of the military on US soil and inflamed political tensions in a city in the midst of protest and turmoil over Trump’s immigration raids.

Fired ABC News journalist stands by his post criticizing Trump and adviser

Ramon Antonio Vargas

A journalist who lost his job at ABC News after describing top White House aide Stephen Miller as someone “richly endowed with the capacity for hatred” has said he published that remark on social media because he felt it was “true”.

“It was something that was in my heart and mind,” the network’s former senior national correspondent Terry Moran said Monday on The Bulwark political podcast. “And I would say I used very strong language deliberately.”

Moran’s comments to Bulwark host Tim Miller about standing by his remarks came a little more than a week after he wrote on X that Stephen Miller – the architect of Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policies – “eats his hate”.

“His hatreds are his spiritual nourishment,” Moran’s post read, in part. He added that the president “is a world-class hater. But his hatred [is] only a means to an end, and that end [is] his own glorification”.

You can read the full report here: