In LA mayor’s race, Nithya Raman makes up ground on Spencer Pratt in contest to face Karen Bass

By Robert Mackey, Lucy Campbell, Marina Dunbar and Vivian Ho (earlier) • June 6, 2026 • US news

LA city council member pulled closer to reality TV villain in ballots counted Friday, now trailing by just 20,672 votes. This blog is now closed.

This concludes our live coverage, with the president starting a three-night stay at his golf course in New Jersey before he heads to Madison Square Garden on Monday to get booed during game 3 of the NBA finals. Here are the latest developments: Democrat Xavier Becerra was projected to advance to the general election in the California governor’s race by the Associated Press, which determined that he is likely to secure one of the two top spots when all the votes are counted in the nonpartisan primary election held this week. In a head-to-head contest for second place in the Los Angeles mayor’s race, LA city council member Nithya Raman now trails reality TV villain Spencer Pratt by just 20,672 votes, with about 200,000 ballots still to be counted. One of the two will face the incumbent, Karen Bass, in the November general election. In an interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker, to be broadcast on Meet the Press this Sunday, Donald Trump tried to shift the blame for his failure to make a deal with Iran to end the conflict he started to his predecessor, Barack Obama. Senate Republicans on Thursday narrowly scuttled an attempt by Democrats to stop Trump from creating a $1.8bn fund to pay his allies, even as signs emerged that dissent over the proposal was spreading inside the US president’s own party. No court has the authority to halt construction of Trump’s White House ballroom and a secure underground facility, a Department of Justice lawyer has argued, suggesting only US Congress had the power to stop the project. Democratic fears that their party could be locked out of the top-two runoff in California’s newly drawn sixth congressional district, because too many Democrats split 53% of the vote, appeared to subside on Friday, as Democrat Richard Pan moved in to second place in the multi-candidate primary. In a head-to-head contest for second place in the Los Angeles mayor’s race, LA city council member Nithya Raman had a strong showing in ballots counted on Friday, and now trails reality TV villain Spencer Pratt by just 20,672 votes, with about 200,000 ballots still to be counted. Raman needs to close that gap and overtake Pratt to win the right to face the incumbent mayor, Karen Bass, in the November run-off between the top two vote-getters in the primary. Raman took 38.6% of the 59,930 votes counted on Friday, with Bass winning 34.1% and Pratt just 17.9%. Democratic fears that their party could be locked out of the general election in California’s newly drawn sixth congressional district, because too many Democrats split the vote, appeared to subside on Friday, as Democrat Richard Pan moved in to second place in the multi-candidate primary on Friday. In an update to the count on Friday, the district’s top vote-getter was still Republican congressman Kevin Kiley, with 25.4% of the vote. Elected to the current Congress as a Republican, Kiley switched his party affiliation to independent before this year’s nonpartisan primary. That left just one candidate on the ballot identified as a Republican: Michael Stansfield, a 50-year-old tech support worker with no campaign staff and no donors. In the early count, Stansfield was in second place, as Pan battled with four other Democrats to get enough votes to overtake him. On Friday, that finally happened, with Pan now in second place, with 22.8% of the vote, and Stansfield dropping to third place, with 22.1%. The other four Democrats split the remaining 30.5% of the vote that Pan will hope to gain. Xavier Becerra has advanced to the November general election in California’s gubernatorial race, cementing a stunning come-from-behind primary victory in one of California’s most turbulent campaign seasons in recent memory. Election officials are continuing to count ballots to determine whether he will face fellow Democrat Tom Steyer, the environmental activist who championed progressive policies like universal healthcare and more taxes on billionaires like himself, or Republican Steve Hilton, the former UK political operative turned Fox News personality who was endorsed by Donald Trump, in the fall. “The people of the great state of California, in the greatest nation on earth, have spoken – loudly and proudly,” Becerra said in a statement, after the Associated Press declared that he had clinched one of two spots in the general election. “We will not be bought. We will not be bullied. And we are never backing down. November, here we come.” Becerra’s advance in the nation’s largest Democratic stronghold was, in his own words, a “Hollywood ending” few saw coming. Just months ago, mired at 3% in the polls, the former California attorney general and US health secretary faced pressure from his own party to drop out of the contest to allow voters to consolidate behind a more viable candidate. “The underdog stayed in the fight,” an ebullient Becerra told supporters at his election night party on Tuesday, as early returns showed him with a strong chance of pulling off a top-two finish in the primary. If elected in November, he would be California’s first Latino governor since 1875. Despite the ongoing count, and the strong expectation that the so-called “late-mail” ballots would favor Democrats, Donald Trump prematurely declared Hilton the winner and, without evidence, accused the state of election rigging. Democrat Xavier Becerra was projected to advance to the general election in the California governor’s race by the Associated Press, which determined that he is likely to secure one of the two top spots when all the votes are counted in the nonpartisan primary election held this week. Because California allows voters to cast ballots by mail on election day, which was on Tuesday, and counts the millions of ballots slowly, it can take days or weeks for final results to be determined in close elections. Becerra, a former state attorney general, US congressman and Joe Biden’s health secretary, is likely to face either Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News commentator endorsed by the network’s number 1 fan, Donald Trump, or Democrat Tom Steyer, a billionaire climate activist who poured $215 million of his own money into his campaign. Hilton has a lead in the count so far, but it is believed that a larger share of ballots cast late in the process were from Democrats, leaving open the possibility that Steyer could still close the gap and finish second in the primary. The current vote count at 5:21pm local time on Friday, has Becerra in first, with 26.7%, Hilton in second, with 26.4% and Steyer in third, with 21%. Becerra’s campaign celebrated the AP projection, noting in a statement sent to reporters that it makes him “the first Latino candidate to break through to the general election in a California gubernatorial race.” “The people of the great state of California, in the greatest nation on earth, have spoken — loudly and proudly,” Becerra said. “We will not be bought. We will not be bullied. And we are never backing down. November, here we come.” The US military said it shot down four Iranian drones that were launched toward the strait of Hormuz and struck coastal surveillance radar sites in response. “The attack drones posed an immediate threat to regional maritime traffic,” US Central Command (Centcom) said on social media. The military is enforcing a blockade on Iranian ports in response to Tehran’s chokehold on the strait – a crucial corridor for global oil and natural gas shipments – which has sent energy prices spiking. It was the latest in a series of back-and-forth attacks that have strained the tenuous ceasefire in the war and harmed efforts to reach a deal to extend the truce. Earlier this week, Iranian drones heavily damaged a passenger terminal at Kuwait’s main airport, killing one person, wounding dozens and briefly closing the airfield. Despite the attacks raising new concerns that the ceasefire could collapse, Donald Trump told reporters on Friday “the situation with Iran seems to be going quite well”. “We’re going to come out of Iran very quickly and it’s going to be very strong one way or the other, whether it’s a piece of paper or the very tough way,” Trump said at an event with farmers in Wisconsin. “The very tough way is maybe the easier way, but we’re going to come out, and your fertilizer prices are going to go way down, just like they were four months ago.” At a rally in Bar Harbor, Maine, on Friday, US Senate candidate Graham Platner choked up briefly as he pointed to his wife in the crowd, and made a glancing reference to the recent revelation that she found sexual messages to other women on his phone last year, but they had worked through the strain that caused on their marriage. After Platner first mentioned the support of his mother, who, he said, had loved him “even when it hasn’t been the most fun, or the easiest”, he added: “And I have my wife Amy.” As the crowd burst into applause and cheers, Platner seemed to choke up and wipe away a tear and pointed to her with gratitude. Platner’s supporters then broke into a chant of “Amy! Amy!” which he joined. “I often say that if you believe in transformational politics, you have to believe in the ability for people to transform,” he said, looking down at written remarks for one of the few times during his speech. “And I would not believe it, because I would not have lived it, if it was not for my wife, Amy Jane.” The Democrat made no reference to dropping out of the race, over that revelation or the allegations by a former romantic partner that he was physically abusive with her on two occasions, and was aware that a tattoo on his chest was a Nazi symbol. Instead, he pledged to defeat Susan Collins, the Republican incumbent, in November – should he win the Democratic primary on Tuesday. Platner was followed by a prominent supporter, Ro Khanna, a Democratic congressman from California. In an interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker, to be broadcast on Meet the Press this Sunday, Donald Trump tried to shift the blame for his failure to make a deal with Iran to end the conflict he started to his predecessor, Barack Obama. In an excerpt from the interview, recorded in a barn in Wisconsin on Friday, Welker confronted Trump with the fact that he has “been saying for months … that Iran is begging to make a deal”. “If they are so desperate to make a deal, why haven’t they made a deal with you yet?” she asked. The president said the difficulty was that the main factor was that Iran’s leaders had previously “dealt with very weak and ineffective leadership on behalf of the United States and other countries, frankly, that were – that allowed them to get away with murder. And I don’t – I think they can’t believe they’re in the situation where they’ve been virtually decapitated.” Pressed further by Welker as to what was taking so long, Trump blamed Obama, and repeated his entirely false claim that the 2015 nuclear deal, between Iran and world powers, including the United States, China, France, Germany, Russia, the UK and the European Union, known as the joint comprehensive plan of action, would have enabled Iran to build a nuclear weapon. The first paragraph of that agreement, known as the JCPOA, includes this unambiguous statement: “Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons.” Trump, however, has repeatedly claimed the opposite, to justify pulling out of the agreement during his first term, in 2018, which removed the guardrails that had kept Iran from enriching uranium that could be used for a bomb. He told Welker on Friday: You’re talking about 47 years of getting away with whatever they wanted. I mean, we should, this should have been done long ago. This should have been done by other presidents or other countries. Doesn’t have to be us, other countries. But they were very close to having a nuclear weapon twice. That was when I terminated the Iran nuclear deal, which was a path – that deal, the JCPOA, that deal was tantamount to giving them a nuclear weapon. It was a horrible deal given by Barack Obama, and really penned by him. It was a horrible deal. It was, you know, it expired long ago. Had I not, had I – I terminated it, but had I not terminated it, it expired long ago. It was a short-term deal. It was a road to a nuclear weapon. They would have had a nuclear weapon five years ago. The NBC host did not point out that the deal was not, in fact, written by Obama, and would not, in fact, have let Iran develop a nuclear weapon five years ago. But she did ask Trump why he did not, as he had promised on the campaign trail in 2016, to “negotiate a better deal”, when he pulled out of the agreement in 2018, despite the fact that his own administration said that Iran was honoring its terms. “Why didn’t you negotiate a better deal at the time? Because after it was ripped up, there weren’t guardrails,” Welker said, “And they escalated their production of enriched uranium.” “Excuse me,” an indignant Trump replied. “It takes years to do these things.” “I’m moving very fast. I’m into three months,” he said, referring to the war with Iran he started at the end of February. “You know, Vietnam lasted 19 years,” he continued, in reference to the US war he managed to avoid serving in as a young man, by getting a medical exemption for a diagnosis of bone spurs from a foot doctor in Queens who rented his office from Trump’s father. “I’m into my third month, and all they do is say: ‘Whoa, when are you going to win?’” the president complained to Welker. In fact, Trump has now been president, across two terms, for more than four years in total since he withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018, but he has yet to negotiate a better deal, or even one just as good, with Iran despite multiple rounds of talks, and two military attacks that have cost the lives of thousands of Iranian civilians and at least 13 US service members. The justice department on Friday sent a federal prosecutor to observe ballot processing in Los Angeles, as Donald Trump continues to make baseless claims that California Democrats were “rigging” the results to win primary elections in the nation’s biggest blue state. State officials have rejected the allegations, but the delay in results immediately fueled misinformation about the integrity of California’s elections, with the president, who has long fanned election-conspiracy theories, accusing the state of “cheating”. In a statement to CNN on Friday, a spokesperson for the county registrar-recorder said “our office was notified late yesterday that the US Attorney’s Office would send an Assistant US Attorney to the Ballot Processing Center to observe ballot processing activities”. “The individual arrived this morning, was provided an overview of the public observation program, and participated in a walkthrough of the ballot processing operations,” the spokesperson, Mike Sanchez, told the network. The county registrar-recorder’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Earlier on Friday morning, Bill Essayli, the US attorney, announced that his office, along with the FBI’s Los Angeles office, had “multiple election fraud investigations underway”, and that the state’s election systems had “serious structural vulnerabilities”. Three days after Californians headed to the polls, key races in the primary election remained too close to call and experts warned the counting could continue for days. The president’s event in Wisconsin is over. Although it was described as a roundtable discussion of American agriculture, it began with a 45-minute speech from Donald Trump, identical in tenor to remarks he makes at partisan rallies, in which he recited familiar boasts, false claims and grievances, almost none of which had to do with agriculture. He then invited 11 other participants to speak during the last 15 minutes of the event. All of them used the opportunity to praise and thank the president. At the conclusion of the event, Trump basked in the applause of his supporters at the venue, as the strains of YMCA blared out. At the end of the event, Trump did, in fact, take off speed skater Jordan Stolz’s gold medal and return it to him. Donald Trump finally ceded the floor after more than 45 minutes of opening remarks at his roundtable on agriculture in Wisconsin, after introducing Jordan Stolz, the gold-medal-winning speed skater from the state, who is participating for some reason. Stolz had both of his Olympic gold medals with him, and, when Trump invited him to shake hands, put one around the president’s neck. Trump then joked that he was keeping the medal, and has continued to wear it as the roundtable continues. “I’m keeping it, Jordan. I’m not giving it back. I’m a very good guy for keeping gold,” Trump said. “I’m never giving this back. Congratulations. I forgot to touch his leg. I didn’t want to do that. But I can tell you one thing: his leg is like a rock.” The president then asked the dozen members of the roundtable, beginning with the speed skater, to make some remarks, but told them to keep it short. “We’ll go pretty quickly because I have to get back to fighting a war with Iran,” Trump said. “Fellas, I got to get back to a place called Washing- and protect you. OK, so if you go very quickly, we don’t need your life story, other than, I like the Olympic guy.” Donald Trump is still talking, 45 minutes into his opening remarks at what is supposed to be a roundtable discussion on American agriculture in Wisconsin. To give a sense of how rambling and tangential his remarks have been, here is a section in which he veered away from talking about the price of eggs to saying that he endorsed the Republican congressman Tom Tiffany, who is now running for Wisconsin governor, because his last name was the same as that of the famed jewelry store in Manhattan whose air rights he purchased when he built Trump Tower nearby. “I called this young lady right over here, Brooke Rollins, secretary of agriculture. I said: ‘Brooke, get the egg prices down, please.’ And she got them down. And by the way, speaking of Tom, Tiffany is one of the best congressmen in our country,” the president said. “And I was there, I don’t know, seven, eight years ago, right at the beginning, I endorsed this guy I didn’t know, I had no idea, but I liked his last name. You know why? Because I bought the air rights many years ago off Tiffany, and I made a lot of money. So I saw Tom, Tiffany, and I backed him, and he went like a rocket ship, and he won. And you’ve kept winning. And now he’s running for a thing called governor.” In extended opening remarks at what was billed as a roundtable discussion of American agriculture in Wisconsin, but so far is identical in content to a rally speech, Donald Trump began by running through a series of familiar false claims, including that his war with Iran is not a war, that 25 million undocumented immigrants arrived during the Biden administration, and that many people do not know that the word dumb has a “b” in it. The president blithely dismissed concerns about the spike in fuel prices caused by the war in Iran, and promised that fertilizer prices, which have also spiked because Iran closed the strait of Hormuz in response to being attacked, will come down. Echoing Vladimir Putin’s claim that his war in Ukraine is a mere “special military operation”, Trump said the war in Iran was just “a military conflict, I call it that, because it’s really not much of a war. But it’s a military conflict. It’s practice.” Trump then went on to complain that his speechwriters had told him not to focus on immigration but to speak instead about the cost-of-living crisis his Iran war, and his tariffs, have exacerbated. The president then repeated his odd claim that Democrats “made up the word” affordability, which he enunciated in a mocking tone. Recounting what he said was his conversation with speechwriters, Trump said: “I say: ‘Let’s talk about the border.’ ‘Sir, nobody cares about the border.’ I said: ‘I won the election on the border. Let’s talk about the – .’ ‘Sir, I’m telling you, nobody cares. Nobody cares about the border. You fixed the border.’ ‘I want to brag about it.’ ‘Sir, they want to hear about other things, like fertilizer.’” As we await the start of the roundtable on American agriculture Donald Trump has traveled to Wisconsin to host, we have discovered some new information which reveals, in a stunning development, that something the president said yesterday turns out to be false. In a rambling set of remarks on Thursday, Trump said that he planned to build a promenade on the west side of the Lincoln Memorial, possibly to be named for himself, before suggesting that his intervention was inspired by the original plans for the memorial, which he claimed, aimed to connect the monument to the Potomac River to its west. The president then suggested, in a comment that baffled historians, that the memorial was for some reason constructed back to front. “At the Lincoln Memorial, the front was supposed to be the back, and the back was supposed to be the front”, Trump told reporters. In fact, the original proposal for the memorial, submitted as a competition entry in 1912 by Henry Bacon, the New York architect who designed the Lincoln Memorial, is available on the National Archives website, and it shows that the plan was always for the monument to face the new reflecting pool to the east. Bacon’s later drawing on the “East Elevation of Lincoln Memorial”, which looks more like the finished structure, also clearly shows that the current east-facing front was always supposed to be the front. Where, exactly, Trump got the idea that the memorial was constructed backwards is not known, but his bizarre assertion of this invented history was offered weeks after he was mocked on social media for sharing an AI-generated image of the memorial facing the wrong way. The justice department sent one of its attorneys to observe ballot processing in Los Angeles this morning, the county’s elections office told CNN, a day after Donald Trump baselessly alleged “cheating” in California’s elections and claimed that the US attorney’s office there was investigating the vote counting. A spokesperson for the county registrar-recorder told CNN, “our office was notified late yesterday that the U.S. Attorney’s Office would send an Assistant US Attorney to the Ballot Processing Center to observe ballot processing activities. “The individual arrived this morning, was provided an overview of the public observation program, and participated in a walkthrough of the ballot processing operations,” the spokesperson, Mike Sanchez, told CNN in an email, noting that ballot processing in the county is open to public observation. Trump claimed in a Truth Social post yesterday that there was “BIG cheating” going on in California, supposedly because of how long it was taking to count the votes. Several key races in the state have yet to be called and may take days or even weeks, in part because of the significant number of mail-in ballots. No court has the authority to halt construction of Donald Trump’s White House ballroom and a secure underground facility, a Department of Justice lawyer has argued, suggesting only US Congress had the power to stop the project. The Trump administration has asked the Washington DC circuit court of appeals to reverse a lower court decision which blocked construction of a $400m ballroom on the site of the White House’s demolished East Wing. Construction of a secure bunker for staff underground at the site was allowed to proceed while the dispute between Washington DC preservationists and the White House continues. The National Trust for Historic Preservation sued the National Park Service and the administration in October, after Trump ordered the East Wing’s demolition. Construction began without completing – or really even beginning – what can be a lengthy process of review and approvals, as required by district and federal statute. The administration has cited national security imperatives for the construction, which Trump has repeatedly emphasized, while using the failed assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents Association event in April as an example of the security threat. Congress appears unpersuaded. The US Senate voted to advance a long-delayed immigration spending bill early on Friday morning only after Republicans removed $1bn in funding for US Secret Service security upgrades to the proposed ballroom. The case before the appellate court tests the limits of presidential authority. In a hypothetical posed to Yaakov Roth, principal deputy assistant attorney general, during a hearing this morning, Justice Patricia Millet asked when the construction of the ballroom and bunker complex became a fait accompli for his purposes. Was it when the destruction happened? Was it when you started doing the underground work, which we’re now told is completely integral and connected and inseparable from a massive ballroom on top? When did it become impossible for courts to stop this project? If the project amounted to “complete lawlessness by the government”, she asked, could it still not be stopped by the courts? “On these theories, I think that’s right,” Roth replied, arguing that US Congress could instead pass a law to authorize or block the specific action that a court would have to respect. “If Congress has weighed the equities in this particular instance, and reached a conclusion, I’m not sure a court would have the authority to second-guess that, but if we’re just talking about a general statute and application. I think a court would not second-guess a congressional decision that addressed the equities in that way.” The argument left Thad Heuer, representing the historic trust, aghast. “Under Marbury v Madison, it is emphatically the province of the judicial department to say what the law is,” Heuer said. “The government’s position, apparently, is that even a lawless action of this type could never be stopped by the court. That is entirely wrong. That’s exactly the court’s job. In this case, it’s about who controls federal property. Is it Congress, its owner, or is it the president, its temporary tenant?” Donald Trump also told reporters that his team is looking into the idea of AI companies giving the American public a stake in their firms. Senior US officials held preliminary decisions with AI companies about the potential for the government to buy some shares in their firms, digital news outlet Notus reported. Trump made the comment in response to a question from a journalist about the topic. “There’s something very interesting about it, where it almost becomes a partnership with the American public,” he told reporters. “We’ll look into that.“ Trump also told reporters that he will meet with AI executives at the White House “probably next week”. Asked which companies, he said “all the big ones”. Trump also claimed that “a lot of people” have asked him to stay involved with the Kennedy Center and “get it fixed” (we just don’t know who they are). The president said last week that he has “no interest” in the Kennedy Center after a judge ordered his name to be removed from its facade and website. Asked about the new “promenade” he announced yesterday to be added to the back of the Lincoln Memorial and where the money will come from, Donald Trump replied first that, “It’s not a lot of money.” He then added that they have “a lot of sources of funding” and claimed “we wouldn’t have to go back to Congress or anything” (which is probably for the best). Yesterday the president announced his latest construction project in his campaign to remake the nation’s capital. “We’re going to call it the promenade,” he told reporters in the Oval Office. “They want to call it the Trump Promenade,” he said, and it remains unclear who “they” are. “But I don’t know if I want to do that. But it’s going to be beautiful. It’s a beautiful project, and it’s going to take the Lincoln Memorial right down to the Potomac.” Work is already under way on a major renovation of the Lincoln Memorial, scheduled to be completed in July, as well as a repainting of the reflecting pool (just don’t call it a “paint job”!). Donald Trump said that he “wouldn’t mind” cutting the number of people working at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. “I wouldn’t mind. [The size of the office has been] way too high for way too long,” the president said, reiterating what he told the Wall Street Journal earlier today. “Yeah, I wouldn’t mind.” The WSJ reported that Trump said he wants Bill Pulte, his new acting director of national intelligence with no national intelligence experience, to cut the size of the office, which has already been significantly scaled back during his second term. Asked how long Bill Pulte will be in the role of acting director of national intelligence, Trump said: “It depends how long it takes to get somebody through.” “He’ll do a very good job,” Trump added. “He’s very good, he’s very talented.” Asked who was under consideration for the (permanent) role of director of national intelligence, Trump was vague and said he’ll have five interviews. “We’ll have a very good person watching things – Bill Pulte – but I have five interviews,” the president said, before abruptly switching back to talking about interest rates. Donald Trump has been gaggling with reporters onboard Air Force One as he travels to Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, for a round-table discussion on American agriculture – and to throw his support behind another Republican seeking re-election. The president touted the “fantastic” job numbers that came out today, before adding that he would like to see lower interest rates. “But I’ll leave that up to Kevin”, he said, referring to Kevin Warsh, whom he hand-picked to be the new Federal Reserve chair. Warsh was sworn in last month, succeeding Jerome Powell, who repeatedly warned over the inflationary risks of Trump’s agenda, and whom the president vehemently attacked for his refusal to cut rates. (Powell was once hand-picked by Trump, too.) Donald Trump’s legal team has rejected a request by the BBC to hand over financial information as part of his $10bn defamation case against the broadcaster. The president’s lawyers accused the BBC of a “fishing expedition”, according to court filings, after the broadcaster’s representatives asked for details to get evidence on Trump’s claims he suffered reputational and financial damage because of a Panorama documentary centred on the US Capitol riots. Trump accused the BBC of “intentionally, maliciously, and deceptively doctoring” a speech he gave on 6 January 2021 before the unrest in Washington in which thousands marched on, and broke into, the US Congress. The BBC had spliced together two parts of a speech made by Trump as part of its documentary broadcast in October 2024. Four people died on the day, and five police officers died afterwards, including from suicide. According to the court documents lodged in Miami, Florida, in May, the BBC had asked for financial papers on the Donald J Trump Revocable Trust, which holds the president’s business interests and assets. Lawyers had asked for records that would show its income, assets and properties held. It also listed hundreds of companies that fall under the trust’s remit. In response, Trump’s Florida-based lawyers Brito PLLC said the request was “disproportionate” and “encompasses individuals and entities that have no connection to the issues in dispute”. They added it amounted to “tens of thousands of documents” within 30 days, adding the timeframe was “unreasonable … and improper”. It accused the BBC of a “textbook fishing expedition”. Filings in May showed Trump’s legal team had made 503 requests for documents, and the BBC had turned over 45,000 pages in return. Trump had produced none. Here’s Harry’s full report: Donald Trump also said in that Wall Street Journal interview that he wants Bill Pulte to approach his job as acting national intelligence director similarly to the way Linda McMahon has approached hers as education secretary. McMahon has moved to drastically shrink and actively dismantle the Department of Education, which the president has previously said he wants to eliminate, through mass firings and reassigning many of its powers to other federal agencies. “We’ve made the Department of Education much smaller, and likewise, this should be much smaller,” Trump said, referring to Office of the Director of National Intelligence. “And this should maybe even be terminated, and we’ll make that decision.” Donald Trump has told the Wall Street Journal that he wants his new acting director of national intelligence Bill Pulte to begin the process of firing a large number of employees as part of a shake-up of the US intelligence community. Trump told the Journal today that he has privately told Pulte that he believes the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees 18 federal intelligence agencies and units, is “unnecessary and/or too big”. “I’d like to see it smaller. I think there are a lot of people in there that shouldn’t be there,” Trump told the WSJ, referring to holdovers from the Biden and Obama administrations. Asked if he was calling on Pulte to fire people, Trump said he wanted him to “start the process”, adding that his eventual nominee to serve in the role permanently should continue that work. Trump’s controversial selection of Pulte, who has no national intelligence experience, has been met with bipartisan alarm, with Democrats and some Republicans concerned that he will use his position to go after the president’s perceived enemies. “We don’t need a weaponized” national intelligence director, Senate majority leader John Thune told reporters on Tuesday, warning that Pulte would face “a lengthy road ahead of him” if nominated permanently. Speaking to the WSJ, Trump said he thought that Pulte’s acting status was an asset. “You’re less shackled. It sort of gives you more power, you know, for a somewhat limited period of time,” he said, adding that he hopes Pulte can begin making changes across the intelligence community before a permanent intelligence director is confirmed. “Frankly, it might be good for him to shake it up before people come,” the president said. “Because, if he reduced the size, in conjunction with me … and in conjunction with possibly the person coming in … he can do a lot of the hard work and we wouldn’t have to saddle somebody that goes in.” NPR reports that CBS News correspondents Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker and Jon Wertheim have pledged to stay on the most watched show in news, declaring: “We don’t want to see 60 Minutes die.” It caps off a tumultuous week at the network after the dramatic firings of Scott Pelley, Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega left serious questions up in the air over who would be left to appear on the show’s next season (Anderson Cooper is also leaving) and how the show would endure. CBS News also fired the show’s executive producer, Tanya Simon, Draggan Mihailovich, the executive editor, and other key staffers. Pelley, who was fired on Tuesday after clashing with the network’s new management, issued a public statement accusing the network’s new executives of silencing employees and claiming they instructed him “to inject falsehoods and bias” into his reporting. He had taken direct aim at Bari Weiss, the network’s controversial editor-in-chief, over his colleagues’ terminations, reportedly telling a meeting of the show’s staff and Nick Bilton, its newly appointed executive producer, along with the CBS News managing editor Charles Forelle: “She’s murdering 60 Minutes. She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it and is doing exactly that.” In a joint memo, Stahl, Whitaker and Wertheim decried the treatment of their colleagues, stating: “As far as we can tell … they were expelled because they fought for our 60 Minutes values and stood up to protect our independence and integrity.” “Newsrooms are not supposed to be run like dictatorships,” they added. “We want to express how sorry we are that these principled, fair and honest journalists have been treated so shabbily, with such indecency.” The correspondents go on to say that their staying on should not be read as “an endorsement of the existing power structure”, but because, “We want to stay and fight.” “If we can continue doing the work that made this show what it is – committing acts of independent, fierce journalism and storytelling, we’re here for it. If not, we leave,” they said. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will no longer report deaths of detainees who have recently been released from its custody, in a change that experts predict could obscure the full human cost of the Trump administration’s mass detention policies. The move rescinds a 2021 policy implemented by the Biden administration that required ICE to report to Congress and investigate deaths of detainees that occur within 30 days of their release. The goal of the 2021 policy was to ensure that ICE could not avoid accountability for deaths by releasing severely ill people from custody. Detainees who were brain-dead or suffering from infection, for example, have died shortly after ICE released them in the past. Health experts who have investigated deaths in ICE custody have criticized the move. Nine out of 15 migrants deported from the US to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in April have returned to their home countries, Congo’s government, a migrant and her lawyer said on Friday. The 15 migrants arrived in Congo on 17 April as part of a bilateral agreement with the Trump administration announced two weeks earlier to accept third-country deportees from the US. Congo’s government said in a statement on Friday that “more than half” of the migrants had since returned to their countries and that others would return “shortly“. Trump recently instated a temporary pause on the removal of refugees to the DRC during a spiraling Ebola outbreak. A federal judge has struck down policies that the Trump administration adopted that have barred people from countries on his travel ban list from getting final decisions on their asylum, work permit, green card and citizenship applications. US district judge John McConnell in Providence, Rhode Island, has ruled that the US Citizenship and Immigration Services had adopted a series of unlawful policies targeting people from 39 African, Asian, Latin American and Middle Eastern countries. Donald Trump is up and complaining that the market too should be up. He posted on his Truth Social platform just now: With a great Jobs Report, like just announced, stocks should go up, not down. That’s the way it was for 200 years. Growth does not mean inflation! How else can a Country attain GREATNESS??? Per my colleague Graeme Wearden, New York traders aren’t convinced, though. The S&P 500 is now down 0.9%, with the Nasdaq Composite down by 1.6%. Seven Republican senators joined Democrats early this morning to block the extension of a powerful government surveillance program, a rebuke to Donald Trump for choosing an inexperienced ally as the country’s top intelligence official. The renewal had been in question amid bipartisan concern over the US president’s appointment of Bill Pulte, a major Republican donor and heir to a home construction fortune, to serve as acting director of national intelligence. Pulte, who has no intelligence experience, was tapped controversially earlier this week by Trump days after Tulsi Gabbard announced her exit from the role. The Senate majority leader, John Thune said following the 47-52 vote that the chamber “will take another run at it” next week, but expressed little confidence the measure would pass. Democrats, he said, had taken a “terribly irresponsible position” by opposing the extension to section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa). The program permits US intelligence agencies to collect communications of foreign targets operating outside the country without a warrant. Critics say that a wide array of domestic communications can be also be swept up without a warrant ever being sought because they may pass through US servers or involve US contacts. The program is set to expire next week, and this morning’s procedural measure, if it had passed, would have set up a final Senate vote on the extension before a 12 June congressional deadline. “The naming of Pulte to that position, although the timing arguably wasn’t the best, I still don’t think it ought to derail something that’s this important,” Thune said. He did not mention the Republican senators who crossed the aisle to join Democrats to vote against the Fisa extension pathway. More on this story here: US employers added 172,000 jobs in May while the country’s unemployment rate held steady at 4.3%, a sign of a resilient labor market despite rising inflation and economic uncertainty brought on by continued conflict in the Middle East. Economists initially predicted there would be about 80,000 new jobs and a steady unemployment rate of 4.3%. Job figures for March and April were also revised up 29,000 and 64,000, respectively, a 93,000 boost compared to initial figures. The new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics is the latest in a number of reports that have pointed to strong hiring in recent months, despite a strained economy and an increase in inflation. The labor department announced earlier this week that the number of job openings in April increased to 7.6m, while the number of people quitting, laid off and discharged changed little. Private employers added 122,000 jobs in May, according to payroll firm ADP, which found that employers of all sizes and most industries – with the exception of the information and natural resource sectors – were hiring. “Hiring was more broad-based in May than we’ve seen in the last few years,” Dr Nela Richardson, ADP’s chief economist, said in a statement. “The labor market continues to show sustained momentum going into the summer hiring season.” Friday’s report was the first monthly jobs data released under the Federal Reserve’s new chair, Kevin Warsh, who was appointed by Trump in January and sworn in last month. The Fed typically cuts rates in response to a weak labor market, which can boost the economy but also raise prices. Raising interest rates would cool spending and inflation, but risks higher unemployment. Economists are predicting that the Fed will hold rates steady at its meeting June 16 and June 17, but Trump and his advisers have made it clear they expect Warsh to be receptive to their continued calls for rate cuts. “We’ve got a Warsh Fed now,” the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said at a news conference last week. It’s a new day at the Fed … I had my first breakfast with Chair Warsh this morning, and I believe that he will do the right thing to balance inflation and growth. Economists say even if the chair supports a rate cuts, it’s unlikely that a majority of the Fed’s 12 voting members would agree. At the Fed’s last meeting in April, just one member voted for lowering the target range for rates. My colleague Graeme Wearden over on our business live blog has more: in Miami Detainees at Florida’s notorious “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration jail said guards were denying them food and fresh water on Thursday until they signed documents presented to them in English that they did not understand. In an audio recording of a telephone call to an immigration advocacy group heard by the Guardian, more than half a dozen detainees alleged that the water given to them over the last three days was “rotten” and containing mosquito larvae, in an apparent attempt to pressure them to sign. During the call, all the detainees identified themselves by name and the section and cage number they are being held in. The Guardian is withholding those details because of the men’s stated fear of reprisals. “They took all the water, and they don’t want to give us water,” one detainee said in the call to a representative of the Workers Circle, an advocacy group that has acted as a liaison between detainees and their families. “They haven’t given us lunch, and they are mistreating us here. Right now, at this very moment, half past one in the afternoon, we haven’t had lunch here in Alcatraz, and they wanted to make us sign a paper in English that we don’t know what that paper says. “They’ve taken reprisals with us for not taking that paper, not signing that paper. They took away the water and medicine to people who need medication. Today the medicine came very late, but here we have people here who are diabetic, one here with high blood pressure.” The detainee said he and others had been complaining for several days about the quality of the water they had been given, and on Thursday morning chants of “agua, agua” broke out when it was withheld altogether. “The water has pests, the water has a bad taste, [you] open the water tubs and they have mosquito larvae,” he said. Another detainee said the water was “stinky and rotten”, and that he saw mosquitoes emerging from a substance contained within it. He said nobody in his cell had yet signed any document. Reports last month said “Alligator Alcatraz”, operated by the state of Florida as an immigration jail on behalf of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, would wind down operations in June, leading to its eventual closure. In its almost one year of operation, the tented facility, built on a little-used training airport deep in the Florida Everglades, has developed a reputation for the brutal treatment of undocumented detainees kept in metal cages, and a succession of alleged human and civil rights abuses. Among the claims are a denial of access to immigration lawyers, frequent and sudden movement of detainees to other detention facilities, and pressure to consent to agree to deportation without legal representation. Donald Trump will be heading to Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin today for a round-table discussion on American agriculture – and to throw his support behind another Republican seeking reelection to Congress in a competitive race. Derrick Van Orden, a retired US Navy Seal who attended the January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally at the Capitol and shouted “lies” during Joe Biden’s 2024 state of the union address, is running to keep his seat in the US House of Representatives for a third term. Though his rural district – Wisconsin’s third congressional district – has gone for Trump every time he’s been on the ballot – Van Orden only narrowly won by less than three points in 2024. The Democratic candidate then was Rebecca Cooke, a moderate who launched her campaign for the 2026 election last year. Read more about Cooke here: Senate Republicans on Thursday narrowly scuttled an attempt by Democrats to stop Donald Trump from creating a $1.8bn fund to pay his allies, even as signs emerged that dissent over the proposal was spreading inside the US president’s own party. Democratic Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer had proposed inserting language barring the payouts into Republican-backed legislation to fund Trump’s mass deportation campaign through the duration of his term. After a vote that stretched for three hours as groups of senators were spotted huddling on the chamber’s floor, the amendment failed by a 49-50 vote. Three Republican senators, all of whom are seen as vulnerable in November’s midterm elections, broke with their party to join all Democrats in support. Though Schumer’s amendment failed, the matter is likely to come up again before Congress. The president’s plan for an “anti-weaponization” fund that could issue financial settlements to people connected to the January 6 insurrection has riven Senate Republicans, and complicated their efforts to settle for good a standoff with Democrats over funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), agencies the president has tasked with implementing his hardline immigration policies. More here: Here’s some more reaction from the marathon vote-a-rama session in the Senate overnight: Amy Klobachur, Democratic senator from Minnesota: “I voted until 5 a.m. today to block Trump’s $1.8 billion slush fund,” Klobluchar wrote on X. “Your tax dollars should not be going to Jan. 6th rioters who went after officers. And why give MORE money to ICE when they’re already bigger than the FBI? The extra 70B could instead fund yrs of health care!” Alex Padilla, Democratic senator from California: “Let me remind us all of the deaths of Americans like Renee Good, Alex Pretti and Ruben Ray Martinez,” Padilla said in a speech on the floor. “Let me remind us all of how this administration is using children like 5-year-old Liam Ramos as bait. Let me remind our colleagues about the price gouging that is happening – mothers and children at Dilley Detention Center (in Texas) having to pay so much just to access clean water – and letting thousands of children languish in detention, jailing more than 6,200 chilren since the beginning of this administration. That’s a shame. “And now they (Republicans) want to shield them from more than 425 judges appointed by both Democrat and Republican presidents, including some appointed by Donald Trump himself, who have isseud more than 10,000 rulings finding that ICE has violated the Constitution of the United States.” Kevin Cramer, Republican senator from North Dakota: “For 76 days, Democrats kept the Department of Homeland Security in limbo,” Cramer posted on X. “Then they made it crystal clear that they’d rather defund law enforcement than defend law enforcement…Republicans refuse to go backward or sacrifice the safety of our law enforcement personnel to Democrats’ open border fantasies.” Cindy Hyde-Smith, Republican senator from Mississippi: “Senate Democrats just can’t seem to understand that after four years of the Biden admin’s catastrophic open border policies – including a record 12,600 encounters in a single day – Americans want secure borders and safe communities,” Hyde-Smith posted on X. Senate Republicans early Friday passed a bill that would provide the Department of Homeland Security with nearly $70 billion in new funds for immigration enforcement. The vote came after a more than 18-hour “vote-a-rama”, a process by which senators offer amendments to bills passed using the reconciliation procedure. The Senate’s Democratic minority leader, Chuck Schumer, had said earlier this week that he would use vote-a-rama to force Republicans into publicly defending the policies of Donald Trump, a move that ultimately forced Senate Republicans to drop their attempt to spend $1bn on security improvements for Trump’s White House ballroom. Among the amendments voted on in this marathon session was an attempt introduced by Schumer to kill the “anti-weaponization fund” and stop Trump from creating a $1.8bn fund to pay his allies. The measure was narrowly defeated in a 49-50 vote after three Republican senators broke with their party to join all Democrats in support. “Tonight, Senate Republicans passed a rotten bill that makes their priorities painfully clear: more money for Donald Trump, more power for Donald Trump, and nothing to lower costs for working families,” Schumer said in a statement posted on X after the immigration reforcement funding bill passed. He continued: “…The Republican agenda is now written in black and white: A slush fund for Trump, tax dodges for Trump, a ballroom for Trump, and a private militia for Trump. For hard-working Americans? Nothing.” On X, Republican senator Lindsey Graham said he was “very proud of my Republican colleagues for sticking together and making sure that Border Patrol and ICE (Immigration Customs and Enforcement) are fully funded”. “Well done to President Trump and my Republican colleagues,” Graham said. Lisa Murkowski was the only Republican senator to vote against the new immigration enforcement funding. In other developments: New abuse allegations have emerged against Graham Platner, a Democratic candidate for the Senate. Platner, a progressive running for election in Maine, has rejected the new report published on Thursday in the New York Times that included an interview with a Republican operative who accused him of womanizing, physical misconduct and making troubling comments about rape. Trump has suggested that his controversial ally Bill Pulte will investigate “rigged elections” while serving as the country’s top intelligence official. Pulte, whom Trump appointed as acting director of national intelligence earlier this week, is a “very smart guy,” Trump claimed on Thursday, “and you may find out some things about the rigged elections, etc, etc”. Pam Bondi on Thursday told lawmakers before the House oversight and reform committee that Todd Blanche, the man Trump has lined up to replace her, was “in charge” of the the US Department of Justice’s controversial handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

Source: The Guardian