U.S.drops 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs)—Twelve of Them—on Iran

Heather Cox Richardson from Letters from an American

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.”

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.

“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.”

Trump’s Courageous and Correct Decision

June 22, 2025, 2:29 p.m. ET

Credit...Pool photo by Carlos Barria

By Bret Stephens

For decades, a succession of American presidents pledged that they were willing to use force to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. But it was President Trump who, by bombing three of Iran’s key nuclear sites on Sunday morning, was willing to demonstrate that those pledges were not hollow and that Tehran could not simply tunnel its way to a bomb because no country other than Israel dared confront it.

That’s a courageous and correct decision that deserves respect, no matter how one feels about this president and the rest of his policies. Politically, the easier course would have been to delay a strike to appease his party’s isolationist voices, whose views about the Middle East (and antipathies toward the Jewish state) increasingly resemble those of the progressive left. In the meantime, Trump could have continued to outsource the dirty work of hitting Iran’s nuclear capabilities to Israel, hoping that it could at least buy the West some diplomatic leverage and breathing room.

Trump chose otherwise, despite obvious risks. Those include Iranian strikes on U.S. military assets and diplomatic facilities in the region and terrorist attacks against American targets worldwide, possibly through proxies and possibly over a long period. One grim model is the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which was carried out by Muammar el-Qaddafi’s regime most likely in retaliation for President Ronald Reagan’s 1986 bombing of Libya. In the Lockerbie atrocity, 270 people lost their lives.

But one set of risks must be weighed against another, and there are few greater risks to American security than a nuclear Iran.

The regime is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. It is ideologically committed to the annihilation of Israel and is currently attacking it with indiscriminate missile fire on civilian targets. It is an ally of North Korea, China and Russia — and supplies many of the drones Russia uses to attack Ukraine. It is developing and fielding thousands of ballistic missiles of increasingly greater reach. Its acquisition of a bomb would set off an arms race in the Middle East. And it has sought to assassinate American citizens on American soil. If all this is not intolerable, what is?

Critics fault the administration for its refusal to seek congressional authorization for attacking Iran. But there’s a long, bipartisan history of American presidents taking swift military action to stop a perceived threat without asking Congress’s permission, including George H.W. Bush’s invasion of Panama in 1989 and Bill Clinton’s four-day bombing campaign against Iraq in 1998.

Critics of the strike also point to an American intelligence estimate from this year that claimed Iran’s leaders had not yet decided to build a bomb. But that was a judgment about intent, which can be fickle. Trump’s responsibility was to deny Iran’s leaders the capabilities that would have allowed them to change their minds at will, to devastating effect. Amid uncertainty, the president acted before it was too late. It is the essence of statesmanship.

We’ll find out in the coming days and weeks how Iran will react. In his White House address, Trump noted that there are many other targets in Iran that the United States could easily destroy if Iran doesn’t agree to dismantle its nuclear program once and for all. Iran may disregard that warning, but if it does, it is choosing further destruction for the sake of a nuclear fantasy. As in 1988, when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini chose to end the Iran-Iraq war for the sake of regime survival — he said it was like “drinking from a chalice of poison” — my guess is that the current supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, will stand down and seek a negotiated settlement. In my column last week, I suggested the outlines of a potential deal, in which the United States could promise Iran relief from economic sanctions in exchange for its complete nuclear disarmament and an end to its support for foreign proxies like Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis.

Whether or not that happens, Iran’s hopes of acquiring a nuclear weapon have probably been seriously degraded. And adversaries everywhere, including in Moscow and Beijing, must now know that they are not dealing with a paper tiger in the White House. The world is safer for it.

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Bret Stephens is an Opinion columnist for The Times, writing about foreign policy, domestic politics and cultural issues.

AMERICA BOMBS IRAN NUCLEAR SITE AT FORDO

At the White House. Pool photo by Carlos Barria

by Lauren Jackson and Evan Gorelick

Last night, the U.S. entered the war with Iran.

President Trump upended decades of diplomacy when he sent American warplanes and submarines to strike three of Iran’s nuclear facilities — including Fordo, its top-secret site buried deep inside a mountain. The bombs fell at about 2:30 a.m. local time.

In an address from the White House, Trump said the goal of the strikes was to keep Iran from building a nuclear weapon. He claimed the facilities had been “completely and totally obliterated,” but the extent of the damage is not yet clear.

Trump also called for the war to end. “Iran, the bully of the Mideast, must now make peace,” he said. He threatened “far greater” attacks if it did not.

Still, the war continues: Iran said today that it wasn’t open to diplomacy right now. It launched missiles into Israel early this morning, wounding at least 16. Israel responded with its own strikes on Iran. More than 40,000 American troops are stationed in the region, and the U.S. is expecting retaliation. (See American bases that Iran could strike.)

The U.S. attack was an “extraordinary turn for a military that was supposed to be moving on from two decades of forever wars in the Middle East,” our colleagues Helene Cooper, Eric Schmitt and Julian Barnes wrote.

Below, we explain the strikes and what could happen next.
What were the targets?

The New York Times


America targeted three Iranian sites, including the buried facility at Fordo, the crown jewel in the country’s nuclear program. The U.S. is the only country believed to have bombs big enough to reach it. Israel has been asking Trump to strike the site since its offensive began. Now he has.

Here’s what we know about each target:

Fordo: Iran built this site — where centrifuges concentrate uranium to a form used in nuclear weapons — inside a mountain to shield it from attacks. The U.S. military concluded that one “bunker-buster” bomb would not destroy it. So six B-2 bombers dropped a dozen of these 30,000-pound weapons, a U.S. official said. The attack was the first time the military had used the weapon in combat. See how the powerful bombs work.

Natanz: This is the largest uranium enrichment site in Iran. Its centrifuge halls are also buried deep underground, but experts say this site is less secretive and less heavily fortified. Israel struck the site recently with warplanes; the U.S. struck it with cruise missiles launched from submarines.

Isfahan: The U.S. also hit a site that holds Iran’s largest nuclear fuel stockpiles near the ancient city of Isfahan. Israel hit parts of the facility last week but avoided the fuel.

Why did the U.S. strike?

The U.S. says it is joining Israel in its war to keep Iran from creating a nuclear bomb.

Trump pledged as a presidential candidate to keep America out of “stupid endless wars.” But he also vowed to prevent the Islamic Republic from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Israel and Iran, sworn enemies for decades, have been striking each other for more than a week. Israelis launched a surprise assault that targeted Iranian infrastructure, including nuclear installations, and military leaders. Israel wanted U.S. help, but Trump was noncommittal.

When Israel began its attacks, the U.S. secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said, “We are not involved in strikes against Iran.” Trump said that he would decide “within the next two weeks” whether to help. He took two days.

What’s next?

It’s not clear. But experts at The Times, including our Cairo bureau chief Vivian Yee, outlined a few scenarios:

Iran could retaliate: The U.S. has troops on bases and warships across the Middle East. Iran might attack them. It might also create havoc in international shipping: It could move to shut the Strait of Hormuz, a critical transit hub for the world’s oil and natural gas. All the options carry risks for Iran’s clerical rulers. Read more about their dilemma.

Iran could negotiate: The strikes could give the U.S. leverage in its negotiations to limit Iran’s nuclear capacity. They may also force Iran to the table. Still, the prospects for a diplomatic solution don’t seem promising, our colleague Michael Shear writes.

The war could get messier: Iran’s allied militias in the region, including the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah, although weakened by Israeli bombing, in Lebanon and armed groups in Iraq, have not fully joined the fight.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog said it had not detected any increase in off-site radiation levels at the nuclear sites the U.S. attacked. Read the latest news.

Benjamin Netanyahu said that the U.S. strikes had been carried out “in full coordination” between the American and Israeli militaries.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been in a bunker, with limited communication, to protect him from possible assassination.

Responses

Israel: The Israeli foreign minister said that Trump “wrote his name tonight in golden letters in the history books.” Netanyahu also praised the attack.

Iran: The Iranian foreign minister said that the attacks would have “everlasting consequences.”
United Nations: António Guterres, the head of the U.N., called the U.S. attacks a “dangerous escalation” and “a direct threat to international peace and security.”

Republicans, including Mike Johnson and John Thune, rallied behind Trump, calling the strikes a necessary check on Iran’s nuclear efforts. Democrats condemned the attack as unconstitutional and warned that it could drag the U.S. into a long war.

Trump claims he will make a decision "in 2 wks" whether to bomb Iran or continue negotiations.

Just a week ago, the Trump administration was preparing for a sixth round of negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, scheduled to be held in Oman on June 15.

Today, Trump issued a statement through White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, falling back on his usual tactic of promising something “in two weeks.” “Based on the fact that there's a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks.”

In 2018, President Donald J. Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) negotiated in 2015 by President Barack Obama, under which the U.S., China, France, Germany, Russia, and the United Kingdom lifted economic sanctions against Iran in exchange for limits to Iran’s nuclear program. With the U.S. withdrawal, the agreement fell apart.

Trump launched a “maximum pressure campaign” of stronger sanctions to pressure Iran to renegotiate the JCPOA, which lasted throughout his first term. Back in office, Trump relaunched that campaign in February 2025. Then, in March 2025, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told Congress that the assessment of the Intelligence Community was that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon.

In the same month, Trump said on the Fox News Channel that he had written a letter to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, urging the Iranians to negotiate “because if we have to go in militarily it’s going to be a terrible thing for them.” Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said Iran would not “enter any direct negotiations with the U.S. so long as they continue their maximum pressure policy and their threats.”

But Iran’s allied militant actors Hamas and Hezbollah in Lebanon have been badly hurt by Israeli strikes since Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and Iran’s major ally in the Middle East, Bashar al-Assad of Syria, fell in December 2024. Discussions began in April of this year, and negotiators met for five rounds by the end of May.

Israel was not included in the negotiations, and on Thursday, June 12, it launched strikes against nuclear and military targets in Iran. The strikes killed a number of nuclear scientists and senior military personnel. Iran retaliated, and the countries have been in conflict ever since.

After the strikes, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who also became the acting national security advisor after Trump fired his first national security advisor for inviting a journalist onto a Signal chat about a military strike against the Houthis, issued a statement distancing the U.S. from Israel’s attack on Iran. “Tonight,” he said, “Israel took unilateral action against Iran. We are not involved in strikes against Iran and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region. Israel advised us that they believe this action was necessary for its self-defense. President Trump and the Administration have taken all necessary steps to protect our forces and remain in close contact with our regional partners. Let me be clear: Iran should not target U.S. interests or personnel.”

But by early Friday morning, Trump appeared to be trying to take credit for the strikes and demanded that Iran make a deal. The next day—Saturday, June 14—was the day of No Kings protests in which at least 2% of the U.S. population turned out to oppose his presidency, as well as the sparsely attended military parade in Washington, D.C., an embarrassing contrast for the president.

The U.S. possesses a 30,000-pound bomb that would perhaps be able to penetrate Iran’s underground nuclear sites, which are fortified against attack. According to Alex Horton, Maham Javaid, and Warren P. Strobel, the “Massive Ordnance Penetrator” (MOP) can penetrate the ground up to at least 200 feet. The U.S. B-2 Spirit stealth bomber is the only Air Force aircraft that can deploy the heavy MOP.

On June 16, while at the G7 meeting in Canada, Trump posted that Iran “should have signed the ‘deal’ I told them to sign.” He continued: “What a shame, and waste of human life. Simply stated, IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON. I said it over and over again! Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran!” More than 9 million people live in Tehran, with more than 16 million in the metropolitan area.

Then Trump abruptly left the G7 and on the trip home told reporters on Air Force One that he didn’t care what Gabbard said, and thought Iran was close to achieving nuclear capabilities. When France’s president Emmanuel Macron suggested Trump left to work on a ceasefire, Trump posted: “Wrong! He has no idea why I am now on my way to Washington, but it certainly has nothing to do with a Cease Fire. Much bigger than that. Whether purposely or not, Emmanuel always gets it wrong. Stay tuned!” Later that day, he posted that “[w]e”—a word suggesting U.S. involvement—“now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran,” and he credited U.S. weaponry with that dominance.

About a half-hour later, he posted: “We know exactly where the so-called “Supreme Leader” is hiding. He is an easy target, but is safe there—We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now. But we don’t want missiles shot at civilians, or American soldiers. Our patience is wearing thin.”

As Trump’s “Stay tuned!” suggested, his hints that he could bring the U.S. into the conflict monopolized the news. It has pushed the No Kings Day protests and the military parade to the background, putting Trump back on the front page.

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo interpreted Trump’s shift to back Israel as a typical Trump branding opportunity: “Israel has got a product ready to go to market and they’ve offered Trump the opportunity to slap the Trump name on it.” In the short term, that product offers a quick way to get rid of the Iranian nuclear program, which has long been a U.S. goal.

But Trump’s flirting with joining a Middle East war has badly split his supporters. Led by Steve Bannon, the isolationist wing is strongly opposed to intervention and suggests that the U.S. will once again be stuck in an endless war.

In contrast, the evangelical MAGA wing sees support for Israel as central to the return of Jesus Christ to Earth in the end times. Earlier this month the U.S. ambassador to Israel, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, said the U.S. was abandoning its longstanding support for a Palestinian state. Huckabee is a strong supporter of the expansion of Israel’s settlements. After the Israeli strikes, Huckabee messaged Trump to urge him to listen to the voice of God. In an apparent reference to Truman’s decision to drop a nuclear weapon on Japan at the end of World War II, Huckabee told Trump: “No President in my lifetime has been in a position like yours. Not since Harry Truman in 1945.”

At the unveiling of two 88-foot-tall (30.5 meters) flagpoles at the White House yesterday, Trump told reporters who asked what he planned to do about Iran: “I mean, you don’t know that I’m going to even do it. You don’t know. I may do it, I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do.” He added, “Nothing’s finished until it’s finished. You know, war is very complex. A lot of bad things can happen. A lot of turns are made.”

He told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins: “I have ideas as to what to do, but I haven’t made a final—I like to make the final decision one second before it’s due, you know, because things change.”

Meanwhile, in a hearing yesterday at the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) pointed out to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that the $1 billion mission he led against the Houthis—who do not have a navy—has not restored the ability of U.S.-flagged commercial vessels to go through the Red Sea. Instead, it cost the U.S. two F18 Hornets, which cost $60 million apiece, and seven Reaper drones that cost another $200 million. Duckworth accused Hegseth of “blowing through money” and said: “Your failures…since you've taken office, have been staggering. You sent classified operational information over Signal to chest thump in front of your wife, who, by the way, has no security clearance, risking service member lives in the process…. You’ve created such a hostile command environment that no one wants to serve as your chief of staff or work with you in other senior lead [Department of Defense] leadership roles.”

“But what we should all be talking about more than all of this,” she added, “is that you have an unjustified, un-American misuse of the military in American cities, pulling resources and attention away from core missions to the detriment of the country, the war fighters, and, yes, the war fighting that you claim to love.”

Warren P. Strobel, Alex Horton, and Abigail Hauslohner of the Washington Post reported yesterday that Hegseth and Gabbard have been sidelined in discussions of whether the U.S. will get involved in the conflict. The White House is also operating without a full complement of professional staffers at the National Security Council, since Rubio fired many of them when he took over from Waltz, apparently with the goal of replacing the think-tank mentality of past NSCs with a group that would simply implement the president’s ideas.

Talking Points Memo’s Marshall noted Tuesday that “there is really, literally no one in the inner discussion of U.S. foreign policy today who has any level of foreign policy or military crisis experience at all.”

Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of lawmakers is pushing back on the idea that Trump can unilaterally decide to take the United States into a war. On Monday, Democratic senator Tim Kaine of Virginia introduced a measure to reassert Congress’s power over the authority to make war. The Constitution explicitly gives that authority to Congress, not the president, but presidents have chipped away at that power for decades. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introduced another measure to bar the use of federal funds for military force without authorization by Congress.

Trump’s deploys Marines to LA to respond to protests

Today President Donald J. Trump made it clear that the provocations he and his administration are escalating in Los Angeles and now elsewhere are using the issue of immigration to suppress dissent entirely.

In the Oval Office today, Trump said of the military parade scheduled for this Saturday: “If there’s any protester wants to come out, they will be met with very big force…. For those people that want to protest, they’re going to be met with very big force.”

His statement comes after the administration instituted aggressive immigration sweeps in Los Angeles during which Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) met the few hundred protesters with violence.

Then, over the protests of both Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass and California governor Gavin Newsom, Trump federalized 4,000 members of California’s National Guard and ordered 700 Marines to Los Angeles. He and his advisors have repeatedly threatened to arrest anyone who does not cooperate with ICE, including Mayor Bass and Governor Newsom.

Trump has said he based his decision to federalize the National Guard on his insistence that Los Angeles is staggering under violent riots, but in fact the protests are largely peaceful and local officials maintain they can handle the situation.

Still, Trump described Los Angeles as “invaded and occupied by Illegal Aliens and Criminals,” and said “violent insurrectionist mobs are swarming and attacking our Federal Agents to try and stop our deportation operations.” Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem called Los Angeles a “city of criminals,” and other MAGA lawmakers have gotten into the act. Will Sommer of The Bulwark pointed out today that MAGA influencers are also pushing for more crackdowns and more cruelty in a feedback loop as they and White House officials push each other toward more and more cruelty toward immigrants.

But the narrative that L.A. is under siege is hard to make stick. Protesters have been filming the bands playing and people dancing at the protests, which remain small. They have also filmed the ICE agents shooting less-lethal bullets at individuals, including an Australian journalist who was speaking to a camera when she was shot from behind. The complaint against SEIU leader David Huerta, who has been charged with conspiring to impede an officer, says that he walked and sat on a public sidewalk in such a way that he blocked an ICE van before an officer pushed him to the ground and arrested him.

Economist Paul Krugman notes that “Los Angeles right now is probably as safe as it has ever been,” and Newsom has been meeting the claims of MAGA politicians that the city is a hellscape with actual statistics showing that California is safer than their own states. He reminded Oklahoma senator Markwayne Mullin that Oklahoma’s murder rate is 40% higher than California’s and, after Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville called for Newsom to be arrested, retorted: “Alabama has 3X the homicide rate of California. Its murder rate is ranked third in the entire country. Stick to football, bro.”

As Maria Sacchetti of the Washington Post noted today, California recently became the fourth largest economy in the world. It has the highest number of immigrants in the country—although many have moved in the past few years to more affordable states—and unemployment numbers are close to the national average.

But Trump has always managed his public affairs by projecting dominance in a fake world; his political instincts for keeping attention on himself have been compared to the kayfabe of professional wrestling.

This afternoon he upped the ante again. In a speech at the Army base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Trump delivered a fiercely partisan speech that sounded like it was written by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller. In front of a crowd of enlisted personnel who journalist Jane Coaston reported had been carefully selected to be Trump supporters and “to be fit and not look fat,” Trump claimed the U.S. was under a “foreign invasion” because of “stupid people or radical Left people or sick people.” He goaded the personnel into booing Newsom and Bass.

Since the days of George Washington, the American armed forces have been strictly nonpartisan, declaring their allegiance to the U.S. Constitution itself rather than to any leader.

Simon Rosenberg of Hopium Chronicles noted that Trump is “turning the world’s powerful military away from its focus on Russia and China toward a new enemy—the American people themselves.” He mused: “I’ve been saying that I felt Trump’s dramatic escalation in recent days was driven in part by Musk’s emasculation of him last week. I also wonder whether it’s being driven by Zelensky’s profound humiliation of Putin, and Putin lashing out at Trump for not delivering Ukraine to him.”

Steven Lee Myers of the New York Times reported today that right-wing bots, trolls, conspiracy theorists, and MAGA influencers are flooding social media with messages designed to attack immigrants and Democrats and defend Trump. Many of those accounts are linked to Russia and Russian disinformation.

It certainly feels as if administration officials are going for broke in ways that benefit Russia. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard today released a video warning that the world is close to a nuclear war caused by a political elite that expects it can survive one in special bunkers. Gabbard has a history of parroting Russian propaganda, and famously, Russian president Vladimir Putin has used the threat of nuclear war to press his demands against Ukraine.

A YouGov poll out today shows that only 34% of American adults approve of Trump’s deployment of Marines to the Los Angeles area to respond to protests over the enforcement of immigration laws while 47% do not approve. Only 38% of American adults approve of Trump’s deployment of National Guard soldiers to L.A., while 45% disapprove. A strong majority—56%—of Americans think state and local officials should take the lead in responding to the L.A. protests, while only 25% think the federal government should.

Strikingly, 50% of adults disapprove of the administration's handling of deportations, while only 39% approve.

Those numbers were gathered before Pentagon comptroller Bryn MacDonnell told the House Defense Appropriations Committee today that the Pentagon estimates the cost of federalizing the National Guard and deploying the Marines to Los Angeles at $134 million.

Today the Department of Justice announced it was indicting Representative LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) on three counts of “forcibly impeding and interfering with federal law enforcement officers” after a May 19 event in front of a Newark, New Jersey, ICE detention center. McIver was at the detention center with others as part of her oversight responsibilities, and a video shows her being jostled with a crowd that includes an ICE officer, but no one breaks stride. McIver called the charges “a brazen attempt at political intimidation.”

Tonight Governor Newsom delivered a prime-time address about the events of the past few days. He outlined the story of the ICE raids and Trump’s escalation of conflict. He urged protesters to exercise their First Amendment rights peacefully and warned that anyone participating in violence would be held accountable.

Then the governor launched into a wholesale condemnation of the Trump regime. He warned that “[i]f some of us can be snatched off the streets without a warrant, based only on suspicion or skin color, then none of us are safe. Authoritarian regimes begin by targeting people who are least able to defend themselves. But they do not stop there.”

Newsom called Trump out for firing the government watchdogs that could hold him accountable for fraud, and for declaring war “on culture, on history, on science, on knowledge itself. Databases quite literally are vanishing. He’s delegitimizing news organizations and he’s assaulting the First Amendment…. [H]e’s dictating what universities themselves can teach. He’s targeting law firms and the judicial branch that are the foundations of an orderly and civil society. He’s calling for a sitting governor to be arrested for no other reason than…, in his own words, ‘for getting elected.’”

“[T]his isn’t just about protests here in Los Angeles,” Newsom said. “When Donald Trump sought blanket authority to commandeer the National Guard, he made that order apply to every state in this nation. This is about all of us. This is about you. California may be first, but it clearly will not end here. Other states are next.”

“Democracy is under assault right before our eyes,” Newsom said. “This moment we have feared has arrived. He’s taking a wrecking ball…to our founding fathers’ historic project: three coequal branches of independent government.”

Newsom urged Americans to stand up for the country. “I know many of you are feeling deep anxiety, stress, and fear,” he said. “But I want you to know that you are the antidote to that fear and that anxiety. What Donald Trump wants most is your fealty, your silence, to be complicit in this moment,” Newsom said.

“Do not give in to him.”

Musk Hints At a Truce, Trump Not So Willing

Last night, billionaire Elon Musk indicated he would be willing to paper over his fight with President Donald J. Trump, perhaps remembering, as Paresh Dave of Wired noted, that his companies stand to lose $48 billion over the next ten years if they lose their government contracts.

Trump spent this morning calling news anchors and telling them he’s not bothered by the fight. According to Nikki McCann Ramirez of Rolling Stone, Trump today called CNN’s Dana Bash, the Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier, ABC News’ Jonathan Karl, and CBS News’ Robert Costa to claim he’s “not even thinking about Elon,” before bashing him as “the man who has lost his mind.”

Yesterday, Lauren Goode of Wired reported that big tech investors and executives were trying to walk a fine line between the two men, trying not to take a stand for or against either. J.V. Last of The Bulwark noted that no one was more hesitant to take a side than Vice President J.D. Vance, who wants to keep the favor of his Silicon Valley patrons but also needs Trump’s backing. At 10:28 last night, after Musk was already retreating, Vance posted on social media: “President Trump has done more than any person in my lifetime to earn the trust of the movement he leads. I’m proud to stand beside him.” As Last notes, this was a pretty weak statement, and “Trump is smart enough to understand that this is a confession.”

“Do not doubt, don’t second guess, and do not challenge the President of the United States Donald Trump,” House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) warned Republican lawmakers. “He is the leader of the party. He’s the most consequential political figure of our time.”

After Russian officials said they were prepared to offer Musk political asylum, Musk spent the day posting or reposting material that boosted his businesses and complaints about Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill.” This evening, he announced: “A new political party is needed in America to represent the 80% in the middle!”

How the fallout from this fight will affect the country remains unclear.

Russia Strikes Ukraine in Retaliation for Covert Drone Operation & Other News

 

Russia Strikes Ukraine in Retaliation for Covert Drone Operation - At least three were killed and 49 injured in a missile-and-drone attack that focused on Kyiv, days after a daring assault on Moscow’s bomber fleet.

• Trump administration is seeking to weaken Sen. Lindsey Graham’s Russia-sanctions bill. The White House wants flexibility in applying sanctions to aid Russia ties. Graham’s bill has bipartisan support, though he has said he plans to make at least some changes to the bill.

• The Supreme Court made it easier for workers to sue for reverse discrimination.  The court’s unanimous decision Thursday revives a lawsuit brought by Marlean Ames, who alleged the Ohio state agency where she works denied her a promotion, and then demoted her, because she is heterosexual.

  Trump's new travel ban is expected to be harder to fight in court than the previous version. In its Wednesday proclamation, the Trump administration provided specific rationales, saying several of the countries have unacceptably high temporary-visa overstay rates, necessitating a ban on more of their nationals entering the U.S.

  A judge blocked Trump’s ban on foreign students at Harvard. The federal judge issued a temporary restraining order against the Homeland Security Department that prevents it from “implementing, instituting, maintaining, enforcing, or giving force or effect” to a proclamation Trump issued late Wednesday that prevented foreign nationals from entering the U.S. to study at Harvard University. Israel has been collaborating with a Palestinian militia in Gaza as part of a broader effort to fight Hamas in the enclave. Trump and Xi Jinping spoke on the phone. Trump called it a “very positive” conversation, and the U.S. and China agreed to hold more trade talks. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, said he wanted to expand access to “experimental,” unproven medical treatments like stem-cell and chelation therapies. But he conceded that the industry was rife with fraud.

On Trump, Musk and Putin

 

Trump and Musk

Trump’s decision to pull an Elon Musk associate out of the running to lead NASA helped doom the Trump-Musk alliance. Read the inside story of the rupture. MAGA-friendly podcasters, including Joe Rogan, just want Trump and Musk to get along — but they have ultimately sided with the president. The Trump-Musk breakup is more than an interpersonal conflict: It’s a sign that Trump is struggling to hold his populist conservative coalition together, Nate Cohn writes.

On Trump and Putin

Thomas Crooks, the man who tried to kill Trump in Pennsylvania last year, was a nerdy engineering student on the dean’s list. As his mental health eroded, he stockpiled explosive materials. Read a Times examination of his path to the deadly shooting. On the campaign trail, Trump said he would reveal deep-state secrets linked to conspiracy theories. Justice Department and F.B.I. leaders are struggling to fulfill the promise. A university founded by George Soros had to leave Hungary after Viktor Orban targeted it. Academics at the school say Trump is using a similar playbook against Harvard. In public, Vladimir Putin says Russia’s friendship with China is unshakable. But a secret Russian intelligence document shows deep suspicion of Chinese espionage.

The Break-Up: Trump vs. Musk

Elon Musk and President Trump in the Oval Office last week. Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times

Today the U.S. political world was consumed today by a public fight between President Donald J. Trump and his former sidekick, billionaire Elon Musk. Musk invested about $290 million into the 2024 election, vowing to elect Trump in order to get rid of government investigations into his businesses he worried would “take [him] down.”

When Trump took office, Musk became a fixture in the White House, attending Cabinet meetings and heading the “Department of Government Efficiency.” That group set out to kill government programs by withholding congressionally approved funds at the same time that its staff sucked up information on Americans that could feed the training of artificial intelligence and killed the investigations into his businesses Musk had worried about.

In February, Musk posted on social media: “I love [Donald Trump] as much as a straight man can love another man.”

But Musk overstepped boundaries and overstayed his welcome even as his antics hurt sales of his signature car, the Tesla, inspiring Trump to do a car commercial for him on the White House grounds. Just a week ago, Musk officially left the White House on the same day that an article in the New York Times documented his heavy drug use on the campaign.

Then, on Tuesday, June 3, he took a public stand against the omnibus bill Trump desperately wants Congress to pass, posting on X: “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”

And with that, the falling out began.

This morning, Trump told reporters he was “disappointed” in Musk. Ron Filipkowski of Meidas followed the saga from there.

“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House, and the Republicans would be 51–49 in the Senate,” Musk wrote. “Such ingratitude.”

Trump then suggested that “The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”

Musk promptly said he would begin decommissioning SpaceX’s spacecraft, which supply the International Space Station.

The two men continued to go back and forth, with Musk saying that “Donald Trump is in the Epstein files,” a reference to the records compiled by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, with whom Trump was friendly. Musk also said Trump's tariffs will cause a recession, and agreed with another poster who suggested that Trump should be impeached and replaced with Vice President J.D. Vance.

Trump responded to that attack far more weakly than one would have expected, simply turning back to the omnibus bill and insisting it “is one of the Greatest Bills ever presented to Congress.”

Musk’s behavior is erratic in its own right, but if there is anything but pique behind it, it appears he is threatening Trump by making a play to control the Republican Party. In response to a post by conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer suggesting that Republican lawmakers are unsure if they should side with Trump or Musk, Musk wrote: “Oh and some food for thought as they ponder that question: Trump has 3.5 years left as President, but I will be around for 40+ years.”

It’s quite a gamble, since Trump controls the government contracts on which Musk’s fortune was built and on which he still relies. Some MAGA loyalists appear to see the fight as a victory for Trump and are thrilled to see Musk’s star fall. MAGA influencer Steve Bannon told Tyler Pager of the New York Times that he has advised Trump to cancel all of Musk’s federal contracts and launch a formal investigation of his drug use and his immigration status.

Kylie Robison and Aarian Marshall of Wired noted that TrumpCoin lost more than $100 million in value during the fight. Tesla stock lost $152 billion of value from its market capitalization,

Chancellor says Berlin and Kyiv will jointly develop long-range weapons to strike Russia and Other International News.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Berlin on Wednesday. PHOTO: SOEDER/EPA-EFE/SHUTTERSTOCK/SHUTTERSTOCK

Key Points

Germany will increase financial and military aid to Ukraine, signaling Europe’s move to replace the U.S. as Kyiv’s key military supporter.

Germany and Ukraine will start a joint program to produce long-range weapons for use against Russian targets, a new form of military cooperation.

European leaders seek additional sanctions on Russia for refusing a cease-fire and worry Trump might abandon mediation efforts

Trump Clemency, Immigration, Tariff News & Israel

Trump has granted clemency in recent days to 26 people, including a former gang leader. Trump’s pardons or commutations included former lawmakers (ex-GOP Rep. Michael Grimm), reality-television stars (Todd and Julie Chrisley) and Larry Hoover, a onetime gang leader convicted of murder. And Trump said he was thinking about pardoning the men behind bars for conspiring to kidnap Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer over her Covid-19 policies.

Trump also commuted the six federal life sentences of Chicago gang leader Larry Hoover, 74, who was convicted of murder, extortion, money laundering, and drug related offenses, and from prison ran a notorious drug gang that had about 30,000 members across 31 states and brought in an estimated $100 million a year. Hoover still faces what’s left of a 200-year sentence in Illinois for murder.

ImmigrationFederal agents are showing up unannounced at schools, homes and migrant shelters to interview unaccompanied migrant children. Critics say the visits are a pretext to deport the children.

Tariffs

A panel of federal judges blocked some of Trump’s tariffs, ruling that he did not have the “unbounded authority” to tax imports from nearly every country in the world.
The ruling gave the administration up to 10 days to complete the process of halting the tariffs. The government immediately filed plans to appeal the decision.
Global markets jumped after the court’s decision, Reuters reports.

Israel

The U.N. denounced a new Israeli-backed operation to distribute aid in Gaza, a day after a chaotic start. The operation, which bypasses the U.N., is run by private U.S. contractors and secured by Israeli soldiers.

China
The Chinese government has sent thousands of Uyghurs to work in factories that supply brands like Tesla, McDonald’s and Samsung. Click the video below to see David Pierson, a Times reporter, explain the findings of an investigation.

Trump's Upcoming Week

Trump in the Middle East

Trump will tour the Gulf this week. He’s looking for business deals.

America’s dominance over A.I. chips will be a powerful source of leverage in those talks.

Saudi Arabia has promised to invest $600 million in the U.S. over Trump’s presidency. Trump wants $1 trillion. Economists say neither sum is realistic, Vivian Nereim writes.

More on the Trump Administration

Top buyers of a Trump family crypto coin could win a private dinner with the president and a White House tour. Some buyers said they hope for a chance to influence policy.

Dozens of white South Africans, granted refugee status by Trump, are on their way to the U.S. They claim to have been victims of discrimination.

Dartmouth is the only Ivy League university that has avoided Trump’s retribution. The school’s president has been careful.