Trump visits the new detention facility in the Fla Everglades designed to hold 5,000 undocumented immigrants.

While the Senate considered the budget reconciliation bill today, Trump visited the new detention facility in the Florida Everglades designed to hold 5,000 undocumented immigrants. The facility will cost $450 million a year, which will be reimbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The Florida attorney general who came up with the plan gave it the name “Alligator Alcatraz,” a cutesy name for tents filled with cages for undocumented immigrants.

It was exactly a year ago today, on July 1, 2024, that the United States Supreme Court decided Donald J. Trump v. United States. The court’s majority overthrew the central premise of American democracy: that no one is above the law.

It decided that the president of the United States, possibly the most powerful person on earth, has “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for crimes committed as part of the official acts at the core of presidential powers. The court also said it should be presumed that the president also has immunity for other official acts as well unless that prosecution would not intrude on the authority of the executive branch.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said that a president needs such immunity to make sure the president is willing to take “bold and unhesitating action” and make unpopular decisions, although no previous president ever asserted that he was above the law or that he needed such immunity to fulfill his role. Roberts’s decision didn’t focus at all on the interest of the American people in guaranteeing that presidents carry out their duties within the guardrails of the law.

The Supreme Court had delayed issuing its decision in that case until the last possible moment, guaranteeing that Trump would not face trial in the two federal criminal cases pending against him, one charging him with willfully retaining national defense information by taking classified information with him when he left office, and the other for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

A year later, today provided a snapshot of what happens to a democracy when a president feels he can disregard the law.

Trump’s Education Department announced today it is withholding $6.8 billion in funding for K–12 schools that, by law, was supposed to be disbursed starting today. By law, the executive branch must disburse appropriations Congress has passed, but Trump and his officers have simply ignored the law, saying they believe it is unconstitutional. The Constitution provides that Congress alone has the power to write laws and charges the president with taking “Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”

But it was at a press conference in Ochopee, Florida, today that Trump showed just how profoundly the immunity conferred on him a year ago is undermining democracy.

Trump continues to say he will arrest and deport U.S. citizens to third countries. On April 14, a microphone picked up Trump’s comment to President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador that “homegrowns are next” after the undocumented immigrants Bukele was imprisoning for Trump. Today, Trump told reporters that “bad criminals” have migrated to the U.S., “but we also have a lot of bad people that have been here for a long time. People that whacked people over the head with a baseball bat from behind when they're not looking and kill them, people that knife you when you're walking down the street. They're not new to our country. They're old to our country. Many of them were born in our country. I think we ought to get them the hell out of here, too. You want to know the truth? So maybe that’ll be the next job that we'll work on together.”

He is also continuing to push the idea of attacking his political opponents. Today, Trump called for an investigation into Alejandro Mayorkas, homeland security secretary under President Joe Biden. He also threatened to arrest the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani, if he doesn’t work with ICE agents to arrest migrants, although local and state governments have no legal obligation to work with federal immigration enforcement. Trump claimed—incorrectly—that Mamdani is a communist, and said that “a lot of people are saying he’s here illegally.” In fact, Mamdani is a naturalized citizen.

Today Alan Feuer and Adam Goldman of the New York Times reported that a former FBI agent, Jared Wise, who was charged with telling the January 6, 2021, rioters storming the Capitol to kill police officers, is working with the task force in the Justice Department set up as a way for President Trump to seek retribution against his political enemies.

Once a new system of detention facilities and ICE agents is established and the idea that a Republican president can legitimately attack his political opponents is accepted, a police state will be in place.

Grover Norquist: the solution to societal ills is tax cuts,

Grover Norquist, a lawyer for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and one of the key architects of the Republican argument that the solution to societal ills is tax cuts, in 2010 described to Rebecca Elliott of the Harvard Crimson how he sees the role of government. “Government should enforce [the] rule of law,” he said. “It should enforce contracts, it should protect people bodily from being attacked by criminals. And when the government does those things, it is facilitating liberty. When it goes beyond those things, it becomes destructive to both human happiness and human liberty.”

Norquist vehemently opposed taxation, saying that “it’s not any of the government’s business who earns what, as long as they earn it legitimately,” and proposed cutting government spending down to 8% of gross domestic product, or GDP, the value of the final goods and services produced in the United States.

The last time the level of government spending was at that 8% of GDP was 1933, before the New Deal. In that year, after years of extraordinary corporate profits, the banking system had collapsed, the unemployment rate was nearly 25%, prices and productivity were plummeting, wages were cratering, factories had shut down, farmers were losing their land to foreclosure. Children worked in the fields and factories, elderly and disabled people ate from garbage cans, unregulated banks gambled away people’s money, and business owners treated their workers as they wished. Within a year the Great Plains would be blowing away as extensive deep plowing had damaged the land, making it vulnerable to drought. Republican leaders insisted the primary solution to the crisis was individual enterprise and private charity.

When he accepted the Democratic nomination for president in July 1932, New York governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt vowed to steer between the radical extremes of fascism and communism to deliver a “New Deal” to the American people.

The so-called alphabet soup of the New Deal gave us the regulation of banks and businesses, protections for workers, an end to child labor in factories, repair of the damage to the Great Plains, new municipal buildings and roads and airports, rural electrification, investment in artists and writers, and Social Security for workers who were injured or unemployed. Government outlays as a percentage of GDP began to rise. World War II shot them off the charts, to more than 40% of GDP, as the United States helped the world fight fascism.

That number dropped again after the war, and in 1975, federal expenditures settled in at about 20% of GDP. Except for short-term spikes after financial crises (spending shot up to 24% after the 2008 crash, for example, and to 31% during the 2020 pandemic), the spending-to-GDP ratio has remained at about that set point.

The national debt is growing because tax revenues have plummeted. Tax cuts under the George W. Bush and Trump administrations are responsible for 57% of the increase in the ratio of the debt to the economy, 90% if you exclude the emergency expenditures of the pandemic, and have left the United States with a tax burden nowhere close to the average of the 38 other nations in the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), all of which are market-oriented democracies. And those cuts have gone primarily to the wealthy and corporations.

Republicans who backed those tax cuts now want more. They are trying to force through a measure that will dramatically cut the nation’s social safety net while at the same time increasing the national debt by $3.3 trillion over the next ten years.

“There are two ways of viewing the government's duty in matters affecting economic and social life,” FDR said in his speech accepting the 1932 Democratic nomination for president. “The first sees to it that a favored few are helped and hopes that some of their prosperity will leak through, sift through, to labor, to the farmer, to the small business man.” The other “is based upon the simple moral principle: the welfare and the soundness of a Nation depend first upon what the great mass of the people wish and need; and second, whether or not they are getting it.”

The Republicans’ budget reconciliation bill takes wealth from the American people to give it to the very wealthy and corporations, and Democrats are calling their colleagues out.

After War With Israel and U.S., Iran Rests on a Knife Edge

The Islamic Republic limps on after the 12-day conflict. Where will the nation go from here?

In Tehran on Tuesday, the morning of a cease-fire with Israel.Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times

By Roger Cohen
Reporting from Dubai
June 29, 2025
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Roxana Saberi felt like she was back behind bars in Tehran. As she watched Israel’s bombing of Evin prison, the notorious detention facility at the core of Iran’s political repression, she shuddered at memories of solitary confinement, relentless interrogation, fabricated espionage charges and a sham trial during her 100-day incarceration in 2009.

Like many Iranians in the diaspora and at home, Ms. Saberi wavered, torn between her dreams of a government collapse that would free the country’s immense potential and her concern for family and friends as the civilian death toll mounted. Longings for liberation and for a cease-fire vied with each other.

“For a moment, I imagined seeing Iran again in my lifetime,” said Ms. Saberi, 48, a dual Iranian and American citizen and author who has taken a break from her journalistic career. “I also thought how ridiculous it was that the Islamic Republic wasted decades accusing thousands of women’s rights advocates, dissidents and others of being spies, when they couldn’t catch the real spies.”

Those spies, mainly from Israel’s Mossad foreign intelligence service, penetrated Iran’s highest political and military echelons. The question now is what a shaken Islamic Republic in dire economic straits will do with what President Masoud Pezeshkian, a moderate, has called “a golden opportunity for change.” That moment is also one of extreme, even existential, risk brought on by the 12-day Israeli-Iranian war that the United States briefly joined.

The military campaign flirted with dislodging the clerical autocracy that has made uranium enrichment the symbol of Iran’s national pride, but stopped short of killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s 86-year-old supreme leader, even though Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel had said that the ayatollah’s death would “end the conflict.” The 46-year-old Islamic Republic limps on.

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Holding photos of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, and his predecessor in Tehran in April.Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times

It does so despite the collapse of its “axis of resistance” that was formed through the funding, at vast expense, of anti-Western proxies from Lebanon to Yemen; despite the devastating bombing of its equally exorbitant nuclear facilities that never produced a bomb and scarcely lit a lightbulb; and despite the humiliation of surrendering the skies above Iran to its enemies.

Yet Mr. Khamenei, as the guardian of the theocratic anti-Western revolution that triumphed in 1979, sees himself as the victor. “The Islamic Republic won,” he said in a video broadcast on Thursday from a secret location, laying to rest rumors of his demise.

His is a survival game dosed with prudence that now faces the greatest test of his 36 years in power.

“To understand Iran and Khamenei and the people around him is to understand that the Islamic Republic’s survival is always a victory,” said Sanam Vakil, the director of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House, a London think tank.
Revolution at a Crossroads

Already, tensions over how to address the crisis brought on by the war are evident.

President Pezeshkian appears to favor a liberalizing makeover, repairing relations with the West through a possible nuclear deal. He has spoken in recent days of “an opportunity to change our views on governance.”

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President Masoud Pezeshkian at a protest in Tehran this month after U.S. attacks on nuclear sites in Iran.Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times

It was not clear what he meant, but many in Iran favor strengthening elected institutions and making the supreme leader more of a figurehead than the ultimate font of authority. They seek an Islamic Republic that is more of a republic, where women are empowered and a younger generation no longer feels oppressed by a gerontocratic theological system.

Mr. Khamenei insisted that the Israeli and American attack on nuclear facilities had failed “to achieve anything significant.” But Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi seemed to question that judgment, saying on Thursday that the country’s nuclear facilities had sustained “significant and serious damage.”

Hardliners see any disunity as a danger signal. They believe concessions presage collapse. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, 69 years after its formation, and the “color revolutions” that brought Western democracy to post-Soviet states, deeply affected Mr. Khamenei and his entourage.
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They are suspicious of any nuclear deal, and adamant that Iran must retain the right to enrich uranium on its soil, which Israel and the United States have said is unacceptable. They are also strongly represented in the country’s single most powerful institution, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

The Guards number 150,000 to 190,000 members, Ms. Vakil said. With control over vast swaths of the economy, they have a deep vested interest in the government’s survival. They are the kind of large institutional buffer that President Bashar al-Assad in Syria lacked before his downfall last year.

Already, as it did in 2009 when a large-scale uprising threatened the toppling of the Islamic Republic, Iran has embarked on a crackdown involving hundreds of arrests, at least three executions, and the deployment of the Revolutionary Guards and Basij militia in Kurdish and other restive areas.
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Members of Basij paramilitary forces marching at a parade in Tehran in January.Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times

Iranians have seen this movie before. Some wonder what the war was for if they are to face another bludgeoning. “The people want to know who is to blame for multiple defeats, but there is no leader to take on the regime,” said Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a prominent political scientist in the United Arab Emirates. “A weak Islamic Republic could hang on four or five years.”

This weakness appears deep. The “victory” claimed by Mr. Khamenei cannot disguise the fact that Iran is now a nation with near zero deterrence.

“I would imagine that deep in his bunker, Khamenei’s priority must be how to rebuild a deterrence that was based on the nuclear program, the missile program and armed proxies, all now in shreds,” said Jeffrey Feltman, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington and, as United Nations under secretary-general for political affairs in 2012, one of the few Americans to have met the supreme leader.

“Khamenei was obsessed with the mendacity and belligerence of the United States,” Mr. Feltman recalled. “His eyes were benevolent, but his words, expressed in a quiet, dull monotone, were anything but benevolent.”
Paranoia, Institutionalized

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Mr. Khamenei’s predecessor, promised freedom when he came to power in the 1979 revolution that threw out a shah seen as a pawn of the secular and decadent West. It was not to be. Tensions soon erupted between those who had fought for democracy and those for whom theocratic rule was more important.
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Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the current supreme leader's predecessor, blessing a crowd in Tehran in 1979.Credit...Michel Lipchitz/Associated Press

The Islamic Republic’s first president, Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, was impeached and ousted after a little more than a year in office, for challenging the rule of the clerics. He fled to France. Thousands were executed as the government consolidated its power.

War engulfed the revolutionary country in 1980, when Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi leader, ordered an invasion. The fighting would go on for eight years, leaving an estimated 500,000 people dead, most of them on the Iranian side, before Ayatollah Khomeini drank from “the poison chalice,” as he put it, and accepted an end to the war.

The generation that fought that war, now largely forgotten in the West, forms much of the political and military elite in Iran today. They came away from the war convinced of American perfidy in light of U.S. military support for Iraq, persuaded of Iranian resilience and viscerally dedicated to the revolution for which they had seen so many fall.

“The war, in many cases, embedded a paranoid worldview, a sense of victimization that has led the elite, and particularly Khamenei, to be unaware of how the world is evolving around them,” Ms. Vakil said.

All of this has shaped the nazam, or system. It is now thoroughly institutionalized. Change has proved difficult and conflict has festered. In the more than four decades since the revolution, the century-long Iranian quest for some workable compromise between clericalism and secularism, one that denies neither the country’s profound Islamic faith nor its broad attraction to liberal values, has endured.

At times, the tension has flared into violent confrontation, as when more than two million people took to the streets in 2009 to protest what they saw as a stolen election that returned President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power.

The vote had been preceded by weeks of vigorous televised presidential debates, watched by tens of millions of people, and the rapid rise of Mir-Hossein Moussavi’s liberalizing Green Movement. All that evaporated as the Revolutionary Guards and Basij militia clubbed protesters into submission over the days after the vote.

Seldom, if ever, had the two faces of the Islamic Republic been so evident, one vibrant and freedom-seeking, the other harsh and closed, succeeding each other at hallucinogenic speed.

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An image from social media showing a protest in western Iran in 2022 over the death of Mahsa Amini.Credit...via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

More recently, in 2022, a wave of protests erupted after a young woman, Mahsa Amini, died in the custody of Iran’s morality police soon after her arrest for failing to cover her hair with a hijab. The movement reflected deep exasperation at the notion that aging clerics should tell women how to dress, and it led to some change. Many more women now go without hijabs; reprimands have become rarer and milder.

The government’s ability to suppress challenges, through repression and adaptation, reflects its strong survival instincts, and complicates assessments of its possible durability even as a clear majority of Iranians oppose it.

So, too, does popular weariness after a century of upheavals that have left Iranians with little taste for further turmoil and bloodshed.

“The people of Iran are fed up with being pariahs, and some were more saddened by the cease-fire than the war itself,” said Dherar Belhoul al-Falasi, a former member of the United Arab Emirates’ Federal National Council who now heads a consultancy focused on risk management.

“But we here in the Gulf are status quo powers that favor stability,” he added.

A toppling of the Islamic Republic would likely have little support among Gulf States, which include Saudi Arabia, not out of any love for Mr. Khamenei, but out a desire to remain havens of peace and prosperity.

“For now, I don’t see any forces gelling to go up against the regime,” said Mr. Feltman. “But Israel will strike again if it sees any redevelopment of Iran’s nuclear or ballistic programs.”
Iran at an Impasse

Ms. Saberi’s hopes rose and fell during the recent fighting as she sat in her parents’ home in North Dakota. Against her better instincts, she found herself digging out her Iranian passport as the 12 days passed, and considering renewing it.

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Roxana Saberi, a dual Iranian and American citizen, was incarcerated for 100 days in Tehran in 2009.Credit...Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters

She has not visited Iran in the 16 years since her release, knowing that return, as she put it, “would be a one-way ticket.” But the tug of her second home, Iran, where she lived for six years, endures.

“Iran’s in our heart, it’s in our blood, there is nowhere in the world like it, and I know so many Iranians in the diaspora who would go back and contribute if the regime falls,” she said. “My dad, in his 80s, spends his time translating Persian poetry.”


Roger Cohen is the Paris Bureau chief for The Times, covering France and beyond. He has reported on wars in Lebanon, Bosnia and Ukraine, and between Israel and Gaza, in more than four decades as a journalist. At The Times, he has been a correspondent, foreign editor and columnist.

U.N. Inspector Says Iran Could Be Enriching Fuel Again in a ‘Matter of Months’

The assessment widens the divide with President Trump, who has claimed that Tehran has given up its nuclear ambitions after a U.S. attack.

An analysis by Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, on the U.S. attack in Iran is consistent with reports that the strike set back the Iranian nuclear program by only a few months.Credit...Evgeniy Maloletka/Associated Press

By David E. Sanger and Tyler Pager
Reporting from Washington
June 29, 2025


The chief United Nations nuclear inspector has widened the divide with the Trump administration over how severely the United States set back Iran’s nuclear program, declaring that it could be enriching uranium in a “matter of months” even as President Trump repeated his claim that Tehran had lost interest in the effort.

“Frankly speaking, one cannot claim that everything has disappeared and there is nothing there,” Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said in an interview with CBS News that aired on Sunday.

He said that when the United States dropped 14 bunker-busting bombs on Iran’s two uranium enrichment centers, the damage was “severe” but not “total.” In previous interviews, he said he believed that all of the more than 18,000 centrifuges, buried in underground enrichment halls, had been destroyed or damaged and knocked out of operation.

But Mr. Grossi’s analysis — one that several European intelligence agencies share — is consistent with a preliminary assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency that was widely reported on last week. That report estimated that the strike set back the Iranian nuclear program by only a few months. The C.I.A. director said later in the week that the Iranian program had been severely damaged, and the U.S. intelligence agencies were continuing to assess the strike.

The Defense Intelligence Agency report appeared to focus on the enrichment process at the sites where the GBU-57 bunker-busters, among the most powerful in the U.S. arsenal, were used. Later analysis by outside groups suggested that the biggest loss for Iran might have been the destruction of facilities to turn that fuel into a weapon. In particular, damage to a laboratory under construction in the nuclear complex outside the ancient city of Isfahan, which is intended to convert enriched uranium into a metal, may prove a major bottleneck in Iran’s ability to convert highly enriched uranium into the metal that is needed to produce a weapon.

Rebuilding that capability, other experts have said, could take years. And much depends on whether Iran throws out I.A.E.A. inspectors — who remained in Tehran throughout the conflict with Israel earlier this month — or whether it decides to conduct its work in the open. Either way, it could be bombed again, as Mr. Trump has said in recent days he is quite willing to do.

5 takeaways from the Diddy trial as jury deliberates to reach a verdict

People try to get a view and record and photograph Sean "Diddy" Combs’ family as they leave the courthouse at the end of Friday. Jury deliberations are expected to being Monday. (Aristide Economopoulos/for The Washington Post)


From the cult of celebrity to the complexities of coercion, several themes emerged during seven weeks of testimony in Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’s sex-trafficking case.


By Anne Branigin and
Shayna Jacobs


NEW YORK — Jury deliberations have begun in the trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs, the music producer turned modern-day Gatsby whose federal racketeering and sex-trafficking case has drawn global attention since it began on May 12.

Combs, 55, faces one count of racketeering conspiracy, two counts of sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion and two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution. If convicted on the most serious of these charges, he faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Tracking Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’s lawsuits

Sean “Diddy” Combs has faced more than 70 sexual assault lawsuits since November 2023. His federal trial over charges of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking began May 12. Follow live updates, and see a breakdown of the prosecution and defense’s closing arguments as well as the witnesses, lawyers and more.

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Outside the courtroom, the trial became a global source of fascination, with the courthouse swarmed by tourists and TikTokers, survivors of sexual abuse and “Free Puff” proponents. The proceedings were crashed by a heckler and Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West. Combs’s mother, Janice, and his adult children maintained a steady show of support.

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As we await the verdict in Diddy's criminal sex trafficking trial, here's what happens before the jury announces their decision. 

In closing arguments, prosecutors argued that Combs was a man who “would not take no for an answer,” relying on power, violence, fear and an inner circle of employees to carry out alleged crimes. To be found guilty of racketeering conspiracy, Judge Arun Subramanian said Combs needed to conspire to commit two illegal acts from a list of eight categories, including distributing drugs for his many “freak-off” parties. Two former girlfriends of Combs, Casandra “Cassie” Ventura and a single mother testifying under the court-approved alias “Jane,” claimed they were coerced into having sex with male escorts and plied with drugs at these parties, which were sometimes filmed.

Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs trial recap: Prosecution’s closing arguments detail sex-...
June 26, 2025

Ventura, Jane and the escorts were willing participants in these meticulously organized sexual activities, the defense team argued. Lead defense attorney Marc Agnifilo said in his closing arguments that prosecutors overreached by applying racketeering conspiracy, “one of the most serious, complicated, comprehensive statutes on the books,” to what was essentially “personal-use drugs and threesomes.”

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Beyond the specific charges in the case, certain themes have emerged from 28 days of testimony. Here’s what to know:

1
A life revolving around freak-offs

Endless sexting, flight bookings, hotel arrangements, candles, baby oil, drugs, meals. Testimony and evidence shown ad nauseam at this trial reveal just how extraordinary and involved Sean “Diddy” Combs’s sex life was and how central it was to his existence.

Combs and his staff prepared extensively for his freak-offs — which sometimes took the hip-hop mogul away from his regular life for days at a time.

Planning these encounters was a group effort, requiring Combs, his staff and his girlfriends to book male escorts, procure drugs and stock up hotel rooms to ensure Combs would be happy and undisturbed for the duration. Prosecutors revealed that federal agents found around 900 bottles of lubricant in his Los Angeles mansion alone, and that he had freak-off supplies in his hotel room when he was arrested in New York in September.

All of it points to a person completely preoccupied with a particular sexual fantasy and the women who would play their part in it.

The defense has characterized Combs as a swinger, voyeur and homemade porn enthusiast. “I’m under the impression this is a popular thing nowadays,” Combs’s lawyer Agnifilo said during closing arguments.

Combs watches as his defense lawyer Teny Geragos cross-examines witness Special Agent DeLeassa Penland, who presented records related to alleged freak-offs. (Jane Rosenberg/Reuters)

2
The complexities of coercion

Both Ventura and Jane said they followed a freak-off “script” laid out by the hip-hop impresario, who they say gave them drugs such as ecstasy and GHB, which made them more compliant while also keeping them awake. Both testified that a freak-off wouldn’t end until Combs decided. Both told Combs they found the experiences degrading and shameful, but they said they ultimately felt compelled to participate because of the love they felt for him — and the specific ways he manipulated them.

Ventura alleged years of brutal physical abuse surrounding the freak-offs. Jane said Combs discouraged her from using condoms with men she had sex with and alleged that Combs once forced her to perform oral sex on a man immediately after a physical fight in which he gave her a black eye and welts.

Some aspects of their stories feel novel, even challenging, when compared with traditional notions of sex trafficking and its imagery of desperate, vulnerable women unwittingly ending up in isolated sexual servitude while trying to escape poverty or war-torn countries. Theirs was a world of red carpets, designer bags and yacht trips. Combs’s defense pointed out that both women not only expressed enthusiasm for the sex encounters, but seemingly also had the means and opportunity to leave.

The jury in Combs’s criminal trial will be tasked with picking through these details and deeper issues of intent and consent when determining whether the defendant made these women, through force, fraud or coercion, participate in commercial sexual encounters across two decades.

Casandra “Cassie” Ventura and Combs appear at the Met Gala in 2015. (Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)

3
Sean Combs’s cult of celebrity

Several witnesses at this trial who were part of Combs’s inner circle have expressed a cultlike adoration of the Bad Boy Records founder, crediting him with opening up their worlds and uplifting them. Former assistant George Kaplan described Combs as “a god among men” on the stand — even as he said he was horrified to witness Combs’s violence. Others painted a picture of a charismatic figure as capable of breaking people down as he was building them up.

Working for Combs meant being available for him at all hours, according to the testimony of his former staff. One former assistant, using court-approved alias “Mia,” said she once had to stay up for five days without sleep. Another former assistant, Capricorn Clark, said she was hooked up to a lie-detector test in a “dilapidated” building for five consecutive days to test her loyalty. “He used to say that he wants us to move like SEAL Team Six,” former assistant Brendan Paul said of his boss’s lofty expectations.

Combs’s duality was especially apparent to his ex-girlfriends. Ventura, who described being a “fan” of his music, recalled how special she felt receiving personal attention from this larger-than-life figure when she was an emerging pop star. But after signing a 10-album contract with Bad Boy Records, Ventura felt Combs stifled her career, forcing her to record “hundreds” of songs that were never released and, ultimately, making marathon-length freak-offs her “job.”

Janice Combs is dressing for the courtroom drama
June 17, 2025

4
Payoffs and nondisclosure agreements

During the trial it emerged that Sean “Diddy” Combs paid $100,000 to obtain what he thought was the only copy of a 2016 video showing him beating Ventura in a hotel hallway, according to the testimony of Eddy Garcia, a hotel security worker. When a copy of the original footage was released by CNN last year, it ignited outrage and shifted public opinion. Garcia also testified that he signed a nondisclosure agreement as part of the deal.

It was also revealed that Combs paid $20 million to Ventura to settle her explosive 2023 sex-trafficking lawsuit, which spurred federal investigators to begin looking into the music producer.

And Ventura’s friend Kerry Morgan testified that she was paid $30,000 and signed an NDA after Combs allegedly assaulted her at Ventura’s Hollywood Hills home in 2018.

Prosecutors also argued that Combs entered into a $10,000 per month “love contract” with Jane after she started pushing back about their “hotel nights,” or freak-offs. Text messages show that when she later brought up the exploitive nature of their relationship, Combs responded by telling her to remember her beautiful home and smile (per his wishes, Combs also paid for her veneers).

Combs listens as his lawyer Marc Agnifilo makes his closing arguments on Friday. (Jane Rosenberg/Reuters)

5
The trappings of wealth

The sordid repeatedly sidled up to the sumptuous throughout the 28 days of testimony: Combs’s drugs supply was kept at the ready in either a Louis Vuitton or Gucci pouch, members of his entourage noted. He had residences in New York, Los Angeles, Miami and the tony enclave of Alpine, New Jersey, where he kept safes stuffed with cash, jewelry and guns. Freak-offs were held within the rarefied confines of the Beverly Hills Hotel, the L’Hermitage and the Mandarin Oriental, among other luxury addresses. Combs frequently traveled by private jet.

Combs’s wealth — his fortune previously hovered around $300 million — was also on display in the courtroom. He has built a remarkably large team of high-profile attorneys from white-shoe firms, who have fought fiercely on his behalf. Alexandra Shapiro, for instance, is one of the country’s top appellate lawyers. As his team argues his innocence, they’re also simultaneously paving the way for an appeal, should Combs be convicted.

Did Israel and the U.S. Accomplish Their Goals in the Bombing of Iran?

By Bret Stephens

I think the Israelis feel that they have accomplished if not all then many of their strategic military goals in substantially degrading Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities. Although we still don’t yet know how substantial the damage is to Iran’s nuclear endeavors. And then, finally, bringing in the United States to bomb and presumably massively degrade Iran’s facilities underground at Fordo. So I think the Israelis feel like, if they haven’t accomplished 100 percent of their goals, they’ve accomplished 80 percent of them.

President Trump, I think, feels very much like he’s accomplished a goal. He said Iran would not get nuclear weapons. He took action that appeared to be decisive. So far, the blowback from Iran appears to be really minimal, although it’s still the early days, so this could unfold over a long period of time.
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I’m always reminded of that wonderful line attributed to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, that intelligence must never be mistaken for intelligence.

Look, the Israelis had a very different assessment of the state of Iran’s nuclear program, owing partly, I think, to superior collection methods, which they’ve demonstrated again and again that they have the state of Iran’s nuclear program. Their assessments were that Iran was much closer, that they had been, in fact, working on elements of bomb designs. But I think there’s also a kind of a confusion about the way in which bombs get made and the timetable. It’s not like you pass a finish line, so to speak, like a trinity test in the New Mexico desert.

What happens really is that countries enter into a kind of a nuclear gray zone as they’re developing weapons. They’ve acquired sufficient amounts of highly enriched uranium. That’s Part 1 of it. They have developed ballistic missiles, which can deploy or field miniaturized nuclear warheads. And what Iran was doing was sort of very systematically putting together all of those components in a way that didn’t quite provide a clear line, which would say to Western intelligence officials: OK, this is the point of no return. But it was getting incredibly close — uncomfortably close.
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Of course Israel has a dog in the fight, because the Islamic Republic of Iran has been threatening its annihilation, and has been threatening a second Holocaust since it came into power in 1979. So I think it’s quite natural if you’re any Israeli leader, of the left or of the right, that you’re going to take this threat with the utmost seriousness, because this is a regime that states its intentions and then amasses capabilities in order to carry them out. I don’t think we can fault the Israelis for taking this threat seriously.

The reason that we have not had to deal with this previously is because high-quality Israeli intelligence has been succeeding in postponing, delaying or retarding Iran’s nuclear bids for decades. The reason these warnings have not come to fruition is because covert action by Israelis succeeded for a remarkable period of time to consistently postpone Iran’s nuclear bids. Now, it is true that intelligence is sometimes wrong, but I think that the Israelis have demonstrated a capacity for close, remarkable intelligence that I am guessing their counterparts at the C.I.A. could only dream of, in terms of the granularity with which they’ve been able to track down Iranian capabilities and figures that system and harm them.

But the larger point, which Friedrich Merz, the German Chancellor made just the other day, is you don’t build a uranium enrichment facility, 300, 200, 300 meters underground if your intentions are peaceful. You just don’t.
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Iran — a nuclear Iran — is a direct threat to the United States. First of all, if you can lob a missile, say, 1,200 miles, you’re going to sooner or later master the technology to lob a missile 7,000 miles, or whatever it is — whatever the range is of an intercontinental ballistic missile.

Iran is a country that is busy trying to carry out assassinations on American soil, including my friend Masih Alinejad, including our sometimes contributor John Bolton, the former national security adviser of the United States. The Iranians have demonstrated time and again that they’re up for playing dirty tricks at a great distance. But the more important threat, the thing that really should keep American decision makers up at night, is what an Iranian bomb would mean for proliferation in the Middle East. Because if Iran were to acquire a bomb tomorrow, then the Saudis would surely get a bomb either by buying it from the Pakistanis or developing an indigenous capability. The Turks would do it, the Egyptians would do it. Perhaps the Algerians would do it.

And then you have to ask yourself, as a decision maker in Washington: Do you really want five or six nuclear weapon states in the world’s most volatile region, each of them at daggers drawn with one another? All of a sudden, figuring out the kind of nature of deterrence in a region like that becomes really terrifying for American decision makers. So the interest in the United States and preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon isn’t simply that this is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism in possession of the world’s worst weapons. It’s the chain reaction that it sets off throughout the region.

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I think the choice that confronted the Trump administration wasn’t between Iran with a bomb and Iran with no bomb. It was Iran with a bomb and Iran with hopefully no bomb. And the Iranians were moving into a gray zone where it would’ve become almost impossible to stop them through military means. But we’ve probably retarded their program by some substantial period of time. It’s not easy to reassemble all of the industrial equipment that goes into making nuclear weapons. It’s not easy to find ways to do so in secret now that the Iranian regime knows that it’s been so deeply penetrated by Israeli intelligence, and it’s not easy to do so in the teeth of a president who has now demonstrated that he really is willing to use force if necessary. So my guess is that it’ll actually be many years before Iran can reassemble what it had on the eve of its war with Israel just 12 or whatever, 13, 14 days ago.

Now, does that mean Iran will see the light and realize it needs to invest in economic development rather than squander resources on nuclear capability? I don’t know. But I actually think there’s a better chance of that than people assume. Of course the lesson the Iranians might draw is we should have gotten a nuclear weapon much sooner, and now they’ll be hellbent on acquiring one. It’s possible that all of their national efforts will shift toward that goal, especially if the current leadership is replaced by an I.R.G.C. figure even more extreme and less cautious. That’s totally within the realm of possibility.

But it’s also possible they’ll see that they have invested $500 billion into a wasted effort that brought them nothing but humiliation, and loss of hardware and prestige — and decide to change course. Strategically, they’re in a much worse position now, thanks to Israeli actions in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. Out of national interest — and the interest of preserving the regime — they may choose to recalibrate and seek a different path. And by the way, it’s also possible that six months or a year from now, when the next morality policeman beats and murders an Iranian woman in the streets, setting off demonstrations, the regime, now weaker and more uncertain, may have a harder time suppressing dissent with the same engines of repression it’s relied on in the past. Over time, I think the regime becomes more vulnerable to internal change — and hopefully to positive change.

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When I think of the parade of horribles that we were hearing from people like Tucker Carlson, thousands of Americans dead if the United States were to bomb Fordo, it seems that this — as we’re speaking now — has been an astonishing success: the massive degradation of Iran’s nuclear capabilities in a swift period of time, at no cost so far to American lives and with the Iranians very swiftly signaling that they want to back down both vis-à-vis the United States and also with the Israelis. I’m a great believer in Winston Churchill’s phrase “in victory, magnanimity.” And I think a lot will depend on how the United States proceeds diplomatically from here.

One of the things I’ve suggested for the Trump administration — I wrote this in a column just last week — is essentially to first bomb Fordo, and of course Natanz and Isfahan. But then offer the following deal, which I think would be very useful, even if the Iranians reject it: In exchange for Iran verifiably abandoning its enrichment programs and its nuclear programs, and ending support for proxies like Hezbollah, the Houthis and Hamas, that the United States would lift all economic sanctions. We should find ways to entice the Iranian regime with proverbial offers that no sane country can refuse — to see if we can turn a new leaf.

But, you know, as Niels Bohr or Yogi Berra or someone said: Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future. So I don’t want to discount anything of how this might affect the regime going forward. It’s an open and interesting — and in many ways, of course, terrifying question.

I think for the Israelis, the sense was that they had to strike before Iran had acquired sufficient quantities of uranium enriched to a 90 percent level, which is what’s broadly considered weapons-grade uranium. They’d gotten to 60 percent, which is very, very close. So from that point of view, it seemed that the urgency — at least from the Israeli perspective — was there.

There was also an opportunity for the Israelis because they had previously substantially degraded Iran’s anti-air capability. So they had a moment of opportunity — an opening. And the question that ultimately needs to be raised isn’t whether Israel waited until the last possible minute or the next to last possible minute. The real question about urgency is just how serious a threat should we see an Iran with a nuclear capability. Not only to Israel’s interest or Middle Eastern interest, but to core American interest. I think the answer is it was an urgent, pressing threat, and there was an opportunity to do something about it. And Israel sees that opportunity, and Donald Trump followed up with what I hope was a decisive blow.

The Ayatollah Has a Master Plan

June 26, 2025, 1:00 a.m. ET

Credit...Hugo Clarence Janody/Hans Lucas, via Redux

By Vali R. Nasr
Dr. Nasr is a scholar of Iranian politics and U.S. policy in the Middle East.

The United States’ attack on Iran’s nuclear sites last weekend, following a weeklong Israeli bombing campaign, has marked a turning point for Iran. Washington’s involvement in the conflict represents one of the biggest challenges to the Islamic Republic since its founding in 1979 and is a moment of truth for the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has maintained Iran’s hostility to the West during his 36 years in power.

Now the future of the country’s nuclear program, and the fate of the tenuous cease-fire with Israel, rests in his hands — and even in the face of grave threat, he is unlikely to back down.

Iran’s rulers are no strangers to war. Many of the country’s top leaders, including its president, foreign minister and key military figures, are veterans of Iran’s long war with Iraq in the 1980s, a grinding struggle that cost Iran billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives. Under Ayatollah Khamenei, who served as president from 1981 to 1988 and became Iran’s supreme leader in 1989, the lessons of that brutal conflict have come to undergird the regime’s worldview — and its national security policy.

As Ayatollah Khamenei sees it, Iran is locked in a struggle for survival with the United States and its allies, including Israel. The policies he has pursued in the decades since he came to power — domestic repression, nuclear expansion and support for proxy militias including Hamas and Hezbollah — have all been in the service of winning that contest. His distrust of Washington has only deepened since Donald Trump’s 2018 withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal Tehran negotiated with the Obama administration.

The Islamic Republic understands its limitations in this struggle. Its military is woefully inadequate in the face of more advanced U.S. weaponry. Its economy has been severely constrained by international sanctions. And in recent years, Iranians have revolted against the regime’s policy of perpetual resistance against the West, as well as against the regime’s repressive domestic policies. The United States has also maintained a robust presence in the region, with tens of thousands of troops stationed across a network of bases.

If this history is anything to go by, Ayatollah Khamenei will not retreat, let alone surrender. He has, for now, accepted a cease-fire with Israel — but only because he is confident that Iran held its ground in the face of U.S. and Israeli strikes. In the past, too, he has made concessions when necessary. Tehran entered both the 2015 nuclear deal and the most recent round of nuclear negotiations with the United States in order to relieve economic pressure.

Ayatollah Khamenei is uninterested in making compromises that could fundamentally change Iran’s trajectory. He is wary of even appearing open to compromise, which he believes the United States would interpret as weakness. “America is like a dog,” he told his advisers in a meeting over a decade ago. “If you back off, it will lunge at you, but if you lunge at it, it will recoil and back off.”

Iran’s supreme leader has instead sought an equilibrium that can be summarized as “no war and no peace.” He wants neither confrontation nor normalization with the United States. What he wants is for Washington to stop containing Iran, unshackle its economy and allow Iran to embrace the status of a regional great power.

Ayatollah Khamenei believes that Iran can achieve this goal in time. If Tehran perseveres, he thinks, it can outlast Washington and Israel’s appetite for a fight. For decades, his regime has built its military strategy on patience and endurance, reflecting its rulers’ takeaways from the Iran-Iraq war. In 1980, Iraq launched a surprise strike against its neighbor, taking over thousands of square miles of southwestern Iran. Two years later, Iran was able to outmaneuver Iraq’s better-armed military through the use of guerrilla forces and so-called human wave attacks, allowing it to recapture much of its lost territory. The lesson, for Ayatollah Khamenei and his peers, was that Iran is capable of wearing down better-equipped foes — even when the odds are stacked against it.

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That lesson guided Iran’s response to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. Convinced that Iran was next on Washington’s list, Ayatollah Khamenei charged Gen. Qassem Soleimani — who was killed by a U.S. drone strike in 2020 — to take advantage of the chaos and brewing Iraqi insurgency by bogging the United States down in a quagmire. General Soleimani proceeded to build a network of Iranian influence across Iraq, co-opting Iraqi politicians and mobilizing Shia militias to attack U.S. forces. The strategy worked; by 2011, the United States had withdrawn most of its troops after a prolonged and exhausting insurgency.

In more recent years, Iran has had plenty of time to prepare for an American or Israeli attack. Its deep burial of the Fordo enrichment site, for instance, may have spared the facility from total destruction by U.S. bunker-busting bombs. A larger conflict would pose a bigger threat, especially at a time when the Iranian economy is weak and its population restive. For now, Tehran has probably concluded that it can endure wartime economic hardship and that the population will rally to the flag and direct its anger at foreign attackers.

With this calculus in mind, Ayatollah Khamenei clearly felt compelled to respond to show that he is not defeated. He also seeks to demonstrate that Washington cannot achieve its aims by force, be they regime change or dismantling Iran’s nuclear program. Iran is looking for deterrence, not escalation. The scale and timing of its missile launch targeting Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar appears carefully calibrated, with Iranian officials giving advance notice that the strike was coming.

If the cease-fire collapses and war resumes, Iran may choose to attack U.S. ships or bases in the Persian Gulf or close the Strait of Hormuz. Whether or not it does so, what matters is its ability to keep the world on its toes, using uncertainty to disturb energy prices and global business.

Should Iran attack, its strikes would probably aim to force Israel and the United States to settle for a war of attrition. A long slog, Iran believes, will foil U.S. and Israeli plans for a decisive victory and force them to compromise in the face of mounting costs and domestic backlash. Iran will not see President Trump’s call for peace as a welcome diplomatic off-ramp. Only after it has regained a measure of deterrence, potentially by acquiring a nuclear weapon, might Iran be ready to talk.

Does Ayatollah Khamenei’s regime have the military capacity, domestic strength and political endurance to sustain a war of attrition? That ambiguity is part of the supreme leader’s game plan. What might matter more is not whether Iran has the capacity to fight indefinitely, but that it could do so for longer than Washington or Israel is willing to countenance — especially if it is able to rebuild its nuclear infrastructure in the interim, and even assemble a nuclear arsenal.

Iran’s calculations will greatly depend on its assessment of how much of its nuclear program has survived the U.S. bombing and whether it can turn its existing stockpile of highly enriched uranium into nuclear weapons. It may soon close its nuclear program to outside inspection — and, even if it remains a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, keep the world guessing about its aims. The United States could try to block Iran’s progress, but short of putting boots on the ground, there may be a limit to what it can do.

And that is what Ayatollah Khamenei may very well be banking on: that the prospect of another “forever war” in the Middle East is sufficiently daunting to keep the United States at bay. It already looks to Tehran that it has persuaded Mr. Trump to eagerly embrace a cease-fire. Until now, Iran had hoped its nuclear ambitions might be enough to end American containment and win sanctions relief at the negotiating table. Now Ayatollah Khamenei may well conclude that the only way to achieve his goals is to cross the nuclear line once and for all.

Mamdani Defeats Cuomo in Upset Win. 5 Takeaways From the New York City Mayoral Primary

Here are some of the factors that drove Zohran Mamdani to the cusp of a seismic upset, and how they will affect the general election in November.

Mr. Mamdani stitched together a novel Democratic coalition across the city, largely consisting of white, Asian and Latino voters in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens.Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

By Nicholas Fandos
June 25, 2025

Zohran Mamdani, a state assemblyman who campaigned relentlessly against New York’s spiraling affordability crisis, was on the verge of a seismic upset in the Democratic primary for mayor on Tuesday, powered by a diverse coalition from brownstone Brooklyn to the immigrant enclaves of Queens.

The result was not final. But Mr. Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist, declared victory, and Andrew M. Cuomo, his rival and the former governor, conceded defeat.

Mr. Mamdani’s success in one of the first major Democratic primaries since President Trump returned to the White House reverberated across the country and offered a potential road map for Democrats searching for a path back to power.

The Democratic primary winner would typically be considered the front-runner in November’s general election. Yet this fall’s contest promises to be unusually volatile. It will include Mayor Eric Adams, who is running as an independent. Mr. Cuomo also still has the option of running on a third-party ballot line, though he has not committed to continuing his campaign.

Here are five takeaways from the primary:

Mamdani’s exuberant optimism attracted disaffected New Yorkers.

Mr. Mamdani, with supporters and Councilwoman Carmen De La Rosa, far right, won over voters with his energetic and charismatic style.Credit...Shuran Huang for The New York Times


Mr. Mamdani, a third-term lawmaker from Queens, entered the race last fall with a thin résumé, virtually no citywide profile and views well to the left of many Democrats. He ended Tuesday as a breakout national figure.

He distinguished himself from a field of 10 rivals by offering an unapologetically progressive economic platform that was as memorable as it was ambitious. He proposed making city buses free, offering free child care and freezing the rent on rent-stabilized apartments — all financed by a large tax hike on the city’s wealthiest residents.

But his success also owed much to his exuberant style, demonstrative love for New York and mastery of social media that seemed to embody the kind of generational change many Democrats say they are hungry for. He filmed himself running into the icy waters of Coney Island in January and speaking with voters in the Bronx who swung to Mr. Trump last fall.

It was a stark contrast to Mr. Cuomo’s joyless campaign, which featured heavily staged events and a candidate who repeatedly warned voters that the city was in deep trouble that only he could fix.

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“Together we have shown the power of the politics of the future, one of partnership and sincerity,” Mr. Mamdani said in a speech declaring victory.

The Cuomo brand seems to have lost its shine.

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Andrew Cuomo must now decide whether to keep running for mayor as an independent in November.Credit...Adam Gray for The New York Times


For four years since resigning as governor in a sexual harassment scandal, Mr. Cuomo, 67, has pined for a path back to power.

He thought he had found it in the New York City mayoralty, and campaigned with an air of inevitability. He locked up key labor endorsements, benefited from a $25 million super PAC and witheringly attacked Mr. Mamdani as dangerously unqualified for the job, all while making no apology for his past conduct.

In the end, it appears voters were simply not interested in a Cuomo restoration.

He must now decide whether to keep running in November on a third-party ballot line, or accept defeat and the likely end of a political career that included stints as the federal housing secretary, New York attorney general and governor.

“Tonight was not our night,” a deflated-looking Mr. Cuomo told supporters Tuesday night. He added, of Mr. Mamdani: “Tonight is his night. He deserved it. He won.”

Mamdani built a novel coalition.
Image
Mr. Mamdani is running to be the city’s first Muslim and South Asian mayor.Credit...Shuran Huang for The New York Times


Initial results suggested that Mr. Mamdani was succeeding by stitching together a novel Democratic coalition across the city, largely consisting of white, Asian and Latino voters in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens.

While Mr. Mamdani campaigned on helping working-class New Yorkers, he ran up large margins in the affluent, brownstone-lined streets of Park Slope, Cobble Hill and Clinton Hill in Brooklyn, as well as wealthy Manhattan enclaves like the East Village and swaths of Midtown.

Mr. Mamdani, who would be the city’s first Muslim and South Asian mayor, was also the top vote-getter in predominantly Asian and Latino communities in Queens. They included economically and racially diverse areas like Woodside, Jackson Heights, Sunnyside and Richmond Hill, home to a large South Asian population.

Notably, he struggled more in middle-class, predominantly Black areas in the Bronx and Southeast Queens, where Mr. Cuomo retained strong support from his years as governor. Mr. Cuomo also won islands of support on affluent Democratic strongholds like the Upper West and East Sides of Manhattan, and in Orthodox Jewish enclaves in Brooklyn, where Mr. Mamdani’s views on Israel alienated some voters.

Mayor Adams gets the opponents he hoped for.
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Mayor Eric Adams did not run in the Democratic primary, but plans to run in November as an independent.Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

He may be down — way down — but Mr. Adams insists he is not yet on his way out.

Even before Tuesday’s primary, the incumbent mayor was preparing a scrape-and-claw re-election campaign in November’s general election, which will not use ranked-choice voting. He has gathered petitions to run on one of two ballot lines, EndAntiSemitism and Safe&Affordable, and plans to relaunch his campaign on Thursday on the steps of City Hall.

He has long made clear he sees Mr. Mamdani as a perfect foil.

The mayor’s allies believe he could pull back together pieces of his scattered coalition, including older Black voters and Orthodox Jewish New Yorkers. He has also inched closer to Mr. Trump and his circle, raising the possibility that he could try to claim support from Republicans as well.

But Mr. Adams enters the race with profound baggage. His approval ratings from New Yorkers were abysmal even before he was indicted last fall on federal corruption charges. He arguably alienated Democrats more, though, when he successfully urged the Trump administration to drop the charges against him earlier this year.

Progressives generally had a good night.

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Councilwoman Alexa Aviles, a democratic socialist, won her primary on Tuesday.Credit...Jefferson Siegel for The New York Times

Mr. Mamdani’s surge captured the city’s attention, but progressives also won some consequential down-ballot races.

Jumaane Williams, the city’s left-leaning public advocate, easily cruised past a challenge from Jenifer Rajkumar, a state assemblywoman who had allied herself with Mr. Adams.

In Brooklyn near Prospect Park, Shahana Hanif, the first Muslim woman elected to the Council and an unsparing critic of the Israeli government, fended off a fierce challenge that centered on her views of the war in Gaza.

In a neighboring district to the south, Alexa Avilés, a democratic socialist, also easily fended off a spirited challenge to her right from Ling Ye, a Chinese immigrant who previously worked for Representative Dan Goldman, the area’s moderate Democratic congressman.

One progressive who appeared to be losing was Justin Brannan, a City Council member from Brooklyn who was trailing Mark Levine, the Manhattan borough president and a liberal Democrat, in the race to replace Brad Lander as city comptroller. Mr. Levine led by a wide margin, though the race had not been called.

Nicholas Fandos is a Times reporter covering New York politics and government.

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.”

By the numbers: OKC Thunder just put together one of the greatest single seasons in NBA history

 

Getty Images

84 total wins, a record point differential, an elite defense and the MVP, the list goes on and on

By Brad Botkin

 

Jun 23, 2025 at 5:23 pm ET•

What makes an all-time NBA team? Is it a roster filled with all-time talent? Is it a pure numbers game: wins, point differentials, efficiency rankings, etc.? The 2015-16 Golden State Warriors would like to know if failing to finish an all-time season with a title excludes you from this conversation. 

That's an important word. Conversation. That's all this is. We can't line up the Jordan-Pippen Bulls against the Curry-Thompson Warriors and actually find out which team was better. What we can say is both these teams, and certainly a handful of others, are in the all-time conversation. 

And now our question is this: Does this Oklahoma City Thunder team that just defeated the Indiana Pacers in seven games for the 2025 NBA title belong as well?

From a dynastic standpoint, it's obviously premature to answer yes to that question. There's no doubt that the Thunder -- as the youngest team to win a championship since the 1977 Trail Blazers, and with a league-high 13 first-round draft picks in their war chest between now and 2031 -- are set up to win multiple titles. But until they actually do, which will be easier said than done in what has become the deepest and most equitable landscape in NBA history, particularly in the Western Conference, they cannot be in that conversation. 

But from a single-season standpoint? That's a different conversation, and through any sort of objective lens, it would be almost impossible to keep the Thunder out of it. To put OKC's place in history into perspective, let's start with some numbers and then go from there. 

84

Only four teams in history have topped the 68 regular-season wins that Oklahoma City piled up this year. Add the 16 postseason wins, and that's 84 total victories. Only two teams have surpassed that number, and one of them, the 2015-16 Warriors, who won 88 games after a record-setting 73-win regular season, didn't finish the deal with a championship. The other was the '95-96 Bulls, who won 87 games (the '96-97 Bulls matched OKC's 84 wins). 

There's some important context here. The NBA didn't go to seven-game series in all four playoff rounds until 2003. Prior to that, the first round was only a five-game series, and prior to 1984, there were only three playoff rounds in total. 

So those '90s Bulls teams, for instance, would've had a chance to add one more victory if their first-round series would have been best-of-seven. Not a huge deal, but still relevant. A team like the '66-67 76ers, who won a total of 79 games, would've had to win five more games to win the title as there is now a full extra round and they are all best-of-seven. 

All of this is to say, if you chalk up 84 wins and finish it off with a championship, you are in the rarest of historic air, whatever "era" context you would like to invoke notwithstanding. But it goes deeper, as not only did OKC win a lot of games, but it won them by historic margins. 

12.9

This was OKC's average per-game point differential in the regular season, and it's the largest in NBA history. The previous record, 12.3 by the 1971-72 Lakers, stood for more than a half century. Below are the top five regular-season point differentials. 

1,247

This was Oklahoma City's total point differential for the regular and postseason combined, and it's also an NBA record. This number included:

• 63 wins by at least 10 points (most in NBA history)
• 40 wins by at least 15 points (most in NBA history)
• 12 wins by at least 30 points (most in NBA history)
• 4 playoff wins by at least 30 points (most in NBA history)

It worked the opposite way, as well, which is to say when the Thunder weren't building their own big leads they were erasing those of their opponents. In the regular and postseason, OKC went 19-12 in games it trailed at halftime. That is the seventh-best come-from-behind win percentage in NBA history. 

16

With a 68-14 regular-season record, the Thunder finished 16 games ahead of the second-seeded Rockets in the Western Conference. That is the biggest gap between a No. 1 and No. 2 seed since the 1977 merger. 

Historic defense

The Thunder are the first team since the 2014-15 Warriors to win the title with the league's top-ranked defense, and the only team since the 1976-77 merger to lead the league in defensive rating (106.6), opponent field goal percentage (43.6%) and opponent turnovers per game (17.0).

Including the postseason, here are some more numbers to chew on. 

• 18: OKC's postseason turnovers created per game, the most since the 1996 Bulls (minimum 15 games)
• 16.4: OKC's postseason steals+blocks per game, the most since the 1983 Lakers (minimum 15 games)
• 1,689: OKC's total steals+blocks for regular and postseason combined, the most since the 1981-82 76ers (1,813)
• 10.7: OKC's postseason steals per game, the most since the 1975 Warriors (minimum 15 games)
• 247: OKC's total postseason steals, an NBA record
• 1,094: OKC's total steals for regular and postseason combined, fifth most all-time
• 131: OKC's total postseason turnover margin, an NBA record
• 62: OKC's number of games (regular and postseason) with at least 10 steals, seventh most all-time
• 468: OKC's total postseason deflections, 100 more than any team over the last decade
• 2.5: The Thunder defense finished 2.5 points per 100 possessions better than the next-best defense (Orlando was 109.1). That is the second-biggest gap over the last 25 seasons. Only the 2015-16 Spurs were better with their 98.2 defensive rating registering 2.6 points/100 possessions better than the 100.8 Atlanta Hawks. 

The MVP season by Shai Gilgeous-Alexander notwithstanding, defense was this OKC team's superpower. The Thunder weren't going to shoot you out of the gym, but when they locked in defensively, it was an avalanche. In Game 5 against Indiana, the Thunder became the first team to record at least 15 steals and 12 blocks in a single Finals game since those two stats started being tracked in 1974. 

Even crazier? The Thunder carded at least 10 steals in an NBA-record 15 games this postseason. Next on the list are the 1977 Trails Blazers with 12 such games and the 1985 Lakers with 10. 

Ten steals in an NBA game is a major number to card. The Thunder did it 65 times in the regular and postseason combined. Only six teams in history have ever topped that mark. 

Now, to pile up 10 steals in a playoff game is even harder, by the very nature of facing the best teams in the league. To get to this number in even a couple playoff games would be an achievement. To reach that mark in 65% of your playoff games, as the Thunder did (15 out of 23) is almost hard to fathom. 

The officials allowed defenses to play extremely physically in these playoffs, and the Thunder, already an inordinately disruptive defense, used these conditions to constrict the life out of opponents in a way we haven't often seen in the NBA. 

SGA's all-time season

If you're going to be talked about as an all-time great team, it's basically a requirement to have an all-time great player. As stated above, we can't call the 2024-25 Thunder an all-time great team yet, but we can say they had an all-time great season. 

Likewise, it's too early to stamp Shai Gilgeous-Alexander with the all-time great label, but from a single-season standpoint, few have topped what he did this year when he became the fourth player in history to win MVP, the scoring title and Finals MVP in the same season. Suffice it to say, he's in some pretty good company.

CBS Sports

A few more SGA notes for you ...

• 12 playoff games with 30+ points and 5+ assists, an NBA record
• 10 straight 30-point home playoff games, an NBA record (passing Wilt Chamberlain)
• 15 playoff games with at least 30 points, third all-time (Michael Jordan & Hakeem Olajuwon had 16)
• 212 Finals points, third most all-time (Shaquille O'Neal had 228 in 2000, LeBron James had 218 in 2015)

All season long, Gilgeous-Alexander was the standard for scoring. Combining the regular and postseason, he led the league in 20-point games (95, tied with '90-91 Jordan for most all-time), 30-point games (64), 40-point games (14) and 50-point games (4). Also, SGA's 32.7 PPG this regular season is the highest scoring output in history on a championship team. 

Season/team	Player	PPG
2024-25 Thunder	Shai Gilgeous-Alexander	32.7
1992-93 Bulls	Michael Jordan	32.6
1970-71 Bucks	Kareem Abdul-Jabbar	31.7
1990-91 Bullls	Michael Jordan	31.5

All of this is to say nothing of SGA ranking second in total regular-season steals and postseason steals. He is an all-time one-on-one scorer with a merciless midrange game and the best driver in the world. And way you break this thing down, Gilgeous-Alexander just put together one of the great single seasons in NBA history, as did the Oklahoma City Thunder.