Lawsuit from Democratic-led states and voting rights groups can proceed over Trump’s executive order to restrict mail voting
A federal judge in Boston ruled that Democratic-led states and voting rights groups could proceed with lawsuits challenging Donald Trump’s executive order that seeks to restrict vote-by-mail ahead of November’s midterm elections.
US district judge Indira Talwani, who was nominated by Barack Obama, ruled that the potential for Trump’s order to impact the midterm elections meant the plaintiffs’ cases could not wait to be heard.
Trump’s order “both includes multiple specific directives as to certain actions that federal agencies must take at specified times and requires that definite ’substantive outcomes’ be implemented that will affect the upcoming election,” she wrote.
The ruling could open the door to the judge blocking the order from being implemented ahead of the midterm elections.
Officials from 23 Democratic states and the District of Columbia sued in April file to block Trump’s executive order to curb voting by mail, arguing that the order was an unconstitutional effort to interfere with states administering their elections.
The Trump administration, however, is pressing ahead with plans to disrupt votes cast by mail.
As the Guardian reported in May, the US Postal Service could throw the upcoming midterm elections into chaos by requiring states to provide lists of voters who received mail ballots, according to a draft rule.
Nearly one in three Americans voted by mail in 2024, but Trump, who wants to restrict the number of voters by limiting ballots cast by mail, signed an executive order in March that prohibits the USPS from delivering ballots to any voters not on a federal list of citizens deemed eligible to vote in each state by the Department of Homeland Security.
The USPS proposal to implement this order seeks to require states to give the postal service the names and barcodes tied to mail-in ballots for federal elections. The public will have 30 days to comment on the proposed rule before the Trump administration can finalize it.
As the Democratic election and voting rights attorney Marc Elias’s Democracy Docket reports, the US Postal Service (USPS) filed a notice on Thursday in federal court saying that it has begun the process of creating a new records system to track mail ballots.
The records system is tied to USPS’ proposed rule stating that it will only deliver mail ballots to voters who are registered with the federal government.
The public comment period on the proposed rule is open until 2 July, and more than 14,000 comments have been submitted by members of the progressive activist group MoveOn.
One public comment submitted by a MoveOn member reads:
“The USPS proposed rule to block mail ballots is outrageous. Many of us choose to vote by mail, either because it is the most convenient or accessible option or, for some Americans, it is the only option. This proposed rule is in violation of each state’s constitutional right and authority to govern election matters. The executive branch of the federal government and its agencies have no role in how a state runs its election proceedings. One in three Americans voted by mail in the last election. It is clear to any thinking person that this is another of Trump’s attempts to control – if not hijack – future federal elections by interfering with legitimate registered voters’ right to vote. USPS’s job is to deliver mail, not decide who gets a ballot.”
Key events
Vance delays trip to Switzerland for Iran talks, White House says
US vice-president JD Vance has postponed his trip to Switzerland for the start of 60 days of talks with Iran’s leaders, as agreed in the memorandum of understanding signed by Donald Trump in the Palace of Versailles on Wednesday.
A White House spokesperson confirmed the delay in a statement provided to the pool reporter for US news outlets who was at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, preparing to travel with vice-president on Thursday night.
“As the Vice President said at his press conference, the plans for the upcoming technical talks have not been finalized, and the U.S. delegation has been prepared to depart at the first available opportunity”, the spokesperson said. “But the logistics of these negotiations have never been simple or predictable. As of now the Vice President is not departing tonight. We will let you know as soon as we have a concrete update about next steps. We look forward to beginning technical talks as soon as possible.”
Trump says Iran war taught him ‘there are no limits’ to his power, then adds: ‘I know there are’
Hours after he returned to the White House from Versailles, the historically resonant setting where he signed a memorandum of understanding to end the war he started with Iran, Donald Trump sat down on Thursday for a video interview with Axios.
In excerpts from the interview posted on social media by the outlet, the president gave very confused answers to two questions: what had the war taught him about the limits of his power, and what happened to his determination to accept nothing less than “unconditional surrender” from Iran’s leaders?
The war had shown him that “there are no limits” to his power Trump said in response to the first question.
“No limits?” the Axios correspondent Marc Caputo asked.
“No, none”, Trump said, before immediately contradicting himself by adding: “I haven’t learned that lesson yet; I know there are, but, you know, there are no limits.”
When Caputo reminded Trump of what he posted a week into the war – “there will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER” – and suggested, “the MOU doesn’t look like unconditional surrender”, Trump said the agreement, which leaves Iran in control of the strait of Hormuz, and awards it $300bn in reconstruction and economic development funds, “really, probably is unconditional surrender”.
“It is?” Caputo asked skeptically.
“I think so”, Trump said.
As the Guardian diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour reports: “Iran has announced plans to introduce a system of maritime fees in the strait of Hormuz in two months, after the 60-day period of negotiation that has been triggered by the signing of the memorandum of understanding.”
Trump said his reflecting pool renovation ‘could last for 100 years’; images show it lasted less than a week
While Donald Trump insisted earlier this month, that his $14.2m resurfacing of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool floor with “industrial strength”, “highly sophisticated” sealant “could last for 100 years”, composite images of the pool taken by Reuters photographers over the past week, suggest that it took only a few days for the algae to return and the sealant to peel away and float to the surface.
It has been just eight days since the president invited the crew that performed the work to the Oval Office, where he presented them with signed hats and challenge coins.
Tourists stop by Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to pick up souvenir chunks of failed waterproof lining
Tourists in Washington DC discovered a new kind of souvenir to take away from the nation’s capital on Thursday, reaching into the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to pocket chunks of the recently applied “American flag blue” waterproof sealant that has spontaneously peeled away from the floor, just weeks after it was applied as part of Donald Trump’s $14.2m renovation.
Social networks filled with video images of the blue sealant floating to the surface of the pool on Thursday, including a clip of ABC News White House correspondent Jonathan Karl dipping his hand in the algae-ridden water to grab a piece of the detached sealant.
The HuffPost correspondent Jen Bendery reported from the water’s edge that passersby were stopping to rip off of chunks of the sealant to remember the president’s grand project by.
As our colleagues Callum Jones and Rachel Leingang report, the Trump administration, apparently without irony, continues to insist that its war against algae in the pool is going just as well as its war on Iran:
For days, the pool has been fluctuating between various shades of green, frustrating efforts to ensure it adopts the US president’s preferred color. And by Thursday parts of the coating laid by Atlantic Industrial Coatings in an effort to turn the monument “American flag” blue had appeared to start peeling off.
Workers were seen on site in waders, attempting to fish out algae and eliminate patches of deep green across the pool.
Hours earlier, the US Department of the Interior – which oversees the National Park Service – had claimed the water was “crystal clear”, and blamed the “Fake News Media” for reports to the contrary.
In a statement on X, after eyewitnesses saw the pool looking distinctly murky, the department went so far as to liken the administration’s purported victory against algae to its purported victory against Iran.
“The Reflecting Pool water is crystal clear, and our National Park Service team is now vacuuming up the dead algae resting on the bottom of some parts of the Reflecting Pool – just like the destroyed Iranian Navy resting on the bottom of the Persian Gulf,” the department’s press office said.
Trump awards Medal of Honor to three service members who fought in Vietnam and Afghanistan
Donald Trump is currently speaking at a ceremony in the East Room of the White House to award the Medal of Honor, the country’s highest military honor, to three US service members who fought in the American wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan.
After boasting about the stock market, Trump said that he was there to award “our country’s highest military distinction, the Congressional Medal of Honor.”
“I wanted to give it to myself, but I was informed I couldn’t do it”, he joked, as he has in the past.
“But today we present this award, it’s the greatest of awards, to three new recipients: Marine corps Major James Capers; Marine Corps Colonel John W Ripley deceased; and Army Major Nicholas Dockery”, Trump read aloud, accidentally saying the word “deceased” as if it was part of the late colonel Ripley’s name.
The first two awards were for service in Vietnam, a war Trump famously dodged through a medical exemption, thanks to a diagnosis of bone spurs in his heels in 1968 from a podiatrist who rented his office from Trump’s father. The third award was for service in Afghanistan.
There was no immediate explanation of why the service members were not recognized in previous decades, but Trump joked to Major Capers, who was, the president said, recommended for the Medal of Honor in 1967, that “maybe this is better”.
While the president referred to the congressional award as “the greatest”, two summers ago, he was widely criticized for suggesting that another award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, is “much better”.
Speaking at a campaign event in 2024, Trump mentioned that, during his first term, he had awarded that medal to one of his donors, Miriam Adelson. Hew then said: “It’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor but civilian version. It’s actually much better because everyone gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, the soldiers, they’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead.”
Donald Trump has just arrived, nearly an hour late, for the Medal of Honor ceremony in the East Room of the White House.
He started by boasting about the stock market, and joking that he wanted to award the Medal of Honor to himself.
Trump White House continues near daily attacks on Biden, six years after the 2020 campaign
We are still waiting for Donald Trump to turn up for a Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House, which was scheduled to start more than 40 minutes ago.
The president just returned early this morning from the G7 conference in Evian, France, where he appeared nearly an hour late for the final day’s session, and told the assembled world leaders waiting on him: “I’m the boss.”
The White House was so proud of that wisecrack that it posted video of the moment on YouTube, side by side with a misleading clip of Joe Biden at a G7 event in 2024, under the headline “Choose YourFighter”.
The video of Biden walking away from other world leaders after a parachute demonstration during the G7 in Italy in June 2024, went viral at the time largely because it was misleadingly described in the rightwing media as evidence the 81-year-old president was confused and had wandered off.
As Reuters reported at the time, Biden, in fact, just walked over to a group of parachutists who had just performed a demonstration to congratulate them after a flags ceremony in which paratroopers bearing member-countries’ flags landed near the leaders.
Apparently still stung by his loss to Biden in the 2020 presidential election, Trump has made attacking Biden a near daily theme of his second term in office.
The day so far
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JD Vance defended the US-Iran deal as a “win-win” for the United States, while several Republicans slammed it as “completely out of step with the president’s goals”. Vance defended Trump’s U-turn on Iran’s right to have “some” ballistic missiles in the name of self-defence (having previously stated that the destruction of Iran’s ballistic missiles as one of the key goals of the war) and insisted that the lifting of sanctions on Iranian oil would somehow benefit the US.
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GOP critics, however, expressed concerns that the deal left the US in a worse position than when it launched the war against Iran three months ago. The chair of the Senate armed services committee, Roger Wicker, said he was “concerned that the memorandum of understanding negotiates away the victories of Operation Epic Fury in ways that are completely out of step with the president’s goals.” The $300bn fund for the reconstruction and economic development of Iran included in the memorandum, “though not funded by US taxpayers, would make Iran’s payoff under President Obama’s 2015 deal look like a pittance by comparison,” he added in his statement.
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A handful of other GOP lawmakers also spoke out against Trump’s deal, arguing that the deal had proven to Iran that flexing its leverage over the strait of Hormuz could deliver significant geopolitical results and that there was no guarantee that Tehran’s nuclear ambitions had been curbed. After Trump admitted yesterday that he had changed course on Iran in order to avoid a “worldwide depression”, one House Republican said the president had “effectively acknowledged he lost the war. It’s no longer worth the economic price.”
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Vance also issued an extraordinary rebuke for Israeli cabinet members critical of the US-Iran memorandum of understanding. “If I was in the Israeli cabinet, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world,” Vance told reporters at the White House press briefing. He warned that Israel “has to respect this peace process” and “not be going wild in Lebanon”, and said the civilian deaths as a result of Israeli strikes were “totally unacceptable”.
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Donald Trump said the US expects “a complete ceasefire on all fronts, including Lebanon, Hezbollah, and Israel,” adding in a Truth Social post, “We encourage everyone in the Middle East Region to maintain their commitment to allowing our negotiations to beautifully unfold.”
Trump administration reverses decision to scrap ocean monitoring system
Maya Yang
The Trump administration has reversed its decision to dismantle a $368m deep-sea observation system following an outcry from lawmakers and ocean experts.
The National Science Foundation announced today that it would halt plans to dismantle the Ocean Observatories Initiative, stating: “effective immediately, [it] will not proceed with further removal or descoping of equipment from the remaining arrays and will continue operations including planned maintenance.”
The agency added that it “appreciates the concerns raised by the range of stakeholders that have informed us they rely on data” from the OOI.
The NSF also said it would “issue a Dear Colleague Letter to collect input from stakeholders and convene an expert panel to assess observational needs, evaluate available data sources, consider responses … and help the agency identify a sustainable path for NSF’s ocean observing systems”.
The OOI comprises more than 900 instruments that collect data on ocean health, including current patterns, climate variability and marine biodiversity. Its observation arrays are located off the coasts of North Carolina, Oregon, Washington and Alaska, as well as in the Irminger Sea, a marginal sea between Greenland and Iceland.
The NSF’s announcement follows widespread backlash from scientists and ocean experts who depend on the OOI’s data for research, including estimates of ocean heating rates amid the climate crisis. Experts warned that losing the system could undermine forecasts and early-warning systems for storms and other severe weather events.
The reversal also came a day after the Senate passed a bipartisan bill introduced by the Oregon Democrat Jeff Merkley and Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski that sought to halt what they described as the “reckless dismantling” of the OOI.
According to the bill, no federal funds may be used to decommission the OOI until the NSF “conducts a thorough review and assessment of the network with robust stakeholder engagement”.
“Dismantling the [OOI] is supreme stupidity, costing taxpayers millions of dollars and destroying a vital source of climate data. Our simple, bipartisan bill blocks this incredibly shortsighted decision and preserves these critical ocean monitoring sensors that keep coastal communities and fishers safe,” Merkley said yesterday.
Trump administration quietly shifts $352m in federal funds for White House ballroom
Joseph Gedeon
Donald Trump’s administration has quietly redirected $352m in federal funds designated for the Secret Service toward the president’s controversial White House ballroom project, despite repeated promises by Trump that the construction would be financed by private donations
The funds were drawn from the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Trump’s signature tax legislation passed last summer on Republican-only votes. The law stipulates the money may only be spent on Secret Service personnel, training facilities, technology and related costs, not construction.
About $340.8m of the funding was placed into an account labeled “Procurement, Construction, and Improvements” on 12 June, according to the office of management and budget (OMB) database. Another account labeled “Operations and Support” was also approved the same day, adding another $10.75m to the budget.
The move came after Congress explicitly refused to provide $1bn in funds for the “East Wing Modernization Project”, the Trump administration’s official name for a 90,000-sq-ft ballroom being built on the site of the White House’s demolished East Wing.
The administration argued the funds were needed for legitimate security upgrades, pointing to recent threats against Trump, including an alleged plot to attack Sunday’s UFC Freedom 250 event on the White House south lawn.
“The East Wing Modernization Project is inextricably tied to the security of the president, the White House grounds and the certain security infrastructure assets,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said. “President Trump and generous American patriots are funding the ballroom to the tune of approximately $400m, which will be a secure and appropriate venue for presidents for generations to come.”
Those disrupted attacks, Ingle said, “proves exactly why” the project is needed for events at the White House, which include “drone-proof structures and drone ports among other critical security enhancements”.
Senior legislators were unconvinced. “That’s a big problem,” Thom Tillis, a Republican senator from North Carolina who is retiring at the end of the year, told Notus.
That sounds like a different way to fund the East Wing project. On its face it doesn’t sound right.
Brian Schatz, a Democratic senator from Hawaii on the appropriations committee, also told the outlet:
I don’t know whether it’s the ballroom, but it sounds like the ballroom.
The art of the fail? Trump’s Iran deal – podcast
Donald Trump is claiming his Iran peace plan is a victory for Washington, despite the 14-point agreement revealing significant concessions to Tehran. Under the deal, Iran will reopen the strait of Hormuz in exchange for sanctions relief and the release of frozen assets, while talks will continue over the fate of Iran’s nuclear programme.
In today’s edition of The Latest podcast, Nosheen Iqbal speaks to the Guardian’s diplomatic editor, Patrick Wintour.
Iran has announced plans to introduce a system of maritime fees in the strait of Hormuz in two months, after the 60-day period of negotiation that has been triggered by the signing of the memorandum of understanding, my colleague Patrick Wintour reports.
Claiming a historic victory over the US, Tehran said the strait was under its control and a European plan for a naval mission to escort ships though the strait would not be welcome.
It comes as the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reports that Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel “will maintain the security zone in south Lebanon as long as our security needs require it”, referring to the more than 600 sq km of Lebanese territory occupied by Israeli troops along the border.
On Iran, Netanyahu stated that Israel would continue to “adhere to the supreme objective” of not allowing Tehran to acquire nuclear weapons.
Iran insists the deal referring to territorial integrity of Lebanon requires a full Israeli withdrawal, making Donald Trump accountable for Israel’s withdrawal.
Here’s Patrick’s report:
Politico also quotes Senate majority leader John Thune as saying he anticipates an administration briefing on the US-Iran memorandum of understanding “early next week”.
Thune said he felt the deal is “good for Americans” because it opens up the strait of Hormuz, but warned on the $300bn fund:
I don’t think there ought to be any financial incentives or any financial relief given to Iran absent their commitment to end the nuclear program.
As they gear up to face tough midterm elections in November, some Republicans are relieved at the memorandum of understanding with Iran – though many are still privately questioning what the purpose of Trump’s war actually was.
After the president said yesterday that if he had not struck a deal, “the alternative would be a worldwide depression”, one House Republican told Politico:
The president didn’t mean to, but he effectively acknowledged he lost the war. It’s no longer worth the economic price.
GOP Senate armed services chair slams US-Iran deal as ‘completely out of step with the president’s goals’
While JD Vance was briefing reporters earlier, Republican senator Roger Wicker, who is chair of the Senate armed services committee, said he was “concerned that the memorandum of understanding negotiates away the victories of Operation Epic Fury in ways that are completely out of step with the president’s goals.”
The $300bn fund for the reconstruction and economic development of Iran included in the memorandum, “though not funded by US taxpayers, would make Iran’s payoff under President Obama’s 2015 deal look like a pittance by comparison,” Wicker added in his statement.
He also said it would be an “error” to “force” Israel to stand down against Hezbollah, and added: “I also oppose the US lifting of any sanctions on Iran, or unfreezing Iranian funds, in exchange for Iran’s mere agreement to negotiate for another 60 days.”
He joins a handful of other Republican senators speaking out against Trump’s deal (see my earlier post). When asked about that criticism earlier, Vance said those Republicans should “have a little bit of faith in the president of the United States”.
“The idea that he is going to strike a deal that’s bad for the American people, it’s preposterous” he said.
Back to Donald Trump for a second (sorry), the president has reiterated that the United States expects “a complete ceasefire on all fronts, including Lebanon, Hezbollah, and Israel.”
“We encourage everyone in the Middle East Region to maintain their commitment to allowing our negotiations to beautifully unfold,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
The Associated Press reports that Michelle Obama spoke directly to her husband when she stepped up to the podium.
“Eight years in the crucible and not once did you melt in the heat. Not once did you let it harden you. Instead, you used it to reveal your truest essence,” she said. “Your stubborn optimism and unflinching courage. Your dazzling brilliance and unpretentious decency. Your ferocious work ethic and absolutely unshakable moral fiber. And to do it all as a first.”
She ticked off highlights from her husband’s eight years in office, including ordering the raid that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden, “standing up for marriage equality” and “listening to science.”
“And you did it all with such grace and class and cool,” she said. “You made the hardest job in the world look like a walk in this beautiful park.”
Obama appeared to wipe away a tear as she praised him, the AP reported.
Michelle Obama also referenced the current “anxious and divisive times” and warned against being cynical or complacent as “everything feels so upside down.” She pitched the center as “a respite from all that.”
