Despite Trump’s claim, US intelligence briefed senators on Monday that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon, Warner says
Despite Donald Trump’s recent claim that Iran was “very close” to making a nuclear weapon when Israel launched its bombing campaign, Mark Warner, the vice-chairman of the US Senate intelligence committee, said on Wednesday that senators were briefed on Monday, after Israel’s attack, that US intelligence agencies still see no evidence that Iran is trying to make nuclear weapons.
In an interview with MSNBC, Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, said that Trump’s director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, had testified to the Senate in March “that Iran had taken no action towards, moving towards a bomb”.
“And we got reconfirmed … Monday of this week, that the intelligence hasn’t changed,” Warner added.
In her written, opening testimony to the Senate select committee on intelligence on 25 March, Gabbard summarized the collective assessment on Iran of the 18 US intelligence elements that comprise the US intelligence community, which she referred to using the acronym IC:
The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamanei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003. The IC is closely monitoring if Tehran decides to reauthorize its nuclear weapons program.
When Trump was reminded on Tuesday of Gabbard’s testimony that Iran was not pursuing a nuclear weapon, he told reporters: “I don’t care what she said, I think they were very close to having one.”
“Foreign policy by tweet is insane. And that’s what this guy is doing,” Warner told MSNBC about Trump’s social media posts on Iran.
“Then you’ve got the president basically dismissing all of the intelligence,” he added. “I have no foggy idea what American policy is right now towards this circumstance. I’m the vice-chair of the intelligence committee; if I don’t have the foggiest idea, what do the American people know?”
Key events
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Closing summary
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Top Democrats insist that Congress must be consulted before any US attack on Iran
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Video of violent arrest of US citizen by federal immigration agents prompts protests in Los Angeles
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On social media, Pentagon hurls partisan invective at Democratic senators for asking Hegseth tough questions
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Despite Trump’s claim, US intelligence briefed senators on Monday that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon, Warner says
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Trump’s delay on forcing sale of TikTok risks national security, senior intelligence committee Democrat says
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The day so far
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Trump says he still has not made a final decision yet on Iran
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Powell says he’s not thinking about his re-appointment prospects
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Trump tariffs expected to increase prices over the summer, says Powell
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Jerome Powell gives press conference as Fed holds key interest rate steady
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Federal Reserve holds interest rates, defying Trump’s demand to lower them
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Transatlantic airfares slump as western Europeans skip US travel over Trump
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Trump again knocks Fed’s Powell and muses about appointing himself to lead central bank
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Hegseth says he would remove troops from US cities if supreme court ordered it
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US supreme court rules against Texas over nuclear waste storage
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‘Nobody knows what I’m going to do,’ says Trump when asked about potential of US strikes on Iran
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Supreme court decision ‘authorizes untold harm to transgender children’, says Justice Sotomayor in her dissent
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US supreme court upholds Tennessee ban on youth gender-affirming care in loss for transgender rights
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‘You don’t know anything about Iran!’ Tucker Carlson and Ted Cruz get into heated exchange as Maga rift erupts into public view
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Women more worried about economy under Trump than men, poll finds
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US Senate Democrats demand Kennedy explain canceling bird flu vaccine contract
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Khamenei warns of ‘serious irreparable consequences’ if US strikes Iran
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Appeals court likely to keep Trump in control of national guard deployed in LA
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Opening summary: Trump overseeing a ‘fascist regime’, says Lander
Closing summary
This brings our live coverage of the second Trump administration to a close for the day, but our colleagues in Australia continue to cover the Israeli attack on Iran in real time. Here are some of the day’s main developments in US politics:
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Despite Donald Trump’s claim that Iran was “very close” to having a nuclear weapon when Israel launched its bombing campaign, Mark Warner, the vice-chairman of the US Senate intelligence committee, told MSNBC that senators were briefed on Monday that US intelligence agencies still see no evidence that Iran is trying to make nuclear weapons.
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Donald Trump said he has still has not made a decision on whether to join Israel’s attack on Iran, but repeated Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that Iran was “weeks away” from developing a nuclear weapon.
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Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell cautioned that officials expect tariffs imposed by Trump to increase prices over the course of the summer. His comments came as the Fed kept interest rates on hold, but signaled it might make two cuts this year, as Trump continues to demand lower rates.
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As Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, was cross-examined by the senate armed services committee, an official defense department social media account, DOD Rapid Response, posted a series of attacks on Democratic senators on X.
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Top senate Democrats insisted that Trump needs congressional authorization for any attack on Iran, echoing the 2002 debate in congress over the US attack on Iraq. A star witness that year, who urged congress to back war in Iraq as a way to achieve regime change in Iran, was Benjamin Netanyahu.
Top Democrats insist that Congress must be consulted before any US attack on Iran
Five top senate Democrats said in a statement on Wednesday that Donald Trump “must consult Congress and seek authorization if he is considering taking the country to war” against Iran, and demanded “a clear, detailed plan outlining the goals, risks, cost, and timeline for any proposed mission”.
The joint statement, from senators Chris Coons, Chuck Schumer, Patty Murray, Jack Reed and Mark Warner expressed strong support for Israel, but cast doubt on the Trump administration’s preparations for war.
“As President Trump reportedly considers expanding U.S. engagement in the war, we are deeply concerned about a lack of preparation, strategy, and clearly defined objectives, and the enormous risk to Americans and civilians in the region. Iran has signaled that it would retaliate against American personnel if the United States participates in military strikes”, the senators wrote.
“We are alarmed by the Trump administration’s failure to provide answers to fundamental questions. By law, the president must consult Congress and seek authorization if he is considering taking the country to war. He owes Congress and the American people a strategy for U.S. engagement in the region. We need a clear, detailed plan outlining the goals, risks, cost, and timeline for any proposed mission, as well as how he will ensure the safe evacuation of Americans in harm’s way all across the region.”
Among the specific questions the Democrats demanded answers to were these: “What is the Intelligence Community’s current assessment of Iran’s nuclear program, its leaders’ intent, and its capabilities?” and, “What would be the objective of U.S. military intervention against Iran? President Trump has called for Iran’s ‘unconditional surrender’ – what does that mean?”
The demand for congressional authorization, and the concern that the president’s claims about Iran’s nuclear program might not be supported by US intelligence assessments echo the 2002 debate in congress over the resolution to authorize the use of military force to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction it did not, in fact, possess.
In that context, it is worth noting that both Schumer and Warner voted for the Iraq war resolution, in October 2002, Murray and Reed voted against it. (Coons was not yet a senator in 2002, but his seat was held at the time by Joe Biden, who voted to authorize the use of force).
In the weeks leading up to that vote, one House committee heard expert testimony on the possible impact of a US invasion of Iraq on the Middle East from an Israeli expert, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Given that it is Netanyahu’s war on Iran that Donald Trump is now thinking about joining, the Israeli leader’s wildly inaccurate prediction of how the Middle East would be transformed for the better by a US invasion of Iraq might be worth considering.
Looking back at his 2002 testimony now, it is striking that Netanyahu linked his strong support for a US invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein with the possibility of inspiring the implosion of the ruling theocracy in neighboring Iran.
“It’s not a question of whether Iraq’s regime should be taken out but when should it be taken out; it’s not a question of whether you’d like to see a regime change in Iran but how to achieve it,” Netanyahu told US lawmakers on 12 September 2002.
The American-educated Israeli leader, who was then between terms as prime minister, even suggested that Iran was so ripe for revolt that just seeing American television shows could do the trick — although he had some trouble recalling the name of one of the programs he proposed using as a weapon.
Netanyahu recalled that he had once advised the Central Intelligence Agency “that if you want to advance regime change in Iran, you don’t have to go through the CIA cloak-and-dagger stuff — what you want to do is take very large, very strong transponders and just beam Melrose Place and Beverly Hills 2050 and all that into Tehran and into Iran, because that is subversive stuff. They watch it — the young kids watch it, the young people. They want to have the same nice clothes and the same houses and swimming pools and so on”.
“So the question now is: choose. You can beam Melrose Place, but it may take a long time. On the other hand, if you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region. And I think that people sitting right next door in Iran, young people, and many others, will say the time of such regimes, of such despots is gone.”
“If you take out Saddam,” Netanyahu told Congress in 2002, “I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region. And I think that people sitting right next door in Iran… will say the time of such regimes, of such despots is gone.” pic.twitter.com/ZNTxpSP3a2
— Robert Mackey (@RobertMackey) February 14, 2019
Andrew Roth
Foreign students will be required to unlock their social media profiles to allow US diplomats to review their online activity before receiving educational and exchange visas, the state department has announced. Those who fail to do so will be suspected of hiding that activity from US officials.
The new guidance, unveiled by the state department on Wednesday, directs US diplomats to conduct an online presence review to look for “any indications of hostility toward the citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles of the United States”.
A cable separately obtained by Politico also instructs diplomats to flag any “advocacy for, aid or support for foreign terrorists and other threats to US national security” and “support for unlawful antisemitic harassment or violence”.
The screening for “antisemitic” activity matches similar guidance given at US Citizenship and Immigration Services under the Department of Homeland Security and has been criticised as an effort to crack down on opposition to the conduct of Israel’s war in Gaza.
The new state department checks are directed at students and other applicants for visas in the F, M and J categories, which refer to academic and vocational education, as well as cultural exchanges.
Video of violent arrest of US citizen by federal immigration agents prompts protests in Los Angeles
Video of a native-born American citizen being roughly arrested by federal immigration agents on Tuesday in Los Angeles county, reportedly for objecting to the arrest of his Walmart coworker, went viral on social media, and prompted street protests in the city of Pico Rivera Tuesday night.
“He’s a U.S. citizen!” and now he’s missing.
20-year-old Adrian Andrew Martinez’s family says he was trying to stand up for someone being harassed by ICE agents in a Pico Rivera parkinglot. The footage shows at least six agents swarming him. He struggles, but doesn’t lay hands… pic.twitter.com/KTcoR6Z1KI
— Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline) June 18, 2025
According to CALÓ News, an English-language platform for the Latino community in southern California, the video showed Adrian Andrew Martinez, 20, being tackled and forcibly detained by several US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents in a parking lot outside the Walmart where Martinez works.
Witnesses, including Oscar Preciado, a delivery driver who recorded the incident on video, said that Martinez told the agents that they needed a warrant to arrest his coworker.
The video, some of which was included in a video report by another local news site, LA Taco, shows uniformed agents hitting Martinez and then forcing him into vehicle as another group of agents, wearing plain clothes arrived in an unmarked car and threatened to shoot bystanders who were recording on their phones.
L.A. Taco has confirmed with the family of 20yr old Adrian Andrew Martinez, who was taken by ICE while working at Walmart in Pico Rivera, is a US citizen who was speaking up for his coworker that was detained. ~ @el_tragon_de_LA pic.twitter.com/6ZtgprqUIa
— L.A. TACO🌴🌮 (@LATACO) June 18, 2025
Myra Martinez told CALÓ News that her son Adrian had started his shift at Walmart around 5 am and went on a break at approximately 8am when Ice agents were reportedly seen in the vicinity. She found out about his arrest from the social media video, and was initially unable to confirm his whereabouts for more than 24 hours.
Adrian Martinez was finally located by his family on Wednesday afternoon and is being held at the federal building in downtown LA, CALÓ News reports.
On social media, Pentagon hurls partisan invective at Democratic senators for asking Hegseth tough questions
As our colleague Chris Stein reports, the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, suggested on Wednesday that he would not obey a federal court ruling against the deployments of national guard troops and US marines to Los Angeles, the latest example of the Trump administration’s willingness to ignore judges it disagrees with.
“I don’t believe district courts should be determining national security policy. When it goes to the supreme court, we’ll see,” Hegseth told the Democratic senator Mazie Hirono during a senate armed services committee hearing on the Pentagon’s budget request. Facing similar questions from another Democrat, Elizabeth Warren, he said: “If the supreme court rules on a topic, we will abide by that.”
Throughout the hearing, the former Fox News host who now leads the Pentagon scoffed at tough questions from Democrats. Hegseth even laughed when he was pressed by senator Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat, to say whether or not troops deployed to southern California were allowed to shoot unarmed protesters in the legs.
Slotkin reminded Hegseth that she was asking because Trump’s first-term defense secretary, Mark Esper, revealed in his memoir that Trump had suggested that soldiers should shoot at Black Lives Matter protesters outside the White House the week after George Floyd was murdered.
According to Esper, on 1 June 1 2020, Trump asked him to deploy 10,000 active-duty troops to the streets of the nation’s capital and have them open fire on protesters. “Can’t you just shoot them?” Trump asked, in an Oval Office meeting Esper describes in the introduction to the book he published two years later. “Just shoot them in the legs or something?”
During the hearing, Hegseth’s mocking, partisan tone was echoed by an official defense department social media account, DOD Rapid Response, which posted a series of attacks on Democratic senators on X.
The account, which appears to be based on, and closely mirrors, the approach of a political campaign social media operation marks a clear departure for the US department of defense, which has previously upheld the non-partisan tradition of making statements in the name of an apolitical military.
“Secretary Hegseth smacks down Senator Hirono’s INSANE line of questioning”, one post blared, quoting his claim that the senator’s questions about whether or not troops are authorized to shoot protesters an attempt “to SMEAR the commander-in-chief”.
Secretary Hegseth smacks down Senator Hirono’s INSANE line of questioning:
. @SecDef Senator, as I have said before, I reject the premise of your question. The characterization that I would be given or are given unlawful orders, it’s all meant to SMEAR the commander in chief,… pic.twitter.com/p8LAlpiAGv
— DOD Rapid Response (@DODResponse) June 18, 2025
Another post complained that “Senator Warren spent her time badgering” Hegseth with questions like, “Would you send troops to 15 cities if the president said, ‘Do it’, would you do it?” After Hegseth refused to answer the question, calling it a hypothetical, Warren reminded him that the senators have oversight of the Pentagon budget.
“Well, you can refuse, but you’re here asking for a trillion dollars and I want to know how you’re going to spend it”, Warren said.
The Pentagon account also attacked senator Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat who lost her legs while serving in Iraq in 2004, for criticizing the deployment of marines to Los Angeles.
After the hearing, when Duckworth suggested in a post that Hegseth would be “fired from the job he has due to his incompetence”, the rapid response account replied by posting a photo of protesters with a Mexican flag in front of a burning car in Compton, with the caption: “Senator, California was burning. Federal agents were being attacked by MOBS. Federal buildings were being vandalized. Gavin Newscum refused to act, so we did.”
Despite Trump’s claim, US intelligence briefed senators on Monday that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon, Warner says
Despite Donald Trump’s recent claim that Iran was “very close” to making a nuclear weapon when Israel launched its bombing campaign, Mark Warner, the vice-chairman of the US Senate intelligence committee, said on Wednesday that senators were briefed on Monday, after Israel’s attack, that US intelligence agencies still see no evidence that Iran is trying to make nuclear weapons.
In an interview with MSNBC, Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, said that Trump’s director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, had testified to the Senate in March “that Iran had taken no action towards, moving towards a bomb”.
“And we got reconfirmed … Monday of this week, that the intelligence hasn’t changed,” Warner added.
In her written, opening testimony to the Senate select committee on intelligence on 25 March, Gabbard summarized the collective assessment on Iran of the 18 US intelligence elements that comprise the US intelligence community, which she referred to using the acronym IC:
The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamanei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003. The IC is closely monitoring if Tehran decides to reauthorize its nuclear weapons program.
When Trump was reminded on Tuesday of Gabbard’s testimony that Iran was not pursuing a nuclear weapon, he told reporters: “I don’t care what she said, I think they were very close to having one.”
“Foreign policy by tweet is insane. And that’s what this guy is doing,” Warner told MSNBC about Trump’s social media posts on Iran.
“Then you’ve got the president basically dismissing all of the intelligence,” he added. “I have no foggy idea what American policy is right now towards this circumstance. I’m the vice-chair of the intelligence committee; if I don’t have the foggiest idea, what do the American people know?”
Trump’s delay on forcing sale of TikTok risks national security, senior intelligence committee Democrat says
Hours after Donald Trump told reporters that he was, again, extending the deadline to force a sale of TikTok’s US business, as required by a law passed last year, Senator Mark Warner, the senior Democrat on the intelligence committee, just released a statement saying the delay poses a risk to national security.
The law mandates the sale of TikTok to ensure that the popular social media app used by Americans is no longer owned by a company beholden to the Chinese government
“Once again, the Trump administration is flouting the law and ignoring its own national security findings about the risks posed by a PRC-controlled TikTok”, Warner said, using an acronym for the People’s Republic of China. “An executive order can’t sidestep the law, but that’s exactly what the president is trying to do.”
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday morning, Trump was asked about the sale to a US owner, which has not yet been agreed despite the fact that he already extended the deadline.
“We’re going to extend it”, Trump said. “We’re going to probably make a deal. I think we’ll need China’s blessing on it.”
The president has previously acknowledged that his own tariff-driven trade war with China has made the prospect of a deal to sell the Chinese-owned social media app’s US business more difficult.
Last year, Warner said that a classified intelligence briefing on the threats posed to national security by TikTok’s Chinese ownership had convinced him and other senators of both major parties that a law mandating a sale was necessary.
“Let me be clear – I don’t want to see TikTok banned either, but we can’t allow it to continue under its current adversarial ownership”, Warner posted on social media in January. “It must be sold to protect our data and national security.”
The day so far
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Donald Trump has still has not made a decision on how to proceed on Iran and has repeated Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that Iran was “weeks away” from developing a nuclear weapon before Israel’s attacks began. Israel has not provided any evidence for its claim, and expert and US intelligence sources have said Iran was not working to develop a nuclear weapon. You can follow all the latest from the Middle East here.
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Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell cautioned that officials expect tariffs imposed by Trump to increase prices over the course of the summer. His comments came as the Fed kept interest rates on hold, but signaled it might make two cuts this year, as Trump continues to demand lower rates.
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Brad Lander, New York City’s comptroller and a mayoral candidate, has lashed out at Donald Trump and “his fascist regime”, after he was arrested yesterday by masked federal agents while visiting an immigration court and accompanying a person out of a courtroom. Posting on X, Lander wrote: “We will all be worse off if we let Donald Trump and his fascist regime undermine the rule of law.”
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A Tennessee state law banning gender-affirming care for minors can stand, the US supreme court ruled, a devastating loss for trans rights supporters in a case that could set a precedent for dozens of other lawsuits involving the rights of transgender children. In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the 6-3 decision “invites legislatures to engage in discrimination by hiding blatant sex classifications in plain sight” and “authorizes … untold harm to transgender children”.
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Pete Hegseth said he would remove military troops from US cities that Trump deployed to assist federal law enforcement officers if the defense department is directed to as a result of a supreme court ruling.
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Women across the political spectrum are more concerned about the state of the US economy and inflation under Trump than men are, according to a new exclusive poll for the Guardian. Libby Rodney, chief strategy officer of Harris Poll, said: “Women are experiencing the sharp edge of inflation on essentials like groceries and childcare in ways that stock portfolios can’t capture.”
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Ted Cruz, the US senator from Texas, and conservative media personality Tucker Carlson clashed over US military involvement in the Middle East, with the latter shouting: “You don’t know anything about Iran!” in a heated interview that exposes a sharp division within Trump’s coalition as the president considers joining Israel in attacking Iran.
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The US supreme court ruled against the state of Texas and oil industry interests in their challenge to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) authority to license certain nuclear waste storage facilities.
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Transatlantic airfares have dropped to rates last seen before the pandemic, data shows, the latest sign that fewer Europeans are traveling to the US amid concerns over US border controls and Trump’s policies.
Trump says he still has not made a final decision yet on Iran
Donald Trump said he still has not made a decision on how to proceed on Iran and will hold a meeting later in the day in the Situation Room.
Trump said that Iran wants to meet and the US side “may do that”, adding: “A deal could still happen.”
He said Israel is doing well in its attacks aimed at dismantling Iran’s nuclear facilities, and repeats Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that Iran was “weeks away” from developing a nuclear weapon before Israel’s attacks began.
This is significant as Israel’s claim that its strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities were “pre-emptive” is the subject of much contention, with expert and US intelligence sources saying that Iran was not working to develop a nuclear weapon.
As my colleague Patrick Wintour wrote this week: “Netanyahu’s critics are saying he acted to pre-empt something else: a diplomatic agreement between the US and Iran on its civil nuclear programme, or even the demise of his own government. They point out that Israel has been saying for 20 years that Iran is on the brink of building a bomb.”
Per Patrick’s analysis:
Either way, Netanyahu’s claim largely depends on Israel’s formidable intelligence community possessing a greater state of knowledge about Iran’s nuclear programme than either its US counterparts or the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
As recently as 25 March, Tulsi Gabbard, the US director of national intelligence, told the Senate intelligence committee that the American intelligence community had assessed that Iran was not actively pursuing a nuclear weapon.
However, Gabbard added that in the past years, there would appear to have been “an erosion of a decades-long taboo in Iran on discussing nuclear weapons in public, likely emboldening nuclear weapons advocates within Iran’s decision-making apparatus”.
She added: “Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile is at its highest levels and is unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons.”
A 22-page report declassified by the IAEA board this week did not say Iran was so close to a nuclear weapon. It said it had been unable to see aspects of Iran’s civil nuclear programme, and believed Tehran had repeatedly failed to cooperate, particularly over its past secret nuclear programme.
It concluded that it could not verify that Iran’s civil nuclear programme was exclusively civilian. But it did not say Iran was on the verge of a nuclear weapon.
Rachel Leingang
Authorities announced earlier this week that alleged shooter Vance Boelter had visited the homes of four lawmakers in Minnesota, ultimately shooting people at two of them.
One of the lawmakers whose homes was targeted has now released a statement. State representative Kristin Bahner was out of town when the shooter came to her door in Maple Grove, a suburb of Minneapolis. She thanked law enforcement and her neighbors, and she expressed grief at the loss of Melissa Hortman.
Her statement reads:
The past several days have been surrounded by so much grief and fear. This senseless violence came to my door as well, placing me and my family in harm’s way.
I do not know why this man was filled with such hatred that he would come to my door; divine intervention led my family to change our plans keeping us safe.
Over the past several days, I have spent time shielding my family from grief and worry, in the hope that they can remain unscathed. Yet these events rarely leave us without marks; they will forever change us.
Bahner said she would seek to honor Hortman’s legacy and that Hortman would have found a way to bring people together and lift people up at this moment.
My response to bad trouble visiting my door will be met with good trouble. I will continue to lead for my community and work to improve the lives of all Minnesotans.
Powell says he’s not thinking about his re-appointment prospects
A reporter asks Powell: “Assuming you are not re-appointed, would you stay on as governor when your term ends?”
Powell’s reply is curt.
I’m not thinking about that. I’m thinking about this.
Earlier today, Trump mused about appointing himself to lead the US central bank, based on his dissatisfaction with Powell. He said:
Maybe I should go to the Fed. Am I allowed to appoint myself at the Fed? I’d do a much better job than these people.
Trump has long criticized Powell and sparked market concern earlier this year when he suggested the central bank chief’s termination couldn’t come fast enough.
Trump has since walked back from that rhetoric, saying he would not fire Powell before his term as chair ends next year, but he has not held back on his broader criticism – including calling Powell “stupid” and a “major loser” – and has made clear that he will not ask Powell to stay on as the central bank’s leader.
