Key events
Maya Yang
The US Department of Homeland Security is now requiring lawmakers to provide 72 hours of notice before visiting detention centers, according to new guidance.
The guidance comes after a slew of tense visits from Democratic lawmakers to detention centers amid Donald Trump’s crackdowns in immigrant communities across the country. Many Democratic lawmakers in recent weeks have either been turned away, arrested or manhandled by law enforcement officers at the facilities, leading to public condemnation towards Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (Ice) handling of such visits.
Lawmakers are allowed to access DHS facilities “used to detain or otherwise house aliens” for inspections and are not required “to provide prior notice of the intent to enter a facility”, according to the 2024 Federal Appropriations Act.
Previous language surrounding lawmaker visits to such facilities said that “Ice will comply with the law and accommodate members seeking to visit/tour an Ice detention facility for the purpose of conducting oversight,” CNN reported.
However, in the new guidance, the DHS updated the language to say that Ice “will make every effort to comply with the law” but “exigent circumstances (eg operational conditions, security posture, etc) may impact the time of entry into the facility”.
The new guidance also attempts to distinguish Ice field offices from Ice detention facilities, noting that since “Ice field offices are not detention facilities” they do not fall under the visitation requirements laid out in the Appropriations Act.
The Guardian has contacted Ice for comment.
Melody Schreiber
Amid controversial dismissals for independent advisers and staff at health agencies, alongside lackluster responses to the bird flu and measles outbreaks, experts fear the US is now in worse shape to respond to a pandemic than before 2020.
H5N1, which has received less attention under the Trump administration than from Biden’s team, is not the only influenza virus or even the only variant of bird flu with the potential to spark a pandemic. But a subpar response to the ongoing US outbreak signals a larger issue: America is not ready for whatever pathogen will sweep through next.
“We have not even remotely maintained the level of pandemic preparedness – which needed a lot of work, as we saw from the Covid pandemic,” said Angela Rasmussen, an American virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. “But now, we essentially have no pandemic preparedness.”
“I’m concerned on a number of fronts,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, professor of epidemiology and director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University School of Public Health.
Those concerns include a lack of quality information from officials, weakened virus monitoring systems, and public health reductions at the federal, state and local levels.
Edward Helmore
Donald Trump has denied a report in the Wall Street Journal that he has approved US plans to attack Iran, saying that the news outlet has “no idea” what his thinking is concerning the Israel-Iran conflict.
He also confirmed, later on Thursday, via his press secretary, that he’d be making a decision within the “next two weeks”.
The Journal reported late on Wednesday that Trump told senior aides a day earlier that he had approved attack plans but was delaying on giving the final order to see if Tehran would abandon its nuclear program. The report cited three anonymous officials.
On Thursday, Trump responded to the report, posting on Truth Social: “The Wall Street Journal has No Idea what my thoughts are concerning Iran!”
But Trump’s decision is dependent on whether the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) would destroy the Fordow uranium enrichment site, a US official told Axios. Fordow, which is built into a mountain south of Tehran, is a target of Israel’s, but they lack the “bunker-buster bombs” and aircraft needed to destroy it; the US has access to both.
“We’re going to be ready to strike Iran. We’re not convinced yet that we’re necessary. And we want to be unnecessary, but I think the president’s just not convinced we are needed yet,” a US official told the outlet.
Victoria Bekiempis
The Los Angeles Dodgers said on Thursday they denied US immigration enforcement agents access to the parking lot at Dodger Stadium earlier in the day.
“This morning, ICE agents came to Dodger Stadium and requested permission to access the parking lots,” the baseball team said in a post on X.
“They were denied entry to the grounds by the organization. Tonight’s game will be played as scheduled.”
But Ice said in a response to the Dodgers’ tweet that its agents “were never there”, and Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at the DHS, said in a statement that “this had nothing to do with the Dodgers. CBP vehicles were in the stadium parking lot very briefly, unrelated to any operation or enforcement.”
The back and forth only added to anxiety in a city left on edge by frequent and brazen immigration enforcement actions.
The homeland security presence came as immigrant communities in LA are on high alert as federal agents have raided workplaces, parking lots and a swap-meet in search of undocumented immigrants.
Since the department stepped up enforcement in the region, there have been persistent rumors that the stadium of the Dodgers, a team which has a large Latino fanbase, may be a target.
Court lets Trump keep control of California national guard for now
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and will be bringing you the news over the next few hours.
We start with the news that a US appeals court let Donald Trump retain control on Thursday of California’s national guard while the state’s Democratic governor proceeds with a lawsuit challenging the Republican president’s use of the troops to quell protests in Los Angeles.
Trump’s decision to send troops into Los Angeles prompted a national debate about the use of the military on US soil and inflamed political tension in the country’s second most-populous city.
On Thursday, a three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit court of appeals extended its pause on U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer’s 12 June ruling that Trump had unlawfully called the national guard into federal service.
Trump probably acted within his authority, the panel said, adding that his administration probably complied with the requirement to coordinate with Governor Gavin Newsom, and even if it did not, he had no authority to veto Trump’s directive.
“And although we hold that the president likely has authority to federalize the national guard, nothing in our decision addresses the nature of the activities in which the federalized national guard may engage,” it wrote in its opinion.
Newsom could still challenge the use of the national guard and U.S. Marines under other laws, including the bar on using troops in domestic law enforcement, it added. The governor could raise those issues at a court hearing on Friday in front of Breyer, it said.
In a post on X after the decision, Newsom vowed to pursue his challenge.
“The president is not a king and is not above the law,” he said. “We will press forward with our challenge to President Trump’s authoritarian use of US military soldiers against our citizens.”
Trump hailed the decision in a post on Truth Social. “This is a great decision for our country and we will continue to protect and defend law-abiding Americans,” he said.
“This is much bigger than Gavin, because all over the United States, if our cities, and our people, need protection, we are the ones to give it to them should state and local police be unable, for whatever reason, to get the job done.”
In other news:
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The Los Angeles Dodgers said they blocked US immigration enforcement agents from accessing the parking lot at Dodger Stadium on Thursday and got into public back-and-forth statements with Ice and the Department of Homeland Security, which denied their agents were ever there.
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The Department of Homeland Security is now requiring lawmakers to provide 72 hours of notice before visiting detention centers, according to new guidance. The guidance comes after a slew of tense visits from Democratic lawmakers to detention centers amid Trump’s crackdowns in immigrant communities across the country.
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A federal judge on Thursday blocked Trump’s administration from forcing 20 Democratic-led states to cooperate with immigration enforcement in order to receive billions of dollars in transportation grant funding. Chief US district judge John McConnell in Providence, Rhode Island, granted the states’ request for an injunction barring the Department for Transportation’s policy, saying the states were likely to succeed on the merits of some or all of their claims.
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The office of the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, requested “a passive approach to Juneteenth messaging”, according to an exclusive Rolling Stone report citing a Pentagon email. The messaging request for Juneteenth – a federal holiday commemorating when enslaved Black people in Galveston, Texas, learned they were free – was transmitted by the Pentagon’s office of the chief of public affairs. This office said it was not poised to publish web content related to Juneteenth, Rolling Stone reported.
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Depending on who you ask, between 4 and 6 million people showed up to last weekend’s “No Kings” protests. Now the real number is becoming clearer, with one estimate suggesting that Saturday was among the biggest.
