Support for the military is why Trump ‘is insistent on increasing defense budget to $1.5tn’, says JD Vance
Vance also brought up Trump’s golden dome during his speech.
You should expect some things out of your civilian leadership, out of the president, the Vice president, the Secretary of war. This is why we’ve pushed forward with Agenda 47 and the Golden Dome, and any number of new and advanced technologies. It’s why the president has made improving military quality of life such a central focus, why he’s insistent on increasing the defense budget to $1.5 trillion, and why he’s proud to support pay raises, new barracks, new hospitals and new schools on base.
Key events
Closing summary
This concludes out live coverage of the second Trump administration, on a day when the wheels fell off its planned concert series to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding. Here are the latest developments:
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A jury in Spokane, Washington found an Afghanistan War veteran and two others guilty of federal conspiracy charges on Thursday for their part in a protest last June outside the city’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility.
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New Jersey’s governor, Mikie Sherrill, said that state health inspectors were denied full access to the privately run Delaney Hall immigration detention center in Newark, where detainees are staging a hunger and labor strike over health and sanitary conditions, and protesters rallying outside have been tased, pepper-sprayed and detained.
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At least six of the nine featured musical acts recruited to play on the National Mall in Washington DC this summer, in a concert series planned by the Trump administration to mark the nation’s 250th anniversary, have dropped out of the concert series, just one day after the lineup was announced.
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US vice-president JD Vance on Thursday told reporters that Washington was “not there yet” with Iran but he said the parties were close, adding that the US was in a position where it could substantially set back Tehran’s nuclear program. Earlier, Iran’s Tasnim news agency, citing a source close to the negotiating team, said the text of a potential memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the two countries had not yet been finalised or confirmed.
After video of former border patrol chief Greg Bovino arriving at Newark Airport on Thursday was posted on social media by the conservative video journalist Brendan Gutenschwager, a Democratic New Jersey congresswoman, Bonnie Watson Coleman, responded with a two-word comment: “Outside agitator”.
Earlier on Thursday, Bovino had posted that he was on his way to Newark, where protesters have rallied outside an ICE detention facility, and asked his social-media followers: “Should I just handle this myself?”
Country music star Martina McBride drops out of Trump-linked concert series
Country music star Martina McBride is the latest musician to announce that she will not be taking part in the Trump-linked Great American State Fair concert series on the National Mall in Washington DC this summer.
In a social-media statement, McBride told her fans that she wanted to “clear the air”.
“I will not be performing at the Great American State Fair on June 25th. I was presented with an opportunity to perform at a nonpartisan event but that turned out to be misleading,” she said.
“I asked lots of questions and was assured this was a nonpartisan event that was meant to celebrate ALL 50 states,” she added. “Yesterday things started changing and what we were told is, in fact, not what is happening.”
“It greatly upsets me that any fan who has been moved by my music may now feel like I’m abandoning the meaning behind those songs. I assure you, that is not the case. I appreciate every single fan who has reached out. I hope to get back to the DC area very soon.”
McBride is the sixth of nine featured performers announced on Wednesday to say that she will not take part in the event organized by Freedom 250, a group created by Donald Trump and staffed by his allies.
In response to McBride’s Instagram post, Jason Isbell, an Alabama musician who performed at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, commented: “WHEW 🙌” and the country musician Ashley McBryde added, “Amen”.
At White House briefing, pro-Trump reporters for partisan outlets helped Bessent promote administration’s agenda
The Trump administration’s effort to remake the White House press corps, by granting credentials to a host of reporters from openly partisan, rightwing outlets and regularly calling on them to ask questions that bolster Donald Trump’s agenda, has been so successful that it is rarely mentioned in news accounts these days.
But Thursday’s briefing, led by treasury secretary Scott Bessent, was remarkable for how it started.
After Bessent began with a pitch to promote a new app for managing Trump accounts, a type of investment account created by the administration for children, who get a one-time federal contribution of $1,000, he turned to his right and called on Beni Rae Harmony, a correspondent for the far-right network Real America’s Voice invited by the White House to sit in seats beside the stage reserved for staff.
Harmony, a former employee of the Republican advocacy group Turning Point USA, who claimed last year that her tearful on-air tribute to the late Charlie Kirk got her suspended (though the station denied that), asked Bessent to expand on how the new investment accounts would help “working-class Americans”.
“Great question”, Bessent responded, before continuing to promote the administration policy.
Bessent then called on a Fox Business correspondent, using his first name, “Ed”, and the Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy.
A few minutes later, after taking two questions from nonpartisan reporters for ABC and CBS, Bessent pointed to the right side of the room and picked out Cara Castronuova, a former reality TV fitness trainer now working as White House correspondent for LindellTV, the pro-Trump outlet created by Mike Lindell, the pillow salesman who played a key role in Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Castronuova asked Bessent another softball question, inviting him to explain how the administration is putting in place safeguards for cryptocurrency, “to make sure new digital payment systems protect Americans privacy and freedoms”.
After Bessent assured the viewers of LindellTV that crypto will be safe for them to use, he turned further to his to his right and asked another invited guest he referred to by his first name, Jack Posobiec, of Turning Point and Real America’s Voice, to help him move along to what looked like a prepared moment.
Posobiec, who first gained prominence in 2016 as a Republican activist spreading the anti-Democrat conspiracy theory known as Pizzagate, asked Bessent to explain the origins of the $1.776bn fund created by the Department of Justice to compensate people who claim that they were the victims of politically motivated prosecutions by the Biden administration.
“Thank you for the question. This is going to be the only question I’ll take on this matter today,” Bessent replied. He then looked down at the podium, apparently to read a prepared statement on the matter without opening himself up to adversarial questioning.
“There’s ongoing litigation, so, it would be inappropriate for me to comment,” he continued. “President Trump is a great American who has endured more than ten years, ten years, of nonstop harassment and weaponization from federal and state government actors.”
“The Department of Justice represented Treasury and the IRS in this matter, and I’m going to have to refer any questions to acting attorney general Todd Blanche,” Bessent said, and then pointed to Steve Nelson, a reporter for the reliably pro-Trump New York Post.
Later in the briefing, Bessent picked out Reagan Reese, of the Daily Caller, which was created by Tucker Carlson, who asked the secretary for an update on the investigation into “who’s funding Antifa”.
Posobiec and Harmony then went outside the briefing room to do a live segment for Real America’s Voice promoting the Trump accounts under the banner headline: “MEDIA IS WRONG: TRUMP ACCOUNTS IS FOR ALL FAMILIES”.
George Chidi
An anti-crime taskforce ordered by Donald Trump on to the streets of Memphis has been accused of targeting community observers with widespread intimidation including “immense force”.
Agents have been “retaliating against, intimidating, and harassing” observers attempting to monitor the federal taskforce’s activity, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Tennessee, which alleges that officials have tailed cars, surveilled homes and even “falsely arrested” a community observer.
The ACLU filed a lawsuit this month against Tennessee state and federal officials administering the anti-crime initiative.
Additional declarations filed on Thursday by six community observers detail “cowboy tactics” they say have been used in recent months, from bumper-riding their cars in unmarked vehicles and pretextual traffic stops to an arbitrary arrest.
The taskforce was launched last September by Tennessee’s Republican governor, Bill Lee, following an executive order by Trump, who cited the persistently high rate of violent crime in Memphis. Lee promptly activated the national guard and flooded his state’s second-largest city with more than 2,000 state and federal police officers.
Wendy Frew
US vice-president JD Vance on Thursday told reporters that Washington was “not there yet” with Iran but he said the parties were close, adding that the US was in a position where it could substantially set back Tehran’s nuclear program.
Earlier, Iran’s Tasnim news agency, citing a source close to the negotiating team, said the text of a potential memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the two countries had not yet been finalised or confirmed.
Donald Trump has circulated a draft peace agreement for the war with Iran among allies including Israel as both sides try to prevent fresh breaches of the ceasefire escalating out of control and scuppering any deal.
The US vice-president told reportersthere were a couple of sticking points in talks with Tehran about its enriched uranium stockpile and the question of enrichment.
“It’s hard to say exactly when or if the president is going to sign the MOU. We’re going back and forth on a couple of language points,” Vance said.
“I can’t guarantee that we’re going to get there, but right now I feel pretty good about it,” he said.
Anti-ICE protesters, including Afghanistan War veteran, found guilty of conspiracy to ‘impede or injure a federal officer’
A jury in Spokane, Washington found an Afghanistan War veteran and two others guilty of federal conspiracy charges on Thursday for their part in a protest last June outside the city’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility.
The US military veteran, Bajun Mavalwalla, told the Guardian in March that he had refused to plead guilty and was ready to face justice.
The right to protest is “supposed to be fundamentally American”, he said.
“It’s among the rights that when I joined the military, I thought I was joining to protect,” he said. “You can’t do it violently. You can’t do it in a way that harms other people, but you have a right to stand up for what you believe in.”
Mavalwalla, 36, now faces six years in prison, three years supervised release and a $250,000 fine for conspiring to “impede or injure a federal officer” when he joined other demonstrators who sought to block the transport of two Venezuelan immigrants who had been arrested by ICE at a routine immigration hearing in Spokane in June 2025.
Young MC, the Commodores, C+C Music Factory and Milli Vanilli follow Morris Day in saying they will not play in Trump’s Freedom 250 bash
At least five of the nine featured musical acts recruited to play on the National Mall in Washington DC this summer, in a concert series planned by the Trump administration to mark the nation’s 250th anniversary, have dropped out of the concert series, just one day after the lineup was announced.
The first to drop out, hours after the announcement, was Morris Day, who called his scheduled participation a baseless “rumor”.
Later on Wednesday, Young MC posted a message that began: “I have informed my agents that I will not be performing at the Freedom 250 event”.
“The artists were never told about any political involvement with the event,” he added, before casting doubt on the claim from the Trump-appointed organizer that the series was nonpartisan.
So far on Thursday, the Commodores, C+C Music Factory and Milli Vanilli have all either dropped out or expressed surprise that they were ever booked.
“The Commodores will not be performing”, the group said in a statement. “Our music has always been our voice and we choose not to publicly affiliate with any single political party.”
Freedom Williams, C + C Music Factory’s lead rapper, said in a video statement apparently recorded in a bathroom that he had been blindsided by texts from friends and fellow celebrities horrified that he was “doing the Trump Freedom show” and “fucking with Trump”.
“I’m like, ‘What? What are you talking about?’” Williams said he replied to people “I’ve know for years, who know I don’t fuck with Trump”.
“I’m God Cipher Divine, I know where I stand. I know who the fuck I am,” he added, before explaining that his agent had not mentioned any connection with Donald Trump when he pitched the show.
After going online to research the series on Wednesday, Williams said, he told his agent he was out.
Williams went on to attack Trump, saying, as a New Yorker, “I know the type of fucking anarchy he creates” and brought up the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis by an ICE officer. But Williams reserved his most intense anger for Democrats who threatened to cancel him if he did not drop out of the series. He went on to also attack Barack Obama and covid vaccines, before suggesting that he might still change his mind and perform with the “Maga crew” out of spite, even though the event was in honor of “250 years of motherfucking capitalism and death; it’s 250 years of straight murder.”
Milli Vanilli singer Jodie Rocco told the Associated Press that no one had even asked her or her sister Linda Rocco or anyone else in the current group to perform. “My sister and I were shocked to see our name, ‘Milli Vanilli’, as one of the performers”, Rocco wrote to the AP in an email.
The poster for the Freedom 250 series included an image of Milli Vanilli’s former frontman, Fab Morvan, who just lip-synched the band’s hits and has been performing apart from the group.
At least one of the featured performers, Vanilla Ice, said in an Instagram video that he was still in. “I’m super honored to do this concert with everybody”, he said, on the apparent assumption that he will not, in the end, be performing alone. The rapper has performed at multiple New Year’s Eve shows at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago beach club.
Last December, as the deadly immigration crackdown by federal ICE agents ramped up, the two leaders of the effort, Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem, were filmed singing along with the rapper to his hit 1990 “Ice, Ice Baby.”
New Jersey health inspector denied full access to Delaney Hall immigration detention center in Newark, governor says
New Jersey’s governor, Mikie Sherrill, said that state health inspectors were denied full access to the privately run Delaney Hall immigration detention center in Newark, where detainees are staging a hunger and labor strike over health and sanitary conditions, and protesters rallying outside have been tased, pepper-sprayed and detained.
“The New Jersey Department of Health today sought to conduct a health inspection of Delaney Hall, but it was denied full access and was allowed to inspect only a limited part of the facility,” Sherrill, a Democrat elected last year in a landslide said.
“As I’ve said repeatedly, refusing to provide full access raises serious questions about what ICE is trying to hide from public view,” she continued. “New Jersey believes in the rule of law, will uphold the Constitution, and Delaney Hall should be closed down. I am calling for ICE to immediately de-escalate the situation as I continue working to keep New Jersey residents safe.”
The Department of Homeland Security tried to push back on reports, like one this week from our Guardian colleagues José Olivares and Julius Constantine Motal, that document complaints from 300-400 Delaney Hall strikers over inedible food containing worms, a lack of air conditioning and proper ventilation, a persistent flu and other viruses spreading throughout the facility, delayed medical care and lags in their immigration cases.
In privately-run ICE detention centers nationwide, detainees perform cooking, cleaning and laundry work, getting paid as little as $1 an hour.
In response to reports about harsh conditions at the center, Markwayne Mullin, the DHS secretary, recorded a social media video in which he scoffed at the concerns of Democratic elected officials, including the governor and senator Andy Kim, who was pepper-sprayed by masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel outside the facility this week.
In the video, Mullin claimed that the detentions were necessary because of the alleged violent crimes committed by a list of eight foreign nationals the department has arrested “recently”.
The secretary appeared to have some trouble making it through his prepared text in the video, however. There were 21 edits in the first 35 seconds of the published video, to cover apparent flubs in delivery, and Mullin so badly mispronounced the name of one country he said a detained man came from, “Wallamala”, that it was only possible to parse his meaning by consulting the on-screen text, which read: Guatemala.
Hakeem Jeffries, the top US House Democrat, has said a $250 bill with the president’s portrait is a “hard no,” on a post on X. He said:
Get over yourself. The upcoming July 4th anniversary is not about a wannabe King. It’s about celebrating the American journey.
Here’s a recap of the day so far:
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Trump shared a draft Iran peace deal with Israel and other allies. Trump circulated a draft peace agreement for his war with Iran among allies including Israel, as both sides try to prevent fresh breaches of the ceasefire escalating out of control and scuppering any deal.
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The Bureau of Economic Analysis released the latest Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index, excluding food and energy. The PCE price index rose in April at an annual rate of 3.8% – that is an increase from 3.5% in March and 2.8% in February.
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Support for the military is why Trump “is insistent on increasing defense budget to $1.5tn”, says JD Vance during his commencement address at the US Air Force Academy. Vance also brought up Trump’s golden dome and the use of AI in warfare, during his speech.
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Scott Bessent held White House press briefing in which he said “I don’t think there’s anything untoward about having the president’s face on the 250th anniversary bill.”
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Trump refiles $10bn defamation suit against Wall Street Journal over its reporting on his ties to Jeffrey Epstein. A judge threw out an earlier version of the suit over legal deficiencies. The lawsuit is one of several that the president has brought in his personal capacity against news organizations.
Political appointees at the Treasury Department told staff at the agency’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing to prepare prototypes of the $250 bill with the president’s portrait, according to current and former employees of the Department, the Washington Post reported Thursday.
At a press briefing Thursday afternoon, Treasure Secretary Scott Bessent said legislation would have to be passed by the Senate, to produce the bill because “no living person can be on US currency,” according to law.
If the proposed legislation is passed, this would be the first appearance of a living person on a US currency in over 150 years.
Bessent said the decision with the $250 bill is not up to the president or the Treasury Department, in fact, “it’s all up on Capitol Hill.”
The Department does “prepare for everything if it gets passed,” he said.
Meanwhile, the US Mint said that Trump’s gold coins won’t be ready before celebrations of the 250th anniversary begin, The Hill reported. The Mint is still designing the coin, and there is no official sell date yet.
