Most say upcoming military parade is not good use of government funds – poll
Six in 10 adults say that the upcoming military parade honoring the 250th anniversary of the US army is not a good use of government funds, according to an Associated Press poll.
But slightly more people approve than disapprove of Donald Trump’s decision to hold the parade. The parade will be held in Washington DC on Sunday, which is also Trump’s 79th birthday.
According to the AP-Norc poll, 40% of adults approve and 29% disapprove of Trump’s decision to hold a military parade. Two thirds of Republicans support Trump’s decision to hold the parade while half of Democrats oppose it. Half of independents neither approve nor disapprove.
Just more than a third feel that the military parade is a good use of government funds, which is expected to cost between $25-45m. Eighty per cent of Democrats said the parade is not a good use of government funds, while 65% of Republicans felt it is money well spent.
The nationwide poll was conducted 5-9 June with 1,158 adults.
Key events
Here are some photos of preparations for the army’s 250th anniversary parade in Washington DC tomorrow, which is expected to be met with millions of people protesting at roughly 2,000 sites around the country.
No immigration changes under way for farm and hospitality workers – Washington Post
There are no policy changes under way to exempt farm, hotel and other leisure workers from Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, the Washington Post reports, a day after the president suggested he might issue an order for such workers.
Trump’s comments yesterday were aimed at soothing industry leaders, but there will be no changes to current deportations, according to the Post’s report, which cites three people with knowledge of the administration’s immigration policies.
Representatives for the White House did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the report, which comes amid demonstrations protesting Trump’s immigration raids.
Trump’s “border czar”, Tom Homan, told the Washington Post that he had not discussed any changes for such workers with Trump and has not been involved in any policy plans to address them.
Farm and hotel industries rely heavily on migrant labor, and farmers were strong supporters of Trump’s 2024 re-election bid.
On Thursday, Trump acknowledged the impact of his immigration policies on some sectors and said he would issue a related order “soon”, giving no details. He said at the White House:
Our farmers are being hurt badly and we’re going to have to do something about that … We’re going to have an order on that pretty soon.
He had earlier said on social media that he was listening to business leaders’ concerns about his mass deportation agenda taking away good workers. He wrote on Truth Social:
Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace. Changes are coming!
But the post was unclear as he gave no details on what changes were coming or when, and because he also claimed “criminals … are applying for those jobs”.
US farm industry groups have long sought to be spared from mass deportations, which could upend a food supply chain dependent on immigrants, and welcomed his comments.
Agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins told CNBC yesterday that Trump was reviewing all possibilities but that Congress would also have to act, pointing to the H-2A visa program that allows employers to hire temporary or seasonal labor.
Richard Luscombe
A Florida sheriff has said his deputies will shoot protesters “graveyard dead” if they step out of line during Saturday’s “No Kings” demonstrations against the Trump administration.
Wayne Ivey, of Brevard county, is one of the state’s so-called constitutional sheriffs and a vocal supporter of Donald Trump, who he enthusiastically endorsed in previous elections.
He gave his fire and brimstone warning at a press conference on Thursday attended by Republican governor Ron DeSantis and other state officials, reported by the Orlando Sentinel:
Throw a brick, a firebomb or point a gun at one of our deputies, we will be notifying your family where to collect your remains at, because we will kill you graveyard dead. We’re not going to play.
Mimicking the kind of language favored by the president, Ivey continued:
If anyone strikes a deputy they will be going to the hospital and likely will be bitten by one of the agency’s big, beautiful dogs. I don’t want to hear any whining later saying ‘we didn’t know’.
DeSantis, meanwhile, touted Florida’s law allowing drivers to mow down protestors if they perceived them to be a threat.
If you drive off and you hit one of these people that’s their fault for impinging on you. You don’t have to sit there and just be a sitting duck and let the mob grab you out of your car and drag you through the streets.
Dozens of “No Kings” actions are planned for Saturday across Florida, where DeSantis has aligned himself forcefully with Trump’s immigration policies.
In Palm Beach, protestors plan to march to the president’s Mar-a-Lago home, although Trump will be spending his 79th birthday watching the military parade in Washington DC.
Earlier we reported that Donald Trump has welcomed the 9th US circuit court of appeals’ decision that temporarily paused a lower court ruling that blocked his mobilization of national guard troops to Los Angeles, claiming “we saved LA”.
Cities across the United States are bracing for more demonstrations especially tomorrow, when those also opposed to the military parade in Washington marking the army’s 250th anniversary are expected to take to the streets.
“They’ve defied our courts, deported Americans, disappeared people off the streets, attacked our civil rights, and slashed our services,” the group No Kings, which is behind the day of action, wrote on its website.
A battalion of 700 marines is expected to arrive today in Los Angeles, marking an extraordinary use of military forces to support civilian police operations within the United States.
Troops have stood guard at a federal detention center in the city’s downtown, where many of the protests have taken place in a show of solidarity for immigrants detained inside.
The protests so far have been mostly peaceful, punctuated by incidents of violence, and restricted to a few city blocks.
Demonstrations have also taken place in other US cities this week, including New York and Chicago.
The guard had also accompanied Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents on operations to detain immigrants.
Democratic leaders in California have strongly opposed the ramping up of immigration enforcement since it began last Friday.
“Peace begins with Ice leaving Los Angeles,” mayor Karen Bass, who has imposed a nighttime curfew over one square mile of downtown Los Angeles, said yesterday.
Trump says US was aware of Israel’s plans to attack Iran – WSJ
Donald Trump has told the Wall Street Journal that he and his team had known about Israel’s plans to attack Iran.
The Wall Street Journal reports that, when asked what kind of a heads-up the United States received before the attack, Trump said in a brief phone interview: “Heads-up? It wasn’t a heads-up. It was, we know what’s going on.”
Trump said he had spoken to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday and planned to speak with him again today. Trump called the operation “a very successful attack, to put it mildly”, per the WSJ.
As my colleague Andrew Roth reported yesterday, Trump had been publicly urging Netanyahu not to strike Iran, and at the same time began to pull non-essential personnel out of embassies and bases in the Middle East within striking distance of Iran. Per Andrew’s report:
But, in a nod to speculation that the US was intentionally signaling an imminent attack against Iran, Trump noted that a strike could also compel Iran to make a deal that would limit its efforts to seek a nuclear weapon.
“It might help it actually but it also could blow it,” he said.
US judge blocks Trump administration from overhauling federal elections
A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from implementing parts of his sweeping executive order overhauling federal elections, including by requiring voters to prove they are US citizens and barring states from counting mail-in ballots received after election day.
US district judge Denise Casper in Boston issued a preliminary injunction at the behest of 19 Democratic-led states who argued the president lacked the authority to mandate changes to federal elections and the states’ voting procedures.
Most say upcoming military parade is not good use of government funds – poll
Six in 10 adults say that the upcoming military parade honoring the 250th anniversary of the US army is not a good use of government funds, according to an Associated Press poll.
But slightly more people approve than disapprove of Donald Trump’s decision to hold the parade. The parade will be held in Washington DC on Sunday, which is also Trump’s 79th birthday.
According to the AP-Norc poll, 40% of adults approve and 29% disapprove of Trump’s decision to hold a military parade. Two thirds of Republicans support Trump’s decision to hold the parade while half of Democrats oppose it. Half of independents neither approve nor disapprove.
Just more than a third feel that the military parade is a good use of government funds, which is expected to cost between $25-45m. Eighty per cent of Democrats said the parade is not a good use of government funds, while 65% of Republicans felt it is money well spent.
The nationwide poll was conducted 5-9 June with 1,158 adults.
Donald Trump will speak to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu today, CNN is reporting.
Analysis: Israel’s strikes on Iran show Trump is unable to restrain Netanyahu
Andrew Roth
Israel’s unilateral strikes on Iran indicate a collapse of Donald Trump’s efforts to restrain the Israeli prime minister and have almost certainly scuttled Trump’s efforts to negotiate a deal with Iran that would prevent the country from seeking a nuclear weapon.
It also will probably lead to an Iranian retaliation that could develop into a larger war between Israel and Iran, a new conflict that Trump has publicly sought to avoid.
Washington officials and analysts had expected that Israel would hold off on launching strikes at least until after the US exhausted attempts to negotiate a deal with Iran. During a phone call on Monday, Trump had urged Benjamin Netanyahu not to attack Iran, the Wall Street Journal reported. But by Wednesday, Trump began to pull non-essential personnel out of embassies and bases in the Middle East within striking distance of Iran.
Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, was expected to travel to Muscat in Oman in order to conduct a sixth round of talks with Iran on Sunday in what was seen as a last chance for diplomacy.
And the strikes took place just hours after Trump had publicly urged the Netanyahu government not to attack Iran, with the US president saying that he believed an Israeli offensive would “blow” up the negotiations.
But, in a nod to speculation that the US was intentionally signaling an imminent attack against Iran, he noted that a strike could also compel Iran to make a deal that would limit its efforts to seek a nuclear weapon.
“It might help it actually but it also could blow it,” he said.
The attack was “clearly intended to scuttle the Trump administration’s negotiations with Iran,” said senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, and is “further evidence of how little respect world powers – including our own allies – have for President Trump”.
“This is a disaster of Trump and Netanyahu’s own making, and now the region risks spiraling toward a new, deadly conflict,” he added.
Read more here:
With Donald Trump’s deployment of more troops in response to protests in LA, and as plans come together for a military parade in Washington DC on the president’s birthday, journalist Judith Levine tells Jonathan Freedland why she believes the US has entered a new era of authoritarianism in this week’s edition of US Politics Weekly. You can listen here.
With predictions of as many as 200,000 attendees at tomorrow’s Washington parade, the Secret Service is preparing for protests by erecting 18 miles of anti-scale fencing and deploying drones to the city’s skies to keep watch.
However, organizers of “No Kings” protests are not planning to hold an event there but are arranging demonstrations around the country to counter the parade, which they contend is meant to feed Trump’s ego.
“The flag doesn’t belong to President Trump. It belongs to us,” the “No Kings” website says.
Their flagship event will be in Philadelphia, and organizers said they hope to draw attention away from what they paint as a strongman spectacle designed for Trump’s birthday, like a king.
Trump laughed off the idea on Thursday. “I don’t feel like a king,” he said. “I have to go through hell to get stuff approved.”
Trump says he had given Iran 60-day ultimatum before Israel’s strikes
Trump said he had given Iran a 60-day ultimatum on a nuclear deal before Israel’s strikes, but added Tehran now has a second chance.
In a post on Truth Social he has said:
Two months ago I gave Iran a 60 day ultimatum to “make a deal.” They should have done it! Today is day 61. I told them what to do, but they just couldn’t get there. Now they have, perhaps, a second chance!
You can follow all the latest developments on this and the region over on our Middle East live blog:
Israeli attack on Iran ‘excellent’, says Trump
Donald Trump on Friday said the Israeli attack on Iran has been “excellent” and warned there was much more to come, according to an interview with ABC News.
An ABC reporter on X quoted Trump as saying:
I think it’s been excellent. We gave them a chance and they didn’t take it. They got hit hard, very hard. They got hit about as hard as you’re going to get hit. And there’s more to come. A lot more.
‘Doesn’t affect tanks’: Trump shrugs off weather concerns for parade
Donald Trump’s desire for a grand military parade was scuttled in his first term over concerns about the high cost for the event. This time around, he is barreling past objections just like the tanks that will roll down Constitution Avenue.
Trump has dismissed concerns about the cost, reports Associated Press, about what message the display of military power sends and about the fact that it will take place on his 79th birthday.
One potential obstacle the president can’t control is the weather. There’s a chance the parade could be interrupted by thunderstorms. The White House has said it will go on rain or shine, but it could be delayed by lightning.
Trump said Thursday night that he hopes the weather is OK but if it’s not, “That’s OK too.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said at the White House.
Doesn’t affect the tanks at all. Doesn’t affect the soldiers. They’re used to it.”
Washington prepares for huge military parade
Tomorrow will see a parade fit for a king, writes my colleague David Smith – which is precisely why critics worry what message it will send the rest of the world about the future of democracy in America.
On Saturday there will be tanks on the streets of the nation’s capital as Washington hosts a celebration of the US army’s 250th anniversary, which happens to coincide with Donald Trump’s 79th birthday.
While the army has said it has no plans to recognize Trump’s birthday, the president will play a major role in a made-for-TV extravaganza that will reportedly also feature rocket launchers and missiles.
“He’s adopted not only the signifiers of dictator chic but the actual articles of its faith,” said Rick Wilson, a political strategist and co-founder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group. “North Korea: military parades. China: military parades. Russia: military parades.
“These aren’t parades to celebrate a victory and it’s certainly not to celebrate the United States army’s birthday. This is a parade to aggrandise Donald Trump’s ego. No one who knows either Trump or his pattern of behavior would think for a minute this is anything else.”
You can read David’s full, and excellent, article here
Millions expected at Saturday’s ‘No Kings’ protests
Rachel Leingang
Millions of people are expected to protest against the Trump administration on Saturday at roughly 2,000 sites nationwide in a demonstration dubbed “No Kings”, planned for the same day as the president’s military parade and birthday.
Interest in the events has risen since Trump sent national guard and US Marine Corps troops to Los Angeles to tamp down mostly peaceful protests against ramped-up deportations.
“We’ve seen hundreds of new events on the No Kings Day map since the weekend,” said Ezra Levin, co-founder of Indivisible, one of the groups behind the “day of defiance”. “We’ve seen hundreds of thousands of people register for those events.”
A website for the protest cites Trump’s defying of the courts, mass deportations, attacks on civil rights and slashing of services as reasons for the protests, saying: “The corruption has gone too far. No thrones. No crowns. No kings.” Actions are set for the country’s largest cities and small towns, dotting the map from coast to coast – part of a strategy to show that opposition to Trump exists in all corners of the US.
Read the full story here
Kilmar Ábrego García to appear in court
Kilmar Ábrego García, the migrant returned to the US last week after being wrongfully deported to his native El Salvador, is due in court on today to enter a plea to criminal charges of taking part in a conspiracy to smuggle migrants into the US.
The Justice Department’s decision to return him to the US to face criminal charges is a potential off-ramp for Trump’s administration from its escalating confrontation with the judiciary over whether it complied with a court order to facilitate Ábrego García’s return, Reuters reports.
The criminal proceeding will provide Ábrego García with due process by giving him the right to contest the charges contained in a grand jury indictment returned in secret on May 21. Still, his lawyers say his return to face criminal charges does not absolve the Trump administration of responsibility for wrongfully deporting him.
Ábrego García’s hearing on the criminal charges is scheduled to begin at 10 am CDT before US Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes in Nashville, Tennessee. In addition to entering his plea, Abrego Garcia is expected to contest a bid by federal prosecutors to have him detained pending trial.
Trump urges Iran to make a nuclear deal or face ‘more brutal’ attacks
Donald Trump has urged Iran to make a deal over its nuclear programme, saying in a post on his Truth Social platform that there was still time for the country to prevent further conflict with Israel:
“I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal. I told them, in the strongest of words, to “just do it,” but no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they just couldn’t get it done.
I told them it would be much worse than anything they know, anticipated, or were told, that the United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the World, BY FAR, and that Israel has a lot of it, with much more to come – And they know how to use it.
Certain Iranian hardliner’s spoke bravely, but they didn’t know what was about to happen. They are all DEAD now, and it will only get worse!
There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter, with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal, come to an end.
Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left, and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire. No more death, no more destruction, JUST DO IT, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE. God Bless You All!
We are covering all the developments over Israel’s attack on Iran in our Middle East crisis blog which you can see here:
Trump keeps national guard in LA for now
Good morning, and welcome to our blog covering US politics amid continuing protests across the country, legal wrangles over the national guard deployment, preparations for a huge military parade in Washington and, along with all that, a major escalation of the conflict in the Middle East as Israel attacks Iran’s nuclear and military sites. So stay with us for all the developments.
Donald Trump has welcomed an appeals court ruling that temporarily returned control of California’s national guard to him, claiming it would keep Los Angeles from “burning to the ground”. It blocked an earlier ruling by a federal judge that the president’s use of the guards to suppress protests in LA was illegal and banned it. The appeals court said it will hold a fuller hearing on the matter on Tuesday.
You can read our story here
Trump has posted on Truth Social this morning
The Appeals Court ruled last night that I can use the National Guard to keep our cities, in this case Los Angeles, safe. If I didn’t send the Military into Los Angeles, that city would be burning to the ground right now. We saved L.A. Thank you for the Decision!!!
In other news:
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Trump has urged Iran to make a deal over its nuclear programme, saying in a post on his Truth Social platform that there was still time for the country to prevent further conflict with Israel. He wrote: “Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left, and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire. No more death, no more destruction, JUST DO IT, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.”
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Trump has said he will attend the G7 summit in Canada which starts on Sunday. It is set to be the first major global gathering of his second term. Looking to avoid a dust-up, Canadian PM Mark Carney had set the agenda on largely uncontroversial themes such as building global supply chains for critical minerals. That now seems likely to be upended amid the Israel-Iran escalation.
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Alex Padilla, a Democratic California senator and vocal critic of the Trump administration’s immigration polices, was forcibly removed and handcuffed as he attempted to ask a question at a press conference held by Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, in Los Angeles on Thursday.
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Preparations are underway for an extravaganza of American military might featuring tanks and other armored vehicles rolling through Washington, thousands of soldiers marching the streets and military aircraft flying overhead on Saturday. It will be a celebration of the US army’s 250th anniversary, which also happens to coincide with Donald Trump’s 79th birthday.
