Trump confirms telling Bill Pulte to fire intelligence community employees – live

The president’s event in Wisconsin is over. Although it was described as a roundtable discussion of American agriculture, it began with a 45-minute speech from Donald Trump, identical in tenor to remarks he makes at partisan rallies, in which he recited familiar boasts, false claims and grievances, almost none of which had to do with agriculture.

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He then invited 11 other participants to speak during the last 15 minutes of the event. All of them used the opportunity to praise and thank the president.

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At the conclusion of the event, Trump basked in the applause of his supporters at the venue, as the strains of YMCA blared out.

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At the end of the event, Trump did, in fact, take off speed skater Jordan Stolz’s gold medal and return it to him.

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Donald Trump finally ceded the floor after more than 45 minutes of opening remarks at his roundtable on agriculture in Wisconsin, after introducing Jordan Stolz, the gold-medal-winning speed skater from the state, who is participating for some reason.

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Stolz had both of his Olympic gold medals with him, and, when Trump invited him to shake hands, put one around the president’s neck. Trump then joked that he was keeping the medal, and has continued to wear it as the roundtable continues.

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“I’m keeping it, Jordan. I’m not giving it back. I’m a very good guy for keeping gold,” Trump said. “I’m never giving this back. Congratulations. I forgot to touch his leg. I didn’t want to do that. But I can tell you one thing: his leg is like a rock.”

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Trump wore an Olympic gold medal won by Wisconsin speed skater Jordan Stolz during his roundtable on American agriculture” in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin on Friday.”,”caption”:”Donald Trump wears an Olympic gold medal won by Wisconsin speed skater Jordan Stolz during his roundtable on American agriculture, in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, on Friday.”,”credit”:”Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images”}},{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”

The president then asked the dozen members of the roundtable, beginning with the speed skater, to make some remarks, but told them to keep it short.

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“We’ll go pretty quickly because I have to get back to fighting a war with Iran,” Trump said. “Fellas, I got to get back to a place called Washing- and protect you. OK, so if you go very quickly, we don’t need your life story, other than, I like the Olympic guy.”

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Donald Trump is still talking, 45 minutes into his opening remarks at what is supposed to be a roundtable discussion on American agriculture in Wisconsin.

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To give a sense of how rambling and tangential his remarks have been, here is a section in which he veered away from talking about the price of eggs to saying that he endorsed the Republican congressman Tom Tiffany, who is now running for Wisconsin governor, because his last name was the same as that of the famed jewelry store in Manhattan whose air rights he purchased when he built Trump Tower nearby.

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“I called this young lady right over here, Brooke Rollins, secretary of agriculture. I said: ‘Brooke, get the egg prices down, please.’ And she got them down. And by the way, speaking of Tom, Tiffany is one of the best congressmen in our country,” the president said. “And I was there, I don’t know, seven, eight years ago, right at the beginning, I endorsed this guy I didn’t know, I had no idea, but I liked his last name. You know why? Because I bought the air rights many years ago off Tiffany, and I made a lot of money. So I saw Tom, Tiffany, and I backed him, and he went like a rocket ship, and he won. And you’ve kept winning. And now he’s running for a thing called governor.”

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In extended opening remarks at what was billed as a roundtable discussion of American agriculture in Wisconsin, but so far is identical in content to a rally speech, Donald Trump began by running through a series of familiar false claims, including that his war with Iran is not a war, that 25 million undocumented immigrants arrived during the Biden administration, and that many people do not know that the word dumb has a “b” in it.

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The president blithely dismissed concerns about the spike in fuel prices caused by the war in Iran, and promised that fertilizer prices, which have also spiked because Iran closed the strait of Hormuz in response to being attacked, will come down.

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Echoing Vladimir Putin’s claim that his war in Ukraine is a mere “special military operation”, Trump said the war in Iran was just “a military conflict, I call it that, because it’s really not much of a war. But it’s a military conflict. It’s practice.”

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Trump then went on to complain that his speechwriters had told him not to focus on immigration but to speak instead about the cost-of-living crisis his Iran war, and his tariffs, have exacerbated.

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The president then repeated his odd claim that Democrats “made up the word” affordability, which he enunciated in a mocking tone.

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Recounting what he said was his conversation with speechwriters, Trump said: “I say: ‘Let’s talk about the border.’ ‘Sir, nobody cares about the border.’ I said: ‘I won the election on the border. Let’s talk about the – .’ ‘Sir, I’m telling you, nobody cares. Nobody cares about the border. You fixed the border.’ ‘I want to brag about it.’ ‘Sir, they want to hear about other things, like fertilizer.’”

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As we await the start of the roundtable on American agriculture Donald Trump has traveled to Wisconsin to host, we have discovered some new information which reveals, in a stunning development, that something the president said yesterday turns out to be false.

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In a rambling set of remarks on Thursday, Trump said that he planned to build a promenade on the west side of the Lincoln Memorial, possibly to be named for himself, before suggesting that his intervention was inspired by the original plans for the memorial, which he claimed, aimed to connect the monument to the Potomac River to its west.

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The president then suggested, in a comment that baffled historians, that the memorial was for some reason constructed back to front. “At the Lincoln Memorial, the front was supposed to be the back, and the back was supposed to be the front”, Trump told reporters.

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In fact, the original proposal for the memorial, submitted as a competition entry in 1912 by Henry Bacon, the New York architect who designed the Lincoln Memorial, is available on the National Archives website, and it shows that the plan was always for the monument to face the new reflecting pool to the east.

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Bacon’s 1912 competition proposal for a monument to Abraham Lincoln.”,”caption”:”Henry Bacon’s 1912 competition proposal for a monument to Abraham Lincoln.”,”credit”:”Illustration: US National Archives Records Administration/U.S. National Archives and Records Administration”}},{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”

Bacon’s later drawing on the “East Elevation of Lincoln Memorial”, which looks more like the finished structure, also clearly shows that the current east-facing front was always supposed to be the front.

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Where, exactly, Trump got the idea that the memorial was constructed backwards is not known, but his bizarre assertion of this invented history was offered weeks after he was mocked on social media for sharing an AI-generated image of the memorial facing the wrong way.

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No court has the authority to halt construction of Donald Trump’s White House ballroom and a secure underground facility, a Department of Justice lawyer has argued, suggesting only US Congress had the power to stop the project.

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The Trump administration has asked the Washington DC circuit court of appeals to reverse a lower court decision which blocked construction of a $400m ballroom on the site of the White House’s demolished East Wing. Construction of a secure bunker for staff underground at the site was allowed to proceed while the dispute between Washington DC preservationists and the White House continues.

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The National Trust for Historic Preservation sued the National Park Service and the administration in October, after Trump ordered the East Wing’s demolition. Construction began without completing – or really even beginning – what can be a lengthy process of review and approvals, as required by district and federal statute.

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Trump at the site of the planned White House ballroom in Washington DC on 19 May.”,”caption”:”Donald Trump at the site of the planned White House ballroom in Washington DC on 19 May.”,”credit”:”Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters”}},{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”

The administration has cited national security imperatives for the construction, which Trump has repeatedly emphasized, while using the failed assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents Association event in April as an example of the security threat.

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Congress appears unpersuaded. The US Senate voted to advance a long-delayed immigration spending bill early on Friday morning only after Republicans removed $1bn in funding for US Secret Service security upgrades to the proposed ballroom.

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The case before the appellate court tests the limits of presidential authority.

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In a hypothetical posed to Yaakov Roth, principal deputy assistant attorney general, during a hearing this morning, Justice Patricia Millet asked when the construction of the ballroom and bunker complex became a fait accompli for his purposes.

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n

Was it when the destruction happened? Was it when you started doing the underground work, which we’re now told is completely integral and connected and inseparable from a massive ballroom on top? When did it become impossible for courts to stop this project?

n

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If the project amounted to “complete lawlessness by the government”, she asked, could it still not be stopped by the courts?

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“On these theories, I think that’s right,” Roth replied, arguing that US Congress could instead pass a law to authorize or block the specific action that a court would have to respect. “If Congress has weighed the equities in this particular instance, and reached a conclusion, I’m not sure a court would have the authority to second-guess that, but if we’re just talking about a general statute and application. I think a court would not second-guess a congressional decision that addressed the equities in that way.”

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The argument left Thad Heuer, representing the historic trust, aghast.

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“Under Marbury v Madison, it is emphatically the province of the judicial department to say what the law is,” Heuer said. “The government’s position, apparently, is that even a lawless action of this type could never be stopped by the court. That is entirely wrong. That’s exactly the court’s job. In this case, it’s about who controls federal property. Is it Congress, its owner, or is it the president, its temporary tenant?”

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Donald Trump said that he “wouldn’t mind” cutting the number of people working at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

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“I wouldn’t mind. [The size of the office has been] way too high for way too long,” the president said, reiterating what he told the Wall Street Journal earlier today. “Yeah, I wouldn’t mind.”

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The WSJ reported that Trump said he wants Bill Pulte, his new acting director of national intelligence with no national intelligence experience, to cut the size of the office, which has already been significantly scaled back during his second term.

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Donald Trump has been gaggling with reporters onboard Air Force One as he travels to Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, for a round-table discussion on American agriculture – and to throw his support behind another Republican seeking re-election.

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The president touted the “fantastic” job numbers that came out today, before adding that he would like to see lower interest rates. “But I’ll leave that up to Kevin”, he said, referring to Kevin Warsh, whom he hand-picked to be the new Federal Reserve chair.

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Warsh was sworn in last month, succeeding Jerome Powell, who repeatedly warned over the inflationary risks of Trump’s agenda, and whom the president vehemently attacked for his refusal to cut rates. (Powell was once hand-picked by Trump, too.)

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Donald Trump has told the Wall Street Journal that he wants his new acting director of national intelligence Bill Pulte to begin the process of firing a large number of employees as part of a shake-up of the US intelligence community.

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Trump told the Journal today that he has privately told Pulte that he believes the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees 18 federal intelligence agencies and units, is “unnecessary and/or too big”.

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“I’d like to see it smaller. I think there are a lot of people in there that shouldn’t be there,” Trump told the WSJ, referring to holdovers from the Biden and Obama administrations. Asked if he was calling on Pulte to fire people, Trump said he wanted him to “start the process”, adding that his eventual nominee to serve in the role permanently should continue that work.

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Trump’s controversial selection of Pulte, who has no national intelligence experience, has been met with bipartisan alarm, with Democrats and some Republicans concerned that he will use his position to go after the president’s perceived enemies.

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“We don’t need a weaponized” national intelligence director, Senate majority leader John Thune told reporters on Tuesday, warning that Pulte would face “a lengthy road ahead of him” if nominated permanently.

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Speaking to the WSJ, Trump said he thought that Pulte’s acting status was an asset. “You’re less shackled. It sort of gives you more power, you know, for a somewhat limited period of time,” he said, adding that he hopes Pulte can begin making changes across the intelligence community before a permanent intelligence director is confirmed.

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“Frankly, it might be good for him to shake it up before people come,” the president said. “Because, if he reduced the size, in conjunction with me … and in conjunction with possibly the person coming in … he can do a lot of the hard work and we wouldn’t have to saddle somebody that goes in.”

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NPR reports that CBS News correspondents Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker and Jon Wertheim have pledged to stay on the most watched show in news, declaring: “We don’t want to see 60 Minutes die.”

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It caps off a tumultuous week at the network after the dramatic firings of Scott Pelley, Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega left serious questions up in the air over who would be left to appear on the show’s next season (Anderson Cooper is also leaving) and how the show would endure. CBS News also fired the show’s executive producer, Tanya Simon, Draggan Mihailovich, the executive editor, and other key staffers.

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Pelley, who was fired on Tuesday after clashing with the network’s new management, issued a public statement accusing the network’s new executives of silencing employees and claiming they instructed him “to inject falsehoods and bias” into his reporting.

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He had taken direct aim at Bari Weiss, the network’s controversial editor-in-chief, over his colleagues’ terminations, reportedly telling a meeting of the show’s staff and Nick Bilton, its newly appointed executive producer, along with the CBS News managing editor Charles Forelle: “She’s murdering 60 Minutes. She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it and is doing exactly that.”

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In a joint memo, Stahl, Whitaker and Wertheim decried the treatment of their colleagues, stating: “As far as we can tell … they were expelled because they fought for our 60 Minutes values and stood up to protect our independence and integrity.”

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“Newsrooms are not supposed to be run like dictatorships,” they added. “We want to express how sorry we are that these principled, fair and honest journalists have been treated so shabbily, with such indecency.”

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The correspondents go on to say that their staying on should not be read as “an endorsement of the existing power structure”, but because, “We want to stay and fight.”

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“If we can continue doing the work that made this show what it is – committing acts of independent, fierce journalism and storytelling, we’re here for it. If not, we leave,” they said.

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Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will no longer report deaths of detainees who have recently been released from its custody, in a change that experts predict could obscure the full human cost of the Trump administration’s mass detention policies.

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The move rescinds a 2021 policy implemented by the Biden administration that required ICE to report to Congress and investigate deaths of detainees that occur within 30 days of their release.

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The goal of the 2021 policy was to ensure that ICE could not avoid accountability for deaths by releasing severely ill people from custody. Detainees who were brain-dead or suffering from infection, for example, have died shortly after ICE released them in the past. Health experts who have investigated deaths in ICE custody have criticized the move.

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A federal judge has struck down policies that the Trump administration adopted that have barred people from countries on his travel ban list from getting final decisions on their asylum, work permit, green card and citizenship applications.

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US district judge John McConnell in Providence, Rhode Island, has ruled that the US Citizenship and Immigration Services had adopted a series of unlawful policies targeting people from 39 African, Asian, Latin American and Middle Eastern countries.

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Seven Republican senators joined Democrats early this morning to block the extension of a powerful government surveillance program, a rebuke to Donald Trump for choosing an inexperienced ally as the country’s top intelligence official.

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The renewal had been in question amid bipartisan concern over the US president’s appointment of Bill Pulte, a major Republican donor and heir to a home construction fortune, to serve as acting director of national intelligence.

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Pulte, who has no intelligence experience, was tapped controversially earlier this week by Trump days after Tulsi Gabbard announced her exit from the role.

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Pulte’s appointment as director of national intelligence despite a lack of relevant experience has attracted bipartisan criticism.”,”caption”:”Bill Pulte’s appointment as director of national intelligence despite a lack of relevant experience has attracted bipartisan criticism.”,”credit”:”Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images”}},{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”

The Senate majority leader, John Thune said following the 47-52 vote that the chamber “will take another run at it” next week, but expressed little confidence the measure would pass.

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Democrats, he said, had taken a “terribly irresponsible position” by opposing the extension to section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa). The program permits US intelligence agencies to collect communications of foreign targets operating outside the country without a warrant.

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Critics say that a wide array of domestic communications can be also be swept up without a warrant ever being sought because they may pass through US servers or involve US contacts.

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The program is set to expire next week, and this morning’s procedural measure, if it had passed, would have set up a final Senate vote on the extension before a 12 June congressional deadline.

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“The naming of Pulte to that position, although the timing arguably wasn’t the best, I still don’t think it ought to derail something that’s this important,” Thune said.

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He did not mention the Republican senators who crossed the aisle to join Democrats to vote against the Fisa extension pathway.

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More on this story here:

“,”elementId”:”f542968c-47eb-4a35-861a-5f12904d30ed”},{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.RichLinkBlockElement”,”prefix”:”Related: “,”text”:”Senate blocks surveillance bill in dispute over Trump’s intelligence pick”,”elementId”:”772ef2ce-9f7a-4bd6-ac1e-f98dec393b08″,”role”:”thumbnail”,”url”:”https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/05/senate-blocks-surveillance-program-trump-bill-pulte”}],”attributes”:{“pinned”:false,”keyEvent”:true,”summary”:false},”blockCreatedOn”:1780668404000,”blockCreatedOnDisplay”:”10.06 EDT”,”blockLastUpdated”:1780668605000,”blockLastUpdatedDisplay”:”10.10 EDT”,”blockFirstPublished”:1780668605000,”blockFirstPublishedDisplay”:”10.10 EDT”,”blockFirstPublishedDisplayNoTimezone”:”10.10″,”title”:”Senate blocks surveillance bill in dispute over Trump’s intelligence pick”,”contributors”:[{“name”:”Richard Luscombe”}],”primaryDateLine”:”Fri 5 Jun 2026 19.00 EDT”,”secondaryDateLine”:”First published on Fri 5 Jun 2026 06.47 EDT”},{“id”:”6a22c9e88f08eeba35d81b51″,”elements”:[{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”

US employers added 172,000 jobs in May while the country’s unemployment rate held steady at 4.3%, a sign of a resilient labor market despite rising inflation and economic uncertainty brought on by continued conflict in the Middle East.

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Economists initially predicted there would be about 80,000 new jobs and a steady unemployment rate of 4.3%. Job figures for March and April were also revised up 29,000 and 64,000, respectively, a 93,000 boost compared to initial figures.

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The new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics is the latest in a number of reports that have pointed to strong hiring in recent months, despite a strained economy and an increase in inflation.

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The labor department announced earlier this week that the number of job openings in April increased to 7.6m, while the number of people quitting, laid off and discharged changed little.

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Private employers added 122,000 jobs in May, according to payroll firm ADP, which found that employers of all sizes and most industries – with the exception of the information and natural resource sectors – were hiring.

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“Hiring was more broad-based in May than we’ve seen in the last few years,” Dr Nela Richardson, ADP’s chief economist, said in a statement. “The labor market continues to show sustained momentum going into the summer hiring season.”

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Friday’s report was the first monthly jobs data released under the Federal Reserve’s new chair, Kevin Warsh, who was appointed by Trump in January and sworn in last month.

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The Fed typically cuts rates in response to a weak labor market, which can boost the economy but also raise prices. Raising interest rates would cool spending and inflation, but risks higher unemployment.

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Economists are predicting that the Fed will hold rates steady at its meeting June 16 and June 17, but Trump and his advisers have made it clear they expect Warsh to be receptive to their continued calls for rate cuts.

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“We’ve got a Warsh Fed now,” the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said at a news conference last week.

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n

It’s a new day at the Fed … I had my first breakfast with Chair Warsh this morning, and I believe that he will do the right thing to balance inflation and growth.

n

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Economists say even if the chair supports a rate cuts, it’s unlikely that a majority of the Fed’s 12 voting members would agree. At the Fed’s last meeting in April, just one member voted for lowering the target range for rates.

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My colleague Graeme Wearden over on our business live blog has more:

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in Miami

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Detainees at Florida’s notorious “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration jail said guards were denying them food and fresh water on Thursday until they signed documents presented to them in English that they did not understand.

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In an audio recording of a telephone call to an immigration advocacy group heard by the Guardian, more than half a dozen detainees alleged that the water given to them over the last three days was “rotten” and containing mosquito larvae, in an apparent attempt to pressure them to sign.

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During the call, all the detainees identified themselves by name and the section and cage number they are being held in. The Guardian is withholding those details because of the men’s stated fear of reprisals.

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“They took all the water, and they don’t want to give us water,” one detainee said in the call to a representative of the Workers Circle, an advocacy group that has acted as a liaison between detainees and their families.

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“They haven’t given us lunch, and they are mistreating us here. Right now, at this very moment, half past one in the afternoon, we haven’t had lunch here in Alcatraz, and they wanted to make us sign a paper in English that we don’t know what that paper says.

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“They’ve taken reprisals with us for not taking that paper, not signing that paper. They took away the water and medicine to people who need medication. Today the medicine came very late, but here we have people here who are diabetic, one here with high blood pressure.”

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are seen inside the ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ migrant detention center as Donald Trump tours the facility in Ochopee, Florida, on 1 July 2025.”,”caption”:”Beds are seen inside the ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ migrant detention center as Donald Trump tours the facility in Ochopee, Florida, on 1 July 2025.”,”credit”:”Photograph: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images”}},{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”

The detainee said he and others had been complaining for several days about the quality of the water they had been given, and on Thursday morning chants of “agua, agua” broke out when it was withheld altogether.

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“The water has pests, the water has a bad taste, [you] open the water tubs and they have mosquito larvae,” he said.

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Another detainee said the water was “stinky and rotten”, and that he saw mosquitoes emerging from a substance contained within it.

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He said nobody in his cell had yet signed any document.

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Reports last month said “Alligator Alcatraz”, operated by the state of Florida as an immigration jail on behalf of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, would wind down operations in June, leading to its eventual closure.

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In its almost one year of operation, the tented facility, built on a little-used training airport deep in the Florida Everglades, has developed a reputation for the brutal treatment of undocumented detainees kept in metal cages, and a succession of alleged human and civil rights abuses.

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Among the claims are a denial of access to immigration lawyers, frequent and sudden movement of detainees to other detention facilities, and pressure to consent to agree to deportation without legal representation.

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Senate Republicans on Thursday narrowly scuttled an attempt by Democrats to stop Donald Trump from creating a $1.8bn fund to pay his allies, even as signs emerged that dissent over the proposal was spreading inside the US president’s own party.

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Democratic Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer had proposed inserting language barring the payouts into Republican-backed legislation to fund Trump’s mass deportation campaign through the duration of his term.

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After a vote that stretched for three hours as groups of senators were spotted huddling on the chamber’s floor, the amendment failed by a 49-50 vote. Three Republican senators, all of whom are seen as vulnerable in November’s midterm elections, broke with their party to join all Democrats in support.

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Though Schumer’s amendment failed, the matter is likely to come up again before Congress. The president’s plan for an “anti-weaponization” fund that could issue financial settlements to people connected to the January 6 insurrection has riven Senate Republicans, and complicated their efforts to settle for good a standoff with Democrats over funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), agencies the president has tasked with implementing his hardline immigration policies.

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More here:

“,”elementId”:”d9b3e526-dea0-482a-b607-59ece466d00c”},{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.RichLinkBlockElement”,”prefix”:”Related: “,”text”:”Senate Republicans narrowly block bid to bar Trump’s $1.8bn fund to pay allies”,”elementId”:”db8de02f-2bc6-40de-b14e-2d7025ca02c5″,”role”:”thumbnail”,”url”:”https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/04/senate-republicans-trump-ally-fund”}],”attributes”:{“pinned”:false,”keyEvent”:true,”summary”:false},”blockCreatedOn”:1780657692000,”blockCreatedOnDisplay”:”07.08 EDT”,”blockLastUpdated”:1780658928000,”blockLastUpdatedDisplay”:”07.28 EDT”,”blockFirstPublished”:1780658928000,”blockFirstPublishedDisplay”:”07.28 EDT”,”blockFirstPublishedDisplayNoTimezone”:”07.28″,”title”:”Senate Republicans narrowly block bid to bar Trump’s $1.8bn fund to pay allies”,”contributors”:[{“name”:”Chris Stein”,”imageUrl”:”https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2023/05/25/Chris_Stein.jpg?width=300&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=816e271eec6598b9b8784a001bf54a35″,”largeImageUrl”:”https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2023/05/25/Chris_Stein.png?width=300&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=5829f7087d8175b610aa897c2d8ded33″}],”primaryDateLine”:”Fri 5 Jun 2026 19.00 EDT”,”secondaryDateLine”:”First published on Fri 5 Jun 2026 06.47 EDT”},{“id”:”6a229a868f08fbbd69e19cfb”,”elements”:[{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”

Senate Republicans early Friday passed a bill that would provide the Department of Homeland Security with nearly $70 billion in new funds for immigration enforcement.

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The vote came after a more than 18-hour “vote-a-rama”, a process by which senators offer amendments to bills passed using the reconciliation procedure. The Senate’s Democratic minority leader, Chuck Schumer, had said earlier this week that he would use vote-a-rama to force Republicans into publicly defending the policies of Donald Trump, a move that ultimately forced Senate Republicans to drop their attempt to spend $1bn on security improvements for Trump’s White House ballroom.

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Among the amendments voted on in this marathon session was an attempt introduced by Schumer to kill the “anti-weaponization fund” and stop Trump from creating a $1.8bn fund to pay his allies. The measure was narrowly defeated in a 49-50 vote after three Republican senators broke with their party to join all Democrats in support.

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“Tonight, Senate Republicans passed a rotten bill that makes their priorities painfully clear: more money for Donald Trump, more power for Donald Trump, and nothing to lower costs for working families,” Schumer said in a statement posted on X after the immigration reforcement funding bill passed.

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He continued: “…The Republican agenda is now written in black and white: A slush fund for Trump, tax dodges for Trump, a ballroom for Trump, and a private militia for Trump. For hard-working Americans? Nothing.”

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On X, Republican senator Lindsey Graham said he was “very proud of my Republican colleagues for sticking together and making sure that Border Patrol and ICE (Immigration Customs and Enforcement) are fully funded”. “Well done to President Trump and my Republican colleagues,” Graham said.

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Lisa Murkowski was the only Republican senator to vote against the new immigration enforcement funding.

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In other developments:

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  New abuse allegations have emerged against Graham Platner, a Democratic candidate for the Senate. Platner, a progressive running for election in Maine, has rejected the new report published on Thursday in the New York Times that included an interview with a Republican operative who accused him of womanizing, physical misconduct and making troubling comments about rape.

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  Trump has suggested that his controversial ally Bill Pulte will investigate “rigged elections” while serving as the country’s top intelligence official. Pulte, whom Trump appointed as acting director of national intelligence earlier this week, is a “very smart guy,” Trump claimed on Thursday, “and you may find out some things about the rigged elections, etc, etc”.

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  Pam Bondi on Thursday told lawmakers before the House oversight and reform committee that Todd Blanche, the man Trump has lined up to replace her, was “in charge” of the the US Department of Justice’s controversial handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

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Key events

Dani Anguiano

The justice department on Friday sent a federal prosecutor to observe ballot processing in Los Angeles, as Donald Trump continues to make baseless claims that California Democrats were “rigging” the results to win primary elections in the nation’s biggest blue state.

State officials have rejected the allegations, but the delay in results immediately fueled misinformation about the integrity of California’s elections, with the president, who has long fanned election-conspiracy theories, accusing the state of “cheating”.

In a statement to CNN on Friday, a spokesperson for the county registrar-recorder said “our office was notified late yesterday that the US Attorney’s Office would send an Assistant US Attorney to the Ballot Processing Center to observe ballot processing activities”.

“The individual arrived this morning, was provided an overview of the public observation program, and participated in a walkthrough of the ballot processing operations,” the spokesperson, Mike Sanchez, told the network. The county registrar-recorder’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Earlier on Friday morning, Bill Essayli, the US attorney, announced that his office, along with the FBI’s Los Angeles office, had “multiple election fraud investigations underway”, and that the state’s election systems had “serious structural vulnerabilities”.

Three days after Californians headed to the polls, key races in the primary election remained too close to call and experts warned the counting could continue for days.

Trump roundtable discussion on American agriculture ends with 15 minutes of praise for him from 12 guests, then YMCA

The president’s event in Wisconsin is over. Although it was described as a roundtable discussion of American agriculture, it began with a 45-minute speech from Donald Trump, identical in tenor to remarks he makes at partisan rallies, in which he recited familiar boasts, false claims and grievances, almost none of which had to do with agriculture.

He then invited 11 other participants to speak during the last 15 minutes of the event. All of them used the opportunity to praise and thank the president.

At the conclusion of the event, Trump basked in the applause of his supporters at the venue, as the strains of YMCA blared out.

At the end of the event, Trump did, in fact, take off speed skater Jordan Stolz’s gold medal and return it to him.

Trump jokes that he is keeping gold medal won by speed skater Jordan Stolz

Donald Trump finally ceded the floor after more than 45 minutes of opening remarks at his roundtable on agriculture in Wisconsin, after introducing Jordan Stolz, the gold-medal-winning speed skater from the state, who is participating for some reason.

Stolz had both of his Olympic gold medals with him, and, when Trump invited him to shake hands, put one around the president’s neck. Trump then joked that he was keeping the medal, and has continued to wear it as the roundtable continues.

“I’m keeping it, Jordan. I’m not giving it back. I’m a very good guy for keeping gold,” Trump said. “I’m never giving this back. Congratulations. I forgot to touch his leg. I didn’t want to do that. But I can tell you one thing: his leg is like a rock.”

The president then asked the dozen members of the roundtable, beginning with the speed skater, to make some remarks, but told them to keep it short.

“We’ll go pretty quickly because I have to get back to fighting a war with Iran,” Trump said. “Fellas, I got to get back to a place called Washing- and protect you. OK, so if you go very quickly, we don’t need your life story, other than, I like the Olympic guy.”

Trump veers from subject to subject in long opening speech at agriculture roundtable

Donald Trump is still talking, 45 minutes into his opening remarks at what is supposed to be a roundtable discussion on American agriculture in Wisconsin.

To give a sense of how rambling and tangential his remarks have been, here is a section in which he veered away from talking about the price of eggs to saying that he endorsed the Republican congressman Tom Tiffany, who is now running for Wisconsin governor, because his last name was the same as that of the famed jewelry store in Manhattan whose air rights he purchased when he built Trump Tower nearby.

“I called this young lady right over here, Brooke Rollins, secretary of agriculture. I said: ‘Brooke, get the egg prices down, please.’ And she got them down. And by the way, speaking of Tom, Tiffany is one of the best congressmen in our country,” the president said. “And I was there, I don’t know, seven, eight years ago, right at the beginning, I endorsed this guy I didn’t know, I had no idea, but I liked his last name. You know why? Because I bought the air rights many years ago off Tiffany, and I made a lot of money. So I saw Tom, Tiffany, and I backed him, and he went like a rocket ship, and he won. And you’ve kept winning. And now he’s running for a thing called governor.”

Trump begins remarks in Wisconsin by complaining that his speechwriters want him to talk about affordability

In extended opening remarks at what was billed as a roundtable discussion of American agriculture in Wisconsin, but so far is identical in content to a rally speech, Donald Trump began by running through a series of familiar false claims, including that his war with Iran is not a war, that 25 million undocumented immigrants arrived during the Biden administration, and that many people do not know that the word dumb has a “b” in it.

The president blithely dismissed concerns about the spike in fuel prices caused by the war in Iran, and promised that fertilizer prices, which have also spiked because Iran closed the strait of Hormuz in response to being attacked, will come down.

Echoing Vladimir Putin’s claim that his war in Ukraine is a mere “special military operation”, Trump said the war in Iran was just “a military conflict, I call it that, because it’s really not much of a war. But it’s a military conflict. It’s practice.”

Trump then went on to complain that his speechwriters had told him not to focus on immigration but to speak instead about the cost-of-living crisis his Iran war, and his tariffs, have exacerbated.

The president then repeated his odd claim that Democrats “made up the word” affordability, which he enunciated in a mocking tone.

Recounting what he said was his conversation with speechwriters, Trump said: “I say: ‘Let’s talk about the border.’ ‘Sir, nobody cares about the border.’ I said: ‘I won the election on the border. Let’s talk about the – .’ ‘Sir, I’m telling you, nobody cares. Nobody cares about the border. You fixed the border.’ ‘I want to brag about it.’ ‘Sir, they want to hear about other things, like fertilizer.’”

Trump’s bizarre claim that Lincoln Memorial was constructed back to front undercut by original plans

As we await the start of the roundtable on American agriculture Donald Trump has traveled to Wisconsin to host, we have discovered some new information which reveals, in a stunning development, that something the president said yesterday turns out to be false.

In a rambling set of remarks on Thursday, Trump said that he planned to build a promenade on the west side of the Lincoln Memorial, possibly to be named for himself, before suggesting that his intervention was inspired by the original plans for the memorial, which he claimed, aimed to connect the monument to the Potomac River to its west.

The president then suggested, in a comment that baffled historians, that the memorial was for some reason constructed back to front. “At the Lincoln Memorial, the front was supposed to be the back, and the back was supposed to be the front”, Trump told reporters.

In fact, the original proposal for the memorial, submitted as a competition entry in 1912 by Henry Bacon, the New York architect who designed the Lincoln Memorial, is available on the National Archives website, and it shows that the plan was always for the monument to face the new reflecting pool to the east.

Bacon’s later drawing on the “East Elevation of Lincoln Memorial”, which looks more like the finished structure, also clearly shows that the current east-facing front was always supposed to be the front.

Where, exactly, Trump got the idea that the memorial was constructed backwards is not known, but his bizarre assertion of this invented history was offered weeks after he was mocked on social media for sharing an AI-generated image of the memorial facing the wrong way.

The justice department sent one of its attorneys to observe ballot processing in Los Angeles this morning, the county’s elections office told CNN, a day after Donald Trump baselessly alleged “cheating” in California’s elections and claimed that the US attorney’s office there was investigating the vote counting.

A spokesperson for the county registrar-recorder told CNN, “our office was notified late yesterday that the U.S. Attorney’s Office would send an Assistant US Attorney to the Ballot Processing Center to observe ballot processing activities.

“The individual arrived this morning, was provided an overview of the public observation program, and participated in a walkthrough of the ballot processing operations,” the spokesperson, Mike Sanchez, told CNN in an email, noting that ballot processing in the county is open to public observation.

Trump claimed in a Truth Social post yesterday that there was “BIG cheating” going on in California, supposedly because of how long it was taking to count the votes. Several key races in the state have yet to be called and may take days or even weeks, in part because of the significant number of mail-in ballots.

No court has authority to block Trump’s White House ballroom, DoJ lawyer says

George Chidi

No court has the authority to halt construction of Donald Trump’s White House ballroom and a secure underground facility, a Department of Justice lawyer has argued, suggesting only US Congress had the power to stop the project.

The Trump administration has asked the Washington DC circuit court of appeals to reverse a lower court decision which blocked construction of a $400m ballroom on the site of the White House’s demolished East Wing. Construction of a secure bunker for staff underground at the site was allowed to proceed while the dispute between Washington DC preservationists and the White House continues.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation sued the National Park Service and the administration in October, after Trump ordered the East Wing’s demolition. Construction began without completing – or really even beginning – what can be a lengthy process of review and approvals, as required by district and federal statute.

The administration has cited national security imperatives for the construction, which Trump has repeatedly emphasized, while using the failed assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents Association event in April as an example of the security threat.

Congress appears unpersuaded. The US Senate voted to advance a long-delayed immigration spending bill early on Friday morning only after Republicans removed $1bn in funding for US Secret Service security upgrades to the proposed ballroom.

The case before the appellate court tests the limits of presidential authority.

In a hypothetical posed to Yaakov Roth, principal deputy assistant attorney general, during a hearing this morning, Justice Patricia Millet asked when the construction of the ballroom and bunker complex became a fait accompli for his purposes.

Was it when the destruction happened? Was it when you started doing the underground work, which we’re now told is completely integral and connected and inseparable from a massive ballroom on top? When did it become impossible for courts to stop this project?

If the project amounted to “complete lawlessness by the government”, she asked, could it still not be stopped by the courts?

“On these theories, I think that’s right,” Roth replied, arguing that US Congress could instead pass a law to authorize or block the specific action that a court would have to respect. “If Congress has weighed the equities in this particular instance, and reached a conclusion, I’m not sure a court would have the authority to second-guess that, but if we’re just talking about a general statute and application. I think a court would not second-guess a congressional decision that addressed the equities in that way.”

The argument left Thad Heuer, representing the historic trust, aghast.

“Under Marbury v Madison, it is emphatically the province of the judicial department to say what the law is,” Heuer said. “The government’s position, apparently, is that even a lawless action of this type could never be stopped by the court. That is entirely wrong. That’s exactly the court’s job. In this case, it’s about who controls federal property. Is it Congress, its owner, or is it the president, its temporary tenant?”

Donald Trump also told reporters that his team is looking into the idea of AI companies giving the American public a stake in their firms.

Senior US officials held preliminary decisions with AI companies about the potential for the government to buy some shares in their firms, digital news outlet Notus reported. Trump made the comment in response to a question from a journalist about the topic.

“There’s something very interesting about it, where it almost becomes a partnership with the American public,” he told reporters. “We’ll look into that.“

Trump also told reporters that he will meet with AI executives at the White House “probably next week”.

Asked which companies, he said “all the big ones”.

Trump also claimed that “a lot of people” have asked him to stay involved with the Kennedy Center and “get it fixed” (we just don’t know who they are).

The president said last week that he has “no interest” in the Kennedy Center after a judge ordered his name to be removed from its facade and website.