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Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories
- President Donald Trump on Saturday announced plans to deploy 2,000 members of the California National Guard to Los Angeles to crack down on protests and riots that began Friday in response to a series of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids across the city. Local police officials said Sunday that more than two dozen people had been arrested in connection with the riots, including one assailant who allegedly injured three police officers by lobbing a Molotov cocktail at them and another who allegedly rammed a police line with a motorcycle. In a memorandum addressed to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordering the activation, Trump cited a federal law allowing the president to summon a state’s National Guard when “there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States,” which the memo said the Los Angeles “protests or acts of violence … constitute.” California Gov. Gavin Newsom responded to Hegseth in a letter on Sunday evening, requesting that the Trump administration rescind the deployment of National Guard troops and return them to Newsom’s command. “We didn’t have a problem until Trump got involved,” Newsom claimed. “This is a serious breach of state sovereignty—inflaming tensions while pulling resources from where they’re actually needed.”
- Russia targeted Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv with drones, missiles, and glide bombs on Saturday, killing four people and injuring more than 60, according to Ukrainian officials. Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov described the bombardment, which came in two waves, as “the most powerful attack since the start of the full-scale war.” One day earlier, Russia conducted aerial attacks across six Ukrainian territories, killing six people—including three emergency responders—and injuring 80 others. Meanwhile, Moscow accused Kyiv of stalling a 6,000-soldier prisoner exchange—a charge Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed on Sunday as a “dirty political and information game.”
- Four Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers were killed and five others injured on Friday after entering a building in southern Gaza that Hamas militants had rigged with explosives. According to an IDF spokesman, the troops were clearing a Hamas compound when a bomb detonated and collapsed the building. The IDF has publicly identified the four fallen soldiers, whose ages ranged from 19 to 33 years old, and added that the military plans to investigate the incident further after completing an initial probe. Meanwhile, a Hamas spokesperson responded, saying Israel must stop the war or “prepare to receive more of their sons in coffins.”
- Attorney General Pam Bondi said Friday that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the El Salvadoran man who the U.S. deported in March in an incident officials described as an “administrative error,” had returned to the U.S. and will face federal human trafficking charges. An indictment unsealed Friday alleges that Abrego Garcia and co-conspirators “unlawfully transported” thousands of illegal immigrants, including “MS-13 members and associates,” and worked with “transnational criminal organizations.” The Trump administration has previously alleged that Garcia was an MS-13 member, which his family denied. Garcia, whose attorney called the charges “an abuse of power,” appeared in a Tennessee court on Friday, where a federal magistrate judge set a hearing for June 13. ABC News reported Friday that Ben Schrader, a “high-ranking federal prosecutor” in Tennessee, resigned as a result of the case against Garcia, concerned that it was “being pursued for political reasons.”
- A federal appeals court on Friday reinstated most of President Trump’s ban blocking the Associated Press (AP) news agency from accessing the Oval Office, Air Force One, Mar-a-Lago, and White House events, ruling that those “restricted presidential spaces are not First Amendment fora opened for private speech and discussion.” However, the court’s ruling required the administration to offer the news group access to events held in larger spaces, including the White House’s East Room. The AP sued Trump in February, and, in April, District Judge Trevor McFadden issued a preliminary injunction temporarily blocking Trump’s ban from taking effect until the full merits of the case are heard. Friday’s ruling reversed most of McFadden’s injunction.
- The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday that U.S. employers added 139,000 jobs in May, down from 147,000 in April but exceeding economists’ expectations. The unemployment rate held steady at 4.2 percent, while the labor force participation rate dropped slightly from 62.6 to 62.4 percent. U.S. Treasury yields ticked upwards on Friday following the jobs report release.
- The 78th Tony Awards were held on Sunday at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan, with “Maybe Happy Ending” winning Best New Musical and “Purpose” winning Best New Play. Sarah Snook of Succession fame won Best Leading Actress in a Play for her work in “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” while Nicole Scherzinger of “Sunset Boulevard” secured Best Leading Actress in a Musical.
Goodbye, Greta
More than 17,000 boxes of food reached Gazans in need on Sunday, but it wasn’t aboard a 22-year-old Swedish activist’s “freedom flotilla.” Israel intercepted the British-flagged yacht carrying Greta Thunberg and other anti-Israel demonstrators off the Mediterranean coast early this morning, announcing plans to send its passengers safely back to their home countries.
“There are ways to deliver aid to the Gaza Strip — they do not involve Instagram selfies,” the Israeli Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “The tiny amount of aid that was on the yacht and not consumed by the ‘celebrities’ will be transferred to Gaza through real humanitarian channels.”
The meals were instead doled out by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a newly formed group with shadowy origins and reported Israeli backing. The initiative, which seeks to cut Hamas out of the aid distribution process, comes amid a renewed effort by Israel to ...
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Today’s Must-Read
Donald Trump, for all his bravado and recalcitrance, has never demonstrated anything like the steadiness of will that true revolution requires. His political instincts are real, even uncanny at times, but they are constantly overridden by transient whims, feuds, and media cycles. He is reactive where Augustus was strategic, mercurial where Augustus was methodical. Trump’s obsession with optics and love of applause undermine the very authority he seeks to consolidate. In this light, it becomes easier to understand why the United States, for all its problems, has not yet yielded to a Caesar. Every four years, the wheel spins again. The faces change, the tweets accumulate, the gears churn, the average price of publicly traded shares increases. And behind it all, the Constitution—both the document and the set of informal assumptions that still cling to it—remains the load-bearer of a still-functional order.
Toeing the Company Line
Cockfight
The unbearable indignity of American decadence.
The Inevitable Splintering to Come
The Trump-Musk schism is a preview of post-Trumpian politics.
Why Are Billions of Muslims Celebrating the ‘Feast of Sacrifice’?
Plus: What to expect from the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting.
What Matt Walsh Gets Wrong About Marriage
A love based on paychecks—or lack thereof—is no love at all.
Who Can Speak for the Silent?
How the case of an unborn baby in Georgia has implications for everyone.
Whither the American Automobile
What makes a car ‘ours.’
All My Exes Drive In Teslas
Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
Can Anyone Save the Democrats?
‘Joe Biden on a bad day is better than Trump on a good day.’
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