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Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories
- Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed that Iran is “actively working towards a nuclear weapon,” Republican Sen. Tom Cotton said in a post on X Wednesday afternoon. Meanwhile, the U.S. ordered nonessential personnel to evacuate its embassy in Baghdad and authorized the departure of nonessential staff and family members from Bahrain and Kuwait due to unspecified security concerns. The evacuation order came as President Donald Trump said on the “Pod Force One” podcast that he was becoming “less confident” about a nuclear deal with Iran, and as the Islamic Republic threatened to strike U.S. bases in the region should military conflict with the U.S. break out. The U.K. government’s Maritime Trade Operations also warned of potential conflict on Wednesday, announcing that increased tensions in the Middle East could lead to military escalation that would affect mariners. Iran has yet to respond to Washington’s proposed deal, and the sixth round of nuclear talks between the U.S. and Iran is reportedly increasingly unlikely to take place on Sunday as scheduled.
- Hamas terrorists raided a bus carrying Palestinian aid workers for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the aid group said Wednesday, leaving five of its staff members dead and others injured. The reported attack came amid continued threats against the organization, which began operating aid hubs in the Gaza Strip late last month in an effort to cut Hamas out of the aid distribution process. “This attack did not happen in a vacuum,” the foundation said in a statement. “For days, Hamas has openly threatened our team, our aid workers, and the civilians who receive aid from us. These threats were met with silence.”
- President Trump announced on Wednesday that the U.S. had reached a “deal” with China after two days of trade negotiations in London. In a post on Truth Social, Trump said that China would relax its export restrictions on rare earth minerals and magnets, but the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that Beijing would place a six-month limit on rare earth licenses to U.S. companies. The U.S., in exchange, plans to drop its plans to cancel Chinese student visas along with restrictions on certain key exports. Tariffs would stay the same, sitting at 55 percent levies on Chinese goods and 10 percent on American products. It remains unclear whether the agreement will be finalized.
- Protests in Los Angeles over the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown spread to additional U.S. cities on Tuesday and Wednesday. Demonstrations began in Austin, Atlanta, New York, Chicago, Dallas, Boston, and other cities, with several of the protests leading to arrests. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, announced plans on Tuesday to deploy National Guard troops in response to the protests in his state. In Los Angeles, 4,000 National Guard members, along with 700 Marines, have been mobilized by the federal government, and a curfew between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. PT remains in effect. The Marines, who are undergoing crowd control training, will be in the city “soon,” the U.S. military said.
- Activists are also planning anti-Trump protests to coincide with the military parade in Washington, D.C., on Saturday to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army. Asked about the rallies on Tuesday, Trump said that any protests would be met with “very big force.” More than 1,800 demonstrations, organized by multiple activist groups, are scheduled to take place across all 50 states. The military parade itself—which is expected to cost between $25 million and $45 million—will be the first in the nation’s capital since the end of the Gulf War in 1991 and include nearly 7,000 soldiers.
- Health and Human Services Secretary (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. selected eight doctors and researchers on Wednesday to join the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP)—which advises the federal government on vaccine guidelines—two days after he fired all 17 members of the body. The incoming group includes prominent vaccine critics, including Retsef Levi, who asserted in a post on X that mRNA vaccines “cause serious harm including death.” Another one of Kennedy’s picks, Dr. Robert Malone, suggested that the recent deaths from measles were due to medical errors rather than the virus itself.
- All 12 board members of the Fulbright Program, a prestigious international educational exchange program, resigned on Wednesday over what they described as political interference from the Trump administration. In a memo, the board alleged that the State Department denied awards to a “substantial number” of people already selected to receive a scholarship and is reviewing applications for 1,200 recipients who had been approved by the board. The board said it approved its applications in the winter but learned that the Trump administration was sending rejection letters based on research topics.
- The consumer price index (CPI) rose 0.1 percent month-over-month and 2.4 percent annually in May, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday. The increase was slightly lower than April’s 0.2 percent increase and lower than the 0.2 percent increase economists expected in the wake of the Trump administration’s tariffs. Analysts have pointed to companies either pulling from existing inventory already in the U.S., absorbing tariff costs, or slowly adjusting their prices as possible explanations for the softer-than-expected increase.
‘It’s Not Transparency at All’
During his January confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. vowed to usher in an era of “radical transparency” if confirmed to head the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). But this week, just shy of four months into his tenure, the HHS chief is making big changes to a longstanding vaccine advisory committee—and few public health experts know what to expect next.
On Monday, Kennedy fired all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), a panel that makes recommendations upon which the federal government typically bases its vaccine guidance. Then, on Wednesday, he named eight new members to the committee, among them prominent vaccine critics and purveyors of misinformation. “All of these individuals are committed to evidence-based medicine, gold-standard science, and common sense,” Kennedy said of the decision, which he claimed was aimed at rooting out conflicts of interest.
“The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is putting the restoration of public trust above any pro- or antivaccine agenda,” Kennedy wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published Monday. “The public must know that unbiased science guides the recommendations from our health agencies. This will ensure the American people receive the safest vaccines possible.”
But a number of scientists and public health officials have described the move to clean house as ...
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Today’s Must-Read
If one could say the Alston decision partially opened the long-sealed amateur door, a settlement last week of a landmark class-action antitrust suit brought by current and former collegiate athletes blew the blocked entryway to smithereens. If you think college sports have become no more than a crass commercial business, you haven’t seen anything yet. On deck: team payrolls, a Dickensian existential struggle for survival among low-revenue collegiate sports, a new regulatory body, and almost assuredly lawsuits over what constitutes fair marketing compensation. The settlement in House v. NCAA will allow colleges and universities to directly pay student athletes starting July 1. For the big revenue-generating sports—and these are almost exclusively football and men’s basketball—the teams will all but be professional.
Toeing the Company Line
Let There Be War
Carnage is good for Trump.
DOGE Looked Broken Before the Trump-Musk Breakup
And it might end up being worse than ineffective in the long run.
The Real Enemy
On Tulsi Gabbard’s Hiroshima lament.
Trump Family Undertakes New Cryptocurrency Projects
Truth Social’s parent company is creating a ‘bitcoin treasury,’ and the president’s sons are investing in a bitcoin mining business.
Antisemitic Attacks Put Democrats in a Bind
Progressives condemn violent attacks while declining to criticize pro-Palestinian rhetoric.
Get Your Shtetl Together!
Blaming the Jews? For things they didn’t do? Groundbreaking.
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