News

Demonstrations at roughly 2,000 sites planned for Saturday, same day as US president’s military parade and birthday

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 federal judge on Friday blocked President Donald Trump’s attempt to overhaul elections in the U.S., siding with a group of Democratic state attorneys general who challenged the effort as unconstitutional.

Trump’s March 25 executive order sought to compel officials to require documentary proof of citizenship for everyone registering to vote for federal elections, accept only mailed ballots received by Election Day and condition federal election grant funding on states adhering to the new ballot deadline.

The group of attorneys general said the directive “usurps the States’ constitutional power and seeks to amend election law by fiat.” The White House has defended the order as “standing up for free, fair and honest elections” and called proof of citizenship a “commonsense” requirement.

Judge Denise J. Casper of the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts said in Friday’s order that the states had a likelihood of success as to their legal challenges.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appeared to acknowledge that the Pentagon has developed plans to take over Greenland and Panama by force if necessary but refused to answer repeated questions at a hotly combative congressional hearing Thursday about his use of Signal chats to discuss military operations.

Democratic members of the House Armed Services Committee repeatedly got into heated exchanges with Hegseth, with some of the toughest lines of questioning coming from military veterans as many demanded yes or no answers and he tried to avoid direct responses about his actions as Pentagon chief.

In one back-and-forth, Hegseth did provide an eyebrow-raising answer. Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., asked whether the Pentagon has developed plans to take Greenland or Panama by force if necessary.

A spate of school killings in Western Europe has raised pressure on authorities to tackle a problem long seen as a largely U.S. phenomenon, increasing momentum for tougher gun and security laws and more policing of social media.

While mass shootings remain far more common in the United States, four of the worst school shootings in Western Europe this century have occurred since 2023 and two - a massacre of 11 people in Austria and another in Sweden - were this year.

This week's killings in the Austrian city of Graz sparked calls for tighter gun laws by political leaders, mirroring the response of the Swedish government after the 11 deaths at the Campus Risbergska school in Orebro in February.

"I can't help gloating over it all, I admit," Mardan said on-air on Rossia-1. "The worse it is for the United States, the better it is for us."

As Cherkasov pointed out, "Cheering over unrest in the United States is standard fare for the Kremlin and Kremlin-friendly media."

The rhetoric is well-practiced and hardly new, he added.

"These outlets have, after all, come up with surveys that purportedly show America as their country's main adversary for the last 20 years."

Much of the pro-Putin coverage that depicts the Los Angeles area as "apocalyptic," Cherkasov said.

But he noted that some broadcasters in the United States have been using similar language, at least some of the time.

The Republican tax bill approved by the U.S. House of Representatives would cost the poorest Americans roughly $1,600 a year while increasing the income of the wealthiest households by an average of $12,000 annually, according to a new analysis released Thursday by the Congressional Budget Office.

Middle-income households would see a boost of roughly $500 to $1,000 per year under Republican President Donald Trump’s tax bill, the CBO found.

The cuts to the lowest-income households come from proposed cuts to social safety net programs including Medicaid and a food assistance program for lower-income people, known as Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program.

Iran fires more than 100 drones at Israel in retaliation for attacks on nuclear sites Videos posted on social media appeared to show Iranian drones in the skies above Iraq, apparently en route to Israel

different ticker (reuters): https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/live-updates-israel-hits-iran-nuclear-facilities-missile-factories-2025-06-13/

President Donald Trump on Thursday pulled the U.S. out of an agreement with Washington, Oregon and four American Indian tribes to work together to restore salmon populations and boost tribal clean energy development in the Pacific Northwest, deriding the plan as “radical environmentalism” that could have resulted in the breaching of four controversial dams on the Snake River.

The deal, known as the Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement, was reached in late 2023 and heralded by the Biden administration, tribes and conservationists as historic. It allowed for a pause in decades of litigation over the harm the federal government’s operation of dams in the Northwest has done to the fish.

Under it, the federal government said it planned to spend more than $1 billion over a decade to help recover depleted salmon runs. The government also said that it would build enough new clean energy projects in the Pacific Northwest to replace the hydropower generated by the Lower Snake River dams — the Ice Harbor, Little Goose, Lower Monumental and Lower Granite — should Congress ever agree to remove them.

California’s top insurance regulator on Thursday launched an investigation into State Farm over the company’s handling of claims from the January Los Angeles-area wildfires.

The investigation comes after survivors of the Palisades and Eaton fires said that the state’s largest home insurer was delaying and mishandling claims regarding damage to their homes and possible contamination from smoke.

The blazes destroyed thousands of buildings around Los Angeles, killed 30 people and displaced thousands of others. They were estimated to be among the costliest natural disasters in U.S. history.

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill announced Thursday she is investigating whether pharmaceutical giant CVS improperly used customers’ personal information to send out text messages lobbying against a proposed state law.

Murrill also said she plans to issue a cease-and-desist letter to the company to stop the messages.

As lawmakers debated a now-failed bill on Wednesday they held up screenshots of text messages sent by CVS.

“Last minute legislation in Louisiana threatens to close your CVS Pharmacy — your medication cost may go up and your pharmacist may lose their job,” one such text, obtained by The Associated Press, read.

A Tennessee judge is scheduled to hear arguments Friday about whether Kilmar Abrego Garcia can be released from jail pending the outcome of a trial on human smuggling charges.

In a motion asking U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes to order Abrego Garcia detained, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee Rob McGuire described him as both a danger to the community and a flight risk. Abrego Garcia’s attorneys disagree. They point out that he was already wrongly detained in a notorious Salvadoran prison thanks to government error, and argue that due process and “basic fairness” require him to be set free.

Abrego Garcia is a citizen of El Salvador who had been living in the United States for more than a decade before he was wrongfully deported in March. The expulsion violated a 2019 U.S. immigration judge’s order that shielded him from deportation to his native country because he likely faced gang persecution there.

“I have no doubt that your day of liberation from this tyranny is closer than ever. And when that day comes, Israelis and Iranians will renew the alliance between our two ancient peoples. Together, we will build a future of prosperity, a future of peace, a future of hope.”

That sounds familiar...

Trump pledges to ‘liberate’ LA as he visits troops at Fort Bragg

A U.S. judge on Thursday temporarily barred Donald Trump from deploying National Guard troops in Los Angeles, finding that the Guard was unlawfully mobilized by Trump.

Judge Charles Breyer ordered the National Guard to return to the control of California Governor Gavin Newsom, who sued to restrict its activity. Breyer's order will take effect at noon on Friday.

"The Court is troubled by the implication inherent in Defendants' argument that protest against the federal government, a core civil liberty protected by the First Amendment, can justify a finding of rebellion," Breyer wrote.

The Trump administration immediately appealed the judge's order.

So they're continuing to bomb the underground nuclear facility in Natanz. But I'm confused by this article from 2023:

An Iranian nuclear facility is so deep underground that US airstrikes likely couldn’t reach it

Unless you plan to continue bombing for all eternity, wouldn't there be a good chance you're just kicking hornet's nest?

Gaslight Obstruct Project

As Trump mobilizes the marines to quell an “insurrection” in LA, it’s essential to be clear about how the protests started and what actually happened.

FBI agents handcuffed Alejandro Theodoro Orellana for allegedly “distributing face shields to suspected rioters” on Tuesday, U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli posted.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/46591018

New legislation in Florida introduces a financial model that would enable local governments around the country to invest virtually limitless sums in the Israeli war effort, despite the mounting financial risk of doing so.

Israel attacked Iran’s capital early Friday, with explosions booming across Tehran.

The attack comes as tensions have reached new heights over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program. The Board of Governors at the International Atomic Energy Agency for the first time in 20 years on Thursday censured Iran over it not working with its inspectors. Iran immediately announced it would establish a third enrichment site in the country and swap out some centrifuges for more-advanced ones.

Israel for years has warned it will not allow Iran to build a nuclear weapon, something Tehran insists it doesn’t want — though official there have repeatedly warned it could. The U.S. has been preparing for something to happen, already pulling some diplomats from Iraq’s capital and offering voluntary evacuations for the families of U.S. troops in the wider Middle East.