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Former federal officials and outside experts have warned for months that President Donald Trump’s deep staffing cuts to the National Weather Service could endanger lives.

After torrential rains and flash flooding struck Friday in the Texas Hill Country, the weather service came under fire from local officials who criticized what they described as inadequate forecasts, though most in the Republican-controlled state stopped short of blaming Trump’s cuts. Democrats, meanwhile, wasted little time in linking the staff reductions to the disaster, which is being blamed for the deaths of at least 80 people, including more than two dozen girls and counselors attending a summer camp on the banks of the Guadalupe River.

“This was an exceptional service to come out first with the catastrophic flash flood warning and this shows the awareness of the meteorologists on shift at the NWS office,” said Brian LaMarre, who retired at the end of April as the meteorologist-in-charge of the NWS forecast office in Tampa, Florida. ″There is always the challenge of pinpointing extreme values, however, the fact the catastrophic warning was issued first showed the level of urgency.”

Questions remain, however, about the level of coordination and communication between NWS and local officials on the night of the disaster. The Trump administration has cut hundreds of jobs at NWS, with staffing down by at least 20% at nearly half of the 122 NWS field offices nationally and at least a half dozen no longer staffed 24 hours a day. Hundreds more experienced forecasters and senior managers were encouraged to retire early.

Former federal officials and experts have said Trump’s indiscriminate job reductions at NWS and other weather-related agencies will result in brain drain that imperils the federal government’s ability to issue timely and accurate forecasts. Such predictions can save lives, particularly for those in the path of quick-moving storms.

“This situation is getting to the point where something could break,” said Louis Uccellini, a meteorologist who served as NWS director under three presidents, including during Trump’s first term. “The people are being tired out, working through the night and then being there during the day because the next shift is short staffed. Anything like that could create a situation in which important elements of forecasts and warnings are missed.”

The cuts follow a decade-long Republican effort to dismantle and privatize many of the duties of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the agency within the Commerce Department that includes the NWS. The reductions have come as Trump has handed top public posts to officials with ties to private companies that stand to profit from hobbling the taxpayer-funded system for predicting the weather.

At a pair of Congressional hearings last month, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick called it “fake news” that the Trump administration had axed any meteorologists, despite detailed reporting from The Associated Press and other media organizations that chronicled the layoffs.

Hedge-fund billionaire Bill Ackman plans to bankroll a New York City mayoral campaign, arguing that his affluent associates are poised to flood the election with money in an effort to defeat Democratic Socialist frontrunner Zohran Mamdani.

Ackman said he was “gravely concerned” because he believed the left-wing candidate’s policies would be disastrous, triggering an exodus of the wealthy that would endanger New York’s public services by hollowing out its tax base.

Arguing that his own support of President Trump would automatically disqualify anyone Ackman might put forward, the activist investor said he was making a public appeal: Anyone capable of taking down Mamdani in the Nov. 4 election should step forward and volunteer.

“Importantly, there are hundreds of millions of dollars of capital available to back a competitor to Mamdani that can be put together overnight (believe me, I am in the text strings and the WhatsApp groups) so that a great alternative candidate won’t spend any time,” he wrote.

“So if the right candidate would raise his or her hand tomorrow, the funds will pour in.”

It’s unclear whether New Yorkers would honor such a candidate. The recent intervention by Elon Musk in Wisconsin’s state supreme court election indicated the voting public does not always respond well to billionaires using their money to sway races.

New York mayoral races are notoriously unpredictable due to the city’s chronically low turnout. In 2017, for example, Bill de Blasio won reelection with only 14% of registered voters coming out to support him.

A large influx of New Yorkers heading to the voting booth because they are as concerned as Ackman could easily affect the outcome. If Cuomo can hold on to enough fundraisers, political pundits also point out, it’s possible he could run as an independent like Adams, splitting the left vote and spoiling the race.

Ackman, however, argued all these factors would support the emergence of a centrist candidate looking to position themself on the national stage. It could even be another businessman like Bloomberg, he suggested, although Ackman in an earlier post appeared to indicate he would not seek to run himself.

“For the aspiring politician there is no better way to get name recognition, build relationships with long-term donors, and to showcase oneself,” the hedge fund manager wrote, pitching the campaign like a business deal. “The risk/reward of running for mayor over the next 132 days is extremely compelling as the cost in time and energy is small and the upside is enormous.”

President Donald Trump said on Monday he would support the arrest of California's Gavin Newsom, in a dramatic escalation of a growing conflict with the Democratic governor over immigration protests that roiled Los Angeles over the weekend.

As Los Angeles faced a fourth day of protests over immigration raids in the city, Democrats and Republicans clashed over what has become the biggest flashpoint in the Trump administration’s aggressive efforts to deport migrants living in the country illegally.

"This is exactly what Donald Trump wanted. He flamed the fires and illegally acted to federalize the National Guard," Newsom, who is viewed as a potential Democratic presidential contender in 2028, said on X.

Federal law allows the president to deploy the Guard if the nation is invaded, if there is “rebellion or danger of rebellion,” or the president is “unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.” Returning to the White House after a night at Camp David, Trump was asked by a reporter whether his border czar, Tom Homan, should arrest Newsom. Homan has threatened to arrest anyone who obstructs immigration enforcement efforts, including the governor.

"I would do it if I were Tom. I think it's great," Trump replied. "Gavin likes the publicity, but I think it would be a great thing."

Newsom on X called the arrest threat an "unmistakable step toward authoritarianism."

Source of news: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/7/ice-launches-military-style-raids-in-los-angeles-what-we-know

This is Stephen Miller's (White House Deputy Chief) response to Karen Bass (Los Angeles Mayor).

Billionaire Elon Musk alleged that President Trump has ties to convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein as the part of his growing feud with the president, a fight that boiled over and turned personal on Thursday.

“Time to drop the really big bomb,” Musk wrote on X, the social platform he owns. “[Trump] is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public.”

Minutes later, he followed up: “Mark this post for the future. The truth will come out.”

A source familiar emphasized to The Hill that Trump kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his Palm Beach Golf Club years ago and noted the administration previously released Epstein files with the President’s name included.

Musk for months, before and after the campaign, spoke glowingly of Trump’s character, the source emphasized, noting at one point the billionaire posted on social media saying he “loves him as much as a straight man can love a straight man.”

Musk’s allegation came just minutes after Trump threatened to cancel government contracts with Musk’s companies, calling him “crazy” and escalating an explosive feud between the two former allies.

The billionaire tech and media mogul suggested earlier Thursday that Trump would not have gotten elected last fall without him and called him ungrateful.

Source Link: https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/2025/06/02/see-canada-wildfire-smoke-map-nj-air-quality-as-summer-heat-nears-nj-weather-temperatures-heat/83989333007/

President Trump says he will fully pardon Todd and Julie Chrisley, reality TV personalities who have served more than two years in prison after being convicted of funding their lavish lifestyle through tax evasion and bank fraud.

Prosecutors said they conspired to defraud community banks in the Atlanta area to take out more than $36 million in personal loans. They spent the money on luxury cars, designer clothes, real estate and travel and used new fraudulent loans to pay back old ones. They said the Chrisleys failed to pay taxes for the 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 tax years.

"Over the course of a decade, the defendants defrauded banks out of tens of millions of dollars while evading payment of their federal income taxes," then-U.S. Attorney Ryan Buchanan said at the time, adding that their "lengthy sentences reflect the magnitude of their criminal scheme."

The Chrisleys have denied the charges and claimed they were unfairly targeted because of their conservative beliefs. Their oldest daughter, Savannah, has become an outspoken critic of the criminal justice system since her parents' incarceration.

She spoke onstage at the Republican National Convention in July, calling her parents victims of political persecution. After Trump took office, she told People that she was "going through the proper channels" to try to get them pardoned, and had lunch at the White House in February.

Those efforts seem to have paid off. On Tuesday, White House special assistant Margo Martin tweeted a video of Trump calling Savannah from the Oval Office to inform her of her parents' pardons.

Trump has pardoned a number of high-profile supporters in the early months of his second term, starting with hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters.

In February, he pardoned disgraced former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was convicted of corruption-related crimes in 2011. Trump commuted Blagojevich's 14-year sentence during his first term. Blagojevich attended the 2024 Republican National Convention in support of Trump, whom he called "the most demonized political figure in American history — and I know something about being demonized."

In March, Trump pardoned former Tennessee state Sen. Brian Kelsey, who was two weeks into a 21-month prison sentence for an illegal campaign finance scheme (which he pleaded guilty to in 2022 but later tried unsuccessfully to rescind).

"May God bless America, despite the prosecutorial sins it committed against me, President Trump, and others the past four years," Kelsey said after receiving the full pardon.

In April, Trump pardoned Michele Fiore, a former Las Vegas city councilwoman and former Republican state lawmaker who was awaiting sentencing on federal wire fraud charges. Fiore, a loyal Trump supporter, was accused of using money meant to honor a slain police officer for her personal expenses, including cosmetic surgery, rent and her daughter's wedding.

And just this week, on Monday, Trump announced a pardon for Scott Jenkins, a former Virginia sheriff who was found guilty of accepting over $75,000 in bribes in exchange for appointing multiple businessmen as auxiliary deputy sheriffs in his Culpeper County department. He was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison in March, and was reportedly due to report to prison on Tuesday.

US President Donald Trump will host top purchasers of the cryptocurrency that bears his name at a gala dinner on Thursday.

$TRUMP was launched shortly before his inauguration in January, initially rocketing in value before falling sharply shortly afterwards.

"It's fundamentally corrupt -- a way to buy access to the President," Democrat senator Chris Murphy wrote on X, one of a number of people to question the ethics of the event.

Some have also suggested the expected attendance of many foreign investors poses a threat to national security.

But the White House has batted away such allegations, saying Trump is only motivated by public service.

"This is something that doesn't have obvious utility. It's not being used for payments. It's not being used as a store of value," said Rob Hadick, General Partner of Dragonfly, a crypto venture fund.

The dinner - which is being held at Trump's golf course near the nation's capital - is advertised on the website gettrumpmemes.com as "the most EXCLUSIVE INVITATION in the World."

The top 220 purchasers of the meme coin, viewable on a leaderboard, received invitations to the "black-tie optional" event.

The top investor in the $TRUMP meme coin is billionaire crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun who was charged with fraud and market manipulation by the US Securities and Exchange Commission during the Biden Administration.

A Trump administration official told the BBC that the meme coin has nothing to do with the White House.

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly pushed back on concerns about potential conflicts.

"The President is working to secure GOOD deals for the American people, not for himself," Kelly said in a statement.

But one former financial regulator likened the meme coin to gambling.

"It's like selling membership cards for his personal fan club which are then traded," said Timothy Massad, Director of the Digital Asset Policy Project at Harvard.

"They have no value. But people speculate on the price and those purchases and that trading enriches him."

• Btw, here's the Leaderboard if anyone's interested.

US President Donald Trump confronted his South African counterpart, Cyril Ramaphosa, over widely discredited claims of a white genocide in South Africa, during an Oval Office meeting on Wednesday.

Mr Trump said that white farmers are "fleeing South Africa", playing footage to the room showing people chanting "kill the Boer, kill the farmer".

Responding, Mr Ramaphosa condemned the chants but pushed back against claims of white persecution.

The United States is becoming less popular globally in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s return to the White House, according to new data.

The 2025 Democracy Perception Index summarizes attitudes toward democracy, geopolitics and global power players, and canvassed more than 110,000 respondents across 100 countries.

A majority of people surveyed had an overall negative perception of the U.S., marking a steep decline from last year. America’s reputation took a particularly massive hit in EU countries — perhaps unsurprisingly, as U.S. President Donald Trump has called the bloc “horrible,” “pathetic” and “formed to screw the United States.”

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former NATO chief and founder of the Alliance of Democracies Foundation that coauthored the index, said he was “not surprised that perceptions of the United States have fallen so sharply.”

Meanwhile, China kept improving its global standing, overtaking the U.S. for the first time and recording mostly positive perceptions in all regions except Europe. Russia, the reputation of which tanked in the wake of President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, is still (slightly) more unpopular than the U.S. — though its image is also improving.

Harvard University, the world-renowned institution emblematic of the elitism that Trump and his coterie hold in contempt, received an extortive demand from the administration that it surrender the core of its academic freedoms – and promptly told it to get lost.

Echoing pressures imposed on other elite colleges, notably Columbia University, the Trump team – representing the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services, and the General Services Administration – had demanded sweeping reforms in how Harvard is run, including the installation of viewpoint-diverse faculty members and the end of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes.

The backdrop to a demand for what would be unprecedented government interference in the affairs of the world’s richest university is the alleged rise of campus antisemitism, arising from an upsurge of pro-Palestinian demonstrations that have gripped Harvard and other colleges following Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel and Israel’s retaliatory military offensive in Gaza.

Critics, however, see a more nefarious White House agenda – namely, gutting universities of what it sees as a liberal-left bias, while using antisemitism as a cudgel in an authoritarian power grab.

Having seen Columbia cave in to similar demands and threatening $9bn in federal funding, the White House may have thought it was on to a winner with Harvard.

“Investment is not an entitlement,” the administration’s 11 April letter read, accusing Harvard of having “failed to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment”.

The administration’s demands made “clear that the intention is not to work with us to address antisemitism in a cooperative and constructive manner”, Garber wrote.

“Although some of the demands outlined by the government are aimed at combating antisemitism, the majority represent direct governmental regulation of the ‘intellectual conditions’ at Harvard.

“No government – regardless of which party is in power – should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”

The university’s lawyers, William Burck and Robert Hur, both of whom have conservative credentials, starkly set out the broader constitutional stakes, writing that the government’s demands were “in contravention of the first amendment” and concluding that “Harvard is not prepared to agree to demands that go beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration”.