[Posted 4:30 PM ET, Friday]
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Edition 1,364
We’ve now entered a classic period of ‘wait 24 hours’ when it comes to Israel and Iran. There is no doubt that Iran’s capabilities have been greatly degraded, including their proxies in Lebanon and Syria, and going back to the tit-for-tat exchange between Israel and Iran last October, Israel further diminished Iran’s air-defense capacity. We then learned the last 18 hours that Israel’s Mosad carried out more attacks from inside Iran on air-defense systems early Friday morning.
I have it all down below. The reaction in the markets was highly muted today, until the final 90 minutes of trading, with the rise in oil only taking crude back to the levels of January.
That said, Israel’s attack is ongoing and we shouldn’t be surprised by basically anything. There are plenty of soft targets for Iran to hit, worldwide, and it does have asymmetric capabilities.
And then around 2:30 p.m. Eastern Time, Iran launched hundreds of ballistic missiles at Israel. There are early reports of some damage and, thus far, a few injuries.
—
Until last night, I was going to be leading with the protests in Los Angeles, also covered in great detail below. Democrats continue to miss the mark in their response to ICE raids and the administration’s efforts to crack down on illegal immigration. Peaceful protests are one thing. Total lawlessness is another, and the great majority of Americans don’t want to see the latter.
Former Republican House speaker Newt Gingrich summed it up: “It could not be clearer. One side is for enforcing the law and protecting Americans, and the other side is for defending illegals and being on the side of the people who break the law.”
That’s the perception.
But as Barron’s put it, there are consequences, economic ones, to the policies being enforced.
“With a goal of 3,000 arrests a day, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, has intensified detentions nationwide – leaving some construction sites deserted, crops unpicked, and employers scrambling.
“Across critical sectors, business owners say fear of arrest is driving both undocumented laborers – and legal immigrants – to stay away from worksites….
“Following an ICE raid at its facility in Omaha, Nebraska on Tuesday, Glenn Valley Foods was running with only 30% of its normal head-count. Output had crashed to 20% of capacity, the company’s president, Chad Hartmann, told Reuters. The company’s LinkedIn page says it supplies pork, steak, chicken and corned beef to restaurants and groceries.”
Yes, many employers haven’t seen a meaningful impact on their labor force, but industry groups, unions, and businesses across the country say that it could change in the coming months. It just seems inevitable.
President Trump, Thursday, seemed to acknowledge the issue in a Truth Social post:
“Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,” adding that the country must protect farmers while getting “CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA” and that change was coming. The White House didn’t clarify what that change could be. ICE has said worksite enforcement is a priority for the agency.
—
Trump World, cont’d….regarding the protests….
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claimed Saturday evening that “violent mob assaults” and a “dangerous invasion” in Los Angeles have caused the Marines to be “on high alert” from their base at Camp Pendleton.
In his threat to send in the Marines, Hegseth did not cite any law that would allow such a move.
Donald Trump on Truth Social, Sun., June 8, 5:06 PM:
“A once great American City, Los Angeles, has been invaded and occupied by illegal Aliens and Criminals. Now violent, insurrectionist mobs are swarming and attacking our Federal Agents to try and stop our deportation operations – But these lawless riots only strengthen our resolve. I am directing Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and Attorney General Pam Bondi, in coordination with all other relevant Departments and Agencies, to take all such action necessary to liberate Los Angeles from the Migrant Invasion, and put an end to these Migrant riots. Order will be restored, the Illegals will be expelled, and Los Angeles will be set free. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
Trump invoked his Title 10 authority to order a military response to the protests, federalizing and deploying 2,000 National Guardsmen in Los Angeles Saturday evening (later 4,000), citing a need to protect “federal personnel and property” – that is, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents whose recent raids in the city have drawn protests.
Trump claimed the protests “constitute a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.” But the law he invoked is not the Insurrection Act, and the Posse Comitatus Act forbids the military (including federalized National Guard troops) from being used for domestic law enforcement.
Tensions in Los Angeles escalated Sunday as thousands of protesters took to the streets in response to Trump’s Guard deployment, blocking off a major freeway and setting self-driving cars on fire as law enforcement used tear gas, rubber bullets and flash bangs to control the crowd.
The L.A. police declared the downtown to be an unlawful assembly area and told protesters to go home Sunday evening. “Los Angeles police said some protesters had thrown concrete projectiles, bottles and other items at police,” Reuters reported. “Police declared several rallies to be unlawful assemblies and later extended that to include the whole downtown area.” Almost 40 people had been arrested by Sunday evening, Police Chief Jim McDonnell said.
Governor Gavin Newsom called Trump’s decision “unlawful” and has formally asked him to withdraw the National Guard. “We didn’t have a problem until Trump got involved,” Newsom said on social media Sunday evening. “This is a serious breach of state sovereignty – inflaming tensions while pulling resources from where they’re actually needed.”
Newsom also said California would file a lawsuit challenging Trump’s act, and did so on Monday.
Trump’s federalizing the Guard marked the first time since 1965 that a president has sent troops into a state without a request from its governor. In 1965, the federalization occurred to protect civil rights demonstrators. Today, the federalization occurred to protect ICE agents.
Trump, Monday, June 9, 12:10 PM:
“We made a great decision in sending the National Guard to deal with the violent, instigated riots in California. If we had not done so, Los Angeles would have been completely obliterated. The very incompetent ‘Governor,’ Gavin Newscum, and ‘Mayor,’ Karen Bass, should be saying, ‘THANK YOU, PRESIDENT TRUMP, YOU ARE SO WONDERFUL. WE WOULD BE NOTHING WITHOUT YOU, SIR.’ Instead, they choose to lie to the People of California and America by saying that we weren’t needed, and that these are ‘peaceful protests.’ Just one look at the pictures and videos of the Violence and Destruction tells you all you have to know. We will always do what is needed to keep our Citizens SAFE, so we can, together, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Historian Heather Cox Richardson of Boston College wrote Sunday evening; “There is real weakness behind the regime’s power grab. Trump’s promised trade deals have not materialized, and indicators show his policies are hurting the economy…There is no doubt that as their other initiatives have stalled and popular opinion is turning against the administration on every issue, the Trump regime is trying to establish a police state.”
“We are one flared temper, one foolish incident, away from a true national emergency,” said Joyce Vance, former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama. “This is a moment where de-escalation is called for. But it doesn’t look like that’s what the Trump administration wants here,” she added. Indeed, “They are not taking steps to de-escalate. To the contrary, they continued to dig in on Sunday afternoon.”
Monday, the Trump administration escalated its response to anti-deportation protests in Los Angeles with the mobilization of 700 Marines, deploying active-duty military on the ground and further increasing tensions with California officials.
California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, said the president’s actions had “trampled” the state’s sovereignty.
Trump repeatedly ridiculed Newsom, saying that he is “grossly incompetent” and had done “a terrible job.” Asked about a threat by his border czar Tom Homan to arrest the governor, Trump said, “I would do it if I were Tom.”
“I think it’s great,” Trump added, without specifying any alleged criminal wrongdoing or charges. “Gavin likes the publicity, but I think it would be a great thing.”
“That’s an American president in 2025, threatening a political opponent who happens to be a sitting governor,” Newsom said in an interview Monday. “That’s not with precedent in modern times. That’s what we see around the globe in authoritarian regimes.”
Newsom’s comments reflected a broader frustration for Democratic leaders, who have been unable to counter what they see as an escalation of Trump’s undemocratic actions in his emboldened second term.
On Monday, Newsom sounded like he was at his end with Trump, calling him “unrestrained” and “unhinged.”
“Trump is a very different president than his first foray in office,” Newsom said Monday. “You’ve seen that as it related to how he has completely obliterated any oversight from Congress; how he seeks to obliterate oversight from the judicial branch by threatening impeachment of judges and running up to the edge as it relates to court orders.”
Monday saw a fourth night of clashes between police and demonstrators. Once again largely peaceful daytime protests morphed into scattered clashes with police shooting less-lethal ammunition and some protesters throwing bottles.
Editorial / Wall Street Journal
“Will Democrats ever learn a political lesson on immigration and crime? It doesn’t appear so judging from their response to the migrant protests in Los Angeles that turned violent on Sunday night. Chaos on the streets will increase public support for a hard-line restrictionist agenda.
“Protests against Mr. Trump’s immigration raids escalated as activists torched cars, looted businesses and occupied a major freeway. Law enforcement and immigration officers were pelted with rocks and fireworks….
“California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s response on Monday? Sue Mr. Trump over his Saturday order deploying the California National Guard to Los Angeles to protect federal property and officers. The Governor claimed that calling in troops was ‘inflammatory.’ But recent history suggests that protesters don’t need a provocation to turn violent.
“Recall how the antifa crowd and other extremists hijacked protests after George Floyd’s death in 2020. Ditto anti-Israel protests at the University of California, Los Angeles, that turned bloody. After the Dodgers’ World Series victory last autumn, revelers looted businesses, torched city buses and hurled fireworks at police officers who tried to bring them under control.
“The current chaos isn’t a surprise in a city and state that too often tolerate lawlessness. Still, it wasn’t clear early Sunday whether deploying troops was necessary or would be constructive. But asked late Sunday if the National Guard were needed, L.A. police chief Jim McDonnell responded: ‘Well, looking at tonight, this thing has gotten out of control.’
“All of this will please Stephen Miller, the White House deportation czar, who is eager for such a confrontation with a ‘sanctuary city.’ Now Democrats are playing into his hands by soft-pedaling the violence. Mr. Newsom and the city’s Democratic leaders could have tried to douse the flames by denouncing the violence and stressing that lawbreakers will be arrested. [Emphasis mine.]
“Instead, they’re blaming Mr. Trump for their own failure to maintain order. As Mr. Newsom tweeted: ‘1) Local law enforcement didn’t need help. 2) Trump sent troops anyway – to manufacture chaos and violence. 3) Trump succeeded. 4) Now things are destabilized and we need to send in more law enforcement just to clean up Trump’s mess.’
“That explanation may resound in Mr. Newsom’s liberal echo chamber, but it won’t sit well with most Americans who have little patience for disorder. Mr. Trump is already escalating by sending in 500 Marines, ostensibly to protect federal buildings….
“The airwaves and social media are saturated with footage of protesters waving Mexican flags atop burning cars, carrying signs claiming California is ‘Stolen land’ and chanting ‘We don’t want ICE or police!’ Mr. Newsom really is living in La La Land if he thinks Americans will side with such radicals over Mr. Trump.
“Mr. Newsom and his Democratic friends could show sympathy for law-abiding immigrants ensnared in the raids while also condemning the violence. It is in their own interest to do so since continuing violence will boost public support for Mr. Miller’s project to deport every illegal migrant and end legal immigration too. Maybe one of these days Democrats will learn that their automatic, unqualified anti-Trump ‘resistance’ helps him.”
But in a separate Journal editorial, it notes an issue I brought up months ago, in particular concerning California and the aftermath of the wildfires. With the crackdown on immigration, who is going to do the hard work of reconstruction?
“Mr. Miller and the restrictionists want to deport everyone to send a message never to come again. But the lost contributions to the U.S. labor force will be great, especially since neither Mr. Miller nor Big Labor will tolerate more legal immigration. The labor-market impact is already showing up in the monthly Bureau of Labor Statistics report.
“There is also the risk of unrest, as we’ve seen in California. It’s fanciful to think that raiding restaurants to snatch busboys, or Home Depot to grab stock clerks, won’t inspire a backlash. All the more so when ICE acts in heavy-handed fashion, as its agents sometimes do. Some on the pro-migrant left will do the same, and that’s when things get ugly. The political risks for Mr. Trump will grow if families are broken up, legal migrants are deported by mistake, or tales of hardship proliferate.
“Yet Mr. Trump can fairly say he has a mandate for mass deportation, however unwise, and he has a broad legal authority to do it….
“When Rep. Maxine Waters says she wants the protesting crowds to ‘grow and grow and grow,’ she is playing into Mr. Trump’s hands….
“This is the tragedy of American immigration politics in 2025. The Biden Administration’s de facto open-border policy created mayhem and costs that have changed the immigration debate for the worse. Border security was one of Mr. Trump’s most popular issues in 2024. This means he has leeway to solve the problem. He may go too far, as he so often does, but Democrats should look in the mirror for giving him the political opening.
“We’d call for common sense on both sides, but that’s probably not in the offing.”
Trump on Truth Social, June 10, 8:27 AM:
“If I didn’t ‘SEND IN THE TROOPS’ to Los Angeles the last three nights, that once beautiful and great City would be burning to the ground right now, much like 25,000 houses burned to the ground in L.A. do [Ed. sic] to an incompetent Governor and Mayor – Incidentally, the much more difficult, time consuming, and stringent FEDERAL PERMITTING PROCESS is virtually complete on these houses, while the easy and simple City and State Permits are disastrously bungled up and WAY BEHIND SCHEDULE! They are a total mess, and will be for a long time. People want to rebuild their houses. Call your incompetent Governor and Mayor, the Federal permitting is DONE!!!”
Tuesday evening, Mayor Karen Bass announced a curfew for a section of the city’s downtown. Governor Newsom, in an address to the state, condemned Trump’s deployment of the military.
Newsom urged Americans to stand up to Trump, calling it a “perilous moment” for democracy and the country’s long-held legal norms.
“California may be first, but it clearly won’t end here. Other states are next. Democracy is next.”
“Democracy is under assault right before our eyes – the moment we’ve feared has arrived,” he added.
Protests were spreading to other cities, hundreds arrested in San Franciso, with demonstrations taking place in Austin, Denver, New York, Chicago, Seattle, Boston….
David Ignatius / Washington Post
“Democrats have gotten the border issue so wrong, for so long, that it amounts to political malpractice. The latest chapter – in which violent protesters could be helping President Donald Trump create a military confrontation he’s almost begging for as a distraction from his other problems – may prove the most dangerous yet.
“When I see activists carrying Mexican flags as they challenge ICE raids in Los Angeles this week, I think of two possibilities: These ‘protesters’ are deliberately working to create visuals that will help Trump, or they are well-meaning but unwise dissenters who are inadvertently accomplishing the same goal.
“Democrats’ mistake, over more than a decade, has been to behave as though border enforcement doesn’t matter. Pressured by immigrant rights activists, party leaders too often acted as if maintaining a well-controlled border was somehow morally wrong. Again and again, the short-term political interests of Democratic leaders in responding to a strong faction within the party won out over having a policy that could appeal to the country as a whole.
“When red-state voters and elected officials complained that their states were being overwhelmed by uncontrolled immigration over the past decade, Democrats found those protests easy to ignore. They were happening somewhere else. But when red states’ governors pushed migrants toward blue-state cities over the past several years, protests from mayors and governors finally began to register. But still not enough to create coherent Democratic policies, alas.
“It’s open season on former president Joe Biden these days, and he doesn’t deserve all the retrospective criticism he’s getting. But on immigration, he was anything but a profile in courage. Security advisers including Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas wanted tougher border policies starting in 2012. But political advisers such as Chief of Staff Ron Klain, who sought amity with immigration rights progressives in Congress and the party’s base, resisted strong measures. Though Biden was elected as a centrist, he leaned left – and waited until the last months of his presidency to take the strong enforcement measures recommended earlier.
“Throughout the 2024 campaign, Trump played shamelessly on public anxieties about the border. Some of his arguments, such as claims that hungry migrants were eating pets, were grotesque. They were simply provocations. But Biden and Kamala Harris didn’t have good answers, other than indignation. They had straddled the issue through Biden’s term, talking about border security but failing to enact it, and the public knew it….
“Over the long run, taking border issues seriously means more immigration courts and more border-control people and facilities – and a fair, legal way of deciding who stays and who goes. But right now, it means Democratic mayors and governors using state and local police to contain protests, so that troops aren’t necessary – and preventing extremists among the activists from fomenting the cataclysm in the streets that some of them seem to want as much as Trump.
“Yes, of course, we need new bipartisan legislation to resolve the gut issue of how to protect the ‘dreamers’ and other longtime residents who show every day that they want only to be good citizens. But on the way to that day of sweet reason, Democrats need to oppose violence, by anyone – and to help enforce immigration policies that begin with a recognition that it isn’t immoral to have a border.”
Gov. Newsom said Trump had “inflamed a combustible situation” by taking over California’s National Guard, and by calling up 4,000 troops and 700 Marines.
“Trump is pulling a military dragnet all across Los Angeles,” Newsom said. “Well beyond his stated intent to just go after violent and serious criminals, his agents are arresting dishwashers, gardeners, day laborers and seamstresses.”
Trump on Truth Social, Thursday morning:
“Los Angeles was safe and sound for the last two nights. Our great National Guard, with a little help from the Marines, put the L.A. Police in a position to effectively do their job. They all worked well together, but without the Military, Los Angeles would be a crime scene like we haven’t seen in years. Governor Gaven NewScum had totally lost control of the situation. He should be saying THANK YOU for saving his ass, instead of trying to justify his mistakes and incompetence!!!”
California Democratic Senator Alex Padilla was forced to the floor, handcuffed and removed by federal agents after interrupting a news conference by the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, on Thursday in Los Angeles, in another sign of the rising political tensions.
Noem and Padilla did speak for 10-15 minutes after. He was not detained. I thought security handled it properly and that Padilla was largely at fault for the way he approached the area where Noem was speaking.
The U.S. military Northern Command said that by Friday evening, roughly 700 Marines are expected to join 2,100 National Guard troops that have been guarding federal property and personnel, and that 2,000 additional Guard troops would begin training on Thursday.
The Pentagon said the deployment of the National Guard and Marines will cost $134 million.
Thursday evening, a federal judge ruled that President Trump illegally federalized the California National Guard in response to the protests and ordered that the force be returned to the control of Governor Newsom.
Trump failed to follow the process Congress set forth to bring the Guard, which normally is an arm of the state government, under federal control, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer said in a 36-page order issued just hours after a hearing on the dispute.
Breyer postponed implementation of his order until noon local time on Friday, giving the Justice Department time to file an appeal.
A CBS News/YouGov poll conducted June 4-6, had 54% of Americans saying they approved of Trump’s deportation policy (46% disapproved), and 50% approved of how he’s handling immigration.
—
—On the trade front, the U.S. and China continued their talks into a second day, Tuesday, in London, as the two sides looked to ease tensions over shipments of technology and rare earth elements.
The first round of talks, Monday, went about eight hours. “We are doing well with China. China’s not easy,” President Trump told reporters at the White House. “I’m only getting good reports.”
The U.S. delegation was led by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer.
Bessent told reporters they had a “good meeting” and Lutnick called the discussions “fruitful.”
The Chinese delegation was led by Vice Premier He Lifeng, who left Monday without commenting to the media. With him was Commerce Minister Wang Wentao and his deputy.
The U.S. signaled a willingness to remove restrictions on some tech exports in exchange for assurances that China is easing limits on rare earth shipments, which are critical to a wide array of energy, defense, auto and technology products, including smartphones, fighter jets and nuclear reactor rods.
The Trump administration is prepared to remove a number of measures targeting chip design software, jet engine parts, chemicals and nuclear materials, reports have it.
Bloomberg also reported that the U.S. dominates in ethane, a gas used to make plastics, and China buys nearly all of it. Washington is now tightening control by requiring export licenses.
So then Tuesday evening, U.S. and Chinese negotiators wrapped up their talks with what they said was a framework to get their trade truce back on track and ratchet down tensions between the two.
Representatives from both countries said the framework would essentially restore a pact they agreed to in Geneva.
“The two largest economies in the world have reached a handshake for a framework,” Commerce Secretary Lutnick said. “We’re going to start to implement that framework upon the approval of President Trump, and the Chinese will get their President Xi’s approval, and that’s the process.”
Senior Chinese negotiator, Li Chenggang, nodded to Lutnick’s remarks, saying the two sides “agreed in principle.”
Lutnick later told the Wall Street Journal that he expects Trump to approve the agreement as soon as Wednesday or Thursday. “I feel really good about where we got to,” he said.
The negotiators didn’t disclose exactly what they had agreed to as part of the framework, which could lead to continued uncertainty over the trade truce.
Trump then posted on Truth Social, Wednesday morning:
“OUR DEAL WITH CHINA IS DONE, SUBJECT TO FINAL APPROVAL WITH PRESIDENT XI AND ME. FULL MAGNETS, AND ANY NECESSARY RARE EARTHS, WILL BE SUPPLIED, UP FRONT, BY CHINA. LIKEWISE, WE WILL PROVIDE TO CHINA WHAT WAS AGREED TO, INCLUDING CHINESE STUDENTS USING OUR COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES (WHICH HAS ALWAYS BEEN GOOD WITH ME!). WE ARE GETTING A TOTAL OF 55% TARIFFS, CHINA IS GETTING 10%. RELATIONSHIP IS EXCELLENT! THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER!”
Trump then wrote: “Adding to the China readout, President Xi and I are going to work closely together to open up China to American trade. This would be a great WIN for both countries!!!”
The ‘55%,’ not 30%, includes tariffs Trump imposed during his first term.
But then the Wall Street Journal reported that China is putting a six-month limit on rare-earth export licenses for U.S. automakers and manufacturers, giving Beijing leverage if trade tensions flare up again while adding to uncertainty for American industry.
In exchange, U.S. negotiators reportedly agreed to relax some recent restrictions on the sale to China of products such as jet engines and related parts, as well as ethane.
Details of the framework are still being worked out.
Meanwhile, the 90-day pause on sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs on all our other trading partners is set to expire in less than a month, July 9. Not a single trade deal has been signed. The one with the UK is just a “framework” for a final deal.
And an appeals court said tariffs can stay in place for now. Crucially, it won’t hear arguments until the end of July, which means that Trump is free to re-implement the levies as originally planned when the 90-day pause ends early next month.
Treasury Secretary Bessent said the U.S. might extend the 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs for some trading partners. That’s for those the administration views as negotiating in good faith. “I would say…that there are 18 important trading partners,” he said during a congressional hearing.
Editorial / Wall Street Journal
“(The) larger problem with Mr. Trump’s tariff strategy – that is, he doesn’t have one. His latest walk-back shows he can’t bully China as he tried to do in his first term. China has leverage of its own.
“A smarter trade strategy would be to work with allies as a united front to counter China’s predatory trade practices. Instead, Mr. Trump has used tariffs as an economic scatter-gun against friends as well as foes. This increased China’s leverage, and, like this week’s trade truce, that’s nothing to cheer about.”
—Regarding the Trump-Musk feud, it’s clear the president thinks it’s over….as in he sees zero reason to even talk to Elon, who is trying to work his way back into Trump’s good graces, fearing retribution in regards to his many businesses, but this is all on Musk.
In an interview with NBC News on Saturday, Trump said Musk would “pay the consequences” if he were to start funding Democratic candidates to challenge Republicans who support his massive tax and immigration bill.
“If he does, he’ll have to pay the consequences for that,” Trump said in the phone interview, later repeating: “He’ll have to pay very serious consequences if he does that.”
“I gave him a lot of breaks, long before this happened. I gave him breaks in my first administration and saved his life in my first administration,” Trump told NBC News, without elaborating on what those interventions were. “I have no intention of speaking to him.”
But a permanent divorce would be messy after Trump suggested canceling Musk’s government contracts.
NASA needs SpaceX’s Dragon Spacecraft. The Pentagon needs his satellites, just for starters. On Tesla, for example, there are still a growing number of Americans buying electric vehicles and you need Tesla’s charging network as part of the infrastructure.
And back to SpaceX, it carries more payload for the military than any other company, launching most U.S. spy satellites, and the Pentagon plans to count on Starlink for connectivity.
Officials also like ‘X’ for communication. And Musk’s forays into artificial intelligence could be critical to the nation’s future as well.
Gerard Baker / Wall Street Journal
“The Musk divorce is symbolic of the tension at the heart of the new Republican coalition. Mr. Trump’s working- and middle-class multiethnic alliance is driving the highly successful cultural counterrevolution on the border, race, sex and national security. But those same voters are none too keen on Mr. Musk’s free-market approach to trade, migration, taxes and spending.
“This tension isn’t new. It’s been a core feature of Republican politics for decades. It probably will remain mostly suppressed as long as Mr. Trump is boss, because of the sheer force of his personality and the willingness of his less enthusiastic supporters to submit. But we can expect these fractures to widen in the coming years as the battle for the future of the party begins in earnest.
“The other significance of the Musk break is that it represents a slight loosening of the climate of coercive authoritarianism Mr. Trump has fostered. As business leaders have watched his treatment of law firms and media companies and others he deems hostile, most have been reluctant to walk into that propeller with public criticism. They will be watching carefully to see whether Mr. Musk faces retribution. But the spectacle of America’s richest man and most creative entrepreneur brazenly denouncing the president can’t help but change the climate.
“There have been signs in recent weeks that other parts of civil society are rising to challenge the Trump supremacy: senators criticizing his fiscal approach and pressing to support Ukraine; the administration’s bowing to court rulings on deportation.
“When he acquired and transformed Twitter, Mr. Musk described himself as a ‘free speech absolutists.’ He hasn’t always behaved like one in the past year. But his dramatic break with the White House is a useful reminder that for all the concerns Mr. Trump understandably arouses about the health of our democracy, a pluralistic, diverse republic doesn’t disappear that easily.”
Musk, Tuesday night, posted on X: “I regret some of my posts about President @realDonaldTrump last week. They went too far.”
But it’s unclear whether Musk’s expressions of regret will do much to repair his relationship with Trump.
The president did tell the New York Post Wednesday morning, “I thought it was very nice that he did that.” The two did apparently talk Monday ahead of Musk’s post.
Thursday, the House narrowly voted to cut about $9.4 billion in spending already approved by Congress as the administration looks to follow through on work done by DOGE.
The package targets foreign aid programs and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides money for National Public Radio and PBS as well as thousands of public radio and television stations around the country. The vote was 214-212, with four Republicans in opposition.
—
Wall Street and the Economy
All eyes were on the inflation data for May this week and the numbers were tame. The consumer price index rose 0.1%, 2.4% year-over-year, and on core, ex-food and energy, 0.1%, 2.8%, this last key figure the same as the month prior. All four numbers were less than consensus.
And it was largely much of the same on producer prices, 0.1%, 2.6%; ex-food and energy, 0.1%, 3.0%…the 3.0% year-on-year less than the 3.1% print in April.
Bonds rallied on this news, with a slide in energy prices (in May) one of the main reasons for the softer data, offsetting rises in food prices and ‘shelter.’ [Egg prices fell again.]
Tariff inflation thus far has been muted. The Fed’s Open Market Committee meets next week. It will not move on rates, and I’m guessing Chair Powell will continue to say they need to see more data in the coming months. Tariff effects could still become more pronounced.
But the Fed also needs to acknowledge there is some softening in the labor market.
President Trump posted on Truth Social:
“CPI JUST OUT. GREAT NUMBERS! FED SHOULD LOWER ONE FULL POINT. WOULD PAY MUCH LESS INTEREST ON DEBT COMING DUE. SO IMPORTANT!!!”
Trump said later he has no plans to fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell. But he called him a “numbskull” for not lowering rates.
Friday, we had a much better than expected consumer sentiment reading from the University of Michigan, the index at 60.5 vs. 52.2 prior. The inflation expectation component was also better, consumers expecting prices to rise at a 5.1% rate over the next year, down from 6.6%, the steepest monthly drop since October 2001.
The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow barometer for second-quarter growth is 3.8%.
Freddie Mac’s 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is 6.84%.
Next week, an important report on retail sales.
The World Bank issued its latest growth forecast for the U.S. and around the world. Citing “a substantial rise in trade barriers” but without mentioning Trump by name, the 189-country lender predicted that the U.S. economy would grow half as fast (1.4%) this year as it did in 2024 (2.8%). That marked a downgrade from the 2.3% U.S. growth it had forecast back for 2025 in January.
The bank now expects the world economy to expand just 2.3% in 2025, down from 2.8% in 2024.
In a forward to the latest version of the twice-yearly Global Economic Prospects report, World Bank chief economist Indermit Gill wrote that the global economy has missed its chance for the “soft landing” – slowing enough to tame inflation without generating serious pain – it appeared headed for just six months ago. “The world economy today is once more running into turbulence,” Gill wrote. “Without a swift course correction, the harm to living standards could be deep.”
The Chinese economy is forecast to see growth slow from 5% in 2024 to 4.5% this year and 4% next.
The European Union is forecast to see growth of just 0.7% this year, down from an already lackluster 0.9% in 2024.
In Japan, economic growth is expected to accelerate this year – but only from 0.2% in 2024 to a sluggish 0.7% this year, well short of the 1.2% the World Bank had forecast in January.
The World Bank did back Trump’s claim that the U.S. faced higher tariffs on its exports than it levied on imports before the recent increases, and Gill said other countries should offer to lower their duties in an effort to secure trade peace.
“This favorable access to U.S. markets was not a sustainable policy,” he said. “The differences should be reduced quickly and this can only happen if everyone acts in good faith.”
But the WB said a number of developing economies that weren’t growing rapidly will see weaker expansions than had been expected, which would extend a long period of lower growth for developing economies.
“Outside of Asia, you’re not seeing improved living standards,” Gill said. “The developing world is becoming a development-free zone.”
–On the budget front, Republicans in the Senate continue to shape the tax-and-spending bill the House sent them. The July 4 deadline that President Trump set for putting a final bill together hardly looks likely.
Republicans say that their bill is essential to preventing a tax increase in 2026 and that the economy and working households would suffer if the tax cuts all expire.
“It would be what is known in economics as a sudden stop. It would be cataclysmic,” Treasury Secretary Bessent told the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday, warning of significant job losses.
Republicans say many of the people losing benefits under the bill are those who are in the country illegally or who otherwise should be ineligible.
Democrats have highlighted the contrast between the bill’s tax cuts for higher-income households and the cuts in Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, calling the proposals immoral.
Europe and Asia
Just one note on the eurozone…April industrial production decreased 2.4% over March, up 0.8% year-over-year.
In Asia…China’s May exports rose 4.8% in May, weaker than expected, and imports slipped 3.4%. Exports to the U.S. fell 35% year-over-year, signaling trade war impacts despite a recent truce.
China’s consumer prices in May dropped by 0.1% Y/Y, matching the declines seen in the previous two months. It was the fourth straight month of consumer deflation, as reported by the National Bureau of Statistics. Producer prices fell 3.3% year-over-year.
Japan had a final reading on first-quarter GDP, -0.2% vs. 2.2% in the fourth quarter of 2024.
May producer prices fell 0.2% over April, but rose 3.2% from a year ago. April industrial production was up 0.5% Y/Y.
Street Bytes
—We would have had a positive week until today’s action as a result of Israel’s attack on Iran, and then the late retaliation by Tehran. The Dow Jones finished the week at 42197, down 1.3%, the S&P 500 fell 0.4% and Nasdaq dropped 0.6%.
It will be a weekend where traders are following the newswires.
—U.S. Treasury Yields
6-mo. 4.27% 2-yr. 3.95% 10-yr. 4.41% 30-yr. 4.91%
Aside from the solid CPI and PPI numbers, we had a successful 10-year auction on Wednesday with good demand. And then another solid 30-year auction Thursday that helped the mood.
Prior to the CPI release Tuesday morning, the 10-year was at 4.50% and then fell on the inflation data the next two days to 4.35%.
But then after Israel’s attack on Iran, and the spike in oil, the 10-year moved back up some.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg reported that Treasury Secretary Bessent has emerged as a possible candidate to succeed Fed Chair Jerome Powell, joining a list that has included former Fed official Kevin Warsh. President Trump last Friday said he was going to name a successor to Powell very soon.
—Oil traded over $68 on Wednesday and Thursday, lifted by optimism over U.S.-China trade talks and renewed tensions between the U.S. and Iran. President Trump has voiced doubts over reaching a nuclear agreement with Iran, and Tehran threatened to strike U.S. basis if talks fail.
And then Israel attacked Iran Thursday night and oil surged to $73, highest since February.
Some of the world’s most vital waterways are in the Middle East, such as the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway where Iran has outsized influence, which handles around a quarter of the world’s oil trade and is of major concern. The Red Sea, flanked by the Suez Canal and Bab-el-Mandeb strait on either side, is another – it is crucial to container ships and has been coming under attack by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, financed by Tehran.
—Apple shares fell a bit after its performance at its Worldwide Developers’ Conference was deemed lackluster. The artificial intelligence race has reached full speed, everywhere except seemingly Apple. Investors were hoping CEO Tim Cook would showcase a vision that would have the tech giant moving to the front of the pack.
Cook hyped the technology’s potential on Siri, the iPhone’s digital assistant, but for now all he offered was a redesigned interface.
Apple’s slow embrace of AI is just one of its problems. It hasn’t had a successful new product in years – the Vision Pro virtual reality headset released in 2023 was a dud, and the Apple Car never even got to market.
Apple says it doesn’t want to roll out AI features until it gets them right, and glitches still plague OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Alphabet’s Gemini, and Elon Musk’s xAI Grok.
—Meta Platforms is in advanced talks to invest around $14 billion into Scale AI and hire the startup’s chief executive, Alexander Wang, to help lead its AI efforts, according to reports.
The deal would be one of the social-media giant’s largest-ever outside investments and shows the dramatic steps it is taking to revamp its AI work, which has suffered setbacks including the delayed release of a major new model. As part of the proposed deal – which is still being finalized – other Scale AI employees would join Meta alongside Wang as part of a new effort to develop advanced AI called superintelligence.
—Oracle shares surged 14% on Thursday after the cloud-services company logged double-digit revenue growth in its most recent quarter and set its sights on bigger gains in the fiscal year ahead.
CEO Safra Catz said Wednesday the company now expects $67 billion in revenue for fiscal 2026, which started this month. That would be a 16% jump from the prior year and more than $1 billion higher than Oracle had previously estimated, she said.
Oracle is also on track to exceed the revenue growth target it previously gave for fiscal 2027, according to Catz.
The higher growth rates are expected to be driven by both Oracle’s cloud applications and cloud infrastructure businesses, executives said. The Austin, Texas, company is forecasting its total cloud growth rate, which accounts for both applications and infrastructure, to rise 40% this fiscal year, compared with 24% in the prior one.
Cloud infrastructure revenue, which surged 50% in the previous fiscal year, should soar 70% this time around, Oracle said.
“We will build and operate more cloud infrastructure data centers than all of our cloud infrastructure competitors combined,” Chairman Larry Ellison said on the call.
For the fiscal fourth quarter ended May 31, Oracle’s revenue was up 11%, at $15.9 billion. That topped analyst forecast for $15.58 billion.
Cloud services and license support revenue was up 14% during the quarter, while cloud license and on-premise license revenue gained 9% year-over-year.
Quarterly earnings jumped to $3.43 billion, or $1.19 a share, from $3.14 billion, or adjusted earnings of $1.70 a share, beating consensus of $1.64 a share.
–The Port of Los Angeles, the largest and busiest container port in the U.S., has seen job opportunities drop sharply due to the Trump tariffs, according to a report from chinanews.com on Sunday.
The report quoted Gene Seroka, executive director of the L.A. port, who said during a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times that nearly half of the longshoremen who support operations at the port went without work from the end of May to early June.
According to the Times report, Seroka said that the port processed 25 percent less cargo than forecast for the month of May.
“They haven’t been laid off, but they’re not working nearly as much as they did previously,” Seroka told the newspaper. “Since the tariffs went into place and in May specifically, we’ve really seen the work go off on the downside.”
Well, just look at China’s export numbers to the U.S. in May listed above.
Last year, the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach collectively processed more than 20 million 20-foot-long containers.
“The June numbers that we’re projecting right now are nowhere near where they traditionally should be,” Seroka said, adding that conditions are not expected to significantly improve anytime soon.
In early May, the inbound cargo volume at the L.A. Port fell by 30 percent. Around 45 percent of the Asian exports to the U.S. mainland flowing into Los Angeles and Long Beach originate from China.
So with the slowdown, you can see the ripple effect on the local communities…small businesses and restaurants in the harbor area for example, a la when Baltimore’s Key Bridge went down, March 2024.
As Seroka told China’s Global Times, while the 90-day pause and reduction of tariffs between the U.S. and China is welcome news, tariffs remain elevated compared to April 1.
—Air India Flight 171 to London had just taken off from the western India city of Ahmedabad, when it almost immediately went down in a residential neighborhood just beyond the runway, killing 241 of 242 on board and an unknown number on the ground. A mayday call went out from the cockpit, but there was no response to subsequent calls from air-traffic control, according to India’s civil aviation regulator.
The airline’s chief executive, Campbell Wilson, had just taken off on another Air India 787 Dreamliner bound for Paris, where he was to attend a key industry gathering. Wilson’s flight was still over India when word of the crash came. His flight then made a U-turn back for New Delhi so the CEO could respond to the accident.
Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner hadn’t been involved in a fatal accident since it went into service two decades ago. The plane involved in the accident was 11 years old.
Accident investigators were immediately focusing on why the aircraft’s landing gear was still down and whether its flaps were retracted prematurely.
The jet’s captain had logged more than 8,000 hours of experience, authorities said, while the co-pilot had more than 1,100 hours in the cockpit.
The Dreamliner is equipped with a warning system to alert pilots if the airplane isn’t properly configured for takeoff.
One of the two black boxes was found, but it wasn’t known if it was the flight data recorder or the cockpit voice recorder.
The lone survivor, a 40-year-old, was in seat 11A. He was found limping in the street and was taken to a hospital where he seemed remarkably OK, and able to give police an account of what he heard before the crash.
—TSA checkpoint numbers vs. 2024
6/12…111 percent of 2024 levels
6/11…101
6/10…84
6/9…95
6/8…114
6/7…82
6/6…98
6/5…110
—Global sales of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles rose 24% in May compared with the same period a year ago, as strength in China offset slower growth in North America, according to market research firm Rho Motion.
Sales in China grew more than 24%, from a year ago. Europe posted a 36.2% increase, while North American sales edged up just 7.5%.
—Warner Bros. Discovery joined the crowd of media giants racing to better position their streaming operations, announcing a long-anticipated split of its movie studio and HBO Max streaming business from its legacy cable television operations such as CNN, TNT, TBS and Warner’s dozens of cable channels, which have seen falling ratings and revenue.
The cable-focused entity, called Global Networks, will hold a 20% retained stake in Warner’s Streaming & Studios business and use its earnings from that stake to pay off its debts. Warner CEO David Zaslav will run Streaming & Studios and CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels will be CEO of Global Networks.
Besides its U.S. cable assets, Global Networks will also house the Discovery+ streaming service, CNN’s planned streaming service and U.S. sports properties, including Bleacher Report.
A significant portion of Warner’s roughly $34 billion debt will live on the balance sheet of Global Networks, which currently generates more revenue and has stronger cash flow than Streaming & Studios.
Comcast is splitting off its cable operations like CNBC and MSNBC into a separate company called Versant. Lionsgate Studios in May completed the separation of its Starz Entertainment business.
The moves come amid dwindling cable television audiences with the rise of streaming popularity. In 2015, the U.S. had 100 million cable subscribers. It’s now closer to about 60 million. Warner Bros. said the split would help the newly publicly traded companies sharpen their focus.
—The Trump administration’s new 50% tariff on imported steel could increase store prices for items in steel cans, such as soup, black beans and sliced pineapple, by 9% to 15%, according to the Consumer Brands Association, a trade group whose members include Campbell’s, Hormel Foods, and Del Monte Foods. As in a can of vegetables that cost $2 now could increase by 18 to 30 cents.
Can manufacturers say they have to buy lots of imported tin-coated steel, known as tinplate – because there isn’t enough of it made in the U.S. to supply them.
I’m a big buyer of Pennsylvania Dutchman mushrooms, available at Stop & Shop, and the other day I had to give a doubletake…the price had gone up from $1.39 to $1.99! Goodness gracious. And this had nothing to do with the price of the can, I’m assuming. [Hands down, these are the best mushrooms with big slices.]
–Brad K., steel pool manufacturer, said he has a meeting slated with his Canadian steel mill rep in a few weeks, the meeting planned before the 50% tariff announcement on steel and aluminum. “While I have the signed agreement in place [for a large order], they will not honor…and haven’t commented on their ability to take a U.S. order and if so at what price.”
On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that Mexico and the U.S. had reached a deal to eliminate the 50% tariffs, but I haven’t seen any confirmation of the report.
–After filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy a second time last month, Rite Aid announced it will be closing more than 200 additional stores, bringing the total number of locations shut down to around 600, approximately half of the 1,240 retail stores that will be listed for sale.
—Waymo, the robo taxi company which is owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet, cut off service to the downtown Los Angeles area after protesters set multiple self-driving vehicles on fire on Sunday, as part of the protests in parts of the city against President Trump’s crackdown on immigration.
“Burning lithium-ion batteries release toxic gases, including hydrogen fluoride, posing risks to responders and those nearby,” the Los Angeles Police Department said on social media, urging people to avoid the area.
Waymo’s driverless taxes operate in San Francisco, Phoenix, Austin and Los Angeles, with prices similar to those of Uber and Lyft.
—Rebecca Ungarino of Barrons had an exclusive on an internal opinion survey at JPMorgan Chase, with CEO Jamie Dimon and human-resources chief Robin Leopold telling staff Monday the result, which showed fewer employees than last year say they view their health and well-being as a corporate priority. Executives linked the results to the in-office mandate they announced earlier in the year.
“Health and well-being scores remain favorable, though they dipped slightly year on year,” Dimon and Leopold wrote in a review. “We know return full-time to the office has been an adjustment and one that not everyone agrees with, but we continue to believe in-person is how we do our best work and how we foster connections and mobility opportunities.”
Starting in March, JPM told employees they would be required to work in-person full-time, up from three days. The policy has been unpopular and prompted instant pushback from employees internally and online.
“We remain committed to flexibility and connecting you with best-in-class benefits and resources that support your well-being to help you make your best self happen,” Dimon and Leopold wrote.
They added: “Career mobility and development opportunities remain a priority. We know there is more we can do to create greater transparency around mobility, including performance and promotions, and we’re building that future model now.”
Each year JPMorgan circulates such a survey across the firm and this year, 90% of the workforce participated, the executives said in the memo.
Options for flexible working arrangements vary from bank to bank. Goldman Sachs has required employees to work in the office five days a week since 2023.
Citigroup gives most employees the option to work remotely two days a week, and it told staff on Monday that people in hybrid roles would have the option to work remotely for two weeks in August, Business Insider reported. [August normally a sleepy month on the Street.]
Here at StocksandNews, the employee manual reads: “You have the option of working seven days a week, or 7…it’s your choice.” The employees don’t appreciate my sarcasm.
Foreign Affairs
Russia/Ukraine:
Russia launched its biggest drone attack of the war so far overnight Sunday, Ukrainian officials said Monday. Ukraine’s air defense units downed 460 out of 479 drones and 19 out of 20 missiles launched by the Russian forces.
A military airfield in Dubno, the western part of Ukraine, appeared to be one of the main targets.
So far, just one person is known to have been injured.
But the day before, Russia targeted Kharkiv, killing at least four people and injuring nearly 60, as Russia struck with 215 missiles and drones. Some 18 apartment buildings and 13 other homes were hit.
Two people were also killed in Russian strikes on Kherson, in southern Ukraine.
Tuesday, Russian sent waves of drones and missile in attacks on Kyiv and Odesa, killing two people and wounding at least 13 others, Ukrainian officials said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in an online statement called the attack “one of the biggest” in the war, Moscow firing another 315 drones and seven missiles, two of which were North Korean-made ballistic missiles.
“Russian missile and Shahed strikes are louder than the efforts of the United States and others around the world to force Russia into peace,” Zelensky wrote, urging “concrete action” from the U.S. and Europe in response to the attack.
“We want to end the war, but this requires the will of both parties. If the other party is not ready for this, it will always come up with something,” Zelensky said in an interview with Hungarian media. “That is why we need strong mediators: so that Russians cannot back out of the agreements reached in the negotiations.”
Zelensky cast doubt on the U.S.’s role in peace talks. “The United States does not appear to be a strong mediator at the moment,” he said. “The Russians told them not to be at the table, and they simply walked away.”
Kharkiv then suffered another drone attack overnight Tuesday, killing three people and injuring 64, including nine officials, Ukrainian officials said on Wednesday.
—
Israel/Iran: As it went down…moment by moment…
Israel appeared to be preparing to launch an attack soon on Iran, according to officials in the United States and Europe, a step that could further inflame the Middle East and derail or delay efforts by the Trump administration to broker a deal to cut off Iran’s path to building a nuclear bomb.
The concern about a potential Israeli strike and the prospect of retaliation by Iran led the United States on Wednesday to withdraw diplomats from Iraq and authorize the voluntary departure of U.S. military family members from the Middle East.
It is unclear how extensive an attack Israel might be preparing. But the rising tensions come after months in which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pressed President Trump to seize on what Israel sees as a moment of Iranian vulnerability to a strike.
Trump waved off another plan by Israel to attack Iran months ago, insisting that he wanted a chance to negotiate a deal with Tehran.
Word of the U.S. decisions to withdraw personnel from the region, along with a warning from Britain about new threats to Middle East commercial shipping, came hours after Trump told the New York Post in a podcast released on Wednesday that he had grown “less confident” about the prospects for a deal with Iran that would limit its ability to develop nuclear weapons.
Thursday, the UN’s nuclear watchdog’s 35-nation Board of Governors passed a resolution formally declaring Iran in breach of its non-proliferation obligations for the first time in almost 20 years, diplomats at the closed-door meeting said.
“(The board) Finds that Iran’s many failures to uphold its obligations since 2019 to provide the Agency with full and timely cooperation regarding undeclared nuclear material and activities at multiple undeclared locations in Iran…constitutes non-compliance with its obligations under its Safeguards Agreement with the Agency,” the International Atomic Energy Agency board resolution text read.
Also Thursday, Iran’s atomic-agency chief announced the country would “accelerate its production of near-weapons-grade uranium and would open a previously unrevealed [third] enrichment site in what he said is a secure location,” the Wall Street Journal reported, citing state-run media.
Iran has two main enrichment sites. One is underground at Natanz, and another is built deep into a mountainside, near the holy city of Qom, at Fordow.
Iran’s defense minister said Wednesday that Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps “will target all U.S. bases in the host countries” if “a conflict is imposed on us.”
American and Iranian negotiators have been planning to meet on Sunday in Oman for another round of talks, and while Trump told reporters on Monday that Iran had adopted an “unacceptable” negotiating position, as of Wednesday, Trump’s envoy to the talks, Steve Witkoff, was still planning to be in Oman.
Israel Thursday night, early Friday morning local time, then launched a wide-ranging attack on Iran’s nuclear program and military leadership, killing the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hossein Salami, and two other generals, while striking dozens of targets in an operation that pushed the region into a new conflict with uncertain consequences. Iranian media also reported the former head of the country’s Atomic Energy Organization had been killed. Israel said at least two of Iran’s leading nuclear scientists were targeted. [Iran’s state media said six scientists had been killed.]
Two hundred jet fighters wrapped up the first wave of the attack, Israel said. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Israel “should expect severe punishment” for the attacks. “The Zionist regime with this crime has created a dark and painful fate for itself, and it will definitely receive it.” Khamenei did not mention the United States in his statement.
Iran then fired 100 drones at Israel which Israel said it shot down, most before they entered Israeli air space. Jordan also claimed it shot down some of the Iranian drones as they crossed its airspace on the way to Israel.
Prime Minister Netanyahu said the military operation would last “as many days as it takes.” Israel planned out 14 days of operations, a senior Israeli official said.
In a video statement early Friday, Netanyahu said: “This operation will continue for as many days as it takes to remove” what he called a “clear and present danger to Israel’s very survival.” Iran, he said, could “produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time. It could be a year. It could be a few months.”
Netanyahu said that Israeli aircraft had “struck at the heart” of Iran’s nuclear enrichment and “nuclear weaponization” programs, including Iran’s main uranium enrichment facility in Natanz. “We targeted Iran’s leading nuclear scientists working on the Iranian bomb. We also struck at the heart of Iran’s ballistic missile program.”
Long before the attacks, Israeli intelligence agents, Mossad, smuggled explosive drones and other guided weapons into Iran, an official said. Agents then sabotaged Iran’s air defenses and weapons. A security official told the press Friday that an explosive drone base was also set up inside Iran, with drones being activated and launched toward surface-to-surface missile launchers at the Esfajabad base near Tehran.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued the first official government statement Thursday night on X:
“Tonight, Israel took unilateral action against Iran. We are not involved in strikes against Iran and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region. Israel advised us that they believe this action was necessary for its self-defense. President Trump and the Administration have taken all necessary steps to protect our forces and remain in close contact with our regional partners. Let me be clear: Iran should not target U.S. interests or personnel.”
President Trump responded on Truth Social early Friday morning:
“I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal. I told them, in the strongest of words, to ‘just do it,’ but no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they just couldn’t get it done. I told them it would be much worse than anything they know, anticipated, or were told, that the United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the World, by FAR, and that Isael has a lot of it, with much more to come – And they know how to use it. Certain Iranian hardliner’s spoke bravely, but they didn’t know what was about to happen. They are all DEAD now, and it will only get worse! There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter, with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal, come to an end. Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left, and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire. No more death, no more destruction. JUST DO IT, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE. God Bless You All!”
Trump then posted:
“Two months ago I gave Iran a 60 day ultimatum to ‘make a deal.’ They should have done it! Today is day 61. I told them what to do, but they just couldn’t get there. Now they have, perhaps, a second chance!”
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farham spoke with Iran’s top diplomat, Abbas Araghchi, according to the official Saudi Press Agency. It said the prince “expressed the Kingdom’s condemnation of the blatant Israeli aggression against the territory of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
“He affirmed the Kingdom’s rejection of the use of force and stressed the importance of dialogue to address disputes,” the agency reported.
While Saudi Arabia and Iran are longtime regional rivals, ties have improved in recent years.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry says it strongly condemns Israel’s military action, “which violates the Charter of the United Nations and international law.”
Well, this is laughable…seeing as Russia has been violating same for years in Ukraine.
“Unprovoked military strikes on a sovereign UN member state, its citizens and its peacefully slumbering cities, as well as its nuclear energy infrastructure, are categorically unacceptable. The international community cannot afford to be indifferent toward such atrocities, which undermine peace and damage regional and international security,” it said.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the UK has “grave concerns” about Iran’s nuclear program and backed Israel’s right to self-defense, while calling for de-escalation.
Rafael Grossi, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Natanz was targeted and that the agency is in touch with Iranian authorities about radiation levels and is in contact with local inspectors.
Trump told the Wall Street Journal Friday morning that he was read in on Israel’s plans to attack. “Heads-up? It wasn’t a heads-up. It was, we know what’s going on.”
Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, told reporters that in “recent months, the Iranian threat took a dramatic turn,” as he claims the country “advanced significantly” in its nuclear capabilities.
Iran has enough material for “multiple nuclear weapons,” Danon claimed. He added his country had found evidence that Iran had planned a surprise attack.
Iran then retaliated late this afternoon.
—
In Gaza, Israeli forced killed at least 60 Palestinians on Wednesday, most of them as they were seeking food from a U.S.-Israeli distribution scheme, according to health authorities. On Tuesday, Israeli troops killed 36 Palestinians around Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) sites.
Separately, in an interview with the BBC, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee suggested “Muslim countries” should give up some of their land to create a future Palestinian state.
“Muslim countries have 644 times the amount of land that are controlled by Israel. So maybe, if there is such a desire for the Palestinian state, there would be someone who would say, we’d like to host it,” he said.
In a separate interview with Bloomberg, Huckabee said the U.S. was no longer pursuing the goal of an independent Palestinian state.
State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce later said the ambassador “speaks for himself,” and it is the president who is responsible for U.S. policy in the Middle East.
Huckabee has previously been a strong supporter of the idea of “greater Israel,” seeking permanent Israeli control of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and using the biblical term “Judea and Samaria” for the West Bank. Some of his language echoes positions frequently taken by ultranationalist groups in Israel.
China: The military has accused Japan of undermining regional security after it tested new long-range anti-ship and hypersonic missiles.
A commentary published by the military mouthpiece People’s Liberation Army Daily on Wednesday said that the extended range of missiles would be “a real deterrent to multiple surrounding areas.”
It also argued that the increased ability to strike long-range targets was “breaking the restrictions of the pacifist constitution that the Japanese Self-Defense Forces cannot possess offensive weapons.” The constitution was imposed after Japan’s defeat in World War II.
Random Musings
—Presidential approval ratings….
Gallup: 43% approve of President Trump’s job performance, while 53% disapprove. 33% of independents approve (May 1-18).
Rasmussen: 53% approve, 45% disapprove (June 13).
A new Quinnipiac University poll has President Trump with just a 38% approval rating, while 54% disapprove. In Quinnipiac’s April 9 poll, the split was 41-53.
As opposed to the above noted CBS/YouGov poll, on immigration 43% approve of Trump’s handling of it, 54% disapprove. On deportations: 40% approve, 56% disapprove.
On the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, independents oppose it 57% to 20%, with 23% not offering an opinion.
On Trump’s handling of the Russia-Ukraine war, 34% approve, 57% disapprove. Almost two-thirds of voters (64%) are either very concerned (27%) or somewhat concerned (37%) about the possibility of Russia using nuclear weapons. If Russia invades a NATO country, voters 62-29 percent think American troops should get involved.
Twenty-one percent of voters approve of the way Democrats in Congress are handling their job, while 70 percent disapprove.
Thirty-two percent of voters approve of the way Republicans in Congress are handling their job, while 61 percent disapprove.
–In a big gubernatorial primary in New Jersey, Democrat Rep. Mikie Sherrill, whose district is a block away from moi, will be running in November against Republican Jack Ciattarelli.
Sherill beat a competitive six candidate field, winning by about 14 points over Newark Mayor Ras Baraka. Ciattarelli, endorsed by Donald Trump, polled nearly 68%.
This is going to be a helluva fight, Trump losing the state by just six points last year, but Democrats can take comfort in that about 300,000 more votes were cast for the donkeys than the elephants on Tuesday.
—HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. retired all 17 members of an advisory committee on immunization to the CDC, arguing that the move would restore the public’s trust in vaccines.
Kennedy said the panel “has been plagued with persistent conflicts of interest.”
“The public must know that unbiased science guides the recommendations from our health agencies,” he said. “This will ensure the American people receive the safest vaccines possible.”
“I think RFK Jr. is a conspiracy theorist, and that’s what this document is about,” said Dr. Paul Offit, who serves as an adviser to the Food and Drug Administration.
Editorial / Wall Street Journal
“We’d like to conclude we were wrong to oppose Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to run the Health and Human Services Department, but alas, no. The latest evidence is his purge of a vaccine advisory panel.
“Mr. Kennedy announced his not-so-clean sweep of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) in these pages on Tuesday. The panel of outside experts advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccine schedules. Its recommendations determine which vaccines insurers must cover without patient cost-sharing….
“Mr. Kennedy’s beef seems to be that the committee’s members know something about vaccines and may have been involved in their research and development. ‘Most of ACIP’s members have received substantial funding from pharmaceutical companies, including those marketing vaccines,’ he writes. How does he define ‘substantial’?
“Some members have been paid by vaccine makers – typically sums less than their salaries – to assist with clinical trials in which they help evaluate the vaccines for safety and efficacy. These trials are double-blinded, meaning doctors don’t know which volunteers receive the vaccine or placebo so there’s no financial incentive to tilt the data in favor of manufacturers.
“Mr. Kennedy this year posted members’ self-identified perceived or potential conflicts on the CDC website. They show that the members have properly recused themselves from decisions that involve products for which they served as trial investigators, as well as those of their competitors, or if they held stock in companies. In other words, the conflicts of interest were honestly handled….
“Mr. Kennedy says ‘the problem isn’t necessarily that ACIP members are corrupt,’ though he implies it. ‘The problem is their immersion in a system of industry-aligned incentives and paradigms that enforce a narrow pro-industry orthodoxy.’ Ah, yes. His goal is to eliminate incentives to develop vaccines.
“Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, who voted to confirm Mr. Kennedy after some indecision, tweeted Tuesday that ‘Of course, now the fear is that the ACIP will be filled up with people who know nothing about vaccines except suspicion.’ Mr. Cassidy said he spoke with the secretary to ensure this won’t be the case.
“That’s nice, but Mr. Kennedy seems more intent on vindicating his critics than pleasing the Senator.”
Kennedy on Wednesday then named eight new vaccine policy advisers, including a scientist who researched mRNA vaccine technology and transformed into a conservative darling for his criticisms of Covid-19 vaccines. Dr. Robert Malone was a close adviser to Kennedy during the measles outbreak. He has claimed that millions of Americans were hypnotized into taking the Covid-19 shots, and he’s even suggested that those vaccines cause a form of AIDS.
—President Trump announced Tuesday in a speech at Fort Bragg in North Carolina that he will restore the names of Fort Robert E. Lee and six other military bases honoring Confederate war leaders.
“We won a lot of battles out of those forts. It’s no time to change. And I’m superstitious, you know, I like to keep it going, right? I’m very superstitious.”
“We want to keep it going. So that’s a big story.”
Fort Bragg itself was recently renamed – though in that case, the Army in February restored its original moniker to honor World War II paratrooper and Silver star recipient Roland Bragg rather than Confederate general Braxton Bragg.
Retired Army Brig. Gen. Ty Seidule, who was vice chair of the Naming Commission that initiated the changes, after years of serious thought and input, said Trump is “overturning the will of the American people through their elected representatives who set up the Naming Commission,” which selected “true American heroes who fought for our great nation and reflect the best of our values.”
—The Smithsonian is conducting a thorough review of all of its content in its 21 museums and zoo to eliminate political influence and bias. The decision by the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents in a closed-door meeting on Monday, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal, shows how President Trump’s influence on the nation’s museums is already taking hold. He issued an executive order in March calling to eliminate “improper, divisive or anti-American ideology” and to remove “narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive.”
It will be interesting to see what the zoo residents think about all this, being asked their political views and such.
—President Trump is feuding with Republican Sen. Rand Paul (Ky), a deficit hawk and one who has called out the corruption connected to Trump’s Air Force One plane from Qatar. Trump told the senator that he and his family couldn’t attend Thursday’s bipartisan picnic on the White House lawn, a tradition.
Paul also mocked Trump’s military parade on Saturday, saying he’s “never been a big fan of goose-stepping soldiers in big tanks and missiles rolling down the street.”
Paul told reporters Wednesday night, “I think I’m the first senator in the history of the United States to be uninvited to the White House picnic. The White House is owned by the taxpayers. We all are members of it. Every Democrat will be invited, every Republican will be invited. But I will be the only one disallowed to come on the grounds of the White House.
“I just find this incredibly petty… The level of immaturity is beyond words.”
Paul said no reason was given, but he knows why. He said the White House recently hired social-media hit people to attack him online.
—Former mayor Michael Bloomberg is endorsing Andrew Cuomo’s bid for city mayor, the primary coming up, June 24.
Bloomberg said Tuesday he has had his differences with Cuomo over the years, but when they disagreed, Cuomo showed strengths as a leader and a manager.
“I care deeply about the future of our city, and since leaving office, it has been difficult to watch its struggles, especially since the pandemic,” Bloomberg said. “Of all the candidates, Andrew has the skills our city needs to lead us forward.”
—ABC News fired veteran correspondent Terry Moran after his social media rant targeting President Trump adviser Stephen Miller, the company said Tuesday.
Moran was suspended by the network on Sunday, hours after he blasted Miller as a “world class hater.”
An ABC News spokesperson told the New York Post: “At ABC News, we hold all of our reporters to the highest standards of objectivity, fairness and professionalism, and we remain committed to delivering straightforward, trusted journalism.”
The Post had reported Monday that ABC News staffers were calling for Moran to be fired.
Moran worked at the network for 28 years. His contract was set to expire Friday.
—A shooter killed ten people and wounded 12 others, Tuesday, in an attack at a secondary school in the southern Austrian city of Graz, second-largest next to Vienna. Most of the victims were teenage pupils.
The attacker was also dead, reportedly a 21-year-old former student who carried two weapons – a pistol and a shotgun. The suspect took his own life in a school bathroom.
Chancellor Christian Stocker said in a post on social media: “The shooting rampage at a school in Graz is a national tragedy that has deeply shaken our entire country.”
While Austrian civilians are among the most heavily armed in the world, according to the Small Arms Survey, a research body based in Geneva, mass shootings are rare. Just two such incidents between 2000 and 2022, as noted by the Rockefeller Institute of Government, a think tank.
—Iceland and Greenland had record heat in May, raising concerns about the far-reaching implications melting Arctic ice has for weather around the world, scientists said in an analysis released Wednesday.
The Greenland ice sheet melted many times faster than normal during the heat wave, according to the analysis by World Weather Attribution. Parts of Iceland saw temperatures more than 10 C (18 F) above average, and the country set a record for its warmest temperature in May when one airport hit 79.9 F on May 15.
One of the report’s authors, Friederike Otto of Imperial College London, said without human-caused climate change, such record temperatures would be “basically impossible.”
Most of the melting of the Greenland ice sheet happens in June, July and August. The May heat wave means there will be a longer melting season this year.
Indigenous communities in Greenland are increasingly encountering dangerous travel conditions as sea ice that was once constantly frozen begins to thaw. Plus, thawing permafrost can destabilize buildings and increases the risk of landslides and tsunamis caused by landslides.
—The Environmental Protection Agency proposed Wednesday weakening air-pollution standards for mercury and eliminating carbon dioxide rules on power plants, reversing Biden-era policies as part of an overall effort to curtail the agency’s role in regulating climate change.
The easing of the environmental regulations is in line with executive orders issued by President Trump in April to expand coal mining, leasing and exports, and push for greater use of coal-fired power generation.
The proposed changes will likely face a legal challenge, with environmental groups saying Wednesday they would oppose the EPA changes during a 45-day public-comment period.
“We urge EPA to abandon any effort to roll back these critical safeguards,” said Harold Wimmer, CEO and president of the American Lung Association. “The agency’s mission is to protect public health and the environment, not to expose people to more toxic pollution.”
–It’s official….Pope Leo XIV is indeed a Chicago White Sox fan, donning a cap during his weekly general audience.
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Pray for the men and women of our armed forces…and all the fallen.
Congratulations to the Army on its 250th anniversary!
Slava Ukraini.
God bless America.
—
Gold $3454…record close
Oil $73.15…up over $8 on the week
Bitcoin $105,119 [4:00 PM ET, Friday]
Regular Gas: $3.13; Diesel: $3.51 [$3.46 – $3.78]
Returns for the week 6/9-6/13
Dow Jones -1.3% [42197]
S&P 500 -0.4% [5976]
S&P MidCap -1.5%
Russell 2000 -1.5%
Nasdaq -0.6% [19406]
Returns for the period 1/1/25-6/13/25
Dow Jones -0.8%
S&P 500 +1.6%
S&P MidCap -3.7%
Russell 2000 -5.8%
Nasdaq +0.5%
Bulls 39.2
Bears 25.5
Hang in there. Enjoy the U.S. Open from Oakmont (though weather will be an issue).
Happy Father’s Day!
Brian Trumbore
