JD Vance says Trump ‘pushing forward’ with Golden Dome as he addresses Air Force Academy – US politics live – The Guardian

Support for the military is why Trump ‘is insistent on increasing defense budget to $1.5tn’, says JD Vance

Vance also brought up Trump’s golden dome during his speech.

You should expect some things out of your civilian leadership, out of the president, the Vice president, the Secretary of war. This is why we’ve pushed forward with Agenda 47 and the Golden Dome, and any number of new and advanced technologies. It’s why the president has made improving military quality of life such a central focus, why he’s insistent on increasing the defense budget to $1.5 trillion, and why he’s proud to support pay raises, new barracks, new hospitals and new schools on base.

A jury in Spokane, Washington found an Afghanistan War veteran and two others guilty of federal conspiracy charges on Thursday for their part in a protest last June outside the city’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility.

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The US military veteran, Bajun Mavalwalla, told the Guardian in March that he had refused to plead guilty and was ready to face justice.

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The right to protest is “supposed to be fundamentally American”, he said.

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“It’s among the rights that when I joined the military, I thought I was joining to protect,” he said. “You can’t do it violently. You can’t do it in a way that harms other people, but you have a right to stand up for what you believe in.”

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Mavalwalla, 36, now faces six years in prison, three years supervised release and a $250,000 fine for conspiring to “impede or injure a federal officer” when he joined other demonstrators who sought to block the transport of two Venezuelan immigrants who had been arrested by ICE at a routine immigration hearing in Spokane in June 2025.

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At least five of the nine featured musical acts recruited to play on the National Mall in Washington DC this summer, in a concert series planned by the Trump administration to mark the nation’s 250th anniversary, have dropped out of the concert series, just one day after the lineup was announced.

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The first to drop out, hours after the announcement, was Morris Day, who called his scheduled participation a baseless “rumor”.

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Later on Wednesday, Young MC posted a message that began: “I have informed my agents that I will not be performing at the Freedom 250 event”.

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“The artists were never told about any political involvement with the event,” he added, before casting doubt on the claim from the Trump-appointed organizer that the series was nonpartisan.

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MC performs during the “I Love The 90’s” tour in August 2022 at RiverEdge Park in Aurora, Ill.”,”caption”:”Young MC performs during the “I Love The 90’s” tour in August 2022 at RiverEdge Park in Aurora, Ill.”,”credit”:”Photograph: Rob Grabowski/AP”}},{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”

So far on Thursday, the Commodores, C+C Music Factory and Milli Vanilli have all either dropped out or expressed surprise that they were ever booked.

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“The Commodores will not be performing”, the group said in a statement. “Our music has always been our voice and we choose not to publicly affiliate with any single political party.”

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Freedom Williams, C + C Music Factory’s lead rapper, said in a video statement apparently recorded in a bathroom that he had been blindsided by texts from friends and fellow celebrities horrified that he was “doing the Trump Freedom show” and “fucking with Trump”.

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“I’m like, ‘What? What are you talking about?’” Williams said he replied to people “I’ve know for years, who know I don’t fuck with Trump”.

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“I’m God Cipher Divine, I know where I stand. I know who the fuck I am,” he added, before explaining that his agent had not mentioned any connection with Donald Trump when he pitched the show.

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After going online to research the series on Wednesday, Williams said, he told his agent he was out.

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Williams went on to attack Trump, saying, as a New Yorker, “I know the type of fucking anarchy he creates” and brought up the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis by an ICE officer. But Williams reserved his most intense anger for Democrats who threatened to cancel him if he did not drop out of the series. He went on to also attack Barack Obama and covid vaccines, before suggesting that he might still change his mind and perform with the “Maga crew” out of spite, even though the event was in honor of “250 years of motherfucking capitalism and death; it’s 250 years of straight murder.”

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Milli Vanilli singer Jodie Rocco told the Associated Press that no one had even asked her or her sister Linda Rocco or anyone else in the current group to perform. “My sister and I were shocked to see our name, ‘Milli Vanilli’, as one of the performers”, Rocco wrote to the AP in an email.

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The poster for the Freedom 250 series included an image of Milli Vanilli’s former frontman, Fab Morvan, who just lip-synched the band’s hits and has been performing apart from the group.

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At least one of the featured performers, Vanilla Ice, said in an Instagram video that he was still in. “I’m super honored to do this concert with everybody”, he said, on the apparent assumption that he will not, in the end, be performing alone. The rapper has performed at multiple New Year’s Eve shows at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago beach club.

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Last December, as the deadly immigration crackdown by federal ICE agents ramped up, the two leaders of the effort, Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem, were filmed singing along with the rapper to his hit 1990 “Ice, Ice Baby.”

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New Jersey’s governor, Mikie Sherrill, said that state health inspectors were denied full access to the privately run Delaney Hall immigration detention center in Newark, where detainees are staging a hunger and labor strike over health and sanitary conditions, and protesters rallying outside have been tased, pepper-sprayed and detained.

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“The New Jersey Department of Health today sought to conduct a health inspection of Delaney Hall, but it was denied full access and was allowed to inspect only a limited part of the facility,” Sherrill, a Democrat elected last year in a landslide said.

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“As I’ve said repeatedly, refusing to provide full access raises serious questions about what ICE is trying to hide from public view,” she continued. “New Jersey believes in the rule of law, will uphold the Constitution, and Delaney Hall should be closed down. I am calling for ICE to immediately de-escalate the situation as I continue working to keep New Jersey residents safe.”

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The Department of Homeland Security tried to push back on reports, like one this week from our Guardian colleagues José Olivares and Julius Constantine Motal, that document complaints from 300-400 Delaney Hall strikers over inedible food containing worms, a lack of air conditioning and proper ventilation, a persistent flu and other viruses spreading throughout the facility, delayed medical care and lags in their immigration cases.

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In privately-run ICE detention centers nationwide, detainees perform cooking, cleaning and laundry work, getting paid as little as $1 an hour.

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In response to reports about harsh conditions at the center, Markwayne Mullin, the DHS secretary, recorded a social media video in which he scoffed at the concerns of Democratic elected officials, including the governor and senator Andy Kim, who was pepper-sprayed by masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel outside the facility this week.

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In the video, Mullin claimed that the detentions were necessary because of the alleged violent crimes committed by a list of eight foreign nationals the department has arrested “recently”.

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The secretary appeared to have some trouble making it through his prepared text in the video, however. There were 21 edits in the first 35 seconds of the published video, to cover apparent flubs in delivery, and Mullin so badly mispronounced the name of one country he said a detained man came from, “Wallamala”, that it was only possible to parse his meaning by consulting the on-screen text, which read: Guatemala.

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Trump shared a draft Iran peace deal with Israel and other allies. Trump circulated a draft peace agreement for his war with Iran among allies including Israel, as both sides try to prevent fresh breaches of the ceasefire escalating out of control and scuppering any deal.

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The Bureau of Economic Analysis released the latest Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index, excluding food and energy. The PCE price index rose in April at an annual rate of 3.8% – that is an increase from 3.5% in March and 2.8% in February.

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Support for the military is why Trump “is insistent on increasing defense budget to $1.5tn”, says JD Vance during his commencement address at the US Air Force Academy. Vance also brought up Trump’s golden dome and the use of AI in warfare, during his speech.

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Scott Bessent held White House press briefing in which he said “I don’t think there’s anything untoward about having the president’s face on the 250th anniversary bill.”

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Trump refiles $10bn defamation suit against Wall Street Journal over its reporting on his ties to Jeffrey Epstein. A judge threw out an earlier version of the suit over legal deficiencies. The lawsuit is one of several that the president has brought in his personal capacity against news organizations.

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When asked for a third time about Trump’s face on the $250 bill, Bessent said “we prepare for everything if it gets passed,” but added that the decision is up to House and Senate, not the treasury department. He added:

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n

I don’t think that there’s anything untoward about having the President of the United States’ face on the 250th anniversary bill.

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Treasury secretary Scott Bessent is expected to hold a White House briefing at 2pm EST.

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Bessent will at the podium hours after the White House has circulated a draft peace agreement for the US war with Iran among allies including Israel. The agreement comes as both sides look to stop new ceasefire violations from derailing negotiations.

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We will be bringing you updates from the briefing once it starts.

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US inflation increased at its fastest pace in three years in April, driven by higher energy prices amid Trump’s war against Iran, and cementing economists’ views that the Federal Reserve could hold interest rates unchanged well into next year.

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Surging price pressures are eroding household income and could restrain consumer spending and economic growth this quarter. Income at the disposal of households after adjusting for inflation dropped for a third straight month in April, other data showed on Thursday.

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Given the soaring cost of living, Americans are growing frustrated with Trump’s handling of the economy. A Reuters/Ipsos survey last week showed the president’s approval rating fell to nearly its lowest level since he returned to the White House, hit by a drop in support among Republicans. Trump won the 2024 presidential election in large part because of his promise to lower inflation.

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The government yesterday also revised down the growth pace in consumer spending in the first quarter to 1.4% from the previously reported 1.6% annualized rate. Overall gross domestic product (GDP) growth was slashed to a 1.6% rate from the 2.0% pace estimated last month.

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Inflation threatens his Republican party’s congressional majority in the November midterm elections.

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Read the full report here:

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Earlier, my colleagues reported over on our Middle East live blog that Donald Trump has circulated a draft peace agreement for his war with Iran among allies including Israel, as both sides try to prevent fresh breaches of the ceasefire escalating out of control and scuppering any deal.

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In an attempt to speed up the negotiations, Pakistan’s foreign minister, Mohammad Ishaq Dar, will fly to Washington tomorrow to meet his US counterpart, Marco Rubio.

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Tehran targeted a US air base in Kuwait today after Washington struck what it described as an Iranian drone operation near the strait of Hormuz, highlighting the fragile situation as both sets of negotiators refuse to cede ground on final points of disagreement.

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The draft Trump has shared is not vastly different to the one that has been circulating across the region for days, under which the strait of Hormuz would be opened to commercial shipping, the US blockade of Iranian ports would by lifted and Iran would be given access to as much as $12bn (£9bn) in frozen assets.

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The aim would be for commercial shipping in the strait to return to pre-war levels within 30 days and for negotiations envisaged to last as long as 60 days to commence on the future of Iran’s nuclear programme. This would include discussions about its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, a time-limited suspension of further enrichment and supervision by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog.

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China is pressing for the UN security council to ratify any agreement.

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Here’s the Guardian’s diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour’s report:

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Vance also brought up Trump’s golden dome during his speech.

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n

You should expect some things out of your civilian leadership, out of the president, the Vice president, the Secretary of war. This is why we’ve pushed forward with Agenda 47 and the Golden Dome, and any number of new and advanced technologies. It’s why the president has made improving military quality of life such a central focus, why he’s insistent on increasing the defense budget to $1.5 trillion, and why he’s proud to support pay raises, new barracks, new hospitals and new schools on base.

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While speaking at the US Air Force Academy, vice president JD Vance thanked “the people who run Dover Air Force Base, the people who pilot and crew Air Force Two, the staff at my house, the person who delivered me my daily intelligence briefing, they are proud to be airmen or proud to be guardians.”

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Vance also thanked the families of the graduating class:

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n

So to the loved ones gathered here today. We will never forget that our nation’s airmen and guardians were your sons and daughters long before they were ours. So I hope you take pride in what they’ve become and know this. The administration will always have your back, just as these new officers have ours.

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The supreme court will hand down opinions at 10am ET today. Here’s a reminder of the major cases we’re tracking closely.

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Trump v Cook: Donald Trump’s case for firing Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, as he continues to exert greater control over the US central bank.

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Trump v Slaughter: A case which examines the legality of Trump’s firing of a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) member, Rebecca Slaughter.

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Trump v Barbara: In which the court will decide if the administration’s attempts to restrict birthright citizenship are unconstitutional.

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The Bureau of Economic Analysis released the latest Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index, excluding food and energy, Thursday morning.

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The PCE price index rose in April at an annual rate of 3.8% – that is an increase from 3.5% in March and 2.8% in February.

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This is the first inflation report to be released under Kevin Marsh, the new fed chair.

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The index is a measure of prices that people living in the US, or those buying on their behalf, pay for goods and services. It’s often called the core PCE price index, because two categories, food and energy, are not included to make underlying inflation clearer.

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Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.

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Donald Trump has refiled a defamation lawsuit seeking at least $10bn in damages against the Wall Street Journal over its reporting on his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, after a judge threw out an earlier version over legal deficiencies.

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The lawsuit is one of several that the president has brought in his personal capacity against news organizations, part of what critics say is a wider pressure campaign against the media.

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The lawsuit claims that the Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper tarnished his reputation with an article describing a birthday card to deceased sex offender Epstein as bearing Trump’s signature.

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Trump and his lawyers said the card is fake, even after it was released by lawmakers investigating Epstein’s case, Reuters reported. The president is seeking at least $10bn in damages, according to the amended lawsuit – the same amount he had previously sought.

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“At the time of publication, Defendants recklessly disregarded whether the Defamatory Statements were true and/or they purposefully avoided the discovery of the truth,” lawyers for Trump wrote in the amended complaint.

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It comes as the Trump administration opened a criminal investigation into E Jean Carroll, the writer who accused the president of sexual assault, according to news reports.

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Prosecutors, the New York Times and CNN reported on Wednesday, are looking into whether Carroll, 82, committed perjury in a 2022 deposition during her civil lawsuits against Trump, in which she said she did not accept outside financial support for her legal battles.

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In other developments:

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In a new interview with CBS News, Jill Biden, the former first lady, said that she was “frightened” as she watched her husband, then-president Joe Biden, freeze up during his disastrous 2024 debate against Donald Trump. Pressed to explain what happened, Jill Biden said: “I don’t know what happened. I mean as I watched it, I thought, ‘Oh, my God, he’s having a stroke’. And it scared me to death.”

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Two House Democrats, Don Beyer of Virginia and Dina Titus of Nevada, announced that they plan to introduce a bill that would “explicitly prohibit construction of President Trump’s proposed ‘triumphal arch’ outside Arlington National Cemetery”.

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Cam Higby, a rightwing activist disguised as a pro-Palestinian activist, disrupted a news conference with the Democratic congressmen Jerry Nadler and Dan Goldman outside the Delaney Hall immigration detention center in Newark, New Jersey.

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George Chidi

An anti-crime taskforce ordered by Donald Trump on to the streets of Memphis has been accused of targeting community observers with widespread intimidation including “immense force”.

Agents have been “retaliating against, intimidating, and harassing” observers attempting to monitor the federal taskforce’s activity, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Tennessee, which alleges that officials have tailed cars, surveilled homes and even “falsely arrested” a community observer.

The ACLU filed a lawsuit this month against Tennessee state and federal officials administering the anti-crime initiative.

Additional declarations filed on Thursday by six community observers detail “cowboy tactics” they say have been used in recent months, from bumper-riding their cars in unmarked vehicles and pretextual traffic stops to an arbitrary arrest.

The taskforce was launched last September by Tennessee’s Republican governor, Bill Lee, following an executive order by Trump, who cited the persistently high rate of violent crime in Memphis. Lee promptly activated the national guard and flooded his state’s second-largest city with more than 2,000 state and federal police officers.

Wendy Frew

US vice-president JD Vance on Thursday told reporters that Washington was “not there yet” with Iran but he said the parties were close, adding that the US was in a position where it could substantially set back Tehran’s nuclear program.

Earlier, Iran’s Tasnim news agency, citing a source close to the negotiating team, said the text of a potential memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the two countries had not yet been finalised or confirmed.

Donald Trump has circulated a draft peace agreement for the war with Iran among allies including Israel as both sides try to prevent fresh breaches of the ceasefire escalating out of control and scuppering any deal.

The US vice-president told reportersthere were a couple of sticking points in talks with Tehran about its enriched uranium stockpile and the question of enrichment.

“It’s hard to say exactly when or if the president is going to sign the MOU. We’re going back and forth on a couple of language points,” Vance said.

“I can’t guarantee that we’re going to get there, but right now I feel pretty good about it,” he said.

Anti-ICE protesters, including Afghanistan War veteran, found guilty of conspiracy to ‘impede or injure a federal officer’

The US military veteran, Bajun Mavalwalla, told the Guardian in March that he had refused to plead guilty and was ready to face justice.

The right to protest is “supposed to be fundamentally American”, he said.

Young MC, the Commodores, C+C Music Factory and Milli Vanilli follow Morris Day in saying they will not play in Trump’s Freedom 250 bash

The first to drop out, hours after the announcement, was Morris Day, who called his scheduled participation a baseless “rumor”.

Later on Wednesday, Young MC posted a message that began: “I have informed my agents that I will not be performing at the Freedom 250 event”.

“The artists were never told about any political involvement with the event,” he added, before casting doubt on the claim from the Trump-appointed organizer that the series was nonpartisan.

Young MC performs during the “I Love The 90’s” tour in August 2022 at RiverEdge Park in Aurora, Ill. Photograph: Rob Grabowski/AP

So far on Thursday, the Commodores, C+C Music Factory and Milli Vanilli have all either dropped out or expressed surprise that they were ever booked.

“The Commodores will not be performing”, the group said in a statement. “Our music has always been our voice and we choose not to publicly affiliate with any single political party.”

“I’m like, ‘What? What are you talking about?’” Williams said he replied to people “I’ve know for years, who know I don’t fuck with Trump”.

After going online to research the series on Wednesday, Williams said, he told his agent he was out.

The poster for the Freedom 250 series included an image of Milli Vanilli’s former frontman, Fab Morvan, who just lip-synched the band’s hits and has been performing apart from the group.

New Jersey health inspector denied full access to Delaney Hall immigration detention center in Newark, governor says

Federal immigration agents detained a protester outside the immigration detention center at Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey on Thursday. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

In privately-run ICE detention centers nationwide, detainees perform cooking, cleaning and laundry work, getting paid as little as $1 an hour.

In the video, Mullin claimed that the detentions were necessary because of the alleged violent crimes committed by a list of eight foreign nationals the department has arrested “recently”.

Hakeem Jeffries, the top US House Democrat, has said a $250 bill with the president’s portrait is a “hard no,” on a post on X. He said:

Get over yourself. The upcoming July 4th anniversary is not about a wannabe King. It’s about celebrating the American journey.

Here’s a recap of the day so far:

Trump shared a draft Iran peace deal with Israel and other allies. Trump circulated a draft peace agreement for his war with Iran among allies including Israel, as both sides try to prevent fresh breaches of the ceasefire escalating out of control and scuppering any deal.
The Bureau of Economic Analysis released the latest Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index, excluding food and energy. The PCE price index rose in April at an annual rate of 3.8% – that is an increase from 3.5% in March and 2.8% in February.
Support for the military is why Trump “is insistent on increasing defense budget to $1.5tn”, says JD Vance during his commencement address at the US Air Force Academy. Vance also brought up Trump’s golden dome and the use of AI in warfare, during his speech.
Scott Bessent held White House press briefing in which he said “I don’t think there’s anything untoward about having the president’s face on the 250th anniversary bill.”
Trump refiles $10bn defamation suit against Wall Street Journal over its reporting on his ties to Jeffrey Epstein. A judge threw out an earlier version of the suit over legal deficiencies. The lawsuit is one of several that the president has brought in his personal capacity against news organizations.

Political appointees at the Treasury Department told staff at the agency’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing to prepare prototypes of the $250 bill with the president’s portrait, according to current and former employees of the Department, the Washington Post reported Thursday.

At a press briefing Thursday afternoon, Treasure Secretary Scott Bessent said legislation would have to be passed by the Senate, to produce the bill because “no living person can be on US currency,” according to law.

If the proposed legislation is passed, this would be the first appearance of a living person on a US currency in over 150 years.

Bessent said the decision with the $250 bill is not up to the president or the Treasury Department, in fact, “it’s all up on Capitol Hill.”

The Department does “prepare for everything if it gets passed,” he said.

Meanwhile, the US Mint said that Trump’s gold coins won’t be ready before celebrations of the 250th anniversary begin, The Hill reported. The Mint is still designing the coin, and there is no official sell date yet.

The AI executive order that Trump almost signed last week called for AI companies to voluntarily consult with the US government regarding their latest models, reported Politico Thursday.

Companies would allow the federal government to preview the models before they are launched.

Since the delay in signing the order, three camps have formed in the White House about how to regulate AI.

The first favors less regulations to help the industry compete with China – this includes AI leader David Sacks. It was Sacks who urged the president to delay the order last week.

The second camp want there to be more barriers to Mythos-type models – they are concerned that the technology could be used by China. This camp includes Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and his undersecretary Emil Michael.

The third camp including chief of staff Susie Wiles and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent are standing in the middle ground, they want the AI companies to voluntarily provide the government a glance at their new models, according to the Politico’s reporting.

When asked about California governor Gavin Newsom’s 100% tax on money from Trump’s anti-weaponization fund, Bessent said: “There’s no cure for stupid.”

That ended this week’s press briefing.

On sanctions on Russia, Bessent said that Biden’s sanctions on the country were “mild” and that “no one has done more sanctions that the Trump administration on Russian oil.”

‘I don’t think there’s anything untoward about having the president’s face on the 250th anniversary bill,’ says Scott Bessent

I don’t think that there’s anything untoward about having the President of the United States’ face on the 250th anniversary bill.

When asked about an update on an investigation about who is funding Antifa, Bessent said significant progress has been made and there’s going to be a lot to report in the coming weeks and months.

On sanctions on the Cuban government, Bessent said the answer lies with the Cuban government.

That’s going to be up to the Cuban government. They can go up, they can go down. We tried to get humanitarian aid in and the regime rejected because they wanted to go through their corrupt system, so they could go up, they could go down.

On the skirmishes and ceasefire violation that have been ongoing this week, Bessent said “President Trump always prefers a peace deal, so everything we have done thus far has been defensive, and at present that is what we will continue doing.”

He said: “We can’t talk about reconstruction in Iran until we reach a peace deal.”

On rising oil prices, Bessent said these are short-term challenges and oil prices have already come down “substantially.”

Bessent said the Trump administration inherited “the worst budget deficit in history, when we were not in a recession or not at war”. He said it was at 6.7% and this administration brought that down to about 5.5% or 5.4% this year.

On the peace deal with Iran, Bessent said “it’s always a mistake to get out ahead of the president, so it is all going to be the president’s decision.” He said as he understand there could be no deal without Iran giving up its highly enriched uranium and nuclear program, and that is what the president is working towards.

JD Vance says Trump ‘pushing forward’ with Golden Dome as he addresses Air Force Academy – US politics live – The Guardian

Support for the military is why Trump ‘is insistent on increasing defense budget to $1.5tn’, says JD Vance

Anti-ICE protesters, including Afghanistan War veteran, found guilty of conspiracy to ‘impede or injure a federal officer’

Young MC, the Commodores, C+C Music Factory and Milli Vanilli follow Morris Day in saying they will not play in Trump’s Freedom 250 bash

New Jersey health inspector denied full access to Delaney Hall immigration detention center in Newark, governor says

Here’s a recap of the day so far:

‘I don’t think there’s anything untoward about having the president’s face on the 250th anniversary bill,’ says Scott Bessent

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