Prepared for the Office of Public Affairs (OPA)
U.S. Department of Homeland Security

Editorial Note: The DHS Daily Briefing is a collection of news articles related to Department’s mission. The inclusion of particular stories is not intended to reflect their importance, nor is it intended to endorse the political viewpoints or affiliations included in news coverage.

The AP [7/1/2025 12:02 AM, Will Weissert and Adriana Gomez Licon, 3077K] reports President Donald Trump is making a day trip to Florida’s Everglades on Tuesday for a firsthand look at a new immigration detention facility that the White House suggests will be especially secure given that it is “surrounded by alligators.” The detention facility is on an isolated airstrip about 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of Miami and could house 5,000 detainees. It’s drawn protests over the potential impact on a delicate ecosystem and criticism that Trump is trying to send a cruel message to immigrants — while some Native American leaders have also opposed construction, saying the land is sacred. But a key selling point for the Trump administration is the site’s remoteness, and the fact that it is in swampland filled with mosquitoes, pythons and alligators. The White House hopes that conveys a message to the detainees being housed there and the world at large that repercussions will be severe if the immigration laws of the United States are not followed. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt noted that the center is “informally known as Alligator Alcatraz,” a moniker that has alarmed immigrant activists but appeals to the president’s aggressive approach to deportations. “There’s only one road leading in, and the only way out is a one-way flight,” Leavitt said. “It is isolated and it is surrounded by dangerous wildlife and unforgiving terrain.” Crackdowns on the border and harsh immigration policies have long been a centerpiece of Trump’s political brand. During his first term in 2019, Trump denied reports that he floated the idea of building a moat filled with alligators at the U.S.-Mexico border. “I may be tough on Border Security, but not that tough,” he said at the time. In his second term, Trump has suggested that his administration could move to reopen Alcatraz, the notorious and hard-to-reach island prison off San Francisco. And Leavitt said the new Florida detention center’s inhospitable location — and dangerous nearby fauna — were pluses. “A detention center surrounded by alligators, yes, I do think that’s a deterrent for them to try to escape,” she said. Former U.S. Rep. David Jolly of Florida, a former Republican who is now running for governor as a Democrat, called the facility a “callous political stunt.” The White House has similarly promoted the political shock value of sending some immigrants awaiting deportation from the U.S. to a detention lockup in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and others to a megaprison in El Salvador. Axios [6/30/2025 11:17 AM, Marc Caputo, 13599K] reports that the idea and name of "Alligator Alcatraz" is the brainchild of Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, who was appointed by DeSantis after serving as his chief of staff. DHS has blessed the project with $450 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s "Shelter and Services Program," which President Biden had tapped to help house migrants in hotels to welcome them to the United States. Now the Trump administration is using that program to detain and help deport them. NBC News [7/1/2025 5:00 AM, Matt Dixon, 44540K] reports that it has received significant national attention, including during a "Fox and Friends" interview with Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday. DeSantis described the push as Florida’s continued effort to align the state with Trump’s anti-immigrant crackdown. But Trump’s decision to attend in person, along with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, has shifted some of the focus to the administration, which had to approve Florida’s plan to run the facility. “When the president comes tomorrow, he’s going to be able to see the facility, which is expected to be ready for operation on Tuesday” DeSantis said at a news conference Monday. He said that he spoke to Trump over the weekend and that Trump is “very excited.” Noem said last week on X: “Under President Trump’s leadership, we are working at turbo speed on cost-effective and innovative ways to deliver on the American people’s mandate for mass deportations of criminal illegal aliens. We will expand facilities and bed spaces in just days, thanks to our partnership with Florida.” ABC News [6/30/2025 3:30 PM, Michelle Stoddart and Selina Wang, 31733K] reports that in a statement released Monday, Noem said, "Alligator Alcatraz, and other facilities like it, will give us the capability to lock up some of the worst scumbags who entered our country under the previous administration. We will expand facilities and bed space in just days, thanks to our partnership with Florida. Make America safe again." Breitbart [6/30/2025 3:30 PM, Hannah Knudsen, 3077K] reports "Alligator Alcatraz" will have up to 5,000 beds, and will house, process, and deport criminal illegal aliens, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday, previewing President Donald Trump’s visit to the facility on Tuesday. CNN [7/1/2025 5:00 AM, Chelsea Bailey and Isabel Rosales, 21433K] reports that in a matter of days, workers have transformed the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport from an 11,000-foot runway into a temporary tent city that Trump is expected to visit Tuesday. When completed, it will house up to 5,000 migrants as they await deportation, officials told CNN. “We had a request from the federal government to do it, and so ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ it is,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said at a news conference last week, adopting the nickname coined by his attorney general for the Everglades facility. “Clearly from a security perspective, if someone escapes, there’s a lot of alligators you’re going to have to contend (with),” DeSantis said. “No one is going anywhere once you do that. It’s as safe and secure as you can be.” But while Republicans are touting it as a “low cost” facility fortified by Mother Nature, the project has already sparked a backlash, not only from immigration rights activists and environmentalists but also members of the state’s Indigenous community, who see the project as a threat to their sacred lands. The Washington Post [6/30/2025 11:00 PM, Cat Zakrzewski, Lori Rozsa and Matt Viser, 32099K] reports Trump plans to join Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem at Tuesday’s opening ceremony for the detention center.

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Los Angeles Times [6/30/2025 11:59 AM, Chris Megerian and Adriana Gomez Licon, 14672K]
FOX News [6/30/2025 12:12 PM, Emma Colton Fox, 46878K]
Washington Times [6/30/2025 3:13 PM, Kerry Picket, 2106K]
Daily Wire [6/30/2025 9:16 AM, Sam Korkus, 3816K]

Breitbart [6/30/2025 1:39 PM, Hannah Knudsen, 3077K] reports that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) defended "Alligator Alcatraz" — the Miami-Dade Collier Training Facility approved for use to detain illegal migrants by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) — during a press conference this week, noting that it is "logistically simple" and adding that President Donald Trump is "excited" about it. DeSantis noted that the facility is in the middle of the Everglades and clarified that the facility is "not defunct." "People say there are training flights that go in there, but it’s a massive runway. And, you know… there’s not a lot of buildings out there, but there’s a lot of concrete. And so these guys set up this whole thing within a matter of days," DeSantis said. "And so when the President comes tomorrow, he’s going to be able to see … what will happen is you bring people in there. They ain’t going anywhere … unless you want them to go somewhere, because good luck in the civilization," he said, as a big part of the draw of this facility is the natural barrier of alligators and pythons. "So the security is amazing… natural and otherwise," the governor said. But ultimately, he said this facility is an effective way to increase the greater goal of removing and deporting illegal migrants. The facility is expected to be up and running this week, and Trump is expected to attend the opening.

USA Today [6/30/2025 3:02 PM, David Baratz, 75552K] reports demonstrators hold signs as they protest the construction of an immigrant detention center, dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz," in the Everglades near Ochopee, Florida, on June 28, 2025. Florida began construction this week on a detention center surrounded by fierce reptiles and cypress swamps, an "Alligator Alcatraz" in the Everglades wetlands, as part of US President Donald Trump’s expansion of deportations of undocumented migrants. The chosen site, an abandoned airfield in the heart of a sprawling network of mangrove forests, imposing marshes and "rivers of grass" that form the conservation area, will house large tents and beds for 1,000 "criminal aliens," according to state Attorney General James Uthmeier. [Editorial note: consult photos at source link]

Breitbart [6/30/2025 3:48 PM, John Binder, 3077K] reports ahead of the opening of a sprawling immigration detention center in Florida known as "Alligator Alcatraz," Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is spotlighting several recent arrests of illegal aliens convicted of murder, child rape, and kidnapping across the Sunshine State. This week, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem and President Donald Trump will travel to the site of Alligator Alcatraz, which will hold illegal aliens, many convicted of crimes, who have been taken into custody by ICE agents and are awaiting deportation.

CNN [6/30/2025 7:43 AM, Staff, 21433K] reports Joshua Aaron, a musician and developer, created an app called ICEBlock, where people can post sightings of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers across the country. CNN’s Clare Duffy speaks to Aaron about what motivated him to create the application and the efforts he has made to keep it accurate and prevent it from identifying users.

NewsMax [6/30/2025 2:50 PM, Solange Reyner, 4622K] reports that a new iPhone app lets users post sightings of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in their area, CNN reported. The app, ICEBlock, was launched in early April by musician and developer Joshua Aaron. He told the news outlet he wanted to do something "to fight back" against ICE raids. Aaron said the deportation efforts feel "reminiscent of Nazi Germany.” "We’re literally watching history repeat itself," he said. ICE acting Director Todd Lyons said CNN’s promotion of the app was "reckless and irresponsible." "Advertising an app that basically paints a target on federal law enforcement officers’ backs is sickening," he said in a statement. "My officers and agents are already facing a 500% increase in assaults, and going on live television to announce an app that lets anyone zero in on their locations is like inviting violence against them with a national megaphone. CNN is willfully endangering the lives of officers who put their lives on the line every day and enabling dangerous criminal aliens to evade U.S. law. Is this simply reckless ‘journalism’ or overt activism?" ICEBlock has more than 20,000 users.

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Breitbart [6/30/2025 4:58 PM, Alana Mastrangelo, 3077K]

The Daily Wire [6/30/2025 9:49 AM, Spencer Lindquist, 3816K] reports Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials say CNN has endangered the lives of federal agents after the news network promoted an iPhone app used to "track ICE activity in real time" in an article published on Monday. Called ICEBlock, CNN noted that the app encourages users to report ICE sightings and pinpoint the locations of federal agents to help illegal aliens avoid arrest. "Users can tap the map to report an ICE sighting in their area, and then everybody who uses the platform within five miles of that sighting will get a push alert," a CNN reporter said before adding that the application’s users remain anonymous. The app reportedly has more than 20,000 users. The developer behind it describes the platform as an "early warning system.” ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons slammed CNN, accusing the outlet of putting the lives of federal law enforcement agents at risk. "CNN’s promotion of an ‘ICE spotting’ app is reckless and irresponsible," Lyons charged. "Advertising an app that basically paints a target on federal law enforcement officers’ backs is sickening.” "CNN is willfully endangering the lives of officers who put their lives on the line every day and enabling dangerous criminal aliens to evade U.S. law," he went on to add. "Is this simply reckless ‘journalism’ or overt activism?". During Monday’s White House briefing, Daily Wire reporter Mary Margaret Olohan asked Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt about CNN’s promotion of ICEBlock. "It sounds like this would be an incitement of further violence against our ICE officers," said Leavitt. "It’s unacceptable that a major network would promote such an app that is encouraging violence against law enforcement officers who are trying to keep our country safe.” Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin also warned that the app is "absolutely obstructing justice" in a climate where federal agents are often vilified. "Our ICE enforcement officers are seeing a 500% increase in assaults against them, and a lot of this is because politicians like AOC, like Governor Tim Walz, like Gavin Newsom demonize our ICE enforcement officers and give them free passes," McLaughlin charged. The Washington Examiner [6/30/2025 3:59 PM, Heather Hunter, 1934K] reports Trump administration border czar Tom Homan is calling on the Department of Justice to launch an investigation into CNN for its recent coverage of "ICEBlock," a mobile app designed to alert users about nearby Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in real time.

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Blaze [6/30/2025 1:59 PM, Julio Rosas, 1805K]

FOX News [6/30/2025 7:17 PM, Staff, 46878K] reports ‘Border czar’ Tom Homan discusses the app that is reportedly being used to track I.C.E. agents on ‘The Will Cain Show.’ [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

FOX News [6/30/2025 4:05 PM, Lindsay Kornick Fox, 46878K] reports White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt suggested on Monday that CNN was guilty of inciting and "encouraging violence" for its reporting on ICEBlock, a new app that tracks and alerts users to the whereabouts of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers. Daily Wire reporter Mary Margaret Olohan asked Leavitt to respond to the CNN report, considering there has been a 500% increase in assaults against ICE agents, according to recent DHS reports. Leavitt said she would need to see the segment herself but condemned CNN for airing it nevertheless. "Surely, it sounds like this would be an incitement of further violence against our ICE officers," Leavitt said. "As you know, as you stated, there’s been a 500% increase in violence against ICE agents, law enforcement officers across the country who are just simply trying to do their jobs and remove public safety threats from our communities.” She continued, "And that’s something we as Americans, including journalists at CNN, who live in many of these cities where illegal aliens are hiding and were let in from the previous administration, should be very grateful for. So we haven’t seen the clip. We’ll take a look at it, but certainly it’s unacceptable that a major network would promote such an app that is encouraging violence against law enforcement officers who are trying to keep our country safe.” "CNN reported on a publicly available app, which is generating attention across the United States, and reached out to ICE for comment prior to publication. After CNN published its reporting, ICE posted a response, which is now included in the story," the spokesperson told Fox News Digital. The response reported by CNN came from ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons, who said ICEBlock "basically paints a target on federal law enforcement officers’ backs" and that "officers and agents are already facing a 500% increase in assaults.” The CNN reported on and aired segments on their channel featuring an interview with the app’s creator, Joshua Aaron, who said he was inspired to create ICEBlock as a way to fight back against deportation efforts which he claimed were reminiscent of Nazi Germany. "We’re literally watching history repeat itself," Aaron said.

FOX News [6/30/2025 12:30 PM, Staff, 46878K] reports Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin joins ‘America’s Newsroom’ to discuss federal agents arresting a group of Iranians in an alleged human trafficking hub near Los Angeles and a new app that alerts users about nearby ICE agents. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Daily Wire [6/30/2025 12:45 PM, Spencer Lindquist, 3816K] reports Customs and Border Protection (CBP) raided a Los Angeles residence that the federal law enforcement agency says has been used to harbor Iranian illegal aliens with ties to terrorists. CBP arrested two unidentified individuals at the home on Friday after a previous operation at the same address resulted in the arrest of seven Iranian nationals, some of whom are on the FBI terror watch list and associated with an Iranian human smuggling network. “CBP executed a federal search warrant today at a human smuggling hub in Los Angeles tied to national security threats,” Customs and Border Protection said in a post on X on Friday. “Two individuals were arrested during the operation, which was led by CBP’s Special Response Team with support from Border Patrol tactical units and Air and Marine Operations.” “The location has been repeatedly used to harbor illegal entrants linked to terrorism,” the federal law enforcement agency added.

FOX Business [6/30/2025 1:39 PM, Staff, 9940K] reports DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin addresses a report over concerns about detention center conditions and the opening of ‘Alligator Alcatraz.’ [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

ABC News [6/30/2025 2:23 PM, Meredith Deliso, 31733K] reports that the Department of Justice is suing the city of Los Angeles over its sanctuary city policy, alleging it interferes with the enforcement of federal immigration laws, officials announced on Monday. "The challenged law and policies of the City of Los Angeles obstruct the Federal Government’s enforcement of federal immigration law and impede consultation and communication between federal, state, and local law enforcement officials that is necessary for federal officials to carry out federal immigration law and keep Americans safe," the lawsuit states. The lawsuit is targeting Ordinance Number 188441, which prohibits city resources, including personnel, from being used for immigration enforcement. The DOJ is seeking a permanent injunction barring the city from enforcing the ordinance. The Los Angeles City Council and the city’s mayor, Karen Bass, are named among the defendants in the lawsuit, which was filed Monday in California’s Central District federal court. "Sanctuary policies were the driving cause of the violence, chaos, and attacks on law enforcement that Americans recently witnessed in Los Angeles," Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement Monday. "Jurisdictions like Los Angeles that flout federal law by prioritizing illegal aliens over American citizens are undermining law enforcement at every level -- it ends under President Trump." Bill Essayli, U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, said in a statement that the lawsuit holds Los Angeles "accountable for deliberately obstructing the enforcement of federal immigration law." Reuters [6/30/2025 1:34 PM, Staff, 24051K] reports "We will keep enforcing federal immigration law in Los Angeles, whether or not the city’s government or residents agree with it," Chad Mizelle, a senior Justice Department official, said on social media. "And we will not tolerate any interference with the federal government’s duty to enforce the law.” The lawsuit comes weeks after Trump deployed California National Guard troops to quell protests in Los Angeles against deportation operations. The demonstrations were limited to a small section of the city, but included some instances of looting, property destruction and attacks on law enforcement. A spokesperson for Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit. California officials, including Bass, accused Trump of inflaming tensions and exacerbating a situation local authorities had under control. California’s Democratic Governor, Gavin Newsom, sued the Trump administration over the deployment. A federal appeals court has for now allowed Trump to keep control of the National Guard. The Justice Department’s lawsuit blames Los Angeles’ policies for sparking confrontations between activists and federal agents that led to this month’s protests. The demonstrations erupted after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted raids on workplaces in and around the city, which has a large immigrant population. The complaint alleges that Los Angeles’ policies, enacted weeks after Trump won last year’s election, violate a provision of the U.S. Constitution called the "supremacy clause" that makes federal law supersede conflicting state laws. It asks a federal judge to strike down those policies as unlawful. The lawsuit marked the latest instance of the Justice Department under Trump challenging so-called sanctuary city policies that prevent local jurisdictions from sharing information or participating in immigration raids.

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AP [6/30/2025 2:34 PM, Tara Copp, 56000K] reports that the top military commander in charge of troops deployed to Los Angeles to respond to protests against immigration raids has asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth if 200 of those forces could be returned to wildfire fighting duty, two U.S. officials told The Associated Press on Monday. President Donald Trump ordered the deployment of about 4,000 California National Guard troops and 800 active duty Marines against the wishes of Gov. Gavin Newsom in early June to respond to a series of protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in Los Angeles. The federal troops’ domestic deployment raised multiple legal questions, including whether the administration would seek to employ emergency powers under the Insurrection Act to empower those forces to conduct law enforcement on U.S. soil, which they are not permitted to do except in rare circumstances. The Marines, however, are primarily assigned to protecting federal buildings. The Insurrection Act has not been used. But in at least one circumstance, Marines have temporarily detained civilians in Los Angeles. California has just entered peak wildfire season, and Newsom has warned that the Guard is now understaffed due to the Los Angeles protest deployment. The top military commander of those troops, U.S. Northern Command head Gen. Gregory Guillot, recently submitted a request to Hegseth to return 200 of the National Guard troops back to Joint Task Force Rattlesnake, which is the California National Guard’s wildfire unit, the officials said. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details not yet announced publicly.

ABC News [6/30/2025 5:17 PM, Laura Romero, 31733K] reports a federal judge in Maryland on Monday ordered the Trump administration to explain how it will enforce President Donald Trump’s executive order that would deny citizenship to children born on U.S. soil to unlawful immigrants or those on temporary immigrant status, after the Supreme Court on Friday granted a partial stay of nationwide injunctions issued against Trump’s order. During a hearing on Monday to consider an emergency motion for class action relief in response to the Supreme Court’s new guidance on injunctions, U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman pressed the government on whether it will deport babies who might be subject to the executive order before she rules on the class action motion. "No," Justice Department attorney Brad Rosenberg said, adding that government agencies have been tasked "with developing guidelines for implementation of the executive order." Judge Boardman ordered the government to submit a written statement by Tuesday on "the government’s view of what it can and can’t do under the executive order." The AP [6/30/2025 4:59 PM, Michael Kunzelman, 56000K] reports Justice Department attorney Brad Rosenberg told U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman that the administration doesn’t intend to deport any children covered by President Donald Trump’s executive while the Supreme Court has suspended its enforcement for 30 days. He called it a "hypothetical" question. The judge gave Rosenberg until Tuesday to submit a written summary of what the administration believes it "can and can’t do" after last Friday’s Supreme Court ruling. She asked if the government would be "seeking to deport babies" before July 26. The judge said her question referred to children who were born after Feb. 19 and are covered by Trump’s executive order but aren’t plaintiffs in litigation challenging the order. "No," Rosenberg said. "I just want to be clear. I am responding to the court’s characterization of what it believes the United States might do after 30 days from the date of the Supreme Court’s decision. But, again, I would note that (federal agencies) have all been tasked with developing guidelines for implementation of the executive order. So I view that as a hypothetical.” "I take the government at its word that the United States does not intend to do that and it is not doing that," Boardman said. Plaintiffs’ attorney William Powell said their clients are experiencing "incredible stress, anxiety and fear" after the Supreme Court’s decision. "They’re not lawyers. It is confusing to them exactly what these things mean," Powell told the judge. "We can’t really assure them, ‘Oh, no, the order is fully blocked,’ because it’s not.”

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Reuters [6/30/2025 5:42 PM, Nate Raymond and Daniel Wiessner, 24051K] reports President Donald Trump’s administration will not deport children deemed ineligible for U.S. citizenship until his executive order curtailing birthright citizenship takes effect on July 27, a government lawyer said on Monday after being pressed by two federal judges. During separate hearings in lawsuits challenging Trump’s order, U.S. District Judges Deborah Boardman in Greenbelt, Maryland, and Joseph LaPlante in Concord, New Hampshire, set expedited schedules to decide whether the order can be blocked again on grounds that the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on Friday curbing the ability of judges to impede his policies nationwide does not preclude injunctions in class action lawsuits. Both judges asked U.S. Department of Justice lawyer Brad Rosenberg, who represented the government in both cases, for assurances that the Trump administration would not move to deport children who do not have at least one parent who is a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident at least until the executive order takes effect. Rosenberg said it would not, which Boardman and LaPlante respectively asked him to confirm in writing by Tuesday and Wednesday. In the Maryland case, immigrant rights advocates revised their lawsuit just a few hours after the 6-3 conservative majority U.S. Supreme Court on Friday ruled in their case and two others challenging Trump’s executive order. The New Hampshire lawsuit, a proposed class action, was filed on Friday. The Supreme Court ruling did not address the merits or legality of Trump’s birthright citizenship order, but instead curbed the ability of judges to issue "universal" injunctions to block the Republican president’s policies nationwide. But while the Supreme Court restricted the ability of judges to issue injunctions that cover anyone other than the parties appearing before them, Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s opinion held out the possibility that opponents of a federal policy could still obtain the same type of relief if they instead pursued cases as class actions.

CNN [6/30/2025 5:43 PM, Devan Cole, 21433K] reports three days after the Supreme Court said litigants attempting to get court orders broadly blocking President Donald Trump’s policies must do so through class action lawsuits, an administration lawyer said it plans to oppose such legal maneuverings in cases challenging the executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship. The statements from Justice Department attorney Brad Rosenberg came during separate federal court proceedings Monday in cases brought in New Hampshire and Maryland against Trump’s executive order, which was blocked by judges around the country through a series of universal injunctions. The Supreme Court on Friday curtailed the ability of lower court judges to issue such universal rulings — while also leaving intact the ability of plaintiffs to get similar relief through class action lawsuits. Attorneys representing the plaintiffs in the New Hampshire and Maryland cases raced back to court to bring class action lawsuits, asking judges overseeing their cases to certify a class of individuals that would include born and unborn babies who could be impacted by Trump’s order and their parents. Asked by the two judges whether the department will be opposing such class certification, Rosenberg said, "yes." The DOJ is expected to file more written legal arguments backing up its position in coming days. Such class-action litigation could potentially lead to the same outcome as nationwide injunctions – and during arguments in the case before the Supreme Court, several justices questioned the significance of shifting the emphasis to class-action suits. One difference is that a judge generally must take the extra step of thinking about who should be covered by an injunction. At the time, Solicitor General D. John Sauer was careful to not reveal the department’s position when pressed by the justices on whether the administration would oppose certifying a class in the cases challenging Trump’s order. "I do not concede that we wouldn’t oppose class certification in this particular case. There may be arguments that this case is or is not appropriate for class certification," Sauer said during a back and forth with Justice Amy Coney Barrett during oral arguments. Barrett eventually wrote the opinion the court issued Friday. Pressed by Justice Brett Kavanaugh on the issue, Sauer said at the time that the administration’s "position is not that class certification will necessarily be granted.” "Our position is that (class certification) is how these sorts of claims should be channeled," he added.

New York Times [6/30/2025 5:55 PM, Alan Feuer, 138952K] reports the Justice Department and the American Civil Liberties Union squared off in front of a federal appeals court on Monday to debate for the first time whether President Trump could use an 18th-century wartime law to deport immigrants he has accused of belonging to a violent Venezuelan street gang. The debate took place during an hourlong hearing before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans. While several lower courts have considered Mr. Trump’s use of the statute, known as the Alien Enemies Act, the Fifth Circuit case is likely to be the first to reach the Supreme Court on the substantive issue of whether the president has been employing it correctly. The law, which was passed in 1798 as the newly founded United States was threatened by war with France, gives the president expansive authority to detain and expel members of a hostile foreign nation. It has been used only three other times in American history, with those powers granted only in special circumstances: in times of declared war or during an invasion or a “predatory incursion.” The dueling arguments in front of a three-judge panel centered on whether the presence in American cities of the street gang Tren de Aragua could reasonably be construed as an invasion and whether its members were agents of a hostile foreign nation working at the direction of the Venezuelan government. Speaking on behalf of the A.C.L.U., which has been representing the Venezuelan men, Lee Gelernt maintained that Mr. Trump had grossly stretched the meaning of the law by seeking to define what amounted to an immigration or a criminal justice problem as an armed invasion. “This law has been invoked only in major, major wars,” he said, “and the government is now saying you can invoke it for a gang.” Mr. Gelernt also told the judges that Mr. Trump’s own intelligence community had already rejected the notion that Tren de Aragua was working with the government of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela. At the heart of his argument was the idea that Mr. Trump’s vision of the Venezuelan men as posing a military threat to the United States did not comport with reality. If the judges accepted it, he added, they would be tacitly endorsing the administration’s use of extraordinary powers to deport people who were better dealt with through the criminal justice system. Two of the panel’s judges — Andrew Oldham, a Trump appointee, and Leslie H. Southwick, who was appointed by President George W. Bush — repeatedly interrupted Mr. Gelernt. Judge Oldham, in particular, suggested that presidents should be granted great deference when it comes to deciding questions of war or foreign policy. The AP [6/30/2025 4:56 PM, Nicholas Riccardi, 56000K] reports Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign, arguing for the administration, said that courts cannot second-guess a president’s determination that the U.S. faces a threat from abroad and requires extraordinary measures to protect itself. He noted that the only time the high court weighed in on the act was in a case that dates from after fighting in Europe ended in World War II, when the court said it could not second-guess then-President Harry Truman’s assertion that suspected Nazis should still be held under the act because the war was still continuing. "The president is due the utmost deference" in matters of foreign affairs and security, Ensign said. Trump’s invocation has already been twice before the nation’s highest court on more technical issues. First, the court found that those accused of being TdA members deserved a "reasonable" amount of time to challenge that designation in court, but that their deportations could only be challenged in the locations they were held. That eliminated a national bar against deportations under the act issued by a federal judge in Washington, who later found the administration possibly committed contempt when it disregarded his orders and continued to fly some held under the AEA to a prison in El Salvador. Then, after the ACLU and its allies began filing suits all around the country and winning rulings barring deportations under the measure, the high court stepped in a second time. In April it issued an unusual post-midnight ruling stopping the administration from deporting people from a slice of north Texas where there was yet no active ruling against removal.

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Washington Post [6/30/2025 1:35 PM, Jeremy Roebuck, 32099K]
Washington Examiner [6/30/2025 5:41 PM, Jack Birle, 1934K]

The AP [6/30/2025 4:06 PM, Travis Loller and Ben Finley] reports Kilmar Abrego Garcia will stay in jail for now over concerns from his lawyers that he could be deported if he’s released to await his trial on human smuggling charges, a federal judge in Tennessee ruled Monday. Abrego Garcia’s attorneys had asked the judge to delay his release because of what they described as "contradictory statements" by President Donald Trump’s administration over what would happen to the Salvadoran national. In a response to the request by Abrego Garcia’s attorneys Friday, acting U.S. Attorney Rob McGuire agreed to delaying Abrego Garcia’s release. He reiterated his stance that Abrego Garcia should remain in jail before trial. The prosecutor also said he lacks jurisdiction over U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, stating he has no way to prevent Abrego Garcia’s deportation. DHS spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, said in a statement that "he will never go free on American soil." Abrego Garcia’s attorneys have asked the judge to delay his release until a July 16 court hearing, which will consider a request by prosecutors to revoke Abrego Garcia’s release order while he awaits trial. CBS News [6/30/2025 4:11 PM, Melissa Quinn, 51860K] reports Abrego Garcia was indicted by a federal grand jury on two charges of human smuggling in late May, after which the government returned him to the U.S. to face federal prosecution. He has pleaded not guilty. His return came weeks after a federal judge in Maryland ordered the Trump administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release from Salvadoran custody, which was affirmed by the Supreme Court. A U.S. immigration official had acknowledged Abrego Garcia’s deportation to El Salvador was an administrative error, as he had been granted a legal status in 2019 that prevented the Department of Homeland Security from removing Abrego Garcia to his home country because of likely persecution by local gangs. After Abrego Garcia was brought back to the U.S. to face the human smuggling offenses, the Justice Department requested he remain detained while awaiting trial. But Holmes earlier this month rejected that request and said he should be granted pretrial release. The Justice Department appealed that decision, and a U.S. district judge set a hearing for July 16 on the request to revoke Holmes’ release order. But during a hearing last week to review the conditions of Abrego Garcia’s release, lawyers for the Salvadoran man and the Justice Department acknowledged that he would likely be detained by the Department of Homeland Security and deported swiftly after being released from Justice Department custody, which would interfere with his criminal proceeding. Holmes put off issuing her order of release, and Abrego Garcia’s lawyers asked her to delay it further because of what they said are conflicting statements about whether he would be removed to a third country — one other than El Salvador — if detained by immigration authorities while awaiting trial. The Daily Wire [6/30/2025 5:55 PM, Leif Le Mahieu, 3816K] reports that the Department of Homeland Security has remained firm in its position that Abrego Garcia will not go free, issuing a swift response to the judge who ordered his release. Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin asserted last week that “Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a dangerous criminal illegal alien” who “will never go free on American soil.”

Reported similarly:
Washington Examiner [6/30/2025 8:23 PM, Kaelan Deese, 1934K]

Daily Caller [6/30/2025 11:58 AM, Jason Hopkins, 1010K] reports a previously deported Mexican national with a lengthy rap sheet could be tantamount in proving Kilmar Abrego Garcia was a longtime smuggler of illegal migrants. Prosecutors released Jose Ramon Hernandez Reyes early from a federal prison and have offered him deportation protection in exchange for his cooperation against Abrego Garcia, according to court documents reviewed by The Washington Post. Reyes, an illegal migrant previously convicted of human smuggling himself, is connected to a 2022 Tennessee Highway Patrol (THP) stop that became the epicenter of the Trump administration’s criminal case against Abrego Garcia. “The grand jury found that over the past nine years, Abrego Garcia has played a significant role in an alien smuggling ring,” Attorney General Pam Bondi declared at the time of his return. “They found this was his full time job, not a contractor — he was a smuggler of humans and children and women.” Lawyers for Abrego Garcia on Friday bemoaned the fact that prosecutors were handing out an advantageous deal to an unnamed individual in exchange for cooperation, according to court documents.

New York Times [6/30/2025 4:50 PM, Alan Feuer, 138952K] reports for nearly six years, Task Force Vulcan, a federal law enforcement team set up by President Trump during his first term in the White House, was enormously successful in pursuing its central mission: taking down the leadership of the violent transnational street gang MS-13. But by this spring, the group was redirected into carrying out what appeared to be contradictory goals. The unit’s agents and prosecutors were asked to unwind some of the charges they had brought against MS-13’s highest-ranking leaders even as they diverted resources into prosecuting a defendant whose ties to the gang were far more tenuous but whose case had become a political liability for the Trump administration. In late April, Vulcan prosecutors were engaged in a pitched legal battle to dismiss the criminal case against an MS-13 leader named Vladimir Arévalo Chávez who was accused of serious crimes, including multiple murders. The goal was to release Mr. Arévalo from U.S. custody and send him back to his homeland in El Salvador. At the same time, the Vulcan team was assembling a criminal case against Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man accused of belonging to the gang who had been wrongly deported to El Salvador. Prosecutors were seeking to free Mr. Abrego Garcia from Salvadoran custody and bring him back to the United States to face indictment on charges of smuggling undocumented immigrants. The dueling moves were, among other things, a reflection of how federal law enforcement officers have at times been put in the position of pursuing the Trump administration’s shifting political agenda.

FOX News [6/30/2025 11:39 AM, Staff, 46878K] reports one remaining Orleans Parish prison escapee is still on the run after local and federal officials on Friday arrested ninth fugitive Antoine Massey. Massey was one of 10 prisoners to escape a minimum-custody site at the Orleans Justice Center on May 16 when they removed a toilet from a wall inside a cell and then crawled through it. One fugitive, four-time convicted killer Derrick Groves, remains at large. "It’s the final countdown," Gov. Jeff Landry said in a Friday post on X. At the time of his escape, Massey was incarcerated for domestic abuse battery involving strangulation, theft of a motor vehicle and parole violations. “This evening, detectives from the Louisiana State Police Bureau of Investigations- New Orleans Field Office and the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Bureau of Investigation, the United States Marshal Service, and the New Orleans Police Department located and arrested 33-year-old Antoine Massey at a residence in New Orleans," the Louisiana State Police said in a Friday press release. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Washington Examiner [6/30/2025 11:13 AM, Emily Hallas, 1934K] reports President Donald Trump on Sunday warned Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s Democratic nominee for mayor, that if he fails to "behave himself" upon a hypothetical win in the general election, the city could lose federal funding. During an interview with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo, Trump expressed concerns about Mamdani, the socialist candidate for mayor who recently clinched an upset primary win against former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Mamdani has espoused a host of Marxist-inspired views at odds with traditionalists in his party, including saying the country "shouldn’t have billionaires," calling for higher taxes on "whiter neighborhoods," and defending the term "globalize the intifada," which calls for violence against the Jews. "He’s a communist," Trump said of Mamdani, who denied the characterization during an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press on the same day. Trump said he hopes Mamdani will be unsuccessful in November, calling his victory "inconceivable." If Mamdani does win, Trump added, New York City will not be "getting any money" unless the mayoral candidate does "the right thing." Mamdani has signaled that, unlike incumbent New York City Mayor Eric Adams, he will not cooperate with the Trump administration as mayor, particularly on immigration enforcement.

Washington Examiner [6/30/2025 1:00 PM, Christian Datoc, 1934K] reports that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem excluded an $80,000 payment from a dark money group in her government disclosure forms, according to a new report. ProPublica reported Monday morning that American Resolve, a dark money group that has backed and publicized Noem on a national stage, paid Ashwood Strategies, a limited liability company owned by Noem, $80,000 in 2023. American Resolve described the payment in its tax forms as a 10% fee on the $800,000 she raised for the organization that year. Both Ashwood Strategies and American Resolve were incorporated in Delaware on June 22, 2023. The former shares the name of one of Noem’s horses, according to ProPublica, while the latter’s political action committee openly touts putting "Kristi and her team on the ground in key races across America" on its website. South Dakota’s loose disclosure laws for government officials allowed Noem’s formation of Ashwood Strategies to go unnoticed until her Senate confirmation process earlier this year. On her government disclosure forms, Noem said Ashwood Strategies was involved with "personal activities" beyond her government position and had received a $140,000 advance for her 2024 book, No Going Back. However, she did not list the payment Ashwood Strategies received from American Resolve. Both the White House and the Department of Homeland Security referred questions about ProPublica’s report to Noem’s personal lawyer, Trevor Stanley.

Breitbart [6/30/2025 7:33 PM, Elizabeth Weibel, 3077K] reports that, in a 56-44 vote on Monday, the United States Senate rejected a measure on President Donald Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill that would have removed millions of illegal aliens from Medicaid. As Breitbart News reported, on Friday, Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled that "various immigration enforcement policies cannot" be included in Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill, and that several "immigration enforcement and other provisions" would need to receive 60 votes in order to be included in the bill. A mandatory minimum fee of $1,000 for anyone applying for asylum. A mandatory minimum fee of $100 to request continuance in immigration court. A mandatory minimum fee of $250 to apply for the diversity visa lottery, $400 to process diversity visa application. A $5,000 bond for sponsors of unaccompanied alien children. Language expanding expedited removal of criminal noncitizens. MacDonough also "determined that some of the megabill’s Medicaid provisions," would not be "eligible for approval via the simple-majority gambit," according to the New York Post. In response to the vote, Sen. Jim Banks (R-IN) expressed that it was "shameful" that 44 Democrats had "voted to let CRIMINAL ILLEGALS on Medicaid.”

AP [6/30/2025 10:38 PM, Matthew Lee, 4120K] reports President Donald Trump has instructed his top Cabinet officers to review U.S. policy toward Cuba, ordering them to examine current sanctions and come up with ways to toughen them within 30 days. In a memo Monday, Trump said the reviews should focus on Cuba’s treatment of dissidents, its policies directed at dissidents and restricting financial transactions that "disproportionately benefit the Cuban government, military, intelligence, or security agencies at the expense of the Cuban people.” In one potential significant change, the order said the U.S. should look for ways to shut down all tourism to the island and to restrict educational tours to groups that are organized and run only by American citizens. The move is not a surprise given that Trump has previously said he plans to rescind the easing of sanctions and other penalties in Cuba that were instituted during the terms of Democratic Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden. In the days before leaving office, Biden had moved to lift the U.S. designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism. Trump’s memo "supports the economic embargo of Cuba and opposes calls in the United Nations and other international forums for its termination," according to a fact sheet. In Cuba, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez responded swiftly to the document. "The Presidential Memorandum vs #Cuba released today by the US government strengthens the aggression & economic blockade that punishes the whole Cuban people and is the main obstacle to our development," he wrote on X. "It’s a criminal behavior that violates the #HumanRights of an entire nation.” The Trump administration also has made Cuba one of seven countries facing heightened restrictions on visitors and revoked temporary legal protections for about 300,000 Cubans, which had protected them from deportation. The administration also has announced visa restrictions on Cuban and foreign government officials involved in Cuba’s medical missions, which Secretary of State Marco Rubio has called "forced labor.” In an interview with The Associated Press this month, Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio accused the United States of trying to discredit the medical missions and criticized reversal of policy welcoming Cubans to the U.S. Rubio, whose family left Cuba in the 1950s before the communist revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power, has long been a proponent of sanctions on the communist island.

Reported similarly:
NewsMax [6/30/2025 7:47 PM, Steve Holland, 4622K]
Telemundo [6/30/2025 11:29 PM, Staff, 177K]

Houston Chronicle [6/30/2025 1:33 PM, Barry Friedman, 1982K] reports that the images are jarring. Across the country, federal law enforcement officers in plain clothes and wearing ski masks and balaclavas are seizing and detaining protesters, students and even elected officials. These scenes evoke images of government thugs in violent regimes disappearing opponents. This is not how policing should look in a democratic society. Which is why everyone — regardless of political affiliation or stance on immigration enforcement — should support bills being introduced in Congress to address this growing problem. Three pieces of legislation — under consideration or expected soon — would prohibit masking by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, including one Thursday from Reps. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., and Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y., and one expected soon from Sens. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., and Cory Booker, D-N.J. These are obvious, common-sense measures that shouldn’t need to be codified into law — but given the reality today, and what’s being done on streets across the country, they clearly do. In the United States, those tasked with enforcing the law are public servants, answerable to the people through their elected representatives. Wearing uniforms and insignia, and publicly identifying themselves, are what make clear an officer’s authority and enable public accountability. That is why U.S. policing agencies generally have policies requiring officers to wear a badge or other identifier that includes their name or another unique mark, like a badge number.

Washington Post [6/30/2025 7:30 AM, Philip Bump, 32099K] reports should the Republican budget bill pass both chambers of Congress and be signed into law, there will be a lot of Americans who suffer as a result. The federal debt would swell even further, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, in part because interest payments on the existing debt would increase. Medicaid and similar programs would see cuts, adding an estimated 11.8 million people to the ranks of the uninsured. Other social safety programs would also see cuts, amounting to what one senator described as the “largest wealth transfer in American history” — from poor to rich. But there is another group of people who would also benefit enormously from the bill: staff and officers of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency which stands to see tens of billions more in funding. An analysis of an earlier version of the bill indicated that "mass deportation would account for almost a quarter of the bill’s total price tag." So it’s worth stepping back and considering what ICE is doing with the by-contrast modest (but still substantial) funding it currently gets.

The Hill [6/30/2025 12:30 PM, John Kenneth White, 18649K] reports on June 20, designated as World Refugee Day by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, an interreligious group of clergy entered the federal building in San Diego, Calif., as a judge was about to hear two immigration cases. Among those present was the newly appointed Catholic bishop of San Diego, Michael Pham. Inside the courthouse were Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents waiting to detain the migrants once their cases were heard. As Bishop Pham walked toward the courtroom, he noticed that the masked agents "kind of scattered and went away." Scott Reid, a member of the San Diego Organizing Project, said: "Like the story of Moses and Exodus, the Red Sea parted.” This is exactly what Pope Leo XIV had in mind. Standing with migrants in courtrooms who, in Bishop Pham’s words, "come in fear," is exactly what Pope Leo XIV wants others to emulate. As the Pope’s younger brother, John Prevost, recently told a reporter: "I know he’s not happy with what’s going on with immigration. I don’t think he’ll be the silent one."

Washington Post [6/30/2025 6:30 AM, Thomas Warrick, 32099K] reports as the Senate takes up the House-initiated One Big Beautiful Bill Act, it can uphold America’s honor and national interest by protecting the Afghans who served alongside our military and civilians in the two decades following al-Qaeda’s attack on Sept. 11, 2001. Thousands of these brave Afghans were relocated to the United States when Afghanistan fell in August 2021 to protect them from death, torture or imprisonment by the Taliban. Today, more than 9,600 Afghans in the U.S. face deportation due to termination of the temporary protected status that allows them to live and work here. Even Afghans who can legally stay in the U.S. until their asylum cases or Special Immigrant Visas are processed, will be required to pay the government thousands of dollars a year in fees if the Senate accepts the bill as passed by the House. The United States has always needed local partners in wartime. Deporting our Afghan partners back to the Taliban and subjecting those who stay to crippling fees and charges goes against America’s character and its national security interests. How we treat those who fought and worked alongside us reflects directly on who we are as a people. Many American veterans and civilians who served after 9/11 believe strongly in protecting these men and women not only as a matter of conscience, but also because doing so represents a clear-eyed, hard-power national security imperative. Many Afghans were paroled hastily into the United States after August 2021 because the U.S. government failed to properly resource the back-office work necessary to process Special Immigrant Visas and also failed to find these Afghans permanent homes here or elsewhere in the two decades since 2001. Bureaucracy and politics, not security concerns, are why thousands remain in limbo in temporary status. On May 12, the Department of Homeland Security said protected status for Afghans could end because Afghanistan’s economy was "stabilizing" and its security "improved." The World Bank, however, reports that Afghanistan’s economy remains a basket case where "poverty and food insecurity remain pressing challenges, exacerbated by high unemployment and restrictions on women’s economic participation.”

NewsMax [6/30/2025 9:21 PM, Michael Katz, 4622K] reports that, Todd Lyons, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Monday that activists against the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal aliens have been targeting the children of ICE agents. "My officers and agents are enforcing immigration law," Lyons said in a video posted on ICE’s X account. "They are not secret police. They are not Nazis. But people hiding behind keyboards are dehumanizing them, they’re doxxing them, stirring up anti-ICE sentiment, and putting their lives and their families’ lives at risk." Democrats and left-wing activists opposed to President Donald Trump’s policy of mass deportations have complained about ICE agents wearing masks while arresting illegal immigrants. The video included a recent social media post by Cynthia Gonzalez, the vice mayor of Cudahy, California, who appeared to suggest that violent street gangs in Los Angeles stand up and organize against immigration raids. It also included a TikTok post from a person who said, "You can kill them. This isn’t about social media clout anymore. This isn’t about video. This isn’t about the phone. This is about get a gun and start killing ICE agents." The FBI reportedly is investigating Gonzalez’s call to gang members in the now-deleted post to defend their "hoods" from ICE agents. "Wouldn’t you wear a mask if it kept your family safe, if it kept your kids safe," Lyons said. "We ran an operation with the Secret Service where we arrested someone that was going online, taking their [ICE agents’] photos, posting their families, their kids’ Instagram, their kids’ Facebooks, and targeting them. "So, let me ask, is that the issue here, that we’re just upset about the masks, or is anyone upset with the fact that ICE officers’ families were labeled terrorists?" The Department of Homeland Security said in a June 20 news release that ICE agents are facing a 500% increase in assaults against them during immigration enforcement operations. DHS also said in the release that, "disturbingly, in recent days, ICE officers’ family members have been doxed and targeted as well. Those who dox our ICE agents will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."

Reported similarly:
Breitbart [6/30/2025 3:06 PM, John Binder, 3077K]

Breitbart [6/30/2025 3:06 PM, John Binder, 3077K] reports acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Todd Lyons says left-wing activists are targeting ICE agents, with some going after agents’ families, including their children. In a video posted to X on Monday, Lyons revealed that ICE and the United States Secret Service tracked down one particular activist who had been targeting the children of ICE agents online. In addition, Lyons highlighted recent remarks from Cudahy, California, Vice Mayor Cynthia Gonzalez where she seems to suggest the 18th Street Gang ought to start targeting ICE agents. Similarly, Lyons showed a viral TikTok message from an activist who called for the execution of ICE agents. ICE agents, since President Donald Trump was sworn into office, are facing a 500-percent increase in assaults as they attempt to locate, detain, and arrest illegal aliens living in the United States.

The Hill [6/30/2025 10:23 AM, Miriam Waldvogel, 18649K] reports Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), the new top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said Sunday he is concerned Congress is losing its ability to monitor immigration policy and enforcement. "This is a very dangerous moment in our country, and certainly when it comes to immigration policy," Garcia said on MSNBC. Under federal law, members of Congress have the right to make unannounced visits to immigration detention facilities for oversight purposes. Some Democratic lawmakers have been turned away during such visits amidst the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. ICE instituted new rules this month restricting lawmakers’ access to its facilities, asserting that its field offices are off-limits and that agency officials have the "sole and unreviewable discretion" to cancel visits. The agency is also now asking members of Congress to give notice at least 72 hours in advance, up from the previously requested 24. Garcia contended on MSNBC that the new regulations were unconstitutional. "Now, [Homeland Security] Secretary [Kristi] Noem has put in a new law, which is unconstitutional, in place that is forcing members to actually have to wait days to actually inspect these facilities," he said. Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to The Hill that requests to visit detention facilities "should be made with sufficient time to prevent interference with the President’s Article II authority to oversee executive department functions—a week is sufficient to ensure no intrusion on the President’s constitutional authority," she wrote. "To protect the President’s Article II authority, any request to shorten that time must be approved by the Secretary." McLaughlin added that requests to tour processing centers and field offices were subject to agency approval due to "a surge in assaults, disruptions and obstructions to enforcement, including by politicians themselves.”

Washington Post [6/30/2025 5:00 AM, Marianne LeVine, Lauren Kaori Gurley, and Aaron Schaffer, 32099K] reports Trump administration officials have vowed to hold companies accountable for employing people who are in the country illegally — no matter which industry they are in or how big or small they might be. But the Department of Homeland Security’s enforcement operations have overwhelmingly focused on arresting workers rather than punishing employers. Since the start of the year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has posted news releases regarding approximately two dozen raids on the "Worksite Enforcement" section of its website. Local news outlets have documented dozens more. Washington Post was able to identify only one employer charged after the raids ICE has publicized. The Post reviewed court filings and searched for records involving individuals named in corporate records of businesses DHS has raided. Charging company owners for employing undocumented workers has historically been rare because the government needs to demonstrate that the employer knew of the worker’s illegal status. That is a high burden of proof, and investigations can take months. Neither Democratic nor Republican administrations have made worksite raids as much of a priority in the past. The Biden administration halted large-scale immigration arrests at worksites and focused enforcement on employers. The raids immigration officers are conducting have largely targeted small businesses such as car washes. Some are carried out in a span of minutes. Two business owners said officers did not show a warrant, even when asked for one, raising questions about whether immigration agents are violating constitutional rights in their effort to drive up migrant arrests. On June 22, Customs and Border Protection agents in masks, sunglasses, and bulletproof vests pulled up in unmarked cars at Bubble Bath Hand Car Wash in Torrance, California, chasing workers into a car wash tunnel marked with "employees & clients only" signs. Video shot by a bystander shows agents pushing one worker’s head into a gate. DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said he was trying to escape and was not injured. The car wash owner, Emmanuel Karim Nicola-Cruz, said his requests to see a warrant were repeatedly denied. Security video of the incident obtained by The Post shows an agent pushing him into the tunnel.

Reported similarly:
NewsMax [6/30/2025 9:50 AM, Charlie McCarthy, 4622K]

CBS Miami [6/30/2025 1:11 PM, Julia Ingram, 51860K] reports detentions of immigrants without criminal histories have risen sharply since May amid a broader push to expand immigration enforcement, according to a CBS News analysis of data from the Department of Homeland Security. White House adviser Stephen Miller announced a push for a new, higher target of 3,000 arrests daily in late May. From the first week of May to the first week of June, new ICE detentions of people facing only civil immigration charges, such as entering the country without authorization, rose by over 250%. President Trump has repeatedly said his administration is focusing deportation efforts on criminals. Until recently, federal agents working to enforce his orders have detained more immigrants with criminal convictions or pending criminal charges than those without them each week, the data shows. But even among those with criminal convictions — about 40% of detainees since Jan. 20 — the majority were not for violent offenses. Overall, roughly 8% of all detainees had been convicted of violent crimes, CBS News found. "What we’re doing is we’re really going after the criminal aliens, of which we have plenty to work with," Mr. Trump said at an event promoting his legislative package on Thursday. At a White House news conference with the president Friday, Attorney General Pam Bondi was asked about enforcement and said, "The violent criminals in our country are the priority now.” However, top White House officials, including "border czar" Tom Homan, have also said anyone who entered the country illegally could face removal. Homan told CBS News in May that while ICE would prioritize public safety and national security threats, "If you’re in the country illegally, you’re not off the table," adding, "It’s a violation of law to enter this country illegally.” More than 97,000 people have been detained over Mr. Trump’s first five months in office, CBS News’ analysis found, while ICE arrests, which do not always result in detentions, topped 100,000 earlier this month. A record 59,000 people were currently being held in ICE detention as of June 23 — nearly half of them with no criminal record, CBS News reported last week. California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom accused the administration of "indiscriminately targeting hardworking immigrant families, regardless of their roots or risk.” Some Republican elected officials have also expressed concern. Six GOP members of Congress wrote a letter to ICE acting director Todd Lyons requesting that ICE reveal how many convicted criminals have been deported since January.

CBS Baltimore [6/30/2025 3:20 PM, JT Moodee Lockman and Ashley Paul, 51860K] Video: HERE reports a Baltimore City courthouse employee could face criminal charges after allegedly alerting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) about a possible undocumented immigrant in the building. The person was detained by two ICE agents on Tuesday, June 24, inside the Clarence M. Mitchell, Jr. Courthouse, prompting a criminal investigation, according to Baltimore City Sheriff Sam Cogen. Sheriff Cogen told WJZ an unidentified employee with the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services took it upon themselves to call ICE about someone scheduled to come to their office. The sheriff believes that it falls out of line with their department duties. "This was sort of like a shocking incident," Cogen said. "We never thought that we would have an employee of another state agency calling for immigration enforcement.” Cogen says they are investigating whether criminal charges are appropriate. "They may have possessed confidential information that was shared that may be outside the scope of their duties," Cogen said. At this point, it’s unclear whether the employee who allegedly made the call to ICE is still working in the courthouse, or what happened to the person who was detained. Sheriff’s deputies took the agents to the floor where the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services holds pre-trial hearings, Cogen said. The hearings are held after a person is arrested to prepare a case before trial in court. The ICE agents then detained a person, the sheriff said. The person’s identity has not been confirmed, and the reason for the immigration arrest remains unclear.

Telemundo [6/30/2025 4:59 PM, Staff, 3352K] reports a 75-year-old Cuban man who lived in the United States for six decades died Thursday after spending three weeks in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in Florida, the agency said in a statement. Isidro Pérez, who arrived in the United States in 1966, was arrested on June 5 during a raid in Key Largo before being transferred to the Krome Detention Center in southwest Miami-Dade County, the agency added. Pérez is the tenth person to die in ICE custody this year; half of the deaths occurred in Florida: three at the Krome Detention Center, one at the Broward Transitional Center, and one at the federal detention center in downtown Miami, according to data reviewed by The Miami Herald. Although the man was discharged from hospital last Wednesday, he suffered chest pains the following afternoon and was taken to Florida Hospital Kendall, where he was pronounced dead shortly after 9:00 p.m. ET. ICE stated in its statement that Pérez had two federal convictions for possession of a controlled substance dating back to the early 1980s and had been detained because he was deemed ineligible to remain in the United States. The agency stated that the immigrant’s death is "under investigation." CBS Miami [6/30/2025 6:20 PM, John MacLauchlan, 51860K] Video: HERE reports Perez was paroled into the U.S. on April 1, 1966. In Feb. 1981 and Jan. 1984 he was convicted of possession of a controlled substance in the U.S. Court for the Southern District of Florida. On June 5, Perez was arrested in Key Largo and charged with "inadmissibility pursuant to the Immigration and Nationality Act," according to ICE. He was then sent to the Krome Detention Center in west Miami-Dade. While there, Perez was diagnosed with several medical issues. He was admitted to the Larkin Community Hospital on June 17 due to an unstable angina/esquimes changes on the EKG, according to ICE. He was discharged June 25 and taken back to the Krome Detention Center. The following day, he told the facility’s health staff that he was experiencing chest pains around 7 p.m. "Miami Dade Rescue arrived at KSPC and initiated life-sustaining interventions to include Automated External Defibrillator shock and cardiopulmonary resuscitation and he responded to revival methods. He was transported to Kendall Florida Hospital for further evaluation and treatment, but was pronounced deceased at 8:42 p.m. by medical staff," ICE said. Upon his death, ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations notified the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Office of Inspector General, and the ICE Office of Professional Responsibility. The Consulate of Cuba was also notified via telephone of his death. ICE is required to make public all reports regarding an in-custody death within 90 days, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Earlier this month, a Canadian man died at the Bureau of Prisons Federal Detention Center in Miami, according to ICE.

Reported similarly:
Telemundo51 [6/30/2025 1:45 PM, Staff, 177K]

FOX News [6/30/2025 4:32 PM, Julia Bonavita, 46878K] reports a beachgoer in the Sunshine State happened upon an unusual discovery while enjoying a day on the sand over the weekend. Twenty-five mysterious black packages — each with an image of famous cartoon character Yosemite Sam — washed ashore on a Florida Panhandle beach on Sunday, according to the Walton County Sheriff’s Office. The bricks contained a whopping $500,000 worth of cocaine, police said. Authorities subsequently confiscated the drugs and logged them into evidence. However, it’s not clear where the packages of drugs came from. The sheriff’s office subsequently contacted the Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) to take over the case, according to the department’s statement.

CBS Miami [6/30/2025 6:19 PM, Staff, 51860K] reports advocates gathered outside FIFA offices in Coral Gables on Monday to keep ICE enforcement away from any Club World Cup games. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Chicago Tribune [6/30/2025 6:00 AM, Sophie Levenson, 3987K] reports in the early morning light outside O’Hare International Airport, Cynthia Myers was dressed like a bride. Her long white dress seemed curiously out of place Friday on the curb outside Terminal 3, but Myers didn’t seem to notice; the man in the slightly loose black suit had her full attention. After three weeks in a Louisiana jail — because of an apparent error by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — Cheikh Fall had finally come home to his wife. On his overnight flights from Monroe, Louisiana, to Dallas and then Indianapolis, he wore the same suit he’d had on when immigration authorities wrongfully arrested him outside his asylum hearing in the Chicago Immigration Court on June 4. It took more than $12,000 and 23 sleepless nights, but Myers got her husband back. She knew he would be wearing the suit so she dressed up like his newlywed bride to celebrate the reunion she gleefully dubbed their "remarriage." Myers couldn’t stop laughing. She and her children have become one of the thousands of families in the United States affected by the Trump administration’s intensified deportation efforts. Immigration experts said that procedural errors from ICE are not uncommon, but the sheer volume of recent arrests has amplified them. In March, the U.S. charged 4,550 defendants with criminal immigration charges, the immigration data center known as TRAC reported, indicating a 36.6% increase from February. And while incidents of errors are increasing, the opportunity to catch them is becoming more limited, experts said.

NewsNation [6/30/2025 8:15 AM, Angelique Brenes, 5801K] reports a mother walking with her children in Pasadena was taken into custody by immigration agents over the weekend in an incident that was partially captured on video and has drawn sharp criticism from witnesses. Rosalina Luna Vargas, a mother of two and the primary breadwinner for her family, was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers on Saturday morning around 8 a.m., according to bystanders. Her children were present at the time of the incident, which took place in broad daylight in the corner of Catalina and Del Mar. The encounter was recorded by Jillian Reed, a Caltech alum and local resident, who was driving by when she noticed a commotion on the sidewalk. In the footage she captured, three individuals in plain clothes—two of whom were masked and wore badges on lanyards—can be seen attempting to force Vargas into an unmarked Honda Accord. A third man, appearing younger and without any visible identification, also participated. "I saw the commotion while driving, and when I slowed down, the kids shouted for help," Reed said. "They kept asking for a warrant. They told the officers they would stop resisting if they just showed them a warrant. One of the men said he had one but didn’t show it." The video cuts off just as Vargas’s daughter pleads with Reed to call the police. According to Reed, she did call 911, reporting what she believed at the time to be a possible kidnapping.

The Hill [6/30/2025 2:01 PM, Will Conybeare, 18649K] reports that more Southern California communities have canceled or postponed their 4th of July celebrations due to federal immigration raids occurring across the region. Among the most prominent canceled events is the Gloria Molina Grand Park’s Summer Block Party, originally scheduled for July 4. According to the event’s website, the postponement comes "in light of recent events affecting a portion of Downtown Los Angeles and the ongoing circumstances impacting the region." No official rescheduled date was announced; the website only stated that the Summer Block Party will be held "later in the summer." In Cudahy – a city where 97% of the population identifies as Hispanic – the celebration originally set for July 3 has been postponed, officials announced. Parks will remain open, and regular programming is set to continue as scheduled. The community of Bell Gardens, which borders Cudahy, has canceled a concert and two outdoor movie showings, including one that was scheduled for this past Saturday and another planned for July 3. City officials said the cancellations were out of "an abundance of caution regarding concerns for resident safety over federal immigration enforcement activities." Another nearby community, Huntington Park, has also canceled its Independence Day celebration that was supposed to be held on July 3. No reason for the cancellation was given.

Reported similarly:
SFGate [6/30/2025 11:00 AM, Farley Elliott, 11859K]

Reuters [6/30/2025 3:51 PM, Tim Reid, Sebastian Rocandio, Pilar Olivares, and Leah Douglas, 51390K] reports Lisa Tate is a sixth-generation farmer in Ventura County, California, an area that produces billions of dollars worth of fruit and vegetables each year, much of it hand-picked by immigrants in the U.S. illegally. Tate knows the farms around her well. And she says she can see with her own eyes how raids carried out by agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the area’s fields earlier this month, part of President Donald Trump’s migration crackdown, have frightened off workers. "In the fields, I would say 70% of the workers are gone," she said in an interview. "If 70% of your workforce doesn’t show up, 70% of your crop doesn’t get picked and can go bad in one day. Most Americans don’t want to do this work. Most farmers here are barely breaking even. I fear this has created a tipping point where many will go bust." In the vast agricultural lands north of Los Angeles, stretching from Ventura County into the state’s central valley, two farmers, two field supervisors and four immigrant farmworkers told Reuters this month that the ICE raids have led a majority of workers to stop showing up. That means crops are not being picked and fruit and vegetables are rotting at peak harvest time, they said. One Mexican farm supervisor, who asked not to be named, was overseeing a field being prepared for planting strawberries last week. Usually he would have 300 workers, he said. On this day he had just 80. Another supervisor at a different farm said he usually has 80 workers in a field, but today just 17. Most economists and politicians acknowledge that many of America’s agricultural workers are in the country illegally, but say a sharp reduction in their numbers could have devastating impacts on the food supply chain and farm-belt economies. Trump has always stood up for farmers, said White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly in response to a request for comment on the impact of the ICE raids to farms. "He will continue to strengthen our agricultural industry and boost exports while keeping his promise to enforce our immigration laws," she said.

SFGate [6/30/2025 7:00 AM, Andrew Pridgen, 11859K] reports in the early days of legalized weed production in California, Santa Barbara County led the charge with a nascent but robust cannabis growing industry — a new feather in the cap of one of California’s agricultural epicenters. But in recent years, like many other places in California where the cannabis business has taken a turn, the boom times have given way to bust. Now, Santa Barbara County officials are looking for ways to shift spending in response to swiftly declining cannabis tax revenues. And one of the first things on the chopping block is the funds allocated to law enforcement. And, in a twist, a big chunk of remaining cannabis tax funds has been redirected away from law enforcement and to a local nonprofit group that helps families cope with fallout from Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and deportations. Earlier this month, Santa Barbara County supervisors reassigned the five county officers away from the cannabis enforcement program, essentially disbanding the dedicated enforcement team. "Since cannabis tax revenues are projected to be down substantially for the coming fiscal year, the Board of Supervisors made the decision to significantly reduce our funding for cannabis enforcement," Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown wrote in a statement to SFGATE on Wednesday. "We have redistributed and restructured our remaining cannabis tax-funded resources in such a way that we can leverage them with other existing assets." Brown’s assessment of the revenue shrinking from cannabis sales is accurate. In 2020-21, cannabis tax revenues in the county reached an apex of $15.7 million. But by 2024-25, they dipped to nearly a third of that, to $5.4 million in tax revenue, with no clear sign of a rebound here anytime soon. The decline in Santa Barbara County mirrors the entire state’s cannabis industry, which hit a grim milestone earlier this year: more than 10,800 pot licenses are now inactive or surrendered, in contrast to just over 8,500 active ones. Dead pot licenses now outnumber active ones.

USA Today [6/30/2025 11:13 AM, Victoria Valenzuela, 75552K] reports the clanging of pots and pans. The steady thud of beating drums. The honking of passing cars with waving flags sticking out the window. Bands playing traditional Mexican songs. Speakers shouting into megaphones. Chants coming from dozens of people. All unfolding into the middle of the night outside the Home2 Suites by Hilton in Montebello, California in late June. The goal of this latest protest? Make as much noise as possible to try and keep U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers from sleeping and force them elsewhere. "They were just making noise, playing music, and some people were dancing," said Verita Topete, a leader of the immigration committee with Centro CSO, who took part in the protest. "A lot of people were holding signs saying, ‘ICE is not welcome here.’" The protests were part of a nightly "No Sleep for ICE" campaign in and around Los Angeles County, where protestors gather outside the hotels ICE agents are staying at and make noise to put pressure on the hotel staff to kick ICE out and prevent agents from sleeping.

FOX News [6/30/2025 1:03 PM, Cameron Arcand, 46878K] reports that the Trump administration is working on a way to allow farmers and the hospitality industry to have a "temporary pass" to avoid a negative impact from Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations, he said on "Sunday Morning Futures." "I don’t back away. What I do have, I cherish our farmers," the president said when asked by host Maria Bartiromo about the issue. "And when we go into a farm and we take away people that have been working there for 15 and 20 years, who were good, who possibly came in incorrectly. And what we’re going to do is we’re going to do something for farmers where we can let the farmer sort of be in charge. The farmer knows he’s not going to hire a murderer." "But you know, when you go into a farm and you set somebody working with them for nine years doing this kind of work, which is hard work to do and a lot of people aren’t going to do it, and you end up destroying a farmer because you took all the people away," he said. "It’s a problem. You know, I’m on both sides of the thing. I’m the strongest immigration guy that there’s ever been, but I’m also the strongest farmer guy that there’s ever been, and that includes also hotels and, you know, places where people work, a certain group of people work," the president added. "We’re working on it right now. We’re going to work it so that, some kind of a temporary pass, where people pay taxes, where the farmer can have a little control as opposed to you walk in and take everybody away," he continued, emphasizing that "criminals are going out of this country."

Bloomberg [6/30/2025 9:55 AM, Lydia Wheeler Senior, 1707K] reports that the US Supreme Court agreed to consider how much deference courts should give the federal government when reviewing decisions to deny a refugee asylum. In an order on Monday, the court accepted an appeal from a Salvadoran family that was denied asylum after arguing they’d face persecution if deported to their home country. Douglas Humberto Urias-Orellana claimed he and his family would be killed by a hitman if they returned to El Salvador, but the Board of Immigration Appeals dismissed the appeal. It said Urias-Orellana hadn’t shown he would be unable to avoid future persecution by relocating within El Salvador. The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed that decision, saying there was substantial evidence for the agency’s findings. Though the Trump administration argued the ruling was right, Solicitor General John Sauer urged the court to take the case. He noted a circuit split over what standard of review should be applied to determinations of past or future persecution. The case is Urias-Orellana v. Bondi, U.S., No. 24-777, cert. granted 6/30/25.

Bloomberg Law News [6/30/2025 11:12 AM, Andrew Kreighbaum, 88K] reports the Department of Homeland Security is renewing a previous Trump administration bid to restrict the duration of student and exchange visitor visa programs. US Citizenship and Immigration Services, the DHS subagency that administers temporary visa programs, sent a proposed rule to the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs for review, the step before its released. F-1 student and J-1 exchange visitor visa holders are allowed to stay in the US for the duration of their academic programs. A proposed rule to restrict “duration of status” for visa holders was released by the first Trump administration in 2020 but never took effect. That rule would have limited F-1 student and J-1 exchange visitors to fixed periods of two or four years before recipients must apply to renew the visa. The rule being reviewed by the White House shares the same title as the 2020 rule. The proposal was opposed by higher education groups, who said it would cause needless disruption to academic programs. It was later withdrawn by the Biden administration in 2021.

NPR [6/30/2025 5:00 AM, Jaclyn Diaz and Juliana Kim, 37958K] reports the Justice Department is aggressively prioritizing efforts to strip some Americans of their U.S. citizenship. Department leadership is directing its attorneys to prioritize denaturalization in cases involving naturalized citizens who commit certain crimes — and giving district attorneys wider discretion on when to pursue this tactic, according to a June 11 memo published online. The move is aimed at U.S. citizens who were not born in the country; according to data from 2023, close to 25 million immigrants were naturalized citizens. At least one person has already been denaturalized in recent weeks. On June 13, a judge ordered the revocation of the citizenship of Elliott Duke, who uses they/them pronouns. Duke is an American military veteran originally from the U.K. who was convicted for distributing child sexual abuse material — something they later admitted they were doing prior to becoming a U.S. citizen. Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate wrote in the memo that pursuing denaturalization will be among the agency’s top five enforcement priorities for the civil rights division. The focus on denaturalization is just the latest step by the Trump administration to reshape the nation’s immigration system across all levels of government, turning it into a major focus across multiple federal agencies. That has come with redefining who is let into the United States or has the right to be an American. Since his return to office, the president has sought to end birthright citizenship and scale back refugee programs. But immigration law experts expressed serious concerns about the effort’s constitutionality, and how this could impact families of naturalized citizens.

Reported similarly:
Telemundo [6/30/2025 2:52 PM, Staff, 3352K]

NPR [6/30/2025 7:30 AM, Brittney Melton, 37958K] reports for the first time ever, the Trump administration has created a searchable national citizenship data system. The system is designed to assist state and local election officials in verifying that only citizens are voting. This is being done through the Department of Homeland Security in partnership with the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency, utilizing data from the Social Security Administration and immigration databases. Some officials have expressed concerns about what else this information could be used for.

Bloomberg [6/30/2025 3:39 PM, Staff, 19320K] Video: HERE reports tech companies are the biggest employers of H-1B visa holders in the US. Erickson Immigration Group Partner Hiba Anver discusses how the US Supreme Court’s recent ruling related to birthright citizenship could impact those workers and the wider industry.

CNN [6/30/2025 2:46 PM, Jennifer Hansler and Billy Stockwell, 21433K] reports members of the British rap punk duo Bob Vylan had their visas revoked by the United States and are under investigation by local police after leading a crowd to chant "death" to Israel’s military at a UK music festival this past weekend. On Monday, US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said that the State Department "has revoked the US visas for the members of the Bob Vylan band in light of their hateful tirade at Glastonbury, including leading the crowd in death chants.” He added on X that "foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country.” The group was slated to go on a US tour beginning in late October, according to a post on Instagram. The US State Department has instituted an aggressive visa restriction and revocation policy for alleged support of terrorism and anti-Semitism. Rapper Bobby Vylan took to Glastonbury Festival’s third-biggest West Holts Stage on Saturday, shouting "Free, free Palestine," before leading crowds to chants against the Israeli military. Video showed the rapper shouting into the mic, "Alright, but have you heard this one though? Death, death to the IDF (Israel Defense Forces).” The artist also performed in front of a screen that displayed a message which read: "United Nations have called it a genocide. The BBC calls it a ‘conflict,’" referring to the UK’s public broadcaster that showed the festival live. In a Sunday Instagram post captioned "I said what I said," Bobby Vylan said he had received "messages of both support and hatred" following the performance. "Teaching our children to speak up for the change they want and need is the only way that we make this world a better place," the post read. "As we grow older and our fire possibly starts to dim under the suffocation of adult life and all its responsibilities, it is incredibly important that we inspire future generations to pick up the torch that was passed to us.” Bob Vylan’s chants at the festival have also prompted outcry among top British officials, and British police are reviewing video footage of their set. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that "there is no excuse for this kind of appalling hate speech.” The Israeli Embassy in the UK said it was "deeply disturbed" by what it called "inflammatory and hateful" rhetoric at the festival. On Monday, the BBC admitted that "with hindsight" Vylan’s performance should have been pulled from air during the performance, saying that the corporation "respects freedom of expression but stands firmly against incitement to violence.” "The antisemitic sentiments expressed by Bob Vylan were utterly unacceptable and have no place on our airwaves," it added.

Reported similarly:
Reuters [6/30/2025 3:16 PM, Staff, 51390K]
NBC News [6/30/2025 5:41 PM, David K. Li and Abigail Williams, 44540K]
Free Beacon [6/30/2025 1:00 PM, Adam Kredo, 773K]

Federalist [6/30/2025 11:28 AM, Ben Weingarten, 1142K] reports following a years-long surge in illegal immigration, the Trump administration is poised to challenge a longstanding but legally fraught practice: counting illegal aliens in the U.S. census. President Trump tried to end the practice during his first term, but President Biden overturned his predecessor’s policy before it was implemented. Now, buoyed by red state attorneys general and Republican legislators, the second Trump administration is determined "to clean up the census and make sure that illegal aliens are not counted," White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller said last month. What Miller didn’t mention are the political implications of the administration’s move. It could have significant political implications because the census count is used to apportion House seats, determine the number of votes each state gets in the Electoral College for selecting the president, and drive the flow of trillions of dollars in government funds. Some immigration researchers project that including noncitizens in the census count disproportionately benefits Democratic states with large illegal alien populations. A recent study counters that, based on 2020 census figures, there would have been a negligible shift to the political map had the U.S. government excluded noncitizens from that count. But looking backward, those researchers found, red states would have benefited under the administration’s desired census counting shift. Had authorities excluded such migrants from the 2010 census, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Ohio, and North Carolina all would have gained one seat in the House, while California would have lost three seats, and Texas and Florida would have each lost one seat — with the total number of Electoral College votes allotted each state changing accordingly.

CBS Miami [6/30/2025 8:05 AM, Staff, 51860K] reports Janet Shamlian reports the foreign-trained doctors, matched with U.S. hospitals, now face uncertainty and that could put a staffing strain on medical centers across the country. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

NBC News [6/30/2025 5:49 PM, Curtis Bunn and Erika Angulo, 44540K] reports people living and working in Haiti are questioning the Trump administration’s reasoning that it is safe enough for Haitians temporarily living in the U.S. to return to their embattled country of origin. The Department of Homeland Security announced Friday that it will end Temporary Protective Status (TPS) for Haitian people living in the United States legally. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s announcement was the latest effort by President Donald Trump and his administration to accelerate deportations for Haitian immigrants living in the country. Its abrupt end means deportation for immigrants of 17 other countries, too, including Sudan, Lebanon and Afghanistan. Haitians are expected to leave by September 2.

Miami Herald [6/30/2025 5:53 PM, Johnny Fils-Aimé, 3805K] reports as it turns out, the Trump administration isn’t revoking revoking Temporary Protected Status for Haitians because "it is safe for Haitian citizens to return home," as a spokesperson said Friday. It’s quite the opposite: The U.S. wants to send hundreds of thousands of people back to the Caribbean country exactly because the situation there has deteriorated so much. Sound contradictory? Hold on. In President Trump’s world, this makes sense — the only way he can justify deporting about half-million people back to a country where Haitians are being slaughtered in the streets and in churches is by treating them as a threat to the U.S. In documents to be published in the Federal Registry Tuesday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wrote that allowing Haitian TPS holders to remain in the country is "contrary to National Interest." She highlighted "widespread gang violence" happening in the country as one of the reasons for rescinding temporary deportation protections, the Herald reported. Gangs control 90% of the capital of Port-au-Prince. Weirdly, Noem quoted Amnesty International in her report, writing that "‘Haiti is in the grip of severe humanitarian and human rights crisis. Armed gangs are striking the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area and its surroundings with terror and violence, including rape and other forms of sexual violence.’". In fact, the acute situation described above is the reason that the Biden administration expanded the TPS designation for Haitians following the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021. But Noem argues that the widespread violence and the "lack of functional government authority" make it hard for the U.S. to properly vet migrants at the border because "Haiti lacks a functioning central authority capable of maintaining or sharing such critical information." She added: "Haitian gang members have already been identified among those who have entered the United States.” Noem has made a similar argument for terminating TPS for 350,000 Venezuelans because she said some of them belong to the notorious Tren de Aragua gang.

Washington Examiner [6/30/2025 6:00 AM, Anna Giaritelli, 1934K] reports President Donald Trump faces a major obstacle in keeping the southern border secure through his second term and into the next decade. U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the federal agency responsible for guarding the country’s borders, faces a possible staffing shortage in the lead-up to Trump’s departure from office in 2029, one that could affect the security at the border and Trump’s legacy on a keystone campaign promise. CBP anticipates a sharp uptick in retirements among employees who joined in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green (R-TN) warned that the problem is not to be underestimated. "Many of the Border Patrol agents and Customs and Border Protection officers who joined the department in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks are reaching a mandated retirement age," Green said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. "This could cripple our border security mission if not addressed swiftly." A report published by the Government Accountability Office in Washington concluded that beginning in late 2026, "significant increases" in retirements in CBP law enforcement positions "could have significant effects" on the agency’s ability to meet its national security mission. The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents CBP’s customs officers who staff air, land, and sea ports of entry, has warned of a "catastrophic breakdown in port operations if thousands of officers retire without anyone to replace them." CBP is working to address the tsunami of employee retirements across its components, but whether CBP can hire and retain employees to make up for the losses will depend to some extent on what Congress is willing to fund.

Reported similarly:
NewsMax [6/30/2025 1:57 PM, Theodore Bunker, 4622K]

Federal News Network [6/30/2025 5:36 PM, Anastasia Obis, 2346K] reports the Defense Department is asking for $5 billion in its fiscal 2026 budget request to fund southern border operations. Defense officials say this money would backfill funding redirected from current military accounts to support the Pentagon’s expanding role at the border. The Pentagon recently pulled more than $4 billion from permanent change of station costs, service members’ pay and benefits and infrastructure repairs to fund the southern border mission. Defense officials told reporters last week they are relying on the reconciliation bill currently being debated in Congress to fund this priority due to the "flexibilities and longer availability of that money." This year’s budget rollout marked a notable departure from past practices.

Telemundo 48 El Paso [6/30/2025 2:09 PM, Claudia Moreno, 9K] reports U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers seized a total of 127.3 pounds of methamphetamine in two operations at border crossings in the El Paso area over the weekend. The most recent seizure occurred on June 29 at the Puente de las Américas international crossing, when a 49-year-old U.S. citizen driving a 2006 Honda Ridgeline attempted to enter from Mexico. During the primary inspection, a CBP officer detected irregularities using a low-energy scanner, which prompted a secondary search. A narcotics-detection dog alerted to the presence of drugs, and an X-ray scan confirmed anomalies in the vehicle’s quarter panels. Officers found 40 concealed packages, which tested positive for methamphetamine, with a total weight of 47.8 pounds. The woman was arrested and handed over to Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents to face federal charges for importing controlled substances. On June 28, at the Ysleta International Crossing, a 30-year-old Mexican woman driving a Chrysler Pacifica was also detained following a secondary inspection. A scan revealed abnormalities in the vehicle, and a sniffing dog confirmed the presence of narcotics. During the physical search, officers located a hidden compartment in the front bumper, from which they removed 19 packages of methamphetamine, weighing a total of 79.5 pounds. The driver was arrested and turned over to the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) to face state charges related to the failed smuggling attempt.

Telemundo 48 El Paso [6/30/2025 3:14 PM, Claudia Moreno, 9K] reports Gabriel Villa, 18, of Ciudad Juárez, has been identified as the suspect in an intense chase that occurred Monday morning in residential areas of West El Paso. The pursuit involved ground units and a helicopter, which followed the vehicle through several streets until they managed to intercept it. The operation culminated in the western area, where the occupants attempted to flee on foot. During the chase, Villa committed multiple traffic violations while fleeing from officers. He eventually entered the parking lot of a Walmart near Resler Street, where he abandoned the vehicle on Quail Cove Court and attempted to flee on foot. He was apprehended moments later in the backyard of a nearby home. There were eight passengers inside the vehicle, who were handed over to the U.S. Border Patrol. Villa was taken into custody by the DPS Criminal Investigation Division and could face charges of evading arrest and other related violations. So far, no injuries have been reported, and no further details have been released regarding the passengers’ immigration status.

NBC News [6/30/2025 6:46 PM, Dennis Romero, 44540K] reports that a Los Angeles man who was in a law enforcement-like vehicle and detained said he’s being used as a "scapegoat" amid fears over immigration enforcement. On Friday afternoon, the mayor and police chief of Huntington Park, California, said police who came across a gray Dodge Durango on Tuesday night initially believed it may have been a federal law enforcement vehicle because inside were red-and-blue police-style visor lights and multiple handheld radios of the type used by law enforcement. The officers took a closer look and discovered the vehicle had a magazine for a gun in plain sight, Huntington Park Police Chief Cosme Lozano said at Friday afternoon’s news conference. Fernando Diaz, 23, was initially arrested based on a bench warrant for an alleged drunk driving incident from May 11, but he was ultimately booked that night and accused of carrying and concealing a firearm in his vehicle, according to court records. In a statement Saturday, the city said what appeared to be federal immigration documents, as well as personal records of unknown people, were also in the vehicle. "This evidence is in addition to statements made by Mr. Diaz himself, claiming to be a former employee of Customs and Border Protection," it said. Diaz has not been charged with impersonating a federal agent, but the city said in a statement that its police department sent a case to the district attorney for possible charges. In an interview, he said he’s never claimed to be a federal agent and is instead being punished for the bad actions of others.

ABC News [6/30/2025 5:40 PM, Doc Louallen, 31733K] reports air travel is surging to new highs, and the Transportation Security Administration has added two more record-breaking days to the history books amid a summer of staggering passenger volumes. Just last week, as millions of Americans took to the skies, June 27 and June 29 now rank as the seventh and eighth busiest days respectively in TSA history, pushing 2025 to claim six of the agency’s top 10 busiest days on record. The surge shows no signs of slowing down. TSA expects to screen 18.5 million travelers during the upcoming Fourth of July holiday period, which officially starts Tuesday. Sunday, July 6, is projected to be the busiest day as an estimated 2.9 million passengers pass through security checkpoints. This record-breaking trend began earlier this month when TSA screened nearly 3.1 million travelers on Sunday, June 22, marking the single busiest day in the agency’s history.

FOX News [6/30/2025 5:30 PM, Preston Mizell, 46878K] reports the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced changes to the airport security process that will begin to take effect at some airports on Tuesday, including a new security lane for active-duty service members and TSA Precheck discounts for the uniformed services’ community. The additional security lane will be implemented at airports located close to military installations, including San Antonio, Texas; Anchorage, Alaska; Atlanta; Austin, Texas; Colorado Springs, Colorado; El Paso, Texas; Fayetteville, North Carolina; Nashville, Tennessee; San Diego, California; and Seattle. Gold Star Families, those who have lost a family member in the line of duty, will have their TSA PreCheck enrollment fee waived. The waiver includes PreCheck through providers CLEAR, IDEMIA and Telos. Additionally, active-duty Department of Defense (DOD) service members will get $25 off the TSA Precheck fee.

New York Post [6/30/2025 12:53 PM, Asia Grace, 49956K] reports that it’s the ire of flyers who profusely perspire. Nearly no one enjoys getting stopped by Transportation Security Administration (TSA) authorities at the airport. But when checkpoint alarm bells begin blaring around a traveler’s groin, as happened to one befuddled passenger not long ago, there is a chance it’s due to extreme wetness in their pants, insiders say. The wet wanderluster described herself as a "midsized adult woman (169 lbs, 5-foot-8)," wearing bike shorts and normal underwear. Internet know-it-alls say it’s crotch sweat — and they’re likely right. It’s a bodily function that can wrongfully trigger red flags, per TSA expert Shawna Malvini Redden. "Perspiration is probably the weirdest thing that can set off the scanners," Malvini Redden recently explained to Reader’s Digest. "It has to do with millimeter wave technology and how the waves bounce off water.” The insider added that because the machines often generate false alarms set off due to sweat, some countries, including France and Germany, have banned the scanners all together. But massive moisture isn’t the only reason the TSA technology might mistake one’s undercarriage for a dangerous weapon. It’s been alleged that frequent flyers boasting larger features, such as a bootylicious behind, can expect to be stopped and searched before getting the green light to board a plane. "On-person screening technology effectively screens diverse populations of travelers every day," Representatives for TSA previously told The Post, adding that their devices and screening algorithms are trained to recognize body composition. Any unexpected abnormalities, including excess sweat, could potentially prompt an alert, they said.

AP [6/30/2025 12:51 PM, Alexa St. John, 56000K] reports that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Monday it is delaying by one month the planned cutoff of satellite data that helps forecasters track hurricanes. Meteorologists and scientists warned of severe consequences last week when NOAA said, in the midst of this year’s hurricane season, that it would almost immediately discontinue key data collected by three weather satellites that the agency jointly runs with the Defense Department. The Defense Meteorological Satellite Program’s microwave data gives key information that can’t be gleaned from conventional satellites. That includes three-dimensional details of a storm, what’s going on inside of it and what it is doing in the overnight hours, experts say. The data was initially planned to be cut off on June 30 “to mitigate a significant cybersecurity risk,” NOAA’s announcement said. The agency now says it’s postponing that until July 31. Peak hurricane season is usually from mid-August to mid-October. NOAA didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking more details about the reason for the delay. The Navy confirmed the new date and said only that the “program no longer meets our information technology modernization requirements.” NOAA — which has been the subject of hefty Department of Government Efficiency cuts this year — said Friday the satellite program accounts for a “single dataset in a robust suite of hurricane forecasting and modeling tools” in the National Weather Service’s portfolio.

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New York Times [6/30/2025 1:46 PM, Rebecca Dzombak and Sachi Kitajima Mulkey, 138952K]
CBS News [6/30/2025 3:15 PM, Emily Mae Czachor, 51860K]
CNN [6/30/2025 7:33 AM, Andrew Freedman, 21433K]

Politico [6/30/2025 10:00 AM, Thomas Frank, 2100K] reports his house has been condemned for nearly two years, since the flood. The front yard where he played Wiffle ball as a kid is a wildland of weeds, caked mud and an overturned red pickup truck that the floodwaters carried 50 yards. Since President Donald Trump canceled a popular disaster grant program in April, Dave Kozlansky is losing hope that the city will buy his property, demolish the home and leave the land empty to absorb floodwater from an adjacent creek. “Everything was in motion. Then I got a call from the city saying they nixed the program and applications were going to be shut down,” said Kozlansky, a local fishing guide, as he walked through the overgrowth in work pants and sneakers. Hundreds of communities, including this old industrial city, are struggling after Trump’s cancellation of $4.5 billion for local projects that are designed to protect neighborhoods from flooding, hurricanes and other disasters. The money would have come from a program, called Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, that Trump’s first administration had created in 2018. Local officials, emergency managers and dozens of members of Congress including Republicans condemned Trump’s April 4 decision. The cancellations have affected states and communities led by Democrats and Republicans at a time when damage is climbing from events driven by rising temperatures and expanding real estate development. But as it becomes apparent that the grants are gone for good, communities are forced to decide between several options, all of them bad. “There are no alternative funding sources,” said Adam Emrick, city administrator of Conway, South Carolina, which lost a $2.2 million federal grant to create a stormwater retention area and now needs money for construction. “The risk to our residents of flash flooding remains.”

USA Today [6/30/2025 4:31 PM, Cybele Mayes-Osterman, 75552K] reports the Defense Department is cutting off weather forecasters from data gathered by its special satellites that can "see" through the clouds, a move experts say could deprive hurricane researchers of key information as hurricane season kicks into gear. "It’s just going to make researchers have to work even harder to get to the results," said Jill Trepanier, a hurricane climatologist and chair of Louisiana State University’s department of geography and anthropology. The "permanent" cutoff puts a stop to the distribution of all data collected by three military-run satellites, according to a notice release June 25 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. The Pentagon first announced that data cutoff would take effect June 30 but later pushed the date back to July 31. The satellites are equipped with unique tools to peer beneath cloud cover and capture microwave images that forecasters can’t get anywhere else. Their infrared sensors capture images over an area of 1,600 nautical miles, beaming down information twice every day. Launched between 2003 and 2009, the satellites orbit Earth every 101 minutes at an altitude of about 515 miles, according to NASA. They track weather patterns over remote areas, including "fog, severe thunderstorms, dust and sandstorms, and tropical cyclones," according to the Space Force. The Navy confirmed the data cutoff, adding that the satellite program was already "scheduled for discontinuation in September 2026.” The Space Force referred questions to the Navy, which it said was responsible for the change. Even as the Navy "is making a change on their end, the posture on sharing DMSP (Defense Meteorological Satellite Program) data has not changed," the Space Force said in a statement. The satellites and instruments "are still functional," and Defense Department users "will continue to receive and operationally use" data from them. Hurricane experts have already raised alarms about the impact the Trump administration’s slashing of science budgets could have on hurricane research. As tropical areas brace for storms, the satellite data cutoff could exacerbate the problem, they say. Hurricane season begins in June and ends on the last day of November. "We’re back to tracking hurricanes like it’s 1999. Except this isn’t a party. And people could die," John Morales, a three-decade TV meteorologist specializing in hurricanes, wrote in an NBC op-ed. The military satellites "provide critical information that regular weather satellites can’t," he wrote. The change will "severely impede and degrade hurricane forecasts for this season and beyond, affecting tens of millions of Americans who live along its hurricane-prone shorelines," Michael Lowry, a hurricane specialist and storm surge expert, wrote in a Substack article. The three military-run satellites provide roughly half of microwave satellite scans to forecasters, Lowry wrote.

Houston Chronicle [6/30/2025 12:17 PM, Roberto Villalpando, 1982K] reports Tropical Storm Barry, the second named storm during the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season but the first to form in the Gulf of Mexico, dissipated in the mountains of northeastern Mexico early Monday. National Hurricane Center forecasters, though, are already on alert for more tropical cyclone activity as storms bubble up in Florida. Barry broke up around 4 a.m. Monday about 100 miles northwest of Tampico, a city on Mexico’s eastern coast, near where the storm had made landfall about six hours earlier. The remnants of Barry were not expected to affect Houston or Southeast Texas. Meanwhile, the National Hurricane Center on Monday was watching out for more tropical cyclone development on the opposite side of the Gulf of Mexico around the Florida Peninsula. Late this week, a cold front approaching the Florida Panhandle from the northwest is expected to stall out and weaken off the southeast coast of the United States. "An area of low (atmospheric) pressure could develop from the weakening front by the weekend off the southeast U.S., over Florida, or over the eastern Gulf," hurricane center forecasters said in a bulletin Monday. "Some gradual tropical or subtropical development could occur thereafter as the low moves little.”

Telemundo52 [7/1/2025 12:25 AM, Helen Jeong, 103K] reports firefighters made progress Monday in battling the Wolf Fire, which broke out near Banning Sunday afternoon. The Wolf Fire scorched more than 2,400 acres after reporting after 3 p. m. Sunday on Old Banning, Idyllwild Road and Wolfskill Truck Trail. While numerous firefighting air tankers across the state are conducting suppression missions, the wildfire was 30 percent contained Monday afternoon. Despite the progress, Cal Fire extended evacuation alerts to additional neighborhoods. See map for alerts and evacuation orders here. As more than 12 fire zones in the area were still under evacuation orders, an evacuation center was set up at Hemet High School on Stetson Avenue. Sheltering is available for evacuated animals at the San Jacinto Valley campus of Riverside County Animal Services on Grand Avenue. According to the Riverside County Fire Department, 70 air tankers, four helicopters, three air tankers, two bulldozers, six fire crews and approximately 300 personnel were assigned to the fire. The cause of the fire is under investigation. Riverside County is also battling two other fires: the Juniper Fire near Perris and the Mindy Fire in Aguanga. The Juniper Fire burned nearly 700 acres with 30% containment, while the Mindy Fire was 70% contained after burning about 100 acres. The Mandalay Fire, which broke out on Saturday, was 100% contained after burning 83 acres.

Los Angeles Times [6/30/2025 8:55 PM, Grace Toohey, 14672K] reports wildfire season in Southern California got off to an ominous start this weekend, with several fires sparking across Riverside and San Bernardino counties’ parched landscapes, elevating concerns that conditions are ripe for a fiery year across the Golden State. Experts have been warning that the Southland’s below-average rainy season is likely to set the stage for a particularly bad stretch of fires this summer and fall — and the recent spate of blazes appears to be a sign of what’s to come. "We are on track for a pretty devastating year overall," said Matt Rahn, the director of the Wildfire Conservancy, a nonprofit that works to improve firefighting and community resilience. "If we get hotter and drier throughout the state, then that risk increases significantly. We’re hoping that that doesn’t happen, but all predictions are pointing to a much hotter, drier summer and fall.” This week, temperatures in the Southland are expected to begin to cool slightly after several days with highs in the 90s and triple digits across the interior, but heat will remain intense across the state. In the Central Valley, highs are expected to remain near or in the triple digits, while a chance for thunderstorms in parts of Northern California could compound fire concerns. Though temperatures on Monday and this weekend spiked across much of inland Southern California, there was not an increased wind threat or particularly low humidity — elements that create heightened fire weather. Still, vegetation in the area was already so parched that fires were able to take off in several spots in the Inland Empire and San Bernardino mountains, forcing large-scale evacuations and cementing concerns that this wildfire season could be particularly bad. "Just because things have been so dry and we haven’t had that meaningful rainfall that we need, that’s why we’re starting to see fires about to break out," said Sam Zuber, a National Weather Service meteorologist in San Diego. "Things are just really dry out there.” On Monday, firefighters in Riverside County responded to the fourth new, large fire in just two days, trying to contain the flames that broke out just before noon near Perris. The Juniper fire was initially reported at 30 acres, but quickly grew to 175 acres, "burning at a critical rate of speed," according to updates from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Officials ordered several areas to evacuate and closed a two-mile stretch of Santa Rosa Mine Road between Juniper and Post roads. About 25 miles northeast, firefighters continued battling the Wolf fire near Banning, where hundreds had been ordered to leave their homes for safety and many more were under evacuation warnings.

CBS News [6/30/2025 10:33 PM, Joe Walsh, Eleanor Watson, 51860K] reports a military commander has discussed shifting some California National Guard troops away from the Trump administration’s weekslong deployment to deal with protests in Los Angeles so they can help fight wildfires, two U.S. officials told CBS News. Gen. Gregory Guillot, the leader of U.S. Northern Command, made the request to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, proposing that 200 out of roughly 4,000 California National Guard members be moved from Los Angeles to wildfire duty elsewhere in California. The request to shift some troops to wildfire duty was first reported by The Associated Press. The purpose of the possible move is to help prepare for wildfire season, one U.S. official said. The other official said they could be placed on standby to respond to wildfires. Wildfires can happen at any time of year in California, but they usually peak in the summer and fall. The state expects an "early and active season" this year, with above-average activity in July and August, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire. The Los Angeles deployment has been controversial and subject to legal challenges. President Trump called up around 4,000 Guard members — and deployed around 700 Marines — over California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s objections, moves Mr. Trump argued were necessary to protect federal buildings and immigration agents from chaotic protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Newsom argued the deployment was illegal and unnecessary. When Mr. Trump initially called up the California National Guard to deal with protests, the state had warned the move could interfere with its wildfire response. Guard forces often work alongside Cal Fire crews — and as wildfires become more frequent and severe, state officials have said more resources are needed. Newsom’s office said last week the Guard’s firefighting force was only at 40% capacity due to the Los Angeles deployment. "This deployment comes when California is in the midst of peak wildfire season for both Northern and Southern California and may need to rely on their crucial support," the state of California wrote in a lawsuit against the Trump administration over the deployment. A federal district court judge initially sided with the state in its lawsuit, but a panel of appellate court judges paused that ruling, allowing Mr. Trump to maintain control of the Guard. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

AP [6/30/2025 8:32 AM, Staff, 11859K] reports Tropical Storm Flossie continued to gain steam off Mexico’s southwestern Pacific coast on Monday afternoon and was projected to turn into a hurricane overnight. Meanwhile, the remnants of what was Tropical Storm Barry dumped rain on eastern Mexico. Flossie strengthened with maximum sustained winds of 65 mph (100 kph). It was centered about 170 miles (270 kilometers) southwest of Zihuatanejo and was moving northwest at 12 mph. Mexico’s government issued a tropical storm warning along the southwestern coast from Punta San Telmo to Playa Perula. A tropical storm watch remained in effect for the southwest coast from Zihuatanejo to Cabo Corrientes. A watch means tropical storm conditions are possible in the area within two days. Flossie is expected to rapidly intensify into a hurricane late Monday or early Tuesday, then skirt the coast for a few days. While its center is forecast to remain offshore, moderate rain was likely in parts of Oaxaca, Guerrero, Michoacán, Colima and Jalisco through early next week.

The Independent [6/30/2025 5:52 PM, Justin Rohrlich] reports the Secret Service is allocating more than $600,000 to rent golf carts and portable toilets for use in Bedminster, New Jersey, the home of President Donald Trump’s private country club, according to a review of government procurement data by The Independent. On June 3, the agency signed a pair of definitive contracts with Associates Golf Car Service of Poughkeepsie, New York, and Restroom Resources LLC of Wrightstown, New Jersey, federal records show. The agreement with Associates Golf Car Service Inc., for ‘Golf Car Rental and Transportation Services," is worth a potential $550,930 and runs through June 2, 2026. Restroom Resources’s work order for "portable restroom rentals and services" is worth up to $80,385, runs through May 31, 2026, and comes with a three-year renewal option, for a potential total of $333,801. Taxpayers, as is customary, will be footing both bills. In a email on Monday, a Secret Service spokesperson told The Independent, "The U.S. Secret Service has contracts in place for portable restrooms and golf cart rentals to support protective operations in Bedminster, New Jersey. The golf carts are used by personnel to move around club property. Secret Service personnel have access to restrooms in club facilities; however, additional restrooms are needed to support the number of personnel onsite. These rentals also allow for restroom access in additional locations on club property and when club facilities are closed such as after business hours."

CNN [6/30/2025 3:04 PM, Maureen O’Hare, 875K] reports that two guests, said to be a father and his young daughter, have been rescued by crew after going into the water while onboard the Disney Dream cruise ship as it returned from a voyage around the Bahamas. Disney confirmed that the rescue happened on June 29, saying that both were returned to the ship within minutes of entering the water. Social media posts from customers on board reported that the pair were a father and his young daughter. The father is said to have jumped in to rescue his daughter after she fell from the ship. It’s unclear how she ended up overboard. "The crew aboard the Disney Dream swiftly rescued two guests from the water," Disney said in a statement to CNN. "We commend our Crew Members for their exceptional skills and prompt actions, which ensured the safe return of both guests to the ship within minutes. We are committed to the safety and well-being of our guests, and this incident highlights the effectiveness of our safety protocols." The ship was returning to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, after a four-night cruise in the Bahamas, Newsweek reported, citing Disney officials. Passengers took to social media to share their videos of the boat rescue. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Reported similarly:
New York Times [6/30/2025 4:21 PM, Amanda Holpuch, 138952K]
AP [6/30/2025 11:29 AM, Staff, 56000K]
CBS San Francisco [6/30/2025 12:22 PM, Staff, 51860K] Video: HERE
NBC News [6/30/2025 5:39 PM, Mirna Alsharif, Juliette Arcodia, Nicole Duarte, 44540K]

The AP [6/30/2025 1:55 PM, Molly Quell, 56000K] reports the International Criminal Court has been targeted by a "sophisticated" cyberattack and is taking measures to limit any damage, the global tribunal announced Monday. The ICC, which also was hit by a cyberattack in 2023, said the latest incident had been contained but did not elaborate further on the impact or possible motive. "A Court-wide impact analysis is being carried out, and steps are already being taken to mitigate any effects of the incident," the court said in a statement. The attack happened last week. "All necessary measures have been taken to ensure the business continuity," court spokesman Fadi El Abdallah told The Associated Press. The incident happened in the same week that The Hague hosted a summit of 32 NATO leaders at a conference center near the court amid tight security including measures to guard against cyberattacks. The court declined to say whether any confidential information had been compromised. The ICC has a number of high-profile investigations and preliminary inquiries underway in nations around the world and has in the past been the target of espionage. In 2022, a Dutch intelligence agency said it had foiled a plot by a Russian spy using a false Brazilian identity to work as an intern at the court, which is investigating allegations of Russian war crimes in Ukraine and has issued a war crimes arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin, accusing him of personal responsibility for the abductions of children from Ukraine. Reuters [6/30/2025 12:48 PM, Stephanie van den Berg, 51390K] reports that the International Criminal Court (ICC) said on Monday it had detected a "new, sophisticated and targeted" cybersecurity incident late last week, adding it has now been contained. The incident was the second of its type against the ICC in recent years, it said in a statement. In 2023, the ICC announced it had been hacked and the court struggled with the aftermath for weeks as it was disconnected from most systems that can access the internet. Details of that attack and who was behind it were never made public. The court, which has been under increased scrutiny since it issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last November for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Gaza conflict, did not give any more details on the latest cybersecurity incident. The ICC also issued an arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin on suspicion of deporting children from Ukraine. Neither Russia nor Israel is a member of the court and both deny the accusations and reject ICC jurisdiction.

Reported similarly:
Bloomberg [6/30/2025 1:16 PM, Cameron Fozi, 88K]

The Hill [6/30/2025 1:26 PM, Michael Bartiromo, 18649K] reports that a cybercrime organization known as "Scattered Spider" has been targeting airlines based in North America in recent weeks, attempting to gain access to sensitive data for purposes of extortion, the FBI confirmed in an alert issued Friday. "They target large corporations and their third-party IT providers, which means anyone in the airline ecosystem, including trusted vendors and contractors, could be at risk," the alert reads, in part. A number of major airlines have confirmed security breaches in recent weeks, including Canada’s WestJet, which reported a "cybersecurity incident" in mid-June. The incident affected internal systems, but the carrier also warned that some customers may find themselves "restricted" from the app, or noticing "interruptions or errors" on the app or website. It was unclear if the customer-facing issues were the result of the cyberattack or the carrier’s attempts to fix or mitigate the issue. Within weeks, Hawaiian Airlines also reported a "cybersecurity event" affecting its IT systems, Nexstar’s KHON reported. The airline did not say whether any other data was compromised. A representative for the airline did not respond immediately when contacted for further information. Neither WestJet nor Hawaiian Airlines identified Scattered Spider as the group believed to be behind the attacks. These tactics appear to mirror other cybersecurity breaches blamed on Scattered Spider in the past, according to the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

Reported similarly:
New York Post [6/30/2025 7:22 PM, Jorge Fitz-Gibbon, 49956K]

Bloomberg [6/30/2025 5:00 PM, Jordan Robertson, Hannah Levitt, Jake Bleiberg, and Jason Leopold, 19320K] reports cybersecurity woes are plaguing the US Treasury Department, deepening a rift between the agency responsible for protecting the integrity of the financial system and the banks it regulates. Treasury has experienced three major hacks in the past five years, including two that have come to light since December. Meanwhile, its ranks of cybersecurity leaders have been decimated this year by departures pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which the world’s richest person left in May. A Bloomberg News review of previously unreported government documents and interviews with more than a dozen people — including current and former Treasury employees, bank executives and cybersecurity experts — uncovered new details about the hacks that underscore concerns about the department’s cybersecurity defense dating back years. In all three instances, Bloomberg’s investigation shows, the department failed to deploy security measures that might have prevented the breaches or flagged the intruders sooner.

EdScoop [6/30/2025 5:12 PM, Staff] reports a cyberattack at Columbia University put the institution’s IT systems in states of intermittent outage, The Record reported last week. The incident led the New York Police Department to aid in the investigation. A school spokesperson said the incident affected the university’s Morningside campus in Manhattan. That building is chiefly used as student housing, but it also includes the university’s Center for Career Education, a facilities management office and its Heyman Center for the Humanities. Numerous students reported online being unable to access various school applications. The spokesperson said that no medical facilities had been affected. According to The Record, several other institutions, including the University of Oklahoma and Western New Mexico University, faced outages this year after similar cyberattacks. Research published last March shows that educational institutions represent the most targeted sector for cyberattacks in the United States.

SecurityWeek [7/1/2025 12:00 AM, Eduard Kovacs] reports Casie Antalis has been named program director of the Joint Cyber Coordination Group at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Antalis has held leadership positions within the US government for more than a decade, including at the White House, Customs and Border Protection, and most recently the Department of Homeland Security. In a LinkedIn post on Sunday, Antalis said she had been named executive director of CISA, but the announcement has since been removed and CISA told SecurityWeek that Antalis has been appointed to the role of program director of the Joint Cyber Coordination Group. It appears CISA has yet to find a new executive director following the departure of Bridget Bean, who served as CISA’s assistant director for nearly three years before taking on the role of executive director in August 2024. Bean announced two weeks ago that she is retiring from federal service. Bean also served as acting director of CISA for the past five months, after Jen Easterly stepped down.

CBS News [6/30/2025 7:45 AM, Stephen Smith, 51860K] Video: HERE reports a notorious drug cartel enlisted a hacker who was able to infiltrate phone data and Mexico City’s surveillance cameras to help track and kill FBI informants, the U.S. Justice Department has revealed. The 2018 operation was disclosed Thursday in a 47-page audit by the Justice Department Inspector General, outlining the FBI’s "efforts to mitigate the effects of ubiquitous technical surveillance." The partially redacted report cites a case involving Juaquin "El Chapo" Guzman -- the founder of the infamous Sinaloa cartel. "El Chapo" is now serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison in the U.S on multiple conspiracy counts for smuggling vast quantities of cocaine and other drugs into the U.S. for more than a quarter of a century. According to the newly released audit, an unnamed hacker was recruited by the cartel in 2018. The hacker "observed people going in and out of the United States Embassy in Mexico City and identified ‘people of interest’ for the cartel, including an FBI assistant legal attaché," the report said. The hacker was able to use the attaché’s phone number to determine incoming and outgoing calls as well as the FBI official’s geolocation data, according to the audit. The report noted that modern technology has made it difficult to protect sensitive operations and sources. "Advances in data mining and analysis, facial recognition, and computer network exploitation have made it easier than ever for nation state adversaries, terrorist organizations and criminal networks to identify FBI personnel and operations," the audit said. The report urged the FBI to conduct an enterprise-wide threat assessment to determine where the agency is most vulnerable.

Reported similarly:
NewsMax [6/30/2025 11:55 AM, Nicole Wells, 4622K]

ABC News [6/30/2025 7:17 AM, Luke Barr, 31733K] reports Iranian-affiliated cyber actors and hacktivist groups "may still conduct malicious cyber activity," according to a joint bulletin from U.S. law enforcement agencies. "Based on the current geopolitical environment, Iranian-affiliated cyber actors may target U.S. devices and networks for near-term cyber operations," the bulletin from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), FBI, NSA and Defense Department says. "Defense Industrial Base (DIB) companies, particularly those possessing holdings or relationships with Israeli research and defense firms, are at increased risk. Hacktivists and Iranian-government-affiliated actors routinely target poorly secured U.S. networks and internet-connected devices for disruptive cyberattacks," according to the bulletin. All of this comes after Israel and Iran "declared ceasefire and ongoing negotiations towards a permanent solution," according to the alert. "Over the past several months, Iranian-aligned hacktivists have increasingly conducted website defacements and leaks of sensitive information exfiltrated from victims," the alert says. "These hacktivists are likely to significantly increase distributed denial of service (DDoS) campaigns against U.S. and Israeli websites due to recent events." The AP [6/30/2025 3:31 PM, David Klepper, 56000K] reports that the warning of continued cyberthreats after a halt to conventional warfare reflects the often opaque nature of cyber conflict. Hacking groups may have only loose ties to a nation state, and may seek to retaliate as an alternative to traditional military action. The bulletin outlined recommendations, including the use of regular software updates and strong password management systems to shore up digital defenses.

Reported similarly:
The Hill [6/30/2025 10:49 AM, Julia Shapero, 18649K]
Reuters [6/30/2025 11:39 AM, A.J. Vicens, 51390K]
CNN [6/30/2025 9:06 AM, Sean Lyngaas, 21433K]

Axios [7/1/2025 12:42 AM, Rebecca Falconer, 13599K] reports an Iran-linked cyberattack group that hacked President Trump’s 2024 campaign is threatening to release another trove of emails it has stolen from his associates, including White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and Roger Stone. Reuters first reported the threat on Monday that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency on X called a "calculated smear campaign" — which came the same day as the Trump administration released a report warning that "Iranian Cyber Actors" may target U.S. firms and "operators of critical infrastructure." And it came three days after Trump announced he was halting plans to potentially ease sanctions on Iran after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claimed U.S. and Israeli airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities didn’t cause major damage. Hackers who gave themselves the pseudonym "Robert" told Reuters in online conversations on Sunday and Monday they had around 100 gigabytes of emails involving Wiles, Stone, Trump lawyer Lindsey Halligan and adult film actress Stormy Daniels, and others. They spoke of potentially selling the emails, but did not disclose details of the material. The Justice Department alleged in an indictment last September against three Iranians in the 2024 Trump cyberattack case that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps oversaw the "Robert" hacking drive. CISA spokesperson Marci McCarthy said in a statement posted to X in response to Reuters’ report that a "hostile foreign adversary" was "threatening to illegally exploit purportedly stolen and unverified material in an effort to distract, discredit and divide." McCarthy said the "so-called cyber ‘attack’ is nothing more than digital propaganda and the targets are no coincidence" and that it’s designed to "damage President Trump and discredit honorable public servants" who serve the U.S. with distinction. "These criminals will be found and will be brought to justice," McCarthy added. During the 2024 presidential campaign, Iran proved to be a bigger threat than Russia — which Axios’ Sam Sabin notes is notorious for its 2016 hacks of major U.S. political parties and successful disinformation operations. Microsoft identified several Iranian groups that conducted aggressive disinformation and hacking campaigns that were designed to influence the outcome of the 2024 U.S. presidential elections. The hackers told Reuters they hadn’t planned any more cyberattacks, until the 12-day war between Israel and Iran that ended in a ceasefire that Trump brokered after the U.S. military intervention.

ABC News [6/30/2025 9:00 AM, Shannon K. Kingston, 31733K] reports a group of Americans who have lost family members to violence perpetrated by drug cartels is urging the Trump administration to designate additional criminal groups as terrorist organizations, according to a letter exclusively obtained by ABC News. The letter, which was sent to Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday, was authored by members of a newly formed coalition--American Families Against Cartel Terrorism--and calls for the Juárez Cartel and its armed wing, La Línea, to be added to the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, or FTOs. "As grieving United States citizens—parents, spouses, siblings, children, and survivors—we write to you carrying the excruciating pain of losing loved ones to the brutal violence of Mexican drug cartels," the letter begins. "This is not just about our families, it is about keeping Americans safe and getting justice for all American victims and ensuring that no American is left behind," it continues. "We want to prevent our fellow citizens from ever experiencing the pain and loss we have faced."

HS Today [6/30/2025 9:44 AM, Staff, 38K] reports On Friday, the Department of Homeland Security announced it is awarding $94,416,838 to over 512 Jewish faith-based organizations across the United States through its National Security Supplemental (NSGP-NSS). This money, part of the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, will be used to help these organizations harden their defenses against attacks. This allocation comes after a terrorist attacked demonstrators with a flamethrower and Molotov cocktails at an event in support of hostages in Gaza, and after two Israeli Embassy staffers were murdered in Washington, DC, by a terrorist who shouted, “Free Palestine.” In 2024, the ADL said it recorded a record high of 9,354 antisemitic incidents in the U.S., marking a 344% increase over the past five years. “DHS is working to put a stop to the deeply disturbing rise in antisemitic attacks across the United States,” said DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. “That this money is necessary at all is tragic. Antisemitic violence has no place in this country. However, under President Trump and Secretary Noem’s leadership, we are going to do everything in our power to make sure that Jewish people in the United States can live free of the threat of violence and terrorism.” The program, operated through FEMA, will help protect Jewish faith-based institutions from further attacks, and was advocated for by over 40 plus Jewish organizations. The funding was appropriated by Congress in response to a surge in antisemitic threats linked to the Israel Hamas war. All faith-based institutions were eligible to apply for grant funding to help defend themselves from threats including houses of worship, educational facilities, medical facilities, community centers and other faith-based institutions. More grant disbursements will follow from the NSGP.

FOX News [6/30/2025 12:16 PM, Sarah Rumpf-Whitten, 46878K] reports that the alleged sniper who killed two firefighters and wounded a third in an ambush-styled attack in Idaho has been identified as Wess Roley. The Associated Pressd reported, citing a law enforcement official, that Roley deliberately set a brush fire on Canfield Mountain, near Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, on Sunday, June 29 to lure first responders into a deadly trap. The Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office said fire crews responded to a blaze at Canfield Mountain just north of Coeur d’Alene around 1:30 p.m. Gunshots were reported about a half-hour later. Law enforcement launched a massive manhunt, tracking the suspected gunman through the terrain. Using cellphone data, a tactical team located Roley’s body several hours later in a wooded area near the origin point of the fire. A firearm was found nearby. Officials have not yet confirmed whether he died by suicide or was fatally wounded during an exchange with authorities. The identities of the two deceased firefighters have not been publicly released, pending notification of next of kin. The third firefighter, who suffered critical injuries, underwent emergency surgery and remains in stable condition. Idaho Governor Brad Little condemned the incident as "a heinous, direct assault on our brave firefighters" and pledged full state support for the investigation. The motive behind Roley’s actions remains unclear, and federal agencies including the FBI are assisting local authorities in the investigation. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Breitbart [6/30/2025 3:23 PM Allen Cone, 3077K] reports an 82-year-old woman burned in an antisemitic firebombing in Boulder, Colo., earlier this month has died, authorities said Monday, prompting an upgrade in criminal charges against the person suspected of carrying out the attack. Karen Diamond, among 14 people injured in the attack at Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall on June 1, died "tragically as a result of the severe injuries that she suffered in the attack," the district attorney’s office said. Diamond and one other victim were airlifted to a Denver-area hospital in Aurora, which is 32 miles north of Boulder, because of the severity of their injuries. Diamond previously hadn’t not been identified publicly. "There are simply no words to properly express the pain of this tragic loss," Boulder Jewish Community Center Executive Director Jonathan Lev and JCC Board Chair David Paul said in an email to the Boulder Daily Camera. "Karen was a cherished member of our community, someone whose warmth and generosity left a lasting impact on all who knew her.” With Diamond’s death, prosecutors have updated charges against Mohamed Soliman, 45, of Colorado Springs, KUSA-TV reported. Prosecutors amended counts 4 and 5 to first-degree murder, instead of attempted murder. "This horrific act of terror has now claimed the life of an innocent person who was beloved by her family and friends," District Attorney Michael Dougherty said. "Our hearts are with the Diamond family during this incredibly difficult time. Our office will fight for justice for all the victims, their loved ones, and the community. Soliman, an Egyptian national, entered California in August 2022 on a B2 visa that expired in February 2023 and his asylum claim was pending, said Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The Hill [6/30/2025 3:35 PM, Miriam Waldvogel, 18649K] reports Arizona voters will decide next November whether to designate drug cartels operating across the southern border as terrorist organizations after the initiative cleared the state’s Senate on Friday. An effort to put the initiative on the ballot last year stalled in the state’s Senate due to a slim Republican majority. It was not immediately clear what new resources or funding a terrorist designation from the state would unlock. The Arizona ballot initiative would also direct the state Department of Homeland Security to "do everything within its authority to address the threat posed by drug cartels." The ballot measure does not provide leeway for migrants who might come to the southern border fleeing the cartels, specifying that "nothing" about the terrorist designation will support asylum claims.

New York Times [6/30/2025 3:29 PM, Alan Feuer, Maria Abi-Habib, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Annie Correal, William K. Rashbaum, and Devlin Barrett, 153395K] reports even among the brutal ranks of the transnational gang called MS-13, Vladimir Arévalo Chávez stands out as a highly effective manager of murder, prosecutors say. Known as “Vampiro,” he has been accused of overseeing killings in at least three countries: of migrants in Mexico, rivals in El Salvador and his own compatriots in the United States. His arrest in February 2023 was a major triumph for American investigators, who only months earlier had accused him and 12 other gang leaders of terrorism, bloodshed and corruption in a wide-ranging federal indictment on Long Island. But this April, the prosecutors who brought those charges suddenly — and quietly — asked a federal judge to drop them. Citing “national security concerns,” they said they needed to return Mr. Arévalo to El Salvador, his homeland. The surprising reversal came shortly after a deal the Trump administration struck this year with Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s president, who agreed to accept more than 200 migrants expelled from the United States into a prison he built for terrorists. The United States paid El Salvador millions of dollars to help President Trump carry out his deportation agenda, adding an important sweetener at Mr. Bukele’s request: the return of key MS-13 leaders in American custody. Officials from both countries have said the gang leaders are being sent back to face justice. But the Trump administration has not acknowledged another reason Mr. Bukele would want them back: U.S. prosecutors have amassed substantial evidence of a corrupt pact between the Salvadoran government and some high-ranking MS-13 leaders, who they say agreed to drive down violence and bolster Mr. Bukele politically in exchange for cash and perks in jail, a New York Times investigation found. The deal with El Salvador heralded by Mr. Trump as a crackdown on crime is actually undermining a longstanding U.S. inquiry into the gang, according to multiple people with knowledge of the initiative. Two major ongoing cases against some of the gang’s highest-ranking leaders could be badly damaged, and other defendants could be less likely to cooperate or testify in court, they said. The deal has also undercut Mr. Trump’s own repeated pledges to dismantle MS-13, a central plank of his tough-on-crime brand. Earlier this year, Attorney General Pam Bondi issued an internal memo calling for the “total elimination” of the gang, which the White House has designated as a foreign terrorist organization.

New York Times [6/30/2025 5:36 PM, Ana Swanson, 138952K] reports governments around the globe are racing to negotiate trade deals with the United States in order to forestall President Trump’s punishing tariffs, which could kick in on July 9. But the discussions have been slowed because Mr. Trump has threatened to impose more tariffs even if those deals are in place. Mr. Trump announced what he refers to as “reciprocal tariffs” on April 8, saying they were in response to other countries’ unfair trading practices. But he agreed to pause those levies for 90 days to give countries time to reach trade deals with the United States. Some administration officials recently suggested that the deadline could be extended, but Mr. Trump has signaled that he is ready to slap tariffs on countries he views as uncooperative. “We have countries that are negotiating in good faith, but they should be aware that if we can’t get across the line because they are being recalcitrant, then we could spring back to the April 2 levels,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Monday. India, Vietnam, Japan, the European Union, Malaysia and other governments have been working toward deals that could smooth relations with the United States and avoid double-digit tariffs. But the Trump administration has been moving forward with plans to impose another set of tariffs on certain industries that it views as essential to national security, a threat that has foreign leaders worried that there could be more pain ahead. These tariffs are dependent on the outcomes of trade investigations into lumber and timber, copper and critical minerals by the Commerce Department, which are expected to be completed soon and submitted to the White House, according to people familiar with the matter. A determination that imports pose a national security threat would allow the president to issue tariffs on those products in the coming weeks. Investigations on pharmaceuticals, semiconductors and electronic devices are also proceeding and could be finished in time for tariffs as early as next month, the people said. Mr. Bessent added that tariffs on imports of items such as lumber were being imposed on a different track from the reciprocal tariffs that were announced in April and are not part of the current round of trade negotiations. Those tariffs on certain critical sectors, which would be issued under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, aim to build up domestic capacity for important products and ensure that the country isn’t reliant on foreign factories in times of war or shortages.

Reuters [7/1/2025 12:03 AM, David Brunnstrom and Humeyra Pamuk, 51390K] reports U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio hosts his Australian, Indian and Japanese counterparts on Tuesday, seeking to boost efforts to counter China even as trade and other bilateral disagreements introduce friction into the relationships. The four countries, known as the Quad, share concerns about China’s growing power, but their ties have been strained by President Donald Trump’s global tariff offensive from which none of the Quad members have been spared. Other issues are also putting pressure on relations. Japan, the key U.S. ally in the Indo-Pacific, postponed an annual ministerial meeting with the U.S. State and Defense Departments that was supposed to be held on Tuesday. Press reports said this followed U.S. pressure for it to boost defense spending further than previously requested. The Financial Times said last week the demands came from Elbridge Colby, the third-most senior Pentagon official, whom analysts say has also recently created anxiety in Australia by launching a review of the massive AUKUS project to provide that country with nuclear-powered submarines. India, meanwhile, has differed with Trump’s claims that his intervention and threats to cut off trade talks averted a major conflict between India and Pakistan after militants killed Indian tourists in the disputed Kashmir region in April. Rubio hosted a meeting of Quad ministers in his first diplomatic engagement as secretary of state on January 21, the day after Trump began his second term, a move meant to underscore the importance of the Indo-Pacific region.

CBS News [6/30/2025 3:52 PM, Camilla Schick, Richard Escobedo, and Kathryn Watson, 51860K] Video HERE reports President Trump signed an executive order Monday afternoon terminating the United States’ sanctions program on Syria, the White House announced. The executive order comes after Mr. Trump announced in May during a trip to the Middle East that the U.S. would lift all sanctions on the country. While in the Middle East, Mr. Trump met with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, who announced a transitional government in March. The Assad regime collapsed under the weight of an offensive by opposition forces. Sanctions will remain on Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s former president. "The order will remove sanctions on Syria while maintaining sanctions on the former president, Assad, his associates, human rights abusers, drug traffickers, persons linked to chemical weapons activities, ISIS and their affiliates, and Iranian proxies," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday. Syria’s transitional government has been pushing the Trump administration for sanctions relief for months, and some work has been underway to ease some sanctions since before the president’s May announcement. Some sanctions would still need to be formally revoked by Congress. Syria has been under U.S. sanctions in some form since 1979, when the country was designated a state sponsor of terrorism.

Reported similarly:
Axios [6/30/2025 1:31 PM, Barak Ravid, 13599K]
FOX News [6/30/2025 4:06 PM, Morgan Phillips, 46878K]

Breitbart [6/30/2025 2:41 PM, John Hayward, 3077K] reports that Senior Shiite Muslim clerics in Iran have issued religious edicts, or fatwas, condemning President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The fatwa issued by Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi on Sunday reportedly damned Trump and Netanyahu as "warlords" using the term mohareb, which Islam defines as a supreme heretic and blasphemer, someone who wages war against Allah. Iranian law specifies various horrific punishments for a mohareb, including torture and execution. Dissident Iranian journalist Niyak Ghorbani, who supported Israeli airstrikes against Iran’s nuclear program as "everything the Iranian people have dreamed of for the past 46 years," said on Sunday that Shirazi’s fatwa was a very thinly disguised call for assassinating the American and Israeli leaders. "This is a clear act of state-backed incitement to international terrorism," Ghorbani said. As Ghorbani noted, Shirazi’s religious edict accused Trump and Netanyahu of "threatening the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution" — Iran’s current theocratic dictator, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — and other religious authorities with "assassination," and strongly suggested "Muslims around the world" had a religious duty to deliver a "harsh punishment" in return. "It is necessary for all Muslims across the world to recognize these enemies and avenge them with strength and fury. If they are not punished severely, the reward for jihadi retaliation is with Allah. This is certain," the fatwa stated.

New York Times [6/30/2025 1:39 PM, Elizabeth Williamson, 138952K] reports that after the United States dropped 14 “bunker buster” bombs on two nuclear sites in Iran, Anh Duong looked up the weapon’s technical details and felt a rush of familiarity. Ms. Duong, 65, is a former Vietnam War refugee who escaped Saigon and found a home with her family in Washington. Long determined to give back to the nation that sheltered her, she got her chance a month after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when she was the leader of a team of U.S. military scientists that created an explosive in the same family as the bunker buster used in Iran. It was the BLU-118/B, a laser-guided bomb designed to travel deep into confined spaces like the underground tunnels occupied by Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. BLU stands for Bomb Live Unit, not Big, Loud and Ugly, “which is maybe what the soldiers say,” Ms. Duong said in an interview at her home in suburban Maryland. The bomb produced a high-temperature, sustained blast, “so that our guys would not have to flush out these hills or caves by foot,” she said. Used repeatedly in Afghanistan, the weapon developed by the Navy’s “Bomb Lady” and her team is credited by others with shortening America’s longest war. “I never forgot the 58,000 Americans, plus the other 260,000 South Vietnamese soldiers who died in that war,” she said. “I feel that I owe my second chance in America to all of those people.” Ms. Duong received a standing ovation, and many in the audience wept. In 2008, she became head of the Borders and Maritime Security Division under the secretary for science and technology in the Department of Homeland Security. There she vetted technology and equipment used to better secure the borders and ports. “I went from offense to defense,” she said.

Reuters [7/1/2025 2:23 AM, Liz Lee, 51390K] reports China’s ruling Communist Party has appointed the head of an ethnic affairs panel as its new party secretary in the vast northwestern region of Xinjiang, the official news agency Xinhua said on Tuesday. Chen Xiaojiang has also held a vice ministerial role since 2020 in the party’s United Front Work Department, his profile on China’s Wikipedia equivalent, Baidu’s Baike, shows. The department runs influence operations related to ethnic minorities, religious groups and on the Taiwan issue at home and abroad. In 2020, he also became the first individual with an ethnic Han majority background to be appointed director of the State Ethnic Affairs Commission since it was re-established in 1978, the Caixin business outlet said. Xinhua did not say when Chen will officially take up the role. In 2022, the United Nations reported finding "serious human rights violations" against mainly Muslim Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang under China’s national security and counter-terrorism policies, as well as forced labour accusations. China has repeatedly countered that the rights of all ethnic groups in the region were protected, while denying forced labour. It has dismissed the report as "groundless" and a part of the West’s attempts to contain China.

Reuters [6/30/2025 6:30 AM, Mikhail Flores, 51390K] reports Military leaders are working to enforce a "one-theatre" concept in both the East and South China seas, the Philippines’ defence minister said on Monday, adding that the Southeast Asian country faces threats in disputed waters that are similar to Japan’s. Japanese newspaper Asahi reported in April that Japanese defence minister Gen Nakatani made a proposal to U.S. Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth to consider the East China Sea, the South China Sea, the Korean Peninsula and surrounding areas as a single "theatre", referring to a military area of operation. Gilberto Teodoro, the Philippines’ Secretary of National Defense, said it was "reasonable" to treat both the East and South China seas as a single area of operation, saying both are maritime areas with no land borders involved. However, he said the area should exclude the Korean Peninsula. "That will involve synergy in operations, synergy in domain awareness, in intelligence exchange, and in mutually reinforcing our strengths to work doubly real-time," he said at a briefing during the visit of his Lithuanian counterpart Dovile Sakaliene. Japan and China have repeatedly faced off over uninhabited Japanese-administered islands in the East China Sea that Tokyo calls the Senkaku and Beijing calls the Diaoyu. The Philippines and China, meanwhile, have clashed frequently in the South China Sea around disputed shoals and atolls that fall inside Manila’s exclusive economic zone. China’s embassy in Manila did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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