Trump Finally Says If He’ll Call Tim Walz. You’ll Wish He Hadn’t.

Breaking a long-standing presidential tradition, Donald Trump says he won’t contact Minnesota Governor Tim Walz after the assassination of Democratic state Representative Melissa Hortman. Instead, the president said that contacting Walz would be a “waste of time.”

It’s been days since Hortman and her husband were killed in what police described as a targeted attack. The suspected assassin, Vance Boelter, also allegedly shot Democratic state Senator John Hoffman and his wife that same night. The pair are still recovering in a hospital. But the horrific assault was not enough to warrant condolences or sympathy from the nation’s leader.

“I think the governor of Minnesota is so whacked out,” Trump told reporters Tuesday morning aboard Air Force One. “I’m not calling him.”

“Why would I call him? I could call and say, ‘Hi, how you doing?’ Uh, the guy doesn’t have a clue. He’s a mess. I could be nice and call him, but why waste time?” Trump added.

Trump was mulling Sunday over whether or not he’d contact the governor, when he told ABC News that he “may” ring Walz, whom he simultaneously referred to as “grossly incompetent” and a “terrible governor.”

“Well, it’s a terrible thing. I think he’s a terrible governor. I think he’s a grossly incompetent person. But I may, I may call him, I may call other people too,” Trump said at the time.

Meanwhile, other world leaders are stepping in to fill Trump’s shoes in the wake of the attack. Ontario Premier Doug Ford, a member of Canada’s Conservative Party, was one such individual who rang Walz to “express his condolences” to the Hortman family and the “people of Minnesota,” per Walz.

“In times of tragedy, I’m heartened when people of different views and even different nations can rally together around our shared humanity,” the governor posted on X.

“All of Ontario is thinking of the Hortman family and our friends in Minnesota,” Ford wrote back.

Donald Trump was not impressed by his multimillion-dollar military parade.

The president reportedly “reamed” out Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the spectacle—which was advertised as a celebration of the Army’s 250th anniversary but conveniently fell on Trump’s birthday—as well as the soldiers who took part in it, according to biographer Michael Wolff.

Speaking with The Daily Beast’s podcast Monday, Wolff revealed that Trump was “pissed off at the soldiers.” He reportedly wanted the troops to appear “menacing,” but instead they were “having a good time,” per Wolff.

“He’s accusing them of hamming it up, and by that, he seems to mean that they were having a good time, that they were waving, that they were enjoying themselves and showing a convivial face rather than a military face,” the Fire and Fury author told the podcast.

“He kind of reamed out Hegseth for this,” the Trump biographer said. “Apparently, there was a phone call, and he said to Hegseth, The tone was all wrong. Why was the tone wrong? Who staged this? There was the tone problem.”

The parade was projected to cost up to $45 million and was not in the original pitch to celebrate the Army’s anniversary, as outlined in a press release in February. Meanwhile, the parade—which barely managed to fill the stands—was easily overshadowed by a nationwide “No Kings Day” protest opposing Trump’s agenda that some organizers said drew upward of five million people.

“It didn’t send the message that he apparently wanted, which is that he was the commander in chief of this menacing enterprise,” Wolff said of the lavish Army anniversary.

The White House did not respond well to Wolff’s account of the festivities, instead opting to publicly slander Wolff as a fraudster and a “lying sack of shit.”

“He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain,” White House communications director Steven Cheung told the Beast.

Trump was also disturbed by the American soldiers’ marching pattern, which went viral in the wake of the parade due to the troops’ asynchronous steps.

Charlotte Clymer, a U.S. Army veteran and former member of the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment, also known as “The Old Guard,” told Buzzfeed that she didn’t believe rumors that the “poor quality of the marching” was because some units weren’t used to marching.

“Every soldier learns how to march during basic training, and it’s not hard. It’s remarkably easy,” Clymer told the digital publication, emphasizing that the troops would have had a dress rehearsal days prior.

“I don’t think this was a protest against Trump, or anything adjacent to anti-fascism or concern with how the government is operating,” she continued. “I don’t think it had anything to do with that. I think this is just because they were treated very poorly and they didn’t care. I think the soldiers who were misstepping during the parade—there were a lot of them—were just tired, annoyed, probably to some extent angry, and they just did not give enough of a shit to march to a high standard of excellence.”

That could be because of poor lodging, bad food, rough wake-up calls, or possibly a perception that the parade was “completely unnecessary.”

“Everyone is aware that this parade was done in service of Donald Trump—even the soldiers who likely voted for him know it was done in service to his ego,” Clymer told Buzzfeed. “And I don’t know about you, but I would never want to participate in the parade so that a lone individual could feel good about themselves.”

The Department of Homeland Security is reversing guidance sparing farms, hotels, and restaurants from immigration raids, less than a week after Donald Trump admitted just how destructive his sweeping deportation efforts were to those industries.

DHS officials gave the new guidance to resume worksite enforcement during a call to 30 ICE field offices across the country Monday morning, The Washington Post reported.

This new directive comes just days after Trump publicly acknowledged that his raids were ripping away some “very good, longtime workers,” and that because those workers might be replaced by criminals, “we must protect our farmers.”

An official at DHS then instructed agents to “hold on all worksite enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels.”

But it seems that economic policy isn’t the only area where Trump is liable to flip, and the raids will resume less than a week later.

It appears that the White House—namely deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who has demanded 3,000 immigration arrests a day—wasn’t totally behind the hold on worksite enforcement.

Two people familiar with Miller’s anti-immigration efforts told the Post that he’d opposed the pause, and ICE and Homeland Security Investigations field office supervisors had heard that the policy would likely be reversed Sunday because the White House didn’t support it, according to one person with knowledge of the reversal.

In a statement Monday, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said that there would be “no safe spaces for industries who harbor violent criminals or purposely try to undermine ICE’s efforts.”

President Trump made a dramatic early exit from the G7 summit, seemingly to help Israel continue to bombard Iran and its nuclear facilities.

“Iran should have signed the ‘deal’ I told them to sign. What a shame, and waste of human life. Simply stated, IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON,” he wrote on Truth Social. “I said it over and over again! Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran!”

Trump has supported Israel in its attacks, explaining that he gave Iran “60 days” to make a so-called “deal,” meaning Iran has to stop working on nuclear power and weapons. French President Emmanuel Macron suggested Trump was leaving to try to craft a ceasefire. But Trump didn’t rush out of the G7 to make peace, he left to plan for war.

“I have not reached out to Iran for ‘Peace Talks’ in any way, shape, or form. This is just more HIGHLY FABRICATED, FAKE NEWS! If they want to talk, they know how to reach me,” he wrote again on Truth Social. “They should have taken the deal that was on the table—Would have saved a lot of lives!!!”

While the G7 leaders did sign a resolution pledging that Iran can never obtain nuclear weapons and publicly mentioned a ceasefire, Trump has further isolated the U.S. by seemingly declaring Israel’s war for them.

“Publicity seeking President Emmanuel Macron, of France, mistakenly said that I left the G7 Summit, in Canada, to go back to D.C. to work on a ‘cease fire’ between Israel and Iran. Wrong!” Trump wrote again. “He has no idea why I am now on my way to Washington, but it certainly has nothing to do with a Cease Fire. Much bigger than that. Whether purposely or not, Emmanuel always gets it wrong. Stay Tuned!”

His exit means he will miss meetings with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Will Iowa Senator Joni Enst call it quits after her humiliating defense of Donald Trump’s budget bill?

Several Republican aides, consultants, and strategists told The Wall Street Journal that there was widespread speculation Ernst would not seek another term in the Senate.

At a disastrous town hall in late May, Ernst was discussing the Trump-backed “one big beautiful bill,” which will kick an estimated 5.4 million people off of Medicaid. A constituent cried out, “People will die!”

“Well, we all are going to die,” Ernst shot back.

As it turns out, Iowans didn’t appreciate the Republican senator getting existential, and now the embattled senator has delayed her annual “Roast and Ride” fundraiser until October. Typically, Ernst—who has been in office since 2015—holds the event in June.

Ernst’s “political ascent within the GOP has stalled,” the Journal reported.

But for now, it’s all just speculation. Earlier this month, Ernst brought on Bryan Kraber to manage her 2026 reelection campaign, signaling her intent to turn her sinking ship around.

Vance Boelter allegedly shot and killed Democratic Minnesota state Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband Saturday. Hours later, conservatives were twisting Boelter’s political ideology to shield MAGA, claiming that the suspected cop/masked killer was a deranged leftist seeking violent retribution.

In reality, Boelter was a Trump supporter who voted for Donald Trump in November, his best friend David Carlson told reporters Saturday. Boelter was a longtime conservative who was a registered Republican when he and his wife lived in Oklahoma in the early 2000s. He was against abortion rights but “never mentioned any particular anger with the lawmakers who were shot,” Carlson told CNN.

None of that seemed to faze conservatives, however, who spent the aftermath of the attack skewing Boelter’s beliefs to frame the other side of the aisle.

Long after reports spilled out that Boelter was a conservative, Elon Musk took to X to claim that “the far left is murderously violent,” quote tweeting a self-described MAGA Trumper lumping Boelter into the left, which she said had become a “full blown domestic terrorist organization.”

Saturday night, far-right influencer Laura Loomer told her followers that the media was trying to “gaslight” Americans into believing that the “shooter in Minnesota is a Trump supporter.” Loomer also decried local organizers of the nationwide “No Kings” movement, and called for their detention alongside Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s 2024 vice presidential pick.

Podcast host Alec Lace questioned if Hortman was “fearful” that “her base would become unhinged,” after she sided with Republicans as the lone Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) party member to repeal state health care for undocumented immigrants.

“Was her vote the motive?” posited Lace.

The tune had still not changed by Sunday, when Fox News contributor Paul Mauro described Boelter’s political background as “murky” while advancing the conspiracy that Hortman had been assassinated for her vote, rejecting Carlson’s recollection of his friend by claiming that he had not offered enough details to qualify Boelter as a conservative.

“The political backdrop of this is, again, murky. Going to the roommate, yea, [Boelter] voted for Donald Trump, but he was not engaged in local politics,” Mauro said. “And I didn’t know anything — that he even knew these local politicians, he didn’t seem to be very engaged in all of that. He says the only thing that [Boelter] seemed to be engaged with politically was that he was anti-abortion. That seems to be the only solid thing that the roommate can point to.”

Mauro then claimed that Boelter had “associations” with Walz and had received money from the governor.

Boelter “stalked his victims like prey” and “shot them in cold blood,” acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota Joseph Thompson said during a press conference Monday, likening Boelter’s alleged crime to “the stuff of nightmares.” The 57-year-old reportedly approached the Hortman residence and the home of Minnesota Senator John Hoffman dressed as a cop in tactical gear and a hyper-realistic silicon mask.

Boelter also owned a police-styled SUV with a license plate that read “police.” The car “looked exactly like an SUV squad car,” equipped with emergency lights, according to Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley. It was convincing enough that it fooled an officer who was dispatched to conduct a wellness check on a politician in the city of New Hope after Boelter allegedly attacked Hoffman and his wife. Upon seeing the vehicle near the lawmaker’s home, the officer pulled up alongside Boelter’s car, believing that he was another cop who had beaten them to the scene, before allowing Boelter to slip away, according to Thompson.

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials reportedly told an Australian writer who was detained and deported upon his arrival in Los Angeles that he was being removed for writing about pro-Palestinian protests on his personal blog, according to The Guardian.

In a thread of posts on X Sunday, Alistair Kitchen said he had just landed back in Australia after 12 hours in detention and a 30-hour round trip. “They just came out and said it: ‘We both know why you’ve been detained … it’s because of what you wrote about the protests at Columbia,’” Kitchen recounted.

Kitchen, who lived in New York for six years before moving back to Australia in 2024, had written about the campus protests at Columbia University opposing Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza for his Substack blog Kitchen Counter. Kitchen was a master’s student in creative writing at Columbia at the time.

In his thread, Kitchen said that officials were waiting for him when he got off the plane and seemed to already have a file containing information about him, despite a social media sweep he’d conducted ahead of his trip just to be safe. “If you are deleting social media ~48hrs before your flight to the US, *it is already too late,*” Kitchen warned in another post.

Kitchen told The Guardian that CBP officers claimed they’d found evidence of drug use on his phone, despite his responses to an ESTA form. Although he doubted that there was any actual evidence, he admitted to having lied. In his thread, Kitchen said that he regretted giving officers the password to his phone, and allowed himself to be barred from entering the United States.

Earlier this year, Customs and Border Patrol began to increase screenings of immigrants’ phones, computers, cameras, and other devices. In March, a French scientist was reportedly denied entry to the U.S. due to texts criticizing Donald Trump.

Kitchen wrote a blog in March about Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student and lead negotiator for the students’ protest encampment who was detained by ICE despite possessing a green card.

“The goal here is the deportation of dissent,” Kitchen wrote at the time.

“This is a mode of speech suppression that seeks to physically remove the undesirable elements it can, and, through fear, ensure silence in everyone else,” he added, referring to Trump‘s executive order targeting so-called “Hamas sympathizers” with student visas.

Last week, a judge ruled that Secretary of State Marco Rubio could not detain and deport Khalil on the flimsy basis that he threatened U.S. foreign policy interests—but the Trump administration is still intent on keeping Khalil behind bars.

A judge appointed by Ronald Reagan just ruled that President Trump’s cuts to DEI-related equity research grants at the National Institutes of Health were both discriminatory and illegal.

The Trump administration, led by DOGE, cut more than $1.81 billion in National Institutes of Health grants in less than 40 days. The National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities got the worst of it, with 30 percent of its grant funding being cut—twice the average. Grants focusing on Black women’s maternal health and HIV were also slashed. The cuts were made on the grounds that “so-called diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) studies are often used to support unlawful discrimination on the basis of race.”

Today Judge William Young, 84, declared those cuts “illegal” and “void.”

“I am hesitant to draw this conclusion, but I have an unflinching obligation to draw it–that this represents racial discrimination. And discrimination against America’s LGBTQ community. That’s what this is. I would be blind not to call it out. My duty is to call it out,” he wrote in his ruling. “It is palpably clear that these directives and the set of terminated grants here also are designed to frustrate, to stop, research that may bear on the health—we’re talking about health here, the health of Americans, of our LGBTQ community. That’s appalling.”

Young continued, clearly upset with the Trump administration’s action.

“I’ve never seen a record where racial discrimination was so palpable. I’ve sat on this bench now for 40 years. I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this.... I ask myself, how can this be?” he said. “I have the protection that the Founders wrote into the Constitution, along with imposing upon me a duty to speak the truth in every case. I try to do that. What if I didn’t have those protections? What if my job was on the line, my profession? ... Would I have stood up against all this? Would I have said, ‘You can’t do this?’ You are bearing down on people of color because of their color. The Constitution will not permit that.

“Have we fallen so low? Have we no shame?”

Even with Young’s ruling’s spirited proclamation, there is no indication that Trump will actually follow it and reinstate the NIH grants.

The Trump administration is thinking about adding 26 more countries—most of them African—to his travel ban list.

The Washington Post obtained a Trump administration memo that would give the 26 countries listed 60 days to capitulate to State Department demands. Some countries were flagged for having “no competent or cooperative central government authority to produce reliable identity documents or other civil documents,” or “government fraud.” There was also a requirement against “antisemitic and anti-American activity in the United States” by people from the listed countries. Nearly all of the listed countries are in Africa, the Caribbean, or the Middle East.

The added countries are:

Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Cambodia, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Dominica, Ethiopia, Egypt, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kyrgyzstan, Liberia, Malawi, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, South Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Tonga, Tuvalu, Uganda, Vanuatu, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

Trump already banned travelers from Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen earlier in June.

This is a xenophobic blanket policy that singles out Arab and African countries. And one thing Trump doesn’t seem to care about is how the timing and targets of this ban will impact both the 2026 World Cup in New York, Atlanta, Boston, and more, and the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. These events, often massive international draws, could very well turn into ICE outposts, discouraging people from attending entirely. And even if it doesn’t, the reputational hit alone could do further damage to America’s international goodwill.

America’s leader decided to open the international G7 summit with a long complaint, seemingly in support of Russia.

Speaking before the global trade coalition, Donald Trump lamented that the group—which consists of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States—would not allow Russia to join its ranks.

“The G7 used to be the G8,” Trump said. “Barack Obama and a person named Trudeau didn’t want to have Russia in, and I would say that that was a mistake, because I think you wouldn’t have a war right now if you had Russia in,” he added, referring to the former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The seven other members of the then G8 suspended Russia’s membership in 2014 as punishment for Moscow’s annexation of Crimea. But Trump doesn’t seem to have as many qualms about Russia’s efforts to seize neighboring territories.

“And you wouldn’t have a war right now if Trump were president four years ago, but it didn’t work out that way,” he continued, referring to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “But it used to be the G8, and now it’s, I guess, what’s that, nine years ago? Eight years ago? They threw Russia out, which I claimed was a very big mistake even though I wasn’t in politics then. I was very loud about it.

“You spend so much time talking about Russia, and he’s no longer at the table, so it makes life more complicated, but you wouldn’t have had the war,” Trump added.

As Trump’s rant continued, the summit’s leadership stepped in to intervene.

“I’m going to exercise my role, if you will, as G7 chair,” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said as reporters continued to shout questions at the U.S. president about the escalating Iran-Israel conflict.

The U.S. has played a weaker and weaker hand in its game against Russia since Trump’s inauguration. On the campaign trail, Trump pledged to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of returning to power—but that hasn’t been the case.

Instead, Trump’s aggression toward Ukraine (which included scolding and mocking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a livestreamed White House meeting) and his repeated concessions on Russia’s enduring violence have been interpreted by Kremlin propagandists as a massive win for Russian President Vladimir Putin, resulting in televised laughter on Russian programs at the downfall of American power.

In the months since he took office, Trump has claimed that Russia has come ready and willing to reach a peace deal, even though many of its demands—such as staking a Russian flag in Crimea—reverse long-standing U.S. policy.

Following a deadly airstrike on Kyiv last month, European leaders urged Western countries to enact sanctions on Moscow as a way to reel Putin back to the negotiating table. But Trump responded by wringing his hands, claiming that applying pressure on Russia would “hurt” a deal.

Just about everyone in the U.S.—including Trump’s own party—wants the White House to act. By late May, Senate Republicans resorted to begging Trump to take a stand against Russia while they mulled over the possibility of going over his head to enact the internationally recommended sanctions. Senate Majority Leader John Thune announced last week that the upper chamber would begin work on a sanctions bill sometime this month.

Those realities pushed Senator Mitch McConnell into a terse exchange with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last week, in which the high-ranking Republican questioned the Cabinet official regarding which side the White House actually wanted to win.