Trump Spends NATO Raging Over Reports His Iran Strikes Did Nothing

Donald Trump furiously pushed back Wednesday against reports that his surprise strike on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities hadn’t “completely and fully obliterated” them as he’s previously claimed.

While attending a NATO summit in The Hague, Trump attacked multiple news outlets that had reported the day before on a damning early assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency, which found his strike on Iran hadn’t completely destroyed the country’s nuclear capabilities and instead only delayed it a few months. Once the president got going, he couldn’t stop.

“This was an unbelievable hit by genius pilots and genius people in the military, and they’re not being given credit for it because we have scum,” Trump said, referring to some reporters in the room. “CNN is scum. MSDNC is scum. The New York Times is scum. They’re bad people. They’re sick. And what they’ve done is they’re trying to make this unbelievable victory into something less.”

Trump, who regularly rails against the press, claimed he was only doing so on behalf of the service members who’d executed the strike.

“Very unfair to the pilots that risk their lives for our country, and then they get fake news New York Times and CNN make up a phony story to get some hits. That’s the only reason I care about it, because those pilots were so brave, I’ve never seen anything like it,” Trump said. “They flew into the hornets’ nest and then they got hurt so badly by what the fake news wrote, and it was CNN, it was The New York Times, and they’re both disgusting, disgusting, really horrible groups of people.”

Trump then outright denied the findings of his own government’s report, once again opting for intelligence from a foreign government: Israel.

When asked whether he would attack Iran again if they rebuilt their facilities, Trump replied, “I’m not gonna have to worry about that. It’s gone for years.” The president claimed that Israel’s nascent report would find that they had achieved “total obliteration.”

This isn’t the first time Trump has opted to trust Israeli intelligence over U.S. intelligence. He repeatedly ignored the annual threat assessment produced by his own intelligence community, which found that Iran was “not building a nuclear weapon,” opting to trust Israel instead.

Trump also tore into the outlets in a post on Truth Social Tuesday night. “FAKE NEWS CNN, TOGETHER WITH THE FAILING NEW YORK TIMES, HAVE TEAMED UP IN AN ATTEMPT TO DEMEAN ONE OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL MILITARY STRIKES IN HISTORY. THE NUCLEAR SITES IN IRAN ARE COMPLETELY DESTROYED! BOTH THE TIMES AND CNN ARE GETTING SLAMMED BY THE PUBLIC,” he wrote.

But the Trump administration has been reluctant to meet the president’s absolute confidence of a successful strike. While Trump patted himself on the back for a mission accomplished, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine said Sunday it was “way too early” to say whether the strike had actually been successful. That same day, Vice President JD Vance declined to confirm that Iran’s nuclear sites had been completely destroyed.

Money can’t buy everything: New York City Democrats elected Zohran Mamdani in the citywide primaries.

Mamdani was ranked first Tuesday in the Democratic mayoral primary by 43.5 percent of the city’s eligible voters with 90 percent of the votes counted, beating out a wide field of rivals in the city’s second mayoral election process to use ranked-choice voting.

The 33-year-old is the first Democratic Socialist to win the coveted candidacy, marking a seismic shift in the party’s national standing. Mamdani won Democratic voters over on a platform focused on taxing the rich and addressing the rising cost of living. Chief among his ideas were plans to reform New York’s constricting housing crisis, which he said would involve incentives to develop more affordable housing, monitoring bad landlords who repeatedly violate rent laws, and freezing rates on rent stabilized apartments.

Since Mamdani did not win 50 percent of the vote, he initially was going to have to wait a week until all of the ranked votes were counted. But in a shocking turn of events, ex–New York Governor Andrew Cuomo conceded the race.

“Tonight was not our night,” said Cuomo, who had just 36.3 percent of first-rank votes. “Tonight was Assemblyman Mamdani’s night.”

Cuomo congratulated Mamdani on a strong campaign, saying his opponent “inspired [New Yorkers] and moved them and got them to come out and vote. He really ran a highly impactful campaign.

“Tonight is his night. He deserved it. He won,” Cuomo added.

Mamdani’s progressive agenda did not come without its detractors. Critics argued that Mamdani’s promises lacked available infrastructure, such as a plan to instate a network of city-owned grocery stores in order to tackle food insecurity, or promises to make bus rides free citywide.

The win shocked the Democratic establishment, which had sided with Cuomo in his bid for Gracie Mansion. Mamdani’s win also flies in the face of some of New York’s biggest corporate interests. Cuomo’s donors included a citywide landlord lobby, pro-MAGA billionaire Bill Ackman, former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Doordash, and a $25 million super PAC that “shattered” outside spending records.

But his loss marks a brutal turn for Cuomo’s power in New York politics, as New Yorkers effectively nixed a city-based comeback for a man who was forced to resign from his leadership position in 2021 after he was deemed too corrupt for Albany. After his resignation, the Department of Justice determined Cuomo had sexually harassed 13 women over an eight-year period.

Mamdani, meanwhile, was backed by grassroots support and individual donors who helped him nearly reach the city’s $8 million campaign cap before he asked his supporters to “please stop sending us money.” Instead, the Ugandan-born Queens lawmaker’s team leaned into their ground game, banking that a volunteer army with 29,000 door-knockers would be able to make the difference.

By the final days of the primary race, Mamdani had received more out-of-state donations than his top two rivals combined, signaling a national appetite for his politics.

Mamdani previously served in the New York State Assembly representing the 36th District in Queens since 2021.

He was endorsed by New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and also won the support of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a figurehead for the nation’s progressive movement.

Republican Representative Maria Salazar spoke out against President Trump’s indiscriminate deportation of immigrants—many of them in her own district—during a hearing with Treasury Secretary Jerome Powell on Tuesday.

“We agree with [what] President Trump is doing, what the administration is doing in deporting illegals, criminal illegals. We do not want Tren de Aragua, we don’t really want people who have committed any type of crime, even more if they are illegals,” Salazar said to Powell. “But we do know that unfortunately what’s happening right now after six months of Mr. President being in office, that we’re losing thousands and thousands of workers [that] the ICE leadership has called ‘collateral damage.’ And most of those people are working in three main sectors: construction, hospitality, and agriculture.… We’re talking about 50 percent of the economy.”

Salazar also asked Powell to elaborate on the impacts of these deportations on the economy. He told her plainly that while he isn’t in charge of fully assessing the impact of immigration policies, Trump’s deportations have “reduced the amount of growth in the labor force,” which in turn would slow the economy.

Salazar is right to point out that the administration is locking up and deporting people with no criminal records who contribute significantly to the economy, but Trump obviously does not care to make the same distinction. This is a sadly ironic and extremely predictable turn of events for someone who endorsed the man who is now terrorizing her constituency.

This isn’t the first time Salazar has issued a plea to Trump. In February, she told CNN that “we have to make a differentiation between the Tren de Aragua and those Venezuelans who came in through [Temporary Protected Status].” The Supreme Court last month let Trump revoke TPS for about 350,000 Venezuelans living and working legally in the country.

An early U.S. intelligence assessment has determined that Donald Trump’s airstrikes on three Iranian nuclear bases failed to destroy core components of the nation’s nuclear program.

The president’s attack, conducted without the express approval of Congress, damaged facilities in Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan on Saturday. But a battle damage assessment by the Pentagon’s intelligence arm determined that the missile barrage only set Iran’s nuclear program back by a few months, CNN reported Tuesday.

The White House denied the contents of the leaked report, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt rebuffing the whistleblower as a “low-level loser.” But she still acknowledged that the report had been classified as “top secret.”

In the wake of the attack, Trump celebrated that Iran’s nuclear program had been “completely and totally obliterated.” He told reporters aboard Air Force One Tuesday that the nation should “get on to being a great trading nation” with regard to its oil supply. He further promised that, based on the severity of the attack, “the last thing on Iran’s mind right now is nuclear weapons.”

But not everyone on Capitol Hill shared Trump’s evaluation. In an interview with Steve Bannon Tuesday, Republican Senator Rand Paul wondered if Iran would respond “with a sprint to creating a nuclear weapon.”

“There are news reports out today saying that 400 kilograms of enriched uranium at 60 percent was spirited out before the attacks,” Paul said.

Israeli officials signaled Sunday there was evidence that Iran had moved equipment and uranium—enriched to 60 percent purity—from one of the bomb sites ahead of the attack. The fuel was reportedly stored inside another nuclear complex near the ancient capital of Isfahan.

International Atomic Energy Agency Director Rafael Grossi texted The New York Times that his inspectors had laid eyes on the uranium a week before Israel attacked, and that Iran has “made no secret that they have protected this material.”

Paul warned he wasn’t “sure you can bomb away the ability to make a nuclear weapon.” He noted that the Iranians had enough uranium to manufacture about 10 weapons. “I hope the war will not continue, but I guess I rest my judgment on the previous incursions of so many presidents—from Obama to Bush—overseas that really didn’t go as planned,” Paul said.

At least 606 people have been killed in Iran since Israel first attacked on June 13, according to Iran’s health ministry. Approximately 107 people died on Monday alone, making it the deadliest single day of the conflict.

Iranian officials have made it clear that they are no longer interested in negotiating with American leadership, citing the nation’s deception ahead of prearranged talks regarding Iran’s nuclear program that were scheduled to take place earlier this month.

Trump preemptively announced a successful ceasefire between Iran and Israel Monday evening, before the two nations had jointly come to an agreement on the terms of ending their conflict. Hours after the ceasefire deadline had passed, the two nations continued lobbing missiles at one another.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that yet another wrongly deported immigrant must be returned to the United States to receive due process.

Last month, Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported Jordin Melgar-Salmeron, 31, to El Salvador minutes after the Second Circuit ordered that he remain in the U.S.—and despite the government having assured the court it would hold off on his removal until at least the following day.

The government chalked the wrongful removal up to “a confluence of administrative errors”—though Politico reports that the Department of Homeland Security has said there was “no error” in his deportation, alleging that Melgar-Salmeron is a member of MS-13.

In a Tuesday ruling, a three-judge panel of the federal appeals court ruled that the government must facilitate Melgar-Salmeron’s return.

The judges, one of whom was appointed by Trump in his first term, also gave the government a one-week deadline to file a document clarifying Melgar-Salmeron’s “current physical location and custodial status” as well as “what steps the Government will take, and when, to facilitate his return to the United States.”

The Second Circuit judges in their Tuesday decision cited the Supreme Court’s decision in Noem v. Abrego Garcia, in which the high court ordered the Trump administration to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was wrongly deported to El Salvador.

Melgar-Salmeron’s is just the latest instance in which courts have had to step in to rein in Trump’s wanton deportation campaign. Politico reports that Melgar-Salmeron’s is the fourth case—Abrego Garcia’s being the most famous—of federal courts ordering the administration to return illegally or improperly deported immigrants to the United States.

Despite issuing guidance that measles can be treated with simple vitamins, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. admitted Tuesday that he’s never actually had to help someone recover from the disease before.

Kennedy was excoriated by Washington Representative Kim Schrier before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health Tuesday. She torched Kennedy for continuing to spread vaccine misinformation and refusing to listen to medical experts while he leads the nation’s public health policy.

“Have you ever treated measles?” asked Schrier, a former physician.

“No,” Kennedy said with a short laugh.

“Well I have,” Schrier said. “Let me tell you how miserable it is: These kids have high fevers, struggling to breathe, and they are crying. They suffer. The great thing is that there’s a vaccine to prevent it.”

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials have described the current measles outbreak in Texas as the worst uptick the agency has seen in measles cases in the last 25 years. But the lackadaisical public response to the contagion has only been made worse by Kennedy’s politics, which include unfounded claims that the disease-eradicating vaccine was contributing to higher autism rates in kids.

Schrier also accused Kennedy of lying to Republican Senator Bill Cassidy during his February confirmation hearings when he promised not to alter the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Cassidy was a critical vote for Kennedy clinching the Cabinet role.

“But then two weeks ago you fired all 17 experts on that very committee. Mr. Secretary, question for you, did you lie to Senator Cassidy when you told him you would not change this panel of experts?” Schrier asked.

Kennedy denied having made that commitment altogether, calling it “inaccurate.”

“I made an agreement with him, and he and I talked many times about that agreement,” he said of Cassidy.

Kennedy claimed that all 17 members had potential conflicts of interest before instating eight new members who were reputed vaccine and Covid-19 skeptics.

In May, Kennedy justified a religious Texas community’s decision not to receive the vaccine by claiming that the measles vaccine contains “aborted fetus debris” as well as “DNA particles.”

It should go without saying, but the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine does not contain pieces of aborted fetuses. The vaccine contains live or weakened measles, mumps, and rubella viruses and ingredients to stabilize the solution.

The return of historically eradicated diseases is thanks to a growing movement of anti-vax parents who refuse to provide their children with the same public health advantages that they received in their youth, mostly in fear of thoroughly debunked conspiracy theories. The researcher who sparked that myth with a fraudulent paper lost his medical license and eventually rescinded his opinion. Since then, dozens of studies have proven there’s no correlation between autism and vaccines, including one study that surveyed more than 660,000 children over the course of 11 years.

But America’s is not the first measles response that Kennedy has bungled. Under Kennedy’s stewardship, the anti-vax nonprofit Children’s Health Defense had its own questionable history with the disease. Preceding a deadly measles outbreak on Samoa in 2019, the organization spread rampant misinformation about the efficacy of vaccines throughout the nation, sending the island’s vaccination rate plummeting from the 60–70 percent range to just 31 percent, according to Mother Jones. That year, the country reported 5,707 cases of measles as well as 83 measles-related deaths, the majority of which were children under the age of 5.

A majority of House Democrats have killed Texas Representative Al Green’s articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump. The House voted 344–79 to table Green’s resolution on Tuesday, just hours after he introduced it. 

Green filed the articles on the  grounds of “abuse of presidential powers by disregarding the separation of powers—devolving American democracy into authoritarianism by unconstitutionally usurping Congress’s power to declare war.”

“President Trump’s unilateral, unprovoked use of force without congressional authorization or notice constitutes an abuse of power when there was no imminent threat to the United States, which facilitates the devolution of American democracy into authoritarianism,” he wrote. “I did not come to Congress to be a bystander while a president abuses power and devolves American democracy into authoritarianism with himself as an authoritarian president. President Trump’s unauthorized bombing of Iran constitutes a de facto declaration of war.”

All 79 votes against tabling the resolution came from Democrats. The rest of the party voted with Republicans to kill the legislation.

The vote makes it clear that most Democrats, like Republicans, do not see impeachment as a realistic, successful option. But maybe they shouldn’t—the president himself has already been impeached twice. 

This story has been updated.

Donald Trump struggled Tuesday to answer a simple question about America’s role in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization while en route to a summit of the group’s leaders.

The president cast doubt on Article 5 of NATO, which obligates member states to collective defense: An attack on one is an attack on all. But when asked whether he was committed to such a rule, Trump played dumb.

“It depends on your definition, there are numerous definitions of Article 5, you know that right?” Trump told reporters on Air Force One.

“But I’m committed to being their friends, you know I’ve become friends with many of those leaders,” Trump continued.

“I’m committed to saving lives. I’m committed to life and safety. And I’m going to give you an exact definition when I get there. I just don’t want to do it on the back of an airplane,” Trump said, according to Politico, leaving it up to interpretation whether he actually knows what Article 5 says, let alone his position on it.

But Trump hasn’t been a very good friend—in fact, his surprise decision to bomb three of Iran’s nuclear facilities inspired some key NATO members to skip Wednesday’s meeting.

NATO members are expected to sign a new agreement Wednesday to raise defense spending from 2 percent of gross domestic product to a target of 5 percent, following Trump’s ceaseless whining that member states are taking advantage of America’s exorbitant defense budget.

On Monday, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that Canada had launched a new defense partnership with the European Commission and European Council, limiting its ability to procure weapons and other materials from the United States.

Republican Senator Mike Lee’s proposed mass sell-off of public lands has foundered on the rocks of Senate procedure.

As a budget reconciliation bill, the Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill can pass with a simple majority, rather than the 60-vote hurdle needed to overcome a filibuster. However, it is subject to certain constraints: Under what is known as the “Byrd rule,” provisions that are unrelated to the budget get the chopping block.

Accordingly, Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough has in recent days been stripping certain extraneous provisions from the plan.

Among the dirt washed away in this so-called “Byrd bath” was a provision authored by Lee that would have put for sale up to 3.3 million acres of public land in 11 Western states, including Lee’s state of Utah. The plan received criticism from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and from hunters, fishers, and conservation groups concerned that it would impact treasured natural sites in the American West.

While Lee claimed the land could be used to address the need for affordable housing, critical observers saw the proposal as merely an effort to pay for tax breaks under Trump. And, under the plan, there would have been “no significant guardrails to prevent valued public lands from being sold for trophy homes, pricey vacation spots, exclusive golf communities, or other developments,” according to the Center for American Progress.

Lee, for his part, has vowed to return with a diluted version of the proposal, writing on X, “Yes, the Byrd Rule limits what can go in the reconciliation bill, but I’m doing everything I can to support President Trump and move this forward. Stay tuned. We’re just getting started.”

Yet another Democrat is calling for Trump’s impeachment after he dropped multiple bombs on Iranian nuclear sites without congressional approval.

On Tuesday, Texas Democrat Al Green filed articles of impeachment against President Trump on the grounds of “abuse of presidential powers by disregarding the separation of powers—devolving American democracy into authoritarianism by unconstitutionally usurping Congress’s power to declare war.”

“President Trump’s unilateral, unprovoked use of force without congressional authorization or notice constitutes an abuse of power when there was no imminent threat to the United States, which facilitates the devolution of American democracy into authoritarianism,” Green continued. “I did not come to Congress to be a bystander while a president abuses power and devolves American democracy into authoritarianism with himself as an authoritarian president. President Trump’s unauthorized bombing of Iran constitutes a de facto declaration of war.”

Green joined Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in calling for Trump’s impeachment.

“The President’s disastrous decision to bomb Iran without authorization is a grave violation of the Constitution and Congressional War Powers. He has impulsively risked launching a war that may ensnare us for generations,” AOC wrote Saturday on X. “It is absolutely and clearly grounds for impeachment.”

These calls, along with the bipartisan War Powers Resolution introduced by Democrat Ro Khanna and Republican Thomas Massie, are certainly much stronger messages than what Democratic leadership has been putting out, with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries admitting Monday that he hadn’t even looked at Massie and Khanna’s resolution.

But the calls will likely amount to nothing, as impeachment is incredibly unlikely to be approved by the House (Trump has been impeached twice already). It also raises questions about the politics of who is allowed to circumvent congressional approval to drop bombs on another country. Former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden each dropped thousands of bombs on various nations without receiving congressional approval, but they didn’t receive any calls for their impeachment.