Donald Trump has weighed in on Zohran Mamdani’s win in New York, saying: “the Democrats have crossed the line”. He called Mamdani “a 100% Communist Lunatic”.
“He looks TERRIBLE, his voice is grating, he’s not very smart, he’s got AOC+3, Dummies ALL, backing him, and even our Great Palestinian Senator, Cryin’ Chuck Schumer, is groveling over him,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Yes, this is a big moment in the History of our Country!”
In a second post, he said, presumably in jest, that Democrats should nominate “Low IQ Candidate, Jasmine Crockett, for President” to get back in play, and put “AOC+3” – his term for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other progressive Squad members – in Cabinet positions.
Added together with our future Communist Mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, and our Country is really SCREWED!”
Key events
Andrew Cuomo has said he will closely evaluate voting data from New York’s mayoral primary election before deciding whether to run as an independent in the November election.
The former New York governor told a CBS affiliate on Wednesday that he would be looking “at the numbers that come in from the primary”, the landscape of the general election as well as any involvement Donald Trump might have in the election. The president has described Zohran Mamdani as a “communist lunatic”.
Cuomo said the field of candidates was not “enticing” and that he did not believe the city’s mayor Eric Adams, who is running as an independent, could win.
“His relationship with Trump and what he did with Donald Trump … and the general condition of the city,” he said. “I don’t know that he is a possible alternative electorally.”
Jessica Glenza
The first meeting of a critical federal vaccine panel was a high-profile display of how the US health secretary and vaccine skeptic Robert F Kennedy Jr has injected chaos into vaccine policy infrastructure.
Wednesday’s meeting was held amid controversy, not only regarding the new members unilaterally appointed by Kennedy, but also the questions they would consider, their conflicts of interest, views on vaccines and the scheduled speakers.
The new chair of the committee, former Harvard University professor of medicine Dr Martin Kulldorff, who was fired for refusing to be vaccinated against Covid-19, began the meeting by criticizing both his former employer and the media.
“Some media outlets have been very harsh on the new members of this committee,” said Kulldorff, who he said were put into: “either a pro- or anti-vaccine box”.
“Such labels undermine critical scientific inquiry and it further feeds the flames of vaccines hesitancy. As secretary Kennedy has eloquently stated, opposing mercury in fish doesn’t make you anti-fish, and opposing mercury in vaccines doesn’t make you anti-vaccines,” Kulldorff continued, referring to one of the issues the panel would consider.
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The Harvard University researcher and Russia-born scientist who spent months in Ice custody after being accused of smuggling frog embryos into the US now faces additional criminal charges.
A federal grand jury indicted Kseniia Petrova, a cancer researcher for Harvard Medical School, on Wednesday on one count of concealment of a material fact, one count of false statement and one count of smuggling goods into the United States, the Associated Press reports.
She was returning from a vacation earlier this year in France, where she had stopped at a lab specializing in splicing superfine sections of frog embryos to obtain a package of samples for research. She was questioned about the samples while passing through a US Customs and Border Protection checkpoint at Boston Logan international airport, and told after an interrogation that her visa was being canceled.
Federal officials accused her of lying about “carrying substances” into the country and alleged that she planned to smuggle the embryos through customs without declaring them. Petrova has said she didn’t realize the items needed to be declared.
Petrova faces a sentence of up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 if convicted of smuggling and a sentence of up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 on the charges of concealment of material fact and false statements.
Today so far
Let’s round up what’s been happening since this morning:
Trump weighed in on Zohran Mamdani’s win in New York, saying Mamdani was a “100% Communist Lunatic” and saying he and other progressive politicians were signs that “our Country is really SCREWED”.
Trump has lit into journalists who are reporting on the doubts in the intelligence community that the US bombs actually decimated the Iranian nuclear sites. He has called for a CNN journalist to be fired over her reporting. CNN defended its journalist, Natasha Bertrand, and its stories on the matter.
Emil Bove, a judicial nominee and justice department official, was grilled by a Senate committee and denied allegations in a whistleblower report about ignoring judicial orders and said claims of a quid pro quo for New York City mayor Eric Adams were false.
Speaking of Eric Adams, he is expected to formally announce his mayoral run tomorrow. He is running as an independent. And he went on Fox and called Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor, a “snake oil salesman”.
Mamdani, meanwhile, gathered congratulations (sometimes muted) from prominent Democrats after his upset win in the mayoral primary. On the right, Stephen Miller has cast Mamdani’s win as a symptom of “unchecked migration”.
The Working Families Party called Mamdani’s win a “seismic shift” and shows that “voters are thoroughly fed up with the status quo”.
Health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr’s new vaccine advisory panel is meeting today for the first time.
A Senate subcommittee held a hearing this afternoon called “Enter the Dragon – China and the Left’s Lawfare Against American Energy Dominance,” attempting to tie lawsuits from local governments against big oil over climate issues to China.
Maryland man Kilmar Ábrego García, who was deported to El Salvador by mistake and then returned to the US, will be released from a Tennessee jail today, then taken into immigration custody.
US congresswoman LaMonica McIver pleaded not guilty to federal charges of assaulting, resisting and impeding immigration officers in New Jersey while on a congressional oversight visit to a detention facility.
Dharna Noor
Dozens of cities and states have in recent years sued big oil over its climate-warming pollution and history of allegedly spreading climate disinformation. Those lawsuits are advancing the agenda of the Chinese communist party, Republicans argued in a hearing on Wednesday.
Titled “Enter the Dragon – China and the Left’s Lawfare Against American Energy Dominance”, the hearing in the Senate judiciary oversight subcommittee aimed to show that climate advocates want to weaken the US energy sector, giving China the upper hand.
It came as Washington DC temperatures neared 100 degrees, and as Republicans are working to gut clean energy credits in reconciliation bill negotiations.
“The agenda of the Chinese Communist Party and the agenda of Senate Democrats are identical: Both China and the Democrats want to bankrupt the American energy industry,” said committee chair Ted Cruz, the senator from Texas. He went on to claim that “left wing groups funded by Communist China”.
Among the expert witnesses invited by Republicans was Kansas attorney general Kris Kobach, chair of the Republican Attorneys General Association, which has been backed by oil and gas interests. In his testimony, he called on Congress to amend the Clean Air Act to block states from regulating greenhouse gas emissions.
This month, Kobach was among 16 Republican attorneys general who signed a letter to the Justice Department calling on the Trump administration to quash climate lawsuits and provide fossil fuel companies with immunity from current and future litigation.
David Arkush, a director at climate and consumer advocacy nonprofit Public Citizen, who was invited to testify by Democratic senators, pushed back on the premise of the hearing.
“Right now, there’s a brutal heatwave afflicting half the United States, energy costs and insurance premiums are skyrocketing, and we’re sitting here in the US Senate talking about Chinese communist conspiracy theories,” he said. “I don’t think this is the right priority.”
CNN has responded to Trump’s outburst about its reporter, Natasha Bertrand, defending her journalism. The media company noted that Bertrand and other journalists who reported on the intelligence assessment specifically noted that this was an initial finding, and the network has also covered Trump’s skepticism of the intelligence report.
“However, we do not believe it is reasonable to criticize CNN reporters for accurately reporting the existence of the assessment and accurately characterizing its findings, which are in the public interest,” CNN said in a statement.
Trump goes after Zohran Mamdani
Donald Trump has weighed in on Zohran Mamdani’s win in New York, saying: “the Democrats have crossed the line”. He called Mamdani “a 100% Communist Lunatic”.
“He looks TERRIBLE, his voice is grating, he’s not very smart, he’s got AOC+3, Dummies ALL, backing him, and even our Great Palestinian Senator, Cryin’ Chuck Schumer, is groveling over him,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Yes, this is a big moment in the History of our Country!”
In a second post, he said, presumably in jest, that Democrats should nominate “Low IQ Candidate, Jasmine Crockett, for President” to get back in play, and put “AOC+3” – his term for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other progressive Squad members – in Cabinet positions.
Added together with our future Communist Mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, and our Country is really SCREWED!”
Donald Trump wants CNN to fire its journalist who has been reporting on the intelligence that casts doubt on whether the US bombs sent to destroy Iran’s nuclear sites actually obliterated them, as Trump has claimed.
Natasha Bertrand has reported in the last few days about intelligence assessments that show the “bunker buster” bombs may not have destroyed key parts of Iran’s nuclear program and could have only set the country back months in creating nuclear weapons.
During Trump’s press conference at the Nato summit, he and defense secretary Pete Hegseth lashed out at reporters who questioned whether the US had destroyed the sites and claimed they weren’t respecting the military members who conducted the strikes. In a post on Truth Social earlier today, he railed against CNN and the New York Times for reporting on the intelligence concerns, saying they “tried to demean” the pilots.
Now, he’s making the criticism more pointed, singling out Bertrand in a post this afternoon:
Natasha Bertrand should be FIRED from CNN! I watched her for three days doing Fake News. She should be IMMEDIATELY reprimanded, and then thrown out “like a dog.” She lied on the Laptop from Hell Story, and now she lied on the Nuclear Sites Story, attempting to destroy our Patriot Pilots by making them look bad when, in fact, they did a GREAT job and hit “pay dirt” — TOTAL OBLITERATION! She should not be allowed to work at Fake News CNN. It’s people like her who destroyed the reputation of a once great Network. Her slant was so obviously negative, besides, she doesn’t have what it takes to be an on camera correspondent, not even close. FIRE NATASHA!
Senator Murphy: Mamdani offers ‘important lessons’ for Democrats
Chris Murphy, the Democratic senator from Connecticut who has emerged as a leading voice on the left, congratulated Zohran Mamdani on his win, saying it offered “important lessons” for Democrats.
“Focus on shifting economic power. Relentlessly. Have big ideas on how to do it,” Murphy wrote on X. “Be joyful and authentic. Even if your ideas aren’t considered ‘mainstream’ by elites. The elites have little idea what’s actually mainstream.”
His comments are an echo of what he told the Guardian two weeks ago for where the Democratic party should move after the harsh 2024 loss. He told David Smith that the party claims to be the party of poor people, but poor people don’t vote for Democrats any more.
There’s a lot of conservative poor people out there who think that our party is way too judgmental. We’ve got to become a bigger tent party when it comes to a lot of social and cultural and hot button issues and then we’ve got to become an aggressively populist party.
A mediator between Donald Trump and Paramount, which owns CBS News, has suggested the media company settle a lawsuit from the president for $20m, the Wall Street Journal is reporting.
Trump’s lawsuit came after a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, which Trump alleged was election interference because of how the interview was edited. CBS has defended its work, saying it edited a response to make it more succinct, a common practice for journalists.
The suit is one of several Trump has filed against media companies, a way to intimidate the press and draw their resources into settlements or lengthy court battles. Paramount is also in the middle of a merger, which plays into its willingness to get on the Trump administration’s good side. The lawsuit has roiled CBS, with high-profile departures from its news operations who see a settlement as damaging to journalism.
Trump wanted $20bn in damages; Paramount had previously offered $15m to settle, but Trump wanted upward of $25m, according to the Journal. The mediator’s $20m proposal would include $17m for Trump’s foundation or museum, plus money for legal fees and public-service announcements against antisemitism, the Journal says. But, it notes, “Settlement talks are still fluid and an agreement may not be reached.”
A few updates on some immigration issues we’ve been covering:
Kilmar Ábrego García, the Maryland man who was deported to El Salvador by mistake and then returned to the US, is expected to be released from a Tennessee jail today. He will then be taken into immigration custody, the Associated Press reports. He was charged by the US with two counts of human smuggling.
Separately, the US representative who was charged after a congressional visit to an immigration detention center pleaded not guilty today, according to the AP. US congresswoman LaMonica McIver faces federal charges of assaulting, resisting and impeding immigration officers in New Jersey. Outside the courthouse, she said: “They will not intimidate me. They will not stop me from doing my job.”
And in Maryland, the Trump administration has taken the unusual step of filing a lawsuit against federal judges over an order they made that blocks removals for detained immigrants who request a court hearing.
Eric Adams, the New York City mayor, is expected to make a “major announcement” and “formally announce” presumably a run to keep his office midday tomorrow.
Adams’s campaign said in a press release today that Adams “will make a major announcement about the future of his re-election campaign” on the steps of New York city hall at noon Thursday.
“With the Democratic primary now behind him, this pivotal moment will set the stage for the next phase of the 2025 mayoral race,” the release says.
Adams ran for mayor as a Democrat but has said he would run as an independent in the general election.
Chris Stein
Democratic senators have repeatedly pressed Emil Bove about his involvement in the decision to drop corruption charges filed under Joe Biden’s administration against Eric Adams, alleging the decision was a quid pro quo to win the New York mayor’s cooperation on immigration enforcement.
“In order to get Mayor Adams to cooperate with President Trump’s immigration policy, you were prepared to drop the charges against him?” asked Dick Durbin, the Senate judiciary committee’s top Democrat.
“That’s completely false,” Bove replied.
Durbin went on to allege that a federal judge “foiled your plans” by dismissing the charges with prejudice – meaning they could not be refiled, and Adams would have no incentive to cooperate. “You could no longer have the mayor on a leash making sure that he follows the president’s immigration policies,” the senator said.
“There’s objective evidence in the record in that case that completely refutes the claim you just made,” Bove replied. Durbin went on to ask whether the justice department attorneys who signed the brief dropping the charges were either threatened or rewarded, which Bove said did not happen.
Republican senators have thus far signaled no opposition to confirming Bove to a seat on the third circuit court of appeals, which covers New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and the US Virgin Islands. In their questioning, they gave Bove the opportunity to strenuously deny Democrats’ allegations.
“I want you to look me in the eye and swear to your higher being when you answer this question, did you make a deal, a political deal, to dismiss the charges against Mayor Adams?” asked senator John Kennedy.
