Politics

By Julia Harte

June 27 – President Donald Trump’s interim agreement to end the war with Iran has dragged down his approval rating and garnered criticism across the political spectrum — even from his own supporters. 

Recent interviews with 18 Americans who voted for Trump in 2024, a group that Reuters has interviewed monthly since he returned to office, show that most have doubts about the deal, which has reopened the Strait of Hormuz while temporarily lifting U.S. oil sanctions on Iran and authorizing a $300 billion fund for its reconstruction.

“We need to truly weaken the Iranian regime instead of this, ‘beat them up a little bit and then step back and let them rebuild’,” said Terry Alberta, 65, a pilot in Michigan.

Overall, only a quarter of Americans believe the war with Iran was worth the costs, ‌and a majority worry that the truce with Tehran is unlikely to last, according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll.

Many of the Trump voters feared his unpopular concessions to Iran would make it harder for Republicans to retain control of Congress in November’s midterm elections, although those most critical of the deal had already begun to lose faith in the president before the war. Six in the group believed he still had plans to bring down the Iranian government.

The group largely supported the war during its early days, believing U.S. strikes were necessary to deplete Iran’s stockpile of long-range missiles and cripple its nuclear program.

Nearly four months later, with Iran politically emboldened and many of its military capabilities still intact, 14 of the voters criticized some aspects of the memorandum of understanding announced on June 14. Most were skeptical that Tehran could be trusted to honor any agreement and dismayed by the prospect of granting it billions of dollars to rebuild. 

The $300 billion fund will be a private investment vehicle rather than a government-funded plan, though exact details have not been released.

Juan Rivera, 26, said Trump “criticized his predecessors about negotiating with terrorists, and he’s basically done the same exact thing.”

TRUMP’S MIDTERM ENDORSEMENT NOW ‘KISS OF DEATH’?

Rivera still plans to support mostly Republican candidates in the midterms. But he said that when he volunteered recently to canvass Latino voters in his community near San Diego, many fellow Trump supporters were so disappointed by the president’s handling of the war, among other issues, that they felt unmotivated to back his party in November.

“A lot of people say: ‘Why should I vote when the president’s not doing what he promised?’” Rivera recalled.

Asked for comment, a White House spokesperson told Reuters that Trump’s achievement “on the battlefield and at the negotiating table is nothing short of remarkable and will strengthen American security for many years.” 

Steve Egan, 65, a promotional product distributor in Tampa, soured on Trump in early 2025 after tariff-triggered price hikes hurt his business. From the outset, Egan was skeptical of the president’s rationale for the war and upset that it further jacked up the price of gas and other goods. 

“Right now it doesn’t seem like it’s been worth it to go through all that,” he said, noting that the stated goal of regime change “didn’t happen.” His opinion of the president is now so low, Egan said, that Trump’s endorsement would be “the kiss of death” for him when deciding which candidates to vote for in the midterms.

Brandon Neumeister, 37, a Pennsylvania state corrections worker and former National Guardsman,  said the conflict seemed only to have benefited oil companies. Even before the war, though, Neumeister said he was unlikely to vote in November because he was disgusted with politics.

Robert Billups, 35, of Washington state, was cautiously optimistic the peace deal would hold. But he believed the war had spawned more hostility toward the United States rather than making the country safer. 

Vice President JD Vance, tasked with leading U.S. negotiations with Iran, has fallen in his esteem, and Billups said he no longer feels preferential toward Republican candidates. Come November, “whoever has a better strategy this time, I’m gonna vote for them regardless of their party,” he said.

‘A BIGGER PLAN’

Though Trump has been adamant about wanting to end the war, six of his more loyal voters expressed hope that he still had secret plans to bring Iran to heel.  

Kate Mottl, 63, a secretary at a municipal office in the Chicago suburbs, said that “destroying” the regime in Tehran seemed like the only way to avert future conflict.

It would be “very disappointing” if Trump refrained from further military intervention, Mottl said, adding that she believed “there’s a bigger plan here.”

Rich Somora, 62, an engineer in North Carolina, agreed that Trump probably had more aggressive plans up his sleeve. “I can’t imagine that he would have gone through all this and not found out a way to get rid of those mullahs,” he said. 

According to diplomats and analysts, however, the war has only strengthened the grip of Iran’s clerical rulers. If they remain in power for another month, Somora said, he’ll start to worry.

In Prescott, Arizona, 74-year-old retiree Joyce Kenney said she supported lifting sanctions and believed restoring Iran’s ability to trade with other countries would ensure its leaders honored the truce. 

But the reconstruction fund was a bridge too far: “That’s not our responsibility,” she said. 

(Reporting by Julia Harte; editing by Jesse Mesner-Hage and Claudia Parsons)

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By Howard Schneider

WASHINGTON, June 27 (Reuters) – Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh’s early leadership of the U.S. central bank faces fresh tests this week, with an appearance before a high-profile economic conference in Portugal and the U.S. Supreme Court’s expected ruling on the legality of President Donald Trump’s effort to fire a Fed policymaker.

The top U.S. court, entering the final week of its current term, could decide as soon as Monday whether Fed Governor Lisa Cook can keep her job despite Trump’s announcement last August that he was firing her.

Lower courts have agreed that Cook is likely to win her legal challenge of Trump’s effort to fire her and have let her remain on the Fed’s Board of Governors as the case worked its way to the Supreme Court.

Fed governors can only be fired “for cause,” but that has never been defined or tested in the courts. Trump is the first president to attempt to dismiss a sitting governor, arguing that what the president has characterized as misstatements on a home mortgage application by Cook justified her removal.

The move was seen broadly as an attack on the Fed’s independence from political interference in its policymaking, as Trump sought to make room on the Fed’s board for his own appointees after being frustrated that current U.S. central bankers would not respond to his demands for steep interest rate cuts.

In a hearing earlier this year, Supreme Court justices seemed skeptical of the Trump administration’s arguments. Though it has allowed the administration to remove officials from other independent agencies, the Supreme Court indicated in earlier rulings that the Fed had its own status. Legal scholars interpreted that stance as a hint that the court would find a rationale to protect the central bank’s policymakers from removal “at will.”

Allowing Cook to remain, with firm guardrails in place, would remove a major risk for Warsh — namely that his leadership of the Fed would involve a disruptive string of firings by Trump, with Warsh himself at risk of removal.

It would also, however, emphasize the constraints Trump faces when it comes to influencing the Fed’s actions, including on rates, with a ruling in Cook’s favor also insulating Warsh and others to act free from the threat of removal.

Recent economic data, with a key inflation gauge in May running at more than double the Fed’s 2% target, has raised the likelihood in the eyes of investors that the central bank will raise rates in coming months, not lower them as Trump has said he wants and expects.

So far, however, comments by Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have been more forgiving than they were towards former Fed Chair Jerome Powell, whose refusal to cut rates earned him the pejorative “Too Late” nickname, and more significantly, a since-dropped criminal investigation and calls for his removal. Powell remains a member of the Fed’s board.

“Kevin is fantastic, and I want him to do whatever he wants,” Trump said on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” program earlier this month. “I don’t want to have a big influence on him.”

Warsh’s approach to his job may help him somewhat in managing Trump’s expectations. The new Fed chief has said he plans to avoid as much as possible any talk or “forward guidance” about whether the policy interest rate should be raised or lowered on any given timetable, keeping his own outlook largely out of public, and the president’s, view.

DIMINISHED GUIDANCE ‘ENTIRELY APPROPRIATE’

Warsh has long said he dislikes guidance or steering financial markets about Fed outcomes during normal times, when, he argues, investors should be reacting to economic conditions and not the central bank.

He began putting that preference into practice quickly, overseeing a new policy statement that dropped guidance language and emphasizing the point in his first press conference as Fed chief following the central bank’s June 16-17 meeting.

“Your question sounded like an encouragement for me to give forward guidance. We’ve dropped forward guidance,” he said in response to a reporter’s query about the conditions under which the Fed might raise rates. “I can’t give any forward guidance about what we’re going to do next. The good news is, we’ll be meeting in six weeks” and issuing an updated policy statement.

Warsh’s appearance on Wednesday at the European Central Bank’s annual forum in the Portuguese hilltop resort of Sintra will be a first test of how that approach is received by global peers including ECB President Christine Lagarde, Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey and Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem.

The four central bankers will share a question-and-answer panel.

While the ECB’s Lagarde has also moved away from forward guidance, the BoE includes fairly detailed commentary about how the economy is seen evolving, based on different economic scenarios.

The dollar, however, plays a different role globally as the major reserve and trading currency, with unexpected movements in U.S. interest rates a source of potential stress across other markets and currencies, and the Fed’s open “swap lines” with other countries offering a dollar liquidity backstop for much of the world economy.

A global audience will be looking to see just how far Warsh’s low-information approach might extend.

Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, who is leaving his post as the International Monetary Fund’s chief economist next week to return to academic life, told Reuters in an exit interview on Friday that strong forward guidance had gotten “really bad press” because it committed central banks to some future action, regardless of economic developments, noting it bound the Fed from responding more quickly to the inflation outbreak following the COVID-19 pandemic.

“So I think moving away from these strong forms of forward guidance is entirely appropriate. Saying there is no forward guidance, I don’t think that is actually the case ever. You do it explicitly, or implicitly, the market is going to form a view,” he said.

(Reporting by Howard Schneider; additional reporting by Andrea Shalal in Washington; editing by Dan Burns and Paul Simao)

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By John Kruzel

WASHINGTON, June 26 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court in a pair of new rulings has further expanded the Constitution’s Second Amendment right “to keep and bear arms,” as the justices consider whether to take up additional gun rights cases for their next term.

The court, in a 6-3 ruling on Thursday powered by its conservative majority, struck down a Hawaii law that required gun owners to get an owner’s permission before bringing a handgun onto private property open to the public, such as most businesses.

The justices decided unanimously last week to limit the application of a decades-old federal law that bars firearms possession by certain drug users, narrowing a measure that had threatened the gun rights of millions of Americans who use marijuana and own firearms.

In a nation deeply divided over how to address ​persistent firearms violence including frequent mass shootings, these rulings underscored the court’s generally sympathetic approach toward protections enshrined in the Second Amendment.

The decisions, experts said, stiffened an already stringent legal test that gun control measures must clear in order to survive scrutiny under the amendment, ratified in 1791, that states, “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

‘EXTREME SKEPTICISM’ 

Pepperdine University Caruso School of Law professor Jacob Charles said, “The two cases confirm the court’s extreme skepticism about all manner of gun regulations, especially new ones.”

“It has created and elaborated a test that makes it exceedingly difficult for legislatures to create gun laws to protect their citizens,” Charles said of the court.

The rulings were issued as the justices near the end of their current term, which began last October. 

Gun rights advocates, fresh off their recent legal victories, expressed hope that the court would take up additional Second Amendment cases for its next term, which begins in October.

The justices on Thursday gathered for their weekly private conference. Challenges to the legality of state restrictions on assault-style rifles, such as AR-15s, and large-capacity ammunition magazines were among the appeals up for consideration for court review. Those cases could be taken up as soon as Monday to be heard in the coming term.

Stephen Stamboulieh, an attorney with the pro-Second Amendment group Gun Owners of America, said that “it’s past time for the court to enforce” its prior rulings against such measures.

“It is critical that the Supreme Court take an AR-15 and magazine case and end the lower courts’ rebellion against the court’s precedents,” Stamboulieh said.

When the Supreme Court last year turned away appeals in similar lawsuits, three of its conservative justices dissented from the decision to reject the appeals.

A fourth conservative justice, Brett Kavanaugh, expressed sympathy toward the argument by the challengers that AR-15s are in common use by “law-abiding citizens and therefore are protected by the Second Amendment.” Kavanaugh said the court “presumably will address the AR-15 issue soon.”

The court is also considering whether to take up a challenge to a U.S. government ban on federally licensed firearms dealers selling handguns to adults under the age of 21, and similar state law measures.

THE BRUEN TEST 

In both new gun rights rulings, the court applied a legal test that emerged from a landmark 2022 decision authored by conservative Justice Clarence Thomas in a case called New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.

Under the so-called Bruen test, gun control measures must be “consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation” — not simply advance an important government interest — in order to comply with the Second Amendment.

Applying that test in the 2024 case of U.S. v. Rahimi, the court in an 8-1 ruling upheld a federal law that makes it a crime for people under domestic violence restraining ​orders to have guns — the only law to survive the Bruen test unscathed at the Supreme Court to date.

David Kopel, a Second Amendment expert at the libertarian Independence Institute think tank, said the dangerousness of domestic abusers is what set the Rahimi decision apart from the two recent rulings.

“Peaceable people who use marijuana, and persons with concealed-carry permits, are not dangerous,” Kopel said, referring to the plaintiffs in the recent gun rights cases.

“The broad historic traditions invoked by Bruen point towards a dangerousness standard as the rule for when some Americans can be disarmed,” Kopel added.

Hawaii officials had contended that the state’s law had struck a proper balance between the right to bear arms and the right of property owners to exclude guns from their property.     

Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in a written dissent, accused the court’s conservatives of having “manipulated” the Bruen test “into a free-for-all that lets the judiciary thwart the will of legislatures by privileging access to firearms above all else.”

Pepperdine’s Charles dismissed the notion advanced by some of the court’s conservatives that the right to keep and bear arms is being treated like a “second-class right.”

“The court’s doctrine has elevated the Second Amendment right far above a first-class right,” Charles said.

(Reporting by John Kruzel; Editing by Will Dunham)

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By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON, June 26 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump said on Friday he would repair the National Mall reflecting pool after July 4, as the landmark remains under heightened security and surveillance amid ongoing controversy over its renovation and emerging maintenance problems.

The reflecting pool, located between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, was the subject of a roughly $14 million Trump-directed renovation that aimed to restore and recolor the basin ahead of the nation’s 250th anniversary, but has since drawn scrutiny after reports of algae growth, peeling surface material and visible deterioration just weeks after completion.

Trump has blamed dark-of-night saboteurs for the issues with the project. While no evidence has emerged to support Trump’s claim that a vandal cut a 350-foot (107-meter) gash in the pool, a National Park Service official said in a sworn court statement late on Wednesday that on June 9, U.S. Park Police examined apparent intentional damage to the pool.

(Reporting By Steve Holland and Jarrett Renshaw; editing by Michelle Nichols and Sanjev Miglani)

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By Kanishka Singh

WASHINGTON, June 26 (Reuters) – U.S. immigrants’ rights advocates welcomed the announcement by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis of the closure of “Alligator Alcatraz” but also urged caution, saying the migrant detention center symbolized a wider systemic problem that remains.

DeSantis said on Thursday the detention center “fulfilled the role it was designed to serve.”

Carmen Iguina González, deputy director for immigration detention with the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project, said the closure was worth celebrating.

“However, the nightmarish scene found at ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ is not wholly unique and reflects systemic patterns of abuse at other ICE detention facilities nationwide,” she said.

“We remain very concerned that people may be transferred to other sites with sordid and dangerous conditions, and we will continue to monitor this situation.”

Last week, the ​U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency said detainees at “Alligator Alcatraz” were relocated to other facilities.

ICE, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, held an average of ​about 1,400 detainees at the facility from October ​1, 2025, through early April, according to the agency’s statistics.

“These failures are not an isolated case — they reflect systemic failures throughout our immigration detention system,” said Paul Chavez, director of litigation and advocacy at Americans for Immigrant Justice.

Environmental groups had sued over the detention center, alleging a lack of proper permits and required reviews.

ICE ​has been at ​the heart ⁠of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown that rights groups have condemned as violating ​free speech and due process rights.

Human rights groups ​say ⁠the crackdown has created an unsafe environment, particularly for ethnic minorities, and led to concerns of racial profiling.

Trump and Republican ⁠advocates of ​the crackdown, including DeSantis, say it aims to curb illegal immigration and improve domestic ​security.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in WashingtonEditing by Rod Nickel)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Louisiana Republicans will nominate a candidate for U.S. Senate in a primary runoff Saturday, six weeks after denying Republican U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy a shot at a third term.

Although President Donald Trump already achieved one of his top political goals with Cassidy’s defeat, Saturday’s runoff could further demonstrate his ongoing influence in Republican primaries as he tries to populate the halls of Congress with loyalists for his final two years in office. The seat is not a top target among Democrats looking to win back control of the chamber in November.

Republican U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow and state Treasurer John Fleming are the finalists for Cassidy’s now-open U.S. Senate seat. Trump encouraged Letlow to challenge Cassidy in the primary and endorsed her before she entered the race in January. Letlow took office in 2021 in a special election to replace her husband, Luke Letlow, who died from COVID-19 in 2020 before taking office. Fleming served in Congress for eight years leading up to Trump’s first term. He ran for U.S. Senate in 2016 but failed to make the runoff. Republican John Kennedy won the seat.

In the May 16 primary, Letlow placed first with about 45% of the vote, short of the majority required to avoid Saturday’s runoff. Fleming placed second with 28% of the vote, just ahead of Cassidy with about 25%.

Letlow led in small, mostly rural parishes across the state, with outright majorities in parishes in northeastern Louisiana and along the Mississippi border. Fleming mostly placed a distant second across the state. He performed best in northwestern Louisiana, with leads in nine rural parishes, but not in Caddo, home to Shreveport, where he finished a close second behind Letlow.

Cassidy was the top vote-getter in the state’s three most populous parishes, including Orleans Parish where he led Letlow by almost a three-to-one margin. But he barely outperformed Letlow in East Baton Rouge and Jefferson parishes.

The president’s endorsees have generally had a strong winning record at the ballot box, but his recent picks for governor of Iowa and Georgia lost their primaries. Trump endorsed South Carolina Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette for governor ahead of the primary, but after she was forced to a runoff in a close vote, he announced he was backing both her and her opponent, state Attorney General Alan Wilson, who won the nomination on Tuesday.

Trump has reissued his endorsement of Letlow several times since January, including most recently in mid-June. He has not also endorsed Fleming.

Louisiana Democrats will also finalize their U.S. Senate nominee, with farmer Jamie Davis and Navy veteran Gary Crockett competing in the runoff.

Other primary runoffs on the ballot include Republican contests for Public Service Commission and state board of education, where incumbent board member and former Republican U.S. Rep. Joseph Cao faces a challenge from educator and business owner Ellie Schroder.

Primaries for U.S. House were were postponed to November after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the state’s current congressional map, which includes a majority Black district that favors Democrats. Although the state had previously adopted a new primary system for congressional races, the postponed U.S. House races will revert to using an “open” or “ jungle ” primary system where candidates run on the same ballot regardless of party.

Here are some of the key facts about the election and data points the AP Decision Team will monitor as the votes are tallied:

Polls close at 8 p.m. CT, which is 9 p.m. ET.

The Associated Press will provide vote results and declare winners in primary runoffs for U.S. Senate, state Public Service Commission and state school board.

Registered party members may vote only in their own party’s primary runoffs. In other words, Democrats can’t vote in a Republican runoff or vice versa. Independent or unaffiliated voters who voted in a party’s primary on May 16 may only vote in that same party’s runoff. Independent or unaffiliated voters who did not vote in a partisan primary on May 16 may vote in either party’s runoff.

As of June 1, there were about 3 million registered voters in Louisiana. Registered Democrats and Republicans numbered about 1.1 million each, with registered Democrats at a slight advantage. About 819,000 voters were not registered with any party. The remainder were registered with other parties.

About 832,000 Louisianans participated in the May 16 primary, or about 28% of registered voters. This includes about 347,000 registered Democrats and about 336,000 registered Republicans.

In 2022 when the state still used “open” or “jungle” primary rules for certain contests, turnout fell from 1.4 million in the November primary to about 439,000 in the December runoff, or about 47% of registered voters to about 14%.

About 33% of Democratic primary votes and about 31% of Republican primary votes in the May 16 primaries were cast early in-person or by mail.

As of Thursday, about 82,000 ballots from Republicans and about 61,000 ballots from Democrats had already been cast in Saturday’s runoffs.

Results from early and absentee voting are usually released by each parish in the first vote update.

In the May 16 primary, the AP first reported results at 9:02 p.m. ET, or two minutes after polls closed. By 10:46 p.m. ET, more than 90% of the total vote had been counted. The last vote update of the night was at 1:30 a.m. ET with about 99.9% of total votes counted.

The AP does not make projections and will declare a winner only when it’s determined there is no scenario that would allow a trailing candidate to close the gap. If a race has not been called, the AP will continue to cover any newsworthy developments, such as candidate concessions or declarations of victory. In doing so, the AP will make clear that it has not yet declared a winner and explain why.

There are no automatic recounts in Louisiana, but a candidate may request and pay for a recount of absentee and early votes. The AP may declare a winner in a race that is subject to a recount if it can determine the lead is too large for a recount or legal challenge to change the outcome.

As of Saturday, there will be 129 days until the Nov. 3 general election and the Louisiana congressional primaries, and 168 days until the Louisiana congressional general election on Dec. 12.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2026 election at https://apnews.com/projects/elections-2026/.

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By Nate Raymond

June 26 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to let it detain people arrested in its immigration crackdown without a chance to seek bond, even if they have lived in the country for years.

The administration made that request in a filing made public on Friday, asking the Supreme Court to overturn a May decision by a federal appeals court, which had rejected its reinterpretation of a decades-old immigration ​law that now underlies its mass detention policy.

The administration filed the appeal earlier this week, before the 6-3 conservative majority court handed it a pair of major wins on immigration policy on Thursday, including by allowing it to strip hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Syrian immigrants of protections against deportation.

The administration is asking the Supreme Court to review a ruling by a 2-1 panel of the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, one of three appeals courts that have joined with hundreds of lower-court judges in rejecting its detention practice.

Two other appeals courts have endorsed the administration’s policy, a fact U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer noted as he urged the justices to intervene and resolve a “critically important question of immigration law” that is fueling thousands of lawsuits by people challenging their detention.

“Detaining aliens who are living in the country after an illegal entry while their removal proceedings unfold prevents those aliens from evading hearings and helps ensure their removal from the United States,” Sauer argued in a petition.

Bucking a long-standing interpretation of immigration law, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security last year took the position that non-citizens already residing in the United ​States, and not just people ​arriving at the border, ⁠qualify as “applicants for admission” subject to mandatory detention.

Under federal immigration law, “applicants for admission” to the United States are subject to mandatory detention while their cases proceed ​in immigration courts and are ineligible for bond hearings.

The Board of Immigration ​Appeals, which is ⁠part of the Justice Department, issued a decision in September that adopted that interpretation. As a result, immigration judges, who are employed by the department, across the country began ordering mandatory detention. 

The 6th Circuit’s ruling came in cases out of Michigan involving citizens of Mexico, El Salvador, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Guatemala who had resided in the United States for years before being arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

It held that the administration misinterpreted a provision of the ⁠Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 and that the migrants were denied bond hearings in violation of their due process rights under the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Sanjeev Miglani)

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By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON, June 26 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump warned on Friday that a string of left-wing Democratic primary victories in New York City posed “the most serious threat to our country since its existence,” previewing what is likely to be a key Republican line of attack ahead of November’s midterm elections.

Trump, addressing the evangelical Faith and Freedom Coalition’s annual “Road to Majority” event in Washington, inaccurately described the winning candidates – including two members of the Democratic Socialists of America – as communists.

“These ruthless communists will attack all religions, but in particular Christianity,” Trump said. “This is the greatest threat to our country since its founding.”

He also said communists were “animals” willing to assassinate their opponents, offering no evidence to support that assertion. The remark was particularly stark given that Trump was speaking at the same hotel where an armed attacker tried to get past Secret Service agents while the president was attending the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in April.

Republicans, struggling to convince Americans they have a plan to address the high cost of living, are widely expected to go on the attack against Democrats in the closing months of the campaign as they fight to retain their slim control of Congress.

Political analysts say the success of left-wing Democratic candidates in the primaries gives Republicans an opportunity to paint the party as drifting too far to the left and focused on ideological priorities rather than voters’ cost-of-living concerns.

Tuesday’s primary contests saw a trio of far-left U.S. House of Representatives candidates backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani defeat two incumbent Democrats and a third candidate favored by the party establishment.

Democratic socialists generally believe that the government should provide a robust welfare state, favoring policies such as universal healthcare and child care, free college education, stronger labor protections and higher taxes on the wealthy. Unlike communists, democratic socialists believe in working within the democratic system to effect change.

Democratic socialist candidates have also put support for Palestinians and opposition to U.S. military aid for Israel at the heart of their campaigns.

In response to Trump’s comments, a spokesman for the Democratic Party’s House campaign arm, Aidan Johnson, said Republicans “know they can’t win on the issues, so we’re seeing them melt down in real time, resorting to ineffective boogeyman attacks.”

INTENSE SECURITY

Trump has supported many of the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s causes, including attempting to ban transgender athletes from women’s sports. But he has also drawn criticism from Christian supporters of Israel over his ceasefire deal with Iran and from anti-abortion opponents who feel the administration has been too permissive. 

On Friday, he sought to portray the war in Iran as an unqualified success, claiming he had thwarted Tehran’s ability to build a nuclear weapon.

His appearance at the Washington Hilton came two months after a man with a shotgun attempted to reach the ballroom where he had been set to speak to a gathering of White House journalists and other guests.

Outside the ballroom on Friday, increased security was apparent with more doors blocked off and more guards on duty.

Authorities identified the gunman as Cole Tomas Allen, a 31-year-old California resident who pleaded not guilty to charges that he tried to assassinate Trump.

(Reporting by Steve Holland; Additional reporting by Tim Reid; Writing by Joseph Ax; Editing by Trevor Hunnicutt, Sanjeev Miglani, Ross Colvin and Alistair Bell)

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By Nolan D. McCaskill

WASHINGTON, June 26 (Reuters) – A congressional panel subpoenaed billionaire investor Leon Black on Friday seeking information about non-disclosure agreements with victims of the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and compelling his appearance for a deposition.

Black appeared on Friday for a voluntary private interview with the panel, which is investigating the federal government’s Epstein probe. He said he had no involvement or knowledge of what he referred to as Epstein’s “heinous conduct.”

Republican Representative James Comer of Kentucky, chair of the House of Representatives’ Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said the subpoenas were “a result of refusing to answer specific questions about NDAs and the terms.”

“We believe that information is vital to our investigation,” he said.

Susan Estrich, Black’s attorney, said the subpoenas were served before the committee had asked her client any questions about his payments to Epstein.

“This was nothing more than a planned political stunt,” she said of the subpoenas. “Mr. Epstein had no involvement with any NDAs, whether they exist or not.”

In his opening statement to the committee, Black said he never abused women or engaged in sex trafficking and had never been with underage women.

“I have never paid Epstein for access to women,” he said. “I was never blackmailed by Epstein.”

PANEL SUBPOENAS BLACK TO TESTIFY UNDER OATH

Black is the latest individual connected to Epstein to appear before the panel, which ordered him to come back on July 16 to testify under oath.

Epstein, a prominent financier who socialized with many political and business leaders, pleaded guilty in 2008 to state prostitution charges and served 13 months in jail. 

He was arrested again in 2019 on federal charges of sex trafficking of minors. His 2019 death in a Manhattan jail cell was ruled a suicide.

Black stepped down as the head of private equity firm Apollo Global Management in 2021 after a review by an outside law firm found he had paid Epstein $158 million for tax and estate planning. He also paid $62.5 million to the U.S. Virgin Islands in 2023 to avoid any legal claims tied to an Epstein-related investigation.

Black has faced several lawsuits from women alleging sexual abuse. Two were dismissed and a third is ongoing. Black has denied all allegations and has not been criminally charged.

Ahead of the interview, Comer said the panel had hundreds of questions for Black about financial transactions and communication with survivors.

“Of all the witnesses that have come thus far, this one has the potential to be the most groundbreaking,” he told reporters.

Black told the committee he would voluntarily answer questions about his payments to Epstein and the work he provided but would not discuss his personal life.

Committee members said Black refused to answer questions about victims of Epstein’s abuse and NDAs, and that he walked out during the middle of the interview.

Representative Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the committee, said it was important that the panel gain access to the non-disclosure agreements and interview Black under oath.

“When we started asking questions about the women, the survivors, NDAs that Mr. Black clearly has facilitated, he wouldn’t answer those questions,” Garcia told reporters after the interview. “Without answers there, we’re not going to have justice for the survivors and [be] able to move our investigation forward.”

Black testified that he had known Epstein for 18 years before giving him a dime. He said Epstein helped him to solve a “massive estate problem.”

Black said he was aware of Epstein’s 2008 guilty plea but was told “it was an isolated incident resulting from a fake ID.” He said he regretted giving Epstein a second chance in 2013 and severed ties in 2018 “after more than a year of increasing turmoil in our professional arrangements.”

(Reporting by Nolan D. McCaskill; Editing by Andy Sullivan and Edmund Klamann)

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By Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff

GREENBELT, Maryland, June 26 (Reuters) – John Bolton, a former national security adviser for U.S. President Donald Trump who has since become one of his fiercest critics, pleaded guilty in federal court on Friday to mishandling classified information and faces up to five years in prison.

“I’m sorry for it,” Bolton told U.S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang during the hearing. 

Reuters previously reported that Bolton would plead guilty under a deal with prosecutors that included a sentencing range from no prison time to as many as five years behind bars, with the final sentence to be determined by a judge.

As part of the agreement, Bolton agreed to pay a $2.25 million fine. Bolton, 77, must make half that payment within five days of sentencing and the full payment within 90 days of sentencing.

He also committed to up to 100 hours of community service and to meet with intelligence and Justice Department officials for a debriefing. Bolton will also forfeit his government pension.

Chuang scheduled sentencing for October 28. 

The White House referred a request for comment to the Justice Department. 

Bolton is accused of sharing sensitive information with two relatives for possible use in a memoir he was writing, including notes on intelligence briefings and meetings with senior government officials and foreign leaders. Prosecutors said he shared more than 1,000 pages in the form of diary entries. He pleaded not guilty to 18 criminal charges last year.

The book detailed Bolton’s tenure as Trump’s national security adviser during his first term. In the book, Bolton described the president as unfit for office, sparking a public feud. But prosecutors said on Friday that no classified information was published in Bolton’s book, “The Room Where It Happened.”

Authorities said Bolton’s personal email was hacked by someone believed to be linked to Iran, which prosecutors reiterated on Friday.

Kelly O. Hayes, the U.S. attorney for the district of Maryland, told reporters after the hearing that that was exactly why it was dangerous to share classified information on personal accounts. 

“He put our national security at grave risk,” she said of Bolton. 

Abbe D. Lowell, Bolton’s lawyer, said in a statement after the hearing that his client was a “real leader” for taking responsibility for his actions, which Lowell called a mistake. 

“By contrast, President Trump thumbed his nose at the classified information laws, took actual classified documents to his Florida mansion, interfered with the investigation of that conduct, and has never accepted any accountability for his conduct,” he said, referring to a case in which Trump was indicted for mishandling classified documents. “Ambassador Bolton, whose offense was only keeping a diary which contained classified information, kept a record to preserve history, but Donald Trump kept secrets to serve himself.”

Bolton, who served as national security adviser during Trump’s first term in office, is one of several notable political opponents who have faced prosecution from Trump’s Justice Department, erasing longstanding norms that had separated law enforcement efforts from partisan considerations.

But unlike other cases brought against Trump critics, the Bolton investigation began before Trump returned to office in 2025 and had the backing of career federal prosecutors.

(Reporting by Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff and Joseph Ax; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Andrea Ricci)

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