Trump says he ‘wouldn’t mind’ cutting ODNI jobs
Donald Trump said that he “wouldn’t mind” cutting the number of people working at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
“I wouldn’t mind. [The size of the office has been] way too high for way too long,” the president said, reiterating what he told the Wall Street Journal earlier today. “Yeah, I wouldn’t mind.”
The WSJ reported that Trump said he wants Bill Pulte, his new acting director of national intelligence with no national intelligence experience, to cut the size of the office, which has already been significantly scaled back during his second term.
Key events
Trump jokes that he is keeping gold medal won by speed skater Jordan Stolz
Donald Trump finally ceded the floor after more than 45 minutes of opening remarks at his roundtable on agriculture in Wisconsin, after introducing Jordan Stolz, the gold-medal winning speed skater from the state, who is participating for some reason.
Stolz had both of his Olympic gold medals with him, and, when Trump invited him to shake hands, put one around the president’s neck. Trump then joked that he was keeping the medal, and has continued to wear it as the roundtable continues.
“I’m keeping it, Jordan. I’m not giving it back. I’m a very good guy for keeping gold”, Trump said. “I’m never giving this back. Congratulations. I forgot to touch his leg. I didn’t want to do that. But I can tell you one thing: his leg is like a rock.”
The president then asked the dozen members of the roundtable, beginning with the speed skater, to make some remarks, but told them to keep it short.
“We’ll go pretty quickly because I have to get back to fighting a war with Iran”, Trump said. “Fellas, I got to get back to a place called Washing- and protect you. Okay, so if you go very quickly, we don’t need your life story, other than, I like the Olympic guy”.
Trump veers from subject to subject in long opening speech at agriculture roundtable
Donald Trump is still talking, 45 minutes into his opening remarks at what is supposed to be a roundtable discussion on American agriculture in Wisconsin.
To give a sense of how rambling and tangential his remarks have been, here is a section in which he veered away from talking about the price of eggs to saying that he endorsed the Republican congressman Tom Tiffany, who is now running for Wisconsin governor, because his last name was the same as that of the famed jewelry store in Manhattan whose air rights he purchased when he built Trump Tower nearby.
“I called this young lady right over here, Brooke Rollins, secretary of agriculture. I said: ‘Brooke, get the egg prices down, please.’ And she got them down. And by the way, speaking of Tom, Tiffany is one of the best congressmen in our country,” the president said. “And I was there, I don’t know, seven, eight years ago, right at the beginning, I endorsed this guy I didn’t know, I had no idea, but I liked his last name. You know why? Because I bought the air rights many years ago off Tiffany, and I made a lot of money. So I saw Tom, Tiffany, and I backed him, and he went like a rocket ship, and he won. And you’ve kept winning. And now he’s running for a thing called governor.”
Trump begins remarks in Wisconsin by complaining that his speechwriters want him to talk about affordability
In extended opening remarks at what was billed as a roundtable discussion of American agriculture in Wisconsin, but so far is identical in content to a rally speech, Donald Trump began by running through a series of familiar false claims, including that his war with Iran is not a war, that 25 million undocumented immigrants arrived during the Biden administration, and that many people do not know that the word dumb has a “b” in it.
The president blithely dismissed concerns about the spike in fuel prices caused by the war in Iran, and promised that fertilizer prices, which have also spiked because Iran closed the strait of Hormuz in response to being attacked, will come down.
Echoing Vladimir Putin’s claim that his war in Ukraine is a mere “special military operation”, Trump said the war in Iran was just “a military conflict, I call it that, because it’s really not much of a war. But it’s a military conflict. It’s practice.”
Trump then went on to complain that his speechwriters had told him not to focus on immigration but to speak instead about the cost-of-living crisis his Iran war, and his tariffs, have exacerbated.
The president then repeated his odd claim that Democrats “made up the word” affordability, which he enunciated in a mocking tone.
Recounting what he said was his conversation with speechwriters, Trump said: “I say: ‘Let’s talk about the border.’ ‘Sir, nobody cares about the border.’ I said: ‘I won the election on the border. Let’s talk about the – .’ ‘Sir, I’m telling you, nobody cares. Nobody cares about the border. You fixed the border.’ ‘I want to brag about it.’ ‘Sir, they want to hear about other things, like fertilizer.’”
Trump’s bizarre claim that Lincoln Memorial was constructed back to front undercut by original plans
As we await the start of the roundtable on American agriculture Donald Trump has traveled to Wisconsin to host, we have discovered some new information which reveals, in a stunning development, that something the president said yesterday turns out to be false.
In a rambling set of remarks on Thursday, Trump said that he planned to build a promenade on the west side of the Lincoln Memorial, possibly to be named for himself, before suggesting that his intervention was inspired by the original plans for the memorial, which he claimed, aimed to connect the monument to the Potomac River to its west.
The president then suggested, in a comment that baffled historians, that the memorial was for some reason constructed back to front. “At the Lincoln Memorial, the front was supposed to be the back, and the back was supposed to be the front”, Trump told reporters.
In fact, the original proposal for the memorial, submitted as a competition entry in 1912 by Henry Bacon, the New York architect who designed the Lincoln Memorial, is available on the National Archives website, and it shows that the plan was always for the monument to face the new reflecting pool to the east.
Bacon’s later drawing on the “East Elevation of Lincoln Memorial”, which looks more like the finished structure, also clearly shows that the current east-facing front was always supposed to be the front.
Where, exactly, Trump got the idea that the memorial was constructed backwards is not known, but his bizarre assertion of this invented history was offered weeks after he was mocked on social media for sharing an AI-generated image of the memorial facing the wrong way.
The justice department sent one of its attorneys to observe ballot processing in Los Angeles this morning, the county’s elections office told CNN, a day after Donald Trump baselessly alleged “cheating” in California’s elections and claimed that the US attorney’s office there was investigating the vote counting.
A spokesperson for the county registrar-recorder told CNN, “our office was notified late yesterday that the U.S. Attorney’s Office would send an Assistant US Attorney to the Ballot Processing Center to observe ballot processing activities.
“The individual arrived this morning, was provided an overview of the public observation program, and participated in a walkthrough of the ballot processing operations,” the spokesperson, Mike Sanchez, told CNN in an email, noting that ballot processing in the county is open to public observation.
Trump claimed in a Truth Social post yesterday that there was “BIG cheating” going on in California, supposedly because of how long it was taking to count the votes. Several key races in the state have yet to be called and may take days or even weeks, in part because of the significant number of mail-in ballots.
No court has authority to block Trump’s White House ballroom, DoJ lawyer says
George Chidi
No court has the authority to halt construction of Donald Trump’s White House ballroom and a secure underground facility, a Department of Justice lawyer has argued, suggesting only US Congress had the power to stop the project.
The Trump administration has asked the Washington DC circuit court of appeals to reverse a lower court decision which blocked construction of a $400m ballroom on the site of the White House’s demolished East Wing. Construction of a secure bunker for staff underground at the site was allowed to proceed while the dispute between Washington DC preservationists and the White House continues.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation sued the National Park Service and the administration in October, after Trump ordered the East Wing’s demolition. Construction began without completing – or really even beginning – what can be a lengthy process of review and approvals, as required by district and federal statute.
The administration has cited national security imperatives for the construction, which Trump has repeatedly emphasized, while using the failed assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents Association event in April as an example of the security threat.
Congress appears unpersuaded. The US Senate voted to advance a long-delayed immigration spending bill early on Friday morning only after Republicans removed $1bn in funding for US Secret Service security upgrades to the proposed ballroom.
The case before the appellate court tests the limits of presidential authority.
In a hypothetical posed to Yaakov Roth, principal deputy assistant attorney general, during a hearing this morning, Justice Patricia Millet asked when the construction of the ballroom and bunker complex became a fait accompli for his purposes.
Was it when the destruction happened? Was it when you started doing the underground work, which we’re now told is completely integral and connected and inseparable from a massive ballroom on top? When did it become impossible for courts to stop this project?
If the project amounted to “complete lawlessness by the government”, she asked, could it still not be stopped by the courts?
“On these theories, I think that’s right,” Roth replied, arguing that US Congress could instead pass a law to authorize or block the specific action that a court would have to respect. “If Congress has weighed the equities in this particular instance, and reached a conclusion, I’m not sure a court would have the authority to second-guess that, but if we’re just talking about a general statute and application. I think a court would not second-guess a congressional decision that addressed the equities in that way.”
The argument left Thad Heuer, representing the historic trust, aghast.
“Under Marbury v Madison, it is emphatically the province of the judicial department to say what the law is,” Heuer said. “The government’s position, apparently, is that even a lawless action of this type could never be stopped by the court. That is entirely wrong. That’s exactly the court’s job. In this case, it’s about who controls federal property. Is it Congress, its owner, or is it the president, its temporary tenant?”
Donald Trump also told reporters that his team is looking into the idea of AI companies giving the American public a stake in their firms.
Senior US officials held preliminary decisions with AI companies about the potential for the government to buy some shares in their firms, digital news outlet Notus reported. Trump made the comment in response to a question from a journalist about the topic.
“There’s something very interesting about it, where it almost becomes a partnership with the American public,” he told reporters. “We’ll look into that.“
Trump also told reporters that he will meet with AI executives at the White House “probably next week”.
Asked which companies, he said “all the big ones”.
Trump also claimed that “a lot of people” have asked him to stay involved with the Kennedy Center and “get it fixed” (we just don’t know who they are).
The president said last week that he has “no interest” in the Kennedy Center after a judge ordered his name to be removed from its facade and website.
Asked about the new “promenade” he announced yesterday to be added to the back of the Lincoln Memorial and where the money will come from, Donald Trump replied first that, “It’s not a lot of money.”
He then added that they have “a lot of sources of funding” and claimed “we wouldn’t have to go back to Congress or anything” (which is probably for the best).
Yesterday the president announced his latest construction project in his campaign to remake the nation’s capital. “We’re going to call it the promenade,” he told reporters in the Oval Office.
“They want to call it the Trump Promenade,” he said, and it remains unclear who “they” are. “But I don’t know if I want to do that. But it’s going to be beautiful. It’s a beautiful project, and it’s going to take the Lincoln Memorial right down to the Potomac.”
Work is already under way on a major renovation of the Lincoln Memorial, scheduled to be completed in July, as well as a repainting of the reflecting pool (just don’t call it a “paint job”!).
Trump says he ‘wouldn’t mind’ cutting ODNI jobs
Donald Trump said that he “wouldn’t mind” cutting the number of people working at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
“I wouldn’t mind. [The size of the office has been] way too high for way too long,” the president said, reiterating what he told the Wall Street Journal earlier today. “Yeah, I wouldn’t mind.”
The WSJ reported that Trump said he wants Bill Pulte, his new acting director of national intelligence with no national intelligence experience, to cut the size of the office, which has already been significantly scaled back during his second term.
Asked how long Bill Pulte will be in the role of acting director of national intelligence, Trump said: “It depends how long it takes to get somebody through.”
“He’ll do a very good job,” Trump added. “He’s very good, he’s very talented.”
Asked who was under consideration for the (permanent) role of director of national intelligence, Trump was vague and said he’ll have five interviews.
“We’ll have a very good person watching things – Bill Pulte – but I have five interviews,” the president said, before abruptly switching back to talking about interest rates.
Trump says he wants lower interest rates but will leave decision to Warsh
Donald Trump has been gaggling with reporters onboard Air Force One as he travels to Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, for a round-table discussion on American agriculture – and to throw his support behind another Republican seeking re-election.
The president touted the “fantastic” job numbers that came out today, before adding that he would like to see lower interest rates. “But I’ll leave that up to Kevin”, he said, referring to Kevin Warsh, whom he hand-picked to be the new Federal Reserve chair.
Warsh was sworn in last month, succeeding Jerome Powell, who repeatedly warned over the inflationary risks of Trump’s agenda, and whom the president vehemently attacked for his refusal to cut rates. (Powell was once hand-picked by Trump, too.)
Harry Taylor
Donald Trump’s legal team has rejected a request by the BBC to hand over financial information as part of his $10bn defamation case against the broadcaster.
The president’s lawyers accused the BBC of a “fishing expedition”, according to court filings, after the broadcaster’s representatives asked for details to get evidence on Trump’s claims he suffered reputational and financial damage because of a Panorama documentary centred on the US Capitol riots.
Trump accused the BBC of “intentionally, maliciously, and deceptively doctoring” a speech he gave on 6 January 2021 before the unrest in Washington in which thousands marched on, and broke into, the US Congress.
The BBC had spliced together two parts of a speech made by Trump as part of its documentary broadcast in October 2024.
Four people died on the day, and five police officers died afterwards, including from suicide.
According to the court documents lodged in Miami, Florida, in May, the BBC had asked for financial papers on the Donald J Trump Revocable Trust, which holds the president’s business interests and assets.
Lawyers had asked for records that would show its income, assets and properties held. It also listed hundreds of companies that fall under the trust’s remit.
In response, Trump’s Florida-based lawyers Brito PLLC said the request was “disproportionate” and “encompasses individuals and entities that have no connection to the issues in dispute”.
They added it amounted to “tens of thousands of documents” within 30 days, adding the timeframe was “unreasonable … and improper”.
It accused the BBC of a “textbook fishing expedition”.
Filings in May showed Trump’s legal team had made 503 requests for documents, and the BBC had turned over 45,000 pages in return. Trump had produced none.
Here’s Harry’s full report:
Donald Trump also said in that Wall Street Journal interview that he wants Bill Pulte to approach his job as acting national intelligence director similarly to the way Linda McMahon has approached hers as education secretary.
McMahon has moved to drastically shrink and actively dismantle the Department of Education, which the president has previously said he wants to eliminate, through mass firings and reassigning many of its powers to other federal agencies.
“We’ve made the Department of Education much smaller, and likewise, this should be much smaller,” Trump said, referring to Office of the Director of National Intelligence. “And this should maybe even be terminated, and we’ll make that decision.”
Trump urges Pulte to fire intelligence community employees, WSJ reports
Donald Trump has told the Wall Street Journal that he wants his new acting director of national intelligence Bill Pulte to begin the process of firing a large number of employees as part of a shake-up of the US intelligence community.
Trump told the Journal today that he has privately told Pulte that he believes the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees 18 federal intelligence agencies and units, is “unnecessary and/or too big”.
“I’d like to see it smaller. I think there are a lot of people in there that shouldn’t be there,” Trump told the WSJ, referring to holdovers from the Biden and Obama administrations. Asked if he was calling on Pulte to fire people, Trump said he wanted him to “start the process”, adding that his eventual nominee to serve in the role permanently should continue that work.
Trump’s controversial selection of Pulte, who has no national intelligence experience, has been met with bipartisan alarm, with Democrats and some Republicans concerned that he will use his position to go after the president’s perceived enemies.
“We don’t need a weaponized” national intelligence director, Senate majority leader John Thune told reporters on Tuesday, warning that Pulte would face “a lengthy road ahead of him” if nominated permanently.
Speaking to the WSJ, Trump said he thought that Pulte’s acting status was an asset. “You’re less shackled. It sort of gives you more power, you know, for a somewhat limited period of time,” he said, adding that he hopes Pulte can begin making changes across the intelligence community before a permanent intelligence director is confirmed.
“Frankly, it might be good for him to shake it up before people come,” the president said. “Because, if he reduced the size, in conjunction with me … and in conjunction with possibly the person coming in … he can do a lot of the hard work and we wouldn’t have to saddle somebody that goes in.”
NPR reports that CBS News correspondents Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker and Jon Wertheim have pledged to stay on the most watched show in news, declaring: “We don’t want to see 60 Minutes die.”
It caps off a tumultuous week at the network after the dramatic firings of Scott Pelley, Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega left serious questions up in the air over who would be left to appear on the show’s next season (Anderson Cooper is also leaving) and how the show would endure. CBS News also fired the show’s executive producer, Tanya Simon, Draggan Mihailovich, the executive editor, and other key staffers.
Pelley, who was fired on Tuesday after clashing with the network’s new management, issued a public statement accusing the network’s new executives of silencing employees and claiming they instructed him “to inject falsehoods and bias” into his reporting.
He had taken direct aim at Bari Weiss, the network’s controversial editor-in-chief, over his colleagues’ terminations, reportedly telling a meeting of the show’s staff and Nick Bilton, its newly appointed executive producer, along with the CBS News managing editor Charles Forelle: “She’s murdering 60 Minutes. She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it and is doing exactly that.”
In a joint memo, Stahl, Whitaker and Wertheim decried the treatment of their colleagues, stating: “As far as we can tell … they were expelled because they fought for our 60 Minutes values and stood up to protect our independence and integrity.”
“Newsrooms are not supposed to be run like dictatorships,” they added. “We want to express how sorry we are that these principled, fair and honest journalists have been treated so shabbily, with such indecency.”
The correspondents go on to say that their staying on should not be read as “an endorsement of the existing power structure”, but because, “We want to stay and fight.”
“If we can continue doing the work that made this show what it is – committing acts of independent, fierce journalism and storytelling, we’re here for it. If not, we leave,” they said.
ICE will no longer report deaths of detainees who have recently been released from custody
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will no longer report deaths of detainees who have recently been released from its custody, in a change that experts predict could obscure the full human cost of the Trump administration’s mass detention policies.
The move rescinds a 2021 policy implemented by the Biden administration that required ICE to report to Congress and investigate deaths of detainees that occur within 30 days of their release.
The goal of the 2021 policy was to ensure that ICE could not avoid accountability for deaths by releasing severely ill people from custody. Detainees who were brain-dead or suffering from infection, for example, have died shortly after ICE released them in the past. Health experts who have investigated deaths in ICE custody have criticized the move.
