It's On: Trump Orders New Strikes on Iran to Protect Ships in Strait of Hormuz

Fed Minutes Show ‘a Few’ Officials Saw Case for June Hike

A few Federal Reserve officials in their most recent policy meeting said there was a case for raising interest rates, though they ultimately supported the decision to leave rates on hold. Bloomberg's Tyler Kendall breaks down the Fed Minutes. (Source: Bloomberg)

Spencer Pratt shares new glimpse inside White House Trump visit with sweet message to his son

The former reality television star and Los Angeles mayoral candidate was photographed sitting with three others, including what appeared to be his son and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.

New report: Trump's anti-renewable policies set to cost US households over half a trillion dollars, as summer blackouts and price spikes hit hardest

A new analysis from clean energy think tank Energy Innovation finds that the Trump administration's rollback of clean energy policy will add more than half a trillion dollars to American households' collective energy costs by 2040, even as it publicly promises lower bills. 350.org says the findings confirm what millions of Americans are already living through this summer: a sudden AI-driven electricity crunch colliding with policy choices that are making the problem worse, not better.According to the report, the cumulative impact of the administration's actions, including the repeal of clean energy tax credits, new barriers to permitting wind and solar, and a tilt toward more expensive coal-fired power, will raise the average household's energy costs by $460 by 2035, rising to $490 a year by 2040. That comes on top of electricity rates that have already spiked 7.4% nationwide since last fall, with more than a dozen states seeing double-digit increases, driven in part by the explosive growth in data center electricity demand.The findings land just as households across the eastern US are living the consequences directly. A "heat dome" and severe storms over the Fourth of July weekend left almost a million households without power across more than a dozen states, and sent wholesale electricity prices up more than 240% in New England and doubled in New York City. Detroit was among the hardest hit: roughly 350,000 people lost power, some for four to five days, with outages still ongoing for some. Detroit's utility, DTE, ranked among the worst-rated in the country, has pushed through repeated rate hikes even as reliability has failed to improve, including a $242.2 million increase approved in February during a deadly cold snap, and a further request in April for up to $474 million, an 11% increase.Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has intervened in DTE and Consumers Energy's current rate cases over the pattern, saying DTE continues to treat Michigan families like an open checkbook to satisfy its shareholders, whether through massive rate hike requests or secret data center contracts.Candice Fortin, US Campaigns Manager at 350.org, said:"This report puts numbers on something households are already feeling in their bills and their blackouts. We were told cutting clean energy would lower costs. Instead, we're seeing the opposite: rates spiking, grids failing under record heat, and households paying more while data centers' electricity use explodes. You can't fix an affordability crisis by blocking the cheapest, fastest power we have to build. The fossil fuel industry and this administration's policies are adding fuel to the fire, and ordinary ratepayers are the ones getting burned."The Trump administration disputes the report's findings, with the White House and Department of Energy characterising Energy Innovation's analysis as partisan and arguing that rolling back clean energy regulation will ultimately lower prices by letting market forces determine new generation. Energy Innovation and other independent analysts maintain there is a direct line between the administration's policies and rising bills, pointing to the growing gap between the promise of cheaper energy and the reality households are experiencing this summer.

Maine Democratic Party accuses Platner’s team of attempting to ‘put their thumb on the scale’ to select new nominee – live

Graham Platner would need to step down in Senate race by 13 July in order for Maine Democrats to replace him on the ballotHow could Democrats replace Graham Platner?Sign up for the Breaking News US emailDuring a bilateral meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the Nato summit in Ankara, Donald Trump was asked about Iran, and he repeated his earlier criticism.On Wednesday, while speaking to reporters alongside Mark Rutte, the Nato secretary general, Trump said that memorandum of understanding signed last month by the US and Iran is “over”, in the wake of the latest strikes. Continue reading...

Could a Republican Be the Next Governor of New York? At Least One Poll Says It's Possible.

Trump Says He’ll Stop Over in UK to Showcase New Air Force One

President Donald Trump said he would send the Air Force One jet gifted by Qatar to an air base in the UK, to showcase the new plane for US service members during a stopover on the way home from the NATO summit.

New DOJ cover-up of Todd Blanche secrets could hide 'unspeakably bad' conduct: experts

Legal experts say the Justice Department is paying off the "Broadview Six" to kill a probe that could expose Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.The Department of Justice entered a court filing Tuesday conceding it will pay the defendants' attorneys' fees — which courts can award when a prosecution was conducted in bad faith — while simultaneously arguing there should be no discovery.The defendants had demanded records of all communications between Chicago federal prosecutors and Associate Deputy Attorney General Aakash Singh or Blanche — including cell phone records tied to Singh — covering the entire Broadview Six investigation, according to a discovery motion filed last month.Six protesters were indicted last fall outside a Chicago-area Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, according to court records.The case collapsed in May after U.S. District Judge April Perry of the Northern District of Illinois found that prosecutors had improperly dismissed skeptical grand jurors, vouched for their own evidence, and concealed the misconduct by submitting redacted transcripts to the court."Speaking as just one guy who sues the government a lot: This basically does not happen," Nashville civil rights attorney Daniel Horwitz wrote on Bluesky. "It is a transparent effort to shut down further inquiry by conceding relief. What they are seeking to cover up must be unspeakably bad.""The United States' litigation decision not to challenge the defendant's entitlement to fees... does not concede that the United States has acted or done anything to warrant those fees," the Justice Department insisted in the filing."Not to put too fine a point on it, but there is nothing amicable about a settlement after the government tried to railroad a bunch of people by rigging the grand jury," Houston appellate attorney Raffi Melkonian wrote on Bluesky."Of course, the Justice Department doesn't want discovery, it will further expose their egregious conduct," criminal defense attorney John Beatty, legal editor at Emptywheel, wrote on Bluesky."What we already know is horrific. Imagine how bad discovery would be if the government is willing to pay our fees (something the government doesn't readily do) just to avoid it," Kat Abughazaleh, a former Democratic congressional candidate from Illinois and one of the Broadview Six defendants, posted on Bluesky.