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Officials believe suspect may have targeted NFL in Manhattan office shooting, mayor Eric Adams says
The gunman who opened fire in a Manhattan office building left a note that appeared to blame the National Football League for his brain injury, New York mayor Eric Adams said.
Two officials familiar with the matter previously told NBC News that in the note found at the shooting scene, the suspect wondered about CTE – a brain condition caused by head trauma – as a possible cause of his mental illness.
“He did have a note on him. The note alluded to that he felt he had CTE, a known brain injury for those who participate in contact sports. He appeared to have blamed the NFL for his injury,” Adams said in an interview with CBS’s “This Morning”.
The skyscraper where the shooting occurred Monday evening houses the NFL headquarters.
In an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”, Adams was asked about a possible link, noting that while the suspect, Shane Tamura, didn’t play college football, he did play at his California high school.
“He talked about CTE. He was not an NFL player. We have reason to believe that he was focused on the NFL agency that was located in the building, and we’re going to continue to investigate with our federal partners to ensure that we can find a reason and identify any other weapons,” Adams responded.
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Investment giant Blackstone Inc said that a senior executive was among the people killed when a gunman, carrying an assault rifle, walked into the lobby of a midtown Manhattan office building and opened fire on Monday.
“We are heartbroken to share that our colleague, Wesley LePatner, was among those who lost their lives in the tragic incident at 345 Park Avenue. Words cannot express the devastation we feel,” the company said in a statement.
LePatner was a senior managing director at the firm and global head of core+ real estate and the chief executive officer of Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust (BREIT), the firm added.
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Updated at 09.05 EDT
Here are some pictures from the ribbon-cutting ceremony during the opening of Donald Trump’s new golf course, the Trump International Golf Links, in Balmedie earlier. This is the final day of his five-day visit to Scotland.
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Updated at 08.18 EDT
Joseph Gedeon
Twenty-one Senate Democrats are demanding Donald Trump immediately cut funding to a controversial Gaza aid organization they say has resulted in the killings of more than 700 civilians seeking food and violated decades of humanitarian law.
The letter, led by senators Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Peter Welch of Vermont, comes as international criticism mounts over the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s operations, arguing that its model “shatters well-established norms that have governed distribution of humanitarian aid since the ratification of the Geneva conventions in 1949” by blurring the lines between aid delivery and military security operations.
“According to reports and eyewitness accounts, civilians have been fired at by tanks, drones, and helicopters, as well as soldiers on the ground, as they attempt to get food and humanitarian supplies,” the senators wrote.
The Trump administration authorized a $30m grant to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in late June, with $7m already disbursed according to documents seen by the Guardian. The organization, which is backed by both Israeli and US interests, has been given preferential access to operate in Gaza through coordination with the Israeli military and private US security contractors.
However, the rollout of the new scheme has been marked by death and destruction from the outset. Jake Wood, the founding executive director and former US marine, resigned on 25 May, saying: “It is not possible to implement this plan while also strictly adhering to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence, which I will not abandon.”
Boston Consulting Group, the US firm handling some of the foundation’s logistics, also withdrew shortly after.
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Joseph Gedeon
The US Department of Justice is facing a federal lawsuit for refusing to release a legal memorandum that reportedly cleared the way for Donald Trump’s acceptance of a $400m luxury aircraft from Qatar’s government.
The Freedom of the Press Foundation, represented by the watchdog group American Oversight, filed the Freedom of Information Act (Foia) lawsuit in Washington DC’s federal district court after the justice department failed to produce the document despite granting expedited processing more than two months ago.
The president’s “deal to take a $400m luxury jet from a foreign government deserves full public scrutiny – not a stiff-arm from the Department of Justice”, American Oversight’s executive director, Chioma Chukwu, said in a press release. “This is precisely the kind of corrupt arrangement that public records laws are designed to expose.”
The case revisits Trump’s decision to accept the extravagant foreign gift: a luxury Boeing 747-8 jetliner dubbed a “palace in the sky”. Before the president’s frustrated base would start to call for the release of all Jeffrey Epstein files, followed by renewed scrutiny of the convicted sex offender’s friendship with Trump, what came to be known as “Qatar-gate” was one of the first symbols of the new administration that even stalwart Trump allies shook their heads at when the deal first emerged in May.
At the time, the US senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, warned the aircraft “poses significant espionage and surveillance problems”. The senator Shelley Moore Capito, a West Virginia Republican, said she would “be checking for bugs”. Former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, also a Republican, called accepting foreign gifts “never a good practice” that “threatens intelligence and national security”.
The Democratic US House member Ritchie Torres called it a “flying grift” that violated the constitution’s emoluments clause prohibiting federal officials from accepting valuable foreign presents without congressional approval.
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The justice department filed a misconduct complaint on Monday against US district court chief judge James Boasberg, a prominent Washington, DC, judge who has drawn president Donald Trump’s ire, US attorney general Pam Bondi said on X.
Boasberg said in April that the Trump administration appeared to have acted “in bad faith” when it hurriedly assembled three deportation flights on 15 March at the same time that he was conducting emergency court proceedings to assess the legality of the effort.
“Today at my direction, @TheJusticeDept filed a misconduct complaint against U.S. District Court Chief Judge James Boasberg for making improper public comments about President Trump and his Administration,” Bondi said, without specifying which comments was she referring to.
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Donald Trump has said he is “working together” with Israel “to try and get things straightened out” in Gaza amid warnings of severe mass starvation in the enclave.
After opening his new golf course in Menie, Aberdeenshire, a reporter from the crowd asked the US president “what will you say next to Benjamin Netanyahu”, the prime minister of Israel.
“We’re working together to try and get things straightened out,” Trump said.
Earlier during his speech at the course, the US leader said he would fly back to the Washington to “put out fires all over the world”.
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US government investigates Duke University in latest federal funding threat
Donald Trump’s administration has initiated a probe into Duke University and the Duke Law Journal over allegations of race-related discrimination, making it the latest American university to face the threat of cuts to federal funding.
The government said on Monday it will probe whether the Duke Law Journal’s selection of its editors gives preferences to candidates from minority communities.
“This investigation is based on recent reporting alleging that Duke University discriminates on the bases of race, color, and/or national origin by using these factors to select law journal members,” the Education Department said in a statement.
US education secretary Linda McMahon and health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr sent a letter to the university’s leadership alleging what the government called “the use of race preferences in Duke’s hiring, admissions, and scholarship decisions.”
The letter urged the university to review its policies and create a panel “with delegated authority from Duke’s Board of Trustees to enable Duke and the federal government to move quickly toward a mutual resolution of Duke’s alleged civil rights violations.” Duke had no immediate comment, Reuters reported.
Rights advocates have raised free speech and academic freedom concerns over the Trump administration’s attempted crackdown against universities.
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Updated at 08.45 EDT
Ed Pilkington
Donald Trump’s strategy of imposing sweeping tariffs on America’s main trading partners will face a major test in the US courts on Thursday, four days after the president hailed the “powerful deal” reached with the EU and just hours before a new round of punishing import duties is set to come into effect.
Trump has underpinned his tariff policy with an emergency power that is now being challenged as unlawful in the federal courts. On Thursday the US court of appeals for the federal circuit will hear oral arguments in the case, VOS Selections v Trump.
A group of small business owners are suing the US president on grounds that he lacks legal authority from Congress to impose severe tariffs that could damage their bottom line. The Trump administration has invoked a 1977 law, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), claiming that various national emergencies – including US trade deficits with trading partners and the scourge of fentanyl trafficking – demand urgent action.
But the plaintiffs have countered that the IEEPA does not give the president the power to impose tariffs, and has never been used in such a way in its almost half a century on the statute books.
The case has the potential to derail Trump’s most significant tariff deals and negotiations, which he has made a centrepiece of his second presidency. Given how much is riding on it, the suit is likely eventually to be settled by the US supreme court under its current 6-3 supermajority of hard-right justices.
In the short term, the challenge under the IEEPA looms as a black cloud over Trump’s desire to claim victory on the tariff front, as his controversial strategy of slapping hefty import duties on major trading partners continues to roil global trade and markets. On Sunday, Trump struck a deal at his golf club in Scotland with the European Commission chief, Ursula von der Leyen, that will see 15% import tariffs on most EU goods entering the US.
Then on Friday, a day after the appeals court hears oral arguments, Trump’s latest round of potentially destabilizing import duties is set to kick in. The targeted countries include some of the biggest suppliers of US imports, including Canada and Mexico.
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George Chidi
Donald Trump’s timeline for a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine has sped up, the president said while visiting Nato ally Great Britain on Monday.
“I’m going to make a new deadline of about 10, 10 or 12 days from today,” Trump said in response to a question while sitting with the British prime minister, Keir Starmer.
“There’s no reason in waiting. There’s no reason in waiting. It’s 50 days. I want to be generous, but we just don’t see any progress being made.”
Russian and Ukrainian diplomats met in Istanbul last week, agreeing on little more than a prisoner exchange. Ukraine proposed a summit by the end of August between the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, but Russia’s reply was that such a meeting would only be appropriate if it were to sign an agreement.
The meeting was the third negotiation in Istanbul. Putin has not attended any of the talks, despite Trump’s exhortations.
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