Jakub Krupa
Here’s some more on Trump’s comments about Putin. Talking about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he said:
“That was a war that should have never happened. A lot of people are dying and it should end.
We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth. He’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”
Asked if he wants to see further sanctions against Russia, he says: “I’m looking at it.”
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Updated at 13.23 EDT
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Trump says he will meet again with Netanyahu this evening
Donald Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet again on Tuesday evening to discuss Gaza, a day after they met for hours while officials conducted indirect negotiations on a US-brokered ceasefire.
Trump and Netanyahu dined together on Monday at the White House during the Israeli leader’s third US visit since the president began his second term on 20 January.
Netanyahu spent much of Tuesday at the Capitol, telling reporters after a meeting with House speaker Mike Johnson that while he did not think Israel’s campaign in the Palestinian territory was done, negotiators are “certainly working” on a ceasefire.
“We have still to finish the job in Gaza, release all our hostages, eliminate and destroy Hamas’ military and government capabilities,” Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu’s plan to return to the White House at 4.30pm ET pushed back his meeting with Senate leaders to Wednesday.
Shortly after Netanyahu spoke, Trump envoy Steve Witkoff said he hoped to reach a temporary ceasefire agreement this week.
“We are hopeful that by the end of this week, we’ll have an agreement that will bring us into a 60-day ceasefire. Ten live hostages will be released. Nine deceased will be released,” Witkoff told reporters at a meeting of Trump’s cabinet earlier.
In his remarks to reporters at Congress, Netanyahu praised Trump, saying there has never been closer coordination between the US and Israel in his country’s history.
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Updated at 15.35 EDT
Pentagon provided $2.4tn to private arms firms to ‘fund war and weapons’, report finds
Andrew Roth
A new study of defense department spending previewed exclusively to the Guardian shows that most of the Pentagon’s discretionary spending from 2020 to 2024 has gone to outside military contractors, providing a $2.4tn boon in public funds to private firms in what was described as a “continuing and massive transfer of wealth from taxpayers to fund war and weapons manufacturing”.
The report from the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and Costs of War program at Brown University said that the Trump administration’s new Pentagon budget will push annual US military spending past the $1tn mark.
That will deliver a projected windfall of more than half a trillion dollars that will be shared among top arms firms such as Lockheed Martin and Raytheon as well as a growing military tech sector with close allies in the administration such as JD Vance, the report said.
The report is compiled of statistics of Pentagon spending and contracts from 2020 to 2024, during which time the top five Pentagon contractors (Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman) received $771bn in contract awards. Overall, private firms received approximately 54% of the department’s discretionary spending of $4.4tn over that period.
Taking into account supplemental funding for the Pentagon passed by Congress under Trump’s flagship sweeping tax and spending bill, the report said, the US military budget will have nearly doubled this century, increasing 99% since 2000.
“The US withdrawal from Afghanistan in September 2021 did not result in a peace dividend,” the authors of the report wrote. “Instead, President Biden requested, and Congress authorized, even higher annual budgets for the Pentagon, and President Trump is continuing that same trajectory of escalating military budgets.”
That contradicts early indications from Trump in February that he could cut military spending in half, adding that he would tell China and Russia that “there’s no reason for us to be spending almost $1tn on the military … and I’m going to say we can spend this on other things”. Instead, the spending bill pushed by Trump through Congress included a $157bn spending boost for the Pentagon.
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Updated at 14.58 EDT
Migrants deported from US to El Salvador prison remain under US control, Salvadorian officials tell UN
The government of El Salvador has acknowledged to United Nations investigators that the Trump administration maintains control of the Venezuelan men who were deported from the US to a notorious Salvadoran prison, contradicting past public statements by officials from both countries.
The revelation was contained in court filings on Monday by lawyers for more than 100 migrants who are seeking to challenge their deportations to El Salvador’s mega-prison known as Cecot.
“In this context, the jurisdiction and legal responsibility for these persons lie exclusively with the competent foreign authorities,” Salvadorian officials wrote in response to queries from the unit of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
The UN group has been looking into the fate of the men who were sent to El Salvador from the US in mid-March, even after a federal judge had ordered the planes that were carrying them to be turned around.
The Trump administration has argued that it is powerless to return the men, as they are beyond the reach of US courts and no longer have access to due process rights or other US constitutional guarantees.
But lawyers for the migrants said the UN report shows otherwise. American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Lee Gelernt said in an email:
El Salvador has confirmed what we and everyone else understood: it is the United States that controls what happens to the Venezuelans languishing at Cecot. Remarkably the US government didn’t provide this information to us or the court.
Skye Perryman, CEO and president of Democracy Forward, said the documents show “that the administration has not been honest with the court or the American people”. The ACLU and Democracy Forward are both representing the migrants.
A justice department spokesperson declined to comment. White House and homeland security department officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment from the Associated Press.
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Updated at 14.40 EDT
The US education secretary, Linda McMahon, yesterday threatened the state of California with legal action after the state refused to ban transgender girls from participating in girls’ sports as demanded by the Trump administration.
“@CAgovernor, you’ll be hearing from @AGPamBondi,” McMahon wrote on X, using the handles for California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and the US attorney general, Pam Bondi.
McMahon’s statement was the latest salvo in the culture wars over transgender youth and ratchets up the personal rivalry between Trump and Newsom. Trump has made reversing advances in transgender rights a priority since returning to office on 20 January, while California law has allowed student athletes to participate in sports in alignment with their gender identity since 2013.
The justice department declined to comment and the education department did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for clarification on the meaning of McMahon’s comment.
California’s state education department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Newsom’s office and the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF), the governing body for high school sports, declined to comment.
The US education department issued a statement in June declaring California in violation of the Trump administration’s interpretation of Title IV, the education law banning sex-based discrimination, and demanding the state alter its policy. The state rejected the federal government’s directive, and in June filed a pre-enforcement lawsuit against the US justice department in anticipation of legal action.
With controversy brewing ahead of the state high school track and field championship in June, the CIF allowed girls displaced from the finals by a transgender athlete to also be granted space to compete. The CIF also allowed girls to appear on the winners’ podium if they would have won a medal without a transgender athlete competing.
As a result, the CIF crowned two champions in the girls’ high jump and triple jump after transgender girl AB Hernandez won both events.
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Updated at 14.08 EDT
Trump again floats federal takeover of Washington, DC
During his cabinet meeting, Donald Trump also suggested his administration was looking into taking over governance of Washington DC.
Trump said his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, was in close touch with the city’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, a Democrat.
It is not the first time the president floated a federal takeover of the city, home to the White House, Congress and the supreme court.
Trump told reporters in February: “I think we should take over Washington DC – make it safe. I think that we should govern District of Columbia.”
Under home rule, Congress already vets all laws in the city and federal lawmakers can overturn some of them. However, it would take an act of Congress to make federal rule a reality.
Both houses would have to vote to repeal the 1973 Home Rule Act. It would be a controversial move and unlikely to make it through.
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Updated at 13.53 EDT
Donald Trump said he would announce a 50% tariff on imported copper on Tuesday. The Trump administration announced a so-called Section 232 investigation into US imports of the red metal in February.
Trump had ordered the investigation into possible tariffs on copper imports to rebuild US production of a metal critical to electric vehicles, military hardware, semiconductors and a wide range of consumer goods.
Trump signed an order directing the commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, to start a new national security investigation under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, the same law that Trump used in his first term to impose 25% global tariffs on steel and aluminum.
A White House official said any potential tariff rate would be determined by the investigation, adding that Trump preferred tariffs over quotas.
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The homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, said first responders in Texas are “still looking for a lot of little girls” who remain missing after a devastating flood in Texas.
Noem described the scene in Texas as Trump met with his cabinet at the White House on Tuesday.
Noem visited Camp Mystic in Kerrville on Saturday after the catastrophic flood on Friday.
You can read our Texas live coverage here:
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Updated at 13.22 EDT
Trump’s Middle East envoy says 60-day Gaza ceasefire could be finalized by end of week
A temporary ceasefire agreement in Gaza could be finalized by the end of the week, Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, said at the cabinet meeting.
Witkoff added that proximity talks had reduced outstanding issues from “four issues … to one”.
“We are hopeful that by the end of this week, we will have an agreement that will bring us into a 60-day ceasefire,” Witkoff said. “Ten live hostages will be released. Nine deceased will be released.”
Trump added that he would meet with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, later to discuss Gaza “almost exclusively”, describing the situation as “a tragedy” while claiming that the prime minister has been “very unfairly treated” because of his corruption trial.
“He’s been very unfairly treated. I think what they’ve done to him in Israel is very unfair. Having to do with this trial, he’s a wartime prime minister, had an unbelievable outcome, and I think he’s been treated very unfairly,” Trump said of Netanyahu.
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Updated at 13.23 EDT
Jakub Krupa
Here’s some more on Trump’s comments about Putin. Talking about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he said:
“That was a war that should have never happened. A lot of people are dying and it should end.
We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth. He’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”
Asked if he wants to see further sanctions against Russia, he says: “I’m looking at it.”
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Updated at 13.23 EDT
When asked about the latest on the Jeffrey Epstein case – in which the Department of Justice concluded there was no secret client list and it lacked evidence to prosecute – Pam Bondi brought up her Fox News interview comments from earlier this year that has gone viral this week about Epstein’s client list, explaining that when she said files were “sitting on my desk to be reviewed”, she meant the Epstein file along with JFK and MLK assassination files.
The US attorney general explained that investigators found “tens of thousands” of child sexual abuse videos downloaded by Epstein, which she said would “never be released, never going to see the light of day”.
Regarding Epstein’s death, Bondi said prison video showed he committed suicide, though she noted a technical issue with the recording system based on the prison’s outdated video system.
Meanwhile, Trump was clearly irritated by the question, saying: “You still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy has been talked about for years … And are people still talking about this guy, this creep? That is unbelievable.”
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Updated at 12.46 EDT
Trump ‘not happy’ with Putin but says any potential action would come as ‘a little surprise’
Speaking to reporters, Trump said that he is “not happy” with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, and noted that weekly casualties in Ukraine are now at 7,000 a week.
“I’m not happy with Putin. I can tell you that much right now, because he’s killing a lot of people, and a lot of them are his soldiers, his soldiers and their soldiers mostly. And it’s now up to 7,000 a week,” Trump said.
When pressed by reporters about potential action, Trump declined to elaborate, saying: “I wouldn’t be telling you, we want to have a little surprise.”
Trump praised Ukrainian resistance while crediting US military aid: “The Ukrainians were brave, but we gave them the best equipment ever made.”
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Updated at 12.36 EDT
Opening his full cabinet meeting just before noon, Donald Trump again targeted his predecessors’ trade policies, claiming the US was previously “led by stupid people” who lacked business acumen.
Trump said: “We only adhered to the rules of other nations who charge us tremendous tariffs because we were led by stupid people, or people without any business sense.”
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Donald Trump is set to attend Sunday’s Club World Cup final at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, a senior administration official tells NBC News senior White House correspondent Garrett Haake.
The Club World Cup final would conclude Fifa’s newly expanded 32-team global tournament.
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Updated at 12.05 EDT
Trump confirms new tariffs to take effect 1 August: ‘there will be no change’
Donald Trump has issued an ultimatum to the US’s trading partners, confirming that new tariffs will take effect on 1 August with no possibility of delays.
In a Truth Social post on Tuesday, Trump said:
As per letters sent to various countries yesterday, in addition to letters that will be sent today, tomorrow, and for the next short period of time, TARIFFS WILL START BEING PAID ON AUGUST 1, 2025. There has been no change to this date, and there will be no change. In other words, all money will be due and payable starting AUGUST 1, 2025 – No extensions will be granted. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
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Updated at 11.24 EDT
The US government will ban sales of US farmland to Chinese buyers and other foreign adversaries, the agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, announced at a joint press conference on Tuesday.
Speaking alongside defense secretary Pete Hegseth and homeland security secretary Kristi Noem, Rollins said the administration would pursue executive actions and work with states to halt such purchases, citing national security and food security concerns.
“No longer can foreign adversaries assume we’re not watching,” Hegseth said, adding that the Pentagon would block farmland sales near military installations to protect food supplies for troops “especially in a contingency”.
The move includes plans for increased monitoring of existing farmland owned by entities from China, Russia and Iran. Chinese investors currently control 265,000 acres of US land, according to government data, with roughly half connected to Smithfield Foods, which was bought by Chinese conglomerate WH Group in 2013.
Chinese ownership of US farmland has already fallen significantly, dropping from 384,000 acres in 2021 to current levels.
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Updated at 11.11 EDT
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and some of his top officials met with JD Vance at Blair House on Tuesday, according to Israeli media reports.
Blair House, directly across from the White House, serves as the official presidential guest house and has been called “the world’s most exclusive hotel”. Only the most important foreign dignitaries get invited to stay there.
Netanyahu’s accommodation at the historic residence signals the Trump administration’s commitment to maintaining the special US-Israel relationship, even as the prime minister faces an arrest warrant from the international criminal court over war crime allegations stemming from Israel’s devastating conduct in Gaza.
He was joined by strategic affairs minister Ron Dermer, national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi, ambassador to Washington Yechiel Leiter and military secretary Maj Gen Roman Gofman.
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Updated at 11.12 EDT
Rightwing influencers in the US who are often aligned with Donald Trump are angry that a joint justice department and FBI memo has dismissed the existence of a “client list” in the case against late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The disgraced financier killed himself in a jail cell at the Metropolitan Detention Center in New York City in 2019 while awaiting prosecution on child sex-trafficking and conspiracy charges.
Almost ever since, Epstein’s death has been the subject of conspiracy theories on the right, including a supposed “client list” that he purportedly used to blackmail wealthy co-conspirators.
Trump’s presidential administration then created anticipation that the alleged list would be publicly disclosed, including the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, who had told Fox News in an interview: “It’s sitting on my desk right now to review.”
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Updated at 10.32 EDT
A split Wisconsin supreme court is paving the way for a statewide “conversion therapy” ban by striking down a Republican committee’s constitutional challenge to the proposed rule.
The 4-3 decision from the liberal-majority court overturned the GOP-controlled joint committee for the review of administrative rules, which had twice rejected a state agency regulation banning the scientifically discredited practice aimed at “converting” LGBTQ+ people to heterosexuality.
The ruling is yet another brush up between the Democratic governor, Tony Evers, and the Republican-controlled legislature over LGBTQ+ rights. Evers has previously vetoed GOP bills targeting transgender high school athletes and has sought to limit the legislature’s power.
Conversion therapy is already banned in 23 states and Washington DC.
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Updated at 09.49 EDT
