Trump considering plans to occupy or blockade Iran's Kharg Island - report
According to a report in Axios, the Trump administration is considering occupying or blockading Iran’s Kharg Island to pressure Iran into reopening the strait of Hormuz. The report, which we have not yet been able to independently verify, cited four sources who all spoke under the condition of anonymity.
“He wants Hormuz open. If he has to take Kharg Island to make it happen, that’s going to happen. If he decides to have a coastal invasion, that’s going to happen. But that decision hasn’t been made,” a senior administration official told Axios.
“We’ve always had boots on the ground in conflicts under every president, including Trump. I know this is a fixation in the media, and I get the politics, but the president is going to do what’s right,” a second senior official said. No decision has been made yet, the official said.
Kharg, a five-mile-long coral island in the Persian Gulf about 16 miles from the mainland, is a key processing hub for Iran, through which 90% of the country’s oil exports typically flow. The island had been largely left untouched by the US-Israeli attacks during the first two weeks of the war.
But the US bombed the island’s military installations last week, although it left the oil export facilities untouched. The US president, Donald Trump, warned he would reconsider the decision not to target oil facilities if Iran or other countries “do anything to interfere” with the safe passage of ships through the strait of Hormuz.
The vital waterway has effectively been blocked since Iran began attacking ships in response to US and Israeli attacks, resulting in a huge jump in oil prices.
US veteran charged with ‘conspiracy’ over ICE protest refuses to plead guilty
A US military veteran arrested on federal conspiracy charges after participating in a June 2025 protest against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) told the Guardian he refuses to plead guilty and is ready to face justice.
The right to protest is “supposed to be fundamentally American”, said Bajun Mavalwalla, who walked foot patrols as US army sergeant in the Horn of Panjwai, the birthplace of the Taliban and one of the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan’s Kandahar Province.
“It’s among the rights that when I joined the military, I thought I was joining to protect,” he said. “You can’t do it violently. You can’t do it in a way that harms other people, but you have a right to stand up for what you believe in.”
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State department forms new humanitarian bureau after foreign aid overhaul
The US state department on Friday established a new bureau to oversee responses to natural disasters and humanitarian crises around the world, capping the Trump administration’s dramatic overhaul of foreign aid, a senior department official told the Associated Press.
Trump officials and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency dismantled the US Agency for International Development after taking office in January 2025, firing thousands of officials and canceling most of its grants before it was absorbed into the state department, Reuters reported.
The official told the AP the new Bureau of Disaster and Humanitarian Response would be staffed by about 200 officials, operate in 12 hubs around the world and receive roughly $5.4bn a year in funding.
It would narrowly focus on “life-saving” aid rather than things like climate projects and what the official called “social causes.“
It would also oversee global food security, said the official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity ahead of the announcement.
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IRS glitch masked $51m in political donations, watchdog says
A technical glitch at the understaffed Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is masking millions of dollars in campaign contributions to state-level election groups, including key governor and attorney general races, a campaign finance watchdog has told the Guardian.
A total of $51m for the second half of 2025 remains unaccounted for due to this technical error, according to the Center for Political Accountability (CPA), a non-profit that tracks corporate spending.
Researchers at the CPA noticed the discrepancy in February, when donor and spending lists from the year before are typically made public after a 31 January deadline. But so far, the disclosures remain blank.
The gaps come as these organizations face another filing deadline just weeks away, with no sign that the error will be fixed by then.
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Trump’s team tried to block appointment of Peter Mandelson as UK ambassador to US, reports say
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Donald Trump’s presidential transition team repeatedly intervened in UK prime minister Keir Starmer’s decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the US, it has been reported.
The president’s aides told Starmer’s national security adviser and former chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, on more than one occasion, that they wished for Mandelson’s predecessor Karen Pierce to remain in post, Politico reported this morning.
According to a source close to the president, the message was conveyed during a meeting in December in Palm Beach in December 2024.
Later the same month, the transition team called Powell to tell them they were unhappy with Pierce’s treatment and did not support Mandelson’s appointment.
Politico reported:
Trump’s aides were particularly exercised that Mandelson could be made ambassador after he had made disparaging public remarks about the president in the past, according to both officials.
Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles is understood to be one of those unhappy with Mandelson’s appointment, with one source saying she saw him as “arrogant” and rude to staff.
Mandelson was ultimately sacked just nine months into the job after new details emerged about his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted child sex offender.
In February, more files were released that revealed the peer was passing information to the convicted sex offender while he was business secretary, including market-sensitive information that sparked the criminal investigation.
In other developments:
Donald Trump created an extremely awkward moment for Japan’s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, in the Oval Office on Thursday when he responded to a question from a Japanese reporter about why the US attacked Iran without warning allies like Japan, by joking about Imperial Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.
Japan’s prime minister said later she explained to Trump that Japan’s ability to deploy military forces overseas, as he wants, is still limited by the constitution drafted for Japan by the United States after the second world war.
A federal arts commission approved the final design for a 24-karat gold commemorative coin bearing Donald Trump’s image to celebrate the US’s 250th birthday on 4 July.
The John F Kennedy Presidential Library foundation announced on Thursday that it is awarding Profile in Courage awards to staunch opponents of Donald Trump: the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell and the people of the Twin Cities of Minnesota.
Senator Thom Tillis, the North Carolina Republican who has shown a willingness to cross Trump since he announced that he will not run for re-election, said he will not vote to eliminate the filibuster to force changes to US election law.
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