Supreme court to release opinions with major cases still to be decided before end of term – live

Key events

In further comments to Fox News this morning, Donald Trump said the US “dropped $250m worth of bombs on them [Iran] last night”.

He said the US was “not hitting them hard enough” but also claimed Iran was “in submission, they just don’t know it yet”.

He added: “My preference has always been take Kharg Island … I don’t know that America has the stomach for it.”

Donald Trump has threatened to attack Iran “very hard tonight” and seize the country’s Kharg Island and “other infrastructure” in his latest warning to Tehran.

In a post on his Truth Social platform, he wrote:

The United States will be hitting Iran (Whose Navy, Air Force, Radar, Anti Aircraft, and all other forms of Defense, together with most of its offensive capability, are GONE!), VERY HARD TONIGHT. At some point in the not too distant future, we will be taking Kharg Island, and other oil infrastructure points, and assume total control of their Oil and Gas Markets, much like we have with Venezuela, which is working out brilliantly for both Venezuela and the United States of America.

Kharg Island in the Gulf is an economic lifeline for Iran, handling about 90% of its oil exports.

It comes after Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said the renewed US strikes against Iran “have rendered the ceasefire ineffective”, per a statement on his Telegram channel.

For more, my colleagues on the Middle East live blog have the latest:

Supreme court to release opinions with major cases still to be decided before end of term

With the final weeks of the US supreme court’s term approaching, the justices are due to release another round of opinions today at 10am ET.

Among the most prominent cases we’ve been waiting for decisions on are Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship, his firings of members of independent federal agencies without cause, whether states can count mail-in ballots that are postmarked by but arrive after election day, state laws banning transgender athletes from girls’ and womens’ sports, and Trump’s efforts to end Temporary Protected Status for more than 356,000 immigrants from Syria and Haiti.

US and Iran exchange strikes for second day, as ceasefire appears close to collapse

Andrew Roth in Washington and William Christou in Beirut

The US launched a new round of airstrikes on Iran into this morning after Donald Trump warned Tehran would “pay the price” for stalled negotiations, prompting Iran to respond with strikes targeting Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan.

The new US assault across a range of Iranian cities came as efforts to negotiate an end to the war again appeared stuck, with Iran insisting it would maintain its chokehold on the strait of Hormuz. The US attack appeared more intense and wider than the day before, but Iran released no information about what was hit.

Explosions were reported around Iran’s capital, Tehran, as well as the port city of Bandar Abbas and other southern areas along the strait of Hormuz.

Before the strikes, Trump had promised to “hit them hard again” as a two-month-old ceasefire appears close to collapse.

Donald Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday that Iranian negotiators were ‘playing us for suckers’ – despite claiming the day before that a deal was imminent. Photograph: Evan Vucci/Reuters

The third back-and-forth strikes this week have tested a shaky two-month ceasefire. The first were attacks between Iran and Israel on Sunday into Monday, followed by the two rounds of fire between the US and Tehran.

The two days of strikes followed the downing of a US Apache helicopter over the strait of Hormuz, which Trump has blamed on Iran.

Trump also accused negotiators in Tehran of “playing us for suckers” – a day after repeating claims that a peace deal was imminent. He told reporters at the White House yesterday:

We hit them hard yesterday and we’re going to hit them hard again today.

We were really close to a deal, but they keep tapping us along, they keep playing us for suckers.

Talks to turn the ceasefire into a durable peace have been stalling for weeks, with periodic flare-ups as both sides continued to launch limited strikes and trade blame for violating the truce.

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmail Baqaei, has said the US strikes had jeopardized the ongoing ceasefire negotiations.

Few Americans, including only a third of Republicans, approve of president Donald Trump’s plan to hold mixed martial arts cage matches at the White House on Sunday to celebrate US history, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found.

Just 16% of Americans said it was appropriate for Trump to hold the Ultimate Fighting Championship event, scheduled for his 80th birthday, while 46% said it was inappropriate and the rest didn’t offer an opinion.

Only 31% of Republicans considered it appropriate, a small share considering that eight in 10 Republicans approve of Trump’s overall performance in the White House, according to the six-day poll, which concluded on Monday.

Trump has planned a slew of public celebrations marking the 250th anniversary of America’s Declaration of Independence from Britain on 4 July, 1776. The events have stirred controversy, with several musical performers pulling out of the opening ceremony over concerns about its association with Trump.

Trump’s administration asked a judge on Tuesday to reject an effort to halt the UFC event after local residents argued that sporting events are barred on the White House’s South Lawn and the large metal arena being constructed for the fight lacks required approval.

As the 2024 election approached, advertisements began popping up in key swing states suggesting local officials had discretion not to certify elections.

The advertisements, reported at the time by ProPublica and Wisconsin Watch, were misleading. Certification is not optional, and officials are required to certify the vote once the proper process for any election challenges are complete and an official challenge is complete. The warnings, nonetheless, arrived at a moment when Donald Trump and allies seemed to be gearing up to contest the election results if he lost.

New documents reviewed by the Guardian show that the group behind the advertisements received financial support from a non-profit linked to prominent election deniers with ties to Trump. The same non-profit, the Foundation For Accountability Integrity & Research In Elections Fund (Fair Elections Fund), also paid influencers to promote an anti-voting bill in 2024.

Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer and longtime ally of Trump who assisted his efforts to overturn the 2020 race, and Heather Honey, a researcher known for misleading election analyses who now works in the Department of Homeland Security, are both listed as directors of the fund, which was incorporated in Delaware in 2023.

Honey’s appointment to an elections role at the DHS last year has caused considerable alarm among voting rights groups, who say it places an election denier in a powerful government role. Before she was in government, Honey produced misleading research that Trump has cited to undermine confidence in the 2020 election. She has falsely claimed, for example, that there were more votes in Pennsylvania in 2020 than there were voters.

Her appointment comes as Trump and his administration continue to sow doubt about the integrity of American elections, making baseless accusations of fraud without offering substantial evidence. There is still concern that Trump could deploy the powerful machinery of his justice department and other government resources to contest the result of the midterm elections this year.

Mitchell and Honey did not respond to a request for comment.

Democratic senators meet to plan response to any potential election interference in midterms

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.

The Democrats are considering messaging strategies and considering legal action amid fears that Donald Trump, or malign foreign actors, will try to influence the midterm elections.

Ten Democratic senators, including minority leader Chuck Schumer, met with the party’s top election officials last week to run through a series of extreme scenarios that could play out, Politico reported.

The war-gaming included how to respond to federal agents at polling locations, ballot seizures in key battlegrounds and dealing with a foreign interference operation.

Schumer said:

Trump has talked about stealing the election, violating the election, perverting the election, over and over again.

And woe be us, and woe be anyone who believes in free elections, who doesn’t take that seriously.

We are going to be prepared for anything that he throws at us.

This year’s midterms will serve as an example of how the president will wield the federal government’s power at cities and states in a crusade to ensure his party maintains power.

Experts warned on Tuesday that president Trump was “inventing fraud” in California’s primary elections, a narrative likely to ramp up unfounded allegations when more races go against him.

“California’s election is not the problem here,” said Omar Noureldin, senior vice-president of policy and litigation at Common Cause, a pro-democracy watchdog group.

“The problem is that we have a president in the Oval Office who continues to lie and sow doubt over elections instead of facing accountability from voters.”

In other developments:

• Donald Trump demanded that Republicans in Congress provide an additional $350bn in funding for the Pentagon, by passing a third reconciliation bill.

• Trump brushed off concerns about new data showing that inflation jumped to an annual rate of 4.2% in May by saying “I love the inflation”, but US House speaker Mike Johnson, accused a CNN journalist of taking the president’s comment “totally out of context”. “What he was saying is: ‘It’s going to be great to have that number and compare it to what comes next, when we get these situations resolved, that’ll be a fun thing to consider.’”

• As Trump appeared unwilling to back off his plan to install as acting director of national intelligence an unqualified political “attack dog”, federal mortgage director Bill Pulte, Senate Democrats said they would not vote to reauthorize a warrantless surveillance law that expires on Friday.

• Trump told Fox News the US had fired 49 Tomahawk missiles at Iran on Wednesday, and would “bomb the shit out of them again on Thursday” if Iran’s leaders do not sign a peace agreement.