Trump insists US strikes were ‘devastating’ to Iran, rejects early assessment

The so-called “golden share” is part of the national security agreement under which President Trump allowed Japan-based Nippon Steel to buy out iconic American steelmaker U.S. Steel.

According to disclosures with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the provision gives the president the power to appoint a board member and have a say in company decisions that affect domestic steel production and competition with overseas producers.

Under the provision, Trump — or someone he designates — controls that decision-making power while he is president. However, control over those powers reverts to the Treasury Department and the Commerce Department when anyone else is president, according to the filings.

The White House didn’t immediately respond to questions Wednesday about why Trump will directly control the decision-making and why it goes to the Treasury and Commerce departments under future presidents.

▶ Read more about the U.S. Steel buyout

Trump posted a lengthy defense of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on social media.

The president likened the Israeli leader’s long-running corruption trial to a “Witch Hunt,” the same term the U.S. leader used to describe his own criminal cases and legal challenges that unfolded in the years he was out of power.

“Bibi and I just went through HELL together, fighting a very tough and brilliant longtime enemy of Israel, Iran, and Bibi could not have been better, sharper, or stronger in his LOVE for the incredible Holy Land,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday.

Trump said Netanyahu’s trial should be “CANCELLED, IMMEDIATELY” or that he should be pardoned.

That’s according to a senior White House official who was not authorized to comment publicly on the matter and spoke on the condition of anonymity. The official did not provide details on how the administration would limit the flow of classified information to lawmakers.

Congressional lawmakers have the authority to receive classified information as part of their legislative and oversight duty. The change seems certain to be challenged by Congress members.

The move, first reported by Axios, comes after the publication of details of a Defense Intelligence Agency assessment that determined Iran’s nuclear program has been set back only a few months after U.S. strikes.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt didn’t directly answer reporters on whether the administration intended to limit lawmakers’ access to classified material. But she made clear the administration wants to take action after the leak.

“We certainly don’t want people that are hostile to this government and are trying to undermine our national security to have classified intelligence in their hands if they’re not going to be responsible with it,” Leavitt said.

In a statement released Wednesday, the DIA noted that its report is not a final conclusion and that the authors had low confidence in their findings. The agency said it has not been able to review the actual sites themselves.

The DIA’s Monday assessment found that while the strikes did significant damage, the facilities were not totally destroyed, contradicting comments from President Trump, who said the strikes had “obliterated” the sites. The White House has rejected the assessment, calling it “flat-out wrong.”

The DIA also says it is working with the FBI to investigate the unauthorized leak of the assessment.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other military officials plan to hold a Thursday morning news conference to respond to the leaked intelligence report about the strikes in Iran, according to Trump.

The president said in a post on social media that the officials would speak “in order to fight for the Dignity of our Great American Pilots. These Patriots were very upset!”

Trump, posting as he’s aboard Air Force One, said the news conference “will prove both interesting and irrefutable.”

Kilmar Abrego Garcia will remain in jail for at least a few more days while attorneys in the federal smuggling case against him spar over whether prosecutors have the ability to prevent his deportation if he is released to await trial.

The Salvadoran national whose mistaken deportation became a flashpoint in the fight over President Trump’s immigration policies has been in jail since he was returned to the U.S. on June 7, facing two counts of human smuggling.

Although a federal judge has ruled that he has a right to be released and even set specific conditions for his release, his attorneys expressed concern that it would lead to immediate detention by ICE and deportation.

▶ Read more about Abrego Garcia’s case

Trump will hold an event at the White House on Thursday afternoon to urge the Senate to pass his massive tax and spending cuts package before a Fourth of July deadline, according to a White House official.

The president will speak at the event in the White House East Room and he will be joined by truck drivers, firefighters, tipped workers, ranchers and others that the White House says will benefit from the passage of the bill, according to the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer was back in the Senate on Wednesday afternoon after being treated at a hospital for dehydration.

A spokeswoman for Schumer said he became lightheaded in the Senate gym on Wednesday morning and was taken to the hospital “out of an abundance of caution.”

Schumer was on the Senate floor by Wednesday afternoon, criticizing the White House for not sending intelligence officials to a classified briefing on Iran scheduled for Thursday. The White House has told Congress that Secretary State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will attend instead.

“The administration has no right to stonewall Congress on matters of national security,” Schumer said.

U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s new vaccine advisers alarmed pediatricians Wednesday by announcing inquiries into some long-settled questions about children’s shots.

Opening the first meeting of Kennedy’s handpicked seven-member panel, committee chairman Martin Kulldorff said he was appointing a work group to evaluate the “cumulative effect” of the children’s vaccine schedule — the list of immunizations given at different times throughout childhood.

It was an early sign of how the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is being reshaped by Kennedy, a leading antivaccine activist before becoming the nation’s top health official. He fired the entire 17-member panel this month and replaced it with a group that includes several anti-vaccine voices.

The president is bashing Zohran Mamdani after the democratic socialist’s surprise trouncing of former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in last night’s Democratic primary in the city’s mayoral race.

“It’s finally happened, the Democrats have crossed the line,” Trump wrote in a social media post, bashing Mamdani, as “a 100% Communist Lunatic.”

“We’ve had Radical Lefties before, but this is getting a little ridiculous,” he went on adding: “He looks TERRIBLE, his voice is grating, he’s not very smart.”

National Republicans have been pointing to Mamdani’s far-left positions like city-run grocery stores as a further sign that the Democratic Party is out of touch with Americans.

The Army says an estimated 190,000 people attended the Army birthday celebration in Washington this month.

Army spokesman Steve Warren provided the crowd estimate on Wednesday for the June 14th parade, which also coincided with President Donald Trump’s 79th birthday. He said that figure comes from magnetometer data from the Secret Service.

Warren says despite discussion before the event about potential damage to the streets of the District of Columbia, the only sign of damage so far has been to a curb that was apparently run over.

As Trump returns from the NATO summit, he’s been using his time on Air Force One to pop out some thoughts on his social media network.

“Israel just stated that the Nuclear Sites were OBLITERATED! Thank you to our great B-2 pilots, and all others involved!” he said in one post

The president has been posting on Truth Social about the U.S. strikes on Iran, about news reports on a leaked U.S. intelligence assessment that the strikes only set back Iran’s nuclear program by months, and his push to cut funding for Voice of America.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres “very much hopes” the talks which President Donald Trump said will take place next week will lead to an end to the Israel-Iran conflict, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

Guterres also hopes the momentum from the Israel-Iran ceasefire will lead to negotiations to end the conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, Dujarric said.

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner said Wednesday the move will allow employees to work in a more modern space. The existing building in Washington D.C. — currently up for sale by the Trump administration -- is plagued by maintenance and infrastructure issues, he said.

It’s not yet clear where over 1,833 NSF in-person employees will be relocated. A statement from the American Federation of Government Employees called the move callous, saying that workers “are being displaced with no plan, no communication and no respect.”

The union said in a statement relocation plans include an executive suite, dining room and possible gym for Turner and his family. Turner rejected that during a press conference at NSF’s current base in Alexandria, Va., saying the move was “about the posterity and the future of HUD.”

Monarez, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told senators Wednesday at her confirmation hearing that she valued vaccines and rigorous scientific evidence, but largely sidestepped questions about widespread job cuts, elimination of programs and whether she disagreed with any of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s actions to date.

“The Secretary is doing the important work of leading a complex agency,” Monarez told members of a Senate health committee. The 50-year-old is the first nominee for the CDC director’s job to require Senate confirmation.

Monarez was named acting director in January and the nominee for the post in March after Trump abruptly withdrew his first choice, David Weldon. She is the former director of a federal biomedical research agency and a respected scientist.

Monarez said she had not been involved as acting director in decisions to cut hundreds of staff and eliminate CDC programs, but that she would work to transition the agency’s core functions to other parts of the Health and Human Services department. Her answers appeared to frustrate senators like Virginia Democrat Tim Kaine, who said he had no questions about her qualifications.

“I’ve got questions about your willingness to follow through on your values,” he said.

The committee will decide whether to advance her nomination.

Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on X that during their meeting he and President Trump had discussed the possibility of Kyiv co-producing drones with American companies and buying American air defense systems.

“We can strengthen each other,” Zelenskyy wrote. He also said that he presented Trump with “what is really happening on the ground.”

“Putin is definitely not winning,” Zelenskyy said.

Trump is “well intentioned” regarding Turkey’s request to obtain F-35s fighter jets, Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday, a day after the two met on the sidelines of a NATO summit.

Turkey was removed from the U.S.-led F-35 program in 2019 — during Trump’s first term in office — after it acquired Russian S-400 missile systems. Turkey is now trying to return to the project.

Erdogan told reporters that Turkey paid more than $1.3 billion toward the jets before its ouster.

“We saw that Mr. Trump has good intentions about delivering them,” he told reporters.

The United States had previously made Turkey’s return to the F-35 program conditional on Ankara abandoning the Russian air defense system. The Turkish president said the two did not discuss “the S-400 issue.”

The president has left The Hague after spending less than 24 hours there for the NATO summit.

The summit wrapped up Wednesday and Trump held a subsequent press conference.

Air Force One, which had touched down on Tuesday at 7:36 p.m. local time, took off from Amsterdam Airport Schiphol shortly before 6 p.m. local time.

The flight was expected to take more than six hours, putting Trump back at the White House on Wednesday evening.

COVID-19 remains a public health threat, resulting in 32,000 to 51,000 U.S. deaths and more than 250,000 hospitalizations since last fall, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It says most at risk for hospitalization are seniors and children under 2 — especially infants under 6 months who could have some protection if their mom got vaccinated during pregnancy.

The first meeting of Kennedy’s new vaccine advisory panel opened Wednesday as the American Academy of Pediatrics announced that it will continue publishing its own vaccine schedule for children but now will do so independently of the ACIP, calling it “no longer a credible process.”

Shortly before the meeting, a Virginia-based obstetrician and gynecologist stepped down from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, bringing the panel’s number to just seven. The Trump administration said Dr. Michael Ross withdrew during a customary review of members’ financial holdings.

First on the two-day agenda is an awkward scenario: Kennedy already announced COVID-19 vaccines will no longer be recommended for healthy children or pregnant women, and his new advisers aren’t scheduled to vote on whether they agree. Yet government scientists prepared meeting materials calling vaccination “the best protection” during pregnancy — and said most children hospitalized for COVID-19 over the past year were unvaccinated.

▶ Read more about the vaccine advisors’ meeting

Trump’s second pick to lead the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is in front of a Senate health committee Wednesday and expected to face sharp questions about vaccine review, scientific independence and more.

Susan Monarez, 50, is the first nominee for the CDC director’s job to require Senate confirmation after a 2023 law. She is the former director of a federal biomedical research agency and a respected scientist. If confirmed, she would be the first nonphysician to lead the agency in decades.

Monarez was named acting director in January and then nominee in March after Trump abruptly withdrew his first choice, David Weldon. Since then, Monarez has largely stayed silent as the $9.2 billion agency tasked with protecting the nation’s health underwent staff cuts, program overhauls and abrupt changes in vaccine policy mandated by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The Council of Economic Advisers chair Stephen Miran told reporters Wednesday that the White House analysis greatly differs from Congressional Budget Office estimates due to factors that the CBO does not consider in its analysis of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, including:

• a boost in tariff revenues
• Trump administration plans to cut regulations
• overall “energy abundance”
• and estimated reduced interest payments on the national debt.

“The problem is not that the CBO is doing everything wrong,” Miran said. “The problem is that people are using the CBO score for purposes its not intended for.”

A new White House Council of Economic Advisers analysis of the Senate Finance Committee draft of Trump’s tax cuts package estimates $2.1 to $2.3 trillion in deficit reduction over ten years, based in part on higher tariffs revenue, and an economic boom that would increase the gross domestic product to 4.9% over four years.

The analysis is markedly different from the Congressional Budget Office’s dynamic analysis of the House-passed measure, which estimates that it would increase deficits by up to $2.8 trillion over the next decade and leave the lowest income Americans facing the biggest hit from the bill.

The CEA didn’t provide an income distribution analysis.

Emil Bove, a top Justice Department official, denied the account of a whistleblower as he was questioned by lawmakers weighing his nomination to become a federal appeals court judge.

The whistleblower, a fired Justice Department lawyer, alleged in a complaint made by public Tuesday that Bove suggested during a meeting about Trump’s deportation efforts that the government might have to consider ignoring court orders.

Bove told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he has “never advised a Department of Justice attorney to defy a court order.”

“I don’t think there’s any validity this to the suggestion that that whistleblower complaint filed yesterday calls into question my qualifications to serve as a circuit judge,” Bove said.

▶ Read more about Bove’s confirmation hearing

The attorney general was asked during a congressional budget hearing Wednesday about a whistleblower’s claims that Trump judicial nominee and Justice Department official Emil Bove suggested ignoring court orders to carry out deportations.

Bondi said she found the timing “suspect,” a day before Bove’s confirmation hearing Wednesday to become a federal appeals court judge.

Bondi noted that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche has said the claims by the Justice Department lawyer — who was fired after acknowledging to a judge that Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia was deported by mistake — are false.

“I stand by Emil Bove and I stand by Todd Blanche every day and I always will,” Bondi said.

“You’re very good at icebreakers,” Trump told a reporter from Finland during his post-NATO summit news conference. The ships can help bolster U.S. defenses in the Arctic.

Trump said he’s gone to Finnish President Alexander Stubb seeking to buy a “fairly used icebreaker,” and offered “about one third of what he asked for.”

“But we’re negotiating,” Trump said. “We need icebreakers in the U.S. And, if we can get some inexpensively, I’d like to do that.”

He said Finland is the “king of icebreakers” and suggested the U.S. might be willing to buy as many as 15 of them, including the used icebreaker that Trump said might be immediately available.

“We’re trying to make a good deal,” Trump said.

The reporter who asked about the Patriot missile systems said her husband was a Ukrainian soldier. Trump, who laid into the U.S. media throughout his news conference, gave her praise.

“That’s a very good question,” Trump said. “And I wish you a lot of luck. I mean, I can see it’s very upsetting to you. So say hello to your husband.”

Before the press conference ended, Trump had an exchange with a Ukrainian reporter, leaving open the possibility of sending Kyiv more US-made Patriot air defense missile systems.

“We’re going to see if we can make some available. Yeah, they’re very hard to get. We need them too. We’re supplying them to Israel, and, they’re very effective, 100% effective. Hard to believe how effective. They do want that more than any other thing.”

The U.S. has routinely pressed for allies to provide air defense systems to Ukraine, but many are reluctant to give up the high-tech systems — particularly countries in eastern Europe that also feel threatened by Russia.

The U.S. also is wary of giving too many away, since they are used all over the world to protect U.S. forces and allies. The systems cost approximately $4 million per missile, and the launchers cost about $10 million each, analysts say.

Trump’s press conference has wrapped with a question about a comment by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, who suggested on Wednesday that Trump was “Daddy” to the alliance.

Asked if he considers NATO allies his children, Trump chuckled but didn’t offer a direct answer.

“No, he likes me. I think he likes me,” Trump said of Rutte.

The president heaped praise during his press conference on most NATO members for agreeing to increase their defense spending.

Trump, departing from the NATO focus of his post-summit news conference, says he has candidates in mind to replace the U.S. Federal Reserve chairman, though he offered his usual insults against Jerome Powell rather than providing more details.

The president has spent months pressuring the Fed chair to lower U.S. interest rates. He said Wednesday that Powell is “an average mentally person” and has “low IQ for what he does.”

“I think he’s a very stupid person, actually,” Trump said.

Trump briefly ceded the stage to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during a question about the impact of U.S. strikes on Iran.

“There’s a reason the president calls out the fake news for what it is,” Hegseth said, accusing media outlets of using a leaked intelligence assessment to politically damage Trump.

“They want to spin it to try to make him look bad,” Hegseth said.

Trump said he doesn’t know what “the problem” with Spain, calling the country’s position unfair to other members of the NATO alliance.

“They want a little bit of a free ride, but they’ll have to pay it back to us on trade,” he said, making up for it through higher tariffs.

But Spain belongs to the European Union, the world’s largest trading bloc, which negotiates trade deals on behalf of all 27 member countries. They are not meant to negotiate trade deals individually.

Asked about that, Trump said, “I’m going to negotiate directly with Spain. I’m going to do it myself.”

Most NATO member countries agreed Wednesday to increase defense spending to 5% of their GDP. Spain claimed an exception and said it would increase spending to 2%.

Pedro Sánchez said Spain will meet the capability targets NATO members agreed upon at Wednesday’s summit, and continue being a key part of Europe’s security apparatus at its southern border as well as the eastern flank with Russia.

And Sanchez called his country’s plan to spend 2% of gross domestic product on defense “sufficient and realistic.”

Two days before the summit, Sánchez announced that Spain had secured an opt-out from the 5% of GDP spending target that NATO allies agreed to at The Hague.

The move threatened the unity of the military alliance as leaders prepared to meet with Trump, who has pushed Europe to spend more on its defense and rebuked Spain for its low spending.

“In today’s summit, NATO wins and Spain wins something very important for our society, which is security and the welfare state,” Sánchez said.

“He’d like to get out of this thing. It’s a mess for him,” Trump said of the Russian president. “He called the other day, and he said, ‘Can I help you with Iran?’ I said ‘no, you can help me with Russia.’”

The president said he came to the NATO summit as a political chore, but is leaving convinced that the assembled leaders love the alliance, their own countries and, mostly importantly, the United States.

“I came here because it was something I was supposed to be doing. But I left here a little bit different,” Trump said.

He called NATO leaders a “nice group of people” and said “almost every one of them said ‘thank God for the United States.’”

Trump praised most member countries for agreeing to increase defense spending, adding: “They need the United States and without the United States it’s not going to be the same.”

Trump characterized the gesture as an indication that the U.S. might be willing to let bygone be bygones with Iran.

Asked if doing so could reduce economic pressure on Iran at a delicate time, Trump responded: “They’re going to need money to put that country back into shape. We want to see that happen.”

He harkened back to the U.S.-led war in Iraq, before the start of his political career, and said, “I used to say with Iraq, ‘Keep the oil.’ I could say it here too.’”

The statement was surprising given Trump’s harsh rhetoric against Iran recently, including his insistence that Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon.

“I’ll tell you what, we’re going to talk with them next week, with Iran. We may sign an agreement, I don’t know,” Trump said.

It was a surprise disclosure about the possibility of restarting dialogue between Tehran and Washington.

“The way I look at it, they fought, the war is done,” he said.

“I don’t care if I have an agreement or not” because “we destroyed the nuclear,” deflating Iran’s atomic ambitions.

“They’re not going to be doing it anyway,” Trump said. “They’ve had it.”

In comments at the press conference, Trump said he, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other top U.S. officials felt like their work during the conflict in Iran made them warriors.

Referring to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Trump said, “Should we say secretary of war?”

The president noted that the Cabinet position was originally known as the Secretary of War. “Maybe, for a few weeks, we’ll call it that because we feel like warriors,” he said, while acknowledging that the original name might not be politically correct.

Trump said the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities brought the conflict to a close. He’s been calling it the “12 day war,” suggesting a definitive end to the conflict.

“I think they’re very much finished,” he said of Israel and Iran. “They’re both tired, exhausted.”

Trump says nearly all military personnel was moved off a U.S. military base before Iran targeted it with multiple missile strikes earlier this week. No casualties had previously been reported during Iran’s Monday attack on Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar.

Trump said Wednesday during his post-NATO summit press conference that “everyone was emptied off the base” except “the gunners.”

Iran targeted the Al Udeid base in retaliation for the U.S. bombing three of its nuclear facilities last weekend.

The president used his NATO press conference to press his claims that he had delivered a devastating blow to Iran’s nuclear program. It was a lengthy digression from the summit’s focus on European security.

“The site has been demolished,” he said.

“We had these brave patriots, these incredible fliers,” Trump said about U.S. pilots who led the attack with U.S. stealth bombers. “The shots were hit perfectly.”

Getting most NATO members to agree to increase their defense spending relative to GDP is something Trump has sought since 2017, feeling that the U.S. was shouldering too much of the burden.

Trump hailed the alliance’s vote on Wednesday to have most members boost that spending to 5%, with the key exception of Spain. He said the increase will add more than $1 trillion per year to “our common defense.”

The U.S. president said the vote will be known as “the Hague defense commitment” and as a “monument really to victory.”

“This is a big win for Europe and, actually, for Western civilization,” Trump said.

“Europe stepping up to take more responsibility for security will help prevent future disasters like the horrible situation with Russia and Ukraine,” Trump told reporters at his summit-ending news conference. “And hopefully we’re going to get that solved.”