Good morning. New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani, said on Sunday that he and a slew of Democratic socialist allies who prevailed in recent primary elections were carrying a “national message” to struggling working Americans hungry for a new kind of politics “coast to coast”. His endorsed candidates won Democratic nominations in three races for New York congressional seats, as well as for five state legislature positions in Albany.
He said that collectively they were carrying a “New Deal understanding” of Democratic politics to Congress and on to the “national stage”. It spoke, he said, to Americans feeling exhaustion at struggling to make ends meet “every single day”. Mamdani remarked: “We don’t have to nationalize that message. That is a national message – it’s a national crisis.”
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How did other members of the Democratic party react? Fifteen self-labelled “moderate” Democrats in the US House signed an open letter that, though it did not mention Mamdani or his endorsed allies, was clearly targeted at them. “We are capitalist, not socialist,” they said. “We are mainstream, not extreme. We are proud, not ashamed, of America.”
US homeland security secretary tells migrants to seek permanent status or leave
Migrants in the US on temporary protected status should seek permanent residence or leave, Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, said after a supreme court decision stripped humanitarian protections from hundreds of thousands of immigrants last week.
“Either try to fill out the paperwork and be here underneath a permanent status or we’ll help you get back to your country,” Mullin said. “We’ll actually give you a plane ticket, plus roughly $2,100 to help you re-establish when you get there, but temporary protective status, according to the courts and in its name itself, is not permanent status,” he added.
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Who is affected by the supreme court decision? Thursday’s ruling is set to affect an estimated 350,000 Haitian and 6,000 Syrian immigrants who now face detention or deportation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers as protections end. The US first provided temporary protected status (TPS) to Haitians after a devastating earthquake in 2010, and to Syrians after their country descended into civil war in 2012.
Venezuela earthquakes: father and son found alive in rubble after four days as death toll nears 1,500
A man and his teenage son were found alive under rubble in Venezuela on Sunday in a town about 25 miles north of the capital, Caracas, as the death toll from last week’s twin earthquakes passed 1,450.
Even as rescue efforts continued apace, outbreaks of looting occured in La Guaira, a port city near the country’s main international airport. Much of the city now lies in rubble after the disaster last Wednesday. Pharmacies, supermarkets and other businesses were ransacked, said residents, some of whom complained about the speed and quality of post-quake aid coming from authorities.
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What are the prospects for finding more survivors? The interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, on Sunday praised rescuers saying: “Today we have rescued people who are still alive, and therefore these efforts will not be suspended. We always hold on to hope.” A Salvadoran rescue worker who declined to give his name, said: “At this point, they are probably dead bodies. Thanks to God maybe we can find people still alive.”
In other news …
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A new round of escalating strikes between Iran and the US has continued, further undermining the fragile interim peace agreement between the two countries. Donald Trump has threatened violence that would ensure Iran “will no longer exist”.
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The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, acknowledged that his country was suffering from “a certain shortage” of fuel after repeated Ukrainian strikes on critical and energy infrastructure.
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Three firefighters responding to wildfires along the Colorado-Utah border have been killed and two others were hurt, the US Wildland fire service announced on Sunday.
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Joe Biden called Donald Trump “a loser” in a pugnacious speech at the weekend, lamenting what he described as the Trump administration’s “corruption on a scale never seen before in American history in any administration”.
Stat of the day: 4,000 local US lenders join forces to fight ‘stablecoins’ law
The Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) is launching a campaign to fight a landmark bill that will determine how the US’s multibillion-dollar crypto sector is regulated. They warn that the shift towards crypto assets could strip US small businesses and farmers – sectors which rely heavily on community bank funding – of billions of dollars in vital loans.
Building power: How US children are being folded into activism
Jessica Machado reports that children-centered activism is happening in progressive spaces and small neighborhood parenting groups around New York, as families figure out how to explain to their children why ICE agents are in their neighborhood, what the Iran war is about and how they can be most helpful in their communities.
Don’t miss this: How children in the West Bank are being killed by Israel ‘without accountability’
Quique Kierszenbaum, reporting from the West Bank, and Julian Borger, the Guardian’s senior international correspondent, present this account of the death of nine-year-old Mohammad al-Halaq, just one of the one of 235 Palestinian children and teenagers killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank over the last two-and-a-half years.
“The widespread and unprecedented killing of Palestinian children and teenagers in the West Bank is the result of Israel’s broader policy that allows the killing of Palestinians without accountability,” said Yuli Novak, the executive director of the human rights group B’Tselem.
A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces said that the army did not “intentionally target uninvolved civilians”.
… or this: Trafficked, beaten and raped – raids reveal scale of abuse of women in Asia’s cyberscam centres
Run primarily by Chinese and Taiwanese criminal syndicates, illicit cyberscamming has expanded across Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia since 2020. Fiona Kelliher speaks to female survivors, who are increasingly reporting gender-based violence in the compounds, which were previously thought to hold mainly men.
Climate check: Heatwave and high humidity to blast much of US
A long and dangerous heatwave will blast a large swath of the central and eastern US this week, with temperatures rising before the Fourth of July holiday and feeling even hotter due to high humidity. The National Weather Service meteorologist Bryan Putnam said: “That’s heat that’s impactful to anyone. It’s not just older adults or younger children or people who are spending a ton of time outdoors, maybe straining themselves a little more than normal. This is heat that really could impact everyone, especially with people outdoors going into the holiday weekend.”
Last Thing: US celebrates Pride with parades across country
Across the US, cities wrapped up Pride month with parades and festivals on the anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall uprising, which underscored the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement. This month’s celebrations unfolded as Trump worked to roll back trans rights and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Here are some of the best Pride pictures.
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