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US strikes destroyed only one of three Iranian nuclear sites, NBC News reports
A new US assessment has found that American strikes in June destroyed only one of three Iranian nuclear sites, NBC News reported on Thursday, citing current and former US officials familiar with the matter.
President Donald Trump rejected a military plan for further comprehensive strikes on Iran’s nuclear program, which would have lasted several weeks, the report added.
Reuters could not immediately verify the report.
US Senate passes aid and public broadcasting cuts in victory for Trump
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.
We start with the news that the US Senate has approved Donald Trump’s plan for billions of dollars in cuts to funding for foreign aid and public broadcasting, handing the Republican president another victory as he exerts control over Congress with little opposition.
The Senate voted 51 to 48 in favour of Trump’s request to cut $9bn in spending already approved by Congress.
Most of the cuts are to programmes to assist foreign countries stricken by disease, war and natural disasters, but the plan also eliminates the $1.1bn the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was due to receive over the next two years.
Trump and many of his fellow Republicans argue that spending on public broadcasting is an unnecessary expense and reject its news coverage as blighted by “anti-right bias”.
Standalone rescissions packages have not passed in decades, with lawmakers reluctant to cede their constitutionally mandated control of spending. But the Republicans, who hold narrow majorities in the Senate and House, have shown little appetite for resisting Trump’s policies since he began his second term in January.
Read the full story here:
In other news:
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In an interview with Real America’s Voice, the far-right network created to host Steve Bannon’s podcast, Donald Trump said that the FBI should investigate what he called “the Jeffrey Epstein hoax” as part of a criminal conspiracy against him.
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In a series of posts on his social media platform X, Elon Musk mocked Trump’s wild claim that files related to the federal investigation of Epstein, the late sex offender and longtime Trump friend, are “a hoax”.
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Trump told reporters that he was “surprised” when Jerome Powell, the chairperson of the Federal Reserve, was appointed by Joe Biden. But Powell was appointed by Trump himself in 2017, before being reappointed by Biden in 2022.
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Trump claimed that Epstein had “died three or four years ago”. But Epstein died in federal custody in 2019, when Trump was president, not during the Biden administration.
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The Daily Show’s Jordan Klepper explained that Trump’s claims of a conspiracy makes no sense. “According to Trump, all the top Democrats got together and said: ‘Let’s create some fake files that destroy Trump’s political career’. They don’t ever use them,” Klepper said. “They let Trump get elected. Don’t use them. Let Trump get elected again. Still don’t use them. And then, once he’s the president, hope he releases the files without ever looking at them.”
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In a lengthy Truth Social post Trump dismissed the backlash over the Epstein files as a “scam” perpetuated by Democrats and accused supporters who have called for more transparency of “doing the Democrats’ work” by buying into the “hoax”.
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