Top U.S. & World Headlines — June 30, 2026

Welcome to Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. Officials in Qatar say no high-level meetings are scheduled between the United States and Iran after the Trump administration said it had sent envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Whitkoff to Doha for talks following a weekend of tit-for-tat attacks around the Strait of Hormuz. Iran's foreign ministry denied Trump's claim Monday that Tehran had requested the meeting, calling it fake news. Iran, however, said it is sending a delegation to Doha to follow up on the release of $6 billion in frozen Iranian assets. Iran also rejected a plan by France to demine parts of the Strait of Hormuz, warning Paris against provocations. Meanwhile, President Trump slashed out against the skyrocketing cost of fuel unleashed by his war against Iran. Trump wrote on Truth Social, quote, "'Gasoline retailers must get their prices down immediately,' adding that if they fail to lower prices, quote, "'big problems lie ahead,' unquote." Israeli strikes on southern and central Gaza Monday killed at least eight people, among them two children. In one of the attacks, Al Jazeera reports a displaced 23-year-old mother and her 1-year-old daughter were killed when their tent was hit in the al-Mawassi neighborhood of Khan Younis. Israel now claims control of some two-thirds of Gaza, with Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrych calling for the immediate establishment of Israeli settlements in Gaza's northern perimeter. Smotrych spoke on Monday from the city of Sidorot on Gaza's border. We are here in Sidorot today. The IDF holds nearly 70 percent of the Gaza Strip. We must complete the conquest of the remaining 30 percent. Defeat Hamas. And above all, we need to establish a belt of Jewish settlements within the territory of the Strip as a protective border for Sidorot and all the communities of the Gaza envelope. In news from the occupied West Bank, Israeli soldiers killed a 15-year-old Palestinian boy in the city of El Bireh near Ramallah Monday. Amir Ahmad Jawad Jaber was reportedly shot in the head and chest during a raid. This comes as a new report by the Israeli human rights group, Atsalam, found Israeli soldiers killed at least 54 Palestinian children and teens in the West Bank last year, in 2025, the highest rate since Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967. In Venezuela, rescue crews continue to search for tens of thousands of missing people nearly a week after two back-to-back earthquakes devastated La Guaira and Caracas. Venezuelan health officials say over 1,700 people are confirmed dead, with the toll expected to soar. Speaking from Caracas, the U.N.'s humanitarian coordinator said Monday people are still being pulled from the rubble. At least 2,500 structures affected, most of which fully collapsed. We are procuring, and this is something that has been agreed with the authorities here, 10,000 body bags. This comes as the Associated Press reports the United States deported more than 140 Venezuelans, including several children. They arrived back in Venezuela just hours before the earthquakes. The deportees were left in a hotel in La Guaira, with some survivors describing crawling out of the rubble and barely escaping. This is the mother of one of the men deported to Venezuela from the U.S. She said he suffered life-altering injuries in the disaster. It's believed more than 100 of the deportees have died. The flight arrived at 11 a.m., then they went through all the migratory process. He called me at 5 p.m. and told me, I love you so much, mom. See you tomorrow at home. Like any mother, I prepared a welcome for him with his blue, yellow and red balloons. We'll go to Caracas later in the broadcast. Ukraine launched a wave of long-range drone attacks on Moscow overnight, the latest in a series of assaults on Russia's capital. A regional governor said a six-month-old baby was killed when a drone crashed into a home. This follows Russian drone and missile attacks on Ukraine Monday that killed at least eight people and wounded 34 others. On Sunday, Ukrainian drone strikes on two Russian oil refineries sparked massive fires. Russian officials say the attacks left four people dead. In the United States, the Supreme Court has granted President Trump the power to fire Monday's 6-3 ruling overturns more than 90 years of precedent that insulated regulatory agencies set up by Congress from presidential control. The case centered around Federal Trade Commission Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, who was fired by Trump without cause in March of last year. In a separate ruling announced Monday, justices ruled 5-4 that Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook could remain in her job as she challenges Trump's efforts to fire her. Writing for The Majority, Chief Justice John Roberts argued the Trump administration's efforts to end the Federal Reserve's independence is, quote, an interpretive leap out of step with the statute Congress enacted and our nation's tradition of central banking protected from political interference, unquote. Meanwhile, Alvaro Bedoya, former FTC commissioner also fired by Trump, responded to the ruling by saying, quote, they're making clear that the Wall Street bankers, the central bankers, they deserve an independent, above-the-fray regulator. The rest of us schmucks get stuck with the loyalists, he said. In another major Supreme Court decision, justices ruled 5-4 to uphold a Mississippi law that allows mail-in ballots to be received up to five days after an election, as long as they're postmarked by Election Day. A ruling overturning the law could have seen hundreds of thousands of voters disenfranchised in future elections due to postal delays or because they live in remote, rural locations. A New York Times review of the 2024 election found at least 725,000 such ballots. The ruling's a blow to President Trump, who sought to limit who can vote by mail while promoting conspiracy theories about mail-in ballots. In response, voting rights journalist Ari Berman wrote, quote, every major study has shown that mail-in voting is safe and secure, but the fact that four justices signed on to Trump's crusade to get rid of mail-in ballots is highly disturbing and could embolden the president to attempt to take even more drastic steps to make it harder to vote, Berman said. In another landmark decision Monday, the Supreme Court ruled law enforcement agencies must first obtain a warrant before sweeping up smartphone location data from third-party tech companies like Google. In her majority opinion, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that a lower court should reexamine whether the technique known as geofencing constitutes an unreasonable search under the Fourth Amendment. She wrote, quote, an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy and records about his cell phone's location, and police intrude on that constitutionally protected interest when they demand the information, unquote. The Supreme Court declined on Monday to consider President Trump's appeal of a $5 million verdict in a civil suit that found he sexually assaulted writer E. Jean Carroll in a department store dressing room in the 1990s and later defamed her. The court dismissed the case without explanation. Trump's lawyers have indicated the last the Supreme Court to consider a second defamation case successfully brought by E. Jean Carroll after Trump called her a liar following the first verdict. Trump was ordered to pay more than $83 million in that case. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court's handing down the final decisions of its term this morning at the time of this broadcast, with rulings on birthright citizenship bans on transgender athletes and campaign finance. Separately, the court announced it will review two Arizona laws requiring people to produce proof of citizenship in order to register to vote. A ruling upholding the laws would dramatically weaken the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. In Colorado, 15-term incumbent Democratic congressmember Diana DeGette faces the most serious primary challenge of her political career from a Democratic socialist seeking to build on last week's upset victories in New York. Twenty-nine-year-old lawyer Milat Kiros is campaigning on a platform of Medicare for all, universal child care, ending homelessness and a complete arms embargo against Israel. Outside groups have poured around $3 million into the race, with super PACs funded by APAC and major big tech donors supporting DeGette. Kiros says her message is getting through despite the flood of negative campaigning against her. These issues are popular with the voters of Denver, right? In fact, socialism is more popular than capitalism for voters of this city. But more than anything, what I would explain is that we already have socialism. It's in our streets. It's in our public schools. It's in our fire stations. What we're fighting for is to extend that kind of guarantee and that security into our health care, into our housing, into our child care and our elder care. Meanwhile, incumbent Colorado Democratic Senator John Hickenlooper faces a challenge from state Senator Julie Gonzalez, a progressive who is the backing also of Democratic socialists of America. We'll speak to a Democratic socialist who won the primary in New York later in the broadcast. In immigration news, Gothamist reports more than 70 immigrants detained at the Newark, New Jersey, ICE jail known as Delaney Hall have filed federal lawsuits over medical neglect and other abuses. In May, hundreds of detained immigrants at Delaney Hall started a labor and hunger strike that lasted for weeks and ended earlier this month. The strikers face retaliation, including solitary confinement and being transferred to other ICE jails. Delaney Hall is operated by the for-profit prison company Geo Group. In related news, a New York City Council employee who was detained at Delaney Hall for more than five months has been released from custody. Rafael Rubio was taken by federal immigrant officers in January during a routine asylum interview. Rubio, who is from Venezuela, was detained despite holding TPS. That's temporary protected status. President Trump purchased up to $5 million worth of stock in a corporation that makes taser weapons just two weeks before ICE solicited a $220 million contract for the devices. Trump's investment in Axon Enterprise was first reported by CNBC. This comes as House Democrats are pushing for passage of the No Getting Rich in Congress Act, a bill that would prevent public officials, including the president, from profiting from conflicts of interest. And New York City Mayor Zoran Mamdani's administration has announced the permanent closure of a detention facility inside the Rikers Island jail complex. Mayor Mamdani said in a statement, quote, For decades, Rikers Island has represented one of the deepest failures of our city government. This milestone brings us closer to ending that chapter. We're replacing a system built around neglect with one centered on rehabilitation, Mayor Mamdani said. This all comes about seven years after the New York City Council in 2019 approved a plan to shut down Rikers for good. But city officials have said the prison complex won't be ready to close by its 2027 court mandated deadline. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now! Democracy Now dot org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman in New York with Democracy Now's Juan Gonzalez in Chicago. Hi, Juan. Hi, Amy. And welcome to all of our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world. Thanks for watching Democracy Now on YouTube. Subscribe to the channel and turn on notifications to make sure you never miss a video. And for more of our audience supported journalism, go to Democracy Now dot org, where you can download our news app, sign up for our newsletter, subscribe to The Daily Podcast and so much more.