r/WhatTrumpHasDone

A federal judge has denied President Donald Trump’s last-ditch effort to delay a $5.8 million payout to E. Jean Carroll years after she won a civil defamation case against him related to sex-abuse allegations.

Trump has been trying to toss the 2022 verdict for years after a jury found him liable for sexual abuse against Carroll, a former Elle magazine writer. The president, who has consistently denied Carroll’s allegations and accused her of lying, was also found liable for defaming the writer in a separate case.

Lawyers for Trump argued the $5 million verdict in the sex-abuse and defamation case was unfairly brought and an attempt to hurt the president – despite the verdict occurring before Trump returned to the White House. An appeals court had already rejected the president’s argument, and the Supreme Court delivered the final blow this week by declining to review the case.

In a July 3 filing, Trump’s attorneys requested a delay in delivering payment to Carroll, arguing that his new lead counsel, Josh Halper, required more time “to become completely familiar with the facts and procedural circumstances” of the case. His former lead attorney, Justin Smith, left the case last month after taking up a position as a federal judge.

District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan denied the motion in a text-only order dated July 4, without further explanation.

Before the judge’s decision, Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, accused Trump of stalling “to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying” in a court filing.

Trump’s legal team had requested the court grant an extension of July 14 to respond to Carroll’s lawyers, arguing that the plaintiff “faces no risk of material harm as a result of granting this request.”

Following the Supreme Court’s ruling, Trump vowed he would not give up his attempts to throw out the case.

“Surprisingly, the Supreme Court declined to ‘review’ a Fake Case brought against me by a woman I never met (Decades old celebrity photo line, standing with her husband, does not count!),” Trump wrote on Truth Social Monday, once again elevating his claims of not knowing Carroll, despite being photographed with her.

Following the Supreme Court’s rejection Monday, Trump’s legal team said: “The American People stand with President Trump as they demand an immediate end to all of the Witch Hunts, including the Democrat-funded travesty of the Carroll Hoaxes. President Trump will keep winning against Liberal Lawfare, as he continues to focus on his mission to Make America Great Again.”

“I will continue the fight against this Weaponization and Lawfare Case against me, including the ridiculous claim of Defamation, with all of my power and strength.”

Kaplan said the Supreme Court’s ruling backed the verdict.

“Today's Supreme Court decision affirms once and for all the jury's unanimous verdict that President Donald J. Trump sexually assaulted and defamed E. Jean Carroll. His multiple efforts to appeal that verdict have all failed and today's ruling ends his quest to avoid accountability for his actions,” Kaplan said in a statement, obtained by NBC News.

The Navy on Sunday suspended the search for a crew member who has been missing since a MH-60 Sea Hawk helicopter crashed into the Arabian Sea on Wednesday.

Three other crew members aboard the Navy helicopter were rescued soon after the aircraft made an emergency landing in the water on July 1 during a routine patrol. The Navy said last week that the crew members were in stable condition aboard the aircraft carrier George H.W. Bush.

Military officials have said the downing of the helicopter was not the result of hostile fire, and that the cause of the crash was under investigation. In a statement on Sunday, the Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain said Navy and Air Force personnel searched over 14,000 square miles for more than 100 hours before calling off the rescue operation.

The death of the sailor, whose identity was being withheld pending the notification of family members, brought to 14 the number of service members who have died in the war against Iran.

Six service members were killed on March 1 by an Iranian drone strike in Kuwait’s Shuaiba port. Another service member died on March 8 following an attack by Iran on Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia.

Six Air Force personnel were killed on March 12 when two Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker refueling aircraft collided in midair and one of the planes crashed in western Iraq.

More than 400 U.S. service members have been injured in the Iran conflict, according to the military’s Central Command. Capt. Tim Hawkins, a Central Command spokesman, said more than 90 percent of those injured had returned to duty.

In a broadside posted to its website just as fireworks celebrating America’s 250th birthday were lighting up skies on Saturday, the White House condemned the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History for what it said was a failure to celebrate the nation’s heritage, arguing it had become a political tool intent on denigrating the American story.

The 162-page report, by the White House’s Domestic Policy Council, represents a sweeping attack on the museum’s presentation of American history. It is the latest step in the Trump administration’s campaign to pressure the Smithsonian into conforming to what President Trump has described as “patriotic” history.

While the report concludes that the broader Smithsonian Institution — which oversees 21 museums and the National Zoo — “has not met its obligations to the American people,” it places particular blame on the National Museum of American History.

Titled “Saving America’s Story: How Ideological Capture at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History Erases Our Heritage,” the report accuses the museum of anti-white bias and of minimizing and distorting the nation’s founding. Those actions, the report asserts, have shifted the museum’s mission “from straightforward historical education and scholarship toward an extreme political activism that seeks to transform our country.”

The museum, it says, “no longer treats the American story as a shared national inheritance to be taught or celebrated but as a political instrument to divide, dispirit and discourage our citizens.”

The report takes issue with specific exhibits, such as an 1840 statue of George Washington that includes a depiction of Hercules. The work’s accompanying text describes “the perceived courage of the American people.” That language, the report says, “refuses to affirm the exceptional courage of the American people.”

But the report’s “main concerns” involve what is not there.

Visitors today, it says, “will find no major exhibit dedicated to America’s founding era, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, other founding fathers, the Continental Congress, the pilgrims, the Puritans or major moments of the American Revolution.” Instead, it claims, many founders are presented chiefly in terms of their connection to slavery.

In a statement, a spokeswoman for the Smithsonian, Julissa Marenco, said, “For more than 180 years, the Smithsonian has served the American public with nonpartisan and independent scholarship, and we remain committed to doing so.”

The Domestic Policy Council, which wrote the report, is a White House group tasked with developing the president’s domestic agenda and advising him on issues like education and health care. Its leader, Vince Haley, has spearheaded the administration’s commemoration of the nation’s 250th anniversary, including Mr. Trump’s plan to build a 250-foot arch in Washington. Mr. Haley has also been credited with the idea for a patriotic sculpture garden known as the National Garden of American Heroes.

The Smithsonian has long been regarded as independent of the executive branch. But in an effort to have much greater influence on cultural matters in Washington, Mr. Trump has focused on the Smithsonian since March 2025, when he issued an executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.”

In that order, which calls on Vice President JD Vance to overhaul the Smithsonian with the help of Congress, the president described a “revisionist movement” across the country that “seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.”

Mr. Trump has since announced that he was dismissing the director of the institution’s National Portrait Gallery, Kim Sajet, calling her “a highly partisan person, and a strong supporter of DEI.” (The Smithsonian did not follow through — publicly insisting it controlled personnel matters — but Ms. Sajet resigned, saying in a statement that her decision served the institution’s best interests.)

The White House also issued an ultimatum to turn over Smithsonian records or face potential budget cuts. In response, the Smithsonian’s secretary, Lonnie G. Bunch III, reasserted the institution’s independence but said materials had been submitted in an effort to be “transparent and open.”

Some 62 percent of the Smithsonian’s annual $1 billion budget is derived from federal sources, including funds directly appropriated by Congress. The Trump administration proposed cutting the Smithsonian’s budget by about 12 percent in the 2026 fiscal year, but Congress has maintained the institution’s federal funding.

Saturday’s report summons the specter of a funding withdrawal, citing how the president’s executive order directed Mr. Vance to work with the Office of Management and Budget to “prohibit expenditure on exhibits or programs that degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with federal law and policy.”

Without specifying the exact remedy, the report says that “the president has a duty and obligation to seek reforms of the Smithsonian.”

The report criticizes the museum for viewing “traditional patriotic narratives” with suspicion or contempt. It says the museum endorses illegal immigration and advocates transgender issues, while it focuses on Christianity as “an instrument of conquest, exclusion or cultural erasure,” rather than its “constructive role” in “shaping the nation and its freedoms.”

It takes particular aim at the museum’s director, Anthea M. Hartig, saying she has advanced “an ideological agenda contradictory to the museum’s founding purpose of fostering patriotism.”

The story the museum tells, the report says, “is not one of ‘the victory of freedom and genius of our country’ but one of regret, tragedy and shame.”

The report immediately drew pushback from some in the historical profession, which has sharply criticized Mr. Trump’s efforts to enforce his view of history.

Sarah Weicksel, the executive director of the American Historical Association, the country’s largest group of history scholars, questioned the report’s claims that the museum neglects the nation’s founding and its founders.

“The museum has extraordinary objects that tell the history of the Revolution, including the newly restored Gunboat Philadelphia,” she said, referring to a Revolutionary-era warship. “Visitors also encounter George Washington, his leadership prowess and the American Revolution in ‘The Price of Freedom,’” another exhibition.

But some conservatives commended the report.

“The National Museum of American History is the tip of the iceberg,” said Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation who has called for Mr. Bunch’s dismissal. “It’s not the only museum that erases our history and our heritage — all the other museums do. We have to go back to celebrating our country and its great achievements.”

The report, which contains more than 30 pages of footnotes, also criticizes an exhibition called “Many Voices, One Nation” that it claims tries “to convince visitors that illegal aliens are entitled to citizenship, voting rights and ‘belonging’ in America.”

And it criticizes an exhibition that closed in November 2025, “The Electric Dr. Franklin,” for what it says was too heavy of an emphasis on Benjamin Franklin’s connection to slavery, including his ownership of slaves, and not enough on his work as an abolitionist.

The report comes as the Smithsonian faces potentially significant turnover in its governing Board of Regents, a 17-member panel that includes Democratic and Republican elected officials as well as nine citizens.

Mr. Bunch has led the Smithsonian since 2019, and his relationship with the White House is, at best, strained. He has enjoyed the support of the board in asserting that the Smithsonian is independent.

But the museum is working with a diminished board since the terms of two Smithsonian trustees ended in March. Their replacements have yet to be named as Mr. Trump’s efforts to gain control of the institution has slowed that process.

Over the past few months, the Smithsonian managed to avoid further confrontations with Trump officials, perhaps because it made tweaks like altering some wall text and because the president was focused on matters like the war in Iran.

But the new report makes clear that the White House is fed up with the Smithsonian.

“The serious concerns raised in this report are not about a few exhibits or a few controversial labels,” the report says. “As it stands today, it would benefit most Americans, especially parents bringing their children for a tour, if the Smithsonian’s flagship history museum had a label at every entrance that reads: ‘Warning: the exhibits in this museum were prepared by people who don’t want you to love your country.’”

Two Tennessee National Guard members assigned by the Trump administration to a crime-fighting patrol in Memphis fatally shot a man Sunday who turned toward the soldiers with a gun during a downtown pursuit, authorities said.

The administration has ordered National Guard deployments in Memphis and five other Democrat-run cities, including New Orleans and Washington, D.C ., to confront what Trump has described as an out-of-control crime wave — though violent crime in dozens of cities led by Democrats is down significantly since a pandemic high. The Guard members in Memphis were part of a troop deployment the administration launched in Tennessee’s second-largest city last fall.

Local leaders in these cities have said they do not believe the federal intervention is necessary, and some have challenged the deployments in court.

The soldiers in Memphis were responding with local police to reports of gunshots around 4 a.m. when they began pursuing an armed man fleeing on foot, the city’s police department said.

The guardsmen opened fire after the man turned towards them with his weapon, the department said.

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation identified the man as 20-year-old Tyrin Johnson and said it is investigating the circumstances of the shooting. No law enforcement officers were injured, the agency added.

Johnson died at the scene after two National Guard medical specialists attempted first aid, Guard spokesperson Lt. Col Darrin Haas said in a statement.

Johnson’s older cousin, Terracle Nelson, 46, told The Associated Press that he was “as good a boy as can be.” Johnson was living in Nashville, working in construction and taking university classes, she said. He had just had his first child earlier this year, she added.

Nelson was present with other members of Johnson’s family when authorities told them that Johnson had been shot twice in the chest.

“I just want to know, how they shot a 20-year-old twice in the chest, he hadn’t harmed anyone,” Nelson said.

Law enforcement authorities did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the number of shots fired. The TBI declined comment on Nelson’s account of the shooting.

Mayor Paul Young called the shooting an “unfortunate incident” and said he was waiting to see the results of the TBI investigation before commenting further, according to a statement provided by spokesperson Penelope Huston.

Federal troops have been patrolling the city since October over the objections of Young, a Democrat, but with the support of Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican. The troops are part of the Memphis Safe Task Force, convened by Trump and comprised of federal and local agencies.

For years, Memphis, whose population exceeds 600,000, has dealt with high violent crime , including assaults, carjackings and homicides. Both Democratic and Republican officials have noted decreases last year in some crime categories, preceding the deployment and paralleling trends across U.S. cities.

The deployments cost nearly half a billion dollars through the end of December and are expected to cost taxpayers more than $1 billion this year, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office .

In April, the Tennessee Court of Appeals ruled that state and local Democratic officials lacked standing to block the deployment of federal troops in Memphis.

In May, four Memphis residents filed a pending federal lawsuit seeking to block the federal task force from applying a law that bars residents from approaching within 25 feet of law enforcement officers to record their activities.

The residents, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, also alleged that task force members have engaged in a pattern of retaliating against them for filming their operations. They alleged they have been followed by law enforcement officers and that unmarked vehicles and individuals in tactical vests have showed up outside their homes after they observed the task force.

The US Department of Energy reportedly deleted about 6,000 pages related to energy conservation as a historic heatwave tears across the country.

The deletion was suspiciously timed, following Republican outrage over Mayor Zohran Mamdani asking New Yorkers to help reduce strain on the grid by setting their AC to 78 degrees. Republicans like Ted Cruz (who has famously fled severe weather in his home state), Nikki Haley, and Representative Nancy Mace (South Carolina) quickly pounced, framing the request as socialism and an act of war on women in menopause (the Republican Party is notoriously concerned about women’s health).

Of course, this is pretty standard advice during a heatwave. It was the official stance of the Department of Energy that Americans should set their thermostats between 75 and 78 degrees, and Republican governors in deep red states like Texas have issued the same advice in the past — including current governor Greg Abbott.

The deletions by the Trump administration are broad and indiscriminate. While pages that would support Mamdani’s request to lower thermostats were deleted, so too were pages about water conservation, types of insulation, and its solar decathlon challenge. The Internet Archive preserved the pages that have been lost.

Temperatures topped 95 degrees for four straight days in New York City, including two days over 100 degrees. Those sorts of temperatures put significant strain on the electrical grid, especially when more people are home during a holiday weekend. Setting thermostats to 78 degrees can help prevent blackouts that would leave people without air conditioning and vulnerable to the heat.

On average, extreme heat is responsible for more deaths in the US than floods, tornadoes, and hurricanes combined, according to data from the CDC and NOAA.

Every year for the past century, in the green hills of rural Denmark, thousands of Americans and Danes come together to celebrate the Fourth of July.

The gathering is billed as the largest Fourth of July celebration outside the United States, and partygoers decked out in the Stars and Stripes sing American songs, eat hot dogs and, because this is Denmark after all, down Danish beer and aquavit.

This year it’s going to be a little different.

Organizers are expecting the smallest crowd ever. Some locals say they are sitting it out. And the American government has been uninvited, something that has never happened before and in the past would have been unthinkable.

Nixon. Reagan. Walter Cronkite. Walt Disney. Even Dionne Warwick. Some real heavyweights have flocked in on the Fourth to this blip of a town, Rebild, surrounded by purple heather fields and pig farms. Just about every year, the American ambassador to Denmark makes an appearance.

But this year, President Trump’s threats to take over Greenland, a Danish territory, have soured the mood. His obsession with Greenland has hijacked what used to be a very tight Danish-American relationship. Many Danes now question why they should celebrate the most patriotic day in the United States, on Danish soil, with public funds no less.

And so local politicians, no doubt smelling a juicy issue, stepped in.

Lasse Olsen, a municipal council member who has agitated against the event for years, called Mr. Trump “an imperialistic mad man.”

He said that, given the way Mr. Trump had behaved toward Denmark, the presence of any officials from his administration would “disturb and distort” the festival. He led the charge this spring that gave the event’s organizers an ultimatum: Cut American officials from the program or lose logistical support and public funds (typically around $50,000).

The festival organizers agreed to remove U.S. officials from the program and said that embassy officials were sad about it but accepted it. The organizers also said that any Americans coming to the event this weekend in a private capacity were welcome.

The change stings. Organizers plan all year for a gala, a business round table and live music, culminating in an outdoor bash usually with some famous speakers. But this year, all anyone is talking about is Mr. Trump.

“It’s embarrassing,” said Bruce Bro, a retired American businessman with Danish ancestry who is a board member of the Rebild National Park Society, the organization that plans the party. He said that he supported the decision to keep American officials from participating.

“You don’t want people throwing a drink on the ambassador,” he said.

The annual pilgrimage to Rebild started in 1912. It was the vision of Max Henius, a Danish American biochemist who helped refine beer brewing. He organized the purchase of land in the hills as a place to celebrate the bonds between Denmark and the United States.

In the early days, Danes who emigrated to America (many to the Midwest, where the landscape reminded them of home) flocked back to Rebild on the Fourth to reconnect with kin. After World War II, when the United States was seen as a hero and ties to the old country were still strong, Mr. Bro said that 50,000 people would show up.

But those ties have faded. And the party in Rebild has taken a hit. Recent crowds rarely surpass the low thousands. This year, organizers say they’ll be lucky to get a thousand.

The program still includes singing the Danish and American anthems, admiring classic American cars, eating hot dogs and open-faced shrimp sandwiches and spotting people dressed as American historical figures.

Last year, Denmark’s foreign minister was the keynote speaker; this time, another minister, lesser known, is planning to come, the Foreign Ministry said.

Lasse Frimand Jensen, mayor of Aalborg, which is one of the municipalities involved in the party, said that his council had decided to take a stand against American officials only after consulting with colleagues in the central government.

The mayor wouldn’t say who, but he’s well connected in the same political party as Mette Frederiksen, the prime minister, who has irritated Mr. Trump by her steadfastness over Greenland. She’s from this same area of Denmark, too.

Over the past few days, organizers have gone through their pre-party rituals: smoothing out American state flags to decorate the party ground, setting up tables and chairs and readying a fleet of golf carts to ferry older people down the gravelly path to the spot in the rugged green valley where the festivities take place.

Organizers say their biggest struggle is to attract younger people.

Mr. Bro said that he heard a lot of people, young and old, saying they didn’t want to come this year because of all the Greenland tensions. As for his own views, he said that he was “horrified” when Mr. Trump threatened to snatch the island from Denmark and that his relatives felt the same way.

“It’s very sad,” he said. “We want to keep this tradition alive. And we blame Trump.”

Donald Trump’s administration claims the Kennedy Center stands to lose “hundreds of millions” of dollars without his name attached to the building, which the Department of Justice says should be renamed in the president’s honor after he “donated his time, energy and unparalleled Construction talents” to renovating the venue.

The Justice Department is appealing a federal court order requiring the venue to remove Trump’s name from the building’s facade, which is still covered in scaffolding and a white tarp that hides the empty space where his name appeared.

The administration has argued that stripping the president’s name from a performing arts institution named after President John F. Kennedy would send it into “financial ruin.”

“Many donors and companies, who have given, or will be giving, millions of dollars to the Center were only willing to do so with the name ‘Trump’ on the Building,” lawyers wrote Tuesday.

The Justice Department claims Trump raised $258 million from Congress and “hundreds of millions more in pledges and donations from Patriotic private donors” to renovate the building.

The “financial harms” from a court order that blocks the president’s attempts to rename the building after himself “will never be recovered, and the hundreds of millions in gifts will have to be immediately returned, or not received by the Center,” according to the filing.

In May, Washington, D.C., District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled that Congress made it “crystal clear” that the building is only to be named after the assassinated former president, “and it cannot bear any other formal name or public memorial” based on a “unilateral say-so.”

The Kennedy Center had until June 12 to strip the president’s name from the building, but construction crews in hard hats and neon green high-vis vests only started to assemble scaffolding to reach the letters that afternoon.

A midnight deadline came and went without any letters removed from the building.

Cooper and a panel of appeals court judges denied the administration’s 11th-hour attempts to keep Trump’s name on the facade, and workers began adding a tarp to the towering scaffolding shortly after 1 a.m..

Workers eventually began removing letters at 3 a.m. June 13.

But the scaffolding and tarp are still in place, and Judge Cooper wants to know why. Last week, the judge ordered the Kennedy Center to “indicate the purpose for and status of the tarp and scaffolding” by July 31.

In their emergency appeal to stop the work last month, lawyers for the Kennedy Center’s Trump-appointed board argued for the first time that the president's name is integral to the venue’s financial future.

“Without the name ‘Trump’ on the Building, our fundraising will not only come to a halt, but any and all monies raised or committed would be obligated to be returned, refunded, or terminated,” they wrote.

Lawyers for the board argued that its bylaws now stated that donations to the center are conditioned on the name “remaining unchanged” and keeping Trump’s name on the facade.

The center’s executive director Charles Matthew Floca also argued that the institution’s funding is inextricably linked to the president.

“President Trump’s fundraising on behalf of the Center is exemplified by the tens of millions of dollars already raised,” Floca wrote in a statement to the court last month. “Further, the President has committed to raise $150 billion on its behalf from private donors over the next two years.”

If his name is taken off the building, “that vital fundraising connection will be severed, causing irreparable harm and fundamentally destabilizing the Center’s development efforts, severely impairing its trust-fund artistic programming, and rendering the continuation of ongoing trust-funded operations financially nonviable,” according to Floca.

Last week, Judge Cooper denied the Trump administration’s attempt to pause proceedings while the legal battle continues.

“Now we will be able to move to discovery and get to the bottom of Trump’s corrupt, failed attempt to seize this national treasure,” said Norm Eisen with Democracy Defenders Action and Nathaniel Zelinsky with Washington Litigation Group, counsel for Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty, who filed the lawsuit against the administration’s efforts.

The president also pardoned Adam Kidan, a major donor to Republicans, including Mr. Trump. He had served about two and a half years in prison for his role in a fraud scheme involving the disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Mr. Kidan had pleaded guilty in 2005 to conspiracy and fraud charges involving his purchase of a casino boat fleet with Mr. Abramoff, who became a poster child for Washington corruption in the pre-Trump era.

Mr. Abramoff and Mr. Kidan were each sentenced to 70 months in prison and ordered to pay a total of $21.7 million in restitution related to the $147.5 million purchase of a cruise ship line in 2000.

Mr. Kidan served less than half of that prison sentence and became an executive in the staffing industry.

It is not clear whether he paid the full amount of the restitution. A pardon typically wipes away any remaining financial obligations.

He has donated millions of dollars to Republican campaigns and groups over the years, including more than $270,000 to Mr. Trump’s political committees in 2024, according to campaign finance records.

The White House will not renew the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, triggering a new phase of annual reviews of the North American trade pact that President Trump signed in his first term.

The agreement is not dead. But by declining to extend it, the administration is setting up years of annual reviews — fresh uncertainty for businesses that depend on trade with two of America's largest trading partners.

The Tuesday announcement comes on the deadline for the three countries to renew the agreement for another 16 years.

A senior administration official said that the decision on Tuesday was really preceded by major changes to tariffs announced over the past year.

The official said that USMCA in its current form did not adequately address Trump's concerns about the U.S. trade deficits with Canada and Mexico.

Negotiations between the three nations will continue, though Trump remains skeptical about the agreement, the official said.

After a year of on-again, off-again tariffs, shifting trade threats and legal fights over the administration's authority to impose them, businesses had seen USMCA as one of the few stable pillars of U.S. trade policy.

Now, even that certainty is giving way to more regular reviews.

Trump appeared to signal last month that he would ultimately prefer that the U.S. withdraw from the pact altogether.

An implosion of the deal could be devastating for industries that rely on the seamless movement of goods and parts across the U.S., Canadian and Mexican borders.

USMCA also exempts a large share of North American trade from Trump's tariffs, making it one of the biggest buffers protecting the economy from a broader trade shock.

Companies, especially those in the auto sector, have spent years investing billions of dollars in North American supply chains on the assumption that goods could move across borders without tariffs before final assembly.

Even if the deal comes short of falling apart, more frequent reviews of the pact would force companies to revisit those assumptions every year.

That might make it more difficult for companies to commit to long-term investments in factories, suppliers and hiring because the rules governing cross-border trade could be back on the negotiating table annually.

The U.S. and Mexico have held rounds of negotiations in recent weeks — talks that have excluded Canada.

The two nations have been at odds this year, with top U.S. officials criticizing how Canada has responded to Trump's trade agenda.

Officials have also balked at Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's recent trade deal with Chinese president Xi Jinping that lowers tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles.

A senior administration official said on Tuesday that the U.S. still has issues over market access, labor, energy and other commitments with Canada and Mexico.

Six years after Trump signed USMCA into law, some of the country's biggest business groups are lobbying his administration to keep it intact.

In a statement, Business Roundtable CEO Joshua Bolten, who leads one of corporate America's largest lobbying groups, said he "urged the Administration to work expeditiously with Canada and Mexico to strengthen and extend USMCA."

The U.S. economy saw job creation cool sharply heading into the summer, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday.

Nonfarm payrolls for June increased by a seasonally adjusted 57,000 for the month, slower than the downwardly revised 129,000 added in May and worse than the 115,000 Dow Jones consensus forecast.

The unemployment rate, however, dropped to 4.2%, and slightly ahead of the 4.1% where it was a year ago.

The move lower was largely due to a slump in the labor force participation rate, which dropped 0.3 percentage point to 61.5%, the lowest since March 2021. Household employment plummeted during the month, with 507,000 fewer people reported at work. A broader unemployment measure that includes discouraged workers and those holding part-time jobs for economic reasons declined by 0.2 percentage point to 7.9%.

Prior months also saw significant downward revisions — the May total, which had been much stronger than economists had anticipated, was cut by 43,000, while April's figure came down 31,000 to 148,000 as the report showed labor market growth significantly slower than previously thought.

Average hourly earnings rose 0.3% for the month and 3.5% from a year ago, both in line with the consensus forecasts.

Professional and business services contributed the most, with a gain of 36,000. Social assistance added 25,000 and health care employment rose by 22,000, a slower-than-normal pace for the industry. Government jobs rose by 8,000.

However, leisure and hospitality reported a loss of 61,000 jobs, which the BLS said reflected slower than usual seasonal hiring. There had been speculation that the World Cup might provide some boost to the payroll numbers, with Goldman Sachs estimating a gain of 40,000.

Most other categories showed little change.

The report comes with Federal Reserve policymakers expressing mixed feelings about the economy – mostly positive on growth though apprehensive on inflation as earlier fears about weakness in the labor market have eased. However, the weak report Thursday could change the labor market view.

In an appearance Wednesday, Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh called the jobs picture "steady" as he continued to emphasize the importance of bringing inflation down to the central bank's 2% target. Inflation has been running north of that goal for the past five years, with the most recent surge in part due to the Iran war and ongoing impacts from tariffs.

The former top US general whom Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired last year criticized the use of the military for political missions in an op-ed published Friday, pointing to the Trump administration’s deployment of troops to clamp down on crime in major cities.

“(W)hen presidents use the armed forces for more politically contentious missions, such as addressing domestic crime in cities, the work of the military becomes more fraught,” former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Charles Q. Brown wrote in Foreign Affairs, along with two other authors: Duke political science professor Peter Feaver and North Carolina lawyer Andrew Kragie.

“Resorting to a military solution rather than fixing the underlying incapacity or dysfunction in civilian institutions diverts the military from focusing on its primary combat mission,” the authors continued. “And … it is not the military’s job to save the republic from political impasses. Indeed, if you ask too much of the military, you risk the entire enterprise.”

Brown, a retired Air Force general and the second Black man to serve as America’s most senior general, was fired in February 2025, along with Admiral Lisa Franchetti, who was then the chief of the Navy and the first woman to serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The move came as the administration has banned diversity and inclusion efforts across the military and government more generally.

At the Aspen Ideas Festival last week, Brown also expressed concerns over the administration’s firings of Pentagon officials, saying, “What’s starting to happen now is not about merit.”

“It’s important we understand that all these people that are being removed are very well experienced and my concern is that the impact it has on those that are still continuing to serve,” Brown said. “Are they going to have a fair opportunity to advance in their career going forth?”

The Foreign Affairs article did not directly criticize President Donald Trump or anyone in the current government. In one sentence, the authors mentioned both Trump and former President Joe Biden as having “looked to the military to play a leading role in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

But it referred to certain actions carried out by the Trump administration. Since Trump’s return to office, he has expanded the use of the military with the help of Hegseth. Last year, the administration deployed thousands of National Guard troops and hundreds of Marines, to crack down on crime in major cities, including Washington, DC, and Los Angeles.

On Thursday, Hegseth touted the work of the National Guard in Washington amid protesters, whom he called “ingrates.”

“They can’t see law and order and common sense in front of them, that there’s nothing ideological about this group, there’s nothing political about this exercise,” Hegseth said. “Law and order is something all Americans deserve.”

In the op-ed published Friday, Brown and his co-authors also addressed the ongoing celebrations for America’s 250th anniversary and what it means to be patriotic.

“Patriotism means recognizing the promise of America’s founding, the progress of its past, and the potential of a shared future,” the authors wrote.

“Service to a cause greater than oneself, a virtue cultivated in military training, is accessible to all regardless of whether they wear the uniform,” they continued. “In ways big and small, Americans can recognize this milestone of 250 years as a moment to rejuvenate the national interdependence that our founders proclaimed along with independence.”