Trump overseeing a ‘fascist regime' says Brad Lander after arrest

The Guardian

18-06-2025

Update:
Date: 2025-06-18T08:51:50.000Z
Title: Opening summary: Trump overseeing a 'fascist regime', says Lander
Content: Brad Lander, New York City's comptroller and a mayoral candidate, has lashed out at Donald Trump and 'his fascist regime', after he was arrested on Tuesday by masked federal agents while visiting an immigration court and accompanying a person out of a courtroom.
Posting on X, Lander wrote:
We will all be worse off if we let Donald Trump and his fascist regime undermine the rule of law.
Lander was arrested, according to video footage of the incident, as he and his staff walked with an immigrant – who he later identified as 'Edgardo' – who had their case dismissed pending appeal earlier in the day, per AMNY.
Lander can be seen and heard in videos of the incident asking the immigration officials if they have a judicial warrant. Additional footage of the arrest shows Lander telling the officials:
I'm not obstructing. I'm standing right here in the hallway. I asked to see the judicial warrant.
In a statement to the Guardian, assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin from the Department of Homeland Security said Lander 'was arrested for assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer'.
Upon his release, Lander said he 'certainly did not' assault an officer.
In an interview with CNN after his arrest, Lander said:
All I was trying to do was the things I had done [in] the prior two weeks of just accompany people out to safety. That was my goal today. I sure did not go with any intention of getting arrested.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is expected to meet Pakistan's army chief, Asim Munir, for talks today. The meeting is expected to take place in the White House cabinet room at 1pm Washington time.
It comes after India's prime minister Narendra Modi told Trump late on Tuesday that a ceasefire between India and Pakistan after a four-day conflict in May was achieved through talks between the two militaries and not US mediation.
Trump had said last month that the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours agreed to a ceasefire after talks mediated by the US, and that the hostilities ended after he urged the countries to focus on trade instead of war.
'PM Modi told President Trump clearly that during this period, there was no talk at any stage on subjects like India-US trade deal or US mediation between India and Pakistan,' Indian foreign secretary Vikram Misri said in a press statement, according to Reuters.
More on both of these stories in a moment, but first, here are some other developments:
Israel's war on Iran appeared to be approaching a pivotal moment on Tuesday night after five days of bombing and retaliatory Iranian missile strikes, as Donald Trump demanded 'unconditional surrender' from Tehran and weighed his military options. Trump convened a meeting of his national security team in the White House situation room after a day of febrile rhetoric in which the president gave sharply conflicting signals over whether US forces would participate directly in Israel's bombing campaign in Iran.
An unlikely coalition of lawmakers has moved to prevent the president from involving US forces in the conflict without Congress's approval. Republican congressman Thomas Massie, whose libertarian-tinged politics have often put him at odds with Trump, joined several progressive Democrats to introduce in the House of Representatives a war powers resolution that would require a vote by Congress before Trump could attack Iran. Democrat Tim Kaine has introduced companion legislation in the Senate.
'Effective today, I am lifting the curfew in downtown Los Angeles,' the city's mayor, Karen Bass, said in a statement on Tuesday afternoon.
A federal judge in Boston ruled that transgender and intersex people can obtain passports that align with their gender identity during litigation that seeks to overturn Trump's executive order that US passports must conform to the sex citizens were assigned at birth.
Ukrainian diplomats have been left frustrated – and in some cases embittered – at Donald Trump's refusal to make Ukraine a priority after Volodymyr Zelenskyy flew 5,000 miles to the G7 conference in Canada only for the US president to return home the night before the two leaders were due to meet. Trump said he needed to focus on the Israel-Iran conflict.
Donald Trump has abandoned his brief immigration and customs enforcement (Ice) reprieve for farm and hotel workers, ordering the agency's raids in those sectors to resume after hardliners crushed a pause that lasted just four days.
A federal appeals court in San Francisco heard arguments on Tuesday in Trump v Newsom, to determine whether the Trump administration must return control of the California national guard troops deployed to Los Angeles by Trump to the state's governor during protests over federal immigration raids.
Bernie Sanders has endorsed the leftwing New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani in the latest boost to his insurgent campaign.