Trump denies reports US looking at $30B nuclear deal with Iran: ‘These people are SICK'
President Trump denounced reports that his administration is weighing a $30 billion deal with Iran that would allow for the development of civilian nuclear facilities — days after Trump said a deal with the Islamic republic may not be necessary.
'Who in the Fake News Media is the SleazeBag saying that 'President Trump wants to give Iran $30 Billion to build non-military Nuclear facilities.' Never heard of this ridiculous idea,' the president wrote late Friday on Truth Social.
'It's just another HOAX put out by the Fake News in order to demean. These people are SICK!!!' he added.
The potential agreement was first reported by CNN citing multiple sources familiar with the matter. The outlet shared that details of the proposal were hashed out last week during a secret, hours-long meeting between Steve Witkoff, the U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, and partners in the Gulf.
That plan was presented a day before the U.S. carried out its attack on Tehran's Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan nuclear facilities last week, per CNN.
The president earlier Friday suggested he could retract previously imposed sanctions on Iran as the White House has maintained the U.S. military's strikes 'obliterated' the nation's nuclear capabilities. Trump also took a swing at Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, after the ayatollah said his nation was 'victorious.'
'During the last few days, I was working on the possible removal of sanctions, and other things, which would have given a much better chance to Iran at a full, fast, and complete recovery — The sanctions are BITING!' he wrote on Truth Social. 'But no, instead I get hit with a statement of anger, hatred, and disgust.'
Trump, in the same post, said Khamenei should be grateful that the U.S. spared his life, citing Israel's 'regime change' goals.
'His Country was decimated, his three evil Nuclear Sites were OBLITERATED, and I knew EXACTLY where he was sheltered, and would not let Israel, or the U.S. Armed Forces, by far the Greatest and Most Powerful in the World, terminate his life,' he wrote. 'I SAVED HIM FROM A VERY UGLY AND IGNOMINIOUS DEATH, and he does not have to say, 'THANK YOU, PRESIDENT TRUMP!''
Dueling reports on how influential the U.S. strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities have emerged in recent days. Multiple outlets reported earlier this week that preliminary assessments from intelligence show the damage only delaying Tehran's program by a few months. Israel and the Trump administration have contended that the damage 'destroyed' it and have gone after news outlets for their coverage.
Still, Trump has touted the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Iran — which has largely held up and said talks would proceed. He voiced optimism that the strikes have deterred Iran from continuing their nuclear program.
'The way I look at it, they fought the war is done. I could get a statement that they're not going to go nuclear. We're probably going to ask for that,' he said Wednesday, following the NATO Summit in the Netherlands. 'But they're not going to be doing it.'
'We're going to talk to them next week with Iran, we may sign an agreement. To me, I don't think it's necessary,' he said at the time.
The president has also warned Tehran that he is not against more strikes should concerns rise again.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNN
35 minutes ago
- CNN
Persian Jews find refuge in ‘Tehrangeles'
Persian Jews find refuge in 'Tehrangeles' CNN's Nick Watt reports from Westwood Boulevard in Los Angeles, situated in a neighborhood known as "Tehrangeles" for its population of Iranians and Persian Jews. 01:06 - Source: CNN Vertical Top News 16 videos Persian Jews find refuge in 'Tehrangeles' CNN's Nick Watt reports from Westwood Boulevard in Los Angeles, situated in a neighborhood known as "Tehrangeles" for its population of Iranians and Persian Jews. 01:06 - Source: CNN Trump reacts to win at the Supreme Court President Trump thanked conservative Supreme Court justices and explained what he plans to do next after the Court backed his effort to curtail lower court orders that have hampered his agenda for months. 00:46 - Source: CNN Supreme Court backs parents who want to opt out of LGBTQ+ curriculum The Supreme Court on Friday backed a group of religious parents who want to opt their elementary school children out of engaging with LGBTQ books in the classroom, another major legal win for religious interests at the conservative high court. 00:52 - Source: CNN Supreme Court limits ability of judges to stop Trump The Supreme Court backed President Donald Trump's effort to curtail lower court orders that have hampered his agenda for months. However, it signaled that the president's controversial plan to effectively end birthright citizenship may never be enforced. 01:32 - Source: CNN What we know ahead of the Bezos-Sanchez wedding After a stormy evening in Venice, CNN's Melissa Bell explains why details remain closely guarded ahead of the Bezos-Sanchez wedding. 01:25 - Source: CNN See moment suspect lights fire on Seoul subway CCTV footage released by the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors' Office captures the moment a man lit a fire on a busy subway in the South Korean capital last month. The footage, from May 31, shows passengers running away after the suspect doused the floor of the train carriage with flammable liquid before setting it alight. Reuters reports that according to the prosecutors' office, six people were injured. The prosecutor's office says it charged the 67-year-old man with attempted murder and arson. 00:48 - Source: CNN Hear Zohran Mamdani's response to concerns by the wealthy over his tax plan CNN's Erin Burnett speaks with New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani about concerns over taxing the city's wealthy to fund his proposed initiatives, and whether it will cause them to leave the city. 02:27 - Source: CNN Details emerge of secret diplomatic efforts to restart Iran talks CNN's Kylie Atwood reports on The Trump administration discussing possibly helping Iran access as much as $30 billion to build a civilian-energy-producing nuclear program, easing sanctions, and freeing up billions of dollars in restricted Iranian funds. 01:11 - Source: CNN How Diddy's body language was 'different' in court today CNN's Elizabeth Wagmeister reports on Sean "Diddy" Combs' family in court for closing arguments in his criminal trial and a notable difference in Combs' body language. 01:18 - Source: CNN Anna Wintour steps down as Vogue editor-in-chief Editor-in-chief of Vogue, Anna Wintour, is stepping down and seeking a replacement, the magazine's publisher Condé Nast confirmed to CNN. She will shift to a role of global chief content officer, where she will oversee every brand's global operations. 00:34 - Source: CNN Fireball spotted across the sky A 'daytime fireball' was caught on video in the sky over South Carolina – causing a sonic boom, according to the American Meteor Society. CNN has reached out to emergency management officials in North Carolina and Tennessee, as well as NASA for comment. 00:36 - Source: CNN Gen. Caine shares video of 'bunker buster' bomb test At a press conference about the US strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, shared video of 'bunker buster' bomb test and shared information about what they know about the strike. 01:05 - Source: CNN Gen. Caine says moment after strikes gave him chills At a press conference about the US strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, discusses the pilots who carried out the strikes and the reactions from their families after they returned home. 01:09 - Source: CNN 'Daddy's home:' Trump leans into NATO chief comment NATO Chief Mark Rutte got the world's attention after referring to President Trump as "daddy" after he used the analogy of two children fighting to describe the conflict between Iran and Israel. In a press conference, Rutte, explained his reason for using the term "daddy." Trump spoke about the moment at a press conference, and the White House leaned into the term in a social media post. 00:50 - Source: CNN Trump's team credits him with creating a decades-old phrase White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt falsely claimed that President Trump came up with the phrase "peace through strength." CNN's Abby Phillip reports on how the phrase has been used for decades. 01:22 - Source: CNN Cuomo called Mamdani after conceding NYC mayoral primary New York state Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani was on the brink of a stunning Democratic primary win Tuesday for New York City mayor, with his top challenger, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, conceding the race. 00:38 - Source: CNN
Boston Globe
an hour ago
- Boston Globe
With Supreme Court ruling, another check on Trump's power fades
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The ability of district courts to swiftly block Trump administration actions from being enforced in the first place has acted as a rare effective check on his second-term presidency. But generally, the pace of the judicial process is slow and has struggled to keep up. Actions that took place by the time a court rules them illegal, like shutting down an agency or sending migrants to a foreign prison without due process, can be difficult to unwind. Advertisement Presidential power historically goes through ebbs and flows, with fundamental implications for the functioning of the system of checks and balances that defines American-style democracy. Advertisement But it has generally been on an upward path since the middle of the 20th century. The growth of the administrative state inside the executive branch, and the large standing armies left in place as World War II segued into the Cold War, inaugurated what historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. coined the 'imperial presidency.' Presidential power waned in the 1970s, in the period encompassing the Watergate scandal and the end of the Vietnam War. Courts proved willing to rule against the presidency, as when the Supreme Court forced President Richard Nixon to turn over his Oval Office tapes. Members of both parties worked together to enact laws imposing new or restored limits on the exercise of executive power. But the present era is very different. Presidential power began to grow again in the Reagan era and after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. And now Trump, rejecting norms of self-restraint, has pushed to eliminate checks on his authority and stamp out pockets of independence within the government while only rarely encountering resistance from a Supreme Court he reshaped and a Congress controlled by a party in his thrall. The decision by the Supreme Court's conservative majority comes as other constraints on Trump's power have also eroded. The administration has steamrolled internal executive branch checks, including firing inspectors general and sidelining the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which traditionally set guardrails for proposed policies and executive orders. And Congress, under the control of Trump's fellow Republicans, has done little to defend its constitutional role against his encroachments. This includes unilaterally dismantling agencies Congress had said shall exist as a matter of law, firing civil servants in defiance of statutory limits, and refusing to spend funds that lawmakers had authorized and appropriated. Advertisement Last week, when Trump unilaterally bombed Iranian nuclear sites without getting prior authorization from Congress or making any claim of an imminent threat, one Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, stepped forward to call the move unconstitutional since Congress has the power to declare war. Trump reacted ferociously, declaring that he would back a primary challenger to end Massie's political career, a clear warning shot to any other Republican considering objecting to his actions. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, recently told her constituents that 'we are all afraid' of Trump. While the immediate beneficiary of the Supreme Court's ruling is Trump, the decision also promises to free his successors from what has been a growing trend of district court intervention into presidential policymaking. In the citizenship case, the justices stripped district court judges of the authority to issue so-called universal injunctions, a tool that lower courts have used to block government actions they deem most likely illegal from taking effect nationwide as legal challenges to them play out. The frequency of such orders has sharply increased in recent years, bedeviling presidents of both parties. Going forward, the justices said, lower courts may only grant injunctive relief to the specific plaintiffs who have filed lawsuits. That means the Trump administration may start enforcing the president's birthright citizenship order in the 28 states that have not challenged it, unless individual parents have the wherewithal and gumption to bring their own lawsuits. The full scope of the ruling remains to be seen given that it will not take effect for 30 days. It is possible that plaintiffs and lower-court judges will expand the use of class-action lawsuits as a different path to orders with a nationwide effect. Such an option, Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in the majority opinion, would be proper so long as they obey procedural limits for class-action cases. Advertisement Still, in concurring opinions, two other key members of the conservative bloc, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, warned lower-court judges not to lower standards for using alternative means to issue sweeping orders in an effort to circumvent the ruling. Alito wrote that 'district courts should not view today's decision as an invitation to certify nationwide classes without scrupulous adherence to the rigors' of legal rules. Thomas added that if judges do not 'carefully heed this court's guidance' and act within limits, 'this court will continue to be 'duty bound' to intervene.' In a rare move that signaled unusually intense opposition, Justice Sonia Sotomayor read aloud a summary of her dissenting opinion from the bench Friday. Calling the ruling a grave attack on the American system of law, she said it endangered constitutional rights for everyone who is not a party to lawsuits defending them. 'Today, the threat is to birthright citizenship,' she wrote. 'Tomorrow, a different administration may try to seize firearms from law-abiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship. The majority holds that, absent cumbersome class-action litigation, courts cannot completely enjoin even such plainly unlawful policies unless doing so is necessary to afford the formal parties complete relief.' Sotomayor also said the administration did not ask to entirely halt the multiple injunctions against its order because it knew the directive was patently illegal, and accused the majority of playing along with that open gamesmanship. She, like the other two justices who joined her dissent, is a Democratic appointee. Advertisement All six of the justices who voted to end universal injunctions were Republican appointees, including three Trump installed on the bench in his first term. The same supermajority has ruled in ways that have enhanced his power in other avenues. Last year, the bloc granted Trump presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution for his official acts as president. The ruling, by Chief Justice John Roberts, asserted that presidents have absolute immunity for anything they do with the Justice Department and their supervision of federal law enforcement power. Emboldened, Trump this year has built on his approach from his first term, when he informally pressured prosecutors to investigate his political foes. He has issued formal orders to scrutinize specific people he does not like, shattering the post-Watergate norm of a Justice Department case independent from White House political control. The supermajority also has blessed Trump's gambit in firing Democratic members of independent agency commissions before their terms were up. The conservative justices have made clear that they are prepared to overturn a long-standing precedent allowing Congress to establish specialized agencies to be run by panels whose members cannot be arbitrarily fired by presidents. In a separate concurrence, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson offered a realpolitik take. The majority's exegesis of what powers Congress understood itself to be granting lower courts when it created them in 1789 was a smokescreen of mind-numbing 'legalese,' she wrote, obscuring the question of whether a court can order the executive branch to follow the law. 'In a constitutional republic such as ours, a federal court has the power to order the executive to follow the law — and it must,' she wrote before striking a cautionary note. Advertisement 'Everyone, from the president on down, is bound by law,' she added. 'By duty and nature, federal courts say what the law is (if there is a genuine dispute), and require those who are subject to the law to conform their behavior to what the law requires. This is the essence of the rule of law.' But Barrett accused her of forgetting that courts, too, must obey legal limits. 'Justice Jackson decries an imperial executive while embracing an imperial judiciary,' Barrett wrote. 'No one disputes that the executive has a duty to follow the law. But the judiciary does not have unbridled authority to enforce this obligation — in fact, sometimes the law prohibits the judiciary from doing so.' This article originally appeared in
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Israeli strikes kill at least 72 people in Gaza as ceasefire prospects move closer
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli strikes killed at least 72 people across Gaza overnight and into Saturday, health workers said, as ceasefire prospects were said to be improving after 21 months of war. Three children and their parents were killed in an Israeli strike on a tent camp in Muwasi near the southern city of Khan Younis. They were struck while sleeping, relatives said. 'What did these children do to them? What is their fault?' said the children's grandmother, Suad Abu Teima, as others knelt to kiss their bloodied faces and wept. Some placed red flowers into the body bags. Also among the dead were 12 people near the Palestine Stadium in Gaza City, which was sheltering displaced people, and eight more in apartments, according to staff at Shifa Hospital. More than 20 bodies were taken to Nasser Hospital, according to health officials. A midday strike killed 11 people on a street in eastern Gaza City, and their bodies were taken to Al-Ahli Hospital. Another strike on a gathering in eastern Gaza City killed eight including five children, the hospital said. A strike on a gathering at the entrance to the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza killed two, according to Al-Awda Hospital. Hopes for a ceasefire agreement in the coming week U.S. President Donald Trump says there could be a ceasefire agreement within the next week. Taking questions from reporters on Friday, he said, 'We're working on Gaza and trying to get it taken care of.' An official with knowledge of the situation told The Associated Press that Israeli Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer will arrive in Washington next week for talks on a Gaza ceasefire, Iran and other subjects. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. Indirect talks between Israel and Hamas have been on again, off again since Israel broke the latest ceasefire in March, continuing its military campaign in Gaza and furthering the territory's dire humanitarian crisis. Some 50 hostages remain in Gaza, fewer than half believed to still be alive. They were among 251 hostages taken when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, sparking the war. 'What more is left to do in Gaza that has not already been done? Who else is left to eliminate?' Yotam Cohen, brother of hostage Nimrod Cohen, said Saturday evening as weekly rallies by families and supporters resumed following Israel's ceasefire with Iran. Over 6,000 killed since latest ceasefire ended The war has killed over 56,000 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. It says more than half of the dead were women and children. It said the dead include 6,089 killed since the end of the latest ceasefire. Israel says it only targets militants and blames civilian deaths on Hamas, accusing the militants of hiding among civilians because they operate in populated areas. There is hope among families of hostages that Trump's involvement in securing the recent ceasefire between Israel and Iran might lead to more pressure for a deal in Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is riding a wave of public support for the Iran war and its achievements, and he could feel he has more space to move toward ending the war in Gaza, something his far-right governing partners oppose. Hamas has repeatedly said it is prepared to free all the hostages in exchange for an end to the war in Gaza. Netanyahu says he will end the war only once Hamas is disarmed and exiled, something the group has rejected. Hundreds have been killed while seeking food Meanwhile, hungry Palestinians are enduring a catastrophic situation in Gaza. After blocking all food for 2 1/2 months, Israel has allowed only a trickle of supplies into the territory since mid-May. More than 500 Palestinians have been killed and hundreds more wounded while seeking food since the newly formed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation began distributing aid in the territory about a month ago, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. Palestinian witnesses say Israeli troops have opened fire at crowds on roads heading toward the sites. The Israeli military says it has only fired warning shots and that it was investigating incidents in which civilians had been harmed while approaching the sites. Thousands of Palestinians walk for hours to reach the sites, moving through Israeli military zones. Separate efforts by the United Nations to distribute limited food have been plagued by armed gangs looting trucks and by crowds of desperate people offloading supplies from convoys. Saturday's death toll included two people killed by Israeli gunfire while waiting to receive aid near the Netzarim corridor, a road that separates northern and southern Gaza, according to Al-Shifa and Al-Awda hospitals, which each received one body. There was no immediate Israeli military comment. ___ Mednick reported from Tel Aviv, Israel. Associated Press journalist Sally Abou AlJoud in Beirut contributed to this report. ___ Follow AP's war coverage at
