The Guardian - About 65% of US adults believe same-sex marriage should be legal, down slightly from 71% in 2022 and 2023. Most of the change is due to dropping acceptance among Republicans. In the new survey, which was conducted in May, only 37% of Republicans say same-sex marriage should be legally valid, while 35% say gay and lesbian relations are “morally acceptable”.
June 3, 2026
Polls
War on protest
Mother Jones - On a Wednesday afternoon last June, Bajun Mavalwalla II, Jac Archer, and Justice Forral gathered with hundreds of others to protest outside an ICE office in Spokane, Washington. Word had spread on social media that two young Venezuelan immigrants—both of whom came to the United States legally—had been detained at a routine ICE check-in.
Mavalwalla, Archer, and Forral—now known as the “Spokane Three”—were charged in July with “conspiracy to impede or injure” officers of the law for participating in that protest, in which people attempted to block an ICE vehicle from exiting the field office.
All three were found guilty on Wednesday of “conspiracy to impede or injure an officer” or “aiding and abetting another to conspire,” felony convictions with the potential for significant prison time. It’s a significant defeat for protesters following Trump administration prosecutors’ repeated failures to convict people who attend anti-ICE rallies.
Videos from the day show brief scuffles—protesters and ICE agents pushing each other—but no evidence of serious injury to anyone. “None of the protesters were hurt. Fortunately, none of the law enforcement officers were hurt either,” Richard Barker, then the acting US Attorney for eastern Washington, told PBS in March. Yet local police arrested more than 30 people on the scene.
Voting
NBC News - The Supreme Court allowed Alabama to use a congressional map that eliminates one of two majority-Black districts in the state in a win for Republicans. The justices split 6-3 on ideological lines with conservatives in the majority. A lower court had found that the map, which was enacted in 2023 but has never been used, intentionally discriminated against Black voters in violation of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.
Car loan debt
WalletHub has released its updated report on the States Where People Overspend the Most on Car Loans, shedding light on where financial strain is most evident. To determine these rankings, WalletHub compared median car-loan debt to residents’ income across all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
For the full report and to see where your state ranks
| Highest % of Income Spent | Lowest % of Income Spent |
| 1. Mississippi (44.60%) | 42. Washington (25.82%) |
| 2. New Mexico (43.60%) | 43. Michigan (25.23%) |
| 3. Arkansas (43.17%) | 44. Minnesota (25.17%) |
| 4. Louisiana (42.30%) | 45. New Hampshire (23.91%) |
| 5. Oklahoma (41.75%) | 46. Rhode Island (23.57%) |
| 6. West Virginia (40.57%) | 47. New York (23.57%) |
| 7. Texas (40.27%) | 48. Connecticut (21.91%) |
| 8. Alabama (40.24%) | 49. New Jersey (21.71%) |
| 9. Tennessee (38.39%) | 50. Massachusetts (19.85%) |
| 10. Nevada (38.27%) | 51. District of Columbia (17.02%) |
For the full report and to see where your state ranks
Trump's war on mail-in voting
Alternet - Donald Trump is wasting no time on legal niceties in pushing for quashing of mail ballots for the November election. Last Friday, one day after a federal judge declined temporarily to block the provision in Trump's election-related executive order, the U.S. Postal Service essentially announced that it would only deliver mail ballot applications to voters that the federal government recognizes, stopping the delivery of applications to tens of millions or more.
What the Postal Service rules made public last Friday was that it would strictly follow new mail-in ballot rules that require states to submit voter names, addresses and unique ballot barcodes for federal elections. The order also sets forth mandatory "best practices" for federal elections including Election Mail logos, tracking barcodes and design reviews.
No Democratic-run state as well as some Republican-run states has agreed to provide these names and private information to the government, arguing instead that this order is unconstitutional.
Whatever the wording, two things are true: Trump is seeking to stomp out mail-in voting with a federal order telling the states how to run their elections, and despite that single judge's decision not to put a stop to the order right now, the legal issues here are still very much in question.
Media
People - Former 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley accused the CBS News program’s new executives of currying favor with President Donald Trump in response to his firing on Tuesday, June 2.
“When stewardship of the program passed to my colleagues and me, our responsibility was to expand energetically into a new age of media technology while preserving the values our audience expects,” Pelley, 68, wrote in a statement obtained by PEOPLE. “Now, the new owner of our network is casting this legend aside, apparently to curry a moment of favor with the Trump administration. The waste is heartbreaking.”
On May 28, 60 Minutes parted ways with journalists Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi. CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss and CBS News president Tom Cibrowski also fired executive producer Tanya Smith, replacing her with tech journalist Nick Bilton.
Elections
NPR - Trump-endorsed Congressman Randy Feenstra lost the Iowa gubernatorial primary race last night to businessman Zach Lahn. It's a rare blow to President Trump, who has seen almost all of his chosen candidates succeed. Farmers in Iowa have been disproportionately impacted by Trump administration policies like tariffs and the war in Iran. The state is governed by Republicans, but voters have cast their ballots for Democrats in recent federal and state elections. Democratic voters are strategically selecting candidates they believe will best position them to flip seats in November. |
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$1.8 billion Trump give away is said to be no more
Headline USA - The proposed $1.776 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund is no more. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche confirmed in remarks to the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday that the Department of Justice is walking away from the initiative.
“We are not moving forward with the fund, period,” Blanche told lawmakers in a tense hearing, later adding: “The reasons for the fund, I think, remain as important as they were before, but we are not moving forward with the fund.”...
Blanche’s remarks mark the latest sign that the DOJ has abandoned the effort entirely.
The fund was first announced in a May 18 press release after Trump settled a civil lawsuit against the IRS over the agency’s failure to prevent the leak of his confidential tax-return information to the legacy media.
His comments also followed two federal court rulings tied to the settlement.
First, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, a Clinton appointee, on May 29 issued a temporary restraining order blocking the fund after a lawsuit filed by a former federal prosecutor who claimed he was fired for his role in the aggressive targeting of Jan. 6 defendants.
Separately, U.S. District Judge Kathleen M. Williams of Florida also on May 29 revived Trump’s case against the IRS after a group of former judges urged her to do so in an amicus brief.
CNBC - Trump, his family members and related business entities remain protected from tax audits and enforcement actions in connection with tax returns filed before last month's out-of-court settlement of his lawsuit, Blanche said. "We are not moving forward with the fund, period," Blanche told Rep. Grace Meng, D-N.Y., the ranking member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies.
NPR - In a rare occurrence, the fund has prompted many Republicans, especially in the Senate, to publicly oppose Trump, NPR’s Ryan Lucas says. Many Republicans disliked the possibility that payouts could go to Capitol rioters who attacked police on Jan. 6, 2021. This Republican pushback has stalled some of the administration’s legislative priorities, including funding for immigration enforcement. From the beginning, Democrats have criticized the fund, arguing that it would serve as a slush fund that allows the president to give nearly $1.8 billion in taxpayer money to his supporters and allies.
Electric vehicles
Bloomberg - Growing numbers of Americans are finding relief from soaring fuel prices in a used-car market awash with affordable electric vehicles. As gasoline costs climb, a glut of secondhand EVs is turning excess inventory into bargains.
- Carmakers had been struggling to sell new EVs as higher prices, steep financing rates and concerns over driving range contributed to a slowdown in adoption.
- But the average cost of a new car broke $50,000 for the first time last year, meaning EVs don’t look as expensive anymore. In fact, more than a third of used battery-powered cars sell at half that amount.
- Gasoline prices have become a particular pain point too as the continued effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz squeezes fuel supplies, adding to the appeal of EVs.
Donald Trump
Time - President Donald Trump has revived talk of his ambitions to annex Canada and make it the 51st state—an idea he has floated repeatedly since returning to the White House last year. The most recent instance occurred Monday night, when Trump shared an article that stated Canada had entered a “technical recession” for the first time since 2020. In response, the President wrote: “51st State!”
The Bank of Canada itself had earlier addressed the recent data that showed GDP had declined for two consecutive quarters on an annualized basis, cautioning people about focusing on the numbers.
“I think we need to be careful not to put too much weight on any one indicator,” the bank’s senior deputy governor Carolyn Rogers told a parliamentary committee.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford responded directly to the annexation reference, stating: “I can’t believe I have to say this again, but Canada will never be the 51st state. Canada is not for sale.”
June 2, 2026
Civil rights
NY Times - In a move that disproportionately targets women and minority officers, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently blocked the promotions of nine Navy officers who had been selected by a board of senior Navy admirals.
The net result of Mr. Hegseth’s intervention is a slate of 22 nominees to be one-star admirals that bears little resemblance to the broader force these officers will help lead.
Three of the officers removed by Mr. Hegseth from the promotion list are women and two are Black men. An additional four are white men.
Mr. Hegseth’s actions, which appear to violate the rules governing a promotion system that is supposed to be apolitical and merit-based, were described by five current and former defense officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters.
Polls
InteractivePolls: YouGov: Net Favorables of Public Figures
Pope Leo XIV (+37)
Jon Stewart: (+14)
Mark Kelly: (+10)
Jon Ossoff: (+6)
Glenn Youngkin: (+6)
James Talarico: (+5)
Ro Khanna: (+5)
Pete Buttigieg: (+1)
Josh Shapiro: (+1)
——
AOC: (-1)
Kamala Harris: (-3)
Thomas Massie: (-4)
Gavin Newsom: (-5)
JD Vance: (-8)
Marco Rubio: (-8)
Ron DeSantis: (-10)
Donald Trump: (-17)
Don Jr: (-27)
Tucker Carlson: (-36)Trump vs. the media
The Guardian - In another apparent affront to press freedom from the Trump administration, journalists may no longer enter the Pentagon’s press office, which has been designated as a classified space.
The defense department began rolling out new restrictions to press access in September, when the military demanded journalists pledge not to gather any information – including unclassified documents – that had not been authorized for release, or else risk revocation of their press passes.
Joel Valdez, the acting defense department press secretary, said in a social media post: “This is the most transparent war department in history. No amount of spin from the Fake News media will change that.” He claimed the redesignation was because “speechwriters from the Office of the Secretary of War” shared the facility.
After the defense department announced sweeping restrictions in October, many longtime reporters refused to agree and began turning over their press passes. The department then announced a “next generation of the Pentagon press corps” featuring 60 journalists from far-right outlets. The New York Times sued the Pentagon over those policies, which designated journalists as “security risks”, and a federal judge found in the Times’s favor in March.
The defense department began rolling out new restrictions to press access in September, when the military demanded journalists pledge not to gather any information – including unclassified documents – that had not been authorized for release, or else risk revocation of their press passes.
Joel Valdez, the acting defense department press secretary, said in a social media post: “This is the most transparent war department in history. No amount of spin from the Fake News media will change that.” He claimed the redesignation was because “speechwriters from the Office of the Secretary of War” shared the facility.
After the defense department announced sweeping restrictions in October, many longtime reporters refused to agree and began turning over their press passes. The department then announced a “next generation of the Pentagon press corps” featuring 60 journalists from far-right outlets. The New York Times sued the Pentagon over those policies, which designated journalists as “security risks”, and a federal judge found in the Times’s favor in March.
Melania Trump
Alternet America - Melania Trump held a press conference in April to deny rumors that didn’t publicly exist yet. Turns out she knew something was coming. Former Brazilian model Amanda Ungaro, locked in a bitter custody battle with presidential envoy Paolo Zampolli, has revealed in a bombshell WhatsApp message that Melania met Trump through Epstein, not Zampolli.
“It was Jeffrey Epstein, as she was escort of Jeffrey Epstein,” Ungaro says on the tape. “That’s how she met Donald Trump.”...
Ungaro was 17 in 2002 when she boarded Epstein’s private jet from Paris to New York, accompanied by Epstein recruiter Jean-Luc Brunel. Zampolli is now a Special Envoy for Global Partnerships and sits on the Kennedy Center Board of Trustees. The First Lady has not updated her statement.
Meanwhile .. .
Serena Williams announced she will return to competitive tennis this month, nearly four years after she retired.
Middle East
NPR - President Trump said he secured pledges from Israel and Hezbollah to pause fighting after Iran said it would suspend peace talks with the U.S. over Israel's offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran's announcement came after Israel's military warned residents in southern Beirut to leave ahead of planned airstrikes.
Congressional ethics filings and other public records show the trips, led by the American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF), revolved around one-sided briefings on Middle East politics and Israeli domestic and foreign policy. Lawmakers and their staffers from both parties met Israeli officials, military contractors and civil society figures, including Benjamin Netanyahu and advocates for the annexation of the West Bank and the displacement of Palestinians from Jerusalem.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) and other pro-Israel groups have sponsored such trips for years, and both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have joined. But the continued participation of Democratic lawmakers and their staff on recent trips is particularly noteworthy given how much sympathy for Israel has ebbed among Democratic voters, and the pains that some Democratic politicians have recently taken to distance themselves from the lobby group
Trump regime
NPR - The Justice Department says it will abide by a federal court order that puts funds for the Trump administration's nearly $1.8 billion anti-weaponization program on hold. The administration says the fund would compensate people who allege they were targeted by the federal government. The fund has faced bipartisan backlash and concerns that it would be used to pay people convicted for storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. NPR's Elena Moore tells Up First that the issue has elicited rare Republican pushback. Even after the DOJ stated it would abide by the court order, some Senate Republicans continued to push for the White House to end the fund. Moore says it has become a distraction as Republicans focus on the upcoming midterms. The Hill - President Trump named William Pulte, a feisty Trump loyalist who runs the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), as the acting director of national intelligence, replacing to replace Tulsi Gabbard, who resigned last month. Pulte is a controversial pick for several reasons: 1) Pulte has no high-level national security experience. He previously owned a construction company and a private equity firm. Now, in this new role, he will be coordinating U.S. intelligence among more than a dozen government agencies. Trump justified Pulte’s appointment by arguing he has “deep experience managing the most sensitive matters in America.” 2) He’s controversial even within the Trump administration. He frustrated Justice Department officials by pushing for Trump enemies to be prosecuted. And his public fight with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent over Trump enemy prosecutions is one of his most notable moments. 3) Trump says Pulte will also keep his job running the FHFA, as well as remaining the chairman of Fannie Maie and Freddie Mac. Keep in mind: Trump indicted Pulte would serve as the *acting* director of national intelligence, meaning he may not need Senate confirmation like a director of national intelligence would need. |
Word
Putin has subordinated his state and his society to a war that is slowly sapping Russia’s strength, depleting the nation’s wealth and consuming the lives of its young people.” — Michael Kimmage, a historian of the Cold War and an expert on U.S.-Russian relations.
Some problems with ranked choice voting
Britannica - Con 1: Ranked-choice voting can eliminate the candidate with the most first-place votes, favor moderate candidates with only marginal support, and encourage scheming to get around these limitations. The winner in a ranked-choice election is the person who has received a majority of all votes in the final round. If the election process goes through several rounds, the candidate with the majority of votes in the first round may be eliminated. As Aaron Hamlin of the Center for Election Science explains:
Much of the time ranked-choice voting [RCV] isn’t getting any kind of majority at all. Rather, it’s contriving a majority by artificially narrowing down the candidate field. RCV knocks out candidates over each round, but sometimes it knocks out good candidates by mistake.
Furthermore, candidates or voters may engage in schemes to tilt favor to one candidate or another, something that’s not at all far-fetched in the age of social media. For example, Hans von Spakovsky and J. Adams of the Heritage Foundation speculate:
If enough Ross Perot voters [1992 U.S. presidential election] had listed George H. W. Bush as their second choice over Bill Clinton in 1992, Bush might have won that presidential election instead of Clinton. Since Perot came in third in the race, his votes with Bush as the second choice would have counted for Bush in the second round of vote tabulation.
RCV provides “voters with an incentive to tactically game the system and falsify their preferences for candidates,” so their “real” choice survives to the next round and can win in the end.
Con 2: Ranked-choice voting disenfranchises voters, limiting their choices and “exhausting” their ballots. Although voters are able, and perhaps encouraged, to rank all candidates on their ballots, they do not always do so. Some voters may only support one or two candidates and find ranking candidates with whom they disagree strongly distasteful or even immoral.
When the candidates on a voter’s ballot have been eliminated by the ranked-choice process, that ballot is “exhausted,” and that voter is effectively disenfranchised.
A study of more than 600,000 ballots from four local elections found that the rate of ballot exhaustion ranged from 9.6 percent to 27.1 percent. This amounted to, according to the authors of the study, “a substantial number of votes being discarded in each election.”
Any voting system that tosses out votes and voters, or that reassigns a voter’s vote to a candidate the voter objects to for the creation of a fake majority, is wholly undemocratic.
Con 3: Ranked-choice voting complicates voting, delays results, and is more vulnerable to corruption. In 2016 California Gov. Jerry Brown, Jr., vetoed a bill to expand ranked-choice voting in his state, calling it “overly complicated and confusing”; it “deprives voters of genuinely informed choice.”
...Moreover, ranked voting delays results. If no candidate wins a majority, the subsequent rounds of tabulation have to wait until all valid ballots have been counted. In Alaska, which uses ranked-choice voting for all elections, the second and later rounds of counting cannot even begin until 15 days after the election because the state continues to count absentee ballots.
Finally, whenever additional rounds of tabulation are added to an election, the risk of election fraud is compounded, especially if the election is a national one. “Under a national popular vote, RCV faces enormous technical hurdles,” writes the Center for Election Science. “The nature of RCV tabulation requires that all the ballot data be centralized for tabulation. This creates both security and logistical concerns.…You’d [also] have to deal with holdout states still using our choose-one [candidate] method.…But you can’t add RCV and regular choose-one ballots together. It just doesn’t work.”
Co-ops
The News Coop - Farmer-owned businesses Arla Foods and DMK Group have completed their merger to form Europe’s largest dairy co-op.
The merged entity, which will take the Arla name, unites approximately 11,200 farmers and 28,800 colleagues. It says it has local roots in seven countries, a global reach, a combined milk pool of 19.4 billion kg annually, and a pro forma revenue of €20bn a year.
Arla warns that the move comes “at a time when stable access to nutritious food can no longer be taken for granted across Europe”, giving the new co-op “a shared responsibility to help strengthen resilient and trusted food production, ensuring operational stability and a strong economic foundation for our farmers for the long term.”
Congress
The Hill - Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and other GOP senators see a path for passing the stalled budget reconciliation package funding immigration enforcement operations through Congress after the Trump administration on Monday backed down from a proposal to establish a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund for MAGA allies.
Thune on Monday called on the White House to abandon the proposal to establish what some GOP critics have called a “slush fund.” Shortly after, the Justice Department announced it would abide by a federal court decision temporarily blocking the administration from setting up the fund pending further litigation.
The result is that Republican leaders in both chambers now feel confident they can pass the $72 billion budget reconciliation package as long as it remains narrowly focused on funding Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol through 2029.
The package will not include funding for security upgrades to President Trump’s proposed 90,000-square-foot White House ballroom, which had also generated strong pushback from several Senate Republicans.
June 1, 2026
Middle East
NBC NEWS - Iran suspended talks with the United States to protest Israel’s expanding offensive in Lebanon, according to government-aligned media. The U.S. military and Iran exchanged strikes over the weekend and into Monday — the latest outburst of violence amid an ostensible ceasefire agreed to in early April.The government did not comment officially, although official statements are often transmitted through the media. U.S. officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
1440 - Israel has seized control of Beaufort, a medieval castle in Lebanon, several miles from the Israeli border. The capture marks the farthest Israeli soldiers have ventured into the country since their 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon ended in 2000. The news comes as Israel and Lebanon continue negotiations to end the weekslong hostilities. Lebanon agreed in 2024 to disarm Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militant group based largely in southern Lebanon. However, violence broke out again between Hezbollah and Israel in March, with Hezbollah launching rockets in response to Israeli attacks on Iran. Israel has since carried out airstrikes and invaded southern Lebanon, killing more than 3,300 people and displacing more than 1.2 million, according to the latest estimates. (See background on the conflict here.) The war between Israel and Hezbollah could have implications for the US war with Iran; Iran has said any peace deal with the US must also end the war in Lebanon.
NPR -The war in Lebanon, where Israel is fighting the militant group Hezbollah, could undermine efforts to end the war in Iran, NPR's Greg Myre tells Up First. Israeli forces captured a 900-year-old hilltop castle in southern Lebanon over the weekend as part of Israel's deepest push into the country in decades. Israel says Hezbollah was using the area to fire on nearby northern Israel. Iran has issued almost daily statements supporting Hezbollah and says peace efforts must address wars in both Iran and Lebanon, Myre says. But Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly said he wants Israeli forces to keep going in Lebanon.
The Hill - President Trump’s serious consideration of a peace deal with Iran that would open the Strait of Hormuz but also ease sanctions on Iran, a longtime U.S. adversary, is pitting Republican against Republican in a messy debate that will take over the Senate this week. Defense hawks led by Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) have panned the emerging deal with Iran, which Trump has yet to sign off on.
At the same time, several Republican senators who are deeply skeptical about the Trump administration’s handling of the conflict and who have complained about the lack of a clear endgame are eager to end hostilities and restore the flow of oil, fertilizer and other goods through the Strait of Hormuz as quickly as possible.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said today that its aerospace force had targeted the source of what it called a U.S. attack on a telecommunications tower. The IRGC said that if American attacks continued, its response would be “completely different” and Washington would be responsible for the consequences.
Meanwhile, a U.S. official said yesterday that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had spoken with Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun as part of ongoing diplomatic negotiations.
Climate change
Independent - Wildfires caused more financial damage in 2025 than in any other year, with catastrophic fires in the US, South Korea and Europe killing about 90 people and forcing roughly 300,000 to evacuate, a new study found. Wildfires accounted for 38 per cent of all insured natural hazard losses globally in 2025 – more than hurricanes, earthquakes and floods combined – even as the total area burned was the second lowest since records began in 2002 and 16 per cent below the long-term average. Researchers say the pattern reflects a shift in how wildfires cause harm: there are fewer fires overall but they are hitting populated areas with greater intensity and speed than before.
“2025 shows that a 'quiet' fire year globally can still be devastating," Dr Matthew Jones of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia, who led the study, said. "We are seeing a growing disconnect between total area burned and real-world impacts, with risk increasingly determined by fire location, intensity and exposure."
Polls
2026 Senate Ratings:
Crystal Ball:
Republicans: 51
Democrats: 46
Tossup: 3
Inside Elections:
Republicans: 52
Democrats: 45
Tossup: 3
Cook Political Report:
Republicans: 50
Democrats: 47
Tossup: 3
Republicans: 51
Democrats: 46
Tossup: 3
Inside Elections:
Republicans: 52
Democrats: 45
Tossup: 3
Cook Political Report:
Republicans: 50
Democrats: 47
Tossup: 3
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