Smithsonian head to retire as Trump escalates attacks on institution
Lonnie G Bunch III has announced he is stepping down as secretary of the Smithsonian Museum after seven years in the role amid Donald Trump’s unprecedented crackdown on the world’s largest museum’s autonomy.
In an interview with the New York Times (paywall), Bunch, 73, said it was not the Trump administration’s pressure campaign to control how the Smithsonian presents US history and values that had led to his departure.
It was really just saying, now’s the time. I’m a fighter.
But, acknowledging the strain of the role, he added:
I have to be honest, it has been stressful. And at a certain point, I’d like to wake up in the morning and not look at my cellphone.
Bunch, the institution’s first black secretary, is expected to leave the role at the end of the year.
Key events
Federal appeals court upholds block on IRS sharing tax return information with immigration enforcement
The court of appeals for the District of Columbia has upheld a block by a lower court judge that prevents the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) from sharing tax return information with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
“No statute authorizes the IRS to disclose ‘return information’ for non-tax civil investigations without the taxpayer’s consent, or to disclose ‘taxpayer return information’ for any purpose,” the court writes in its ruling.
The court also noted that IRS’ argument against the preliminary injunction – namely that it “impedes and delays federal law enforcement by improperly restricting the information that ICE is entitled to receive” – is actually a problem that needs to be addressed through legislation in Congress, not the court.
The judges added that the administration’s claim is “weak sauce”.
Last year, the IRS established the “Data-Exchange Procedure” with ICE, which provides the agency with the last-known addresses of 1.2 million taxpayers who may be undocumented. Soon after the plaintiffs challenged the new policy, blocked the data sharing, which the government appealed.
Centcom says that unmanned US drone Iran claims to have captured was ‘defective’ and carried no classified equipment
US Central Command (Centcom) said that a submarine drone, that Iranian forces claimed to have captured, actually “malfunctioned more than a day ago”.
In a statement to the Guardian by US Navy Capt Tim Hawkins, a Centcom spokesperson, said that the underwater drone was surveying regional waters in support of the ongoing military operation in the region. Hawkins said the submersible was “defective” and an older model. He also downplayed that it was a sophisticated piece of technology, adding that it “neither collected sensitive data nor carried any classified sonar or radar equipment”.
Hawkins added that operations in area waters continue.
Earlier today, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claimed to Iranian state TV that its naval forces “captured one of the most modern, unmanned, and smart submarines of the US terrorist army at the entrance to the strait of Hormuz”.
They added that the drone was “equipped with the latest technology”.
Republicans welcome Smithsonian chief’s retirement, while Democrats praise his ‘trailblazing leadership’
In response to the news that Lonnie Bunch III will step down as chief of the Smithsonian Institution, several Republicans have assailed his tenure leading the storied collection of museums.
“Good riddance,” wrote Josh Hawley, a GOP senator from Missouri. The lawmaker and fierce defender of Donald Trump said that Bunch “should return his salary to the American people”.
Similarly, Congressman Brandon Gill – a hardline conservative from Texas – said that he was “glad to see” Bunch retire.
“The days of using America’s museums to teach Americans to hate their own country are coming to an end,” Gill said on X. “New leadership must tell America’s story accurately.”
As we reported earlier, Trump has spent much of his second term in office undermining the content, programming and leadership of Smithsonian, including signing an executive order to “restore” the institution to “its rightful place as a symbol of inspiration and American greatness”.
Democrats, however, have praised Bunch for his seven years leading the organization. “He is a student of history who has devoted his life to telling America’s full history and cultivating our nation’s continued love of learning and exploration,” said Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat from Nevada, who serves on the Smithsonian’s 17-member board and will be responsible to selecting his replacement.
Meanwhile, Representative Terri Sewell, a Democrat from Alabama, thanked Bunch for his “trailblazing leadership” and appeared to push back on the criticism from Republicans that Bunch had attempted to rewrite American history.
Sewell said that the outgoing chief “helped ensure that all Americans can see themselves – and their history – reflected in the Smithsonian”.
Victoria Bekiempis
A US appellate court has decided that the federal constitution does not guarantee a right to clean water.
That legal opinion came in the form of a decision on Friday from the fifth circuit court of appeals to uphold a lower court’s dismissal of a 2022 lawsuit from several Jackson, Mississippi, residents claiming that tainted drinking water violated their constitutional rights.
Those residents of Mississippi’s capital city contended that their local drinking water was unsafe to drink because of high lead levels and other contaminants.
The New Orleans-based fifth circuit’s majority opinion held that the residents wanted “recognition of two new constitutional rights lacking any foundation in the history and tradition of our nation” – those being “the right to be free from exposure to contaminated water and the right to accurate information from public officials”.
In the majority’s view, residents should have gone about their legal fight for clean water another way, such as pursuing “tort claims” or by “electing representatives who will better manage the public-water system, and petitioning their representatives for other remedies”.
Tort claims allege “harms caused by others” while seeking “to impose liability on parties responsible for the harm, and to deter others from committing harmful acts”, according to Cornell University’s law school.
Friday’s decision also said that state and federal officials were working hard to improve the majority-Black city’s drinking water. The residents who filed suit alleged that public authorities had for years failed to mitigate lead levels and failed to inform them about an increase.
Bunch’s resignation will mark a huge leadership transition at a vulnerable and politically fraught time for the institution.
During Trump’s second term in office, the president has repeatedly attacked how the Smithsonian presents US history, starting when he signed an executive order in March last year targeting “divisive narratives” and “improper ideology” at the institution. This progressed into frequent attacks, sweeping exhibition reviews and federal funding threats.
Bunch has had to tread a fine line between defending the Smithsonian’s independence and commitment to historical accuracy and complexity, and complying with some of the administration’s demands.
Trump has accused the organization of being too “woke” and focusing too much on unsavoury aspects of US history. A recent report prepared by the White House’s domestic policy council called “Saving America’s Story” accused the museum’s leadership of “ideological capture”.
The Smithsonian “explicitly adopted an ideological framework that 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 said.
In July, Trump then ordered the interior department to display signs in front of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History accusing the institution of “inaccurate information”.
Interior secretary Doug Burgum then sent a letter to the Smithsonian last week accusing its leadership of having “sanctioned a radical institutional ideology to permeate” the museum and threatening to cut off executive agencies’ cooperation with the institution if it failed to abandon that agenda.
Bunch pushed back against many of the administration’s efforts, reiterating the Smithsonian’s commitment to “scholarship, nonpartisanship, independence, accuracy, and integrity.”
But he has also complied with some of the White House’s requests, including handing over extensive documents about museum exhibitions and programming details for review.
Smithsonian head to retire as Trump escalates attacks on institution
Lonnie G Bunch III has announced he is stepping down as secretary of the Smithsonian Museum after seven years in the role amid Donald Trump’s unprecedented crackdown on the world’s largest museum’s autonomy.
In an interview with the New York Times (paywall), Bunch, 73, said it was not the Trump administration’s pressure campaign to control how the Smithsonian presents US history and values that had led to his departure.
It was really just saying, now’s the time. I’m a fighter.
But, acknowledging the strain of the role, he added:
I have to be honest, it has been stressful. And at a certain point, I’d like to wake up in the morning and not look at my cellphone.
Bunch, the institution’s first black secretary, is expected to leave the role at the end of the year.
Trump asks supreme court to allow voter verification database blocked by judge
The Trump administration has asked the supreme court to allow it to use a revamped immigration database for checking the accuracy of state voter rolls, one of a series of actions that boosts federal involvement in voting ahead of November’s midterm elections, Reuters reports.
Justice department lawyers asked the court to halt a Washington DC-based federal judge’s June ruling that blocked the mass voter verification system, which the judge said was haphazardly assembled and contained unreliable citizenship data.
“The district court has issued an indefensible order that threatens the integrity of upcoming elections by vacating the federal government’s authority to internally use Social Security data when fulfilling its duty to respond to requests by states to verify the citizenship of individuals for voting and other purposes,” DOJ lawyers wrote in a filing.
Oliver Milman
The lawyer of Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts woman accused of killing her three young children, has said he hopes Donald Trump will pardon his client after her trial recently ended with a deadlocked jury.
Clancy’s attorney, Kevin Reddington, made the appeal on a televised interview on the ABC show Good Morning America today. The plea comes to Trump after a judge on Friday declared a mistrial after the jury in the Clancy case could not reach a unanimous verdict on whether she was guilty or not guilty, opening the way for another trial.
Reddington said he hoped that the president would “consider a pardon” for Clancy given “the type of person she is” and “what she has been through”.
“Mr President, I would hope that you would consider this young lady,” said Reddington, who also alluded to how Trump on Friday called the case a “tragedy”.
Trump’s pardon powers are applicable in the federal justice system in the US, and Clancy was tried in Massachusetts’ state criminal justice system.
The president was asked about the trial by reporters on Friday, with Trump calling the case “a shame” and a “horrible tragedy”.
“I think the judge has said it’s going to be a mistrial, so there’s going to be another trial,” he said. “It’s a terrible situation. Look, she did a horrible, horrible thing.
“Can’t be worse. But you’ll find out what the price to pay is. There’ll be a price. It’s going to be mental institution or jail or something, but I guess they’re going to go through another trial.”
Iran says it captured unmanned US submarine drone in strait of Hormuz
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claimed said they seized an American submarine drone “equipped with the latest technology” in the strait of Hormuz on Tuesday.
“The IRGC naval forces captured one of the most modern, unmanned, and smart submarines of the US terrorist army at the entrance to the strait of Hormuz in a complex intelligence and operational action at dawn today,” the Guards said in a statement carried by Iranian state TV. “This submarine has now been captured and images of it will be released in the coming hours.”
The White House did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.
Johana Bhuiyan
In January, the New York police department’s counter-terrorism unit sent out a memo warning police officers about a new potential “security and counterintelligence” threat: Ray-Ban Meta glasses.
The memo directed officers to “conduct thorough inspections of all eyewear permitted within inmate cells” and cautioned that people who have been arrested could use these glasses, equipped with small cameras and microphones, to record inside police facilities. The memo cited two examples of such videos posted on social media.
“The ability to covertly record inside a law enforcement or detention facility, could result in a security risk if proprietary information about cell layouts, camera placements, or officer patrol/site protection routines are released,” the memo read.
The NYPD memo is one of a dozen, previously unreported and reviewed by the Guardian, that showed law enforcement agencies across the US are increasingly concerned about the potential for smart glasses to be used against them. Officers from Maine to California worry the technology will be used either to secretly record officers and facilities or to aid in the execution of crimes and acts of terrorism.
One of the videos, taken with smart glasses and posted to TikTok in July 2025, offered a rare peek into a South Carolina detention center that had been the subject of a federal investigation over unsafe conditions.
“Everyone here is trying to figure out what’s going on with my glasses, why my light is blinking,” the user said about other detainees in the video. “People don’t know about Meta glasses.” He filmed a dingy shower, the inside of holding cells, an overcrowded cafeteria, and several other detainees as they slept, ate or walked, all seemingly unaware of being recorded.
US police and federal agents are not alone in their fear. Concern among the public and privacy experts over Meta’s smart glasses, widely dubbed “pervert glasses”, is growing. The technology enables its wearers to record people without their consent and has already been used to harass people.
Read the full report:
Rubio says US will not implement same sanctions on trade with Israeli settlements as UK
Marco Rubio said today that US is “not going to do what the UK did” and impose sweeping sanctions on trade with Israeli settlements, but stopped shy of commenting on the matter while speaking to reporters in Miami. However, the secretary of state said that the US does not “want to see some uptick in violence or an uptick in conflict or tensions in the West Bank at a very tenuous time in the region”.
Earlier today, UK foreign secretary Ed Miliband announced the measure, the strongest condemnation ever issued by the UK government, which accused Israel the country of conducting “ethnic cleansing” in the West Bank.
The sanctions include an import ban on goods from illegal settlements in the occupied territories and a comprehensive sanctions regime against providing services such as construction or financing for Israeli settlements.
Donald Trump is speaking now in Washington, at an event for first responders at the 9/11 terror attacks.
The president just spoke about how his commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, narrowly avoided being at the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001, when he took his son to school instead of being in his office at Cantor Fitzgerald, which occupied several floors of the North Tower.
“This was the first time in years that he wasn’t there early in the morning,” Trump said, noting that Lutnick’s brother, Gary, who also worked at the investment banking firm and 657 other Cantor Fitzgerald employees were killed in the attacks.
Trump added: “[Lutnick’s] got some faults, but overall he’s excellent. He’s a great guy. Now he went through a lot, didn’t he?”
New York releases previously undisclosed documents showing that officials knew air quality was unsafe in wake of 9/11 terror attacks
Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced on Tuesday that New York City would release 170,000 pages of previously undisclosed documents that show officials at the time knew that the air quality after the 9/11 terror attacks posed health risks, despite assuring the public and first responders that the air quality was safe.
Ahead of the 25th anniversary of the attacks, the city has published the documents to a publicly accessible portal, which includes air quality reports and correspondence between New York officials. Mamdani directed $34m of the city’s budget to create the portal for the records. Many documents were stored in 68 boxes in a city office, and many were only discovered last year by officials.
The initial release on the portal includes the document commonly known as the “Harding Memo” sent to then-Deputy Mayor Robert Harding in 2001, which provides insight into the City’s consideration of potential legal responses in the aftermath of the attacks, including concerns about the prospect of litigation arising from toxic exposure and the adequacy of safety equipment.
“For too long, information about the aftermath of September 11th has not been provided to the public. For years, families, city workers, and survivors have been crying out for more transparency from their government,” said Stephen Banks, head of the city’s law department, about the release.
While almost 3,000 people were killed in the attacks, in the years since, “thousands more have become devastatingly – often fatally – ill from toxins and debris, though the true magnitude of the attack’s impact has yet to be fully realized,” Banks added.
Greg Hull, the Republican nominee running to replace New Mexico’s term-limited governon, Michelle Lujan Grisham, denounced the president’s suggestion to change the state’s name to “New America”.
“New Mexico does not need a new name,” Hull said in a statement to Santa Fe Public Radio. “This state carries the history of Native nations and Spanish explorers who named this land nearly five hundred years ago, and generations of families who built New Mexico into what it is today. That identity is not up for negotiation.”