President Donald Trump on Tuesday called for the Iranian regime’s “unconditional surrender” in the Israel–Iran war and threatened the life of Iran’s supreme leader if he orders missile strikes against civilians or American troops.

In a series of messages on social media on June 17, Trump said “we” have full control of Iranian airspace and stated that the United States knows “exactly where” Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is hiding—calling him an “easy target” but saying he would not be killed, “at least not for now.”

“We now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran,” Trump wrote in the first post. “Iran had good sky trackers and other defensive equipment, and plenty of it, but it doesn’t compare to American made, conceived, and manufactured ‘stuff.’ Nobody does it better than the good ol’ USA.” In a second post, Trump said that the United States knew the exact location of Iran’s supreme leader and that eliminating him would be easy. The third post called for Iran’s unconditional surrender. (More)

In the first five months of President Donald Trump’s second term, blue-collar hourly workers have experienced a nearly 2 percent increase in real wages—the most significant growth under any administration since President Richard Nixon.

New Treasury Department data suggest real (inflation-adjusted) hourly wage growth is up 1.7 percent year-to-date for production and nonsupervisory workers. By comparison, real wages declined 1.7 percent during the first five months under the previous administration.

The last time wages outpaced inflation at this pace was during the president’s first term, says Joe Lavorgna, counselor to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. “Today’s data confirm what we saw during President Trump’s first administration: pro-growth policies like tax reform and deregulation had a measurable impact on real wages, especially for blue-collar workers. This isn’t theoretical—it is showing up in the paychecks of everyday Americans,” Lavorgna told The Epoch Times. The only other time a president recorded positive wage data was in 1969, when Nixon reported real blue-collar wage growth of 0.8 percent. (More)

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass on Tuesday lifted the curfew in the city’s downtown area following a decline in the protests, violence, and vandalism that had disrupted the neighborhood. A day earlier Bass pushed back the curfew’s start time to 10 p.m., allowing businesses to stay open longer. The curfew originally ran from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m., covering roughly a square-mile area that included the Arts District and Chinatown.

“The curfew, coupled with ongoing crime prevention efforts, have been largely successful in protecting stores, restaurants, businesses and residential communities,” Bass said.

The city imposed the curfew on June 10, days after protests erupted in response to a new wave of Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests of illegal immigrants who were seeking day labor jobs outside retail locations as part of a probe into customs fraud, tax evasion, and money laundering. The situation escalated when protests devolved into riots. In response, President Donald Trump called in 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines to restore order. (More)