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Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks alongside President Donald Trump on recent Supreme Court rulings, in the briefing room at the White House on June 27, 2025. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

The Trump administration sued Los Angeles on June 30, alleging that the city’s sanctuary policies prevented immigration officers from doing their jobs.

In the lawsuit, Attorney General Pam Bondi invoked the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, which establishes that federal laws and treaties are the supreme law of the land.

“Sanctuary policies were the driving cause of the violence, chaos, and attacks on law enforcement that Americans recently witnessed in Los Angeles,” Bondi wrote in a statement posted on social media platform X Monday. 

“Jurisdictions like Los Angeles that flout federal law by prioritizing illegal aliens over American citizens are undermining law enforcement at every level—it ends under President [Donald] Trump.”

The Justice Department alleges that the city ordinance and other policies put in place in Los Angeles “intentionally discriminate against the Federal Government by treating federal immigration authorities differently than other law enforcement agents through access restrictions both to property and to individual detainees.”

The restrictions prohibit contractors and subcontractors from disclosing information on illegal immigrants to federal officials, the lawsuit says. (More)

More Politics:

Authorities have identified the alleged shooter who gunned down two firefighters responding to a wildfire call in Idaho.

The alleged assailant is 20-year-old Wess Roley, a transient who had been living out of his vehicle in the area, according to Kootenai County Sheriff Bob Norris.

The shooting began after firefighters responded to a blaze that Roley had allegedly set using flint. The fire, reported at approximately 1:20 p.m. on Saturday, quickly escalated into a deadly shootout when the first responders asked Roley to move his vehicle.

“There was an interaction with the firefighters,” Norris stated during a Monday news conference. “It has something to do with his vehicle being parked where it was.”

The firefight unfolded over several hours as the firefighters took cover behind their trucks. Despite their efforts, two firefighters were killed and a third was wounded in what officials described as a barrage of gunfire.

Norris identified the two deceased firefighters as 42-year-old Battalion Chief Frank Harwood, who was a veteran of the Army National Guard, 17-year member of the city fire department, and husband and father of two children. The other victim is 52-year-old Coeur d’Alene Fire Department Battalion Chief John Morrison, who was a 28-year member of the fire department. (More)

More U.S. News:

Analysts have long warned that China is closing in on the United States as a peer competitor, whether in terms of high-tech industries, naval fleets, or the size of its diplomatic corps.

That power shift seemed to have also played out in the Middle East, a region where the United States has traditionally held significant influence.

Beijing brokered the normalization of diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia two years ago. Later the same year, the China-led BRICS bloc, designed to counterbalance the U.S.-led Western democracies, admitted four new members from the region: Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

The bloc was formed by Brazil, Russia, India, and China in 2009 and expanded to include South Africa in 2010.

However, the action of the United States and the inaction of China during the 12-day conflict between Israel and Iran revealed that the power gap between Beijing and Washington remains sizable.

The United States joined its ally Israel in the conflict on June 21 by attacking key Iranian nuclear sites with 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs. Two days later, President Donald Trump announced a cease-fire between Israel and Iran. The truce appears to be holding so far.

By contrast, Beijing’s support for Iran remained largely rhetorical.

The Chinese regime condemned Israel and criticized the United States over the strikes on Iran. It also released joint statements with member states of BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a China- and Russia-led security grouping, expressing “grave concern” that the attacks on Iran violated international law.

The revelation of the power gap between the United States and China means that countries will move closer into Washington’s orbit, according to Yeh Yao-yuan, a professor of international studies at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. (More)

More World News:

Photo of the Day: Visitors crowd around a titan arum (Amorphophallus titanum) plant in bloom at the Botanical Garden in Berlin, on June 30, 2025. According to the Botanical Garden, the inflorescence measures 2.36 metres, making it the largest ever measured in Berlin. The flower blooms infrequently and releases an intense odor to attract carrion insects. The flowering spectacle only lasts three days. (John Macdougall/AFP via Getty Images)

 📸 Day in Photos: Migrants Crossing English Channel, Forest Fires in Turkey, and Largest Flower Bloomed (Look)

🎙️ Podcast: The U.S. bunker-busters that ended the 12-day war in Iran sent metaphorical shockwaves all the way to Beijing. Join Terri Wu on China Watch as she analyzes how the complex moving pieces in this short conflict have rattled the regime’s confidence and its “rising East” and “declining West” narrative. (Listen)

 ✍️ Opinion: How the Supreme Court Went Wrong in the ‘Ghost Gun’ Case—by Rob Natelson (Read)

🎵 Music: Tchaikovsky - Hamlet (Listen)

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A detail of ‘Home Ranch,’ 1892, by Thomas Eakins. (Philadelphia Museum of Art)

One of the American West’s treasured contributions to the nation’s rich musical tapestry is the singing cowboy of the early 1900s. Entertainers such as Gene Autry and Roy Rogers perfected this archetype throughout the 1940s and early 1950s. 

But singing cowboys at the turn of the 20th century laid the groundwork. Although many of these performers hadn’t actually spent much time on a ranch, a select few pulled from real-life ranching experience and used it as inspiration for their careers.

Author Richard Carlin explained how this mysterious musical archetype affected the country’s view of the West in his book “Country Music: The People, Places, and Moments That Shaped the Country Sound.”

“The idea that the West was populated by a roving band of guitar-strumming, happy-go-lucky tunesmiths was spread mostly by city-born performers, most of whom had never punched cattle,” he wrote.

“Undoubtedly, some cowboys did sing—probably at night, to entertain themselves after a hard day on the trail.”

One of those cowboys was Texas native Jules Verne Allen. His songs and literary contribution to country music helped make the singing cowboy a mainstay of the genre that never went out of style.

Jules Verne Allen (1883–1945) was born in the bustling small town of Waxahachie, Texas. At 10 years old, he began his cowboy career as a cattle handler. When he got older, he covered hundreds of miles while driving cattle through the American West and into Mexico.

Cowboys often sang songs to pass the time while out on a cattle drive or bedding down for the night. Allen especially enjoyed learning various tunes, which were often sung a cappella or with a simple guitar. (More)

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