Minnesota shooting suspect had more than 45 names of elected officials, prosecutors say
Reuters reports that prosecutors said notebooks recovered from Boelter’s car, as well as the home where he had been staying, showed that he had meticulously planned the attacks for some time.
He had the names and, in some cases, home addresses for more than 45 elected officials – “mostly or all Democrats” – according to an affidavit from an FBI agent. Boelter’s notes indicated he had used a variety of people-finding websites to track down addresses.
In one notebook, Boelter noted that the Hortmans had two children and included details about their house, writing: “Big house off golf course 2 ways in to watch from one spot,” the affidavit said.
Hours after the shootings, with police searching for him, Boelter met an individual at a bus stop in Minneapolis and offered to buy his electric bicycle, according to prosecutors. After the two went to the person’s house, Boelter instead offered to buy his Buick.
Investigators on Sunday found the Buick in rural Sibley county, near his listed home address about an hour’s drive southwest of Minneapolis. Inside the car, officers found a handwritten letter to the FBI, in which Boelter gave his name and admitted to committing the shootings, according to the affidavit.
More than 20 Swat teams combed the area, aided by surveillance aircraft, officials said. Boelter, who was armed, crawled from a wooded area and surrendered to police in a field with no shots fired.
The killing was the latest in a series of high-profile episodes of political violence across the country, including a 2022 attack on former Democratic US House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband at their home, the attempted assassination of Donald Trump last year and an arson attack at Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro’s house in April.
Minnesota governor Tim Walz said after Boelter’s arrest:
This cannot be the norm. It cannot be the way that we deal with our political differences.
Key events
Starmer says US-UK trade deal to be completed ‘very soon’
Further to my earlier post, Britain and the United States should finalize “very soon” the implementation of a trade deal agreed last month, Keir Starmer has said ahead of a meeting with Donald Trump in Canada.
On the sidelines of the G7 summit, Starmer told reporters:
I’m certainly seeing President Trump today, and I’m going to discuss with him our trade deal.
I’m very pleased that we made that trade deal, and we’re in the final stages now of implementation, and I expect that to be completed very soon.
The UK was the first country to agree a framework deal for lower tariffs from Trump, with the US reducing tariffs on imports of UK cars, aluminium and steel, and Britain agreeing to lower tariffs on US beef and ethanol.
But implementation of the deal has been delayed while details were being hammered out. The proclamation readied by the White House will set an effective date in coming weeks, a source told Reuters.
On steel and aluminum, the US agreed to lower the 25% tariffs on imports from Britain to zero, subject to setting a quota for British steel imports that must meet supply chain requirements.
Britain had avoided tariffs of up to 50% on steel and aluminum that the US imposed on other countries earlier this month, but could face elevated tariffs from 9 July unless a deal to implement the tariff reduction is reached.
US seeks dismissal of Naval Academy case after ending race-conscious admissions
The US justice department has asked a federal appeals court to dismiss a lawsuit challenging race-conscious admissions at the US Naval Academy after the elite military school said it changed its policy under Donald Trump.
The Naval Academy, located in Annapolis, Maryland, disclosed in March that it was no longer considering race or ethnicity in its admissions decisions following directives from Trump and defense secretary Pete Hegseth.
The justice department and an anti-affirmative action group that had sued the academy, jointly told the court today that the policy change rendered the legal dispute moot.
“This Department is committed to ending illegal discrimination and restoring merit-based opportunity throughout the federal government,” attorney general Pam Bondi said in a statement.
The filing, in the US court of appeals for the fourth circuit, also asks the court to vacate a federal judge’s ruling last year finding that the prior race-conscious policy was legal.
The Biden administration defended affirmative action at the Naval Academy after the US supreme court exempted US military academies from its 2023 ruling barring consideration of race in college admissions.
The Naval Academy had long relied on its prior policy to raise its enrollment of Black, Hispanic and other minorities.
US conservatives and the Trump administration have argued that such policies disadvantage white and certain other applicants and do not improve military readiness.
Trump to sign proclamation formalizing US-UK trade deal in coming days – Reuters
Reuters is reporting that Donald Trump is expected to sign a proclamation finalizing a US-UK trade deal in the coming days, citing sources who say the proclamation will cover autos, beef, ethanol and steel. We’ll bring you more detail on this as we get it.
The trading framework was agreed in early May and earlier this month we reported that Keir Starmer hoped it would come into effect “in the coming weeks”.
House speaker Mike Johnson postpones trip to Israel
US House speaker Mike Johnson said he has postponed his planned 22 June trip to Israel to address its parliament, as an escalating battle between Israel and Iran has raised fears of a broader conflict.
“Due to the complex situation currently unfolding in Iran and Israel, [Knesset] Speaker [Amir] Ohana and I have made the decision to postpone the special session of the Knesset. We look forward to rescheduling the address in the near future and send our prayers to the people of Israel and the Middle East,” Johnson said in a statement.
French president Emmanuel Macron spoke at length with Donald Trump on tariffs and the crises in the Middle East and Ukraine, a French presidential official told Reuters.
The official did not give further details on the meeting, which took place on the sidelines of the G7 summit.
American Bar Association sues to block Trump administration’s ‘deliberate intimidation’ of law firms
The American Bar Association has sued the Trump administration, seeking an order that would bar the White House from pursuing what the ABA called a campaign of intimidation against major law firms.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington DC, said the administration violated the US Constitution in a series of executive orders targeting law firms over their past clients and lawyers they hired.
“There has never been a more urgent time for the ABA to defend its members, our profession and the rule of law itself,” the group’s president, William Bay, said in a statement.
The ABA, with about 150,000 paying members, is the country’s largest voluntary association for lawyers.
A White House spokesperson had no immediate comment.
Four law firms have separately sued the administration over Donald Trump’s orders, which stripped their lawyers of security clearances and restricted their access to government officials and federal contracting work.
Four different judges in Washington have sided with the firms and temporarily or permanently barred Trump’s orders against them.
One of the firms that sued and won a preliminary victory, Susman Godfrey, is representing the ABA in Monday’s lawsuit.
Despite Trump’s court losses, nine law firms have struck deals with the president, pledging nearly $1bn in free legal services on mutually agreed legal issues with the White House in order to stave off similar executive orders.
The ABA said in its lawsuit that Trump’s actions had made it difficult to find law firms willing to represent it in litigation adverse to the federal government, including a case it sought to join challenging the administration’s immigration policies.
The ABA said Trump had formed a “deliberate policy designed to intimidate and coerce law firms and lawyers to refrain from challenging the President or his Administration in court”.
Minnesota shooting suspect had more than 45 names of elected officials, prosecutors say
Reuters reports that prosecutors said notebooks recovered from Boelter’s car, as well as the home where he had been staying, showed that he had meticulously planned the attacks for some time.
He had the names and, in some cases, home addresses for more than 45 elected officials – “mostly or all Democrats” – according to an affidavit from an FBI agent. Boelter’s notes indicated he had used a variety of people-finding websites to track down addresses.
In one notebook, Boelter noted that the Hortmans had two children and included details about their house, writing: “Big house off golf course 2 ways in to watch from one spot,” the affidavit said.
Hours after the shootings, with police searching for him, Boelter met an individual at a bus stop in Minneapolis and offered to buy his electric bicycle, according to prosecutors. After the two went to the person’s house, Boelter instead offered to buy his Buick.
Investigators on Sunday found the Buick in rural Sibley county, near his listed home address about an hour’s drive southwest of Minneapolis. Inside the car, officers found a handwritten letter to the FBI, in which Boelter gave his name and admitted to committing the shootings, according to the affidavit.
More than 20 Swat teams combed the area, aided by surveillance aircraft, officials said. Boelter, who was armed, crawled from a wooded area and surrendered to police in a field with no shots fired.
The killing was the latest in a series of high-profile episodes of political violence across the country, including a 2022 attack on former Democratic US House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband at their home, the attempted assassination of Donald Trump last year and an arson attack at Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro’s house in April.
Minnesota governor Tim Walz said after Boelter’s arrest:
This cannot be the norm. It cannot be the way that we deal with our political differences.
The Minnesota attacks began around 2am on Saturday, when a gunman wearing a police-style tactical vest knocked on the Hoffmans’ door in Champlin, announced himself as a police officer and then shot the couple multiple times inside, according to prosecutors. He was driving an SUV outfitted with police-style lights and a fake license plate that read “POLICE.”
Boelter then traveled to the home of another state lawmaker in Maple Grove, where he rang the doorbell at 2.24am, Thompson said. The official was not home at the time.
Boelter also visited the home of a legislator in New Hope, prosecutors said. A New Hope officer – dispatched to the house to conduct a wellness check after police learned of the Hoffman shooting – took Boelter, who was parked outside, to be another police officer and pulled up next to him.
“He just sat there and stared straight ahead,” Thompson said of Boelter. The responding officer went to the door to wait for additional officers, and Boelter had left by the time they arrived, prosecutors said.
Shortly after, police went to the Hortmans’ house in Brooklyn Park as a precaution. The arriving officers saw the suspect shoot Mark Hortman through an open door around 3.35am and exchanged fire with him before he fled on foot out the back door, according to prosecutors. Melissa Hortman was already dead inside.
When police searched Boelter’s SUV after the shootings, they discovered three AK-47 assault rifles, a 9mm handgun, a gold police-style badge and the target list, according to authorities.
Suspect in Minnesota lawmaker killing visited other legislators’ homes, prosecutors say
The suspect in the assassination of a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband this weekend drove to the homes of two other state politicians before he succeeded in killing one of the targets of his carefully planned attack, federal authorities said today.
Vance Boelter, 57, faces state and federal charges of murder after he was arrested on Sunday night following a massive two-day manhunt that was the largest in state history.
He is charged with fatally shooting Melissa Hortman, the top Democrat in the Minnesota House, and her husband, Mark, in their home on Saturday. Boelter is also accused of shooting and wounding another Democratic lawmaker, state senator John Hoffman, and his wife Yvette, in their home a few miles away.
Prosecutors said Boelter also visited the homes of two other lawmakers on Saturday while disguised as a police officer, apparently targeting more victims. Investigators have said they discovered a list in his car that included the names of dozens of legislators.
Boelter was charged with two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of second-degree attempted murder in Hennepin County. The county’s chief prosecutor, Mary Moriarty, said at a news conference today that her office would seek first-degree murder charges, which carry a mandatory sentence of life without the possibility of parole.
Federal prosecutors separately charged Boelter with an array of crimes, including murder, which could lead to a death sentence.
“Political assassinations are rare,” Joseph Thompson, Minnesota’s acting US attorney, said at a news conference today. “They strike at the very core of our democracy.”
Boelter is expected to make an initial appearance in federal court on Monday afternoon.
Harvard wins extension of court order blocking Trump’s international student ban
A federal judge has said she would issue a brief extension of an order temporarily blocking Donald Trump’s plan to bar foreign nationals from entering the US to study at Harvard University while she decides whether to issue a longer-term injunction.
US district judge Allison Burroughs, at the end of a hearing in Boston in Harvard’s legal challenge to the restrictions, extended to 23 June a temporary restraining order that had been set to expire on Thursday. She said she wanted to give herself more time to prepare a ruling, adding:
We’ll kick out an opinion as soon as we can.
Ian Gershengorn, a lawyer for Harvard, told her that an injunction was necessary to ensure the Trump administration could not implement his latest bid to curtail the school’s ability to host international students.
The judge scheduled the hearing after issuing a temporary restraining order on 6 June preventing the administration from implementing a proclamation that Trump had signed a day earlier. A preliminary injunction would provide longer-term relief to Harvard.
Gershengorn argued Trump signed the proclamation to retaliate against Harvard in “plan violation” of its free speech rights under the Constitution’s first amendment for refusing to accede to his administration’s demands to control the school’s governance, curriculum and the ideology of its faculty and students.
The proclamation is a plain violation of the first amendment.
Donald Trump does not intend to sign a G7 statement related to Israel and Iran, CBS News reports, citing unnamed US officials.
A draft document discusses monitoring Iran, calls for both sides to protect civilians and for commitments to peace, according to the news outlet.
The US military has moved a large number of refueling aircraft to Europe to provide options to Donald Trump as Middle East tensions soar, two US officials have told Reuters.
The officials also said the US aircraft carrier Nimitz was heading to the Middle East, although one official said the movement was pre-planned.
Trump says it was a mistake to throw Russia out of G8
Trump once again complained about removing Russia from what was once the G8. Russia used to be a part of the exclusive club of major economies but was kicked out following its 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.
“The G7 used to be the G8. Barack Obama and a person named Trudeau didn’t want to have Russia in,” Trump said, referring to former Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau.
And I would say that was a mistake, because I think you wouldn’t have a war right now if you had Russia in and you wouldn’t have a war right now if Trump were president four years ago.
Trump claims Iran has signaled it wants to de-escalate conflict with Israel
Trump says Iran wants to talk about de-escalating hostilities with Israel, and he advises that they should do so immediately “before it’s too late”.
“I’d say Iran is not winning this war, and they should talk, and they should talk immediately before it’s too late,” Trump told reporters at the start of the G7 summit meeting with Canadian prime minister Mark Carney.
Trump reiterated unfounded claims that immigrants are intentionally being placed in cities in the US to bolster votes for Democratic candidates. He also repeated false claims that the majority of immigrants are criminals.
“Biden allowed 21 million people to come into our country, of that the vast number of those people are murderous killers, people from gangs, people from jails. They empty jails out into the US,” Trump said. “Most of those people are in the cities, all blue cities, all Democrat-run cities, and they think they’re going to use them to vote, it’s not going to happen.”
Trump meets Carney as G7 begins
Trump has kicked off the G7 summit by meeting with Canada’s prime minister.
Carney began the summit by welcoming President Trump and wishing him a belated birthday.
In an unusual twist, Trump is seated in a chair in front of the Canadian flag, while Carney is seated in front of a US flag.
Keir Starmer says he’ll hold a one-on-one meeting with President Trump on Monday about finalizing the UK-US trade deal the leaders agreed to in May.
Starmer said he’ll meet Trump on the margins of a G7 summit in Canada, “and I’m going to discuss with him our trade deal”. The British leader said the agreement is “in the final stages now of implementation, and I expect that to be completed very soon”.
The deal agreed last month would bring down import taxes on British cars, steel and aluminum in return for greater access to the British market for US products including beef and ethanol. But it has yet to take effect, leaving British businesses uncertain about whether the UK could face any surprise hikes from Trump.
G7 has consensus on need for Middle East de-escalation, says Starmer
Keir Starmer said he believed there was a consensus at the G7 summit in Canada on the need for de-escalation in the Israel-Iran conflict.
“I do think there’s a consensus for de-escalation. Obviously, what we need to do today is to bring that together and to be clear about how it is to be brought about,” the British prime minister told reporters.
