Iran-Linked Plot to Kill Ivanka Trump Revealed

The day's most striking single number was Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi -- the 32-year-old Iraqi national arrested in Turkey on May 15, extradited to the United States, and now held in solitary confinement at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. The New York Post reported Friday that the federal indictment charges him with 18 attacks or attempted attacks across Europe and the US, and that the case file alleges a plot to assassinate Ivanka Trump in revenge for the January 2020 US drone strike that killed Iranian Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani. Entifadh Qanbar, a former Iraqi deputy military attache in Washington, told the Post Al-Saadi had said associates "must kill Ivanka to burn Trump's house as he burned our house," and that Al-Saadi possessed a plan of her Florida residence; the indictment also covers a March arson of a Bank of New York Mellon branch in Amsterdam, an April knife attack on two Jewish victims in London, a March shooting at the building housing the US consulate in Toronto, and planned synagogue attacks in Liege and Rotterdam.

The Iran war's other ledger was domestic. Consumer sentiment in the University of Michigan's May reading fell to 44.2 -- the lowest in the survey's history and below April's previous record low of 49.8 -- with 57 percent of respondents spontaneously citing high prices as eroding personal finances, up from 50 percent the month before. Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller, quoted in coverage of the release, said inflation expectations one to five years out had moved up since the start of 2026, signalling reduced willingness to cut rates. An AP/NORC poll dropped Republican approval of Trump's economic handling to about 6 in 10, down from roughly 8 in 10 in February; consumer sentiment is down 21 percent since February. The dissonance the data point at -- a record-low sentiment alongside fresh stock-market highs -- is the political problem the White House is now carrying.

The Pentagon side of the same war made its own arrival. Reporting on US munitions stockpiles flagged severe drawdowns in THAAD interceptors, Tomahawk missiles and Patriot systems from the intensive Iran campaign, with analysts warning rebuilding could take years and that readiness for any next conflict is reduced. At GLOBSEC in Prague, European officials worked on insulating NATO from Trump's unpredictability after the White House withdrew 5,000 troops from Germany and cancelled intermediate-range missile deployments, deepening the rift with Chancellor Friedrich Merz over the Iran war. Across the Pacific, Taiwan's National Security Council chief Joseph Wu said China had deployed over 100 naval and coast guard vessels from the Yellow Sea through the South China Sea to the western Pacific, exceeding previous peaks. Former Israeli national security adviser Eyal Hulata, in a separate interview, said Israel would strike again if Iran resumed enrichment, citing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's earlier warning that the war was "not over" until Iran's enriched uranium was removed and its facilities dismantled.

Inside the administration, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced her resignation Friday, effective June 30, citing her husband's cancer diagnosis. Trump praised her "remarkable work" on Truth Social; she had been a polarising figure who took pro-Russia and anti-Ukraine-war positions during her tenure. The same day, the White House posted an AI-generated video of the president throwing comedian Stephen Colbert into a trash can after Colbert's final late-night episode, and the Justice Department pulled every press release related to the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack prosecutions from its website, labelling them "partisan propaganda" -- this after Trump's earlier pardon of more than 1,500 defendants and the creation of a $1.776 billion compensation fund for them. CNBC reported separately that Congress, not the courts, has the strongest chance to block a $1.8 billion DOJ "lawfare" compensation fund set up to settle Trump's own suit against the IRS, with members of Congress holding the firmest legal grounds against the use of taxpayer money for it. US District Judge John Bates ordered Trump aides to keep observing the Presidential Records Act, rejecting a DOJ opinion that the law unconstitutionally intruded on presidential power.

Immigration policy moved in step. US Citizenship and Immigration Services announced on May 22 that most foreigners in the United States on temporary visas -- work, tourism, study -- will have to return to their home countries to apply for green cards, except in extraordinary circumstances; the change rewrites the path many adjustment-of-status applicants had been on.

The day's largest physical incident was unrelated to any of the above: an aerospace manufacturing facility in Garden Grove, California began leaking from a 34,000-gallon tank of methyl methacrylate, prompting the Orange County Fire Authority to evacuate more than 44,000 residents across Garden Grove, with the agency warning the tank could either spill toxic material or explode and a possible blast radius of several blocks. The evacuation order was still in force at end of day.