Escalating US-Iran strikes threaten interim peace agreement

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“Escalating US-Iran strikes threaten the interim peace agreement, with Iran attacking Bahrain and Kuwait in response to US strikes on Iranian sites. The conflict centers around control of the strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway for global oil and gas supplies. Iran aims to control the strait and charge fees, while the US promotes a southern lane bypassing Iran.

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Tehran attacks Bahrain and Kuwait amid efforts to open strait of Hormuz without Iran’s direct oversight

Jason Burke

Boats anchored off Oman's northern Musandam peninsula near the strait of Hormuz. Iran launched attacks on US sites in the Gulf in response to American strikes on Tehran. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

A new round of escalating strikes between Iran and the US has continued, further undermining the fragile interim peace agreement between the two countries, and prompting Donald Trump to threaten violence that would ensure Iran “will no longer exist”.

On Sunday, Tehran launched drone and missile attacks against Bahrain and Kuwait after new US strikes on sites in southern Iran and threatened a “complete halt” to negotiations to end the war. Trump said that a moment might come soon when he abandoned talks and the US would “militarily finish the job”.

The US president posted on social media: “If that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist!”

Kuwait, which hosts a major US army base, said it had intercepted two ballistic missiles and that there were no reports of injuries or damage, while Bahrain’s interior ministry said the Iranian strikes had damaged a residential building near the international airport and that no one had been killed.

Bahrain civil defence and rescue personnel work in a residential building in Muharraq, which the interior ministry said had been hit by an Iranian drone. Photograph: Bahrain Police Media/Reuters

The latest violence has been triggered by efforts to reopen the strait of Hormuz to all shipping without Iran’s direct oversight. The strategically critical waterway, which carried a fifth of the world’s oil and liquid gas supplies before the war, has long been considered an international passageway.

US Central Command said in a statement that its strikes were “in direct response to continued Iranian aggression against commercial shipping” and targeted Iranian military surveillance, communications, air defence, drone storage and mine-laying facilities.

Washington has been promoting a southern lane along the coast of Oman, while Tehran, which ultimately aims to charge fees for use of the strait, wants ships to ‌use a northern route through its waters and under its control.

Hundreds of vessels, including tankers laden with oil, have been blockaded inside the Gulf by the closure of the strait since war broke out. Some have chanced the passage through the past two weeks, leading oil prices to drop to close to prewar levels and bringing relief to economies around the world.

The US military accused Iran of violating the ceasefire on Saturday by attacking the Panama-flagged tanker Kiku, which carried crude oil for the state-run energy company of Qatar. According to ship-tracking websites, the Kiku appeared to be attempting to use the southern corridor near the coast of Oman.

A Singapore-flagged container ship was struck by an Iranian drone while transiting the same route last week.

Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, restated Tehran’s claim to sole control of the waterway during a state visit to Iraq on Sunday. He said in Baghdad: “Any interference in this matter, any attempt to establish new or separate arrangements from those currently being carried out by the Islamic Republic of Iran, will only lead to further complications, delay the reopening of the strait of Hormuz, and increase the level of tension.”

Araghchi speaking during a joint press conference in Baghdad. Photograph: Xinhua/Shutterstock

Observers say Iran is using its ability to threaten shipping in the strait not just as leverage in negotiations with the US, but to intimidate neighbouring countries and establish a more dominant role in the region.

Aragchi also called for the establishment of a security framework with Gulf countries that would exclude the US. He said: “We should reach a new framework that includes all countries in the region and without the presence or interference of any country from outside the region.”

Mediators from Qatar and Pakistan successfully brought representatives of Washington and Tehran together in Switzerland earlier this month but have been unable to bridge wide gaps on contentious issues such as the future of the strait of Hormuz, sanctions relief for Tehran, and the future of Iran’s nuclear programme. Under the memorandum of understanding signed earlier this month, the two countries have 60 days to work out the details before signing a final agreement.

Leaders in Tehran and Washington face domestic political pressures to avoid a return to conflict and appear committed to a ceasefire for now, despite frequent bellicose rhetoric.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed responsibility for both new attacks on Sunday. It said: “Let the enemy know that violating the ceasefire … will lead to a complete halt of ongoing processes.”

Oil tankers sailing off the coast of Kuwait on Saturday. Photograph: Yasser Al-Zayyat/AFP/Getty Images

The IRGC, which controls Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal, has gained influence in Iran in recent months. Its navy command said American bases in the region would “experience hell in the coming days”.

Bahrain’s foreign ministry denounced the attacks, which it called “a dangerous escalation that reveals that what Tehran is doing is not a passing act, nor an isolated incident, but rather a deliberate approach and a systematic pattern of repeated aggression against the sovereignty of the kingdom, and the security of its citizens and residents”.

Bahrain is home to the US navy’s 5th Fleet, whose base there came under repeated attack during the war.

Violence has also continued in Lebanon, further threatening the agreement between Iran and the US to end their own conflict.

An Israeli military vehicle travelling past destroyed buildings in southern Lebanon on Sunday.Photograph: Ohad Zwigenberg/AP

Israeli military officials said a soldier had been killed on Sunday when soldiers encountered a “Hezbollah terrorist after entering a suspicious structure in the area of Deir Seryan in southern Lebanon”.

The Lebanese state news agency reported a new Israeli attack targeting the outskirts of the towns of Deir Seryan and Taybeh in southern Lebanon.

The fresh clashes in Lebanon come two days after Israel and Lebanon signed an agreement aimed at ending hostilities. The deal calls for Israeli forces to begin an initial withdrawal from the south of the country and their replacement by the Lebanese armed forces who will assume responsibility for local security and dismantling the military infrastructure of Hezbollah.

They will also further undermine prospects for any durable peace agreement between Iran and the US, which Tehran has insisted is dependent on a ceasefire in Lebanon.

Israel, which is not a party to the US deal with Iran, invaded southern Lebanon in March in a new offensive against Hezbollah, which is supported by Iran.

Israel and Lebanon have repeatedly agreed to US-brokered ceasefires, the latest on Friday, but these have had only limited effect, with Israel insisting it will not withdraw from Lebanese territory it has seized, and Hezbollah repeatedly rejecting calls to give up its arms as long as Israeli troops remain in place.

With reporting by Reuters and Associated Press“ 

 

Jeffries Faces Steep Test as Far Left Builds Strength in Congress

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“ Avila Chevalier’s victory over a close ally of Hakeem Jeffries in a New York primary signals a growing far-left presence in Congress. This new wave of progressive candidates, like Avila Chevalier, could challenge Jeffries’ leadership as he aims to become Speaker. While unlikely to block his path, they could create divisions within the Democratic caucus, similar to the challenges faced by Republican leaders.

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The victories of Darializa Avila Chevalier and other anti-establishment candidates are changing the face of House Democrats, posing a challenge for their leader.

June 27, 2026

Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the New York Democrat and minority leader, is in line to be speaker if his party wins the House in November.Eric Lee for The New York Times

Just days after she was elected to Congress in 2018, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joined protesters outside Nancy Pelosi’s office, urging the speaker-in-waiting to take more aggressive action on climate change.

More than 50 people were arrested that day as Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, who had won her seat after upsetting one of Ms. Pelosi’s loyal lieutenants in a primary, told reporters she had not yet decided whether she would support the longtime party leader for speaker in January. (Eventually, she did.)

Now Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the New York Democrat who succeeded Ms. Pelosi as party leader and is in line to be speaker if his party wins the House in November, is facing a similar challenge.

This time it is Darializa Avila Chevalier, the 32-year-old democratic socialist who defeated a longtime ally of Mr. Jeffries in a New York primary this week. She is now the most polarizing face of a new crop of far-left progressives across the country who are changing the face of the House’s Democratic caucus in ways that could pose a major challenge for their leaders.

Mr. Jeffries, who has led House Democrats since 2022, is poised to become the first Black speaker next year. With no other Democrat currently stepping forward to challenge him, it is unlikely the incoming faction of anti-establishment members would block his path.

But they could make his job very difficult, stoking the same kind of bitter divisions that have made the House Republican majority ungovernable in recent years.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani gave strong support to Darializa Avila Chevalier in her challenge to the Democratic incumbent.Lexi Parra/The New York Times

Last week, Ms. Avila Chevalier scored an upset primary victory against Representative Adriano Espaillat of New York, the chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and one of Mr. Jeffries’s close confidants, whom he backed vigorously in his re-election campaign.

And like Ms. Ocasio-Cortez before her, Ms. Avila Chevalier is making no promises about supporting Mr. Jeffries or any other of her party’s leaders.

“That’s a conversation I’ll be having with my coalition, my community,” she said on Thursday on MS NOW when asked whether she would back Mr. Jeffries for speaker. “I will be looking at what makes most sense in terms of the strategy for how to deliver for New Yorkers.”

Many democratic socialist candidates like Ms. Avila Chevalier view Mr. Jeffries with particular aversion, regarding him as an establishment politician who has purposefully held back some of their progressives goals. They also see him as someone too closely aligned with AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying group that has come to be seen by many Democrats as politically radioactive.

Mr. Jeffries will have to negotiate with Ms. Avila Chevalier and like-minded Democrats for their votes. But it’s not clear what they want and what he will be able to offer. And he is under competing pressures from more centrist Democrats, who have privately warned him that the party will get flattened if he goes too far in appeasing the left.

How much power Ms. Avila Chevalier and other far-left Democrats will have to make demands of Mr. Jeffries will depend in large part on the size of the margin that Democrats have in the House. But there appears to be a growing bloc of anti-establishment progressives who could cause trouble for Mr. Jeffries next year if the party’s majority is small.

In Colorado next week, Representative Diana DeGette, a 30-year veteran of Congress, is facing a serious primary challenge from a 29-year-old democratic socialist and first-time candidate, Melat Kiros. In Pennsylvania, Chris Rabb, an anti-establishment candidate aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America, won his primary last month in a solidly Democratic Philadelphia district, all but assuring his election. And in central New Jersey, Adam Hamawy, a progressive who ran on abolishing ICE and dismantling the Department of Homeland Security, won the primary to succeed the retiring Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman.

Should they prevail and Democrats win control, they could pose a steep test for a new speaker who has never guided his party in the majority.

Ms. Avila Chevalier also appears to be more of a wild card than Ms. Ocasio-Cortez ever was. Her archive of deleted social media posts includes ones that used profane language to criticize the Democratic Party and leaders like former Vice President Kamala Harris, questioned the reported origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, and disparaged interracial relationships. She campaigned on a hard-line anti-Israel platform and has called for the abolition of prisons, favors open borders and wants an end to deportations.

She will arrive in Congress with no loyalty to any Democrat in leadership or the party, which did not support her. Her view of Israel was shaped by living for months in the West Bank.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York democratic socialist elected in 2018, had disagreements with Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker, but maintained a relationship.Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

Back in 2019, Ms. Pelosi managed, with some difficulty, to establish a working relationship with Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and a band of like-minded women of color who dubbed themselves “The Squad.” But the former speaker had a once-in-a-generation political talent for shutting down revolts and bending holdouts to her will, as well as decades of experience leading the Democratic caucus under her belt.

Mr. Jeffries, who has kept the caucus mostly united in the minority over the past four years, has yet to be tested as speaker, and many colleagues view him as stylistically remote. His style, so far, has been less cutthroat than Ms. Pelosi’s, and Democrats often grumble that they don’t hear directly from him the way they used to hear from her.

He has had some success in making allies of the progressives currently in Congress. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez serves on his task force addressing the critical issues of affordability and health care, and Mr. Jeffries gave her a coveted seat on the Energy and Commerce Committee.

After Ms. Avila Chevalier’s victory last week, it was Representative Katherine M. Clark of Massachusetts, the No. 2 Democrat, who reached out to her, not Mr. Jeffries himself.

Some progressives said they were not worried about the far left subjecting Mr. Jeffries to the same dysfunction that has reigned in the House G.O.P. as far-right Republicans have made life impossible for Speaker Mike Johnson and a long line of Republican speakers before him.

“They want to break things,” Representative Greg Casar of Texas, the chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said of ultraconservative Republicans. “You just need one or two people to break in Congress. Progressives want to pass legislation, and that takes 218 votes.”

Mr. Casar added: “Freedom Caucus members deliver to their base by stopping action on the floor, by nothing happening. If we want a higher minimum wage, to create union jobs, to regulate big tech, we have to get to 218 votes.”

Former Representative Jamaal Bowman of New York conceded there would be “points of contention” between Ms. Avila Chevalier and Democratic leaders. But he said she was not coming to Congress to oust Mr. Jeffries or any other party leader.

“Darializa is an educator, a community organizer, who really wants to make our democracy better,” Mr. Bowman said. “She’s not there to just pop off for the sake of popping off just because you want to rabble-rouse against your leader.”

And Brad Lander, another progressive who won his primary this week against a more mainstream Democrat, Representative Dan Goldman of New York, said it was time to end party infighting and unite around Mr. Jeffries and an affordability agenda.

But he also suggested that Mr. Jeffries would have to shift on some critical issues, including embracing a push in his ranks to cut off military aid to Israel, to keep his caucus unified enough to achieve major priorities.

“People feel like the system is rigged and want to see some real substantive, concrete change,” Mr. Lander said in an interview. “And yes, people don’t want to keep sending military aid to Israel. We have a lot more to gain on making progress on those things than on factional fighting.”

Some said the test for Mr. Jeffries is starting now.

“A lot are looking to see how he tamps down a lot of the nastiness coming from key people in the Democratic Party,” said Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington, a former chairwoman of the Progressive Caucus, referring to disparaging comments by the former party chair Jaime Harrison and the strategist James Carville about the far-left candidates prevailing in their primaries.

But she also noted that rifts between leaders and the left were nothing new in Congress.

Ms. Jayapal recalled a tough negotiation with leadership in 2019 as she withheld her vote on a rules package that needed to pass for the new Congress to get underway. In a series of frantic, last-minute calls before the vote, she asked for a public commitment from Ms. Pelosi that she could hold a series of hearings about Medicare for All. Ms. Jayapal got her hearings, and Ms. Pelosi got her critical vote.

“Jeffries will have to do that” to round up the votes for speaker and to get things done should he win, Ms. Jayapal said.

But she added that Mr. Jeffries also had work to do “untangling himself” from AIPAC and big money.

“AIPAC is toxic to our brand,” she said. “He’s going to have to figure out how to navigate that.”

Annie Karni is a congressional correspondent for The Times.“

 

Rats, Leaks and Broken Elevators: Repair Backlog Plagues Federal Buildings

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“A $50 billion maintenance backlog plagues federal buildings, causing health and safety hazards for employees and the public. The lengthy congressional approval process for repairs exacerbates the issue, with costs rising as problems persist. The pandemic worsened conditions, leading to stagnant water, mold, and pest infestations, highlighting the urgent need for improved building maintenance.

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After decades, deferred maintenance totals an estimated $50 billion. But getting repair funds from Congress is a laborious process.

June 28, 2026Updated 8:00 a.m. ET

Hoses and plastic bags being used to manage a leaky roof in an Internal Revenue Service building on the Chamblee campus in Georgia.

Hoses and plastic bags being used to manage a leaky roof in an Internal Revenue Service building on the Chamblee campus in Georgia.

Rain has been seeping into an Internal Revenue Service building in Atlanta through leaks in the roof that have gone on for years. The mold in Veterans Affairs work spaces in Hilo, Hawaii, got so bad that visitors complained. And on any given day, people in an Oakland, Calif., federal building are at risk of getting stuck in one of its outdated elevators.

Across the federal government, employees are working in buildings that have persistent health and safety problems, in part the result of decades of backlogged maintenance that totals as much as $50 billion, according to one recent estimate by an oversight board. In several years, the cost is set to exceed the entire value of the federal government’s real estate portfolio, the Public Buildings Reform Board said earlier this year.

The health and safety risks were exacerbated last year by the Trump administration’s push for federal workers to return to the office, forcing more employees into buildings whose longstanding needs had gone unaddressed for years.

Unlocking money for repairs is a lengthy and bureaucratic process. Under federal law, Congress must approve major improvements to buildings run by the General Services Administration that total more than $3.96 million — an amount that would cover the cost of replacing just three elevators at a time when the government needs to replace dozens.

The approval process takes an average of 435 days, the G.S.A. said, and in many cases even longer, meaning costs balloon as problems fester.

A project to replace the roof and HVAC systems and update the electrical system of the John F. Kennedy Federal Building in Boston has increased by more than 400 percent since it was first presented to Congress in 2016, according to the G.S.A. Since the 24-story building was first flagged for improvements, it has developed additional problems with its elevators, which are more than 30 years old and have entrapped people at least 49 times in the past two years.

The John F. Kennedy Federal Building in Boston has been plagued by problems with its elevators, which are more than 30 years old and have entrapped people at least 49 times in the past two years.Christopher Evans/Boston Herald, via Getty Images

Meanwhile, less costly maintenance needs across the government have piled up amid a focus on issues that could be life-threatening, according to federal employees and government officials.

“This isn’t just an accounting exercise,” Edward C. Forst, the head of the General Services Administration, told Congress in March. “This represents real buildings deteriorating and real safety hazards developing when we do not address problems when they arise.”

The conditions affect not just federal workers, but also members of the public who routinely visit the buildings for services such as veterans and Social Security benefits.

In May, Mr. Forst and leaders of 21 federal agencies asked the top Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate to change the appropriations process and give the G.S.A. full access to the federal buildings fund, and to raise the threshold for how much the agency can spend.

So far, the lobbying effort has not had an impact, and Congress has kept in place the oversight requirement for the G.S.A. to submit detailed requests for projects exceeding $3.96 million. Mr. Forst asked Congress to raise it to $75 million.

Dan Mathews, a former head of the G.S.A. division that manages real estate, said that it was unlikely that Congress would change the law, in part because the state of federal buildings gets little attention. For lawmakers of both parties, spending money on government itself rather more tangible services for voters is not a top priority.

“It doesn’t fall that high, and it never will,” said Mr. Mathews, now a member of the reform board, which was set up a decade ago to identify federal properties that can be offloaded. “Government is a terrible owner of real estate.”

Worsened by the pandemic

The G.S.A., which serves as the landlord for civilian government agencies, owns about 1,475 buildings and properties in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, according to the agency’s online inventory. On average, the buildings are 50 years old. The estimated $50 billion maintenance backlog involves a range of projects, including roof repairs and replacements, fixes to heating and cooling systems, electrical upgrades and asbestos remediation.

In its budget request for 2027, the G.S.A. identified a dozen buildings with the most urgent need of repairs, including seven federal courthouses. Some have been on the list for multiple years.

The decline and decay has been decades in the making, but the coronavirus pandemic created new problems. Many federal offices sat empty for years as employees moved to remote work. Water lay stagnant in pipes. Flora and fauna moved in. HVAC filters went uncleaned and unrepaired. Mold grew.

Employees began to return in 2022, but many agencies allowed some remote work flexibility. Last year, Mr. Trump ordered all federal workers to return to the office as soon as possible, and directed managers to terminate remote work arrangements.

Many employees returning to the office encountered problematic conditions. Water at the Food and Drug Administration headquarters contained Legionella, the bacteria that causes Legionnaires’ disease, a dangerous type of pneumonia, according to the G.S.A.’s website. The website also says buildings with the bacteria can be safely occupied, with “appropriate control measures.” Legionella can develop in water when plumbing fixtures go unused for a period of time. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that there is no safe level.

“Coming out of Covid, you had so many water systems that were just sitting with stagnant water in them that you’ve started to get a buildup of all kinds of unfortunate things, like Legionella,” Brian Gibson, G.S.A.’s deputy assistant inspector general for real property audits, said in an interview. “It’s a risk. It’s a problem.”

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An F.D.A. spokeswoman said the most recent test for Legionella, which was in May, came back negative.

The Mazzoli Federal Building in Louisville, Ky., has also had longstanding problems with Legionella in its water, according to an employee in the building familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution, like others who described their working conditions.

Records obtained by The New York Times show that laboratory tests found Legionella in building water fountains and sinks in 2024 and 2025. To this day, there are signs around the Louisville building advising that Legionella has been detected in the drinking water, according to the worker. The G.S.A. did not respond to questions about the Mazzoli building.

Some buildings were in even worse condition. The G.S.A. had to lease new space for some of its employees because 40 percent of its headquarters was deemed unsafe, largely because old radiators and window air conditioning units did not meet air quality standards for ventilation, the agency said. 

Despite months of internal complaints, mold festered inside the Veterans Affairs offices in Hilo, Hawaii, for so long that when it was finally evaluated at the beginning of this year, an employee was told to not work in proximity to it, according to a person familiar with the situation. The G.S.A. said that the problem had been resolved, and that the space was safe.

Jordan Barab, a deputy assistant secretary of labor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration from 2009 to 2017, said that mold, bad water and animals in federal buildings were the kinds of problems that could fall through the cracks.

“They don’t hit the headlines like somebody falling off a building or a huge explosion,” he said. “But workers have a right to have a safe workplace.”

The federal government’s own regulatory agency for safe and healthy working conditions has flagged problems at facilities across the country.

In St. Paul, Minn., the federal government notified the Army Corps of Engineers about an infestation of stinging insects, including wasps and hornets, on the 11th floor of the building where the government leases office space, according to a Jan. 7 letter from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

The Army Corps of Engineers said the OSHA case was closed on June 9, and the issue appears to be resolved.

‘Multiple screams a day’

The employees who work at two I.R.S. buildings on the Chamblee campus in Atlanta had a rough spring.

In one of the buildings, workers have been greeted by rats struggling to escape glue traps that have been placed in the middle of their work space.

“It’s multiple being caught a day,” said Sydney Monger, who worked in accounts management in the building until May 29, when she quit, in part because of the rats. “It’s multiple screams a day just on our floor.”

Rat infestations can cause serious health problems, including the transmission of diseases through their urine, droppings and saliva.

In another I.R.S. building on the Chamblee campus, a leaky roof has worsened without repair. When it rains, a makeshift catheter-type contraption of plastic sheeting, hoses and trash cans is attached to the ceiling in parts of the building to direct the rain water into a receptacle.

After a local news report on the rodent complaints and a recent protest by workers, Mr. Forst and the chief financial officer for the I.R.S. visited the campus on June 15 to see the problems for themselves. They decided the situation warranted an aggressive plan, the G.S.A. said, adding that pest management found evidence of mice, not rats.

The agency described the leaky roof as an urgent situation, and said it was using funds to fix it in a piecemeal approach so it did not have to wait for Congress to approve the project funding.

In Austin, I.R.S. employees who work in a leased building have described broken revolving doors at the building’s entrances, out-of-service bathrooms, poor ventilation and leaks that some said have caused headaches, according to an employee. The employee complained of having itchy eyes after entering the building.

Earlier this year, the city documented sewer gas escaping from a drain in one of the men’s bathrooms, which could explain a rotten egg smell workers have reported.

In early April, Austin city officials found 105 code violations in the building, including exposed wiring, improperly installed HVAC units on the roof, broken drinking fountains, leaky faucets and equipment installed without permits. The G.S.A. said that the odors in the building had been addressed, and that other fixes were slated to be completed by October.

Some problems have festered for so long that earlier this year, the federal judiciary asked Congress to take over the management of its buildings that were deeply in need of repair, because the G.S.A. had not been able to do it fast enough.

The cost of the federal maintenance backlog could now total as much as $50 billion, and is on track to cost more than the value of the federal government’s entire real estate portfolio by 2030, according to the Public Buildings Reform Board, which was created to identify properties to be sold.

Full access to the federal building fund will not solve the problem, said the board, which has urged the government to sell underused buildings that have massive deferred maintenance costs.

“The bottom line is that the system is working against the American taxpayer,” Nick Rahall, a board member and former Democratic representative from West Virginia, said on Thursday during a public hearing. “The maintenance backlog translates into unhealthy and sometimes unsafe work environments for our federal employees.”

1. 

   Eileen Sullivan

   Correspondent

   Before I started reporting on this story, I took for granted that I work in an office without mold or rats scampering around the ground. Although I should probably take the stairs more often for exercise, I never worry about getting stuck when I take the elevator to my office.Work is hard enough without those distractions and the associated health hazards that come with some of them. But many federal workers and visitors to federal buildings experience these conditions for months at a time — and sometimes years — because the government cannot keep up with routine maintenance and repairs.I definitely had my gutters cleaned during the reporting of this story.

Eileen Sullivan is a Times reporter covering the changes to the federal work force under the Trump administration.“

 

Trump Cut a Billion-Dollar Mining Deal. His Sons Stand to Profit.

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“A deal between the U.S. and Kazakhstan, facilitated by President Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, granted an American company access to Kazakhstan’s vast tungsten reserves. The Trump and Lutnick families, through their respective investment firms, have financial ties to the deal and other critical mining projects, raising concerns about potential conflicts of interest. The surge in federal funding for critical minerals, driven by the need to reduce reliance on China, has created a lucrative opportunity for these families.

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An agreement between the U.S. and Kazakhstan has given a group of American investors with ties to the president and the commerce secretary access to one of the world’s largest untapped reserves of tungsten.

June 28, 2026Updated 9:52 a.m. ET

Outside the village of Unrek, in rural Kazakhstan, the Soviet Union dug holes into the earth during the Cold War to prospect for tungsten. An American company plans to break ground there again.By Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

Outside the village of Unrek, in rural Kazakhstan, the Soviet Union dug holes into the earth during the Cold War to prospect for tungsten. An American company plans to break ground there again.By Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

By Paul Sonne and Eric Lipton

Paul Sonne reported from Unrek, Karaganda and Astana in Kazakhstan, and Eric Lipton from Washington.

When Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick met with Kazakhstan’s president at the St. Regis Hotel last September in New York, President Trump jumped in by phone as the men sealed a deal on a top priority for Washington.

During the call, Mr. Trump and his team won an agreement from the Kazakh leader to give a little-known American company access to one of the world’s largest untapped reserves of tungsten, a metal that the United States desperately needs for the production of missile warheads, fighter jets, computer chips and other critical goods.

Ahead of the deal, the Trump administration approved preliminary applications for as much as $1.6 billion in federal financing for the American company, now called Kaz Resources, which plans to break ground on the project in rural Kazakhstan.

It was not only Mr. Trump and Mr. Lutnick who saw an opportunity.

Their sons were soon doing business with partners in a deal that their fathers were negotiating, continuing a pattern of self-enrichment in the second Trump administration that has few precedents in American history.

Within weeks of the St. Regis negotiations, investors with a firm called Dominari Securities, which is housed at Trump Tower in New York and partly owned by the president’s two eldest sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, joined with other partners to take a 20 percent stake in a corporate entity related to the Kazakhstan project.

Around the same time, Cantor Fitzgerald, an investment company controlled by Mr. Lutnick’s family and overseen by his sons Brandon and Kyle Lutnick, helped one of the lead investors working with Dominari on the Kazakh deal raise $210 million in new capital for a related entity. Such rounds of fund-raising typically net Cantor millions of dollars in fees.

The Kazakh deal was ultimately signed on Nov. 6, six days after the investment involving the Trump sons and their partners, which was not publicly disclosed at the time.

The arrangement is hardly an outlier. One or both families have financial ties to at least 14 companies that are actively working with the federal government on critical mining deals, including the Kazakhstan project, according to federal filings examined by The New York Times.

All 14 of these companies have either benefited directly from offers of financial assistance from the Trump administration, or have pending permit applications before the Commerce Department, which Mr. Lutnick oversees, The Times found. The total amount of federal funding that the Trump administration has provided or is considering providing to the companies exceeds $8.9 billion, according to public statements by the companies and federal government.

See all the mining companies with ties to C Cantor Fitzgerald
or the T Trump family

The 14 companies working on critical mining deals with the U.S. government that have ties to Cantor Fitzgerald or the Trump family.

USA Rare Earth

Approved to receive up to $1.3 billion in Commerce loans and $277 million in direct federal funding to accelerate neodymium-iron-boron magnet production and potentially another $565 million for rare earths mine in Brazil now held by a company it is acquiring.

Ties: Cantor Fitzgerald as lead agent on capital raise

Kaz Resources

Pursuing $900 million in financing from the Export-Import Bank and up to $700 million from the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation to support plan to build tungsten mine in Kazakstan

Ties: Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr. are investors in firms involved in the deal; Dominari, another firm the Trump sons own in part, has financial ties to the deal. Cantor Fitzgerald helped one partner in the deal raise capital

Perpetua Resources

Approved for a $2.9 billion loan from the Export-Import Bank for a central Idaho gold and antimony project

Ties: Cantor Fitzgerald as underwriter

This emboldened mixing of federal policymaking and personal business began shortly after Mr. Trump returned to office last year, when the Trump and Lutnick sons played a role in billions of dollars of cryptocurrency deals as the fathers helped set policies that supercharged the crypto industry.

Now, the families’ ethically tangled pursuit of profits is extending to the new arms race for critical minerals.

These kinds of deals are a warning sign, said Representative Maxine Dexter of Oregon, the top Democrat on the House panel that investigates accusations of wrongdoing in the mining industry.

“Congress needs to make sure that taxpayer dollars are being used in the public’s interest and not to benefit family members or those closely tied with the Trump administration,” Ms. Dexter said in an interview.

The White House and the Commerce Department, in separate statements, rejected any suggestion that the Trump administration was improperly mixing government actions with family business.

“The only special interest guiding the Trump administration’s decision-making is the best interest of the American people,” Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, said in a statement to The Times. “Securing and reshoring America’s critical supply chains has been a top priority for President Trump, and Secretary Lutnick along with the rest of the administration continue to take historic action to safeguard America’s national and economic security.”

President

Donald Trump

Commerce Secretary

Howard Lutnick 

The U.S. government is

considering providing as

much $1.6 billion

in financing for a

Kazakhstan mining deal

ASP subsidiary

invests in

the deal

Trump’s

sons were

investors in

the deal

Lutnick's sons

raised capital for

ASP Isotopes

Dominari Securities

Donald

Trump Jr.

Brandon

Lutnick

Simon Ducroquet/The New York Times

At the center of the Kazakhstan deal is an Australia-born rabbi named Pini Althaus, who moved to the United States years ago and set his sights on critical minerals.

Mr. Althaus is the executive chairman of Kaz Resources and the related company that will mine the Kazakh tungsten deposit, and he remains a shareholder in another critical minerals firm he founded that secured up to $1.6 billion in Commerce Department financing this month.

He has proved to be a savvy player, soliciting — and receiving — direct support from top-level federal officials, including Mr. Lutnick, in his efforts to secure deals.

In a series of interviews, he said his discussions with the U.S. government about the tungsten deal started during the Biden administration and did not benefit from any political favors.

Mr. Althaus said that in the weeks after the St. Regis meeting, he was approached by new investors, but that he had never met Mr. Trump’s sons and did not know they were involved. He later came to learn about the Trump family’s participation and understood how that might generate questions, he said.

“I can see how the optics might be disturbing to some people,” Mr. Althaus said. “But that’s unfortunate because this company and this project goes way beyond any one president, let alone any family.”

Central Asia’s Promise

Past the herds of free-roaming horses, the abandoned skeleton of a Soviet worker village and the rolling hills of a verdant Kazakh steppe are the giant water-filled craters at the center of the U.S. deal.

Here, outside the village of Unrek, population 407, the little lakes mark the places where the Soviet Union dug holes to prospect for tungsten.

With its exceptional hardness, density and high melting point, tungsten became known as the “war metal,” with key uses in munitions, aviation and weapons.

The Soviet Union’s collapse interrupted its plans for new mines in Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic. Tungsten mining in the United States also petered out, with the last operating U.S. mine, in Utah, ceasing production about a decade ago.

The shells of prefabricated buildings that the Soviet Union had constructed for a worker village stand as an unfinished ghost town between tungsten deposits on the Kazakh steppe.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

China came to dominate the global tungsten trade. But as Mr. Trump was returning to the White House, Beijing began restricting tungsten and other critical mineral exports, sending the benchmark price for the metal outside China surging sixfold in the past year.

Mr. Trump and his aides responded by pushing through, with the help of Congress, a giant wave of federal funding to bankroll a new generation of U.S. mining firms.

Since Mr. Trump returned to office, the federal government has given conditional or final approval to 60 critical minerals projects worldwide backed by $18.6 billion in federal loans, loan guarantees or other financing, according to a count in May by BMO Capital Markets, a leading bank in the sector. That is the largest amount in U.S. history, a bank executive said.

The Pentagon and the Export-Import Bank, where Mr. Lutnick sits on the board, are among the federal agencies bankrolling the push. The moves have created a modern-day gold rush in the critical minerals industry, as start-ups seek to get a chunk of the federal largess.

For example, Donald Trump Jr. is a partner at another investment firm that last summer took a stake in a tiny start-up mining company called Vulcan Elements. Months later, the company signed a nearly $700 million deal with the federal government to help finance the expansion of its production in North Carolina.

“The level of activity compared to, say, 2023 is like night and day,” said Max Yerrill, a BMO vice president. “It has been one of the hottest sectors.”

For Kazakh officials, such deals offer their landlocked nation a new calling card in foreign affairs and an entree with Mr. Trump.

The country can produce and process 25 of the 60 commodities on the U.S. critical minerals list, according to Olzhas Alibekov, a top official at Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Industry and Construction.

“Kazakhstan is positioning itself as an important player in the global rare and rare earth metals market,” said Nurlan Zhakupov, the chief executive of the Kazakh sovereign wealth fund, which owns the state mining company that is partnering with Kaz Resources on the tungsten project.

That project will require a huge investment, which Mr. Althaus estimates will total about $650 million initially and $1.1 billion over the life of the project. According to his firm’s own calculations, the tungsten there might be worth as much as $80 billion.

His company could not make the project happen by itself. He needed the U.S. government to cut a deal with Kazakhstan at the highest levels, and to pledge financing to make the math work. In return, the United States could get access to an estimated 12,000 metric tons of tungsten a year, about as much as is now imported annually.

A New York Deal

At the St. Regis Hotel that day in September 2025,  President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev of Kazakhstan was in the middle of a speed-dating-like procession of meetings with executives from corporate giants like Citigroup, Amazon and Chevron.

Among Mr. Tokayev’s corporate guests was Mr. Althaus, who was there to push Kazakhstan to approve the mining project. Mr. Lutnick had his own audience with the Kazakh president at the hotel that day.

“You have great critical minerals that we can invest in together,” the commerce secretary told Mr. Tokayev, according to a recording of parts of the meeting that the Kazakh leader posted on social media.

Mr. Lutnick had made a number of moves over several months to help push along the deal.

He sent a letter last year to Mr. Tokayev urging the country to give the contract to Mr. Althaus and his financial backers, telling them that the Trump administration “fully supports” the company (then known as Cove Kaz) in its efforts.

The Export-Import Bank and a second federal agency where Mr. Lutnick is also on the board, the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, each issued letters of interest last summer to provide Mr. Althaus’s firm with tentative financing for the project. Those loans together could be worth as much as $1.6 billion.

By the time of the St. Regis meeting, Mr. Lutnick was closing in on securing Mr. Tokayev’s agreement for the deal. That is when Mr. Trump called in.

“President Trump, Secretary Lutnick and Secretary Rubio all personally got involved,” said Mr. Althaus, who did not attend the closed-door meeting. “President Trump did the final negotiation with President Tokayev for this deal.”

Chinese bidders were also looking to get access to the Kazakh tungsten site, which is one reason Mr. Althaus needed help from the U.S. government.

The final signing took place on Nov. 6, during a high-profile summit in Washington, where Mr. Trump welcomed the five leaders of Central Asia and highlighted his interest in their critical minerals.

Under the terms of the deal, Mr. Althaus’s firm now owns 70 percent of the venture, and the Kazakh state mining company will own 30 percent.

Investors involved in the Kazakh deal have several different business plans slated to benefit from Trump administration support — and that also do business with Cantor Fitzgerald.

This month, for example, the Trump administration committed to provide up to $1.6 billion in financial support to USA Rare Earth, the other mining company Mr. Althaus founded and in which he remains a shareholder.

That deal gives the Commerce Department 16 million shares of the company’s stock. Cantor Fitzgerald separately earned millions of dollars in fees by helping USA Rare Earth in a series of deals since last year that ultimately raised $1.5 billion for the company.

Cantor Fitzgerald, which Mr. Lutnick ran before he became commerce secretary, has long had a division that helps mining companies raise capital. But it has seen a surge in its business helping to launch or finance mining companies, especially those benefiting from Trump administration support.

Democrats in Congress have called for an investigation into the proposed Commerce Department stake in USA Rare Earth. They told Mr. Lutnick in a letter that it was “the latest example of how official Commerce Department business has intersected with Cantor Fitzgerald’s financial interests during your tenure.”

Even some Trump administration officials directly involved in the effort — who spoke to The Times on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter — said they were disappointed to see the links between the Lutnick and Trump families and the projects the government has proposed to help finance.

A Cantor spokesman, in a statement to The Times, said the company’s executives were not involved in discussions related to government funding on behalf of their mining industry clients.

“Cantor is a natural partner for companies raising capital to meet the growing demand for critical minerals,” said the spokesman, Stan Neve.

In a statement, the Commerce Department said that neither Mr. Lutnick nor anyone at the department had “interacted with or had any discussions whatsoever with Cantor Fitzgerald regarding the rare earth minerals industry.” It noted that Mr. Lutnick had sold his ownership stake in Cantor.

A Trump Stake

The Trump brothers’ ties to the Kazakhstan deal started at their father’s tower on Fifth Avenue in New York.

That is where Dominari Securities, a small financial services firm, had set up its offices after Mr. Trump’s first stint in the White House ended.

Such proximity to the Trump Organization’s headquarters afforded Dominari executives the chance to form friendships — and then business relationships — with Mr. Trump’s sons.

“That’s how the relationship started and developed,” Allan Evans, one of Dominari’s business partners, said in an interview.

After Mr. Trump returned to the White House, Dominari hired Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump as paid advisers, giving them stock now worth about $7 million, representing about 10 percent of the company’s total shares. The firm launched an explicit effort to invest in companies aligned with the president’s agenda, ranging from military drones to critical minerals.

To carry out the Kazakh tungsten investment, Dominari relied on the sort of complex corporate maneuvering that is a hallmark of its deals.

First, Dominari partnered with Paul E. Mann, a British investor and entrepreneur who more recently has also been looking to get into the critical minerals sector.

Using a subsidiary of Mr. Mann’s nuclear energy company, ASP Isotopes, the group of investors last summer bought a controlling amount of shares in a failing road construction firm called Skyline Builders. That might seem like an odd move, but they did so for a reason — Skyline is listed on the Nasdaq exchange. So the ASP subsidiary now controlled a publicly traded company.

Dominari and the Trump sons joined this effort through what is known as a Special Purpose Vehicle, which took a stake in Skyline, as was first reported by The Financial Times. The Trump sons have a second small interest in the deal, through an investment they made directly in the ASP subsidiary late last year, according to Mr. Mann.

In late September, the Trump administration secured the verbal agreement from the Kazakh government for the tungsten rights.

That set their move into play.

In October, Cantor Fitzgerald helped raise $210 million for ASP Isotopes.

By Oct. 31, Skyline, now controlled by ASP, took a 20 percent stake in Mr. Althaus’s Kazakhstan-focused corporate entity, for $20 million. The former road building company was suddenly in the mining business.

Six days later, the final deal with the Kazakh government was signed in Washington by Mr. Lutnick.

Mr. Mann, in an interview, insisted the money that Cantor raised for ASP Isotopes was not used in the mining deal. Nevertheless, Cantor — the investment firm overseen by Mr. Lutnick’s sons — was fund-raising for Mr. Mann’s company at the same time that its subsidiary was preparing to invest in a deal that Mr. Lutnick was negotiating as commerce secretary.

In December, Mr. Mann approached Mr. Althaus with a proposal for a maneuver known as a “reverse merger,” which would replace Skyline Builders on the Nasdaq exchange with a new entity known as Kaz Resources, Mr. Althaus said. The merger, which will essentially take the mining operation public, was announced in April.

The listing will allow investors to profit on the Kazakhstan project by trading its stock before any tungsten comes out of the ground. U.S. government backing of such projects often pushes up the stock price, making money for early-stage investors who exit at the right time.

As part of the merger, Skyline agreed to make about $50 million available for the Kazakh project beyond the original $20 million investment, Mr. Althaus said.

Mr. Althaus said he needed the money from the merger to begin work on the Kazakhstan project. The merger still requires U.S. regulatory approval to close.

Dominari did not respond to requests to comment.

Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. said in separate statements that they were not involved in the specifics of the deal, with Eric Trump writing that he “has always been a passive investor with absolutely no management role.”

Mr. Mann confirmed that Mr. Trump’s sons have a financial interest in the deal. But he said he had not spoken to them, or anyone in the Trump family, about it.

“When you look at it, take a step back here, there’s no conflict of interest here,” Mr. Mann said. “And it’s certainly in the United States government’s best interest to want to do this deal.”

He also said he did not pick Cantor to raise money for his company because Mr. Lutnick is commerce secretary.

“Of course not,” he said, adding, “Should Cantor exclude themselves from all deals in the mining sector? That’s unfair on Cantor.”

Moving Toward Production

So far, none of the $1.6 billion in U.S. government financial support for the Kazakh mining project has come through, as it is subject to additional approvals, a Trump administration official said. Mr. Althaus’s firm is undertaking a final feasibility study that will be reviewed.

That does not mean that no one has made money.

Federal filings suggest that both Cantor Fitzgerald (run by the Lutnicks) and Dominari Securities (partly owned by the Trumps) have earned fees for their work. They were both paid for their services helping executives involved in the series of transactions to raise new capital.

Mr. Althaus said he was now focused on moving the project toward production, which he hopes will begin by 2030, though there is pressure to speed up the timeline.

“If we had a door to knock on, so to speak, we would have,” he said. “We did this the hard way through advocacy.”

Kitty Bennett, Oleg Matsnev and Alina Lobzina contributed research.

1. 

   Eric Lipton

   Investigative reporter

   Since the start of President Trump’s second term, The New York Times has been documenting examples of moves by members of Mr. Trump’s family or the families of top aides to profit off of Trump administration policy actions. The Times has already documented such moves in the worlds of cryptocurrency and military contracting. Today, we dive deeply into a similar pattern playing out as the United States, backed with billions of dollars in Trump-era federal funding, is pushing to expand the supply of critical metals for the Pentagon and American manufacturers.As the Trump administration has pursued this agenda, the president’s sons and an investment bank run by the sons of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick have also been looked for ways to profit from the critical metals frenzy.

Paul Sonne is an international correspondent, focusing on Russia and the varied impacts of President Vladimir V. Putin’s domestic and foreign policies, with a focus on the war against Ukraine.”

Eric Lipton is a Times investigative reporter, who digs into a broad range of topics from Pentagon spending to toxic chemicals.