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    Trump rolls out red carpet for Putin in Alaska – as Ukraine hopes he won’t roll over

    Donald Trump has given the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, a warm welcome to US soil as they begin a critical summit on the war in Ukraine.Both leaders disembarked their planes at 11.08am local time at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, a cold war-era air force base on the outskirts of Anchorage, Alaska.The friendly, tactile body language that followed offered a stark contrast to Trump’s shakedown of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in the Oval Office in February.Trump and Putin walked down red carpets that had been rolled up to their respective planes and met where the carpets came to a T, with Trump arriving first and clapping as Putin approached.The men shared a warm handshake and what appeared to be some lighthearted banter. Trump gave Putin a friendly tap on the arm. Putin grinned and pointed skyward while their hands were still clasped.The pair walked together towards a platform bearing a sign that read Alaska 2025 as B-2s and F-22s – military aircraft designed to oppose Russia during the cold war – flew over to mark the moment.Trump and Putin stood looking towards the media but did not respond to shouted questions including: “President Putin, will you stop killing civilians?” The Russian president, who is wanted by the international criminal court, appeared to shrug.Putin then joined Trump in the presidential limousine nicknamed “the Beast” – a rare privilege for allies and adversaries alike – and could be seen laughing with glee.The men then sat together in a conference room with their respective delegations, seated to the side in front of a blue backdrop that had the words “Pursuing Peace” printed on it several times. Trump was joined by the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and special envoy Steve Witkoff, and Putin by his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, and foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov.The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said the previously planned one-on-one meeting between Trump and Putin is now a three-on-three negotiation. That is a shift from a 2018 meeting in Helsinki, when Trump and Putin first met privately just with their interpreters for two hours.The coming hours of discussions could reshape the war in Ukraine and relations between Moscow and Washington. The war has caused heavy losses on both sides and drained resources. Zelenskyy and European leaders are not invited.Critics say that, by bringing Putin on to US soil for the first time in a decade, the president is giving him the legitimacy he craves after he became a global pariah following his invasion of Ukraine in 2022.European allies fear that the notoriously mercurial Trump might sell out Ukraine by essentially freezing the conflict with Russia and recognising – if only informally – Russian control over one-fifth of Ukraine.Trump sought to assuage such concerns as he boarded Air Force One, saying he would let Ukraine decide on any possible territorial swaps. “I’m not here to negotiate for Ukraine, I’m here to get them at a table,” he said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAsked what would make the meeting a success, he told reporters: “I want to see a ceasefire rapidly … I’m not going to be happy if it’s not today … I want the killing to stop.”On his way to Alaska, Trump sat for an interview on Air Force One with Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier. In a clip posted online, he said he thought the meeting would “work out very well – and if it doesn’t, I’m going to head back home real fast.”“I would walk, yeah,” he added, after a follow-up question.Any success is far from assured because Russia and Ukraine remain far apart in their demands for peace. Putin has long resisted any temporary ceasefire, linking it to a halt in eastern arms supplies and a freeze on Ukraine’s mobilisation efforts, which are conditions rejected by Kyiv and its western allies.Trump previously characterised the summit as “really a feel-out meeting”. But he has also warned of “very severe consequences” for Russia if Putin does not agree to end the war.Trump said earlier in the week there was a 25% chance that the summit would fail but also floated the idea that, if the meeting succeeds, he could bring Zelenskyy to Alaska for a subsequent, three-way meeting.European allies also have concerns that Trump could be tempted by economic incentives and potential deals. On Friday, the Reuters news agency reported that the US has had internal discussions on using Russian nuclear-powered icebreaker vessels to support the development of gas and LNG projects in Alaska. More

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    New Mexico Republican candidate gets 80 years for shootings at Democrats’ homes

    A failed political candidate in New Mexico has been sentenced to 80 years in federal prison for his convictions in a series of drive-by shootings at the homes of state and local lawmakers in the aftermath of the 2020 election.A jury convicted former Republican candidate Solomon Peña in March of conspiracy, weapons and other charges in the shootings in December 2022 and January 2023 on the homes of four Democratic officials in Albuquerque, including the current state house speaker.Prosecutors, who had sought a 90-year sentence, said Peña has shown no remorse and had hoped to cause political change by terrorizing people who held contrary views to him into being too afraid to take part in political life.Peña’s lawyers had sought a 60-year sentence, saying their client maintains that he is innocent of the charges. They have said Peña was not involved in the shootings and that prosecutors were relying on the testimony of two men who bear responsibility and accepted plea agreements in exchange for leniency.“Today was a necessary step toward Mr Peña’s continued fight to prove his innocence,” said Nicholas Hart, one of Peña’s attorneys, after Wednesday’s sentence. “He looks forward to the opportunity to appeal, where serious issues about the propriety of this prosecution will be addressed.”The attacks took place as threats and acts of intimidation against election workers and public officials surged across the country after Donald Trump and his allies called into question the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.Prosecutors said Peña resorted to violence in the belief that a “rigged” election had robbed him of victory in his bid to serve in the state legislature.The shootings targeted the homes of officials including two county commissioners after their certification of the 2022 election, in which Peña lost by nearly 50 percentage points. No one was injured, but in one case bullets passed through the bedroom of a state senator’s 10-year-old daughter.Two other men who had acknowledged helping Peña with the attacks had previously pleaded guilty to federal charges and received years-long prison sentences. More

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    ‘It’s not illegal to be homeless’: disquiet as Trump crews clear DC encampments

    For the past eight months, David Harold Pugh has found his “spot” outside the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial Library in Washington DC. He keeps all his belongings, including a guitar, tied up together on a two-wheeled buggy.“This is shelter. It’s a safe place where I can put my buggy up against the wall, and it’s up against that beam so nobody can roll it,” said Pugh. “I roll it on its back, and then I sleep alongside of it, so nobody can get it without me waking up.”He’s one of the more than 5,000 people in the city without a permanent place to live and now facing uncertainty about where to find shelter after Donald Trump said homeless people in DC must be moved far from the city.Crews tore down a major encampment near the Kennedy Center on Thursday, with federal law enforcement removing residents and clearing out the remaining encampments across the city overnight. The removal is part of Trump’s federal takeover of the city’s police department and deployment of the national guard across the city.Pugh believes the Trump administration is out of line for blaming crime on unhoused individuals. “It’s not illegal to be homeless,” he said.Despite the widespread encampment closures, Pugh told the Guardian he didn’t have any plans to visit a shelter this week and wanted to stay close to his spot. “If they tell me to roll, I’ll roll and I’ll come back when they leave,” he said.View image in fullscreenIn an encampment across the city, near the interchange of Rock Creek Parkway and Whitehurst Freeway, one homeless individual, who identified himself as G, had already packed up his belongings. He said he had had to bounce around to various locations over the last few weeks.“It’s just going with the punches,” said G. “So you just never get settled. It feels like you [are] on the edge.”G is also just days away from moving off the streets and into permanent housing. He said the only thing he’s missing is a new social security card, which he will have very soon, but until then, he’s not sure where he will go.“What am I supposed to do for six days? Am I supposed to tell the national guard, or whoever, I got six days? Gonna get six days, and I literally have the appointment at the social security [office] on the 20th,” said G.With encampments now closed around DC and just a few days before he can secure stable housing, G said he may consider staying at a shelter.“I know the shelters might be full. I don’t even know where a shelter is, they haven’t gave us any list. No, nothing. They just made us fully aware of possibilities,” he said.According to the DC office of the deputy mayor for health and human services, unhoused residents who want shelter will not be turned away, and the city is prepared to expand capacity as necessary.View image in fullscreenBut if homeless individuals refuse to leave encampments, the Trump administration said their options are limited.During a news briefing earlier this week, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said homeless individuals could face fines or even jail time if they refused to go to a shelter or receive addiction or mental health services.“We’re in the business of making sure people have the information, they have the connection to resources if they choose, but then people are, you know, left up to make their own decisions,” said Kierstin Quinsland, chief program officer at Miriam’s Kitchen, a homeless service provider in DC. “However, it is extremely concerning that people are being threatened with arrest if they are refusing services.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionJesse Rabinowitz of the National Homelessness Law Center said many unhoused people sleep outside in DC and across the nation because rent is too expensive. “Arresting or ticketing people for sleeping outside makes homelessness worse, wastes taxpayer money and simply does not work. The solution to homelessness is housing and supports, not handcuffs and jails,” said Rabinowitz in a written statement.Quinsland said advocates and community partners have mobilized to keep an eye on encampment closures to make sure unhoused individuals are offered support and “treated as respectfully as possible”.She said one of their biggest concerns about these federal police sweeps is losing contact with homeless residents. In many cases, Quinsland said advocates work with members of the city’s unhoused population for weeks, months or longer if they are trying to move them toward permanent housing.“Trust is an issue in homeless outreach, you know. A lot of folks [who] are outside, they decline shelter for a reason, because they don’t trust services,” said Quinsland. “So these relationships that we have with folks are precious, and they are hard fought.”View image in fullscreenAdvocates also warn that these citywide encampment closures may separate homeless individuals from critical support and social services.“If they’re moved somewhere where they don’t know where they can get a meal, they don’t even know how to get back to the neighborhoods that they’re familiar with,” said Quinsland.Ahead of the encampment closures, Quinsland said outreach street teams with Miriam’s Kitchen have been passing inexpensive mobile phones to unhoused residents to help them stay connected.“Making sure that they have our phone numbers, have our business cards with them, to make sure that wherever they may end up, we can remain in contact,” she said.With Trump’s temporary takeover of the DC police department in place for the next few weeks, Quinsland said there had also been discussion about bussing homeless residents to neighboring areas like Montgomery county, Maryland, or parts of Virginia to be “out of sight of Donald Trump”.But that’s just a temporary fix, she said, as homeless service providers need more funding to address the issue.“The long-term answer is, if we have the political will to put money in the city budget for housing, then we can do that,” said Quinsland. “This year, there is zero dollars in the budget for permanent supportive housing vouchers, so that’s not a help.” More

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    Protesters gather in Washington DC as federal law enforcement officers stop drivers – US politics live

    Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, said on Thursday state Democratic lawmakers would move forward with a redistricting plan to counter the Republican-led map-drawing effort in Texas aimed at securing a House majority after the midterm elections.As he spoke at the Japanese American National museum’s National Center for the Preservation of Democracy – a venue deliberately chosen for its symbolism – federal agents, armed and masked, fanned out across the complex, led by Gregory Bovino, head of the border patrol’s El Centro sector. Local news footage showed a man being led away in handcuffs.Newsom, joined by congressional Democrats and legislative leaders, unveiled a plan, known as the election rigging response act, that would override California’s independent redistricting commission and draw new congressional lines – a direct counter to a Texas effort, sought by Donald Trump, to push through mid-cycle maps that could hand Republicans five extra US House seats. The governor vowed the move would “neuter and neutralize” Texas’s proposal.“Today is liberation day in the state of California,” Newsom declared at a rally in Los Angeles, in which he formally called for a 4 November special election to approve a new congressional map. “We can’t stand back and watch this democracy disappear district by district all across the country.”After the rally, Newsom called the presence of border patrol agents “sick and pathetic” and accused Trump of ordering the operation to intimidate Democrats. “Wake up, America,” Newsom warned. “You will not have a country if he rigs this election.”Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass, a Democrat who was not attending the event, arrived on the scene to condemn the raid. In remarks to reporters, she argued that it was not “a coincidence” the raid took place steps from where Newsom was speaking.. “The White House just sent federal agents to try to intimidate elected officials at a press conference,” she said in a social media post. “The problem for them is Los Angeles doesn’t get scared and Los Angeles doesn’t back down. We never have and we never will”.”Good morning and welcome to the US politics live blog. My name is Tom Ambrose and I’ll be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.We start with news that Donald Trump has falsely claimed crime in Washington DC is “the worst it’s ever been” on Thursday, amid a federal takeover of the city’s police department and deployment of the national guard and federal agents in the city.“Washington DC is at its worst point,” Trump said from the Oval Office. “It will soon be at its best point.” He also baselessly accused DC law enforcement officials of giving “phony crime stats” and said “they’re under investigation”.The president’s comments came after protesters heckled federal law enforcement officials as they reportedly stopped dozens of cars at a checkpoint along a busy street in Washington DC on Wednesday night.About 20 law enforcement officers, some of whom appeared to be from the Department of Homeland Security, pulled over drivers for infractions such as broken taillights and not wearing seatbelts, according to the Washington Post.At least one woman was reportedly arrested as more than 100 protesters gathered and reportedly yelled things like “get off our streets”, according to NBC News. Some protesters began warning drivers to avoid the area, the outlet reported.The city’s homeless encampments, which Trump has long fixated on, came under target Thursday night as city police began removing residents. Officials in Washington DC and advocates for the unhoused had warned people living in camps to relocate to shelters before the federal sweeps began.“We do not have enough shelter beds for everyone on the street,” said Amber W Harding, executive director of the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless. “This is a chaotic and scary time for all of us in DC, but particularly for people without homes.”Read the full story here:In other developments:

    As part of its advertising blitz to attract new recruits, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) released a social media video on Thursday that uses a song by the rapper DaBaby and shows agency vehicles that appear to be painted in the same red, blue and gold style as Donald Trump’s private plane, which was featured in the opening sequence for The Apprentice.

    New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, confirmed on social media that a federal building where protesters held a silent vigil on Thursday against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) was evacuated after “envelopes containing white powder were discovered”.

    In another sign that the Trump presidency is largely made-for-TV, the White House and Fox News revealed that Trump will appear on Fox News both before and immediately after his summit meeting with Vladimir Putin on Friday.

    Four days after Trump ordered the unhoused residents of Washington DC, whom he sped past in his motorcade for a golf outing, to leave the city, local officials helped clear encampments before announced sweeps by federal agents. More

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    Newsom says California will push to redraw maps in riposte to Texas plan

    Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, said on Thursday state Democratic lawmakers would move forward with a redistricting plan to counter the Republican-led map-drawing effort in Texas aimed at securing a House majority after the midterm elections.As he spoke at the Japanese American National museum’s National Center for the Preservation of Democracy – a venue deliberately chosen for its symbolism – federal agents, armed and masked, fanned out across the complex, led by Gregory Bovino, head of the border patrol’s El Centro sector. Local news footage showed a man being led away in handcuffs.Newsom, joined by congressional Democrats and legislative leaders, unveiled a plan, known as the election rigging response act, that would override California’s independent redistricting commission and draw new congressional lines – a direct counter to a Texas effort, sought by Donald Trump, to push through mid-cycle maps that could hand Republicans five extra US House seats. The governor vowed the move would “neuter and neutralize” Texas’s proposal.“Today is liberation day in the state of California,” Newsom declared at a rally in Los Angeles, in which he formally called for a 4 November special election to approve a new congressional map. “We can’t stand back and watch this democracy disappear district by district all across the country.”After the rally, Newsom called the presence of border patrol agents “sick and pathetic” and accused Trump of ordering the operation to intimidate Democrats. “Wake up, America,” Newsom warned. “You will not have a country if he rigs this election.”Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass, a Democrat who was not attending the event, arrived on the scene to condemn the raid. In remarks to reporters, she argued that it was not “a coincidence” the raid took place steps from where Newsom was speaking.. “The White House just sent federal agents to try to intimidate elected officials at a press conference,” she said in a social media post. “The problem for them is Los Angeles doesn’t get scared and Los Angeles doesn’t back down. We never have and we never will”.”The Department of Homeland Security said Bass “must be misinformed”.“Our law enforcement operations are about enforcing the law – not about Gavin Newsom. CBP patrols all areas of Los Angeles every day with over 40 teams on the ground to make LA safe,” Tricia McLaughlin, DHS assistant secretary, said in a post on social media.The California map would only take effect if Texas – or any other Republican-led state – advanced a a partisan redistricting plan. Newsom said he preferred all states adopt independent commission, as California does, and had previously said in a letter to Trump that he would “happily” stand down if Texas abandoned its effort.Earlier on Thursday, a group of Texas Democrats, who had blocked a vote on the measure by fleeing the state, said they were prepared to end their two-week walkout when California releases its redrawn map proposal. Their return to the state legislature would allow Republicans to plow ahead. Accepting that reality, Newsom said California – with a population larger than the 21 smallest states combined – would not “unilaterally disarm”.“It’s not complicated,” he said. “We’re doing this in reaction to a president of the United States that called a sitting governor of the state of Texas and said, ‘Find me five seats.’”View image in fullscreenIn a recent interview, Trump claimed that Republicans were “entitled to five more seats” in Texas because he won the state overwhelmingly in the 2024 presidential election.The new map, Newsom said, would remain in place through the 2030 elections, after which mapmaking power would return to the independent redistricting commission, approved by voters more than a decade ago. The Democratic-led state legislature will introduce legislation on Monday, he added, expressing confidence the initiative would pass and ultimately prevail at the ballot box in November.California has 52 House seats – 43 held by Democrats – and several of the nation’s most competitive races, including a handful that helped Republicans claim the majority in 2024.How California voters will respond is uncertain: polls have found deep support for the state’s independent redistricting commission, suggesting Democrats will have to work quickly over the next three months to persuade voters to support their plan.Sara Sadhwani, a Democrat who served on California’s 2020 independent redistricting commission, said she wanted partisan gerrymandering banned nationwide. But in Los Angeles on Thursday, Sadhwani stood side by side with Newsom, lawmakers, labor leaders and advocates in support of tearing up the maps she helped draw. “Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures,” she said.Common Cause, a good government group that has long opposed partisan map-making, said in a statement this week that it would “not pre-emptively” oppose the effort by California to redraw its maps in response to partisan redistricting in Texas.“A blanket condemnation at this moment would be sitting on the sidelines in the face of authoritarianism,” the group stated.Eric Holder, a former attorney general and chair of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said on Thursday that he backed “responsible and responsive” countermeasures to Trump’s “extreme and unjustified mid-decade gerrymanders in Texas and beyond”.“Our democracy is under attack,” he said. “We have no choice but to defend it.”Republicans have denounced the California proposal: “Gavin Newsom’s latest stunt has nothing to do with Californians and everything to do with consolidating radical Democrat power,” Christian Martinez, the National Republican Congressional Committee spokesperson, said in a statement, accusing the governor of trampling the will of California voters to serve a “pathetic 2028 presidential pipe dream”.At the rally in Los Angeles, there was little sympathy for the nearly half-dozen California Republicans who could be out of job if the redistricting plan succeeds. Speaking before the governor, Jodi Hicks, the president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, had a message for the nine Republicans who backed legislation rolling back reproductive rights: “You take away our freedoms, we’ll take away your seats.”Texas’s pursuit of new maps has kicked off a redistricting “arms race” that has spread to state legislatures across the country. Leaders in Florida and Missouri – and in blue state like New York and Illinois – are weighing similar moves. “Other blue states need to stand up,” Newsom said.The campaign, with a freshly launched website, will be enormously costly and is expected to draw national attention and donors eager for a high-stakes, off-year political brawl. Former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican who championed independent redistricting, has already voiced opposition. Newsom said he had spoken to Schwarzenegger and shared his disdain for gerrymandering, but argued that this was about preserving American democracy.“It’s not good enough to just hold hands, have a candlelight vigil and talk about the way the world should be,” Newsom said. “We have got to recognize the cards that have been dealt. And we have got to meet fire with fire.” More

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    Trump news at a glance: president insists he won’t let Putin ‘mess around with me’ at summit on Ukraine

    Donald Trump has insisted he won’t let Vladimir Putin “mess around” with him at their high-stakes summit over Ukraine and is giving the talks a 75% chance of success.Amid concerns from European leaders that the Russian president will cajole Trump into imposing a settlement on Ukraine, the US president told reporters on the eve of Friday’s talks in Alaska: “I am president, and he’s not going to mess around with me.“I’ll know within the first two minutes, three minutes, four minutes or five minutes… whether or not we’re going to have a good meeting or a bad meeting. And if it’s a bad meeting, it’ll end very quickly, and if it’s a good meeting, we’re going to end up getting peace in the pretty near future.”Meanwhile in Washington DC, the White House said there would be a round-the-clock presence of local and federal law enforcement officers after Trump’s federal takeover of its police department and dispatch of national guard troops.Here are the key US politics stories at a glance:Trump says Putin ready to make Ukraine dealDonald Trump has said he believes Vladimir Putin is ready to make a deal on the war in Ukraine as the two leaders prepare for their Alaska summit, but his suggestion the Russian leader and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy could “divvy things up” may alarm some in Kyiv.The US president implied there was a 75% chance of Friday’s Alaska meeting succeeding, and that the threat of economic sanctions may have made Putin more willing to seek an end to the war. He also said a second meeting – at present not confirmed – between himself, Putin and Zelenskyy would be the more decisive.Read the full storyTrump tightens grip on DC policingThe president falsely claimed crime in Washington DC was the “worst it’s ever been”, amid an ongoing federal takeover of the city’s police department and deployment of the national guard and federal agents in the city.“Washington DC is at its worst point,” Trump said from the Oval Office on Thursday. “It will soon be at its best point.” He also baselessly accused DC law enforcement officials of giving “phony crime stats” and said “they’re under investigation”.Read the full storyBondi threatens to prosecute leaders not complying with immigration officersPam Bondi, the attorney general, said she had sent “sanctuary city” letters to the mayors of 32 cities and a handful of county executives warning that she intends to prosecute political leaders who are not in her view sufficiently supportive of immigration enforcement.“You better be abiding by our federal policies and with our federal law enforcement, because if you’re not we’re going to come after you,” she told a Fox News reporter on Thursday. “Our leaders have to support our law enforcement.”Read the full storyTexas Democrats prepare to return to state after two-week absenceDemocratic lawmakers in Texas said they were ready to return to the state under certain conditions, ending a nearly two-week-long effort to block Republicans from passing a new congressional map that would add five GOP seats.The lawmakers said on Thursday they would return as long as the legislature ended its first special session on Friday, which Republicans have said they plan to do. The Texas governor, Greg Abbott, has said he will immediately call another special session.Read the full storyMelania Trump demands retraction of comments linking her to EpsteinThe first lady has demanded that Hunter Biden retract comments linking her to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and has threatened to sue if he does not.Biden, the son of the former president Joe Biden, alleged in an interview this month that Epstein had introduced Melania Trump to Donald Trump. The statements were false, defamatory and “extremely salacious”, Melania Trump’s lawyer, Alejandro Brito, said in a letter to Biden.Read the full storyMedical journal rejects RFK Jr call to retract vaccine studyAn influential US medical journal is rejecting a call from the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F Kennedy Jr, to retract a large Danish study that found that aluminum ingredients in vaccines do not increase health risks for children, the journal’s editor told Reuters.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

    Donald Trump cold-called Norway’s finance ministerlast month to ask about a nomination for the Nobel peace prize, Norwegian press reported on Thursday.

    A lawsuit filed on behalf of two mothers and their four minor children claims the two families were unlawfully denied due process and deported by Ice to Honduras.

    Ron DeSantis said Florida would open a second immigration jail as a federal judge weighs whether to close the facility in the Everglades known as “Alligator Alcatraz”.
    Catching up? Here’s what happened on 13 August 2025. More

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    Five key points on how a long-respected US human rights report became a ‘cudgel’ under Trump

    In May, Donald Trump took to the stage at a business conference in Saudi Arabia’s capital, promising that the US would no longer chastise other governments over human rights issues or lecture them on “how to live and how to govern your own affairs”.With the release this week of the US government’s annual report on human rights worldwide, the president has – in part – followed though on that pledge.The report – compiled by the state department – softens its criticism of nations that have sought closer ties with the US president, while alleging “significant” human rights breaches among traditional allies across Europe, all while vastly scaling back criticism of discrimination against minority groups.Hungary and El Salvador receive softer treatmentThe report’s claims of “no credible” human rights abuses in Hungary and El Salvador sit at odds with the state department’s own report from a year earlier, which described the situation in Hungary as “deteriorating”, while highlighting “arbitrary killings”, “enforced disappearance” and “torture” in El Salvador.In April, a delegation of EU lawmakers warned that the rule of law in Hungary is “rapidly going in the wrong direction” under Viktor Orbán’s government. They highlighted threats to press freedom and targeting of minorities. In June a law banning content about LGBTQ+ people from schools and TV was found to violate basic human rights and freedom of expression by a scholar at the European court of justice.Meanwhile, activists and opposition leaders in El Salvador have warned the country is on the path towards dictatorship after its congress scrapped presidential term limits, paving the way for President Nayib Bukele to seek indefinite re-election. Bukele’s hardline approach to crime has been accompanied by an assault on civil society and democratic institutions.Orbán and Bukele have both positioned themselves as Trump adherents – with El Salvador opening up a notorious mega-prison to detain US deportees. Orbán, who came to power in 2010, was once described as “Trump before Trump” by the US president’s former adviser Steve Bannon.European countries singled outFrance, Germany and the United Kingdom are among the European countries singled out as having seen a worsening human rights situation. The picture is a far cry from the previous report, which saw no significant changes.Criticism over the handling of free speech – in particular relating to regulations on online hate speech – was directed at the governments of the UK, Germany and France.The criticism comes despite the US itself moving aggressively to deny or strip visas of foreign nationals over their statements and social media postings, especially student activists who have criticised Israel.Since being returning to power, Trump and his administration have stepped up criticism of traditional allies – in February the vice-president, JD Vance, accused European leaders of suppressing free speech, failing to halt illegal migration and running in fear from voters’ true beliefs.The report also singles out Brazil, where Trump has decried the prosecution of former president Jair Bolsonaro. Brazil, the report says, has “undermined democratic debate by restricting access to online content deemed to ‘undermine democracy.’”Israel-Gaza warThe report’s section on Israel and the Palestinian territories is much shorter than last year’s edition and contains no mention of the severe humanitarian crisis or death toll in Gaza. It acknowledges cases of arbitrary arrests and killings by Israel but says authorities took “credible steps” to identify those responsible.More than 61,000 people have been killed in Gaza, the Gaza health ministry says, as a result of Israel’s military assault after an attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas in October 2023 in which 1,200 people were killed.Notable omissionsSections within the report highlighting discrimination have been vastly pared back. Any criticism focused on LGBTQI rights, gender-based violence or racial and ethnic violence which appeared in Biden administration editions of the report, appear to have been largely removed.A group of former state department officials called some omissions “shocking,” particularly highlighting the lack of detail on Uganda, which in 2023 saw the passing of some of the harshest anti-LGBTQ+ laws in the world, including the death penalty for some homosexual acts.The backlashFor decades, the report has been used as a blueprint of reference for global rights advocacy – but critics have labelled this year’s edition politically driven.“The report demonstrates what happens when political agendas take priority over the facts,” says Josh Paul, a former state department official, adding “the outcome is a much-abbreviated product that is more reflective of a Soviet propaganda.”In April, secretary of state Marco Rubio wrote an opinion piece saying the bureau that prepares the report had become a platform for “left-wing activists,” and vowed that the Trump administration would reorient it to focus on “western values”.State department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said the report was restructured to improve readability and was no longer an expansive list of “politically biased demands and assertions”.Democratic party lawmakers, however, have accused Trump and Rubio of treating human rights only as a “cudgel” against adversaries, in a statement released this week.Rubio’s state department has “shamelessly turned a once-credible tool of US foreign policy mandated by Congress into yet another instrument to advance Maga political grievances and culture war obsessions,” said Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.With Reuters More