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      Trump’s killing of 11 alleged Venezuelan drug traffickers sets a dangerous precedent | Kenneth Roth

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      The US military’s killing of 11 alleged Venezuelan drug traffickers traveling by boat in international waters in the Caribbean is an illegal use of war powers to address what should have been a situation of law enforcement. Unless this dangerous precedent is condemned and curtailed, it will enable US authorities to summarily shoot anyone they choose by simply declaring a “war” against them.Last month, it was reported that Donald Trump had signed a secret decree authorizing the Pentagon to use military force against certain designated Latin American drug cartels, claiming that they were “terrorist” organizations. On Tuesday, Trump wrote that on his orders the military had targeted Tren de Aragua “narcoterrorists”, accusing them of “operating under the control of Nicolas Maduro”, the Venezuelan leader, and being “responsible for mass murder, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, and acts of violence and terror across the United States and Western Hemisphere”.No reported attempt was made to interdict and detain the boatload of people. The video accompanying Trump’s statement suggests that the boat was simply blown up. When asked why the boat wasn’t stopped and its occupants arrested, Trump ducked the question and suggested that the killings would force traffickers to think twice before trying to move drugs to the United States.Under international standards for law enforcement, lethal force can be used solely as a last resort to meet an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury. That rule makes sense because law-enforcement officials should ordinarily seek to arrest and prosecute criminal suspects. That is the best way to ensure they have committed the offense in question. It also respects the fact that for most crimes, the penalty upon conviction is a prison sentence, not the death penalty – let alone summary killing without trial.Trump has sought to evade those standards by in effect declaring war against Venezuelan drug cartels. Beginning with Richard Nixon in 1971, US presidents have repeatedly referred to a “war on drugs”, but that was a metaphoric war, a rhetorical claim that the effort was important, not a literal war. The distinction is important, because in genuine armed conflicts, opposing combatants can be summarily shot unless they are surrendering or in custody. There is ordinarily no duty to try to capture or arrest them.There was nothing in the encounter in the Caribbean Sea that is indicative of a war. There has been no suggestion that the alleged drug traffickers were firing at US forces or otherwise engaged in what could fairly be described as combat. The US military simply blew them out the water. It wrongly applied wartime rules in what should have been a law-enforcement situation.That Trump calls drug-trafficking suspects “terrorists” doesn’t change the rules for law enforcement. Terrorists are criminals, not combatants. Absent an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury, they must be arrested, not shot.That illicit drugs such as fentanyl cause enormous harm also does not alter the rules governing law-enforcement operations. Much criminal activity causes serious harm, but unless that harm constitutes an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury and cannot be stopped by other means, law-enforcement standards require arrest and prosecution, not the use of lethal force.Nor does it matter that the people killed may have been hardened criminals. Even despicable individuals are entitled to arrest and prosecution rather than summary killing.If war rules could be applied to suspected terrorists or drug traffickers by a mere declaration of “war”, the risks would be enormous. Law-enforcement officers could shoot anyone anywhere on the mere assertion, never proved in court, that they were part of the group against which a “war” had been declared. What just happened at sea in the Caribbean could be replicated on the streets of New York, London or Paris.Until now, the most visible example of a leader treating a “war on drugs” as a genuine armed conflict has been the former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte. Under his direction, Filipino security forces summarily killed thousands of poor young men. The international criminal court charged him for these executions, and he is now in custody in The Hague awaiting trial.Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina senator and a Republican leader on foreign policy, met the killing of the 11 with callous bravado: “I hope America’s adversaries are watching & now understand there’s a new sheriff in town.” But even a new sheriff must abide by policing rules. Trump did not.We have every reason to worry that the Trump administration intends to continue this lawless behavior. Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, warned that such operations “will happen again”.To avoid normalizing such flouting of law-enforcement rules, the Trump administration’s killing of the alleged drug traffickers must be broadly and firmly criticized. If we close our eyes to this instance of misapplied war rules because of dislike for Venezuelan drug cartels or fear of illicit drugs, we risk setting a precedent in which our most basic right to life is suddenly dependent on whether Trump or other leaders decide in effect to declare a war against us.

      Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch (1993-2022), is a visiting professor at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs. His book, Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments, was published by Knopf and Allen Lane in February. More

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      Why Trump’s firing of the US jobs chief has economists worried

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      As it has for over a hundred years, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) will release its latest monthly jobs report on Friday.But the routine monthly update on the health of the US jobs market has been overshadowed by Donald Trump’s firing of the agency’s commissioner, Erika McEntarfer, hours after July’s statistics were released last month.The BLS’s data is parsed by Wall Street, Federal Reserve officials and company bosses across the US. It is also widely watched – and admired – internationally as a barometer of the US economy.Both liberal and conservative economists have criticized Trump’s nominated replacement at the BLS and have raised concerns over what will happen to the agency after the dramatic shake-up. Here’s what we know about what’s happening to the bureau.What does the Bureau of Labor Statistics do?The bureau reports key economic statistics through surveys of employers and prices. Every month, it releases data on the labor market, including the current unemployment rate, and the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which measures the cost of a basket of goods and services. This data is an important monthly snapshot of the US economy and how it changes over time.Why did Trump fire the bureau’s commissioner?Last month, the bureau announced the US had added just 73,000 jobs in July – far lower than expected – and made big revisions to previously released stats on the labor market in May and June. The number of jobs added to the economy across those two months was dramatically cut by over 250,000.Trump, who spent months boasting about the strength of the economy amid fears about the impact of his trade wars, was furious. “Today’s Job Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad,” he declared on social media.Hours after the numbers were released, Trump announced he was firing McEntarfer and that she would “be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified”.Has Trump firing of the bureau’s commissioner changed its operations?Economists say that Trump’s firing hasn’t changed the bureau, yet. Although the White House has made other job cuts at the BLS, as it did throughout the federal workforce. Since Trump took office, the bureau has seen a hiring freeze and has lost 15% of its workforce.While the bureau said it was downsizing its data collection for CPI, it did not say it was making any significant changes to its survey to employers.Economists say that, for now, the bureau’s operations have largely remained the same. William Watrowski, a longtime leader within the bureau, is currently its acting commissioner. But there are still many questions about the future of the bureau, especially after Trump announced his nomination for McEntarfer’s replacement.Who does Trump want to appoint as the bureau’s new commissioner?Trump has nominated EJ Antoni, chief economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation, as the bureau’s commissioner.Antoni was a contributor to Project 2025 – the Heritage Foundation’s rightwing blueprint for reshaping the US government – and was a vocal critic of the bureau last year, claiming that it manipulated numbers to make them more favorable to Joe Biden and Democrats. Last November, Antoni said on Twitter that Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency needed to “take a chainsaw” to the bureau.“Month after month, the government bean-counters under former-president Biden published overly optimistic estimates for everything from job growth to the size of the economy, only to have those numbers routinely – and quietly – revised down later,” Antoni wrote in May.When announcing his appointment, Trump said Antoni “will ensure that the Numbers released are HONEST AND ACCURATE”.Antoni has yet to be confirmed by Congress, and a confirmation date has not been set.Why did the bureau revise its job figures for May and June?Revisions are standard to the bureau’s reporting of the labor market, which is based on surveys to employers throughout the country.Large revisions often happen when employers take more time to complete the bureau’s surveys or revise their own figures due to changing circumstances. Economists have pointed out that uncertainty can lead to larger revisions. The pandemic, for example, saw jobs figures in flux as employers were handling different shutdown laws and the spread of the virus.The impact of Trump’s tariffs on data collection could be a major factor in the revisions seen earlier this year. Businesses have been reporting rollercoaster levels of uncertainty over tariff policy, with sentiment among US small businesses dipping down in the spring before going up again in the summer.“We’ve gone through periods where there were larger revisions before,” said Michael Madowitz, principal economist at the Roosevelt Institute who served on the bureau’s data users advisory committee before it was dissolved by the Trump administration. “This is like so standard, and the idea that it’s what actually set off this big political kerfuffle – this is a really unprecedented political situation.”Has the bureau gone through any political fights before?This isn’t the first time the bureau has been accused of manipulating numbers for politics. In the mid-90s, Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chair at the time, criticized the way the bureau was calculating the CPI. Greenspan argued that the bureau was overestimating CPI, making inflation look higher than it actually was.Thomas Stapleford, a historian at the University of Notre Dame and author of The Cost of Living in America: A Political History of Economic Statistics, pointed out that Greenspan’s criticism led to a series of hearings where the bureau’s methodology came under question and debate. There were congressional hearings and a committee of economists was formed to investigate the methodology.“There’s all this detailed look at digging into the methodology by these outside experts and also testimony from [the bureau],” Stapleford said. “In my mind, if you have questions about the methodology, that’s the way to approach it.”But Trump has pushed the bureau into uncharted waters. Stapleford noted McEntarfer’s firing was the first time the president fired a bureau commissioner.“What the administration, in the eyes of critics, is doing is pushing the numbers in a particular direction. Not for reasons that it can justify publicly in terms of methodology, but simply because it would like a different outcome,” Stapleford said. “That’s a really big deviation from how the bureau has operated in the past.”What does this all mean for the future of the bureau?The commissioner isn’t involved in much of the day-to-day operations of the bureau. A new leader could have major sway over how the bureau collects and reports data in the long term, but there are protections in place, and any significant changes would be subject to public scrutiny.“The commissioner isn’t directly involved in the data calculation. Most of the BLS staff are long-term civil servants. They’ve been there a long time, they have various protections around them,” Stapleford said. “If the new commissioner started to force major methodological changes, I think that would raise a lot of red flags if those changes were controversial.”But even if major changes aren’t made immediately, the fact that Trump has called the bureau’s data into question could risk confusing Americans over whether the data can be trusted.“It takes a whole lot longer to build credibility than to lose. I don’t think any of the experts involved at this point are at all worried about the credibility of BLS’s work, but I know a whole lot less about what’s filtering down to the average person right now,” Madowitz said.As an example, Madowitz pointed out how the science around climate change has been clear.“But having a one-side, other-side public position on what the science says has left the public really confused,” Madowitz said. “It would be really bad if that’s how we decided to understand the economy.” More

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      Trump asks US supreme court to overturn trade tariffs ruling

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      Donald Trump has asked the US supreme court to overturn a lower court decision that most of his sweeping trade tariffs were illegal.The US president filed a petition late on Wednesday to ask for a review of last week’s federal appeals court ruling in Washington DC, which centred on his “liberation day” border taxes introduced on 2 April, which imposed levies of between 10% and 50% on most US imports, sending shock waves through global trade and markets.The court found in a 7-4 ruling last Friday that Trump had overstepped his presidential powers when he invoked a 1977 law designed to address national emergencies to justify his “reciprocal” tariffs.The decision was the biggest blow yet to Trump’s tariff policies, but the levies were left in place until 14 October – giving the administration time to ask the supreme court to review the decision.Trump has now appealed and the supreme court is expected to review the case, although the justices must still agree to do so. The administration asked for that decision to be made by 10 September.The appeal calls for an accelerated schedule with arguments being heard by 10 November, according to filings seen by Bloomberg. Justices could then rule by the end of the year.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe ruling that the tariffs were unlawful upheld a previous decision by the US Court of International Trade.The federal appeals court said last Friday that US law “bestows significant authority on the president to undertake a number of actions in response to a declared national emergency, but none of these actions explicitly include the power to impose tariffs, duties, or the like, or the power to tax”.It said many of Trump’s steep tariffs were “unbounded in scope, amount and duration”, the ruling added, and “assert an expansive authority that is beyond the express limitations” of the law his administration has leaned on.A defeat for Trump’s levies would at least halve the current average US effective tariff rate of 16.3%, and could force the country to pay back tens of billions of dollars, according to Chris Kennedy, an analyst at Bloomberg Economics. It could also derail the preliminary trade deals the president has struck with some countries, including the UK and the European Union.Tariffs typically need to be approved by Congress, but Trump claimed he has the right to impose tariffs on trading partners under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which in some circumstances grants the president authority to regulate or prohibit international transactions during a national emergency.Earlier this week, the US clothing brand Levi’s said that “rising anti-Americanism as a consequence of the Trump tariffs and governmental policies” could drive British shoppers away from its denim. Other brands, such as Tesla, have also suffered in Europe and in Canada, while protests against US goods have led to a slump in sales of Jack Daniel’s whiskey. More

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      Judge sides with Harvard and orders Trump to reverse billions in funding cuts – US politics live

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      A federal judge in Boston has sided with Harvard university in its court battle with the Trump administration, ordering that the federal government reverse funding cuts, the AP reports.The Trump administration had cut more than $2.6bn in research grants to the school as part of the president’s aggressive attacks on academic institutions.Judge Allison Burroughs ruled Wednesday the cuts constituted illegal retaliation after Harvard had refused the White House’s demands to change its policies and governance, the AP reported.Harvard’s complaint, filed in July, said:
      This case involves the government’s efforts to use the withholding of federal funding as leverage to gain control of academic decisionmaking at Harvard. All told, the tradeoff put to Harvard and other universities is clear: allow the government to micromanage your academic institution or jeopardize the institution’s ability to pursue medical breakthroughs, scientific discoveries, and innovative solutions.
      The NAACP has filed a lawsuit against the state of Missouri to block the red state’s special legislative session to redraw congressional maps and expand GOP representation.The civil rights group said in a press release that it was suing to “stop an unlawful attempt to convene a special legislative session aimed at redrawing political maps in ways that would diminish the voting power of Black Missourians”.The NAACP filed a similar lawsuit in Texas last month to block the state’s redistricting plan, which is expected to add five GOP seats to Congress.Derrick Johnson, NAACP president, said in a statement:
      This case is about defending democracy and protecting the voice of every voter. The Missouri legislature’s attempt to force a rushed, unconstitutional redistricting process in a special session is a blatant effort to silence Black voters and strip them of their fundamental rights. We will not stand by while elected officials manipulate the system to weaken our power and representation.”
      The redistricting effort pushed by Mike Kehoe, Missouri’s GOP governor, followed calls by Donald Trump for the state to redraw its maps so it could “elect an additional Maga Republican in the 2026 midterm elections”. States traditionally have only redrawn maps every ten years based on the US census, but Republican efforts to add seats this year, in the middle of the decade, have sparked a redistricting battle with Democrats.A federal judge in Boston has sided with Harvard university in its court battle with the Trump administration, ordering that the federal government reverse funding cuts, the AP reports.The Trump administration had cut more than $2.6bn in research grants to the school as part of the president’s aggressive attacks on academic institutions.Judge Allison Burroughs ruled Wednesday the cuts constituted illegal retaliation after Harvard had refused the White House’s demands to change its policies and governance, the AP reported.Harvard’s complaint, filed in July, said:
      This case involves the government’s efforts to use the withholding of federal funding as leverage to gain control of academic decisionmaking at Harvard. All told, the tradeoff put to Harvard and other universities is clear: allow the government to micromanage your academic institution or jeopardize the institution’s ability to pursue medical breakthroughs, scientific discoveries, and innovative solutions.
      Hundreds of federal agents are arriving to the Chicago area for Donald Trump’s deployment, with some already “practicing crowd control with shields and flash-bang grenades”, according to a new report in the Chicago Sun-Times.Roughly 230 agents, some who work for US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), are arriving from Los Angeles, the newspaper reported, with at least 30 of them training at a naval station near north Chicago.JB Pritzker, Illinois’ Democratic governor, has strongly condemned the deployment, which the president has claimed is meant to address crime. “Any kind of troops on the streets of an American city don’t belong unless there is an insurrection, unless there is truly an emergency. There is not,” the governor said on Sunday. “I’m going to do everything I can to stop him from taking away people’s rights and from using the military to invade states. I think it’s very important for us all to stand up.”More than 100 unmarked vehicles have been sent to the Navy training station, the Sun-Times reported.The deployment of troops and other federal agents in LA caused widespread outrage and protests. Some demonstrations were met with teargas and other munitions. Border patrol agents with CBP were also accused of injuring protesters in LA and were found to have made false statements about demonstrators they arrested.Jeff Landry, the Republican governor of Louisiana, said he backed the president’s threat to send federal troops to his state.“We will take President @realDonaldTrump’s help from New Orleans to Shreveport!” Landry said on social media, responding to a White House post that said Trump was determining whether to send federal forces to Chicago or New Orleans “where we have a great governor”.It’s unclear if Landry has formally requested that the president send in troops, and his office did not respond to questions from the Associated Press.New Orleans, like other cities attacked by Trump, has seen a sharp decline in crime. JP Morrell, president of the New Orleans city council, criticized Trump’s threats of deployment in a statement, saying:
      It’s ridiculous to consider sending the National Guard into another American city that hasn’t asked for it. Guardsmen are not trained law enforcement. They can’t solve crimes, they can’t interview witnesses and they aren’t trained to constitutionally police.
      Trump’s deployment of troops to US cities has been condemned as authoritarian, with scholars saying the president was increasingly acting like a dictator.Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, has denied, sort of, having conversations with the Trump administration about him being given a government job in exchange for dropping his re-election campaign.The New York Times reported on Wednesday that advisers to Donald Trump “have discussed the possibility” of giving Adams a position, in an attempt to thwart Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old Democratic socialist who is currently the frontrunner to be elected mayor in November.According to the Times, “intermediaries” for Trump have spoken to “associates” of Adams about leaving the race. Adams, who has proved to be deeply unpopular among New York Democratic voters and is running as an independent candidate, is well behind Mamdani in the polls, and is draining support from Andrew Cuomo, another independent candidate.There is a suggestion that if Adams, a centrist Democrat, and the Republican candidate, Curtis Sliwa, were to drop out of the race, Cuomo could consolidate enough support to challenge Mamdani. The Times reported that there have been talks in the Trump administration about also finding a job for Sliwa.Sliwa did not respond when asked about the Times story, but the Adams campaign did reply to the Guardian.“Mayor Adams has made it clear that he will not respond to every rumor that comes up,” said Todd Shapiro, a spokesman for Adams.“He has had no discussions with, nor has he met with, President Donald Trump regarding the mayoral race. The Mayor is fully committed to winning this election, with millions of New Yorkers preparing to cast their votes. His record is clear: crime is down, jobs are up, and he has consistently stood up for working families. Mayor Adams is focused on building on that progress and earning four more years to continue delivering for the people of New York.”On Tuesday a poll found Adams with 9% of the vote in the election – Mamdani was at 42%, Cuomo 26%, and Sliwa 17%. It’s worth noting that the Times story did not claim that Adams himself had discussed leaving the race with Trump.Speaking in Mexico City, Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, warned that the US military would continue to target vessels belonging to alleged Venezuelan drug cartels.Arguing that previous interdiction efforts in Latin America have not worked, Rubio said: “What will stop them is when you blow them up, when you get rid of them.”“The president of the United States is going to wage war on narco-terrorist organizations,” Rubio said, adding that the strikes would continue, according to reporters covering the news conference. “It’ll happen again. Maybe it’s happening right now.”Rubio’s visit to Mexico, his first since taking office, comes after the US military launched what the president said was a “a kinetic strike” on a “drug-carrying boat” in the Caribbean Sea. Trump said 11 drug traffickers were killed in the attack.Defending Tuesday’s military operation, Rubio said of the Venezuelan vessel: “This one was operating in international waters, headed towards the United States, to flood our nation with poison. And under President Trump those days are over.”A handful of House Republicans helped tank a motion to censure Democratic congresswoman LaMonica McIver of New Jersey stemming from her indictment by a federal grand jury earlier this year for allegedly assaulting law enforcement during an altercation at an immigration facility in her home state – charges she denies.The censure, brought by Republicans congressman Clay Higgins, was expected to succeed in the GOP-led chamber where the once-rare form of public disapproval is now increasingly common. The House voted 215-207 to set aside the censure resolution, which would have stripped her of her position on the homeland security committee, a role the resolution claimed represented a “significant conflict of interest”.Nearly a half-dozen Republicans sided with Democrats in voting to table the resolution.Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, has crossed the pond and popped up at House judiciary committee, a guest of House Republicans.His testimony was met with scalding derision by Democrats on the panel, who accused the far-right leader of being a a “Putin-loving free speech impostor” working to “ingratiate yourself with tech bros”. At one point, Congressman Hank Johnson, asked Farage to confirm that Reform currently has four MPs.Farage, who missed prime minister’s questions to appear before the committee, testified to the “awful authoritarian” situation for free speech in the UK.Children in Florida will no longer be required to receive vaccines against preventable diseases including measles, mumps, chicken pox, polio and hepatitis, the state’s surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, announced on Wednesday.In a speech announcing the move, Ladapo likened vaccine mandates to “slavery”.Ladapo, hand-picked for the role by Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, is a long-time skeptic of the benefit of vaccines, and has previously been accused of peddling “scientific nonsense” by public health advocates.In his Wednesday speech he said that every state vaccine requirement would be repealed, and that he expected the move would receive the blessing “of God”.“All of them. All of them,” Ladapo said. “Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery.”In 2022, Ladapo altered data in a study about Covid-19 vaccines in an attempt to exaggerate the risk to young men who took one.The governors of California, Oregon and Washington announced on Wednesday the creation of a West Coast Health Alliance aimed at safeguarding access to vaccines, amid growing turmoil at the nation’s top public health agency under the leadership of Robert F Kennedy Jr.In a joint press release, governors Gavin Newsom of California, Tina Kotek of Oregon, and Bob Ferguson of Washington said the CDC had become a “political tool that increasingly peddles ideology instead of science”.“President Trump’s mass firing of CDC doctors and scientists – and his blatant politicization of the agency – is a direct assault on the health and safety of the American people,” the Democratic governors said in a joint statement, adding: “California, Oregon, and Washington will not allow the people of our states to be put at risk.”Speaking on Capitol Hill earlier, Chauntae Davies, one of Epstein’s victims, says the disgraced financier bragged often about his friendship with Trump.Epstein and Maxwell “were always very boastful about their friends – their famous or powerful friends”, she told reporters in Washington. “And his biggest brag forever was that he was very good friends with Donald Trump.”Davies added that Epstein kept an 8in x 10in framed photo of him and Trump on his desk. “They were very close,” she said.Vice-President JD Vance and second lady Usha Vance have arrived in Minneapolis, where they will meet with the families of the victims of the Annunciation Catholic church shooting that killed two schoolchildren and injured nearly two dozen people last week.“They will hold a series of private meetings to convey condolences to the families of those affected by the tragedy,” the White House said in a statement.Trump’s attorneys are asking the US supreme court to reverse a $5m sexual abuse and defamation lawsuit against him in the civil lawsuit brought by E Jean Carroll, Bloomberg News has reported.According to a new filing, the president’s lawyers are asking the justices to extend the deadline for him to formally ask the court to toss out the verdict.In 2023, a civil jury trial concluded that Trump had sexually abused Carroll, a former magazine columnist, in the 1990s, before he embarked on his political career, and then defamed her in 2022 when he denied the allegations as a hoax and said that she was “not my type”. Carroll was awarded $5m in damages.The petition was due on 11 September, but Trump’s legal team has asked for an extension, until 10 November, Bloomberg wrote.Here’s a look back at what’s gone on today so far:

      Democratic congressman Ro Khanna said only two more Republican signatures are needed for the success of a discharge petition to force a vote on legislation compelling the release of files related to the Jeffrey Epstein case.

      Donald Trump slammed the push for the files’ release as a “Democrat hoax that never ends” and mulled deploying federal agents into New Orleans to fight crime.

      Republican congressman Thomas Massie criticized how House GOP leaders handled the Epstein issue.

      At a separate press conference outside the US Capitol, Epstein survivors detailed abuse they suffered at the disgraced financier’s hands.

      The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, said that the US would carry out more strikes like the one that targeted a suspected drug trafficking boat and killed 11 people on Tuesday off the coast of Venezuela.

      A federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday that Donald Trump unlawfully invoked the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans he alleged were part of a criminal gang.
      Donald Trump teased the possibility of deploying federal resources into New Orleans to fight crime.“We’re going to be going to maybe Louisiana, and you have New Orleans, which has a crime problem. We’ll straighten that out in about two weeks. It’ll take us two weeks,” the president said.New Orleans has a homicide rate that is among the highest in the nation, but lies in a Republican-governed state – unlike Los Angeles and Washington DC, where Trump deployed federal troops earlier this year.Trump also confirmed that he was still sending federal agents into Chicago, saying: “We could straighten out Chicago”.Asked at the White House about the push in Congress to release the Epstein files, Donald Trump again accused Democrats of orchestrating the controversy, and attempted to change the subject to his own purported accomplishments.“This is a Democrat hoax that never ends,” Trump said. Referring to the recent release of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein, he said: “Nobody’s ever satisfied.”“They’re trying to get people to talk about something that’s totally irrelevant to the success that we’ve had as a nation since I’ve been president,” Trump said. He went on to claim credit for making Washington DC a “totally safe zone” with “no crime, no murders, no nothing” – though crime, including murders and robberies, have continued since he deployed the national guard and took control of its police department.Another boast from Trump: “I ended seven wars, nobody’s going to talk about it because they’re going to talk about the Epstein whatever.” It’s unclear which seven he is referring to, though his claims of having quelled recent fighting between Pakistan and India played a part in souring the relationship with New Delhi. He also has notably not ended the war in Ukraine – something he boasted, on the campaign trail, that he could do right after taking office.The White House has referred to signing the discharge petition to release the Epstein files as a “hostile act”, and discouraged Republicans from supporting it.Thomas Massie, the Republican congressman who introduced the petition and is one of four lawmakers from his party who signed it, replied:
      I don’t know if that’s precedented in this country to have a president call legislators to say that they’re engaged in a hostile act, particularly when the so-called hostile act is trying to get justice for people who’ve been victims of sex crimes.
      He also said that the fact that there was little new in the case documents released yesterday may spur more lawmakers to sign the petition:
      What people are waking up and discovering right now is the folks who stayed up all night to go through the 34,000 individual pages have found that they’re so redacted as to be useless and that many of them were already available.
      A reality check on the discharge petition that could force a vote in the House on legislation to release the Epstein files.The petition needs two more signatures – which will probably have to come from Republicans – to reach the majority threshold to compel the vote. But even if the petition receives that support and the bill passes the House, the legislation will still need to be approved by the Senate, where Republican majority leader John Thune has given no indication he will put it up for a vote.Should it pass the Senate, it faces another obstacle: Donald Trump. He’s condemned the furor over the Epstein files as a distraction created by the Democrats, and could veto the legislation. That would punt the issue back to Congress, where the bill would need two-thirds majority support to overcome his veto – a tall order.Marjorie Taylor Greene is among the most outspoken conservatives in Congress, but has made a rare pact with the Democrats by signing the discharge petition that could force a vote on legislation to release the Epstein files.“This is an issue that doesn’t have political boundaries. It’s an issue that Republicans and Democrats should never fight about. As a matter of fact, it’s such an important issue that it should bring us all together,” she said at the press conference convened by the petition’s sponsors outside the Capitol.“The truth needs to come out, and the government holds the truth. The cases that are sealed hold the truth. Jeffrey Epstein’s estate holds the truth. The FBI, the DoJ and the CIA holds the truth. And the truth we are demanding comes out on behalf of these women, but also as a strong message to every innocent child, teenager, woman and man that is being held captive in abuse. This should never happen in America, and it should never be a political issue that divides us.” More

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      Adams denies being offered Trump job in exchange for quitting mayoral race

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      Eric Adams, the embattled mayor of New York, has denied having conversations with Donald Trump about being given a government job in exchange for dropping his re-election campaign.Politico reported on Wednesday that Adams has been offered a position at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, citing a person with direct knowledge of the offer. The mayor met with the president’s team during his visit to Florida on Monday, according to the person.The New York Times also reported that advisers to Donald Trump “have discussed the possibility” of giving Adams a position, in an attempt to thwart Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old Democratic socialist who is currently the frontrunner to be elected mayor in November.According to the Times, “intermediaries” for Trump have spoken to “associates” of Adams about leaving the race. Adams, who has proved to be deeply unpopular among New York Democratic voters and is running as an independent candidate, is trailing Mamdani in the polls, and is draining support from former governor Andrew Cuomo, also running as an independent.There is a suggestion that if Adams, a centrist Democrat, and the Republican candidate, Curtis Sliwa, were to drop out of the race, Cuomo could consolidate enough support to challenge Mamdani. The New York Times reported that there have been talks in the Trump administration about also finding a job for Sliwa to get him out of the race.“Mayor Adams has made it clear that he will not respond to every rumor that comes up,” said Todd Shapiro, a spokesperson for Adams, told the Guardian.“He has had no discussions with, nor has he met with, President Donald Trump regarding the mayoral race. The mayor is fully committed to winning this election, with millions of New Yorkers preparing to cast their votes.“His record is clear: crime is down, jobs are up, and he has consistently stood up for working families. Mayor Adams is focused on building on that progress and earning four more years to continue delivering for the people of New York.”Sliwa told Politico he had not spoken to the White House and would not want a job anyway.“I have not been contacted by the White House, and I’m not interested in a job with the White House,” he said in a statement.“My focus is right here in New York. I’m the only candidate on a major party line who can defeat Mamdani, and I’m committed to carrying this fight through to election day. The people of New York City deserve a mayor who truly cares.”Mamdani, meanwhile, has been keen to underline his rivals’ associations with Trump, who is deeply unpopular in true-blue New York City.“Today’s news confirms it: Cuomo is Trump’s choice for Mayor. The White House is considering jobs for Adams and Sliwa to clear the field,” he wrote on X. “New Yorkers are sick of corrupt politics and backroom deals. No matter who’s running, we will deliver a better future on November 4.”On Tuesday a poll found Adams with 9% of the vote in the election – Mamdani was at 42%, Cuomo 26%, and Sliwa 17%. More

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      DC mayor Bowser signs order aligning city with Trump’s federal police takeover

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      Washington DC’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, appeared to bow to Donald Trump’s military occupation of the nation’s capital on Tuesday, signing an executive order that formalizes cooperation with federal forces even as residents push back against the city’s takeover.The Tuesday order establishes the “Safe and Beautiful Emergency Operations Center” – borrowing from Trump’s own branding – to institutionalize collaboration between city officials and various federal agencies including the FBI.On Wednesday, Bowser pushed back against accusations that she’s willing to continue Trump’s federal takeover.“I want the message to be clear to the Congress, we have a framework to request or use federal resources in our city,” Bowser told reporters during a press conference. “We don’t need a presidential emergency.”The comments come as Trump’s 30-day takeover is set to expire on 10 September.“Let me tell you, without equivocation, that the mayor’s order does not extend the Trump emergency,” she added. “In fact, it does the exact opposite. What it does is lays out a framework for how we will exit the emergency. The emergency ends on September 10.”The Pentagon previously said the national guard troops deployed to Washington will remain “until law and order is restored”. The more than 2,000 troops could stay through December to continue service member benefits, according to a senior official who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity, although the mission may not last until then.Bowser’s executive order mandates that federal officers adhere to transparent policing practices, requiring them to avoid wearing masks, display clear agency identification, and provide proper identification during arrests and public encounters.But DC residents have criticized Bowser for opting for collaboration with the federal government over resistance. Polling from late August shows only 17-20% of residents support the federalized policing or armed national guard presence. Troops have been visibly patrolling tourist areas, metro stations and transit hubs rather than high-crime neighborhoods, and some unarmed troops have been assigned beautification tasks such as trash collection rather than crime-fighting duties.In a statement on Wednesday, Todd A Cox, the Legal Defense Fund associate director counsel, called Bowser’s decision “alarming, misguided, and profoundly disappointing”.“An increased presence of armed federal law enforcement officers in the District will not make our communities safer,” he said. “Safety for DC residents must include protection from police violence, yet the mayor’s decision subjects DC residents to an increased risk of it. Evidence has shown that this tactic is not only ineffective but actively harmful, disproportionately targeting Black communities, escalating tensions and undermining public safety.”Washington residents have organized a resistance to fill the void left by the muted local government response. Free DC, a grassroots coalition that has campaigned for home rule since the 1990s, has soared as a central organizing force – staging nightly “noise protests” with pots and pans at curfew and launching an “Adopt a Curfew Zone” program to protect the most heavily patrolled neighborhoods from what they describe as federal occupation meant to strip the district of its autonomy. The organization gained tens of thousands of new followers on Instagram over the last few weeks.Grand juries – composed of DC residents – have also refused to indict defendants in at least six cases, nullifying federal prosecutions through community defiance, including the case of the infamous “sandwich guy” who threw his Subway snack at an officer and was later tracked down and arrested. Residents in neglected neighborhoods such as Congress Heights have also condemned the military deployment’s focus on protecting tourists while ignoring their communities, instead pushing for local investment.A federal judge this week ruled that Trump’s similar national guard deployment to Los Angeles violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which restricts military involvement in civilian law enforcement, potentially undermining the legal foundation for the DC operation.Trump has so far claimed substantial results from the operation, posting on Truth Social that “Carjacking in DC is down 87%” and that “ALL other categories of crime are likewise down massively” along with 1,599 arrests and 165 illegal weapons seized as of 1 September, according to the attorney general, Pam Bondi. On Tuesday he called DC a model for other states and in an Oval Office meeting said he would be “honored” to take a call from the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, to send national guard troops to his state.“I would love to have Governor Pritzker call me,” Trump said. “I’d gain respect for him and say we do have a problem, and we’d love to send in the troops because, you know what, the people they have to be protected.” More

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      From Uncle Sam to social media memes: inside homeland security’s push to swell Ice ranks

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      The pinned post on the X account of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is an image of Uncle Sam with the caption “We Need You.”“America has been invaded by criminals and predators,” the post reads. “We need YOU to get them out.”DHS posts on Instagram are similar. One pinned post features a highly produced video that starts with a family walking in a field and urges viewers to “defend” their “homeland”. Another displays an image of a younger and older man in military garb, designed to look like a first world war-era army recruitment poster. Under it, in big bold capital letters: “NO AGE CAP JOIN ICE NOW”. The caption: “We’re taking father/son bonding to a whole new level.”The posts are part of the DHS’s push to quickly hire more than 10,000 new US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers and 3,000 border patrol agents in order to meet the Trump administration’s aggressive arrest and deportation quotas.To meet those goals, the DHS has made several changes to its job and eligibility requirements in what experts say is a rushed attempt to expand its hiring pool – including appealing to a younger set of potential recruits. In addition to lowering the age minimum to 18, DHS is working to incentivize more hires with promises of forgiving up to $60,000 in college loans.And it has heavily invested in advertising on social media. In early August, 404 Media spotted Ice documents that solicited pitches from advertising companies that could help the agency “dominate digital media with messages that reflect the urgency and scale of Ice’s hiring effort”.Ice identified three audiences as its targets: former military and law enforcement; legal professionals; gen Z and early-career professionals. The deadline for companies to submit proposals was 11 August.It is unclear whether Ice has selected a vendor, though there have been no new posted contracts as of yet and Meta’s ad library, which is one of the few public repositories of brand advertising activity on social media, has no new entries for the DHS or Ice as of the publication of this article.Meanwhile, Ice and the DHS have already been ramping up their social media recruitment efforts on various platforms.Its photos and videos depict the US at war, with Ice and border patrol agents part of a heroic effort to save the country from criminals and predators, even though numerous studies have shown immigrants commit fewer crimes than those born in the US. Many of the ads conjure a feeling of nostalgia for a country that once was. And some have thinly veiled references to white supremacist messages.Marketing experts say that taken together, the various posts show a scattered strategy, probably because the agency is targeting such a wide array of audiences.The posts depict a country that the younger generation has never known, says Mara Einstein, the author of Hoodwinked, How Marketers Use the Same Tactics as Cults. “This is a generation that has lived through permacrisis and has never known that shiny city on the hill that people of older generations think of when they think of the US,” Einstein said. “Even if you have a dual target, advertisers have to ask how do you talk to both of these people.”Many of the ads juxtapose Uncle Sam and other American symbols with images of mostly brown immigrants being arrested. On X, DHS regularly posts intentionally antagonistic memes commonly used in far-right corners of the internet in its responses to other people’s posts.The overall campaign strategy also appears to attempt to replicate in some ways the US army’s “Be All You Can Be” campaign – likening the recruitment of immigration enforcement officers to a military recruitment campaign and an act of patriotism, experts say. One video shows supposed immigration officers training in a military facility and people jumping out of planes. The caption: “Hunt cartels. Save America.”In its latest video the DHS boasts about its 5,000th arrest in Los Angeles that starts with Hollywood-style footage of immigration officers putting on their military tactical gear and ends with a compilation of mostly brown men being arrested or detained.“The targeting of Black and brown immigrants with false information and using pictures of Uncle Sam as if this is military recruitment at the time of war is an unprecedented use of propaganda for civil immigration enforcement,” said Nayna Gupta, the policy director at the American Immigration Council.“The social media messaging links this anti-immigration narrative to patriotism to some all-American identity,” Gupta continued. “But part of the American identity has always been this is a country that welcomes people that want to build something better.”While the messaging is muddled, the choice to post images or text that either enrage or excite an already polarized audience is a strategy that builds on Donald Trump’s ongoing success with capturing attention on social media by posting hateful and inflammatory content, according to Ramesh Srinivasan, aUCLA professor of information studies.“It’s a messaging strategy that has worked well within algorithmic systems that are optimized for content that is predicted to capture attention,” Srinivasan said. “It’s a negative populism that has been part of the Trump team’s strategy from the get-go.”The campaign also seeks to put a glossy sheen on the realities of working for Ice – making it look like a scene out of Bad Boys while simultaneously demonizing and dehumanizing America’s immigrant communities, experts say.It’s not a totally unprecedented approach to recruitment for the DHS to take but it’s historically been a far cry from the realities of working for Ice, according to Michelle Brané, a former DHS official under the Biden administration. “The recruitment videos have always looked like an episode of Cops, so these new videos are not necessarily that different,” Brane said. “It was always about: ‘We’re going to catch the bad guys,’ with videos of raiding a house, a car chase, wrestling someone to the ground. And that always seemed problematic.“Many people in the field were very dissatisfied with the day-to-day of their jobs,” Brané said of her time working at the DHS. “They did arrest criminals, but a very large part of their job is just processing regular people who have immigration violations or who crossed the border and are requesting asylum. But they’d insist, ‘That’s not the job I signed up for – I signed up to catch the bad guys.’”Experts worry that the rapid pace of recruitment, paired with the polarizing messaging the DHS is using will attract a group of people desperate for work who may share the xenophobic and anti-immigrant stances of the administration.“This feels like a multi-level marketing thing where you’re going to get the people who are really vulnerable and desperate and looking for some type of job who is willing to do this,” said Einstein.It may further push Ice, as an agency, into an extreme political posture, Gupta said.“What’s worrisome is that any folks that this kind of dehumanizing propaganda would work on are more likely to share xenophobic views of non-citizens,” Gupta said. “Combined with decreasing training and vetting practices by Ice as they look to speed up hiring creates a situation where the agency is likely to be hiring enforcement officers who have an explicit history of racism or don’t meet the usual standards of law enforcement officers.” More

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      Trump news at a glance: president shrugs off ill health rumours as ‘fake news’

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      Donald Trump has dismissed speculation that he is in ill health, saying he was busy on the Labor Day weekend giving media interviews and visiting his Virginia golf course.“I was very active over the weekend,” Trump, 79, told reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday. Asked about rumours on social media that he may have died, he called them “fake news”.The president complained that he had done several news conferences last week “then I didn’t do any for two days and they said ‘there must be something wrong with him’.”“It’s so fake. ‘Is he OK, how’s he feeling, what’s wrong?’”Speculation about his health swirled on X over the weekend, with posts citing his lack of a public schedule late last week and a JD Vance interview in which the vice-president told USA Today he was confident the president was “in good shape” but suggested he was prepared to step in if anything happened to Trump.Here’s the day’s Trump administration news at a glance.Trump illegally deployed national guard to LA, court rulesA judge has found the Trump administration’s use of national guard troops during southern California immigration enforcement protests was illegal.Judge Charles Breyer ruled on Tuesday that the administration violated federal law by sending troops to accompany federal agents on immigration raids. The judge did not require the remaining troops withdrawn, however.Read the full storyIce obtains access to Israeli-made spywareUS immigration agents will have access to one of the world’s most sophisticated hacking tools after a decision by the Trump administration to move ahead with a contract with Paragon Solutions, a company founded in Israel which makes spyware that can be used to hack into any mobile phone, including encrypted applications.Read the full storyUS House committee releases more than 33,000 pages of Jeffrey Epstein filesThe US House of Representatives oversight committee released thousands of pages of records related to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein from the justice department.The 33,000 pages included years-old court filings related to Epstein and his former associate Ghislaine Maxwell as well as what appears to be body-cam footage from police searches and police interviews.The release on Tuesday comes as the Trump administration has been embroiled in months of controversy over its decision not to release additional files in the case.Read the full storyTrump announces Space Command HQ will switch to Alabama from ColoradoDonald Trump made his first public appearance in a week on Tuesday to announce that the US Space Command (Spacecom) headquarters, which is tasked with leading national security operations in space, would be in the Republican stronghold of Alabama.Flanked by Republican senators and members of Congress at a White House news conference, Trump said Huntsville, Alabama, would be the new location of the space command.The move reverses a Biden administration decision to put the facility at its current temporary headquarters in Democratic-leaning Colorado.Read the full storyAmy Coney Barrett defends US abortion ruling in memoirThe conservative supreme court justice Amy Coney Barrett, whose controversial fast-track confirmation at the end of Trump’s first presidency led directly to the panel’s vote to strike down abortion rights nationally, has expressed in a new memoir her belief that the ruling “respected the choice” of the American people.Barrett was paid a $2m advance for her book, Listening to the Law, according to CNN, which obtained a copy and published brief extracts on Tuesday, a week before its 9 September publication.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      A US appeals court has allowed US federal trade commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, a Democrat, to resume her role at the agency, as Donald Trump tries to remove her from office.

      Jerry Nadler, a Democratic representative from New York, will retire next year after 34 years in Congress.

      One of the world’s most prominent hedge fund billionaires, Ray Dalio, has warned that rising inequality is turning the US into an autocratic state and condemned business leaders for failing to speak out against Trump’s policies.

      Woody Allen has said he was impressed by the acting abilities of Donald Trump when he directed the now-president in the 1998 film Celebrity.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 1 September 2025. More