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      LA Ice protests spurred US military to identify ‘hotels to avoid’ due to ‘harassment’

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      When Donald Trump’s administration escalated immigration raids in Los Angeles earlier this summer, protest organizers responded with actions staged in an unusual setting: the hotels where immigration officers were staying.Protests took place at several southern California hotels where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents had been spotted. Some activists launched “No sleep for Ice” rallies, with chants and music blaring through the night, in hopes of pressuring the hotels to kick agents out.Now, public records shared with the Guardian show that the protests indeed sent federal agencies scrambling to find hotels for their officers in LA where they would not be “harassed”.A 16 June email from the US marines shows that military officials made a list of “LA Hotels to Avoid”. The information came from multiple law enforcement agencies who were tracking the community backlash to Ice and the border patrol, the marines said. The list was written by Army North, the domestic defense command deployed on the ground during the protests, and reviewed by the navy’s south-west division.The documents, obtained by Property of the People, a government transparency non-profit, suggest protesters successfully disrupted Trump’s immigration crackdown by targeting hotels, though the extent of their impact is not clear from the records.An email thread shows a Marine Corps analyst in San Diego sent the list of LA hotels to the San Diego Law Enforcement Coordination Center (SD-LECC) seeking a similar list of properties to avoid in San Diego. The analyst’s duties include “critical infrastructure protection” and their name was redacted. The SD-LECC is a fusion center where local, state and federal agencies share intelligence.“We have operations in the area and are looking to avoid issues wherever possible,” the analyst wrote, saying the LA list was based on reports of “harassment of Ice and CBP personnel”.View image in fullscreenAuthorities did not disclose the hotel names or further communications to Property of the People, so it is also unclear how widely hotel demonstrations erupted and were tracked.Spokespeople for the marines and the navy declined to comment, deferring to the army, which did not respond to inquiries. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions about the hotel protests, and in an email on Thursday after publication of this article, a spokesperson referred questions to the military.Kristi Laughlin, SD-LECC’s deputy director, told the Guardian that SD-LECC was not aware of protests taking place at hotels in the San Diego region and did not provide a list in response to the military’s request.The military’s apparent efforts to help federal personnel avoid demonstrators at hotels came after Trump took the extraordinary step of deploying the national guard and marines to respond to LA protests. The move polled poorly among US residents and led to reports of low morale among troops.Ryan Shapiro, executive director of Property of the People, which filed a series of records requests on the LA immigration raids, said it was remarkable that US armed forces apparently had to search for accommodations where they would not be protested, an unusual predicament he attributed to the widespread outrage at the administration.“The document reveals that Trump’s nativist crusade, carried out by masked Ice thugs, is so widely detested that now the US military feels the need to hide from Americans on American soil,” Shapiro said in an email.Advocates involved in the protests said the emails seemed to affirm the effectiveness of the demonstrations, some of which were organized spontaneously by nearby residents. News reports in June chronicled hotel demonstrations across LA county municipalities, including Pasadena, Glendale, Long Beach, Whittier, Downey, Monrovia and Montebello.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Working-class people saw this as a way to participate in the struggle against Ice,” said Ron Gochez, a leading member of Unión del Barrio, a group that documents Ice actions in LA. At the height of the June raids, his group received five to 10 calls a day from people who had spotted immigration officers at hotels, Gochez said. Once the reports were verified through photos or hotel employees, Unión del Barrio alerted other community groups in their networks.“A lot of hotel workers were not only mad about officers staying there, but were in fear because they were undocumented,” he said. “People want to make life difficult for these agents as they are kidnapping and separating families. And for the agents to constantly hear that they are unwanted, that people in society hate what they’re doing, that they will go down in history as kidnappers and collaborators, I think that gets to them psychologically.”One of the first hotel demonstrations took place on 8 June at the AC Hotel in Pasadena, a Marriott property, where, according to a state senator, immigration officers were lodging and had questioned staff.“We wanted to alert the community that Ice was staying at the hotel and let Ice know they were not welcome in Pasadena,” said Jose Madera, director of the Pasadena Community Job Center, a day laborer center.Widely shared footage showed protesters cheering as federal vehicles left the AC Hotel, with agents seen exiting with their bags stacked on a cart, the LA Times reported.“It was effective because the community organically organized itself, and people did not leave until they physically saw the agents leave,” Madera said. “It’s a source of pride for the people who live and work in Pasadena that we started this and sparked other communities to organize to get Ice out of their hotels … It’s going to take many strategies to slow down and stop Ice raids.”At the Glendale Hilton on 12 June, protesters posted footage of a woman who identified herself as hotel management greeting protesters and saying officers had left and would no longer be staying there.Representatives of the Glendale and Pasadena hotels did not respond to inquiries.“It helped combat this feeling of hopelessness,” said Teto Huezo, who was involved in the Glendale protests and is part of an LA community self-defense coalition that monitors Ice. He said he hoped more protests would pressure hotels to publicly commit to keeping Ice out. “Community members should be proud of these wins. The lesson is, we can be so much more organized and smarter than these agencies, and when we don’t want them in our neighborhoods, we can actually take actions to force them out.” More

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      A coal-fired plant in Michigan was to close. But Trump forced it to keep running at $1m a day

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      Donald Trump has made several unusual moves to elongate the era of coal, such as giving the industry exemptions from pollution rules. But the gambit to keep one Michigan coal-fired power station running has been extraordinary – by forcing it to remain open even against the wishes of its operator.The hulking JH Campbell power plant, which since 1962 has sat a few hundred yards from the sand dunes at the edge of Lake Michigan, was just eight days away from a long-planned closure in May when Trump’s Department of Energy issued an emergency order that it remain open for a further 90 days.On Wednesday, the administration intervened again to extend this order even further, prolonging the lifetime of the coal plant another 90 days, meaning it will keep running until November – six months after it was due to close.The move, taken under emergency powers more normally used during wartime or in the wake of disaster, has stunned local residents and the plant’s operator, Consumers Energy. “My family had a countdown for it closing, we couldn’t wait,” said Mark Oppenhuizen, who has lived in the shadow of the plant for 30 years and suspects its pollution worsened his wife’s lung disease.“I was flabbergasted when the administration said they had stopped it shutting down,” he said. “Why are they inserting themselves into a decision a company has made? Just because politically you don’t like it? It’s all so dumb.”The 23 May order and the latest edict, by the US energy secretary, Chris Wright, both warn that the regional grid would be strained by the closure of JH Campbell with local homes and businesses at risk of “curtailments or outages, presenting a risk to public health and safety” without it.“This order will help ensure millions of Americans can continue to access affordable, reliable, and secure baseload power regardless of whether the wind is blowing or the sun is shining,” Wright said in a statement on Thursday.But Miso, the grid operator for Michigan and 14 other states, has stressed it has had “adequate resources to meet peak demand this summer” without JH Campbell and Consumers Energy had already set about making plans for life after its last remaining coal plant.“What’s remarkable is that this is the first time the energy secretary has used these powers without being asked to do so by the market operator or power plant operator,” said Timothy Fox, an energy analyst at ClearView. “It shows the Trump administration is prepared to take muscular actions to keep its preferred power sources online.”View image in fullscreenWright – whose department has bizarrely taken to tweeting pictures of lumps of coal with the words “She’s an icon. She’s a legend” – has said the US “has got to stop closing coal plants” to help boost electricity generation to meet demand that is escalating due to the growth of artificial intelligence.The administration has also issued a separate emergency declaration to keep open a gas plant in Pennsylvania, although it has sought to kill off wind and solar projects, which Trump has called “ugly” and “disgusting”.The president, who solicited and received major donations from coal, oil and gas interests during his election campaign, has signed an executive order aimed at reviving what he calls “beautiful, clean coal” and took the remarkable step of asking fossil fuel companies to email requests to be exempt from pollution laws, again under emergency powers.So far, 71 coal plants, along with dozens of other chemical, copper smelting and other polluting facilities, have received “pollution passes” from the Trump administration according to a tally by the Environmental Defense Fund, allowing greater emissions of airborne toxins linked to an array of health problems. Coal is, despite Trump’s claims, the dirtiest of all fossil fuels and the leading source of planet-heating pollution.Trump has launched a “political takeover of the electricity grid” to favor fossil fuels, according to Caroline Reiser, an attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The result of this will be higher electricity bills, more pollution in our communities and a worsening climate crisis,” she added.In Michigan, the cost of keeping JH Campbell open is set to be steep. Consumers Energy initially estimated its closure would save ratepayers $600m by 2040 as it shifts to cheaper, cleaner energy sources such as solar and wind.Reversing this decision costs $1m a day in operating costs, an imposition that midwest residents will have to meet through their bills. It is understood the company privately told outside groups it fears the administration could keep adding 90-day emergency orders for the entire remainder of Trump’s term.“Consumers Energy continues to comply with the [Department of Energy] order and will do so as long as it is in effect,” a company spokesperson said. “We are pursuing recovery of the costs of running the Campbell plant in a proceeding currently before [the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission]. Timely cost recovery is essential.”Should the Trump administration go further and force all of the US fossil fuel plants set to retire by 2028 to continue operating, it will cost American ratepayers as much as $6bn a year in extra bills, a new report by a coalition of green groups has found.This would almost certainly be met by legal action – Dana Nessel, Michigan’s attorney general, has already filed a lawsuit arguing the “arbitrary and illegal order” to extend JH Campbell’s lifespan will unfairly heap costs upon households in the state.Trump’s efforts may bear some fruit, with US coal production expected to tick up slightly this year, although the longer-term trend for coal is one of decline amid cheaper gas and renewables. “The administration may slow the retirement trend although they are unlikely to stop it,” said ClearView’s Fox. “The economics don’t change but the administration could be a savior for these plants at least while Donald Trump is in office.”For those living next to and downwind of coal plants, there is a cost to be paid that isn’t just monetary. Tiny soot particles from burned coal can bury themselves deep into the lungs, causing potentially deadly respiratory and heart problems.The closure of such plants can lift this burden dramatically – a recent study found that in the month after a coal facility was closed near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 2016, the number of childhood asthma visits to local hospitals declined by 41% and then continued to fall by about 4% each month.The study shows “the closure of a major industrial pollution source can lead to immediate and lasting improvements in the lung health of the those who live nearby”, said Wuyue Yu, research co-author and postdoctoral fellow at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine.For those living in the township of Port Sheldon, a mostly bucolic setting on the shore of the vast Lake Michigan, a pollution-free future beckoned once JH Campbell had been scheduled to close, with lofty plans for new parkland, housing and a battery plant touted for the site.View image in fullscreenNow there is uncertainty. Last week, a few dozen residents and activists held a protest event next to the sprawling plant, which hummed and whirred in the summer heat, one 650ft chimney puncturing the horizon, another, smaller flue striped red and white, like a candy cane.Dozens of train cars full of coal, hastily procured after the plant’s supply was used up ahead of a closure that has been scheduled for four years, backed up in the sunshine. When burned in the huge 1.5GW plant, this coal emits about 7.7m tons of carbon dioxide a year.“Trump is just trying to keep the money coming into coal companies as long as he can, I suppose,” said David Hoekema, who has lived a couple of miles from the plant since 2006 and has had to clean coal dust from his windows. Trump easily won this county, called Ottawa, in last year’s election, but Hoekema said even his staunchest conservative neighbors don’t want the coal plant.“I’ve not met anyone along the lake shore who says, ‘Oh yeah, let’s keep this open’ – even the conservative Republicans are concerned about their health,” he said. “Republican ideology says local control is best but the Trump administration is saying, ‘We don’t care what the hell states do, we will impose our order on them.’ I know there’s a lot of competition, but this would have to be one of their craziest decisions.”The Department of Energy did not respond to questions about its plan for JH Campbell once its latest extension expires. The battle over the coal plant’s future has taken place to a backdrop of a scorching summer in Michigan, one of its hottest on record, with algal blooms sprouting in its lakes, both symptoms of an unfolding climate crisis.“The talk in neighborhoods has been how hot it’s been this summer – my kid was prepared to be outside every day and it’s been so hot so often it’s been irresponsible to do that,” said Stephen Wooden, a Democratic state lawmaker who added that Michigan residents are also “pissed off” about increasing power bills.“We’re seeing the impacts of climate change daily, it is impacting our state,” Wooden said. “And this is being caused by the continuation of outdated, expensive fossil fuels that Donald Trump wants to prop up.” More

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      The umpire who picked a side: John Roberts and the death of rule of law in America

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      View image in fullscreenOn 4 March, Donald Trump delivered his epic 100-minute speech to Congress, the longest such presidential address in US history. Having finished speaking, in time-honored fashion, he walked down the line of supreme court justices, gladhanding each in turn before coming to a stop before the chief justice, John Roberts.“Thank you again, thank you again,” Trump said, taking Roberts’s hand into both his own and shaking it vigorously. Then, as he began to step away, the president tapped Roberts on the arm in a gesture of buddy-buddy intimacy, and said: “Won’t forget.”Supreme court watchers have wondered why Trump thanked the chief justice so effusively. Was it because the Roberts court had, exactly a year earlier, allowed Trump to stay on the electoral ballot even though he had inspired a violent mob attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021?Could it have been that Roberts had written the ruling that immunised Trump from criminal prosecution for that January 6 insurrection and for any other criminal misdeed he might commit while in the White House?Or was it, as Trump later claimed, more innocent than that: a simple thank you to Roberts for having administered the oath of office at Trump’s second inauguration?Whatever the truth, time has moved on since that friendly encounter five months ago. Were the president to bump into the chief justice today, one might expect an even more extravagant display of gratitude.In the past 10 weeks America has witnessed an extraordinary outpouring of decisions from its highest court that should make Trump very happy indeed. The six rightwing justices who control the court – three of them given their lifetime seats by Trump himself – have effectively greenlighted the president’s explosive and law-busting agenda.The supermajority has granted Trump 18 straight victories in the administration’s requests for emergency relief. Steve Vladeck, a leading supreme court scholar at Georgetown University Law Center, has tracked the decisions in his Substack, One First, noting that the rulings have been handed down largely in the legal darkness.View image in fullscreenThey have been piped through the court’s so-called “shadow docket”, where important affairs of state are decided at speed and with little or no debate or deliberation. By Vladeck’s count, seven of the orders have been issued without any explanation, leaving the American people clueless as to the justices’ thinking.Yet the emergency rulings, though temporary in nature, could have seismic consequences. For as long as they hold they have the potential to cause untold suffering to millions of people targeted by Trump.That includes countless federal employees who can now be fired at whim after decades of loyal public service; transgender people purged from the military; more than 1 million individuals from Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba and other countries who are being stripped of their status to remain in the US; immigrants singled out for deportation to war-torn third countries where their lives are in danger.Legally, the consequences are also profound. Several of Trump’s actions given temporary go-ahead are of dubious legality, violating congressional or international laws and running roughshod over fundamental tenets of the US constitution.By conceding to Trump’s wishes, the justices have for now approved what Vladeck has called “a truly unprecedented amount of lawlessness by the executive branch”.The liberal-leaning justice Sonia Sotomayor has sounded a similar alarm in a series of increasingly despairing dissenting opinions. Her conservative peers on the court, she has written, are “rewarding lawlessness”, and undermining the bedrock principle that America is a “government of laws, not of men”.All of this has put Roberts, 70, in a strange and uncomfortable position. Just as he should be celebrating the completion of his 20th year at the pinnacle of the US judiciary, he is being accused of betraying the very legal edifice he is supposed to protect.Prominent jurists have held Roberts responsible for emboldening Trump’s drive towards an authoritarian presidency. J Michael Luttig, who served on a federal appeals court for 15 years, put the criticism starkly.“The chief justice is presiding over the end of the rule of law in America,” Luttig told the Guardian.In Luttig’s view, the court under Roberts is “acquiescing in and accommodating the president’s lawlessness. And it is doing so without briefing, without argument, without deliberation – and without even a single word of explanation of its decisions.”For Luttig, this is more than just the 6-3 supermajority of the court expressing its conservatism. This is a fundamental distortion of the American legal system.“The supreme court was never intended to function like this. Never before has it entertained such challenges from the president, and never before has it decided them so flippantly.”When it comes to assessing the chief justice’s record, Luttig has special standing. He was himself a one-time contender for a supreme court seat, and has known Roberts as a friend since they worked together in their 20s in the Reagan administration. Roberts asked Luttig to be a groomsman at his wedding in 1996.“I have had four decades of knowing and respecting him,” Luttig said.Having had a ringside seat for so many years, Luttig has no doubts about how the chief justice is conducting himself in the current fraught moment.“John Roberts knows exactly what he is doing,” the judge said, “and he knows exactly the message he is sending to America.”Luttig’s characterisation of Roberts as a disciplined individual with absolute self-awareness chimes with the chief justice’s reputation as someone who cares deeply about public image. His attention to detail is legendary: he is known to rehearse his questions and fine-tune his jokes before oral arguments.He speaks so smoothly – and disguises his inner convictions so thoroughly – that he has been able to straddle political and personal divides. As one lawyer who has presented before Roberts at the supreme court put it: “There is no person I would rather deliver my eulogy, even if I knew that he hated me.”The roots of Roberts’s controlled conservatism lie in Buffalo, New York, where he was born on 27 January 1955, and in north-west Indiana where his family moved when he was 10. He was brought up in a devout Catholic well-to-do family enjoying the benefits of the post-war boom.His parents came from Johnstown, now a struggling hollowed-out town in western Pennsylvania but then one of the world’s great steel-producing centers. His father, John Glover “Jack” Roberts Sr rose to be a manager of a steel plant and moved the family to Long Beach, Indiana, a heavily segregated white enclave on Lake Michigan.As a teenager, Roberts imbibed a fusion of Catholic morality and a powerful work ethic. He went on to attend an elite Catholic boarding school, La Lumiere, that had been recently founded by local businessmen.“I have always wanted to stay ahead of the crowd,” he wrote in an application letter to the school at age 13. “I’m sure that by attending and doing my best at La Lumiere I will assure myself of a fine future.”Harvard and its law school followed. He remarked in 2006 that the culture shock of being an Indiana boy surrounded by liberal students protesting against the Vietnam war helped cement his conservatism.“I didn’t view myself as conservative until I went there and kind of reacted against the orthodoxy,” he said.Joan Biskupic, who wrote a 2019 biography of Roberts, describes him as having emerged from Harvard with a “flawless veneer” and an eye for appearances. In The Chief, she writes: “He has always shown a keen interest in how he is portrayed in the media. Even as a young lawyer in the Reagan administration, he demonstrated an awareness of the importance of messaging.”The message for which Roberts is most famous was deployed during his Senate confirmation hearings for the role of chief justice in 2005. In a speech dripping with faux humility, he presented himself as the impartial arbiter of the law.“Judges are like umpires,” he said. “Umpires don’t make the rules, they apply them … Nobody ever went to a ball game to see the umpire.”Over the past 20 years he has honed that umpire character, modelling himself as a modern institutionalist. He has kept his personal convictions largely hidden, shrouding himself and his leanings in mystery; as Biskupic puts it, he is “his own enigma”.Meanwhile, the court he leads has marched – through Trump’s three nominations of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – in an ever more rightward direction. Over time, the gulf has steadily widened between Roberts’s media representation as a moderate conservative and the increasingly extreme actions of his court.“Supreme court reporting has been generous to Roberts, and has reinforced the idea that what is happening in his court is a sort of normalcy, when it is not normal at all,” said Lisa Graves, the former chief counsel for nominations for the Senate judiciary committee and founder of True North Research, a watchdog investigating rightwing groups that undermine democracy.Graves has reappraised the chief justice’s 20-year record and come up with a very different narrative than that of Umpire Roberts. Her conclusions are laid out in her forthcoming book, Without Precedent, which will be published next month.In it, she argues that Roberts is anything but the modest judge he claims to be. Rather, he has used his power as chief justice to promote a rightwing agenda from the moment George W Bush placed him in the court’s central seat in 2005.View image in fullscreen“He has consistently shown hostility towards civil rights, trade unions and environmental protections, approaching the law with the rigidity of a rightwing ideologue. That was true from the time when as a young man he chose to clerk for the most regressive supreme court justice, William Rehnquist, and it remains true today,” Graves said.Roberts cut his legal teeth not in the wood-panelled setting of a federal court, but in the executive branch as an eager young pup in the Reagan administration. He began in 1981 working for Ken Starr, then chief of staff to the US attorney general (and later Bill Clinton’s bete noire), before joining the White House counsel’s office where he became friends with Luttig.Those early days of Ronald Reagan’s first term bear comparison with Trump’s second. Both presidents wielded a strong media presence, both were vitriolically dismissive of liberals whom they blamed for destroying America, both were committed to radical tax and spending cuts and slashing what they regarded as the bloated federal government.Roberts adopted Reagan’s mission with zeal. “I felt he was speaking directly to me,” he once recalled about listening to the newly ensconced president’s 1981 inaugural speech.Within the Reagan administration, Roberts began to formulate rightwing passions that have endured through his years on the top court. They included hostility towards civil rights and voting protections for racial minorities, and skepticism of racially based affirmative action.View image in fullscreenAt the justice department he wrote a series of spiky legal memos in which he let down his mild-mannered guard. Out came a stream of aggressive and combative missives designed to boost Reagan’s power and stature.The memos make for a chilling read in the context of today. Roberts lambasts fellow government officials whom he accused of standing in the way of the Reagan agenda – an echo of Trump and Doge’s war on the “deep state” civil service. He railed against affirmative action programs seeking to redress the balance for women and Black people – a view that was made manifest in 2023 when his court put an end to affirmative action in universities.The future head of the US judiciary went so far in his memos as to berate federal judges for what he called “unwarranted interference” in executive branch affairs. Fast forward four decades, and we now see the Roberts court repeatedly overturning the rulings of lower court judges who have resisted Trump’s lawless actions.Just how far federal courts should go in reining in presidents is a perennial question that has divided jurists and politicians for years. What disturbs some supreme court watchers about the present moment is the context in which this wrangling is happening: with Trump so brazenly challenging the rule of law, is now the time for the top court to be clipping the wings of federal judges struggling to hold him back?As Graves points out, Roberts’s approach to lower court judges would be more understandable if it were consistently applied – or to put it another way, if he actually did behave like a neutral umpire free of political motives. “When a Democrat was in the White House, the chief justice went out of his way to block student loan debt relief, which was a modest effort by the Biden administration that in no way compares to the extreme actions that Roberts is now greenlighting for Trump.”Roberts’s early musings on the importance of a strong executive in the White House, so evident in those Reagan memos, run as a theme through his jurisprudence. It culminated with him authoring Trump v US.That was last year’s shattering ruling that gave Trump absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for his official presidential acts.The chief justice justified this extraordinary decision to shield the president from basic accountability by invoking the desire of the framers – the men who drafted the US constitution – for a “vigorous” and “energetic” executive.He conveniently overlooked the framers’ other core executive requirements: “responsibility”, and an obligation to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed”.Trump has repeatedly ignored that duty over the past six months. He has disregarded congressional laws, such as the 1974 Impoundment Control Act which limits the president’s power to withhold funds approved by Congress from federal agencies.He has also violated constitutional laws such as birthright citizenship – a right that is written in plain, unambiguous English into the 14th amendment.Graves believes that Roberts’s immunity ruling has had devastating consequences. “It paved the way for Trump’s return. It sent a signal to some sections of the American people that not only did Trump do no wrong, he could do no wrong – that if he returned to power, he would be above the law.”When Trump did return to the White House on 20 January, Roberts was widely seen as the last great hope for constitutional government. The chief justice would draw a line in the sand that Trump, thirsting for supremacy, would not be allowed to cross.Initially there were signs that such hopes might be founded. At 1am on 19 April – in the early hours of a Saturday morning – the supreme court issued an order that could be deemed to draw precisely such a line in the sand.It barred the Trump administration from deporting undocumented Venezuelans summarily to a notorious prison in El Salvador. The Roberts court had struck a blow for due process and, yes, the rule of law.The rosy glow of that pre-dawn intervention did not last for long. Since then the supreme court has used the shadow docket to grant Trump virtually his every wish, trampling over the separation of powers in the process.The most recent emergency order from 23 July allowed Trump to fire without cause three Democratic members of the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission. The decision was a direct affront to Congress, which had created the agency and only permitted the president to fire its commissioners on grounds of neglect of duty, or malfeasance.Just days earlier, the justices cleared the way for Trump to eviscerate the federal education department even though, as Sotomayor pointed out in one of her withering dissents, only Congress has the power to do so. And a week before that they gave the green light to the mass firing of thousands of federal workers, delivering a potential death knell to the US government as we know it.The court’s most egregious shadow docket rulings relate to cases in which Trump has not only violated the law, he has done so in open defiance of federal judges. On 23 June and 3 July the justices released two emergency orders which had the combined effect of allowing the Trump administration to deport people to third countries such as South Sudan, a nation devastated by civil war and with a shaky human rights record.Federal judges in lower courts had expressly forbidden the deportations, ordering that the individuals had to be given a chance to prove they faced torture in those destinations. Under the international Convention against Torture, to which the US is a signatory, it is prohibited to expel people to places where they might be subjected to such illegal treatment.The Trump administration ignored the court rulings, deporting the individuals regardless.Roberts’s willingness to preside over a court that sides with Trump over the judiciary itself, even in cases involving brazen defiance of federal judges, has profoundly shocked the legal world.“The supreme court is the ultimate guardian of the rule of law, and it appears to have abdicated that role,” said Amrit Singh, director of the Rule of Law Lab at New York University. “The court has clearly indicated that it is willing to tolerate the Trump administration’s violation of federal court orders.”Singh’s charitable interpretation is that Roberts was trying to “appease the Trump administration to avoid direct confrontation”. Were that the case, she said, the chief justice was pursuing an “extremely dangerous strategy”.“He is letting the Trump administration get away with it. When district court orders are ignored, and the supreme court turns a blind eye, then the rule of law has already been sacrificed.”Some supreme court watchers have cautioned against assuming that the justices’ emergency rulings are their final word. Bob Bauer, Barack Obama’s White House counsel who co-chaired Joe Biden’s presidential commission on the supreme court, has pointed out that the court has yet to rule on several of Trump’s biggest provocations.They include birthright citizenship, and the use of the Alien Enemies Act under which third-country deportations are being carried out. “There is yet no final resolution of these issues,” Bauer has written in his Substack, Executive Functions.It is true that, if and when those issues are fully addressed by the supreme court, Roberts could surprise us once again. He could dust off his old umpire’s uniform, revisit his carefully crafted posture as a moderate institutionalist, and confound us all – Trump included – with nuanced rulings.But for his longtime friend Luttig, that is besides the point. The price of what Roberts is doing here and now, in the legal darkness of the shadow docket, is just too high.“The supreme court has pulled the rug out from under the lower federal courts, and it has done so deliberately and knowingly,” Luttig said. “The chief justice has no higher obligation than to protect the federal judiciary from attacks by this president, and in my view he has utterly failed.”

      This article was amended on 21 August 2025 to correct that John Roberts administered an oath of office to Donald Trump; he did not take the oath as previously stated. More

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      Trump needs to understand what the war in Ukraine is really about | Kenneth Roth

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      It may be difficult for a real-estate mogul like Donald Trump to recognize, but Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is not about slices of war-torn land in eastern Ukraine. It is about Ukraine’s democracy. Putin fears that the Russian people will see that democracy as an enticing alternative to his stultifying autocratic rule. Trump is unlikely to secure a peace deal unless he acts on that reality and changes the cost-benefit analysis behind Putin’s continuing war.Much of the public analysis of the Alaska summit between Trump and Putin, and the Washington collection of European leaders protecting the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, from the temperamental Trump, has been replete with red-herring issues. For example, Putin did not invade Ukraine because of feared Nato expansion. The unanimous consent of all Nato members required to admit Ukraine is nowhere on the horizon, especially since article 5 of the Nato treaty would require all Nato members to defend Ukraine from the ongoing Russian incursion.Ironically, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has strengthened Nato. It encouraged Sweden and Finland to join the alliance. It led Nato members to vow to dramatically increase their defense expenditures to 5% of their gross domestic product. And it has made some Nato members more likely to deploy troops in Ukraine as part of a “reassurance force” to secure a possible peace deal.Nor did Putin invade to liberate the Ukrainian people from the rule of Zelenskyy, whom he regards as illegitimate and even a “neo-Nazi”. This claim is rich because Zelenskyy was chosen in a free and fair election, but Putin risked only an electoral charade while imprisoning, ultimately lethally, his most charismatic opponent, Alexei Navalny.And the war is not about Putin’s pining to resurrect the Soviet Union, whose collapse he sees as “the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”. That logic would endanger the other 13 former Soviet states, three of which – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – are Nato members.Rather, Putin invaded Ukraine to quash its democracy. Unlike the established democracies of Europe, Ukraine looks too much like Russia for Putin to ignore the possibility that Russians will see an alternative future in its accountable, elected government. Like Russia, Ukraine is Slavic and Orthodox. And far from a small statelet, Ukraine, with the second largest population among post-Soviet states after Russia, cannot be ignored.Putin has long preferred Ukraine as a Kremlin vassal state. The Euromaidan protests of 2013-14, which ousted Ukraine’s pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych after he suspended talks for a closer relationship with the European Union, led to Putin’s seizure of Ukraine’s Crimea and parts of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.Today, Putin’s most controversial demands would enhance the possibility of Kyiv’s renewed subordination. His insistence that Ukraine hand over large portions of Donetsk province – the “land swaps” that Trump casually suggests – would relinquish far more land than Russia has managed to take by force since November 2022, at enormous cost in Russian soldiers’ lives – land that had been home to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians.It would also compel Ukrainian forces to abandon key defensive lines – Ukraine’s “fortress belt’’ – that stand in the way of Russian seizure of much larger chunks of territory. Comparisons with Neville Chamberlain’s 1938 appeasement of Adolf Hitler by sacrificing Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland – a prelude to war – would be inevitable. Putin’s demand that Ukraine disarm would make Russia’s further aggression even easier.Precluding that possibility is why security guarantees are so important for Ukraine. Given that Putin has a history of ignoring agreements with Ukraine, Kyiv reasonably wants some assurance that the Russian military will not use a lull in the fighting to replenish its diminished forces, rearm and reinvade. The best guarantee would be a European peacekeeping force on the ground, but European governments understandably seek a US backstop to deter Russian attack. Trump’s stated willingness to consider air support for a European force is an important step forward. The Russian government’s insistence on the power to veto any security guarantees raises obvious questions about Putin’s intentions.For now, Putin seems to see advantage in continuing the war. To avoid angering Trump, he hasn’t outright refused to meet with Zelenskyy but is slow-walking the matter by insisting on time-consuming prior steps. Given that Putin’s quest to undermine Ukraine’s democracy stems from his calculation of what it takes to retain power, the only way to soften his maximalist demands is by making his recalcitrance even more politically costly.This is where Trump has a role to play. Entering the Alaska summit, Trump had threatened “severe consequences” if Putin did not agree to a ceasefire. The mercurial Trump then seemingly abandoned that threat after a few hours with Putin.Trump could take various steps that would force Putin to recalibrate the rationale for his war. Trump could increase the supply of arms to Ukraine. He could further use tariffs to deter the sale of oil and gas that prop up the Russian military. He could press European governments to devote to Ukraine’s defense and rebuilding the $300bn of sovereign Russian assets that are now frozen in western accounts.It is deeply disturbing that matters of war and peace, democracy and autocracy, depend on stroking and flattering the fragile ego of the self-absorbed Trump. But that is the world we live in.European leaders have an essential role to play in nudging him in the right direction. They must get Trump to overcome his usual disdain for democratic rule, and admiration for autocrats like Putin, to acknowledge the centrality of defending Ukraine’s democracy for any fair resolution of the Ukraine conflict.These are counterintuitive steps for the American president. But if he wants to orchestrate an end to the horrible slaughter in Ukraine, he will have to summon the vision to take them.

      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 new book, Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments, was published by Knopf and Allen Lane More

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      Texas house passes redrawn electoral map aiming to help Republicans keep majority in 2026 midterms – US politics live

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      Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. My name is Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.We start with news that the Texas legislature’s lower chamber passed a contentious new electoral map on Wednesday that aims to help Donald Trump’s Republican party retain its razor-thin US House majority in the 2026 midterm elections, AFP reported.The vote had been delayed by two weeks after Democratic legislators fled the southern state to halt the redistricting drive, which carves out five new Republican-friendly districts.More than 50 Democrats walked out, stalling legislative business and generating national headlines as they sought to draw attention to the rare mid-decade redistricting push.The Democratic lawmakers returned this week, but not before their protest had set off a national map-drawing war, with Trump pressuring his party’s state-level officials to do everything they can to protect the majority in the US House of Representatives.The stakes are sky-high for Trump, who will be bogged down in investigations into almost every aspect of his second term if Democrats manage to flip the handful of districts nationwide needed to win back the House in next year’s midterm elections.Trump hailed the “Big WIN for the Great State of Texas“ on Wednesday night. “Everything Passed, on our way to FIVE more Congressional seats and saving your Rights, your Freedoms, and your Country, itself,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform. “Texas never lets us down.”The president also suggested Florida, Indiana and other states were looking into pursuing similar redistricting to benefit Republicans while once again calling to “STOP MAIL-IN VOTING.”Trump – who has long railed against postal ballots, even though they have benefited his party and he has voted by mail – said in a separate post:
      END MAIL-IN VOTING, AND GO TO PAPER BALLOTS. 100 additional seats will go to Republicans!!!”
      In other developments:

      The vice-president, JD Vance, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and the White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, staged a photo op with National Guard troops at Union Station in the nation’s capital. They were roundly booed and jeered on their way in and out of the station.

      A federal judge denied the justice department’s bid to unseal records from the grand jury that indicted Jeffrey Epstein in 2019. US district judge Richard Berman said the small number of documents seen by the court pale in comparison with the 100,000 records the government already has on Epstein and that disclosing them could harm victims.

      Lisa Cook, the Federal Reserve governor Trump has called on to immediately resign over an accusation that she falsely declared a property she obtained a mortgage on was her primary residence, responded on Wednesday that she has “no intention of being bullied to step down”.

      Trump has bought at least $100m of bonds since he returned to office in January, according to a CNBC analysis of new filings from the president with the US Office of Government Ethics.

      A young American citizen who was violently arrested by federal immigration officers in Los Angeles county in June, after he objected to the arrest of an older man in a Walmart parking lot, was charged with conspiracy to impede a federal officer. More

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      Trump news at a glance: president fights ‘woke’ Smithsonian after claims it is too focused on ‘slavery’

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      After Donald Trump on Tuesday lashed out at the Smithsonian Institution – a premier museum, education and research complex for US history and culture – over what he called an excessive focus on “how bad Slavery was”, the Guardian has revealed the shape his administration’s targeting of seven flagship museums will take.Trump suggested he would pressure the institution to accept his demands, just like he did with colleges and universities by threatening to cut federal funding. The White House said last week it would lead an internal review of some Smithsonian museums after Trump earlier this year accused it of spreading “anti-American ideology”.Here is the key Trump administration news of the day:Exclusive: Trump to review Smithsonian museums to ‘get Woke out’Amid the Trump administration’s heavy-handed review of Smithsonian museums, the Guardian has seen a document compiled by the White House that argues the widely visited cultural institutions have overly negative portrayals of US history, from a Benjamin Franklin exhibit that links his scientific achievements to his ownership of enslaved people to a film about George Floyd’s murder that it says mischaracterizes the police.Read the full storyPresident calls on Federal Reserve governor to resignDonald Trump called on a Federal Reserve governor to immediately resign, renewing his extraordinary attack on the central bank’s independence as officials mull next steps on interest rates. The president has repeatedly broken with precedent in recent months to demand the Fed cut rates and urged its chair, Jerome Powell, to quit after disregarding such calls.Read the full storyTexas Republicans pass gerrymandered congressional map requested by TrumpThe Republican-controlled Texas House of Representatives has approved a redrawn congressional map requested by Donald Trump and fiercely opposed by Democrats, who led a weeks-long protest to stall the effort that kicked off a redistricting arms race between red and blue states.With the House’s approval, the measure next goes to the state Senate, where it is expected to pass, possibly as soon as Thursday.Read the full storyJudge rejects Trump’s request to unseal Epstein transcriptsA federal judge in New York who presided over the sex-trafficking case against the late financier Jeffrey Epstein has rejected the government’s request to unseal grand jury transcripts.Judge Richard Berman’s ruling in Manhattan on Wednesday came after the judge presiding over the case against British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell also turned down the government’s request.Read the full storyUS health agency workers accuse RFK Jr of fuelling violenceMore than 750 current and former federal health employees on Wednesday accused the health and human services (HHS) secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, of fuelling harassment and violence directed at government healthcare staff.Read the full storyMilitary vehicle crashes in DC as red states send more troopsA military vehicle crashed into a car in Washington DC on Wednesday morning, an incident that comes as more than six Republican-led states have all pledged to send more national guard troops to the capital.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      JD Vance was booed and heckled with chants of “Free DC!” during a photo op with national guard troops at Union Station in Washington on Wednesday afternoon.

      A Yosemite national park ranger was fired after hanging a pride flag from El Capitan, while some park visitors could face prosecution under protest restrictions that have been tightened under Donald Trump.

      Texas cannot require public schools to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom, a judge said in a temporary ruling against the state’s new requirement.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 19 August 2025. More

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      Republican-led Texas legislature to vote on new gerrymandered district map – live

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      The Texas house is getting down to legislative business today. The Republican majority is poised to pass the new congressional map that would give the GOP five more US House seats in 2026. As I write this, members have spent the last several hours handling and voting down a number of amendments to the bill, filed by Democrats. My colleague, George Chidi, has been covering the action in and around the house chamber today.

      A reminder that Texas Democrats broke quorum for two weeks in protest of the gerrymandered map set to pass today. Their walkout set the stage for a wider redistricting battle that’s now playing out across the country. In fact, Axios reports (citing an internal memo from Gavin Newsom’s longtime pollster) that the California governor’s bid to offset Texas’ gains and redraw his state’s congressional seats to create more Democratic-friendly districts – has a 22-point advantage in support among Californian voters.

      When it comes to the federal takeover of DC police, and the deployment of national guard troops, vice-president JD Vance, defense secretary Pete Hegseth, and the White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller met with soldiers at Union Station in the nation’s capital. The visit involved a photo op at Shake Shack, with Vance asserting “we brought some law and order back” as he handed out burgers to the troops. As the trio left the station they were heckled and booed by a crowd.

      Meanwhile, the administration said federal law enforcement has made 550 arrests since the surge in officers and agents in DC, which began almost two weeks ago. In recent days, six Republican-led states have also pledged to send more than 1,200 national guard troops to DC.

      And when it comes to the Epstein saga that continues to plague the Trump administration, a federal judge today denied the justice department’s bid to unseal records from the grand jury that indicted Jeffrey Epstein on sex trafficking charges. US district judge Richard Berman said the transcripts pale in comparison to the documents the government already has on Epstein and that disclosing them could harm victims.
      The Pentagon’s press office falsely accused Washington Post reporters of endangering the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, by reporting on Wednesday that his “unusually large personal security requirements are straining the Army agency tasked with protecting him”.The pushback, using vitriolic language, came after the Post reported that agents from the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division, or CID, the agency that provides security for Pentagon officials, have been pulled from criminal investigations to safeguard Hegseth family residences in Minnesota, Tennessee and Washington DC, and residences belonging to the Hegseths’ former spouses.The social media campaign to attack the Post reporters began with a response to a post on X by Dan Lamothe, one of the reporters who conducted the investigation.“When left-wing blogs like the Washington Post continue to dox cabinet secretaries’ security protocols and movements, it puts lives at risk,” Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesperson replied to Lamothe’s post.“It is flatly false that The Washington Post doxxed anyone,” Lamothe replied.Kingsley Wilson, the Pentagon press secretary who was appointed despite having repeatedly spread an antisemitic conspiracy theory, then falsely accused the Post of “publishing details about Secretary Hegseth’s security protocols” and “actively putting him and his family in danger for clicks.”“These ‘reporters’ are disgusting,” Wilson added.Wilson then boosted posts from three more Pentagon press aides who all echoed the false claim that the reporters had endangered Hegseth and his family and used increasingly extreme language. One, Jacob Bliss, referred to the reporters as “scum”; a second, Riley Podleski, asked “How do these reporters sleep at night?”; a third, Joel Valdez, wrote “there should be severe punishment” for what the three reporters had done, by reporting on concerns from inside the Pentagon that Hegseth’s security demands were excessive.“There looks to be a coordinated reaction to The Post’s reporting today that falsely accuses the paper of publishing specific security vulnerabilities,” Lamothe responded on X. “Reaction like this comes after a string of undisputed WaPo scoops that have detailed dysfunction on Secretary Hegseth’s team.”Amid the Donald Trump administration’s heavy-handed review of Smithsonian museums, the Guardian has seen a document compiled by the White House that argues the widely visited cultural institutions have overly negative portrayals of US history, from a Benjamin Franklin exhibit that links his scientific achievements to his ownership of enslaved people and a film about George Floyd’s murder that it says mischaracterizes the police.The document, based on public submissions shared with the administration, shows that seven museums have so far been flagged for review: the National Museum of American History, National Museum of the American Latino, National Museum of Natural History, National Museum of African Art, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Museum of Asian Art.“President Trump will explore all options and avenues to get the Woke out of the Smithsonian and hold them accountable,” a White House official said. “Until we get info from the Smithsonian in response to our letter, we can’t verify the numbers of artifacts that have been removed because the Smithsonian has removed them on their own.”Trump announced the initiative on Truth Social earlier this week, writing: “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been.”The administration argues exhibits at these museums focus excessively on oppression rather than American achievements. At the National Museum of American History, the document flagged the ¡Presente! Latino history exhibition for allegedly promoting an “anti-American agenda” by examining colonization effects and depicting the US as stealing territory from Mexico in 1848.Examples from the document also shames the museum’s Benjamin Franklin exhibit for linking his scientific achievements to his ownership of enslaved people, and the Star-Spangled Banner display for focusing on American historical failures and controversies rather than celebrating national achievements.The National Portrait Gallery is being singled out for focusing on how the Chinese Exclusion Act and other racist immigration laws contradicted the Statue of Liberty’s welcoming message. The African art museum is targeted over the George Floyd film. And the Asian art museum is flagged for exhibitions for claiming to impose western gender ideology on traditional cultures.

      The Texas house is getting down to legislative business today. The Republican majority is poised to pass the new congressional map that would give the GOP five more US House seats in 2026. As I write this, members have spent the last several hours handling and voting down a number of amendments to the bill, filed by Democrats. My colleague, George Chidi, has been covering the action in and around the house chamber today.

      A reminder that Texas Democrats broke quorum for two weeks in protest of the gerrymandered map set to pass today. Their walkout set the stage for a wider redistricting battle that’s now playing out across the country. In fact, Axios reports (citing an internal memo from Gavin Newsom’s longtime pollster) that the California governor’s bid to offset Texas’ gains and redraw his state’s congressional seats to create more Democratic-friendly districts – has a 22-point advantage in support among Californian voters.

      When it comes to the federal takeover of DC police, and the deployment of national guard troops, vice-president JD Vance, defense secretary Pete Hegseth, and the White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller met with soldiers at Union Station in the nation’s capital. The visit involved a photo op at Shake Shack, with Vance asserting “we brought some law and order back” as he handed out burgers to the troops. As the trio left the station they were heckled and booed by a crowd.

      Meanwhile, the administration said federal law enforcement has made 550 arrests since the surge in officers and agents in DC, which began almost two weeks ago. In recent days, six Republican-led states have also pledged to send more than 1,200 national guard troops to DC.

      And when it comes to the Epstein saga that continues to plague the Trump administration, a federal judge today denied the justice department’s bid to unseal records from the grand jury that indicted Jeffrey Epstein on sex trafficking charges. US district judge Richard Berman said the transcripts pale in comparison to the documents the government already has on Epstein and that disclosing them could harm victims.
      Just a quick update from our earlier reporting where attorney general Pam Bondi said there were 61 arrests by federal law enforcement in DC on Tuesday. A White House official says there were actually 91 arrests. The official added that agents arrested 25 undocumented immigrants.The official didn’t elaborate on the discrepancy between the White House’s numbers and the attorney general’s.Nicole Collier, a Texas Democratic state representative, Democrat who has refused to permit state capitol police to shadow her while the legislature debates the redistricting bill, abruptly abandoned a livestream from the women’s bathroom at the capitol minutes ago, saying she was threatened with a felony for being there.“Sorry, I was asked to leave. They said it’s a felony for me to do this,” she said on the Zoom call with the DNC chair Ken Martin, the California governor Gavin Newsom and the Democratic senator Cory Booker of New Jersey.“Apparently, I can’t be on the floor or in the bathroom.” Collier spoke hurriedly with someone off camera, saying “Well, you told me I was only allowed to be here in the bathroom. No? Hang on.” She turned to the camera, and said “Bye, everybody. I’ve got to go,” dashing away.The four of them had been discussing the redistricting, and broader efforts by Democratic lawmakers and leaders to resist authoritarian actions taken by the Trump administration. Booker was taken aback by Collier’s exit.“Hey, that’s … that is outrageous,” Booker said. “First of all, let me tell you something, representative Collier in the bathroom has more dignity than Donald Trump in the Oval Office … what they’re trying to do, right there, is silence an American leader, silence a Black woman. And that is outrageous. And I hope everybody took note of that. The fact that she can’t even let her voice be heard is freaking outrageous, yes, and this is what we’re fighting for here.”More than 750 current and former federal health employees on Wednesday accused health and human services (HHS) secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, of fueling harassment and violence directed at government healthcare staff.In a letter sent to Kennedy and members of Congress, the group accuses RFK Jr of contributing to “the harassment and violence experienced by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) staff”, citing decisions such as removing members from a CDC vaccine advisory panel, questioning the safety of the measles vaccine, and firing key CDC staff as actions that sow distrust in federal medical professionals.The group says Kennedy’s rhetoric played a role in the 8 August attack at the CDC’s headquarters in Atlanta, where a Georgia man opened fire on four CDC buildings, firing dozens of shots and killing a police officer. Law enforcement officials said the gunman blamed a Covid-19 vaccine for making him feel depressed and suicidal.After the attack, Kennedy refused to confirm the motive of the shooter in an interview. He described political violence as “wrong” but neither he nor Donald Trump have spoken publicly about the motive, despite law enforcement officials making clear the shooter targeted the CDC over the vaccine.The health workers are now asking Kennedy to “cease and publicly disavow the ongoing dissemination of false and misleading claims about vaccines, infectious disease transmission, and America’s public health institutions”.Speaking at a National Democratic Redistricting Committee event on Tuesday, former president Barack Obama called California governor Gavin Newsom’s plan to counter the new Texas congressional map, by launching an effort to redraw his own state’s map and create more Democrat-friendly districts, “a responsible approach”.He went on to say:
      I want to see as a long-term goal that we do not have political gerrymandering in America. That would be my preference…but we cannot unilaterally allow one of the two major parties to rig the game.
      Obama also called Newsom’s strategy “measured”, as it only temporarily grants the California legislature with the ability to redraw maps mid-decade. “The fact that California voters will have a chance to weigh in on this makes this act consistent with our democratic ideals, rather than in opposition to our democratic ideals,” the former president said.As we reported earlier, there are protests outside the Texas house chamber in the capitol rotunda. Congressman Greg Casar spoke a short while ago, leading the crowd in a chant of “we’re not going back”, as demonstrators held “put Texans first” signs behind him.He added:
      Let’s have a government where people get to elect and unelect their leaders. No president, no politician, gets to make this decision for you. That is the fight we’re all in.”
      The new GOP-drawn map would put Casar’s Austin-area seat at risk, by essentially merging with congressman Lloyd Doggett’s constituency, another Democrat, and leading to a possible primary battle.A federal judge has denied the justice department’s bid to unseal records from the grand jury that indicted Jeffrey Epstein on sex trafficking charges.Manhattan-based US district judge Richard Berman’s decision came as Donald Trump tries to quell discontent from his conservative base of supporters over his administration’s handling of the case.Trump had promised to make public Epstein-related files if reelected and accused Democrats of covering up the truth. But in July, the justice department declined to release any more material from its investigation of the case and said a previously touted Epstein client list did not exist, angering Trump’s supporters.Evidence seen and heard by grand juries, which operate behind closed doors to prevent interference in criminal investigations, cannot be released without a judge’s approval. Trump in July instructed attorney general Pam Bondi to seek court approval for the release of grand jury material from Epstein’s case.The grand jury that indicted Epstein heard from just one witness, an agent with the FBI, the justice department said in a court filing in July.On 11 August a different Manhattan-based judge, Paul Engelmayer, denied a similar request by the justice department to unseal grand jury testimony and exhibits from the case of Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime girlfriend and accomplice. She is serving a 20-year prison sentence following her 2021 conviction for recruiting underage girls for Epstein to abuse.Engelmayer wrote that the public would not learn anything new from the release of materials from Maxwell’s grand jury because much of the evidence was made public at her month-long trial four years ago. The grand jury testimony contained no evidence of others besides Epstein and Maxwell who had sexual contact with minors, Engelmayer wrote.The trio’s visit to national guard troops at Union Station involved a photo opp at Shake Shack, with the vice-president asserting “we brought some law and order back” as he handed out burgers to the troops. “We appreciate everything you’re doing,” he told them.Per the Associated Press, citing the protesters whose shouts echoed through the station, Vance said: “They appear to hate the idea that Americans can enjoy their communities.”As vice-president JD Vance, defense secretary Pete Hegseth and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller left Washington DC’s Union Station a short while ago, they were heckled and boo’d by a crowd inside the station.Here’s an example from social media via a HuffPost reporter: More

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      JD Vance booed during hamburger handout to national guard troops in DC

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      JD Vance was booed and heckled with chants of “Free DC!” during a photo op with national guard troops at Union Station in Washington on Wednesday afternoon.Handing out burgers to troops deployed last week by Donald Trump, at the station’s Shake Shack alongside the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, Vance told soldiers “we appreciate everything you’re doing” and asserted: “We brought some law and order back.” Meanwhile, a crowd of demonstrators protested outside.The crowd shouted slogans such as “Free DC!” and “From DC to Palestine, occupation is a crime.” Some also shouted expletives as the three men walked into Union Station and gathered at the restaurant, and continued as they tried to speak to reporters and eventually left.Asked why the troops were at the station instead of parts of the city where crime rates were statistically higher, Vance claimed it was being overrun with “vagrants, drug addicts, the chronically homeless and the mentally ill” and that visitors didn’t feel safe. “This should be a monument to American greatness,” he said, later adding: “We do not have to live like this.”Addressing the protests, Vance said: “It’s kind of bizarre that we have a bunch of old, primarily white people who are out there protesting the policies that keep people safe when they’ve never felt danger in their entire lives.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAppropriating the protesters’ chants, he added: “Let’s free Washington DC, so that young families can walk around and feel safe and secure. That’s what we’re trying to free DC from.”His sentiments were echoed by Miller, who belittled those who had gathered in protest as “crazy communists”. “We’re going to ignore these stupid white hippies that all need to go home and take a nap because they’re all over 90 years old, and we’re going to get back to the business of protecting the American people and the citizens of Washington DC,” he said.Last week, the president federalized the city’s Metropolitan police department and directed Hegseth to mobilize national guard troops, claiming he was cracking down on “crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor” in the nation’s “lawless” capital, despite a sharply falling crime rate with violent crime at a 30-year low.An estimated 1,900 troops are being deployed in DC. More than half are coming from Republican-led states including Louisiana and South Carolina. Besides Union Station, troops have mostly been spotted in downtown areas, including the National Mall and metro stops. More