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      Jimmy Kimmel: ‘Only Donald Trump would try to prove he wasn’t threatening ABC by threatening ABC’

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      Late-show hosts discuss Jimmy Kimmel’s record-breaking return to air and Donald Trump’s escalator snafu at the United Nations.Jimmy KimmelAfter breaking his own YouTube monologue record and attracting 6.2 million broadcast viewers on Tuesday night, Kimmel celebrated the fact that his show returned again on Wednesday – at least, “for most of the country”, as Jimmy Kimmel Live! remained off the air for a number of ABC affiliates, including channels in Seattle, Washington DC, Nashville, New Orleans, St Louis and elsewhere.“Thank God they’re not pre-empting the new season of The Golden Bachelor because of this,” he joked, referring to his suspension by ABC owner Disney under pressure from the Trump administration. “The FCC might not like jokes about the president, but they are still very OK with Poppop getting a squeezer in a Jacuzzi, and I think we can be very grateful for that.“A lot of people watched our show last night,” he continued. “I got so many texts from so many people – it made me realize how many of my friends are never watching the show at any other time.”That included “one very special friend” – Trump, Kimmel’s beloved “mad red hatter”, who wrote on Truth Social hours before Kimmel aired: “I can’t believe ABC Fake News gave Jimmy Kimmel his job back. The White House was told by ABC that his Show was cancelled! Something happened between then and now because his audience is GONE, and his ‘talent’ was never there.”“You can’t believe they gave me my job back?” Kimmel mused. “I can’t believe we gave you your job back.”Trump continued: “I think we’re going to test ABC out on this. Let’s see how we do. Last time I went after them, they gave me $16 Million Dollars. This one sounds even more lucrative. A true bunch of losers!”Kimmel fired back: “There’s the threat again, this time straight from FCC-biscuit’s mouth. Only Donald Trump would try to prove he wasn’t threatening ABC by threatening ABC.“You almost have to feel sorry for the people who work for him, who try to clean up the messes,” he added. “They go to all these lengths to say, ‘Oh, it wasn’t coercion! The president was just musing!’ And then the second Trump is alone, he sits on the toilet, he gets his grubby little thumbs on his phone, and he immediately blows their excuses to smithereens, and says it was ratings that got me fired.”Trump ended his Truth Social rant with: “Let Jimmy Kimmel rot in his bad ratings.”“And he does know bad ratings. He has some of the worst ratings any president has ever had,” Kimmel laughed, referring to Trump’s record-low poll numbers. “So on behalf of all of us, welcome to the crappy ratings club, Mr President.”Late in the monologue, Kimmel offered an explanation to his critics for his continued focus on Trump. “I talk about Trump more than anything because he’s a bully. I don’t like bullies – I played the clarinet in high school.” And Trump, he said, was “an old-fashioned, 80s movie-style bully”.Backing Trump was like “rooting for Biff from Back to the Future”, he added, referring to the villain of the 1985 film. “I don’t know about you, I’m with Marty McFly.”Stephen ColbertStephen Colbert opened Wednesday’s Late Show monologue in a good mood, “because last night our good friend Jimmy Kimmel returned to television”.“Jimmy spoke beautifully about free speech and unity,” he said. “He made great jokes, showed his deep emotions, got huge ratings.”But “that wasn’t the only victory for free speech yesterday”, as a statue depicting Trump and Jeffrey Epstein skipping and holding hands was placed on the National Mall. “It’s a lovely piece, but I’ve gotta say, not very realistic – Trump can’t stand on one leg, not with those cankles!” Colbert joked. “It would be like trying to balance on a sock full of overripe honeydew.”The controversial statue was put up by artists issued an official permit to “demonstrate freedom of speech and artistic expression using political imagery” by the National Park Service. “Good for you, National Park Service,” said Colbert, “and thank you for protecting free speech for almost 24 hours”, because despite the permit allowing the sculpture to stand until Sunday, park police removed it on Wednesday morning.In response, Colbert pretended to navigate the cancellation of Disney+ on his phone – “worked last time!”Park police said the statue was not “in compliance” with the permit, though it did not specify how. “I think we know how it violated the permit,” said Colbert. “We’ve all seen those signs in the national parks: ‘Leave no trace … of the Epstein files.’”Seth MeyersAnd on Late Night, Seth Meyers focused on Trump’s visit to the UN in New York this week. “It’s easy to forget because so much has happened, but when Trump was running for president last year, he was adamant he was going to bring peace to the world,” he reminded viewers before several clips of Trump making such claims as “I will end the chaos in the Middle East quickly” or end the war in Ukraine “in no longer than one day”.“In fairness, he said it would take him one day, he didn’t say which day,” Meyers laughed. But “as a general rule, you should always be skeptical when someone tells you they can solve any problem in one day”.But Trump didn’t focus on any of that at his UN address. Instead, he was thrown off by a broken escalator, which shut down as soon as he stepped on to it. On Fox News, Karoline Leavitt accused the UN of trying to “sabotage” him with the frozen escalator and teleprompter.“Man, you know I’ve heard a lot about these globalists over the years, but I didn’t realize their MO was to just burn you with soft pranks,” Meyers laughed.“Teleprompter down, escalator off. When the president was talking, someone tied his shoelaces together! Are they a shadowy cabal or Kevin from Home Alone?”On Wednesday evening, Trump took to Truth Social to name the escalator episode among three “very sinister events” that took place during his UN visit. He claimed that Melania avoided a “disaster” by not falling “forward onto the sharp edges of these steel steps, face first”. He then called for the arrest of the person responsible for the frozen escalator.A spokesperson for the UN previously blamed Trump’s videographer for the incident, suggesting that they may have “inadvertently triggered” a built-in safety function while proceeding backward up the escalator to film his arrival.Meyers had to laugh: “Oh, hey, look at that – they solved the conflict in one day! How about that?” More

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      Daylight savings haters rejoice: scientists confirm it’s bad for health

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      Daylight savings time is not just a hassle – it can also be bad for your health.The twice-yearly “spring forward, fall back” routine rattles our bodies’ daily cycles, known as circadian rhythms, with potentially harmful consequences. And a new study supports what many sleep experts have long argued: the solution is getting rid of daylight savings for good.That will not be easy. While there is plenty of support for eliminating the time change itself, Donald Trump and some in Congress have called for the opposite: making daylight savings permanent. And it may prove unpopular with those of us who enjoy an extra hour of light on a summer’s evening.Researchers at Stanford University found that keeping our clocks on standard time year round, instead of just in the autumn and winter (as in most US states as well as the UK), would reduce the prevalence of obesity and strokes. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, stands apart from much other research thanks to its breadth. Instead of simply looking at what happens when the clocks change, the researchers compared three scenarios: permanent standard time, permanent daylight savings time, and the current switching system, which applies in most US states.Dr Jamie Zeitzer, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, and Lara Weed, a PhD candidate in bioengineering, modeled sunlight exposure across every county in the 48 contiguous states, and compared that information with federal health data. The goal, Zeitzer says, was to use an existing mathematical model to discover the “circadian burden” of the three daylight scenarios – in other words, “how much stress are we putting on the circadian system?” That stress is associated with a variety of disorders, including obesity and stroke. The result suggested that, at least in circadian terms, permanent standard time is the least burdensome on our health.“This goes along with what we’ve been saying since about 2019,” says Dr Karin Johnson, a neurology professor at the University of Massachusetts Chan school of medicine and a member of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine’s advocacy committee. Johnson testified in favor of permanent standard time in front of a US Senate committee in April, telling lawmakers it would create “a more natural alignment between our social schedules and the sun’s cycle every day of the year”.“Our body rhythms basically get set by the sun,” she says. But because our natural cycle is slightly longer than 24 hours, “we need to get cues every day to stay on track. Otherwise, our rhythms get delayed.” That results in problems ranging from trouble sleeping and waking up to digestive issues. “The more we can stay aligned with the sun time,” she says, “the healthier it is for our body, the better our brain functions, the better our sleep.” The American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM), American Academy of Neurology and the health and safety-focused non-profit National Safety Council agree.But that argument runs counter to a repeated effort in Congress to pass the Sunshine Protection Act, which would change the system to make daylight savings permanent. Unlike virtually everything else Congress grapples with, it does not seem to be a highly partisan matter; Ted Cruz, for instance, has heard “serious arguments on both sides” and even Trump has acknowledged it’s a “50-50 issue”.Permanent daylight savings may sound appealing, since skipping an hour in the spring results in long, sunlit evenings, but Johnson says that view is misleading. “It’s really summer people are loving but they connect it in their mind to daylight savings time,” she says. Even under standard time, she notes, summer nights would be long. Permanent daylight savings, on the other hand, would cost us essential light during winter mornings – though of course, late-rising Americans may prefer to have that light in the evening.A Gallup poll this year found declining support for daylight savings time overall, with 48% of Americans supporting permanent standard time, 24% backing permanent daylight savings, and 19% wanting to stick with the current system. In 2023, however, a YouGov poll found that among those who wanted to stop switching the clocks, 50% supported permanent daylight savings and 31% supported permanent standard time.As for Zeitzer, while his latest research argues in favor of permanent standard time, he cautions that circadian rhythms are just a “piece of the puzzle”. “Do people exercise more if there’s more light in the morning? Are fewer kids biking to school because it’s too dark in the morning? Are there better economic outputs that are going to help economically marginalized individuals?” he asks. “There are lots of things that could happen if you move where that hour of light is happening, and frankly, it might be very different in different parts of the country.”Advocates of permanent daylight savings have suggested it could, for instance, help fight seasonal depression, save energy and reduce vehicle crashes. (And while the AASM ranks permanent daylight savings as the worst of the three options, Zeitzer’s study asserts it’s better than the constant switching.)But to Johnson, the answer is clear. “It’s a long, slow process but I think getting the word out with studies like this can hopefully shift that needle” toward permanent standard time, she says. “Because people are desperate to end the time change.” More

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      US is violating human rights laws by backing fossil fuels, say young activists in new petition

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      By continuing to fund and support a fossil fuel-based energy system, the US is violating international law, a group of young people have argued to an international human rights body.The petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), filed late on Tuesday and shared exclusively with the Guardian, says the government’s actions have violated the petitioners’ human rights.“The US’s actions over the past 50 years constitute an internationally wrongful act that implicate its international responsibility,” the petition to the Washington DC-based commission says.The IACHR, part of the Organization of American States, is a quasi-judicial body that reviews and investigates complaints about human rights violations, then issues reports with findings and recommendations to the accused states. Its recommendations are not legally binding.The plea comes after the publication of two strongly worded advisory opinions on the climate crisis from two top international courts. It was filed by 15 of the 21 youth climate activists who previously brought the groundbreaking federal climate lawsuit Juliana v US, which was effectively dismissed last year.“This petition is about truth and accountability,” said Levi, an 18-year-old petitioner who was eight years old when the Juliana case was filed. “For over 50 years, the US government has knowingly protected fossil fuel interests while putting people, especially young people, in harm’s way.”View image in fullscreenLike Juliana, the new filing details the myriad ways the climate crisis has caused the young petitioners to suffer. Levi, for instance, grew up in Florida on the Indialantic barrier island. He and his family were frequently forced to evacuate amid dangerous hurricanes; eventually, they became so severe and frequent that his parents decided relocating was the only option.“Part of why we left was so that my baby sister could grow up in a home with a smaller risk of flooding,” he said. “One of the most difficult moments was losing my school after it was permanently closed due to storm damage.”Levi and the other young activists accuse the US of breaching international human rights law, customary international law and the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man – an international human rights instrument that guarantees economic, social and cultural rights, as well as equality under the law.The bid comes just after the release of an early July advisory opinion from the inter-American court of human rights (I/A court HR), a separate human rights body which can issue binding recommendations but which the US does not recognize. The opinion said that the climate crisis carries “extraordinary risks” felt most by already-vulnerable populations, and that the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man requires countries to set ambitious greenhouse gas-cutting targets.“Before that happened, we had already been planning to file this,” said Kelly Matheson, deputy director of global strategy at the non-profit law firm Our Children’s Trust, which is representing the petitioners. “The timing is pure serendipity.”The I/A court HR opinion is non-binding, and the US does not recognize the jurisdiction of the top court from which it came. However, international courts and commissions can draw on the opinions to interpret the law.By denying the plaintiffs “access to justice” – and by expanding fossil fuel production – the US is violating an array of rights guaranteed to the young activists, including the right to life, liberty and security; the right to health; the right to benefits of culture; and special protections for children.“We are bringing our case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights because domestic courts would not hear the full story,” said Levi. “This petition is a statement that what has happened to us is not just unfortunate or political but that it is a violation of our human rights.”The petitioners also accuse the US of violating their right to a healthy climate, referencing another recent nonbinding advisory opinion on greenhouse gas emissions from the international court of justice – a United Nations top court. The young activists have been trapped in that violation since birth, Matheson said.“These young people were born into a climate emergency, they were born into a rights violation, and they have lived every single day with their right to a healthy climate system being infringed upon,” she said. “We could get to a healthy climate system by 2100 if we make changes, but even then, these young plaintiffs will live their entire lives without ever being able to fully enjoy and exercise their right to a healthy climate system … Their hope is that their children or their grandchildren might.”Filed in 2015, Juliana v US argued that the government violated the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights with pro-fossil fuel policies. Our Children’s Trust, which brought the case, made its final attempt to revive the case last year by asking the supreme court to allow the suit to proceed to trial in a lower court; its bid was denied in March.By denying the young challengers access to effective remedies to the climate crisis and thereby continually causing them harm, the courts failed to fulfill its international legal obligations, the new filing says.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe US is also breaching its obligations by continuing to perpetuate a fossil fuel-based energy system, argues the petition to the IACHR.“The US government, the leading cumulative contributor to climate change, has caused real harm to our health, our homes, our cultures and our futures,” said Levi.With the new petition, the young activists are demanding “precautionary measures” aimed at protecting their rights and obligations, as well as a hearing. In their best-case scenario, the IACHR would visit the US to hear the stories of the petitioners, then hold a public hearing to allow them to present their evidence to the world, and finally declare that the US has committed “wrongful acts” and make recommendations to push the country to improve its behavior.“We want the commission to declare that these systemic actions have violated our rights under the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man,” said Levi. “This would carry legal weight across the Americas and help set a precedent that governments can’t continue to violate our rights without consequences.”Michael Gerrard, an environmental law expert at Columbia University, said the commission the activists are petitioning tends to act slowly. The body took five years to review one pollution-focused complaint from a Louisiana community filed in 2005.If the commission issues strong recommendations for the US, he said, US officials will be under no obligation to follow it.“The Trump administration wouldn’t care what this commission says, but the next administration might,” he added.The petition follows news that planet-warming pollution from the US rose in the first half of 2025. It also comes amid widespread attacks on climate protections by the Trump administration, which has launched more than 150 anti-environmental and anti-renewable energy actions since retaking the White House in January.“We are bringing this petition forward now because the science is urgent, the harm is accelerating and our rights are still being violated,” said Levi.Our Children’s Trust has represented young people in an array of state and federal lawsuits. During a two-day hearing in Montana this month, young plaintiffs in one federal case argued that three of Trump’s pro-fossil fuel executive orders should be blocked. The law firm in 2023 notched a landmark win in the lawsuit Held v Montana, when a judge ruled that the state’s pro-fossil fuel policies violated a group of youth plaintiffs’ rights under the state’s constitution.Just hours before Our Children’s Trust filed the petition, Trump addressed the United Nations claiming that the climate crisis was the “greatest con job perpetrated on the world” and “a hoax made up by people with evil intentions”.“This courageous action aims to tell the truth and do something about it,” said James R May, of counsel to Our Children’s Trust. More

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      Trump wants to rebrand his tax bill as the ‘Working Families Tax Cut’. Don’t be fooled | Steven Greenhouse

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      Just a few months ago, Donald Trump sought to bamboozle the American people into believing that his One Big Beautiful Bill Act – with its trillions in tax cuts for the rich – was a legislative wonder stuffed with one marvel after another. But a Pew opinion poll in August found that millions of Americans have wised up about the measure and now view it as a big, unbeautiful monstrosity.Many Americans have come to realize that Trump’s not-so-beautiful bill – instead of being filled with good things that benefit average Americans – is overflowing with big tax cuts for the wealthy as well as many unfortunate things that will hurt typical working families. As we saw in the town halls held across the US, many Americans are furious about some painful things that Trump and congressional Republicans inserted into the bill: cuts that will make health insurance more expensive, cuts that reduce food assistance, cuts that make it harder for students from working families to afford college. All this is bad news for working families who struggle to make ends meet.President Trump and his administration can’t hide from the fact that many Americans detest the bill — 46% disapprove of it, while just 32% approve (23% say they’re unsure what they think). What’s more, 33% of Americans “strongly disapprove” of the bill.Alarmed that the bill has become a public relations and political disaster, Trump and his allies have embraced a curious strategy to address that problem. Their strategy is not what you might hope – they’re not seeking to amend the bill to make it less painful for average Americans. Rather, their strategy is slick marketing: to simply rebrand the bill, to make it sound better. The White House is telling Republicans to stop calling it the One Big Beautiful Bill and instead call it the nice-sounding Working Families Tax Cut Bill.Unfortunately, that name is another effort to dupe America’s working families. The bill gives 45% of next year’s tax cuts to the highest-earning 5% of US households, while just 1% of the tax cuts go the lowest-earning 20% of households. Under the bill, far more in net tax cuts, $117bn, will go to the wealthiest 1% of households next year than will go to the bottom 60% ($77bn).If the White House and GOP lawmakers want to be accurate, they should call the bill the Billionaires’ and Millionaires’ Tax Cut Act. The bill gives a $13,622 tax cut to households in the top 10% by income, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The top 0.1% of households (those with income of more than $3.3m a year) will receive annual tax cuts of $103,500 on average, according to the Yale Budget Lab.If you’re wealthy enough to have $15m in assets, the bill is very good for you. Under the bill, the first $15m in an individual’s assets are exempt from the estate tax, nearly triple the $5.5m in pre-Trump days. For couples, the first $30m in assets will be exempt. Does anyone think that these sound like working family tax cuts?Frankly, it would be more accurate to call the bill the Working Families Benefits Cut Bill. Containing a painful $1.4tn in Medicaid and other cuts that Republicans insisted on to help finance their tax cuts for the rich, the bill is filled with benefit cuts that hurt working families. Roughly 15 million Americans will lose health coverage and become uninsured because the bill cuts Medicaid funding and reduces subsidies for Obamacare.Other results of the bill: 4 million people will lose some or all of their food aid, while 4.4 million students from working families might lose all or some of their federal aid to go to college.“Who’s getting hit, who’s bearing the cost? It’s people with low and middle incomes, people that the president and many Republican policymakers promised to serve and support in the last election,” said Sharon Parrott, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.President Trump is correct that the bill contains some tax cuts for working Americans – for instance, it increases the standard income tax deduction by $750 for individuals and $1,500 for couples. The bad news is that for tens of millions of families, the bill’s benefit cuts, especially on health coverage, outweigh the meager tax cuts that the bill gives non-affluent Americans. In many ways, Trump and GOP lawmakers are making this a shell game – they say you’re benefiting from tax cuts, but the fact is that because of the benefit cuts, millions of working families will end up worse off.According to the CBO, Americans in the bottom 10% by income (averaging $23,751) will end up $1,214 worse off on average per year, while the next lowest 10% (averaging $43,092) will end up $392 worse off per year. Those in the third-lowest tenth ($54,453) will receive a mere $23 annual gain. Those in the fourth-lowest decile ($67,637) will see a very modest net gain of $379. Cutting through all these numbers, this shows that for tens of millions of families, the bill is a net loser or a wash.“This really is a big, beautiful bill for billionaires, but for the poor and the working class in this country, you are actually poorer,” said the representative Brendan Boyle, the top Democrat on the House budget committee.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFor those solidly in the middle class, the bill provides modest gains. Middle-class families earning between $86,000 and $108,000 would receive between $800 and $1,200, around 1% of income, the CBO says.Since we’re discussing taxes, we shouldn’t forget Trump’s massive tariffs – they are unarguably a tax, a sales tax on imports that will hit working-class Americans hardest. The reason: the non-wealthy spend a higher share of their income on imports, whether on furniture, electronics or coffee, than the wealthy do. The Yale Budget Lab found that when one combines the effects of Trump’s tariffs and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, 90% of American families will end up worse off. Seventy per cent of households will face losses ranging from $780 to $2,570 each year.President Trump boasts that two provisions he championed – no tax on tips and no tax on overtime – will be great for working Americans. But those provisions will be far less helpful than people realize. Just 3% of US workers receive tips, and one-third of them earn so little that they don’t pay federal income taxes. So no tax on tips won’t help them.No tax on overtime won’t help workers nearly as much as many think. The deduction applies only to the “half” in “time and a half” overtime pay. So if a worker earns $20 an hour and receives $30 per overtime hour, that worker can deduct only the $10 premium per overtime hour, not the full $30. John Ricco, an analyst at the Yale Budget Lab, says that for the bottom 40% of Americans by income, no tax on overtime will mean “less than a $10 tax cut per year” – “essentially a rounding error”.By seeking to call this bill the Working Families Tax Cut Bill, Trump and the GOP are again seeking to hold themselves out as the best friends of American workers, even though Trump, since returning to office, has taken dozens of anti-worker actions. He halted enforcement of a regulation that protects miners from a debilitating, often fatal lung disease. He has stripped 1 million federal employees of their important right to bargain collectively and has torn up union contracts for hundreds of thousands. He fired the chair of the National Labor Relations Board, leaving the nation’s top labor watchdog without a quorum to protect workers from companies’ unlawful anti-union actions. Trump is also pushing to end minimum wage and overtime protections for 3.7 million home-care and domestic workers.People who care about working families – whether union leaders, clergy or community leaders – need to make clear to the public that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act hurts many working Americans. It is a bait and switch, telling working families that it’s good for them even as it cuts benefits for millions of working Americans while lavishing big tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans.

      Steven Greenhouse is a journalist and author, focusing on labour and the workplace, as well as economic and legal issues More

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      ‘I was reborn’: Cincinnati imam reflects on 10 weeks in Ice custody after release

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      On a recent rain-drenched fall afternoon, the mood at the Clifton Mosque in Cincinnati was one of elation and relief.Last Friday, Ayman Soliman, an Egyptian imam and hospital chaplain who had been detained at a county jail for more than 10 weeks, was released and is expected to have his visa status fully returned.Soliman had been accused by US authorities of a variety of alleged terror-related charges in Egypt and faced deportation having fled the North African country in 2014 after being detained there for his work as a journalist.The legal about-turn marks a major blow to the Trump administration’s aggressive and often illegal deportation campaign that’s seen hundreds of thousands of people forced out of the US, often without due process.Soliman’s ordeal began during a regular check-in with immigration officials in Cincinnati on 9 July, when the 51-year-old from Cairo was subjected to an hours-long interview before being detained by an Ice agent and a representative of the FBI.“Eventually, they said, ‘We’re sorry to tell you that we will detain you.’ I was shocked,” Soliman says.“The Ice officer said that 24 hours ago there was a new order to detain everyone that comes to the Ice offices. He said: ‘I’m so sorry but it’s not my decision.’”Soliman was transported to the Butler county jail and held in freezing conditions for 12 hours in the jail’s waiting room, where he struggled to stay warm wearing just a T-shirt and pants.“The beds were rusted, and the only toilet was in a room with 13 or 14 other people around. It was traumatizing and dehumanizing,” he recalls.Things worsened when Soliman was put in isolation – a cell where he was separated from others and denied nearly all rights granted to other detainees – for five days. He says it followed an argument when Soliman’s request for a quiet space to pray was rejected by a correctional officer who then claimed Soliman failed to comply with a lockdown call, something the imam denies.“There is a multi-purpose room where Christian pastors and Muslim imams come to administer to people, but the officer told me to pray at the gym where people were playing basketball,” he says.“He grabbed my arms, I asked him to take his hands off me, then he pressed an emergency button and in seconds five or six officers rushed in and they handcuffed me.”Correctional officers at Butler county jail have been accused of abusing detainees in the past. In 2020, two men refugees detained by Ice at the jail filed a lawsuit against the jail and an officer, claiming that beatings resulted in serious physical abuse including the loss of teeth.Across the country, 12 people have died while in Ice custody since Trump took office in January.While in isolation, Soliman says he was denied commissary, meaning he could not order paid for food or other items, wasn’t allowed to contact his attorney, or to engage with visitors.“It was one of the most terrible experiences of my life. It was just as brutal as my detention in the torture dungeons in Egypt,” he says.“They treated us like inmates, not detainees.”He says he had one interaction with Richard Jones, the Butler county sheriff known for his long-held anti-immigrant and racist views.“[Jones] said [speaking of Soliman]: ‘I know this guy; he is very famous. You are in the news all the time.’ He didn’t ask me how I was.” According to figures previously provided by Jones, the jail could have expected to net around $5,000 in taxpayer money from Soliman’s detention.He says that nearly everyone he interacted with at the jail had crossed the southern border legally seeking asylum and were awaiting a court appearance to decide their case before being picked up by Ice officers in recent months. Some had been living in the US for decades; one had a son who served in the US Navy.But for Soliman, the threat of being deported was a constant worry.“The jail and its abuse was the least of my worries. My main fear was being put on a plane to Egypt and being tortured until I die. It never left my mind,” he says.“Every day in jail, I felt I was getting closer to that.”He says his experiences over the past several months have taught him that the country has changed, reminding him more of his life in Egypt. The Trump administration’s suing, taking to court and firing of more than a dozen immigration judges in recent months has widened fears that the US is falling deeper into an autocracy.“This government can do whatever they want; if they can take judges to court, if they can fire judges. This government could have sent me home without trial, without immigration court,” he says.“Ayman got his day in court because he could afford good lawyers, thanks to the generosity of the people who know and love him and strangers from around the country,” says Lynn Tramonte, director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance.“But there are hundreds of people just like him in immigration jail today, who also don’t deserve to be there. The US government is accusing them of things they aren’t guilty of, and they are facing deportation to countries where they will be harmed.”Soliman’s experience is ultimately a victorious one.“I was reborn. I couldn’t imagine sitting here today, talking freely.” He says he hopes that now his asylum status has been returned that his application for a green card, which would grant him permanent residency, could be completed within several months.“This is a real miracle.”Soliman lost his job as a chaplain at Cincinnati children’s hospital after his asylum status was revoked, but the hospital has since faced a wave of controversy after two chaplains were fired after they spoke out in support of Soliman.“I feel ethically obliged to go back [to work at Cincinnati Children’s hospital] for the families and patients. In the jail, I got 60, 70 letters from families I met [at the hospital]. It was my work as a chaplain that got people to empathize with me. They stood by my side; they fought for me.”Towards the end of a two-hour interview with the Guardian, a man enters the mosque to attend prayers. Seeing Soliman for the first time since before his detention, the worshipper is almost overcome with joy; tears fall down his face.“Alhamdulillah [Thank god], Alhamdulillah, you’re here,” he says. “You’re back.” More

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      Trump hangs autopen photo instead of Biden portrait in new presidential gallery

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      President Donald Trump has added a “Presidential Walk of Fame” to the exterior of the White House, featuring portraits of each of the previous commanders-in-chief – except for one.Instead of a headshot of Joe Biden, the Republican incumbent instead placed a photo of an autopen signing the Democrat’s name – a reference to Trump’s frequent allegation that the former president was addled by the end of his term in office and not really the one making decisions.The snub is the latest attempt by Trump to delegitimise a predecessor he routinely belittles, including in front of more than 100 world leaders on Tuesday at the UN general assembly gathering. Trump has never acknowledged his own defeat to Biden in the 2020 election, instead falsely chalking up the outcome to voter fraud.Trump had previously signalled he would represent Biden with an autopen on the walkway. Trump has alleged without evidence that Biden administration officials may have forged their boss’s signature by using the autopen and taken broad actions he was not aware of.He has also cast doubt on the validity of pardons and other documents that Biden signed with an autopen, even though other presidents before him have also relied on the device to sign key papers. A Republican-led House committee is investigating the Biden administration’s autopen use.White House staff sent out a burst of social media posts on Wednesday afternoon gleefully promoting the finished project. The media may get its first in-person glimpse of the display when Trump hosts a dinner on Wednesday night on the new Rose Garden patio that sits adjacent to the West Wing Colonnade on which the portraits hang.The addition is the latest in a series of design changes he has made at the White House since resuming office. The president also added gold flourishes to the Oval Office walls, installed massive new flagpoles on both lawns, replaced the grass in the Rose Garden with patio stone and started construction on a large new ballroom. More

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      Trump news at a glance: Obama says the US caught between two visions of the future as he criticises the president

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      Barack Obama has said the US is in the middle of a “tug of war” between two visions of the future, criticising progressives for becoming “smug” and “complacent” while populists pushed a conservative vision.The former US president said on one side was the progressive view in which change comes through democracy, while the other, driven by populists including Trump, see a return to an older, more conservative worldview.He told an audience in London on Wednesday: “My successor has not been particularly shy about it. That desire is to go back to a very particular way of thinking about America, where ‘we, the people’, is just some people, not all people. And where there are some pretty clear hierarchies in terms of status and who ranks where.”Obama was also critical of progressives who he said became “complacent” and “smug” in the 90s and 00s, “posturing that we believe in all these values because they were never tested. Now they’re being tested”.Obama says Trump linking paracetamol to autism is ‘violence against the truth’Obama said Donald Trump’s claims linking paracetamol to autism in infants is “violence against the truth” that could harm pregnant women if they were too scared to take pain relief.Obama, who was being interviewed by David Olusoga at the O2 Arena, told the audience that Trump’s claims about paracetamol – branded as Tylenol in the US – had been “continuously disproved” and posed a danger to public health.Read the full storyThree immigration detainees shot as Trump jumps to blame DemocratsOne detainee has been killed and two others injured in a shooting at a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) field office in Dallas, officials said.Authorities have also confirmed that the shooter – named in reports as 29-year-old Joshua Jahn – died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.Trump wrote on social media that he had been briefed on the shooting, calling it “despicable” and that the shell casings contained anti-Ice messaging. He immediately cast blame for the shooting on “radical left Democrats”, instructing them, in capital letters, to “stop this rhetoric against Ice”. There was no indication the shooter had any connection to any organizations, including antifa.Read the full storyEscalatorgate: Trump alleges ‘triple sabotage’ after technical mishaps at UN Trump alleged “triple sabotage” at the United Nations, after the US president was plagued by a series of unfortunate events surrounding his address to the global body. According to Trump, his smooth arrival at the summit in New York on Tuesday was disrupted when the escalator ferrying him and the first lady to the General Assembly Hall “stopped on a dime”. Then, his teleprompter went “stone cold dark”.Stéphane Dujarric, the UN spokesperson, said an investigation indicated that a videographer from the US delegation who had run ahead of the first couple to document their arrival may have “inadvertently triggered the safety function” on the escalatorRead the full storyTrump energy secretary to return billions set aside for green projectsThe US energy secretary, Chris Wright, on Wednesday announced that his department will return to the treasury billions of dollars set aside for green projects, while dodging questions about affordability and grid reliability and claiming international climate policy had not lowered emissions.Read the full storyRolex faces questions over Trump US Open invitation amid tariffs painRolex is facing scrutiny over its “concerning” decision to host Donald Trump in the Swiss watchmaker’s corporate box at the US Open final earlier this month – weeks after the White House imposed steep tariffs on Switzerland.Read the full storyWorld leaders and UN push climate agenda forward despite Trump’s attacksWorld leaders have unveiled new targets to cut planet-heating pollution at the United Nations, in a bid to spur fresh impetus to the beleaguered climate effort a day after Donald Trump called the crisis “the greatest con job ever perpetrated upon the world”.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      The World Health Organization is pushing back against contested claims by the Trump administration that acetaminophen use during pregnancy heightens the risk of autism, further underscoring that no scientific consensus supports such a connection.

      The state superintendent in Oklahoma announced plans to put Turning Point USA chapters in every high school in the state, saying it would counter “radical leftist teachers unions” and their “woke indoctrination”.

      Nearly 100 doctors who have practised at the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) issued a mass letter on Wednesday raising “urgent concerns” about Trump administration policies that they said will “negatively affect the lives of all veterans”.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 23 September 2025. More

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      Escalatorgate: Trump alleges ‘triple sabotage’ after technical mishaps at UN

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      Donald Trump alleged “triple sabotage” at the United Nations, after the US president was plagued by a series of unfortunate events surrounding his address to the global body.“A REAL DISGRACE took place at the United Nations yesterday,” Trump wrote Wednesday in a 357-word social media chronicle of “Not one, not two, but three very sinister events!”According to Trump, his smooth arrival at the summit in New York on Tuesday was disrupted when the escalator ferrying him and the first lady, Melania Trump, “stopped on a dime”. He expressed relief that the first couple “didn’t fall forward onto the sharp edges of these steel steps, face first”.Then, when he took the green marble podium, his teleprompter went “stone cold dark”.“I immediately thought to myself, “Wow, first the escalator event, and now a bad teleprompter. What kind of a place is this?’” Trump wrote. Adding insult to injury, he recounted a third alleged offense. After being forced to improvise part of his speech to the general assembly, he asked his wife how he had done, and she replied: “I couldn’t hear a word you said.”“This wasn’t a coincidence, this was triple sabotage at the UN,” Trump declared, demanding an “immediate” investigation into the matter, a diplomatic incident so Trumpian it has earned the name “escalatorgate”.View image in fullscreen“All security tapes at the escalator should be saved, especially the emergency stop button. The Secret Service is involved,” Trump’s concluded his post. “Thank you for your attention to this matter!”Earlier on Wednesday, the organization responded in a “note to correspondents”, titled “on UN escalators”.Stéphane Dujarric, the UN spokesperson, said an investigation indicated that a videographer from the US delegation who had run ahead of the first couple to document their arrival may have “inadvertently triggered the safety function” designed to prevent people or objects from accidentally getting caught in the mechanism.“As the videographer, who was traveling backwards up the escalator reached the top , the First Lady, followed by President Trump, each mounted the steps at the bottom,” Dujarric said. “At that moment (9:50am), the escalator came to a stop. Our technician, who was at the location, reset the escalator as soon as the delegation had climbed up to the second floor.”Footage showed the 79-year-old president and the 55-year-old first lady stepping onto the escalator at UN headquarters, before it lurched to a stop. Tightening their grip on the handrails, the pair turns around quickly to see what caused them to stall. A moment later, Melania Trump begins to climb the steps, trailed by her husband.Trump’s Wednesday post suggests the president does not accept the UN’s conclusion into the mishap on the moving stairway and believes there was a wider conspiracy afoot.While technical difficulties might have beset his delivery in the General Assembly Hall, Trump’s message was heard loud and clear around the world. In a combative speech, Trump bashed the UN, questioning the purpose of its very existence, and issued a dark warning to European allies that unless they curbed migration, their countries were “going to hell”.During his address, Trump swerved from his prepared remarks to recount his fateful entrance and, in his view, poor treatment at the assembly.“All I got from the United Nations was an escalator that on the way up stopped right in the middle,” Trump said in his Tuesday speech. “If the first lady wasn’t in great shape, she would have fallen, but she’s in great shape. We’re both in good shape, we’re both still. And then a teleprompter that didn’t work.”However, it seemed unlikely that the audio problem was as bad as Trump made it out to be. Video showed the audience reacting immediately to what Trump was saying, including chuckling when the president declared with a hint of self-pity: “These are the two things I got from the United Nations, a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter.”Later that evening, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt alleged on Fox News that the elevator stoppage was part of an intentional plot to humiliate the US president.“If we find that these were UN and staffers who were purposefully trying to trip up, literally trip up the president and the first lady of the United States, well, there better be accountability for those people. And I will personally see to it,” she said.In his lengthy post on Wednesday afternoon, Trump pointed to a report in the Times of London newspaper on Sunday saying that UN staff members had joked that they would turn off the escalators and “tell him they ran out of money” – a jab at the sweeping US funding cuts.“The people that did it should be arrested!” Trump wrote. More