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    US judge halts Trump’s deployment of the national guard to Washington DC

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    A federal judge on Thursday halted for now Donald Trump’s deployment of national guard troops to Washington DC, dealing the president a temporary legal setback to his efforts to send the military to US cities over the objections of local leaders.US district judge Jia Cobb, an appointee of former president Joe Biden, temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deploying national guard troops to enforce the law in the nation’s capital without approval from its mayor.Cobb paused her ruling until 11 December to allow the Trump administration to appeal.The legal fight is playing out alongside several others across the country as Trump presses against longstanding but rarely tested constraints on presidents using troops to enforce domestic law.The DC attorney general, Brian Schwalb, an elected Democrat, sued on 4 September after Trump announced the deployment on 11 August.The lawsuit accused Trump of unlawfully usurping control of the city’s law enforcement and violating a law prohibiting troops from performing domestic police work.Trump has unique law enforcement powers in Washington, which is not part of any state, but local officials say he overstepped by supplanting the mayor’s policing authority and violated legal prohibitions against federal troops engaging in civilian police work.Trump administration lawyers called the lawsuit a political stunt in court filings and said the president is free to deploy troops to Washington without the approval of local leaders. The administration also claims the troops are operating lawfully and successfully reducing crime.Trump, a Republican, has also moved to deploy troops in Los Angeles, Chicago and Portland, Oregon, to combat what he describes as lawlessness and violent unrest over his crackdown on illegal immigration.Democratic leaders of those cities and their states have sued to block the deployments, saying they amount to an attempt to punish political foes with militarized shows of force. More

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      Plastic surgeons wrestle with requests for ‘Mar-a-Lago face’: ‘You’re going to look like Maleficent’

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      Picture a plastic surgeon’s office. You might imagine a sleek Los Angeles practice, with discreet entrances meant to conceal celebrities from the paparazzi. Maybe a Dallas high-rise, where monied housewives spend on postpartum “mommy makeovers”. Or a Miami location, where influencers and OnlyFans stars film TikToks of their BBLs. One city you might not think of is Washington DC. But its buttoned-up reputation belies a newly buzzing industry.Much has been made of the so-called “Mar-a-Lago face”, or the uncannily smooth and artificially voluminous features seen on the likes of Maga elite such as Kristi Noem, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Laura Loomer and Matt Gaetz. The bee-sting puffy lips, frozen brows and taut necks have been compared to Real Housewives stars, sleep paralysis demons and – ironically, considering the Republican party’s anti-LGBTQ+ culture war – drag queens (minus the campy fun).As of January, plastic surgeons in Washington DC have seen a “surge in ‘Mar-a-Lago face’ requests from Trump insiders”, Axios recently reported. Surgeons told the outlet that more Washingtonians want their procedures to be not unnoticed but obvious and overdone.Axios attributed the aesthetic shift to the influx of transplants from south Florida (where Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s gaudy private club, is located), who are no strangers to nip-tuck tune-ups. Others theorize that going through these procedures is a calculated act of political deference to Trump’s preferred (and unnatural) beauty standards.Dr Anita Kulkarni is a plastic surgeon who practices out of DC’s West End neighborhood and specializes in postpartum body contouring. Enter her office, and you will be greeted by staff who look good, but not worked on – and that is the effect most of her clients have gone for. “Before this second Trump term, I just didn’t see a lot of patients coming in making unreasonable requests,” Kulkarni says. But since the inauguration, she has fielded half a dozen or more – not a large sample size, but enough for the surgeon to take note.She says nobody comes in asking for Mar-a-Lago face by name; the most obvious clue is when a patient with visible lip filler comes in wanting more. “I have to say: ‘I cannot put any more in there safely.’” Or they will want more cheek or jawline filler. “‘To my eye, if I put any more in there, you’re going to cross over from looking like the best version of yourself to looking like Maleficent.’ I have to say no in a way that I have never seen before.” And still patients will try to talk their way into more. But placing fresh filler over an existing layer too soon can cause lumpiness, and Kulkarni does not want to risk being known for that look.“My aesthetic doesn’t necessarily have to be your aesthetic for me to give you what you want,” she says. “But when you go outside the range of what a normal human face should look like, that’s not a place I’m willing to go.”More still might shrug their shoulders and say Mar-a-Lago face is part of society’s wider embrace of body contouring. Kris Jenner’s ageless, 70th-birthday facelift may look less garish than Laura Loomer’s balloonish attributes, but both are just as fake. It comes at a time when the American Society of Plastic Surgeons reports there were more than 28.5m minimally invasive procedures done in 2024; lip augmentation, dermal fillers and neuromodulator treatments (such as Botox) cracked the top five.Dr Troy Pittman, a plastic surgeon based in DC, says that across the country, people are more willing to talk about the work they have had done. “That’s not a bad thing,” he sys. “But in a town like DC, there is this glamming up of Washington with this new administration, so it’s become more prevalent. They’re OK with looking enhanced.”Dr Kelly Bolden is also a DC-based plastic surgeon. Most of her clients are people of color – she is the medical director of Cultura Dermatology, a practice that specializes in cosmetic treatments for deeper skin tones – and she is not seeing a boom in Mar-a-Lago face requests. But she has noticed a shift, especially among her younger clients in their 20s and 30s.View image in fullscreen“They come in and actually tell me that they like the artificial look. A couple of my patients have said those exact words to me,” Bolden says. Some of the most visible Trump officials are young, such as press secretary Karoline Leavitt and her deputy Anna Kelly (both 28, and the latter is a former pageant queen), and they’re always camera-ready. “I think most of [Trump’s] administration is on the younger side compared to traditional ones, so that’s probably a little bit of where the trend comes from.”Those who want a Mar-a-Lago face have to be able to handle needles: Bolden says it is most often achieved via shots and injectables underneath the skin. “It’s overdone filler and Botox that gives them that mask-face type of appearance.”This is not a look Bolden is known for. Sometimes, she outright denies these requests. Or she will compromise. “Usually I’ll look at them and say: ‘Let’s balance you out, let’s make it more even.’ It’s almost like just as long as they get a little bit more, it will satisfy them,” she says.After the Duchess of Sussex announced her engagement to Prince Harry in 2017, Pittman said women would bring photos of Meghan to appointments and ask for her nose. “That’s a trap,” Pittman says. “We’re not trying to make people look like clones of each other.” He would similarly talk down someone who brought in a picture of Ivanka or Melania Trump. “Whenever people come in asking for a branded look, that can lead to either very unrealistic expectations or artificial results.”Other plastic surgeons advertise Mar-a-Lago face. A practice out of Boca Raton, Florida – less than an hour away from Mar-a-Lago – calls it a procedure that “doesn’t scream surgery. Instead, it whispers refinement.” Dr Shervin Naderi, based in the DC area, described the look as “a modern aristocratic mask” in his practice’s blog.When does a patient know it’s time to ease up on the procedures? Bolden says it’s common not to; the industry term is perception blindness. “The first time someone gets filler, the majority of the time, it looks good,” she said. “Then people get used to it, and they see a wrinkle come back or some sagging, and they’re like, ‘I need more.’ They’re chasing after something without realizing it. A little bit more, a little bit more, and you can’t really see the evolution.”The aesthetics of politics have long been an uneasy topic, especially as it relates to women. Nicole Russell, a columnist at USA Today, called jokes about Mar-a-Lago face “cruel attacks” on conservative women. To others, the face has come to symbolize an allegiance to Trump and his policies. See Noem wearing full glam to an ICE raid, beach waves tumbling over her bulletproof vest. Or Leavitt at the press podium, insisting Trump’s name in Jeffrey Epstein’s emails means nothing, as she purses overlined pink lips to match her shimmery eye shadow.Men are not spared the political aesthetic shift either. Ninety-two per cent of surgeons report treating male patients, with facelifts and sculpted jawlines being top picks. Pittman told Axios his male patients want to look “younger … more virile and masculine” like Pete Hegseth, via Botox, liposuction and eyelid rejuvenation. A fitting counter to Maga’s leading women.But, just like trends, administrations ebb and flow. Mar-a-Lago face won’t last forever – literally. “Nothing in plastic surgery is permanent,” Bolden says. “Filler goes away. Most people will say you get a good eight to 10 years out of a facelift. Everything has a lifespan.” More

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      Washington National Opera may move out of Kennedy Center due to Trump ‘takeover’

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      The Washington National Opera (WNO) is considering moving out of the Kennedy Center, the company’s home since the US’s national performing arts center opened in 1971.The possibility has been forced on the company as a result of the “takeover” of the center by Donald Trump, according to WNO’s artistic director, Francesca Zambello. The president declared himself chair of the institution in February, sacking and replacing its board and leadership.Leaving the Kennedy Center is a possible scenario after a collapse in box office revenue and “shattered” donor confidence in the wake of Trump’s takeover, said Zambello.“It is our desire to perform in our home at the Kennedy Center,” she said. “But if we cannot raise enough money, or sell enough tickets in there, we have to consider other options.“The two things that support a company financially, because of the takeover, have been severely compromised,” she said.Ticket sales were about 40% unsold compared with before Trump declared himself chair, said Zambello. Many have decided to boycott the center. Every day she receives messages of protest from formerly loyal members of the audience, she says.“They say things like: ‘I’m never setting foot in there until the “orange menace” is gone.’ Or: ‘Don’t you know history? Don’t you know what Hitler did? I refuse to give you a penny,’” she said.“People send me back their the season brochure shredded in an envelope and say: ‘Never, never, will I return: while he’s in power.’”Before February’s coup, the opera performances were running at 80%-90% of capacity. Now, Zambello said, they were at 60%, with at times the appearance of fuller houses created by the distribution of complimentary tickets.Philanthropic giving to the company – an important source of its funding – was down, she said. “Donor confidence has been shattered because many people feel: ‘If I give to the Kennedy Center, I’m supporting Donald Trump,’” she said.“The building is tainted,” she said. It had been “politicized by the current management”.Previously, the board of trustees “was always a mix of Republicans and Democrats. It did not matter that someone was a Republican or a Democrat. What mattered was that they were leading a big, important institution.”She said that the new management of the institution “do not have experience in the arts”. Richard Grenell, the Trump-appointed president of the center, has previously served in various foreign policy roles, including US ambassador to Germany.In addition, staffing in key areas such as marketing and development had been hollowed out, both in terms of experience and numbers, she said. “There was a promise from the new management that they would help us find new donors, increase contributions – which they have not done for our benefit,” she said.The new management of the center had not vetoed any of Zambello’s programming choices, but “they have suggested that we produce more popular operas”, she said. “This season, we are producing The Marriage of Figaro, Aida and West Side Story … I don’t see how we can get more popular than that.”Zambello said that when she joined the company in 2012, she committed to 50% non-white casting.“The management has questioned some aspects of it, and we have explained these are the best people for the roles,” she said, adding: “America is an incredibly diverse country, and so we want to represent every part of this country on our stage.”They had also questioned, she said, singers’ fees: “They have said: ‘Could we consider less expensive artists?’ We’re a feeding ground for bigger companies in this country. So we’re already hiring people who are on the rise and whose fees will get a lot more expensive later.”Grenell had, said Zambello, issued an edict requiring all shows to be “net neutral”, that is, with costs fully covered by box-office returns and donor contributions. But, she said, “We’re at the point where now we can’t present a net-neutral budget without an epic amount of outside funding, or knowing that our patrons would come back.”The slump in ticket sales was reflected across the board at the center, including for its concert seasons and theater, according to an analysis published by the Washington Post last week, which showed the box office down by 40% compared with a 2018 baseline.According to Zambello, box-office figures have now ceased to be internally circulated among the center’s creative teams as part of the standard system of daily show reports.The president declared his intention to become chair of the institution on 7 February, firing its bipartisan board of trustees. He replaced them with those of his own choosing; they elected him unanimously to the position days later. The president of the center was removed and replaced with Grenell.The moves were widely condemned. Weeks later, when JD Vance and the second lady, Usha Vance, who was inserted on to the Kennedy Center board by Trump, attended a concert given by the National Symphony Orchestra in March, patrons booed them.Usha Vance was already a trustee of the WNO, which has an independent board and its own endowment. “She was a supportive board member when she was a senator’s wife, and she has been a supportive board member as second lady, and we are grateful to have her patronage,” said Zambello.“I believe that she is someone who is an equalizer,” she said. “We can’t turn our backs on half this country. We have to find a way to all communicate and function together. I don’t believe in ‘us’ and ‘them’.”Artists have by and large remained loyal to WNO, Zambello says. However, in March, the creative team behind the opera Fellow Travelers, a love story set amid Eisenhower’s purge of gay employees from federal jobs in the 1950s, withdrew their work from the programme.The show was replaced by a production of Robert Ward’s opera The Crucible, an adaptation of Arthur Miller’s allegory on the anti-communist witch-hunts of McCarthyism.WNO is an independent company, but it has an affiliation agreement with the Kennedy Center, meaning that it agrees to produce a certain number of shows in the building; shares back office functions such as marketing and development; and receives a subsidy from the center of about $2m-$3m per year.The affiliation agreement was made in 2011, soon before Zambello became artistic director, in order to stabilise the finances of the company. It was renewed shortly before Trump declared himself chair of the Kennedy Center.WNO is understood to be looking at alternative venues in DC for its forthcoming season, which runs from October 2026 to May the following year. Theaters of the scale required to produce main-stage opera are scarce, though auditoriums used by the city’s Shakespeare Theater Company could potentially be taken from time to time for smaller-scale works.The Kennedy Center declined to comment. More

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      US food banks rush to stock supplies amid the Snap lapse: ‘We’re going to garner all the resources we can’

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      Waves of hungry Angelenos gathered outside the Community Space food bank’s storefront on a recent afternoon, grabbing dry goods like pastries, bagels, lentils and pasta along with refrigerated salads and frozen bags of brisket.The crowd ebbs and flows all day, said founder Gaines Newborn, but as news spread last week that the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) would cease on Saturday, he braced for the need to dramatically increase.“I’ve gotten more calls than we’ve ever gotten from concerned people saying: ‘My food stamps are getting cut, I need a plan,’” Newborn said. “People are trying to get ahead of food insecurity.”As the federal government shutdown stretches into its second month, the Trump administration announced that Snap, which helps around 42 million people afford food each month, will exhaust its funding at the start of November – something that has never happened before in the program’s half-century history.On Friday, two separate federal judges blocked the government’s attempt to stop paying out the benefits, but the administration could appeal the orders to a higher court. Food banks remain on edge for the possibility of a benefit cut, as they face increased demand driven by federal workers who have gone unpaid during the shutdown, along with people who have struggled to afford rising grocery prices.“The scale of what will happen when 1.8 million New Yorkers don’t get that benefit that they rely on to purchase groceries is sort of hard to wrap my head around, honestly,” said Nicole Hunt, director of public policy and advocacy at Food Bank for NYC, which serves the nation’s most populous city.The organization, which is the largest in New York City, planned to step up its aid during the period when Snap is unavailable, but Hunt said they cannot match the level of assistance the federal program provides.View image in fullscreen“We are going to do what we do, which is to show up with food. We’re going to try to concentrate as much as we can on the neighborhoods that are going to be the hardest hit and garner all the resources that we can, but that’s just not a scale that we’re going to be able to meet, and that’s the reality of how important Snap is and how many people rely on it,” she said.The federal government shut down on the first day of October, after Democrats and Republicans in Congress failed to agree on legislation that would have continued funding. Around 700,000 federal workers were furloughed, with hundreds of thousands more told to continue working for paychecks that will arrive only after funding is restored.The deadlock has continued as Republicans refuse Democratic demands to couple government funding legislation with an extension of tax credits that have lowered costs for Affordable Care Act health plans. While the Senate’s Republican leaders have tried 13 times to pass a bill to reopen the government, Democrats refuse to budge, and there is no sign of a resolution in sight.Snap benefits continued during previous shutdowns – including those that took place in Donald Trump’s first term – and a Department of Agriculture report outlining their plans for the latest funding lapse indicated they would continue during this one, too.But that report was deleted from the department’s website and replaced by a message that attacks Democratic senators and reads: “Bottom line, the well has run dry. At this time, there will be no benefits issued November 01.”David Super, a professor at Georgetown Law, said that between money allocated for Snap and funds for other programs that the law allows it to repurpose, the department could keep Snap dollars flowing, if it wanted to.“Clear congressional intent is that this money is available to pay benefits,” Super said at an event organized by the Brookings Institution. “They’re cutting off benefits to put pressure on Senate Democrats, and they put this offensive and dishonest statement on their website trying to blame anyone but themselves for this entirely voluntary termination of Snap benefits.”The program’s lapse will create need beyond the capability of any food bank to fill.View image in fullscreenOn average, Snap provides 95 million meals per month in New York City. In all of last year, Food Bank for NYC distributed 85 million meals, Zac Hall, the senior vice-president of programs, said.“We’re seeing mothers worried about what they’re going to be able to make for dinner for their kids, grandmothers worried about what they’re going to put on the table for Thanksgiving meals,” Hall said.In the Minneapolis suburb Brooklyn Park, Second Harvest Heartland, the country’s second-largest food bank, is stocking more inventory to be ready for Snap’s end, according to Sarah Moberg, the CEO.“The hunger relief network was not designed to do the work of Snap,” Moberg said. “We are designed to meet someone’s acute hunger need in a moment, and Snap is designed to do that so much more efficiently.”The pain of a cutoff would be particularly acute for the federal workers who are already struggling to get by without their normal salaries.“It’s horrible,” said Christina Dechabert, 52, a Bronx resident who has been working without pay for the Transportation Security Administration at John F Kennedy international airport. “You’re talking about trying to survive with no checks. I’ve had to come to a food bank to get food so our family can survive.”One mother in New York, who did not want to be named, said she was considering taking her two-year-old out of daycare as both she and her husband were federal workers.“We’re in a household with both of us not having paychecks, so that’s the toughest part,” she said. “My son’s under three, so there’s no free daycare, so if this goes on another month or so I might just take him out and have him at home so I don’t have to pay for daycare.”Joshua Cobos, a volunteer at Community Space in Los Angeles, is a Snap recipient himself. He hopes the credit he has earned from his hours at the food bank will see him through the benefit cutoff.“I’m racking up as much as I can around here, and with everything coming up I feel like we’re gonna be busy,” Cobos said.Some cities and states moved to pre-empt the financial hit from the Snap cutoff. Kathy Hochul, the New York governor, on Thursday declared a state of emergency that would free up $65m in state funds for food banks. Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor, is sending $4m in state funding to food shelves to manage the Snap gap, but the need is far greater – $73m comes from federal funds to Minnesota for the program.The Atlanta Community food bank, where the monthly need has grown 70% over the past three-and-a-half years, announced Thursday it would draw $5m from its contingency to stock its pantries in anticipation of a surge of demand from unpaid federal workers and Snap beneficiaries. Andre Dickens, the city’s mayor, also announced a temporary eviction and water shutoff moratorium to support residents affected by the lapse in food aid.Super, the Georgetown Law professor, warned the cutoff for Snap bodes ill for the program’s long-term future in Washington.“This has been something that has not been political or ideological up to this point, and it would be tragic if we cross that line and this does become something that’s just part of partisan warfare,” he said. More

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      The ex-CIA scientist brothers perfecting Halloween

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      Crowley Place is a sleepy street in the Waynewood area of south Alexandria, Virginia, a suburb 30 minutes from DC. The unassuming homes are well-tended, and it’s a quick walk to six different churches.But each year at Halloween the police shut down the street as thousands of visitors flock to the area. It’s all due to two ageing brothers who spent 40 years working together in secret at a laboratory in the CIA.For six weeks, no matter what was going on in the world, the Park brothers would take leave from the agency – using vacation, sick days and anything else they could think of – and construct an elaborate front-yard Halloween display, often using CIA-inspired technology.View image in fullscreenThe espionage careers of Jeff and Brian Park spanned the cold war, the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, Ronald Reagan’s war to topple the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Gulf war, and the global “war on terror”.Among the true insiders in the intelligence community, they were something of a legend. Among their specialties in the CIA office of technical services was to help to sabotage Russian systems. It is an obscure discipline even for intelligence services – sabotaging weapons can mean anything from secretly ruining rifle ammunition to hacking the guidance systems for an anti-aircraft missile.Still, their CIA work was just one part of their lives. Their obsession and delight was Halloween.It was three years ago that I first heard of the duo. My sources, veterans of the CIA, just called them the “Park brothers” – and spelled out their unusual expertise, claiming they didn’t remember their first names. It was difficult to track them down because Park was such a common name, but this year I used public records databases, keying in what their ages must be, and scanning through hundreds of names to find adjacent homes, and finally got their address.Outside the two adjacent homes on Crowley last week – the brothers own both – there was an absolute mess of black tents and graveyards, dotted with skeletons, robots, pirates and gory monsters. Lines overhead guide the flying witch and giant spider.Once I showed up on their lawn, the Park brothers were happy to talk.Jeff Park, 78, was pondering a jumble of electronics underneath a witch and near some skulls. He wore a brown T-shirt tucked neatly into tactical grey pants.View image in fullscreen“It takes six weeks to put this together and six weeks to take it apart,” he told me. He said he and his brother Brian, who strolled by lugging some equipment in a handcart, had started their display in 1977, and have been enlarging it ever since.“When I retired in ’14 I was the senior scientist at the CIA,” Jeff said, “so we got to do a lot of cool things. Things that you would go to jail for anywhere else.”Jeff confirmed what sources had said – that they used to sabotage Russian missiles. “We basically specialized in doing in – my brother and I, in our careers – doing in‬ weapon systems. Not just that, lots of other things too. But that was what we did. We did a lot of sabotage on‬ ‭weapon systems to stop the bad guys from doing stuff that we didn’t want them to do.”Brian Park, 75, has longer hair and a big smile. He said getting hired at the office of technical services in the 1970s was “like marrying into an extended Italian family”. Jeff added: “A mafiosa family.”But before talking about the CIA, they wanted to discuss Halloween. Jeff speaks fast, like an enthusiastic professor or Doc Brown of Back to the Future. He pointed out where the displays were going. “There will be Igor, there,” he pointed, “and the Gremlin and Ninja Turtle and ET and Yoda goes over there.” All of them, he says, are animatronic.The hi-tech displays are everywhere – all made by the Parks out of raw materials or discarded electronic devices, rescued parts, or remnants of some CIA experiments. There are elaborate cameras with radar and sonar sensors and a home-engineered 12-channel digital surround sound system threaded through the yard. There’s a giant cauldron – inspired by Disney’s Fantasia – with a computer and a smoke machine inside that emits different colors of smoke. Put your face too close and there’s a sensor to launch a surprise.A couple of graveyards, and one tombstone that flickers with a name changed at will.Jeff collects gargoyle statues; he’s got 210 of them so far. The gargoyles aren’t really part of the Halloween display, however, so they are just piled in the backyard for the winter.The living room of one Park home has what appears to be an old and worn-down La-Z-Boy chair, and the faded wall-to-wall carpet is littered with robots they built for bomb-disposal operations many years ago. On the walls are Christmas ornaments the Parks’ mother used to make.One house has all the electrical engineering supplies, with walls crammed with industrial shelving for resistors and capacitors and electrical connectors. There’s a massive specialized machine for making circuit boards.The other house has a metalworking shop, where the lathe is still littered with brass shavings.View image in fullscreenJeff has been setting up the animatronic gremlin they built. “We wrote software to modify his personality,” Jeff said, “as a function of your body movement. So you have a series of doppler shift radars that measure your body motion and it modifies how he reacts. So if you’re very calm and collected, he will look at you, OK? And then if you get hyper, then he pays no attention to you whatsoever.”Jeff said the exhibit is the most interactive. “Little kids, even four-year-old kids, know there is something special about him. Like, one year we had to cut his head open to repair something and they cried because they thought we were hurting him.”Close by is the alien rocket ship, with blue windows through which the alien is visible. It’s abandoned radio frequency testing equipment. “The throttle is from a B-1 bomber prototype,” Jeff said, pointing inside. It emits huge clouds of smoke for Halloween.In one back shed is a virtual reality device they first engineered in the 1970s for the CIA. Now it’s used to control a handmade, four-legged Star Wars Imperial Walker about five feet tall. “It’s got a 3,000-watt second strobe,” Jeff said. “You can feel it on the back of your neck at 20 feet.”The Parks joined the CIA in 1973. Brian Park was first, part of a fellowship program, and he convinced his bosses to meet with Jeff. Jeff insisted his first CIA interview – just to informally screen him – was at a downtown DC strip club that’s gone out of business.Brian said one early assignment was designing a specialized camera for a now well-known Russian spy for the CIA. “We had to build him a super tiny camera that would digitally store all this stuff so he wouldn’t have to put himself at risk. And so the first technology we used in the camera, the only way you could store digital, non-mechanically, was magnetic bubble memory.”It was the early days of digital memory. “We did something audacious. We shoveled four chips into one coil set and spent millions of dollars.”Whatever they did couldn’t protect the spy, whom the Russians executed in 1985. The story is the subject of a 2015 book and an upcoming movie starring Russell Crowe. And the technology they used – “bubble memory” – soon vanished from memory, obsolete.The CIA stories are never far away. Brian was lugging some Halloween display parts in a cleverly made cart, a one-handed wheelbarrow fashioned to distribute weight laterally.Jeff claimed the cart’s deck, fashioned out of a honeycombed aluminum material, used to reinforce the deck of racing boats he said were sent to the Contras, rigged with machine guns with massive recoil. He pointed at the cart. “That’s what’s left over!”Speedboats were indeed deployed to the region and provided to US proxies. Some speedboats were used in 1984 in CIA efforts to mine Nicaraguan harbors, an operation the international court of justice at The Hague declared illegal. It’s unclear if the specific boats the Park brothers refitted were used for that operation.Most of the year Brian and Jeff also have a railroad track made of aircraft-grade aluminum that encircles their property, over hills and bridges. It is for a miniature working steam engine that they handcrafted, with a seat so kids can ride it. Jeff said they built it using aircraft-grade aluminum. Unprompted, that launched him on a story about working on the track helped him as he engineered an early drone program in 1990, targeting Iraq.View image in fullscreenHe said the agency developed and deployed 25 of the unmanned aerial systems, with 7ft wingspans, prop driven gas engines – for reconnaissance, distributing propaganda leaflets, and finally for kamikaze bombing runs – and he boasted that earned him a promotion to the senior intelligence service level.It’s unusual to find people willing to chat about intelligence technology, even outdated gear. The CIA declined to comment on the Park brothers’ revelations.One of the things they’re proud of – “the coolest thing we ever did” – was an ambitious plan to destroy Scud missiles deployed by Russian client states.Earlier sources had referenced this when explaining the genius of the Park brothers, so hearing the details directly from them was like watching a movie where I’d only seen the trailer.View image in fullscreenBy engineering one key part, the brothers believed that deployed Scud missiles would make a U-turn and hit their own launching sites.“At the time the Soviet Union had come apart and so they were selling off to the black market a lot of the components that are used in Russian missiles,” Jeff said. “And so we basically went out, bought a bunch of them, brought them back to our contractors, modified them with my circuit.”In the end, the operation never moved forward. He said it was canceled because of resistance from the state department, worried about blowblack.Jeff boasted of another invention that he says he designed for US special operations. “It was the thing that probably put my name on the map. I had this crazy, wild-ass idea about how to build an infra-red beacon that you could see 10 miles away with night-vision glasses, and if you were two inches away from it you couldn’t see anything, using light-emitting diodes.”To convince the Navy Seals it worked, the brothers said, they invited the special operations forces to the Halloween festivities, and hid a beacon in a hedge a couple of streets over.After that, “for five years, I personally made all the night-vision beacons for the entire US military, including the Seals, Delta Forces, the Rangers. And that made me world famous.”View image in fullscreenJeff described one of their final plots – sabotaging Russian-made batteries, intercepted by the CIA, that Iran planned to install as an underground power back-up system for a nuclear facility.On this mission, the way he describes it, they went somewhat rogue. “Since it was two days after Christmas, all the bosses were on leave. And so there was just us in there. And so a whole bunch of us got together and we said, ‘Let’s screw the bad guys.’ So I trained a group of 10 people to drill holes randomly in the batteries, the diameter of a sewing machine needle.”The undetectable holes would slowly leak out the hydrogen and oxygen, to raise the internal resistance, and heat, of the battery to an explosive level.The brothers retired before they ever found out if the plan worked.View image in fullscreenCertainly their CIA, the one they talk about, is an agency where the notorious baggage and failures and scandal don’t play a leading role.This version of the CIA is not necessarily troubled by the old enhanced interrogation program, the “salt pit” death in Afghanistan, or “renditions”, or involvement in the mistaken shooting down of a plane carrying an American missionary family.Jeff said about two-thirds of all he did at the CIA never came to fruition, rejected by higher-ups or unsuccessful.But the Park brothers’ huge Halloween spectacle is at least a successful mission for them – where kids can be tricked and still be happy, where covert technology and deception actually work.View image in fullscreen More

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      Jon Stewart on Trump’s taunts of an illegal third term: ‘We know he’s thought about it’

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      Late-night hosts reacted to Donald Trump’s taunts about an illegal third presidential term and his demolition of the East Wing of the White House.Jon StewartFrom his Monday night post on the Daily Show, Jon Stewart assessed the threat of Trump attempting to run for a third term as president, which is illegal under the 22nd amendment to the constitution.Asked by reporters for his thoughts on comments by Steve Bannon that he had a plan for such a campaign, Trump answered: “I would love to do it … I have my best numbers ever.”He also claimed, however: “I haven’t really thought about it.”“That’s the tell for whenever he’s asked about something that he is definitely going to do that is dubious legally, ethically or morally,” Stewart noted. “He says he hasn’t thought about it. But of course we know he’s thought about it because he already has the merch,” he added, pointing to “Trump 2028” hats that Trump has displayed in the Oval Office.“What’s interesting about Trump is he’s actually worked through the various scenarios of running for a third term that he has not thought about,” said Stewart, pointing to Trump’s further comments that “I think the people wouldn’t like that. It’s too cute.”“Too cute? No, that’s why you don’t go to Build-a-Bear as an adult,” Stewart replied. “Running as the vice-president to skirt the 22nd amendment isn’t cute. But he’s the kinda guy who’s like ‘I respect Americans too much to play games. If I’m going to run again, I’m going to rip off the constitution’s head and shit down its neck.’“Indications are very clear he’s gonna do it,” he continued, “because you don’t move into a house, knock down a wing and build a 90,000-sq-ft ballroom for the next guy.“Trump’s not a house-flipper,” he added. “He’s not Ellen. He’s in it for the long haul.”Jimmy KimmelJimmy Kimmel returned from a weeklong family trip to Ireland with renewed perspective on his home country. “In case you’re wondering what people in other countries think about what’s going on here in our country, I’ll tell you: they’re worried about us,” he said. “They’re very worried. They’re worried about us in the same way you worry about a nephew who you maybe haven’t seen for a few years and he shows up at Thanksgiving missing all of his front teeth? That kind of worry.”People in Ireland, Kimmel reported, had a lot of questions for him about Trump, including: “Why is he knocking down part of the White House?”“I don’t know. Nobody knows,” he answered. “I don’t think he even knows.“Back here at home, the unrest continues to rage out of control. Antifa terrorists are destroying government – oh wait, that’s the White House,” Kimmel joked over a photo of the demolished East Wing. “That’s what Trump did on purpose, without permission, to the White House. I told you we should’ve made him put down a security deposit!”Nevertheless, Trump’s treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, defended the move on NBC News: “I think this was a judgment call by the president. The president is a master builder. I don’t know, I assume that maybe parts of the East Wing, there could’ve been asbestos, there could’ve been mold.“There could’ve been some old Chinese food, could’ve been ghosts! We don’t know,” Kimmel joked. “All we know is that the only solution was to completely smash the whole place down. I wish the master builder would master-build in private like the rest of us do.”Seth MeyersOn Late Night, Seth Meyers also touched on the Trump 2028 hats seen on his desk during meetings with congressional Democrats.“It’s so weird to make a hat for a thing that can’t happen,” said Meyers. “Wearing a Trump 2028 hat is like wearing a hat that says Super Bowl champion New York Jets.”“So Trump put some hats on the desk during a meeting with Democrats,” he continued, “and the Democrats in attendance definitely thought it was weird.”As the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, a Democrat from New York, told CNN: “it was the strangest thing ever.”“Come on, the strangest thing ever? Don’t you live Brooklyn?” Meyers laughed. “If someone Rollerbladed into a Brooklyn deli wearing a full mermaid costume, the only thing anyone would say is ‘the usual, Jeff?’“It’s not even the strangest thing Trump has done,” he continued. “Not long before that meeting, he wandered on to the roof of the White House.“Think about how insane this is: this was supposed to be a meeting about keeping the government open, making sure troops get paid and families get nutrition assistance and air traffic controllers can do their jobs,” Meyers added. “And instead the president’s main interest was trolling.“Trump can’t help himself,” he concluded. “The Maga movement cares more about trolling libs than making government function, which is why he keeps going on about this unconstitutional third term.”Stephen Colbert“It was a beautiful day here in America because Donald Trump was out of the country,” said Stephen Colbert on the Late Show. To start the week, Trump was on a “field trip” to Asia, where “he’s going to tear down the Great Wall and put up a ballroom,” Colbert quipped.The trip includes stops in Japan, South Korea and Malaysia, where Trump danced to a marching band in a way that Colbert could only describe as “shuffling and swinging his wrists like a low-battery Chuck E Cheese robot”.In Japan, the new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, reportedly planned to gift Trump a gold golf ball. “It is so sad to see how easy it is to butter up the president of the United States,” Colbert remarked. “OK quick, Trump’s visiting, what are we going to get him this time? Gold burger? Gold TV? Have we tried spray-painting a woman gold?”Colbert also touched on the fourth week of the ongoing government shutdown. “The longer it goes, the more used to having no government we get and then the less likely it is to ever end,” he said.The shutdown is now restricting military pay. But on Friday, an anonymous donor – later identified as Timothy Mellon – gifted $130m to pay troops during the shutdown. “I know that sounds nice, I get it, but I don’t like the idea of the armed forces having a private sponsor,” Colbert said. “I don’t want our next invasion to be code-named ‘Operation Chili’s New El Diablo Triple Dipper Rib Tips: Can You Stand the Heat?’” More

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      Leader of top federal worker union calls for end of US government shutdown

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      The head of America’s largest federal workers union says it is time to end the government shutdown, now the second-longest in US history, as hundreds of thousands of employees miss another round of paychecks.Everett Kelley, who leads the American Federation of Government Employees representing more than 800,000 workers, avoided assigning blame to either party in the Monday morning letter but said lawmakers must stop playing politics and pass a stopgap funding measure to reopen the government, its closure now eclipsing the four-week mark.“Both political parties have made their point, and still there is no clear end in sight,” Kelley wrote in the statement. “Today I’m making mine: it’s time to pass a clean continuing resolution and end this shutdown today. No half measures, and no gamesmanship.” NBC News first reported the letter.A “clean” continuing resolution is a temporary spending bill that keeps the government running at current funding levels without attaching other political demands. Republicans say they have offered that in their measure, but Democrats argue the bill shortchanges key services and are using their power in the Senate to push for a deal on health insurance subsidies that expire at year’s end.Because of this stalemate, hundreds of thousands of federal and Washington DC government employees are either working without pay or furloughed. The union represents workers across nearly every federal agency, from Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers and army nurses to food safety inspectors and veterans affairs staff, many of whom are now lined up at food banks after missing their second paycheck, Kelley said.“These are patriotic Americans – parents, caregivers, and veterans – forced to work without pay while struggling to cover rent, groceries, gas and medicine because of political disagreements in Washington,” Kelley said. “That is unacceptable.”But the crisis extends beyond federal workers: roughly 42 million Americans who receive food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program face losing their benefits as soon as 1 November if the shutdown continues, after the US agriculture department warned states it would run out of money to pay for the program.Senate Democrats have blocked a Republican-backed continuing resolution 12 times, demanding commitments on extending Affordable Care Act health subsidies. Three Democrats and one independent who caucus with the party have broken ranks to support the measure, but it remains short of the 60 needed to advance. The Republican senator Rand Paul is the sole Republican to defect on the measure.The AFGE is already suing the Trump administration over mass layoffs organized during the shutdown and over partisan emails sent from government accounts without employees’ knowledge.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionKelley called for three immediate steps: reopening the government under a continuing resolution, ensuring full back pay for all affected workers, and addressing policy disputes through normal legislative debate rather than shutdown tactics.“When the folks who serve this country are standing in line for food banks after missing a second paycheck because of this shutdown, they aren’t looking for partisan spin,” he said. “They’re looking for the wages they earned. The fact that they’re being cheated out of it is a national disgrace.”The shutdown reaches the one-month mark this week, with no negotiations scheduled between the parties.The House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, told CNN on Sunday that he and the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, requested a meeting with Donald Trump to discuss the shutdown before he went out of the country but had been rebuffed. The president has said he will only meet with Democrats after they vote to reopen the government.“A strong America requires a functioning government – one that pays its bills, honors its commitments, and treats its workforce with respect by paying them on time,” Kelley wrote. “The government belongs to all of us. Let’s open it back up and keep America moving forward.” More

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      What is the White House East Wing and why has it been torn down in Trump’s renovation plans?

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      It was confirmed on Friday that the East Wing of the White House has now been completely destroyed, days after construction started on the planned $300m (£225m) ballroom that Donald Trump is adding to the historic building.The demolition marked a reversal of Trump’s earlier promise in July that none of the White House’s existing infrastructure would be torn down during construction of the ballroom.The rapid pace of the project, coupled with images of rubble at the president’s residence has elicited a chorus of disgust among White House alumni and presidential historians, while the Trump administration has dismissed the criticism as “manufactured outrage”.What is the East Wing?The East Wing was first known as the East Terrace and was built during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt in 1902. Franklin Roosevelt created the East Wing in its current form in 1942 to add working space during the war, but also to conceal an underground bunker that had been constructed for the president and staff.Over time it became the home base for the first lady and her staff. It was also the home of the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden.View image in fullscreenSitting across East Executive Avenue from the Treasury Department, it represented the social side of the White House and was where tourists and other guests entered for events.In the original plan for the ballroom, it would have remained untouched and, in Trump’s telling, become a space where guests would mingle, sip cocktails and eat hors d’oeuvres until they were called into the ballroom for dinner. However, days after ground was broken on the new project, the White House confirmed the entire wing would be torn down and that process appeared to be completed by Friday.What can we expect from the new ballroom?Trump has complained that the White House needs a large entertaining space and that the East Room is too small, with capacity for only about 200 people.The 90,000-square-foot (27,400sqm) ballroom will dwarf the main White House, at nearly double the size, and Trump says it will accommodate 999 people.Renderings released by the White House suggest a strong resemblance to the gilded ballroom at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club and home in Palm Beach, Florida. The White House has said the ballroom will be ready for use well before Trump’s term ends in January 2029, an ambitious timeline.View image in fullscreenThe president has been adamant that the ballroom will not come at a cost to taxpayers, because it is being privately funded by “many generous Patriots, Great American Companies, and, yours truly”.Donors for the proposed ballroom include a slew of major tech companies, including Apple, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Google. Defense contractors and communications companies have also pitched in, including Lockheed Martin, Palantir, T-Mobile and Comcast.The president began construction despite the lack of signoff from the National Capital Planning Commission, the executive branch agency that has jurisdiction over construction and major renovations to government buildings in the region.What has been the reaction to the bulldozing of the East Wing?The image of broken masonry, rubble and steel wires at America’s most famous address appeared to strike a chord even with people who have become accustomed to shrugging off Trump’s outrageous antics.David Frum, a former speechwriter for President George W Bush, tweeted: “Something profoundly symbolic about Trump taking a wrecking ball to the White House … paying for the demolition with money from cronies and insiders seeking government favors … and the Republicans in Congress acquiescing as Trump treats public assets as private property.”View image in fullscreenThe National Trust for Historic Preservation on Tuesday asked the Trump administration to pause the demolition until the planning commission review was completed. Its letter expressed concern that the proposed ballroom would “overwhelm the White House itself”.Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian, was quoted by WTOP News as saying: “Maybe it’s just the dislike of change on my part, but it seemed painful, almost like slashing a Rembrandt painting. Or defacing a Michelangelo sculpture.”In an appearance on Fox News on Friday, Trump adviser Stephen Miller defended the unannounced demolition of the entire East Wing, arguing that the extension was not really part of the White House.“It was a cheaply built add-on structure … [it] is badly in need of refurbishment, repair and renovation,” he said.What have other presidents done to change the White House?Presidents have added to the White House since construction began in 1792 for a host of reasons, and Trump aides say his decision to build a ballroom follows that long tradition.Thomas Jefferson added the east and west colonnades.Andrew Jackson built the North Portico on the Pennsylvania Avenue side of the White House, aligning with the South Portico that James Monroe added after the original mansion was rebuilt after the British burned it during the war of 1812.Theodore Roosevelt added the West Wing to provide dedicated space for the president and senior staff, while Franklin D Roosevelt added the East Wing.One of the most significant White House renovations happened under Harry Truman, when the mansion was found to be so structurally unsound that he ordered a complete gutting of the interior that lasted from 1948 to 1952. The project, including Truman’s addition of a balcony to the second floor of the South Portico, was highly controversial.Other changes include the creation of the Rose Garden during John F Kennedy’s administration and Richard Nixon’s decision to convert an indoor swimming pool that was built for FDR’s physical therapy into a workspace for the growing White House press corps.With Reuters and the Associated Press More

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      Big? Beautiful? Donald Trump is literally ripping apart the home of US democracy. Is anyone really surprised? | Emma Brockes

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      Occasionally, life gives you scenarios that are so on the money it’s impossible to do anything with them. Boris Johnson getting stuck halfway down a zip wire while waving two union flags, for instance; or Liz Truss getting lost while attempting to leave a room – two images that are so embarrassingly on point it is almost difficult to enjoy them. An audience likes to feel it has done a bit of work before arriving at a punch line, which is why, on Monday, when demolition crews moved into the White House to knock down part of the East Wing at the behest of Donald Trump, it felt once again like we were living in post-satirical times.As far as we can tell from the photos, Trump didn’t actually send in a wrecking ball – although his administration did sharply reprimand government employees working in a neighbouring Treasury building for posting visuals of the demolition online, so at this point who knows? There were, however, diggers, torn-down walls and an awful lot of dust. This was the first stage of a project Trump has advertised as the addition to the White House of a 90,000 sq ft (8,300 sq metres) ballroom, at an estimated cost of $250m (£187m) and a capacity, according to Trump, of “999 people”. And while, granted, it’s not a branch of McDonald’s – one thing about Trump’s range is that, however bad things are, they could always have been worse – architectural and heritage institutes have been expressing concern.Presidents, of course, like to leave their mark on the nation’s furnishings as on its finances. The Obamas planted a kitchen garden at the White House, put in a basketball court and tweaked the lighting, apparently so it was bright enough for their daughters to do their homework. Joe Biden had less time to renovate, but did swap out Trump’s gold drapes in the Oval Office for some sober Clinton-era curtains and a new rug.Trump, meanwhile, paved over the Rose Garden, decked out the Oval Office in gold, and now appears to be wholesale demolishing the East Wing’s 1942 facade to build a giant event space – and you have to wonder if the state banquet he enjoyed at Windsor Castle last month has been a spur to get construction under way. As for what the new space might look like, we must assume that Clark Construction and McCrery Architects, the design and building entities involved, will be led by Trump’s general aesthetic and find a happy medium between the Grand Ballroom at Mar-a-Lago and Saddam Hussein’s palace.Well, you can imagine, there’s been some carping online. The Society of Architectural Historians released a statement expressing “great concern” over the proposed ballroom. The American Institute of Architects put out a stiff note reminding the president that “the historic edifice at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is the People’s House, a national treasure and an enduring symbol of our democracy”. And more importantly, that “any modifications to it – especially modifications of this magnitude – should reflect the importance, scale and symbolic weight of the White House itself”. This was, perhaps, a discreet way of pointing out that, given you can barely put up a shelf in a major city on the eastern seaboard without having to get a permit, the DC Department of Buildings might care to look into things.In her commentary online, Hillary Clinton was more direct: “It’s not his house. It’s your house. And he’s destroying it.” For many Americans, the demolition photos were soul-shuddering in a way that has no direct equivalence in the UK. I suppose if they changed the door numbers in Downing Street a lot of people might be upset and disturbed. But the building at No 10, and the living quarters in particular – which for a long time looked like one of those rental ads that go viral for demanding £2,000 a month for a flat in east London that is smaller than the inside of a canal boat – have never been as iconic or emotionally charged as their US counterparts.Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, dismissed all the chatter as “fake outrage”, while the president himself posted online, “For more than 150 years, every President has dreamt about having a Ballroom at the White House to accommodate people for grand parties, State Visits, etc.” As with everything Trump says, it’s the “etc” in this sentence that should cause the most worry. The ballroom will be funded via private donations, setting up yet another race to curry favour with the president. And, as an event space, it will run in competition with the Trump International Hotel, offering the possibility of a very Trumpian future use for the building: the White House as venue for corporate retreat.

      Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist
      skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More