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      Burner phones, wiped socials: the extreme precautions for visitors to Trump’s America

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      Keith Serry was set to bring a show to New York City’s Fringe festival this year, but pulled the plug a few weeks out. After 35 years of traveling to the United States, he says he no longer feels safe making the trip.“The fact that we’re being evaluated for our opinions entering a country that, at least until very recently, purported to be an example of democracy. Yeah, these are things that make me highly uncomfortable,” said Serry, a Canadian performer and attorney.“You’re left thinking that you don’t want to leave evidence of ‘bad opinions’ on your person.”Serry is among a substantial cohort of foreign nationals reconsidering travel to the US under the Trump administration, after troubling reports of visitors facing intense scrutiny and detention on arrival.In March, a French scientist who had been critical of Donald Trump was refused entry to the US after his phone was searched. An Australian writer who was detained and denied entry in June said he was initially grilled about his articles on pro-Palestinian protests, and then watched as a border agent probed even the most personal images on his phone. He was told the search uncovered evidence of past drug use, which he had not acknowledged on his visa waiver application, leading to his rejection. German, British and other European tourists have also been detained and sent home.More than a dozen countries have updated their travel guidance to the US. In Australia and Canada, government advisories were changed to specifically mention the potential for electronic device searches.On the advice of various experts, people are locking down social media, deleting photos and private messages, removing facial recognition, or even traveling with “burner” phones to protect themselves.In Canada, multiple public institutions have urged employees to avoid travel to the US, and at least one reportedly told staff to leave their usual devices at home and bring a second device with limited personal information instead.“Everybody feels guilty, but they don’t know exactly what they’re guilty of,” said Heather Segal, founding partner of Segal Immigration Law in Toronto, describing the influx of concerns she’s been hearing.“‘Did I do something wrong? Is there something on me? Did I say something that’s going to be a problem?’”She advised travelers to assess their risk appetite by reviewing both the private data stored on their devices and any information about them that’s publicly accessible, and to consider what measures to take accordingly.US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has broad powers to search devices with minimal justification. Travelers can refuse to comply, but non-citizens risk being denied entry. CBP data shows such searches are rare; last year, just over 47,000 out of 420 million international travelers had their devices examined. This year’s figures show a significant increase, with the third quarter of 2025 reflecting an uptick in electronic device searches higher than any single quarter since 2018, when available data begins.“Anecdotally, it seems like these searches have been increasing, and I think the reason why that’s true is, undoubtedly, I think they are more targeted than before,” said Tom McBrien, counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center.“It seems like they are targeting people who they just don’t generally like politically.”Travelers who are concerned about their privacy should consider minimizing the amount of data they carry, McBrien said.“The less data you have on you, the less there is to search, and the less there is to collect,” he said. Beyond using a secondary device, he suggested securely deleting data, moving it to a hard drive or storing it in a password-protected cloud account.A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson rejected claims that CBP had stepped up device searches under the new administration or singled out travelers over their political views.“These searches are conducted to detect digital contraband, terrorism-related content, and information relevant to visitor admissibility, all of which play a critical role in national security,” the spokesperson told the Guardian in a statement.“Allegations that political beliefs trigger inspections or removals are baseless and irresponsible.”The statement acknowledged, however, that there had been heightened vetting under Trump and the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Under the leadership of the Trump Administration and Secretary Noem, we have the most secure border in American history,” it said. “This has allowed CBP to focus to actually vet and interview the people attempting to come into our country.”Alistair Kitchen, the Australian writer who was denied entry to the US in June, said the DHS’s denial of political targeting directly contradicts what he was told on arrival.Border officials “bragged actively that the reason for my targeting, for my being pulled out of line for my detainment, was explicitly because of what I’d written online about the protests at Columbia University”, he told the Guardian.While he doesn’t plan to return to the US under the Trump administration, Kitchen said that if he ever did, he would either not take a phone or bring a burner.“Under no conditions would I ever hand over the passcode to that phone,” he added. “I would accept immediate deportation rather than hand over the passcode. People should think seriously before booking travel, especially if they are journalists or writers or activists.”Various foreign nationals told the Guardian they are rethinking travel plans for tourism, family visits, academic events and work.Donald Rothwell, a professor who teaches international law at the Australian National University, says he no longer plans to accept speaking invitations to the US over fears of being detained or denied entry – which, he noted, could also trigger red flags on his record for future travel.He’s even considered traveling without a device at all, but is concerned his academic commentary in the media could be used against him regardless.“I might be commenting on matters that could be quite critical of the United States,” he said. “For example, I was very critical of the legal or lack of legal justification for the US military strikes on Iran in June.”Kate, a Canadian whose name has been withheld due to privacy concerns, said she has wrestled with complicated decisions about whether to travel across the border to see American relatives, including for an upcoming wedding. During a trip earlier this year, she deleted her social media apps before going through customs.Despite DHS assurances that travelers are not flagged for political beliefs, she said “it’s hard to believe things that this government is saying”.“It would be really nice to have trust that those kinds of things were true, and that these kinds of stories that you hear, while absolutely horrific, are isolated incidents,” she said.“But I do feel like in many ways, the United States has sort of lost its goodwill.” More

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      ‘I would not feel safe’: Americans on the sorrow – and relief – of leaving Trump’s US for Europe

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      The scramble began in November as news broke that Donald Trump had been re-elected. Benjamin and Chrys Gorman had long said they would leave the US before seeing Trump inaugurated again, giving them exactly 76 days to sell their home, cars and most of their belongings and move four people, three dogs and two cats to Barcelona.“I was saying: we’ve got more time than that, it won’t go that fast,” said Gorman. “My wife said no, we need to be out of here – not just on inauguration day, but a few days before. And she was so right.”Within hours of taking office, Trump signed an executive order defining sex as only male or female. The change was to be reflected on official documents, sowing confusion over what it meant for Americans with the non-binary identification of “X” in their passports.Relief gripped the Gormans as they watched it play out from afar. “Our kid’s passport has an X gender marker,” said Gorman. “So we managed to escape just in time.”View image in fullscreenSince Trump’s return to power, relocation firms from London to Lisbon and Madrid to Milan say they’ve seen a surge in inquiries from Americans. Undaunted by the gains made by the far right across the continent, many Americans cite a desire to escape the US’s increasingly polarised climate and an administration whose wide range of targets has included immigrants, diversity measures and political opponents.Statistics suggest that the barrage of interest is translating into action; in the first two months of the year, US applications for Irish passports were at their highest level in a decade – up 60% from the same period last year. In the first three months of the year, France reported a rise in the number of long-stay visa requests from Americans, while in March, the number of Americans who had solicited British citizenship in the 12 months before surged to its highest since record-keeping began in 2004.While the figures remain relatively small given the size of the US population, the movement has been galvanised by a steady drip of celebrity announcements. Rosie O’Donnell said in March that she had moved to Ireland, describing it as “heartbreaking to see what’s happening politically” in the US, while Ellen DeGeneres recently cited Trump’s re-election to explain why she and her wife, Portia de Rossi, had moved to the Cotswolds in 2024. Earlier this month, Jimmy Kimmel revealed that he had acquired Italian citizenship, saying that the US under Trump was “just unbelievable”.Across Europe, governments and institutions have sought to capitalise on the exodus, launching programmes aimed at attracting stateside talent or, in the case of one enterprising Italian village, seeking to bolster its population with disgruntled Americans.Among the first was France’s Aix-Marseille University, which in March put out an offer of “scientific asylum” for researchers reeling from Trump’s crackdown on academia. Three months later, the university said it had received more than 500 inquiries for the 20 spots.View image in fullscreenThose selected included Lisa, a biological anthropologist who was preparing to move her husband, a school teacher, and two children across the Atlantic. “When Trump was re-elected, the feeling was: ‘We gotta go,’” she told the Guardian earlier this summer. She asked that her last name not be used to protect her university in the US from reprisals.The sentiment had strengthened as she watched the Trump administration take aim at universities, dismantle research funding and undermine science. “We’re months into this presidency, and a lot has already happened. I can’t imagine what’s going to happen in another three and a half years.”The opportunity to swap the northern US for southern France was welcome, but not without its drawbacks. “It is a big pay cut,” she said. “My kids are super gung-ho. My husband is just worried that he won’t find a job. Which is my worry too, because I don’t think I’ll be able to afford four of us on my salary.”In January, as thousands of Trump faithful turned up in Washington DC for a televised viewing of his inauguration, Deborah Harkness knew the time had come to act on her longstanding dream of moving to southern Spain. “As soon as he was inaugurated, I started making plans,” she said.Months later she was in Málaga, watching as Trump’s administration sought to drastically reshape the judiciary, public broadcasting, higher education and immigration. “What frightens me most is how normalised it’s all become,” she said. “The chaos, the cruelty, the disinformation – that’s how authoritarianism takes hold.”The view was echoed by Monica Byrne, who in 2023 left North Carolina for Cork, Ireland. Trump was a factor in her decision, but only in that she saw his rise to power as a symptom of the bigger issues facing the US. “I didn’t know whether Trump specifically was going to come back, but I knew fascism was,” she said. “So it was more about the abject failure of the Democrats and knowing they weren’t going to protect us from fascism generally.”View image in fullscreenTrump’s re-election cemented her decision to remain abroad and enrol in a master’s programme in Ireland. “I get frustrated when people say: ‘You’re very lucky or you must be happy you’re not there,’” she said. “There is some degree of that, but 90% of the people I care about and love are in the States and are affected.”In Barcelona, Gorman and his family have been slowly settling into the rhythms of the city. “So many things have just been shockingly better,” he said. “For example, my wife was saying that the other day she was walking along La Rambla and a car backfired. And she was the only person who ducked.”While they were thrilled to have left behind the gun violence and shooter drills of the US, the challenge was now in explaining to their loved ones that they were unlikely to return home once Trump’s term ends. “I don’t foresee this movement ending with the end of the Trump administration … I think that the rot is much deeper,” said Gorman.“If he wouldn’t have a huge base of support, Trump is just, you know, your crazy uncle yelling things on a porch. That base of support needs to be addressed. Why was there support for this kind of fascism?” he added. “And that’s a much deeper question. I would not personally feel safe going back to a country that doesn’t fully reckon with its fascist impulses.” More

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      Russia says Europe’s leaders don’t want peace in Ukraine as Vance says US will keep trying

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      Russia accused western European leaders on Sunday of not wanting peace in Ukraine, as Moscow’s most senior diplomat praised efforts by Donald Trump to end the war, while Vice-President JD Vance said the US would “keep on trying” to broker talks in the absence of a deal.Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, made the comments during a sometimes contentious interview on NBC on Sunday morning, during which he denied his country had bombed civilian targets in Ukraine.Trump, he said, had set himself above European leaders who accompanied Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy for talks at the White House last week, immediately after the summit between the US president and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, on 15 August.“We want peace in Ukraine. He wants, President Trump wants, peace in Ukraine. The reaction to [the] Anchorage meeting, the gathering in Washington of these European representatives and what they were doing after Washington, indicates that they don’t want peace,” Lavrov said.The Alaska talks produced neither a ceasefire nor an agreement for Zelenskyy and Putin to meet, and was widely considered to be a public relations triumph for the Russian leader.Lavrov brushed aside Trump’s apparent frustration at the outcome and the US warning of “massive sanctions or massive tariffs or both” against Moscow. He said “yes” when asked if Putin wanted peace and said Putin and Trump respected each other, while assailing the alliance of leaders such as France’s Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s Friedrich Merz, Britain’s Keir Starmer and European Union president Ursula von der Leyen who came to the White House last week to bolster Zelenskyy’s visit.European leaders in recent days have pledged to support security guarantees as part of a peace agreement, although Russia has flatly rejected the prospect of troops from countries in Europe being positioned in Ukraine.Trump has ruled out sending the US military, and on Friday it was reported that his administration had blocked Ukraine’s use of US-supplied long-range missiles to attack Russia.Meanwhile, Canadian prime minister Mark Carney told Zelenskyy on Sunday that he backed Ukraine’s calls for robust security guarantees and that Canada would not rule out sending troops.Earlier, Lavrov became defensive when NBC asked him if Putin was “stringing along” Trump by appearing conciliatory to his peace overtures but continuing to bomb Ukraine, attacks which last week included an airstrike on an American electronics manufacturing company in the west of the country.“It is not for the lawmakers or for any media outlet to decide what President Trump is motivated by. We respect President Trump because President Trump defends American national interests. And I have reason to believe that President Trump respects President Putin because he defends Russian national interests,” he said.Critics, including some conservative voices, are alarmed by what they see as Putin manipulating Trump over Ukraine and US elections.Lavrov meanwhile denied that Russia attacks civilian targets including schools, hospitals and churches, hinting at Russia’s extraordinary claims throughout the war that Ukraine is attacking its own people.“Our intelligence has very good information, and we target only military enterprises, military sites or industrial enterprises directly involved in producing military equipment for [the] Ukrainian army,” he said.Vance appeared separately in the same Sunday morning program and insisted Russia deserved credit for indicating it was ready to end a conflict that Trump has said more than 50 times he would solve “in one day”, while in contrast the vice-president warned of a longer process.“I think the Russians have made significant concessions to President Trump for the first time in three and a half years of this conflict,” Vance said.“They’ve recognized that they’re not going to be able to install a puppet regime in Kyiv. That was, of course, a major demand at the beginning. And importantly, they’ve acknowledged that there is going to be some security guarantee to the territorial integrity of Ukraine.”Vance said historically that peace negotiations go “in fits and starts” and warned that he did not think ending the war was “going to happen overnight”.Vance said of Russia, in a comment that was not further clarified: “Should they have started the war? Of course, they haven’t. But we’re making progress”. Trump in February blamed Ukraine, saying, “you never should have started it.”Any sanctions against Russia, Vance said, would be on a “case by case basis”, but he remained hopeful that US efforts could bring Zelenskyy and Putin together.“It’s complicated, but we’re going to keep on trying to convince these parties to talk to each other and continue to play the game of diplomacy, because that’s the only way to get this thing wrapped up.”Lavrov remained adamant that Russia also wanted peace, and acknowledged “Ukraine has the right to exist”. But he said it “must let people go”, referring to Putin’s demand that it give up Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula seized by Russia in 2014, as well as southern and eastern parts, such as the Donbas, captured since 2022, as part of a peace agreement.“In Crimea [they] decided that they belong to the Russian culture,” he said, citing a disputed 2014 referendum condemned by most of the world as illegal.On Friday, Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat of Connecticut, said on CNN that stronger US action was needed because “Putin is not going to stop until we stop him.”

      Reuters contributed reporting More

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      Pentagon has blocked Ukraine from striking deep inside Russia – report

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      US defense officials have blocked Ukraine from using US-supplied long-range missiles to strike targets inside Russia since late spring as part of a Trump administration effort to get Vladimir Putin to engage in peace talks , according to a report on Saturday.The Wall Street Journal reports that the Pentagon has blocked Ukraine from using US-made Army Tactical Missile Systems, or Atacms.Two US officials told the outlet that on at least one occasion, Ukraine had sought to use Atacms against a target but was denied under a “review mechanism” developed by Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s undersecretary for policy, that governs how US long-range weapons or those provided by European allies that rely on American intelligence and components can be used.The review process also applies to Britain’s Storm Shadow cruise missile because it depends on US targeting data, according to two US officials and a British official, the Journal said.The review system reportedly gives US defense secretary Pete Hegseth approval over the use of the Atacms, which have a range of nearly 190 miles (305km). Ukraine was previously given authority by the Biden administration to use the missile system against targets inside Russia in November after North Korean troops entered the war.Before the inauguration in January, Trump told Time magazine that the decision to allow Ukraine to use US weapons systems to attack targets inside Russia had been a mistake.“I disagree very vehemently with sending missiles hundreds of miles into Russia. Why are we doing that? We’re just escalating this war and making it worse. That should not have been allowed to be done,” he said.It is unclear whether the US defense department’s review process amounts to a formal policy change. But it comes alongside increasing control of munitions to Ukraine as US stocks are themselves depleted.In a statement to the Journal, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump “has been very clear that the war in Ukraine needs to end. There has been no change in military posture in Russia-Ukraine at this time.”But last week, amid efforts to broker talks between the Russian president and Voldomyr Zelenskyy, Trump said that Ukraine couldn’t defeat Russia unless it could “play offense” in the war.“It is very hard, if not impossible, to win a war without attacking an invader’s country,” Trump wrote on Thursday. “It’s like a great team in sports that has a fantastic defense, but is not allowed to play offense. There is no chance of winning.”Last month, the US agreed to supply Ukraine with new weapons systems but only if European nations paid for them. While Trump has said that the US is “not looking” to provide longer-range weapons that could reach Moscow, US officials told the Journal that the administration has approved the sale of 3,350 Extended Range Attack Munition air-launched missiles, or Erams, which have a range of 280 miles (400km). More

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      Ghislaine Maxwell transcripts: Epstein associate says she ‘never’ saw Trump receive a massage – live

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      The transcripts are more than 300 pages, but here it goes …

      Blanche said, on record, that their conversation wasn’t “promising to do anything” for Maxwell. But that anything she said couldn’t be used against her, unless she provided false statements or there was a retrial in her case.

      According to Maxwell, Epstein didn’t have any video or photographic evidence of any high-profile individuals committing sexual offences. And to that point, Maxwell said she didn’t hear or witness any instances of Epstein blackmailing powerful people.

      Maxwell recruited a number of masseuses for Epstein but “never checked their age or credentials”. She added that, throughout her time with Epstein, she never heard any examples of “sexually inappropriate contact” between Epstein’s guests and in-house masseuses.

      Despite her claims that Epstein didn’t extort anyone, Maxwell does not believe that Epstein died by suicide. She chalked that up to “mismanagement” at the bureau of prisons.

      In the interview Maxwell said she does believe that Epstein “did a lot of, not all, but some of what he’s accused of”. But she maintains that “he became that man over a period of time”.

      Maxwell said that she “never” saw Donald Trump receive a massage. She also said that she “never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way,” adding that he was “a gentleman in all respects” whenever she saw the president.

      Maxwell also didn’t recall former president Bill Clinton receiving a massage while travelling with Epstein.

      One notable point is that Maxwell denied ever recruiting masseuses from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club. “I’ve never recruited a masseuse from Mar-a-Lago for that, as far as I remember. I can’t ever recollect doing that,” she told Todd Blanche. A reminder that Trump claimed his falling out with Jeffrey Epstein stemmed from the convicted sex offender’s efforts to hire workers away from Trump’s Florida club.

      Maxwell did not remember whether Trump submitted a letter for Epstein’s 50th birthday album, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. She also couldn’t remember asking Trump to contribute.
      Donald Trump announced that he named Sergio Gor to be the next US ambassador to India and special envoy for South and Central Asian affairs, according to a post on Truth Social.Gor is currently the director of the White House presidential personnel office, and is slated to remain in that position until his confirmation.“For the most populous Region in the World, it is important that I have someone I can fully trust to deliver on my Agenda and help us, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,” Trump wrote on Friday.Carol Alvarado, a Texas Democratic senator from Houston, says she intends to filibuster tonight in the Texas senate to delay Republicans from passing a redrawn congressional map.“Republicans think they can walk all over us. Today I’m going to kick back.I’ve submitted my intention to filibuster the new congressional maps. Going to be a long night,” she wrote in a post on X, accompanied by a picture of sneakers.Democrats have gone back and forth with Phil King, the bill’s GOP sponsor, since this morning, trying to get him to admit that he considered race in drawing the maps.The local television station KVUE has more on the rules Alvarado will have to follow as she filibusters the new congressional map.Alvarado will not be able to eat or drink and must stand at her desk the whole time without breaks for the bathroom, the outlet reported.The national guard personnel deployed on the streets of Washington DC will now be armed, a defense official confirmed to The Guardian.Defense secretary Pete Hegseth authorized the nearly 2,000 of the national guard members to carry “service-issued weapons,” the official said.“The Interim Commanding General of the D.C. National Guard retains the authority to make any necessary force posture adjustments in coordination with the D.C. Metropolitan Police and Federal law enforcement partners,” said the defense official.The Pentagon and the US army had said last week that troops would not carry weapons.In a Truth Social post, President Donald Trump announced that his administration is undergoing a “major tariff investigation” into imported furniture and is expected to release its findings within 50 days.Trump said the US will impose tariffs (at a rate still to be determined) on foreign-made furniture, in efforts to revive the industry in states including North Carolina, South Carolina, and Michigan.Defense secretary Pete Hegseth fired ​​Lt Gen Jeffrey A Kruse​, the military’s top intelligence officer. The Washington Post first reported the story.Kruse, who served as Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) director, is the second senior Air Force general in a week to be forced out or retire unexpectedly. On Monday, Air Force chief of staff Gen David Allvin announced he was stepping down after just two years in the role, a position typically held for four years.A spokesperson for the DIA told CBS News that deputy director Christine Bordine will assume the role of acting director “effective immediately.”“The firing of yet another senior national security official underscores the Trump administration’s dangerous habit of treating intelligence as a loyalty test rather than a safeguard for our country,” said senator Mark Warner, vice chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, in a statement.The firing comes a few months after details of the agency’s preliminary assessment of damage to Iranian nuclear sites from US strikes leaked to the media. It found that Iran’s nuclear program has been set back only a few months by the US strikes, contradicting assertions from Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.The transcripts are more than 300 pages, but here it goes …

      Blanche said, on record, that their conversation wasn’t “promising to do anything” for Maxwell. But that anything she said couldn’t be used against her, unless she provided false statements or there was a retrial in her case.

      According to Maxwell, Epstein didn’t have any video or photographic evidence of any high-profile individuals committing sexual offences. And to that point, Maxwell said she didn’t hear or witness any instances of Epstein blackmailing powerful people.

      Maxwell recruited a number of masseuses for Epstein but “never checked their age or credentials”. She added that, throughout her time with Epstein, she never heard any examples of “sexually inappropriate contact” between Epstein’s guests and in-house masseuses.

      Despite her claims that Epstein didn’t extort anyone, Maxwell does not believe that Epstein died by suicide. She chalked that up to “mismanagement” at the bureau of prisons.

      In the interview Maxwell said she does believe that Epstein “did a lot of, not all, but some of what he’s accused of”. But she maintains that “he became that man over a period of time”.

      Maxwell said that she “never” saw Donald Trump receive a massage. She also said that she “never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way,” adding that he was “a gentleman in all respects” whenever she saw the president.

      Maxwell also didn’t recall former president Bill Clinton receiving a massage while travelling with Epstein.

      One notable point is that Maxwell denied ever recruiting masseuses from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club. “I’ve never recruited a masseuse from Mar-a-Lago for that, as far as I remember. I can’t ever recollect doing that,” she told Todd Blanche. A reminder that Trump claimed his falling out with Jeffrey Epstein stemmed from the convicted sex offender’s efforts to hire workers away from Trump’s Florida club.

      Maxwell did not remember whether Trump submitted a letter for Epstein’s 50th birthday album, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. She also couldn’t remember asking Trump to contribute.
      In Ghislaine Maxwell’s first interview with deputy attorney general Todd Blanche, on 24 July, she said that she “may have met” Donald Trump in 1990, before meeting Jeffrey Epstein.Maxwell went on to describe the relationship between the president and Epstein as “friendly”, although she didn’t know how the two men met or how they became friends.She added that she “never” saw the president receive a massage:
      I actually never saw the president in any type of massage setting. I never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way. The president was never inappropriate with anybody. In the times that I was with him, he was a gentleman in all respects.
      Maxwell also contested Trump’s claims she recruited masseuses from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. “I’ve never recruited a masseuse from Mar-a-Lago for that, as far as I remember. I can’t ever recollect doing that,” she said in the interview with Blanche.A reminder that the president said in July that his falling out with Jeffrey Epstein stemmed from the convicted sex offender’s efforts to hire workers away from Trump’s Florida club. “People were taken out of the spa, hired by him, in other words, gone,” the president said.The Department of Justice has released the transcripts and audio recordings of the interviews between Ghislaine Maxwell, the former girlfriend of child sex-offender Jefrrey Epstein, and the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche.The interviews between Blanche and Maxwell took place on 24 and 25 July 2025, with her legal representatives present. Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence for child sex trafficking.The justice department will also send the first tranche of records from the Jeffrey Epstein investigation to the House oversight committee, after receiving a subpoena for the files. Earlier this week, the committee chair, Representative James Comer, a Republican, said that his aim is to make the files public – while protecting the safety and identities of the victims.A court has ordered the release of Kilmar Ábrego García from criminal custody in Tennessee.On Friday, magistrate judge Barbara Holmes issued an order allowing the Maryland father of two to leave custody for the first time since his return to the US in June, after his wrongful deportation to El Salvador earlier this year.The 30-year-old was initially wrongfully deported by federal immigration officials in March. According to the Trump administration, Ábrego was affiliated with the MS-13 gang, a claim Ábrego and his family vehemently deny.During his detention at El Salvador’s so-called Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot), Ábrego was physically and psychologically tortured, according to court documents filed by his lawyers in July.Following Ábrego’s wrongful deportation, the Trump administration faced widespread pressure to return him back to the US, including from a supreme court order that directed federal officials to “facilitate” his return.In June, the Trump administration returned Ábrego from El Salvador, only to hit him with a slew of human smuggling charges, which his lawyers have rejected as “preposterous”. His criminal trial is expected to begin in January.An update from the Texas senate, where Molly Cook, a Democratic lawmaker from Houston, is now questioning Phil King about the new Texas map.Her line of questioning appears designed to highlight that the senator is not completely blind to race in Texas. She points out that he’s likely done polling in his own races that breaks down results by race and has analysed other statewide racial data as part of his job as a legislator.“I have not drilled into racial data with regard to redistricting,” King says.When asked about the ongoing discussions about a possible bilateral meeting between Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president said it will be “interesting to see” whether that goes ahead.Earlier he explained his decision to let the two leaders have a meeting together: “I could have been at the meeting, but a lot of people think that nothing’s going to come out of that meeting.”Trump went on to say that he’ll know “one way or the other” about his next steps in two weeks. “It’s going to be a very important decision. And that’s whether or not it’s massive sanctions or massive tariffs, or both, or do we do nothing and say ‘it’s your fight,’” he said.Earlier the president said he was “not happy” when asked about a US factory being hit during a Russian strike in Ukraine.The president just confirmed that he has spoken with the House speaker, Mike Johnson, and the Senate majority leader, John Thune, about a plan to raise $2bn from Congress to help fund his ‘beautification’ plans for DC.“I think it’s going to be very easy to get it’s going to be not a lot of money. I wouldn’t even know where to spend the number that you mentioned, but it’s going to be money to beautify the city,” he said in response to a reporter’s question in the Oval Office.“I’m not a fan of John Bolton. I thought it was a sleazebag, actually, and he suffers major Trump derangement syndrome,” the president said, speaking about the raid on his former national security adviser’s home.Trump repeated that he tries to “stay out of that stuff”, and that when it came to the search of Bolton’s home, he “purposefully” didn’t want to get involved. “I saw that just like everybody else,” he added.The president then spent time talking about how he too was subjected to a raid, referring to the FBI search of the his Mar-a-Lago estate in 2022 during an investigation into the handling of presidential and classified documents.“They went through everything you can imagine,” Trump said. More

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      Ghislaine Maxwell never saw Trump in ‘any inappropriate setting’, transcript shows

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      The US Department of Justice has released the transcript and audio recording of an interview conducted by Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, with the convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.In a post on X, Blanche said the materials were being released “in the interest of transparency”, providing links to the transcript and to audio files.The release includes documentation from a two-day interview conducted on 24 and 25 July. The materials comprise redacted transcripts for both days, along with multiple audio recordings – seven separate parts plus test recordings for day one, and four parts plus test recordings for day two.The department of justice gave Maxwell limited immunity to allow her to talk about her criminal case, but did not promise anything in exchange for her testimony, according to the transcript that was released.“The most important part of this agreement is that this isn’t a cooperation agreement, meaning that by you meeting with us today, we’re really just meeting,” Blanche told Maxwell. He added: “I’m not promising to do anything.”Maxwell, 63, was Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime associate and was convicted on five counts, including sex trafficking of minors, and sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2022 for helping Epstein sexually abuse teenage girls.Epstein died by suicide in federal custody in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.Maxwell, in the released transcript, said she never saw Trump do anything inappropriate and she repeatedly showered Trump with praise. That sort of comment would have been welcomed by Trump and his circle who have been keen to dismiss concerns about this relationship with Epstein which have roiled his support base.“I actually never saw the president in any type of massage setting. I never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way. The president was never inappropriate with anybody,” Maxwell said.But she did detail the social relationship between Trump and Epstein, who cultivated a wide and powerful social circle for many years.“I don’t know how they met, and I don’t know how they became friends. I certainly saw them together and I remember the few times I observed them together, but they were friendly. I mean, they seemed friendly,” she said.She added: “I think they were friendly like people are in social settings. I don’t … I don’t think they were close friends or I certainly never witnessed the president in any of … I don’t recall ever seeing him in his house, for instance,” she said.The justice department lawyers also quizzed Maxwell extensively about Epstein’s relationship with former president Bill Clinton, who travelled multiple times on Epstein’s plane and – like Trump – has denied any wrongdoing or knowledge of wrongdoing.“President Clinton liked me, and we got along terribly well. But I never saw that warmth or that … that warmth, or however you want to characterize it, with Mr Epstein,” she said of Clinton’s contacts with Epstein.Maxwell also said she did not remember Trump having been in Epstein’s 50th birthday book, which she assembled.The Wall Street Journal reported in July that the book’s collection of letters included one with Trump’s name on it. The president has repeatedly denied writing the note and filed a lawsuit accusing the Journal of libel.Maxwell said she saw some parts of the birthday book before her trial, during its discovery phase.“There was nothing from President Trump,” Maxwell said.She also denied remembering any picture of a naked woman, a detail the Journal previously reported.Maxwell said Epstein did not know what to do to celebrate his 50th, and she suggested a birthday book like “my mom did … for my dad”.She added: “He said, I love that idea.”After her interview with justice department lawyers, Maxwell was moved from the low-security federal prison in Florida, where she had been serving a 20-year sentence, to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas.Neither her lawyer nor the federal Bureau of Prisons have explained the reason for the move which caused a storm of criticism and raised eyebrows as to whether Maxwell get some sort of deal for her cooperation.One legal expert said that the release of the transcript was Trump “getting what he wants” from the interview in the latest effort to calm the political storms around his links to Epstein that have dogged him for weeks.“From what we see from this transcript, Trump is getting what he wants. She is saying that Trump didn’t do anything untoward, nothing criminal. That’s what Trump wants. Ideally, he’d also like names of Democrats who did do something wrong, because that’s what the Maga base has been promised,” Dave Aronberg, former Democratic state attorney for Palm Beach county, told CNN.The House oversight committee has received the first round of Epstein documents from the justice department, which includes 33,000 pages of documents, according to panel staff.“The committee intends to make these records public after thorough review to ensure any victims’ identification and child sexual abuse material are redacted,” a spokesperson for committee chair James Comer said. “The committee will also consult with the [justice department] to ensure any documents released do not negatively impact ongoing criminal cases and investigations.”The committee subpoenaed files related to Epstein following a public outcry over the administration’s handling of its promises to release more information related to Epstein’s conduct and death.House Democrats seized on the issue and helped push Comer to subpoena the justice department for documents.“The Trump DoJ is providing records at a far quicker pace than anything” than it did during Joe Biden’s presidency, the committee spokesperson continued. 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      Federal Reserve set to cut interest rates – but still Trump won’t be happy

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      Stocks soared on Friday following the strongest signal yet that US the Federal Reserve is gearing up to start cutting interest rates again this fall. But how long can this celebration last?While Wall Street cheered the biggest headline from the speech by the Fed chair, Jerome Powell, at the annual Jackson Hole symposium in Wyoming, Powell also delivered a reality check on where interest rates could settle in the longer term.“We cannot say for certain where rates will settle out over the longer run, but their neutral level may now be higher than during the 2010s,” said Powell.In other words: even if the Fed does start cutting interest rates again this year, they may not fall back to their pre-pandemic levels. It’s a signal, despite the short-term optimism on potential rate cuts, that the Fed’s long-term outlook is more unstable.“Markets might be ahead of their skis on how aggressive the Fed is going to be in reducing interest rates, because the neutral rate might be higher than some believe,” Ryan Sweet, an economist at Oxford Economics, said.Higher rates means borrowing money for loans, such as mortgages, will be more expensive. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate was just under 3% in 2021, when interest rates were near zero.Now the average mortgage rate is closer to 6.7%. Paired with home prices at near-record highs, elevated mortgages mean many Americans will continue to struggle to purchase a home.Although Trump has been pushing the Fed for months to decrease rates to 1%, claiming that Powell is “hurting the housing industry very badly”, it seems unlikely that rates will return to such a level any time soon.The Fed is trying to achieve a Goldilocks balance. Rates that are too high risk unemployment, while rates that are too low could mean higher inflation. Policymakers are searching for a “neutral” level, where everything is just right.Many economists believed the central bank was close to achieving this balance before Trump started his second term. In summer 2022, as inflation scaled its highest levels in a generation, the Fed started raising rates, at the risk of hurting the labor market, in an attempt to get inflation down to 2%.Rates rose to about 5.3% in less than two years, but the jobs market remained strong. Unemployment was still at historically low even as inflation came down. Although some economists had feared rapidly increasing rates would throw the US economy into a recession, instead the Fed appeared to achieve what is known as a “soft landing”.But things were thrown into a tailspin when Trump returned to office, armed with campaign promises to enact a full-blown trade war against the US’s key trading partners.The president has long argued that tariffs would boost American manufacturing and set the stage for better trade deals. “Tariffs don’t cause inflation. They cause success,” Trump declared back in January, acknowledging that there might be “some temporary, short-term disruption”.But so far, success has been limited. Economists doubt the policies will generate a manufacturing renaissance, and Trump’s trade war has inspired new commercial alliances that exclude the US.All the while, US consumers are starting to see higher prices due to Trump’s tariffs.At Jackson Hole on Friday, Powell said tariffs had started to push some prices up. In June and July, inflation was 2.7% – up 0.4 percentage points since April, when Trump first announced the bulk of his tariffs.This is still only a modest increase in price growth, but the bulk of the White House’s highest tariffs only went into effect in early August. Fed policymakers are waiting to see whether Trump’s aggressive trade strategy will cause a one-time shift in price levels – or if the effects will continue.The once strong labor market has grown sluggish. Though there are fewer job openings, there are also fewer people looking for jobs. Powell called it “a curious kind of balance” where “both the supply of and demand for workers” have slowed. He noted that the balance was unstable and could eventually tip over, prompting more layoffs and a rise in unemployment.This instability in the labor market has made Fed officials more open to a rate cut. Powell pointed to a slacking in consumer spending and weaker gross domestic product (GDP), which suggests an overall slowdown in economic activity.Although it set the stage for a rate cut as soon as next month, Powell’s speech was far from optimistic.“In this environment, distinguishing cyclical developments from trends, or structural developments is difficult,” he said. “Monetary policy can work to stabilise cyclical fluctuations but can do little to alter structural changes.”From Powell, who is typically diplomatic and reserved in his public statements, this seemed to be a careful warning: when executive policies destabilise the economy, the Fed can only do so much to limit the damage. More

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      Protests at Glacier as national parks reel from Trump cuts: ‘They’ve gutted staff, gutted funding’

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      Dozens of former rangers, park volunteers, and local residents protested at the gateway to Montana’s Glacier national park on Wednesday against the staff cuts and hiring freezes that have thrown many national parks into crisis, including Glacier.Current and former staffers and watchdog groups say the cuts have meant staff are not able to keep up the facilities and infrastructure. Some say the park has been left with inadequate infrastructure and too little staff to be able to respond to emergencies.Although it might look to visitors like operations in Glacier are normal, “it’s like walking down a Hollywood movie set where the front looks great but there’s nothing behind it,” said Sarah Lundstrum, Glacier program manager with the National Parks Conservation Association.The protesters held signs, chanted and waved at tourists during a visit to the park from the Congressional Western Caucus. Hosted by the Montana Republican congressman and former interior secretary Ryan Zinke, the caucus came to the park to showcase the success of the 2020 Great American Outdoors Act, which secured federal funding for protection and maintenance of public lands.Montana’s Republican senator Steve Daines championed that bill during Donald Trump’s first term, calling it “the greatest conservation win for Montana and the entire country in 50 years”. In May, Daines introduced the America the Beautiful Act to extend federal funding for projects to address crucial maintenance backlogs.But congressional support for funding projects in national parks comes at a jarring disconnect with the Trump administration’s slashing of jobs at national parks countrywide, including at Glacier, where an already overworked staff has been left with little to no bandwidth to implement projects.No congressional Republicans, including Daines or Zinke, have spoken up against the cuts and freezes, and all voted for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that rescinded $276m from the National Park Service (NPS).“We’re supporting the park, but drawing attention to the fact our policymakers are grandstanding in a national park where behind the scenes they’ve gutted staff and gutted funding,” said Suzanne Hindler, one of the rally’s organizers. She said organizers specifically chose to hold the event outside the park to avoid adding more work for already overburdened park staff during peak tourist season.Hindler emphasized that funding for national parks was crucial. But without the staff to execute the work, new problems would arise with no one to fix them, she said.Jan Metzmaker, a longtime park employee who was on Glacier’s first all-women trail crew in the 1970s, said: “I can see the deterioration in the services and in the facilities.“They really need to put some money into those, because this place is crazy with people. It’s being loved to death. But there’s no way that they can do the maintenance and all the things that need to be done in the park now.”Visitation to national parks reached a record 331.9 million last year. But because of the Trump administration’s hiring freezes, terminations, and buyout and early retirement offers, US national parks have lost nearly a quarter of permanent staff, with seasonal hiring behind by nearly 8,000 positions. Further staff cuts, described as “deep and blunt” and “aggressive and swift” by National Parks Traveler, the multi-media outlet that covers the NPS, are held up in court but may still be forthcoming.In Glacier, which has seen a 7.5% increase in visitors from last year’s record high, the park is trying to operate with a 25% loss of staff. Vacancies span from chief ranger and fire positions, wildlife scientists, multiple environmental impact analysis positions, and emergency services, to mechanics, electricians, plumbers and IT positions.View image in fullscreenAfter the federal government canceled all national parks’ internet contracts this year, Lundstrum said, Glacier now uses StarLink, which some staffers say is spotty, goes down entirely, and often fails to connect park dispatch and 911 calls. There’s only one IT person remaining to address technical problems, those staffers, who asked to remain anonymous because they fear retaliation for speaking out, in a park that spans the Continental Divide, has no cell service, and regularly sees lost and injured hikers and encounters with wildlife, including the park’s dense population of grizzly bears.On top of that, said a current park employee who spoke on condition of anonymity, there are no longer enough staff to safely respond to emergencies. It’s only luck “that the park hasn’t had any big events this year”, they said. “In past years we’ve had big fires, major search-and-rescue operations, really critical injuries. It’s only a matter of time until there’s an event we can’t respond to appropriately and there’s a mass failure of a system.”And yet the interior secretary, Doug Burgum, issued an order in April requiring all parks to remain “open and accessible” despite the reduced staff. In Glacier, that might come at the cost of visitor and staff safety.The Department of the Interior did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the concerns the staffers and watchdog groups raised. The offices of Zinke and Daines also did not respond to a request for comment.The staffers say that remaining staff are doing “twice the job they used to”. Law enforcement are covering twice their previous area, maintenance workers are doing jobs they are not trained for, and outside recreation operators, such as Glacier Guides and Montana Raft, are emptying trash and cleaning bathrooms at river accesses to make up for the gaps. The mentality inside the park, said the employee, “is that if you’re the only one left, you’ll do whatever you can to help”.The Association of National Park Rangers reported that “amid federal budget cuts, some seasonal employees at Yosemite national park worked for as long as six weeks without pay in recent months as park supervisors struggled to manage hiring”.One of the rally attenders, a local woman named Kathy who asked not to be identified by her last name, is a volunteer with the Glacier National Park Association. “We do restoration, painting, backcountry patrol, visitor center, vehicle reservations. We want to do things, but unfortunately, we don’t have enough supervisors – rangers – to have volunteers.”“It feels like the government is setting us up to fail,” said the Glacier employee.Experts worry that Trump’s budget proposal to cut 36% of the national park budget, which could force the closure of up to 350 park units, is a deliberate attempt to sabotage the park system as an excuse to sell those lands for profit.“Hollowing out staffing, cutting budgets, changing priorities – all of that very much lends itself to the idea of essentially causing those agencies to fail at meeting their mandates, and that will lead to the call for privatization,” said Lundstrum. “Because if the government can’t manage that land, then obviously somebody else should, right? In documents like Project 2025, there are calls for the privatization of land, or the selloff of land.”Multiple sources say that morale among Glacier staff is low. “The civilian federal workforce used to be non-partisan, so you always felt like you could have your opinion – liberal or conservative – without fear of retribution,” said one employee. “And now the undertone is to stay under the radar. If you speak up and say, ‘this is wrong’, you pretty much have a target on your back.”One young mother who came to the rally with her two small sons asked not to be identified because her husband is a federal employee; just this month, the justice department fired an official whose husband developed a phone app that tracked Ice agents.“Having these two little guys is just a constant reminder of how much our world is changing, and the need to stand up for it. Everything could be gone in a blink,” the mother said.Glacier is also the national park poster child for climate change, as its namesake glaciers are predicted to be completely gone in the coming decades. Yet the administration, without any pushback from congressional Republicans, has cut and scrubbed climate science and reversed Biden-era initiatives to curb climate change.In his press release, Daines said he introduced the America the Beautiful Act “so that people can get outside and enjoy the natural beauty we’re lucky to have here in the US”, and that he was “proud” to “protect our outdoor way of life for generations to come”.Hildner said she was not fooled. She said: “To see capitalism as the driving force for managing lands, rather than conservation, is really terrifying: for myself, for what it means for future generations, and what it means for the planet. How do we as a public help the folks who’ve been elected to govern see what the real costs are?” More