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Sept. 24 (UPI) — The National Park Service on Wednesday removed bronze-colored statues of President Donald Trump and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein holding hands and frolicking on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

The papier-mache and paint statues were erected on Tuesday by an anonymous group called The Secret Handshake, UPI reported. The statues were near U.S. governmental buildings with the Capitol in the backdrop.

“We celebrate the long-lasting bond between President Donald J. Trump and his ‘closest friend,’ Jeffrey Epstein,” the middle plaque reads. “There must be more to life than having everything.”

A member of the group behind the statue told MSNBC that U.S. Park Police took down the statue around 5:30 a.m. EDT, although they had a permit that allowed them to remain through Sunday evening. CNN also confirmed the removal.

The group said it had initially been told it would be given 24 hours’ notice if the administration wanted it removed.

“Instead, they showed up in the middle of the night without notice and physically toppled the statue, broke it and took it away,” the group said.

The permit is for a 6-foot-tall statue, but the display is taller than that when combined with its base, which is almost as tall.

A spokesperson for the Department of the Interior, which oversees the Park Service, told MSNBC, “the statue was removed because it was not compliant with the permit issued.”

In a statement to Time magazine, the White House said, “Liberals are free to waste their money however they see fit — but it’s not news that Epstein knew Donald Trump, because Donald Trump kicked Epstein out of his club for being a creep.”

Trump is displayed with another plaque quoting the infamous 50th birthday card to Epstein, which reads in part, “A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.”

Epstein’s plaque reads: “Nor will I, since I also know what it is. Yes, we do come to think of it. As a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you.”

Epstein died by suicide in jail on Aug. 10, 2019, while awaiting trial on federal charges of sex trafficking. He had been convicted on state charges of soliciting prostitution in Florida in 2008.

Tourists stopped before the statues out of curiosity and lined up to take photos.

“I think it’s a really good reminder about how artists are the ones that always push back on fascists first, on fascist governments,” D.C. resident Matt Gordon told UPI on Tuesday.

“This is a hoot,” D.C. resident Lelaina Brandet also told UPI. “It seems there’s other daily distractions, whether calling a marginalized group a terrorist organization or attacking some random vote to distract from what pretty much everybody from both sides wants — which is to see the release of the Epstein files.”

One week ago, a 12-foot golden Trump statue whose faceplate called him the “Bitcoin president” was displayed anonymously at the same location for about a day before being taken down.

“It is great to have these artists that keep pushing the focus of ‘Hey, let’s not forget this is what America wants right now.’ We love it. It’s fantastic,” resident Brandet said.

In 2024, the group’s “The Resolute Desk” and “The Donald J. Trump Enduring Flame” statues went viral. In June, their “Dictator Approved” statue and another of a golden television appeared.

“Before this, they’ve never been anything but friendly to work with,” Patrick and Carol Flaisher, an independent contractor who files the group’s permits, told CNN.

The group said they were able to view the removed statues. Trump’s head was split in half.

“It’s a great example of where we’re headed in this country when it comes to freedom of speech,” Patrick said.

Last week, a giant banner with Trump and Epstein was unveiled on the lawn outside Windsor Castle, where Trump was hosted by King Charles III and Queen Camilla. The banner was removed before Trump arrived in Britain.

Protesters then projected images of them on the walls of Windsor Castle. Also targeted was Prince Andrew, who was associated with Epstein.

It’s now 28 years since “The Candidate” was released in the middle of the Nixon-McGovern presidential campaign, and I’m astonished that it’s still alive and apparently relevant, still quoted when columnists want to make a point about a certain kind of politician. Gore Vidal predicted this about six months after the film opened, but I didn’t believe him.

“You’re going to take my residuals!” he said. He explained to me that American TV had room for only one political-electoral film at a time, and they tended to last about 10 years. His own original script “The Best Man,” in which an Adlai Stevenson-like Henry Fonda (who else?) resists the chance to blackmail a Nixonian presidential rival, had run its course. Now, he said, “The Candidate” was going to take over.

At the time, “The Candidate” had been at best a minor success, and maybe even a bottom-line failure in the reckoning of studio executives. It had opened to mixed reviews and struggled along respectably, but failed to take off as movies must to bring the profits true players look for. I was happy that it had survived and been widely seen, but was well aware that this was due to the same reason it had been financed: the presence of Robert Redford, who at first was indulged as a low-budget producer of movies he starred in, on the hope that he’d favor the more commercial projects from the same studios.

Redford’s name went over the title for his starring role as Bill McKay, the idealistic son of an ex-governor of California, who is tricked into running for senator, against his own best judgment, on the promise that he can say what he likes because he’s sure to lose.

The professional campaign manager who cunningly presses McKay’s buttons (Peter Boyle) knows that in the pressures of campaigning, McKay will be forced away from his beliefs, and in the end find it hard to recall what they were. By the time McKay pulls off his last-minute victory, he is so lost he has no idea what to do next.

*

Redford, director Michael Ritchie and I were all in our early 30s when the picture was made. They came to me because they’d reached an impasse on the beginnings of a story about how the candidate gets drawn into the California Senate race. At that point, they had no script and a start date four months off.

I was one of a number of screenwriters interviewed. I had experience in practical campaigning as Eugene McCarthy’s speech writer, traveling around the country with him in 1968. I assumed I would not get the job and felt free (like Bill McKay) to say what I liked.

“We want to make a movie about a liberal politician who sells out,” Redford told me.

“Most of them don’t sell out,” I said. “They get carried away. It’s like being a movie star. The constant feedback buffets you like a man overboard in a turbulent river. You don’t entirely trust it, but you have to respond to it if you want to keep going downstream. Know it or not, you may be heading over the falls.”

To my surprise, I got the job. Redford got the point, and he told stories from his “feedback” experience I could mix and change with my own stories of campaigning.

When Redford had moments on the set where he feared we had no guiding story line, I always fell back on the image of a man going over the falls. To me, it’s only realistic to assume that, in the larger sense, most campaigners don’t really know what they’re doing, or the nature of the forces that come in their direction day by day.

Ritchie had spent the preceding summer with John Tunney’s senatorial campaign, and worked out the idea of putting an actor with face recognition on the street, camera crew in tow, and letting him greet passersby and ask for their vote. Ritchie also had taken footage of large political meetings and rallies, which could later be intercut in a way that showed McKay entering the same premises and addressing the same crowd, where the camera would pick out luminaries of the time like Hubert Humphrey and former California Assembly Speaker Jesse Unruh.

We were fortunate to have signed on two of Tunney’s top staffers, his campaign manager and his speech writer, to draw on their California connections to assemble crowds of real political workers and make sure the props and settings were authentic.

These two bright and competent guys let me know in the most friendly way that they disagreed about Bill McKay. They were the first to propound a wrong interpretation of “The Candidate,” in which Bill McKay was a young guy learning about political reality on his way to becoming a mature and responsible senator. To me, and to Redford and Ritchie, this interpretation would be dead wrong. My attempts to refute them by citing tone and substance were easily dismissed as a writer’s private rationale. This made for amusing banter on the set, as did the collection of crew people who campaigned for the incumbent Sen. Crocker Jarmon (played with delicious gravity by Don Porter) to beat the young upstart McKay.

Redford, Ritchie and I were only heartened by such developments. We took them as signs of our success in capturing the day-by-day reality of political campaigns.

Liberal commentators, by and large, disliked the story, and were quick to point out that real-life senators were hardly as innocent as McKay–that real-life campaigning and politicking were far more serious and complicated matters, hardly the playthings of media consultants that we’d made them out to be. If someone had asked me, I would have said that they got it wrong, and that we were not claiming McKay was typical, just possible.

In understanding how the film overcame such spotty beginnings, one can’t underestimate the changing political climate. Most people don’t remember that in the ’72 campaign McGovern was trying to call attention to the nastiness, elitism and law-breaking embodied in the Watergate affair. At the time, hardly anyone was paying attention! It was simply not believable, at that time, that presidents could be so driven by the most trivial details of manipulating public opinion.

*

When McGovern saw “The Candidate” at a special screening in 1972, it made him angry. I was not surprised to hear that; I was mildly gratified. It was what I would expect from a man who tried to take his profession seriously. Naturally he would resent a movie about a politician steamrollered by the prevailing political environment.

But by the end of the ‘70s, the amalgamation of show biz and politics had become obvious, and “The Candidate” miraculously became readily accessible to the American audience and a standard play on preelection television each year. By the ‘80s, the advertising “image-is-everything” environment was so dominant that I began to get a very different reaction from politicians. When I was in my 40s and met newly elected congressmen in their 30s, they were honored to meet me and would say, to my amazement, “That’s us! That’s the way we are!”

I concede that the congressmen did not necessarily mean that they could be imposed upon and confused like Bill McKay. Most of them were simply being hip, in the manner of suburban yuppies who romanticized the ‘60s and adored the most angry and hostile popular music while leading lives as cogs in the spreading corporate machine. Such people disturbed me, but I noted that “The Candidate” had moved from outside to inside in terms of their self-conceptions.

“The Candidate” brought me two more surprises. One was an Academy Award for best screenplay. Still, a writing award doesn’t mean increased advertising or box office, and the best I could foresee was that the movie would survive as a cult film in the memory of the small circle who got it.

But what really saved the film had to do with the changing nature of American television. Movies in those days were severely edited for TV. This was especially crippling to “The Candidate” because I had put most of the exposition into the mouth of Howard Klein, the media chief (Allen Garfield), who expressed every thought in comic obscenities.

With Garfield almost cut out of the picture, the movie became a string of disconnected campaign events, with no connective tissue to ratchet the pressure that was pushing the story toward a crisis only the election could resolve. I assumed that I’d go down in history as a guy who got an Oscar for a film that was impossible to follow.

Cable changed all that. Among the cultural trends that have debased both movies and politics, we have to be grateful that most movies are now shown in their entirety or mostly so. This put Garfield back into the picture, and ensured that future viewers could at least see the film as its makers intended.

Little did we know that the “good senator” theory about Bill McKay would come back to haunt us in the shape of Sen. Dan Quayle, who loved to tell reporters that he’d seen “The Candidate” countless times and modeled himself after Redford’s character. In the 1988 presidential campaign, when every magazine profile seemed to claim the Quayle-McKay-Redford connection, I wrote an open letter to Quayle, which was printed as an op-ed piece in the New York Times, informing him that “The Candidate” “is not a how-to picture, it’s a watch-out picture. And you’re what we’ve got to watch out for.”

If “The Candidate” has truly become a classic, the reason is that the real-life tactics and attitudes we observed have mushroomed in the era of the permanent presidential campaign. The subsuming of politics into show business, and the shallowness of pop-political stardom are what we have to watch out for. A movie can’t defeat them, any more than we defeated Dan Quayle. But in a culture that can co-opt almost anything and use it to ends that were never intended, I consider us lucky to have done something that seems to grow more and more into its true meaning as it rolls along.

A hiker who was attacked by a bear — probably a grizzly — in Yellowstone National Park this week has been released from the hospital.

The 29-year old man had been hiking alone on the remote Turbid Lake Trail when he apparently surprised the bear, according to park officials. While trying to use bear spray, he sustained “significant but not life-threatening injuries to his chest and left arm,” according to officials.

National Park Service medics responded to the scene, and the victim was able to walk with them to the trailhead, where he was loaded into an ambulance and taken to a nearby clinic. From there, a helicopter flew him to a hospital. He was released Wednesday.

As is true in the rest of the U.S., bear attacks are exceedingly rare in Yellowstone. Since the park was established in 1872, eight people have been killed by bears, according to the park’s website. For comparison, 125 people have drowned and 23 have died from burns after falling into hot springs.

Even seeing a grizzly bear is pretty uncommon in the lower 48 states. Prior to 1800, they were much more common, with an estimated 50,000 roaming the American West. But European settlers viewed them as a mortal threat to people and livestock and hunted them to near extinction, reducing their number to less than 1,000 in the contiguous U.S.

Thanks to recovery and conservation efforts in recent decades, the population has increased to nearly 2,000, mostly in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Still, the specter of a bear attack, especially by a grizzly, is enough to make most hikers’ blood run cold. While experts tell backcountry travelers to stand their ground and fight back if attacked by a black bear, the standard advice for years has been to lie down and play dead in the face of a much larger, more aggressive grizzly.

That advice has been updated lately, but not by much. A national parks website providing guidance on what to do says, “If you surprise a grizzly/brown bear and it charges or attacks, do not fight back! Only fight back if the attack persists.”

The hiker who was attacked on Tuesday told park officials he thought it was a black bear, but the location, behavior and size of the bear made park staff suspect it might have been a grizzly.

Discovery of an animal carcass near the attack, and confirmation that bear tracks found nearby were left by a grizzly, support that conclusion.

The trail has been closed indefinitely and rangers swept the area to make sure there weren’t any other hikers in imminent danger.

As for the bear? Parks officials say it was probably surprised too and merely acting in self-defense. So the park, “will not be taking any management action against the bear.”

Last year, Jon Kyle Mohr faced a similar encounter with a black bear in California’s Yosemite National Park.

He was less than a mile from the end of a 50-mile ultra-run he had started 16 hours earlier in Mammoth Lakes when he saw a huge black shape charging at him.

In an instant, he said, he felt “some sharpness” on his shoulder followed by a powerful shove that sent him stumbling in the dark. When he turned around, people about a hundred feet away were shining their headlamps in his direction and shouting, “Bear!”

It worked. The bear disappeared into the darkness and Mohr was left with torn clothes and a few scratches, but no more serious damage.

Asked how he felt about the experience, Mohr said he was incredibly shaken at first, and lucky it had happened near the Vernal Falls trailhead, one of the most populated places in the park.

But after a day or two to reflect, he had settled into a more zen frame of mind.

“It was just a really strange, random collision,” he said. “If I had rested my feet for 20 seconds longer at any point,” during the 16-hour run, “it wouldn’t have happened.”

Sept. 17 (UPI) — A man suffered serious injuries after being attacked by a bear Tuesday while hiking by himself in Yellowstone National Park.

The attack occurred while the man was hiking Turbid Lake Trail, which is located east of Yellowstone Lake, according to a press statement. Park officials have since closed the trail and are investigating the attack on the unidentified 29-year-old man.

The man deployed bear spray but still suffered “significant but non-life-threatening injuries to his chest and left arm,” the statement said. Park medics responded to the incident and walked out with the hiker, who was transported to Lake Medical Clinic and later flown to a hospital.

The hiker thought the bear was a black bear, but park officials suspect it was a grizzly bear considering its size and behavior, according to the statement. Bear management staff plan to attempt DNA analysis to confirm the species.

“Because this incident was a defensive reaction by the bear during a surprise encounter, the park will not be taking any management action against the bear,” the statement said.

The park occasionally sees visitors injured by wildlife. A Florida man was gored by a bison in May after getting too close to the animal.

Elsewhere, a hiker in Japan was found dead over the summer from a brown bear attack while hiking in the country’s rugged Hokkaido region. In Canada’s western province of British Columbia, a man was severely injured during a grizzly bear attack.

However, bear attacks remain vanishingly rare. A 2019 article published in Nature found there are about 40 brown bear attacks per year globally, about a dozen of which occur in North America. Yellowstone is home to more dangerous grizzly bears. But a 2022 paper found that the per capita risk of being killed by a grizzly bear while visiting the park was one out of every 26.2 million park visitors.

Yellowstone National Park saw its busiest May on record with more than 566,000 recreational visits that month.

Despite so many people flocking to the park’s roughly 3,500 square miles, the attack on Tuesday is the first time a bear has injured someone in Yellowstone in years, according to the press release. The last time a bear injured someone was in 2021 when a solo hiker was attacked by a grizzly bear.

Maybe the national team turned a corner in last week’s 2-0 win over Japan.

Maybe the change to a 3-4-2-1 formation unlocked the lively and innovative play that had been missing in the team’s first year under coach Mauricio Pochettino. Maybe Pochettino and his players have finally found the chemistry and coordination that was so obviously missing.

And maybe, just maybe, the U.S. really can make a deep run in next summer’s World Cup, the first to be played in the U.S. in 32 years.

Maybe.

Or maybe not.

One game can’t totally erase the dysfunctional and dispassionate performances that have marked much of the brief Pochettino era, one which included four consecutive losses at home and two losses in as many games with Mexico.

Nor can it make up for a player pool that has seemingly grown thin and ever-changing or speed the learning curve for a successful club coach who has struggled with the transition to the international game.

But it can buy the team and its coach some time.

“Touch the right buttons and we start to perform,” Pochettino said last September, shortly after he took the U.S. job. Just now, however, is he finding those buttons.

The win over Japan clearly lifts a huge weight off Pochettino and his players, but the reprieve may be temporary. If the U.S. regresses in friendlies with Ecuador and Australia next month, the angst and despair that have hovered over the team most of the year will return.

What it all means is Pochettino and the USMNT have reached a fork in the road. And the path they take will likely shape U.S. Soccer’s future for years, if not decades.

A World Cup the federation has been pointing to for years is just nine months away and much is riding on the U.S. team’s performance. A deep run in the tournament will engage and ignite the country, open the wallets of deep-pocketed sponsors and do more for the sport in the U.S. than any event since the last World Cup held here. That one led to the formation of MLS, which has grown into the largest first-tier professional league in the world, and the establishment of the U.S. Soccer Foundation, which has invested more than $100 million at the grassroots level, impacting nearly 100 million kids.

The coherent performance against Japan — albeit a young, inexperience Japanese “B” team — brought hope that a successful path, the longest one at the fork in the road, is still open.

But three days before beating Japan, the U.S. was thoroughly outplayed by South Korea in a 2-0 loss — the team’s sixth loss in 14 games this year — that raised alarm. According to The Athletic, the performance dropped the U.S. to 48th in the world in the Elo Ratings, a results-based formula for measuring all men’s national teams. It was the lowest ranking in 28 years for the Americans.

If the USMNT follows the South Korea path in the World Cup, its tournament run could be short, ending in the first two rounds and likely stunting both interest and investment in soccer in the U.S.

With just three international breaks remaining before the World Cup, there is reason for both hope and concern.

Pochettino’s lineup choices remain as unsettled as his tactical approach — although the Japan game may help settle that. As Stuart Holden, World Cup midfielder turned Fox Sports analyst, noted, the change to a three-man backline solved many problems.

Against Japan, Holden said, the center backs played with noticeable confidence and aggression. The formation also freed wingbacks Max Arfsten and Alex Freeman to be more creative and allowed attackers Christian Pulisic and Folarin Balogun, the team’s game-changers, to be more impactful.

There was much to like in the new approach and for the first time in his tenure, it seemed as if Pochettino had finally found a game plan that suited his players, with Balogun among those who benefited most: his goal, off an assist from Pulisic, was his first for the U.S. in nearly 14 months while his start was his first under Pochettino.

The other goal went to Alex Zendejas, who was called up for the first time this year despite having one of the best two-year runs of any USMNT attacker, scoring 16 goals and contributing 15 assists to help Mexico’s Club América to three straight Liga MX titles.

Another player who stepped up when given the opportunity was Seattle Sounders midfielder Cristian Roldan, who played an inspired 90 minutes, leading all players with 83 touches.

Pochettino welcomed the result but continued to argue it wasn’t the most important thing.

“It’s the process,” he told reporters.

“When you are strong in your ideas and your belief, it’s about never giv[ing] up.”

So which team is the real national team? The one that beat Japan or the one that was humiliated by South Korea? And what will the USMNT’s destiny be in the World Cup? A long, profitable run that changes the trajectory of soccer in the U.S. or a short, disappointing one that sets the sport’s progress back years?

The October games with Ecuador and Australia could go a long way toward determining that. There’s a lot riding on the answer.

World Cup ticket update

More than 1.5 million people registered for the chance to buy World Cup tickets in the first 24 hours of the tournament’s initial presale lottery, according to FIFA. Online applications came from 210 countries, FIFA said, with the three host countries — the U.S., Mexico and Canada — leading the way.

The presale draw, which began last Wednesday and will end Friday at 8 a.m. Pacific time, is the first phase of ticket sales for the tournament. After a random selection process, successful applicants will be notified via email starting from Sept. 29 and will be given a date and time slot to purchase tickets, starting at $60, beginning Oct. 1. When fans enter the window won’t affect their chances of winning.

Subsequent ticket sales phases will begin in October. Further details on the timeline and products are available at FIFA.com/tickets.

⚽ You have read the latest installment of On Soccer with Kevin Baxter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and shines a spotlight on unique stories. Listen to Baxter on this week’s episode of the “Corner of the Galaxy” podcast.

Sept. 16 (UPI) — President Donald Trump signed a memorandum Monday to deploy U.S. National Guard troops into Tennessee to “restore law and order” in the city of Memphis.

The move comes one month after the president sent the National Guard into Washington, D.C.

“Today, at the request of Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee, who’s standing with us as you know, I’m signing a presidential memorandum to establish the Memphis Safe Task Force and it’s very important because of the crime that’s going on not only in Memphis, but in many cities and we’re going to take care of all of them,” Trump said.

“Just like we did in D.C. We have virtually no crime in D.C., right now and we’re going to keep it that way. It’s our nation’s capital,” Trump added, before announcing “Chicago is probably next,” as well as St. Louis and New Orleans.

According to the White House, violent crime in Memphis has “overwhelmed its local government’s ability to respond effectively.” The Federal Bureau of Investigation said Memphis had the highest rate of violent crime per capita last year to include murder, robbery, aggravated assault and property crimes.

“We have to save these cities,” Trump repeated throughout Monday’s signing ceremony.

“A person is four times more likely to be murdered today in Memphis, Tenn., than in Mexico City,” Trump said, according to statistics. “It’s been overrun with carjackings, robberies, shootings and killings. There were 249 murders, 429 rapes, 5,616 burglaries and 12,522 violent assaults” within the last year, according to the FBI data.

The Memphis Safe Task Force will increase policing and investigations with aggressive prosecution to “restore public order,” according to the signed memorandum.

Tennessee’s governor has been instructed to use National Guard units from his state first, with the federal government adding additional personnel, if needed.

“The task force will be a replica, as I said, and I think will be equally as successful as in Washington. We essentially had the crime down to a very low rate in 12 days,” Trump claimed.

“The effort will include the National Guard, as well as the FBI, ATF, DEA, ICE, Homeland Security Investigations and the U.S. Marshals,” Trump said, adding that the Department of Justice would also be involved in the prosecutions.

Memphis Mayor Paul Young and other Democrats have said they do not want the administration’s help and do not believe it will lower crime.

“We don’t have a say in the National Guard, but our goal is to ensure that we have influence in how they engage in the community,” Young told reporters Friday.

Lee, a Republican, thanked the Trump administration Monday for providing the federal resources to Memphis.

“We are very hopeful and excited about the prospect of moving that city forward,” Lee said. “I’ve been in office for seven years. I’m tired of crime holding the great city of Memphis back.”

The city’s Democratic mayor, Paul Young, says the ‘decision has been made’ but he does not think it will drive down crime.

US President Donald Trump will extend federal law enforcement action to the city of Memphis, Tennessee, in a move that will include sending in National Guard troops and setting up a “Memphis State Task Force” to tackle crime, though police say overall criminal offences are at a 25-year low.

Trump announced the move in an executive order on Monday to rid Memphis of what he called the “tremendous levels of violent crime that have overwhelmed its local government’s ability to respond effectively”.

The executive order did not set out a timeline for when the Memphis task force, which will also include the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the US Marshals Service, will be deployed.

Trump described the task force as a “replica” of his crackdown on Washington, DC, in August, according to the Associated Press news agency, which saw the US president deploy the National Guard on the streets of the US capital.

Trump has pushed for a similar military involvement in policing in Baltimore and Chicago, which, like Memphis and Washington, DC, are Democratic strongholds.

Trump’s Memphis task force has the backing of Tennessee’s Republican governor, Bill Lee, who joined Trump in the White House for the announcement.

“I have been in office for seven years. I’m tired of crime holding the great city of Memphis back,” Lee said during a signing ceremony.

In recent weeks, @POTUS has restored law & order to DC.

Today, I was proud to stand with him as he signed an order to do the same for another American city: Memphis. In 2024, Memphis had the highest rate of violent crime per capita – nearly 7 times the national average.

City by… pic.twitter.com/mrwH4cvccZ

— Attorney General Pamela Bondi (@AGPamBondi) September 16, 2025

Memphis’s Democratic mayor, Paul Young, said on X that he did not think deploying the National Guard would drive down crime, but “the decision has been made”.

“Yesterday morning, we learned that the Governor & President have decided to place the National Guard & other resources in Memphis, which they have the authority to do. I want to be clear: I did not ask for the National Guard and I don’t think it is the way to drive down crime,” Young said on X.

Yesterday morning, we learned that the Governor & President have decided to place the National Guard & other resources in Memphis, which they have the authority to do.

I want to be clear: I did not ask for the National Guard and I don’t think it is the way to drive down crime. pic.twitter.com/gYO2LSEtC5

— Paul Young (@mayorpaulyoung) September 13, 2025

Memphis is known globally for its music industry and its historic ties to rock and roll, soul and the blues. Last year, it reported the highest violent crime rate among US cities of 100,000 people or more, according to 2024 FBI crime data.

A review by Al Jazeera of FBI crime statistics found the rate of violent crime – which includes murder, negligent manslaughter, rape, robbery and aggravated assault – for Memphis was 2,501 per 100,000 people in 2024. The city was followed by Oakland, California, at 1,925 per 100,000 and Detroit, Michigan, at 1,781 per 100,000 people.

Memphis police, however, say this figure does not paint a full picture of the city’s violent crime situation amid “historic crime reductions” in the first eight months of 2025.

“Overall crime is at a 25-year low, with robbery, burglary, and larceny also reaching 25-year lows. Murder is at a six-year low, aggravated assault at a five-year low, and sexual assault at a twenty-year low,” police said last week.

Despite this decline, the city reported 146 homicides so far in 2025 and 4,308 cases of aggravated assault.

THE National Lottery Set For Life numbers are in and it’s time to find out if you’ve won the top prize of £10,000 every month for 30 years.

Could tonight’s jackpot see you start ticking off that bucket list every month or building your own start-up as a budding entrepreneur?

1

You can find out by checking your ticket against tonight’s numbers below.

Good luck!

The winning Set For Life numbers are: 18, 38, 42, 45, 46 and the Life Ball is 02.

The first National Lottery draw was held on November 19 1994 when seven winners shared a jackpot of £5,874,778.

The largest amount ever to be won by a single ticket holder was £42million, won in 1996.

Gareth Bull, a 49-year-old builder, won £41million in November, 2020 and ended up knocking down his bungalow to make way for a luxury manor house with a pool.

1. £1.308 billion (Powerball) on January 13 2016 in the US, for which three winning tickets were sold, remains history’s biggest lottery prize
2. £1.267 billion (Mega Million) a winner from South Carolina took their time to come forward to claim their prize in March 2019 not long before the April deadline
3. £633.76 million (Powerball draw) from a winner from Wisconsin
4. £625.76 million (Powerball)  Mavis L. Wanczyk of Chicopee, Massachusetts claimed the jackpot in August 2017
5. £575.53 million (Powerball)  A lucky pair of winners scooped the jackpot in Iowa and New York in October 2018

Sue Davies, 64, bought a lottery ticket to celebrate ending five months of shielding during the pandemic — and won £500,000.

Sandra Devine, 36, accidentally won £300k – she intended to buy her usual £100 National Lottery Scratchcard, but came home with a much bigger prize.

The biggest jackpot ever to be up for grabs was £66million in January last year, which was won by two lucky ticket holders.

Another winner, Karl managed to bag £11million aged just 23 in 1996.

The odds of winning the lottery are estimated to be about one in 14million – BUT you’ve got to be in it to win it.

There are many ways to make an entrance, but lurching into a pub full of smartly dressed diners while windswept, muddy and more than a little frayed wouldn’t be my first choice. At 7.30pm on a sunny Sunday evening, the Welldiggers Arms – a country pub just outside Petworth in West Sussex – is full of people tucking into hearty roasts, the glass-walled restaurant overlooking glorious downland scenery, the sun all but disappeared behind the hills. For my husband, Mark, and I, it’s more than a stop for supper; the pub marks the halfway point on our two-day walking adventure along a brand new trail, the 25-mile Petworth Way.

Twenty-five miles may not sound like much (I have keen walker friends who would do it in a day) but, for us, it’s the perfect length, with plenty of pubs along the way. The first leg, from Haslemere to Petworth, covers countryside we’re both entirely unfamiliar with; the second, Petworth to Arundel runs through landscapes I’ve known since childhood. Happily, the start and finish points can be reached by rail – meaning we can leave the car at home and set off with nothing but small rucksacks, water bottles and detailed printed instructions.

Things start easily enough; a brief weave through Haslemere’s residential streets before the first serious ascent, through fields and shady, fern-rippled woodland that opens out on to Black Down, the highest point in the South Downs national park. After the dim light of the wood, the heathland blazes with colours; bursts of butter-yellow gorse, purple heather and bottle-green pine trees, all set beneath an intensely blue sky.

It reminds me of Ashdown Forest, which inspired Winnie-the-Pooh, and Mark and I bicker happily about who would be Christopher Robin and who Pooh, before arriving at the Temple of the Winds viewpoint, where we sink gratefully on to the seat and soak up the view. It is spectacular; green velvet hills and blueish-tinged valleys, church spires and the odd country estate dotted between the trees, all of Sussex laid out before us, half drenched in sunlight, half darkened by ominous clouds throwing down grey mists of rain on the horizon.

Keen not to miss lunch at the Noah’s Ark pub in Lurgashall, we set off again, at which point the bickering becomes slightly less good-humoured as we realise we’re going the wrong way. Ten minutes’ later, we’re properly lost, with an OS app on a phone that has unhelpfully lost all signal and directions that make no sense. Thankfully, a pair of local walkers point us in the right direction, and we make it down the hill, past vineyards and on to the pub, where we settle in with a couple of cold halves, some local salami and warm bread, eaten while watching a cricket match on the village green.

Fortunately, the next few miles are more straightforward, until a final ascent that leads into Petworth House’s great park; a glorious end to the day that makes us feel as if we’ve got this walking thing licked. That is, until we realise there are very few taxis in Petworth and we’ll have to walk the extra mile and a half to the Welldiggers, which, fortunately, proves to be a cocoon of loveliness; all soft clean linens, piping-hot showers, and staff who politely pretend not to notice our slightly catatonic state over dinner.

Next morning, fuelled by delicious shakshuka (poached eggs in a hot tomato sauce) and several buckets of tea, we hop in a taxi back to Petworth park to continue the walk across the Sussex Weald. The route drops in on a short section of the Serpent Trail – a 65-mile route from Haslemere to Petersfield that we pencil in for next year – before veering away past Burton Park, a grandiose, privately owned Greek revival mansion, all Doric columns and vanilla-hued walls. From here, the path heads downhill, which, we agree, is not a good thing, as it means going uphill is not far off.

Uphill is something of an understatement, and the pull up through the villages of Barlavington and Sutton was made even more challenging as the White Horse Inn, earmarked for a restorative half, turns out to be closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. Fuelled instead by lukewarm water and half a Twix each, we carry on towards Bignor, the gradient steepening with every step. By the time we’re walking east along the South Downs Way, the 360-degree views – across a patchwork of faded cornfields and khaki grassland – are quite some reward. Even so, it’s a welcome change to begin the descent into Houghton village, where I know (because I’ve checked) lunch awaits.

It’s this leg that really reaffirms the joy of walking for me. As the Arun valley unfolds beside the wooded hills of the Arundel estate, I think of how many decades I’ve driven the road that runs alongside and how different the countryside looks when taken at a slow pace, with the chance to stop and look, rather than snatched glances through the windscreen. Thirty years ago, I’d sit over lunch with my mum and dad in the George & Dragon’s garden, watching hikers amble down the very hillside we’re walking on. I’ve not been back to the pub for many years and it’s lovely – if slightly lump in throat – to return and have my parents suddenly conjured up so vividly.

It’s tempting to stay all afternoon, but after a classic ploughman’s (what else?), we lace up our boots for the final stretch, past Houghton’s thatched, flint-walled cottages and along the River Arun, before one final ascent into the Arundel estate. Clouds glower, but we’re lucky; the rain holds off as we skirt the edge of Swanbourne Lake and pass the Hiorne Tower, built by architect Francis Hiorne in 1797, as part of his (failed) bid to rebuild Arundel Castle. When we pop out on to London Road and amble towards the familiar outline of the castle, we’re almost too focused on finding large slabs of cake to properly celebrate the fact we’ve arrived at our destination.

Later, once the train has taken us back to our corner of the East Sussex countryside, I think about how little I know, really, of the landscapes I’ve visited since childhood. We’ll probably never be long-distance walkers, but weekend trails like this prove you don’t have to be; a couple of days is enough to see a familiar landscape in a whole new light.

Accommodation was provided by the Welldiggers Arms, which has double rooms from £115 B&B

NASHVILLE — President Trump said Friday he’ll send the National Guard to address crime concerns in Memphis with support from the mayor and Tennessee’s governor, making it his latest expansion of military forces into American cities that has tested the limits of presidential power and drawn sharp criticism from local leaders.

Speaking on Fox News, Trump said “the mayor is happy” and “the governor is happy” about the pending deployment. The city is “deeply troubled,” he said, adding, “we’re going to fix that just like we did Washington,” where he’s sent the National Guard and surged federal law enforcement.

Memphis is a majority-Black city and has a Democratic mayor, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Republican Gov. Bill Lee confirmed Friday that he was working with the Trump administration to deploy National Guard troops to Memphis as part of a new crime-fighting mission.

The governor said he planned to speak with the president on Friday to work out details of the mission and was working with Trump’s team to determine the most effective roles for the Tennessee National Guard, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Tennessee Highway Patrol, Memphis Police Department and other law enforcement agencies.

Trump on Friday said he decided to send troops into Memphis after Union Pacific’s CEO Jim Vena, who used to regularly visit the city when he served on the board of FedEx, urged him earlier this week to address crime in the city.

Since sending the National Guard to Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., Trump has openly mused about sending troops to some of the nation’s most Democratic cities — including Chicago and Baltimore — even as data show most violent crime in those places and around the country has declined in recent years.

Trump has also suggested he could send troops to New Orleans, another Democratic-run city in a Republican-leaning state.

Crime is down, but troops may be coming

The president’s announcement came just days after Memphis police reported decreases across all major crime categories in the first eight months of 2025 compared with the same period in previous years. Overall crime hit a 25-year-low, while murder hit a six-year low, police said.

Asked Friday if city and state officials had requested a National Guard deployment — or had formally signed off on it — the White House didn’t answer. It also didn’t offer a possible timeline or say whether federal law enforcement would be surged in connection with a guard deployment to Memphis, as happened when troops were deployed to Washington.

Trump said Friday that he “would have preferred going to Chicago,” where local politicians have fiercely resisted his plans, but suggested the city was too “hostile” with “professional agitators.”

Officials in Tennessee appear divided

Republican state Sen. Brent Taylor, who backs the Memphis troop deployment, said Friday the National Guard could provide “administrative and logistical support” to law enforcement and allow local officers to focus on police work. Republican U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn also voiced her approval.

The Democratic mayor of Shelby County, which includes the city of Memphis, criticized Trump’s proposal. “Mr. President, no one here is ‘happy,’ ” said Mayor Lee Harris. “Not happy at all with occupation, armored vehicles, semi-automatic weapons, and military personnel in fatigues.”

Republican Gov. Bill Lee said Wednesday that an ongoing FBI operation alongside state and local law enforcement had already made “hundreds of arrests targeting the most violent offenders.” He also said there are record levels of Tennessee Highway Patrol troopers in Shelby County, including a newly announced additional 50 troopers.

“We are actively discussing the next phase of our strategy to accelerate the positive momentum that’s already underway, and nothing is off the table,” Lee said in the statement.

On Thursday, Memphis Mayor Paul Young said he learned earlier this week that the governor and Trump were considering the deployment in Memphis.

“I am committed to working to ensure any efforts strengthen our community and build on our progress,” Young’s statement said. What the city needs most, he said, is money for intervention and crime prevention, as well as more officers on patrol and support for bolstering the police department’s investigations.

Some Republicans, including Taylor, the state senator, have asked the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to audit the Memphis Police Department’s crime reporting.

Trump’s broader National Guard strategy

Trump first deployed troops to Los Angeles in early June over Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s objections by putting the California National Guard under federal jurisdiction, known as Title 10, to protect federal property from protests over immigration raids. The National Guard later helped protect officers during immigration arrests.

Alongside 4,000 National Guard members, 700 active duty Marines were also sent, and California sued over the intervention.

In Washington, D.C., where the president directly commands the National Guard, Trump has used troops for everything from armed patrols to trash cleanup without any legal issues.

Chicago is on edge

Trump’s comments underscored his shift away from threats to send troops into Chicago. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson, both Democrats, vowed legal action to block any such move.

Pritzker, a potential 2028 presidential contender, has said a federal intervention is not justified or wanted in Chicago. U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi this week accused state leaders of being uncooperative.

“We want Chicago to ask us for the help and they’re not going to do that,” she told reporters after an unrelated event near Chicago where federal agents seized vaping products.

Even without National Guard troops, residents in Chicago are expecting more federal immigration enforcement. The Department of Homeland Security launched a new operation this week, with federal officials confirming 13 people with prior criminal arrests had been detained. However, it’s still unclear what role that operation would play more broadly.

Mattise writes for the Associated Press.

Two big reasons to celebrate today: First, it’s Friday (and who doesn’t love Fridays?). And second, it’s National 401(k) Day! Woot woot!

OK, so it’s not exactly a party holiday, but if you’ve got a 401(k), today’s the perfect excuse to give it a quick once-over. Taking five minutes to check on your retirement account could save you thousands down the road. Tiny tweaks can add up big time.

Here are three quick things to look at right now (plus one bonus tip to go beyond your 401(k)).

1. Check your contribution rate

First things first: If you’re not contributing at least enough to snag any provided company match in full, you’re basically saying “no thanks” to free money.

If you’re not sure what your company offers (or you’re confused about 401(k) plans in general) ask HR to explain it to you. Don’t be shy — they love talking about benefits.

Next, consider bumping up your contributions a little higher.

Upping your savings by just 1% can make a huge difference over time. Most plans let you increase it in just a few clicks — and then you don’t have to think about it again.

For 2025, the contribution limit is $23,500 (or $31,000 if you’re 50+). No pressure to max it out, but knowing the target gives you something to shoot for.

Here’s what different contribution levels might look like on a $70,000 salary:

Data source: Author’s calculations.

Set it and forget it. One small change now can quietly grow into something huge later.

2. Review your investments

When was the last time you peeked under the hood?

Many 401(k) plans default you into a target-date fund based on your expected retirement year. That’s not necessarily bad, but sometimes it’s not always aligned with your risk tolerance or goals.

Ask yourself:

• Are you too aggressive or too conservative for your age?
• Are your fees higher than they should be?
• Do your investments reflect how far off retirement really is?

I try to review my allocations at least once a year to make sure they’re still working for me. I’m only 40, so I’ve got another two decades before I can think about withdrawals. My focus is on long-term growth, not short-term profits.

3. Consolidate old 401(k) accounts

If you’ve switched jobs a few times, there’s a good chance you’ve got an old 401(k) (or two) just chillin’ somewhere out there.

This happens a lot, actually. Capitalize estimates there are over 29 million forgotten 401(k) accounts in the U.S., holding about $1.65 trillion in assets!

If you want to make life way easier, roll over those old 401(k)s into an IRA. It’s tidier, gives you more control over investments, and can also save you on fees.

And here’s a cool idea… Some brokers are offering 1% match incentives for 401(k) to IRA rollovers. You could snag a little bonus! I recommend checking out Robinhood’s current offer. Read our full Robinhood review here to see if it’s a fit for you.

Think beyond the 401(k)

Just because it’s National 401(k) Day doesn’t mean your retirement plan has to stop there.

401(k)s are great, but they’re only one piece of the puzzle. To give yourself more flexibility (and some potential tax-saving superpowers later), it’s smart to build a mix of account types.

Personally, I’m aiming to build a big portfolio across both pre-tax accounts (like a 401(k) or IRA) and post-tax options like a Roth IRA or a regular brokerage account. That way, when retirement comes, I’ve got options to pull from. And a lot more control over how and when I pay taxes.

If you want to round out your retirement plan, check out:

• Roth IRAs for tax-free growth and withdrawals
• Traditional IRAs for more pre-tax savings
• Brokerage accounts for total flexibility, no age limits or early withdrawal penalties

No matter where you’re starting from, a few small moves now can make a massive difference later.

So give your 401(k) a quick check, tidy things up, and take one step closer to that dream retirement — whatever it looks like for you.

Explore all the top brokers for beginners and start building a more flexible retirement strategy today.

NEW YORK — If Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear vaults into national prominence as a Democratic leader, he may one day look back at Thursday as a key step in that direction.

SiriusXM announced that it was giving Beshear’s new podcast a national platform starting this month, along with featuring him in a regular call-in show on its Progress network.

President Trump’s appearances on podcasts were a pivotal media strategy in his successful 2024 Republican campaign. Moving forward, mastering a personal podcast could replace soft-focus biographies or wonky books as a way for politicians to increase their profiles.

Beshear said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” this summer that he will “take a look” at running for president in 2028. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, also in the circle of potential presidential nominees, started his own podcast earlier this year.

Speaking to the anxiety of Americans

In an interview, Beshear said a motivating factor in his own podcast was people who have come up to him, especially during the Trump administration, to talk about their anxieties.

“That’s how Americans feel,” he said. “They feel like the news hits them minute after minute after minute. And it can feel like chaos. It can feel like the world is out of control. With this podcast, we’re trying to help Americans process what we’re going through.”

He’s already done nearly two dozen podcasts, with his audience heavily weighted toward Kentucky residents. His guests have included some potential Democratic presidential rivals, including Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar. Entrepreneur Mark Cuban, former Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari and Kentucky-born actor and comic Steve Zahn have also appeared.

Beshear, the son of a former governor who’s been leading Kentucky since 2019, talks issues himself. Two of his friends, a Republican and a Democrat, are regular guests, and his 16-year-old son helps Dad navigate some youthful lingo.

Newsom attracted attention — some of it negative among Democrats — for interviewing conservative guests Steve Bannon, Michael Savage and Charlie Kirk on his podcast.

“I did disagree with him on certain guests because I don’t like to give oxygen to hate,” Beshear said. “But Gavin is out there really working to communicate with the American people, and he deserves to be commended for it.”

Newsom’s podcast started slowly in the marketplace but has caught fire in recent weeks, his regular audiences jumping from the tens of thousands to the hundreds of thousands, said Paul Riismandel, president of Signal Hill Insights, an audio-focused market research company.

The California governor’s increased visibility, particularly on social media, is likely a factor in the growing popularity of the podcast, Riismandel said. But it’s also a function of how podcasts often catch on: Many tend to be slow burns as audiences discover them, he said.

Learning to master the format of podcasts

Whether ambitious politicians start their own podcasts or not, they’re going to have to be familiar going forward with what makes people successful in the format.

“With a podcast, the audience expects a more unfiltered, authentic kind of conversation and presentation,” Riismandel said. If politicians come across as too controlled, looking for the sort of soundbites that will be broken out in a television appearance, it’s not likely to work, he said. They have to be willing to open up.

“That is something that is probably new for a lot of politicians,” he said, “and new for their handlers.”

Beshear’s first podcast for SiriusXM will feature an interview with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), conducted in the company’s New York studio and debuting Sept. 10. The Progress network will air Beshear’s podcasts regularly on Saturdays at 11 a.m. Eastern.

The first live call-in show will be next Tuesday at noon, with Beshear joined by Progress host John Fugelsang.

Beshear stressed that his work for SiriusXM is “not just aimed at a Democratic audience.”

“We’re aiming,” he said, “at an American audience.”

Bauder writes for the Associated Press.

Sept. 4 (UPI) — The District of Columbia has filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump for bringing in National Guard soldiers to police its streets.

The suit alleges that “the President has launched an unprecedented assault on the District’s sovereignty.”

“We are suing to defend D.C. home rule and stop the unlawful deployment of the National Guard,” said Washington, D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb in an X post Thursday. “Our nation was founded on the fundamental principles of freedom and self-governance that are stake in this case.”

Schwalb posted several times to explain the situation.

“The National Guard deployment does not only undermine public safety,” he wrote in a separate post. “It also hurts D.C.’s economy — depressing vital industries like restaurants, hotels, and tourism.”

“And critically, it infringes on D.C.’s sovereign authority and right to self-governance under the Home Rule Act,” he added.

Schwalb went on to state that more troops arrived in the district this week and noted that President Donald Trump issued an Executive Order last week that “directs the creation of a dedicated D.C. National Guard unit to ‘enforce Federal law.'”

That order titled “Additional Measures to Address the Crime Emergency in the District of Columbia,” tells the Secretary of Defense to create “a specialized unit within the District of Columbia National Guard” that would be deputized to do as Schwalb described.

Around 2,300 National Guard troops have been deployed in Washington, D.C., since mid-August, who have joined with other federal agents and the District’s Metropolitan Police Department to ramp up patrols throughout the city.

Schwalb further declared that Trump’s use of the National Guard in the district is illegal under the Posse Comitatus Act, which bans the use of any part of the Army or Air Force to execute law enforcement unless authorized by the Constitution or an act of Congress.

“Yet the Administration launched a massive, indefinite law enforcement operation in DC under direct military command,” Schwalb wrote. “This is plainly illegal, and it threatens our democracy and civil liberties.”

He also declared that the deployment denies the District of the local autonomy granted by the Home Rule Act, under which the elected Council of the District of Columbia adopts laws and approves the District’s annual budget in conjunction with the District’s mayor.

The lawsuit comes at a time when House Republicans are considering legislation to remove Schwalb, who was elected to his post in 2022, and replace him with a presidential appointee, according to a Thursday report by The Washington Post.

WASHINGTON — The District of Columbia on Thursday sued to stop President Trump’s deployment of National Guard during his law enforcement intervention in Washington.

The city’s attorney general, Brian Schwalb, said the surge of troops essentially amounts to an “involuntary military occupation.” He argued in the federal lawsuit that the deployment, coinciding with an executive order Aug. 11, that now involves more than 1,000 troops is an illegal use of the military for domestic law enforcement.

A federal judge in California recently ruled that Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops to Los Angeles after days of protests over immigration raids in June was illegal.

The Republican administration is appealing that decision and Trump has said he is ready to order federal intervention in Chicago and Baltimore, despite staunch opposition in those Democrat-led cities. That court ruling, however, does not directly apply to Washington, where the president has more control over the Guard than in states.

The White House did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment to the new lawsuit.

Members of the D.C. National Guard have had their orders extended through December, according to a Guard official. While that does not necessarily mean all those troops will serve that long, it is a strong indication that their role will not wind down soon.

Several GOP-led states have added National Guard troops to the ranks of those patrolling the streets and neighborhoods of the nation’s capital.

Schwalb’s filing contends the deployment also violates the Home Rule Act, signed by President Richard Nixon in 1973, because Trump acted without the mayor’s consent and is wrongly asserting federal control over units from other states.

The city’s attorney general, an elected official, is its top legal officer and is separate from Washington’s federal U.S. attorney, who is appointed by the president.

The lawsuit is the second from Schwalb against the Trump administration since the president asserted control over the city’s police department and sent in the Guard, actions that have been with protests from some residents.

Trump has said the operation is necessary to combat crime in the district, and Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, has pointed to a steep drop in offenses such as carjackings since it began.

Violent crime has been an issue in the capital for years, though data showed it was on the decline at the start of Trump’s intervention.

Whitehurst writes for the Associated Press.

A federal judge ruled Tuesday that President Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles was illegal, which the sane and democracy-loving among us should applaud — though of course an appeal is coming.

During the trial, though, a concerning but little-noticed exchange popped up between lawyers for the state of California and Maj. Gen. Scott Sherman, who was in charge of the federalized National Guard forces in L.A. It should have been an explosive, red-flag moment highlighting the pressure our military leaders are under to shake off their oath to the Constitution in favor of fealty to Trump.

Sherman testified that he objected to National Guard involvement in a show-of-force operation in MacArthur Park, where Latino families often congregate.

That action, Sherman said, was originally slated for Father’s Day, an especially busy time at the park. Internal documents showed it was considered it a “high-risk” operation. Sherman said he feared his troops would be pushed into confrontations with civilians if Border Patrol became overwhelmed by the crowds on that June Sunday.

Gregory Bovino, in charge of the immigration efforts in L.A. for the Border Patrol, questioned Sherman’s “loyalty to the country,” Sherman testified, for just showing hesitation about the wisdom and legality of an order.

It’s the pressure that “you’re not being patriotic if you don’t blow by the law and violate it and just bend the knee and and exhibit complete fealty and loyalty to Trump,” California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said Tuesday. And it’s a warning of what’s to come as Trump continues to press for military involvement in civilian law enforcement across the country.

For the record, Sherman has served our country for decades, earning along the way the prestigious Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star and the Meritorious Service Medal among other accolades.

The MacArthur Park operation, according to the Department of Homeland Security, was itself little more than a performative display of power “to demonstrate, through a show of presence, the capacity and freedom of maneuver of federal law enforcement within the Los Angeles,” according to agency documents presented in court. It was dubbed Operation Excalibur, in honor of the legendary sword of King Arthur that granted him divine right to rule, a point also included in court documents.

But none of that mattered. Instead, Sherman was pushed to exhibit the kind of blind loyalty to a dear leader that you’d expect to be demanded in dictatorships like those of North Korea or Hungary. Loyalty that confuses — or transforms — a duty to the Constitution with allegiance to Trump. Military experts warn that Sherman’s experience isn’t an isolated incident.

“There’s a chilling effect against pushing back or at least openly questioning any kind of orders,” Rachel E. VanLandingham, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, told me. She’s former active duty judge advocate in the U.S. Air Force who now teaches at Southwestern Law School and serves as a national security law expert.

VanLandingham sees the leadership of our armed forces under pressure “to not engage in the critical thinking, which, as commanders, they are required to do, and to instead go along to get along.” She sees Sherman’s testimony as a “telling glimpse into the wearing away” of that crucial independence.

Such a shift in allegiance would undermine any court order keeping the military out of civilian law enforcement, leaving Trump with exactly the boots on the ground power he has sought since his first term. This is not theoretical.

Through Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Trump has purged the top ranks of the military of those who aren’t loyal to him. In February, Hegseth fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a Black soldier who championed diversity in the armed forces. Hegseth has also purged the head of the Pentagon’s intelligence agency, the head of the National Security Agency, the chief of Naval Operations, multiple senior female military staff and senior military lawyers for the Army, Navy and Air Force. In August, he fired the head of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency after that general gave a truthful assessment of our bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites, angering Trump.

At the same time, the military is being pushed farther into civilian affairs, and not just as erstwhile cops. The Associated Press reported Tuesday that Hegseth ordered 600 military lawyers to serve as temporary immigration judges.

Not to dive too deep into the convoluted immigration system, but these are civilian legal positions, another possible violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, VanLandingham points out.

And beyond that, can a military lawyer — trained and bound to follow orders — really act as an impartial judge in proceedings where the administration’s wish to deport is clearly known?

Goodbye due process, goodbye fair trial.

That “looks like martial law when you have militarized … judicial proceedings,” VanLandingham said. “How can we trust they are making unbiased decisions? You can’t.”

And even though Sherman pushed back on a full-blown military presence in MacArthur Park, that raid did happen. Federal agents marched through, about three weeks after Father’s Day, with National Guard troops remaining in their vehicles on the perimeter. It was Hegseth himself who authorized the mission.

Sherman also said on the stand that he was told there were “exceptions” to the Posse Comitatus Act — the law being debated in the trial that prevents the military from being used as civilian law enforcement — and that the president had the power to decide what those exceptions were.

“So your understanding is that while [some actions] are on the list of prohibited functions, you can do them under some circumstances?” Judge Charles Breyer asked.

“That’s the legal advice I received,” Sherman answered.

“And the president has the authority to make that decision?” Breyer asked.

“The president has the authority,” Sherman answered.

But does he?

Breyer also asked during the trial, if the president’s powers to both command troops and interpret law are so boundless, “What’s to prevent a national police force?” What, in effect, could stop Trump’s Excalibur-inspired inclinations?

For now, it’s the courts and ethical, mid-level commanders like Sherman, whose common-sense bravery and decency kept the military out of MacArthur Park.

Men and women who understand that the oaths they have sworn are to our country, not the man who would be king.

United States President Donald Trump has reaffirmed his commitment to sending the National Guard to Chicago, Illinois, as he continues to portray Democrat-run cities as overrun by crime.

Tuesday’s remarks were some of Trump’s most direct statements on the subject so far.

In an Oval Office appearance to announce the relocation of the US Space Command headquarters, Trump was asked about the possibility of a troop deployment to Chicago, the country’s third-largest city by population.

Though he initially launched into a screed decrying crime in the city, he quickly confirmed his plans.

“We’re going in. I didn’t say when, but we’re going in,” Trump said.

“ If the governor of Illinois would call me up. I would love to do it. Now, we’re going to do it anyway. We have the right to do it because I have an obligation to protect this country.”

But the threat of military force was not the only reason Tuesday’s news conference made headlines.

Here are four key takeaways from Trump’s Oval Office appearance.

Trump teases Chicago military deployment

Trump was defiant in his Tuesday afternoon appearance, which came shortly after a federal court in San Francisco ruled that his troop deployment to Los Angeles earlier this year was illegal.

Instead, he defended his decision to use soldiers for his crime crackdown, arguing it was necessary to deal with some suspects.

“Frankly, they were born to be criminals,” Trump said. “And they’re tough and mean, and they’ll cut your throat, and they won’t even think about it the next day. They won’t even remember that they did it. And we’re not going to have those people.”

He also pointed to his deployment of troops in Washington, DC, as a model for his crime initiatives throughout the country.

“ I’m very proud of Washington,” he said. “It serves as a template. And we’re going to do it elsewhere.”

Experts, however, point out that the federal government has greater powers to deploy troops in Washington, the country’s capital, than in other parts of the country.

But the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prohibits the use of the military for domestic law enforcement, except in rare occasions with state cooperation.

Trump is expected to face another legal challenge under that law should he deploy troops to Chicago, as he has repeatedly threatened.

Tensions have been ratcheting upwards between city officials and the Trump administration since August.

On Sunday, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said that the Trump administration would increase the presence of federal agents to support immigration enforcement in the city.

Also over the weekend, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson announced that Chicago police will not collaborate with any National Guard troops or federal agents.

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, meanwhile, said on Tuesday that military “staging that has already begun started yesterday, and continues into today” in and around the Chicago area. Pritzker, a Democrat, has opposed such efforts and warned the city to brace for a situation like what Los Angeles experienced in June.

Still, Trump indicated that a troop deployment to Chicago would only be the start of a wide-reaching crackdown.

“ Chicago is a hellhole right now. Baltimore is a hellhole right now. Parts of Los Angeles are terrible if we didn’t put out the fires – I mean, the other fires, the bullet fires,” Trump said

Moving US Space Command

The focus of the Oval Office event, however, was to tout Trump’s decision to move the headquarters of the US Space Command from Colorado to Huntsville, Alabama.

Space Command falls under the Department of Defense and is tasked with overseeing military operations beyond Earth’s atmosphere.

Critics pointed out that the move appeared designed to play to Trump’s Republican base, as Alabama is a right-wing stronghold compared with the more left-leaning Colorado.

Trump, however, said the move was in the strategic interest of the US. He also emphasised that it would create 30,000 jobs in the state and “billions and billions” of dollars of investment, despite concerns over logistical issues.

Supporters have noted that Huntsville is already home to NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and a major hub for defence contractors, earning it the nickname “Rocket City”.

Tuesday’s announcement reverses a 2023 decision by then-President Joe Biden to keep Space Command in Colorado, where it had been located since its founding 1985, until it was mothballed in 2002.

Trump re-established the command during his first term in 2019, with about 1,700 personnel currently working at its headquarters in Colorado Springs.

In his remarks from the Oval Office, though, Trump was blatant in his disdain for the state, which he lost in both the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections.

He repeatedly told reporters that Colorado’s policy of providing mail-in ballots to all voters fuelled the decision to move the command.

“When a state is for mail-in voting, that means they want dishonest elections,” Trump said. “So that played a big factor.”

Trump has falsely claimed that mail-in ballots lead to election malfeasance. In his remarks, he noted he had won Alabama by a wide margin in the 2024 race, joking about how that might have affected Space Command’s relocation.

“ I only won it by about 47 points,” he said to chuckles. “I don’t think that influenced my decision, though, right?”

In a statement, Colorado Governor Jared Polis said the move “undermines national security, wastes millions of taxpayer dollars, and disrupts the lives of military families”.

Speculation over health

Tuesday’s news conference was Trump’s first public appearance in days, an absence that stoked speculation over the 79-year-old president’s health.

When asked about the rumours, Trump, 79, batted them away.

“I didn’t do any [news conferences] for two days and they said, ‘There must be something wrong with him,’” Trump said.

“Biden wouldn’t do them for months, you wouldn’t see him, and nobody ever said there was ever anything wrong with him, and we know he wasn’t in the greatest of shape.”

Trump spent part of the recent Labor Day weekend playing at his Trump National Golf Course in Virginia, a fact he pointed to when confronted with questions about his health.

“I was very active over the weekend,” he added.

Media reports estimated it was Trump’s 66th visit to a golf course since he began his second term in January.

Trump is expected to be the oldest president in US history by the time he leaves office: Should he successfully complete his second term, he will be 82, edging out the current record holder, Biden, by several months.

But Biden’s seeming frailty in his final months in office has raised scrutiny about what health conditions Trump might face as he approaches a similar age.

An attack on a Venezuelan boat?

One of the surprises that emerged from Tuesday’s meandering news conference was the announcement that the US may have attacked a boat in the Caribbean Sea.

“We just – over the last few minutes – literally shot out a boat, a drug-carrying boat,” Trump said. “A lot of drugs in that boat. And you’ll be seeing that, and you’ll be reading about that. It just happened moments ago.”

The president identified the vessel as departing from Venezuela, whose government Trump has repeatedly accused of directing drug-trafficking operations, though he has provided no proof for that assertion.

Shortly after the news conference, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed on the social media platform X that the military had “conducted a lethal strike in the southern Caribbean against a drug vessel which had departed from Venezuela and was being operated by a designated narco-terrorist organisation”.

He did not provide further details.

Since returning to office for a second term, Trump has returned to his policy of maximum pressure against the government of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, recently raising the reward for his arrest to $50m.

Trump has also claimed that immigration into the US was the result of a criminal “invasion” that Maduro masterminded.

A US intelligence report declassified in May, however, failed to find proof of any such cooperation between Maduro and gangs like Tren de Aragua.

Still, earlier this year, the Trump administration designated Latin American gangs like Tren de Aragua as “foreign terrorist organisations”. The move represented a break in convention in Washington, which has a separate designation for foreign criminal enterprises.

In August, it was reported that Trump secretly signed an order authorising military action against cartels and other criminal networks, spurring concern of US intervention abroad.

Maduro has long accused Trump of interfering in his domestic politics, and Tuesday’s announcement has further piqued tensions.

For two years, labor organizers tried to unionize employees at a trio of celebrated California national parks, but they couldn’t reach critical mass.

Then came mass firings of National Park Service employees in February under the Trump administration. Many employees were reinstated, but litigation concerning the legality of the firings winds on. The park service has lost about a quarter of its staff since Trump reclaimed the White House, and that’s on top of a proposed $1-billion budget cut to the agency.

This summer the scales tipped. More than 97% of employees at Yosemite and Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks who cast ballots voted to unionize, with results certified last week. More than 600 staffers — including interpretive park rangers, biologists, firefighters and fee collectors — are now represented by the National Federation of Federal Employees.

Steven Gutierrez, national business representative with the National Federation of Federal Employees, said it took mass firings to “wake people up.”

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

“Culture is hard to change,” said Steven Gutierrez, a national business representative for the union. “It takes something like this administration firing people to wake people up, to say, ‘Hey, I’m vulnerable here and I need to invest in my career.’”

The unionized employees work at some of California’s most celebrated and highly visited national parks. Yosemite is famous for its awe-inspiring valley, while Sequoia and Kings Canyon are known for their giant sequoia trees.

Amid that beauty is a workforce that is frustrated and fearful. Two employees at Yosemite National Park described rock-bottom morale amid recent turmoil — and a sense that the union could provide an avenue for change. Both are union representatives and requested anonymity for fear of retaliation.

“With this administration, I think there’s a lot more people who are scared, and I think the union definitely helps towards protections that we really want,” said one employee.

National Park Service Ranger Anna Nicks walks through a grove of sequoia trees in Sequoia National Park in May 2024.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Despite staff being depleted by buyouts and a hiring freeze, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has ordered parks to remain “open and accessible.” As a result, the employee said visitors may not notice something is off.

“There’s a lot of folks doing multiple jobs and just trying to hold up the park,” she said, adding that she believes that the union will help ensure people get paid properly for the work they do and that their duties don’t shift.

The employees stressed that many workplace problems they want to see fixed — including low pay and squalid living conditions — predate Trump’s second stint in the White House. But recent developments have exacerbated the situation.

Because pay hasn’t kept pace with inflation, one employee said he’s unable to pay rent and lives out of his car for most of the year. Meanwhile, he said, those in park housing face safety threats such as hantavirus-carrying rodents that invade living spaces, caving-in roofs and unstable decks. Understaffing has plagued Yosemite for years.

“People that you see working here, they’re really at their wit’s end,” he said. “Personally speaking, it’s just a lot of work to handle. Years ago, we had twice as many people doing this work.”

Staffers are “worried about their futures,” he added.

The National Park Service did not respond to a request for comment. But in a statement to a Senate appropriations subcommittee in May, Burgum said the Trump administration remains committed to supporting the parks, while looking for ways to cut costs.

A waterfall is reflected in water in the meadow in the Yosemite Valley as the snowpack melts in April 2023.

(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

“Since becoming Interior Secretary, I’ve traveled to National Parks, historic sites, and wildlife refuges to learn and hear from leadership on the ground,” Burgum said. “We’re instituting changes to get more people actually working in the parks and are looking forward to what Yellowstone Superintendent Cam Sholly forecasted to be an ‘outstanding summer.’ ”

The unionization vote comes as the Trump administration seeks to strip federal employees of labor protections many have long enjoyed. On Thursday, Trump signed an executive order that directs certain federal agencies — including NASA, the National Weather Service and the Bureau of Reclamation — to end collective bargaining agreements with unions representing federal employees.

The Department of Veterans Affairs previously moved to terminate protections for more than 400,000 of its workers. The president’s overall effort on this front is being fought in court, although federal judges have so far sided with the administration.

As labor unrest mounts, Americans and foreign tourists are visiting national parks like never before. In 2024, there were a record 332 million visits to national parks, including 4 million to Yosemite. Crowds continued to stream into national parks over Labor Day weekend.

Groups that advocate for public lands say that short staffing is quietly adding to long-standing problems.

Preventative Search and Rescue Program Coordinator Anna Marini gives the Lutter family children junior guide books after they finished a hike in August 2024 in Joshua Tree National Park.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

“It’s clear staffing shortages are directly impacting park operations across the system,” the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Assn. said in a statement Wednesday.

“Parks like Joshua Tree and Yosemite are struggling with search and rescue, law enforcement and even basic medical services, while some parks have no maintenance staff at all. Seasonal roads, trails and campgrounds like those at Sequoia and Kings Canyon remain closed due to unaddressed damage.”

The union voting took place July 22 to Aug. 19, and included permanent and seasonal employees. The National Federation of Federal Employees represents workers at several other national parks, including Yellowstone and, in Ohio, Cuyahoga Valley, as well as those in the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management.

A union sign hailing federal workers is displayed at Sequoia National Park.

(Steven Gutierrez)

Federal employees don’t have the right to strike, Gutierrez said, meaning that much of employees’ advocacy has to happen in Washington, D.C. He said the union can bring workers face to face with congressional leaders to explain why their jobs matter — including the tourism dollars they help generate.

Next steps will include hammering out labor contracts for Yosemite and Sequoia and Kings Canyon, which can provide job protections.

Gutierrez said he’d like to see one drafted by December but acknowledged that it can be a long process.

“If Trump puts his fingers into it, it’s going to take longer,” he said.