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ROME — President Trump’s attacks on Italy’s premier have had an unintended consequence.

After Trump questioned Italy’s reliability as a wartime ally and claimed Giorgia Meloni had groveled for his attention, European leaders rallied to Meloni’s side, thawing what had been a frosty relationship over her hard-right political roots.

It is the latest example of how the often divisive American president is helping to draw Europe closer together.

European leaders are finding more reasons to coordinate on defense, tariffs and foreign policy as they confront wars in Ukraine and Iran, a ballooning trade deficit with China, and threats from Russia. That leaves Trump, who has often preferred to negotiate with European countries individually, with less ability to do so, analysts say.

“Most of the mainstream leaders realize that Europe is getting squeezed between China and America, and so, if not now, then when?” said Sudha David-Wilp, vice president at the German Marshall Fund. “They need to act as a bloc in order to maintain Europe’s place in the world.”

This newfound European unity could be tested next week at a NATO summit in Turkey.

European leaders rally around Meloni

Meloni’s spat with Trump has helped her strengthen ties with European leaders once wary of her party’s post-fascist roots.

A pivotal moment came in March when she wouldn’t allow U.S. bombers headed to the Middle East to use a base in Sicily without parliamentary approval.

For years before then, France and Germany often kept Meloni outside the small-group talks that helped shape Europe’s response to major foreign policy crises. That persisted into 2026 amid disagreements over the Russian war on Ukraine, including Meloni’s rejection of a proposal by Britain and France to send European troops there following a possible ceasefire.

But Trump’s escalating attacks on Meloni — who called Trump’s criticism of Pope Leo “unacceptable” — helped shift the dynamic, prompting European leaders to rally around her.

After all, they, too, have been on the receiving end of Trump’s barbs.

Meloni was firmly in the fold at a late June meeting in Berlin with the leaders of Germany, France, Britain and Poland. And she met the next day with French President Emmanuel Macron in southern France — the first bilateral summit since the pandemic.

Europe’s nationalist parties are adjusting

Even nationalist parties across the continent once aligned with Trump are recalibrating their stances because his trade policies and war with Iran are proving unpopular with voters.

In France, far-right leader Jordan Bardella recently blasted U.S. actions as “foreign interference” and described Trump as “erratic” and “extremely unsteady.” Bardella had previously welcomed Trump’s brand of nationalism as a “wind of freedom.”

In Germany, leaders of the far-right Alternative for Germany party have criticized the U.S. military campaign against Iran. The co-leader of the party, Tino Chrupalla, said in March he was “extremely disappointed” with Trump, whom he had viewed as a politician who would avoid new conflicts.

The changing rhetoric comes as elections approach, putting more focus on domestic issues.

“This pushes everyone to consider a European horizon more than an international one,” said Lorenzo Castellani, a political analyst and professor at Rome’s LUISS University,

Beyond Europe’s biggest powers

These dynamics are playing out beyond the European Union, from the Arctic Ocean to the Balkans.

When Trump threatened to take Greenland by force, protests erupted in its capital, Nuuk, and in the Danish capital of Copenhagen. Leaders across the political spectrum bristled at the threatened infringement of European sovereignty and feared it could shatter the already stressed NATO military alliance.

In Albania, a luxury development being planned that is linked to Trump’s family business has become a major political issue, drawing protests in June.

The political risks of close alignment with Trump were perhaps most clearly illustrated in Hungary. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán — long regarded as Trump’s closest ally in the European Union — was voted out of office in April despite support from the U.S. president and prominent figures in the MAGA movement.

An analysis by the consultancy Maplecroft suggested that negative perceptions of the Trump administration may have weighed on Orbán politically.

Meloni’s balancing act

Though Meloni remains closely aligned with Trump on issues like immigration and security, she has long diverged from him on Ukraine. Her steadfast support for Kyiv made her more palatable for European leaders and has been a key factor in forging a more united European front toward the U.S.

During their public spat last month, Meloni said her friendship with Trump came with a heavy political cost.

In her response to his accusation that she had “begged” to be photographed with him while at the recent G7 summit in France, she wrote on social media: “As for my popularity, being your friend has certainly not helped it, nor does it depend on my relationship with you.”

A recent Pew Research Center survey found that Trump is deeply unpopular in Italy. According to the survey, 83% of Italians have no confidence in Trump’s ability to do the right thing regarding foreign affairs. His handling of a range of issues — including Iran, tariffs, and U.S. immigration policies — received a low level of support.

With a national election due by 2027 — and possibly as early as next spring — Meloni faces mounting political pressures, including fallout from the unpopular Iran war and her former ties to Trump.

Voters across Europe could hold their own politicians accountable for the actions of an American president beyond their control, said Castellani, the political analyst.

“At a certain point, when voters see the price of gasoline rising because of a war perceived as distant, they ask Meloni for the bill, not Trump.”

Zampano and McNeil write for the Associated Press. McNeil reported from Brussels. AP writers Sylvie Corbet in Paris, Geir Moulson in Berlin, and Justin Spike in Budapest, Hungary, contributed to this report.

On June 25, the United States Supreme Court decision allowed President Donald Trump and his administration to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitians, paving the way for their legal immigration status to be removed.

Trump has pushed to end TPS for several groups, as part of his efforts to restrict immigration into the US.

But lawmakers from both political parties have argued that stripping Haitians of their TPS status could create a caregiving crisis, given their presence in key industries like healthcare.

“Of the 350,000+ lawful Haitian TPS holders, roughly 1/3 work in our healthcare system. Immediately shutting off TPS will create a crisis in our hospitals, nursing homes, and in the [intellectual disabilities] community,” Republican Representative Mike Lawler wrote on the social media platform X.

Democratic Representative Ayanna Pressley echoed that sentiment in a statement.

“Seniors will lose their caregivers when we already have a caregiving crisis, and seniors will lose their ability to age in community with much-needed assistance,” she wrote.

The Temporary Protected Status programme allows nationals from countries experiencing crises, such as natural disasters or armed conflict, to live in the United States for up to 18 months. The federal government had previously renewed the designations, making them effectively permanent, before President Trump took office for a second term in 2025.

Lawler’s estimates about how many Haitians with TPS work in the US healthcare system are within the range of what the data show.

The Trump administration decision — and Supreme Court ruling — affect about 330,000 Haitians whose TPS-related work authorisations expire on July 10. They face deportation unless they qualify for another status. The ruling also applies to Syrians and Venezuelans.

About 158,000 Haitians in Florida have TPS, the majority of whom are in South Florida. The Sunshine State has the largest population of TPS recipients in the US: nearly 404,000 people. More than half are from Venezuela and about one-third are from Haiti, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

With an ageing population and an existing caregiver shortage, healthcare experts say the end of TPS for Haitians will have a significant effect on the US healthcare industry.

Of the 330,000 Haitian TPS holders, about 13,000 work daily as nursing assistants, caring for 65,000 patients, The Boston Globe found. Another 8,000 Haitian caregivers serve 12,000 children and ageing people, according to Americans for Immigrant Justice, a Miami-based nonprofit law firm that provides free representation to low-income immigrants.

Experts said the TPS healthcare workforce exodus will be felt most acutely in New York, Massachusetts and Florida.

With its high populations of older people and immigrants, Florida is expected to be particularly hard-hit.

David Grabowski, a Harvard Medical School healthcare policy professor, said the decision will “have a major impact on nursing homes, assisted living facilities and home care agencies”.

What will happen if most Haitians with TPS are deported?

Healthcare researchers say deporting Haitian recipients of Temporary Protected Status will add pressure on a strained system.

Immigrants who have TPS are more likely to work in healthcare, with one 2025 study finding that recipients represent 15 percent of all noncitizen healthcare workers. (TPS recipients make up about 2.1 percent of the total immigrant population.)

Immigrants make up a large share of direct care workers — people who are home health aides, personal care aides and nursing assistants.

There is already a national shortage of home health aides, personal care aides, nursing assistants and other long-term care and eldercare workers, but the US will need even more in the future. The US 65-and-up population is expected to rise from 58 million to 82 million by 2050 — a 42 percent increase.

Nearly half of US nursing homes report limiting admissions due to staffing shortages, and 19 percent recently met the minimum staffing levels set by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. In 2023, shortages of nurses and other employees caused about two-thirds of US hospitals to operate below capacity.

“People who run nursing homes, chronic care hospitals and home care agencies – they are all saying this is a crisis,” said Dr Steffie Woolhandler, a distinguished professor of public health at City University of New York’s Hunter College. “There has long been a shortage of folks who are willing to do direct care work as nursing aides, and there’s still a shortage now, so, of course, if the US deports them all, it’s just going to make it worse.”

Drishti Pillai, the director of immigrant health policy at the research nonprofit KFF, said, “The long-term care industry is already facing shortages prior to these immigration policy changes, so I think it’s accurate to say that this is going to further exacerbate the situation.”

Why do so many Haitians with TPS work in caregiving?

Healthcare experts pointed to several reasons for TPS holders’ high numbers in direct care, including job availability, an easier certification process compared with other healthcare jobs, and prior experience caring for family members.

“We do not have sufficient native-born workers to fill all the caregiving jobs,” Grabowski, the healthcare policy professor, said.

These positions also typically have lower barriers to entry for licensure, or no English language requirements, experts said. Refugee settlement organisations often recommend the work to immigrants for those reasons.

The positions are “extremely difficult to fill” because they’re physically and emotionally demanding, with low pay and with little or no employee benefits, said Priya Chidambaram, senior policy manager with KFF’s programme on Medicaid and the uninsured.

Some Haitians also have experience caring for sick family members in their homes, given the lack of nursing home infrastructure in their home country.

In the end, experts said there will be many more people who need this care than people who will be able to provide it.

“This was true before the ruling,” Chidambaram said. “Now, the impact will only be worse.”

The administration of United States President Donald Trump has announced felony charges against a former Olympic athlete for allegedly harming the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, DC.

At a news conference on Thursday, US Attorney Jeanine Pirro accused professional canoeist David Hearn, 67, of deliberately vandalising the pool.

“Today, a grand jury has returned a felony indictment against a defendant, David Hearn, for felony destruction of property, for which he faces 10 years in prison,” Pirro, a Trump appointee, said.

She proceeded to call the destruction of national monuments “one of the most offensive images” she has ever seen.

“This unchecked vandalism and civil disorder turns into criminal behaviour, and that’s why we’re here today,” Pirro said. “They are an affront to the dignity of our shared history.”

But in media interviews, Hearn has denied any vandalism, saying that, like many Americans, he was simply curious about the Reflecting Pool when he visited on June 19.

The Reflecting Pool had been the subject of a renovation effort Trump began in April, as part of a wider initiative to reshape Washington, DC, through controversial construction and maintenance projects.

Trump awarded a no-bid contract to a firm to seal and resurface the granite pool in a colour he dubbed “American flag blue”. But observers noted that, as soon as the pool reopened in early June, it suffered an algae bloom, and blue paint began to peel from its bottom.

Faced with criticism about the $13.1m renovation contract, Trump countered that vandals had sabotaged the Reflecting Pool.

At least seven people, including Hearn, have been arrested on allegations they may have harmed the pool’s blue-painted bottom.

Hearn has maintained his innocence. He says he was cycling by the Reflecting Pool when he stopped to look at the peeling paint, and he reached in the water to feel it. He denies removing any part of the pool.

Pirro, however, described a different scene. She said National Park Service employees observed Hearn “forcefully and violently pulling up and removing the bottom liner with both hands”, damaging roughly 2 square feet — or around 0.18 square meters — of pool sealant.

“A parks employee actually told Hearn to stop his behaviour and stop what he was doing. Hearn reacted by shouting at that parks employee,” Pirro alleged.

Reporters confronted Pirro with questions about whether charging Hearn with a felony was disproportionately punitive, since similar cases have been considered misdemeanour offences.

One journalist asked Pirro if her decision to seek a felony indictment was influenced by Trump, who wrote on Truth Social that a 10-year prison sentence should “be fully enforced” for any attempted damage to the Reflecting Pool.

“I didn’t charge anything harshly. I charge according to the evidence,” Pirro replied. She argued that Hearn caused damage exceeding $1,000, thereby necessitating a felony charge.

She also dismissed comparisons with the millions of dollars in damage caused by Trump supporters during the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Nearly all of those defendants were pardoned on the first day of Trump’s second term.

“Are you really talking about January 6th? I’m not,” Pirro told one reporter. A hearing in Hearn’s case is scheduled for July 9.

On Thursday, preparations for the July 4 fireworks show began at the Reflecting Pool, with large nets spread across the entire structure.

According to a police officer on the site, the nets are intended to catch the debris that could fall into the pool during the show. The site remains fenced off to visitors.

Still, many have come to look at the pool and see the controversial renovations firsthand.

Brian Williams, a 31-year-old from Roscoe, Georgia, praised Trump for his efforts to beautify the city. He said that algae was normal for a pool full of still water in the heat of summertime.

“I don’t think people have any business vandalising anything,” Williams added. “If you have something that you dislike about the president, don’t take it out on the people’s pool.”

But others were more sceptical of Trump’s claims. Jon Delgado, a 40-year-old Navy veteran from Collierville, Tennessee, expressed frustration at seeing the Reflecting Pool in its current state.

“I came here with my wife and my family to show them the beauty of America, the spirit of what we fought for,” he said. “To see it trashed like this, it just makes me angry.”

Delgado called Trump’s accusations about vandalism at the site “really crazy”.

“We have just got to ask ourselves: Is this where we’re at, in the state of America, that we’re believing something like this? You can look for yourself: This thing has pond scum all in it, and it stinks. There’s no vandalism,” he said.

WASHINGTON — President Trump and his fellow Republicans are reviving a line of attack against Democrats heading into the midterm elections: They’re communists.

In just the past week, Trump has issued dark warnings that members of the Democratic Party’s ascendant left are communists who want to “completely destroy the traditional American way of life” and even engage in assassinations. Vice President JD Vance has similarly called out communism as a political shift that is “something we haven’t seen in the U.S.” House Speaker Mike Johnson has decried “radical candidates” who are “self-described, self-identifying Marxists.”

The GOP’s ideological focus conflates democratic socialism, which often centers on securing universal healthcare, higher taxes on the wealthy and stricter corporate regulation, with communism, under which private ownership is largely eliminated. It has been building since Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, won the Democratic nomination for New York City mayor last year.

But it’s kicked into a higher gear recently after democratic socialists won several New York City congressional primaries last week. The primary victory on Tuesday by another democratic socialist, Melat Kiros, for a Denver congressional seat suggested the trend may extend beyond Manhattan liberalism.

“The Democrats are making this easy for us,” Rep. Richard Hudson, the North Carolina Republican who leads the House GOP’s strategy and fundraising arm, said in an interview. “They’re nominating extreme liberals, leftists who are out of touch even with mainstream Democrats.”

Republicans are holding onto slim majorities

The messaging effort comes as Republicans scramble to hold onto threadbare congressional majorities in the November midterms. It risks overlooking public frustration, particularly among younger voters, with unfettered capitalism at a time of growing income inequality and rising costs.

But it also gives Republicans a much-needed opportunity to shift the conversation back to territory that is more comfortable for them after their party has spent much of the year on defense over the fallout from Trump’s decision to launch a war against Iran, which contributed to widespread price spikes.

Ralph Reed, the longtime conservative activist who hosted Trump last week at a Faith and Freedom Coalition conference, acknowledged that Republicans are facing steep headwinds this year. But the recent string of wins by democratic socialists, he said, allows Republicans to present a contrast between “common sense and crazy.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) speaks during a Get Out the Vote (GOTV) rally at Kings Theater on June 18, 2026 in New York City. Sanders joined Mayor Zohran Mamdani ahead of next week’s primary, and the start of early voting on Saturday, as the pair campaigned for Brad Lander, Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier, who are challenging incumbents in Democratic primary contests.

(Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images)

Democrats are uncertain over the party’s direction

The renewed push could tug at tensions among Democrats who are largely united in their loathing of Trump but are divided over the party’s direction. This year’s primaries are shaping up as a referendum between centrists who are eager to course correct from what they see as progressive overreach earlier in the decade and a left-wing pushing for even more sweeping change.

“A lot of this anger has been boiling under the surface,” said Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of Our Revolution, which was founded by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who caucuses with Democrats. “It’s coming to the fore in this moment in a very powerful way.”

But Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a centrist New Jersey Democrat, called the victories in Colorado and New York “aberrations.”

“We’ve got to fight like hell to keep our party from being hijacked by socialists,” he said. “Most of them are bomb throwers, not problem solvers.”

Nevada Atty. Gen. Aaron Ford easily dispatched a more progressive rival earlier this year in his Democratic bid for governor in a state Trump carried in 2024. As he eyes a general election challenge to Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo, he insisted candidates like those who won in New York don’t represent all Democrats.

He said the Democratic Socialists of America “is not the face of our party.”

Rep. Suzan DelBene, a Washington Democrat who chairs the House Democratic campaign committee, said in a statement that Republicans were “resorting to desperate attacks that aren’t actually about the pocketbook issues.”

Trump risks overreaching with communism argument

Trump and fellow Republicans risk missing the mark when the public’s embrace of capitalism might not be as strong as it was decades ago.

About half of U.S. adults, 54%, have a positive view of capitalism, according to an August poll from Gallup, a slight decline from 61% in 2010. Democrats have driven some of the shift, but favorable opinions of capitalism have fallen among independents as well.

Only 42% of Democrats viewed capitalism favorably, while 66% had a positive view of socialism. The poll found that both younger and older Democrats have warmed slightly on socialism since 2010, but Democrats under age 50 are much less likely to view capitalism favorably. Democrats age 50 or older didn’t shift meaningfully.

“Young voters, who I would argue are driving a lot of the electoral energy that we’re seeing, came of age politically in a post-Soviet world,” Geevarghese said. “The attacks don’t land in the same way when Donald Trump was politically of age.”

Hudson, who is running the House GOP campaign committee, acknowledged the communism line might not resonate in the same way with all voters, particularly younger people. That’s why, he said, it’s important for Republicans to tailor their message to the needs of individual districts.

“I’ve never run cookie-cutter campaigns where we just say one thing over and over everywhere,” he said.

Still, the argument was high on Trump’s mind again on Wednesday as he visited the newly built Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in North Dakota. He called the former president a “ferocious opponent of a thing called communism.”

“It’s the biggest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, September 11,” he said. “It’s a bigger threat, potentially a bigger threat than that, because it’s like a cancer that spreads, and you better stop it fast.”

Beverly Gage, a history professor at Yale University who has written on the rise and fall of Sen. Joe McCarthy, said earlier eras of anti-communism politics took hold because there was a large and active Communist Party in the U.S. and the Soviet Union was the country’s primary foe. But she said Trump’s focus on the issue is notable given his ties to Roy Cohn, a onetime confidant of Trump who earlier worked for McCarthy.

“It’s not very many steps to get from McCarthy to Roy Cohn to Donald Trump,” she said.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a potential Democratic presidential candidate, shrugged off Trump’s communism focus as “bunk.” In an interview, he said the direction of the party isn’t all that different from the dynamics he’s navigated for decades in California politics.

“I governed in an environment where the DSA was otherwise known as progressives,” he said. “This dialectic is so deeply familiar to me, and I don’t over read any of it.”

Sloan writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Michelle L. Price contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON  — Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. led a fractured Supreme Court this year that both expanded a president’s power to run the government and dealt major defeats to President Trump.

In Trump’s second year back in the White House, Roberts and the court punctured his claim to have power with no limits.

The justices struck down his worldwide tariffs, ruling these import taxes are a matter for Congress, not the president.

They also threw out his executive order that would end the principle of birthright citizenship. The Constitution wrote this promise into law, Roberts said, and the president may not change it.

The court also ruled in December that the president did not have the power to put National Guard troops on the streets of Chicago.

The three decisions came over fierce dissents from conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. and with Neil M. Gorsuch in two of them.

The three liberal justices dissented angrily when the court ruled the administration may end Temporary Protected Status for Haitians and Syrians.

They did the same when the court ruled the president may replace the top appointees of semi-independent agencies.

But they joined Roberts in a 5-4 ruling that affirmed the independence of the Federal Reserve and blocked Trump’s move to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook.

Trump has won on most immigration fronts because Roberts and the conservatives believe Congress put the enforcement power in the hands of the administration. They point to the law authorizing temporary protection which says there shall be “no judicial review” of the decision to end the protection.

Roberts is a solid conservative who also tries to keep the court on a middle course. It’s an approach that rarely wins plaudits from the right and almost never from the left.

This year the chief justice prevailed with different coalitions.

This week, the court ruled by a 5-4 vote against the Republican National Committee and upheld state laws that allow for counting late-arriving mail ballots. Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined with Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Barrett also joined the chief justice in the rulings on tariffs and birthright citizenship.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. speaks to the Georgetown Law School graduating class in 2025.

(Manuel Balce Ceneta / Associated Press)

This week, the court also limited the power of police to use cellphone data to look for crime suspects. This too came on a 5-4 vote when Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh joined Roberts and the three liberals.

Harvard law professor Richard Lazarus, who has been a friend of Roberts’ since their time in law school, said the chief justice “is clearly working very hard” to put together majorities.

“It is not easy to formally preside over a court in which five of its members (Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch on the right and Justices Sotomayor and Jackson on the left) deride the kind of efforts at moderation that is the chief’s preferred signature and harshly condemn him when he strays from their own views.”

Washington attorney Roman Martinez, a former clerk for Roberts, said the court is “clearly right of center” but the decision on tariffs was the most important of the year.

“It is a huge deal for the court to say ‘no’ to the president on his major policy initiative,” he said.

Stanford law professor Michael McConnell agreed. “It’s hard to claim the court is in Trump’s pocket when he lost the major cases,” he said.

Trump responded to the tariff defeat by calling the justices in the majority a “disgrace to our nation” and “disloyal to the Constitution.”

They “sicken me,” he said of Justices Barrett and Gorsuch, his two appointees who joined Roberts in the 6-3 majority.

Trump went to the court in April to hear his top attorney defend his executive order on birthright citizenship. He left after an hour of mostly skeptical questions.

On the term’s last day, Roberts issued a clear and eloquent 26-page opinion setting out America’s history of according citizenship to children who were born in this country, without regard to their parents.

This view came from England “and crossed the Atlantic with the colonists — and was adopted with little fanfare after the Revolution,” he wrote. “Nothing is better settled,” Justice Joseph Story wrote in 1830.

But it was unsettled by the fight over slavery.

“In the odious decision of Dred Scott v. Sandford, this Court imposed the Southern States’ beliefs onto the Nation” and decreed Blacks could not become citizens, Roberts wrote.

Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass were among the many who condemned the court’s decision, he said.

“It took more than a decade — and the addition of names such as Antietam, Gettysburg, and Chancellorsville to our national canon — but Douglass’s vision of ‘our common humanity’ would be fulfilled,” he wrote.

The Reconstruction Congress wrote this rule into the 14th Amendment and said “All persons born” here are citizens by birth.

The principle of birthright citizenship had been upheld by the Supreme Court in 1898, the chief justice wrote, and it had gone unchallenged until Trump returned to the White House last year.

But Thomas filed a 91-page dissent arguing that immigrants must be “domiciled” here before their children may become citizens.

Alito filed a separate 39-page opinion branding the Roberts opinion a “serious mistake.”

On that note, the court adjourned for its summer recess.

WASHINGTON — President Trump has spent months waging an unusually aggressive campaign to reshape how states run elections, leveraging federal agencies in ways no previous president has attempted.

He has pushed the Department of Homeland Security to compile a list of citizens in each state to help determine voter eligibility. He is seeking to give the Postal Service a role in deciding who can receive mail ballots. He has threatened to withhold federal funding from states unless they phase out electronic voting machines. And he is pressuring Republican lawmakers to overhaul voting laws, claiming without evidence that elections are being rigged.

The efforts have run into resistance in court and within his own party. They have also left postal workers and local election officials bracing for an election cycle marked by deepening doubts about election integrity, and uncertainty about how the federal government may challenge the post-election results.

“It’s an unprecedented power grab to reshape how our elections work so that he and his allies can maintain and expand power,” said Eric Kashdan, director of federal advocacy at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan government ethics organization.

The White House defends the effort as fulfilling a campaign promise, and argues the administration is “lawfully enacting the agenda President Trump was elected to enact.”

One of Trump’s defining efforts to assert some federal control over state elections has been his insistence on passing the SAVE America Act, which would require voters to provide proof of citizenship when they register, require Americans to show identification when casting a ballot and require states to send voter data to the Department of Homeland Security.

His relentless push for the measure has prompted him to derail a bipartisan housing bill and threaten to forgo signing any piece of legislation unless the voting measure is approved. He says he considers the matter a “national emergency.” Despite the pressure campaign, Senate Republican leaders maintain there is not enough support to pass the measure.

The political stakes ahead of the midterms have been laid out more bluntly by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), whose chamber has approved the SAVE America Act. Last month, Johnson warned conservatives gathered at the Faith & Freedom Coalition that if Democrats win back control of the House, they will “go after the president’s family, the Cabinet, his donors, friends,” and supporters.

“I run the protection program,” Johnson said. “I will take care of you.”

Setbacks in court

The administration’s ambitions have hit numerous snags in court in the last month, with judges reaffirming in many cases that the Constitution gives states — not the federal government — primary authority over elections.

In one case, U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan, who was appointed by President Biden, went further.

She said a federal immigration database the Department of Homeland Security was compiling to determine voter eligibility violated privacy laws. She added that the database has resulted in states actively removing U.S. citizens from voter rolls based on inaccurate information.

“All in all, the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote,” Sooknanan wrote. “This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens.”

James Percival, the general counsel for Homeland Security, said the ruling was the latest example of “how hard the Left will fight to stop us from solving problems they insist do not exist.”

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority this week also dealt a blow to the GOP and upheld state laws that allow for counting mail ballots that are postmarked by election day but arrive late.

The decision left Trump fuming. He said it was a “a little bit surprising” to see the court’s decision, claiming without evidence that the result will inevitably give “people more time to vote illegally.”

Democrats, in turn, saw the ruling as a necessary check on the Trump administration’s efforts.

“While we continue to see unprecedented efforts to interfere with elections from the Trump administration, it is a relief to see federal courts make clear that these attacks on mail and absentee voting are clearly illegal and unconstitutional,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Los Angeles) said in a statement after the ruling.

Trump is still eyeing changes to voting by mail. In March, he issued an executive order that seeks to limit who can receive mail ballots. Under the proposed rule, the Postal Service would not deliver mail ballots to states that don’t turn over sensitive voter data to the federal government, Postmaster General David Steiner told a Senate panel last month.

The admission drew immediate condemnation from Democratic lawmakers. They argued the regulation is an illegal attempt to coerce states into handing over their voter rolls.

“Please push back on being a pawn in this authoritarian playbook,” Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) told Steiner. “The Postal Service is one of the most important institutions in our country. Don’t taint it with the obsession of this one man.”

A day after that back-and-forth, U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani, who was nominated by President Obama, blocked those plans — at least for now.

“The Constitution does not grant the President any specific powers over elections,” the judge wrote, while adding that the Postal Service does not have the legal authority to determine who can vote by mail and how.

The White House said Wednesday that the administration remains confident the executive order will be in place by the November election.

Taken together, the administration’s efforts are unprecedented, UCLA law professor Rick Hasen said. That’s because the Constitution puts control over elections in the hands of the states and grants Congress the ability to pass laws, he said.

“The president really only has authority through federal statutes that have already been passed,” Hasen said. “It’s not surprising that many courts have struck down or stopped him from doing things to try to interfere with how elections are being run.”

Postal workers waiting for clarity

The legal setback for the Postal Service proposed rule was welcome news to the union representing postal workers.

“We believe that what we’re being asked to do is in violation of the oath that we took,” said Jonathan Smith, the president of the American Postal Workers Union, which represents more than 200,000 postal workers.

Following the ruling, the union called on the agency to abandon the rule, arguing it “will crush mailers’ trust in the Postal Service” and undermine “one of the most important functions the Postal Service and postal workers perform in service of the United States and its remarkable democracy.”

In several states, the union has run ads promoting mail voting as safe and a needed option for Americans. The ads were planned before Trump signed his executive order in March seeking to limit who can receive mail ballots, Smith said.

Now, the ads are taking a different meaning. Smith argued that “sometimes God works in mysterious ways.”

“The ad was then and is now intended as a piece to educate America about how good vote by mail is, how much it has been working out,” Smith said. “It’s an educational piece, not a response to the White House.”

Ahead of the election, Smith said postal workers are waiting for clarity on how their duties may change. But right now, he says, there isn’t much.

Orange County Registrar Bob Page said his office is monitoring any changes to existing federal and state election laws to ensure any changes, if needed, are implemented without disruptions. But he acknowledged the timing crunch could create some hurdles the closer the election gets.

“In many ways, any change to how California voters cast their ballots made between now and election day would create a challenge and may even be disruptive,” Page said.

He said many counties have ordered outgoing and return ballot envelopes for the election to ensure envelopes for more than 23 million California voters are ready to use by the Oct. 5 mailing deadline. Any change to how ballots should be prepared or mailed could present an issue.

“Our office has received calls from voters asking about potential changes to vote-by-mail procedures usually tied to media coverage about proposed changes,” he said. “We inform these voters that our procedures have not changed because the law has not changed and that we will mail their 2026 General Election ballots by Oct. 5.”

L.A. County prepares for possible voting changes

In Los Angeles County, election officials are also in a battle to bring clarity to the process as the administration ushers in a series of proposed changes to the election.

Dean Logan, the head of the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder/county clerk’s office, said his office is fighting to contain a wave of election misinformation, including some that is amplified by the White House.

“It’s not something that we’ve seen happen before, and certainly not at the level we’ve seen,” Logan said.

Rather than respond to every claim, Logan says his office picks its battles, intervening only when a falsehood appears likely to reach a wide audience. Even then, the office tries to avoid engagement with whoever is spreading it.

If the administration imposes a new rule closer to the election, Logan said his office is ready to follow the law.

“It’s really been about finding this balance of staying alert and prepared for the possibility [of change] but also not getting sucked into the political distraction,” he said.

Last month, Trump claimed without evidence that Democrats have cheated to win California’s primary elections, and boasted about federal prosecutors in Los Angeles investigating the matter.

Trump has also continued to claim Democrats are trying to rig or cheat in the upcoming election, remarks that have faced rebukes from members of his own party.

“I think it is ironic that we control the House, Senate, Supreme Court and the White House and we are yelling election fraud. I mean, we won all the damn elections,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) told reporters last month.

At the national level, Senate Democrats have said they plan to send election observers to polling places on behalf of Congress in reaction to Trump’s efforts.

“We are not waiting for chaos to arrive,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said last month. “We are preparing now.”

Times staff writer Justine McDaniel contributed to this report from Washington.

PHOENIX — For decades, all that separated the U.S. from Mexico was barbed wire.

Now, after a massive infusion of cash from Congress, President Trump’s administration is swiftly building what it has dubbed a “smart wall,” a combination of 30-foot-tall steel fencing and an array of sophisticated technology like sensors, cameras and towers allowing Border Patrol to surveil the territory.

The wall is under heavy scrutiny for the billions of dollars being dedicated to it when border crossings are at their lowest in decades. Critics say the U.S. is militarizing the border as it increasingly deploys sophisticated surveillance technology to the area, impacting local communities.

“We are seeing a massive expansion of surveillance and surveillance technology across the borderlands,” said Ricky Garza, border policy counsel at the Southern Border Communities Coalition, an advocacy group. “The wall in all its forms is harmful to communities.”

Officials say the technology is complementary to the physical wall and frees up agents for other tasks.

“It’s a smart wall. It’s not just a barrier,” Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott said during recent congressional testimony. “It maximizes the use of our most valuable resource, which is our agents.”

Contracts for hundreds of miles of wall already inked

The wall has been a top priority for Trump, a Republican, since he first ran for president.

During the administration of President Joe Biden, a Democrat, the border emerged as a flashpoint, with thousands of people seeking to cross into the country each day. Those numbers started to taper off shortly before Trump returned to office last year and then slowed to a trickle, with his broader immigration crackdown serving as a deterrent for would-be migrants.

Flush with $46 billion to finish the wall after an infusion by Congress for immigration enforcement, CBP is inking tens of billions of dollars in contracts to build the wall and push along the president’s signature project.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said recently that a preliminary part of the wall will be finished by “this time next year.” Scott said his agency is putting up 6 miles of wall a week.

Hundreds of miles had already been built before Trump returned to office. As of mid-June 2026, CBP has erected another 74 miles and aims to build hundreds more. There is no wall planned for roughly 535 miles of the roughly 2,000-mile-long border, because rugged terrain already serves as a barrier. Ground sensors and towers will be used instead.

CBP is also going back to hundreds of miles of already built wall and adding more technology, lights and roads. Along the long stretches of river in Texas that mark the border with Mexico, they’re deploying 12- to 15-foot-long cylinder-shaped buoys meant to keep migrants or smugglers from crossing the border.

More technology being deployed on the border

Technology is playing a greater role in the Trump administration’s effort to make illegal crossings along the border more difficult, part of a broader transformation of CBP in the years since Sept. 11, 2001, into an intelligence operation with a mass surveillance network whose reach extends far beyond the nation’s frontiers, according to reporting by The Associated Press.

And critics say the border technology poses a threat.

The Southern Border Communities Coalition says surveillance technologies can push migrants into more dangerous routes to avoid being detected.

Garza, the group’s policy counsel, warned that surveillance technology infringes on the privacy rights of border residents and that locals have found ground sensors used to detect smuggler or migrant traffic placed on their property without their consent.

Nayda Alvarez and her relatives own land along the Rio Grande roughly 125 miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico. She has found cameras placed on her family’s land, and just last week she spotted a surveillance tower about a quarter of a mile down the river from her house.

“Are we expecting a war or something?” she said. “It doesn’t make me feel safer.”

Dave Maass, director of investigations for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit that focuses on civil liberties related to digital technology, said the technology has made the border area “a hostile environment” for locals and would-be migrants.

The foundation has published a guide on the various types of surveillance towers in use along the southern border designed to help local residents.

These can range from fixed towers with video, infrared and radar technologies that have a range of roughly 8 miles to remote video surveillance systems that have cameras and a spotlight fixed on top. Some are mounted on the backs of trucks so agents can drive them to different parts of the border.

Increasingly, these towers are autonomous. They can scan an area, analyze what they’re seeing using artificial intelligence and alert Border Patrol agents to something suspicious. Proponents say this helps keep Border Patrol agents out in the field instead of sitting in front of computer screens watching for activity. But it also increases AI decision-making along the border when experts have warned about the technology’s potential for bias or other problems.

The big GOP tax cuts and spending bill passed by Congress last summer requires that CBP buys only the autonomous towers, and the department is deploying an additional 95.

Underground, buried fiberoptic cables can sense movement, capturing data that is also then analyzed by AI.

“We follow the contour of the land. We go through trees. We go down into the river banks. We can go absolutely everywhere,” said Magnus McEwen-King, CEO of Sintela, which has a contract with CBP to install the cables. He spoke at a recent border security expo in Phoenix, where some of the technology was on display.

CBP also uses ground sensors and trail cameras to detect smuggling routes.

Concerns over cost and future plans

The nonpartisan watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense has questioned both the huge amounts of money for the wall-building and whether taxpayers are getting their money’s worth.

In 2011, under Democratic President Obama, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano pulled the plug on a project to build a “virtual wall” of integrated technology like radars, sensors and cameras across the entire border after it ran over budget, faced technological glitches and was behind schedule.

Josh Sewell, director of research and policy at Taxpayers for Common Sense, said the organization would like to see more “robust evaluation” of the technologies being used to avoid similar scenarios. And he criticized the Trump administration for lack of oversight on how the money is being spent, a charge CBP has denied, citing “oversight mechanism.”

In the Big Bend area of southern Texas, opposition to the department’s wall-building plans gathered strong bipartisan support especially in the most sensitive areas that run through a state and national park and a wildlife area.

CBP now says it is not planning to build a 30-foot-high bollard wall in those areas. Its recently announced plans include installing patrol roads and some barriers designed to stop cars and using detection technologies.

Clara Benson, who is one of the founders of the No Big Bend Wall coalition, says bright lights in the area designed to illuminate the border could pollute the skies in an area renowned for having some of the best views of the stars. Even without a 30-foot-tall steel wall running through the land, there is concern about CBP’s plans.

“There’s still a lot of fear and dread that the plan is still going to be quite damaging,” she said.

Santana writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — As America’s 250th birthday arrives this weekend, President Trump’s mark is clearly visible on Washington.

Visitors to the nation’s capital are being met with cranes hanging over the White House and construction at the site of the demolished East Wing. Fences crisscrossing the National Mall to hem in the Great American State Fair have blocked the famed sightline from the U.S. Capitol to the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial.

Some fountains newly sparkle as a result of Trump’s renovations. National Guardsmen patrol the sidewalks. The partisan flavor of the Trump-aligned Freedom 250 organization’s events is on display, and the fireworks show Saturday will feature a rally-style speech from Trump, with fireworks reportedly pushed back to 11 p.m.

President Trump examines the maintenance work Wednesday on the exterior of the White House.

(Alex Wong / Getty Images)

The memorial’s Reflecting Pool, where fireworks will be set off Saturday, was barricaded from the public earlier than usual after onlookers flocked last week to see the algae and peeling paint that followed Trump’s renovation, and Trump accused vandals of tampering with it.

“You don’t have a sense of ‘land of the free’ here,” said Melissa McFarlane, 61, standing along the fencing on the Mall. She said she was born in Silver Spring, Md., and she grew up watching July 4 fireworks on the Mall with her parents.

She recalled the nation’s 200th anniversary celebrations as “open and inviting” but said this year’s “heavy-duty fencing” and the presence of National Guardsmen made it feel different.

“It’s majorly disorganized, which is weird for our country,” McFarlane added.

A sign outside Lafayette Park near the White House.

(Julia Demaree Nikhinson / Associated Press)

Trump has fixated on making changes to the nation’s capital in his second term, declaring in an early executive order that his administration would make the district “safe and beautiful.” Some of the renovations have been successful; fountains are running anew, including the long-dormant cascading water feature at the city’s popular Meridian Hill Park.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said Sunday on “Fox & Friends” that more than 50 parks and circles have been restored and 22 fountains, along with repairs to lights on the National Mall.

“President Trump should be thanked for all he is doing to leave things better than he found them for the good of our great nation,” an Interior Department spokesperson said in a statement. “D.C. residents and visitors are experiencing working fountains, clean parks and safe streets across the district for the first time in decades, all thanks to President Donald J. Trump.”

But Trump’s growing slate of projects has drawn legal challenges from preservationist groups and raised questions about the cost to taxpayers. The $14.7-million repainting of the Reflecting Pool became particularly controversial last month after algae overtook the renovated pool and the new paint appeared to peel off.

On Sunday, the president took a tour of some of his construction sites, walking through Lafayette Park with Burgum before traveling to the East Potomac golf club he plans to renovate, which sits on federal land. Trump walked part of the property and inspected blueprints in view of reporters; he was then driven by the site where he wants to erect a marble arch.

Over the weekend, he posted on Truth Social about his improvements to the city in a post about D.C. mayoral candidate Janeese Lewis George, casting it as a “Safe and Prestigious Community” that is now at risk of being “destroyed” by Lewis George.

“I have worked too hard to make Washington, D.C., the Envy of the World, with almost No Crime, and a Beautification process that has been second to none,” Trump wrote.

Construction crews build scaffolding outside the Kennedy Center on June 13 before removing President Trump’s name from the venue’s exterior.

(Tasos Katopodis / Getty Images)

Involvement by presidents in the city’s plan goes back to George Washington, said Matthew J. Bell, an architecture professor at the University of Maryland. That is not unusual, nor is it strange for cities, including Washington, to change over time, he said.

“It’s probably more a matter of timing in terms of inconvenience for people coming for the Fourth,” Bell said of the ongoing construction. “If there had been a more coordinated plan for some of these things … it probably could’ve been managed better.”

At the National Mall, the fencing design for the state fair drew head shakes and confusion from some tourists. Visitors are corralled into a walkway by the Freedom 250-branded fencing on one side and low metal barriers on the other.

It’s normal for fencing to be used to control foot traffic for events on the mall, said Charles A. Birnbaum, chief executive of the Cultural Landscape Foundation, but he perceived the problem as slapdash placement, including of the Ferris wheel, which was put on the mall’s axis.

“Things are being plopped down,” said Birnbaum, whose organization sued the administration over the repainting of the Reflecting Pool. “It speaks to what Trump is doing at the ballroom, what he’s proposed [with] the arch — he’s just plopping these things down in major view sheds that have major historical and cultural significance.”

People walk past the Ferris wheel at the Great American State Fair on the National Mall.

(Jen Golbeck / Associated Press)

The fountains in Lafayette Park are running again near the White House on June 23.

(Andrew Harnik / Getty Images)

The state fair itself has drawn relatively few crowds, though some attendees have been enthusiastic.

On Monday, McFarlane and two friends were outside the fencing, leaning against the metal barriers in front of the Department of Agriculture, which faces the National Mall.

“It’s a little too secure,” said one of them, John, 60, who was visiting from Burbank and declined to give his last name.

He gestured over the barrier to a manicured plot with shady benches. “Here’s the People’s Garden,” he said, reading its sign, “and we can’t go in.”

A construction crane works on the White House ballroom on Monday.

(Julia Demaree Nikhinson / Associated Press)

Visitors take photos Tuesday of a model of President Trump’s proposed marble arch at the Great American State Fair on the National Mall.

(Mark Schiefelbein / Associated Press)

Early-morning joggers observer the refilling of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on June 5.

(John McDonnell / Associated Press)

The anniversary celebrations also come on the heels of the reflecting pool controversy. Last week, after chunks of paint were spotted in the water, Trump blamed vandals for tampering with the pool and said people had been arrested at the site. Two dead ducks were found in a pond about 250 feet away from the pool.

The area last week was surrounded by surveillance cameras and patrolled by National Guardsmen as lifelong resident John Cates strolled the area.

“It’s kind of creepy,” Cates said about the security cameras mounted around the pool. “It is unnecessary that we have to have this pond deemed a high security risk. That is weird.”

The area was fenced off at the end of last week. Fencing normally occurs in preparation for the July 4 fireworks show, but it went up “a couple days early to protect the pool,” Burgum said in the Fox News interview. He said seven people had been arrested in connection with the pool.

Tom Ayers, 34, was disappointed to find the fences already up on Monday. He traveled with his father from Wisconsin for the 250th, but they were finding it difficult to get around the Mall and they were upset to see the East Wing gone.

When they reached Lafayette Park, where the fencing had yet to be removed, they were again disappointed by the obscured view of the White House. Ayers’ father recalled a different scene in 1976, when he visited as a child for the nation’s bicentennial.

“I was kind of hoping for a summer similar to that,” Ayers said, “but overall, it seems nowhere close.”

Times staff writer Ana Ceballos in Washington contributed to this report.

Constitutional lawyer Bruce Fein says the US was founded on the principle that governments exist to protect inalienable rights. He argues expanded presidential powers and unchecked authority represents a step backwards for US democracy.

Ethics experts sounded the alarm Wednesday after new financial disclosure reports revealed that President Trump’s income ballooned to $2.2 billion in 2025, with $1.4 billion coming from various new cryptocurrency-related businesses.

“It’s bribery. It’s graft. It’s exploitation of public power for private financial gain,” said Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University and an expert in government ethics. “Trump has — with the acquiescence of a somnolent, GOP-controlled Congress and the active assistance of John Roberts’ Supreme Court — transformed the presidency into a massive corruption racket.”

Trump reported income of over $600 million in 2024. But after he entered the White House in 2025, he reported that his income had soared to more than $2.2 billion.

The 2025 annual disclosure report filed with the Office of Government Ethics shows that Trump ramped up his real estate business in countries across the globe, particularly in the Middle East, at a time when his government was negotiating over vital issues of military aid and economic tariffs. The president also expanded his dealings in the relatively new realm of cryptocurrency.

According to the 927-page report, Trump made $635 million in royalties from Celebration Coins and more than $500 million from his World Liberty Financial crypto firm. He drew in millions from a raft of Trump-branded merchandise including God Bless the USA Bibles and sneakers depicting him with his hand raised in a fist. He also brought in $10.4 million from a property in the United Arab Emirates and $9 million from a property in Saudi Arabia.

Noah Bookbinder, an ethics expert and former president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, a nonprofit watchdog group in Washington, described Trump’s business dealings while in the White House as “entirely unprecedented, certainly in modern history, but I think by most ways of measuring, in all of American history.”

“This is corruption,” Bookbinder said. “You have a president who has been quite transparently using the presidency in ways that benefit his business interests and intertwining the presidency and business interests.”

But the president and the White House brushed aside ethics concerns about the money Trump is making.

Trump told reporters Wednesday that he made a lot of money before he came to the White House, he had “big institutions” run his money, and that he had benefited, like every other American, as the stock market went up.

“We’re all profiting,” he said. “I’m profiting because I have a lot of money and a lot of cash.”

In a statement, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said: “Neither the President nor his family has ever engaged — or will ever engage — in conflicts of interest. … All actions by President Trump and his administration are taken in the best interest of the American people.”

Although the report does not show exactly how much Trump is earning — it provides details of revenue, rather than profit — the scale of the president’s cryptocurrency dealings elevated ethics watchdogs’ long-standing concerns.

Jordan Libowitz, a vice president at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, said the most concerning detail of the new report is the hundreds of millions of dollars coming in from various crypto ventures partnered with companies that the American public knows little about.

“At a time when his own administration itself is setting regulation for these types of companies,” Libowitz said, “there’s just this massive opportunity for corruption when foreign governments and foreign nationals can pour tens of millions of dollars into the president’s pocket.”

As a real estate mogul, Trump has long invested in hotels, condominiums and golf courses. But cryptocurrency, Libowitz said, offers vastly more potential for corruption.

“There’s only so many hotel rooms you can book, so many rounds of golf, but there’s no limit with crypto,” Libowitz said. “You can just buy his meme coin and he gets a cut, so you kind of take out the middleman, but also the cap or the amount of money you can funnel to the president.”

Libowitz said it was also problematic for Trump to expand his real estate empire in foreign countries, particularly the Middle East.

“Now it seems that almost all his new developments are in foreign countries, and that opens up, if you’re building this giant resort, you’re going to need help from the local government, whether it’s tax breaks or utility issues, or building a road, or speeding up permits,” Libowitz said. “These are ways that foreign governments can do favors for the American president.”

In the half a century before Trump was elected, ethics experts say, presidents from Nixon to Obama publicly released their tax returns, sold properties or put the proceeds in a blind trust managed by someone they did not know.

“They weren’t doing it because they legally had to, but because they thought it was the right thing to do,” Libowitz said.

Ever since Trump was first elected in 2016 and opted to not sell his businesses or put them in blind trusts, ethics experts have urged Congress to impose more aggressive financial oversight over money in politics.

“Congress needs to update the law, and basically, mandate blind trusts and sale of assets and disclosure of tax returns,” Libowitz said.

Noting that the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause explicitly states that the president cannot accept things of value from foreign or domestic governments, ethics experts say Trump is flouting the law and Congress has chosen to not enforce it.

Richard Painter, a law professor at the University of Minnesota and former White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, said Congress needed to close loopholes that exempt presidents from federal conflict of interest laws as well as enforce the Foreign Emoluments Clause.

“Nobody holding a position of trust with the United States government can accept emoluments, profits and benefits from foreign governments, and that is flatly prohibited under the United States Constitution,” Painter said. “Now, if the United Arab Emirates put money into Liberty Financial, as I understand they did … and then Trump makes money off Liberty Financial, that’s a Foreign Emoluments Clause problem.”

Congress, he said, should empower an independent prosecutor to investigate such conflicts.

“The problem with the Foreign Emoluments Clause is how do we enforce it?” Painter said. “The founders and head of the Congress enforced it by impeaching anybody who took a bunch of foreign government money, but I guess that system’s not working. That’s a serious problem.”

July 1 (UPI) — John Brennan, former director of the CIA and a longtime foe of the Trump administration, filed a lawsuit Wednesday asking a federal court to preserve all records related to the administration’s investigation of him.

The Justice Department has been eyeing Brennan for months, with lawyers interviewing former intelligence officials and issuing subpoenas as part of a conspiracy investigation, The Washington Post reported.

Justice Department officials have alleged that Brennan and others violated President Donald Trump‘s civil rights in a conspiracy back to the Obama administration that included efforts to prosecute Trump and investigate his ties to Russia, The Post said. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, also referred Brennan to the Justice Department, alleging that he lied during testimony to Congress.

Brennan’s attorneys requested that a judge order the administration to preserve any internal records and communications from the investigation.

The records could be used as part of defense arguments that the investigation and any prosecution are part of Trump’s attempt to vindictively punish Brennan, the attorneys said, citing an administration policy “of using criminal process and prosecution to punish the president’s perceived adversaries,” The Post said.

“Administration officials from the acting attorney general to the FBI director and the counselor overseeing the Brennan investigations have been publicly declaring Director Brennan a criminal, not only before securing a conviction in court but even before a full investigation and indictment,” the lawyers wrote, CNN reported.

“And, certain officials in the Department of Justice are engaging in demonstrably irregular prosecutorial activity in order to gin up a case that will satisfy the president’s direction,” they wrote.

Brennan has also said the court should preserve any records that could be used in any broader “grand conspiracy” investigation by the Justice Department. He has denied any wrongdoing. The lawsuit names Trump, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, FBI Director Kash Patel and prosecutors in Florida overseeing the investigation.

California’s effort to restrict sales of handguns that can be converted into fully-automatic machine guns drew an immediate federal challenge Wednesday, with the Trump administration suing the state over its new “Glock ban” law just hours after it took effect.

The U.S. Department of Justice is seeking a court order to block the controversial state law that limits where most Glock and Glock-style pistols can be sold. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, also aims to invalidate key parts of the state’s handgun roster — a list that dictates the types of firearms that Californians may legally purchase. In a statement Wednesday, acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche said that both policies “trample” the rights of law-abiding Californians.

“The Second Amendment is a sacred right belonging to all Americans, even those in California,” Blanche said. “California cannot ban the most popular type of handgun in America.”

California’s Assembly Bill 1127 does not explicitly name the Glock brand, but instead targets any handgun with a specific mechanism that can easily be converted by a black market device. These simple “Glock switches” convert semiautomatic handguns into a weapon capable of firing 20 rounds per second with a single squeeze of the trigger.

Advances in 3D printing have made the conversion devices widely available and cheap to produce. Federal authorities reported recovering 11,088 of them from crime scenes between 2019 and 2023. Switches have been used in several mass shootings, including one in Sacramento that resulted in six deaths and 12 injuries in 2022.

The new law does not prohibit the possession of affected handguns already owned by Californians, and includes exemptions for gun dealers, as well as law enforcement and military agencies.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the bill in October, and has maintained that firearm laws are responsible for California’s declining crime rates and gun deaths.

“The Trump administration is once again trying to dismantle California’s commonsense gun safety laws,” Diana Crofts-Pelayo, a spokesperson for the governor, said in a statement. “Our response is simple — these laws save lives.”

The federal government argues in its complaint that California can’t ban legal semiautomatic handguns simply because they could be illegally altered, adding that state and federal law already prohibit such pistol converters. The U.S. compared California’s approach to banning ordinary shotguns because they can be illegally shortened.

The lawsuit also challenges California’s decades-old handgun roster, which requires new handgun models to pass certain safety tests before they can be approved for retail sale. A federal judge tentatively blocked portions of the roster requirements in a separate 2023 case, which is being appealed before the 9th Circuit. That lawsuit was filed by the California Rifle & Pistol Assn. and other gun rights supporters following a landmark 2022 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that set new standards for evaluating firearm restrictions.

Under those new guidelines, the Trump administration wants a judge to find that California’s gun restrictions violate the 2nd Amendment, and is seeking an order to bar the state from enforcing them.

The Trump administration is relying on a federal civil rights law typically used against police departments accused of repeated constitutional violations, arguing that California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and state Justice Department agents qualify as peace officers and therefore violate gun owners’ rights whenever they enforce handgun restrictions.

Bonta, who is named in the suit, has a winning court record over the Trump administration, and has secured at least 12 final court rulings and more than 35 preliminary injunctions or emergency orders.

“We won’t be intimidated by another politically motivated lawsuit,” said Crofts-Pelayo, Newsom’s spokesperson. “We’ll continue defending the laws that protect Californians and keep dangerous weapons off our streets.”

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Wednesday took his maiden voyage on a new Air Force One — a retrofitted Boeing 747 worth $400 million gifted by Qatar that embeds his personality more deeply into the institution of the American presidency.

Gone is the trademark light blue hull that helped Air Force One blend into the sky. The refurbished jet is painted to Trump’s preferred color scheme of a navy blue belly and red and gold stripes. It has the luxury features that the president believes a commander-in-chief’s entourage should have — plush carpets, lie-flat seats, wood paneling and a presidential seal on the seat belts, according to reported tours of the plane.

Trump told reporters that he was proud of the luxurious plane. “You can do two things: You can low-key it, or you can show it,” he said.

Reporters are generally not permitted to take photos on the plane unless Trump is present. But on Wednesday, Trump administration staffers posted images of the plane’s interior on social media.

White House communications director Steven Cheung posted a photo of aides gathered around a circular table that had off-white place mats and leather captain’s chairs. Monica Crowley, the chief of U.S. protocol, posted a picture of herself perched on a leather couch between a pair of Air Force One throw pillows. Mounted on the wall behind her was a framed photo of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial.

The jet carried Trump to North Dakota to see the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, its first official visitor ahead of its opening on the nation’s 250th anniversary.

The gift from the Middle Eastern power raised ethical concerns, but Trump saw the plane as a necessary replacement to the 35-year-old planes that had previously ferried him as president.

“This is a gift from a country that has treated us very well,” Trump said.

The new jet will only temporarily be in the nation’s service, as Boeing is expected to deliver in 2028 long-delayed planes that will permanently serve as Air Force One. Trump, a Republican, has said in the past that the Qatar plane would end up in a presidential library.

The Air Force has said that it did little to change the cabin layout of the plane and that it spent less than $400 million on security upgrades.

Nikhinson and Boak write for the Associated Press.

This week’s narrow Supreme Court decision protecting birthright citizenship is rightly being hailed as a triumph for the American experiment.

By some, anyway.

Check out MAGA world and you’ll quickly find Trump surrogates and even elected leaders spouting a kind of extremist anti-immigrant sentiment that once, not so long ago, was considered intolerable in the public sphere.

This has included suggestions that go as far as banning pregnant women from traveling to the United States for fear they might give birth here, and — no joke — one notable commentator writing that demanding female immigrants be sterilized might be a solution.

Trump’s Homeland Security advisor Stephen Miller said after the ruling that children of immigrants might not be “qualified to carry on or capable of executing the inheritance of this country.”

“We have people from all over the world, from Third World nations, nations that on their own would have never invented the wheel, let alone modern technology, let alone medicine, let alone air travel, and they can just come into the country, have a baby at a hospital, paid for it by you and me, and then that baby is automatically a citizen,” Miller said.

Before you tell me that the Supreme Court has spoken and this is a done deal, no matter if there’s more gross Miller mush, let me tell you about Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s written opinion and why it matters. It is, if read in the right light, a warning for what comes next — a fight to rewrite history to serve political aims.

“The odds were long and the stakes were high,” Jackson wrote about the creation of the 14th Amendment in 1866, which has long been understood as granting citizenship to any child born on U.S. soil and which was the focus of this case.

Still, she wrote, despite the unlikeliness of post-Civil War America rising to the challenge of inclusiveness, the amendment was always meant to do just that — because free Black people, recently emancipated but denied citizenship, “fought for the shared humanity of all people.”

An alternative interpretation by MAGA world of this amendment and this history was the center of this case.

To greatly simplify, the 14th Amendment was originally a response to a Supreme Court decision, the Dred Scott case, that said freed Black slaves could not be U.S. citizens. MAGA world was arguing that the authors of the 14th Amendment never intended much more than that — citizenship for ex-slaves and their descendants.

While concurring with the majority of the court, Jackson also wrote her own summary that makes a vital point: Without history that includes the Black experience — as most of the arguments in this case did — we are left bereft of the suffering that has shaped our values and which gives us the empathy required to be a pluralistic society.

Black history — any non-white history, really — is the history of resistance and the road map to recovery from this dark era of hate.

It’s hard to call someone your fellow citizen if you take away their humanity — which is exactly what this case was attempting to do by splitting into factions those who would fight for equality and rewriting history with only the voices that match the current administration’s goals.

It was disappointing that the court, whose individual justices bounced around arguments from a myriad of sources outside of their erstwhile adherence to the ideas of originalism, did not call out that erasure more forcefully, and that it was left to Jackson to do so.

Jackson took that narrow idea that Black people — and the white legislators sympathetic to their cause — had only themselves in mind when crafting the 14th Amendment and attacked it head-on, arguing that if we just look at what Black people were saying at the time, the larger intent of the amendment becomes clear.

“This alternative account pitches Black Americans against immigrants when the advocates who promoted the Fourteenth Amendment did no such thing,” Jackson pointed out of the MAGA version of events. “Freed Blacks fought for the shared humanity of all people.”

That “universalist vision of belonging and citizenship,” she wrote, “eventually won the day.”

The 14th Amendment was largely written by Sen. Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, who took much of the basis of it from the legal arguments of Black intellectuals, including Frederick Douglass, the most influential Black statesman of the era.

Trumbull then argued in Congress that the amendment was meant to be inclusive — even of so-called “gypsies” and Chinese immigrants, who faced extreme racism, especially in California.

One congressman opposed to the measure warned that if it passed, Chinese immigrants would “overrun” California and “will double or treble the population.” At the same time, the Romani would likely continue to “wander in gangs” and “have no homes, pretend to own no land, live nowhere, settle as trespassers where ever they go, and whose sole merit is a universal swindle,” he warned.

Asked if the amendment would grant citizenship to those two controversial groups of immigrants, Jackson points out that Trumbull gave an unapologetic “undoubtedly,” again drawing on the universalist ideas of Douglass and others.

The “child of an Asiatic is just as much a citizen as the child of a European,” Trumbull said (and Jackson quoted, drawing from an amicus brief by Evan Bernick of Northern Illinois University and Jed Sugerman of Boston University).

“There is a serious breakdown in on the court that reflects the breakdown and echo chambers in America,” Sugerman, the professor, told me Wednesday. “When it comes to history and originalism, you have to read more broadly than just the founding fathers that you liked.”

So the history of the 14th Amendment is right there — equality not just for Black Americans but for immigrant Americans — but it required Jackson to write her own opinion to put it on the court record.

Legal scholars aligned with Trump did Olympic-level gymnastics in this case to parse what the authors of the 14th Amendment meant with the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction” — words that MAGA claimed were meant to secretly exclude undocumented immigrants.

Brown instead reminded us that outside of those white-only discussions when the amendment was written, it was the activism of Black people — their demand for colorblind equality — that actually shaped the final words that granted citizenship to all babies born within our borders.

Solidarity — the unbreakable strength of American democracy.

After the ruling, Trump wrote on social media that Congress could write legislation undoing birthright citizenship. Some pundits say that wouldn’t work, but I’m here to say Trump has managed a bunch of stuff that the pundits said wouldn’t work.

More chilling, and direct, were more comments from Miller.

“It’s an abomination,” he said of the ruling.

But “because of President Trump’s courage and leadership, we are now on the precipice. Yes, we were dealt a setback, but because of his courage alone, we’re on the precipice as a nation of being in a position to end this travesty once and for all, and that’s what we have to fight for.”

Miller and his ilk are seeking to rewrite history to justify their vision of the future of America.

Jackson alone in the court offered us both a warning and a path — a reminder that our history holds indisputable facts despite politics, and we erase them at our own peril.

President Donald Trump is flying on the U.S. Air Force’s new VC-25B Bridge aircraft for the first time. The modified, Qatari-gifted Boeing 747-8i is taking Trump and others to North Dakota for the opening of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library and for other celebrations marking the 250th anniversary of the United States. The Air Force formally accepted delivery of the plane less than two weeks ago.

The White House has confirmed to TWZ that this is Trump’s first flight aboard the Bridge aircraft. The plane has been the source of controversy, including over its ability to adequately serve in the Air Force One role, something TWZ has questioned in detail in the past. The gifting of the jet from Qatar in the first place was also highly irregular, and the justification for needing it at all remains up for debate. The converted 747-8i has also been painted in a new scheme for U.S. executive aircraft preferred by Trump, which is a major departure from the Kennedy-era Air Force One livery that had been the standard for 60 years.

Decorative books, soft lighting, framed photos on new AF1, a gift from Qatar and retrofitted for presidential use by Trump. Some of the 1st images out publicly from @StevenCheung47, who is pictured with Ross Worthington, Natalie Harp, Karoline Leavitt, Meredith O’Rourke, Stephen… pic.twitter.com/jdVWNPvCmA

— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) July 1, 2026

For the first time, the VC-25B bridge aircraft has flown over the Washington, D.C. area with the callsign “AIR FORCE ONE.” @POTUS is on his way to North Dakota today. pic.twitter.com/VVwTbsyAKi

— Andrew Leyden (@PenguinSix) July 1, 2026

“This will be the first flight of what I think is maybe the greatest commercial plane ever built. I said to Boeing, what’s the best one? They said this is the best plane ever built. And you’re going to have the privilege of flying it, and I have the privilege also of flying it,” Trump told reporters before boarding the plane at Andrews Air Force Base. “I’m excited about the first flight.”

One of the Air Force’s two existing VC-25A Air Force One aircraft is serving as a backup for Trump’s trip today.

VC-25B-Bridge Makes Maiden Flight as AIR FORCE 1

US Air Force VC-25B-Bridge #AF83F3 is in the air from JB Andrews as AIR FORCE 1 for the first time.

USAF VC-25A #ADFDF9 is serving as SAM47 for this trip, a role that this aircraft hasn’t been in for years. pic.twitter.com/8fblf7iA6h

— TheIntelFrog (@TheIntelFrog) July 1, 2026

Bloomberg was first to report that the trip to North Dakota would be Trump’s first flight aboard the Bridge aircraft. NBC News had previously reported that the inaugural flight of the Bridge aircraft might come later in the week, taking Trump on a planned trip to Mount Rushmore in South Dakota on July 3. It is still very possible, if not probable, that the plane will take Trump to South Dakota, as well.

Reuters also reported back in May that the debut of the VC-25B Bridge jet might come during a July 4th flyover. The former Qatari jet was unveiled to the public on June 19, but it has been confirmed that it will fly over Washington, D.C. as part of the celebrations this weekend.

Significant questions do still remain about the Bridge aircraft’s ability to support the full spectrum of Air Force One mission requirements, especially given that the plane was modified for this role in just 10 months. U.S. officials and defense contractor L3Harris, which did the conversion work, have insisted that operational concerns have been addressed and have downplayed any potential risks.

“One of the first things we have to do on this aircraft, in conjunction with the U.S. government, is ensure it is safe. There was a lot of content and buzz on blogs and whatnot about is the aircraft secure? Is there anything that we wouldn’t want coming in on the aircraft? Somebody could listen in, something like that,” Jason Lambert, President of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) at L3Harris, told TWZ in an interview last week. “I can assure you that was very effectively managed to the highest degree. Experts from the U.S. government, experts from L3Harris, experts in cyber security, electronic warfare, ensured that every square inch of that plane was clean, not only on the exterior but interior of the plane and all systems within. So I’ll say, there’s just electronic scrubbing, is how I would describe it, to ensure that it was safe and secure. Frankly, that work took place even before we were able to do any real work on the plane.”

“Survivability of the aircraft was something that was absolutely thought of, but I can’t comment on the specific systems on the aircraft yet. That’s one I’ll have to direct you back to the Air Force,” he added. Lambert also deferred to the Air Force when asked about hardening against electromagnetic pulses, command and control capabilities, and other core Air Force One requirements.

Readers can find the full interview here.

The Air Force’s two existing VC-25A Air Force One aircraft remain in service, as evidenced by the one serving today as a backup. Boeing is still working toward delivering two fully-equipped VC-25B jets around the end of the decade. The VC-25Bs are set to replace the aging and increasingly difficult to sustain VC-25As, which were converted from older 747-200 models. However, that program has suffered repeated delays and cost growth. The Air Force is also now operating an additional 747-8i, acquired from Lufthansa, as a trainer for aircrew and ground personnel. A second ex-Lufthansa 747 will serve as a source of spare parts for the expanded Air Force One fleet.

Trump’s inauguration flight today aboard the VC-25B Bridge jet makes clear that it is now firmly in the Air Force One rotation.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The White House submitted a 927-page financial disclosure to the US Office of Government Ethics on Tuesday, offering the fullest picture yet of how US President Donald Trump’s fortune has grown since he returned to office in January 2025.

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Barely established when he was sworn in, Trump’s crypto businesses now generate more revenue than large parts of the property empire he spent decades assembling with his family, earning the US president more than $1.2 billion (€1.05bn) last year.

Two ventures account for the bulk of the crypto windfall.

World Liberty Financial, the firm launched in 2024 by Trump’s sons and business partners, brought in more than $500 million (€438mn) from selling new crypto products, among them so-called governance tokens, which grant holders voting rights in certain company decisions but no ownership stake.

A separate business tied to the $TRUMP “meme” coin, a cryptocurrency bearing the US president’s face and name, generated a further $635 million (€557mn) from token sales.

Trump’s crypto activities appear to be a major driver of the near tripling of his personal fortune, which Forbes estimates rose from $2.3 billion (€2bn) to $6.5 billion (€5.7bn) between 2024 and 2026.

For many buyers, the story has been far less lucrative.

The $TRUMP coin, which briefly traded above $74 in the days after its launch, has since collapsed to under $2, while World Liberty’s tokens have shed around 80% of their value since they began trading last September.

Since the disclosure lists only revenue and not profit, the true scale of Trump’s personal gains cannot be known. However, the filing shows that the US president and his family collected fees and royalties up front, while many investors have seen the value of their holdings fall sharply.

Among those investors was Chinese-born crypto billionaire Justin Sun, who poured $75 million (€65.7mn) into the governance tokens and $200 million (€175.3mn) into both $TRUMP and $MELANIA meme coins.

A US fraud case against him was later paused before being resolved with a $10 million (€8.7mn) settlement. Sun has denied any connection between his spending and the outcome of his legal troubles.

After the release of the filing, the White House also rejected suggestions of any ethical concerns.

“Neither the President nor his family has ever engaged, or will ever engage, in conflicts of interest,” Principal Deputy US Press Secretary Anna Kelly said in a statement to AFP.

Kelly said US President Donald Trump had “proudly made the United States the crypto capital of the world.”

“All actions by President Trump and his administration are taken in the best interest of the American people, and any so-called ‘reporters’ pushing otherwise are recycling the same, tired, false narrative that Democrats and the legacy media have been pushing for a decade,” Kelly added.

Beyond crypto: Trump’s wider business empire

The filing also details an aggressive international expansion, with new hotel, resort and condominium agreements generating millions of dollars in countries that were negotiating with Washington over trade and security at the same time.

A development in the United Arab Emirates earned the Trump business around $10.4 million (€9.1mn) last year, one in Saudi Arabia roughly $9 million (€7.9mn), and projects in Qatar, Romania and Vietnam were $5 million (€4.3mn) apiece.

Closer to home, the US president’s established businesses boomed alongside all the new ventures.

Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club in Florida, generated around $77 million (€67.5mn), a jump of roughly 50% on the previous year, as heads of state and executives flocked to the property during his new term.

The disclosure also reveals the wide range of ways the Trump brand is now monetised.

The US president earned millions from a sprawling range of branded goods, from sneakers and watches to bumper stickers, with Trump-branded watches alone bringing in $4.7 million (€4.1mn), and more than $200,000 (€175,300) coming from the “God Bless the USA” Bible, a branded edition promoted with country singer Lee Greenwood.

Branded merchandise of this kind, sold by a sitting US president, has no precedent.

A 1978 law requires the president and vice president of the United States to declare their income as well as their assets.

First Lady Melania Trump’s income is also set out in her husband’s financial disclosure, including more than $10 million (€8.7mn) tied to a biographical Amazon documentary and over $500,000 (€438,250) from her memoir.

For comparison, US Vice President JD Vance reported between $1 million (€876,500) and $5 million (€4.4mn) in royalties from his 2016 book “Hillbilly Elegy”.

Critics have long argued that such arrangements blur the line between public office and private profit. The White House rejects the charge outright.

July 1 (UPI) — President Donald Trump has announced that the Republican Party will hold a midterm convention, an unprecedented development seemingly aimed at mobilizing the GOP base ahead of November’s midterm elections.

The convention highlights the importance Trump has placed on the midterms, framing Republican control as necessary to protecting his presidency and the implementation of his America First agenda. He has warned Republicans that if they lose the House, Democrats would seek to impeach him and use their investigative powers to probe him, his family and other GOP officials.

Trump announced the convention Tuesday on his Truth Social media platform, saying it will be held Sept. 9-10 in Dallas, Texas.

“It will be fantastic! It has never been done before, and will be a truly Historic Event,” he said, describing it as an opportunity to promote his administration’s purported accomplishments.

“We are going to celebrate the GREAT AMERICAN COMEBACK, and the incredible successes of the American People who transformed our Country through the America First Agenda.”

GOP Chairman Joe Gruters emphasized that the event will be centered on the president, calling it “Trumpapalooza” in an online statement.

“This historic midterm convention will highlight President Trump’s many accomplishments and unwavering commitment to restoring America!” Gruters said, adding that the event will “showcase the work Republicans have done to advance the America First agenda!”

The convention will be held in a solidly red state but comes as Trump’s approval sinks and a as November Senate race is competitive.

Democrat James Talarico is running against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the Senate contest, and the convention may give draw attention to the GOP’s candidate.

Texas state Rep. Cassandra Garcia Hernandez, a Democrat, said the convention was proof that both the national and Texas Republican parties were worried about the Senate seat.

“They’re not only holding their first-ever midterm convention, they’re holding it right here in our state,” she said in an online statement.

“The battleground for our nation runs through Texas.”

Trump first said in September 2025 that the Republican Party would hold a midterm convention, saying it would “show the great things we have done since the Presidential Election of 2024.”

Democratic National Committee Executive Director Roger Lau responded to Trump’s September announcement by saying his party would be more reserved and precise with how it uses its resources.

“Republicans were baited into wasting time and money on a midterm convention that will sink their swing-seat candidates by tying them directly to Trump’s wildly unpopular policies,” Lau said in a statement.

June 30 (UPI) — President Donald Trump reported billions of dollars in income, revenue and other proceeds during his first year back in the White House, much of it tied to cryptocurrency ventures, according to his annual financial disclosure released Tuesday.

Trump reported at least $2.1 billion in income, revenue and other proceeds last year, according to his financial disclosure made public by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, with more than half tied to cryptocurrency.

Though Trump was initially skeptical about cryptocurrencies,, he embraced the digital currencies — and their supporters — during his third campaign for the White House. After being elected, he created what some analysts have called a crypto-friendly administration.

During his first year in office, he took several actions in support of the crypto industry, including signing a digital-assets executive order during his first week in office and creating a strategic Bitcoin reserve and U.S. digital asset stockpile.

The 927-page financial disclosure states the president reported more than $1.4 billion in cryptocurrency income and proceeds, including $635 million from his $TRUMP meme coin and nearly $800 million from World Liberty Financial, a Trump family-linked cryptocurrency venture.

The $TRUMP memecoin was a cryptocurrency Trump announced days before his inauguration. He announced the $MELANIA memecoin the day before he was inaugurated.

Memecoins are cryptocurrencies with little to no intrinsic utility, often derived from Internet memes and supported by online communities or fans.

After Trump announced the coins, critics accused him of attempting to profit from the presidency.

The disclosure also shows that Trump reported tens of millions in revenue from golf, resort and real estate-related holdings, including $121.9 million from Trump Doral, $77.5 million from Mar-a-Lago, $37.6 million from his Lamington Farm Club, $36.9 million from Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach and $31.6 million from his Jupiter Golf Club, among others.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed off on a 100% state tax on money any Californians receive from Trump’s $1.8-billion “anti-weaponization” fund for his political allies.

Newsom unveiled his proposal in May, after Trump’s Justice Department said it would create a fund to compensate Trump’s allies who claim they have “suffered weaponization and lawfare” under Biden’s Justice Department.

The settlement fund was criticized by politicians on both sides of the aisle, including Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who described it as a “slush fund to pay people who assault cops.”

The fund remains in legal limbo. Earlier this month, a federal judge in Virginia extended a court-ordered block on the plan, which critics warned could be used to pay pardoned Jan. 6 rioters.

Fast-tracked into law as part of Senate Bill 122, Newsom’s plan imposes “a tax on any settlement fund payment from the federal Anti-Weaponization Fund, or any subsequent fund, settlement, or agreement, as provided, at a rate of 100%,” according to the bill text. The tax applies to all tax years between 2026 and 2030.

Newsom signed the bill Tuesday. In a statement, his office said the tax is meant to ensure that, should Trump’s fund proceed, California recipients won’t “receive favorable state treatment on those payments.”

“We believe democracy is worth defending, the rule of law matters, and public dollars should support victims—not those who attacked the very institutions that protect our freedoms,” Newsom said in the statement.

University of Southern California law professor Ariel Jurow Kleiman, an expert on tax law and policy, said that while Newsom’s tax is a “novel legal strategy,” she believes there is “no categorical legal restriction” preventing California from implementing it.

States have a “wide degree of discretion” to design their tax systems — including how they define income — so long as they do not violate their constitutions, Jurow Kleiman said.

If a California resident wanted to challenge the tax in court, they would need to show they were harmed by it to have standing to sue, according to Jurow Kleiman. That would mean receiving a payment from Trump’s settlement fund and then paying the 100% California tax. Unless the settlement fund is established and distributes payments, that scenario is unlikely.

While there have been proposals to levy a 100% tax on income above certain thresholds — Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in 2023 said he supports a 100% tax on income exceeding $1 billion — Jurow Kleiman said she is not aware of any governments that have adopted such a policy.

Trump has launched a slate of crypto-friendly policies since returning to the White House for a second term.

A new government report has shown that United States President Donald Trump made millions from cryptocurrency and settlements with media companies last year, raising questions about possible conflicts of interest.

On Tuesday, the US Office of Government Ethics released annual financial disclosure forms for both Trump and his vice president, JD Vance.

One 927-page document itemises all of Trump’s reported assets and income for 2025. They include more than $1.4bn from his family’s cryptocurrency ventures.

Trump received more than $500m from World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture he and his sons co-founded. The president also reported another $635m from the sale of his $TRUMP meme coins.

The report suggests that investments in digital assets now generate one of the largest tranches of Trump’s income, overtaking even the real estate empire he inherited from his father.

The revelation is likely to intensify scrutiny of Trump’s policies.

Since returning to the White House in January 2025, Trump has launched a slate of crypto-friendly policies as he seeks to make the US the “crypto capital of the world”.

Early in his second term, for instance, the president announced that his government would create a national strategic cryptocurrency reserve to help ensure the stability of certain digital assets.

He also hosted the first-ever White House cryptocurrency summit.

The forum included several technology leaders that had been under investigation during the administration of Trump’s predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden.

But Trump reversed those actions. In February 2025, for instance, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced it would drop charges against Coinbase, the largest US-based cryptocurrency exchange, after it was accused of acting as an unregistered broker.

Other digital currency firms came under suspicion for fraudulent transactions.

Trump has coupled the shift away from government oversight with efforts to champion new legislation, including the GENIUS Act.

The law, passed in Congress in July 2025, created a general regulatory framework that required stablecoin, a type of cryptocurrency, to be backed one-to-one by US dollars. Advocates said the law would help to make cryptocurrency more mainstream.

“The entire crypto community: For years, you were mocked and dismissed and counted out,” Trump said during the law’s signing ceremony. “You were counted out as little as a year and a half ago, but this signing is a massive validation.”

But Trump’s increasingly close ties to the cryptocurrency industry have drawn criticism for its potential for corruption.

Last week, five Democratic senators, including Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal, called on their Republican colleagues to join them in forcing Trump administration officials to testify under oath about their cryptocurrency dealings.

They pointed to investments from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in World Liberty Financial, the company the Trump family co-owns with government envoy Steve Witkoff’s sons.

Those investments, they argued, “raise questions about what more the UAE may receive — or may have already received – at the expense of U.S. national security after investing in the Trump family crypto company”.

The five Democrats urged immediate hearings on the matter.

ATLANTA — President Trump has tried many ways to tighten his grip on U.S. elections, from signing executive orders to pushing restrictive legislation in Congress. Monday’s Supreme Court ruling siding with states that accept late-arriving mail ballots was the latest example showing the limits of his reach.

It followed back-to-back rulings last week that barred his two sweeping executive orders seeking to change national election rules, more court rulings preventing his Department of Justice from obtaining detailed state voter data and his stalled attempts to get the Senate to pass the SAVE Act. That measure would eliminate nearly all absentee voting, require citizenship documents to register to vote and impose photo identification requirements nationwide right before the midterm elections.

“It’s been a mixed bag for Republicans,” said University of Notre Dame law professor Derek Muller. But the president, he added, “has come up mostly empty-handed.”

Trump’s efforts have not been entirely fruitless. Republican-run states have satisfied his demands to redraw congressional district lines, efforts buoyed by the Supreme Court striking down a key section of the Voting Rights Act, and he has been directing his Department of Justice to investigate voting and election operations, which Democrats see as a possible prelude to their involvement in November.

All the activity around how the nation votes and runs its elections is a reflection of the Republican president’s long fixation on his false claim that his 2020 election defeat was rigged. He has been so frustrated by the inability of the Senate to pass the SAVE Act that he has refused to sign a bipartisan housing bill.

He weighed in again Monday after the Supreme Court’s decision in the mail ballot deadline case, saying on his social media account that he is trying to “save America from crooked elections.” Voting rights groups and Democrats see him abusing power and attempting to suppress legal voters to gain an advantage in the midterms, when control of Congress is at stake.

Regardless, Muller said Trump faces legal and political realities: The Constitution gives the states and Congress authority over elections while providing no such role for the president.

“That’s how federalism works,” Muller said.

Here’s a look at Trump’s efforts to reshape election rules and what options he might have left for the November midterms.

Focus on noncitizens and voter data has met roadblocks

The president has repeatedly said U.S. elections are riddled with fraud in part because of noncitizen voting. Research shows the problem to be rare, accounting for a minuscule percentage of fraud cases. Convictions are measured in the hundreds over periods in which tens of millions of ballots are cast.

Trump’s view resulted in a multiagency push to nationalize voter data and use federal resources to help states remove voters from the rolls. The Department of Justice has sought detailed voter files from multiple states, data that would include dates of birth and partial Social Security numbers. Democratic and some Republican secretaries of state balked, and federal lawsuits followed. The administration has lost every case so far.

Homeland Security citizenship check rejected in court

Trump’s Department of Homeland Security, with help from the DOGE effort led by Elon Musk, revamped a government tool called SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements). The program has been a key pillar of his efforts to cull potentially ineligible voters from state rolls.

Last week, a federal judge blocked its use as a mass citizenship check.

The administration, according to its own news releases, had allowed local election administrators to search users by the thousands, using a wider range of metrics rather than DHS-issued identification numbers. At least 67 million registrations, primarily in Republican-controlled states, were analyzed. Tens of thousands were flagged as potential noncitizens or people who have died, but some voters were wrongly identified as ineligible.

U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan ruled that Trump’s changes aggregated Americans’ sensitive personal data in a way that could result in voters being wrongly purged from the rolls.

“All in all, the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote,” Sooknanan said in her order.

Executive orders used in place of legislation

As presidents before him, Trump signed executive orders when Congress would not enact his policy preferences.

Trump’s first order reflected his emphasis on noncitizens. Like the SAVE Act pending on Capitol Hill, it sought to require would-be voters to document their citizenship to be able to register to vote.

U.S. District Court Judge Denise Casper put a temporary block on the order last year as she considered the case and last week made her decision permanent. The Constitution, Casper wrote, “does not grant the President any specific powers over elections.”

Trump issued a second order in March, as the SAVE Act’s rough path in Congress became obvious. He called for a national voter list using data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Social Security Administration. Further, the order would have empowered the U.S. Postal Service to determine who gets an absentee ballot and threatened local elections officials with prosecution.

Absentee voting is a staple of U.S. elections, but Trump describes the practice, incorrectly, as allowing fraud — even as he has used it himself. A 2025 report by the Brookings Institution found that mail voting fraud occurred in only 0.000043% of total mail ballots cast.

Democratic secretaries of state sued, and U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani made the same legal assessment as Casper. The provisions, she wrote last week, “unconstitutionally violate the separation of powers.”

The White House has indicated it will appeal.

Even Trump says the SAVE Act has long odds

Trump on Monday called the Senate logjam “crazy” and one of the holdouts, Republican Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, “Trump-deranged.”

It’s the latest legislative tussle that prompted Trump to demand Republicans scrap the filibuster, which requires most major legislation to get support from 60 of the 100 senators. But that likely wouldn’t matter in this case, with four of the Senate’s 53 Republicans declaring their opposition to the bill itself: Murkowski, Susan Collins of Maine, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Thom Tillis of North Carolina.

The president acknowledged Monday that the SAVE Act is “probably not going to happen.”

Trump still has options for the November elections

Both major parties have national operations to monitor elections, including legal teams ready to file challenges.

Despite the Republican National Committee losing the mail ballot case, Chairman Joe Gruters on Monday alluded to those efforts: “We are not going to be deterred by this decision, and the RNC will keep fighting to have elections end on Election Day,” he said.

Meanwhile, Trump has been developing a possible roadmap for more aggressive actions.

His U.S. attorney in Los Angeles said in June that he had opened multiple election fraud investigations, and he sent a prosecutor to the county’s vote-tabulation center after California’s June primary. Six months earlier, FBI agents executed a warrant and seized ballots and other records from the 2020 election in Georgia’s Fulton County, which includes Atlanta.

Muller, the law professor, said local elections officials “already are having conversations about chain of custody disputes” for ballots as they are cast, collected, counted and stored.

He and UCLA law professor Rick Hasen noted that judicial warrants are required for the kinds of actions that happened in Fulton County. Muller predicted “the bar would be even higher” for any warrant the administration requests during a live election.

Hasen added that he’s working to educate judges around the country on the importance of chain of custody for ballots.

“Republicans believe him when he says the election is rigged. And then when Republicans try to change voting rules to tighten things up, that causes Democrats to also think that the election system is being rigged,” Hasen said. “So, if what he’s trying to achieve is undermine voters’ confidence in the election process, he seems to have succeeded spectacularly.”

Barrow writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Ali Swenson in New York contributed to this report.

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — He’s a prize-winning presidential historian who wrote an entire biography of Thomas Jefferson. But even Jon Meacham needs to think for a moment before defining what it means to be a “Jeffersonian.”

“Well for a long time, before the civil rights movement, it meant to be more inclined toward states’ rights and limited government,” says Meacham, the National Constitution Center’s Semiquincentennial Scholar. He then pauses, and asks to start over, recalling how President Franklin Delano Roosevelt evoked Jefferson as an “apostle of liberty” who would have supported the U.S. fighting the Nazis in World War II.

You could define it in so many ways. Historians may argue over the “greatness” of individual founders, but as the country’s 250th anniversary approaches many agree that no one’s life and work resonates like Jefferson’s. He embodied the “very best and the very worst” of the United States, Meacham says.

And a great deal in between.

America’s birth is rooted in his most profound contradiction — the man who proclaimed that “all men are created equal” while being a slaveholder to the end of his life. But Jefferson advanced and explored both sides of so many issues and world views that have defined the country’s path: agrarian self-sufficiency and worldly innovation, pluralism and separatism, limited government and dreams of an “empire of liberty.”

“There is no more malleable figure in early America than Jefferson,” says Andrew Burstein, a professor of history at Louisiana State University who has summed up Jefferson’s legacy in a book he published a decade ago: “Democracy’s Muse: How Thomas Jefferson became an FDR Liberal, a Reagan Republican, and a Tea Party Fanatic, All the While Being Dead.”

“There have been times in American history when just about everyone would have considered themselves ‘Jeffersonian,’” says historian Peter S. Onuf, author of numerous works on Jefferson. “Yet even at those moments, he was a controversial figure.”

It’s an argument without end

Jefferson’s legacy is debated even in settings that owe their existence to him.

On the campus of the University of Virginia, the college he founded and regarded as a signature achievement, stands a memorial to thousands of enslaved people who lived and worked there.

At Monticello, the mountaintop estate and plantation outside of Charlottesville where Jefferson lived when not in public office, a banner near the entrance features the Declaration and the caption, “After all, our guy wrote it.” But once on the grounds, reminders of his enslavement of hundreds are found throughout, from its “Burial Ground for Enslaved People” that includes dozens of graves to an exhibit dedicated to Sally Hemings, the enslaved woman with whom Jefferson is widely believed to have had six children.

Monticello’s director of historic interpretation and audience engagement, Brandon Dillard, cites the staff’s mission “to tell unflinching stories of America’s complex origins and fitful progress toward the ideals Jefferson articulated in the Declaration of Independence.”

Jefferson regarded Monticello as a refuge from the times, but the times inevitably find their way here. A guide on the gardens and grounds tour points out that a foldable plant Jefferson tried and failed to grow — the “Mimosa Pudica,” or “sensitive plant” — now thrives because of climate change. The visitors’ center is LEED Gold-certified for green energy, Dillard says, and geothermal systems have been installed in other buildings for temperature control.

Monticello raises questions old and new about race. Virtually all of the guides are white, an issue Dillard notes is prevalent nationwide. A recent survey released by the American Association for State and Local History found that around just 10% of workers at museums, historic sites and historical societies were nonwhite and that many “Latino/a/x, and multiracial respondents reported higher rates of discrimination and harassment.” (Dillard declined to answer in detail the experience of guides of color at Monticello.)

There is a Jefferson for every occasion

Jefferson’s contradictions date back through much of American history; he was claimed by both sides of the Civil War and both sides of the civil rights movement.

Nineteenth-century Confederates and 20th-century segregationists cited his defense of states’ rights, while Abraham Lincoln and civil rights leaders emphasized Jefferson as the author of the Declaration of Independence. In the space of a few months in 1963, he would be invoked in the inaugural speech of Alabama Gov. George Wallace as he vowed defiance of federal efforts to integrate the state’s schools and by the Rev. Martin Luther King as he delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington.

Roosevelt enlisted Jefferson as an ideological ally for the New Deal (the Thomas Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., began as a New Deal project) and a former New Dealer-turned conservative, President Reagan, held up Jefferson decades later as a foe of wasteful spending. Jefferson has been cited often by free-speech advocates for his crucial support for the Bill of Rights, while President Trump has quoted Jefferson’s 1807 lament that “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper” as an implicit endorsement of his modern war against “fake news.”

Jefferson has also been placed on either side of today’s divide over immigration. Ibram X. Kendi, author of “How to Be an Anti-Racist,” cites his well-documented belief in colonization for Black people as inspiration for contemporary scapegoating and xenophobia. Meanwhile, at a time when the Trump administration is aggressively trying to restrict immigration and even denaturalize some citizens, Monticello continues its decades-old July 4 naturalization ceremonies, with Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger scheduled as this year’s keynote speaker.

“As new citizens share their personal stories every Fourth of July,” Dillard says, “we are reminded that the values uplifted in that Declaration are values toward which people from all backgrounds aspire.”

Many Monticello visitors, many reasons to visit

Monticello attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. They come for many reasons.

Erin Porter is a Virginia native in her 40s who until recently had never been to Monticello and wanted to cross it off her bucket list, while Nathan Jaycox of Connecticut is a former nuclear engineer now seeking to absorb history for a class he hopes to teach. Duane Cromwell, a longtime resident of Vancouver, was here on a very personal mission.

Cromwell, 70, grew up in Greenville, S.C., where she was taught that slavery was “an economic necessity” and learned nothing about Jefferson’s history of enslavement. In town last month for a family reunion, she arrived at Monticello anxious to get past the “whitewashed Southern version” and the myths of evil “yankees” and the victimized rebels who defied them.

“Did you (ever) notice kudzu growing up over trees and buildings while in the South? It is an invasive plant brought to the region to control erosion. Well, it is like racism. It is pervasive, part of the horizon, always there but soon you don’t notice it,” she says.

“Having said that, I do think that people do go along better, there is more interactions, relationships than when I was growing up. Everyone needs each other and in the South, there is a great sense of humor and friendliness that help people navigate the awkward moments.”

For Cromwell, Monticello was a chance to educate herself, to become a better person — and, like countless others before her, using Thomas Jefferson as a prism.

“Isn’t that what it’s all about?”

Italie writes for the Associated Press.