www.theguardian.com
Trump’s justice department sends election monitors to Minnesota’s two largest counties
The Department of Justice said that officials are monitoring polling sites in Hennepin and Ramsey county – Minnesota’s largest – throughout the state’s primary elections on Tuesday.
In a press release, the justice department said that it has deployed approximately 20 staff from the Civil Rights Division’s Voting Section and Minnesota’s US attorney’s office to continue “its nationwide effort to ensure free and fair elections”.
Minnesota has long been a target of the Trump administration since the president returned to the White House last year.
The North Star state was the sight of a deadly immigration crackdown that killed two US citizens earlier this year, and the administration has paused more than $500m in Medicaid payments to Minnesota to clamp down on alleged fraud over the last year.
Key events
Donald Trump said he is exploring to see if the federal government has any way of stepping in to try to end Zohran Mamdani’s pied-à-terre tax in New York City.
“This dangerous political ‘experiment’ in New York will destroy what was once a great City and State,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
On Monday, a state judge temporarily blocked the tax, which would place a surcharge on second homes, after homeowners filed a lawsuit against the mayor and city officials. The tax would apply to people who own, but do not reside full-time in, any house worth more than $5m, or a condominium or cooperative unit worth at least $1m.
Trump said today that the policy is actually costing New York more – by forcing “tens of thousands” of people to leave the city “never to return”.
“It is pure Amateur Hour, and it’s hard, as President of the United States of America, to sit back and watch it happen, especially to a place I once loved,” he added. “Financial, and then Social, RUIN, is a 100% certainty … This doesn’t work in America, and must be stopped, NOW!”
Trump’s justice department sends election monitors to Minnesota’s two largest counties
The Department of Justice said that officials are monitoring polling sites in Hennepin and Ramsey county – Minnesota’s largest – throughout the state’s primary elections on Tuesday.
In a press release, the justice department said that it has deployed approximately 20 staff from the Civil Rights Division’s Voting Section and Minnesota’s US attorney’s office to continue “its nationwide effort to ensure free and fair elections”.
Minnesota has long been a target of the Trump administration since the president returned to the White House last year.
The North Star state was the sight of a deadly immigration crackdown that killed two US citizens earlier this year, and the administration has paused more than $500m in Medicaid payments to Minnesota to clamp down on alleged fraud over the last year.
US says new round of Israel-Lebanon talks to take place in September in Rome
The United States will sponsor a new round of talks between Israel and Lebanon in early September in Rome, a state department official announced today.
“The political track will reconvene in Rome in early September, and conversations will continue in Beirut, Jerusalem, and Washington in the interim,” the official told AFP on condition of anonymity, adding: “We feel good about the trajectory.”
The US has been facilitating talks between Israel and Lebanon aimed at putting an end to hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group based in Lebanon, with Beirut seeking Israel’s phased withdrawal from the swathes of southern of Lebanon it currently occupies, while Israel wants the disarmament of Hezbollah.
In June, Israel and Lebanon agreed to a framework deal that involves the disarmament of Hezbollah, a gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon’s south and the deployment of the Lebanese army to the region, starting in test areas known as “pilot zones”.
The seventh round of US-mediated talks between the two countries concluded last week. One of the days of discussion was cut short after Israel resumed heavy strikes on Lebanon, accusing Hezbollah of violating the truce. But really there has been continued intermittent Israeli strikes and shelling, as well as detonations and demolitions in southern villages, since the ceasefire agreement was signed on 26 June.
The US official today gave an update on the last round of talks in Rome, telling AFP: “The framework is being implemented, the first zones are live, and the working groups have aligned their language, maps, and procedures.”
At the next round of technical talks, they added, “Lebanon will present detailed roadmaps for securing new areas as implementation proceeds in the current zones.”
Israel’s bombing campaign and ground invasion has killed more than 4,300 people in Lebanon, injured over 12,200 and displaced over 1.2 million.
Trump says agreement to release former US marine from Russian custody came about after he spoke to Putin
Further to that, Donald Trump has said the agreement came about after he spoke to Vladimir Putin about releasing Robert Gilman “on a humanitarian basis” and that Gilman will land back in the US at Joint Base Andrews tonight.
“I just spoke to him, and he had one request – A GREAT cheeseburger when he lands. I will take care of that!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
The US president also confirmed that this was not a prisoner exchange, adding: “We appreciate this decision, and the fact that Russia asked for no one in return – No exchange took place.”
Trump’s post included this photo of Gilman traveling back to the US, alongside his mother, Nancy, and officials.
Russia frees former US marine who had been imprisoned since 2022
Pjotr Sauer
Russia has freed a former US marine who had been in jail since 2022, after Vladimir Putin granted the ailing American a pardon on humanitarian grounds.
Robert Gilman, 32, an English teacher who briefly served in the US Marines, was travelling by train when he was arrested in the southern Russian city of Voronezh in January 2022 for allegedly kicking a police officer while drunk, according to Russian state media. He was later sentenced to four and a half years in prison, though his family has consistently denied the allegations against him.
His father, Vladimir Gilman, who emigrated to Massachusetts from Russia, wrote in an October 2024 Boston Globe op-ed that his son had fallen ill when the incident occurred and had accidentally kicked the police officer.
Concerns over Gilman’s health had grown sharply in recent weeks, and the White House and the state department had urged Moscow to release him so he could receive medical treatment in the US.
Eric Lebson, chief strategy officer at Global Reach, an advocacy group representing Gilman’s family, told Reuters last week that he had been transferred in late June from a prison hospital to the psychiatric ward of a civilian emergency hospital in a catatonic-like state that doctors assessed as a “dissociative stupor”.
“While this news is deeply welcomed, it is long overdue,” Massachusetts senator Edward Markey wrote on X. “Approximately 50 days ago, Robert was diagnosed with a dissociative stupor – a condition where he could not interact or eat. He was essentially catatonic and also suffered a severe case of pneumonia. We do not know his current condition or the long-term impact on his recovery.”
US officials told Reuters that Gilman was already on a state department plane carrying him from Russia to Washington Dulles airport, adding that Gilman would be greeted on arrival by US envoy Steve Witkoff and Sebastian Gorka, a deputy assistant to Donald Trump.
The official who spoke to Gilman said he was walking and talking.
“All things considered, he seems to be in good shape,” the official said.
The move to release Gilman is likely to be a signal of Moscow’s eagerness to improve relations with the Trump administration, after several weeks in which the US president has appeared to take a more supportive position towards Ukraine.
Samuel Alito gained up to $2.9m from oil and gas assets since joining supreme court, analysis shows
Dharna Noor
Supreme court justice Samuel Alito gained up to $2.9m from his fossil fuel interests between 2005 and 2024, a new review of financial disclosures shows.
The analysis from the non-profit advocacy group and judicial watchdog Court Accountability, shared exclusively with the Guardian, found that even at the lowest range of estimates, Alito gained almost $400,000 from his oil and gas interests since being tapped for the high court by George W Bush in 2005.
The findings come as the supreme court prepares to take up a case in which the oil companies Suncor Energy and Exxon asked the justices to find that federal law prevents subnational governments from filing lawsuits against fossil fuel producers for the climate-warming effects of their products.
The supreme court said this month it will hear oral arguments in the case on 5 October, the opening day of its new term. The Trump administration, which is siding with the oil companies, has asked for 10 minutes of argument time. Court Accountability and other groups have called for a Senate committee to investigate Alito, the sole supreme court justice with holdings in energy companies, and said he should recuse himself.
He and the court rejected those calls.
Supreme court ethics rules focus specifically on investments in companies named in court cases. In May, a supreme court spokesperson told NBC News that Alito is not required to recuse himself from the Suncor lawsuit as his holdings do not include the companies directly named in the case, Suncor and ExxonMobil.
But Lisa Graves, co-founder of Court Accountability who authored the new analysis, said Alito’s oil-tied wealth provides grounds to question whether Alito can impartially weigh in on cases affecting the entire fossil fuel sector.
“You might have real appreciation for how that industry has helped make it possible for you to perhaps buy a second home on the water, or live a [certain] lifestyle,” she said.
Here’s Dharna’s full report:
The advocacy group Free DC has held a rally in Washington DC today to mark one year since Donald Trump declared a “crime emergency”, despite violent crime being at a 30-year low, and deployed national guard troops to the capital.
One of the most controversial measures of Trump’s second term so far, the deployment – currently at more than 4,600 personnel – was recently quietly extended through January 2029, to a cost of about $1.4bn. It marks the longest and largest of Trump’s extraordinary mobilizations of military personnel on US soil.
The lawsuit in my last post is the latest example of organizations pushing back on what they call the Trump administration’s efforts to undermine international law and prevent efforts to combat impunity by governments around the world.
“The fact that so many leading human rights and humanitarian organizations have come together to challenge Trump’s unlawful executive order demonstrates the widespread harm it is causing across civil society groups dedicated to bringing those responsible for grave crimes to justice,” Andrew Loewenstein of Foley Hoag LLP, the lead counsel representing the plaintiffs, told the Associated Press.
The groups assert that the financial and legal penalties against the ICC have forced them to “curtail a wide range of human rights and legal work in violation of their First and Fifth Amendment rights under the US Constitution and under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.”
“The Trump administration seeks a get out of jail free card for whomever it chooses. And with this case, we say no,” Liz Evenson, international justice director at Human Rights Watch, told a press conference this morning.
Human rights groups sue Trump administration over ‘crippling’ ICC sanctions
Alice Speri
Four prominent US human rights organizations have accused the Trump administration of using its “crippling” sanctions regime against the international criminal court (ICC) to undermine global efforts to prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity.
In a lawsuit filed in federal court today, the groups – the American Friends Service Committee, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Human Rights Watch and the Open Society Institute – argued that the administration’s targeting of the ICC, as well as of groups and individuals affiliated with it or assisting its work, amounts to a “blatantly illegal attack on international justice”, the groups said.
The suit challenges Donald Trump’s February 2025 executive order, which authorized sanctions on ICC officials, judges and others working to support its investigation of Israeli crimes in Palestine – one of 18 investigations into war crimes and crimes against humanity the Netherlands-based tribunal is overseeing.
The US state department and justice department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The US government has long opposed and sought to impede the work of the court – of which it is not a party – but those attacks escalated after the ICC prosecutor issued arrest warrants in November 2024 for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and former Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant over crimes committed in Gaza. The US responded by sanctioning ICC prosecutors, judges, three leading Palestinian human rights groups and Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Palestinian territory.
Earlier this summer, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, also escalated efforts against the ICC, announcing a campaign aimed at “dismantling” it by pressuring member states to leave the court.
Those attacks, and Trump’s executive order, undermine access to justice for victims of major human rights violations and criminalize the work of those seeking to combat impunity by collaborating with the court – including the plaintiffs in the case – in violation of both constitutional protections for free speech and association and US obligations under international law, the lawsuit argues.
“The Trump administration took the extraordinary step to not only deny Palestinians and victims of US torture equal access to justice, but to criminalize and punish them, their lawyers and advocates, and their partners,” said Katherine Gallagher, a senior attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights who represents victims before the ICC. She added:
All victims of international crimes – from Sudan and Ukraine to Palestine and Afghanistan – need and deserve to have an independent and strong ICC able to fulfill its mission of ending impunity, without fear or favor.
More on this story here:
In response to the Washington Post’s reporting that Donald Trump took a clandestine flight on a military jet to avoid an Iranian assassination attempt, Ned Price, a former state department official, said that while “subterfuge is sometimes a necessary safeguard” the decision to mislead reporters “in the moment” and continue “to lie to the American people weeks later is never acceptable”.
Price, who noted that he’s traveled overseas with multiple presidents said that as far as he’s aware, this decision making is “unique to this White House”.
Press corps traveling with Trump provide additional flight details following reports that president hid in catering truck to switch planes
We’re also chasing new reports that Donald Trump left Turkey last month on a secret military flight to Britain amid an Iranian assassination threat – despite the White House saying he was aboard the old Air Force One – and that he briefly hid in an airport catering truck to move from one aircraft to another.
ABC News reporter Michelle Stoddart, who traveled with the president and senior officials from Ankara in July, noted today that before the press corps departed the summit, they were given no additional guidance on the president’s movements or flight plans beyond his publicly posted Truth Social post.
Stoddart said the press pool’s movements were not unusual once they boarded the old Air Force One. But she added that the pool was instructed to keep window shades closed. Another ABC News journalist said a Secret Service agent returned to the press cabin to remind reporters to keep the shades down. At one point, a photographer seated behind Stoddart opened their shade and was quickly told to close it. When they asked a White House aide why, the aide said only that it was a request from Secret Service.
