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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.
Key events
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.
Jason Wilson
Pete Hegseth’s appointments to a key Pentagon advisory body include two men with ties to the venture capital fund where Donald Trump Jr is a partner, which has lucrative investments in military and space technology.
Defense Policy Board appointee Marc Andreessen’s firm, Andreessen Horowitz, one of Silicon Valley’s largest venture capital firms and known by the name “a16z”, co-invests alongside the Trump partnership 1789 Capital in three defense contractors. Fellow DPB appointee Blake Masters also sits on the boards of three ventures tied to 1789 Capital.
Both men now advise the Pentagon on the defense-technology sector those companies operate in.
Companies jointly backed by a16z and 1789 have already drawn billions in federal loans and contracts since the start of the second Trump administration.
The appointments by the US defense secretary not only appear to increase the influence of rightwing ideologues, autonomous weapons manufacturers, and one-time clients of authoritarian states on the world’s most powerful arsenal, but to potentially put the financial interests of the US president’s family at the heart of setting US strategic priorities.
Scott Amey, general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight said that such advisory committees are often found to have conflicts of interest. “A lot of the people appointed to them are seeking government business – specifically seeking business with the agency they’re serving,” Amey said.
As we continue to cover a number of key primary races throughout the country today. He’s a reminder of when the polls close in the states holding elections.
South Carolina – 7pm ET
Vermont – 7pm ET
Alabama – 8pm local time/9pm ET
Connecticut – 8pm ET
Minnesota – 9pm local/10pm ET
Wisconsin – 9pm local/10pm ET
State department revokes more than 175,000 visas
The state department has revoked more than 175,000 visas of foreign nationals who officials say have “violated the terms of their visas, committed crimes, called for violence against US citizens”.
While a number of these people had been charged with crimes, including sexual assault, human trafficking and felony kidnapping. Others who had their visas revoked had allegedly “celebrated” the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, according to officials. The state department noted an instance of online comments which included: “when fascists die, democrats don’t complain” and another who said Kirk “died too late”.
Last year, my colleague Ed Pilkington dug into the Trump administration’s free speech crackdown following Kirk’s shooting at a Turning Point USA college campus event in Utah.
Trump also welcomed the news that supreme court justice Samuel Alito would be serving another term on the bench, despite a now-retracted report from NPR in June that the long-serving conservative jurist would be retiring.
Alito recently told the Wall Street Journal that he’s “obviously” serving another term.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump called Alito the “greatest of all time”. Earlier this year, Alito wrote the court’s majority opinion that dismantled section two of the Voting Rights Act – the last remaining to of the 1965 civil rights law that prevents racial discrimination in voting.
Donald Trump will begin the day in closed-press meetings in Washington. Later, he’ll travel to Geneva, Ohio where he’ll watch the Patriot Games finale at 7pm ET.
This is the athletic competition for high school students that includes challenges like the presidential fitness test. The winning boy and girl will each win $125,000 in scholarships. Critics have suggested the event resembles the Hunger Games.
We’ll bring you the latest lines as we hear from the president.
Republicans name candidate to replace Chuck Edwards after sexual harassment investigation
Chris Stein
North Carolina Republicans on Monday chose state lawmaker Jennifer Balkcom to replace Chuck Edwards, the incumbent congressman who earlier this month dropped his re-election bid after a US House investigation determined his conduct towards to young female staffers likely amounted to sexual harassment.
Balkcom will face off against the Democratic nominee, Jamie Ager, in the November midterm elections to represent the 11th congressional district in western North Carolina. Though Donald Trump won the district by 10 percentage points two years ago, Democrats believe Ager may have a shot at winning amid the president’s low approval ratings and frustration over the pace of recovery from Hurricane Helene, which devastated the region in 2024.
“I’m blessed to receive the Republican nomination for the 11th Congressional District. Western North Carolina is where I was born, raised, and chose to raise my own family,” Ager said in a statement following her nomination.
“Rest assured, I will work every single day between now and Election Day to earn the votes of our friends and neighbors. Our region is incredibly strong and resilient, and I plan to be the fighter everyone who calls Western North Carolina home deserves.”
Edwards was first elected in 2022 after defeating the scandal-plague congressman Madison Cawthorn in the Republican primary. Last week, the US House ethics committee found he “fostered a hostile work environment and engaged in sexual harassment” towards two female employees in his Washington DC office.
Minnesota primaries could mark change of path for Democrats and Republicans
Rachel Leingang
Minnesota voters on both sides of the aisle are weighing the direction of their parties – and their chances of winning over the general electorate – in marquee statewide races on Tuesday.
On the left, Peggy Flanagan, the state lieutenant governor and a progressive, faces off against Angie Craig, a US representative, for the Democratic bid for US senate in a race punctuated by the role of immigration enforcement in the state that saw two residents killed by immigration agents in a winter surge.
On the right, Mike Lindell, an election denier and pillow salesman, carries Donald Trump’s endorsement in a three-way race for the Republican nomination for governor, where Republicans face an uphill battle to challenge Amy Klobuchar, the Democratic contender and a US senator, now seeking the governor’s office.
After Tuesday, the general election for the open governor and US senate seats will shape up, signaling a change for top roles in the state. Governor Tim Walz, a Democrat, initially sought a third term, but dropped his bid after ongoing fraud scandals threatened to distract from the race.
Tina Smith, the Democratic US senator, decided not to run again, saying she wanted to spend time with her grandkids and make way for new faces in the chamber. She has endorsed Flanagan.
The state leans Democratic. It has not elected a Republican statewide since 2006, when Tim Pawlenty won a second term as governor. A Republican presidential candidate has not won the state since 1972. Still, Republicans hope to seize on fraud problems in state programs, including criminal cases against a sprawling group accused of organized theft of meals for children, services for kids with autism and housing programs.
Wisconsin considers democratic socialist for governor amid US wave of progressive wins
Rachel Leingang
Wisconsin voters will decide on Tuesday whether to nominate a democratic socialist for the state’s highest office in the latest test of an anti-establishment wave among Democratic primary voters.
Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist state lawmaker, emerged as the frontrunner in a four-way race to succeed Tony Evers, the Democratic governor who is not seeking another term.
Evers threw his support behind David Crowley, the Milwaukee country executive. Crowley previously left the race, before reentering it on 18 July.
Crowley and Evers toured the state in the last two weeks, centering his campaign around electability, saying Crowley was more poised to win a general election in a swing state like Wisconsin than Hong.
Eyes turned to the Wisconsin governor’s race after Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic primary for US Senate in Michigan last week in the most recent example of a progressive beating out a moderate. Next door, Minnesota voters have also been weighing a US Senate primary between a moderate and a progressive.
After a wave of wins of progressives and democratic socialists in solidly blue parts of the country, the midwest primaries centered more on electability concerns given the close nature of statewide races there.
‘Fiercely independent’ South Carolina votes on Lindsey Graham’s Senate successor
George Chidi
In the race to replace the late US senator Lindsey Graham, 10 candidates have been barnstorming South Carolina diners, church halls and recreation centers, compressing a normal year of campaigning into about a fortnight.
The Republican party is staging a special primary election in the state on Tuesday to choose Graham’s replacement. His sister, Darline, who has been serving as interim senator following his sudden death last month, is on the ballot.
If no candidate wins an overall majority of votes, the top two will advance to a runoff on 25 August. Polling suggests that this is the most likely outcome.
“You know, South Carolina politics is very local,” said Eaddy Roe Willard, a longtime Republican activist in South Carolina’s Richmond county. “Something one of our former chairmen used to say about presidential candidates: we don’t decide whether or not we’re gonna vote for you until we’ve had a chance to shake your hand at least three times.”
On Friday Russell Fry, a Republican representative, pressed the flesh at Savage Craft Ale Works in West Columbia. On Monday morning, Darline Graham shook hands at Lizard’s Thicket breakfast restaurant, 2 miles away. Mark Sanford, the former South Carolina governor, and US representative Ralph Norman were also just a few miles down the road in Aiken on Friday, Willard said.
After Lindsey Graham’s death on 11 July, Henry McMaster, South Carolina’s governor, appointed Darline Graham to fill the vacancy in the US Senate.
Lindsey Graham had already won the Republican primary election for his seat, so the Republican party must hold a special election to replace him on the ballot in November’s general election. The timeline is brutal by American political standards, holding an election within a few weeks of the vacancy.
The winner will face Annie Andrews, the Democratic nominee and a pediatrician, in November.
Wisconsin and Minnesota primaries set for clash between progressives and Democratic establishment
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
Democratic primaries for governor in Wisconsin and US senator in Minnesota will once again see left-wing candidates face off against more traditional ones.
The party’s ideological rift, that has already been seen in contests across the States this year, shifts to the upper Midwest later today.
In Wisconsin, state representative Francesca Hong, a self-described democratic socialist, is front-runner for the party’s nomination for governor in a swing state where winning the governor’s mansion is central to Democrats’ hopes for 2028 and beyond.
In Minnesota, Peggy Flanagan is running for the nomination for an open Senate seat against centrist Democratic representative Angie Craig. Meanwhile, seven Minnesota Republicans are vying to face off against likely Democratic gubernatorial nominee senator Amy Klobuchar in November.
The primaries come a week after Abdul El-Sayed narrowly defeated Haley Stevens in Michigan’s divisive and costly US Senate primary.
El-Sayed’s victory has energized progressives, while stoking fears among Democratic party leaders that the shift to the left, particularly in battleground states like Michigan and Wisconsin, will make it more difficult to win in the November midterms.
The left vs center theme is on display in Democratic primaries in multiple states voting on Tuesday, with other significant races also taking place in the likes of Alabama and South Carolina.
In other developments:
President Donald Trump departed on a secret military flight from Turkey last month when the White House said he was flying aboard Air Force One, an extraordinary move prompted by an Iranian assassination threat, the Washington Post reported on Monday.
Trump signed an executive order that will involve splitting up the highly effective measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine into three single shots. The president also announced an overhaul to the childhood immunization schedule, scrapping recommendations for the hepatitis b, Covid-19 and influenza vaccines. He also suggested that the number of inoculations is linked to the rate of autism in the US, despite no proven link between the two. Medical experts have blasted the changes, calling it “problematic and deeply concerning.”
Todd Blanche has been sworn as US attorney general, cementing Trump’s installation of his former personal attorney in charge of the Department of Justice. Blanche, who has been serving as acting attorney general since April, was confirmed in his new position during a ceremony at the White House on Monday.
Trump has named White House staff secretary Will Scharf to become White House counsel and assistant to the president, replacing David Warrington, who is taking a job in the private sector. In taking up that role, Scharf will become the White House’s top lawyer after overseeing the administrative work of the Oval Office in his current position.
Lawyers for David Hearn, the Olympian who was arrested for alleged property destruction of the reflecting pool before his charges were dropped, said that the Trump administration is “continuing to attack an innocent man”.
