UK says it will restrict repeated protests after 500 arrests at pro-Palestinian vigil

SOCIAL DEMOCRATS = SOCIAL FASCISTS

JILL LAWLESS
Sun, October 5, 2025 

Police remove a protester taking part in a demonstration organised by Defend our Juries, in support of Palestine Action in Trafalgar Square, London Saturday Oct. 4, 2025. (Maja Smiejkowska/PA via AP)(ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Police remove a protester taking part in a demonstration organised by Defend our Juries, in support of Palestine Action in Trafalgar Square, London Saturday Oct. 4, 2025. (Maja Smiejkowska/PA via AP)(ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Police remove a protester after a banner was unfurled on Westminster Bridge, London, as part of a demonstration organised by Defend our Juries, in support of Palestine Action, Saturday Oct. 4, 2025. (Stefan Rousseau/PA via AP)(ASSOCIATED PRESS)

People take part in a demonstration organized by GM Friends of Palestine at Manchester Cathedral, in Manchester, England, Saturday, Oct. 4 2025. (Ryan Jenkinson/PA via AP)(ASSOCIATED PRESS)

LONDON (AP) — British police will get stronger powers to restrict repeated protests, the government said Sunday, after almost 500 people were arrested at a demonstration in support of a banned pro-Palestinian group.

The Home Office said police forces will be able to consider the “cumulative impact of frequent protests” on local areas when they impose conditions on marches and demonstrations.

“The right to protest is a fundamental freedom in our country,” Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said. “However, this freedom must be balanced with the freedom of their neighbors to live their lives without fear. Large, repeated protests can leave sections of our country, particularly religious communities, feeling unsafe, intimidated and scared to leave their homes.”

Pro-Palestinian demonstrations have been held regularly since the start of Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, which has so far killed more than 67,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry that is part of the Hamas-run government. The U.N. and many independent experts consider its figures to be the most reliable estimate of wartime casualties.

The protests have been overwhelmingly peaceful, but some people say they have allowed antisemitism to spread. Some Jews say they feel threatened by chants such as “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” A handful of pro-Palestinian protesters have been arrested for supporting Hamas, which is banned in the U.K.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his supporters have frequently accused critics of Israel or its conduct of the war in Gaza of antisemitism. Israel’s detractors see it as an attempt to stifle even legitimate criticism.

British police and politicians had urged protesters to stay home this weekend after Thursday's attack on a synagogue in Manchester that left two Jewish men dead. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that organizers should “recognize and respect the grief of British Jews this week” and postpone.

But on Saturday, about 1,000 people gathered in Trafalgar Square to protest against the banning of Palestine Action, a direct-action group that has vandalized British military planes and targeted sites with links to the Israeli military. It has been labeled a terrorist organization by the government, making support for the group illegal.

Critics say the government is restricting free speech and the right to protest.

Police officers carried away a number of people who sat silently holding signs saying “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action.” Police said they made 488 arrests for supporting the outlawed organization, and a handful for other offenses.


More than 2,000 people have now been arrested at protests since Palestine Action was proscribed in July, and more than 130 charged with terrorism offenses.

The war in the Palestinian enclave was triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Southern Israel that left more than 1,200 people dead and 251 others taken hostage. The Palestinian militant group said Saturday it was willing to return all remaining hostages, 20 of whom are believed to be alive, and the bodies of the dead in accordance with U.S. President Donald Trump’s peace plan.

UK police to get new powers after latest pro-Palestinian protest

Reuters
Sun, October 5, 2025 

Police officers detain a protester, during a mass demonstration organised by Defend our Juries, against the British government's ban on Palestine Action, in London, Britain, October 4, 2025. REUTERS/Toby Melville

Police officers detain a protester during a mass demonstration organised by Defend our Juries, against the British government's ban on Palestine Action, at Trafalgar Square in London, Britain, October 4, 2025. REUTERS/Toby Melville

LONDON (Reuters) -British police will get powers to restrict repeat protests held in the same place, the government said on Sunday, a day after the latest pro-Palestinian demonstration went ahead despite requests to cancel it in the wake of a deadly attack at a synagogue.

The new powers will allow senior police officers to consider the cumulative impact of previous protests on a local community, the interior ministry said.

"The right to protest is a fundamental freedom in our country. However, this freedom must be balanced with the freedom of their neighbours to live their lives without fear," Interior Minister Shabana Mahmood said.

"Large, repeated protests can leave sections of our country, particularly religious communities, feeling unsafe, intimidated and scared to leave their homes," Mahmood said, noting the fears within the Jewish community.

On Saturday, police arrested almost 500 people in central London during a protest in support of Palestine Action, a group that was banned in July after members broke into an air base and damaged military planes.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer had urged organisers to call off the demonstration following the killing of two people at a synagogue in Manchester on Thursday on Yom Kippur, the holiest day for Jews.

Police shot dead the assailant, a British man of Syrian descent who officials said may have been inspired by extremist Islamist ideology.

The group behind Saturday's protest said the plans for more powers to limit demonstrations represented "a dangerous, authoritarian escalation" in a crackdown on free speech.

"We are announcing a major escalation ... and we urge all of our supporters to sign up to show we will not stand by as our fundamental rights are stripped away," a spokesperson for Defend Our Juries said.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews welcomed the government's announcement but said more action was needed to protect the Jewish community.

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Mahmood is also due to review the police's existing powers to ensure they are sufficient and consistently applied, including powers to ban protests outright, the interior ministry said in a statement.

(Writing by William Schomberg; Editing by Jamie Freed and Tomasz Janowski)

Police to get new powers in crackdown on repeat protests after hundreds arrested at Palestine Action rally

Kate Devlin
Sun, October 5, 2025 
THE INDEPENDENT



Police to get new powers in crackdown on repeat protests after hundreds arrested at Palestine Action rally


Police are to be given greater powers to restrict repeated protests, the home secretary has announced, hours after hundreds were arrested at a Palestine Action demonstration in London.

The event went ahead despite calls from Keir Starmer and others in the wake of the terror attack on a synagogue in Manchester during which two people were killed.

The home secretary Shabana Mahmood said repeated large-scale protests had caused "considerable fear" for the Jewish community.

Palestine Action protest (Reuters)

She said: "The right to protest is a fundamental freedom in our country. However, this freedom must be balanced with the freedom of their neighbours to live their lives without fear.

"Large, repeated protests can leave sections of our country, particularly religious communities, feeling unsafe, intimidated and scared to leave their homes.

"This has been particularly evident in relation to the considerable fear within the Jewish community, which has been expressed to me on many occasions in these recent difficult days.

"These changes mark an important step in ensuring we protect the right to protest while ensuring all feel safe in this country."

In the wake of the arrests in London on Saturday, Amnesty International said it should not be the job of the police to arrest people “peacefully sitting down”, and that the arrests amounted to a breach of the UK’s human rights obligations.

As part of the new crackdown ministers will amend Sections 12 and 14 of the Public Order Act 1986 to explicitly allow the police to take account of the cumulative impact of frequent protests on local areas.

The home secretary will also review existing legislation to ensure powers are both sufficient and being applied consistently by police forces – this will include powers to ban protests outright.

In response, the Tory leader Kemi Badenoch asked: “What took them so long?”

She also said pro-Palestine demonstrators were abusing their right to protest and that many people at the marches are "actually out to intimidate Jews".

But Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesperson Max Wilkinson said: "People spreading antisemitic hate and inciting violence against Jews are getting away with it, and we fear the government’s approach will do nothing to tackle that while undermining the fundamental right to peaceful protest.”

Home secretary Shabana Mahmood outlined the proposals (PA)

The president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Phil Rosenberg, said the move was one they had called for for months.

He said the change was “a necessary start. We have been calling for this for many months, and it was one of our key demands in the meeting with the prime minister and home secretary on Friday. But the government now needs to go further. We will work with them to ensure that these and other measures are as effective as possible in protecting our community.”

On Saturday officers arrested hundreds of people at a Palestine Action protest in London, days after the Manchester synagogue attack.

Met Police said 492 people were arrested at the protest in support the proscribed group, which was classed by the UK government as a terror organisation earlier this year.

Most of the arrests were made at Trafalgar Square, where around 1,000 protesters sat silently, some holding signs backing Palestine Action, despite calls from Sir Keir and police chiefs to stay away following the terror attack in Manchester.

The Met said many of those arrested had to be carried out of the square after refusing to walk, with each person taking up to five officers to move away safely. Some were pictured holding their hands in the air defiantly.

Paula Dodds, chair of the Metropolitan Police Federation, said officers were “physically exhausted” but continue to be called on “to facilitate these relentless protests. And we are coming under attack for doing so. How can this be right?” she asked.


She added: “There aren’t enough of us. Hardworking police officers are continually having days off cancelled, working longer shifts and being moved from other areas to facilitate these protests.

“Our concentration should be on keeping people safe at a time when the country is on heightened alert from a terrorist attack. We are emotionally and physically exhausted. What are politicians and senior police officers going to do about it?”

Event organiser Defend Our Juries said that among those arrested was 79-year-old Elizabeth Morley, a Jewish woman and daughter of a Holocaust survivor.

In what it called the largest defiance of the ban on Palestine Action to date, people of a mixture of ages sat for the silent vigil, before taking out pens and writing signs in support of the group. Some read: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”

At the same time, around 100 people gathered in Manchester city centre for a similar demonstration, organised by Greater Manchester Friends of Palestine.

The prime minister had urged protesters to “respect the grief of British Jews”, while Jewish figures called the action “phenomenally tone deaf” after two people were killed in the attack in Manchester on Thursday.

Politicians and senior police officers also joined calls for the events not to go ahead. Scotland Yard chief Sir Mark Rowley warned the rallies would “likely create further tensions and some might say lack sensitivity” in the wake of the attack, while Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police Sir Stephen Watson urged would-be attendees to “consider whether this is really the right time”.

Sir Mark added that protests are “drawing valuable resources away from the communities of London at a time when they are needed most”. Police forces have deployed extra officers to synagogues and other Jewish buildings to offer protection and reassurance in the aftermath of the attack, with hundreds of extra officers around Manchester in particular.

Civil liberty groups express concern over plan for more anti-protest powers

Rajeev Syal,Peter Walker and Ben Quinn
Sun, October 5, 2025 
THE GUARDIAN


Police officers take away a demonstrator in Trafalgar Square in central London on Saturday.Photograph: Krisztián Elek/Sopa Images/Shutterstock


Civil liberty groups have expressed concern over government plans to hand police greater powers to restrict protests as organisers of mass demonstrations against the banning of Palestine Action pledged a “major escalation” of their campaign.

Shabana Mahmood said on Sunday that repeated large-scale demonstrations over Gaza had caused “considerable fear” for the Jewish community in the wake of a fatal terror attack on a synagogue last week.

Under new powers, police will be able to impose tougher conditions on static protests or marches by taking account of the “cumulative impact” of previous similar demonstrations, she said.


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Following her statement, the pressure group Defend Our Juries promised to escalate the demonstrations in support of Palestine Action over 10 days in November. “The home secretary’s extraordinary new affront to our democracy will only fuel the growing backlash to the ban,” a spokesperson said.

The measures have been announced after almost 500 people were arrested this weekend in London for expressing support for Palestine Action. Jewish community leaders, police and Keir Starmer had called on Palestine Action protesters to refrain from demonstrating after Thursday’s killing of two people in the terror attack on a Manchester synagogue.

Mahmood will also look at all anti-protest laws, with the possibility that powers to ban some demonstrations outright could be strengthened.

Shami Chakrabarti, the Labour peer and former shadow attorney general, warned that the government should pause before passing draconian powers that could end up in the hands of a Nigel Farage-led government.

“Street protest that isn’t a bit of a nuisance isn’t usually effective. But any government seeking to further restrict it should think about new powers in Farragist hands,” she said.

Two Labour MPs also expressed concern at the move. One told the Guardian: “However distasteful the protests in favour of Palestine Action have been, we must not fall into the trap of making rushed laws which can be used in future to stop justifiable protests.”

If a protest such as Saturday’s in support of Palestine Action takes place at the same site on several occasions, and causes repeated disorder, the police will get the power to instruct organisers to hold the event elsewhere, limit numbers and to set time limits, Home Office sources said.

The changes will amend sections 12 and 14 of the Public Order Act of 1986, under which anyone breaching conditions set by police faces up to six months in jail, an unlimited fine, or both.

Speaking on Sunday to Sky News, Mahmood said she believed there was “a gap in the law” that required action, and she aimed to act at speed.

“What I will be making explicit is that cumulative disruption, that is to say the frequency of particular protests in particular places, is in and of itself, a reason for the police to be able to restrict and place conditions,” she said.

Speaking later to BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme, Mahmood denied this was about banning protest: “This is not about a ban. This is about restrictions and conditions that would enable the police to maybe put further time restrictions or move those protests to other places.

“What I’m allowing is for the police to be able to take cumulative disruption into account, and it is important.”

The Liberal Democrats warned that the plans for further protest restrictions would lead to a greater waste of police time while letting off those inciting violence.

Max Wilkinson, the party’s home affairs spokesperson, said: “The Conservatives made a total mess of protest laws. I fear Labour seem to be following them down the same path, instead of properly reforming these powers to focus on the real criminals and hate preachers.”

The plans could be challenged in the courts because they mirror failed moves by the former Conservative home secretary Suella Braverman to curb protests.

The court of appeal in June upheld the original judgment in what the civil rights organisation Liberty – which brought the legal challenge – hailed as a major legal victory.

The case centred on legislation passed in June 2023 – without a parliamentary vote – that reduced the threshold for when police could crack down on protests, meaning the law covered anything that was deemed as causing “more than minor” disruption. In May 2024, the high court agreed with Liberty that Braverman’s legislation had been unlawful.

Home Office sources pointed out that Liberty won the 2023 case because ministers tried to change the definition of “serious public disorder”, lowering it to cover any crime “more than minor” through a statutory instrument.

Officials believe the measures this time will be more robust because they are not trying to lower the threshold and are planning to use primary legislation.

Tom Southerden, a director at Amnesty International UK, said the government’s proposal was “ludicrous” and may be a “cynical” attempt to look tough.

Akiko Hart, Liberty’s director, said: “The police already have immense powers to restrict protests – handing them even more would undermine our rights further while failing to keep people safe from violence like the horrific and heartbreaking antisemitic attack in Manchester.”

Defend Our Juries said there would be mass civil disobedience defying the ban from 18 to 28 November, in the lead up to and throughout the judicial review.

In a letter to chief constables on Sunday, Mahmood warned that “the country faces a period of heightened tensions and division” and thanked police for their response to Thursday’s attack.

“I have confirmed the government will bring forward legislation to increase the powers available to you to tackle the repeated disruptive protests we have seen, and continue to provide the reassurance to communities that they need.

“And I will review more widely the full suite of public order legislation, to ensure that it keeps pace with the continued changes in the scale, nature and frequency of protests,” she wrote.

The planned new powers follow protest-related measures in the crime and policing bill going through parliament, which would ban the possession of face coverings or fireworks or flares at protests, and criminalise the climbing of certain war memorials.


UK police to get greater powers to restrict demos

AFP
Sun, October 5, 2025 


A UK minister says pro-Palestinian protests have caused 'considerable fear' for the Jewish community (JUSTIN TALLIS)(JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP/AFP)


UK police are to be given greater powers to restrict protests as a minister said repeated large-scale pro-Palestinian demonstrations had caused "considerable fear" for the Jewish community.

The government initiative follows Thursday's deadly knife and car-ramming attack on a synagogue in the northwestern city of Manchester.

A pro-Palestinian demonstration in central London went ahead on Saturday despite pleas from Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the capital's Metropolitan Police to delay it.

The government said police would be authorised to consider the "cumulative impact" of protests when deciding to impose limits on protesters.

"The right to protest is a fundamental freedom in our country. However, this freedom must be balanced with the freedom of their neighbours to live their lives without fear," Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said in a statement.

Over 1,000 people took part in Saturday's protest in London's Trafalgar Square, with nearly 500 people arrested for showing support for the banned Palestine Action campaign group.

Defend our Juries, a group that organises protests in support of Palestine Action, called the new measures an "extraordinary new affront to democracy" in a statement published Sunday.

It also announced that it would "escalate" its campaign to lift the ban ahead of a legal challenge in the High Court in November.

-'Solidarity' with Jewish community-

Organisers previously rejected calls not to gather, saying they "stood in solidarity" with the Jewish community over the Manchester attack, but that "cancelling peaceful protests lets terror win".


A day earlier, Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy was booed at a vigil for the Jewish victims of the synagogue attack.

"Large, repeated protests can leave sections of our country, particularly religious communities, feeling unsafe, intimidated and scared to leave their homes," Mahmood said.

"This has been particularly evident in relation to the considerable fear within the Jewish community."

Questioned by a BBC television interviewer about the Jewish community's repeated warnings about the dangers they face, Mahmood admitted she was "very worried about the state of community relations in our country".

The Home Secretary added, speaking to Times Radio, that there was a broad "problem of a rise not only in antisemitism but in other forms of hatred as well".

"There are clearly malign and dark forces running amok across our country," she said.

Police shot dead assailant Jihad Al-Shamie, a 35-year-old UK citizen of Syrian descent, within minutes of the alarm being raised on Thursday's synagogue attack.

One person was killed in the attack outside the synagogue in north Manchester. Another died after suffering a fatal gunshot, likely from armed officers as they tackled Al-Shamie.

Three people who were seriously injured remain in hospital, including one who is also believed to have been accidentally hit by police fire.

Counter terrorism police have been granted more time to detain four people arrested on suspicion of terrorism-linked offences over the incident.

The UK has seen repeated pro-Palestinian demonstrations since the deadly Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023 and Israel's retaliatory action in Gaza in which tens of thousands have died.

‘All the trees are dead': An ancient California forest has been wiped out

Julie Johnson
Sun, October 5, 2025 

SAN FRANSISCO CHRONICLE

The Teakettle Experimental Forest within the Sierra National Forest is 80 miles east of Fresno,

 pictured in 2017. (U.S. Forest Service)

Roughly 500 years ago in California's High Sierra, pine cones dropped to the ground and a cycle began. The Aztec Empire was falling. The printing press was new. The seedlings grew.

Half a millennia later, U.S. Forest Service scientists began testing strategies to save these now ancient and massive trees in the little-known area east of Fresno called the Teakettle Experimental Forest. They had plans to light a huge prescribed burn to clear overgrowth next year

But then the Garnet Fire ignited amid a lightning storm and scorched all 3,000 federally protected acres on its path through the Sierra National Forest.

"There are large swaths where everything is dead - all the trees are dead," said Scott Scherbinski, a biologist and program manager at the Climate & Wildfire Institute. "It will be a start-over event for this forest."

Old growth forests across the American West are at risk of disappearing within the next 50 years due to a combination of extensive drought-related tree deaths and high severity fire, according to recent studies.

Malcolm North, a Forest Service ecologist and lead researcher on the Teakettle for 30 years, said the forest is a tragic example of that risk.

Fires with less intensity can be beneficial in California's fire-adapted landscapes, but the Garnet Fire, when it burned through in September, may have killed most trees and sterilized the ground - making it unlikely the forest can rebound without significant intervention.

It's not just big trees that were lost, but also the chance to continue research under way for decades. Over the years, researchers marked and tracked about 40,000 trees and tested various fire and thinning methods and generated pioneering research into forest health.

Scott Stephens, a professor of fire science at UC Berkeley, said the Teakettle held enormous scientific value because of the sheer amount of data collected over the past 30 years.

"That being lost is a tragedy to science," Stephens said. "You can't recreate that."

In 1938, the U.S. Forest Service set aside 3,000 acres about 80 miles east of Fresno to study hydrology and named it Teakettle after a creek. They originally set out to study whether tree thinning sent more water flowing into the creek for Central Valley farmers, but that research was scrapped after similar studies elsewhere found no benefit.

The Teakettle Experimental Forest within the Sierra National Forest is 80 miles east of Fresno, pictured in 2017. (U.S. Forest Service)

The Teakettle is one of 76 experimental forests established by the federal government for ecological research. Before the fire, it was open to the public but had no established trails. Only a small sign on a locked gate marked its borders and it was primarily visited by researchers and hunters.

About 30 years ago, North and other scientists launched a series of studies on the Teakettle into forest thinning and prescribed burning to restore a healthier balance to what had become overgrown forests. Towering sugar pine and Jeffrey pine had grown to hulking proportions with 9-foot diameter trunks, but these large trees were being choked by small trees and underbrush.

Teams found evidence that fires had occurred naturally about every 12 to 15 years in the Teakettle until the federal government stopped letting wildfires burn in the late 1800s. Before the Garnet Fire, the last major wildfire in the Teakettle had burned in 1865, and since then smaller trees, shrubs and debris had proliferated and created "a dangerous situation," North said.

Led by North, researchers tried six methods for clearing overgrowth on 18 plots, each 10 acres in size. They found that light vegetation thinning followed by low-intensity fire had the best outcomes, but that crews must return to limit undergrowth and allow big trees to flourish.

In a recent project, scientists meticulously raked forest floor duff made of pine needles and other highly flammable debris away from the trunks of large trees to mimic pre-1800s forest conditions. The plan was to determine how those trees fared compared to others where the duff remained piled up along the base.

The Garnet Fire burned through the Teakettle Experimental Forest in the Sierra east of Fresno.

 (The Climate & Wildfire Institute)

But their most ambitious plan was set to begin next year.

North and collaborators were awarded over $5 million in grant funding from Cal Fire to launch a prescribed fire across 3,300 acres. Most prescribed fires are under 50 acres.

Scherbinski, whose organization partnered with the Forest Service to manage the Teakettle prescribed fire project, said that it would have been a key demonstration to show that planned fires can burn safely at a large scale, which is needed to address California's wildfire crisis.

The groups were scheduled to start building fire breaks in September and continue preparations over the next 12 months. The prescribed fire was scheduled to take place next fall.

But then the Garnet Fire ignited Aug. 24 about 10 miles south of the Teakettle and ultimately charred more than 60,000 acres. It threatened giant sequoias in the famed McKinley Grove in the Sierra National Forest as it burned for 32 days before it was contained Sept. 25.

When the fire barreled toward the Teakettle, firefighters wrapped research cabins with fire-resistant material and aircraft doused those areas with fire retardant. But the fire was burning so intensely as it entered the Teakettle in the first days of September that fire officials said it wasn't safe for crews to do more to save the old growth forest, according to North.

The Garnet Fire burned through the Teakettle Experimental Forest in the Sierra east of Fresno.

 (The Climate & Wildfire Institute)

On Sept. 8, ecologist Matthew Hurteau published a "Eulogy for the Teakettle" lamenting the government's failure to protect national forests by reintroducing fire sooner and at large scales.

"I am sad because this old-growth forest is no more," wrote Hurteau, a biology professor at the University of New Mexico. "I am angry because this outcome was a choice."

On a helicopter flight to survey the burn scar after the fire was mostly extinguished, North said black sticks covered the ridgelines and slopes where towering pine and mixed conifer stands once grew. The ground was scorched and "you could see the outline where massive logs had been," he said.

Trump administration brands US cities war zones

Octavio Jones with Sebastian Smith in Washington
Sun, October 5, 2025 
AFP


A masked US immigration agent patrols Chicago, where President Donald Trump is also planning to send National Guard troops 

(OCTAVIO JONES)(OCTAVIO JONES/AFP/AFP)


The Trump administration branded Chicago a "war zone" Sunday as a justification for deploying soldiers against the will of local Democratic officials, while a judge blocked the White House from sending troops to another Democratic-run city.

An escalating political crisis across the country pits President Donald Trump's anti-crime and migration crackdown against opposition Democrats who accuse him of an authoritarian power grab.

In the newest flashpoint, Trump late Saturday authorized deployment of 300 National Guard soldiers to Chicago, the third-largest city in the United States, despite the opposition of elected leaders including the mayor and state Governor JB Pritzker.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem defended the move on Sunday, claiming on Fox News that Chicago is "a war zone."

But Pritzker, speaking on CNN's "State of the Union" show, accused Republicans of aiming to sow "mayhem on the ground. They want to create the war zone, so that they can send in even more troops."

"They need to get the heck out," he said.

A CBS poll released Sunday found that 58 percent of Americans oppose deploying the National Guard to cities.

Trump -- who last Tuesday spoke of using the military for a "war from within" -- shows no sign of backing off his hardline campaign.

In an untrue claim Sunday, he said: "Portland is burning to the ground. It's insurrectionists all over the place."

Key ally Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, echoed the president's rhetoric Sunday, telling NBC's "Meet the Press" that National Guard troops deployed in the US capital Washington had responded to a "literal war zone" -- a characterization at odds with reality.

- No to 'martial law' -

Trump's campaign to use the military on home soil hit a roadblock late Saturday in Portland, Oregon, when a court ruled the deployment was unlawful.

Trump has repeatedly called Portland "war-ravaged," but US District Judge Karin Immergut issued a temporary block, saying "the president's determination was simply untethered to the facts."




"This is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law," Immergut wrote in her ruling.

Although Portland has seen scattered attacks on federal officers and property, the Trump administration failed to demonstrate "that those episodes of violence were part of an organized attempt to overthrow the government as a whole" -- thereby justifying military force, she said.

One of Trump's key advisors, Stephen Miller, called the judge's order "legal insurrection."

On Sunday, California Governor Gavin Newsom, who is at the forefront of Democratic moves against Trump, said the US president had deployed his state's National Guard to Oregon, and that he would be suing over the move.

"His deployment of the California National Guard to Oregon isn't about crime. It's about power. He is using our military as political pawns to build up his own ego," said Newsom.

- Chicago shooting -

The Trump crackdown is being spearheaded by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). The department is being rapidly expanded both in personnel and duties.

ICE raids around the country -- primarily in cities run by Democrats -- have seen groups of masked, armed men in unmarked cars and armored vehicles target residential neighborhoods and businesses, sparking protests.

Days of tense scenes in Chicago turned violent Saturday when a federal officer shot a motorist that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said had been armed and rammed one of their patrol vehicles.

DHS officials have said that ICE officers also shot and killed 38-year-old immigrant Silverio Villegas Gonzalez during a traffic stop on September 12, accusing him of allegedly trying to flee the scene and dragging an ICE officer with the vehicle.

'Military-Style' ICE Raid In Chicago Shows Escalation in Tactics

Rebecca Schneid
Sun, October 5, 2025 
TIME

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) personnel, and Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino stand together amidst a tense protest outside the ICE processing facility in Broadview, Illinois, on September 27, 2025. Credit - Jacek Boczarski—Anadolu via Getty Images

At around 1 a.m. on Tuesday morning, armed federal agents rappelled from helicopters onto the roof of a five-storey residential apartment in the South Shore of Chicago. The agents worked their way through the building, kicking down doors and throwing flash bang grenades, rounding up adults and screaming children alike, detaining them in zip-ties and arresting dozens, according to witnesses and local reporting.

The military-style raid was part of a widening immigration crackdown by the Trump Administration in the country’s third-largest city, dubbed “Operation Midway Blitz,” which has brought a dramatic increase in federal raids and arrests.

It has also drawn outrage throughout Chicago and the state of Illinois, with rights groups and lawmakers claiming it represents a dramatic escalation in tactics used by federal authorities in the pursuit of Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown.

Read more: White House Anti-Terror Order Targets ‘Anti-Capitalist’ and ‘Anti-American’ Views. Here’s What To Know

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker accused the federal agents of separating children from their parents, zip-tying their hands, and detaining them in “dark vans” for hours. Videos of the raid show flashbang grenades erupting on the street, followed by residents of the building—children among them—being led to a parking lot across the street. Photos of the aftermath show toys and shoes littering the apartment hallways that were left in the chaos as people were pulled from their beds by the operation that included FBI and Homeland Security agents.
'Military-style tactics'

Pritzker condemned the raid and said that he would work with local law enforcement to hold the agents accountable. “Military-style tactics should never be used on children in a functioning democracy,” he said in a statement on Friday. “​​This didn’t happen in a country with an authoritarian regime – it happened here in Chicago. It happened in the United States of America – a country that should be a bastion of freedom, hope, and the rights of our people as guaranteed by the Constitution,” he added.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has touted some 900 arrests in its Chicago operation since it began in early September, as well as the 37 arrests made in the nighttime raid on Tuesday, all of whom it said were “involved in drug trafficking and distribution, weapons crimes and immigration violators.” The DHS said the building was targeted because it was “known to be frequented by Tren de Aragua members and their associates,” although it has yet to release the names of those arrested.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem posted a video of the raid on social media, overlaid with dramatic music, showing helicopters shining bright lights onto the apartment, armed agents kicking down doors and leading people out of the building in restraints.

A DHS spokesperson told CNN following the raid that children were taken into custody “for their own safety and to ensure these children were not being trafficked, abused or otherwise exploited.” The DHS also said that four children who are U.S. citizens with undocumented parents were taken into custody.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to send federal authorities and troops to Chicago and other Democratic-run cities to assist in immigration raids and to address what he perceives to be rampant crime.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said on Saturday that the president had authorized the deployment of 300 Illinois National Guard members to Chicago, citing what she called "ongoing violent riots and lawlessness."



Gov. Pritzker condemned the deployment as "a manufactured performance."

"This morning, the Trump Administration's Department of War gave me an ultimatum: call up your troops, or we will," Pritzker said in a statement. "It is absolutely outrageous and un-American to demand a Governor send military troops within our own borders and against our will."

The Trump Administration launched expanded immigration enforcement operations in Chicago on Sept. 8 as part of a wider federal crackdown on sanctuary cities across the country.

“This operation will target the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens in Chicago,” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said of the operation.

Chicago officials mounted a pushback ahead of the crackdown. The city’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, signed an order directing Chicago law enforcement and officials not to cooperate with federal agents and established an initiative intended to protect residents’ rights. The city of Evanston, an urban suburb of Chicago, issued a statement warning its residents of impending raids by ICE agents and urging them to report sightings of law enforcement.
Zip-ties and guns

In the aftermath of the sweeping raid, residents and city lawmakers have been demanding answers from the federal government.

Ed Yohnka, from the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois (ACLU), told MSNBC on Saturday that the raid represented “an escalation of force and violence” from the federal government in Chicago.

“What we saw was a full-fledged military operation conducted on the south side of Chicago against an apartment building,” he added.

“They just treated us like we were nothing,” Pertissue Fisher, a U.S. citizen who lives in the apartment building, told ABC7 Chicago in an interview soon after the raid. She said she was then handcuffed, held for hours, and released around 3 a.m. This was the first time she said a gun was ever put in her face.

Neighbor Eboni Watson, who witnessed the raid, also told the ABC station that the children were zip-tied—some of them were without clothes—when they were taken out of the residential building by federal agents. “Where’s the morality?” Watson said she kept asking during the raid.

Read More: Trump Vowed His Mass Deportation Efforts Would Target ‘the Worst of the Worst.’ Here’s What the Data Shows

“As a father, I cannot help but think about what it means for a child to be torn from their bed in the middle of the night, detained for no reason other than a show of force,” National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) president Derrick Johnson said in a statement. “The trauma inflicted on these young people and their families is unconscionable."

ICE and DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment from TIME.
Protests in the aftermath

The increased raids have turned Chicago into a flashpoint in the battle over Trump's crackdown. Protests have increased in across the city in recent weeks over the ICE operations, concentrated outside the ICE detention facility in the suburb of Broadview.

One woman was shot by Border Patrol agents during a protest outside the facility on Saturday, the DHS announced. The agency said in a statement that its agents were "were rammed by vehicles and boxed in by 10 cars," and were forced to fire defensive when "a suspect tried to run them over."

“One of the drivers who rammed the law enforcement vehicle was armed with a semi-automatic weapon,” spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said on social media. “Law enforcement was forced to deploy their weapons and fire defensive shots at an armed US citizen who drove herself to the hospital to get care for wounds.” The woman was later released from hospital, according to Chicago police. Protests have continued at the facility.

ICE’s tactics in the city were also under the spotlight on Friday, when Chicago Alderperson Jessie Fuentes was handcuffed by federal immigration agents at a Chicago medical center after questioning agents about their warrant to arrest at the medical center.

Chicago's Mayor Johnson called ICE’s tactics “abusive.”

The raids come just days after President Trump signaled a desire to make greater use of the U.S. military in American cities during a speech to top military leaders, as he assailed a “war from within” the nation.

“We are under invasion from within,” he said, “no different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways, because they don't wear uniforms.” In the same speech, he called for U.S. cities to be “training grounds” for the military.

Trump has frequently singled out Chicago in his long-running feud with Democratic-run cities, threatening it with his newly named “Department of War.”


US Border Patrol raid sweeps in citizens, families as Chicago crackdown intensifies

By Renee Hickman, Kristina Cooke and Ted Hesson
Sat, October 4, 2025 


FILE PHOTO: USBP Chief Patrol Agent of the El Centro sector, Greg Bovino, stands on a street corner with federal agents after patrolling several tourist districts in the downtown area, after U.S. President Donald Trump ordered increased federal law enforcement presence to assist in crime prevention, in Chicago, Illinois, U.S. September 28, 2025. REUTERS/Jim Vondruska

CHICAGO (Reuters) -U.S. Border Patrol agents deployed to Chicago led a late-night raid on an apartment building this week, rappelling from helicopters onto rooftops and breaking down doors in an operation authorities said targeted gang members but which swept up U.S. citizens and families.

The show of force highlighted President Donald Trump's unprecedented use of Border Patrol agents as a surge force in major cities, rerouting personnel who would normally be tasked with guarding America’s borders with Mexico and Canada.

Naudelys, a 19-year-old Venezuelan woman, says she was in her apartment with her 4-year-old son and another couple with a baby when agents knocked down their door during the raid early Tuesday. Agents told them to put up their hands and pointed guns at them, she said.

Naudelys, whose husband was arrested and detained by immigration authorities three months ago, said she tried to record the scene but an agent knocked away her phone.

The Spanish-speaking agents told them to go back to their country and made a sexualized remark about Venezuelan women, she said. One of the agents hit a man in front of her son, and she begged him to stop, she said.

"My son was traumatized," said Naudelys, who requested her last name be withheld.

She said authorities alleged her friend's partner is a member of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, something she disputes.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which includes Border Patrol, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Naudelys' account of the raid.

As part of the raid, some U.S. citizens were temporarily detained and children pulled from their beds, according to interviews with residents and news reports. Building hallways were still littered with debris two days later.

Trump, a Republican, has vowed to escalate immigration enforcement in Chicago and other Democratic strongholds that limit cooperation with federal operations. Border Patrol - staffed with some 19,000 agents and under less pressure with border apprehensions at historic lows - has increasingly taken on a new role in major cities, led by Gregory Bovino, the agency's commander-at-large.

The incident in the city’s South Side neighborhood, which authorities said resulted in dozens of arrests, was one of the highest-profile immigration actions in Chicago since the Trump administration launched "Operation Midway Blitz" in the city last month. Hundreds of agents swarmed the apartment building during the raid on Tuesday, including some rappelling down to the roof from Black Hawk helicopters, according to NewsNation.

AGENTS TOOK CHILDREN FROM THEIR PARENTS

A DHS spokesperson confirmed the operation, saying it focused on alleged members of Tren de Aragua and that border agents partnered with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Authorities arrested at least 37 people on immigration violations, most of whom were Venezuelan, the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson said two people arrested were alleged members of Tren de Aragua. The department identified six people with criminal histories, ranging from battery to marijuana possession and said two people were suspected of being involved in a shooting.

The spokesperson declined to say whether agents had warrants to forcibly enter homes, saying that because Tren de Aragua has been labeled a terrorist organization "there are sensitivities on what we can provide without putting people at risk."

"This operation was performed in full compliance of the law," the spokesperson said.

Four U.S. citizen children were taken from their parents during the raid because the parents lacked legal status, DHS said, alleging that one of the parents was a Tren de Aragua member.

"These children were taken into custody until they could be put in the care of a safe guardian or the state," the spokesperson said.

Naudelys said authorities released her and her son later that day because she has a pending asylum case. Her apartment was boarded up when she returned, she said. Workers opened it for her, but her possessions were gone, she said.

Cassandra Murray, 55, a resident, said she heard loud blasts as the raids occurred.

She said her Venezuelan neighbors arrived about two years ago. At the time, thousands of Venezuelans who had recently crossed the U.S.-Mexico border were being bused to Chicago and other cities by the state of Texas.

“They never made us feel unsafe,” said Murray. “They needed somewhere to live, too."

One resident, who asked not to be named, reported being made to lie down on the ground by agents during the raid and having his hands zip-tied.

Gil Kerlikowske, who was commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection from 2014-2017 and a former Seattle police chief, said border agents have different training and protocols than local police and worries more aggressive tactics could erode trust.

“Policing an urban environment is totally, completely different,” he said.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have also come under scrutiny over the use of tear gas against protesters at one of its Chicago facilities and the fatal shooting of a Mexican man.

'WE ARE NOT GOING ANYWHERE'

In Los Angeles over the summer, Border Patrol agents conducted immigration sweeps in Home Depot parking lots and other public areas that contributed to a federal judge’s decision to block overt racial profiling in the area. The Supreme Court in September sided with the Trump administration, allowing it to resume the tactics.

Bovino, who oversaw the L.A. operation, arrived in Chicago several weeks ago. He frequently posts to social media about his agency’s work, often in brash terms.

“We are here, Chicago, and we are not going anywhere,” Bovino said on X last month alongside a video of the arrest of a man he said was a Venezuelan gang member in a Home Depot parking lot, edited to a song by rapper Travis Scott.

A viral video this week showed masked and armed Border Patrol agents chasing a man on an e-bike in downtown Chicago after he taunted them and said he was not a U.S. citizen.

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, a Democrat, criticized the deployment of armed Border Patrol agents and other personnel to the city, calling it "authoritarianism" at a press conference on Monday.

"Gregory Bovino has been leading the disruption and causing mayhem while he gleefully poses for photo ops and TikTok videos," he said.

800 arrests amid Chicago immigration 'blitz' of helicopters and midnight raids

Michael Loria and Eduardo Cuevas, USA TODAY
Fri, October 3, 2025

CHICAGO – Federal agents rappelled from Black Hawk helicopters. Dozens of others, their faces hidden behind masks, arrived in moving trucks. In total, 300 officers stormed a South Side apartment building that Department of Homeland Security officials say harbored criminals.

An agency spokesperson said the raid in the early hours of Sept. 30 was aimed at capturing members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang President Donald Trump has designated as a terrorist organization. Hundreds of agents swarmed apartments in the multi-story building, detaining several American citizens, including children, for hours and netting 37 total arrests. The outcome of those arrests remains unclear.

The extraordinary raid came nearly a month into the White House’s immigration enforcement crackdown in the Chicago area, known as Operation Midway Blitz. Federal officials said it has netted more than 800 arrests since Sept. 8.

“Our continued targeted enforcement in Chicago shows criminals have nowhere to hide,” Michael Banks, the chief of U.S. Border Patrol, said in an X post. “Not at the border, not in our cities.”


Debris and personal belongings sit on the floor of an empty apartment in a complex where 37 people were detained during a large-scale ICE raid on Sept. 30, 2025, after President Donald Trump ordered increased federal law enforcement presence to assist in crime prevention, in Chicago, Oct. 2, 2025.

Broken exterior windows of an apartment complex where 37 people were detained during a large-scale ICE raid on Sept. 30, 2025, after President Donald Trump ordered increased federal law enforcement presence to assist in crime prevention, in Chicago, Oct. 2, 2025.

The broken exterior windows of an apartment complex where 37 people were detained during a large-scale ICE raid on Sept. 30, 2025, after President Donald Trump ordered increased federal law enforcement presence to assist in crime prevention, in Chicago, Oct. 2, 2025.

Debris and personal belongings sit on the floor of an empty apartment in a complex where 37 people were detained during a large-scale ICE raid on Sept. 30, 2025, after President Donald Trump ordered increased federal law enforcement presence to assist in crime prevention, in Chicago, Oct. 2, 2025.More
Overnight apartment building raid

The Trump administration has vowed to flood cities run by Democrats with federal agents as part of a nationwide immigration crackdown. Federal officials have targeted so-called "sanctuary" jurisdictions that limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.

The Chicago Sun-Times and NewsNation were among the first to report on the raid in the city’s South Shore neighborhood. The historically Black area gained a sizable Venezuelan population after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott bused tens of thousands of migrants from the border to the Democratic city in 2023. Many moved to the neighborhood after first being placed in city-run shelters in the area.

Videos of the raid shared online by the Department of Homeland Security show Border Patrol agents with guns drawn approaching the building in the middle of the night. Agents led shirtless men outside.

The raid saw dozens arrested and the building left in shambles, according to photos shared with USA TODAY. Two "confirmed Tren de Aragua members" were captured, according to a Department of Homeland Security statement.


A protester washes chemical irritant from his eyes after federal agents deployed tear gas and pepper balls outside of the Broadview ICE processing facility on Sept. 26, 2025. President Donald Trump ordered increased federal law enforcement in Chicago.

People protest outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in the Chicago suburb of Broadview, Ill., Oct. 3, 2025.

Activists proest outside of an immigrant processing and detention center on Oct. 2, 2025 in Broadview, Ill.

A protester washes chemical irritant from his eyes after federal agents deployed tear gas and pepper balls outside of the Broadview ICE processing facility on Sept. 26, 2025. President Donald Trump ordered increased federal law enforcement in Chicago.More

"Federal law enforcement officers will not stand by and allow criminal activity to flourish in our American neighborhoods," Homeland Security said in a statement. Among others captured, according to the agency, were a "suspected" Tren de Aragua member; six people with a criminal history ranging from aggravated battery to possession of marijuana; and two people "suspected of being involved in a shooting investigation."

An American citizen with a local arrest warrant, and four U.S. citizen children of immigrants were also caught up in the raid, Homeland Security reported. The children were taken into custody to be "put in the care of a safe guardian or the state," the agency said.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported people were taken outside while still naked; NewsNation reported from the Black Hawk helicopters at the scene.

Videos from the scene taken at about 2 a.m. and shared with USA TODAY show masked agents arriving in the back of Budget and U-Haul moving vans carrying military-style rifles.

Detained immigrants were shown held in a parking lot and across the street a woman crying calls out in broken Spanish, "I’ll always love you."

Federal law enforcement agencies including DHS, ICE, and Customs and Border Protection would not say if the Black Hawks used in the raid were from the U.S. Army, National Guard, or a non-military department.

Arrests create widespread fear

Out of more than 800 people arrested during the last month in the Illinois operations, it’s unclear how many actually had criminal convictions or pending charges, versus those with no criminal record, including children.

An Oct. 1 DHS news release included mugshots of more than a dozen migrants from Eastern Europe and Latin America who had been arrested because of previous criminal convictions.

One Venezuelan woman was listed as the only alleged Tren de Aragua gang member. The Trump administration has focused on the Venezuelan gang despite little evidence of widespread presence in Chicago or the United States more broadly.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, said federal agents have failed to focus on violent criminals. Instead, he said in an Oct. 3 social media post, the operations have created panic by scaring residents, violating due process rights and detaining citizens.

“Illinois is not a photo opportunity or warzone,” he said, “it’s a sovereign state where our people deserve rights, respect, and answers.”
Other large-scale ICE raids

In other large-scale operations, federal agents have mostly detained people with no criminal records.

Highly publicized raids across Southern California in June showed most people arrested had no criminal histories. Immigration and Customs Enforcement data showed that, out of over 2,000 people arrested that month, more than two-thirds had no criminal convictions, and over half had never been charged with a crime, according to the Los Angeles Times.

A police officer holds a demonstrator as people protest outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Broadview facility in Chicago, Illinois, October 3, 2025.

A July raid of a cannabis farm in Camarillo, California, found only four of the 361 people arrested had existing criminal convictions, as the Ventura County Star, part of the USA TODAY Network found.

In September, federal officials led a large worksite raid of a Hyundai battery plant under construction in Georgia. Agents arrested about 475 people, including more than 300 South Koreans, many of whom who were here on visas allowing them to train American workers.

About 71.5% of nearly 60,000 people currently in ICE detention have no criminal convictions, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research group at Syracuse University.

(This story has been updated with new information.)

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Chicago immigration 'blitz' piles up arrests and criticism

Exclusive-Trump administration eyes stake in company developing Greenland rare earths mine

MERCANTILIST STATE CAPITALI$M

By Jarrett Renshaw, Ernest Scheyder and Gram Slattery
Fri, October 3, 2025 

(Reuters) -Trump administration officials have discussed taking a stake in Critical Metals Corp, four people familiar with the discussions told Reuters, which would give Washington a direct interest in the largest rare earths project in Greenland, the Arctic territory that President Donald Trump once suggested buying.

If finalized, the deal would mark the latest political twist for the Tanbreez rare earths deposit, which former President Joe Biden successfully lobbied to have sold to New York-based Critical Metals for far less than a Chinese firm was offering. Washington has recently taken stakes in Lithium Americas and MP Materials, underscoring Trump's desire for the U.S. to benefit from growing production of minerals used across the global economy.

Details of the discussions about Washington's interest in an equity stake in Critical Metals have not previously been reported. The four sources declined to be named, citing the sensitivity of the negotiations.

"Hundreds of companies are approaching us trying to get the administration to invest in their critical minerals projects," a senior Trump administration official told Reuters in response to a request for comment. "There is absolutely nothing close with this company at this time."

Critical Metals did not respond to repeated requests for comment via email and phone. Greenland is a semi-autonomous part of Denmark and the Danish Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Rare earths offer strong magnetic properties critical to high-tech industries ranging from electric vehicles to missile systems. Their importance is spurring an intense push for fresh supplies by Western countries looking to lessen their dependence on China's near total control of their extraction and processing. Critical Metals, which agreed to buy Greenland's Tanbreez deposit last year for $5 million in cash and $211 million in stock, applied in June for a $50 million grant through the Defense Production Act, a Cold War-era piece of legislation aimed at boosting production of goods for national security purposes. In the last six weeks, though, the administration has begun discussions with the company about converting the grant into an equity stake, three of the sources said. If the deal goes through, a $50 million conversion would mean a roughly 8% stake in the company, although negotiations are not final and the final size of the stake could be higher or the deal itself could collapse, the same three sources said.

 A general view of the port in Nuuk ./File Photo · Reuters

Administration officials have considered reallocating $2 billion from the CHIPS Act to fund critical minerals projects, Reuters reported in August. The law, formally known as the CHIPS and Science Act, was signed into law by then-President Joe Biden in 2022 and aims to lure chip production away from Asia. The Critical Metals investment discussions were delayed by the administration's negotiations in recent days for a 5% stake in Lithium Americas, two of the sources said. The U.S. government shutdown is not expected to affect the negotiations, given that high-level staff involved in the discussions are considered essential government workers, two of the sources said. Part of the discussion centers on how warrants would be issued to give Washington the stake, one of the sources said. Warrants give their holders the right to buy stock at a set price. The equity stake would be separate from a $120 million loan the U.S. Export-Import Bank (EXIM) is considering to help the company develop Tanbreez, according to two of the sources. An EXIM spokesperson was not immediately available to comment. GREENLAND'S APPEAL Even before Trump expressed an interest in acquiring Greenland, Washington had long-running economic interests in the Danish territory. Biden officials were visiting Greenland's capital Nuuk as recently as last November trying to woo additional private investment in the island's mining sector. Trump also sent Vice President JD Vance to the island in March. One of the largest U.S. Air Force bases is in northern Greenland. The Tanbreez project is expected to cost $290 million to bring into commercial production, the company has previously said.

The EXIM loan would be used to fund technical work and get the mine to initial production by 2026. Once fully operational, the mine is expected to produce 85,000 metric tons per year of rare earths concentrate. The site also contains gallium, which China subjected to export restrictions last year, and tantalum. Greenland's mining sector has developed slowly in recent years, hindered by limited investor interest, bureaucratic challenges and environmental concerns. Currently, only two small mines are in operation. The remote, cold location of Tanbreez is seen posing challenges to its development, although the deposit is located near a major waterway.

(Reporting by Jarrett Renshaw, Ernest Scheyder and Gram Slattery; Writing by Ernest Scheyder; Editing by Veronica Brown, Jason Neely and Edmund Klamann)

\

Trump is reviving large sales of coal from public lands. Will anyone want it?

\A haul truck is seen after being loaded with coal by a mechanized shovel at the Spring Creek mine,  near Decker, Mont. (AP Photo/Matthew Brown) · Associated Press

MATTHEW BROWN and MEAD GRUVER
Sat, October 4, 2025

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — U.S. officials in the coming days are set to hold the government's biggest coal sales in more than a decade, offering 600 million tons from publicly owned reserves next to strip mines in Montana and Wyoming.

The sales are a signature piece of President Donald Trump's ambitions for companies to dig more coal from federal lands and burn it for electricity. Yet most power plants served by those mines plan to quit burning coal altogether within 10 years, an Associated Press data analysis shows.

Three other mines poised for expansions or new leases under Trump also face declining demand as power plants use less of their coal and in some cases shut down, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration and the nonprofit Global Energy Monitor.

Those market realities raise a fundamental question about the Republican administration's push to revive a heavily polluting industry that long has been in decline: Who's going to buy all that coal?

The question looms over the administration's enthusiastic embrace of coal, a leading contributor to climate change. It also shows the uncertainty inherent in inserting those policies into markets where energy-producing customers make long-term decisions with massive implications, not just for their own viability but for the future of the planet, in an ever-shifting political landscape.

Rushing to approve projects

The upcoming lease sales in Montana and Wyoming are in the Powder River Basin, home to the most productive U.S. coal fields.

Officials say they will go forward beginning Monday despite the government shutdown. The administration exempted from furlough those workers who process fossil fuel permits and leases.

Democratic President Joe Biden last year acted to block future coal leases in the region, citing their potential to make climate change worse. Burning the coal from the two leases being sold in coming days would generate more than 1 billion tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide, according to a Department of Energy formula.

Trump rejected climate change as a “con job” during a Sept. 23 speech to the U.N. General Assembly, an assessment that puts him at odds with scientists. He praised coal as “beautiful" and boasted about the abundance of U.S. supplies while deriding solar and wind power. Administration officials said Wednesday that they were canceling $8 billion in grants for clean energy projects in 16 states won by Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.

In response to an order from Trump on his first day in office in January, coal lease sales that had been shelved or stalled were revived and rushed to approval, with considerations of greenhouse gas emissions dismissed. Administration officials have advanced coal mine expansions and lease sales in Utah, North Dakota, Tennessee and Alabama, in addition to Montana and Wyoming.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said Monday that the administration is opening more than 20,000 square miles (52,000 square kilometers) of federal lands to mining. That is an area bigger than New Hampshire and Vermont combined.

The administration also sharply reduced royalty rates for coal from federal lands, ordered a coal-fired power plant in Michigan to stay open past planned retirement dates and pledged $625 million to recommission or modernize coal plants amid growing electricity demand from artificial intelligence and data centers.

“We're putting American miners back to work,” Burgum said, flanked by coal miners and Republican politicians. “We've got a demand curve coming at us in terms of the demand for electricity that is literally going through the roof.”

Coal demand plummets

The AP's finding that power plants served by mines on public lands are burning less coal reflects an industrywide decline that began in 2007.

Energy experts and economists were not surprised. They expressed doubt that coal would ever reclaim dominance in the power sector. Interior Department officials did not respond to questions about future demand for coal from public lands.

But it will take time for more electricity from planned natural gas and solar projects to come online. That means Trump’s actions could give a short-term bump to coal, said Umed Paliwal, an expert in electricity markets at the University of California, Berkeley.

“Eventually coal will get pushed out of the market,” Paliwal said. “The economics will just eat the coal generation over time.”

The coal sales in Montana and Wyoming were requested by Navajo Nation-owned company. The Navajo Transitional Energy Co. (NTEC) has been one of the largest industry players since buying several major mines in the Powder River Basin during a 2019 bankruptcy auction. Those mines supply 34 power plants in 19 states.

Twenty-one of the plants are scheduled to stop burning coal in the next decade. They include all five plants using coal from NTEC's Spring Creek mine in Montana.

In filings with federal officials, the company said the fair market value of 167 million tons of federal coal next to the Spring Creek mine was just over $126,000.

That is less than one-tenth of a penny per ton, a fraction of what coal brought in its heyday. By comparison, the last large-scale lease sale in the Powder River Basin, also for 167 million tons of coal, drew a bid of $35 million in 2013. Federal officials rejected that as too low.

NTEC said the low value was supported by prior government reviews predicting fewer buyers for coal. The company said taxpayers would benefit in future years from royalties on any coal mined.

“The market for coal will decline significantly over the next two decades. There are fewer coal mines expanding their reserves, there are fewer buyers of thermal coal and there are more regulatory constraints,” the company said.

In central Wyoming on Wednesday, the government will sell 440 million tons of coal next to NTEC’s Antelope Mine. Just over half of the 29 power plants served by the mine are scheduled to stop burning coal by 2035.

Among them is the Rawhide plant in northern Colorado. It is due to quit coal in 2029 but will keep making electricity with natural gas and 30 megawatts of solar panels.

Aging plants and optimism

The largest U.S. coal company has offered a more optimistic take on coal's future. Because new nuclear and gas plants are years away, Peabody Energy suggested in September that demand for coal in the U.S. could increase 250 million tons annually — up almost 50% from current volumes.

Peabody’s projection was based on the premise that existing power plants can burn more coal. That amount, known as plant capacity, dropped by about half in recent years.

"U.S. coal is clearly in comeback mode," Peabody's president, James Grech, said in a recent conference call with analysts. “The U.S. has more energy in its coal reserves than any nation has in any one energy source.”

No large coal power plants have come online in the U.S. since 2013. Most existing plants are 40 years old or older. Money pledged by the administration to refurbish older plants will not go very far given that a single boiler component at a plant can cost $25 million to replace, said Nikhil Kumar with GridLab, an energy consulting group.

That leads back to the question of who will buy the coal.

“I don't see where you get all this coal consumed at remaining facilities," Kumar said.

___

Gruver reported from Wellington, Colorado. Associated Press writer Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, New Mexico, contributed to this report.

Trump's 'paper tiger' jab at Russia echoes Mao's propaganda against the US

DIDI TANG
Fri, October 3, 2025


FILE - President Donald Trump silences his mobile phone in the Oval Office of the White House, May 23, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly 80 years after Mao Zedong called the United States a “paper tiger” to boost morale at home, U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are exchanging barbs who is the paper tiger of today.

In a Sept. 23 post on Truth Social, Trump mocked Russia's military powers and called the country “a paper tiger,” prompting the Kremlin to push back. Trump backed off, but on Tuesday he brought back the dismissive rhetoric when addressing a roomful of generals and admirals. “You’re four years fighting a war that should have taken a week," Trump said of Russia's war with Ukraine. "Are you a paper tiger?”

On Thursday, Putin retorted, “We are fighting against the entire bloc of NATO, and we keep moving, keep advancing and feel confident, and we are a paper tiger; what NATO itself is?”

He added: “A paper tiger? Go and deal with this paper tiger then.”

Those familiar with modern Chinese history have found it amusing, odd and not without irony that an American president should be using a classic Chinese propaganda slogan — words that came from the heart of a communist government that is the polar opposite of what the Trump administration frames as the best way to run a country.

“As a Chinese historian I had to laugh at the irony when President Trump appropriated one of Chairman Mao’s favorite expressions in calling Russia a ‘paper tiger,’” said John Delury, a senior fellow at Asia Society.

“Mao famously said this about the United States, at a time when the U.S. had a growing nuclear arsenal and China was not yet a nuclear power. ... How times have changed. Now the leaders of the United States and Russia are calling one another ‘paper tigers’ as Chinese leader Xi Jinping sits back looking like the adult in the room.”

How paper tiger became a propaganda term in China

The phrase — “zhilaohu” in China's dominant dialect — is well-rooted in the culture of the Chinese Communist Party. Perry Link, a well-known American scholar on modern Chinese language and culture, recalled that Lao She, a famous Chinese writer, referred to U.S. troops as the “paper tiger” during the Korean War years.

“There’s a Cold War echo across this whole story,” said Rana Mitter, a British historian specializing in modern Chinese history.

Accounts by Chinese state media and essays by party theorists say the phrase entered into the party vocabulary when Mao, the founding revolutionary, told the American journalist Anna Louise Strong in a 1946 interview that the atom bomb by the United States was a “paper tiger,” which the “U.S. reactionaries use to scare people.”

Mao then used the Chinese phrase “zhilaohu,” which means paper tiger literally. But his interpreter translated it into “scarecrow,” according to state media reports, before an American doctor who was present suggested “paper tiger," which Mao approved. The phrase largely refers to something that is seemingly powerful but actually fragile.

Delury said at the time that Moscow, which took the nuclear threat seriously, was aghast that Mao “casually” dismissed the threat and was annoyed that “Mao would brazenly use 'paper tiger’ rhetoric at a time when if nuclear war broke out, China would rely on Russian involvement.”

The term became ‘a sharp thought weapon’ for China

That didn't happen. Mao seized power in 1949, and the phrase “zhilaohu” became a propaganda staple in communist China, closely associated with western imperialists, particularly the United States. Mao famously said that “all reactionaries are paper tigers.” In canonizing the leader's wisdom, party theorists have called the slogan Mao's “strategic thought" and “a sharp thought weapon.

The rhetoric subsided when U.S.-China ties warmed in the 1970s, but it resurfaced in recent years as bilateral relations chilled.

In April, in the heat of a tariff war between the two countries, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson posted on X a Mao quotation from 1964: “The U.S. intimidates certain countries, stopping them from doing business with us. But America is just a paper tiger. Don't believe its bluff. One poke, and it'll burst."

Before Trump borrowed Beijing's propaganda slogan to mock Russia, the phrase had already seeped into the public discourse in the United States. In a February editorial, Eugene Robinson, a Washington Post columnist, criticized Trump's foreign policy and compared it to bullying. “Trump’s foreign policy is that of a paper tiger, not a real one,” wrote the columnist, now retired.

And in May, Laurence Tribe, a Harvard University professor, called Trump “a paper tiger” when assuring Harvard's international students not to be scared by the president's hostile policy towards foreign students.