LONDON: Thousands crammed the streets of central London on Friday to vent their anger over Donald Trump’s first official visit to Britain, blowing horns, waving banners and hoisting a bright orange effigy of the US president on their shoulders
Filing past palaces of high-end commerce — Apple, Burberry, Brooks Brothers — marchers criticized Trump’s policies on immigration, climate change and torture, as well as his treatment of women. Some carried more than one sign, unable to choose which policy they hated the most.
The Rev. Nigel Sinclair, a 53-year-old Church of England preacher, came in what he called his Sunday vicar’s outfit, carrying a sign that showed how Trump’s ideas differ from those of Jesus Christ. Susie Mazur, 29, from Salisbury in southwestern England, crocheted a Donald Trump pin-cushion and wore it on her head, winning praise from fellow protesters.
“People coming here nowadays feel very hopeless about what is happening. They don’t like what is happening in the UK, in America, across the world — there are so many problems,” Mazur said. “Everyone has the same goal. What they want is to stop hate, basically.”
As Trump met with Prime Minister Theresa May at her country retreat outside the city, the protesters gathered outside embassies, offices and homes carrying signs that read, “Human rights have no border,” and “Mother Earth unites us,” before marching past the shops of Regent’s Street on their way to Piccadilly Circus and finally Trafalgar Square, which the city calls a “center of national democracy and protest.”
Not everyone was protesting against Trump, however.
Augustine Chukwuma Obodo, who wore a “Make America Great Again!” hat and a “Trump for President in 2020” shirt, said he wanted to make clear that not everyone found the protests amusing. Obodo, a Nigerian living in London, said he wanted to add his voice to those who are quieter, but believe Trump is doing a good job on issues such as pushing NATO members to increase their defense spending.
“America is not a cash point,” he said.
The day began with a giant balloon that caricatured Trump as a screaming orange baby flying outside the Houses of Parliament. The diaper-clad infant, with a quiff of hair and a mobile phone for tweeting, was the centerpiece of demonstrations.
“Depicting Trump as a baby is a great way of targeting his fragile ego, and mocking him is our main motivation,” said Matthew Bonner, one of the organizers of the balloon flight. “He doesn’t seem to be affected by the moral outrage that comes from his behavior and his policies. You can’t reason with him, but you can ridicule him.”
Hundreds crammed Parliament Square to take in the spectacle. Deborah Burns, 43, of Newcastle in northern England, brought along her 10-year old daughter, Monica Siddique.
“I think it’s a good way to stop Trump from being mean to the rest of the world,” Monica said of the balloon. “He says, ‘Oh, this is a free world.’ But then he goes and builds walls. ... He acts like a baby.”
Some Americans living in London came to see the balloon, wearing the Stars and Stripes draped over their shoulders. Other spectators just came to take pictures as the balloon floated overhead for two hours.
“It’s a very British way of protesting — we don’t like to throw stones,” said Phil Chapman, 59, of Hayfield, a village in Derbyshire. “It’s far easier to protest in a pleasant way. If you can do that with humor, you will get more attention.”
Trump criticized London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who refused to prevent the balloon from flying, in an interview published Friday.
“I think he has not been hospitable to a government that is very important,” Trump told Britain’s Sun newspaper. “Now, he might not like the current president, but I represent the United States. I also represent a lot of people in Europe, because a lot of people from Europe are in the United States.”
Khan, who has been a target of Trump’s ire before, said his job was to make sure the protests were peaceful, not to be a censor or the “arbiter of good taste.”
“The idea that I would stop a blimp or a balloon flying over London because it may cause offense, and thereby curtail the rights people have to protest when it’s not unsafe, it’s not un-peaceful, I think people would find a bit astonishing,” Khan told the BBC.
Anger over Trump’s visit has been simmering ever since May invited the president for a state visit just a week after his inauguration last year. The event, which would normally include glittering horse-drawn carriages and a state dinner hosted by the monarch, morphed into a two-day “working visit” with much less pomp and circumstance amid concern about security and crowds in central London.
Trump avoided the protests by largely staying away from the capital. After a black-tie dinner 60 miles (100 kilometers) outside London, he spent Thursday night at the US ambassador’s residence in Regents Park, then flew by helicopter to May’s country retreat, Chequers, for his meeting with the prime minister, followed by another flight to Windsor Palace for tea with Queen Elizabeth II.
He then headed for Scotland, where he was to spend the weekend at one of his private golf clubs.
Ahead of Trump’s arrival, hundreds of people gathered in Scotland’s largest city, Glasgow, to protest the US president’s UK visit.
Among them was Emily Bryce, who proudly carried a homemade banner written in Gaelic, in recognition of Trump’s Highland roots. “Donald Trump, son of the devil,” it read.
“It’s a disgrace that Theresa May has allowed Trump to visit the UK and to meet the queen,” the 67-year-old Bryce said.
A march in support of Trump was planned for Saturday in London, starting at the US Embassy on the south bank of the River Thames and ending near the prime minister’s residence at Downing Street. But on Friday, the crowds belonged to those who oppose his policies.
Placards reading “Dump Trump,” and “Can’t comb over sexism,” were raised high by the boisterous crowds in the capital.
Phil Bond, 65, a musician, said he knew it was unlikely that the demonstrations will make any difference to Trump, but he believes people in the United States will notice.
“If enough people come out, it might make a difference,” he said.
Donald Trump mocked during protests against his visit to the UK
Donald Trump mocked during protests against his visit to the UK
- Trump was greeted by massive protests across Britain, including tens of thousands of demonstrators who filled the streets of London alongside a giant balloon
- Trump acknowledged feeling unwelcome in the city, and blamed that in part on Mayor Sadiq Khan, who gave protesters permission to fly the baby Trump balloon
British PM Starmer stresses commitment to free trade in talks with Trump, Downing Street says
- UK seeking deal with Trump after he imposed 10 percent tariffs on most imports of British goods to the US
- The two leaders also addressed the situations in Ukraine and Iran, and recent actions against the Houthis in Yemen
LONDON: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer spoke with US President Donald Trump, discussing trade between the two nations among other subjects including the situation in Ukraine and Iran, a Downing Street spokesperson said on Friday.
Britain is hoping to strike a deal with Trump after he imposed 10 percent tariffs on most imports of British goods to the United States and a higher 25 percent rate on imports of cars, steel and aluminum.
“The leaders began by discussing the ongoing and productive discussions between the UK and US on trade,” the spokesperson said, adding that Starmer emphasized his commitment to free trade while safeguarding national interests.
Starmer and Trump also addressed the situations in Ukraine and Iran, and recent actions against the Houthis in Yemen, the spokesperson from the prime minister’s office said.
Lawsuit challenges Trump administration crackdown on international students
- About 1,100 students at more than 170 colleges, universities and university systems have been affected since late March, according to an Associated Press review of university statements, correspondence with school officials and court records
WASHINGTON: A class action lawsuit filed Friday asks a federal court to reinstate the legal status of international students caught up in a Trump administration crackdown that has left more than a thousand fearful of deportation.
The suit filed by several American Civil Liberties Union affiliates seeks to represent more than 100 students in New England and Puerto Rico.
“International students are a vital community in our state’s universities, and no administration should be allowed to circumvent the law to unilaterally strip students of status, disrupt their studies, and put them at risk of deportation,” said Gilles Bissonnette, legal director of the ACLU of New Hampshire.
At schools around the country, students have seen their visas revoked or their legal status terminated, typically with little notice.
About 1,100 students at more than 170 colleges, universities and university systems have been affected since late March, according to an Associated Press review of university statements, correspondence with school officials and court records. The AP is working to confirm reports of hundreds more students affected.
Students have filed other lawsuits arguing they were denied due process. Federal judges have granted temporary restraining orders in New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Montana, shielding students from efforts to remove them from the US.
Plaintiffs in the new lawsuit, filed in federal court in New Hampshire, learned without warning their F-1 student statuses had been terminated, leaving in doubt their ability to stay in the country and finish their studies, according to the complaint.
One of them, Manikanta Pasula of India, was on the brink of getting his master’s in computer science at Rivier University in New Hampshire and applying to remain in the country through a work program for international students. Hangrui Zhang of China had come to the US for a Ph.D. program in electronic and computer science at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. Now, he cannot work as a research assistant, which was his only source of income, the complaint said.
The government did not give notice it is required to provide before terminating a foreign student’s legal status, the lawyers said.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
Last month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the State Department was revoking visas held by visitors who were acting counter to national interests, including some who protested Israel’s war in Gaza and those who face criminal charges.
In some high-profile cases, such as that involving Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil, the Trump administration has cited involvement in pro-Palestinian activism as a rationale for deportation.
But colleges say most students affected by visa revocations played no role in those protests. Many are being singled out over minor infractions such as traffic violations that occurred long ago, and in some cases the reason is unclear, colleges say.
Russia sees progress in Ukraine peace talks but US relations strained
- President Trump hints abandoning peace effort “if one of the two parties makes it very difficult”
- Kremlin spokesman cites moratorium on strikes against energy infrastructure as progress
MOSCOW: The Kremlin said on Friday that some progress had already been made in talks about a possible peace settlement to end the war in Ukraine but that contacts were rather complicated with the United States.
“Contacts are quite complicated, because, naturally, the topic is not an easy one,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
“Russia is committed to resolving this conflict, ensuring its own interests, and is open to dialogue. We continue to do this.”
US President Donald Trump said on Friday that he wanted to achieve a peace deal quickly, but could not be involved in the search for a settlement indefinitely “if one of the two parties makes it very difficult.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking earlier in Paris after meeting European and Ukrainian leaders, said the sides had just days to show progress or Washington would abandon its efforts.
Asked if the United States could withdraw from the search for a peace settlement in Ukraine, Peskov said that was a question for Washington.
“We believe that some progress can already be noted,” Peskov said, citing a temporary moratorium on strikes against energy infrastructure, though he said Ukraine had not adhered to it.
“Therefore, certain developments have already been achieved, but, of course, there are still many complex discussions ahead.”
Peskov, when asked if the energy moratorium was over, said that it had already been a month but that no orders from the president had been received to change Russia’s position.
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council and a representative of Russian hawks, expressed approval for the US remarks on the X social media platform.
“American officials have said that if there is no progress on the Ukrainian case, the United States will wash its hands of it. Wisely,” Medvedev wrote in English. “And the EU should do the same. Then Russia will figure it out faster.”
10,000 pages of records about Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 assassination are released, on Trump’s order
WASHINGTON: About 10,000 pages of records related to the 1968 assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy were released Friday, including handwritten notes by the gunman, who said the Democratic presidential candidate “must be disposed of” and acknowledged an obsession with killing him.
Many of the files had been made public previously, while others had not been digitized and sat for decades in federal government storage facilities. Their release continued the disclosure of historical investigation documents ordered by President Donald Trump.
Kennedy was fatally shot on June 5, 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles moments after giving a speech celebrating his victory in California’s presidential primary. His assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, was convicted of first-degree murder and is serving life in prison.
The files included pictures of handwritten notes by Sirhan.
“RFK must be disposed of like his brother was,” read the writing on the outside of an empty envelope, referring to Kennedy’s older brother, President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963. The return address was from the district director of the Internal Revenue Service in Los Angeles.
The National Archives and Records Administration posted 229 files containing the pages to its public website.
The release comes a month after unredacted files related to the assassination of President Kennedy were disclosed. Those documents gave curious readers more details about Cold War-era covert US operations in other nations but did not initially lend credence to long-circulating conspiracy theories about who killed JFK.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of Robert Kennedy, commended the release.
“Lifting the veil on the RFK papers is a necessary step toward restoring trust in American government,” the health secretary said in a statement.
Documents include interviews with assassin’s acquaintances
The files surrounding Robert Kennedy’s assassination also included notes from interviews with people who knew Sirhan from a wide variety of contexts, such as classmates, neighbors and coworkers. While some described him as “a friendly, kind and generous person” others depicted a brooding and “impressionable” young man who felt strongly about his political convictions and briefly believed in mysticism.
According to the files, Sirhan told his garbage collector that he planned to kill Kennedy shortly after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. The sanitation worker, a Black man, said he planned to vote for Kennedy because he would help Black people.
“Well, I don’t agree. I am planning on shooting the son of a bitch,” Sirhan replied, the man told investigators.
Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics and author of “The Kennedy Half-Century,” said there have always been conspiracies surrounding Robert Kennedy’s assassination. He believes the rollout of documents Friday would be similar to the JFK documents released earlier this year.
He cautioned that a review needs to be done carefully and slowly, “just in case there is a hint in there or there is an anecdote” that could shed more light on the assassination.
“I hope there’s more information,” Sabato said. “I’m doubtful that there is, just as I said when the JFK documents were released.”
Some redactions remained in the documents posted online Friday, including names and dates of birth. Last month, the Trump administration came under criticism over unredacted personal information, including Social Security numbers, during the release of records surrounding President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.
Trump, a Republican, has championed in the name of transparency the release of documents related to high-profile assassinations and investigations. But he has also been deeply suspicious for years of the government’s intelligence agencies. His administration’s release of once-hidden files opens the door for more public scrutiny of the operations and conclusions of institutions such as the CIA and the FBI.
Trump signed an executive order in January calling for the release of government documents related to the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and King, who were killed within two months of each other.
Lawyers for Kennedy’s killer have said for decades that he is unlikely to reoffend or pose a danger to society, and in 2021, a parole board deemed Sirhan suitable for release. But Gov. Gavin Newsom rejected the decision in 2022, keeping him in state prison. In 2023 , a different panel denied him release, saying he still lacks insight into what caused him to shoot Kennedy.
RFK still stands as a hero to American liberals
Kennedy remains an icon for liberals, who see him as a champion for human rights who also was committed to fighting poverty and racial and economic injustice. They often regard his assassination as the last in a series of major tragedies that put the US and its politics on a darker, more conservative path.
He was a sometimes divisive figure during his lifetime. Some critics thought he came late to opposing the Vietnam War, and he launched his campaign for president in 1968 only after the Democratic primary in New Hampshire exposed President Johnson’s political weakness.
Kennedy’s older brother appointed him US attorney general, and he remained a close aide to him until JFK’s assassination in Dallas. In 1964, he won a US Senate seat from New York and was seen as the heir to the family’s political legacy.
Judge says detained Tufts student must be transferred from Louisiana to Vermont
A Tufts University student from Turkiye being held in Louisiana must be returned to New England by May 1 to determine whether she was illegally detained by immigration officials for co-writing an op-ed piece in the student newspaper, a federal judge ruled Friday.
US District Judge William Sessions in Burlington, Vermont, said he would hear Rumeysa Ozturk’s request to be released from detention. Her lawyers had requested that she be released immediately, or at least brought back to Vermont.
“The Court concludes that this case will continue in this court with Ms. Ozturk physically present for the remainder of the proceedings,” the judge wrote. “Ms. Ozturk has presented viable and serious habeas claims which warrant urgent review on the merits. The Court plans to move expeditiously to a bail hearing and final disposition of the habeas petition, as Ms. Ozturk’s claims require no less.”
Immigration officials surrounded the 30-year-old doctoral student as she walked along a street in a Boston suburb March 25 and drove her to New Hampshire and Vermont before putting her on a plane to a detention center in Basile, Louisiana. An immigration judge denied her request for bond Wednesday, citing “danger and flight risk” as the rationale.
Ozturk is among several people with ties to American universities whose visas were revoked or have been stopped from entering the US after they were accused of attending demonstrations or publicly expressing support for Palestinians. A Louisiana immigration judge has ruled that the US can deport Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil based on the federal government’s argument that he poses a national security risk.
A lawyer for the Justice Department said her case should be dismissed, saying the immigration court has jurisdiction.
Ozturk’s lawyers first filed a petition on her behalf in Massachusetts. Initially, they didn’t know where she was. They said they were unable to speak to her until more than 24 hours after she was detained. Ozturk herself said she unsuccessfully made multiple requests to speak to a lawyer.
Ozturk was one of four students who wrote an op-ed in the campus newspaper, The Tufts Daily, last year criticizing the university’s response to student activists demanding that Tufts “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide,” disclose its investments and divest from companies with ties to Israel.
Ozturk’s lawyers say her detention violates her constitutional rights, including free speech and due process.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said last month, without providing evidence, that investigations found that Ozturk engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a US-designated terrorist group.
