US President Donald Trump on Monday suggested many Americans would like a dictator as he signed orders to tighten his federal clampdown on the capital Washington and to prosecute flag-burners.During a rambling 80-minute event in the Oval Office, Trump lambasted critics and the media as he complained that he was not getting credit for his National Guard-backed crackdown on crime and immigration.”They say ‘we don’t need him. Freedom, freedom. He’s a dictator. He’s a dictator.’ A lot of people are saying: ‘Maybe we like a dictator,'” Trump told reporters.”I don’t like a dictator. I’m not a dictator. I’m a man with great common sense and a smart person.”Trump — who attempted to overturn the results of his 2020 election defeat by Joe Biden at the end of his first term — said before winning a second term in November that he would be a “dictator on day one.”Republican Trump deployed the National Guard to Washington earlier this month to counter what he alleged was an out-of-control crime problem, also taking federal control of the city’s police department. – ‘Sick’ -Trump said he was also considering sending the military into the cities of Chicago and Baltimore as he targets a series of Democratic strongholds. He sent the National Guard to Los Angeles — against the mayor’s and California governor’s wishes — in June.The president was particularly disparaging of Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, a vocal opponent who has strongly rejected any move to send troops to Chicago.”You send them, and instead of being praised, they’re saying, ‘you’re trying to take over the Republic,'” said Trump. “These people are sick.”Pritzker, a billionaire businessman like Trump, launched his own broadside at the president in a Monday press conference, calling him “a wannabe dictator” who “wants to use the military to occupy a US city, punish his dissidents, and score political points.” Trump further tightened his clampdown Monday by signing an executive order to investigate and prosecute people who burn the American flag — despite a 1989 ruling by the US Supreme Court saying that the act is protected by freedom of speech laws.”If you burn a flag you get one year in jail — no early exits, no nothing,” Trump said. Trump also announced new measures tightening his grip on security in Washington, ordering Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to set up a specialized unit within Washington’s National Guard for public order, and ending cashless bail.He also said he would soon be changing the name of Hegseth’s department to the Department of War, its name from 1789 to 1947.”Defense is too defensive,” Trump told reporters.- ‘Violent’ fish -Democrats have repeatedly accused Trump of pushing presidential power way past its constitutional limits, most recently by deploying troops in the US capital.He has also clamped down on everything from the federal bureaucracy and “woke” policies to his political opponents.But the 79-year-old rejected all criticism in his angry and wide-ranging Oval Office diatribe, speaking for more than 45 minutes before taking reporters’ questions.Trump dismissed opponents who have called him racist by proclaiming “I love Black People” — before describing a Salvadoran man who is set to be deported to Uganda in an immigration row as an “animal.” He went on a long detour about what he called a lack of gratitude from Pritzker about measures to tackle a “pretty violent” invasive fish species in the Great Lakes.Trump also called his Democratic predecessor Biden a “moron” and dismissed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s brutal 2022 invasion of Ukraine as being the result of “big personality conflicts.”The US president later repeatedly expressed his admiration for another strongman leader — North Korea’s Kim Jong Un — during a meeting with South Korea’s president in the Oval Office.”I’d like to have a meeting. I get along great with him,” Trump said of Kim, whom he met three times in his first term.

Rapper Lil Nas X was charged Monday with four felonies after allegedly charging at police who went to pick him up during a naked stroll through Los Angeles last week.The “Old Town Road” artist was arrested after stripping off on a major thoroughfare in the city.Video that emerged last week initially showed the hitmaker wearing cowboy boots and some modesty-covering white underwear as he strutted through the Studio City area.But new footage obtained by entertainment outlet TMZ showed the performer — whose real name is Montero Hill — completely in the buff.That tallies with what police told AFP last week, when a spokesman said: “There was a nude man walking in the street.””Upon arrival the suspect charged at officers. He was taken into custody and taken to a local hospital for a possible overdose and placed under arrest for battery on a police officer.”Hill appeared in court Monday to plead not guilty to three felony counts of battery against a police officer and a single count of resisting arrest.His bail was set at $75,000 and he was ordered to return to court on September 15.Last week’s footage sparked an internet storm as web users flocked to watch the flamboyant performer flirting with the camera.”Don’t be late to the party tonight,” he told a passerby. It was not clear which party he was talking about, or when “tonight” might be in footage filmed just before dawn.At one point he asked the person filming — who was apparently sitting in a car — to hand over the phone so he could throw it away.”I wanna throw it far away so you never see it again. I don’t like phones.””Didn’t I tell you to put the phone down? Uh-oh, somebody’s gonna have to pay for that,” he said as he theatrically wagged his finger.

SpaceX is gearing up for the next test flight of its Starship megarocket on Monday after a technical issue on the launchpad forced a 24-hour delay.The tenth trial comes at a time of heightened scrutiny for the world’s most powerful launch vehicle — central to founder Elon Musk’s dream of colonizing Mars and NASA’s plan to return astronauts to the Moon — following a string of explosive failures that have begun raising doubts about its viability.Standing 403 feet (123 meters) tall, the stainless-steel behemoth is scheduled to lift off from the company’s Starbase in southern Texas at 6:30 pm local time (2330 GMT).Sunday’s attempt was scrubbed because of a ground-system leak, a relatively routine issue in spaceflight and not generally cause for concern.The mission aims to put the upper stage — eventually intended to carry crew and cargo — through structural stress testing as it flies halfway around the world before splashing down in the Indian Ocean.SpaceX will also try out new heat-shield materials and attempt to deploy mock Starlink satellites as cargo. Unlike recent attempts, the “Super Heavy” booster will not be caught by the launch tower’s giant “chopstick” arms but instead aim for a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.The company’s aggressive “fail fast, learn fast” approach has been credited with giving it a commanding lead in space launches through its Falcon rocket family.Its Dragon capsules are the only American spacecraft ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station, while Starlink has become a geopolitical asset.But concern is mounting over whether these successes will translate to Starship, a rocket unlike any before it. Its upper stage — also called Starship — has exploded in all three 2025 test flights.Two scattered debris over Caribbean islands, while the third broke apart after reaching space. In June, another upper stage blew up during a ground “static fire” test.”I think there is a lot of pressure on this mission,” Dallas Kasaboski, a space analyst for consulting firm Analysys Mason, told AFP. “We’ve had so many tests and it hasn’t proven itself reliable — the successes have not exceeded the failures.”Even if the tenth flight succeeds, formidable challenges remain, including proving Starships can be refueled with super-cooled propellant in orbit — an unprecedented feat but a prerequisite for deep-space missions.Delays could ripple through NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to return US astronauts to the Moon by mid-2027 using a modified version of Starship as the landing vehicle.

The Trump administration’s top justice official Pam Bondi hailed a “landmark victory” Monday as Sinaloa drug cartel cofounder Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada changed his plea to guilty, meaning he faces life imprisonment and losing $15 billion.Zambada, 77, cofounded the Sinaloa Cartel with notorious drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. He was arrested in the United States in July 2024 along with Joaquin Guzman Lopez, a son of El Chapo.”El Mayo will spend the rest of his life behind bars. He will die in a US federal prison where he belongs,” Attorney General Bondi told a briefing flanked by prosecutors and federal agents in Brooklyn.”His partner was El Chapo. They were co-founders of the Sinaloa cartel. They brutally murdered multiple people, and flooded our country with drugs. Their reign of terror is over.”Zambada will avoid a trial because of the plea, but will face a mandatory minimum term of life imprisonment without parole on a racketeering charge at sentencing, due at a later date.The United States accuses the cartel of trafficking fentanyl into the United States, where the opioid epidemic is linked to tens of thousands of deaths.- $15 bn forfeiture -Zambada agreed to the forfeiture of $15 billion of ill-gotten-gains as part of the plea deal, the Department of Justice said.Bondi said that Zambada had been “living like a king,” but would now “live like he’s on death row.”Last September, Zambada pleaded not guilty to 17 charges including murder and drug trafficking, particularly of fentanyl — a powerful narcotic 50 times stronger than cocaine, responsible for tens of thousands of US overdose deaths annually.Zambada’s arrest and that of Joaquin Guzman Lopez last year, after the pair arrived in the United States in a private plane, sparked cartel infighting that has left more than 1,200 people dead and 1,400 missing in Sinaloa state in northwestern Mexico.The Sinaloa Cartel is one of six Mexican drug trafficking groups that US President Donald Trump has designated as global “terrorist” organizations.In its aggressive policy against drug cartels, the Trump administration announced additional sanctions in June against “Los Chapitos” — El Chapo’s sons — for fentanyl trafficking and increased the reward to $10 million for each of the fugitive brothers.The Sinaloa cartel is one of six Mexican drug trafficking groups designated terrorist organizations by US President Donald Trump.United States Attorney for the Western District of Texas Justin R. Simmons said Monday that the Sinaloa cartel had engaged in a years-long war with the Juarez cartel on the US-Mexico border.