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Donald Trump has often been dubbed a political wrecking ball for his unorthodox style — and now the US president has literally started demolition work on the White House.Work crews began tearing down part of the East Wing on Monday as the former property mogul said work had formally commenced on a huge new $250-million ballroom.A mechanical excavator had ripped through the facade of the East Wing, leaving a tangle of broken masonry, rubble and steel wires, AFP journalists at the scene saw.Republican Trump said as he hosted college baseball players at the White House on Monday that “right on the other side you have a lot of construction that you might hear occasionally.”The 79-year-old billionaire later officially announced that work had started on the ballroom, the biggest addition to the US presidential mansion in more than a century.”I am pleased to announce that ground has been broken on the White House grounds to build the new, big, beautiful White House Ballroom,” Trump said on his Truth Social network.Trump said the East Wing was being “fully modernized as part of this process, and will be more beautiful than ever when it is complete!”The East Wing is where US first ladies have traditionally had their offices. The president works in the West Wing and the couple live in the Executive Mansion.- ‘Generous Patriots’ -But while Trump said that the East Wing is “completely separate from the White House itself,” it is in fact physically joined to the main mansion by a covered colonnade.Trump says the new 90,000-square-foot ballroom with a capacity of 1,000 people is needed to host large state dinners and other events that currently have to be held in a tent.The former reality TV star held a glitzy dinner at the White House last week for donors to the ballroom. The guests included representatives from tech firms like Amazon, Apple, Meta, Google, Microsoft and Palantir and defense giant Lockheed Martin — all companies with significant contracts or other dealings with the government.They also included twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the founders of crypto platform Gemini, who were made famous as jilted investors in the movie “The Social Network” about the birth of Facebook.”The White House Ballroom is being privately funded by many generous Patriots, Great American Companies, and, yours truly. This Ballroom will be happily used for Generations to come!” he said on Monday.It is the largest part of the huge makeover Trump has given the White House since returning to power in January, including covering the Oval Office with gold decor and paving over the Rose Garden.Trump has also unveiled plans for a huge triumphal arch in Washington, which was dubbed the “Arc de Trump” after AFP first revealed the proposal.

A US appeals court said Monday that President Donald Trump can send National Guard troops to Portland, despite objections from Oregon’s governor.The ruling is the latest step in a battle pitting the White House against liberal states who have pushed back against what they characterize as Trump’s authoritarian over-reach and a creeping militarization of US society.”After considering the record at this preliminary stage, we conclude that it is likely that the President lawfully exercised his statutory authority” when he federalized the state’s National Guard, the Ninth Circuit of the US Court of Appeals said.The ruling clears the way for 200 National Guard personnel to be deployed to protect federal buildings, where authorities say protestors — many dressed in animal costumes — are impeding immigration enforcement.Portland, along with Chicago, became the latest flashpoints in the Trump administration’s rollout of raids, following the deployment of troops to Los Angeles, Washington and Memphis.In such raids, groups of masked, armed men in unmarked cars or armored vehicles target residential neighborhoods and businesses.The state of Oregon took the administration to court to try to prevent its forces being used, obtaining a stay from a lower court that prevented any boots on the ground while the matter was decided.Monday’s decision — by two out of the three justices on the appeals panel — overturns the stay.Trump has repeatedly called Portland “war-ravaged” and riddled with violent crime. But in her original ruling granting the stay, US District Judge Karin Immergut dismissed his comments as “simply untethered to the facts.”Although the city 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,” Immergut wrote.Protests in Portland did not pose a “danger of rebellion” and “regular law enforcement forces” could handle such incidents, Immergut said.Circuit Judge Susan Graber, dissenting from the ruling released Monday, said the administration’s seizing of Oregon’s National Guard — a force usually under the control of the state’s governor — was a dangerous erosion of constitutional rights.”Given Portland protesters’ well-known penchant for wearing chicken suits, inflatable frog costumes, or nothing at all when expressing their disagreement with the methods employed by ICE, observers may be tempted to view the majority’s ruling, which accepts the government’s characterization of Portland as a war zone, as merely absurd,” she wrote.”But today’s decision is not merely absurd. It erodes core constitutional principles, including sovereign States’ control over their States’ militias and the people’s First Amendment rights to assemble and to object to the government’s policies and actions.”Oregon’s Attorney General Dan Rayfield called for an immediate “en banc” hearing — a gathering of the most senior judge on the circuit and 10 other justices, who could override Monday’s judgment.”Today’s ruling, if allowed to stand, would give the president unilateral power to put Oregon soldiers on our streets with almost no justification. We are on a dangerous path in America,” he said.Governor Tina Kotek said she wanted to hear from Trump exactly what he expected National Guard troops to do in a city where people protest peacefully.”The Trump Administration is being dishonest, and these actions to deploy troops are a gross, un-American abuse of power,” she said.

Former FBI director James Comey asked a federal court on Monday to throw out his felony charges on the grounds they were motivated by the “personal spite” of US President Donald Trump.Comey, 64, a prominent Trump critic, said the case against him is a “vindictive and selective prosecution” and should be dismissed.Comey pleaded not guilty this month to charges of making false statements to Congress and obstructing a congressional proceeding.He was the first of three outspoken critics of the Republican president to be indicted in recent weeks in what is widely seen as a campaign of retribution against Trump’s political opponents.New York Attorney General Letitia James, who successfully prosecuted Trump, was indicted this month on one count of bank fraud and a second count of making false statements to a financial institution.Another Trump critic, his former national security advisor John Bolton, was indicted last week on 18 counts of transmitting and retaining classified information.Comey’s lawyers, in a filing with a district court in Virginia, said his prosecution is an “egregious abuse of power by the federal government.””The United States Constitution entitles individuals to speak out against the government and, in turn, forbids the government from retaliating against individuals for their protected speech,” they said.”President Trump ordered the Department of Justice to prosecute Mr Comey because of personal spite and because Mr Comey has frequently criticized the President for his conduct in office,” they added.Comey’s lawyers noted that the charges were brought by a US attorney who was hand-picked by Trump after the previous federal prosecutor declined to proceed with the case.Comey’s indictment stems from sworn testimony he gave to a Senate committee in 2020 on the probe he led into whether any members of the Trump presidential campaign had colluded with Moscow to sway the 2016 election.He is accused of falsely stating he had not authorized another FBI employee to be an anonymous source in news reports.He faces up to five years in prison if convicted.Comey was appointed to head the FBI by then-president Barack Obama in 2013 and was fired by Trump in 2017.The charges against Comey came days after Trump publicly urged Attorney General Pam Bondi to take action against the former FBI director and others he sees as enemies — a stunning departure from the principle that the Justice Department must be free from White House pressure.The 79-year-old Trump — the first convicted felon to serve as US president — hailed the indictment, calling Comey “one of the worst human beings this country has ever been exposed to.”Since taking office in January, Trump has taken a number of punitive measures against perceived enemies, purging government officials he deemed to be disloyal, targeting law firms involved in past cases against him and pulling federal funding from universities.

US President Donald Trump said Australia would get coveted nuclear-powered attack submarines and signed a deal on rare earth minerals with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at the White House on Monday.The promise to Australia, which promotes itself as a key US ally against China, came after the Trump administration said earlier this year it was reviewing a deal for the subs signed under previous president Joe Biden.”The submarines that we’re starting to build for Australia are really moving along,” Trump told reporters as he sat alongside Albanese in the cabinet room of the White House.”We’ve worked on this long and hard, and we’re starting that process right now. And it’s really moving along very rapidly, very well.”The two leaders also signed a deal on critical minerals and rare earths, which are vital for the technology that runs the global economy. Albanese has touted Australia’s abundant critical minerals as a way to loosen China’s grip over global supplies.The Australian premier meanwhile managed to ride out an awkward confrontation between Trump and Australia’s ambassador to Washington — former prime minister Kevin Rudd.Rudd deleted a series of critical social media posts about Trump following the Republican’s election victory last year.”I don’t like you either. I don’t. And I probably never will,” Trump said to Rudd when a reporter pointed out that the ex-PM was in the room and asked the US president whether he minded the comments.Australians have a mostly unfavorable view of the Trump administration, polling shows, though the country relies on the United States to balance China’s expanding military clout in the Pacific region.- Rare earths -Australia’s government had been hoping for Trump’s blessing of the 2021 agreement for at least three of the silent, Virginia-class submarines within 15 years.The AUKUS submarine deal between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States could cost Australia up to US$235 billion over the next 30 years, according to Canberra.But the Trump administration said in June it had put AUKUS under review to ensure it aligned with his “America First agenda.”Some domestic critics had said the United States did not produce enough Virginia-class submarines to supply Australia as well as its own navy.The nuclear-powered vessels lie at the heart of Australia’s strategy of improving its long-range strike capabilities in the Pacific.Australia had a major bust-up with France after it tore canceled a multibillion-dollar deal to buy a fleet of diesel-powered submarines from Paris and go with the AUKUS program instead.In the run-up to the White House talks, Australia also sold itself to Washington as a future source of critical minerals including rare earths — of which China is by far the world’s largest supplier.Australia sits on deposits of lithium, cobalt and manganese as well as rare earth metals used in technologies from semiconductors to defense hardware, electric cars and wind turbines.Albanese announced plans in April for a strategic reserve of critical minerals to provide to “key partners” such as the United States.The reserve is designed to help relax China’s chokehold on global critical minerals production, which it has been accused of leveraging to pressure trade partners.Trump this month threatened 100-percent tariffs on China in response to its latest rare earths export curbs. But Trump insisted on Monday that he now predicted a good trade deal with China at talks in South Korea with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The US Supreme Court agreed on Monday to hear a challenge to a federal law prohibiting abusers of illegal drugs from owning firearms.The conservative-dominated court will decide whether the law violates the Second Amendment, which protects the constitutional right of Americans to keep and bear arms.The statute was used to convict Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son, on gun charges last year before he was pardoned by the then-president.It prohibits the possession of firearms by a person who “is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance.”The case before the Supreme Court involves Ali Danial Hemani, an alleged habitual marijuana user indicted for being unlawfully in possession of a Glock pistol.An appeals court ruled that barring Hemani, a dual US-Pakistani national, from owning a gun violated his Second Amendment rights.Republican President Donald Trump’s Justice Department, which generally backs expansive gun rights, is challenging that decision.There are “narrow circumstances in which the government may justifiably burden” Second Amendment rights, it said in a filing with the Supreme Court.”Habitual illegal drug users with firearms present unique dangers to society,” Solicitor General John Sauer wrote.”By disqualifying only habitual users of illegal drugs from possessing firearms, the statute imposes a limited, inherently temporary restriction,” Sauer said.”The individual can remove (the restriction) at any time simply by ceasing his unlawful drug use,” he added.The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, tends to rule in favor of gun owners.But it has recently upheld regulation of “ghost guns” — firearms sold in easy-to-assemble kits — and restricted gun access for persons subject to domestic violence restraining orders.The Hemani case is one of two gun rights cases the court has agreed to hear this term.The other involves a Hawaii law restricting where holders of concealed carry permits can bring their firearms.

Shares in France’s biggest bank, BNP Paribas, sank more than seven percent in trading on Monday, following a US court verdict late last week finding it liable for atrocities committed in Sudan.A New York jury on Friday found the bank helped prop up the regime of former Sudanese ruler Omar al-Bashir, opening the way to compensation demands.The eight-member jury sided with three plaintiffs originally from Sudan, awarding a total of $20.75 million in damages, after hearing testimony describing horrors committed by Sudanese soldiers and the Janjaweed militia. BNP Paribas on Monday declared its “unwavering intention to appeal” the verdict. “There is no doubt whatsoever that the bank will fight this case and use all recourses available to it,” it said.  BNP Paribas did business in Sudan from the late 1990s until 2009 and provided letters of credit that allowed Sudan to honour import and export commitments. The three plaintiffs who brought the US case — two men and one woman, all now American citizens — alleged that these contracts helped finance violence perpetrated by Sudan against a part of its population.They told the federal court in Manhattan that they had been tortured, burned with cigarettes, slashed with a knife, and, in the case of the woman, sexually assaulted.Attorneys for the French bank argued that its operations in Sudan had been legal in Europe, and stated that the bank had no knowledge of the human rights violations. The bank said the atrocities would have been committed regardless of its operations in Sudan.The war in Sudan claimed some 300,000 lives between 2002 and 2008 and displaced 2.5 million people, according to the United Nations.Bashir, who led Sudan for three decades, was ousted and detained in April 2019 following months of protests in Sudan. He is wanted by the International Criminal Court on genocide charges.The big drop in BNP Paribas’s shares in afternoon Paris trading outstripped a decline for other French banks, which sank around one percent.The bank sought to tamp down speculation that the ruling could open it up to further cases.”This verdict is specific to these three plaintiffs and should not have broader application,” BNP Paribas said in a statement.  “Any attempt to extrapolate is necessarily wrong as is any speculation regarding a potential settlement,” it added.Analysts at RBC Capital Markets had suggested in a broker note that “there might be an argument that BNP aims to settle in order to avoid a larger payment as a result of court rulings”.They pointed to estimates by Bloomberg that the settlement could be in the range of $10 billion.

Metal shrapnel from an artillery shell that detonated “prematurely” during a US military demonstration for the Marine Corps’ 250th anniversary hit a law enforcement vehicle, the California Highway Patrol said on Sunday.No injuries were reported at Saturday’s event at California’s Camp Pendleton, which US Vice President JD Vance attended.An artillery round “detonated overhead prematurely,” damaging a highway patrol vehicle on a nearby freeway, the agency said in a statement.”This was an unusual and concerning situation,” said the patrol’s division chief Tony Coronado.He added that it is “highly uncommon for any live-fire or explosive training activity to occur over an active freeway.”California Governor Gavin Newsom had been critical of the live fire display in the days leading up to the event which closed off a 17-mile (27-kilometer) stretch of the Interstate 5 that links Los Angeles and San Diego.Newsom, a frequent critic of the Trump administration, said on X that “this could have killed someone.”US media said the Marine Corps — which had previously insisted there was no safety risk — had also launched an investigation into the incident.The event featured fighter jet flyovers, amphibious ship displays, explosions in a simulated village and Navy SEALS dropping into the Pacific Ocean from helicopters.

Baseball fans are facing an onslaught of phony AI content on Facebook,  pushed by a clickbait network in Southeast Asia capitalizing on interest in the lead-up to the sport’s World Series, an AFP investigation has found.With names like “Dodgers Dynasty” and “Yankee Nation,” the pages mimic genuine fan accounts, but link to websites that are full of ads and phony AI-generated articles meant to draw clicks — and payouts for the site creators.”The goal of pages and operations like this is to earn money, and so whatever is going to work in terms of messaging, in terms of content, in terms of tactics they will do,” journalist Craig Silverman, who has investigated similar clickbait, told AFP.Experts warn that this strategy of pulling in users, sometimes with innocuous content, can be used to grow accounts that are later sold or rented to more nefarious disinformation campaigns.Lies meant to elicit rage — such as false claims US President Donald Trump plans to jack up prices for games featuring Major League Baseball’s sole Canadian team, the Toronto Blue Jays — have long been used to attract social media engagement. But seemingly innocent posts are also drawing thousands of likes.One features an AI image of Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani surrounded by puppies, lauding him for purportedly building a $5 million dog sanctuary. Another post praises the Japanese standout for tipping a struggling waitress hundreds on a $60 check, an act of unverified generosity that was also ascribed to New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge and Boston Red Sox outfielder Jarren Duran. “Scammers are learning to be better storytellers,” said Luke Arrigoni, founder of Loti, an AI tool used to protect the reputations of public figures. He said AI is allowing those creating false narratives to more easily make posts that appear genuine.- Under investigation -AFP presented Meta with a list of 32 Facebook pages pushing baseball-linked phony AI content and asked if the falsehoods run afoul of platform rules. The pages had attracted a combined 248,000 followers.A Meta spokesperson said: “We are investigating the pages and admins in question and will take action against any that violate our policies.” Page transparency data shows the accounts are managed from Southeast Asia — mostly Vietnam — despite listing US phone numbers and addresses. The numbers reached entities unaffiliated with the pages, including a motel and a California physician’s office. AFP also matched the addresses to a salon and restaurant.The Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which studies disinformation, previously found clickbait networks were “generating substantial revenue for the people behind them, relative to average incomes in Vietnam.”- Lack of labels -While the Major League Baseball playoffs boosted engagement with these pages, the network also targets fans of American football, ice hockey and basketball.An individual page or claim on its own may not appear concerning. But Silverman, who focuses on digital deception for Indicator, a site he co-founded, said AI is enabling groups to scale rapidly.More divisive content, including false quotes attributed to athletes on LGBTQ issues or the assassination of US conservative activist Charlie Kirk, have also gained traction.And AFP found these tactics are not limited to English-language content. As part of Meta’s fact-checking program, AFP has debunked falsehoods on pages targeting tennis fans in Serbian and Formula One supporters of Max Verstappen in Dutch. In the United States, Meta replaced fact-checking labels with a Community Notes program intended to allow users to flag false content.AFP examined hundreds of claims published since the start of the baseball playoffs and did not find any carrying visible notes — even as some users posted page reviews warning about fake content.”They’re building a bigger and bigger foothold,” Silverman said of the phony accounts, warning that without moderation the networks will only continue to grow.

Every five years, the fading US town of Taft puts on a days-long “Oildorado” festival to celebrate its glory days at the center of California’s black gold rush.Thousands flock to its parade of cowboys on horseback, antique cars and floats featuring oil pumps — a hat tip to the Wild West of yore.This year, nine months into Donald Trump’s second term, the tone has shifted from reminiscence to renaissance.Shrugging off climate change concerns, the US president has embraced fossil fuels with a stated goal of “unleashing American energy” and removing “impediments” to domestic energy production.Some of Taft’s 7,000 residents are anticipating a comeback for the petroleum industry in California, which has pledged to abandon oil drilling by 2045 to meet its climate goals. “I’m 100 percent satisfied with President Trump,” Buddy Binkley told AFP, a minority view in a heavily Democratic state. “And as for the state of California, I think he’s putting a nice pressure on them to hopefully turn around their prejudice against oil.”The 64-year-old retired maintenance supervisor with oil company Chevron sported a red cap with the words “Make Oil Great Again,” a play on Trump’s MAGA motto and a slogan featured on several parade floats. “The oil industry in California is suffering due to political reasons,” Binkley said. But with Trump in power, “I think it may go back the way it was.”- ‘Great hopes’ -Located about 200 kilometers (120 miles) north of Los Angeles, Taft was founded in 1910 atop California’s most extensive oil field. Today, Kern County — where Taft is located — contributes more than 70 percent of California’s total oil production. Its rural landscape is dotted with thousands of oil pumps.A giant wooden oil derrick serves as a central landmark in Taft, which finances its schools, fire department and police force with oil revenues.   Festival-goers can compete for the title of best welder, crane operator or backhoe loader — or be crowned the “Oildorado Queen.”Despite its pageantry and pride, the town is in decline.California oil production has been waning since the 1980s and has more recently been pinched by the push for cleaner forms of energy. Some of the town’s residents have moved to Texas, where drilling is less regulated.Many in Taft are delighted that Trump has pulled out of the Paris climate accord and removed obstacles to drilling on federal lands while handing out billions in tax breaks for the oil industry.”I have great hopes,” said Dave Noerr, Taft’s mayor. “We have all the raw materials. We had the wrong direction, now we have leadership that is going to unleash the possibilities.”- ‘Stuck in the past’ -Trump’s administration has slashed federal funding for renewable energy and climate science, and he wants to strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.  Like the president, Noerr is a skeptic of “quote, unquote, climate change.””We need to question the narrative, and we need to update those things with the existing science,” he said.Yet California is increasingly vulnerable to the extreme weather produced by climate change. Earlier this year, 31 people in the Los Angeles area died in fires spread by hurricane-force gusts of 160 km/h (100 miles per hour). “If everyone around the world behaved like the US, the world would be on pace for four degrees centigrade of global warming by 2100,” said Paasha Mahdavi, a political scientist specializing in environmental policy at the University of California, Santa Barbara.Agriculture remains the top employer in Kern County, and “would be dramatically affected by increased incidence of drought, and unprecedented heat waves that are already hitting the region,” he added.That worries Taylor Pritchett, a 31-year-old dog groomer in Taft who frets about air pollution in the area.”If I were to have a child, I wouldn’t want to raise them in Kern County,” she said. “I would like to go somewhere cleaner.”She believes that “we need to get away from fossil fuels.” But in Taft, she acknowledged, “we’re stuck in the past a little bit, you know, like, very unwilling to change.”

US President Donald Trump said Sunday that the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was still in effect after the Israeli military carried out deadly strikes on Gaza over apparent truce violations by the Palestinian armed group. “Yeah, it is,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One when asked if the ceasefire was still in place. He also suggested that Hamas leadership was not involved in any alleged breaches and instead blamed “some rebels within.””But either way, it’s going to be handled properly. It’s going to be handled toughly, but properly,” Trump added.Israel said it had resumed enforcing the Gaza ceasefire after it struck Hamas positions Sunday, having accused the group of targeting its troops in the most serious violence since the nine-day-old truce began.Gaza’s civil defense agency, which operates under Hamas authority, said at least 45 people had been killed across the territory in Israeli strikes. Israel’s military said it was looking into the reports of casualties.Trump expressed hope that the ceasefire he helped broker would hold. “We want to make sure that it’s going to be very peaceful with Hamas,” he said. “As you know, they’ve been quite rambunctious. They’ve been doing some shooting, and we think maybe the leadership isn’t involved in that.”Shortly before Trump’s comments, his vice president, JD Vance, downplayed the renewed violence in Gaza, telling reporters there would be “fits and starts” in the truce. “Hamas is going to fire on Israel. Israel is going to have to respond,” he said. “So we think that it has the best chance for a sustainable peace. But even if it does that, it’s going to have hills and valleys, and we’re going to have to monitor the situation.”The truce in the Palestinian territory, which took effect on October 10, halted more than two years of devastating war that has seen Israel kill tens of thousands and reduce much of Gaza to rubble, after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack.The deal established the outline for hostage and prisoner exchanges, and was proposed alongside an ambitious roadmap for Gaza’s future. But it has quickly faced challenges to its implementation. Vance called on Gulf Arab countries to establish a “security infrastructure” in order to ensure that Hamas is disarmed, a key part of the peace deal.”The Gulf Arab states, our allies, don’t have the security infrastructure in place yet to confirm that Hamas is disarmed,” he said.Vance said that a member of the Trump administration was “certainly” going to visit Israel “in the next few days” to monitor the situation.He did not confirm who that would be, but said “it might be me.”