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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s racist social media post featuring former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, as primates in a jungle was deleted Friday after a backlash from both Republicans and Democrats who criticized the video as offensive.

Trump said later Friday that he won’t apologize for the post: “I didn’t make a mistake,” he said.

The Republican president’s Thursday night post was blamed on a staffer after widespread backlash, from civil rights leaders to veteran Republican senators, for its treatment of the nation’s first Black president and first lady. A rare admission of a misstep by the White House, the deletion came hours after press secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed “fake outrage” over the post. After calls for its removal — including by Republicans — the White House said a staffer had posted the video erroneously.

The post was part of a flurry of overnight activity on Trump’s Truth Social account that amplified his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, despite courts around the country and Trump’s first-term attorney general finding no evidence of systemic fraud.

Here's Colbert's interview with Talarico, not on the Carr-controlled, Trump-tainted airwaves but in the free air of the internet. As I post this, 500k have watched. Let's make sure more people see it on YouTube than TV. Call that the Carr Effect.

The dream holiday ended abruptly on Friday 26 September, as Karen and Bill were trying to leave the US. When they crossed the border, Canadian officials told them they didn’t have the correct paperwork to bring the car with them. They were turned back to Montana on the American side – and to US border control officials. Bill’s US visa had expired; Karen’s had not.

“I worried then,” she says. “I was worried for him. I thought, well, at least I am here to support him.”

She didn’t know it at the time, but it was the beginning of an ordeal that would see Karen handcuffed, shackled and sleeping on the floor of a locked cell, before being driven for 12 hours through the night to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centre. Karen was incarcerated for a total of six weeks – even though she had been travelling with a valid visa.

Karen has no criminal record. She is a grandmother who spent eight years working as an admin assistant at a primary school before her retirement. “I don’t even have parking tickets in the background anywhere,” she says. “I am not a dangerous criminal. I didn’t enter the country illegally and I had everything I needed to be there.”

So why did ICE detain her, and keep her locked up for so long? A possible answer began to emerge over the weeks she was incarcerated. As Karen got to know the guards at the Northwest ICE Processing Center where she was held, she kept hearing the same thing from them: that ICE officers are paid a bonus every time they detain someone. “Individual ICE agents get money per head that they detain – the guards told me that,” Karen says.

It’s no secret that the Trump administration has been pouring money into ICE. Its annual budget – $6bn a decade ago – is now $85bn; ICE is now the highest -funded law enforcement agency in the US. Since last August, new recruits can expect to receive a signing-on bonus of up to $50,000. Karen’s experience has left her convinced that ICE agents are being given even more incentives – to arrest and detain anyone they possibly can, even blameless tourists who have all the paperwork they need to be in the US.

Within days of Donald Trump’s second inauguration on 20 January 2025, his administration ordered ICE officials to detain more people, with new quotas that would increase the total number of arrests from a few hundred to 1,200-1,500 a day. Reports immediately began to emerge of international travellers being detained by ICE officers.

Some U.S. military leaders are telling troops that the Iran war is part of "God's divine plan" featuring President Donald Trump and Jesus, according to a religious freedom advocacy group. In response to Newsweek's request for comment on the matter, the Pentagon talked about Trump's action in Iran.

Mikey Weinstein, founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, said the nonprofit group has received more than 200 complaints from roughly 50 military installations since Saturday involving reports of U.S. commanders linking Christianity to the "biblically sanctioned" war in Iran.

"This morning our commander opened up the combat readiness status briefing by urging us to not be 'afraid' as to what is happening with our combat operations in Iran right now," one complaint reads. "He urged us to tell our troops that this was 'all part of God’s divine plan' and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ. He said that 'President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.'"

War, for most people, brings confusion, fear and destruction. But for Ron Hubbard it brings something else altogether: opportunity.

The 63-year-old Texan builds bunkers designed to help customers survive drone attacks, ballistic missile strikes or even nuclear Armageddon. With the US war with Iran sparking fears of World War Three, business has never been better for his company, Atlas.

“I’ve been inundated with calls,” says Hubbard. Enquiries have gone up “tenfold” since the war broke out last Saturday. Hubbard claims two senior Cabinet members in the Trump administration are amongst his clients.

“One of them texted me yesterday, asking me: ‘When will my bunker be ready?’”, he says.

With somewhat remarkable timing, Hubbard’s firm opened new offices in Dubai at the end of February. Just two days later, Iranian missiles rained down on the glitzy city as the Islamic Republic took revenge on the Gulf States for their support for the bombing campaign launched by the United States and Israel. The onslaught shattered the city’s carefully cultivated image as a safe paradise for wealthy expats, protected from the instability of the surrounding region. The Texan says two of the city’s billionaires immediately got in touch to buy a shelter.

“I wouldn’t call it lucky, but I would call it good timing for them,” he says, insisting his motivation is to protect people, not profit.......

NEW YORK (AP) — Among dozens of companies competing for Pentagon contracts to supply attack drones, one stands out.

Powerus is flush with cash and ballooning in size as it buys up rivals and has one other advantage: It is partly owned by President Donald Trump’s two oldest sons.

The Trump family has drawn criticism for expanding its real estate business into foreign countries that are trying to curry favor with the president and for making billions of dollars off cryptocurrency ventures benefiting from his policies. Grabbing less attention are new ownership stakes in federal contractors providing everything from rocket parts and rare earth magnets to AI chips and computer hardware.

“It’s corruption,” said Kathleen Clark, a government ethics expert at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis. “Government decision makers will feel pressure to use contract awards to enrich the president’s family.”

The latest Trump venture is hoping to win some of the $1.1 billion set aside by the Pentagon to build up a U.S. manufacturing base for armed drones now that the Trump administration put a ban on importing them from China.

The company bought three rivals in the past six months and plans to buy more. It just raised $60 million from investors to fund the buying spree and hopes to tap additional financing by doing a “reverse merger” in which a private company gets a public listing by buying one already on the stock market, usually a business with little or no operations.

The public company in this case is Aureus Greenway Holdings, a Florida firm partly owned by Eric and Don Jr. that holds a few golf courses and is listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange.

Of the two oldest brothers, Don Jr., is the one most involved in federal contracting firms through a venture capital fund called 1789 Capital.

Shortly after Trump’s reelection, 1789 Capital made Don Jr. a partner and then went on a buying spree of its own, investing in 25 companies in one year. It had made only six purchases in the two years prior, according to data provided by research firm Pitchbook. Most of its targets appear to be seeking federal contracts or taxpayer funds or have already won them