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Trump will visit Scotland, where his family has golf courses, and will talk trade with Starmer

Trump will visit Scotland, where his family has golf courses, and will talk trade with Starmer

CTV News17-07-2025
WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump will head to Scotland next week, visiting areas where his family owns two golf courses and is opening a third, and will meet with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to discuss trade ahead of an official state visit to Britain in September.
Trump's trip from July 25-29 will see him visit Turnberry, home to a historic golf course and hotel he bought in 2014, and Aberdeen, where one Trump golf course has operated since 2012 and a new one is set to open in August, the White House said Thursday.
During the trip, Trump plans to meet with Starmer to 'refine' a previously announced trade deal, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.
Trump himself had previously said he'd be discussing trade with Starmer and said those talks would take place at 'probably one of my properties' in Aberdeen, but the White House hadn't previously announced the trip.
The White House hasn't commented on whether the Republican president plans to golf while in Scotland, though he played his Turnberry course during his first term in 2018, ahead of traveling to Helsinki, Finland, for a high-stakes meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The president's son's Eric and Donald Jr. are now running the family business, The Trump Organization, while their father is in the White House.
During her briefing with reporters, Leavitt also said Trump and first lady Melania Trump will travel to the United Kingdom from Sept. 17-19 and meet with King Charles.
That trip had already been confirmed by Buckingham Palace and will mark Trump's second state visit to the United Kingdom after he first had one in 2019. No U.S. president had previously been invited for a second state visit.
'He is honored and looking forward to meeting with his majesty, the king at Windsor Castle,' Leavitt said.
Trump's first golf course near Aberdeen, International Golf Links Scotland, is set to host an event on the European tour, the Scottish Championship, from Aug. 7-10. It will be the first time the course has staged a European tour event, though it held a tournament on the seniors' tour in 2023 and 2024 and will do so again this year, the week before the Scottish Championship.
Located on the Ayrshire coast, around 200 miles (320 kilometers) southwest of Aberdeen, Trump Turnberry is one of 10 courses on the rotation to host the British Open — the oldest of the four major championships in men's golf — but hasn't staged that event since 2009, before Trump bought the resort.
Will Weissert, The Associated Press
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Ottawa warned early in new year of wheels wobbling on $100 billion EV strategy
Ottawa warned early in new year of wheels wobbling on $100 billion EV strategy

National Observer

time36 minutes ago

  • National Observer

Ottawa warned early in new year of wheels wobbling on $100 billion EV strategy

The federal government was warned early in 2025 that its $100 billion electric vehicle strategy was in danger of being run off the road by slowing North American EV sales and the economic mayhem sown by US President Donald Trump's tariffs on Canada, a newly released document reveals. François-Philippe Champagne, then federal minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, was sent a briefing note on Jan. 10 by his deputy minister, Philip Jennings, that flagged 'a decline in expectations' among EV makers that imperiled the plan's progress. 'The slowdown in growth has contributed to delays, modifications, or scaling back of planned investments' in the auto sector despite tens of billions of dollars in investments having already been announced, Jennings said in the document obtained by Canada's National Observer through an access to information and privacy request. 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A man is halted climbing the US-Mexico border wall. Under new Trump rules, US troops sound the alarm
A man is halted climbing the US-Mexico border wall. Under new Trump rules, US troops sound the alarm

Winnipeg Free Press

time5 hours ago

  • Winnipeg Free Press

A man is halted climbing the US-Mexico border wall. Under new Trump rules, US troops sound the alarm

NOGALES, Ariz. (AP) — Inside an armored vehicle, an Army scout uses a joystick to direct a long-range optical scope toward a man perched atop the U.S.-Mexico border wall cutting across the hills of this Arizona frontier community. The man lowers himself toward U.S. soil between coils of concertina wire. Shouts ring out, an alert is sounded and a U.S. Border Patrol SUV races toward the wall — warning enough to send the man scrambling back over it, disappearing into Mexico. The sighting Tuesday was one of only two for the Army infantry unit patrolling this sector of the southern border, where an emergency declaration by President Donald Trump has thrust the military into a central role in deterring migrant crossings between U.S. ports of entry. 'Deterrence is actually boring,' said 24-year-old Army Sgt. Ana Harker-Molina, voicing the tedium felt by some fellow soldiers over the sporadic sightings. Still, she said she takes pride in the work, knowing that troops discourage crossings by their mere presence. 'Just if we're sitting here watching the border, it's helping our country,' said Harker-Molina, an immigrant herself who came from Panama at age 12 and became a U.S. citizen two years ago while serving in the Army. U.S. troop deployments at the border have tripled to 7,600 and include every branch of the military — even as the number of attempted illegal crossings plummet and Trump has authorized funding for an additional 3,000 Border Patrol agents, offering $10,000 signing and retention bonuses. The military mission is guided from a new command center at a remote Army intelligence training base alongside southern Arizona's Huachuca Mountains. There, a community hall has been transformed into a bustling war room of battalion commanders and staff with digital maps pinpointing military camps and movements along the nearly 2,000-mile border. Until now border enforcement had been the domain of civilian law enforcement, with the military only intermittently stepping in. But in April, large swaths of border were designated militarized zones, empowering U.S. troops to apprehend immigrants and others accused of trespassing on Army, Air Force or Navy bases, and authorizing additional criminal charges that can mean prison time. The two-star general leading the mission says troops are being untethered from maintenance and warehouse tasks to work closely with U.S. Border Patrol agents in high-traffic areas for illegal crossings — and to deploy rapidly to remote, unguarded terrain. 'We don't have a (labor) union, there's no limit on how many hours we can work in a day, how many shifts we can man,' said Army Maj. Gen. Scott Naumann. 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Naumann said the focus is on stopping 'got-aways' who evade authorities to disappear into the U.S. in a race against the clock that can last seconds in urban areas as people vanish into smuggling vehicles, or several days in the dense wetland thickets of the Rio Grande or the vast desert and mountainous wilderness of Arizona. Meanwhile, the rate of apprehensions at the border has fallen to a 60-year low. Naumann says the fall-off in illegal entries is the 'elephant in the room' as the military increases pressure and resources aimed at starving smuggling cartels — including Latin American gangs recently designated as foreign terrorist organizations. He says it would be wrong to let up, though, and that crossings may rebound with the end of scorching summer weather. 'We've got to keep going after it, we're having some successes, we are trending positively,' he said of the mission with no fixed end-date. Militarized zones are 'a gray area' The Trump administration is using the military broadly to boost its immigration operations, from guarding federal buildings in Los Angeles against protests over ICE detentions, to assisting Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Florida to plans to hold detained immigrants on military bases in New Jersey, Indiana and Texas. 'It's all part of the same strategy that is a very muscular, robust, intimidating, aggressive response to this — to show his base that he was serious about a campaign promise to fix immigration,' said Dan Maurer, a law professor at Ohio Northern University and a retired U.S. Army judge advocate officer. 'It's both norm-breaking and unusual. It puts the military in a very awkward position.' The militarized zones at the border sidestep the Posse Comitatus Act, an 1878 law that prohibits the military from conducting civilian law enforcement on U.S. soil. 'It's in that gray area, it may be a violation — it may not be. The military's always had the authority to arrest people and detain them on military bases,' said Joshua Kastenberg, a professor at the University of New Mexico School of Law and a former Air Force judge. Michael Fisher, a security consultant and former chief of the Border Patrol from 2010-2016, calls the military expansion at the border a 'force multiplier' as Border Patrol agents increasingly turn up far from the border. 'The military allows Border Patrol to be able to flex into other areas where they typically would not be able to do so,' he said. The strategy carries inherent moral challenges and political risks. In 1997, an 18-year-old U.S. citizen was shot to death while herding goats by a Marine Corps unit on a border anti-drug patrol in the remote Big Bend Region of western Texas. Authorities say Esequiel Hernandez had no connection to the drug trade and was an honor student. The shooting stoked anger along the border and prompted an end to then-President Bill Clinton's military deployment to the border. In New Mexico, the latest restrictions barring access to militarized zones have made popular areas for hunting, hiking and offroad motorsports off-limits for recreation, leading to an outcry from some residents. Naumann said adults can apply for access online, and by agreeing to undergo a criminal background check that he calls a standard requirement for access to military bases. 'We're not out to stop Americans from recreating in America. That's not what this is about,' he said. Military-grade equipment At daybreak Wednesday, Border Patrol vehicles climbed the largely unfenced slopes of Mt. Cristo Rey, an iconic peak topped by a crucifix that juts into the sky above the urban outskirts of El Paso and Mexico's Ciudad Juárez — without another soul in sight. The peak is at the conflux of two new militarized zones designated as extensions of Army stations at Fort Bliss in Texas and Fort Huachuca in Arizona. The Defense Department has added an additional 250-mile (400-kilometer) zone in Texas' Rio Grande Valley linked to an Air Force base. The Navy will oversee the border near Yuma, Arizona, where the Department of Interior on Wednesday ceded a 32-mile (50-kilometer) portion of the border to the military. At Mt. Cristo Rey, the Homeland Security Department has issued plans to close a 1.3-mile (2-kilometer) gap in the border wall over the objections of a Roman Catholic diocese that owns much of the land and says a wall would obstruct a sacred refuge for religious pilgrimages. From a nearby mesa top, Army Spc. Luisangel Nito scanned the valley below Mt. Cristo Rey with an infrared scope that highlights body heat, spotting three people as they crossed illegally into the U.S. for the Border Patrol to apprehend. Nito's unit also has equipment that can ground small drones used by smugglers to plot entry routes. Nito is the U.S.-born son of Mexican immigrants who entered the country in the 1990s through the same valleys he now patrols. 'They crossed right here,' he said. 'They told me to just be careful because back when they crossed they said it was dangerous.' Nito's parents returned to Mexico in 2008 amid the financial crisis, but the soldier saw brighter opportunities in the U.S., returned and enlisted. He expressed no reservations about his role in detaining illegal immigrants. 'Obviously it's a job, right, and then I signed up for it and I'm going to do it,' he said. At Mt. Cristo Rey and elsewhere, troops utilize marked Border Patrol vehicles as Naumann champions the 'integration' of civilian law enforcement and military forces. 'If there's a kind of a secret sauce, if you will, it's integrating at every echelon,' Neumann said.

Trump's trip to Scotland as his new golf course opens blurs politics and the family's business
Trump's trip to Scotland as his new golf course opens blurs politics and the family's business

Winnipeg Free Press

time5 hours ago

  • Winnipeg Free Press

Trump's trip to Scotland as his new golf course opens blurs politics and the family's business

EDINBURGH, Scotland (AP) — Lashed by cold winds and overlooking choppy, steel-gray North Sea waters, the breathtaking sand dunes of Scotland's northeastern coast rank among Donald Trump 's favorite spots on earth. 'At some point, maybe in my very old age, I'll go there and do the most beautiful thing you've ever seen,' Trump said in 2023, during his New York civil fraud trial, talking about his plans for future developments on his property in Balmedie, Aberdeenshire. At 79 and back in the White House, Trump is making at least part of that pledge a reality, traveling to Scotland on Friday as his family's business prepares for the Aug. 13 opening of a new course it is billing as 'the greatest 36 holes in golf.' While there, Trump will talk trade with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, a meeting he's said will take place at 'probably one of my properties.' The Aberdeen area is already home to another of his courses, Trump International Scotland, and the president also plans to visit a Trump course near Turnberry, around 200 miles (320 kilometers) away on Scotland's southwest coast. Using this week's presidential overseas trip — with its sprawling entourage of advisers, White House and support staffers, Secret Service agents and reporters — to help show off Trump-brand golf destinations demonstrates how the president has become increasingly comfortable intermingling his governing pursuits with promoting his family's business interests. The White House has brushed off questions about potential conflicts of interest, arguing that Trump's business success before he entered politics was a key to his appeal with voters. White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers called the Scotland swing a 'working trip.' But she added that Trump 'has built the best and most beautiful world-class golf courses anywhere in the world, which is why they continue to be used for prestigious tournaments and by the most elite players in the sport.' Trump family's new golf course has tee times for sale Trump went to Scotland to play his Turnberry course during his first term in 2018 while en route to a meeting in Finland with Russian President Vladimir Putin. This time, his trip comes as the new golf course is about to debut and is already actively selling tee times. It's not cheap for the president to travel. The helicopters that operate as Marine One when the president is on board cost between $16,700 and nearly $20,000 per hour to operate, according to Pentagon data for fiscal year 2022. The modified Boeing 747s that serve as the iconic Air Force One cost about $200,000 per hour to fly. That's not to mention the military cargo aircraft that fly ahead of the president with his armored limousines and other official vehicles. 'We're at a point where the Trump administration is so intertwined with the Trump business that he doesn't seem to see much of a difference,' said Jordan Libowitz, vice president and spokesperson for the ethics watchdog organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. 'It's as if the White House were almost an arm of the Trump Organization.' During his first term, the Trump Organization signed an ethics pact barring deals with foreign companies. An ethics frameworks for Trump's second term allows them. Trump's assets are in a trust run by his children, who are also handling day-to-day operations of the Trump Organization while he's in the White House. The company has inked many recent, lucrative foreign agreements involving golf courses, including plans to build luxury developments in Qatar and Vietnam, even as the administration continues to negotiate tariff rates for those countries and around the globe. Trump's first Aberdeen course has sparked legal battles Trump's existing Aberdeenshire course, meanwhile, has a history nearly as rocky as the area's cliffs. It has struggled to turn a profit and was found by Scottish conservation authorities to have partially destroyed nearby sand dunes. Trump's company also was ordered to cover the Scottish government's legal costs after the course unsuccessfully sued over the construction of a nearby wind farm, arguing in part that it hurt golfers' views. And the development was part of the massive civil case, which accused Trump of inflating his wealth to secure loans and make business deals. Trump's company's initial plans for his first Aberdeen-area course called for a luxury hotel and nearby housing. His company received permission to build 500 houses, but Trump suggested he'd be allowed to build five times as many and borrowed against their values without actually building any homes, the lawsuit alleged. Judge Arthur Engoron found Trump liable last year and ordered his company to pay $355 million in fines — a judgment that has grown with interest to more than $510 million as Trump appeals. Golfers-in-chief Family financial interests aside, Trump isn't the first sitting U.S. president to golf in Scotland. That was Dwight D. Eisenhower, who played in Turnberry in 1959. George W. Bush visited the famed course at Gleneagles in 2005 but didn't play. Many historians trace golf back to Scotland in the Middle Ages. Among the earliest known references to game was a Scottish Parliament resolution in 1457 that tried to ban it, along with soccer, because of fears both were distracting men from practicing archery — then considered vital to national defense. The first U.S. president to golf regularly was William Howard Taft, who served from 1909 to 1913 and ignored warnings from his predecessor, Teddy Roosevelt, that playing too much would make it seem like he wasn't working hard enough. Woodrow Wilson played nearly every day but Sundays, and even had the Secret Service paint his golf balls red so he could practice in the snow, said Mike Trostel, director of the World Golf Hall of Fame. Warren G. Harding trained his dog Laddie Boy to fetch golf balls while he practiced. Lyndon B. Johnson's swing was sometimes described as looking like a man trying to kill a rattlesnake. Bill Clinton, who liked to joke that he was the only president whose game improved while in office, restored a putting green on the White House's South Lawn. It was originally installed by Eisenhower, who was such an avid user that he left cleat marks in the wooden floors of the Oval Office by the door leading out to it. Bush stopped golfing after the start of the Iraq war in 2003 because of the optics. Barack Obama had a golf simulator installed in the White House that Trump upgraded during his first term, Trostel said. John F. Kennedy largely hid his love of the game as president, but he played on Harvard's golf team and nearly made a hole-in-one at California's renowned Cypress Point Golf Club just before the 1960 Democratic National Convention. 'I'd say, between President Trump and President John F. Kennedy, those are two of the most skilled golfers we've had in the White House,' Trostel said. Trump, Trostel said, has a handicap index — how many strokes above par a golfer is likely to score — of a very strong 2.5, though he's not posted an official round with the U.S. Golf Association since 2021. That's better than Joe Biden's handicap of 6.7, which also might be outdated, and Obama, who once described his own handicap as an 'honest 13.' The White House described Trump as a championship-level golfer but said he plays with no handicap. ___ Associated Press writer Chris Megerian in Washington contributed to this report.

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