LA protests: Partial curfew goes into effect

The curfew set by Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass in the downtown area has come into effect, with many protesters still being seen in the area.

Protests are also taking place in New York and Chicago. 

Some 80 people have been detained as an immigration raid took place at a meat production plant in Omaha, Nebraska, US Congressman Don Bacon told local media.

The food packaging company whose facility was raided said it was surprised by the raids and had followed the rules regarding its employees' immigration status.

Chad Hartmann, president of Glenn Valley Foods, told the Reuters news agency the plant that was raided used E-Verify, a federal database used for checking employees' legal status.

After having told the federal agent about it, he was told that "the system is broken," and that he should contact his local congressional representative. 

"I mean, what am I supposed to do with that?" Hartmann said. "This is your system, run by the government. And you're raiding me because your system is broken?"

The Homeland Security department called the raid on X "the largest worksite enforcement operation in Nebraska under the Trump Administration."

The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)  has been intensifying its operations in recent weeks to deliver on US President Donald Trump's promise of record-level deportations.

California governor Gavin Newsom spoke about the situation in Los Angeles, harshly criticizing President Donald Trump's decision to deploy the National Guard.

"This brazen abuse of power inflamed a combustible situation putting our people, our officers, and the National Guard at risk," Newsom said.

Newsom said the current situation puts democracy "under assault before our eyes."

"This is about all of us, this is about you. California may be first but it clearly will not end here. Other states are next. Democracy is next."

A US federal appeals court is allowing the US government to collect global tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump while it considers the case on an expedited track due "issues of exceptional importance."

Arguments are scheduled for July 31, according to the court order.

This means Trump's tariffs are likely to stay in place for at least two more months.

Trump imposed in April a baseline tariff of 10%, with extra tariffs imposed, and paused, on countries with which the US runs trade deficits.

A man who murdered his girlfriend in Alabama was executed by nitrogen gas, with another man executed by lethal injection in Florida.

Sixty-five-year-old Gregory Hunt, who was convicted of raping and murdering his girlfriend of one month in 1988, was pronounced dead at the Alabama state prison at 6:26 Central Time (2323 GMT/UTC).

The execution by nitrogen hypoxia involves pumping nitrogen gas into a facemask, causing the prisoner to suffocate. 

UN experts have denounced the method as cruel and inhumane, with only one other US state, Louisiana, using it.

Anthony Wainwright, 54, was executed by lethal injection in Florida. He was convicted of the 1994 rape and murder of Carmen Gayheart, a 23-year-old nursing student and the mother of two children.

Twenty one executions have taken place in the USthis year, including 16 by lethal injection, two by firing squad and three using nitrogen gas.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass announced on Tuesday an overnight curfew in the downtown area.

"I have declared a local emergency and issued a curfew for downtown Los Angeles to stop the vandalism, to stop the looting," she told reporters.

The curfew will begin at 8 pm local time (0300 GMT/UTC on Wednesday) on Tuesday and last until 6 am local time on Wednesday and apply to a 1-square-mile area in downtown.

In a post on X, Bass said the curfew was declared "to stop bad actors who are taking advantage of the President's chaotic escalation."

"Law enforcement will arrest individuals who break the curfew, and you will be prosecuted," she warned.

A fifth day of protests unfolded in Los Angeles as hundreds of people gathered at a building where detained activists from the previous days of demonstrations against US President Donald Trump's immigration crackdowns were being held.

Los Angeles police pushed the crowd away from the building, making arrests in the process. 

Elsewhere, about 100 people briefly halted traffic on a freeway. 

New York, too, saw a protest against Trump's immigration plans, as several thousands of people marched through the streets of Manhattan.

Earlier today, President Trump called the protests a "full-blown assault on peace, on public order and national sovereignty." 

He also called the protesters "rioters bearing foreign flags with the aim of continuing a foreign invasion of our country."

High trade talks between the US and China ended in London late on Tuesday, with the two sides agreeing on a "framework" to move forward on trade.

"The two sides have, in principle, reached a framework for implementing the consensus reached by the two heads of state during the phone call on June 5th and the consensus reached at the Geneva meeting," China's Vice Commerce Minister Li Chenggang told reporters.

US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that the trade "framework" and implementation plan agreed should resolve restrictions on rare earths and magnets.

The plans reached in London following the two-day talks will need to be approved by Washington and Beijing.

"The idea behind all this is to increase our trade with China," Lutnick said.

This comes after a tariff war prompted by Donald Trump imposing %145 tariffs on China, with Beijing striking back with %125 tariffs. An earlier round of trade talks in May helped bring the mutual tariffs significantly down.

US President Donald Trump said that the country's military would rename bases whose names had been changed after the racial justice protests in 2023, in the wake of George Floyd's 2020 killing by police in Minneapolis. 

"We are also going to be restoring the names to Fort Pickett, Fort Hood, Fort Gordon, Fort Rucker, Fort Polk, Fort AP Hill and Fort Robert E. Lee," Trump said, while speaking at Fort Bragg, which had already been reverted to its original name earlier this year, from Fort Liberty.

"We won a lot of battles out of those forts. It's no time to change," he added.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sidestepped a Congressional provision banning bases having Confederate names, using the old names of the bases while saying they were renamed after people with the same names of the Confederate officials.

For example, Fort Lee was initially named after Civil War-era Confederate commander Robert E. Lee and renamed Fort Gregg-Adams in 2023.

Under Trump's new orders, it would be renamed after Private Fitz Lee, a Medal of Honor recipient from the Spanish-American War.

Many Americans see Confederate flags and base names as symbols of white supremacy. The Confederacy was the group of US states which fought against ending slavery, among other things, and lost in the US civil war.

US President Donald Trump called the protesters against his immigration enforcement in Los Angeles "animals" and "a foreign enemy" during a speech on Tuesday.

"We will not allow an American city to be invaded and conquered by a foreign enemy. That's what they are," Trump said, while calling Los Angeles a "trash heap" with "entire neighborhoods" under the control of criminals.

In a speech that was supposed to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the US Army, Trump condemned the protesters, while also repeating his false claims that the 2020 presidential elections, which he lost to Joe Biden, had been rigged.

"What you're witnessing in California is a full-blown assault on peace, on public order and national sovereignty, carried out by rioters bearing foreign flags with the aim of continuing a foreign invasion of our country," the US president said.

Trump linked the protesters to what he called "uncontrolled migration" and said that Europe must act against it as well.

"We will liberate Los Angeles and make it free, clean, and safe again," he said.

Dozens of people were arrested as part of the anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles, local police (LAPD) said in a statement. 

According to LAPD, 96 people were arrested for failing to disperse, while one arrest was made due to the alleged assault with a deadly weapon, one for resisting arrest and one for vandalism.

Fourteen more were arrested for looting, the LAPD said regarding the situation on Monday and the morning of Tuesday.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum criticized Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, calling her comments "absolutely false."

Earlier Tuesday, Noem spoke to reporters at the White House, saying "Claudia Sheinbaum came out and encouraged more protests in LA and I condemn her for that. She should not be encouraging violent protests that are going on."

In response, Sheinbaum took to X, saying Noem "mistakenly mentioned" that she encouraged violent protests, which was "absolutely false." 

The Mexican president reposted a video of her daily news conference the previous day, when she had condemned violent demonstrations and urged Mexicans living in the United States "to act peacefully."

"We have always been against" violent protests, Sheinbaum wrote on X.

"On the other hand, our position is and will continue to be the defense of honest, hardworking Mexicans who support the United States economy and their families in Mexico," she added.

The state of California is seeking a restraining order to prevent US troops being deployed on the streets of Los Angeles.

"Sending trained warfighters onto the streets is unprecedented and threatens the very core of our democracy," Governor Gavin Newsom said. 

"Donald Trump is behaving like a tyrant, not a President. We ask the court to immediately block these unlawful actions."

California's government accuses Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth of seeking "to bring military personnel and a 'warrior culture' to the streets of cities and towns where Americans work, go to school, and raise their families," according to the court filing, AFP reported. 

"To put it bluntly, there is no invasion or rebellion in Los Angeles; there is civil unrest that is no different from episodes that regularly occur in communities throughout the country, and that is capable of being contained by state and local authorities working together," the filing said.

It added that "nothing is stopping the President from enforcing the laws through use of ordinary, civilian mechanisms available to federal officers."

According to US Broadcaster CNN, the case has been assigned to senior US District Judge Charles R. Breyer of the federal trial-level court in San Francisco.

Democratic members of California's congressional delegation in the US House of Representatives organized a press conference at the US Capitol on Tuesday morning to address the situation in their home state.

The lawmakers accused President Donald Trump of creating a "manufactured crisis" in Los Angeles.

"It's a deliberate attempt by Trump to incite unrest, test the limits of executive power and distract from the lawlessness of his administration," said Representative Jimmy Gomez.

Representative Nancy Pelosi, former House speaker, criticized Trump's actions today with his handling of the January 6th insurrection at the US Capitol in 2021.

"We begged the president of the United States to send in the National Guard. He would not do it," Pelosi said.

"And yet, in a contra-constitutional way, he has sent the National Guard into California. Something is very wrong with this picture," she added.

Representative Jimmy Panetta said that Trump's decision to send in the military was designed to "give him the image and give him the fight and give him the pictures that he wants."

The Pentagon's acting comptroller, Bryn MacDonnell, said that the deployment of National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles
will cost at least $134 million (€117 million).

MacDonnell said the figure would cover travel, housing and food expenses for the troops while they are on site. The money is expected to be drawn from operations and maintenance accounts.

Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said those troops would stay in Los Angeles for 60 days. In total, the Pentagon has said that 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines will be deployed.

"We stated very publicly that it's 60 days because we want to ensure that those rioters, looters and thugs on the other side assaulting our police officers know that we're not going anywhere," Hegseth told members of the House appropriations defense subcommittee during a congressional hearing.