Germany Vows to Defend Baltics Against Any Russian Threat
By and Milda Seputyte
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Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Germany's military is prepared to defend the Baltic region against 'any threat' as he arrived in Lithuania to mark the establishment of a battle tank brigade aimed at bolstering NATO's eastern flank.
Merz and Defense Minister Boris Pistorius took part in the first ceremonial roll call of the Panzer Brigade 45 in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. Germany aims to complete the establishment of the brigade by the end of 2027, with as many as 5,000 personnel on the ground. It will be the country's first permanently-deployed battle tank brigade abroad since World War II.
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CNN
28 minutes ago
- CNN
Fact check: Trump makes multiple false claims to the troops at Fort Bragg
President Donald Trump made a series of false claims to members of the military on Tuesday in a partisan and combative speech at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. Trump lied again about the 2020 election. He repeated a long-debunked story about a Minnesota National Guard deployment in 2020. He again distorted the history of his first administration's fight against the ISIS terror group. He revived a fictional tale about immigration during former President Joe Biden's administration. And he exaggerated the military's recruiting challenges under Biden. In addition, Trump made a series of vague assertions about the protests in Los Angeles for which he presented no evidence. Here is a fact check of some of his checkable false claims from the speech – plus a false claim he made in remarks about California at the White House earlier in the day. The 2020 election: Trump repeated his long-debunked lie that the 2020 election 'was rigged and stolen.' Trump legitimately lost a free and fair election to Biden. The National Guard and Minneapolis: While bashing Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Trump revived a false story that CNN debunked nearly five years ago. Trump wrongly claimed that it was him, not Walz, who sent the National Guard to Minneapolis in 2020 amid the civil unrest that followed the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. Trump said: 'I'll never forget in Minnesota: that city was burning down, Minneapolis, it was burning down, it was gonna burn to the ground, and he wouldn't call the guard. And I waited for a long time, and I called the guard, and I saved it.' In reality, publicly available evidence proves that Walz first deployed the Minnesota National guard more than seven hours before Trump publicly threatened to deploy the guard himself. While Walz was criticized by many Republicans and some Democrats for not sending in the guard faster, it is indisputable that Walz, not Trump, was the person who deployed the guard. You can read more here. Trump and the battle against ISIS: Trump repeated his regular false claim that even though 'they said it would take five years to defeat ISIS, we did in four weeks, four weeks.' The so-called ISIS 'caliphate' was declared fully liberated more than two years into Trump's presidency, in 2019, not 'in four weeks.' Military recruiting under Biden: Trump, boasting of the military's recruiting performance during his second administration, falsely claimed, 'Just think of this: six months ago, we couldn't recruit anybody to join the military. Nobody wanted to join. That was six months ago.' Even granting that words like 'nobody' can be used less than literally, it's simply not true that 'nobody wanted to join' the military at the end of the Biden administration. The ongoing uptick in recruiting actually began under the Biden administration. The Defense Department announced in October 2024, before Trump's second victory, that recruitment was up more than 12% in the 2024 fiscal year compared with the previous fiscal year; reported in October 2024: 'After years of negative recruiting news and headlines, all the military branches managed to eke out wins this year and meet their recruiting goals – largely aided by new programs and policies that allowed them to sign up recruits who would have been disqualified in previous years.' The Army, for example, added just over 55,000 recruits, up substantially from just under 45,000 in fiscal year 2022. Migrants, prisons and mental institutions: Trump made his frequent assertion that foreign countries deliberately placed prisoners and people with mental illnesses in the US as migrants during Biden's presidency. 'Many of them came out of prisons and jails – the most heinous people, they came from all over the world. They came from the Congo in Africa, they came from Asia, they came from the prisons of these places, they were put into the United States and allowed to stay here,' Trump said at one point. At another, he said, 'Their countries would bus them or drive them right to our border and say, 'Go in there. If you ever come back, we're going to kill you.'' Trump has never presented any evidence of any foreign government transporting their criminals to the US border under Biden. Nor has he corroborated his stories about foreign governments deliberately emptying prisons and mental health facilities to somehow facilitate migration to the US, which even his 2024 presidential campaign could not prove. His allegations about prisons in 'the Congo' have been rejected as baseless by independent experts, human rights organizations, and the governments of the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of Congo. California, fires and water: At the White House earlier on Tuesday, Trump again wrongly asserted that the January wildfires in Los Angeles 'started because they wouldn't allow water into LA, they wouldn't allow water into California' – and added that he then turned water 'around,' and 'now we have billions of gallons of water flowing down.' None of this is true. First, nobody has broadly refused to allow water into Los Angeles or into California as a whole. Second, experts on California water policy and firefighting have repeatedly explained that there is no basis for Trump's claims that the January wildfires were caused by water being used for environmental protection in northern California rather than being sent to Los Angeles. Third, Trump did not actually send water to Los Angeles earlier this year. Rather, in what experts widely described as a waste and a stunt, he had about two billion gallons of fresh water sent from one part of California's Central Valley to another part of the valley in late January and early February.
Yahoo
28 minutes ago
- Yahoo
US marines deployed to LA have not yet responded to immigration protests
US marines that deployed to Los Angeles on orders from President Donald Trump have not yet been called to respond to the city's immigration protests and are there only to protect federal officials and property, a commander said. The 700 marines and another 2,000 US National Guard troops were sent to LA on Monday, escalating a military presence that local officials and governor Gavin Newsom do not want and that the police chief says makes it harder to handle the protests safely. Marine Corps Gen Eric Smith told a budget hearing on Capitol Hill that the battalion has not yet been sent to any protests. The marines were trained for crowd control but have no arrest authority and are there to protect government property and personnel, he said. Mr Trump doubled the number of Guard troops being deployed soon after the first wave of 2,000 began arriving on Sunday following days of protests driven by anger over the President's enforcement of immigration laws that critics say are breaking apart migrant families. The demonstrations continued on Monday but were far less raucous, with thousands of people peacefully attending a rally at City Hall and hundreds more protesting outside a federal complex that includes a detention centre where some immigrants are being held following workplace raids across the city. The protests in Los Angeles, a city of four million people, have largely been centred in several blocks of downtown and a few other spots. At daybreak on Tuesday, guard troops were stationed outside the detention centre, but there was no sign of US marines. Obscene slogans were directed at Mr Trump and federal law enforcement remained scrawled across several buildings. At the Walt Disney Concert Hall, workers were busy washing away graffiti on Tuesday morning. In nearby Santa Ana, armoured vehicles blocked a road leading to federal immigration and government offices. Workers swept up plastic bottles and broken glass near buildings sprayed with graffiti. Mr Trump has described Los Angeles in dire terms that Mayor Karen Bass and Mr Newsom say are nowhere close to the truth. They say he is putting public safety at risk by adding military personnel even though police say they do not need the help. Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell said in a statement that he was confident in the police department's ability to handle large-scale demonstrations and that the Marines' arrival without coordinating with the police department would present a 'significant logistical and operational challenge'. Mr Newsom called the deployments reckless and 'disrespectful to our troops' in a post on the social platform X. 'This isn't about public safety,' the governor said. 'It's about stroking a dangerous President's ego.' The protests began on Friday after federal immigration authorities arrested more than 40 people across Los Angeles and continued over the weekend as crowds blocked a major road and set self-driving cars on fire. Police responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and flash-bang grenades. Demonstrations spread on Monday to other cities nationwide, including San Francisco and Santa Ana, California, as well as Dallas and Austin, Texas. Authorities in Austin appeared to use chemical irritants to disperse a crowd that gathered near the state Capitol. Texas governor Greg Abbott posted on social media that more than a dozen protesters were arrested. The Pentagon said deploying the National Guard and Marines costs 134 million dollars (£98.8 million). That figure emerged just after US defence secretary Pete Hegseth engaged in a into a testy back-and-forth about the costs during a congressional hearing. Mr Hegseth said the department has a budget increase and the money to cover the costs, and he defended Mr Trump's decision to send the troops, saying they are needed to protect federal agents doing their jobs. Meanwhile, Democratic members of California's congressional delegation on Tuesday accused the President of creating a 'manufactured crisis' with his orders to send in troops. Nancy Pelosi contrasted Trump's actions with his handling of the January 6 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol when law enforcement officers were beaten. 'We begged the president of the United States to send in the National Guard. He would not do it,' Ms Pelosi said. California's attorney general Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit over the use of National Guard troops following the first deployment, telling reporters that Mr Trump had 'trampled' the state's sovereignty. He sought a court order declaring Mr Trump's use of the Guard unlawful and asking for a restraining order to halt the deployment. The President said the city would have been 'completely obliterated' if he had not deployed the Guard. US officials said the marines were needed to protect federal buildings and personnel, including immigration agents. A convoy of buses with blacked-out windows and escorted by sheriff's vehicles arrived overnight at a Navy facility just south of LA. Despite their presence, there has been limited engagement so far between the Guard and protesters while local law enforcement implements crowd control.
Yahoo
29 minutes ago
- Yahoo
In his own words: Trump said during 2024 campaign he would use military for immigration enforcement
President Donald Trump in recent days has sent thousands of National Guard troops and 700 active duty Marines to quell Los Angeles-area protests over immigration enforcement actions, despite the objections of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and local leaders. On Tuesday, National Guard troops were standing guard around officers as they made arrests, an expansion of the troops' duties from their earlier role of protecting federal property. The actions are in line with what Trump pledged during last year's campaign, when as a candidate he promised the largest mass deportation effort the U.S. has seen, and said he would be willing to use military might to make it happen. But Trump has changed his position since his 2020 presidential bid, namely around using the Insurrection Act to send military units to respond to unrest in the states. Here's a look at how Trump has talked about use of the military when it comes to immigration — and how his position evolved — in his own words: 2025: 'If there's an insurrection, I would certainly invoke it' 'If there's an insurrection, I would certainly invoke it. We'll see. But I can tell you last night was terrible, and the night before that was terrible.' — Trump, Tuesday, to reporters in the Oval Office. ___ During an Oval Office engagement with reporters, Trump left open the possibility of invoking one of the most extreme emergency powers available to a U.S. president. The Insurrection Act authorizes the president to deploy military forces inside the United States to suppress rebellion or domestic violence or to enforce the law in certain situations. It is often referred to as the 'Insurrection Act of 1807,' but the law is actually an amalgamation of different statutes enacted by Congress between 1792 and 1871. In calling up National Guard forces over Newsom's objections, Trump cited a legal provision that allows him to mobilize federal service members when there is 'a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.' 2024: 'I would have no problem using the military' 'If I thought things were getting out of control, I would have no problem using the military, per se. We have to have safety in our country. We have to have law and order in our country. And whichever gets us there, but I think the National Guard will do the job.' — Trump, April 30, 2024, interview with Time Magazine. ___ While campaigning in 2024, Trump said he would use the National Guard as part of efforts to deport millions of migrants across the country. He didn't say how he would carry out the operations and what role the National Guard would play, but added he would resort to the military if 'things were getting out of control.' When asked to clarify if he would use the military inland, he said, 'I don't think I'd have to do that. I think the National Guard would be able to do that. If they weren't able to, then I'd use the military.' Trump told Time that he would deport between 15 million and 20 million people who are in the country illegally. The foreign-born population, including immigrants in the country both legally and illegally, was estimated to be 46.2 million, or nearly 14% of the U.S. total, in 2022, according to the Census Bureau, which also reported about 11 million immigrants in the country illegally. After winning the November election, the possible contours of Trump's incoming administration and how it would handle issues, including immigration, began to take greater shape. On Nov. 17, after conservative activist Tom Fitton proclaimed in a social media post that the incoming president 'will declare a national emergency and will use military assets to reverse the Biden invasion through a mass deportation program,' Trump replied: 'TRUE!!!' On his first day back in office, Trump rolled out a blueprint to beef up security at the southern border in a series of executive orders that began taking effect soon after his Jan. 20 inauguration. Trump ordered the government, with Defense Department assistance, to 'finish' construction of the border wall and send troops to the border. He did not say how many would go — leaving it up to the defense secretary — or what their exact role would be. His executive orders suggested the military would help the Department of Homeland Security with 'detention space, transportation (including aircraft), and other logistics services.' Trump directed the defense secretary to come up with a plan to 'seal the borders' and repel 'unlawful mass migration.' 2020: 'There's no reason to ever' make insurrection determination 'We have to go by the laws. We can't move in the National Guard. I can call insurrection, but there's no reason to ever do that.' — Trump, Sept. 15, 2020, in a town hall hosted by ABC News in Philadelphia. ___ Questioned during a 2020 election town hall about his campaign promise of restoring law and order, Trump said he could not activate the National Guard unless a governor requested it, referring to the response to wildfires that ravaged Portland in 2020. 'We have laws. We have to go by the laws. We can't move in the National Guard. I can call insurrection, but there's no reason to ever do that,' he said. 'Even in a Portland case, we can't call in the National Guard unless we're requested by a governor. If a governor or a mayor is a Democrat, like in Portland, we call them constantly.' That reference wasn't explicitly to immigration, but it was referring to Trump's willingness to overrule a state's governor and federalize National Guard resources. ___ Kinnard can be reached at
