ICE raid sparks pandemonium as cops batter agitators blocking major bridge
Demonstrators protesting the immigration detention of former hospital chaplain Ayman Soliman blocked the Roebling Bridge that carries traffic between Ohio and Kentucky on Thursday.
Approximately 100 people crossed the bridge from the Ohio side, but fights broke out after protesters were met by nearly 50 officers from Covington, Kentucky, reported Cincinnati.com.
Shocking footage showed one officer punching a protester several times as police wrestled him to the ground.
Covington Police Chief Brian Valenti claimed the protester, Brandon Hill, had tried to disarm an officer carrying a pepper ball gun.
However, Hill, who was left covered in scratches and bruises and with his arm in a sling, insisted he was just trying not to get shot.
'It's all very traumatic, and I'm still trying to recover from this, honestly,' Hill told WCPO. 'If anything like that happened, it's because a random gun was pointed in my face.'
Covington police placed the officer who arrested Hill on administrative duty with pay while the investigation is ongoing.
Body camera footage from the unidentified officer showed him chasing Hill as he was running along the sidewalk before the cop grabbed him near the ledge of the bridge.
Hill can be heard on other officers' body cams yelling 'ow' and 'stop' as he got hit in the head.
In the officer's use-of-force report, he wrote: '[Hill] continued to physically resist, actively concealing his hands... fearing that [he] might be attempting to access a weapon, and that the surrounding crowd opposed a threat to my safety, I delivered additional closed fist strikes.'
Another video from the protest showed people wearing neon-colored vests pushing against a black SUV on the bridge.
Police arrested 15 people during the protest, including two journalists, after police said they had refused to comply with orders to disperse.
Covington police said in a statement that officers who initially attempted to talk with the protest's organizer were threatened and met with hostility.
'While the department supports the public's right to peaceful assembly and expression, threatening officers and blocking critical infrastructure, such as a major bridge, presents a danger to all involved,' the police said.
Among the charges filed against those arrested were rioting, failing to disperse, obstructing emergency responders, criminal mischief and disorderly conduct.
Reporter Madeline Fening and photo intern Lucas Griffith were charged with felony rioting and several other charges, said Ashley Moor, the editor in chief of CityBeat.
A judge on Friday set a $2,500 bond for each of those arrested.
The arrests happened during a protest in support of Ayman Soliman, 51, an Egyptian immigrant who worked as a chaplain at Cincinnati Children's Hospital.
He was detained last week after he showed up for a routine check-in with ICE officials at their office near Cincinnati.
According to his lawyers, he was granted asylum in 2018 based on past persecution for his work as a journalist in Egypt during the Arab Spring uprising. His lawyers say he was jailed and tortured for reporting on the intense political conflict.
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Times
an hour ago
- Times
‘I was the Trump team': how the Podcast Election was won
The president's social media strategist has had a busy morning stirring up online outrage. In the past few hours Alex Bruesewitz has condemned Democrats as a 'pathetic group of people', denounced critics of Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil, as 'far-left maniacs' and shared a post of the 'horrible' liberal podcast host Alex Cooper being booed at a baseball game. Bruesewitz, 28, has been starting arguments like this professionally for a decade but now, sipping a glass of water at the Waldorf Astoria in Washington, in a well-fitted navy blue suit, he is relaxed and even polite. He co-founded X Strategies, a company that counsels conservatives on how to win social media wars, when he was 19. Last year he was the architect of the podcast game plan credited with helping Donald Trump to win back the White House. Today he is at the heart of the administration's ultra-combative communications operation, working as a hired gun because he is planning to get married and thinks that it is 'a little bit difficult' to afford a wedding on a government salary. Often the best ideas are not his, he says. Take some of the viral memes — of Trump dressed as the Pope, or Gaza rendered as a holiday resort (Gaza-Lago), or the AI-generated cartoon of a crying migrant — that have driven huge clicks and controversy, amplified by the president's social platforms. Bruesewitz says they are generated by Trump 's fans, whom he calls 'really talented people'. 'These guys make some of the best memes, and they're bus drivers in small towns across the country,' he says. 'And they get off of work and they go home and they open their computer, they tell their wife they love them and they log on to X for the next five hours of their life. And they're making hilarious memes of the president or videos of the president.' But it was podcasts, not memes, that really sealed his reputation. During the 2024 campaign, which became known as the 'podcast election' because of the extent to which the format often seemed to usurp traditional media, Trump appeared on 20 episodes. Most were hosted by young men and popular with young men. These appearances reached 23.5 million Americans in an average week, compared with 6.4 million for his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris. Subsequently 56 per cent of men aged 18 to 29 backed Trump in 2024, up from 41 per cent in 2020. Trump's podcast circuit has been depicted as a long pitch to the 'right-wing manosphere'. Bruesewitz thinks this is unfair. 'None of the podcasters we sat down with during that period were Trump lovers,' he says. Instead, he calls them 'equal-opportunity critics' — hosts who have been critical of Trump on certain issues, and critical of Democrats on others. He also notes that Trump saw a bounce among young women, up from 33 per cent in 2020 to 40 per cent in 2024. Podcasts worked for the candidate because they suited his unique political skills, he says. 'The greatness about President Trump is that he knows all the issues, and he also has charisma that is unrivalled in the political space,' Bruesewitz says. In general, little to no preparation was needed. 'I think over-prepping your candidates is what kind of trips you up.' Underpreparing has its pitfalls too. Rapid rise In the last few days of the election The Atlantic described Bruesewitz as a 'terminally online troll and perpetual devil on the campaign's shoulder' who had urged JD Vance to amplify the lie that illegal Haitian immigrants were stealing and eating pets. The magazine also reported that it was Bruesewitz who had personally advocated for the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe to appear at a Trump rally days before the election, at which he then called Puerto Rico a 'floating island of garbage' (Bruesewitz says both claims are untrue.) But Trump's subsequent victory cast him in a much more favourable light and Axios hailed him as 'one of the most influential political strategists in the US'. In February the Trump family appointed him senior adviser to the political action committee Never Surrender, entrusting him with running two of the president's social media accounts. His team of five, based in Florida, manage the @TrumpWarRoom and @TeamTrump handles, which are followed by millions (although the president still posts his own messages on Truth Social). Bruesewitz has also found time to meet some British conservatives. He met Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the Conservative Party, in London. 'I think she's a good person,' he says, adding that she's got the issues right but is in a tough position. 'The party that she leads now was led by imbeciles before.' On the Reform leader Nigel Farage, he says: 'He's probably the best in the UK and my advice to him has been to make sure you use your momentum and your platform to build up the voices of the next generation because he's not going to be hot for ever.' It all started with a tweet Bruesewitz's career started in April 2015 when he was 18 years old. He was sitting at his high school desk in the Wisconsin town of Ripon (population 7,900), 'and I posted a picture of the Trump Hotel in Chicago,' he says. 'And I said, 'the sign on Trump Chicago would look just as good on the White House'. And the president, then businessman Donald Trump, retweeted me.' Two months later, Trump announced his candidacy. 'And when he announced that he was running, I was sold already. I wanted to be like Donald Trump.' After high school, Bruesewitz skipped college and tried his hand at real estate, having admired the empire Trump had built. 'I didn't do so well in that,' he concedes. Trump's election in 2016 inspired Bruesewitz and his business partner Derek Utley to form X Strategies a year later. Their early clients included FreedomProject Academy, a Christian conservative homeschooling academy in central Wisconsin, and a father who lost his daughter in the Parkland school shooting in 2018. Utley and Bruesewitz represented the latter pro bono as he argued for more school security rather than fewer guns. Then came the 2020 election and Trump's claims of election fraud. Bruesewitz leapt to his defence on social media and made a speech in Washington's Freedom Plaza. When the BBC invited Bruesewitz on air, he argued with the presenter. 'Thank you for having me on,' he said, 'and I just want to make one thing very clear … your country's opinion stopped mattering in our country in 1776.' His sparring eventually got Donald Trump Jr's attention. 'He liked my tenacity online,' Bruesewitz says. 'He found me to be quite entertaining.' The two became friends and Don Jr introduced Bruesewitz to his father. 'I got to spend quality time with the president for the first time at a live golf tournament at his club in New Jersey,' he tells me. 'I ended up spending four and a half hours with the president that day.' They spoke about 'all things' — not just politics. 'And we've had a great relationship ever since.' After that, Bruesewitz poured his energy into attacking Republicans who had backed Trump's impeachment — not as an official Trump appointee but out of 'sheer patriotism and love of nation'. Eight out of ten of those Republicans either declined to stand in 2022 or lost their primary. 'We travelled [around] their campaign districts,' Bruesewitz says. 'I personally picked fights with Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger,' he says of the two anti-Trump Republican members of Congress, 'which was also great entertainment. I found great joy in that'. In November 2022, the Trump family finally hired Bruesewitz. His mission? To help beat Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, to the Republican presidential nomination. That worked — and then came the general election. The podcast plan It was Trump's youngest son Barron, not Bruesewitz, who set up the first big podcast interview — with the 24-year-old online streamer and influencer Adin Ross — which proved the power of the format before the election. Bruesewitz calculated that clips from Trump's appearance were seen by 113 million people in the first 24 hours. When Bruesewitz presented the numbers to Trump, 'he flipped through it, and he was like, 'these numbers are massive''. Trump also thanked his 19-year-old son in a Truth Social post. 'And then about four or five days passed, and he kept texting me or calling me about how great that interview was.' Not long afterwards, Bruesewitz was called into the office of Susie Wiles, who helped manage Trump's election campaign and is now White House chief of staff. 'She's like, 'Alex, we've got to get him to do more of these.'' After that, they went all in. 'We lined them up, one major podcast a week, up until we did Rogan, which was like a week before the election,' Bruesewitz says. The appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, the most popular podcast in the US, garnered more than 44 million views on YouTube by election day, allowing Trump to reach young, predominantly male voters, opining on topics such as martial arts, the possibility of life on Mars, and his admiration for William McKinley, the president who was assassinated in 1901. When I ask how Bruesewitz decided which podcasts Trump should do, he shrugs. 'I mean, I just went through something called Spotify and Spotify rankings. And I think we did eight of the ten podcasts on Spotify that were popular.' There was one conspicuous exception, however. Trump avoided Alex Cooper's Call Her Daddy, one of the most popular podcasts among young American women. Cooper, the 30-year-old host of the show, is beloved by her 'Daddy Gang' — some 70 per cent of whom are female, with 76 per cent under 35. In October Kamala Harris appeared on the podcast, discussing women's rights and abortion. Cooper later said her team had a Zoom call with Trump's team about the possibility of him appearing. Bruesewitz says that's not true. 'I was President Trump's team,' Bruesewitz says. 'I never had a conversation with Alex Cooper about going on the podcast. Her team reached out to me. We never responded. I would never put the president on Call Her Daddy.' Why not? 'Because one, she's terrible, she's terrible at what she does. I think personally. I think she's been a detriment to society with the content that she talks about.' And she's 'regressive', he says, 'when it comes to starting families and having happy, healthy relationships'. A source close to the Call Her Daddy team confirmed that a call about the president coming on the show occurred before the election in November 2024 with members of his campaign team, including discussing a suggestion by his staff that they film the episode at Mar-a-Lago. Unexpected love story Instead, looking for a female-friendly podcast to counter Harris's appearance on Call Her Daddy, he landed on a show called Girls Gone Bible. 'It's the No 2 religious podcast on Spotify,' he says. 'Massive following. They do these in-person shows where they get 1,000 young girls at each tour stop. They talk about Jesus and they pray over them. And it's actually really beautiful.' Bruesewitz organised a meeting between Trump and the hosts of Girls Gone Bible in Las Vegas. The night before, one of the hosts brought a glamorous friend to dinner. It was Carolina Urrea, the former Miss Nevada. 'Carolina walked in. I'm like, wow, who's that girl?' The following day, Carolina took a picture with Trump, who gave Bruesewitz a 'thumbs up'. The pair got engaged eight months later. Bruesewitz says his fiancée has 'strengthened my relationship with the Lord'. ALEX BRUESEWITZ/INSTAGRAM He sees his experience as part of a larger shift toward Christianity in America in recent years. 'Another trend is moving away from the girl boss attitude to the trad wife,' he says. 'I don't know if it was Covid that kind of made that switch where people were spending more time at home and they were, you know, learning to cook more and doing more things. But that trad culture started taking off big time.' • My day with the trad wife queen and what it taught me While podcasts helped Trump to reclaim the White House, the president has rarely appeared on them in his second term. Though he showed up last month on the New York Post's Pod Force One, Trump is spending most of his time these days on Truth Social and his old favourite: TV news. Bruesewitz, who describes Trump as 'a good friend of mine' thinks this could change. 'I think he'll eventually do some. You know, he's been very busy running the free world.' As for his own future, he says that Trump would have endorsed him to run for office if he had wanted to, but he didn't. 'I think Congress would be a little too boring for me.'
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Huge fortress home where couple harbored 21 children was set up like a hotel
From the outside, the imposing castle-like design and gated exterior made the $4.1 million mansion appear like a fortress. Residents admired it as they walked their dogs through the high-end California neighborhood of Arcadia - and assumed the family inside just enjoyed their privacy. That's until they noticed heavily-pregnant women walking around the grounds. For behind the walls lurked a dark secret, with mothers claiming the couple who lived there were running a chilling surrogacy scheme. The owners, couple Guojun Xuan, 65, and Silvia Zhang, 38, made headlines after they were found to have harbored a staggering 21 surrogate babies in the house - 17 of which were under the age of three. A neighbor, who asked not to be named, told the Daily Mail he suspected the couple were operating some sort of 'maternity house' for years - and would see cars driving in and out at all times of night. He recalled: 'Some of them [the pregnant women] were Caucasian. They were exercising and walking around because maybe their backs hurt, or they want to go into labor. 'I heard rumors that this was set up like a hotel. There are nine bedrooms. The talk around the neighborhood is they even had a front desk manager, and it was like coming to a birthing hospital.' Michael Bui, another neighbor, told Daily Mail, he would never see people go in and out and never heard crying. Women who handed over babies to the couple said they believed they were helping to build a loving family and were oblivious to other surrogates recruited across the country, from Pennsylvania to Texas. The alleged ruse continued for years - for reasons that California detectives and the FBI are yet to fully uncover - until the couple brought a two-month-old to the hospital with a traumatic head injury in May. The hospital visit led to a search warrant on the lavish mansion, which turned up the horror discovery of not only the massive brood, but also indoor surveillance cameras depicting nannies 'physically and verbally' abusing the children, Arcadia Police said. When Daily Mail visited the towering property this week, there was no sign of Xuan, Zhang, or anything showing dozens of children spent their childhoods there besides a dilapidated trampoline. Xuan and Zhang were arrested after their May hospital visit and charged with child endangerment, while the Arcadia Police Department also issued an arrest warrant for one of the nannies, named as Chunmei Li, 56. Neighbors told Daily Mail this week that residents on their Arcadia street keep to themselves, enjoying the sunny California weather in the peace of their mansions. They said they were shocked to hear dozens of children lived in the home for years, as they had never seen any toys or strollers outside nor any children playing in the street. Mark Tabal, who lives about a block and a half from the home, said he passes by the castle house several times a day to walk his dog, but had not met the couple. He said: 'I've never seen any of the kids out here. It's a fairly quiet house and I've never seen the owners. Every once in a while, I see a gardener watering the bushes outside. 'It's pretty suspicious to hear the news and knowing this is the house but not hearing anything.' Neighbor Art Romero told CBS News that the huge nine-bedroom, 11-bath home was set up like a hotel, with a large lobby and a desk at the front appearing like a hotel clerk. It is unclear what the couple do for work or how they acquired their considerable wealth, with public records showing they are connected to a number of investment firms. Surrogate mothers who gave their children to the couple have expressed horror at the allegations, saying they believed Zhang and Xuan were clients of a surrogacy company. The FBI is now investigating whether they misled mothers across the country. After the shock allegations made headlines this week, an image emerged showing Zhang smiling at the birth of one of the children, hugging surrogate mother Kayla Elliot, 27, from Texas. In an interview with Center for Bio Ethics and Culture on TikTok, Elliot revealed that when Zhang met her at the hospital, she was handed $2,000, and her mother, boyfriend, son and daughter $200 each. She said that Zhang appeared unemotional about the birth and that she 'wasn't holding the baby.' She said: 'The baby was wrapped in a bassinet... you would think that somebody that wanted a baby so bad would be holding on that baby and loving that baby and just in awe with that baby.' Another surrogate mother in Pennsylvania, who asked to remain anonymous, revealed to KTLA that she is currently still pregnant with a baby intended for the couple. The 15 children found in the home were aged between two-months and 13-years-old, and six others had been given away. All 21 were taken into the custody of Department of Children and Family Services. Bui said on the street outside the home this week that the staggering allegations have left their quiet neighborhood searching for answers. He asked: 'Did they send them to school? 'I don't know why no one found out about the people who carried the children. Twenty-one children! What do you want to do with all of those children?' Surrogate Elliot, 27, is now fighting to regain custody of a baby girl she gave to the couple. She said that she was told that the baby was going to a loving family who only had one child, and believed Xuan and Zhang were clients of a surrogate firm that investigators now allege they owned. She told ABC7: 'It's horrific, it's disturbing, it's damaging emotionally. 'These agencies, we're supposed to trust them and follow their guidance and come to find out this whole thing was a scam, and the parents own the agency - that was not disclosed at all beforehand. Zhang has denied the allegations, and told KTLA that officials are 'misguided and wrong... We look forward to vindicating any such claims at the appropriate time when and if any actions are brought.' Despite Zhang's alleged claim that she just wanted a large family, one expert fears the mega-family may have been connected to trafficking. Kallie Fell, executive director of the nonprofit Center of Bioethics and Culture, told ABC7 that while the couple may not have broken the law by having so many surrogate children, the situation made her fear they were part of a human trafficking ring. Fell, who is working with Elliot, said that the surrogacy industry is unregulated, and often, 'anything goes.' She said: 'These clinics, these agencies are not regulated by any governing body. 'That to me smells of trafficking... What are the intentions of having that many children at home through these assisted reproductive technologies?'
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Prince Andrew WAS asked to contribute to paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein's 50th birthday album by Ghislaine Maxwell, insider claims
Prince Andrew was personally asked to contribute a message to billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein 's 50th birthday album, an insider has claimed. The Duke of York, 65, was allegedly approached by longtime friend Maxwell to write a personal message for Epstein's milestone birthday in 2003, a project the British socialite is said to have spent over a year orchestrating. He was convicted of sex crimes a few years later, in 2008. Maxwell, now 63 and serving a 20-year sentence in a US prison for trafficking underage girls, is believed to have asked Epstein's circle of powerful and wealthy friends to submit written tributes. According to US investigators, the album - described as 'gold-embossed' and bound in leather - was later recovered by the Department of Justice during a probe into Epstein's sordid network. A US source told the Sunday People: 'Ghislaine was the driving force behind the birthday tributes. 'She wanted it to be a who's who of Epstein's inner circle, and she leaned on a lot of people to write something. It wasn't just casual greetings. Ghislaine wanted messages that were personal, meaningful.' 'Jeffrey… always saw Andrew as the pinnacle of his pals, and Ghislaine made sure he was asked to contribute. 'She framed it as a celebration of Jeffrey's brilliance, his generosity, his supposed unique mind. She made it sound like an honour to be included.' It is not known whether Prince Andrew did ultimately send a message. However, his close relationship with Epstein, a friendship he has faced intense scrutiny over in recent years, was already well established at the time. Andrew was first introduced to Epstein by Maxwell in 1999 and subsequently visited the disgraced financier at his homes in New York, Palm Beach, and the US Virgin Islands. Epstein was also hosted by the Prince at royal residences including Balmoral, Windsor Castle, Sandringham, and Royal Ascot. The Duke has consistently denied any knowledge of Epstein's crimes, which became public in 2006. In 2008, Epstein was convicted of procuring a minor for prostitution. He died by suicide in a Manhattan jail in 2019 while awaiting federal sex trafficking charges. Virginia Giuffre, who claimed she was trafficked by Epstein as a teenager, alleged in a 2014 court filing that she had been forced to have sex with Andrew on three occasions - allegations the Prince has 'vehemently' denied. In 2022, he reached an out-of-court settlement with Giuffre reportedly worth £12million, while maintaining his innocence and stating he had no recollection of meeting her. Giuffre died by suicide in Australia earlier this year, aged 41. The existence of the birthday album first emerged after claims that Donald Trump had contributed a handwritten note to Epstein in 2003. According to The Wall Street Journal, the letter included a crude drawing of a naked woman and a signature allegedly stylised to resemble pubic hair. The message reportedly read: 'A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday - and may every day be another wonderful secret,' and added, 'We have certain things in common, Jeffrey.' Trump has furiously denied the report and is now suing The Wall Street Journal for a staggering $10billion (£7.46billion), branding the story 'fake'. He told reporters: 'I don't draw pictures of women. It's not my language, it's not my words.' The former US President's ties to Epstein have long been under the spotlight. In a 2002 interview, Trump remarked: 'He's a lot of fun to be with… he liked beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.' Trump has since said he distanced himself from Epstein well before the financier's crimes became public. Meanwhile, The Mail on Sunday has revealed that former US President Bill Clinton also contributed a 'warm and gushing' letter to the birthday book. The message, embossed with 'From the desk of William Jefferson Clinton', was included among hundreds of tributes from elite figures Maxwell is said to have courted for over a year.
