Category: Nation & World

Daye Gottsche let the stranger into the car without knowing he was a right-wing provocateur who had been leading a march to support President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

She didn’t realize that the demonstrators she saw on her drive had gathered at Minneapolis City Hall on Saturday to counterprotest — and were chasing him away, throwing punches at him. Gottsche did not recognize that this man was Jake Lang, who had been accused of beating police officers with a baseball bat during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and was jailed for four years before Trump pardoned him.

She saw only a man in need of rescue.

“Please help me,” Lang said, standing outside her friend’s car door, Gottsche told the Washington Post. “They hurt me bad.”

Gottsche saw a cut on his lip and scrapes on his face. From the driver’s side, her friend unlocked the doors. Lang jumped in the back seat.

As they waited for the stoplight to turn green, protesters swarmed them, shouting “That’s him!” according to video of the incident and interviews with Gottsche and Lang. People pried open the doors and kicked Lang. Some hit the car itself. Finally, Lang, Gottsche, and her friend sped away.

Within minutes, footage of the moment surfaced online. It fueled speculation about how Lang had escaped the reach of counterprotesters and who had helped him pull it off. The reality was simpler — and in some ways, more complicated — than what most guessed.

Inside the car was Gottsche, a 22-year-old transgender woman and singer-songwriter who said the choice to help Lang felt easy. She thought he might have been hurt by ICE officers, carrying with him the same fear that she and her neighbors have felt for weeks.

But minutes before Lang was begging for help outside the car, he had been blasting “Ice Ice Baby” to support federal immigration agents and yelling about how immigrants were “replacing” white Americans. After facing attacks from the crowd, he was seen bleeding from the back of his head.

Gottsche said if she had to relive the encounter, she would make the same decision to help Lang.

“I don’t necessarily know if he deserved our kindness, but I would not change anything that happened,” she said.

Afraid for her own safety, Gottsche had sat out the anti-ICE protests roiling Minneapolis. But, she said, she opposes the presence of the thousands of federal officers who have spent their days stopping people to ask for paperwork, pepper-spraying protesters and door-knocking in search of undocumented immigrants. Now, Gottsche sees her decision to rescue Lang as a sort of ironic intervention.

“I feel like it was meant to happen, because who knows — had we not stopped, he might have died,” she said. “He was really hurt, and I would hate to have something like that on my conscience.”

To Lang, receiving help from people who disagreed with him presented “a powerful kind of imagery,” a reminder of a higher power at play. He said he wanted to believe that had they known his beliefs, they still would have helped — but he doubts it, given public social media posts he saw from Gottsche afterward. He referenced one video in which she said, “We’re letting the wolves have you next time.”

“That’s very sad and disappointing,” he told the Post. “And I pray God checks their heart on that.”

Asked about the video, Gottsche said she had made it just minutes after Lang left the car and before she had even begun to process what had transpired. She said she may have taken her remarks too far.

But, Gottsche said, she wondered whether, if the roles had been reversed, Lang would have helped her. In the 48 hours since the interaction, Gottsche said she and her friend have been the target of derogatory, threatening messages and posts with false information from right-wing social media accounts.

Since an ICE officer shot and killed 37-year-old Renée Good on Jan. 7, protests have spilled into the streets of Minneapolis daily. In a different world, Gottsche might have joined them.

After a police officer murdered George Floyd in 2020, Gottsche, then a high school student, joined thousands in Minnesota to protest police brutality. Gottsche, who is half Black, marched with a sign reading, “Stop killing us.”

But she doesn’t feel safe anymore, she said. She had seen videos of the shooting of Good, a white woman who had been in her car, blocks away from home. She had watched Vice President JD Vance say the ICE officer who killed Good had “absolute immunity.”

“I felt like that was my warning to just not” protest, Gottsche said. “That’s not normal.”

So she chose to keep her support of the Minneapolis demonstrations subtle. She honked when driving by protesters. Then she went about her day.

On Saturday, Gottsche and her friend decided to grab drinks. The bar they wanted to try was blocks away from Minneapolis’ city hall and federal courthouse, where Lang planned to hold an anti-immigration protest. He had been preparing to protest for months as part of a series of anti-Muslim rallies he has held across America. He said his desire to demonstrate in Minneapolis only grew after he heard Trump blame Somali immigrants for a yearslong welfare fraud probe in the state and saw that residents there were clashing with ICE officers.

As he was chased by the crowd of counterprotesters Saturday, Lang ran into a hotel and left through a side door. He said he took off the military-style vest he had been wearing with patches reading “Infidel” and “47,” a reference to Trump.

Then Lang approached the red sedan where Gottsche and her friend, Aleigha, were sitting at a traffic light. Gottsche said that she rolled down her window as she saw Lang running toward them, and that he asked for help. She and her friend looked at each other, trying to figure out whether to let him inside the car.

Suddenly, the car was surrounded. From the passenger’s side, with the window still down, Gottsche panicked, trying to explain to the people outside that she did not know the man and was just trying to help.

“Drive!” Lang shouted, according to video and an interview with him. “Drive! Drive!”

Soon after, they tore away from the crowd.

Gottsche turned to face Lang and asked him what had happened. It was then that she realized “that we had someone that’s not on our side in our car.” Lang said he recognized that Gottsche was trans and her friend was also a woman of color, and he thought to himself that “they probably are not sympathetic to my stance as a pro-ICE supporter.”

Lang thanked Gottsche and her friend but did not directly answer their questions about what had led him to their car, Gottsche said. He identified himself only as “Jake” and as a Christian who loves God. He offered to pay for the damage to the car and shared a phone number, Gottsche said. She texted the number and confirmed that the message had gone through.

The ride was short. They reached the bar, and Lang got out of the car.

Gottsche still didn’t know who exactly he was.

Then friends and social media followers who had started to see videos of Lang’s escape sent her messages: Did she know she had just saved an anti-immigrant influencer? They sent videos of the rally he had just held and links to his social media pages, where he had repeatedly made incendiary posts about immigrants and Muslims. Some people seeing the photos and videos of the moment assumed Gottsche was a fan of Lang.

She took to TikTok to clarify how she had ended up in the now-viral exchange. In one video, she lip-synced to “No Good Deed” from Wicked, with the caption: “When you try to help an injured man in the street but it turns out he was Jake Lang.”

In the hours that followed, Gottsche still felt it was a “right place, right time” moment — a twist of fate that landed two people otherwise unlikely to talk to one another in the same car. She told Lang in a text message that she hopes the interaction sparks a reconsideration of his stances.

“I also wanna add while i do not whatsoever support you or ur ideals, im happy to see that you are gonna be okay, and i hope this has some sort of impact on you,” Gottsche wrote to the number Lang had shared with her.

“Because the fear and urgency you felt trying to escape that crowd is what people here feel everyday. America was never ours to begin with, so how does it make sense that we cant share, especially with people seeking safety and shelter?”

By Monday afternoon, a reply had not come.

A massive replica of a birthday note and crude drawing signed with the typed name “Donald J. Trump” and a “Donald” signature that was part of a 2003 book of birthday wishes for the deceased convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was placed on the National Mall early Monday morning, the latest installation of artwork critical of the president by a group that identifies itself as “The Secret Handshake.”

The group, whose members are anonymous, has previously placed installations at the same location, including a statue of Trump and Epstein holding hands and skipping, a mock tribute to Trump from the world’s authoritarian leaders, and a replica of the desk of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) with a pile of fake excrement on it that ridiculed the Jan. 6, 2021, rioters who sought to overturn the 2020 election.

The new installation, located on the Mall on Third Street NW between Jefferson and Madison drives, stands 10 feet high by 12 feet wide. A National Park Service permit will allow the work to remain at that location through Friday.

Trump has denied writing the note and has told reporters that the signature is not his. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the new installation.

In front of the replica card is a stack of marble blocks made to resemble a filing cabinet, with each drawer labeled “The Files” and overflowing with hundreds of strips of paper. Atop the files is a box of Sharpies and an invitation for visitors to sign the card with a message to the administration. It notes, “Please refrain from any promotional, violent or hateful speech or it will be removed.”

The towering placard replicates the message found in a “birthday book” given to Epstein for his 50th birthday by friends and acquaintances. It was one of a tranche of documents released in September by the House Oversight Committee that it had received from Epstein’s estate.

The sketch is of a woman’s nude form and includes a dialogue between “Donald” and Epstein, ending with a handwritten signature and the typed words “Donald J. Trump” above it.

The exchange between “Donald” and “Jeffrey” appears inside the contours of a woman’s body. “We have certain things in common, Jeffrey,” “Donald” says. “Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?”

“Happy birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret,” “Donald” ends the note.

Last year, Trump sued the Wall Street Journal and others at the news organization, alleging defamation after the newspaper published its story revealing the letter. The case is pending in federal court in Miami.

On its permit application, the artists wrote that the purpose of the work was “to use creative and artistic free speech about one of the most relevant political issues of this moment, and to highlight the conversation about President Donald Trump’s friendship and relationship with Jeffrey Epstein using his own reported language and correspondence. As well, to highlight the heavily redacted files that have been released and those that haven’t.”

The Mall was quiet Monday morning as the nation took a day off to honor Martin Luther King Jr. By midmorning, there were just a few messages written on the giant card, all with negative sentiments toward the president.

“Looking forward to your jail sentence, DJT!”

“The people will rise. We already are.”

D.C. resident Susan Fritz, 61, stopped to take a look during her morning run. “What I really like about it is that they didn’t have to make anything up. They just had to blow it up and put it out here.”

But she was pretty sure the installation’s message would not be received well by the administration.

“I’ll be surprised if it stays up,” she said.

“I think everyone should see it,” said Anders Williams, 45, who stopped in front of card on his way to the Air and Space Museum with his wife and young child. “It shows that someone lived in a very different world from the rest of us at some point. It’s just weird.”

Ying Yong, 33, also from the District, said he spotted the card from a distance and came over to check it out.

“It’s great, it’s hilarious,” he said. “Nothing more to be said.”

A woman bundled up against the morning cold said she was a federal worker and declined to provide her name. But she wanted to comment on the new installation, so she picked up a Sharpie and approached the card.

On it she quoted King. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that.”

Environmental Protection Agency ethics officials have interpreted impartiality guidelines in a way that has allowed several former industry insiders to oversee dramatic changes to chemical regulations, documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show.

Those ethics decisions have cleared the way for a former agriculture lobbyist to help reinstate a pesticide that had been banned twice by federal courts, as well as for two former chemical industry executives to help reassess the agency’s stance on the dangers of formaldehyde.

Internal emails and documents obtained by the Center for Biological Diversity and shared with the Washington Post show EPA ethics officials determined that Kyle Kunkler’s recent lobbying on behalf of the American Soybean Association did not require his recusal from pesticide regulation, including decisions about dicamba, a pesticide that soybean farmers have wanted to see reinstated.

According to federal loss-of-impartiality regulations, new government employees are supposed to have a yearlong “cooling-off period” on matters that directly involve their previous employer, unless given written authorization by the ethics office.

Emails show that before Kunkler started as EPA’s top official on pesticides in late June, ethics officials began prepping him on recusal strategies and answered questions about his ability to work on pesticide regulations given his previous role.

An email exchange from after his first week shows officials knew he had helped develop his association’s comments to the EPA on dicamba. In light of that, he should not “participate in any meetings, discussions or decisions about ASA’s specific comments,” one ethics office lawyer wrote in a July 3 email, but “he could still work on comments submitted by other parties about dicamba, including those that may overlap with ASA’s comments.”

On July 23, the EPA announced plans to bring back dicamba. The agency is slated to make reregistration official in the coming weeks.

In a statement, EPA ethics office director Justina Fugh said “a federal employee’s ‘previous lobbying efforts’ do not constitute any conflict of interest as defined by existing federal ethics laws or regulations” and that only Kunkler’s direct interaction with his former employer would violate loss-of-impartiality rules.

“The federal ethics rules simply do not preclude him from working as part of his EPA duties on general issues or topics,” Fugh said. “He is therefore permitted under the federal ethics rules to work on pesticide registrations generally, including EPA actions on dicamba, even though he previously worked on that same topic.”

The ethics decision is legally correct but still raises concerns about bias in regulatory decision-making, said Richard Briffault, a professor of legislation at Columbia Law School.

“There is a legitimate concern that people who have made a career out of representing or advocating for an industry that has a stake in regulation will be predisposed to favor that industry’s position when they make decisions as regulators – that they will be biased and not impartial,” Briffault said.

The federal impartially standards are designed to ensure government decisions are not made on the basis of personal bias, personal connection, or loyalty to a former employer, said Kathleen Clark, a government ethics lawyer and a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis. Clark said barring Kunkler from comments and meetings is “relatively unimportant” given his ability to participate in the government approval of pesticides he once lobbied for.

“It seems strange to me that they would say that it would be inappropriate for him to respond to comments but, on the other hand, he can absolutely participate in what presumably is something extremely important to his former employer,” said Clark, who reviewed some of the documents at the Post’s request.

“It’s sort of like hiring the fox to guard the hen house,” she said.

The American Soybean Association did not respond to request for comment.

The EPA originally approved dicamba in 2016 for use on soybeans and cotton that had been genetically modified to withstand what would otherwise be a damaging dose. But in 2020, a federal court vacated that approval over concern that the pesticide was drifting to and damaging other crops and wild plants. The EPA reapproved dicamba months later with additional application restrictions, but a court revoked that approval in 2024, saying drift damage remained a problem.

Kunkler had been among those lobbying for dicamba’s reinstatement. Calendar records show he had a virtual meeting in March with officials from the office he would later join, the Post reported last year.

He once likened the dicamba dispute to the “legal and regulatory equivalent of a Wimbledon court littered with land mines.” He told his association’s members: “ASA knows just how vital it is for your operations to have choices in the crop protection tools available to you, and we will continue to advocate strategically and vigorously to defend your access to them.”

Nathan Donley, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity, said it’s not surprising that the new registration plans for dicamba closely mirror proposals from ASA.

“I don’t see any limitations on what he can or cannot do based on his past work,” said Donley, whose organization has sued the EPA three times over dicamba. “It assures that industry interests are going to be considered above what’s in the public interest.”

Kunkler’s role in the reinstatement of dicamba in some ways parallels the involvement of two former chemical industry executives who helped drive the EPA’s reassessment of formaldehyde, a cancer-causing chemical used in furniture, wood adhesives, and body preservation at funeral homes.

Toxicologist Nancy Beck heads the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. Lynn Dekleva, an environmental engineer, serves as her deputy.

Both fought to roll back chemical regulations as part of the first Trump administration. Afterward, Beck joined the chemicals practice at law firm Hunton Andrews Kurth, where her clients included top industry trade groups. Dekleva signed on with the American Chemistry Council trade group as a senior director. Both criticized the EPA’s risk assessment model, and Dekleva directly pressed the agency to reassess the model in relation to formaldehyde.

But when they joined the second Trump administration, both Beck and Dekleva received written approval from the agency’s ethics office to work on chemical regulation, as reported by E & E News last year.

“I conclude that the interest of the United States Government in your participation outweighs any concerns about your impartiality,” Fugh wrote in March.

She told the Post that while federal ethics guidelines proscribe engaging with former employers or clients in activities such as grant-making and enforcement actions, matters with “general applicability” — such as rule- or policymaking — aren’t prohibited.

The new approach to formaldehyde announced by the EPA last month is the one favored by the industry. It assumes there can be a safe threshold of exposure, and that some carcinogens pose no health risk at lower levels. Under the Biden administration, the agency took the position that even small exposures could pose risks.

The proposed revisions nearly double the amount of formaldehyde considered safe to inhale.

Briffault said the real issue may be less about ethical interpretations and than about political decisions — namely, the administration’s pick of proindustry people for top regulatory appointments.

Asked whether Beck and Dekleva’s appointments influenced the EPA’s shift, agency spokesperson Brigit Hirsch said EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin made the decision and it was based on “the most advanced, gold standard scientific methods.”

“EPA’s move to a threshold approach for formaldehyde does not at all mean the agency is relaxing its standards or giving industry a pass,” Hirsch said. “By using this science, EPA can set limits that are more protective, not less, because they are based on the most sensitive biological changes that occur before serious health effects develop.”

In a statement to the Post, the American Chemistry Council said the EPA’s revised approach was recommended by their own peer reviewers and is consistent with other international authorities. “ACC supports risk evaluation approaches that are grounded in sound science and protective of public health, consistent with [Toxic Substances Control Act] requirements.”

LONDON — Prince Harry’s third, and perhaps final, major legal showdown with Britain’s tabloid press opened in a London courtroom on Monday, as a closely watched trial began examining claims of widespread illegal information-gathering by the company that owns the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday newspapers.

The company, Associated Newspapers, is one of Britain’s largest newspaper publishers. Harry, who appeared in court wearing a dark suit and tie, is one of seven plaintiffs in the case who are alleging “habitual and widespread” legal violations that collectively span at least two decades — including hiring private investigators to bug phones and plant listening devices in homes and cars; unlawfully obtaining medical records and banking records; and hacking voicemail messages.

David Sherborne, the lawyer representing Harry and the other plaintiffs, said in his opening remarks that he would prove there was “clear, systematic and sustained use” of unlawful activity at the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday. He named several private investigators allegedly used by journalists, including one described as a “talented voice actor” who specialized in “blagging,” the impersonation of others to gain private information.

Court documents show Harry alleges that 14 articles, published between 2001 and 2013, relied on unlawfully obtained information, including flight details of his then girlfriend, Chelsy Davy, and what Harry’s lawyers described as “intimate conversations” with Prince William, his brother, related to images of their dying mother that appeared in the press.

Harry, who was seated behind Sherborne in the courtroom, stared attentively at a monitor as he followed the proceedings.

Associated Newspapers has strongly denied the allegations, calling them “preposterous smears.”

In its written submissions, Associated argued the allegations were unsupported by credible evidence and it can explain legitimate sourcing of its articles. The publisher also contends the claims should be dismissed because they were brought too late — more than six years after the plaintiffs became aware of an allegation. In some cases, Associated said, information came from “leaky” social circles rather than unlawful intrusion.

The trial’s significance extends beyond the plaintiffs themselves, said Mark Stephens, a media lawyer at the firm Howard Kennedy. “This case is about whether the last untouchable corner of Fleet Street was quietly doing the same things everyone else was caught doing,” he said in an email.

For the first time, Stephens added, a court will examine the Daily Mail’s historic newsgathering practices “to see whether it genuinely stood apart during the phone-hacking era — or whether it simply avoided scrutiny.”

In addition to Harry, who is King Charles III’s younger son, plaintiffs in the case include musician Elton John and his husband, David Furnish; actor and model Elizabeth Hurley; and Doreen Lawrence, whose 18-year-old son, Stephen, was murdered in a racist attack in 1993. Lawrence’s decision to join the case came as a surprise, given the Daily Mail publicly supported her campaign to bring her son’s killers to justice. Lawrence has described being stunned when Harry contacted her and informed her that allegedly she had been subject to phone hacking and other illegal information-gathering techniques.

The case marks the latest chapter in Harry’s long-running crusade against Britain’s tabloids. He has said he is on a mission to reform the news media and curb what he views are its excesses. Harry has repeatedly criticized the British news media, arguing that his mother, Princess Diana, was relentlessly harassed, and that his wife, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, was vilified by the British press. Diana died in a car crash in Paris in 1997 after being chased by paparazzi.

Harry has secured judgments and settlements against major publishers. In 2023, Harry became the first senior British royal in more than a century to testify in court, during his case against the publisher of the Daily Mirror. A judge concluded that the prince, also known as the Duke of Sussex, was a victim of “widespread” phone hacking and awarded him 140,600 pounds in damages.

Last year, Harry secured a last-minute settlement with Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers. The company apologized for the “serious intrusion” into his private life and Harry reportedly received an eight-figure sum.

A spokesperson for the prince said there were no additional media-related court cases planned.

The trial comes amid media reports that the British government is considering whether to reinstate Harry’s full personal security protection while he is in the United Kingdom. The U.K. government is also scrutinizing a high-profile bid by the Daily Mail and General Trust — the parent company of Associated Newspapers — to acquire the Daily Telegraph under competition and media plurality rules.

The trial, at London’s Royal Courts of Justice, is expected to last about nine weeks, with testimony from plaintiffs and witnesses including Harry and Elton John, as well as current and former journalists and executives from the Daily Mail.