In the days leading up to the election, mysterious monuments continue to pop up in cities across the US, poking fun at candidate Donald Trump and his supporters.

On Wednesday in Maja Park in Philadelphia, a large statue of Trump was propped up. Titled “In Honor of a Lifetime of Sexual Assault”, the monument, showing Trump smiling and holding his hand in a suggestive manner, quotes from the infamous 2005 recording – leaked in 2016 – in which Trump is heard bragging about sexually assaulting women.

The monument was quickly removed, Philly Voice reported.

On Sunday, a similar satirical statue was found in Portland, Oregon. It was beheaded that day and further damaged by a Portland city council candidate and Trump supporter, who filmed himself chipping away at the base of the statue.

Underneath the statues in Philadelphia and Portland is a plaque with Trump’s brag about his status and how it allows him to sexually assault women: “I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”

The two statues, in Philadelphia and Portland, were placed behind, and next to, nude sculptures sanctioned by the respective cities.

The Access Hollywood tape was recorded in 2005 and published by the Washington Post in 2016, a month before that year’s election. The tape’s release shook up the election, with some Republicans withdrawing their support for Trump.

Although Trump has never been criminally charged for sexual offenses, 27 women have accused him of sexual assault. Last year, a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing writer E Jean Carroll in a civil suit.

The recent Philadelphia and Portland statues follow other satirical Trump-related statues, found throughout the country.

In Washington on Monday, a tiki torch statue titled “The Donald J Trump Enduring Flame” was placed a few blocks away from the White House. The statue evokes the white nationalist Unite the Right rally from 2017, in which neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The first satirical statue, installed last Thursday also in Washington, depicts a bronze pile of feces on Nancy Pelosi’s desk and references the January 6 attack. After Trump supporters marched on the Capitol that day, some broke into the building, attempting to overturn the 2020 election.

“This memorial honors the brave men and women who broke into the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 to loot, urinate and defecate throughout those hallowed halls in order to overturn an election,” the statue read.

Although it is unknown who is behind the four statues, the Washington Post reported that the National Park Service approved a request by Julia Jimenez-Pyzik to install the poop monument on the National Mall. On Tuesday, an anonymous person called the Washington Post to say he and others were behind the tiki torch and poop installations. On Wednesday, the same person called back, claiming they also were responsible for the Philadelphia and Portland statues.

“We are hoping they spark conversation about what we view are certain political issues that are relevant to voters and how they make their decision voting,” the anonymous caller told the Post.

UK farms worth more than £1 million will no longer be exempt from paying inheritance tax, Rachel Reeves has announced in her autumn budget.

For combined business and agricultural assets above £1 million, there will be a 50% inheritance tax relief, at an effective rate of 20%, from April 2026.

We would like to hear from UK farmers about their views on the changes. How might you be affected? Do you have any concerns?

The former Republican governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger has announced that he is backing Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in next week’s election.

In a long post on X, Schwarzenegger, 77, said that while he doesn’t “really do endorsements” … “hate[s] politics” and doesn’t “trust most politicians”, he felt compelled to formally endorse Harris and her pick for vice president Tim Walz.

“I will always be an American before I am a Republican,” he wrote. “That’s why, this week, I am voting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. I’m sharing it with all of you because I think there are a lot of you who feel like I do. You don’t recognise our country. And you are right to be furious.”

Schwarzenegger, who quit acting between 2003 and 2011 while he served in California, continued by writing that he was disappointed in all those who have been in power in the US over the past decades who have discussed addressing the national debt and “our broken immigration system” yet not managing to do so. This continued during election campaigning, he said, as politicians prefer “having talking points” for elections rather than performing “the public service that will make Americans’ lives better.”

“It is a just game to them. But it is life for my fellow Americans. We should be pissed,” Schwarzenegger wrote. “But a candidate who won’t respect your vote unless it is for him, a candidate who will send his followers to storm the Capitol while he watches with a Diet Coke, a candidate who has shown no ability to work to pass any policy besides a tax cut that helped his donors and other rich people like me but helped no one else else, a candidate who thinks Americans who disagree with him are the bigger enemies than China, Russia, or North Korea – that won’t solve our problems.”

Schwarzenegger, who replaced Donald Trump as host of The New Celebrity Apprentice in 2016, has long been an outspoken critic of the former president and current Republican candidate. Schwarzenegger likened the 6 January attack on the Capitol to the Kristallnacht in Nazi Germany and described Trump as “a failed leader. He will go down in history as the worst president ever.”

He returned to the aftermath of the 2020 election on X, saying that “rejecting the results of an election is as un-American as it gets. To someone like me who talks to people all over the world and still knows America is the shining city on a hill, calling America [a] trash can for the world is so unpatriotic, it makes me furious.”

Were Trump to be re-elected, he said, “it will just be four more years of bullshit with no results that makes us angrier and angrier, more divided, and more hateful. We need to close the door on this chapter of American history, and I know that former President Trump won’t do that.”

“I want to move forward as a country,” he concluded, “and even though I have plenty of disagreements with their platform, I think the only way to do that is with Harris and Walz.”

It all seemed like an innocent bit of fun. In the early 2000s, Russ McKamey and his then wife Carol went on TV to explain that they were spending $30,000 to make Halloween at their home bigger and better than anyone else’s. Fans queued around the block of the quiet San Diego suburb to experience fake blood, spooky props and teenage actors giving them jump scares. Until, that is, things got much, much darker.

By 2012, participants were being waterboarded, chained up in boxes and almost buried alive after McKamey decided to make McKamey Manor a more extreme, kid-free zone. “I was seeing people come out shaking uncontrollably … one guy, it looked like his nose was broken; another burst a blood vessel in his eye – it was full of blood,” says Mercedes Ann, a certified lifeguard with basic first aid training who was there to deal with the fallout. “People would have psychotic breakdowns – that’s the only time they would stop the tour. Then they would bring me in to calm them down.” She was 15.

“We didn’t get paid or anything,” explains Ann, who began volunteering at the manor, aged 13, after meeting McKamey at a community barbecue – back when “Russ and Carol were like the cool aunt and uncle”. Over the following years, McKamey would not take a single payment for entering the manor; instead, participants were required to bring dog food to give to charity.

It’s a story I found myself immersed in recently, when I created the podcast series Inside McKamey Manor. Everyone I spoke to seemed to have an eye-opening tale, all of which seemed too wild to be true. Although when we put a detailed list of them all to McKamey, he chose not to comment.

As news of this extreme haunt spread via TV appearances and shows such as Dark Tourist on Netflix, demand grew high. According to McKamey, the manor had a 24,000-person waiting list and there was a $20,000 reward for anyone able to complete it (no one ever has). Participants were required to sign a waiver up to 40 pages long, stating you could be subjected to “drowning, electric shocks and exposure to poisonous animals”, be “slapped, shoved and restrained” and that it may result in “broken bones, dislocation of limbs, crushed limbs and blackouts”.

If no one was getting paid, why were people agreeing to volunteer? Kris Smith saw McKamey on the 2017 documentary Haunters: The Art of the Scare. They became friends after Smith got in touch, offering to help McKamey with some graphic design work. They began speaking on the phone every day and formed a friendship. As Smith says: “[McKamey] was a goof. I didn’t really take him seriously.” But, in 2018, Smith, who had already gone through the manor once and coped, decided to go through a second time.

“He gave me threats of being buried alive … I got lowered into a well 10 ft in the ground.” He was made to unlock padlocks via combination codes while water was filling the well. “I tell him I’m done for the night, I’m tired,” Smith says, but McKamey persuaded him to do one more thing. Smith says he ended up being dragged in a metal trough behind a truck. “Russ had told me: ‘I’m always gonna know when to stop, don’t worry about it’”. While in the trough, Smith says, “[McKamey] started shovelling dirt on me over and over again … I start waving my hand while saying I quit.” But Smith says McKamey didn’t stop immediately, that in fact he would continue a tour as long as he’s “having fun”. Their friendship soon broke down.

McKamey seemed to have a network of people like Smith willing to help him for nothing. But 2019 marked the beginning of a shift. There were growing concerns across social media about the manor, especially on Reddit. Debates cropped up as to whether McKamey was running a “red room” – livestreaming videos of people being abused or tortured to sell on the dark web. An online petition titled “Shut down McKamey Manor” received 192,744 signatures. Since then, there have been eight petitions to do just that. Smith is part of the global movement to close the manor.

McKamey was no stranger to documenting his life and posting it online. In 2009, he launched his YouTube channel, McKamey Manor Presents. By 2019, the things his participants had to endure were brandished across the internet as part of the deal of signing up. In one video, a man has his eyes duct taped and is seemingly covered in oil and a blood-like substance. An “actor” is shaving his head and holding a hammer over his teeth, threatening to smash them. In another, the same man appears to have blood pouring from his mouth while he lays unconscious on the ground.

Gabriella Hardiman, 19, was one of those whose video was posted on the YouTube page. “I felt a little weird with the camera,” she admits. Having seen McKamey on TV, she figured that most of the controversial acts were part of the theatre. She signed up via the manor’s official Facebook group and quickly received a call that “there’s a cancellation, you have to come tomorrow, this is the only chance”. Hardiman was chained inside a freezer box, had a tarantula put on her face, and had a panic attack mid-experience.

“I remember being in a straitjacket lying in water [and] having it poured over my face,” she recalls. “Someone called the cops because we were outside screaming.” The manor had so many problems in the community that the haunt ended up moving to Tennessee in 2017. “I posted a video against him in 2017,” says Hardiman. “It was on YouTube for two days before I took it down, because the hate I was getting from Russ and the community was so insane. It’s why I waited so long to talk about it, and why in every interview my voice is shaking because I’m so scared how people are going to perceive it.” She feels shame about speaking out, because she signed a waiver consenting to take part.

What makes the waiver even more controversial is that it may not even legally stand up. “I’ve read a lot of contracts over the past 20 years; I’ve never seen anything like this,” says Thomas Greer, a lawyer from Tennessee. While determining whether every detail in people’s experiences was legal is extremely complicated, Greer is clear on one thing: was it legal for 13-year-old Mercedes Ann to sign a contract? “No, that’s not legal,” he says.

By 2023, complaints about the manor were too prominent to ignore. Hulu released a documentary Monster Inside: America’s Most Extreme Haunted House, presenting first-hand accounts of the manor and the trauma participants had experienced. McKamey filed a lawsuit alleging invasion of privacy. In October 2023, YouTuber Reckless Ben made it his mission to complete the manor, only to discover that McKamey was now only operating a physical bootcamp in his front garden instead. After hearing testimonies from participants, Ben Schneider went viral trying to shut down the manor. He was regularly posting exposés of McKamey’s behaviour, passing on footage ex-employees had given him to the police.

Unrelated to the manor, a personal altercation led to McKamey’s arrest in July 2024 for domestic violence and the attempted murder and rape of an ex-girlfriend. In September, the charges against him were dropped. If the Facebook post on the group Keep McKamey Manor Open is anything to go by, there are still fans of McKamey, despite the controversy. “Does anyone know how to get signed up for the McKamey Manor?” a fan asked in early October. “I want a shot at the challenge.” The manor’s closure, it seems, is still very much up for debate.

Rachel Reeves says the UK voted for change, and the Labour government has a mandate for a decade of “national renewal”.

Reeves pledges “more pounds in people’s pockets” and improved living standards. The only way to drive economic growth is to “invest, invest, invest”, she adds.

The government must “restore economic stability and turn the page on 14 years” of Conservative government, Reeves says. She says the Labour party has rebuilt the UK economy before, and will “rebuild Britain once again”.

Reeves says this budget will raise taxes by £40bn.

She adds that she is “deeply proud to be Britain’s first ever female chancellor of the exchequer’.

Peter Walker, senior political correspondent: Reeves sets out the political challenge – and the very big one – at the centre of her budget, and indeed the whole government: making people feel they are better off, and with better public services. And this requires investment, she says, adding some inevitable Tory-bashing for good measure, plus noting her status as the first-ever female chancellor.

National insurance

• Employees will not pay more directly, Reeves says. However, she will raise employers’ national insurance contributions by 1.2 percentage points to 15% from April.

• The government will also reduce a secondary threshold when contributions are due from £9,100 to £5,000.

• Those measures will raise £25bn a year by the end of the forecast period.

• Before the budget, employers were liable for a rate of 13.8% of workers’ earnings above £175 a week. An increase of one percentage point would raise an estimated £8.5bn.

PW: This is the big fiscal hitter of the budget – £25bn a year by the end of the parliament – and probably the most politically perilous choice Reeves will make. There is no doubt that public services need the extra money, and voters want better public services. But it will be portrayed as tax on jobs, and as something that could hit growth, even with the new allowances for smaller businesses.

Income tax

PW: If not a fully fledged rabbit yanked from a hat, then we do perhaps have a glimpse of a nose and some whiskers. The surprise move allows Reeves to argue she has kept Labour’s manifesto promise to not increase taxes on working people – even if it does only start in 2028/29.

Capital gains and inheritance tax

• Capital gains tax will be increased. The lower rate will be raised from 10% to 18%, while the higher rate will rise from 20% to 24%. However, there will be no increase on the 24% capital gains rate imposed on second properties.

• The government will extend a freeze on the threshold for inheritance tax, allowing £325,000 to be inherited tax free.

• There will be tax raises worth £2bn from reforming reliefs for business and agricultural assets. After £1m, those assets will attract inheritance tax of 20%.

PW: A rise in capital gains tax was very much baked in with budget expectations, and the increases are not huge – as Reeves says, they will keep UK rates relatively low by international standards. And it will raise a relatively modest £2.5bn by the end of the parliament. On inheritance tax, she has largely closed loopholes connected to farms, but even this and other tweaks will raise an eventual £2bn a year. None of this is likely to be hugely contentious.

The minimum wage

• Reeves confirms that the “national living wage”, the legal minimum for over-21s, will increase by 6.7% to £12.21, equivalent to £1,400 a year for an eligible full-time worker.

• There will be a single adult rate phased in over time to eventually equalise pay for under-21s.

PW: The most recent of dozens of announcements to be briefed in advance of the budget. Paying people more is usually seen as a vote-winner – but ministers will also be wary of business voices warning about the impact this could have on job creation.

Tobacco and alcohol

• The government will implement a levy on vapes, which will be increased in line with tobacco.

• Tobacco taxes will rise by 2% above retail prices index (RPI) measure of inflation for the rest of this parliament, and tax on hand-rolling tobacco will increase by 10%.

• Taxes on alcohol will rise in line with the RPI. However, Reeves announces a cut in draught duty by 1.7%, which she says is a penny off a pint in the pub.

PW: On what we are obliged to call sin taxes, Reeves has, as expected, further taxed tobacco and vapes. In another sign of how this government is less worried about what might be termed nanny state measures, it is also toughening the levy on sugary soft drinks. As a sop to the tabloid, she did cut 1p off the duty of a pint of draught beer.

Fuel duty

• Reeves says increasing fuel duty next year would be the “wrong choice”, so she extends the freeze for a year and maintains the last government’s 5p cut.

• Fuel duty was frozen between 2011 and 2022, and cut by 5p in March 2022 after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

PW: A continued freeze to fuel duty was one of the most politically tricky decisions faced by Reeves. On the one hand, as she said, the £3bn cost is a lot. But the anti-fuel duty rise lobby is very powerful, and increasing it could (and would) be portrayed as a tax rise for working people.

Private school fees

PW: Not in the least a surprise, and if you believe the polling, one of the more popular policies in both the Labour manifesto and in this budget. Will it see a rush of private school students into the state sector? Time will tell, but ministers are fairly relaxed.

Schools and education

• Reeves says the Department for Education will receive £6.7bn, a 19% real-terms increase. That includes £1.4bn to rebuild schools in the greatest need.

• The schools budget will increase by £2.3bn to support the hiring of teachers.

• There will be £2.1bn for school maintenance, a £300m increase.

• Reeves announces a £1bn uplift in funding for special needs.

• There will be another £300m for higher education.

PW: One of the most visible and enduring legacies of the last Labour government was the many new and renovated schools it delivered. Reeves has set out her ambition to copy this – the 19% real-terms increase in investment is an instant lesson on what you can do with the changed fiscal rules.

NHS

• Reeves promises a 10-year plan for the NHS in the spring, targeting 2% productivity growth next year.

• She announces a £22.6bn increase in the day-to-day health budget, and £3.1bn increase in the capital budget. That includes £1bn for repairs and upgrades and £1.5bn for new beds in hospitals and testing capacity.

PW: At risk of endlessly repeating a theme, the state of the NHS is one of the biggest factors on which Labour won the election, and on which it will be judged five years later. Will a £22.6bn increase in everyday spending be enough? Not without parallel structural changes. But it’s fair to say that without it, waiting lists would surely rise again. And the voters would notice.

Housing

• The government will spend £5bn on housing, including increasing the supply of affordable housing.

• The government will reduce right-to-buy discounts, and local governments will retain the earnings from council housing sales to allow them to reinvest.

• The government will hire “hundreds of new planning officers” to accelerate housebuilding.

PW: All the figures and new policies on housing were briefed in advance, and for good political reason. One of the key metrics the Starmer government has set itself is to build 1.5m new homes – and the voters are watching.

Transport

• Reeves commits to the Transpennine Route Upgrade, improving capacity at Manchester Victoria, and electrifying the Wigan to Bolton route. She also promises to support east-west rail link between Oxford and Cambridge.

• Reeves confirms the government will fund tunnelling of HS2 to London Euston.

• There will be a £500m increase in the roads budget next year to target potholes.

PW: No, it’s not full HS2, but the ragbag of mainly northern rail routes, and confirmation that the Manchester-London route will end in Euston are something. And as every councillor will tell you, at length, voters are very, very interested in potholes.

Energy

• Reeves announces £3.4bn for the warm homes plan to upgrade buildings, lowering energy bills.

• The government will fund Great British Energy, a new body to be based in Aberdeen.

Public spending

Defence

Local government

• There will be £1.3bn for additional grant funding for local government, including £600m for social care.

• Greater Manchester and the West Midlands will get integrated settlements next year, allowing them to take more control of their spending.

PW: This is something for a part of public life which bore the brunt of austerity, and the section often most keenly felt by voters. Is it enough? Of course not. But is it a start? Yes.

Public investment

• Reeves says more public investment is needed in the UK. A new rule will target debt falling as a share of the economy. She confirms that debt will be measured as public sector net financial liabilities, recognising benefits from investments.

• The rule will apply in 2029-30, and then net financial debt will fall by the third year of every forecast.

• There will be regular reports on government investments from the OBR.

• She says the government will invest £1bn in aerospace, £2bn in automotive to support electric vehicles, and £500m for life sciences.

• Reeves adds the government will invest £6.1bn in funding in sectors such as engineering, biotechnology and medical science.

PW: Politically, albeit most likely in the longer term, this could be the most significant change in the budget. To very obviously make the link between low investment and the state of public services, Reeves lists the problems of crumbling infrastructure in various sectors to a series of cries of “Shame!” from Labour MPs.

Planes and private jets

• Air passenger duty will increase by up to £2 for each economy short-haul flight, Reeves says.

• Private jets will attract an extra 50% air passenger duty, up to £450 per passenger for a flight.

PW: This is both a largely politically-risk free change, and one which allowed the chancellor to make a few well-aimed jokes in the direction of Rishi Sunak, saying the levy would be applied on flights going to “say … California?”. It wins plenty of laughs.

Business taxes and non-doms

• The government will introduce permanently lower business rates for retail, hospitality and leisure businesses from 2026-27. Until then they will receive 40% relief on business rates up to a cap of £110,000.

• Employment allowance will be increased from £5000 to £10,500, reducing national insurance for smaller businesses.

• Taxes on carried interest, generally paid by private equity managers, will rise from 28% to 32% from April.

• Reeves confirms the oil profits levy will be increased to 38%, and extended.

• The concept of non-domicile residents will be abolished from April.

Compensation schemes

PW: Even Tory MPs will find it hard to argue with this. And Reeves’s words that the last government apologised for the infected blood scandal but failed to budget at all for compensation payments is a powerful argument.

Other measures

OBR

• Reeves says Labour inherited a £22bn “black hole” with allegedly unfunded pledges by the Conservative government.

• The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the government’s budget watchdog, has published a review saying that the previous government did not disclose details of spending. Those details would have made forecasts “materially different”, Reeves says.

• Reeves says the government will implement 10 recommendations from the OBR’s review.

PW: This is very nakedly partisan and in some ways familiar, not least the idea of the £22bn fiscal black hole. But the idea of the OBR saying it was effectively misled by the Conservatives is very strong political cover for the coming tax rises in limited increases to public budgets. It will enrage Jeremy Hunt, the shadow chancellor, all the more.

Inflation and growth forecasts

• The chancellor will maintain the Bank of England’s 2% target for inflation.

• Inflation will average 2.5% in 2024, rising to 2.6% in 2025, before gradually dropping to 2% in 2029, according to OBR forecasts. Inflation was at 1.7% in September, below the Bank of England’s 2% target, and down from 11% in October 2022.

• The OBR slightly upgrades its growth forecast for this year, but adjusts them down in later years. GDP growth is forecast to be 1.1% in 2024, then 2%, 1.8%, 1.5%, 1.5%, and 1.6% in 2030, Reeves says. At the spring budget under the then Conservative chancellor Jeremy Hunt the OBR had forecast 0.8% growth this year, 1.9% in 2025, and 2% in 2026.

PW: The OBR’s inflation and growth predictions are hardly stellar, with inflation not due to fall down to the 2% target before 2029. But in truth, as long as it stays in the 2% range, Reeves would take it. She will, however, very much hope that the growth figures – the stated central task of the Keir Starmer government – pick up.

Government borrowing

• Reeves announces new rules to not borrow for day-to-day spending. The current budget will be balanced within three years of forecasts.

• The government will run a deficit of £26.2bn in 2026, but will achieve a surplus of £10.9bn in 2027-28, £9.3bn in 2028-29 and £9.9bn in 2029-30.

• Public sector net debt will fall from £127bn in 2024-25, falling gradually to £70.6bn by 2029-20.

PW: Expect the forecasts of reduced borrowing and an eventual surplus to be much mentioned by ministers in the coming days and weeks, as they try to push back against the Conservatives’ charges of fiscal incompetence. The tougher rules on day-to-day spending will be seen as a balance to the relaxation of their equivalent on investment, as already announced.

• Reeves says it is a moment of “fundamental choice” for the UK.

• She says the government will protect the NHS, protect working people and “rebuild Britain”.

• She says the Conservatives must say what choices they would make if they disagree with her decisions. They would have to cut schools and hospitals if they disagree with any tax increases.

PW: Reeves’s final words are an open challenge to the Conservatives – and an attempt to pre-empt their accusations of broken promises: ‘what would you do instead?” It is a fair question, even if as an opposition you sometimes get a free pass on such scrutiny.

Donald Trump’s extremist attacks on top Democrats as “the enemy from within” and talk of deploying the military against political foes if he wins the election are stark signs Trump will endanger the rule of law in America, say former US justice department officials and scholars.

Trump’s threats – singling out ex-speaker Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff and others as “the enemy from within” and “more dangerous than China [and] Russia” – jibe with his earlier incendiary talk of using a return to the White House to seek “revenge” against political foes led by Joe Biden. He also suggested the military could be used to quell violence at the polls from “radical left lunatics”.

Those comments, along with Trump’s adamant refusal to say clearly he will accept the election results if he is defeated, prompt critics to say Trump poses unprecedented dangers to the US constitution.

Critics call Trump’s campaign rhetoric especially worrisome since it squares with his efforts after he lost the 2020 election to falsely claim the voting was rigged, while scheming to overturn the results before a mob of his allies on January 6 attacked the Capitol as Congress was certifying the results.

Alarm about a second Trump term were heightened this month when Trump’s former chief of staff and former four-star marine general John Kelly condemned him in the Atlantic as unfit to govern and having said: “I need to have the kind of generals that Hitler had.”

Ex-justice department officials are appalled by Trump’s demonizing his political foes as “the enemy from within”, words used by the demagogic senator Joe McCarthy, and ruminating about using the military against them to exact revenge.

“Trump’s anti-democratic, authoritarian rhetoric has been ratcheted up the closer we draw to the election,” said Michael Bromwich, a former inspector general at the justice department.

“Rather than keeping a covert enemies list, he publicly names his enemies against whom he vows to take action. The implications for a Trump justice department, charged with dealing with Trump’s lust to retaliate against these enemies, are frightening to consider.”

Bromwich said: “People who take their oath to the constitution seriously have trouble wrapping their heads around someone who views the constitution and the rule of law as nuisances to be circumvented rather than a set of principles to be scrupulously honored.”

Other justice department veterans express similar worries about a second Trump term.

“Trump’s rhetoric is dangerous for two reasons. Using the powers of the presidency to go after his political rivals is an incredibly dangerous deviation from democratic norms and the rule of law,” said Barbara McQuade, a former federal prosecutor in eastern Michigan and a law professor at the University of Michigan.

“The rule of law requires that we apply the law equally to everyone, and not in retaliation for political activity or speech. Second, the military is to be used against our foreign adversaries, not our own citizens. These tactics are things we see in authoritarian regimes, not democracies. Following through on these threats would change the country as we know it.”

Fears about how Trump would rule in a second term have metastasized as former senior top officials in his first administration have gone public, labeling him a fascist and unfit to be president again.

Mark Milley, Trump’s ex-chair of the joint chiefs of staff, was in quoted in Bob Woodward’s new book calling Trump “fascist to the core”.

Kelly, too, told the New York Times that Trump met the definition of a “fascist” and “prefers the dictator approach to government”, and once said that “Hitler did some good things”.

Trump in turn attacked Kelly last Friday, calling him a “whack job” and boasting that he had fired Kelly, who was a “nutjob to start off with. These are phoney stories by a general that got fired.”

Thirteen former Trump officials signed a letter supporting Kelly’s charges and attacking Trump’s “disdain for the American military and admiration for dictators like Hitler”.

Trump’s obsession with having a military loyal to him as Hitler did, fits with a larger pattern in Trump world: Trump and his allies have made it clear that loyalty to Trump will be a prerequisite to serve in a new administration, and that moderate Republicans would not be welcome.

Critics say Trump is intent on creating an administration without the kinds of guardrails that existed with people like Kelly and Milley as checks against his authoritarian instincts, a point that is underscored by Trump’s campaign talk of using the justice department to seek “revenge” on his enemies.

That mindset was palpable when Trump told the podcast host Joe Rogan on Friday that the country faces a “bigger problem … with the enemy from within” than the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, and allowed that his “biggest mistake” as president was hiring “disloyal people”.

Trump’s latest incendiary claims fit too with his call in 2022 on Truth Social for the “termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the constitution”, which he justified by citing his false claims the 2020 election was stolen.

Tim Naftali, a senior research scholar at Columbia University, said: “Trump wants a second go without any obstacles from people who will tell him what he can’t do. People who served as guardrails during his first term are now worried about what he will do if he gets a second term without guardrails. From personal experience they know that his instincts are injurious to US national security and our constitutional democracy.”

Naftali noted further that the supreme court’s much criticized ruling broadening presidential immunity “has made it easier for Trump, if he wins, to push his own people to do whatever he wants”.

“The court has made this a more permissive environment for an abusive president. If he’s re-elected, Trump can take advantage of the new permissive environment created by the supreme court which wraps his official acts in at least presumed immunity.”

Naftali’s warnings are buttressed by Trump’s repeated threats to seek revenge against his enemies, whom he has often portrayed as part of a “deep state” conspiracy against him that he claims involves a weaponized justice department waging “lawfare” against him.

Little wonder that Trump last Thursday upped his attacks on Jack Smith, the special counsel who has filed criminal charges against the former president over his election subversion efforts in 2020, and for improperly taking hundreds of classified documents with him when he left office. Trump said he would fire Smith in “two seconds” and that he should be “thrown out of the country”.

Justice department veterans voice alarm about Trump’s barrage of autocratic-style threats about seeking revenge on foes in both parties if he defeats Kamala Harris.

“For a long time, Donald Trump has been promising to use government to punish his enemies. It is shocking but not surprising that he has now adopted the language of Joseph McCarthy by labelling his likely targets ‘the enemy from within’”, said Donald Ayer, a former deputy attorney general under the former president George HW Bush.

“But this is just one more piece of his single-minded effort to divide the American people and establish his own authoritarian power by attacking the basic principles that have long united us. The American people must not let him get away with this.”

Other justice department alumni see Trump posing unprecedented dangers if he wins again.

“No one in our history has ever stressed the constitution the way Trump has,” said Ty Cobb, a lawyer who served in the Trump White House and former justice department official.

Cobb added: “The founders could not have conceived of the possibility a crippled narcissist like Trump, a court-determined rapist with dozens of criminal felony convictions, serious pending charges, some involving functional insurrection, and civil fraud liability in the hundreds of millions, could possibly be a serious presidential candidate, much less elected.”

Bromwich, too, sees the prospect of Trump in power again as frightening.

“What would a justice department staffed by senior officials willing to implement Trump’s authoritarian, unconstitutional, and retaliation-minded agenda look like? Like nothing we have ever seen: staffed by lawyers with much ambition and little principle, working for a president himself protected by the immunity from prosecution conferred by the supreme court.”

As the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, finished a speech to the European parliament, the Italian MEP Ilaria Salis rose from her seat and with about a dozen other leftwing colleagues belted out the anti-fascist anthem Bella Ciao.

Until May, Salis had been held in pre-trial detention in a Hungarian prison following her arrest on charges of assault in February last year at a counter-protest to a neo-Nazi rally in Budapest. She was then freed and allowed to return to Italy in June, after her election that month to the European parliament.

After her response to Orbán’s speech on 9 October, representatives of his Fidesz party said their government had formally requested the withdrawal of Salis’s parliamentary immunity in order to have her returned to prison in Hungary.

“I was expecting it,” Salis told the Guardian in an interview. “It was evident that they would do everything they could to send me back to prison. At stake is their credibility and my election as a member of the European parliament has certainly caught them off-guard and embarrassed them.

“They have not digested the fact that I was elected. They have not digested the fact that I received 178,000 votes. They have not digested the fact that, at least so far, anti-fascism and human rights have prevailed.”

The case of Salis, 40, a teacher from Monza near Milan, sparked diplomatic protests and anger in Italy after she was brought to court in Hungary in chains at the start of the year, her hands cuffed and feet locked together, to hear the charges against her of three counts of attempted assault and membership of an extreme leftwing organisation. She denied the charges, which carried a jail term of up to 11 years.

In a letter to her lawyer, Salis, who was held in detention for nearly a year before her first court appearance, described cells infested with rats and bugs, and said she was not allowed to wash for days at a time, or given urgent medical care. Her candidacy for the Greens and Left Alliance in Italy was intended to give her immunity from prosecution, and she won a seat in the EU parliament just weeks after she was freed from jail to house arrest at the beginning of her trial.

“My case is not just a judicial matter,” she said. “It is a political case. Orbán is losing support, both in Europe and in Hungary. My situation is just one of his strategies to continue his propaganda in his country. Moreover, my case can also be easily exploited in Europe. During the first plenary session, a member of the Patriots’ group, referring to me, said in parliament ‘there is a woman who goes around with a hammer hitting people,’ which is absolutely false, and even requested that my staff and I be searched.”

Salis had been the target of numerous death threats from far-right militant groups following her arrest. As a far-right march commemorating Nazi forces in the second world war passed through Budapest last February, a mural was painted on a wall imagining the death by hanging of Salis, while on Telegram channels, neo-Nazis said they wanted to put her in a wheelchair.

“Threats and insults have now become the norm on social media,” said Salis. “But what hurt me the most was a post by the European parliament group, Patriots for Europe, where they wrote about me: ‘Does Salis seriously think that justice will not catch up with her? Does she think she will always be protected? There will come a time when she will be very alone. It’s hard to say what’s worse, that moment or the anticipation before it.’ What shocked me was that the post was not written by just any social media user, but by a democratically elected political group in the European parliament.”

Salis’s case is potentially embarrassing for Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister, as she and the deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, have close ties with Orbán.

“I only hope that the Italian government supports me as one of their citizens and defends the rule of law,” Salis said. “I do not want to evade the trial. I just want a fair trial. In Hungary, there are no such conditions. Orbán has already condemned me, speaks of me as guilty, even though we have not yet reached a verdict, not to mention the fact that in Hungary I face a 24-year prison sentence in a country with several pending human rights violations.

“Myself and the Italian government will never be friends, as our ideas are diametrically opposed. All I ask is to be treated without prejudice, and fairly, like any Italian citizen.”

The Hungarian parliamentarians’ request to revoke Salis’s immunity has already been communicated to the president of the European parliament, Roberta Metsola. The request will then be announced in parliament and referred to the relevant committee.

The process before reaching the final vote in parliament could take up to four months. “I only hope that my colleagues who will be called to vote, do so thinking first and foremost not about being right wing or left wing, but being aware that at stake is the rule of law, the credibility of the European Union, and the very values for which it was founded, those of anti-fascism,” Salis said.

“As far as I am concerned, I have nothing left but to continue fighting.”

Experts agree that the world needs $700bn (£539bn) a year to restore nature – but no one knows where the money is going to come from, and anger is building about rich countries failing to pay their share.

With representatives of nearly 200 countries gathered in Colombia for the UN Cop16 biodiversity summit, the question of who will fund conservation and how those funds will be distributed is a key battleground – and as negotiations push into their second week, frustration is growing at the lack of movement.

In their first submission to the negotiations, the Africa Group (representing the African nations, who have opted to negotiate as a bloc) said it was “deeply concerned” about the progress being made. It said the idea that wealthy countries would reach their 2025 finance target – the deadline for which is three months away – was “wishful thinking”.

The headline figure agreed on by countries at Cop15 in 2022 was to generate $700bn a year in finance for nature, beginning with $200bn a year by 2030. Scientists estimated that $700bn is the amount required to sustainably manage biodiversity and halt the destruction of ecosystems and species. That figure includes all financing – including from the private sector, non-profits, NGOs, and governments. Within it, richer countries have promised to contribute $20bn a year of public funds to poorer countries by 2025.

But those funds have proven slow to materialise. On Monday, dubbed “finance day” at the talks, eight countries, including the UK, Germany, France and Norway, announced $163m in new pledges.

Alice Jay, director of international relations at Campaign for Nature, said that while they welcomed these new commitments, closing the finance gap “would require them to announce $300m each month from now to 2025, and then keep that up each year until 2030.”

Oscar Soria, director of thinktank The Common Initiative, described the amount as “paltry”. He said negotiations had been in gridlock in the first week and “the most contentious issues revolved around biodiversity finance”.

“Countries from the global south expect more from the global north,” said Nigeria environment minister Dr Iziaq Kunle Salako. “Finance is key in the context of implementing all the targets.”

“We cannot ignore the fact that one of the main factors limiting progress is the lack of finance,” agreed Inger Andersen, head of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), explaining that resource mobilisation is central to discussions because it is central to enabling developing nations – which contain the world’s globally important ecosystems – to implement their action plans.

Rich countries failing to contribute

So far, the majority of rich countries appear to be contributing less than half of their “fair share” of biodiversity finance, according to a report released ahead of the UN meeting. As of 2022 (the latest year for which data is available and before the Cop15 deal was signed) wealthy countries which signed the agreement provided $10.95bn in biodiversity funding, according to the report by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and Campaign for Nature.

It is not known how much was donated in 2023 or 2024, but ODI research found minimal new announcements of finance since Cop15, and analysis by research organisation BloombergNEF found no evidence of new and substantial public money committed to biodiversity in 2024.

“Financing is a currency of trust,” said Mark Opel, the finance lead at Campaign for Nature. “It is fundamental to building trust between the global north and the global south.”

It is not just about the quantity – the quality is equally important. There is no globally agreed definition of biodiversity finance, and donor countries sometimes give money to projects that only partially benefit nature – such as food production – and call it “biodiversity-related” funding.

A large chunk of the $700bn was expected to come from rewiring $500bn of environmentally damaging subsidies. Collectively, countries spend $1.25tn on subsidies for agriculture, fossil fuel development, and other industries that destroy biodiversity, according to a 2023 report by the World Bank. All countries were meant to identify harmful subsidies in their public spending by 2025, but so far only 36 have released information. “This is a point on which almost no progress has been made,” said Soria.

Also on the table is the question of whether increased debt should count as finance. Broadly, the countries with the most intact biodiversity are also the least developed – and the most indebted.

An Independent Expert Group report released in October shows countries most exposed to climate change and nature loss are increasingly having to borrow to fund disaster response and adaptation. Debts are rising and becoming more expensive, meaning countries are less able to invest in nature conservation and climate resilience. “Many low and middle-income countries are facing a ‘triple’ crisis not of their own making,” said Vera Songwe, former UN under-secretary general and co-chair of the review. “Unless the international community collectively takes measures to address this, countries are not going to be able to pursue the climate resilient, low-carbon, nature-positive growth which they need.”

But nature funding to these countries in the form of loans has been on the rise. The typical model is to offer countries loans at cheaper interest rates, on condition they meet certain nature preservation goals. About 80% of the increase in funding from 2021 to 2022 was in the form of loans, not grants, according to unpublished estimates from Campaign for Nature.

France, for example, has given 87% of its biodiversity contributions in the form of loans. Climate justice activists argue that this money should be given as grants to save poorer countries falling into a vicious circle of indebtedness.

The African group and Latin America group are pushing for official recognition of how debt burdens impact poor countries, while countries including France, the UK and China are against this.

Who distributes the money?

Countries are also locked into conflict over how funding is distributed. The current mechanism is the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF) which was created at Cop15 in Montreal as a way for countries to make their finance contributions. It currently sits within the Global Environment Facility (GEF).

During negotiations, however, many developing countries (including Brazil and the Africa group), have argued this should be put in a separate fund because they say it is burdensome to access and controlled by wealthy nations. Wealthy countries, including Europe, Canada, the UK and Japan, are among those saying it should stay where it is. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) nearly blocked the nature deal from being signed in 2022 due to anger over GEF carrying all the cash.

Out of the 22 projects approved by the GBFF so far, 30% of funds have gone via WWF-US for work in developing countries, according to analysis by the campaign group Survival International, which has raised concerns about a lack of funds reaching Indigenous people and local groups.

In the meantime, as NGOs at the negotiation have emphasised, the clock is ticking. Progress on finance is crucial to the rest of negotiations moving forward, said Bernadette Fischler Hooper, global advocacy lead at WWF.

“It is the hottest of all the potatoes. It’s the core of the atom and everything else revolves around it.”