To hear Donald Trump tell it, America’s cities are in dire shape and in need of a federal intervention.

“We’re going to rebuild our cities into beacons of hope, safety and beauty – better than they have ever been before,” he said during a recent speech to the National Rifle Association in what has become a common refrain on the campaign trail. “We will take over the horribly run capital of our nation, Washington DC.”

Trump has for years railed against cities, particularly those run by Democratic officials, as hotbeds for crime and moral decay. He called Atlanta a “record setting Murder and Violent Crime War Zone” last year, a similar claim he makes frequently about various cities.

His allies have an idea of how to capitalize on that agenda and make cities in Trump’s image, detailed in the conservative Project 2025: unleash new police forces on cities like Washington DC, withhold federal disaster and emergency grants unless they follow immigration policies like detaining undocumented immigrants and share sensitive data with the federal government for immigration enforcement purposes.

Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, an extensive document breaking down each part of the federal government and recommending changes to be made to advance rightwing policy, was created by the Heritage Foundation, with dozens of conservative organizations and prominent names contributing chapters based on their backgrounds.

This part of the project is another Republican attempt at a crackdown on so-called “sanctuary” cities, places around the country that don’t cooperate with the federal government on enforcing harsh immigration policies.

Trump v Washington DC

Washington DC, in particular, has taken up residence in Trump’s stump speech, where he rails against the city for crime, graffiti and general mismanagement. He vows that the federal government will take over the city and run it.

Project 2025 posits a way to do this: use the Secret Service. The service’s police force, the Uniformed Division, doesn’t have the ability to enforce laws outside the White House and its immediate surrounding area, the project says. But that could change.

“As the District of Columbia is a federal jurisdiction and currently is beholden to the trend of progressive pro-crime policies, UD officers should enforce all applicable laws,” Project 2025 says. “The result would be to allow UD officers to gain more law enforcement experience – an attractive credential that would improve morale.”

Trump’s allies in Congress have already been taking aim at DC, with Arizona’s Republican US representative Andy Biggs saying he’d support a federal takeover of the city to enforce laws and the Florida representative Byron Donalds pushing a bill to put Congress in charge of some DC criminal laws. The US House also will reverse a DC policy that allows non-citizens to vote in local elections, a pet issue nationwide for Republicans this election year.

The anti-DC sentiment is predicated on crime rates, which, after reaching a peak in 2023, is down this year compared with last year, DC police data shows.

In a speech to the National Rifle Association earlier this month, Trump went on about what he’s seen in DC lately that justifies a federal takeover.

“I was there recently on a court case, of course. I get so many court cases,” he said. “And I’m driving into a federal courthouse, and the graffiti all over the place is unbelievable. It’s staggering. The roads are full of potholes. The medians in the middle, you know, the guardrails, are all broken and some of them laying, literally laying, in the street. The garbage is piled up and disgusting, cans are laying there for many months.”

So it’s time for a change, he says: “We’re going to make our capital strong again. We’re going to run our capital, we’re going to take our capital over by the federal government, it’s going to run properly, not the way it’s run right now.”

The office of DC Mayor Muriel Bowser declined to comment.

Trump has posited creating new cities whole cloth as well, predicated on the idea that cities now are uninspiring at best.

Last year, he talked about building “freedom cities” on federal lands, though this idea hasn’t entered into his speeches lately, which have taken a darker turn. At the time, he said there should be a contest to charter 10 new cities using vacant, federally owned land. And he challenged local leaders to work with him to get rid of “ugly buildings”, make cities and towns more liveable and build new monuments to “our true American heroes”.

“These freedom cities will reopen the frontier, reignite American imagination and give hundreds of thousands of young people and other people, all hardworking families, a new shot at home ownership and, in fact, the American Dream,” he said in one video.

The threat of withholding federal funds

Republicans, cheered on by Trump, have worked to make immigration a key issue in cities across the country by busing migrants from the US-Mexico border inland, to places run by Democrats like New York, DC and Chicago, overwhelming the social safety net in these cities.

The idea of using federal funds granted by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) to force immigration changes are included in a chapter about the Department of Homeland Security, written by Ken Cuccinelli, Trump’s former deputy secretary of homeland security.

The chapter’s initial recommendation is to dismantle DHS entirely, create a border-focused agency comprised of other immigration-related organizations and farm out the rest of its components to existing agencies (or privatize them, in the case of the Transportation Security Administration).

It’s not directly clear whether the aim is to use all Fema funds – including those that help cities and states in the immediate aftermath of an emergency like a tornado or flood – or large grant programs for things like emergency preparedness. One line in the chapter says “post-disaster or nonhumanitarian funding” could be exempt from the immigration policy requirements. The chapter also suggests that cities and states should take on more of the burden of financially responding to disasters.

Project 2025 did not respond to a request for an interview or comment.

Fema administers most of the homeland security department’s grant programs to local governments, the project notes. The chapter suggests the many billions of dollars in Fema grants outside of post-disaster relief have become an avenue for special interests and “pork” spending that “do not provide measurable gains for preparedness or resiliency”.

The concept of withholding federal funding in this way is not new for Trump. During his time in office, Trump tried to use the federal government’s funding strings to deprive US cities that didn’t abide by immigration policies of a justice department grant program, though the process got tied up in the courts for years.

The Biden administration reversed the policy of using the Edward Byrne memorial justice assistance grants program, which sends about $250m annually to local law enforcement, to compel immigration compliance.

Trump also threatened in 2020 to withhold federal funds from cities he claimed had “allow[ed] themselves to deteriorate into lawless zones” after that summer’s protests over the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. In a memo, he specifically mentioned Portland, Seattle and New York City as places where chaos reigned, directing the federal government to review the use of federal funds to places that “permit anarchy, violence and destruction in America’s cities”.

One of the conditions Project 2025 suggests is requiring states or localities to share information with the federal government for law and immigration enforcement, and specifies that this would include both department of motor vehicle and voter registration databases.

This is of particular interest in many cities because 19 states and Washington DC allow undocumented people to get drivers licenses, the Niskanen Center, a thinktank that delved into the project’s immigration aims, points out. These licenses help with public safety by decreasing the potential for hit-and-runs and increasing work hours, among other benefits, the center writes.

If a city or state is forced to choose between issuing licenses and then sharing this information for use by immigration authorities, or accessing emergency funds for their whole population in a crisis, it’ll be tough for them to deny Fema money, said Cecilia Esterline, an immigration research analyst at the Niskanen Center.

“I think that it is most likely that maybe the state will bend to the will of the executive on this. But that comes at a cost, and that cost is not just a political one,” she said, though she noted that there will be pushback and likely lawsuits from states and cities if an incoming Trump administration tries to put these policies in place.

Shamanic healing or opportunity for ritualized abuse? A lawsuit filed in New Mexico last week alleged that a “shamanic master” assaulted a woman during an “energy medicine” training session in March.

The claim, which is being investigated, could shed more light on what some say is a dark side of some trends in modern spirituality, especially those that involve the ceremonial use of often intense psychedelic treatments.

The woman in New Mexico, who was identified in the complaint only by the initials MG, says she paid thousands of dollars to the Four Winds Society and the Chi Center to become a certified energy medicine practitioner with “an extraordinary life of health, purpose and inner guidance”.

The lawsuit, first reported by the Santa Fe New Mexican, says that the woman had scheduled a session with an unidentified Peruvian “wisdom keeper” and “shamanic master of energy training” and informed him that she had been sexually abused as a child. The man indicated in Spanish he understood.

But after he directed her to lie down on one of the beds in his room at the Chi Center, the shaman used the healing session for “his own personal interests or gratification”. The lawsuit alleges that at least two other women had similar experiences with the man.

A senior teacher at the center told MG that “what was done to her was not a standard part of the healing session” when she raised her concerns, according to the suit. The Santa Fe county sheriff’s office has said the woman had not completed a sexual assault nurse examination because she “had left the state and waited to report the incident via telephone from California”.

The shaman had by then left the US, flying from Houston to Panama, and the Santa Fe sheriff, Adan Mendoza, said a criminal case was “challenging” because the accused shaman was from overseas.

Still, the accusation follows in a long line of claims against spiritual gurus which indicate that some shamanic master practitioners may engage in sexual abuse, a troubling tendency previously associated primarily with more mainstream religious practices.

Last year, Jeffrey Glattstein, a shaman in Georgia, was accused of sexually assaulting staff and clients, including at least three women who said they had been assaulted “under the guise that he would be healing and helping them”. The defendant then filed claims against two former employees under the state’s anti-defamation Slapp laws that later failed.

Sex scandals in spiritual or self-enlightenment communities are hardly novel, says Patrick Paul Garlinger, a former lawyer and the author of a 2022 essay titled The Spiritual World Has a Sex Abuse Problem.

“We are seeing an increase, and part of that is the expanding number of people donning the mantle of spiritual teacher. But this also has a long history, in Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, in New Age circles, and there are obviously parallels with the sex abuse scandals in the Catholic church.”

The proliferation of spirituality, coupled with a willingness of victims to come forward in the #MeToo age, has created the conditions for an increasing number of claims coming to light. “The power differential of a master-teacher, who is treated as enlightened or ascended in some way, is often used as the justification for why this isn’t abuse,” Garlinger says.

Scandals within such organizations date at least to 1983, when Richard Baker, then the head of the San Francisco Zen Center, was fired for having affairs with several students. A decade later, Amrit Desai, the spiritual leader of the Kripalu yoga school, was similarly brought down. More recently Bikram Choudhury, the founder of a popular form of hot yoga, was sued for sexual assault in 2016 and fled the US to Mexico.

Sogyal Rinpoche, the author of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, was accused of abusing students in 2016; three years later, Sakyong Mipham, the leader of the Shambhala Buddhist meditation organization, was exposed and the Zen master Joshu Sasaki, accused of abusing students, was said to proselytize that the path to inner peace was to touch his penis because “true love is giving yourself to everything”.

The increased use of psychedelic drugs like ayahuasca, often amid claims of promoting spiritual growth or emotional healing, and an increase in shamanic tourism, could also be exacerbating the issue.

Ayahuasca ceremonies, usually held at night, involving drinking a sticky brown liquid – a brew of two Amazonian plants – followed by vomiting before the drugs take effect, often involving powerful visions. In such circumstances, consent to any form of sexual contact is not grantable.

In one instance, a supposed taita, or shaman, Édgar Orlando Gaitán, was convicted in a Colombian court of raping women and three cases of sexual abuse of minors with disabilities, some during “traditional Indigenous” therapeutic practices.

Academic Daniela Peluso has warned of “increased abuses of power, intercultural misunderstandings, the proliferation of inexperienced shamans, and vast power differentials that have fueled the unacceptable reality that ayahuasca ceremonies can become potential spaces where sexual abuse can occur”.

The shadow side of the ayahuasca scene led to a code of conduct co-authored by Peluso that “aimed to assist individuals within the psychedelic community to understand the common scenarios that can lead to abuse during ayahuasca consumption”.

The authors warned that “mutual cross-cultural misunderstandings and misconceptions between healers and participants can create confusion at least, and can be brutally manipulated at worst” under the guise of spiritual empowerment or through the use of “charm spells”.

“As ayahuasca’s popularity is increasing, alarmingly so are incidents of the sexual abuse of women,” they wrote, noting that “the majority of such cases involve the abuse of female participants by male shamans”.

This, the authors added, “is especially harmful and shocking considering many women who drink ayahuasca are seeking healing for sexual traumas suffered in the past”.

A separate study published by Psychedelic Invest warned: “Many of the people running these programs are not qualified to be working with people suffering from the after-effects of trauma. Others do have qualifications, but overstep important boundaries because they believe they are entitled to.”

But a code of conduct is a poor substitute for avenues for complaints and redress. Garlinger writes that the master-student relationship is problematic from the outset, especially when the approach to sexuality is unarticulated.

“There’s a lot of shame and a sense of deep betrayal within a setting that is deeply meaningful,” he says. “These abuses are difficult to investigate, and historically there has been an effort to silence victims, reframe their experience as part of their spiritual growth, and a need to protect the teacher and institution.”

Nicki Minaj has offered her “deepest and most sincere apologies” after her Manchester concert was cancelled at the last minute as she was arrested in Amsterdam.

The US rapper was detained for hours at Schiphol airport on suspicion of “possessing soft drugs” before being fined by Dutch police and allowed to continue her journey.

Her show at Co-op Live was abandoned at 9.30pm, when Minaj was due on stage. About 20,000 fans were inside the venue, the UK’s biggest indoor arena, when they were told the concert had been called off.

There were boos from the crowd and some concertgoers said they felt “disgusted” and felt “betrayed” by the 41-year-old star.

“I feel appalled. But also, in a way, I’m not shocked,” said Olivia Gibson, 21, who had travelled from Newcastle for the gig. “And it’s not the Co-op Live’s fault. She’s just let all her fans down.”

Minaj said on social media she was in a jail cell for five to six hours and finally arrived at her hotel in Manchester at about midnight.

“They succeeded at their plan to not let me get on that stage tonight,” she wrote on X, without saying who she was referring to. “Please please please accept my deepest & most sincere apologies. They sure did know exactly how to hurt me today but this too, shall pass.

“They’ve been doing this over & over & over & over & over again & I’ve tried so hard to not discuss it b/c [because] you guys deserve to just get the good stuff. I hate involving you in anything that isn’t for entertainment purposes only.”

She said she hoped to announce a rescheduled date on Sunday, promising an “added bonus” for those who had bought a ticket.

Minaj went on to meet fans – who call themselves Barbz – outside the Stock Exchange hotel in Manchester shortly before 2am on Sunday.

“I love you … and I’m so sorry,” she told those gathered, according to footage shared on social media.

Co-op Live, which has endured a series of setbacks since opening in April, said it was “deeply disappointed” at the inconvenience caused by the latest cancellation, which came two-and-a-half hours after ticket-holders had entered the arena.

The venue said: “Tickets will remain valid for the rescheduled performance which will be announced ASAP. Despite Nicki’s best efforts to explore every possible avenue to make tonight’s show happen, the events of today have made it impossible.”

Minaj is due to perform in Birmingham on Sunday night before returning to Manchester on Thursday.

Soaring church spires, the 1,000-year-old town centre unblemished by second world war bombing or graffiti, snow-capped Alps in the middle distance – Kaufbeuren, in Bavaria, can count many blessings.

Unemployment is in the low single digits, the Luftwaffe backed away from plans to move its training school for Eurofighter and Tornado jet technicians elsewhere and crime is at a historic low.

However, as voters prepare to elect a new European parliament next month, deep-seated fears have gripped a significant share of the electorate in one of the most affluent pockets of Europe’s top economy and delivered it to the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).

The bond between the party and its voters appears unshaken even by a cascade of recent scandals. The AfD’s lead candidate for the election, Maximilian Krah, was forced by his party leadership on Wednesday to resign from its board and stop campaigning after he told Italy’s La Repubblica that the SS, the Nazi paramilitary force which ran the death camps, were not all criminals and could only be judged on the basis of “individual guilt”.

The SS remark led France’s far-right National Rally (RN) to announce it would sever ties with the AfD in the EU assembly after the June election. The populist Identity and Democracy political group in the European parliament then moved to expel the AfD delegation “with immediate effect”.

Krah had already been in the spotlight for suspected Chinese and Russian ties after one of his aides was arrested on charges of spying for China. On the eve of his resignation, he told the Observer the allegations were “merely an attempt to distract from our political arguments” and threatened legal action against his accusers.

Polls show the AfD going into the EU election with 14-18% of the vote, well off its 23% high in October but up from its 11% score in 2019. Despite the rap on the knuckles, Krah is virtually guaranteed a seat in the next European parliament.

As he arrived for the Kaufbeuren rally last week wearing a blue suit and his trademark pocket handkerchief, Krah posed for selfies with dozens of fans including young men with short haircuts wearing lederhosen.

Surprisingly for many, the AfD continues to make inroads in Germany’s prosperous south and west, beyond its heartland in the poorer ex-communist east, as it embraces more extreme views on immigration, the war in Ukraine and national atonement for the Holocaust. But the right’s ascendancy has also given rise to a lively local pro-democracy movement that seeks to draw lessons from the town’s grim Nazi past.

In Kaufbeuren, nearly one in five gave the AfD their vote at the last state election in October. Pelted by cold rain, about 200 people gathered in a quaint old town square for the AfD rally waving large German flags. A similar number of peaceful counter-protesters rallied 300m away, led by the Omas gegen Rechts (Grannies Against the Right) movement and joined by mayor Stefan Bosse and a brass band.

Krah’s supporters said they were disgusted by chancellor Olaf Scholz’s centre-left-led coalition and anxious about their children’s future.

“It’s a catastrophe – the worst government we ever had,” said civil servant Manuela, 55, who was from a neighbouring town and, like most of the AfD supporters, declined to give her surname. She brought her teenage daughter to the rally. Despite the low rates of violent crime, she said her family no longer felt safe on the streets due to “Islamists”.

Anti-AfD activists booed and whistled from the sidelines as Krah addressed the rally. Manuela said: “They call us Nazis just because we’re patriots. The world laughs at us because no country is as dumb as Germany, with our exaggerated tolerance and diversity. They’ve been telling us for decades we should carry this guilt, and so we should rescue the whole world and be its dole office.”

A bombshell report in January revealed that senior AfD members had attended a meeting at a lakeside villa where they discussed a scheme for the mass deportation of German citizens with immigrant backgrounds. The revelation sparked anti-extremism demonstrations nationwide, including in Kaufbeuren.

Doreen, 53, who works in hospital catering, said the “remigration” plan appealed to her. “I have friends and acquaintances who migrated here and they agree: those who want to integrate should be able to stay, and those who just want to exploit the social welfare system should be told to go home.”

Elke, a 54-year-old nurse, said she liked the AfD’s opposition to what she called overreach in Berlin and Brussels. “I want to drive a car with an internal combustion engine, I want gas heating and I don’t want a war against Russia,” she said. “It would have been over long ago if all that money hadn’t flowed to Ukraine.”

Several AfD voters said they opposed Germany’s military support for Ukraine and worried about a Europe-wide conflagration triggered by standing up to Vladimir Putin.

As Krah took the stage, local party officials released eight white doves of peace into the overcast sky to applause from the crowd.

A father of eight, Krah spoke of his fear that his 21-year-old son could become “cannon fodder on the eastern front” if Germany brings back conscription, a proposal floated in limited form by defence minister Boris Pistorius to address looming security threats.

Krah warned that Kaufbeuren’s surrounding region of Swabia, “one of the richest parts of Germany”, was under threat from politicians who would take away its security and prosperity with climate protection measures and “mass migration”. He presented the AfD as the defender of “traditional families” while its opponents believed there were “53 genders”.

Bosse, the mayor, told the Observer that a large part of the AfD’s base in Kaufbeuren comprises ethnic Germans from the former Soviet Union who arrived in the 1990s, many of whom harbour pro-Putin views. In the pandemic, the region also had a strong anti-vaxxer movement, which now opposes Nato aid for Ukraine.

Bosse has led the town for 20 years. In his wood-panelled office overlooking the town’s immaculate high street, he said that he was “ashamed” that the far right had gained a foothold again, despite efforts across the political spectrum to blunt its appeal.

“I also feel shame toward the British and French and all those who suffered so much under the Third Reich that in Germany you have a political force establishing itself that is trying to just wipe away these horrible crimes,” he said.

Bosse, from the conservative Christian Social Union, said he is haunted by a particular chapter of the Nazi past in Kaufbeuren, which under Adolf Hitler hosted a dynamite factory employing forced labourers, satellite concentration camps belonging to Dachau and a psychiatric hospital that orchestrated the extermination of more than 1,500 men, women and children.

Even after the town’s “liberation” by the US on 27 April 1945, the hospital continued to operate on the town’s outskirts under its Nazi administrators, Bosse said. Another 100 helpless patients were murdered before GIs finally took control of the facility on 2 July.

“It is incredible to me that, even after the second world war was over, no one in Kaufbeuren told the Americans what was happening and said: ‘You have to go in there and set them free,’” he said.

Speaking at the counter-demonstration, Bosse noted that 2 July is now marked by the town each year with a memorial ceremony for the victims as a reminder of the need for civil courage. “We have got to stand up for this democracy together,” he said.

The Great Taste awards are a British success story – the world’s largest food awards, celebrating the best products on the planet. But new post-Brexit import controls have forced the organisers to hold a judging panel outside the UK for the first time in the awards’ 30-year history.

On Sunday, judges from the Guild of Fine Foods panel will travel to County Tipperary in Ireland to spend three days tasting products that have become much harder to bring to the UK.

Since January, anyone sending meat, dairy or fish products to the UK has to find a vet to fill out a seven-page form showing that the product is disease-free. And since April, exporters have also had to pay a fee of £29 for each product, whether it’s a container full of Irish beef or a single packet of Tayto cheese and onion crisps, unless they are for personal use. This includes the 13,672 samples sent to the Great Taste judges from 115 countries.

John Farrand, the managing director of the Guild of Fine Food, said: “The friction at the borders has tripped us up this year. We’re a bellwether for the wider problems in the market. It’s irritating for us because it’s going to cost us a lot more money to go and judge in Ireland. We’re going to judge [in Clonmel, Co Tipperary] to help the smaller food and drink producers who can’t cope with the paperwork and the cost.”

Some judging will still take place in the UK. Sally Ferns Barnes, a Scot who founded the Woodcock Smokery in West Cork in 1981 and won supreme champion at the 2006 Great Taste awards for her cold-smoked wild Atlantic salmon, is not entering this year. “We used to send entries every year,” she said. “It was a wonderful yardstick for us because you’re up against [about] 10,000 other products. When you win, you think, ‘I must be doing something right here’.

“I didn’t enter because I thought, ‘what’s the point – I can’t offer it to customers in the UK any more.’ ”

Barnes is the last Irish producer working exclusively with wild salmon – she refuses to use farmed salmon, and this creates a problem with the paperwork to export to the UK.

Fish get a “catch certificate” when they are landed to prove their origin, and Barnes needs this certificate to be able to apply for a vet’s health certificate to export to the UK. “An issue with wild salmon is that you don’t get catch certificates because it’s a freshwater fishery,” she said. “It’s not sea fisheries. So I’ve been trying to pester the [Irish] inland fisheries for information. They don’t know. They’ve never dealt with this. So they don’t know what to do.”

Neal’s Yard Dairy has previously sold Barnes’s salmon and had offered to include her in a regular shipment it is running for seven Irish cheesemakers, but she has not felt able to accept.

“If I don’t get it [the paperwork] 100% right and there’s one tiny thing wrong, the entire consignment would be delayed,” she said. “And you can’t do that with cheeses. I would be so deeply unpopular with all my cheesemaker friends.

“I’ve spoken to other producers who would have been exporting, and most of them are not interested any more. We’ll look to Europe instead.”

The possibility that a paperwork error will mean that entire consignments are delayed or even destroyed is a major risk for small food exporters like Barnes.

Border controls for the new Brexit red tape will cost at least £4.7bn, the National Audit Office said last week, and importers have complained that perishable shipments of food and flowers have faced delays, some up to 20 hours long, because computer systems have failed.

Overall, the cost of importing alone is likely to add £1bn to the UK’s food bill, according to the Cold Chain Federation, although the government estimates the cost will be £330m a year. Fruit and vegetables are not yet subject to the new rules but are expected to be included from October.

The import controls also affect suppliers to larger retailers, including supermarkets, who may need to send samples out to dozens of product buyers at different organisations on several occasions before they are accepted on to the supermarket shelves. So while someone sending a pot of French jam to a supermarket buyer in the UK would have spent a few euros per sample before Brexit, now they would spend closer to €100.

“There is a huge irony here that the government is telling us to do more trade with Europe and the rest of the world in light of Brexit,” Farrand said. “And we’re busy trying to get business with retailers, but the movement of samples is being affected by border controls.

“We are removing the colour, diversity and interest in our food and drink. We’re going to end up with fewer suppliers. That’s bad for our economy and for our nutrition.”

A government spokesperson said: “These border checks are fundamental to protecting the UK’s food supply chain, farmers and natural environment against costly diseases reaching our shores.

“Our robust analysis has shown they will have minimal impact on food prices and consumers, with just a 0.2% point increase on food prices over the next three years.

“The cost of checks is negligible compared to the impact of a major disease outbreak, such as foot and mouth disease in 2001, which cost our economy more than £12.8bn in 2022 prices.”

Donald Trump, the former US president, has suffered the rare humiliation of getting booed and heckled during a raucous speech to the Libertarian National Convention.

Trump’s rocky ride at a Washington hotel on Saturday night, including cries of “Bullshit!” and “Fuck you!”, underlined the challenge that the Republican presidential nominee faces to broaden his appeal both left and right on the political spectrum.

“The fact is we should not be fighting each other,” Trump pleaded. “If Joe Biden gets back in, there will be no more liberty for anyone in our country. Combine with us in a partnership – we’re asking that of the libertarians. We must work together. Combine with us. You have to combine with us.”

The appeal went down like a lead balloon as delegates booed, jeered and shouted insults. It was a stunning rebuke for a man who has become accustomed to cult-like rallies where his every word is cheered to the echo.

The Libertarian party, which prioritises small government and individual freedoms, typically gains 3% or less of the national vote but its members could yet prove crucial in swing states this November. Trump’s clumsy attempt to court them resulted in him scolding them instead.

Taking the stage, he was confronted by Libertarians, who have their own factional disputes, shouting insults and decrying him for running up huge federal deficits and enriching pharmaceutical companies with the coronavirus vaccine development. A smaller core of diehard Trump supporters clad in “Make America great again” hats and T-shirts chanted “USA! USA!”. One person unfurled a Palestinian flag.

Amid this melee, Trump’s appeal to Libertarians to vote for him or join his campaign were repeatedly rebuffed. Referring to the four criminal indictments against him, he joked: “If I wasn’t a libertarian before, I sure as hell am a libertarian now.”

The ex-president quoted an article written by political commentator Deroy Murdock arguing that Libertarians should vote for Trump. The crowd again erupted in boos and jeers.

Trump retorted: “Only if you want to win. Only if you want to win. Maybe you don’t want to win. Maybe you don’t want to win. Only do that if you want to win. If you want to lose, don’t do that. Keep getting your 3% every four years.”

Trump went on to argue that Libertarians should make him their presidential nominee or at least vote for him in the election. Again there were boos and wails of derision. He went on: “The Libertarians want to vote for me and most of them will because we have to get rid of the worst president in history and together we will.”

The Republican promised that, if elected, he would put a Libertarian in his cabinet and others in senior posts. Again the crowd made clear its dissent. Ever the salesman, Trump prodded: “Pretty good. That’s pretty big.” But this time the old tricks did not work.

Again Trump chided them for getting 3% in past elections. Competing with chants, he said: “No, you want to make yourself winners, it’s time to be winners. You have a lot of common sense.”

Trump pressed on with his speech, saying he’d come “to extend a hand of friendship” in common opposition to Biden. That prompted a chant of “We want Trump!” from supporters, but more cries of “End the Fed!” – a common refrain from Libertarians who oppose the Federal Reserve. One person who held up a sign reading “No wannabe dictators!” was dragged away by security.

The ex-president claimed that much of his record was libertarian, citing examples such as tax cuts, slashing bureaucratic red tape, cancelling and defunding federal diversity, equity and inclusion programmes. He promised to appoint Libertarians to a taskforce to “rapidly review the cases of every political prisoner who has been unjustly persecuted” by Joe Biden’s administration.

Trump said: “As everyone knows, it will be my great honour to pardon the peaceful January 6 protesters or, as I often call them, the hostages. They’re hostages. There has never been a group of people treated so harshly or unfairly in our country’s history. This abuse will be rectified and it will be rectified very quickly.”

“And if you vote for me on day one I will commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht.” The room, where many had been waving “Free Ross” signs, erupted in roars and whistles of approval. Ulbricht was the founder of Silk Road, an online marketplace for the sale of heroin, cocaine, LSD and other illegal drugs, who in 2015 was sentenced to life in prison.

With that the tide had turned in Trump’s favour and his gamble of addressing the convention was looking less disastrous than it first appeared. The crowd gradually became more muted and supportive.

The ex-president received further acclaim for pledging to sign an executive order banning federal agencies from censoring free speech, introduce record tax cuts, oppose the Green New Deal and drill for oil and gas, secure the future of crypto and bitcoin currencies and defend religious liberty and gun rights.

Still, not everyone was won over. When Trump said, “I want your support and again, you can either nominate us and put us in the position or give us your vote,” a chorus of boos rose again.

Afterwards one delegate, who gave his name only as Joe, said: “He’s full of shit.”

Glen Lewis, chairman of the Libertarian Party of Mississippi, said: “It was a lot of politicking. He came here to tell us to pull our people’s votes towards him using the fear of Joe Biden’s presidency. But real men and women vote on integrity.”

Lewis, 54, a military veteran who served in Afghanistan, added: “I went into the group of Trump supporters who could not defend him printing money. They could not defend him giving immunity to the pharmaceutical companies. They could not defend him not stopping wars. I will benefit him with not starting any new ones, but he did not end the ones that were there.”

Michael Fitch, 35, who has been a member of the Libertarian Party since 2012, said he appreciated Trump’s “bravery” in coming to the convention but has no intention of voting for him. “A lot of people like Donald Trump because they think he’s a conservative but he’s not a conservative,” he said. “He actually raised the deficit – he spent millions and millions of dollars.

“He capitulated to the pharma regime. Obviously his base, the Maga revolution, is very anti-lockdown but Donald Trump was the one who did Operation Warp Speed. We can’t let this guy off the hook: if we’re gonna come after [Anthony] Fauci and Biden, Trump’s on the same list. He’s just as complicit as the rest of them. I don’t think his base fully appreciates that and Donald Trump isn’t going to be the one to tell them it.”

Joe Gravagna, 77, a retired computer security worker from Westfield, Indiana, said he voted the Libertarian candidate in 2020 but might consider Trump this time. “I like his ideas on deregulation, de-weaponising the justice system and non-intervention. He’s less of a hawk. I don’t think he likes wars. Anybody worth their salt would not have left Afghanistan with $88bn worth of weapons left behind.”

Among the committed Republicans in the room was Brandi Bohannon, 37, from Gulf Shores, Alabama. She said: “He’s different. No wars. He doesn’t get paid off by K Street. He’s honest. He’s feisty.

“We’ve never had a border this open ever – what, 8m have crossed? These wars would have never happened under Trump. Russia would never have invaded Ukraine. Israel and Palestine wouldn’t have gone to war. Serbia and Bosnia look like they’re about to go after each other again. So scary times.”

Libertarians will pick their White House nominee during their convention, which wraps up on Sunday. Trump’s appearance also gave him a chance to court voters who might otherwise support independent presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr, who gave his own Libertarian convention speech on Friday.

Rishi Sunak has announced that a future Conservative government would bring back mandatory national service, as he attempted to reignite his election campaign after an error-strewn start.

Under the plan, which appeared to be his latest attempt to reduce Tory losses by winning over voters drifting to Reform UK, the prime minister late Saturday said that every 18-year-old would have to spend time in a competitive, full-time military commission or spend one weekend a month volunteering in “civil resilience”.

The party said that the country needed to be “open and honest” about the long-term challenges it is facing, adding the scheme would ensure young people had “the opportunities they deserve”.

The proposals would see a “bold new model of national service” for 18-year-olds that could see them opt to spend one weekend per month volunteering in roles such as special constable, RNLI volunteer, or NHS responder. Officials claimed it would give young people “real world skills, while contributing to their country and community”.

In practice, a royal commission would be set up to design the new national service programme, leading to a pilot programme to open for applications in September 2025. However, it would be backed in law by a National Service Act.

The Tories insisted the scheme did not amount to conscription, stating that the Covid pandemic had shown the importance of civic service. The party said that a new scheme was “completely essential”.

“Only by nurturing our shared culture and fostering a sense of duty can we preserve our nation and values for decades to come. This is an investment in both the character of young people and our security,” it said.

It insisted a similar scheme was successful in Sweden, claiming 80% of young people completing national service said they would recommend it to their peers.

Labour lambasted the idea as another uncosted policy from the Tories, who have already raised the prospect of tax cuts they have yet to fund. “This is another desperate, £2.5bn unfunded commitment from a Tory party which already crashed the economy, sending mortgages rocketing, and now they’re spoiling for more,” said a spokesperson.

“This is not a plan – it’s a review which could cost billions and is only needed because the Tories hollowed out the armed forces to their smallest size since Napoleon. Britain has had enough of the Conservatives, who are bankrupt of ideas, and have no plans to end 14 years of chaos. It’s time to …rebuild Britain with Labour.”

The Tories said the scheme would be part-funded through a £1bn tax avoidance clampdown and £1.5bn currently spent on the UK Shared Prosperity Fund. A similar scheme was outlined in 2010 by David Cameron. Under his proposals, a special youth programme for 16-year-olds would be established to end a “pointless waste of potential” among teenagers. The plans never came to fruition.

Sunak was accused of hypocrisy over his scheme. In January, the prime minister rebuked the chief of the general staff, Sir Patrick Sanders, following his suggestion the UK might need a citizen army to fight Putin. The prime minister’s spokesman said at the time that Sunak did not agree with his comments and insisted there would be no return to national service, which was abolished in 1960.

Labour figures also privately accused the Tories of making 18-year-olds fix the problems the government had created, by boosting numbers in the military, helping the NHS and repairing infrastructure.

Erik ten Hag says he will join another club and keep winning trophies if Manchester United press ahead with plans to sack him after their shock 2-1 triumph over Manchester City in the FA Cup final.

Along with delivering what may be viewed as a final parting shot before he learns of his fate, Ten Hag was unable to offer any clarity on what the future holds for him. Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the minority owner who controls United’s football policy, had earlier refused to say whether the victory over City would be enough for the Dutchman to stay.

United have already identified candidates to replace Ten Hag, who won the Carabao Cup final last season, and are ready to make a change after finishing eighth in the Premier League, despite the FA Cup triumph delivering European football next season.

“I don’t think about this,” Ten Hag said. “I am in a project. We are exactly where we want to be. We are constructing a team. When I took over it was a mess. The team is developing and winning. It is about winning trophies. The team plays to an identity. You need a strong squad.

“You need players available and there is a lot of work to do. The team is progressing and we are winning trophies. Two trophies in two years is not bad. I am not satisfied. If they don’t want me any more I will go [somewhere else] to win trophies because that is what I do in my whole career.”

United, who implemented Ten Hag’s tactics to perfection and won thanks to first-half goals from the teenagers Alejandro Garnacho and Kobbie Mainoo, secured Europa League qualification after ending City’s hopes of completing a double Double.

Yet the conversation was dominated by Ten Hag’s position. Before the final he had said to Dutch media that the club told him they want him to stay. But the 54-year‑old was evasive when pressed on whether that message was relayed to him during a review with the United hierarchy last week.

“How many times do I have to tell you this?” Ten Hag said. “Do I have to repeat myself 10 times? Twenty times? They don’t have to tell me every week. I was in some clubs where every day they tell you: ‘You are the best.’ If they tell me they don’t want me any more then I will hear it.”

Notably, Ratcliffe did not single Ten Hag out for praise. “It is a glorious feeling to win the FA Cup final at Wembley,” the Ineos magnate said. “Manchester United clearly were not the favourites to win today but they played with total commitment and skill and overcame one of the great teams in football. We are all very proud of the players and the staff who work tirelessly to support them.”

Ten Hag, who has repeatedly claimed his team’s poor form is down to injuries, was asked if United need stability. “I don’t have to think about this,” he said. “When you see the last decade, there were not so many finals for this club, not so many trophies, not so many young talents coming through. We strengthened the squad by our coaching. We also need transfer windows to bring players in and players who are always available.”

United are monitoring Thomas Tuchel, Mauricio Pochettino, Graham Potter, Kieran McKenna, Thomas Frank and Gareth Southgate. Ten Hag was asked if it was disrespectful that the club have been speaking to candidates. “I don’t know if they did this,” he said. “I can’t answer this question.”

Responding to Ten Hag’s claim that “we are exactly where we want to be”, it was suggested that the injury crisis did not excuse United finishing eighth and ending with a negative goal difference. “When you make it like this you don’t have any knowledge about managing a football team,” Ten Hag replied. “If that is the opinion I will go anywhere else. I will stay winning trophies.”

Pep Guardiola admitted his tactics were wrong after City, who looked jaded after winning the league title last Sunday, failed to defend their trophy. They improved when Jérémy Doku came on at half-time but the winger’s goal came too late. “We were not in the right position,” Guardiola said. “It was my mistake. The gameplan was not good.”

“Energy efficient”, “carbon neutral” and “net zero” are buzzwords we hear more and more as we face the impact of climate change. But do we think about them enough in building?

Globally, a move towards sustainable housing is growing. In Europe, efforts to move to greener homes hope to combat rising energy costs and be better for the planet. But 40% of global carbon dioxide emissions still come from the real estate sector.

In Australia, off-grid electric homes are becoming more common. A recent report by the University of New South Wales is pushing the built environment industry to reach net zero by 2040, and according to a 2024 study by Domain, energy-efficient real estate is attracting more interest than conventional homes.

But even if net zero housing – which means your home releases no net carbon – is not yet the norm, many architects are beginning to champion sustainable design, aiming for high energy ratings and future-proofing homes to adapt with the changing climate.

By reducing their carbon footprint, and using passive design – which focuses on conditions like sunlight and layout instead of artificial climate control – these net zero homes make it clear that going back to basics is key to making the switch.

Huff’n’Puff Haus, Strathbogie ranges, Victoria

Once upon a time a big bad wolf could huff, puff, and blow the straw house down. But not any more – in rural Victoria, Envirotecture’s Huff’n’Puff Haus is here to stay.

Asked to create an off-grid, all-electric, energy-efficient home, architect and director Talina Edwards set out to build a house that would let two empty nesters age in place for years to come.

Huff’n’Puff house is made from prefabricated, structurally insulated straw bale panels about 300-350mm thick and has “passivhaus premium certification”, which means it generates more renewable energy than it uses.

As a waste product, straw not only sequesters CO2 – reducing the embodied carbon of the project – but is an under-utilised material in building. Edwards says the amount of straw burned in paddocks annually would be enough to insulate 40,000 homes in Australia every year.

Envirotecture also aimed to use sustainably sourced timber, reduce use of plastic during building and focused on good ventilation strategy for healthy air quality. The house needs hardly any heating and cooling, instead relying on orientation, cross ventilation, passive shading and natural light.

“The cost of building anything is expensive, but not the cost of building well,” says Edwards.

“If you reduce the size and maybe you don’t have so many built-in pieces of joinery … you can choose how to prioritise.”

Despite Australia’s “obsession” with large homes, the 200 sq metre house is flexible and functional – a corridor opens out into spaces instead of whole rooms. A breakfast bar can become a study space; a window seat, a place to look at the view.

“On a regional site it always looks a bit odd if you’ve just got this tiny little house, but we did keep it a modest size,” says Edwards. “I think that’s the first tip for anyone building no matter where.”

The project has won many awards since its completion and is shortlisted in the sustainability category in the House awards. But for Edwards, it is not about accolades.

“Everyone kept saying, it’s so beautiful … but it’s not about what it looks like,” she says.

“… The beauty of it is beyond skin deep. What’s hidden behind? What’s the true heart of what this is doing?… It’s honest beauty, not just considering the aesthetics.”

39S House, Brisbane, Queensland

On a 240 sq metre block in Brisbane, architect Andrew Noonan has breathed new life into a dilapidated Victorian-era timber cottage, giving the five bedroom family home a net zero future.

Aiming for a “whole-of-life net zero” home – one that takes as much carbon out of the system through energy production and materials as it takes to build – Noonan went back to basics, applying passive-design principles to literally turn the house around.

“The house originally ran north-south. It had a very long west-facing facade,” says Noonan.

“100m away there is Suncorp stadium … and a main road, so quite noisy on that same western side … it became quite an opportunity to do one big move to solve a couple of problems.”

Noonan removed a 1930s extension at the rear of the home and added a new extension to achieve east-west orientation. It’s a five bedroom home, with four of them occupied, but Noonan says necessity must be questioned when building.

“Do we all need media rooms? Do we all need three, four or five bathrooms?” he says, adding that key to the net zero approach is letting the climate dictate material choice to ensure a lifespan beyond the 55-year average for a home.

If you have high-quality doors and windows “they’ll very much last beyond the life of the building,” Noonan says.

“If they’re made in a way that’s designed to be thermally efficient – not cheap, single piece aluminium frames with very thin glazing in them … but something that is thinking about performance – that will have an ongoing value.”

39S House also has no heating or cooling, instead relying on heavily insulated timber framing and orientation to cater to Brisbane’s humidity.

And while Noonan recommends electrifying everything by switching to induction appliances, air source heat pumps and getting photovoltaic panels– which are slightly different to solar – he says gadgets “won’t solve the problem if it’s not worked out in a more simple way first”.

Green space occupies 50% of the site, reducing external heat. The air temperature directly outside the doors and windows is 15 degrees cooler than it would be if the area was paved with no trees.

And the home also considers Brisbane’s propensity to flood, lifting the house above ground and aiming to absorb flood waters into the soil, slowing the run-off rate downstream.

“Just because it’s doing some really interesting sustainability things doesn’t mean it has to look like a tree house,” says Noonan.

“It can look like it can look like any house … the aesthetic doesn’t really tie into the performance.”

Farrier Lane House, Perth, Western Australia

Architect Matt Delroy-Carr set out to build an affordable, high performing family home. But when a lifecycle assessment partway through the project came back carbon neutral, he added net zero status to the list.

His home, Farrier Lane House, now acts as a demonstration project on how to build sustainably for his practice MDC Architects.

“A 180 sq metre-house might have exactly the same things in it as an 140 sq metre-house like mine,” says Delroy-Carr. “It’s just got 40 sq metres of wasted area that’s inefficiently designed.”

Farrier Lane House has large windows to open up the space. Its house-to-garden ratio heavily favours green space, filling 60% of the site to extend the liveability of a smaller-footprint home.

Inside, it has a double brick ground floor, providing a solid thermal mass, a hybrid upper floor with reverse brick veneer and timber-framed floors throughout.

But Delroy-Carr says often the more you focus on carbon neutrality through material use, the harder it is to get a high NatHERS star rating.

“The rating system heavily favours masonry construction … it loves brick and concrete, because they’re high thermal mass materials,” he says.

In 1993 I was working as a young criminal lawyer for Aboriginal Legal Aid in the Northern Territory. One day I was sent to the remote community of Yirrkala in north-east Arnhem Land to pay our respects at the funeral of Roy Dadaynga Marika, “the father of land rights”.

Overwhelmed by the beauty and richness of the ceremony and the shock of seeing my first dead body, I staggered out of the funeral shelter and turned back for a moment to take a photo of the pomp and colour of the scene, including the beautiful woman sitting right in front of me.

The moment I pointed the camera at her she turned towards me with a look of disgust that seemed to say, “Who is this ignorant tourist?” I later found out she was Merrkiyawuy Ganambarr, Marika’s adopted daughter.

Some months later I was back in Yirrkala, fishing at the local beach. An old lady had shown my dad a foolproof secret fishing spot on my previous trip. Merrkiyawuy was on the beach with her friends, assuring them I would never catch anything. Just then, to everyone’s surprise, I caught a massive cod.

Merrkiyawuy and her friends rushed over to congratulate me and offered to help me cook it but I was so shy in front of this beautiful woman that I grabbed the fish and took off.

A couple of months later we ended up at the same party in Darwin where everyone was dancing on the lawn. When the music slowed down Merrkiyawuy asked me to dance but I told her I didn’t know how. She dragged me to the centre of the lawn as the song changed to Anne Murray singing “Could I have this dance for the rest of my life?” I slumped on her, the way we did at primary school socials, as that was the only step I knew.

I asked her on a date the next night and took her to the best restaurant I knew. I made a big deal about rejecting the waiter’s suggested wine choice and insisted on the most expensive bottle for $50.

As we began to share our stories she told me she had been a backup singer with the band Yothu Yindi and was now working as a schoolteacher. She said she had two children but could not have any more. From somewhere outside my body I heard myself say, as if to contradict her, “I have a strong totem!” I still have no idea where that humiliating statement came from.

As we were leaving I asked the waiter for another bottle of the $50 wine and he explained we could take BYO wine that we hadn’t finished but we couldn’t buy wine from the restaurant. I gave him a nod and a wink and he opened a bottle for me and we took it away.

The emotions of the evening and the expensive wine took a toll on me. When Merrkiyawuy told me she was going to “sing” me (a form of love spell), I spewed on her! All I remember after that was her walking me up and down the street to sober me up.

At the time I was living under someone’s house in central Darwin with only shade cloth for walls. But it was just next to the offices of Legal Aid. And that is where I snuck off to the next morning, leaving her asleep. Mine was a true walk of shame. She was heading to a conference in New Zealand that morning and I knew I had blown my chances with this most graceful, clever, funny, beautiful woman.

After a day in court and beating myself up over my stupidity, I came home to find a handmade card on my bed. Merrkiyawuy had cut out a photo of herself and stuck it to the front. Inside was a $50 note and the words: “Buy yourself another bottle of wine.”

Her compassionate humour and the fact she could forgive me convinced me I was still in with a chance.

Fourteen months after our first date, we married. Our daughter, Siena, was born eight years after that. We will celebrate our 30-year wedding anniversary in December.

Merrkiyawuy is now an award-winning author, the co-principal of Yirrkala school and the true Mary Poppins of the north, loved by the many children she has taught over three decades. Her eyes are always on the needs of the community. My eyes are generally on her. I am in constant awe of her grace, beauty and big brain.

Ten years after we married someone returned a pile of items from an old house I’d lived in. Included in the pile was the photo of my wife I had taken at the exact moment I first saw her. She was scowling at me. With good reason.