Protests set to greet vice-president on visit after governor said redistricting ‘looks like it’s going to happen across many Republican states’

Across the US’s fabled but overstretched national parks, unusual scenes are playing out this summer following budget cuts by Donald Trump’s administration. Archeologists are staffing ticket booths, ecologists are covering visitor centers and the superintendents of parks are even cleaning the toilets.

The National Park Service (NPS), responsible for maintaining cherished wildernesses and sites of cultural importance from Yellowstone to the Statue of Liberty, has lost a quarter of its permanent staff since Trump took office in January, with the administration seeking to gut the service’s budget by a third.

Donald Trump has claimed “great progress was made” during talks on ending the war in Ukraine between his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin on Wednesday. The three-hour talks came two days before a deadline the US president set for Russia to reach a peace deal in the war or face fresh sanctions.

The White House is placing an additional 25% tariff on imports from India, bringing total tariffs up to 50%, in retaliation for the country’s purchase of oil from Russia, according to an executive order signed on Wednesday morning. India has 21 days to respond to the potential tariffs before they go into effect. The tariffs will be tacked on to a 25% tariff on India Trump set last week as a “penalty” for the country’s trading relationship with Russia.

A new report has found hundreds of reported cases of human rights abuses in US immigration detention centers. The alleged abuses uncovered include deaths in custody, physical and sexual abuse of detainees, denial of access to attorneys, and child separation.

Trump on Wednesday celebrated a commitment by Apple to increase its investments in US manufacturing by an additional $100bn over the next four years. Apple’s plan to up its domestic investment comes as it seeks to avoid Trump’s threatened tariffs, which would increase the tech giant’s costs as it relies on a complex international supply chain to produce its iPhones.

South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa held a telephone call with US president Donald Trump on bilateral trade matters, Ramaphosa’s office said in statement.

Switzerland’s government will hold an emergency meeting on Thursday to decide its next move after its president returned home empty-handed from an 11th-hour trip to Washington aimed at averting a crippling 39% US import tariff on Swiss goods. An urgent meeting of the seven-member Federal Council - Switzerland’s governing cabinet - will take place in Bern in the early afternoon, the government said a post on X. Swiss president Karin Keller-Sutter left Washington on Wednesday without a new deal and did not meet with Donald Trump or any of his top trade officials, two sources told Reuters.

The man charged with killing the top Democrat in the Minnesota House and her husband, and wounding a state senator and his wife, is expected to plead not guilty when he’s arraigned in federal court on Thursday, his attorney said. Vance Boelter, 58, of Green Isle, Minnesota, was indicted 15 July on six counts of murder, stalking and firearms violations. The murder charges could carry the federal death penalty, though prosecutors say that decision is several months away.