By WILL WEISSERT and MICHELLE L. PRICE

WASHINGTON (AP) — With National Guard troops in the streets and federal agents at the door of his former adviser, President Donald Trump spent a heavy dose of his Friday channeling his inner tourist and reliving his bygone days as a sports team owner and construction mogul.

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He stopped by a gift shop near the White House, visited the Kennedy Center that he now chairs and returned to his increasingly gilded Oval Office to trumpet the U.S. cohosting next year’s World Cup.

“We have a lot of fun,” Trump said. “We’re fixing up the whole world.”

The president’s stops around the city came as the nation’s capital is increasingly on edge amid Trump’s deployment of the National Guard and federalization of Washington’s police force in an effort to better curb crime.

Just before he left the White House, officials announced there had been 76 arrests citywide the previous evening as part of the crackdown. The Pentagon also said National Guard troops patrolling the streets of D.C. would soon start carrying weapons.

“We are going to make D.C. totally safe. When people come from Iowa, Indiana, all of the beautiful places, and they come, they’re not going to go home in a body bag,” Trump said after visiting the People’s House exhibit and its gift shop. “They’re not going home in a coffin, and it’s very safe right now.”

With the crackdown now entering its third week, however, many Washington residents and visitors don’t feel as safe as the president suggests, with persisting concerns that the White House is amplifying racist narratives about urban crime and tearing down homeless camps where the most vulnerable live.

Trump has shrugged off criticisms and declared, when asked about the FBI searching the home and office of his former national security adviser John Bolton, “I’m actually the chief law enforcement officer.” Still, he spent far more time looking and acting like a president relishing the parts of the job that make him happiest.

WASHINGTON, DC – AUGUST 21: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to law enforcement officers alongside Interior Secretary Doug Burgum (R) at the U.S. Park Police Anacostia Operations Facility on August 21, 2025 in Washington, DC. The Trump administration has deployed federal officers and the National Guard to the District in order to place the DC Metropolitan Police Department under federal control and assist in crime prevention in the nation’s capital. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

At the Kennedy Center, Trump’s activities Friday weren’t public, but he told reporters he’d show off the marble that might be used to refurbish the building — along with other planned renovations, including change the paint on its signature columns from gold to white.

Trump has begun frequently joking about renaming it the Trump Kennedy Center but deadpanned Friday: “We’re not prepared to do that quite yet. Maybe in a week or so.”

WASHINGTON, DC – AUGUST 21: U.S. President Donald Trump visits the U.S. Park Police Anacostia Operations Facility on August 21, 2025 in Washington, DC. The Trump administration has deployed federal officers and the National Guard to the District in order to place the DC Metropolitan Police Department under federal control and assist in crime prevention in the nation’s capital. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

The president also said he’ll be leading yet more White House renovations — this time on the bathroom attached to the iconic Lincoln Bedroom. It last underwent renovations in 2005.

“We’ll be doing the Lincoln Bathroom which was Art Deco,” Trump said, adding, “We’re making it actually incredible.”

The president even floated the idea of refurbishing the sprawling Old Executive Office Building on the White House grounds, saying it was “such a beautiful building, but it doesn’t look it.”

Trump has already made extensive changes to the White House, redoing the Oval Office to add gold decor, installing patio seating with external speakers around the Rose Garden, erecting two towering flagpoles on its lawn and promising to build a ballroom.

Later in the day, Trump was joined in the Oval Office by FIFA President Gianni Infantino to announce that the Kennedy Center would host the draw for the 2026 World Cup, which will be played in the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

President Donald Trump speaks with reporters as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, from right, FIFA President Gianni Infantino, Vice President JD Vance, Richard Grenell, president of the Kennedy Center Board of Trustees and Andrew Giuliani listen in the Oval Office of the White House, Friday, Aug. 22, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

The former owner of the New Jersey Generals of the USFL, Trump has been heavily promoting sporting events that will take place during his second term, including the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.

“I just left the Kennedy Center. We’re spending a lot of money wisely and making it really beautiful,” Trump said during the event with Infantino. “It’s going to be beautiful again. It’s like Washington, D.C.”

By MELISSA GOLDIN

After the Trump administration announced Thursday that it is reviewing the valid visas of more than 55 million people, social media users began using this figure to inflate the number of noncitizens living in the U.S. by tens of millions.

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Posts claimed that these 55 million visa holders, plus about 25 million or more people living in the country illegally, means that nearly a quarter to a third of the people living in the U.S. are not American citizens. The total U.S. population is about 342 million.

But government data contradicts these figures, and experts say the estimates spreading online are highly inflated.

Here’s a closer look at the facts.

CLAIM: Approximately 70 million to 100 million people living in the U.S. are not American citizens.

THE FACTS: This is false. There were nearly 22 million noncitizens residing in the U.S. in 2023, according to the latest Census Bureau data. That includes people in the country both legally and illegally.

The 55 million visas, which includes tourist visas, is not representative of U.S. residents, as not everyone with a visa resides in the U.S. The number of people in the U.S. illegally is nearly 14 million, according to a recent Pew Research Center report. Trump routinely inflates the number of people living in the country illegally, the majority of whom he says entered under the Biden administration, most recently citing totals of 25 million to 30 million.

“The 55 million figure is the total number of visa-holders worldwide, not people who are currently in the United States,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. “The 25 million figure for undocumented immigrants is also completely false.”

Still, many social media users overstated the number of noncitizens living in the U.S., pointing to these figures.

“55 million on visas, tens of millions of illegals—close to 100 million are foreign aliens,” reads one X post. “Almost 1/3 of the entire country are foreigners. Completely insane if you really think about it. America has no reason or obligation to tolerate this. If America doesn’t deport the tens of millions it needs to, it will cease to exist as a nation.”

In 2024, there were 3.6 million people residing in the U.S. on temporary visas, such as diplomats, exchange visitors, students, and temporary workers, according to the Department of Homeland Security. This does not include people with tourist visas. An additional 12.8 million people were green card holders.

Experts noted that the 55 million people with U.S. visas includes tens of millions who hold tourist visas, which can last up to 10 years, depending on one’s nationality. The State Department issued nearly 6.5 million tourist visas last year.

“I think no one would consider a tourist who comes to the U.S. for a week or two a U.S. resident,” said Michelle Mittelstadt, a spokesperson for the Migration Policy Institute.

A Pew Research Center report released Thursday estimated that in 2023 there were 14 million people living in the U.S. illegally. Other recent estimates cite similar figures. The Center for Immigration Studies, which calls for restricting immigration, found the number to be 14.2 million as of July. On the lower end, the Center for Migration Studies estimated 12.2 million as of mid-2023.

Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.

By GRAHAM LEE BREWER

Just days ahead of the 70th anniversary of his killing, the federal government made public thousands of pages of records Friday on the lynching of Emmett Till.

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The records in the National Archives, released by the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board, detail how the Justice Department, the FBI, and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights responded to the 1955 killing of 14-year-old Till. The records were released in accordance with the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Collection Act of 2018.

“Our thoughts are with the Till family,” the National Archives and Records Administration said in a news release.

FILE – This undated photo shows Emmett Louis Till, who was kidnapped, tortured and killed in the Mississippi Delta in August 1955 after witnesses claimed he whistled at a white woman working in a store. (AP Photo, File)

The Chicago teenager was falsely accused of whistling at a white woman at a grocery store in rural Mississippi. Four days later, Till was abducted from a great-uncle’s home in the predawn hours by Roy Bryant and John William “J. W.” Milam. The white men tortured and killed Till in a barn in a neighboring county, and his body was later found in the Tallahatchie River.

Bryant and Milam were charged with murder in Till’s death but were acquitted by an all-white-male jury. Bryant and Milam later confessed to a reporter that they kidnapped and killed Till.

His killing galvanized the Civil Rights Movement after Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, insisted on an open casket so that the country could see the brutality. In 2022, President Joe Biden signed a bill named for Till that made lynching a federal hate crime. And in 2023, Biden signed a proclamation establishing a national monument honoring Till and his mother.

FILE – Mamie Till-Mobley weeps at her son’s funeral on Sept. 6, 1955, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Chicago Sun-Times, File)

Many of the records have never been seen by the public. They include reports, telegrams, case files and correspondences and documents from the NAACP, the White House, and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, among others.

The records can be viewed in the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Collection on the National Archives and Records Administration website.

A member of the Till family did not immediately return a request for comment.

By DARANEE BALACHANDAR, LIZZY ALSPACH, CAT MURPHY and AIDAN HUGHES / Howard Center for Investigative Journalism

When a BNSF freight train carrying six cars of liquefied petroleum gas derailed near Manuelito, New Mexico, in 2024, the resulting fire shut down more than 100 miles of an interstate highway.

The train carried enough flammable material to send a column of fire and black smoke high into the thin, dry air — but not enough to qualify as a “high-hazard flammable train” under federal rules.

That meant the train was not obligated to follow federal safety rules that require high-hazard flammable trains, or HHFTs, to operate at slower speeds, and use safer braking systems and tank cars.

It also meant BNSF was not obligated to include the train in federally-mandated reports to New Mexico emergency management officials estimating the movement of HHFTs through the state.

Federal safety investigators and some lawmakers want to change that. For more than a decade, the National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates major train accidents, has tried and failed to convince federal regulators to make HHFT safety rules apply to a much larger number of trains. In an investigation report on the Manuelito disaster released in June, the NTSB again called for changes.

The current definition of an HHFT only covers trains carrying large quantities of flammable liquids, such as crude oil or alcohol. The safety board wants to expand the definition to include liquefied petroleum gas and other flammable gases.

The issue generated intense interest from lawmakers following the catastrophic derailment of a Norfolk Southern train that caught fire, resulting in the release of a toxic plume of vinyl chloride — a flammable gas — over East Palestine, Ohio, in 2023. The train wasn’t classified as an HHFT, even though it was carrying three loaded tank cars of flammable liquid. That’s because the federal definition requires a train to carry at least 35 loaded cars of flammable liquid — or at least 20 cars in a row – to qualify.

In the wake of that accident, some members of Congress filed legislation that overlaps with the NTSB recommendation and goes one step further. The DERAIL Act, introduced by Rep. Chris Deluzio, D-Pa., would define an HHFT as one carrying even a single car of a flammable gas or a flammable liquid.

“I think what we saw in the East Palestine derailment is a pretty blunt reality that even just a single train carrying something flammable and toxic — say, like vinyl chloride — can cause a lot of harm to people who live near the tracks,” said Deluzio, whose Pennsylvania district sits just across the border from East Palestine.

The bill stalled in the House after being introduced in 2023, but Deluzio reintroduced it in January. Supporters say the legislation, which has not moved in Congress, could provide U.S. communities with a more accurate picture of risk from train derailments.

That’s because there are many more trains carrying small amounts of flammable material than there are trains carrying large amounts, according to a Howard Center for Investigative Journalism analysis of data that details the precise movement of freight trains.

This image provided by the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism shows a Class 2.1 hazardous material placard, warning of flammable gases, on a tank car carrying liquified petroleum gas sits on the railway tracks in Blaine, Wash. on March 3, 2025. (Daranee Balachandar/Howard Center for Investigative Journalism via AP)

Federal transportation officials have recognized rail as the “safest land-based method of moving large quantities of chemicals over long distances” when compared with movement on trucks.

The Association of American Railroads — an industry lobbyist and trade group with significant sway over rail safety practices — “has concerns with a number of the provisions in (the DERAIL Act) and similar bills,” spokesperson Jessica Kahanek said. The industry follows its own protocol that limits the speed of trains carrying more than 20 cars of hazardous material, she noted.

The association is open to discussing the HHFT definition, but changes “must be driven by an assessment of actual risk,” Kahanek said, and must allow railroads “to continue safely delivering the goods Americans depend on each day.”

Railroads closely protect real-time and location-specific information about the movement of freight trains carrying hazardous materials, saying public disclosure presents a public safety risk.

To analyze the potential impact of the proposed change to the definition of HHFTs, the Howard Center relied on data from RailState LLC, a company that independently captures detailed information on train movements.

The company has placed optical sensors on private land at key locations across the North American rail network. The sensors take pictures of each passing train. They use artificial intelligence to extract information about the cargo, identifying hazardous materials by reading warning placards displayed on rail cars.

The firm sells its information to government agencies in the U.S. and Canada, as well as to shippers and other clients.

Only the railroads — and not the U.S. government — know the precise number and real-time location of HHFTs. It’s not possible, even with RailState’s data, to precisely compare the number of trains that meet the current definition to the number of HHFTs that would meet the proposed definition.

One major reason: both definitions only consider loaded tank cars, and RailState’s data cannot automatically determine whether a tank car is loaded — or only contains chemical residue.

What is clear from the RailState data, however, is that there are many more trains with a smaller number of cars with hazmat placards indicating the presence of a flammable gas or a flammable/combustible liquid than there are trains carrying a large number of cars with placards for a flammable/combustible liquid.

The Howard Center counted trains that passed RailState sensors over the last six months with at least one car with a hazmat placard indicating it carried a flammable gas or a flammable/combustible liquid. Then the Howard Center counted the number of trains with at least 35 cars bearing a placard for a flammable/combustible liquid, and compared the two numbers.

At RailState sensors located near the East Palestine accident site, the data captured six times as many trains with at least one car of flammable gases or flammable/combustible liquids.

At the sensor closest to the Manuelito crash site, there were five times as many trains.

At the company’s U.S.-Canadian border sensor in Blaine, Washington, there was a 16-fold difference.

Across the RailState sensor network, the smallest difference observed by the Howard Center was a three-fold difference — at a sensor near the U.S.-Mexico border in Laredo, Texas.

While RailState does not monitor the entire U.S. rail system, the analysis showed a tenfold difference, on average, across its sensors in the United States. The company has nearly 100 U.S. sensors located in 18 states, along with more than 150 across Canada.

HHFT Derailments

In Custer, Washington, along a stretch of rail just south of RailState’s Canadian-border sensor in Blaine, Jennifer Reich was cleaning the kitchen floor of her art studio in December 2020 when she saw a black smoke plume emerge from the railroad tracks across the street from her shop.

A BNSF train carrying 106 cars of petroleum crude oil derailed near the end of its trip from the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota to a refinery in nearby Cherry Point, Washington. Nearly 30,000 gallons of oil caught fire and burned uncontrolled for two hours, according to the NTSB, prompting Reich and her neighbors to evacuate.

The derailment caused at least $1.5 million in damages, according to the NTSB, but no one was injured.

“That was very lucky because it could have been a whole lot worse,” said Reich, the owner of Whimsy Glass Art Studio.

Over the last decade, at least six trains that met the HHFT classification derailed — including the incident in Custer, a Howard Center review of federal accident data found.

— A BNSF train on Sept. 19, 2015, spilled nearly 50,000 gallons (190,000 liters) of ethanol near Lesterville, South Dakota, after it derailed on a small bridge. The train carried 96 loaded cars of ethanol, according to investigation reports.

— A Union Pacific train with 96 loaded tank cars derailed in Fort Worth, Texas, on April 24, 2019, and leaked around 65,000 gallons (246,000 liters) of denatured ethanol, which ignited and formed pool fires. Some of the denatured ethanol entered a tributary of the Trinity River, according to investigation reports.

— On Feb. 13, 2020, a mudslide led to a CSX Transportation train derailment near Draffin, Kentucky, and released more than 38,000 gallons (144,000 liters) of denatured ethanol, which combined with diesel fuel from the derailed locomotives and ignited. The train carried 96 loaded tank cars, according to the investigation report.

— On January 8, 2022, 37 tank cars of a BNSF train derailed and 28 of them released around 601,000 gallons (2.27 million liters) of denatured ethanol in Oklaunion, Texas. The leaked ethanol resulted in a pool fire that burned for around four hours, according to investigation reports.

— On March 10, 2017, a Union Pacific train derailed carrying 98 loaded tank cars, releasing 322,000 gallons (1.25 million liters) of ethanol that caught fire near Graettinger, Iowa.

The U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration proposed a federal regulation classifying HHFTs in 2014, a year after one of the worst rail disasters in modern North American history.

In 2013, a train carrying more than 70 cars of flammable Bakken crude oil derailed in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, Canada, killing 47 people and leveling dozens of buildings.

The accident helped popularize the nickname safety and environmental activists use to describe the movement of large quantities of flammable liquid by rail: “bomb trains.”

Alaysia Ezzard, Ijeoma Opara, Molecule Jongwilai, Tiasia Saunders, Natalie Weger and Marijke Friedman of the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism contributed to this story.

The Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland is funded by a grant from the Scripps Howard Foundation in honor of newspaper pioneer Roy W. Howard.