Ron DeSantis has launched his 2024 presidential campaign with a Twitter announcement plagued by technical glitches.
He filed a declaration of candidacy with the US federal electoral commission on Wednesday and then announced his move in an online chat with Twitter chief executive Elon Musk.
But the audio stream crashed repeatedly, making it almost impossible for most followers to hear the 44-year-old Florida governor most of the time.
He said: “American decline is not inevitable – it is a choice.
“And we should choose a new direction – a path that will lead to American revitalisation.
“I am running for president of the United States to lead our great American comeback.”
Mr DeSantis becomes the latest in a crowded Republican contest to decide whether the party will move on from Donald Trump in 2024 as it aims to retake the White House from Democrat Joe Biden.
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Those already in the GOP field include Trump, former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, South Carolina senator Tim Scott, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson.
Former vice president Mike Pence is also expected to announce his candidacy in the coming weeks.
Trump is leading in early polls but Mr DeSantis has generated some interest among Republican primary voters by presenting himself as a younger and more electable version of the 76-year-old former president.
In a chat with Mr Musk that lasted for more than an hour, Mr DeSantis did not mention Trump, but said: “Buckle up when I get in there, because the status quo is not acceptable”.
However, those trying to listen to his announcement had to battle being kicked off the feed, hearing microphone feedback, hold music and other issues.
Mr Musk blamed the popularity of the event and “straining” servers, adding: “You can tell by the mistakes that it’s real.”
But Mr DeSantis’s rivals were less generous, with Mark Harris, lead strategist for Ms Haley’s campaign, saying: “Failed soft launch? Check. Failed announcement? Double check.
“We look forward to Ron DeSantis’s failed campaign.”
Trump adviser Chris LaCivita added: “This is a disaster – not surprising.”
Hours before Mr DeSantis announced his candidacy, Trump said on social media: “He desperately needs a personality transplant and, to the best of my knowledge, they are not medically available yet.”
Under Mr DeSantis’s watch, Florida has passed numerous so-called anti-woke laws, such as the heavily-criticised “don’t say gay” bill and a ban on teaching critical race theory.
He signed a law allowing Florida residents to carry concealed firearms without a permit, backed measures that weaken press freedom, and took control of a college he said was indoctrinating students with leftist ideas.
The Sunshine State has also been given new restrictions on abortion with a ban on terminations after six weeks– before most women even realise they are pregnant.
Mr DeSantis also removed an elected prosecutor who had vowed not to charge people under the abortion restrictions or doctors who provide gender-affirming care.
Donald Trump has said he wants to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un again.
Speaking at the White House as he held talks with the new South Korean president Lee Jae Myung, Mr Trump told reporters: “I’d like to meet him this year… I look forward to meeting with Kim Jong Un in the appropriate future.”
“I’d like to have a meeting. I got along great with him,” President Trump said, adding they “became very friendly” during his first term in office.
“We think we can do something in that regard,” he said, adding that he would like to help the relationship between the two Koreas.
Image: Trump and Kim at the demilitarized zone in June 2019. Pic: Reuters
Mr Trump and Mr Kim held three meetings between 2018 and 2019 during Mr Trump’s first term and exchanged a number of, what the president called, “beautiful” letters.
In June 2019, Mr Trump briefly stepped into North Korea from the demilitarized zone (DMZ) with South Korea.
The US president on Monday responded to a question about whether he would return to the DMZ by fondly recalling the last time he did so.
“Remember when I walked across the line and everyone went crazy?” especially the Secret Service, Mr Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
But “I loved it”, Mr Trump said. He added he felt safe because he had a good relationship with Mr Kim.
Image: Mr Trump met South Korea’s Lee Jae Myung at the Oval Office on Monday. Pic: Reuters
Mr Trump became the first sitting American president to set foot on North Korean soil six years ago.
However, little progress was made in curbing North Korea’s nuclear programme, and Mr Trump acknowledged in March this year that Pyongyang is a “nuclear power”.
Kim possible: Is Trump seeking another ‘Hermit Kingdom’ handshake?
It was Donald Trump’s first meeting with the new president of South Korea.
A highly unconventional platform for glowing words about the North Korean one.
He said he got along “great” with Kim Jong Un and would like to meet him again “this year”.
The US president’s renewed interest in North Korea appears less about policy and more about theatrics.
The historic image of President Trump stepping on to North Korean soil in 2018 gave him global headlines.
The timing is curious – North Korea has been busy polishing its nuclear credentials and vowing not to disarm without serious concessions.
In other words, Pyongyang is holding the same cards it held four years ago, only now they’re shinier.
But Trump seems eager to revive his image as the only US president bold, or brash, enough to break bread with the ruler of the “Hermit Kingdom”.
Supporters call it visionary diplomacy; critics call it reality TV masquerading as foreign policy.
Either way, President Trump clearly sees value in the spectacle.
Since Mr Trump’s first-term meetings with Mr Kim ended, North Korea has shown no interest in returning to talks.
The White House said in June that Mr Trump would welcome communications with Mr Kim.
The attempts at rapprochement come after the election in South Korea of Mr Lee, who has pledged to reopen dialogue with North Korea.
As a gesture of engagement in June, Mr Lee suspended South Korean loudspeakers blasting music and messages into the North at the DMZ along their shared border.
Analysts say, however, that engaging North Korea will likely be more difficult for both Mr Lee and Mr Trump than it was in the president’s first term.
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US rapper Lil Nas X has pleaded not guilty after being charged with assaulting a police officer while walking in downtown Los Angeles in his underwear.
The musician, real name Montero Lamar Hill, was taken to hospital and arrested after police responded to reports of a naked man shortly before 6am on Thursday.
The district attorney’s office said on Monday that Lil Nas X faces three counts of battery with injury on a police officer and one count of resisting an executive officer.
He was being held on a $75,000 (£55,457) bail, conditional on attending drug treatment. It is not immediately clear whether he had posted it and been released yet.
He is set to return to court on 15 September for his next pre-trial hearing.
Image: Pic: AP
During the hearing on Monday, Hill’s lawyer Christy O’Connor told the judge he had led a “remarkable” life, adding: “Assuming the allegations here are true, this is an absolute aberration in this person’s life.
“Nothing like this has ever happened to him.”
A law enforcement source told Sky’s US partner network, NBC News, on Thursday that the Old Town Road and Industry Baby hitmaker punched an officer twice in the face during the encounter.
The source added officers were unsure whether he was on any substances or in mental distress.
NBC News cited TMZ footage where Hill was seen walking down the middle of Ventura Boulevard at 4am on Thursday in a pair of white briefs and cowboy boots.
In the videos, Hill tells a driver to “come to the party” in one clip and in another tells the person: “Didn’t I tell you to put the phone down?”
“Uh oh, someone’s going to have to pay for that,” Hill says as he continues to walk away.
In some clips, Hill struts as if he’s on a catwalk, posing for onlookers, and at one point he places an orange traffic cone on his head.
A man who was wrongly deported from the US to El Salvador has been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) again.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a 30-year-old originally from El Salvador, handed himself into the ICE field office in Baltimore, Maryland, for a check-in on Monday.
The visit was a mandatory condition of his release from federal custody earlier this weekend. However, in a court filing on Saturday, his lawyers said they expected Garcia would be detained again upon attending.
Garcia is charged in an indictment, filed in federal court in Tennessee, with conspiring to transport illegal immigrants into the US.
Image: An emotional Kilmar Abrego Garcia appears outside the ICE Baltimore field office on 25 August 2025. Pic: Reuters
According to a court filing by his lawyers, immigration officials made an offer to Garcia to be deported to Costa Rica in exchange for pleading guilty to the charges.
Otherwise, they would seek to deport him to Uganda.
Image: Pics: Reuters
Speaking at a news conference outside the ICE office on Monday morning, Garcia said via a translator: “This administration has hit us hard, but I want to tell you guys something: God is with us, and God will never leave us.
“God will bring justice to all the injustice we are suffering.”
Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, one of Garcia’s lawyers, also said: “There was no need to take him into ICE detention… the only reason they took him into detention was to punish him.”
A judge later ruled Garcia could not be deported after he filed a challenge asking to be allowed due process to fight any removal attempt.
Judge Paula Xinis ruled the 30-year-old must remain detained in the US until she can hold an evidentiary hearing – set for Wednesday.
She added there appeared to be “several grounds” for her to have jurisdiction to exercise relief, including that Uganda has not agreed to offer Garcia protections, such as being able to walk freely, being given refugee status, and not being re-deported to El Salvador.
After initially being detained in Maryland – where he lived with his American wife and children – by ICE in March, Garcia was sent to El Salvador, where he was then imprisoned in the country’s maximum security Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT).
This was despite an immigration judge’s 2019 order granting him protection from deportation after finding he was likely to be persecuted by local gangs if he was returned to his native country.
Image: Garcia was first detained by ICE in March. Pic: CASA/AP
The Trump administration admitted deporting Garcia was an “administrative error”, but said at the time they could not bring him back as they do not have jurisdiction over El Salvador.
The criminal indictment alleges Garcia worked with at least five co-conspirators to bring immigrants to the US illegally and transport them from the border to other destinations in the country.
Minutes after his release on Friday, officials notified Garcia they intended to deport him to Uganda.
Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem, US President Donald Trump, vice president JD Vance and other officials claim Garcia was a member of MS-13 – an international criminal gang formed by immigrants who had fled El Salvador‘s civil war to protect Salvadoran immigrants from rival gangs.