The US president’s second day golfing at one of his courses has also met protests around the country.

United States President Donald Trump says he has spoken with the leaders of Cambodia and Thailand in a bid to end their border fighting, on the second day of his golfing trip in Scotland, where he owns and is promoting two courses.

“Just spoke to the Prime Minister of Cambodia relative to stopping the War with Thailand,” said Trump in a post on his Truth Social network on Saturday. Trump, who was playing at his Turnberry resort with son Eric and US ambassador to the UK Warren Stephens, said soon after in a new post, “I have just spoken to the Acting Prime Minister of Thailand, and it was a very good conversation.”

On Saturday, the death toll on both sides stood at 32, with more than 130 injured. Trump’s announcement came as clashes, now in their third day, continued in the countries’ coastal regions where they meet on the Gulf of Thailand, about 250 kilometres (160 miles) southwest of the main front lines.

Tensions flared over long-contested ancient temple sites before fighting spread along the countries’ rural border region, marked by a ridge of hills surrounded by wild jungle and agricultural land where locals farm rubber and rice.

The decades-old conflict between Thailand and Cambodia, centred around a contested section of their shared border, re-erupted on Thursday after a landmine explosion along the border wounded five Thai soldiers.

“Thailand, like Cambodia, wants to have an immediate Ceasefire, and PEACE,” said Trump on Saturday.

“I am now going to relay that message back to the Prime Minister of Cambodia. After speaking to both Parties, Ceasefire, Peace, and Prosperity seems to be a natural. We will soon see!”

Advertisement

Trump also indicated he would not move forward on trade deals with either nation until fighting has stopped.

‘Even though he has Scottish roots, he’s a disgrace’

Trump’s visit to Scotland, where his late mother hailed from, has met protests, both at the golf course where he is playing and elsewhere around the UK.

Hundreds of demonstrators gathered on Saturday in front of the US Consulate in the capital Edinburgh. Speakers told the crowd that Trump was not welcome and criticised British Prime Minister Keir Starmer for striking a recent trade deal to avoid stiff US tariffs on goods imported from the UK.

“The vast majority of Scots have this sort of feeling about Trump that, even though he has Scottish roots, he’s a disgrace,” said Mark Gorman, 63. Gorman, who works in advertising, said he came out “because I have deep disdain for Donald Trump and everything that he stands for.”

Protests also took place in other cities as environmental activists, opponents of Israel’s war on Gaza, staunchly supported by the Trump administration, and pro-Ukraine groups loosely formed a “Stop Trump Coalition”.

“I think there are far too many countries that are feeling the pressure of Trump and that they feel that they have to accept him and we should not accept him here,” said June Osbourne, 52, a photographer and photo historian.

“I don’t think I could just stand by and not do anything,” said Amy White, 15, of Edinburgh, who attended with her parents. She held a cardboard sign that said “We don’t negotiate with fascists.”

Other demonstrators held signs of pictures with Trump and Jeffrey Epstein as the feeding frenzy in the US media, and backlash from his MAGA base, over files in the case has increasingly frustrated the president.

At a protest Saturday in Aberdeen, Scottish Parliament member Maggie Chapman told the crowd of hundreds: “We stand in solidarity, not only against Trump but against everything he and his politics stand for.”

While golf is the main purpose of his trip, Trump also plans to talk trade with Starmer and Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president.

The Trump family will also visit another one of their courses near Aberdeen in northeastern Scotland, before returning to Washington on Tuesday.

US House speaker Mike Johnson has waded into the Epstein files saga that is roiling Donald Trump’s conservative base – by calling on the justice department to release the Epstein files.

Johnson, a key ally of the US president, was asked about the controversy during an interview for a rightwing podcast. “It’s a very delicate subject, but we should put everything out there and let the people decide it,” Johnson told Benny Johnson, in comments released on Tuesday. “I agree with the sentiment that we need to put it out there.”

Referring to a comment attorney general Pam Bondi made to Fox News this year that Epstein’s client list was “sitting on my desk right now to review”, Johnson said: “She needs to come forward and explain that to everybody.

“We need the DoJ focusing on the major priorities. So let’s get this thing resolved,” the speaker added.

The comments put Johnson at odds with Trump, who has defended Bondi’s handling of the case.

Here is more on this and other key Trump stories of the day:

Catching up? Here’s what happened on 14 July 2025.

The fallout between the US president, Donald Trump, and tech billionaire Elon Musk has reached a new low, with Musk declaring this weekend that he will bankroll a new political party to rival the president.

Musk, the world’s richest man, only departed from the White House this May but has been critical of Trump’s signature policy bill, which he has described as “utterly insane and destructive”.

“Today, the America party is formed to give you back your freedom,” Musk wrote on X on Saturday, adding that: “By a factor of 2 to 1, you want a new political party, and you shall have it! When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy.”

Here are the key stories:

Catching up? Here’s what happened on 4 July 2025.

During heated oral arguments on Monday morning, the Wisconsin supreme court appeared poised to find an 1849 law banning most abortions cannot be enforced.

The legal status of abortion in Wisconsin has been contested since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade and ended the right to abortion nationwide, triggering bans across the country – including in Wisconsin, where a 175-year-old ban immediately went into effect.

Democrats in Wisconsin have seized on abortion as a campaign issue, with Justice Janet Protasiewicz expressing her support for abortion rights and winning a seat on the court in spring 2023. Protasiewicz’s election to the court helped flip the ideological balance on the bench, which is now controlled by a narrow liberal majority.

It is highly unlikely the liberal-controlled court will uphold the ban.

The 1849 statute, which was nullified by Roe v Wade and then reanimated when the landmark decision was overturned, declares that ending “the life of an unborn child” is a felony, except when required to save the life of the mother. In July 2023, a Dane county judge ruled that the 1849 ban applies only to feticide and not “consensual” abortion, citing a previous ruling that interpreted the statute as an anti-feticide law, and in September, providers including Planned Parenthood resumed offering abortion care.

The Sheboygan county district attorney Joel Urmanski appealed the ruling, which is now before the Wisconsin supreme court.

“The position of the circuit court below … is ultimately indefensible,” said Matthew Thome, an attorney representing Urmanski, during his opening argument. Thome argued that the 1849 law should be interpreted to “prohibit consensual abortions from conception until birth, subject to an exception when it is necessary to save the life of the mother”.

Justice Jill Karofsky interrogated Urmanski’s interpretation of the law, asking if it would provide exceptions for rape, incest, the health of the mother, or fetal abnormalities.

“Just to be clear, a 12-year-old girl who was sexually assaulted by her father and as a result, became pregnant, under your interpretation … she would be forced to carry her pregnancy to term?” asked Karofsky. She noted that the “penalty for aborting after a sexual assault would be more severe than the penalty for the sexual assault”.

In response to a question about the medical consequences of a ban, Thome responded that he was unsure, given that he is “not a doctor”.

“I fear that what you are asking this court to do is to sign the death warrants of women and children and pregnant people in this state, because under your interpretation, they could all be denied life saving medical care, while the medical professionals who are charged with taking care of them are forced to sit idly by,” said Karofsky.

The court weighed the question of whether laws that were passed regulating abortion while Roe was in effect “impliedly repealed” the 1849 ban and rendered it unenforceable.

“All of those statues” passed after 1973 and before it was overturned, “just go to the dust pile?” asked Karofsky.

Justice Brian Hagedorn, a conservative-leaning judge, argued, of the 1849 ban, that “the law is still there”, adding that “the judiciary doesn’t get to edit laws, the judiciary doesn’t get to rewrite them, we didn’t delete it, we prevented its enforcement”.

The assistant attorney general Hannah Jurss disagreed, arguing that “there is nothing in the text of these statutes that says in the event that Roe is overturned we somehow go back to the old law and throw out all of the new ones,” drawing a distinction between Wisconsin’s more than a century old law and “trigger” laws passed in certain states that were specifically designed to go into effect after Roe v Wade was overturned.

A separate case, which the Wisconsin supreme court has also agreed to hear, would decide whether the right to abortion is protected under the state’s constitution – possibly opening the door to challenge other laws regulating abortion in the state.

View image in fullscreen ‘Masculinity is taking action,’ says one organizer. ‘Masculinity is caring for the people that you love.’ Photograph: Guardian Design

“Oh, no, no, I think you’re trying to get in contact with my wife.”

That’s what a man in Florida recently told an activist who knocked on his door to talk about abortion rights. But the man was wrong. The activist, who represented a group called Men4Choice, was there to talk to him, because the group is dedicated to getting more men who support abortion rights involved in the fight for them.

“They have to get off the sidelines,” said Dewayne Martin, the youth organizing director for Men4Choice, who relayed the activist’s account to the Guardian. “They have to become the foot soldiers of this movement.”

Two years after the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade and allowed more than a dozen states to ban almost all abortions, most men in the United States support abortion rights. Within months of the decision, 65% of men between the ages of 18 and 29 said they supported abortion being legal in all or most cases. But Men4Choice calls these young men “passively pro-choice”.

Young women still support abortion rights at higher rates than their male peers – and young men are just not as motivated to take a public stand on the issue. Just 43% of gen Z men say that abortion rights are a “critical issue”, compared with 68% of gen Z women, the political scientist Melissa Deckman found in her forthcoming book The Politics of Gen Z. This indifference has consequences: compared with women, men between the ages of 18 and 44 are less likely to say that abortion is motivating them to vote in the 2024 elections, according to polling from the firm PerryUndem. They are also less likely to say that the state of abortion rights will affect whom they vote for.

Men4Choice’s goal is to get these young men to vote, canvass and otherwise act on their beliefs – instead of leaving the work to women.

“When we think about our organizing strategy, it’s: help men see the harm,” said Oren Jacobson, a Men4Choice co-founder. “Help men understand how this issue is not just a woman’s issue. It’s not just about abortion. It’s about freedom, it’s about power, it’s about control. It is an issue that impacts all of us, our families, our loved ones.”

View image in fullscreen Oren Jacobson co-founded Men4Choice. Photograph: Nam Y Huh/AP

It affects young men’s futures, too. Compared with young men whose partners got pregnant and gave birth, young men whose partners had abortions are almost four times more likely to graduate college. Young men who have been involved in an abortion are also more likely to make more money than those whose partners gave birth. Overall, an estimated one in five men has impregnated somebody who has had an abortion.

Democrats have made abortion rights one of their central issues in the 2024 elections, while Republicans – wary of how outrage over Roe’s downfall probably lost them a much heralded “red wave” in the 2022 midterms – have tried to downplay the issue and their own role in overturning Roe. However, as they’ve backed away, rightwing commentators and politicians have become far more adept at discussing masculinity than their leftwing counterparts, experts have told the Guardian. These rightwing public figures are not only willing to acknowledge that young men are struggling – with getting into college, with their finances, with their mental health – but also to portray these struggles as the result of women’s growing social and political power.

This kind of talk – which is so popular it has essentially spawned a cottage industry – is believed to be a major reason why, despite their past support for liberal causes, so many young men are now pivoting towards conservatism (and potentially towards supporting Donald Trump).

“It feels good. It’s telling men: ‘You’re the priority. You’re the superior being,’” said Davan’te Jennings, a Men4Choice fellow who lives in Georgia. “‘You act like this, this is when you get all the cars, the women, the mansion. Grind 24/7. Don’t think about mental health. Depression isn’t real.’”

In Jennings’ view, such “toxic masculinity” is part of the reason why young men don’t feel like they can be openly passionate about abortion rights. He hears references to it all the time: when Jennings talks to men through Men4Choice, the men often use phrases like “to be a man” and “the manly thing to do”. Expressing emotions – including caring about abortion rights – doesn’t fit into that mold of masculinity.

View image in fullscreen An anti-abortion activist stands in front of abortion rights activists outside the supreme court in June, the anniversary of the Dobbs decision. Photograph: The Washington Post/Getty Images

Men4Choice, then, aims to reframe how abortion fits into antiquated and restrictive notions of masculinity. “Masculinity is taking action,” Martin said. “Masculinity is caring for the people that you love. Masculinity is ensuring that you are building a pathway towards freedom for you and your people, and realizing that those two things are not separate.”

Christian Shephard, a 26-year-old Men4Choice fellow who serves as an organizer for the group in central Florida, tries to open up conversations about abortion rights with men by discussing how some men treat women, including how they may objectify or sexualize women.

“It may sound like that has nothing to do with reproductive justice, but it certainly does,” Shephard said. “There is a clear connection between how people talk about women and how these [anti-abortion] laws are being created to deprive them of fundamental rights.”

In a recent Men4Choice “community conversation” – virtual and in-person discussions where fellows are expected to bring male friends – one man claimed he didn’t have to take any responsibility for abortion because “women should keep their legs closed”, Jennings recalled.

“That was literally the words he used,” Jennings said. “Most of us who are pro-choice on the call are like: ‘Now we see why it’s important to dismantle that way of thinking.’”

Jacobson launched Men4Choice in 2015, but the group has exploded in the years since Roe’s demise. The Men4Choice fellowship program, which runs three times a year and is training 70 men between the ages of 18 and 28 this summer, has almost tripled in size since the summer of 2022. Many Men4Choice fellows are based in Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina – all states with abortion bans.

Though he was raised in a Democratic area of Miami, Martin, 22, said he hadn’t acted on his support for abortion rights until 2020. He was a high school senior working on organizing around school boards when a friend told him about Men4Choice.

“It was in that moment that I realized, despite my being raised by a community of women who have served as my village and have made my life possible in several ways, I’ve never taken a direct action to support them on this issue,” recalled Martin, who became a Men4Choice fellow that year.

View image in fullscreen Doug Emhoff at a roundtable discussion with advocates for reproductive rights, including representatives of Men4Choice, in Miami in October. Photograph: Rebecca Blackwell/AP

In the months before Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee for president, Men4Choice partnered with Doug Emhoff, Harris’s husband and the second gentleman of the United States, to host events centered on energizing men to fight for abortion rights. (“This is an issue of fairness to women. Women are dying,” Emhoff told NBC in May. “It’s affecting men’s ability to plan their lives.”) Now, the group is trying to mobilize male volunteers and funnel them towards partner organizations working on the ground.

“Guys go where their buddies are,” Jacobson said. “You have to create an ecosystem of men to get them to show up.”

Men4Choice is also heavily focusing on Florida, which has banned abortion past six weeks of pregnancy – before many people even know they’re pregnant – and where voters will decide in November whether to amend the state constitution to protect abortion rights.

Abortion-rights ballot measures previously have succeeded in Republican strongholds, such as Ohio and Kentucky. Exit polls found that 73% of male voters between the ages of 18 and 29 voted in favor of the Ohio measure – a significant share of voters, but still less than the 81% of young female voters who supported it.

The Florida amendment must garner 60% of the vote to pass. This fall, Men4Choice wants to reach 400,000 voters through phone and text banking, according to Martin. The group also wants to hold 100 community conversations with men.

There is, however, a limit to the organization’s activism. Men4Choice focuses on men who already support abortion rights or are at least open to having a discussion about it – not men who are adamantly opposed to the procedure. “If there’s not an understanding or a clear line of wanting to understand,” Jennings said, “and we’re just going to sit here and get into a debate – it’s pointless.”