President Trump is in Scotland.
But he can't escape questions about Jeffrey Epstein.
You're making a very big thing over something that's not a big thing.
I'm Aisha Roscoe. And I'm Scott Simon, and this is Up First from NPR News.
Trump and his allies call it Alligator Alcatraz, the immigration detention center in Florida's Everglades.
Now, people being held there say guards are abusive.
They chained me to the ground.
I was in the sunlight from one o 'clock to like seven o 'clock in the evening.
This is unhuman. What do officials say about these allegations?
Also, there's anxiety about where the economy is headed for sure, but the stock market is hitting record highs.
Why? Stay with us. We'll have the news you need to start your weekend.
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Go to GoodRx .com slash UpFirst. In Scotland, the home country of his late mother, President Trump, will be playing golf, promoting the golf resorts he owns there, and meeting with British and European leaders.
But questions about other things have followed him there.
Gossett, the Federal Reserve, and his dead former friend, the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
And there are protesters.
And Piers -Lauren Freire is at a demonstration in Edinburgh.
Joins us from there.
Lauren, thanks for being with us.
Thanks for having me, Scott.
What kind of welcome is the president receiving in Scotland?
Well, I'm outside the U .S. consulate in Edinburgh where several hundred people gathered today.
There are Scottish bagpipers.
One of them is holding a sign that says, at least this bag of hot air serves a purpose.
There are Palestinian flags over the crowd.
I also see a sign that says Scotland is already great, a reference to, you know, making anything great again.
Protest organizers here call this a festival of resistance.
Here's protester Niamh Convin -Smith.
Why on earth is this convicted felon allowed to come into our country and play golf when the people do not like him?
A recent poll found that more than 70 percent of people in Scotland have an unfavorable view of Trump.
That's higher than across the entire United Kingdom.
People here say they're motivated by Trump's climate policy.
In fact, some climate protesters actually abseiled, belayed themselves on ropes down off a bridge here last night.
Others say they're protesting U .S. policy in the Middle East. Many Scots are also angry at the cost to taxpayers of Trump's visit here, and there are even a few Jeffrey Epstein posters in the mix here.
A topic that the president might have hoped to leave on this side of the Atlantic, I should think.
Probably, but it's one of the things that the traveling press asked him about moments after Air Force One touched down here last night.
Trump denied ever being briefed that his name might be in the Epstein files.
He said he has the power to pardon Epstein's ex, Ghislaine Maxwell, who was in prison, but that he hasn't thought about doing that.
And he said if you're going to talk about Epstein...
Talk about all of his friends.
Talk about the hedge fund guys that were with him all the time.
Don't talk about Trump.
So Trump was dodging questions about Epstein here.
But it's not just the media talking about this.
Scottish protesters stealthily put up a sign outside of one of Trump's golf resorts here this week that says, quote, twinned with Epstein Island.
The president does have deep family ties to Scotland.
As we mentioned, his late mother was born and raised there.
Do Scots like to consider him a native son?
Yeah, I mean, his mother was born on the Isle of Lewis in the outer Hebrides Islands, A place that Trump once on a visit called Sirius Scotland.
Her first language was actually Gaelic.
Trump has long owned golf resorts here, so Scots have been well acquainted with him for a long time, even before he became president.
Trump says he loves Scotland, but he's also been critical of its environment policy, for example.
He's called for the country to scrap what he calls windmills, renewable energy wind turbines.
He considers them an eyesore.
He's called on Scotland to double down on energy from fossil fuels.
instead. Here's an Edinburgh bartender.
I spoke with Cam Page.
I mean, the first thing I saw going on about was the windmills and all that.
I think it's a bit weird. The first thing he does when he comes here is just moan and complain.
He kind of just wants Trump to butt out of his country's energy policy.
This is a private presidential trip, but there is some business and politics mixed with it.
He's meeting with British and European leaders.
What's on the president's agenda?
agenda. Yeah, so Trump will be meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
You'll recall they announced a limited trade deal back in May.
Starmer may press Trump for a further reduction of tariffs on British steel.
The U .S. president is also meeting with the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
The U .S. and the EU are still negotiating their trade deal.
Trump said the chances of that working out before an August 1st deadline for more tariffs is quote about 50 -50.
As you said this is a private trip by President Trump.
He's actually coming back to the UK in a couple months in September for a state visit with King Charles that'll be at Windsor Castle near London.
That trip will be full of pomp and pageantry.
You might recall one of Trump's prior visits entailed protesters floating a giant orange Trump baby blimp over London.
We'll We'll be watching for anything like that here and also covering his trip to Windsor in September as well.
And Piers Lauren Freer in Edinburgh.
Thanks so much. Thanks, Scott.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis says the first deportation flights have begun from the new Migrant Detention Center, referred to by President Trump and others as Alligator Alcatraz.
The remote facility in the Everglades has come under intense scrutiny and generated controversy.
Some people now detained there allege harsh treatment by guards.
Tim Padgett with our member station WLRN in Miami has been following the story.
Tim, thanks for being with us.
Thank you, Scott. First, please remind us how this detention center came about and immediately became a source of controversy.
Well, it was a very sudden action taken by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis late last month month out on an idle airstrip in the remote Everglades, where the concept was that detainees would, of course, be met by alligators and other wildlife if they try to escape.
President Trump and DeSantis hope it will serve as a sort of punitive showcase to deter illegal immigration.
Critics say it's just one more piece of performative demonization of immigrants.
And although Alligator Alcatraz is for immigrant detention, which is supposedly a federal function.
It's run by Florida's Division of Emergency Management, but apparently DeSantis is going to tap into federal FEMA money to reimburse Florida for the $450 million cost of its first year of operation.
Either way, a big reality is that it's a hastily constructed tent structure with caged cells for up to 5 ,000 detainees.
So detainees have complained of Of substandard food, large mosquitoes, overflowing toilets, scant air conditioning, lights on continuously, a lack of access to showers, and especially access to lawyers who say they're not allowed in the facility and can only engage their detainee clients by phone or Zoom.
And I gather this week you spoke with a Nicaraguan migrant inside the detention center.
What did he say? Well, he's a 21 -year -old asylum seeker who says he came to the U .S. border in 2023 as a student protester fleeing Nicaragua's brutal Ortega dictatorship.
He asked that his name not be used for fear of government retaliation here.
year. He'd been arrested in Fort Lauderdale before this for improper exhibition of a firearm, but he was not convicted.
So he's one of the hundreds of non -criminal migrants in Alligator Alcatraz, which is a facility that was supposedly for criminal migrants only.
And he claims that after a shouting match with guards last Saturday over detainee clothing regulations, one of them called the man who is black the n -word and they shackled his hands and feet he says they then put him outside in what they call the box a four by four foot square he said directly in the hot florida sun here's what he told me they chained me to the ground i was in the sunlight from one o 'clock to like seven o 'clock in the evening this is unhuman they treat us like weird criminals He claims that when a fellow detainee from Honduras complained to the guards about this punishment, they
did it to him, too.
Of course, Tim, it's hard to verify what the detainees say when there's little access for journalists or lawyers in that place.
How do officials respond to these allegations?
That's right. But the Florida Division of Emergency Management categorically denies the claims of punishment as, quote, false.
It insists that alligator alcatraz guards do not punish detainees and that they follow all proper prison state and federal protocols.
But the other significant response has been from Florida Republicans who insist the public needs to remember that this is essentially a prison where many, if not most of the detainees do, in fact, have criminal histories and that it's not supposed to be, as the Florida House House speaker said recently a, quote, five -star resort.
Tim Padgett, WLRN in Miami, thanks so much for being with us.
Thank you. If you've taken a look at your retirement account lately, you might have been pleasantly surprised.
That's because even as Americans remain worried about President Trump's tariffs, stock markets are surging and hitting record highs.
So what gives? NPR Senior Business Editor Rafael Nam is here.
Hi, Rafael. Hey, Aisha.
So why is Wall Street feeling so good while many Americans are concerned?
Yeah, it's a question that many investors are grappling with, given that the president is threatening to impose big tariffs later this week, on August 1st. But there are a few reasons that can help explain this moment.
The first is that, you know, despite the tariffs, the economy so far is doing kind of well.
The U .S. is still adding jobs at a solid pace, and the unemployment rate is at 4 .1%.
That's historically very low.
And yes, inflation ticked up a little bit last month, but overall, it wasn't the spiking inflation that investors had initially feared.
So when investors look at what they call the hard data, meaning what the economic numbers are actually showing us, they're thinking, maybe things really aren't so bad.
So I spoke with Amanda Agadi.
She's the chief investment officer at PNC Asset Management Group in Philadelphia.
We may feel bad. We may feel concerned, but the hard data would suggest our behavior is something else entirely.
And we are also seeing that in terms of the company earnings we've seen so far.
What kind of results did companies report last week?
So we're not talking blockbuster numbers here, but they're generally better than what investors had anticipated.
So take Delta Airlines.
If you think about things that people tend to cut back, that trip to Europe, for example, is usually at the top of that list. But Delta announced better -than -expected results and said it was more optimistic about the outlook, despite the tariffs.
And other companies are also reporting decent results, like Toymaker Hasbro or Netflix.
Are investors betting that tariffs will end up being more manageable?
So far, yes. And a lot of that has to do with President Trump himself.
So, Ayesha, back in April, investors literally freaked out when he first announced this sky -high tariffs on just about every country on planet Earth.
And then stock markets plunged.
But then Trump delayed the tariffs and then delayed them again till this Friday to allow more time for negotiations.
And so far, those trade deals show that tariffs are not as bad as the ones first announced back in April.
So take Japan, Ayesha.
Trump announced last week a deal with Japan and set the tariff at 15%.
Well, that's definitely high, but initially Trump wanted a tariff of nearly 25%.
So investors were relieved and the S &P 500 hit another record high.
I mean, it's really an indication of how much the president has managed to reset market expectations.
I mean, We've gone from a tariff of nearly 0 % for most Japanese imports to now an overall tariff of 15%, and that's considered good news.
But as one fund manager told me, you know something?
The final chapter hasn't been written yet.
So we still don't have deals with Canada or Mexico or China or dozens of other countries.
Those are some major trading partners.
How could this situation change?
Yeah, that's the thing.
I couldn't find a single investor that was super optimistic about this rally.
They all gave me a variation of so far so good, but let's see how this turns out.
Just because we haven't seen a big impact from tariffs yet doesn't mean that we won't in the future.
The Yale Budget Lab, which tracks these things closely, estimates that tariffs right now are at the highest since the 1930s.
So can this incredible stock rally continue?
continue. So far, investors are betting yes, but that's a mighty big bet.
That's Raphael Nam, NPR's Senior Business Editor.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Thanks, Ayesha. And that's up first for July 26, 2025.
I'm Ayesha Roscoe. And I'm Scott Simon. Today's podcast was produced by the discerning and astute Elena Turek, with help from Fernando Narro, who possesses a piercing mind.
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