Sunday dawned hot and clear at Bondi - not a cloud in the sky, the sun shining as the waves crashed onto the sand.

It was a day made for the beach. By midday, the entire stretch was heaving with thousands of people and the sea was full of swimmers and surfers. Our family of four, on holiday at Bondi Beach, was among them.

As we headed to the beach, crossing on a footbridge from the carpark of Campbell Parade, I noticed people were setting up white tents on the grass next to a children's playground.

A truck arrived, carrying a climbing wall. Later we would learn they were preparing for a Jewish community event, called Chanukah by the Sea, to celebrate the start of the Jewish festival of Hanukkah.

In the late afternoon, loud upbeat music boomed from the speakers and across the beach. The event had begun. Our family packed up our things at the beach at about 18:00 local time (07:00 GMT) to go back to the holiday home we had rented nearby.

As we crossed the footbridge again, we saw hundreds of people - families with young children and grandparents - at the event. A stage had been set up for live performances with rows of chairs set out in front. Activity stations and stalls lined the green. The mood was relaxed and festive as laughter and children's cries floated in the air.

Scores more people were streaming into the event via an entry point with what looked like bag checks. Metal barriers had been set up to fence the event off from the rest of the green, but there appeared to be minimal security.

As the event looked like it could have food stalls, I suggested to my husband we check it out for dinner. "Let's just get pizza back at the house," he sighed - the kids were getting cranky and needed a shower.

So I went back with the children, while my husband stopped by a pizzeria for a takeaway.

Half an hour later, he returned home with the pizzas, and a worried look. While he was buying dinner, people had run past him in a panic. One of them stopped to say, "Mate, get away from here, something bad's happened."

We could hear police sirens and the roar of helicopters. We checked the news, and I quickly went to the scene, which was just 100m from where we were staying.

Police officers were just starting to cordon off the car park in front of the footbridge where my family and I had crossed over - and which the attackers used, not even an hour later, as a vantage point to shoot at the festival we had seen earlier.

Many people had gathered at a corner close to the cordon where there were bars and restaurants. Lively music blared during a beautiful sunset - an incongruous setting for what had become a deadly evening at the beach.

People were anxiously milling about, some crying and in shock. A few were desperately trying to get in touch with their loved ones who were stuck in the area that was being cordoned off.

"My daughter's at the surf club just over there, and I can't contact her," one woman told me, her eyes filling with tears. Some were arguing with police at the cordon, insisting they needed to find their relatives or get to their cars or homes.

I caught a man running past - he told me his name was Barry. He had just fled the festival with his two children. When he heard gunshots, they dropped to the ground, he said.

"And as we're lying there on the floor, with my kids, I saw a shooter or two on the bridge on the side towards Bondi beach, shooting at all of us," he said. "It was pandemonium and chaos."

Soon the restaurants and bars on the corner shut down, even as the crowd of onlookers and media grew.

As the night wore on, police and emergency vehicles moved in and out of the zone, clearing what we learnt later was a car filled with IEDs.

A fierce wind whipped up from the beach, as officers tried to hold the cordon.

The next morning, the main stretch of Bondi was deserted. Uncertainty, shock and anxiety still lingered. At the police cordon, a crowd thronged a cafe, buying coffees while worriedly discussing what had happened the previous night.

Watching the scene were Bondi residents Ali Pattillo, Abby Agwunobi and Brooke Schlesinger. The three women, all Americans, live in an apartment overlooking the shooting site. When they heard the gunshots, they thought it was fireworks.

"I started hearing people kind of screaming and running, grabbed the dog and hid in the bathroom," Ms Pattillo said. "And then you could just sort of hear the entire thing play out in this like horrible dream."

Ms Schlesinger said the attack was such a shock because "what appealed to us most about the Australian lifestyle is that sense of security and safety and community".

Although the Bondi community was "incredibly tight", Ms Agwunobi said she was worried about "the backlash and fallout that might happen from this", particularly with "the kind of climate with people being very anti-immigration."

"So, yeah, I'm very afraid for the next few days. And my heart just goes to the Jewish community as well because... it's just such a violation to happen, especially on a holy celebration".

Across the street, some people began laying out bouquets of flowers, balloons and an Australian flag at the corner of a primary school, in an impromptu memorial for the dead.

Soon, more people arrived to grieve at the spot. Some draped Israeli flags around their shoulders and wore kippahs, or Jewish skullcaps. People wept openly and embraced one another.

Others expressed fear and despair, including Jewish people who said they had been feeling vulnerable after a spate of antisemitism-related offences. Yvonne Haber, a Bondi resident who is Jewish, said an attack like this has "been waiting to happen, and we've been saying this is gonna happen. And now that it's happened... it's absolutely horrific."

As the sun began to set, I went to Bondi Pavilion, which had become an enormous shrine for for mourners after police removed part of the cordon.

Israeli and Australian flags hung on the closed gates of the pavilion, as hundreds of people gathered to lay wreaths, bouquets, candles and pebbles from the beach. The enormous pile of flowers framed a handwritten sign: "We stay united, no more hate, just love."

As 18:47 neared - the time of the attack the day before - a group of local Jewish leaders stepped forward with a large menorah with candles. They announced they were going to light the candles - a ritual associated with Hanukkah - to remember those killed in the attack, and urged the crowd to light their own candles from the menorah and take it home with them.

"We invite the crowd to take the light, to spread peace and tolerance. We have survived for thousands of years... light will always prevail," Rabbi Yossi Shuchat announced to the crowd.

Then the group began singing traditional Jewish songs, with many in the crowd joining in. Their voices soared, cracked with grief, enveloping those gathered in a wave of pure emotion.

A woman behind me quietly sobbed as she sang and clapped along to the more spirited songs. At one point, the crowd broke out into the Australian national anthem.

Afterwards, Rabbi Shuchat told me that he and his friends had decided that morning to hold the ceremony for the victims - and to make a powerful statement.

"Darkness has no power where light arrives, and therefore we implore everyone to be that light in their surroundings. Don't allow evil to come. The best way to banish evil is to shine a light."

US President Donald Trump has filed a defamation lawsuit against the BBC over an edit of his 6 January 2021 speech in a Panorama documentary.

Trump has requested billions of dollars in damages, according to court documents filed in Florida.

The BBC apologised to Trump in November, but rejected his demands for compensation and disagreed there was any "basis for a defamation claim".

Trump's legal team accused the BBC of defaming him by "intentionally, maliciously, and deceptively doctoring his speech". The BBC has not yet responded to the lawsuit being filed.

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Warning: Disturbing content

A little boy faces the camera. He is pale and has no hair.

"I am seven years old and I have cancer," he says. "Please save my life and help me."

Khalil - who is pictured above in a still from the film - didn't want to record this, says his mother Aljin. She had been asked to shave his head, and then a film crew hooked him up to a fake drip, and asked his family to pretend it was his birthday. They had given him a script to learn and recite in English.

And he didn't like it, says Aljin, when chopped onions were placed next to him, and menthol put under his eyes, to make him cry.

Aljin agreed to it because, although the set-up was fake, Khalil really did have cancer. She was told this video would help crowdfund money for better treatment. And it did raise funds - $27,000 (£20,204), according to a campaign we found in Khalil's name.

But Aljin was told the campaign had failed, and says she received none of this money - just a $700 (£524) filming fee on the day. One year later, Khalil died.

Across the world, desperate parents of sick or dying children are being exploited by online scam campaigns, the BBC World Service has discovered. The public have given money to the campaigns, which claim to be fundraising for life-saving treatment. We have identified 15 families who say they got little to nothing of the funds raised and often had no idea the campaigns had even been published, despite undergoing harrowing filming.

Nine families we spoke to - whose campaigns appear to be products of the same scam network - say they never received anything at all of the $4m (£2.9m) apparently raised in their names.

A whistleblower from this network told us they had looked for "beautiful children" who "had to be three to nine years old… without hair".

We have identified a key player in the scam as an Israeli man living in Canada called Erez Hadari.

Our investigation began in October 2023, when a distressing YouTube advert caught our attention. "I don't want to die," a girl called Alexandra from Ghana sobbed. "My treatments cost a lot."

A crowdfunding campaign for her appeared to have raised nearly $700,000 (£523,797).

We saw more videos of sick children from around the world on YouTube, all strikingly similar - slickly produced, and seemingly having raised huge amounts of money. They all conveyed a sense of urgency, using emotive language.

We decided to investigate further.

The campaigns with the biggest apparent international reach were under the name of an organisation called Chance Letikva (Chance for Hope, in English) - registered in Israel and the US.

Identifying the children featured was difficult. We used geolocation, social media and facial recognition software to find their families, based as far apart as Colombia and the Philippines.

While it was difficult to know for sure if the campaign websites' cash totals were genuine, we donated small amounts to two of them and saw the totals increase by those amounts.

We also spoke to someone who says she gave $180 (£135) to Alexandra's campaign and was then inundated with requests for more, all written as if sent by Alexandra and her father.

In the Philippines, Aljin Tabasa told us her son Khalil had fallen ill just after his seventh birthday.

"When we found out it was cancer it felt like my whole world shattered," she says.

Aljin says treatment at their local hospital in the city of Cebu was slow, and she had messaged everyone she could think of for help. One person put her in touch with a local businessman called Rhoie Yncierto - who asked for a video of Khalil which, looking back, Aljin realises was essentially an audition.

Another man then arrived from Canada in December 2022, introducing himself as "Erez". He paid her the filming fee up front, she says, promising a further $1,500 (£1,122) a month if the film generated lots of donations.

Erez directed Khalil's film at a local hospital, asking for retake after retake - the shoot taking 12 hours, Aljin says.

Months later, the family say they had still not heard how the video had performed. Aljin messaged Erez, who told her the video "wasn't successful".

"So as I understood it, the video just didn't make any money," she says.

But we told her the campaign had apparently collected $27,000 (£20,204) as of November 2024, and was still online.

"If I had known the money we had raised, I can't help but think that maybe Khalil would still be here," Aljin says. "I don't understand how they could do this to us."

When asked about his role in the filming, Rhoie Yncierto denied telling families to shave their children's heads for filming and said he had received no payment for recruiting families.

He said he had "no control" over what happened with the funds and had no contact with the families after the day of filming. When we told him they had not received any of the campaigns' donations he said he was "puzzled" and was "very sorry for the families".

Nobody named Erez appears on registration documents for Chance Letikva. But two of its campaigns we investigated had also been promoted by another organisation called Walls of Hope, registered in Israel and Canada. Documents list the director in Canada as Erez Hadari.

Photos of him online show him at Jewish religious events in the Philippines, New York and Miami. We showed Aljin, and she said it was the same person she had met.

• Outside the UK, watch the film on BBC World Service YouTube

We asked Mr Hadari about his involvement in a campaign in the Philippines. He did not respond.

We visited further families whose campaigns were either organised by, or linked to, Mr Hadari - one in a remote indigenous community in Colombia, and another in Ukraine.

As with Khalil's case, local fixers had got in touch to offer help. The children were filmed and made to cry or fake tears for a nominal fee, but never received any further money.

In Sucre, north-west Colombia, Sergio Care says he initially refused this help. He had been approached by someone called Isabel, he says, who offered financial assistance after his eight-year-old daughter, Ana, was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumour.

But Isabel came looking for him at the hospital treating Ana, he says, accompanied by a man who said he worked for an international NGO.

The description Sergio gave of the man matched that of Erez Hadari - he then recognised him in a photo we showed him.

"He gave me hope... I didn't have any money for the future."

Demands on the family did not end with the filming.

Isabel kept ringing, Sergio says, demanding more photos of Ana in hospital. When Sergio didn't reply, Isabel started messaging Ana herself - voice notes we have heard.

Ana told Isabel she had no more photos to send. Isabel replied: "This is very bad Ana, very bad indeed."

In January this year, Ana - now fully recovered - tried to find out what happened to the money promised.

"That foundation disappeared," Isabel told her in a voice note. "Your video was never uploaded. Never. Nothing was done with it, you hear?"

But we could see the video had been uploaded and, by April 2024, appeared to have raised nearly $250,000 (£187,070).

In October, we persuaded Isabel Hernandez to speak to us over video link.

A friend from Israel, she explained, had introduced her to someone offering work for "a foundation" looking to help children with cancer. She refused to name who she worked for.

She was told only one of the campaigns she helped organise was published, she says, and that it had not been successful.

We showed Isabel that two campaigns had in fact been uploaded - one of them apparently raising more than $700,000 (£523,797).

"I need to apologise to [the families]," she said. "If I'd known what was going on, I would not have been able to do something like this."

In Ukraine, we discovered that the person who approached the mother of a sick child was actually employed in the place where the campaign video was filmed.

Tetiana Khaliavka organised a shoot with five-year-old Viktoriia, who has brain cancer, at Angelholm Clinic in Chernivtsi.

One Facebook post linked to Chance Letikva's campaign shows Viktoriia and her mother Olena Firsova, sitting on a bed. "I see your efforts to save my daughter, and it deeply moves us all. It's a race against time to raise the amount needed for Viktoriia's treatments," reads the caption.

Olena says she never wrote or even said these words and had no idea the campaign had been uploaded.

It appears to have raised more than €280,000 (£244,000).

Tetiana, we were told, was in charge of advertising and communications at Angelholm.

The clinic recently told the BBC it didn't approve filming on its premises - adding: "The clinic has never participated in, nor supported, any fundraising initiatives organised by any organisation."

Angelholm says it has terminated Tetiana Khaliavka's employment.

Olena showed us the contract she had been asked to sign.

In addition to the family's $1,500 (£1,122) filming fee on the day, it states they would get $8,000 (£5,986) once the fundraising goal was met. The amount for the goal, however, has been left blank.

The contract showed an address in New York for Chance Letikva. On the organisation's website, there is another - in Beit Shemesh, about an hour from Jerusalem. We travelled to both, but found no sign of it.

And we discovered Chance Letikva seems to be one of many such organisations.

The man who filmed Viktoriia's campaign told our producer - who was posing as a friend of a sick child - that he works for other similar organisations.

"Each time, it's a different one," the man - who had introduced himself as "Oleh" - told her. "I hate to put it this way, but they work kind of like a conveyor belt."

"About a dozen similar companies" requested "material", he said, naming two of them - Saint Teresa and Little Angels, both registered in the US.

When we checked their registration documents, we once again found Erez Hadari's name.

What is not clear is where the money raised for the children has gone.

More than a year after Viktoriia's filming, her mother Olena rang Oleh, who seems to go by Alex Kohen online, to find out. Shortly afterwards, someone from Chance Letikva called to say the donations had paid for advertising, she says.

This is also what Mr Hadari told Aljin, Khalil's mother, when she confronted him over the phone.

"There is cost of advertising. So the company lost money," Mr Hadari told her, without giving any evidence to support this.

Charity experts told us advertising should not amount to more than 20% of the total raised by campaigns.

Someone previously employed to recruit children for Chance Letikva campaigns told us how those featured had been chosen.

They had been asked to visit oncology clinics, they said - speaking on condition of anonymity.

"They were always looking for beautiful children with white skin. The child had to be three to nine years old. They had to know how to speak well. They had to be without hair," they told us.

"They asked me for photos, to see if the child is right, and I would send it to Erez."

The whistleblower told us Mr Hadari would then send the photo on to someone else, in Israel, whose name they were never told.

As for Mr Hadari himself, we tried to reach him at two addresses in Canada but could not find him. He replied to one voice note we had sent him - asking about the money he had been apparently crowdfunding - by saying the organisation "has never been active", without specifying which one. He did not respond to a further voice note and letter laying out all our questions and allegations.

Campaigns set up by Chance Letikva for two children who died - Khalil and a Mexican boy called Hector - still appear to be accepting money.

Chance Letikva's US branch appears to be linked to a new organisation called Saint Raphael, which has produced more campaigns - at least two of which seem to have been filmed in Angelholm clinic in Ukraine, as the clinic's distinctive wood panelling and staff uniforms can be seen.

Olena, Viktoriia's mother, says her daughter has been diagnosed with another brain tumour. She says she is sickened by the findings of our investigation.

"When your child is… hanging on the edge of life, and someone's out there, making money off that. Well, it's filthy. It's blood money."

The BBC contacted Tetiana Khaliavka and Alex Kohen, and the organisations Chance Letikva, Walls of Hope, Saint Raphael, Little Angels and Saint Teresa - inviting them to respond to the allegations made against them. None of them replied.

The Israeli Corporations Authority, which oversees the country's non-profit organisations, told us that if it has evidence founders are using entities as "a cover for illegal activity", then registration inside Israel may be denied and the founder could be barred from working in the sector.

UK regulator, the Charity Commission, advises those wishing to donate to charities to check that those associations are registered, and that the appropriate fundraising regulator should be contacted if in doubt.

Additional reporting by: Ned Davies, Tracks Saflor, Jose Antonio Lucio, Almudena Garcia-parrado, Vitaliya Kozmenko, Shakked Auerbach, Tom Tzur Wisfelder, Katya Malofieieva, Anastasia Kucher, Alan Pulido and Neil McCarthy

• If you have any information to add to this investigation please contact simi@bbc.co.uk

At a meeting of his cabinet at the White House two weeks ago, US President Donald Trump looked around the long room filled with his top advisers, administration officials and aides, and made a prediction.

The next Republican presidential candidate, he said, is "probably sitting at this table".

"It could be a couple of people sitting at this table," he added, hinting at possible electoral clashes to come.

Despite a constitutional amendment limiting him to two four-year terms, his supporters chanted "four more years" at a rally last Tuesday night in Pennsylvania. Trump said at the time that the final three years of his second term amount to an "eternity".

But in the cabinet room last week, when talking about prospects for the 2028 Republican president nomination, he was clear: "It's not going to be me."

The next presidential election may seem a long way off, but Trump's own speculation – and certain frictions within Trump's coalition - suggest that the jockeying to succeed and define the Make America Great Again (Maga) movement after Trump is well under way.

In last month's local elections, the Republican Party lost support among the minority and working-class voters who helped Trump win back the White House in 2024.

Members of his team have feuded over policy. And some, most notably Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, have cut loose from his orbit, accusing the president of losing touch with the Americans who gave him power.

There has been speculation about fractures within the Maga base in certain quarters of the international press, as well as at home. On Monday, a headline in The Washington Post asked: "Maga leaders warn Trump the base is checking out. Will he listen?"

The warning signs are there. While Trump has long been known for being in tune with his base, the months ahead will pose a series of challenges to the president and his movement. Nothing less than his political legacy is at stake.

From Vance to Rubio: A team of rivals?

It was all smiles and talk of historic presidential achievements inside the friendly confines of Trump's newly redecorated, gold-bedecked cabinet room two weeks ago.

But the presidential aspirants Trump may have had in mind as he looked around the table hint at just how hard it could be to keep his Maga movement from stretching apart at the seams.

Vice-President JD Vance sat directly across from the president. As his running mate, he is widely considered to be Trump's most likely heir apparent – the favourite of Trump's sons and libertarian Silicon Valley tech billionaires.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio was on the president's immediate right. The former Florida senator, who competed with Trump for the Republican nomination in 2016, had spent the past 10 years undergoing a Maga transformation.

He has jettisoned his past support for liberalising immigration policy and his hard line on Russia in lieu of Trump's America First foreign policy. But if there is anyone close to an old-guard Republican with influence in Trump's party, Rubio tops the list.

Then there is Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, whose vaccine scepticism and "Make America Healthy Again" agenda have sent earthquakes through the US health bureaucracy; he sat two down from Rubio. The Democrat-turned-independent-turned-Republican is a living embodiment of the strange ideological bedfellows Trump made on his way to re-election last year.

And finally, Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, was tucked off to the corner of the table. While the former South Dakota governor is not considered a major presidential contender, her advocacy for aggressive immigration enforcement – including a recent call for a full travel ban on "every damn country that's been flooding our nation with killers, leeches and entitlement junkies" – has made her a prominent face of administration's policies.

Each might believe they could, if they chose to run, become Trump's political heir and take control of the political movement that has reshaped American politics over the last decade.

But to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin's comments at the birth of American democracy, whoever wins the Republican nomination will have been given a winning coalition – if they can keep it.

The Republican empire transformed

Of course none of this is guaranteed - nor is it certain that the next generation of Maga leaders will be someone from the president's inner circle. Trump stormed the White House as a political outsider. The next Republican leader may follow a similar path.

"It's going to be up to the next Republican president who follows Trump to set him or herself apart," says former Republican Congressman Rodney Davis of Illinois, who now works for the US Chamber of Commerce.

"But at the same time make sure that you don't go too far away, because clearly it's Donald Trump [who] got elected president twice."

When the November 2028 presidential election rolls around, American voters may not even want someone like Trump. Some public opinion polls suggest that the president may not be as popular as he once was.

A survey by YouGov earlier this month indicated the president had a net approval rating of -14, compared with +6 when he took office again in January. Then there are concerns about the economy and his relentless efforts to push the boundaries of presidential power.

Leadership of Trump's movement still represents the keys to the Republican empire, however, even if that empire has drastically changed in recent years.

"I think the Republican coalition has become fundamentally different over the last few decades," said Davis, who served in Congress from 2013 to 2023. "The Republican coalition that existed when Ronald Reagan was elected is not the Republican coalition anymore."

Back in the 1980s, the Reagan coalition was a fusion of free-market economics, cultural conservatism, anti-communism and international foreign affairs, says Laura K Field, author of Furious Minds: The Making of the Maga New Right.

Trump's party, she continues, was perhaps best described by long-time Trump adviser and current state department official Michael Anton in a 2016 essay advocating for Trump's election. In contrast with the Reagan era, its core principles include "secure borders, economic nationalism and America-first foreign policy".

'Normie Republicans' versus 'the edgelords'

Earlier this month, the conservative Manhattan Institute released a comprehensive survey of Republican voters, shedding more light on the composition of Trump's coalition.

It suggested that 65% of the current Republican Party are what it calls "core Republicans" – those who have supported party presidential nominees since at least 2016. (If they were alive in the 1980s, they may well have voted for Reagan.)

On the other hand, 29% are what the Institute called "new entrant Republicans". It is among those new Republicans that the challenge to the durability of Trump's coalition presents itself.

Only just over half said they would "definitely" support a Republican in next year's mid-term congressional elections.

According to the survey, the new entrants are younger, more diverse and more likely to hold views that break with traditional conservative orthodoxy. They hold comparatively more left-leaning views of economic policy, they tend to be more liberal on immigration and social issues, and they may also be more pro-China or critical of Israel, for example.

Jesse Arm, vice-president of external affairs at the Manhattan Institute, told the BBC in an email: "A lot of the conversation about the future of the right is being driven by the loudest and strangest voices online, rather than by the voters who actually make up the bulk of the Republican coalition."

Perhaps not surprisingly, the so-called new entrant Republican voters are significantly less supportive of some of Trump's would-be heirs. While 70% of core Republicans have positive views of Rubio and 80% for Vance, just over half of new entrants feel that way about either.

Other findings could be more concerning for Republicans.

More than half of new entrants believe the use of political violence in American politics "is sometimes justified" – compared to just 20% among core Republicans.

It also suggests they may be more likely to be tolerant of racist or anti-Semitic speech and more prone to conspiratorial thinking – on topics like the moon landings, 9/11 and vaccines.

Trump was able to attract these voters into his coalition. The question is whether he and his political heirs can keep them there – or if they even want to.

"The real takeaway is not that these voters will 'define' the post-Trump GOP, but that future Republican leaders will have to draw clear lines about who sets the agenda," argues Mr Arm.

"The heart of the party remains normie Republicans, not the edgelords that both the media and the dissident right are strangely invested in elevating."

Clashes in the conservative ranks

The divides revealed in the Manhattan Institute poll helps explain some of the most notable frictions within the Trump coalition over the past few months.

The Trump-Greene feud that culminated in the latter's resignation from Congress began with her backing of a full release of the government files connected to the Jeffrey Epstein underage sex-trafficking case – long a source of conservative conspiracy theories.

It broadened, however, into a critique of Trump's Middle East policy and accusations of his failure to address cost-of-living and healthcare concerns for low-income American voters.

An earlier high-profile Maga split erupted over Trump's economic policy, with billionaire Elon Musk, a strong supporter and member of Trump's inner circle at the start of the year, going on to condemn certain tariffs and government spending policies.

The president has, for the moment, largely tried to stay out of another bitter clash within conservative ranks over whether Nick Fuentes, a far-right political commentator and Holocaust denier, is welcome within the conservative movement.

It's a dispute that has roiled the influential Heritage Foundation and pitted some powerful right-wing commentators against each other.

According to Ms Field, those who follow Trump may find it a difficult conflict to avoid. "Nick Fuentes has a huge following," she says. "Part of how the conservative movement got the energy and power that they've got is by peddling to this part of the Republican Party."

In the halls of the Republican-controlled Congress, some signs of friction with the president's agenda are showing. Despite White House lobbying, it couldn't stop the House from passing a measure mandating release of the Epstein files.

The president has also been unable to convince Senate Republicans to abandon the filibuster, a parliamentary procedure Democrats in the minority have been able to block some of Trump's agenda.

Meanwhile, Trump's party has been stumbling at the polls, with the Democrats winning governorships in Virginia and New Jersey last month by comfortable margins.

In dozens of contested special elections for state and local seats over the past year, Democrats have on average improved their margins by around 13% over similar races held in last November's national elections.

The future of Trumpism

All of this will be front of mind for Republicans ahead of the 2026 mid-term congressional elections - and it will do little to ease the concerns held by some that, without Trump at the top of the ticket, their coalition will struggle to deliver reliable ballot-box victories.

Yet even a defeat next year – or in 2028 – is unlikely to mark the end of Trumpism.

The ascent by Trump's Maga movement to the pinnacle of American power has been far from a smooth one. It includes a mid-term rout in 2018 and Trump himself losing in 2020, before his re-election last November.

But the changes that Trump has wrought within the Republican Party itself appear to be foundational ones, according to Ms Field. His Maga coalition builds on strains of populist movements in the US that date back decades or more – from Barry Goldwater's insurgent presidential campaign in 1964 to the Tea Party protests during Barack Obama's presidency.

"These things are not coming out of nowhere. They are forces in American politics that have been underground for a while, but have been just kind of fermenting."

The old Republican order, she argues, is a relic of the past.

"The Trump movement is here to stay and there's no real likelihood of the old establishment returning with any sort of clout - that much is clear."

Top picture credit: Getty Images

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A person of interest has been detained in connection with a US shooting at Brown University that left two people dead, police said.

Nine others were injured when a gunman opened fire at the university in Providence on Saturday.

Police confirmed on Sunday a person had been detained, and an earlier order for people on the Brown campus and surrounding areas to shelter had been lifted.

Of those injured, medics said one person was in a critical condition, six were "critical but stable" and two others were less severely hurt.

The gunman opened fire in a classroom at around 16:00 local time (21:00 GMT) on Saturday at the Holley engineering building at the eastern end of Brown's campus, according to officials.

The identities of those killed or injured have not yet been released, but Brown University President Christina Paxson told reporters in a press briefing on Saturday that all the victims, including those killed and wounded, were students.

Police had earlier released CCTV footage of a male suspect walking away from the scene wearing all black clothing. Officers said a firearm was not found in a sweep of the building.

Almost 90 flights linked to Jeffrey Epstein arrived at and departed from UK airports, some with British women on board who say they were abused by the billionaire, a BBC investigation has found.

We have established that three British women who were allegedly trafficked appear in Epstein's records of flights in and out of the UK and other documents related to the convicted sex offender.

US lawyers representing hundreds of Epstein victims told the BBC it was "shocking" that there has never been a "full-scale UK investigation" into his activities on the other side of the Atlantic.

The UK was one of the "centrepieces" of Epstein's operations, one said.

Testimony from one of these British victims helped convict Epstein's accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell of child sex-trafficking in the US in 2021. But the victim has never been contacted by UK police, her Florida-based lawyer Brad Edwards told the BBC.

The woman, given the name Kate in the trial, was listed as having been on more than 10 flights paid for by Epstein in and out of the UK between 1999 and 2006.

The BBC is not publishing further details about the women in the documents because of the risk this might identify them.

US lawyer Sigrid McCawley said the British authorities have "not taken a closer look at those flights, at where he was at, who he was seeing at those moments, and who was with him on those planes, and conducted a full investigation".

Under the Jeffrey Epstein Transparency Act, the deadline to release all US government files on the sex-offender financier is Friday.

But the flight logs were among thousands of documents from court cases and Epstein's estate which have been already made public over the past year, revealing more about his time in the UK, such as trips to royal residences.

The BBC examined these documents as part of an investigation trying to piece together Epstein's activities in the UK.

It revealed that:

• The incomplete flight logs and manifests record 87 flights linked to Epstein - dozens more than were previously known - arriving or departing from UK airports between the early 1990s and 2018
• Unidentified "females" were listed among the passengers travelling into and out of the UK in the logs
• Fifteen of the UK flights took place after Epstein's 2008 conviction for soliciting sex from a minor, which should have raised questions from immigration officials

Although Epstein died in jail in 2019, before his trial on charges of trafficking minors for sex, legal experts have told the BBC a UK investigation could reveal whether British-based people enabled his crimes.

Two months ago the BBC sent the Metropolitan Police, which has previously examined allegations about Epstein's activities in Britain, publicly available information about the UK flights with suspected trafficking victims on board.

Later, we sent the Met a detailed list of questions about whether it would investigate evidence of possible British victims of Epstein trafficked in and out of the UK.

The Met did not respond to our questions. On Saturday, it released a broader statement saying that it had "not received any additional evidence that would support reopening the investigation" into Epstein and Maxwell's trafficking activities in the UK.

"Should new and relevant information be brought to our attention", including any resulting from the release of material in the US, "we will assess it", the Met said.

US lawyer Brad Edwards, who has been representing Epstein victims since 2008, told us "three or four" of his clients are British women "who were abused on British soil both by Jeffrey Epstein and others".

Other victims were recruited in the UK, trafficked to the United States and abused there, he said.

Mr Edwards said he is also representing women of other nationalities who say they were trafficked to the UK for abuse by Epstein and others.

Our analysis shows Epstein used commercial and chartered flights, as well as his private planes, to travel to the UK and to arrange transport for others, including alleged trafficking victims.

More than 50 of the flights involved his private jets, mostly flying to and from Luton Airport, with several flights at Birmingham International Airport, and one arrival and departure each at RAF Marham in west Norfolk and at Edinburgh Airport.

Limited records of commercial and chartered flights taken by Epstein, or paid for by him, show dozens more journeys, mainly via London Heathrow, but also Stansted and Gatwick.

In a number of the logs of Epstein's private planes, including some detailing trips to the UK, women on the flight are identified only as unnamed "females".

"He's absolutely choosing airports where he feels it will be easier for him to get in and out with victims that he's trafficking," said Ms McCawley.

Private aircraft did not have to provide passenger details to UK authorities before departure in the same way as commercial aircraft during the period covered by the documents we examined. The Home Office told us they were "not subject to the same centralised record-keeping".

That loophole was only closed in April last year.

Kate, the British woman who testified against Maxwell, was on some of the commercial flights in the records we examined. She described in court that she had been 17 when Maxwell befriended her and introduced her to Epstein - who then sexually abused her at Maxwell's central London home.

In the 2021 trial, she described how Maxwell gave her a schoolgirl outfit to wear and asked her to find other girls for Epstein. As well as the dozen flights to and from the UK, Kate told the court she had been flown to Epstein's island in the US Virgin Islands, New York and Palm Beach in Florida, where she says the abuse continued into her 30s.

Mr Edwards, her lawyer, told BBC News that even after that testimony, Kate has "never been asked" by any UK authorities any questions about her experience - "not even a phone call".

He said that if British police were to launch an investigation into Epstein's activities and his enablers, Kate would be happy to help.

Prof Bridgette Carr, a human-trafficking expert at the University of Michigan Law School, said trafficking cases usually require many people working together.

"It's never just one bad person," she said. "You don't think about the accountant and the lawyer and the banker - or all the bankers - and all these people that had to implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, be OK with what was happening for it to continue."

There are also questions about how Epstein was able to travel freely to the UK after his 2008 conviction for soliciting a minor for sex, which meant he had to register as a sex offender in Florida, New York and the US Virgin Islands.

Epstein was released from prison in 2009 after serving 13 months. Documents suggest Epstein took a Virgin Atlantic flight from the US to London Heathrow in September 2010, just two months after he completed his probation on house arrest.

Home Office rules at the time said foreign nationals who received a prison sentence of 12 months or more should, in most cases, have been refused entry.

But immigration lawyer Miglena Ilieva, managing partner at ILEX Law Group, told us that US citizens did not usually require a UK visa for short stays, so there was no application process where they would be asked about criminal convictions.

"It was very much at the discretion of the individual immigration officer who would receive this person at the border," she said.

The Home Office said it does not hold immigration and visa records beyond 10 years and added "it is longstanding government policy that we do not routinely comment on individual cases".

During the 1980s, Epstein also used a foreign passport - issued in Austria with his picture and a false name - to enter the UK as well as France, Spain and Saudi Arabia, according to US authorities.

Epstein also listed London as his place of residence in 1985, when he applied for a replacement passport, ABC News has previously reported.

In its statement on Saturday, the Met said it had contacted "several other potential victims" when it examined 2015 allegations by Virginia Giuffre that she had been trafficked for sexual exploitation by Epstein and Maxwell.

Ms Giuffre also said she was forced to have sex with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor on three occasions, including when she was 17 at Maxwell's home in London, in 2001. The former prince has consistently denied the allegations against him.

The Met said its examination of Ms Giuffre's claims "did not result in any allegation of criminal conduct against any UK-based nationals" and it concluded that "other international authorities were best placed to progress these allegations".

That decision was reviewed in August 2019 and again in 2021 and 2022 with the same result, it said.

But for lawyer Sigrid McCawley, the message the Met is sending to victims is "that if you come to law enforcement and this is a powerful person you're reporting on… it will not get investigated."

• ​​If you have information about this story that you would like to share, please email ​​epsteininvestigation@bbc.co.uk

More UK families will "know what sacrifice for our nation means" as the nation seeks to deter a potential confrontation with Russia, the head of the military has said.

Sir Richard Knighton said the country's security "cannot be outsourced to the armed forces" and "requires a whole-of-society response", including harnessing UK universities and manufacturing.

While the chief of the defence staff suggested there was only a remote chance of Russia directly attacking the UK, he told an event at the Royal United Services Institute that so-called hybrid attacks showed the threat was worsening.

He referenced a Russian spy ship that was recently suspected of mapping undersea cables near UK waters.

"Every day the UK is subject to an onslaught of cyber-attacks from Russia and we know that Russian agents are seeking to conduct sabotage and have killed on our shores," he added.

At the same time, Russia's military had become a "hard power [which] is growing quickly".

While Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine had been a strategic failure, he said, "we should be under no illusions that Russia has a massive, increasingly technically sophisticated, and now highly combat-experienced military".

Sir Richard said the UK needed to make itself a "harder target" for hybrid threats and to avoid war.

Building the nation's resilience went beyond strengthening the military and "more people being ready to fight for their country", and included harnessing the UK's universities, energy and manufacturing industries, and the NHS.

It also meant building industrial capacity "to meet the demands in the UK and of our allies to re-stock and re-arm".

"Building this industrial capacity also means we need more people who leave schools and universities to join that industry."

He added that "we need defence and political leaders to explain the importance of the industry to the nation, and we need schools and parents to encourage children and young adults to take up careers in the industry".

Addressing a skills gap highlighted in a recent report by the Royal Academy of Engineering, Sir Richard also talked about the need to work with industry and young people, announcing £50m for new defence technical excellence colleges.

In recent weeks, both France and Germany have outlined plans for voluntary national service.

Last year, the then-Conservative government set out its own compulsory proposals, which Labour dismissed as a gimmick.

Sir Richard, who became chief of the defence staff in September, said he found himself in a position none of his predecessors had: "looking at the prospect of the largest sustained increase in defence spending since the end of the Cold War".

The government announced earlier this year that UK defence and security spending would rise to 5% of GDP by 2035 at the latest.

"Sons and daughters, colleagues, veterans will all have a role to play - to build, to serve, and if necessary, to fight," Sir Richard said. "And more families will know what sacrifice for our nation means.

"That is why it's so important we do explain the changing threat and the need to stay ahead of it."

The UK and South Korea have finalised a trade deal which the government says will create thousands of jobs and bring billions into the British economy.

British industries including pharmaceuticals, car manufacturing, alcohol and financial services are expected to benefit from an extension to the current tariff-free trade on most goods and services.

The deal is the fourth such agreement struck by the Labour government, following deals with the EU, US and India — none of which have had a material impact on the UK's economy so far.

South Korean culture, including music, cosmetics and food, has become much more popular in the UK in recent years.

Trade minister Chris Bryant announced the deal in Samsung's flagship store in London on Monday night, accompanied by his Korean counterpart Yeo Han-koo.

Under the deal, 98% of trade will continue to be tariff free, the same terms that the EU has with South Korea, and which the UK maintained temporarily after Brexit.

The UK's agreement with South Korea was set to expire in January 2026, but the new agreement will protect £2bn of UK exports from an increase in tariffs.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the deal was "a huge win for British business".

"This deal making trade even easier between us will help boost the economy - supporting jobs and growth which will be felt all over the country," he said.

Bryant said the deal would give "cast-iron protections to our key industries to speed up economic growth as part of our Plan for Change".

South Korea is the UK's 25th largest trading partner, according to the Department for Business and Trade. In the 12 months to the end of June this year, it accounted for 0.8% of the UK's total trade.

Over that same 12-month period, official figures show UK exports to South Korea fell 16.4% and South Korean exports to the UK fell 10.8%.

South Korea's trade minister told the BBC that South Korea and Britain's economies "are complimentary", and denied that the fall in trade between the nations suggested the relationship wasn't as important as it used to be.

Han-koo said the new agreement was more about reducing non-tariff barriers, such as making rules around product origin more business friendly, and creating new digital and investment protections.

"So these two economies can win by cooperating closer through this kind of framework," he added.

Han-koo also said Britain can serve as a gateway for South Korea in its trade with Europe, while South Korea can serve as a gateway to Asia for British companies.

The South Korean deal is the latest in a series of post-Brexit trade agreements, but the independent budget forecaster, the OBR, has so far deemed deals done with those larger partners as unlikely to make a measurable impact on the UK economy by 2030.

The government has said that its various trade agreements struck this year will grow the British economy by creating jobs and cutting red tape for small businesses.

But its own assessment showed that the deal with India will only increase GDP by between 0.11% and 0.14%.

That deal in particular was criticised for potentially undercutting British workers.

India is the UK's 10th-largest trading partner, accounting for 2.5% of British trade.

'Great news'

UK companies including Bentley Motors, Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) and Guinness owner Diageo welcomed the news of the South Korean deal.

Frank-Steffen Walliser, chairman and chief executive of Bentley Motors, said that South Korea is a key market for the company and the wider luxury vehicle market.

"To secure immediate ongoing access to South Korea and a positive long term trade deal, is great news. Smooth international trade is vital to UK automotive business growth."

Diageo's interim chief executive Nik Jhangiani said it would "help satisfy the growing demand from South Korean consumers" for Guinness, which is canned in Runcorn, Cheshire.

Emily Weaver Roads, interim international director at the Scotch Whisky Association, said the Asia-Pacific region was the largest regional market by value for whisky.

"The reduction of trade barriers in the Republic of Korea will further enhance Scotch Whisky's access to an important market, especially for single malts."

A suspected New Year's Eve terror plot by an extremist group has been foiled by federal authorities in Los Angeles, officials say.

Four alleged members of the Turtle Island Liberation Front - an offshoot of a pro-Palestinian anti-government group - have been arrested on suspicion of planning a coordinated bombing attack in at least five locations across southern California, the FBI and LA law enforcement said on Monday.

The suspects were apprehended last week while traveling to the desert east of Los Angeles to test improvised explosive devices, officials said.

The FBI believes it has "disrupted the plot", but an investigation to identify other potential suspects is ongoing.

US Attorney General Pam Bondi said on X on Sunday that the agencies prevented "far-left" extremists from executing "a massive and horrific terror plot".

Audrey Illeene Carroll, 30; Zachary Aaron Page, 32; Dante Gaffield, 24; and Tina Lai, 41, face charges including conspiracy and possession of an unregistered destructive device, according to the complaint filed in the US District Court for the Central District of California.

On 12 December, the group travelled to the desert with "precursor chemicals" and were allegedly going to create bombs with their wares, officials said during a media conference on Monday.

A surveillance plane captured footage of their movements and the Los Angeles FBI SWAT team, along with the FBI, moved in and arrested the quartet without incident.

The bombing plot involved explosive devices being planted at locations that targeted two US companies described as logistic centres at midnight on New Year's Eve in the Los Angeles area.

The group also allegedly discussed attacking Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and vehicles with pipe bombs in January or February, according to the complaint said.

Carroll allegedly said: "That would take some of them out and scare the rest of them."

"The successful disruption of this plot is a powerful testament to the strength of our unified response," said LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell, adding that work through allied agencies "prevented a potential tragedy and reaffirmed our shared commitment to safeguarding our communities".