Trump's birthday passport emulates an old-fashioned dictator

Donald Trump has long relished emblazoning hotels, golf clubs and merchandise with his name and likeness, but he has ramped up this effort in recent months.

The US President has faced criticism for his plans for an “Arc de Trump” to mimic the Paris monument, designs for a presidential library featuring a golden Trump statue and his attempt to rename the Kennedy Center (overturned by the courts earlier this month).

Now, Trump has unveiled a new limited edition US passport, featuring his face and signature, which will be issued to coincide with the 250th anniversary of American independence celebrations on 4 July.

New EU border checks should be suspended before peak summer, aviation industry leaders have said, after Brits reported huge delays due to the new Entry/Exit System (EES). 

The system, rolled out fully in April, involves people from the UK having their fingerprints registered and photographs taken to enter certain countries.

The EES is used to enter the Schengen Area, which consists of 29 European countries, mainly in the EU.

For most UK travellers, the process is done at foreign airports.

Severe operational consequences disrupting passengers and putting border authorities, airports and airlines under unsustainable pressure.

Senior figures at three major aviation industry bodies wrote to Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission warning waiting times at border control had “increased significantly, now reaching up to five hours”.

Since it’s implementation, the EES has caused travel chaos for Brits.

Russia launched a large-scale attack on Ukraine’s capital Kyiv with missiles and drones, killing at least 13 people and injuring dozens more.

Russia launched a series of strikes on Kyiv, hitting residential ⁠buildings and ⁠triggering ​a fire in a hotel on a central boulevard.

Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko has said 13 people had been killed, ⁠with about three dozen locations across the city damaged in the attacks.

Many residents took shelter at metro stations after the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, issued the first warnings of the attack.

Zelenskyy was forced to cut short a trip to Dublin on Wednesday, citing intelligence reports of a large-scale Russian attack.

Ukraine said on Tuesday it hit one of Russia’s largest satellite communication centers in north Moscow for the second time in just over a week.

Russian president Vladimir Putin also recently admitted Russia is facing fuel shortages after Ukraine launched repeated strikes on oil refineries, while Kyiv notably launched a large-scale attack on Moscow last month.

Sir Keir Starmer’s much-delayed Defence Investment Plan had one big bet at its heart: drones are the future of warfare.

American company Anduril makes the “Seabed Sentry“- a weighted cylinder that uses sensors and AI to monitor what is happening under the sea. They could be used to listen out for spying and sabotage by Russian submarines. They are far cheaper than crewed submarines using traditional sonar.

A dozen of the cylinders can be dropped onto the seabed at a time by an autonomous submarine, with the devices forming a network which communicate between themselves and listens out for undersea activity.

The UK is woefully unprepared with the Royal Navy in a desperate condition. Whoever sits in Downing Street come next September will need to address matters of defence, homeland and cyber defence especially, with urgency.

Officials have drawn up contingency plans to cut further green levies from energy bills if prices remain high this winter, The i Paper has been told.

Several options are now circulating among Burnham’s transition team who are believed to be weighing up how to deliver on that pledge. A Treasury source said work on a package was ongoing to help with rising costs.

Burnham could remove remaining green levies from energy bills, funded through general taxation instead.

One proposal would be to raise the bank surcharge from its current 3 per cent.

Replace stamp duty, loosen fiscal rules and tax the capital gains uplift on inherited assets.

A written statement published by the Chancellor said the remaining sum would be “confirmed at Budget 2026, in a fair and balanced way”.

The coronation of Andy Burnham is fraught with dangers. Never will a prime minister have arrived in Downing Street with so little scrutiny of what he wants to do.

Electric flying taxis could be above the streets of London by 2028, a manufacturer has claimed. Here’s what you need to know.

Vertical Aerospace is still testing the aircraft and it will need to be approved by both the approval from the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and the European Aviation Safety Authority (EASA). But the company says the aim is for air taxis to become as cheap and convenient as ordering an Uber to the airport.

“The U.S.A’s New Passport, which says, “Welcome, but be good!'” he posted on Truth Social, along with a mock-up of the design.

The announcement has not only prompted a backlash for being another vanity project, it has also drawn ridicule, with commentators saying Trump’s message suggested he was confusing a passport with a visa. Others observed that while it is policy that truly matters, the concept emulates the behaviour of dictators.

Putting aside the creepy dictatorial vibe, it's either hilarious or terrifying that Donald Trump clearly doesn't know who passports are for. pic.twitter.com/UYVA4jf35g

The President has been sticking his name on a wide range of projects for decades, says Dr Mark Shanahan of University of Surrey, whose forthcoming book Trump Unbound, examines the former businessman’s attempts to consolidate his personal power in his second term.

“He has never been shy at this kind of lifetime memorialisation,” said Shanahan. “This idea of putting his name on everything that he touches is very much in his style, all the way back to his New York property days. It’s all part of the same, ‘see how powerful I am’.”

Trump is the first president to put his likeness on the US passport, but the document will only be issued in a very limited run of around 30,000 to in-person applicants at one office in Washington DC from 6 July.

Shanahan believes this “transactional branding style” is largely superficial and temporary, representing a commercial need to spread his name as widely as possible while he can. “Whoever is the next President, particularly if it’s a Democrat, will probably let people change to a normal American passport,” Shanahan added. “What is irreversible comes in his policy.”

Professor John Owens of the Centre for the Study of Democracy agrees that “pictures can be removed” more easily than other actions of Trump’s administration, but adds that the President is simultaneously working on longer-term influence campaigns.

“Trump also wishes to create more permanent reminders, while conveniently and dangerously ignoring constitutional niceties, including the separation and sharing of powers in the US system,” he said, referring to the 80-year-old’s campaign to remove powers from Congress and the courts.

Owens said that in putting himself on the passport, Trump “emulates authoritarian dictators past and present” by aiming to establish a “cult of personality”.

“By broadcasting his image, Trump is purposely blurring the important distinction between the state and an incumbent president,” Owens continued. “Like those authoritarian dictators, Trump seeks to personalise the federal government, portray unchecked dominance, enforce conformity, and insist on loyalty from ordinary Americans and federal government workers while implicitly or explicitly reminding them that they are being watched.”

The passport announcement has also drawn mockery, with social media users calling it “confusing” and “beyond strange”. Shanahan pointed out that Trump’s welcome message implied a “misreading of what a passport is”.

“Maybe if this had been on a visa stamp for people coming into the country, it would have made more sense,” he said. “I think like many Trump ideas, it seemed like a good idea at the time, but probably hasn’t been fully thought through.”

Others took it as a veiled warning to people who have been granted US citizenship, in keeping with Trump’s hostility to immigrants.

The post has generated alarm, with critical race theorist Tim Wise decrying its “creepy dictatorial vibe” and others saying it underlined claims Trump behaves more like a king than a president. The announcement came as fresh “No Kings” protests took place in Florida this weekend, in defiance of Trump’s anniversary celebrations.

These have already included turning the South Lawn of the White House into an Ultimate Fighting Contest arena to coincide with his 80th birthday a few weeks ago and a campaign-style rally at Washington’s National Mall last week. He plans to hold another “Trump rally” there during the 250th anniversary celebrations next weekend.

Shanahan thinks the passport is just the latest proof in Trump’s desire to “reign like a King”, following on from his “autocratic” style of government, including firing civil servants wholesale as part of a Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) push and going to war in Iran without Congressional approval.

He said: “Whether it quite gets to dictatorial, we are still some way short of that. But he is pushing the boundaries as far as he can on what he can get through for his own benefit. We will see Trumpism long after the man himself has left the building.”