Trump news: Under-fire postmaster general says he has 'no intention' of returning mail sorting machines
Senate committee interrogates US Postal Service chief as GOP prepares for 2020 convention
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Donald Trump said he would send law enforcement officers to polling locations for this November's presidential election in comments branded "an attack on America" by a former White House ethics chief.
“We're going to have sheriffs, and we're going to have law enforcement, and we're going to have hopefully US attorneys, and we're going to have everybody and attorney generals (sic),” Mr Trump told Fox News after host Sean Hannity asked if he would have "poll watchers".
Meanwhile, his Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said on Friday there was “no intention” to return mail sorting machines that were removed in recent weeks, after it was reported that at least 671 machines were removed in critical voting states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin and Georgia, among others.
The postmaster general said those machines were “not needed”, while adding that he supports vote-by-mail efforts amid the pandemic.
Mr DeJoy, who has overseen sweeping cuts at the agency following his appointment by the president in June, told a US Senate committee he would be voting by mail in fall elections and insisted that the "American people should feel comfortable that the Postal Service will deliver on this election" despite the president's constant threats to undermine the agency.
On Friday, the president and his family held a funeral service for his brother Robert Trump, who died on 16 August. He was 71. The president held a service in the East Room of the White House.
A group of anti-Trump Republicans have meanwhile seized on the arrest of former Trump campaign chief and senior White House adviser Steve Bannon, who has pleaded not guilty to fraud in an an alleged US-Mexico border wall crowdfunding scheme. He is the subject of an advert targeting Fox News views during next week's 2020 Republican National Convention.
GOP officials and the president are preparing for the event following Joe Biden's official nomination as the Democrats' nominee after his party's week-long convention, during which Democrats and several Republicans condemned the current administration and the president's response to the coronavirus pandemic and economic fallout.
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‘We’ve never heard one president talk that way about another’
Rich Lowry, editor of the right-wing publication National Review, is among the many pundits expressing their surprise at Barack Obama’s speech. “We’ve never heard one president talk in public about another president the way Barack Obama did last night,” he said.
“Democrats don’t really get much from attacking Donald Trump, because it’s very hard to say anything that people haven’t hear over and over again.”
Ballot drop boxes are latest battleground in election fight
Welcome to the latest partisan flash point in the presidential election: the ballot drop box.
As US election officials gird for a dramatic expansion of mail-in voting, Democrats across the country are promoting drop boxes as a convenient and reliable option for voters who don't want to entrust their ballots to the US Postal Service.
Donald Trump’s re-election campaign, meanwhile, has sued to prevent their use in Pennsylvania, a key battleground state, alleging that the receptacles could enable voting fraud.
Republican officials in other states have prevented their use. Tennessee secretary of state Tre Hargett told a US Senate committee in July that drop boxes could enable people to violate a state law against collecting ballots.
In Missouri, Republican secretary of state Jay Ashcroft decided not to distribute 80 drop boxes he had purchased because state law requires those ballots to be returned by mail.
“We didn’t want to cause confusion with voters,” spokeswoman Maura Browning said.
Trump vs Goodyear tyres
Donald Trump has urged people to boycott Goodyear tyres, tweeting that the Ohio-based company had “announced a BAN ON MAGA HATS”.
But the company, based in Ohio, merely asked employees to refrain from workplace expressions involving political campaigns and “forms of advocacy that fall outside the scope of racial justice and equity issues”.
Trump’s tweet sent the company’s stock downward, closing down about 2.4% for the day.
“Get better tires for far less! (This is what the Radical Left Democrats do. Two can play the same game, and we have to start playing it now!),” Trump tweeted.
His tweet followed a report from WIBW television station in Topeka, Kansas, based on an anonymous Goodyear employee’s screenshot.
The screenshot listed Black Lives Matter and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride messages as acceptable while politically affiliated slogans and material, including “MAGA Attire” and “Blue Lives Matter”, in support of police, were listed as unacceptable.
‘There may be dirty tricks from Trump,’ says Senator Booker
Senator Cory Booker says that “there may be dirty tricks” from Donald Trump in the general election vote and that the nation’s voters should be stalwart in their determination to cast ballots.
The Democratic New Jersey senator told ABC’s Good Morning America he “hopes that Americans press on and are not deterred” by distractions involving the voting process, such as the recent dispute over US Postal Service funding and access to voting by mail.
The Republican president has warned repeatedly without evidence about potential fraud in mail-in voting even though voter fraud is exceedingly rare.
Booker, who speaks on the fourth and final night of Democrats’ virtual convention Thursday ahead of Joe Biden, said he’d like to see the return of “civic grace”.
Democrats need to offer reasons to vote for Biden, says Tom Cotton
Republican senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas says he doesn’t think he heard “many or even any reasons to vote for Joe Biden” at the convention on Wednesday night, when Barack Obama, Biden running mate Kamala Harris and 2016 Trump opponent Hillary Clinton spoke.
Cotton says Democrats “have to explain why America would be better off with Joe Biden as our president” rather than simply attacking Trump.
Trump wanted to trade 'dirty and poor' Puerto Rico for Greenland, says ex-White House official
Donald Trump wanted to sell Puerto Rico or swap it for Greenland because he viewed the Caribbean territory as "dirty" and "poor", a former senior White House official has said.
Miles Taylor, who served as chief of staff to the former Department for Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, said the president made the comments in August 2018 -- less than a year after Puerto Rico had been devastated by Hurricane Maria.
"Not only did he want to purchase Greenland, he actually said he wanted to see if we could sell Puerto Rico," Mr Taylor told MSNBC on Wednesday. "Could we swap Puerto Rico for Greenland because, in his words, Puerto Rico was dirty and the people were poor."
Matt Mathers reporters:
US suspends Hong Kong extradition treaty as China feud deepens
US-China relations took another blow on Wednesday after Washington suspended its extradition treaty with Hong Kong in protest at Beijing‘s new national security law.
The treaty was one of three the Trump administration said it was halting or axing entirely, in response to China‘s decision to impose on Hong Kong sweeping new reforms that critics say signal an end to the territory’s autonomy.
The measures mean the US will no longer cooperate with China on “the surrender of fugitive offenders, the transfer of sentenced persons and reciprocal tax exemptions on income derived from the international operation of ships”, State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus said in a statement.
Matt Mathers has the full report:
US jobless claims unexpectedly jump about one million
The number of people filing for unemployment was greater than expected, according to a report released by the Department of Labour.
Initial jobless claims came in at 1.106 million for the week ending on 15 August.
This has caused concern among across the country that the state of the US economy could be worse than expected, as lawmakers on Capitol Hill still fight over the next coronavirus relief package.
Economists polled by Dow Jones expected for claims to be around 923,000 for the week.
Breaking news: Trump former adviser Steve Bannon is arrested and indicted for money laundering to assist in building the US-Mexico border wall
Former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon has been charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering while raising money for a campaign to build the US-Mexico border wall.
Mr Bannon and two others were indicted for allegedly funnelling "hundreds of thousands of dollars" from the "We Build the Wall" online fundraising campaign to Brian Kolfage, the founder of the organisation who was also indicted by United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY).
"As alleged, the defendants defrauded hundreds of thousands of donors, capitalising on their interest in funding a border wall to raise millions of dollars, under the false pretence that all of that money would be spent on construction," Acting US Attorney Audrey Strauss said in a press release.
More on this breaking news here:
More breaking news: Judge dismisses Trump's second attempt to block criminal investigation into his business dealings
A federal judge has dismissed Donald Trump's second attempt to block a criminal investigation into him by Manhattan prosecutor Cyrus Vance, who is seeking to subpoena eight years of the president's tax filings.
"Under their theory of temporary absolute immunity, even if the President (presumably any president) while in office were to shoot a person in the middle of New York's Fifth Avenue, he or she would be shielded from law enforcement investigations and judicial proceedings of any kind, federal or state, until the expiration of the President's term," the federal judge wrote, denying the president's lawsuit motioning to end Mr Vance's investigation.
Griffin Connolly with the story:
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