Trump news - live: Administration sues over Bolton book as criticism grows over president's police reform executive order
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Your support makes all the difference.Donald Trump's administration sued to block the release of John Bolton's upcoming White House memoir, saying it was "rife with classified information."
The White House defended Trump's executive orders on police reform as Democrats critised the measures as "weak" and "inadequate".
Mike Pence, meanwhile, defended the president's upcoming rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, insisting Trump has the right to gather supporters after falsely claiming the state successfully "flattened the curve."
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Trump wrongly says scientists created Aids vaccine and predicts coronavirus cure by end of year
Graig Graziosi has more on the president's gaffe: President Donald Trump has claimed doctors working on a coronavirus vaccine are the same that produced a non-existent Aids vaccine.
During a White House briefing - which was ostensibly held for him to discuss his executive order on police reform - Mr Trump made a prediction that some kind of coronavirus remedy would be available by the end of the year.
"Before the end of the year I predict we will have a very successful vaccine, therapeutic and cure," he said.
"We're making tremendous progress. I deal with these incredible scientists, doctors very closely," he said.
Mr Trump praised the scientists, and then mistakenly credited them for a non-existent Aids vaccine.
"I have great respect for their minds. They have come up with things. They've come up with many other cures and therapeutics over the years," Mr Trump said. "They've come up with the Aids vaccine."
Massive expansion of vote-by-mail approved in Illinois
Governor JB Pritzker on Tuesday approved a massive expansion in voting by mail, a plan derided by Republicans nationally.
The Democrat said allowing voters to mail-in ballots for the November presidential election would limit polling place crowds and Covid-19 transmission.
Republicans, led by President Donald Trump, have argued it opens the door to fraud.
The law requires that vote-by-mail applications be sent to every voter who voted through the mail for any election since 2018. It even directs reminders to be sent in the fall and authorizes the Illinois State Board of Elections to publicize and ease the process.
Ballots need not be mailed but could be placed in drop-boxes outside local election authorities. A second bill Mr Pritzker signed Tuesday requires those boxes to be locked.
Democrats set aside about $17 million, mostly in federal Covid-19 relief funds, to be provided to local authorities to finance the system. Republicans say it will cost far more than that and its price could bust some county government budgets.
Associated Press
Police officer who shot Rayshard Brooks had previous complaints and reprimand for use of force, records show
The Atlanta police officer who shot Rayshard Brooks already had one reprimand for use of force involving a firearm plus several citizen complaints, newly-released records show.
Garrett Rolfe, 27, who was fired following Mr Brooks's death, received a written reprimand in October 2017 for an incident in September 2016, according to Atlanta Police Department documents released to Reuters.
While that was his sole use-of-force reprimand in the seven years before Friday's shooting, Mr Rolfe has several citizen complaints dating back to 2015 in which no action was taken, the outlet reported.
His disciplinary file outlines five vehicle accidents and four citizen complaints, with two of the vehicle accidents leading to a written reprimand and an oral admonishment, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's version of the documents.
In all the report lists three incidents involving use of a firearm. Along with the reprimand, a discharge in 2015 did not have a conclusion listed and the 2016 incident resulted in the reprimand about a year later. The shooting of Mr Brooks was the third firearm incident listed, according to the reports.
Read the full story.
Analysis: Once a law-and-order president, always a law-and-order president.
From The Independent's John T Bennett.
Donald Trump and his top West Wing aides spent weeks debating whether he should give a national address on race after coast-to-coast protests over police officers killing black people, mostly triggered by
George Floyd dying in Minneapolis under the knee of a white officer.
The president was resistant. He has complained to senior aides that he is not comfortable delivering remarks to a mostly empty Oval Office from behind the Resolute Desk. He did so on March 11, trying to reassure the country about the coronavirus. In part because of his bungling parts of the speech, that was widely considered a failure.
So he and his team settled on a midday address on Tuesday ahead of signing an executive order putting in place policing reforms -- even though it appeared to fall well short of the kinds of changes protesters and many Democrats in Congress want. They say the coronavirus is one of two epidemics facing black Americans. The other is police officers killing black Americans, they say, practically begging Mr Trump to at least urge the country for calm and embrace bold policing reforms.
There were signs as Mr Trump began speaking from the White House's Rose Garden that he might do something he rarely has during the three-plus years of his term: At least play the part of the consoler in chief.
Read the full story.
Breaking: Trump administration sues Bolton over upcoming book, reports say
Following weeks of speculation, The White House on Tuesday asked a federal judge to block the publication of John Bolton's book, CNN is reporting.
Arguing that the former National Security Advisor breached contract, the suit filed in a federal court alleges the manuscript for The In the Room Where it Happened: A White House Memoir was filled with "classified information".
"(Bolton) struck a bargain with the United States as a condition of his employment in one of the most sensitive and important national security positions in the United States Government and now wants to renege on that bargain by unilaterally deciding that the prepublication review process is complete and deciding for himself whether classified information should be made public," prosecutors wrote, according to CNN.
The book was due to be released on 23 June.
White House takes aim at Democrat response to Trump's police reform
Following Democrat criticism of the Trump's police reform announcements, the White House took to the airwaves to defend the president's executive order.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer slammed President Trump's executive order on police reform, calling it 'inadequate'
Press secretary Kayleigh McEnany responded to Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi during an interview on Fox News this afternoon following criticism that racial bias was not addressed in Trump's executive order.
"What was addressed was use of force, we want all Americans to be handled in an equal, fair manner, the president made that very clear that we're all made in the image of God and there should be no racism in our policing system, our economic system, our schooling system," she said.
Ms McEnany said that Nancy Pelosi's was "incredibly wrong" for calling Trump's action "weak".
"Guess what there's been one action taken on this and who has taken that action? President Trump with this executive order," she said.
"Eight years with the previous administration with President Obama and Vice President Biden they had eight years to make changes, it took President Trump, much like it took President Trump on criminal justice reform."
Trump met with families of victims - How did it go?
White House reporter Yamiche Alcindor has an account from one of the attendees at today's meeting between Trump and families of people killed in confrontations with police.
It went about as you'd expect it.
CIA focus on cyber weapons vs. security defences led to largest data theft in its history, reports say
In a heist ripped straight out of the pages of Mission Impossible, the largest theft of data in the history of the Central Intelligence Agency occurred due to 'woefully lax security', according to reports this week.
An internal investigation released on Tuesday, reported by CNN, said the CIA focused more on building cyber weapons than identifying the warning signs that a person with access to classified information posed a risk to national security.
"In a press to meet growing and critical mission needs, CCI (Centre for Cyber Intelligence) had prioritized building cyber weapons at the expense of securing their own systems. Day-to-day security practices had become woefully lax," the report says, according to CNN.
Hacking tools stolen in the 2016 breach were revealed in 2017 when WikiLeaks published "Vault 7", detailing some of the agency's sophisticated cyberweapons the data, which could have been up to 34 terabytes, or 2.2 billion pages of text.
The Independent has obtained exclusive footage of the astonishing act of international espionage, which you can watch below.
Trump says 'school choice' is the civil rights issue 'of all time in this country'
Donald Trump said school choice was the civil rights issue "of all time" as he announced reforms on Tuesday to address police brutality following global outrage over the killing of George Floyd.
During his White House remarks, Mr Trump said his administration was fighting for school choice, "which really is the civil rights of all time in this country".
"Frankly school choice is the civil rights statement of the year, of the decade, and probably beyond," the president said.
"Because all children have to have access to quality education, a child's zip code in America should never determine their future and that's what was happening."
It is the second time in the past week that Mr Trump has positioned school choice in the company of civil rights milestones like the abolition of slavery, women's suffrage, same-sex marriage and the civil rights movement itself.
Read more.
Nebraska Democrats demand Senate candidate drop out over sexual comments to female staffer
The Nebraska Democratic Party has asked its Senate nominee to pull out of the race, after a female staffer reported texts he sent making graphic sexual comments about her.
Chris Janicek, who owns a cupcake bakery in Omaha, Nebraska, is running as the Democratic nominee for the Senate, against Republican Ben Sasse, who is seeking reelection.
The text messages, obtained by The Associated Press, were from a group chat involving Mr Janicek and
five other people, including the female staffer.
He wrote that he had argued with her and then asked whether the campaign should spend money on "getting her laid."
"It will probably take three guys," he wrote, before describing in graphic detail an imagined group sex scene involving the female staffer.
James Crump has the full story on this.
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