Trump news: President blocks action on gun control weeks after deadly mass shootings, as Fox News poll suggests he will lose in 2020
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Donald Trump has angrily denied reports he made a promise to a mystery foreign leader during a phone call from the Oval Office that so troubled one US intelligence official they felt compelled to file a whistleblower complaint about it, predictably dismissing the story and asking: “Is anybody dumb enough to believe that I would say something inappropriate?”
The precise nature of the pledge is currently unknown, according to The Washington Post, but, despite the matter being deemed of “urgent concern”, the president’s acting director of national intelligence Joseph Maguire has so far refused to pass it on to House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff, even after a subpoena was issued.
With a new Fox News poll finding him lagging behind the 2020 Democratic front-runners, Mr Trump returns from California where he visited his US-Mexico border wall on Wednesday, hailing the construction project with characteristic bluster as a “world-class security system”.
Meanwhile, Mr Trump asked a federal court to block an effort by New York prosecutors to obtain his tax returns as part of a criminal investigation, opening another front in the president’s efforts to keep his financial information private.
The president’s attorneys filed a lawsuit against Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr, who recently subpoenaed the president’s accounting firm for eight years of his state and federal returns as part of an investigation into payments made to two women who claimed to have had affairs with Mr Trump.
The Democrat challengers to Trump in 2020
Show all 25They called the subpoena a “bad faith effort to harass” Mr Trump and said Mr Vance, a Democrat, had overstepped his constitutional authority.
“Virtually ‘all legal commenters agree’ that a sitting President of the United States is not ‘subject to the criminal process’ while he is in office,” Mr Trump’s lawyers wrote.
“Yet a county prosecutor in New York, for what appears to be the first time in our nation’s history, is attempting to do just that,” they added.
The lawsuit, filed in Manhattan federal court, asks US District Judge Victor Marrero to declare the subpoena unenforceable until Mr Trump leaves office.
The president’s lawyer, Jay Sekulow, said the lawsuit is intended “to address the significant constitutional issues at stake in this case.”
A spokesman for Mr Vance said his office had received the lawsuit “and will respond as appropriate in court.” Mr Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA, declined to comment.
Additional reporting by AP. Please allow a moment for our liveblog to load
Massachusetts congressman Joe Kennedy III is bidding to extend his family's legendary political dynasty.
Chris Riotta reflects on his chances of challenging Ed Markey for the Senate.
Hi everyone. This is Andrew Buncombe up in Seattle, where it is a rather grey morning. Big bit of news here this morning is that one of Mr Trump's favourite people to hate, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post, has announced Amazon will be carbon neutral by 2040
By contrast, Mr Trump has little truck with climate change and is withdrawing the US from the Paris Accord, signed by Barack Obama
Donald Trump has poured cold water on prospects for a bipartisan compromise on gun legislation, even as attorney general William Barr circulated a draft plan on Capitol Hill to expand background checks, Reuters reports.
In a Fox News interview that aired on Thursday, Mr Trump said no deal was imminent, more than six weeks after mass shootings in Texas and Ohio that killed more than 30 people.
The United States has issued visas allowing Iranian president Hassan Rouhani and foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to travel to New York for the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations next week, Iran's UN mission said on Thursday, according to Reuters
Donald Trump’s administration spent roughly $33m (£26.3m) in the past seven weeks to staff an immigrant detention centre for unaccompanied minors in Texas that has been completely empty since last month, according to officials.
The last child left the Homestead detention centre on 3 August, and yet the sprawling facilities have reportedly remained staffed to house as many as 1,200 immigrants at once.
Jonathan Hayes, director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, acknowledged the soaring figures during a congressional hearing on Wednesday about immigrant children in US custody and their specific mental health needs.
The revelations about how much has been spent by the federal government to keep the empty facilities staffed were made when Mr Hayes was asked by Wisconsin Democrat Mark Pocan if his office was in fact spending $600 (£478) a day to pay for each of the 1,200 available beds.
Story to come...
The US House of Representatives has just passed a short-term funding bill in order to avert a government shutdown. The bill passed 301-123 and would allow the government to continue running at current funding levels until 21 November.
The bill now heads to the Senate where it will need to pass before going to Donald Trump’s desk for a signature.
The Trump administration has threatened to disqualify a university-level Middle East studies programme from receiving federal funding for teaching the “positive aspects of Islam”.
The US Department of Education has ordered that the programme run by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University revise their course plans by 22 September or risk losing future funding.
The administration claims the course has “critical shortcomings and impermissible biases”, with “very little serious instruction” on national security and instead “considerable emphasis” on the “positive aspects of Islam”.
In a letter dated August 29 and sent to the programme’s directors, the Department says course topics including Iranian art and film offer “little to no relevance” under the funding guidelines, nor do they “support the development of foreign language and international expertise for the benefit of US national security and economic stability”. Instead, the course places “considerable emphasis on advancing ideological priorities”, the Department has claimed.
Barack Obama has taken a rare, thinly veiled poke at his predecessor, suggesting it was unwise for any president to spend too much time watching television or reading social media.
While not referring to Donald Trump by name, Mr Obama told an audience in San Francisco, it was very difficult to perfect a decision-making process in the White House.
“Make sure you have a team with a diversity of opinion sitting around you,” he said, according to CNBC. “The other thing that’s helpful is not watching TV or reading social media. Those are two things I would advise, if you’re our president, not to do.
He added: “It creates a lot of noise and clouds your judgment.”
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