Trump news - live: Top state department official resigns over president's 'actions surrounding racial injustice' as Facebook takes down his ads
Social media platform says campaign used 'banned hate group's symbol to identify political prisoners without the context that condemns or discusses the symbol'
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Facebook has removed dozens of ads from Donald Trump's re-election campaign invoking Nazi imagery against political opponents while he has publicly sparred with the US Supreme Court and his ex-national security adviser John Bolton over allegations in a new book.
The social media platform said its decision to pull dozens of Trump campaign ads that invoked Nazi symbols to mark political opponents was based on the company's policy against "using a banned hate group's symbol to identify political prisoners without the context that condemns or discusses the symbol."
Bolton say the “stunningly uninformed” president begged Chinese premier Xi Jinping for help with his re-election, said invading Venezuela would be “cool”, believed Finland was in Russia and did not realise the UK was a nuclear power.
Several newspapers published extracts from The Room Where it Happened, which hits shelves next week and paints a damning portrait of the Trump White House and a blustering president willing to do “personal favours for dictators he likes”, ignorant of foreign policy and motivated predominantly by “re-election calculations”.
Trump wasted no time in angrily hitting back at Bolton, disparaging him as “a washed up guy” on Fox News and taking to Twitter to label him: “A disgruntled boring fool who only wanted to go to war.”
A senior State Department official meanwhile has resigned over the president's poor handling of racial tensions in the wake of the police killings of black Americans, as the president lashed out over the Supreme Court's ruling that halts the administration's bid to end DACA, an Obama-era programme that provided a legal path for migrants who entered the US without legal permission to stay in the country.
The president, who has two of his own appointees on the high court, threatened the possibility of more nominees, underscoring the future of SCOTUS as a larger campaign issue in November.
Follow live coverage as it happened
Please allow a moment for our liveblog to load
Hillary Clinton says Trump is trying to ‘hijack Christianity’ and that Biden will win election
The former first lady and secretary of state has been talking to Sky News's Kay Burley and mocking Trump brandishing the Bible, saying he "can’t tell you a single thing that’s in it.”
Andrew Naughtie has more from the 2016 candidate.
Kayleigh McEnany brands John Bolton 'misguided hawk and a weak dove'
As Trump continues to rage at his former employee, digging up old grievances over their talks with North Korea...
...his press secretary has been up early on Fox and Friends to discredit her ex-comrade over the deluge of wild claims about her boss's ignorance of foreign policy in his new book.
The hosts of the president's favourite breakfast show have meanwhile been seeking to bring solace, with Brian Kilmeade suggesting Bolton is just "bitter" about his ousting last September.
Supreme Court blocks Trump from ending legal protection for young migrants
The US Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that the Trump administration cannot shut down the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) immigration programme, first established by Barack Obama.
DACA protects nearly 800,000 people, known as “Dreamers”, from facing immediate deportation from the US but the Trump administration had put forth a plan to disband DACA in an effort to crack down on immigration reform within the country – a promise made by the president when seeking election.
The Supreme Court’s decision today has halted that effort, its five-four ruling made with chief justice John Roberts writing the majority opinion and being joined by the four liberal justices to protect DACA.
Here's Danielle Zoellner with the latest.
Trump on reporters: 'These people should be executed. They are scumbags'
Gino Spocchia has this on the president's disturbing attitude towards members of the Fourth Estate, as relayed by John Bolton.
Trump says Supreme Court decisions are 'shotgun blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves Republicans'
Woah! Where did that come from? The president is angry after the country's top court blocked his bid to end Obama's DACA programme and says so in suprisingly graphic terms.
Nancy Pelosi orders portraits of Confederate speakers to be removed from House on Juneteenth
The speaker has ordered the House clerk to remove from the Capitol portraits of four speakers who also served in the Confederacy as part of Democrats' response to the recent killing of George Floyd in police custody and protests of black people dying while interacting with white police officers.
John T Bennett has the latest on this developing story.
Fox News says viewers don't expect Tucker Carlson to report facts
Well that's probably for the best eh?
Here's Andrew Naughtie on a Trump media ally who has absolutely outdone himself in recent weeks spreading conservative hysteria about the Black Lives Matter demonstrations.
Former top ethics chief raises questions about Ivanka Trump's emails
The former head of the US Office of Government Ethics has raised questions about controversial emails Ivanka Trump sent before joining her father’s White House administration, after they resurfaced due to John Bolton's upcoming book.
Walter Shaub, who served as the chief ethics czar under former President Barack Obama, described the previously reported emails as “disturbing” after they were posted to Twitter by a government watchdog group, which received them after filing a Freedom of Information Act request in 2017.
Ms Trump, who now serves as a senior White House adviser in President Donald Trump’s administration, was found to have conducted government business over a private server using personal email account “on hundreds of occasions”, according to the watchdog group, American Oversight.
The emails revealed that the first daughter — who had no prior government or political experience prior to serving in her father’s White House — was emailing top cabinet officials like Education Secretary Betsy DeVos prior to officially joining the administration.
Mr Shaub pointed to one email he found “even MORE disturbing” than others, which showed Ms Trump referring to a White House official as her “COS”, or chief of staff. The former ethics chief wrote in a tweet: “Wow! This is really crazy stuff.”
Story to come...
Criticism grows as Democrat says Trump campaign is using Nazi symbolism
Reports are emerging online that point to a recent “Team Trump” Facebook post that condemns the recent nationwide protests, describing the demonstrations as “dangerous MOBS of far-left groups”, which appears to include Nazi symbolism.
Ted Lieu, a California Democrat, shared a post from Bend the Arc: Jewish Action that compared the Trump campaign post to a Nazi concentration camp symbol used to mark political prisoners and others who attempted to rescue Jews.
“Why is this not a bigger story?” the congressman wrote, adding: “This is not okay.”
ICYMI: Trump said journalists 'should be executed' and are 'scumbags', ex-aide Bolton claims
Gino Spocchia writes: Former national security adviser John Bolton has claimed that Donald Trump called journalists “scumbags” who should be “executed”.
Those comments, which Mr Bolton alleges were made last summer, were published on Wednesday night alongside other alleged wrongdoings contained in a new tell-all book.
The extract states that Mr Trump attacked journalists during a meeting last summer in New Jersey.
He was said to have called journalists “scumbags” who should be jailed so they would have to expose their sources, wrote Mr Bolton.
“These people should be executed. They are scumbags,” Mr Trump said, according to Bolton’s account from “The Room Where It Happened.”
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments