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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
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Julia Carrie Wong in San Francisco (now) and Amanda Holpuch in New York (earlier)

Trump proposes meeting with Kim Jong-un after G-20 summit – as it happened

Donald Trump and North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un met in February during the second North Korea-US summit.
Donald Trump and North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un met in February during the second North Korea-US summit. Photograph: Leah Millis/Reuters

Summary

Thanks for joining us for another day of US politics. Here’s a rundown of the day’s biggest stories:

Trump’s latest attempt at Twitter diplomacy with Kim was issued just about three hours after the White House released a much more formal statement regarding his visit to South Korea.

In that statement, the White House stressed that the visit to the Republic of Korea (ROK) was designed to “reaffirm a vital partnership that is essential to our economic and security interests” and discussed the negotiations with North Korea.

President Trump is working closely with President Moon Jae-in of the Republic of Korea to achieve the final and fully verified denuclearization of North Korea and to establish a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula ... The United States and ROK coordination and cooperation regarding the denuclearization of North Korea is the strongest it has ever been ... Both President Trump and President Moon have repeatedly called on Chairman Kim to follow through on his commitment to completely denuclearize.

The statement makes no mention of an attempt to hold a meeting in the DMZ during Trump’s visit.

Trump proposes meeting with Kim Jong Un via tweet

President Trump just proposed a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in the demilitarized zone (DMZ) that divides the Korean peninsula between north and south. Trump will be in South Korea meeting with that country’s president, Moon Jae-in.

The bizarre missive suggests that Trump is leaving the planning of such a high stakes meeting to the whims of chance, and that the only agenda would be to shake hands and say “Hello(?)!”

Trump and Kim have met twice, first in Singapore last June and again in Hanoi in February. Neither summit has produced any agreement about North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

Updated

A federal judge has ordered the US government into mediation over concerns about the treatment of children being held in border patrol facilities, Reuters reports.

The judge’s order follows a request by lawyers representing detained children for an emergency order to send doctors and health experts into the facilities. The treatment of migrant children held in detention is governed by a decades-old agreement known as the Flores agreement.

The parties will have to report back to the judge by 12 July on the status of conditions in the detention facilities.

Another report out today, by Bloomberg, states that children and their mothers are complaining of hunger in one federal detention center center in Texas.

Bloomberg reviewed procurement data for the facility and found that the menu was unhealthy, lacking nutritional value and fresh ingredients. Rafael Perez-Escamilla, a professor at the Yale School of Public Health, called the menu “appalling”.

Toby Elizabeth Gialluca, a lawyer with the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, visited the facility in early June and said mothers alleged they were mostly provided with formula and potato chips to feed their toddlers. Other staples include cereal bars, ramen noodles, bologna sandwiches and microwaveable burritos.

Margo Wootan, vice president for nutrition at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, called the menu “a monotonous, unhealthy and disrespectful diet”.

Updated

Buttigieg wins endorsement of major LGBTQ fundraising group

Victory Fund, the largest LGBTQ political action committee in the US, just endorsed Pete Buttigieg for president. The announcement comes on the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riot that galvanized the fight for civil rights for LGBTQ people in the US.

The group’s core mission is to increase the representation of LGBTQ people in American politics by supporting the campaigns of openly LGBTQ candidates. This is the first time the group has endorsed a presidential candidate.

“Every day that Pete is in the race, from the standpoint of an LGBT activist, he transforms American politics,” the group’s president, Annise Parker, told the Daily Beast. “As long as he is on that debate stage, LGBTQ issues can never be put on the backburner.”

Hello everyone, this is Julia Carrie Wong in San Francisco taking over the live blog to see you through to the weekend.

It’s not exactly your standard political live blog fare, but since everything is political now (nb the discount furniture site whose employees walked out over sales to immigrant detention centers), it’s probably worth mentioning that the US women’s national team just dispatched France 2-1. The victory comes thanks to two goals by star midfielder Megan Rapinoe, whose outspoken politics and promise not to go to the “fucking White House” have drawn the ire of Trump.

Evening Summary

In a 50 to 40 vote, the Senate voted in favor of an amendment to a Defense bill that would require congressional support before Trump acts.

The vote was still short of the 60 needed for passage.

But with four Republicans backing the amendment, members of Congress said it reflected skepticism about Trump’s possible intervention in the Middle East.

At the moment, Trump is only beholden to war authorizations Congress approved in the aftermath of September 11th. The House is expected to take up the issue next month.

“A congressional vote is a pretty good signal of what our constituents are telling us that another war in the Middle East would be a disaster right now, we don’t want the president to just do it on a whim,” said senator Tim Kaine, a Democrat from Virginia, who co-authored the measure with Tom Udall, a Democrat from New Mexico.

Kaine continued: “My gut tells me that the White House is realizing this is deeply unpopular with the American public.”

Even though the measure failed to reach the 60 votes needed, the House will likely try to attach its own limits on military action in Iran with its Defense bill next month.

Of the ten candidates on stage last night, entrepreneur Andrew Yang clocked the least amount of speaking time at two minutes and 56 seconds.

“I really would have loved more questions and more air time, but I’ve got three more bites at the apple,” Yang said after the debate. “The American people just found out a little more about me tonight.”

He did manage to advocate for a plan that would give $1,000 per month to all citizens over 18, but because of the stunted debate format, he didn’t have time to explain it.

Yang told the Miami Herald that the stipend would cost the government about $3.2 trillion per year, would be paid for by consolidating some welfare programs and implementing a value-added tax of 10%. “While it seems like a lot of money, it’s actually more affordable than you’d think,” he said.

Yang also claimed his microphone was “not on” a few times when he attempted to speak, but the debate host, NBC, denied that assertion.

“At no point during the debate was any candidate’s microphone turned off or muted,” an NBC spokesperson said in a statement to reporters.

It’s Sarah Huckabee Sanders last day as White House press secretary, which means it’s a good time to read this piece by our Washington bureau chief, David Smith, about how the role of press secretary diminished under Trump.

During Sanders’ tenure, the once daily ritual of the press briefing – must-watch television in the chaotic era of Sean Spicer – was essentially supplanted by the president holding court with reporters in the Oval Office, the cabinet room and, above all, on the White House South Lawn, competing with the roar of his Marine One helicopter.

The more he talked, the more pointless Sanders’ briefings became, since she merely parroted his tweets, evaded serious policy questions and channeled her boss’s anti-media barbs. It was perhaps inevitable that the briefings would get shorter and finally wither away, symbolised by a recent photo that showed dust literally gathering on the lectern.

This morning, 2020 Democratic candidates visited the Homestead children’s detention shelter in Florida. Julián Castro, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, John Hickenlooper, Kirsten Gillibrand and Marianne Williamson were denied entry to the facility, but made remarks while standing outside.

Julián Castro, speaking in Spanish and English, said: “He should have immediately reached out to Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, to partner with them so more people could find safety and opportunity at home instead of having to come to the United States. Instead of that, he has wasted two and a half years.”

Biden defends 'lifetime committed to civil rights'

Joe Biden just spoke at an event in Chicago, addressing his exchange at the debate with Kamala Harris about his past comments about segregationist senators.

“30 seconds to 60 seconds on a campaign debate exchange can’t do justice to a lifetime committed to civil rights,” Biden said.

At the debate Thursday night, in response to a question about race and policing, Harris interjected and said that she had a right to respond as the only black candidate on stage. She directed her comments to Biden, denouncing his record on race.

“I do not believe you are a racist,” Harris said, looking directly at the former vice-president. “But,” she continued, “it is personal. And it was actually hurtful to hear you talk about the reputations of two United States senators who built their reputations and career on the segregation of race in this country.”

Speaking at a labor luncheon on Friday, Biden said: “Folks, the discussion in this race today shouldn’t be about the past. We should be talking about how we can do better, how we can move forward, how we can give every child in America an opportunity for success stories.”

Updated

Another House Democrat, Massachusetts representative Joe Kennedy, is backing impeachment.

“This is not a decision I made lightly, nor is it one to celebrate,” Kennedy said. “It’s a dark day for our country when its Commander-in-Chief is accussed of high crimes. But after reading the Mueller report in full, reviewing the facts and consulting with legal experts, I believe Congress has a responsibility to act decisively.”

That brings the amount of House Democrats who back impeachment to 81, according to the Hill.

The Guardian’s Emily Holden, an environment reporter, said the Democratic debate last night demonstrated just how far the the US is from contemplating the climate crisis as a threat that will touch almost all areas of American life and policymaking:

The discussion largely pigeonholed the climate crisis as a single issue and an environmental problem.

And the crisis was not what most candidates – including ones with better climate credentials – listed as their top priority.

Asked what first issue they would pursue from the White House, only Hickenlooper and the Colorado senator Michael Bennet, neither of whom have been polling strongly, responded with climate change. Sanders, who is considered a heavyweight in the field, refused to pick one or two issues. “We need a political revolution,” he said.

The acting Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary, Kevin McAleenan, said border crossings are on track to drop 25% from May to June, at a press conference this afternoon.

This drop was expected, border crossings usually drop in the warmer summer months. Watch for Donald Trump and DHS attempting to connect this to their policies. When a reporter asked if the drop was related to seasonal changes, McAleenan said the change was not just seasonal.

If you would like to watch the full 21 minute press conference, it’s here.

Summary

Here’s a look at what was an unfortunately fairly routine morning in US politics, circa 2019.

Also:

Elizabeth Warren has challenged her fellow Democrats running for president to commit to not giving ambassador posts to political donors, a common practice. She said diplomatic posts must not be sold to “rich buffoons.”

Her campaign posted a proposal of this and other changes to the State department on Medium on Friday, including doubling the size of the foreign service by growing programs to train people for jobs in that field and improving diversity in the pool of people going for those jobs.

“The Pentagon is nearly 40 times bigger than the State department — we employ more people to work in military grocery stores than we do foreign service officers,” Warren said. “That has real consequences.”

It’s not super flashy, though Warren’s argument for making diplomatic positions more professional is a direct hit at Trump.

Trump has perfected the act of selling swanky diplomatic posts to rich buffoons... His South Africa nominee is a handbag designer. In all, Donald Trump has appointed political cronies to nearly half the available ambassadorial positions — far more than any president in recent memory. As a result, opportunities for career professionals are severely limited.

The practice of auctioning off American diplomacy to the highest bidder must end.

At the event where former president Jimmy Carter questioned the legitimacy of Donald Trump’s election, Walter Mondale, who served as vice president under Carter, also criticized Trump, saying “he’s got something deep in him that is detestable.”

It is unusual - very unusual - for a former president to criticize a sitting president.

Carter has even praised some of Trump’s decisions before and in April they spoke by phone. Carter is the oldest living president at 94.

We might not hear Trump’s reaction until tomorrow because he’s at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, where it is 1:30am.

In two, two-hour debates featuring 20 presidential hopefuls, Puerto Rico was mentioned exactly once.

Julián Castro, the former housing secretary, mentioned Puerto Rico in response to a question about the climate crisis.

Hurricane Maria devastated the island, a US territory, in September and October 2017.

The US response to the hurricane was severely criticized as Puerto Ricans faced weeks without electricity and were stranded without access to food, water or medical care.

The official death toll is 2,975 people, a number Donald Trump has repeatedly denied. He also continues to complain about providing aid to Puerto Rico while simultaneously lying about how much money the island has received from the US.

The New York Times Miami bureau chief, Patricia Mazzei, on last night’s debate:

Jared Rizzi, a political podcaster, said:

It would be an egregious error not to spotlight the debate performance of author and lifestyle guru, Marianne Williamson, who very fortunately/unfortunately will probably never be in a position to debate Donald Trump.

He’s talking about Trump (for reference: battery, windmill, cereal).

Former president Jimmy Carter says Trump is an "illegitimate president"

Former US president Jimmy Carter said Trump is an “illegitimate president” at a conference for his Carter Center.

Carter said a full investigation “would show that Trump didn’t actually win the election in 2016,” in comments first reported by USA Today Washington bureau chief, Susan Page.

“He lost the election and he was put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf,” Carter continued.

The event moderator, Jon Meacham, asked if that meant Carter thought that Trump was an illegitimate president.

“Based on what I said, which I can’t retract,” Carter said.

Updated

Ahead of its summer break, the US supreme court has announced what it plans to consider in its next term, according to Reuters:

  • It will hear an appeal concerning the criminal convictions of two former associates of former New Jersey governor Chris Christie in the so-called Bridgegate scandal that hindered his 2016 presidential candidacy. The associates were convicted in 2016 of fraud and civil rights violations for realigning the lanes to the George Washington Bridge without telling local officials.
  • It won’t revive Alabama’s ban on the most commonly used procedure in second-trimester abortions. Courts have blocked similar laws in Kansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas.
  • It will will consider reviving a Montana program that gives tax credits to people who donate to private-school scholarships. The state’s highest court had struck down the program because it violated the Montana constitution’s ban on state aid to religious organizations.
  • It agreed to hear a case about billions of dollars awarded by a court to victims of the 1998 bombing of the US embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. More than 200 people died in the attacks and more than 1,000 were injured.

2020 hopeful Elizabeth Warren and George Conway, husband of Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway, are among the first to criticize Donald Trump for joking with Russian president Vladimir Putin about both getting rid of journalists and Russian meddling in US elections.

Twenty-six journalists have been murdered in Russia since Putin first became president, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). And it is a year to the day since five Capital Gazette employees were killed in their newsroom in Annapolis, Maryland.

In June, the appointment of Ken Cuccinelli, the Trump immigration official who has blamed a migrant father for the drowning death of him and his child, was immediately challenged by senior House committee leaders in a letter to the acting Homeland security secretary concerned about Cuccinelli’s appointment in June.

The House leaders said they had “deep concern” about the appointment, which they said circumvents rules about federal vacancies.

Immigration groups immediately raised concerns about Cuccinelli’s appointment because of his history of homophobic remarks and claim that “war powers” could be used against immigrants. He also has ties to the anti-Muslim campaigner, Brigitte Gabriel.

Earlier this month, Cuccinelli appeared to push USCIS staffers to lower how many people are approved in the first stage of the asylum process, a credible fear interview, according to a leaked letter published by Buzzfeed.

Supreme court to review program for Dreamers

The supreme court just announced it will review the constitutionality of an Obama-era program that allows undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children get temporary deportation relief and work permits.

Trump ended the program, called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca), but the decision was challenged in several lawsuits. The program protected about 700,000 people known as “Dreamers.”

The Washington Post reports:

The judges who have blocked ending the program have said the administration could remedy the legal impasse by providing a detailed reasoning of why the program should be abolished. Instead, it has continued to combat the orders in court.

The fight over the young people protected by the program — the average age is around 24 — has been a fierce battle between Trump and Democrats, who largely defend the initiative.

Trump at times has said he would like to find a way to protect those in the program, but attempts to work out a political compromise over DACA have foundered amid the larger partisan debate over immigration and border security.

Updated

Immigration agency head blames migrant father for drowning death

The acting director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), an agency that deals with the administrative aspects of immigration, has blamed a migrant father for the drowning deaths captured in a widely circulated photo.

USCIS acting director, Ken Cuccinelli, blamed Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez, 25, for the deaths of himself and his 23-month-old daughter, Valeria – as the Trump administration faces criticism for failing to respond to the influx of families approaching the border.

The Trump administration has favored policies meant to deter people from traveling north, which advocates say has in turn driven people to make more dangerous border crossings such as crossing the Rio Grande.

CNN’s Erin Burnett asked Cuccinelli if the photo would become a symbol of the Trump administration’s policies on the border?

Cuccinelli said no, “in fact the opposite.”

The reason we have tragedies like that on the border is because that father didn’t wait to go through the asylum process in the legal fashion and decided to cross the river and not only died but his daughter died tragically as well. Until we fix the attractions in our asylum system, people like that father and that child are going to continue to come through a dangerous trip.

Cuccinelli has not yet been confirmed as head of USCIS, an agency that under Trump has become less about processing documents and more about immigration enforcement. Some details about Cuccinelli, the former attorney general of Virginia:

*This post was updated at 12:03pm to reflect that Cuccinelli said homosexual acts are “intrinsically wrong,” not that he thinks homosexuality is “intrinsically wrong.”

Updated

While Kamala Harris is being praised for her performance in the debate last night, she is under pressure to clarify a muddled response to a question on health insurance from last night’s debate.

In the debate, Harris seemed to support abolishing private insurance in favor of government-run health insurance. This morning, she says she misunderstood the question and thought it was about whether she would give up her own private insurance plan for a government-run plan under Medicare for All. She said she doesn’t support eliminating private insurance.

Political journalists aren’t convinced this is her end-all answer on Medicare for All.

Hello, happy Friday and welcome to our daily live politics coverage.

The first round of Democratic debates concluded last night after a two-day, 20-candidate extravaganza. California senator Kamala Harris was last night’s definitive winner and today she’ll be looking to maintain that momentum while others fight for attention.

The president has also weighed-in, from Osaka, Japan:

In Florida today, several 2020 candidates plan to visit the Homestead child detention facility, including Pete Buttigieg, Julián Castro, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, John Hickenlooper and Marianne Williamson.

At the G20 summit, Trump just spoke to Russian president Vladimir Putin and made light of Russian election meddling. They also shared a laugh about “getting rid” of journalists. More on that in a bit and rolling updates from the G20 by the Guardian’s business team here.

We’ll have some analysis and reviews of last night’s debate in the blog. If you’re looking for a summary to start, do read Guardian political correspondent Lauren Gambino’s excellent review:

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