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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
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Sam Levin in Los Angeles (now) and Adam Gabbatt in New York (earlier)

Greenland row escalates as Trump attacks Danish prime minister – as it happened

Donald Trump takes questions from reporters as he prepares to depart the South Lawn of the White House in Washington DC Wednesday.
Donald Trump takes questions from reporters as he prepares to depart the South Lawn of the White House in Washington DC Wednesday. Photograph: Ron Sachs/Rex/Shutterstock

Summary

We’re ending our live coverage for the day – thanks for following along. Here are some key events and links you may have missed:

The president seemed to struggle to correctly pronounce words today on multiple occasions, a Vox journalist noted:

Iceland’s prime minister has said she will not be present for vice president Mike Pence’s visit next month:

Katrín Jakobsdóttir said it was not meant to be a snub or protest, and that there was a scheduling conflict.

It appears that the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, tried to do some damage control today with Denmark after the president abruptly canceled his visit over the rejection of his suggestion that he wanted to buy Greenland.

The president is continuing his attacks on auto companies following the news that Ford, Volkswagen, BMW, and Honda made a deal with the state of California to reduce pollution. His latest tweet praises the “Legendary Henry Ford”:

Some are pointing out that Ford is one of America’s most famous antisemites:

The president’s tweets came hours after he repeated antisemitic tropes while criticizing American Jews who vote for Democrats.

The New York Times reports that Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, has renewed his push for the Ukrainian government to investigate the president’s political opponents. This came months after Giuliani backed out of a trip to Ukraine after he faced criticism that he was mixing partisan politics with foreign policy:

The Times reported:

Over the last few weeks, Giuliani has spoken on the phone and held an in-person meeting, in Madrid, with a top representative of the new Ukrainian president, encouraging his government to ramp up investigations into two matters of intense interest to Trump.

One is whether Ukrainian officials took steps during the 2016 election to damage Trump’s campaign. The other is whether there was anything improper about the overlap between former Vice President Joseph Biden Jr’s diplomatic efforts in Ukraine and his son’s role with a gas company there.

Giuliani said he was acting as a private citizen, but had assistance from the US state department, according to the paper.

A reminder of a story that has received very little attention: the president of the United States recently mocked the accents of the leaders of South Korea and Japan at a fundraiser. The AP has published a piece with reactions from Asian Americans, who discussed their painful memories of racist mocking they’ve experienced in their lives:

More from the AP:

Amanda Berg, a Korean American who grew up in Fort Collins, Colorado, recalled kids doing the “stereotypical pulling at the eyes and the mocking accent.” It made her feel like she was a foreigner in her own community.

Berg, a registered Democrat, is among a growing and crucial bloc of Asian American voters leaning further to the left in the age of Trump, and his stunt, reported by the New York Post, angered her and many others.

“It empowers people who would be predisposed to doing that kind of thing anyway,” said Berg, a high school English teacher in Denver. “And it makes it acceptable to be openly, increasingly discriminating.”

In a speech to a veterans group today, Trump said he wanted to give himself the Medal of Honor:

Trump famously got draft deferments to avoid service in Vietnam.

The Onion published this yesterday:

ABC News has announced new details for the third Democratic primary debate slated for September:

If more than ten candidates qualify, the debate will take place over two nights. It’s unclear if that will happen at this stage:

If there are ultimately ten or fewer candidates eligible, then the frontrunners in the polls would all face off on the same stage for the first time.

Guardian reporter Abené Clayton has an in-depth look at the sweeping gun reform agenda proposed today by March for Our Lives:

The proposal released on Wednesday, Peace Plan for a Safer America, includes plans to reduce the number of firearms in civilian hands by 30%, create a mandatory federal gun buyback program for assault weapons, and re-examine the Heller decision – the 2008 supreme court ruling allowing private citizens to keep handguns in their homes.

“This plan is not geared toward Democrats or Republicans. It’s not about a party, it’s not about politics, it’s about saving lives and prioritizing that,” said Eve Levenson, federal programs manager at March for Our Lives.

“We’re looking to change the culture of gun violence and that is going to require doing some things that are going to make people at first think, ‘Oh no you’re going to take my guns’,” Levenson continued. “It’s not about what we’re against, it’s what we’re for,” she added.

Read the full story here:

And some additional insights from Lois Beckett, the Guardian’s senior reporter on gun policy:

Israel’s prime minister has stayed silent on the president’s repeated use of an antisemitic trope in his attacks on American Jews who support Democrats, the AP notes:

Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to keep quiet came one week after he barred two Muslim congresswomen from visiting his country, following Trump’s public appeal.

Trump has continued today to say that Jews who vote Democratic are “disloyal to Jewish people and … very disloyal to Israel”. The silence from Republicans and others on Trump’s comments has provided a sharp contrast to the intense backlash Congresswoman Ilhan Omar has repeatedly faced for her criticisms of Israel.

Judge rules Trump can appeal lawsuit over foreign payments

A federal judge has just ruled that Trump can appeal rulings in a lawsuit that challenged his business with foreign governments, in effect, putting the case on hold, the Washington Post reports:

The lawsuit was brought by more than 200 congressional Democrats who have alleged that Trump’s hotels and other companies should be barred from taking money from foreign states.

The judge’s decision today is a small win for Trump and yet another setback for Democrats and others who have been trying to prevent the president’s private businesses from accepting foreign governments’ payments.

Trump considering executive order to block refugees, report says

Hello - Sam Levin in Los Angeles here, taking over our live coverage for the rest of the day. A new report says that the Trump administration is considering an executive order that would allow states and cities to deny entry to refugees who have been approved for resettlement:

NBC News says it has seen a draft of the proposed executive order, which would undermine efforts to resettle refugees and could violate the intent of existing law that gives the federal government control over refugee policies.

This report follows a string of stories today on Trump’s escalating anti-immigrant agenda. The president claimed he was exploring ways to abolish birthright citizenship. His administration has also proposed a regulation that would allow the government to detain families crossing the border indefinitely.

The number of House members supporting the impeachment of Donald Trump has edged up to 127, after Rhode Island’s Jim Langevin announced his backing for impeachment this afternoon.

“The prospect of impeaching a President is not something I take lightly,” Langevin said in a statement.

“The power to remove a public official from office is one of the most significant constitutional powers held by Congress, and it must be reserved for extraordinary circumstances.

“After careful reflection and interaction with my constituents, I believe the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment inquiry into President Trump’s actions is necessary to gather the evidence Congress needs to make this critical determination.”

According to Axios, 126 Democrats and one independent are now in favor of impeachment. Assistant Speaker Rep Ben Ray Luján, from New Mexico, came out in favor of an impeachment inquiry on Monday. Luján is the highest ranking Democrat so far to support impeachment.

So why did Trump cancel his trip to Greenland? Here’s our video report.

Survivors of the Parkland, Florida, school shooting have released a sweeping gun-control plan, which would ban assault-style weapons, institute a national buy-back program and boost federal funding for gun violence research.

The group’s leaders said they hope to halve US firearms deaths and injuries within a decade.

“The time for thoughts and prayers has come and gone. It is now time for real change and real action,” David Hogg, Parkland survivor and March for Our Lives co-founder, said in a statement.

From Reuters:

The plan also calls on the government to automatically register all US citizens to vote when they turn 18, a measure that March for Our Lives has pushed in an effort to turn out the youth vote and sway elections to yield tighter gun policies.

According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll this month, 69% of Americans said they support “strong” or “moderate” firearms restrictions and regulations, including 84% of Democrats and 56% of Republicans.

David Hogg, one of the leaders of the March For Our Lives movement.
David Hogg, one of the leaders of the March For Our Lives movement. Photograph: Wilfredo Lee/AP

Summary

•Donald Trump has attacked the Danish prime minister, describing her as “nasty”. Trump said he cancelled his long-planned trip to Denmark because the prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, criticized his attempt to buy Greenland as “absurd”. “I looked forward to going but I thought the prime minister’s statement that [Trump’s plan to buy Greenland] was ‘absurd’ [...] I thought it was nasty,” Trump said.

•In a busy day for Trump, he announced that the government is weighing whether to abolish birth right citizenship, calling the constitutional right “ridiculous”. The 14th amendment, passed after the civil war to ensure that black Americans had full citizenship rights, grants citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States”. But Trump said: “We are looking at birthright citizenship very seriously. It’s frankly ridiculous.”

•During the same (impromptu) press conference, Trump doubled down on his antisemitic language. Asked about his remarks that Jewish Americans who vote for Democrats were showing “either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty” – a longstanding antisemitic trope – the president simply repeated his statement. “If you vote for a Democrat you’re being very disloyal to Jewish people and you’re being very disloyal to Israel,” Trump told reporters.

•A new government regulation would allow the government to detain families crossing the border indefinitely. The rule would abolish the current 20-day limit on how long families can be held in custody. It would effectively replace the decades old Flores agreement, which provided oversight on immigrant children being detained by the government.

Updated

Update: Trump has finished speaking in Kentucky. He didn’t mention the prime minister of Denmark, or birthright citizenship, or say anything antisemitic, which in light of the rest of his day, makes this an excellent speech.

The president walks off the stage to the Rolling Stones You Can’t Always Get What You Want – his campaign anthem, and a song the band has repeatedly asked him to stop using.

Here are Donald Trump’s remarks on birthright citizenship earlier – the president said the government is looking into abolishing the longstanding policy. (A policy enshrined in the US constitution.)

Meanwhile the NRA, already being investigated by attorneys generals in Washington DC and New York, is facing more trouble. According to CNN, a Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee “aiming to uncover more examples of potential financial impropriety” and “convince the powerful House committee to launch a formal investigation into the tax-exempt nonprofit”:

In a new letter obtained by CNN, Rep. Brad Schneider of Illinois has asked the NRA’s former advertising and public-relations firm Ackerman McQueen to release letters, receipts and other materials that document the firm’s financial relationship with the organization.

The letter comes as the gun-rights group is engaged in a bitter legal battle with Ackerman amid allegations of financial impropriety. It also comes amid probes from attorneys general in Washington DC and New York into whether the NRA violated its tax-exempt status.

Well, so far this is just a campaign speech from Trump.

Trump says his government has increased military spending, and reminds the crowd that he has nominated two justices to the Supreme Court.

“We are remaking American greatness. We are America first. It’s about time too,” Trump says.

The president tells the crowd he won’t use his some-time new campaign slogan: ‘Keep America Great’.

“I won’t say it here because this is not a campaign speech,” Trump says. Then he says: “Keep America Great.”

Updated

Trump is now speaking in Louisville, Kentucky. Trump is 40 minutes behind schedule, which is about the length of time he spent talking to reporters outside the White House earlier.

According to Associated Press, Trump “plans to discuss his commitment to the military during an address to a gathering of veterans”.

He is also expected to “discuss suicide prevention and access to health care, along with education and other issues of concern to veterans”.

We’ll see if the president sticks to that. His speech is live streamed here.

Updated

Donald Trump has landed in Louisville, Kentucky, where he is due to speak to at the American Veterans convention at 3pm.

Rep John Yarmuth, the Democratic congressman who represents Louisville – and is Jewish – has released a statement criticizing Trump’s “vile, hate-filled speech” in anticipation of the president’s visit:

Yesterday, sitting in the Oval Office, the President of the United States questioned my intelligence, faith, and loyalty to this country—along with the intelligence, faith, and loyalty of all Jewish Democrats in America.

Today, he lands in the city I’ve called home since the day I was born.

Mr. President: Louisville is a compassionate and welcoming city, so we will welcome you today. But please know that many of us here stand in defiance of and in opposition to the vile, hate-filled speech you use every day to divide and distract our nation.

Enjoy your visit.”

Updated

Donald Trump, apparently not satisfied with describing the Danish prime minister as “nasty” 45 minutes ago, has resumed attacking Denmark.

Tweeting from Air Force One – Trump is en route to Kentucky – the president has apparently looked up some information on a favorite hobbyhorse of his: other countries’ contributions to Nato.

Trump has now finished his long chat with reporters outside the White House. Several things stood out – including Trump’s claim that the current birthright citizenship law was “frankly ridiculous” and that he wanted to abolish it.

“We’re looking at that very seriously, birthright citizenship, where you have a baby on our land, you walk over the border, have a baby - congratulations, the baby is now a US citizen,” Trump said – mischaracterizing how most such citizenships are granted.

“It’s frankly ridiculous.”

Trump had told Axios in October 2018 that he would end “birthright citizenship” through an executive order. But experts have said such a move would not be legal under the US constitution.

“Few immigration and constitutional scholars believe it is within the president’s power to change birthright citizenship,” Axios reported at the time.

The constituion’s 14th amendment, which grants US citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States”, has been routinely been interpreted to grant citizenship to most people born in the United States, whether or not their parents are American citizens or legally living in the United States.

Government exploring scrapping birthright citizenship: Trump

Donald Trump has said the government is weighing whether to abolish birth right citizenship, calling the constitutional right “ridiculous”.

Currently a child born in the US is entitled to a US passport. The constitution’s 14th amendment, passed after the civil war to ensure that black Americans had full citizenship rights, grants citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States”.

Speaking to reporters outside the White House on Wednesday, Trump said: “We are looking at birthright citizenship very seriously. It’s frankly ridiculous.”

Updated

Trump attacks Danish prime minister

Donald Trump attacked Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen on Wednesday, saying he cancelled his planned trip to Denmark after Frederiksen had been “nasty” towards him.

“I looked forward to going but I thought the prime minister’s statement that [Trump’s plan to buy Greenland] was ‘absurd’ [...] I thought it was nasty,” Trump said.

“I thought it was a very not nice way of saying something. They could have told me no.”

Trump added: “It was not a very nice statement the way she blew me off.”

Frederiksen had indeed referred to Trump’s apparently impromptu attempt to buy Greenland from Denmark as absurd. Trump was criticized by a raft of Danish politicians for his bid.

Trump said: “We treat countries with respect she shouldn’t treat the United States that way.”

Trump repeats antisemitic trope

Donald Trump has just been speaking as he left the White House en route to Kentucky.

Asked about his remarks that Jewish Americans who vote for Democrats were showing “either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty” – a longstanding antisemitic trope – Trump doubled down on his statement.

“If you vote for a Democrat you’re being very disloyal to Jewish people and you’re being very disloyal to Israel,” Trump told reporters.

Trump also repeated his earlier slurs against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other members of ‘the squad’. The four women are “anti-Semites” who are “against Israel”, Trump said.

Half of all Trump voters would at least partially blame him if the economy goes south, according to a new poll.

Morning Consult found that 42% of Trump’s 2016 voters would hold the president “partially responsible” for a recession, while 7% would find Trump “solely responsible”.

Of all voters, 69% said they would hold Trump at least partially responsible for a recession, and 28% said he would be solely responsible.

It’s not good news for Trump as the economy continues to look shaky. A number of economists have warned that the chances of a recession are growing. The ominous sounding “yield curve” has inverted, which has proceeded every recession in the past 60 years.

Here’s an explainer on the economy, yield curves, and recessions by my colleague Dominic Rushe.

In some big breaking political news: former White House press secretary Sean Spicer is going on Dancing With the Stars.

Spicer’s presence on the new season of the show was announced by ABC on Wednesday. The former press secretary will appear alongside such luminaries as Ally Brooke, from the band Fifth Harmony, and Hannah Brown, who was in season 15 of the Bachelorette.

Dancing With the Stars begins on September 16. Spicer does have something of a background in the arts, having portrayed the role of ‘Easter Bunny’ during the George W Bush administration.

Updated

In depressing news: Idaho has been forced to change signage on children’s buses after angry drivers began following vehicles full of migrant children.

According to the Idaho Statesman: “The Community Council of Idaho plans to remove and conceal signage on buses they use to transport local children of farmworkers and Head Start participants, after repeated experiences of harassment from motorists across the state, including the Treasure Valley.”

The buses are used to transport children to the Community Council, where they can take part in non-profit programs. The vehicles are labelled “Migrant and Seasonal Head Start”, and staff say drivers are harassing the buses because they “assume that migrant means undocumented”.

“Migrant doesn’t necessarily mean ‘illegal,’” Alvarez told the Statesman. “Migrant means people move in search of work, which is what our program is. We have people who might move from East Idaho to Caldwell because of the work that they’re in.”

US deficit to increase by $800bn more than expected

The federal deficit is expected to balloon to a higher than expected level over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office, while Donald Trump’s tariffs are projected to shrink gross domestic product by 2020.

It’s another headache for Trump as concerns continue to grow over the economy, with serious fears about a looming recession.

The non-partisan CBO said the deficit will soar by $800bn more than expected over 10 years. According to CNBC the US budget deficit “is expected to hit $960 billion in 2019, and average a whopping $1.2 trillion per year between 2020 and 2029”:

The new deficit projection for 2019 rose $63 billion from the last report, which came out in May. The CBO says this is mainly because of the massive new budget deal, which passed both houses of Congress and was signed into law by Trump on Aug. 2.

“The nation’s fiscal outlook is challenging,” CBO director Phillip Swagel said in the report. “Federal debt, which is already high by historical standards, is on an unsustainable course.”

Swagel said that the debt is projected to rise even higher after 2029, due to the aging of the U.S. population, growth in health care spending and rising interest costs.

Updated

Eighteen (!) of the 23 (!!) prominent Democratic candidates for president are speaking at the Iowa Federation Labor Convention today.

The presidential hopefuls will address union members in Altoona, beginning at 10am ET and running, presumably, for a long time.

“[Union members] want to know that there’s job security for them and that if you are a building trades-member you want to know that there’s gonna be a good economy and that they are going to be able to continue to do work,” Charlie Wishman, Iowa Federation of Labor Secretary-Treasurer, told 13WHOTV.

“If you are somebody who works at the postal service, you want to know that the postal service is protected and that it is not going to be privatized.”

Peter Buttigieg woos voters in Iowa.
Peter Buttigieg woos voters in Iowa. Photograph: REX/Shutterstock

It’s another illustration – if one were needed – of the importance candidates are placing on Iowa ahead of the state’s February caucuses. In no particular order, the speakers are:

John Delaney, Elizabeth Warren, Jay Inslee, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders, Bill De Blasio, Joe Biden, Tulsi Gabbard, Julian Castro, Steve Bullock, Tim Ryan, Amy Klobuchar, Michael Benet, Beto O’Rourke, John Hickenlooper, Joe Sestak and Ben Gleib.

Updated

Some reaction to the Trump administration rule on indefinitely detaining immigrant families:

Updated

The Trump rule change on detaining immigrant families will be published this week in the Federal Register, and would take effect 60 days later, the New York Times reports: “though administration officials concede that the expected court challenge will probably delay it”.

From the Times:

Under the new rule, the administration would be free to send families who are caught crossing the border illegally to a family residential center to be held for as long as it takes for their immigration cases to be decided. Officials said families cases could be resolved within three months, though many could drag on much longer.

Trump administration officials — who briefed reporters on Tuesday night on the condition of anonymity to discuss the plans — said that many of the families would be detained until they were either released after being awarded asylum or they were deported to their home countries. Some families might be awarded parole to leave the facilities while the courts decide their fate.

Currently the government may not detain children for more than 20 days unless they are detained in a state facility. The Wall Street Journal reported that the two largest facilities designed to house families, both in Texas, aren’t licensed to house children beyond 20 days.

“To circumvent that requirement,” the Journal wrote: “The new set of rules would enable the Department of Homeland Security to create its own licensing system, effectively allowing the government to house families in any of its detention facilities through their court proceedings, until they are either granted asylum, paroled into the US or deported.”

Trump rule would allow for indefinite detention of immigrant families

A new Trump administration regulation would allow the government to detain families crossing the border indefinitely.

The new rule would abolish the current 20-day limit on how long families can be held in custody. It would effectively replace the decades old Flores agreement, which provided oversight on immigrant children being detained by the government.

The rule is expected to be challenged in court, but adds to the raft of anti-immigration measures Trump is attempting to enforce.

So what do people in Denmark think about Trump’s decision to call off his trip to the country?

Not much, it seems – with one former Danish foreign minister comparing Trump to “a clown in a circus”.

“There are already many good reasons to think that the man is a fool, and now he has given another good reason,” Eva Flyvholm, the foreign policy chair for Denmark’s Red-Green Alliance, told Danish media.

The Guardian’s Sean Walker reported that former Denmark foreign minister Villy Søvndal said the decision “confirms that Donald Trump is a narcissistic fool”.

“If he had been a clown in a circus, you could probably say that there is considerable entertainment value. The problem is that he is the president of the most powerful nation in the world,” Søvndal said.

Trump’s cancellation came, of course, after Denmark refused to sell Greenland to the US.

Some Muskoxen calfs near Kangerlussuaq, Greenland.
Some Muskoxen calfs near Kangerlussuaq, Greenland. Photograph: Eric Post/AFP/Getty Images

Updated

Donald Trump here, quoting right-wing conspiracy theorist Wayne Allen Root’s comments describing Trump as the “King of Israel” and “the second coming of god”.

Root is a far right crank who has a radio show. He was an early proponent of the racist Obama ‘birther’ campaign – which Trump jumped onto. Root also believed Obama was Muslim, and insisted the president was gay, and claimed 2017 Las Vegas shooting was a “muslim terror attack”.

Good morning and welcome to live coverage of the day’s political news.

•A number of prominent Republicans are preparing to challenge Donald Trump for the presidency. Former Ohio governor John Kasich, former Arizona senator Jeff Flake, former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford and former congressman Joe Walsh are each in various stages of weighing a run against Trump in the GOP primaries, according to the Washington Post, while former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld launched his own challenge to Trump in April.

•Flake and Kasich told the Post they had received a number of approaches from GOP donors encouraging them to run. The hastily convened surge for a non-Trump candidate has been prompted in part by fears over the economy. But despite the excitement over Trump being potentially ousted by a member of his own party, most of the mooted candidates acknowledge they are very unlikely to win.

•Jewish leaders have responded furiously to Donald Trump using an antisemitic trope to describe Jewish people who vote for Democrats. Halie Soifer, executive director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said the comments were “yet another example of Donald Trump continuing to weaponize and politicize antisemitism”, CNN reported, while the Jewish organization J Street called Trump’s remarks “dangerous and shameful”. On Tuesday Trump said Jewish Americans who for Democrats were guilty of “great disloyalty”, apparently suggesting Jewish Americans have dual loyalty to the US and Israel – a perception widely considered antisemitic.

•A Politico/Morning Consult poll has found Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders as the only candidates beating Trump in 2020. Biden leads Trump by 7% in the survey, with Sanders 5% ahead. Elizabeth Warren was tied with Trump, with most other Democrats trailing. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 2%.

Updated

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