Donald Trump has insisted he is “the least racist person” after coming under renewed attack over his response to the devastating mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, a day after condemning the massacres at the White House without calling for tighter gun control legislation.
In an open letter to the nation, 44th president Barack Obama called on Americans to “soundly reject language coming out of the mouths of any of our leaders that feeds a climate of fear and hatred” while his former vice-president and 2020 challenger Joe Biden criticised Mr Trump’s use of white nationalist language and habit of speaking of migrants and Muslims in “subhuman terms”.
As the investigations into the killings continue and congresswoman Veronica Escobar says he is “not welcome” in El Paso ahead of his scheduled visit on Wednesday, the administration has designated China a currency manipulator and frozen assets belonging to the government of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.
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Asian stock markets tumbled on Tuesday after the US accused China of manipulating the yuan in a sharp escalation of the year-long trade war between the world’s two largest economies that threatens global growth.
On Monday, the US Treasury labelled China a currency manipulator for the first time since 1994, opening the door to sanctions, such as exclusion from US government procurement contracts, and potentially new and higher tariffs on Chinese imports.
“The purpose of China’s currency devaluation is to gain an unfair competitive advantage in international trade,” the Treasury said.
A “lack of thought and prayers is probably the single biggest factor” behind an increase in mass shootings across the United States, according to the former Republican governor of Arkansas.
Mike Huckabee, who served as the Arkansas governor from 1996 to 2007, and whose daughter Sarah Huckabee Sanders served as Donald Trump’s former White House press secretary until earlier this year, described the recent shootings as “mindless violence” after gunmen left nearly 31 dead in reportedly unconnected attacks over the weekend in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio.
“Despite all those who are denouncing the idea of prayers for the victims (do a Google search for ‘Thoughts and prayers are not enough’ and see how many hits you get), I will continue to pray for the victims and their families and for an end to this mindless violence, and I hope you will, too,” Mr Huckabee wrote.
“In fact,” he added, “amid all the finger-pointing and blame-laying and repulsive attempts to turn these tragedies to political advantage before the bodies are even cold, I would posit that the lack of thought and prayers is probably the single biggest factor in what is behind them.”
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Donald Trump has increased existing sanctions against Venezuela, freezing the government’s assets as the US escalates an economic effort to force Nicolás Maduro out of power.
The Venezuelan president’s administration joins Cuba, North Korea, Syria and Iran on a short list of US adversaries who face the severe embargo.
“I have determined that is is necessary to block the property of the Government of Venezuela in light of the continued usurpation of power by the illegitimate Nicolas Maduro regime, as well as the regime’s human rights abuses, arbitrary arrest and detention of Venezuelan citizens, curtailment of free press, and ongoing attempts to undermine Interim President Juan Guaido of Venezuela and the democratically-elected Venezuelan National Assembly,” Mr Trump wrote in a Monday letter to congressional leaders.
American citizens and companies will no longer be allowed to conduct any business with the Maduro administration and its allies, the Associated Press reported. While the country can maintain its private sector under the sanctions, foreign groups that conduct business with the Venezuelan government can also face economic punishments from the US.
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Democratic state governor Gavin Newsom signed a law last week that requires presidential candidates to file five years of their income tax returns with the California secretary of state. Candidates who don't comply will not appear on the 3 March presidential primary ballot.
"This is a nonpartisan concern about the state running roughshod and attempting to amend the Constitution on its own," Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said (a man whose every thought is cheerily retweeted by the president).
The Constitution requires three things of presidents: They have to be born in the US must be at least 35 and must have lived in the country for at least 14 years.
Attorneys for Judicial Watch argue California's law effectively alters the Constitution by adding a new requirement for tax returns, something they say state governments don't have the authority to do.
California's law says voters need to know details about presidential candidates' finances to "better estimate the risks of any given Presidential candidate engaging in corruption."
But Judicial Watch argues that rationale could lead states to demand things like medical and mental health records and eventually things like Amazon purchases, Google search histories and Facebook friends.
The organization also argues that by limiting the law to primary elections, it does not apply to independent candidates. Judicial Watch also says the law violates voters' constitutional rights to associate with presidential candidates and the voters who support them, rights it says are guaranteed under the First and 14th amendments.
The lawsuit names secretary of state Alex Padilla as the defendant because his office is in charge of enforcing the law.
Speaking with reporters outside of an unrelated event at the governor's office, California attorney-general Xavier Becerra said: "We'll be ready to do what we need to do defend California's laws."
When he signed the law last week, Newsom released statements from three lawyers, including the dean of the University of California, Berkeley law school, saying the law is constitutional.
Newsom contends Congress has changed aspects of the presidency previously, including limiting presidents to two terms after President Franklin D Roosevelt was elected to four terms, and passing anti-nepotism laws after President John F Kennedy appointed his brother, Robert, US attorney general.
"If the federal government is not going to act, California needs to act. We've always done that," Newsom said in a video posted to his Twitter account.
Citizens have had to pay federal income taxes since 1913, but it wasn't until 1973 when a US president made his personal tax returns public. Republican Richard Nixon released his tax returns publicly while he was being audited by the IRS.
Ever since, US presidents have released at least a summary of their personal income taxes. That includes most major candidates for president, with some exceptions. Former California Democratic governor Jerry Brown did not release his tax returns when he ran for president in 1992.
Trump has refused to release his tax returns, saying they are being audited by the IRS.
Donald Trump has re-ignited a row with Google, sharing conspiracy theories about the search giant.
In a long series of tweets he described how Google CEO Sundar Pichai had come to the White House and described "how much he liked" the president, as well as what a good job he was doing.
But Mr Trump said that he now believed the company could have been lying about its relationship with the Chinese government and claimed that it could have tried to help Hillary Clinton win.
The other gravestones include socialism, the Green New Deal and Merrick Garland, a Democratic Supreme Court nominee who McConnell refused to bring to the Senate floor for a vote in 2016.
Manuel Oliver and his wife, Patricia, have been travelling the world in the days and months since their 19-year-old son, Joaquin, was killed in the February 2018 massacre in Florida that left 17 students and staff dead, campaigning for gun control.
They happened to be in El Paso by "terrible coincidence" to unveil a mural that Oliver, an artist whose family was originally from Venezuela, had painted on the walls of an immigration rights organisation. Their son had long been a champion of humane treatment of migrants.
The ban on Americans doing business with Venezuela's government takes effect immediately.
An executive order signed by President Trump justified the move by citing Maduro's continued "usurpation" of power and human rights abuses by groups loyal to him.
While the order falls short of an outright trade embargo, it represents the most determined US action to remove Maduro since the Trump administration recognised opposition leader Juan Guaido as Venezuela's rightful leader in January.
As such, it places Venezuela on par with adversaries such as Cuba, Syria, Iran and North Korea, who have also come under strident US measures.
Previous sanctions have targeted dozens of Venezuelan government insiders as well as the South American nation's oil industry, the source of almost all of its export earnings.
As part of the executive order, Americans will be banned from engaging in transactions with anyone determined to be assisting Maduro or his government. The same Maduro supporters will also be banned from entering the US. Exceptions will be allowed for the delivery of food, medicine and clothing.Transactions with Venezuela's still sizeable private sector do not appear to be affected either.
The order comes the day before Trump's national security adviser John Bolton and US commerce secretary Wilbur Ross represent the United States at the International Conference for Democracy in Venezuela in Lima, Peru.
The conference is being attended by representatives from more than 50 nations that recognise Guaido as Venezuela's president and consider Maduro's re-election last year to be fraudulent.
