Donald Trump took a detour from his White House address on rolling back regulations to wax lyrical about his hair and incandescent lightbulbs, which make everyone look better. Likely why light bulbs are making a comeback.
Mary Trump continued her media blitz to promote her new book, telling MSNBC she has heard her uncle use the "n-word" and say anti-Semitic slurs.
The CDC, meanwhile, released a report claiming the president's China travel ban was too late to slow the spread of coronavirus as Dr Anthony Fauci said 30,000 people would participate in a vaccine trial starting this summer.
Check out The Independent's live coverage below:
Trump replaces campaign manager
Donald Trump has replace his election campaign manager Brad Parscale in a major shake-up less than four months before November's presidential vote.
The president has promoted veteran Republican operative Bill Stepien to oversee his campaign, he announced on Wednesday.
"Brad Parscale, who has been with me for a very long time and has led our tremendous digital and data strategies, will remain in that role, while being a senior advisor to the campaign," Trump added.
His announcement came on Facebook as a Twitter hack made verified accounts such as the president's inaccessible.
Trump's relationship with Parscale had been increasingly strained, with the president said to be annoyed by the publicity his campaign manager had garnered in the role.
But the final straw appeared to be a Tulsa, Oklahoma, rally last month that drew an unexpectedly low crowd of about 6,200 people after Parscale had bragged that more than a million people had requested tickets.
The shake-up has injected familiar turmoil to Trump's 2020 campaign, which had so far largely avoided the regular staff churn that dominated the president's 2016 campaign and his administration.
It comes as Mr Trump has been struggling in his re-election campaign against presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, and with the nation facing health and economic crises during a pandemic that has killed more than 135,000 Americans.
The staff change was not expected to alter the day-to-day running of the campaign.
News of the reshuffle was delivered to Parscale on Wednesday afternoon by White House adviser and Mr Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner. Parscale, a political novice, ran Trump's digital advertising in 2016 and was credited with helping bring about his surprise victory that year.
Stepien has been in politics for years, working for former New Jersey governor Chris Christie and serving as Trump's national field director in 2016.
Biden opens up biggest national poll lead over Trump since securing nomination
Donald Trump's campaign shake-up comes as Joe Biden enjoys his largest polling lead since securing the Democratic nomination, with a new nationwide survey showing him with a 15-point advantage in the race for the White House.
Registered voters back the former vice president over the incumbent 52 – 37 per cent, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released on Wednesday. The same poll one month ago gave Mr Biden a lead of eight points, 49 – 41 per cent.
Senior US correspondent Richard Hall has the full story:
China accuses US of 'gangster logic' on Hong Kong
China's liaison office in the Asian financial hub said the move would only damage US interests while having little impact on Hong Kong.
"Unreasonable meddling and shameless threats by the United States are typical gangster logic and bullying behaviour," the office said in a statement.
"No external force can block China's determination and confidence to maintain national sovereignty and security for Hong Kong's long-term prosperity and stability."
The security law imposed by Beijing punishes what China broadly defines as subversion, secession, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces with up to life in prison.
Critics of the law fear it will crush the wide-ranging freedoms promised to the former British colony when it returned to Chinese rule in 1997, while supporters say it will bring stability to the city after a year of sometimes violent anti-government protests.
Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order to end preferential economic treatment for Hong Kong, allowing him to impose sanctions and visa restrictions on Chinese officials and financial institutions involved in the imposition of the law.
China has threatened to impose retaliatory sanctions of its own, and summoned the US ambassador to protest.
Anthony Fauci featured on cover of InStyle as White House battle continues
Embattled White House coronavirus adviser Dr Anthony Fauci has spoken out over White House briefings against in a cover story in InStyle, a monthly women's fashion magazine,
Dr Fauci, who has reportedly been held back from appearing on TV by a White House keen to moderate his warnings about the pandemic, was interviewed for the magazine along with his wife by CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell.
Addressing briefings against him emanating from the White House and elsewhere, Dr Fauci said: “Sometimes you say things that are not widely accepted in the White House, and that’s just a fact of life.
The interview comes after Trump administration trade adviser Peter Navarro penned a furious op-ed for USA Today in which he said Dr Fauci “has been wrong about everything I have interacted with him on”. The White House has disavowed the op-ed, saying it was not authorised through “normal clearance processes”.
My colleague Andrew Naughtie has more on this story below:
Trump accused of breaking law by not wearing mask
The mayor of Atlanta has accused Donald Trump of breaking the law by failing to wear a face mask during a visit to the city.
The president was pictured on Wednesday not wearing a mask at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, which falls under a city-wide executive order making face coverings mandatory to slow the spread of coronavirus.
"By not having on a mask, President Trump did violate law in the city of Atlanta, but I am somehow not surprised that he disregarded our rules and regulations in the city," Democrat mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms told CNN.
Asked to response, the White House said Trump had complied with Centres for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines.
The president "takes the health and safety of everyone travelling in support of himself and all White House operations very seriously," added deputy press secretary Judd Deere.
Trump was last week seen wearing a mask in public for the first time during a visit to Washington's Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre.
Bottoms, who is a contender to be Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's running mate, is embroiled in a dispute with Georgia's Republican governor Brian Kemp about the mask requirement, which goes beyond the measures he has put in place for the wider state.
Kemp signed an executive order yesterday prohibiting local governments from implementing rules requiring people to wear masks in public places.
Donald Trump may be overseeing a fight against a deadly pandemic, battling for re-election, locked in a dispute with China, and shaking up his campaign team, but the US president still found time yesterday to pose with tinned foods to promote a firm run by a supportive chief executive.
A picture posted on the president's Instagram account yesterday showed him with a range of Goya Foods products, including beans and coconut milk, laid out on his Oval Office desk.
The food producer is facing a boycott in some quarters after its chief executive Robert Unanue publicly praised Trump.
Unanue joined Trump at an event in the White House‘s Rose Garden last week and told reporters: “We are all truly blessed ... to have a leader like president Trump who is a builder.”
After his comments, some of the president’s critics, including congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda, vowed they would boycott the brand.
The chief executive of the Latino foods brand refused later claimed the boycott was a “suppression of speech.”
President Trump defended Unanue on Twitter last week, writing: “@GoyaFoods is doing GREAT. The Radical Left smear machine backfired, people are buying like crazy!”
James Crump has more:
Record number of LGBT+ candidates running for office in US
The number of openly LGBT+ elected officials in the United States has more than doubled in the past four years — and those ranks could soon grow, thanks to a record field of candidates this year, according to new data from an advocacy and research group.
The LGBTQ Victory Institute's Out For America report, released today, tallies 843 openly LGBT+ elected officials across all levels of government at present, up from 417 in June 2016. The institute says a record 850 LGBT+ people are running for office this year, including several candidates with strong chances of entering Congress.
But institute's president, former Houston mayor Annise Parker, said LGBT+ people "continue to be severely underrepresented in every state and at every level of government"
She said LGBT+ people make up about 4.5 per cent of the US adult population, yet hold only 0.17 per cent of the more than 510,000 elected positions in the US, ranging from Congress and state legislatures to city councils and school boards. To achieve proportionate representation, Parker said, LGBT+ people would need to win more than 22,500 additional positions.
The Victory Institute data reveals a striking partisan divide. As of 2018, it counted 438 LGBT+ elected officials affiliated with the Democratic Party and only 16 Republicans. Among the LGBT+ candidates with solid chances of winning in November are several Democratic congressional contenders.
Joe Biden opens up biggest national poll lead over Trump
Registered voters back the former vice president over the incumbent 52 – 37 per cent, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released on Wednesday. The same poll one month ago gave Mr Biden a lead of eight points, 49 – 41 per cent.
The poll suggested that independent voters were behind the shift. Back in June, independent voters were split nearly evenly between the two – now Mr Biden leads 51 – 34 per cent.
“Yes, there’s still 16 weeks until Election Day, but this is a very unpleasant real-time look at what the future could be for President Trump. There is no upside, no silver lining, no encouraging trend hidden somewhere in this survey for the president,” said Quinnipiac University polling analyst Tim Malloy.
According to a letter to a Manhattan federal judge, the challenge would be on grounds that it represented a fishing expedition or a form of harassment or retaliation against him by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr who is seeking eight years of the president’s personal and corporate tax records.
Mr Vance is seeking the records in part for a criminal probe into payments that Mr Trump’s then-personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, arranged during the 2016 presidential race to keep the porn actress Stormy Daniels and model Karen McDougal from airing their claims of extramarital affairs with Mr Trump. He has denied the affairs.
Mr Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to charges related to campaign finance and lying to Congress, among other crimes.
Hospitals will be forced to bypass the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and send all data on patients infected with Covid-19 to the Trump administration under a new order beginning on Wednesday.
The federal government confirmed the change in policy amid the coronavirus pandemic, with Health and Human Services (HHS) Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Michael Caputo saying in a statement the new process would lead to “faster” reporting of hospital data across the country.
Instead of sending data on coronavirus patients to the National Health Care Safety Network Site, which has tracked the outbreak since it officially began in the US earlier this year, the nation’s 25,000 medical facilities will instead report to a singular database in Washington.
In order to gain access to that critical data on a daily basis, the administration has urged governors to call in the US National Guard, the Washington Post reported.
Infectious disease experts quickly spoke out against the developments, including Dr Thomas File, president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, who said in a statement: “Placing medical data collection outside of the leadership of public health experts could severely weaken the quality and availability of data, add an additional burden to already overwhelmed hospitals and add a new challenge to the US pandemic response.”
CNN anchor slams Trump for 'hawking' beans brand amid pandemic
CNN anchor Chris Cuomo lambasted Donald Trump for posting a photo to social media promoting the food company Goya after its CEO praised the president, a move that triggered backlash and calls for a boycott.
Cuomo delivered the scathing remarks during his Wednesday night show, calling a photo the president posted to social media with several Goya products from behind the Resolute Desk “bull****” and insisting his criticism had nothing to do with politics.
“Tell me how a president in the middle of a pandemic has got time for this bull****,” the anchor begins, pointing the photo of a smiling Mr Trump with two thumbs up, grinning behind cans of beans and coconut milk. “Are you kidding me? Hocking products? Goya, I don’t care who it is. Resolute Desk? This is what he’s resolute about?”
Mr Trump posted the photo to his Instagram page after Goya Foods CEO Robert Unanue received mounting criticism for comments he made in a press conference earlier this month, in which he said the country was “truly blessed” to have a leader like Mr Trump, calling the president a “builder” and adding: “That’s what my grandfather did, he came to this country to build, to grow, to prosper … and we pray, we pray for our leadership, our president, and we pray for our country.”
‘Is Pence running for election or Trump?’: Pro-Trump ad only shows president for two seconds
The new ad titled, America Back To Work, was published by non-profit organisation, America First Policies, on Wednesday and features vice president Mike Pence discussing the Trump administration’s job policies.
A speech Mr Pence gave at an event for the organisation’s Great American Comeback Tour is played over images of him meeting workers and detailing policies put in place by the administration.
Mr Trump is only shown in the ad once and is featured for two seconds - signing an updated free trade agreement with Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
The US president is also briefly mentioned by Mr Pence, who says: “We’ve all passed through very challenging times over the last several months. It’s because of what you’ve done, because of the leadership of the president provided – we are going back to work. We’re going back to worship.”
Ivanka Trump violated government ethics rules with Goya photo stunt, watchdog rules
The picture was posted to Ms Trump's Instagram and Twitter accounts late Tuesday night, a few hours after Donald Trump turned the Rose Garden into a campaign rally venue to hammer former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
Former White House officials who worked in other administrations quickly fired off tweets suggesting she had violated ethics rules. Walter Shaub, who oversaw the ethics office inside the Obama White House expanded his Twitter thoughts with a Washington Post op-ed that published Thursday morning."Ivanka Trump's posts violated an executive branch ethics regulation prohibiting employees from misusing their official positions to endorse commercial products," Mr Shaub wrote. "As a pictorial representation of the Trump administration's war on government ethics, both photos are perfectly clear. They scream 'the rules don't apply to us,' a central message of the Trump administration from the start.
