Donald Trump‘s administration continues to find itself in a tense stand-off with Iran as a Tehran military commander warns his country is on the “cusp of a full-scale confrontation with the enemy”, even though reports have indicated the American president isn't comfortable with the pace of war preparations in his own administration.
The comment from Iranian major-general Hossein Salami of the Revolutionary Guards comes despite reassurances from secretary of state Mike Pompeo and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that neither sides wants their dispute over economic sanctions to descend into war.
Meanwhile, with the US already embroiled in a trade war with China over tariffs, the president has blacklisted foreign telecoms giants including Huawei from trading in the US in the interests of national security. Later on Thursday, the presiden plans to unveil plans to revamp the country’s immigration system and launches a website to combat the censorship of conservatives on social media.
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If you missed this yesterday, take a look at our latest from the 2020 campaign trail.
Not a lot of folks know about Andrew Yang, and we took a look at his campaign this week in New York:
Andrew Yang wants to tax Amazon and Google like oil so every American can get $1,000 a month
'We’re facing an automation wave [that will eliminate] 20-30 per cent of American jobs in the next 11 to 20 years'With the passage of harsh abortion bans in several states across the country this year, culminating in the recent approval of an outright ban in Alabama, 2020 Democratic presidential candidates are showing some solidarity.
Senator Cory Booker's deputy campaign manager Jenna Lowenstein announced on Twitter that she had donated to senator Kirsten Gillibrand's campaign, with the hopes of helping her qualify for the upcoming Democratic debates.
She encouraged others to do the same, so that Ms Gillibrand's perspective as a female candidate could be heard next month in Miami.
"I just donated to ensure @SenGillibrand’s important perspective is on the debate stage. Join me!" Ms Lowenstein tweeted.
In case you missed this news: Mr Trump used his power to pardon to help out his friend Conrad Black, a former business associate who wrote a flattering book about the president just last year.
Mr Black was found guilty in 2007 on mail fraud and obstruction charges for his part in a plan to swindle investors out of cash in a media company scam.
With Mr Trump's escalating trade war as a backdrop, senator Chuck Grassley says he doesn't think the president actually thinks tariffs are a good thing, even if he praises them repeatedly.
Speaking to POLITICO's Morning Money, Mr Grassley expressed disbelief that Mr Trump would use tariffs as a tool because he believes they're a good thing. Instead, they're just a means to an end, Mr Grassley suggested.
"He believes in tariffs as a tool to get a negotiation as opposed to being an end in themselves," he said. "Then he hasn't changed anything. If he has used tariffs because he believes they're good, and I know he says that, but I don't believe he actually believes that. I don't see how he could believe it.”
“[H]e hasn't changed the Republican Party. We're still a party of free trade … I surely hope that he has learned from history that lower tariffs are good.”
Senators in Maine have passed a bill that would award the US state’s electoral college votes to the presidential candidate who wins the national popular vote.
The Maine Senate voted 19-16 in favour of joining 15 other states in an agreement aimed at reforming the electoral system.
Under the current electoral college system, voters effectively cast ballots for state electors who in turn select their party's presidential candidate. It gives small states disproportionate influence over who enters the White House.
Here's Chris Baynes with more.
Max Burns for Indy Voices warns the Republican rollback of access to abortions in Alabama and Missouri are only the beginning.
Donald Trump has weighed in on the newest entrant into the 2020 Demcoratic primary, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio.
Mr Trump — who is no darling in his home city, to say the least — attacked Mr de Blasio and called him "the worst mayor in the US", and a "JOKE".
He then proceeded to say that the newest Democrat in the field is "your man" if you like high taxes and crime, in spite of New York's relatively low crime rate.
Here's Andrew Buncombe for Indy Voices on why Trump has bitten off more than he can chew in his "little squabble" with China.
A Florida radio station is going to run "inspirational" Trump speeches every hour during the 2020 election campaign, as if the Sunshine State weren't mad enough already.
The White House has launched a website to tackle what it sees as the problem of conservative voices being censored on social media.
The American Right has frequently complained about the alleged liberal bias of Silicon Valley tech giants, who have worked to purge their sites of neo-Nazis and hate speech.
"No matter your views"?
As part of the Trump administration's assault on immigration, the State Department has been working to eliminate birthright citizenship, given to children of undocumented migrants who are born on US soil.
Opponents of the law dismiss the children as "anchor babies", whose parents cynically contrive to ensure they are delivered in American maternity wards to win citizenship on behalf of the whole family.
As Scott Bixby of The Daily Beast reports, the State Department issued new rules last summer that unilaterally changes its interpretation of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), a 1952 law that, along with the 14th Amendment, codifies eligibility.
“The US Department of State interprets the INA to mean that a child born abroad must be biologically related to a US citizen parent,” its website says. “Even if local law recognises a surrogacy agreement and finds that US parents are the legal parents of a child conceived and born abroad… if the child does not have a biological connection to a US citizen parent, the child will not be a US citizen at birth.”
What this means in practice, Bixby says, is that LGBT+ couples whose children were born overseas through gestational surrogacy and other forms of assisted reproductive technology (ART) are considered to be born “out of wedlock” and risk having their claim to birthright citizenship challenged and potentially invalidated. This could mean their being deported or even left stateless.
"Children born out of wedlock face higher legal and logistical hurdles to obtaining birthright citizenship," Bixby writes. "In addition to submission of DNA tests proving genetic links to US citizen parents, their parents must be able to testify that they can support their children financially, and must prove that they have been present in the United States for at least five years prior to the child’s birth."
The last time Trump came to the UK in July 2018 he was met with a giant inflatable Trump baby in a nappy floating over Westminster.
This time? A giant robot tweeting and shouting "I'm a very stable genius" from a toilet.
Trump's old tweets have returned to haunt him before but this vintage cut from 2012 is especially damning given the current tensions with Iran and his own attempts to steer the national conversation away from the Mueller report and back towards 2020.
It also casts new light on his scaremongering about the migrant caravan during November's midterms.
Here's Lowenna Waters for Indy100.
Attorney general William Barr attended the National Peace Officers' Memorial Service yesterday and joked about Nancy Pelosi trying to have him arrested after the Democrat-led House Judiciary Committee voted to hold him in contempt of Congress last week for refusing to give up the unredacted Mueller report in response to a subpoena.
A bystander gave the following account to The Hill:
"As those seated on the platform waited for the president’s arrival in an adjacent tent, Attorney General Barr approached Speaker Pelosi, shook her hand and said loudly, 'Madam Speaker, did you bring your handcuffs?'
"The Speaker, not missing a beat, smiled and indicated to the attorney general that the House sergeant-at-arms was present at the ceremony should an arrest be necessary. The attorney general chuckled and walked away."
On a lighter note, Texas senator Ted Cruz yesterday warned of the threat from "space pirates". No really.
Full marks to MSNBC for this ludicrous graphic.
Yet another Democrat has thrown his hat into the ring for a 2020 presidential run: step forward New York City mayor Bill De Blasio.
He's expected to formally confirm his run on Good Morning America and drop a campaign video later today.
Missouri’s Republican-led senate has passed a bill to effectively ban abortion after eight weeks of pregnancy, even in cases of rape and incest. Senators approved the legislation by 24 votes to 10 in the early hours of Thursday morning, just hours before a Friday deadline to pass bills.
It will require another vote of approval in the state’s GOP-led House before it can be signed off by Republican governor, Mike Parson, who has already announced he supports the measure.
The move follows Alabama's senate passing a similar bill on Tuesday, effectively outlawing terminations in all cases unless the mother's life is in danger.
Leading Democrats Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have both issued strong statements about this worrying regression of women's rights in the American South.
The move follows Alabama's senate passing a similar bill on Tuesday, effectively outlawing terminations in all cases unless the mother's life is in danger.
Leading Democrats Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have both issued strong statements about this worrying regression of women's rights in the American South.
Here's the latest.
As part of the plan, officials want to shore up ports of entry to ensure all vehicles and people are screened and to create a self-sustaining fund, paid for with increased fees, to modernise ports of entry.
The plan also calls for building border wall in targeted locations and continues to push for an overhaul to the US asylum system, with the goal of processing fewer applications and removing people who don't qualify faster.
While the officials insisted their effort was not a "political" plan, they nonetheless framed it as one they hoped Republicans would unite behind, making clear to voters what the party is "for."
"I don't think it's designed to get Democratic support as much as it is to unify the Republican Party around border security, a negotiating position," said South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, a close ally of the White House.
Indeed, the plan drew immediate criticism from Democrats as well as immigration activists, who remain deeply sceptical of Trump after past negotiation failures.
Democrats and some Republicans tried crafting a compromise with Trump last year that would have helped young Dreamer immigrants and added money for border security. But those talks collapsed over White House demands to curb legal immigration and a dramatic Senate showdown in which lawmakers rejected three rival proposals that aligned with the "four pillars" immigration plan Trump unveiled that year.
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer criticised the White House for failing to engage in talks with Democrats over the latest proposal.
"Don't come up with a plan that Stephen Miller rubber stamps and say, 'Now, pass it.' It's not going to happen," Schumer said, referring to Trump's hard-line policy adviser.
Lisa Koop, director of legal services at the National Immigrant Justice Center, also criticised the various planks of the proposal, including its failure to address those brought to the US illegally as children who are currently protected from deportation by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, or DACA, which Trump has tried to end.
"A plan that forces families apart, limits access to asylum and other humanitarian relief, and doesn't contemplate a path to citizenship for DACA recipients and other undocumented community members is clearly a political stunt intended to posture rather than problem-solve," she said.
Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for lower immigration rates, applauded a "very positive effort" on legal immigration, but said it was "undermined by the embrace of the current very high level of immigration."
Republicans on the Hill, too, voiced scepticism, even as administration officials insisted the plan had been embraced by those who briefed on it. A PowerPoint presentation shared with reporters on Wednesday referred to the plan as "The Republican Proposal," even though many GOP members had yet to see it.
Graham, who rolled out his own proposal on Wednesday to address the recent flood of migrants seeking asylum at the US-Mexico border, said he had advised Trump to try to cut a new deal with Democrats and believed Trump was open to that.
"I am urging the president to lead us to a solution," he said.
After years of setbacks and stalemates, Trump will lay out yet another immigration plan from the White House Rose Garden today as he tries to convince the American public and lawmakers that the nation's legal immigration system should be overhauled.
The latest effort, spearheaded by Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, focuses on beefing up border security and rethinking the green card system so that it would favor people with high-level skills, degrees and job offers instead of relatives of those already in the country.
A shift to a more merit-based system prioritising high-skilled workers would mark a dramatic departure from the nation's largely family-based approach, which officials said gives roughly 66 percent of green cards to those with family ties and only 12 percent based on skills.
But the plan, which has yet to be embraced by Trump's own party - let alone Democrats - faces an uphill battle in Congress. Efforts to overhaul the immigration system have gone nowhere for three decades amid deeply divided Republicans and Democrats. Prospects for an agreement seem especially bleak as the 2020 elections near, though the plan could give Trump and the GOP a proposal to rally behind, even if talks with Democrats go nowhere.
The plan does not address what to do about the millions of immigrants already living in the country illegally, including hundreds of thousands of young "Dreamers" brought to the US as children - a top priority for Democrats. Nor does it reduce overall rates of immigration, as many conservative Republicans would like to see.
In briefings on Wednesday that attracted dozens of journalists, administration officials said the plan would create a points-based visa system, similar to those used by Canada and other countries.
The officials said the US would award the same number of green cards as it now does. But far more would go to exceptional students so they can remain in the country after graduation, professionals and people with high-level and vocational degrees. Factors such as age, English language ability and employment offers would also be taken into account.
Far fewer green cards would be given to people with relatives already in the US and 57 percent versus the current 12 percent would be awarded based on merit. The diversity visa lottery, which offers green cards to citizens of countries with historically low rates of immigration to the US, would be eliminated.
They offered fewer specifics on border security, which is expected to remain a key focus for Trump as he campaigns for re-election. Trump has been furiously railing against the spike in Central American migrant families trying to enter the country and he forced a government shutdown in a failed effort to fulfill his 2016 promise to build a southern border wall.
Trump also took time out yesterday to attack The Washington Post and New York Times (what else is new?) after they reported infighting within his administration over how best to handle Iran.
Ever the narcissist, he also retweeted a compliment from MSNBC broadcaster Joe Scarborough, a man he previously dismissed on Twitter as "Psycho Joe".
"I think that I just feel like a young man," Trump told reporters in April, comparing himself favourably to 2020 rival Joe Biden.
"I’m so young! I’m the youngest person. I am a young, vibrant man. I look at Joe [Biden], I don’t know about him. I don’t know about him. I would never say anyone else is too old. I know they’re all making me look very young, both in terms of age and in terms of energy."
