Donald Trump - currently on holiday at his golf resort in Bedminster, New Jersey - has again stoked controversy by retweeting unfounded conspiracy theories about the apparent suicide of billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein in a New York jail cell on Saturday.
Democratic 2020 contenders Beto O'Rourke and Cory Booker have led the condemnation of the president, accusing him of seeking to divert attention from the bad press he suffered in the aftermath of the El Paso and Dayton mass shootings by giving oxygen to unfounded rumours linking Epstein, a former friend of Mr Trump himself, to his precursor in the White House, Bill Clinton.
The White House has meanwhile introduced tough new immigration measures that could deny visas and permanent residency to hundreds of thousands of people for being too poor.
The White House administration announced it was moving forward with one of its most aggressive steps yet to restrict legal immigration, denying green cards to many migrants who use Medicaid, food stamps, housing vouchers or other forms of public assistance.
Federal law already requires those seeking to become permanent residents and gain legal status to prove they will not be a burden to the US — a “public charge,” in government speak — but the new rules detail a broader range of programs that could disqualify them.
It’s part of a dramatic overhaul of the nation’s immigration system that the administration has been trying to put into place.
While much of the attention has focused on Mr Trump’s efforts to crack down on illegal immigration, the new change targets people who entered the United States legally and are seeking permanent status.
It's also part of an effort to move the US to a system that focuses on immigrants’ skills instead of emphasizing the reunification of families.
US Citizenship and Immigration Services will now weigh public assistance along with other factors such as education, household income and health to determine whether to grant legal status.
The rules will take effect in mid-October. They don’t apply to US citizens, even if the US citizen is related to an immigrant who is subject to them.
The acting director of Citizenship and Immigration Services, Ken Cuccinelli, said the rule change fits with the Republican president’s message.
“We want to see people coming to this country who are self-sufficient,” Mr Cuccinelli said. “That’s a core principle of the American dream. It’s deeply embedded in our history, and particularly our history related to legal immigration.”
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Donald Trump - currently on holiday at his golf resort in Bedminster, New Jersey - has again stoked controversy by retweeting entirely unfounded conspiracy theories about the apparent suicide of billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein in a New York jail cell.
On Saturday night, hours after the news broke, the president retweeted the following, the first coming from conservative comedian Terrence K Williams:
Democratic 2020 contenders Beto O'Rourke and Cory Booker have led the condemnation of the president, accusing him of seeking to divert attention from the bad press he suffered in the aftermath of the El Paso and Dayton mass shootings by giving oxygen to unfounded rumours linking Epstein, a former friend of Trump himself, to his precursor in the White House, Bill Clinton.
"This is another example of our president using this position of public trust to attack his political enemies with unfounded conspiracy theories," O'Rourke, a former congressman from Texas, said on CNN's State of the Union.
"He's changing the conversation, and if we allow him to do that then we will never be able to focus on the true problems, of which he is a part," O'Rourke said from his hometown, still grieving after the killing of 22 people at a Walmart store last weekend.
Booker, a US senator from New Jersey, said Trump's retweet was "just more recklessness."
"He is giving life to not just conspiracy theories but really whipping people up into anger and worse against different people in this country," he said on CNN.
The FBI and the Department of Justice's inspector general have opened investigations into the death of Epstein, who a source said had been taken off suicide watch. Last month, Epstein was found unconscious on the floor of his jail cell with marks on his neck and officials were investigating that incident as a possible suicide or assault.
US attorney general William Barr said he was "appalled" to learn of the apparent suicide in federal custody. "Mr Epstein's death raises serious questions that must be answered," he said in a statement on Saturday.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic congresswoman from New York City and a leading progressive voice, tweeted: "We need answers. Lots of them."
More than a decade ago, Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida to state charges of solicitation of prostitution from a minor in a deal with prosecutors that has been widely criticised as too lenient.
Then on 6 July, Epstein was indicted, federal prosecutors in New York accusing him of knowingly recruiting underage women to engage in sex acts with him, sometimes over a period of years while paying the women for each encounter. He pleaded not guilty.
Here's Chris Riotta's story on the fallout.
One person shameless enough to defend Trump's decision to retweet the unfounded conspiracy theories was White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway.
“I think the president just wants everything to be investigated,” she told Fox News Sunday.
"Jeffrey Epstein has done some very bad things over a number of years, so let's continue to investigate that," Conway continued. "I don't think that somebody's crimes and the accountability for that necessarily perish with them."
The president has also taken time out from the links to attack his enemies in politics and the media, from Maggie Haberman of The New York Times and comedian Bill Maher to Joe Biden, China and MSNBC's Donny Deutsch, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski and Erin Burnett of CNN.
He also laid into his own short-lived former press secretary Anthony Scaramucci after he warned the Republican Party it may need to replace Trump on its 2020 ticket.
The Mooch had also been critical of the president's handling of his El Paso and Dayton visits last week, calling them a "catastrophe" on MSNBC on Thursday: “Maybe he’ll tweet something negative about somebody for saying he didn’t do well, but the facts are he did not do well on the trip because if the trip is being made about him and not the demonstration of compassion and love and caring and empathy for those people, then it becomes a catastrophe for him, the administration, and it’s also a bad reflection on the country."
After he tweeted this warning that the president “eventually turns on everyone"...
... Trump blew his top.
This was the Mooch's philosophical response, quoting a German pastor, theologian and anti-Nazi dissident.
On the question of the Republicans replacing Trump on the ticket next year raised by Scaramucci (never going to happen, surely), his only current GOP challenger, Bill Weld, has called on the party to reject the racist rhetoric Trump has espoused.
Here's Clark Mindock's report from the Iowa State Fair.
The only person with a worse take than Conway on Trump's latest self-inflicted outrage is his eldest son, who says the fact that the hashtag #TrumpBodyCount trended on Twitter but #ClintonBodyCount did not in the wake of the president's Epstein tweets is the latest evidence that the social media platform is biased against conservatives.
Lowenna Waters has more for Indy100.
Mark Morgan, Trump's acting Border Patrol chief, was interviewed by Jake Tapper on CNN yesterday and grilled about the ICE round-up of 680 undocumented workers that took place at poultry farms in Mississippi on Wednesday, coinciding with the president's consolation missions to Ohio and Texas.
Tapper took Morgan to task about the lack of raids on Trump owned-properties, despite numerous reports suggesting some of his staff have questions to answer about how they first arrived in the US.
Morgan also offered this characteristically heartless take on the tragic CBS video of a Mexican girl weeping for her father that went viral after he was picked up by ICE agents.
Here's a little more context.
A story you might have missed over the weekend from The New York Post: Trump reportedly put on an "Asian accent" to mock South Korean leader Moon Jae-in and Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe at a pair of fundraisers held for him in the Hamptons on Friday.
One of these was staged by Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross, also the owner of the SoulCycle and Equinox fitness centres, both of which were the subject of boycott calls from celebrities including Chrissy Teigen and Billy Eichner after news of the whip-round emerged last week.
Trump attended a lunch for 60 hosted by Ross at his home and then talked for an hour to a crowd of 500 at the Bridgehampton pile of property developer Joe Farrell.
“I love coming to the Hamptons, I know the Hamptons well, everyone here votes for me but they won’t admit it," the president joked before, according to The Post, "[making] fun of US allies South Korea, Japan and the European Union - mimicking Japanese and Korean accents - and talked about his love of dictators Kim Jong-un and the current ruler of Saudi Arabia."
The story continues: "Talking about South Korea, Trump said it makes great TVs and has a thriving economy, 'So why are we paying for their defense. They’ve got to pay.' He then mimicked the accent of the leader Moon Jae-in while describing how he caved in to Trump’s tough negotiations."
On Abe, Trump marvelled that the premier's father had been a kamikaze pilot: “Imagine they get in a plane with a half a tank of gas and fly into steel ships just for the love of their country!”
Amid the usual "fake news" bashing you would have expected, other highlights form Trump's address included the following.
On gun control.
"There’s Don Jr, I didn’t think he liked politics, but actually he’s really good at it. And so is Kimberly [Guilfoyle, Jr's girlfriend]. Don Jr is my gun expert, he knows more about guns than anyone I know.”
On North Korea.
"If I hadn’t been elected president we would be in a big fat juicy war with North Korea."
Speaking of the Hamptons, the affluent New Yorkers who live there have been complaining they cannot come out as Trump supporters without fear of reprisals from angry locals.
Fox and Friends are joining in with the Epstein conspiracy theories so far this morning.
Giving grist to the mill is the emergence of new details about his final hours in New York's Metropolitan Correctional Center like this.
The authorities certainly have questions to answer as it appears his cellmate was transferred elsewhere, he had been taken off suicide watch and neglected by guards working "extreme overtime shifts".
All this a week after more than 2,000 pages of documents were released related to a since-settled lawsuit against Epstein's ex-girlfriend by Virginia Giuffre, one of his accusers. The records contain graphic allegations against Epstein as well as the transcript of a 2016 deposition in which the hedge fund manager repeatedly refused to answer questions to avoid incriminating himself.
Here's more on the mess Epstein leaves behind him. A trail of ruined lives, misery and bankruptcy.
Chris Riotta has this on the spiraling cost of Trump's golf holidays to American taxpayers.
This is odd.
Trump - who loves to print out his tweets and sign them - reportedly tore out a magazine picture of Justin Trudeau from Bloomberg Businessweek, scrawled a brief note about the Canadian prime minister “looking good” on it and had the White House mail the dispatch to the neighbouring country’s embassy.
The message - first reported by Axios - was allegedly written by the US president on the cover of a May 2017 issue of the magazine, which featured an image of Trudeau alongside a caption reading “The Anti-Trump”. On it, Trump allegedly jotted a Sharpie-written note reading something to the effect of, “Looking good! Hope it's not true!" according to the US news outlet.
The Canadian ambassador considered the note so strange he thought it was a prank but, after calling US officials, was told the note was genuine.
With the Epstein investigation set to run and run, attention is turning to socialite Ghislaine Maxwell.
Maxwell has been described as his "protector" who "supplied him with three girls a day".
The Mooch continues to bite back against his old handler.
Clark Mindock has more on the Democrats in Iowa, where Bernie Sanders proved a much bigger draw than Bill de Blasio.
Speaking at The Des Moines Registers's "Political Soapbox" event, Bernie recalled his narrow defeat in the Midwestern state in 2016 and pledged to fight Trump's racism while pushing for progressive causes in 2020.
Check out these numbers: 12.95 false claims a day.
Well, he does love high ratings.
Joe Biden reminds me us today is the two-year anniversary of Charlottesville.
Hard to argue with this.
More from Clark Mindock in Iowa, where Bernie Sanders has been holding the Republicans to account over their "hypocrisy" on abortion.
"Right now, all across the country, there is a well-funded and extreme attack on the right of women to control their own body and their own future," the candidate says.
