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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Vivian Ho (now) and Jamiles Lartey (earlier)

Ocasio-Cortez describes 'horrifying' conditions at border detention center – as it happened

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was touring a CBP detention facility at the US-Mexico border on Monday.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was touring a CBP detention facility at the US-Mexico border on Monday. Photograph: Leah Millis/Reuters

Evening summary

Honduran man dies in Ice custody

A Honduran man in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) custody since June died at a Texas hospital after he was found unresponsive in his room at a detention facility, according to the agency.

Yimi Alexis Balderramos-Torres, 30, is the sixth detainee to die in custody since October.

According to the agency, Balderramos-Torres made numerous attempts to enter the country. In May, he encountered Border Patrol in El Paso and was found to be “inadmissible to the US”, and returned to Mexico.

Ten days later, he entered the country, encountered local law enforcement during a “routine traffic stop,” and was transferred to Ice custody.

He had previously tried to enter the US in 2013, and was sent back to Honduras, according to Ice.

Updated

CNN poll ranks Kamala Harris no. 2 among 2020 Dems

It was no question that Senator Kamala Harris came out on top of the Democratic primary debates last week, when she challenged former Vice President Joe Biden on his relationship with segregationist Republicans and held him to answer on his record on bussing.

Her campaign has been open about the senator raising $2m in donations in the 24 hours following her formidable performance - $2m from 63,277 people - but the first polls are coming out now and showing that her performance translated into more than just dollar signs.

For the first time since Biden entered the race, a CNN poll has Harris just under Biden at second, with senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders at third and fourth, respectively:

  • Biden - 22%
  • Harris - 17%
  • Warren - 15%
  • Sanders - 14%

Updated

Trump tweets about Kim Jong-un meeting

Over the weekend, President Trump became the first sitting US president to enter North Korea when he shook hands with Kim Jong-un in an impromptu meeting in the demilitarized zone and then walked over the border.

Today, he tweets about it.

Here’s more from President Trump and the possibility of a delayed census:

Trump: delayed immigration raids to take place after 4 July

Last week, President Trump announced that he planned to deploy mass immigration raids on migrant families in several big cities throughout the country - and then delayed them.

Today, he appears to have more of a timeline in place:

Trump considering delaying the 2020 Census

If you’ll all be so kind as to rewind to just a few days ago, when the Supreme Court blocked the Trump administration from including a question about citizenship on the 2020 US census.

Well.

How likely is it that President Trump will be able to delay the 2020 census? It’s unclear at the moment exactly what he has planned. But let us remember that the US census is constitutionally mandated. So there’s that.

Yep, he was serious about those tanks.

But, uh...

Updated

Hey all, Vivian Ho on the west coast taking over for Jamiles Lartey. Happy Monday.

Before I hand the blog over to Vivian Ho on the west coast, how about we take a quick walk down a fake memory lane to think about some events at which Ivanka Trump would be unwanted.

As our Alison Rourke wrote, Ivanka Trump’s prominent role at the G20 summit over the weekend, and her presence at the Korean demilitarised zone with her father, has inspired a slew of parodies under the hashtag #unwantedivanka.

Here’s some favorites:

House Democrats are investigating whistleblower claims from within the State Department which allege that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has used his taxpayer-funded diplomatic security team for personal errands like picking up his dog and take away food orders.

From CNN:

Congressional investigators, who asked for the committee not to be named as they carry out their inquiries, tell CNN that a State Department whistleblower has raised multiple issues over a period of months, about special agents being asked to carry out some questionable tasks for the Pompeo family. In April, for example, an agent was asked to pick up Chinese food — without Pompeo in the car. The whistleblower said this led agents to complain that they are now serving as “UberEats with guns,” which has created a buzz within the department, according to multiple Democratic congressional aides who cited the whistleblower...

According to the Code of Federal Regulations, a federal employee “shall not encourage, direct, coerce, or request a subordinate to use official time to perform activities other than those required in the performance of official duties or authorized in accordance with law or regulation.”

It is unclear if Pompeo requested the allegedly improper arrangements or whether they were made by someone on his staff without his knowledge...

Former government ethics czar Walter Shaub told CNN “sending subordinates to run personal errands for you is the very definition of misuse of position.”

CNN’s first poll of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents post-debate shows double-digit decline for Joe Biden, with Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren pulling up on his heels and ahead of Bernie Sanders.

MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki ponders whether post-debate, Kamala Harris is starting to cobble together the same Dem coalition that propelled upstart Barack Obama to victory over establishment candidate Hillary Clinton in 2008.

Updated

The Associated Press has this dispatch Monday from the Clint Texas Border Patrol station, where AOC will visit today on her tour of migrant detention facilities:

For almost two weeks, a 12-year-old migrant girl said she and her 6-year-old sister were held inside a Border Patrol station in Texas where they slept on the floor and some children were locked away when they cried for their parents.

She was one of hundreds of migrant children who have been held this year in holding cells at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection station near El Paso that has come under fire for holding children in squalid and unsanitary conditions.

In a video obtained by The Associated Press, the girl speaking in Spanish tells her Minnesota-based attorney Alison Griffith children were “treated badly” and were not allowed to play or bathe. The girl’s face is not visible on the video to protect her privacy and not jeopardize her immigration case.

El Paso, Texas, attorney Taylor Levy, who worked with the girl’s family, said she and her sister were separated from their aunt when they arrived in the US on May 23. The children, from Central America, were put in the Border Patrol station in Clint, Texas, Levy said. Their aunt is still being detained.

Lawyers who visited the Clint facility last month after the girls had already been released said the conditions were perilous, with more than 250 children trying to take care of each other, passing toddlers between them, with inadequate food, water and sanitation.

Customs and Border Protection officials have repeatedly said the agency is “in a crisis mode” with too many immigrants and not enough resources.
Customs gave journalists a tour of the Clint Border Station on June 26, and a congressional delegation headed there Monday.

The White House has just issued a new statement on escalating tensions with Iran declaring that “Maximum pressure on the Iranian regime will continue until its leaders alter their course of action.

Full statement:

The Iranian regime took action today to increase its uranium enrichment. It was a mistake under the Iran nuclear deal to allow Iran to enrich uranium at any level. There is little doubt that even before the deal’s existence, Iran was violating its terms. We must restore the longstanding nonproliferation standard of no enrichment for Iran. The United States and its allies will never allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons.

Maximum pressure on the Iranian regime will continue until its leaders alter their course of action. The regime must end its nuclear ambitions and its malign behavior.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said Monday that the country has breached the limit on its stockpile of low-enriched uranium set under a 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

Border Patrol launching investigation into racist, sexist posts on Facebook group

According to ProPublica, Customs and Border Patrol has announced it is launching an investigation into a Facebook group of 10,000 former and active members where a number of racist and sexist posts were shared mocking migrants and violence against US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

“Any employees found to have violated our standards of conduct will be held accountable.” — US Border Patrol Chief

Some US military veterans are planning to troll President Trump and/or honor the late Senator John McCain at the president’s Independence Day rally on Thursday.

The president is going to the unprecedented and, let’s be honest, predictably Trump-like effort of hosting what is essentially a private campaign event on the National Mall in Washinton (complete with tanks if Trump gets his way), to compete with the normal public and thoroughly celebration that typically takes places in the capital.

Via HuffPost:

Irked by President Donald Trump’s plan to hold his own July Fourth event on the National Mall, veterans plan to give out thousands of USS John S. McCain T-shirts to make the president face a crowd of people honoring the McCain family’s legacy and the idea of putting one’s country before oneself.

VoteVets, a nonprofit group founded in 2006 by Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, is organizing the effort in response to Trump’s unprecedented “Salute to America” celebration. While Americans will still be able to catch the annual fireworks display on the National Mall, Trump is hosting his own event on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, where he will give remarks and has set up a ticketed area for VIPs, friends, family and members of the military. Trump’s event will include military flyovers and possibly even tanks.

“Today, we learned the news that Donald Trump is turning the national 4th of July celebration into a 2020 campaign event, complete with a ticketed VIP section for friends and supporters,” reads a Sunday email from VoteVets. “That’s not what America is about.”

“It’s really a way to honor a family that, through multiple generations, has shown that the country is bigger than any one individual,” said Peter Kauffmann, vice chair of VoteVets and a Navy veteran. “July 4 has never been about who is president. The idea that Donald Trump can come in and sell VIP tickets so you can get good seats while the regular old people have to stay back from the area is antithetical to the whole idea of America.”

Trump is of course, the only US president who could conceivably be trolled by veterans distributing shirts celebrating a late Senator and war hero from his own political party. But the president’s dislike for McCain runs so deep that the USS John McCain warship had to be physically kept out of his sight on a May visit to Japan.

AOC says visit to detainees at the border “horrifying so far”

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s shock and disgust at what she’s finding on a visit to border patrol stations in Texas today follows outrage at her own abusive invocation online by border patrol agents via a Facebook group.

During her ongoing visit to the border she’s already getting further grief on social media from those doubting her word at what she’s seen already today.

AOC says women in a cell tell here they are being subjected to “psychological warfare” from the federal agents.

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Photograph: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reports that detainees are being abused - after visiting border patrol facility

The New York Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez just visited a Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) detention facility at the US-Mexico border and said officers were keeping woman in cells with no water.

She’s now on her way to the Clint CBP station near El Paso, Texas, where reports surfaced last week of small children and babies kept in appalling conditions, without their loved ones.

Updated

“Go get ‘em, Tish”

Is one of the more polite encouraging responses New York state attorney general Letitia James has received in her defiant response to the president’s complaints about her investigating his business dealings.

Lots of other respondents call the president rude names and are spitting nails up Pennsylvania Avenue using furious language I can’t go into here.

“The American people dearly want to see you bring Trump to justice” is a succinct and highly-printable version and sums up many angrier ones.

And then there’s the simple but effective mike drop.

Hey, about those tanks

Conservative commentator and Trump skeptic, Bill Kristol, has tweeted asking if Ivanka Trump will be riding on one of the tanks her dad (Potus) has apparently requested for the Independence Day parade on fourth of July.

The context is that, after spending the G20 meet in Japan last week having greatness thrust upon her as, yet again, a quasi-diplomat for the US, despite basically being a volunteer in the White House, Ivanka has inspired an #UnwantedIvanka hashtag on social media and a bunch of memes.

A little earlier, with greater gravitas, former US government ethics chief Walter Shaub tweeted sarcastically about Trump’s angling for a “Giant Tank Parade” and VIP section “even though the hostages in the child destruction centers lack soap and toothbrushes” and urged people to boycott the celebration in Washington this Thursday.

Shaub was referring to all the reports of young children and babies detained in appalling conditions in US Border Patrol stations after crossing the US-Mexico border unlawfully.

This is not a meme
This is not a meme Photograph: UPI/Barcroft Media

Tish is proud

One day earlier, NY AG Letitia James was at the LGBTQ pride parade in New York City, reminding everyone that the personal is political and whatever’s political is an opportunity (for solidarity and a great social media pic). If you missed the Guardian’s live coverage, you can catch up with it here.

“No-one is above the law, not even the president”

New York State attorney general Letitia James has just responded to Donald Trump’s outbursts about investigations being led by her into his business dealings, which we posted about earlier.

James, who has previously called Trump’s presidency “illegitimate”, noted on Twitter this afternoon, via her AG account, that she will follow cases “wherever they lead”.

Following new poll numbers out this morning, which show a tightening race for the Democratic nomination, an analysis from Politico’s David Siders suggests the contest is now wide open.

Here’s more:

For months, the Democratic presidential primary has been dictated by Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. That primary is now over.

After an eventful month and the conclusion of the first round of Democratic debates, there is a new top tier — and a sense among many campaigns and Democratic operatives that Biden and Sanders are suddenly within reach in a race that has broken wide open.

“Bernie and Biden were largely living off of inertia,” said Colin Strother, a veteran Democratic strategist.

Now, he said, voters are becoming aware that “other [candidates], they have a lot of other things to offer.”

The campaign’s evolution came gradually at first — then violently amid the debates. Biden, already damaged by his shifting views on abortion and his one-time work with segregationists, withered under Sen. Kamala Harris’ filleting of his record on busing for school desegregation.

Sanders committed no such error. Yet he was weakened by contrast — his forgettable debate performance versus the proficiency of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a fellow leftist previously untested in a presidential campaign. She is slowly rising in the polls, just as Sanders — a rival for the progressive vote — is seeing his numbers tick downward.

Former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele said Monday that Sen Kamala Harris’s confrontation with former Vice President Joe Biden over his civil rights record in last week’s presidential debate could actually hurt her support within the black community. Steele suggests that despite poll numbers which suggest a strong boost for Harris in the aftermath of the debates. The dust-up between Harris and Biden was arguably the most talked-about exchange of the first debate round.

“In the black community, it hurt her,” Steele said. “This was not something that I think she’s going to walk away from with a lot of black support.”

From The Hill:

Steele predicts that this reaction could be age-related, saying he spoke with ten African-American voters across the country and found that the response to Harris’s attacks weren’t very favorable, particularly among older black women, who said “she done him wrong,” Steele said.

Harris has since defended her decision to confront the former Vice President.

Updated

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has a response to a previous item about the uncovering of racist, sexist abuse in a Facebook group for current and former Border Patrol agents. The congresswoman was specifically targeted for sexist mocking in images shared among the group.

“How on earth can CBP’s culture be trusted to care for refugees humanely?” Ocasio-Cortez wondered, noting that the group membership size was nearly half the current population of agents employed. “This isn’t about ‘a few bad eggs.’ This is a violent culture,” she said.

The congresswoman also indicated she has no plans to cancel a scheduled visit to a border patrol office today, despite the fact that messages in the group called for agents to attempt to harm her.

The State of New York v Donald Trump

Donald Trump launched into a tirade against his home state this morning in a series of tweets, and there’s a lot to unpack.

Trump:

It is very hard and expensive to live in New York. Governor Andrew Cuomo uses his Attorney General as a bludgeoning tool for his own purposes. They sue on everything, always in search of a crime. I even got sued on a Foundation which took Zero rent & expenses & gave away more money than it had. Going on for years, originally brought by Crooked Hillary’s Campaign Chair, A.G. Eric Schneiderman, until forced to resign for abuse against women. They never even looked at the disgusting Clinton Foundation. Now Cuomo’s A.G. is harassing all of my New York businesses in search of anything at all they can find to make me look as bad as possible. So, on top of ridiculously high taxes, my children and companies are spending a fortune on lawyers. No wonder people and businesses are fleeing New York in record numbers!

It is unclear exactly what prompted the outburst. The Attorney General who Trump references without naming is Leticia James, who is currently pursuing a barrage of investigations of the president and his business ventures.

James’ predecessor Barbara Underwood had Trump’s foundation shut down after uncovering what she described as “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation – including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more. This amounted to the Trump Foundation functioning as little more than a checkbook to serve Mr Trump’s business and political interests.”

Trump’s claim that people are leaving the state in record numbers is not supported by population data, which suggest that the state’s numbers have been remarkably stable (varying less than 0.5% each year) for nearly two decades.

Revealed: Facebook group for current and former Border Patrol agents a trove of racist, sexist abuse

A ProPublica investigation has found that members of a secret Facebook group for current and former Border Patrol agents joked about the deaths of migrants, discussed throwing burritos at Latino members of Congress visiting a detention facility in Texas on Monday and posted a vulgar illustration depicting New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez engaged in oral sex with a detained migrants.

From ProPublica:

In one exchange, group members responded with indifference and wisecracks to the post of a news story about a 16-year-old Guatemalan migrant who died in May while in custody at a Border Patrol station in Weslaco, Texas. One member posted a GIF of Elmo with the quote, “Oh well.” Another responded with an image and the words “If he dies, he dies.”

Created in August 2016, the Facebook group is called “I’m 10-15” and boasts roughly 9,500 members from across the country. (10-15 is Border Patrol code for “aliens in custody.”) The group described itself, in an online introduction, as a forum for “funny” and “serious” discussion about work with the patrol. “Remember you are never alone in this family,” the introduction said.

A screenshot from the Facebook group, run with this text: “That’s right bitches. The masses have spoken and today democracy won. I have returned. To everyone who knows the real me and had my back I say thank you. To everyone else? This is what I have to say.....”

Responsible for policing the nation’s southern and northern boundaries, the Border Patrol has come under intense scrutiny as the Trump administration takes new, more aggressive measures to halt the influx of undocumented migrants across the United States-Mexico border. The patrol’s approximately 20,000 agents serve under the broader U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, which has been faulted for allegedly mistreating children and adults in its custody.

News that Harvard’s John F Kennedy School of Government has named former Michigan Gov Rick Snyder a senior research fellow has sparked a social media backlash, the Detroit Free Press is reporting.

Many have expressed outrage at the appointment, citing Snyder’s role in the Flint drinking water crisis, and have launched an email campaign aimed at Jeffrey Liebman, director of the school’s Taubman Center for State and Local Government.

Among those speaking out against the appointment are Piper Kerman, author of “Orange is the New Black,” Flint activist Mari Copeny, known as “Little Miss Flint,” and the magazine “Current Affairs.” Most of the opposition relates to Snyder’s role in the Flint drinking water crisis.

2020 candidates join in universal condemnation of coordinated racist attacks on Harris

Senator Kamala Harris, who has been the subject of a coordinated social media campaign questioning her ethnicity is receiving broad support from her fellow Democratic nomination seekers.

A number of social media accounts, most appearing to be online bots, promoted theories after Thursday’s primary debate that falsely claimed the California Democrat, who is of Indian and Jamaican descent, is not black and is not a US citizen. The posts gained some currency after Donald Trump Jr shared one.

The Democratic field has been unified in condemning the attacks as racist and manipulative.

Updated

The Associated Press has this on President Trump’s historic visit to the Korean DMZ and what it means for US diplomacy on the peninsula moving forward:

“Ok, let’s do it.”

With those words, a deliberate step and a pat on the arm of Kim Jong Un, President Donald Trump became the first sitting American leader to step into North Korea on Sunday as the two made history at the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone. The made-for-television moment was unthinkable just two years ago, when the men were trading base insults and grim threats.

Trump’s three-hour stop at the DMZ — of which about 80 minutes were spent with Kim — was a display of handshake-diplomacy for the history books, but also a chaotic spectacle reflective of the last-minute nature of the invitation to the authoritarian leader to join him at the border between the Koreas.

Afterward, it was unclear whether the meeting was more show than substance. Other than the headline-grabbing moment and the unprecedented images, Trump’s only accomplishment appeared to be securing an agreement to restart nuclear talks that he himself had walked out on in February during his last summit with Kim in Vietnam.

Trump had long planned a visit to the DMZ, dating to 2017 when a scheduled trip was canceled by fog, but aides said the public invitation for Kim to join him there was as spontaneous as it seemed. In typical Trump fashion, it started with a tweet.

“I would meet him at the Border/DMZ just to shake his hand and say Hello(?)!” Trump posted about 30 hours before the visit.

The secrecy that had surrounded the ill-fated attempted visit two years ago was replaced by a media frenzy stoked by the president himself.

Trump said North Korea quickly responded and expressed interest in the invitation. U.S. and North Korean officials spent much of Saturday evening and early Sunday trying to surmount the immense logistical and security hurdles on such a tight timetable.

Even Kim seemed unable to contain his surprise when the meeting occurred.

“I never expected to meet you at this place,” he told Trump as they shook hands across the concrete slab marking the Military Demarcation Line between North and South.

It was Trump who first broached the notion of walking into North Korea. “Would you like me to step across?” he asked Kim as an interpreter translated his words to Korean. “Would you like me to?”

Kim waved Trump over, replying through an interpreter of his own: “If your excellency would step forward, you will be the first U.S. president to cross the border.”

As Trump took his first steps, the former reality television star quickly moved to stage-manage the show of his own creation.

“Come on,” he said to Kim, tapping his elbow, as they walked side by side 10 paces into the North.

After a moment, they turned to face the press waiting in the South.

Trump escorted Kim back to the South as a scuffle broke out between reporters and North Korean security guards, with officials shoving and trying to block the press from capturing the moment.

The jostling intensified as the leaders moved to the Freedom House on the southern side of Panmunjom, where they made brief remarks to reporters and then met for roughly 50 minutes. A photographer was knocked to the ground and one reporter was seen in tears.

At one point, incoming White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham side-checked a North Korean guard who was blocking reporters from the room while others security officials frantically tried to cordon off the area with yellow rope.

Grisham ended up with bruises from the fracas. The U.S. Secret Service intervened in the pushing and shoving match.

The president was joined in the Freedom House conversation with Kim by his daughter and son-in-law, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, both senior White House advisers. Chief of staff Mick Mulvaney milled about with other aides. National security adviser John Bolton, a skeptic of the talks with Kim, was en route to Ulaanbaatar to consult with Mongolian officials on regional security issues.

At one point, Ivanka Trump and Kushner stopped to enter one of the blue huts straddling the border between the two Koreas. Asked by a reporter about her trip to the North, she replied, “Surreal.”

And a sequel could be in the works: Trump told reporters he had invited Kim to Washington.

Updated

CNN has footage this morning of Joe Biden explaining his opposition to busing as a strategy for desegregating schools back in 1981. Biden’s opposition to busing in the 1970s is facing renewed scrutiny after California Senator Kamala Harris criticized his position during the Democratic debate on Thursday.

From CNN: “In response, Biden said he “did not oppose busing in America” and only opposed busing ordered by the Department of Education. On Friday, Biden again tried to qualify his opposition, saying he “never ever opposed voluntary busing.”But the 1981 CNN interview illustrates that Biden’s objections to busing to end segregation in schools were much broader than he casts them today.”

I happen to be one of those so-called people that are labeled as a liberal on civil rights, but oppose busing... And I support the effort to curtail the ability of courts to bus...

What I have argued as one who grew up in the civil rights movement and ran for office as a public defender and a member of an active participant in civil rights cases, I have argued that the least effective remedy to be imposed is the busing remedy.”

In a statement to CNN, Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates reiterated that the former vice president always supported voluntary busing and federally mandated busing to end “de jure” segregation. “He has also always been an advocate for integration, but saw that the forced busing being discussed in these statements was not the right mechanism for achieving integration in Delaware because it put an undue burden on African-American families and children,” Bates said.

A new poll from Morning Consult suggests that Kamala Harris’ strong performance in last weeks debate has catapulted her into the top-tier of Democratic contenders.

The poll found her support doubled from 6% to 12% after the debate, coming mostly at the expense of frontrunner Joe Biden, whose support fell from 38% to 33%.

The poll has Biden, Bernie Sanders (18%), Harris, and Elizabeth Warren (12%) as the top four candidates.

2020 presidential contender Pete Buttigieg hauled in an impressive $24.8m in fundraising in the second quarter of 2019. That’s more than 3x what the South Bend mayor pulled in in the previous quarter, and more than the $18.2m the top fundraiser Bernie Sanders took in in the first quarter.

Trump requested tanks for Fourth of July parade, reports say

Good Morning and welcome to the politics blog for 1 July. Let’s kick off the morning with tank parades, shall we?

The Washington Post is reporting Monday that, with three days until the fourth of July, the National Parks Department is trying to figure out how to make good on Donald Trump’s request for tanks or “other armored military vehicles” to be placed on the National Mall in advance of his independence day address.

“The ongoing negotiations over whether to use massive military hardware, such as Abrams tanks or Bradley Fighting Vehicles, as a prop for Trump’s “Salute to America” is just one of many unfinished details when it comes to the celebration planned for Thursday, according to several people briefed on the plan, who requested anonymity to speak frankly,” The Post is reporting.

The plan is somewhat of a retread from Trump’s long-delayed, and eventually squashed plans for a military parade in Washington last year.

From the Post:

National Park Service acting director P Daniel Smith faces plenty of looming priorities this summer, from an $11 billion backlog in maintenance needs to natural disasters like the recent wildfire damage to Big Bend Park.

But in recent days, another issue has competed for Smith’s attention: how to satisfy President Trump’s request to station tanks or other armored military vehicles on the Mall for his planned Fourth of July address to the nation.

White House officials intend to give out tickets for attendees to sit in a VIP section and watch Trump’s speech, but did not develop a distribution system before much of the staff left for Asia last week, according to two administration officials. Officials are also still working on other key crowd management details, such as how to get attendees through magnetometers in an orderly fashion.

Traditionally, major gatherings on the Mall, including inauguration festivities and a jubilee commemorating the start of a new millennium, have featured a designated event producer. But in this case, the producer is the president himself.

Updated

Outgoing White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders is, unsurprisingly, penning a book about her 3 and a half years in the White House, Axios is reporting.

Sanders has told friends that she’s also looking seriously at running for governor of her home state of Arkansas.

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