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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Sam Levin in San Francisco (now) and Amanda Holpuch in New York (earlier)

Biden, Sanders and Harris to face off as Democratic debate lineups set – as it happened

Biden has been drawn with Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris in the ‘purple’ debate group.
Biden has been drawn with Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris in the ‘purple’ debate group. Photograph: Charlie Neibergall/AP

Summary

We’re ending our live coverage for the day, thanks for following along! Some key links and updates from the day:

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner made $135m last year

The AP reports:

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner took in as much as $135m in income during their second year as aides to Donald Trump, generated from their vast real estate holdings, stocks and bonds and even a book deal, according to their financial disclosures released Friday.

Ivanka Trump’s stake in her family’s Washington DC hotel down the street from the Oval Office generated $3.95m in revenue in 2018, barely changed from a year earlier. The hotel, a favorite gathering spot for foreign diplomats and lobbyists, is at the center of two federal lawsuits claiming Trump is violating the constitution’s ban on foreign government payments to the president.

Another big Ivanka Trump holding, a trust that includes her personal business selling handbags, shoes and accessories, generated at least $1m in revenue in 2018, down from at least $5m the year before. Ivanka Trump announced in July of last year that she planned to close her fashion company to focus on her work as a White House adviser for her father.

Read the full story here:

And the Guardian’s recent reporting on Kushner’s finances:

Some useful commentary on the court decision today sending Trump’s trans military ban back to a lower court:

The decision could have broader implications beyond military policy, given the precedent the ninth circuit is setting for protecting trans people from discrimination.

Read the full decision here:

The decision could potentially help trans people in other contexts, like access to health care and workplace discrimination:

Research has shown the trans military ban is unpopular:

Appeals court backs abortion access for undocumented minors

A federal appeals court ruled today that the Trump administration cannot block undocumented minors in custody from getting abortions.

The judges said they were “unanimous in rejecting the government’s position that its denial of abortion access can be squared with Supreme Court precedent”, adding that court precedent holds that “a person has a constitutional right to terminate her pregnancy before fetal viability, and the government cannot unduly burden her decision”.

The Trump administration had argued that it was trying to prevent “abortion tourism”. Some background from Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern here:

The Trump campaign’s pollster has responded to the reports from earlier suggesting that the president’s internal reelection data shows him losing to Joe Biden in critical battleground states. The statement claimed the media was reporting on “old numbers” from March that represented a “worst-case” scenario:

The polling data showed a double-digit lead for Biden in Pennsylvania (55-39) and Wisconsin (51-41). It predicted Biden leading by seven points in Florida.

Justice department releases memo on withholding Trump tax returns

The justice department has released its formal opinion backing the Treasury’s decision to withhold Trump’s tax returns from Congress:

The 33-page memo from the DOJ office of legal counsel claimed that Democrats’ request for the tax returns did not serve a “legitimate legislative purpose” and was instead aimed at making the documents public:

Under the facts and circumstances, the Secretary of the Treasury reasonably and correctly concluded that the Committee’s asserted interest in reviewing the Internal Revenue Service’s audits of presidential returns was pretextual and that its true aim was to make the President’s tax returns public, which is not a legitimate legislative purpose.

The DOJ view echoes the arguments Trump’s private attorneys have made in court:

Federal courts have rejected these arguments, and some have noted that the law doesn’t require Congress to have a specific reason to request these records.

Florida governor signs bill banning 'sanctuary cities'

Hello - Sam Levin in the San Francisco office here, taking over our live coverage for the rest of the day.

Florida’s Republican governor has signed an anti-immigrant bill banning “sanctuary” policies in the state. From the AP:

All law enforcement agencies in Florida will have to cooperate with federal immigration authorities under a bill signed by the governor, Ron DeSantis, on Friday during a ceremony that often felt like a campaign rally for him and Donald Trump.

The bill prohibits local governments from enacting “sanctuary” polices that protect undocumented immigrants from deportation. It will require law enforcement to honor US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainers for undocumented immigrants who are arrested or convicted of a crime. It exempts crime victims and witnesses.

Some reactions:

Summary

Mexico’s government has released it’s one page agreement with the White House - an agreement last seen brandished by the president at a press conference where photographers managed to snap a photo that revealed part of the paper’s contents.

The agreement says the two countries will discuss how to respond to the swell of Central American migrants seeking refuge in the US and Mexico.

It also states that if the US, after consulting with Mexico, determines the Mexican government has not achieved the desired results of measures meant to curb migration in 45 days, Mexico will do what it can to reduce migration.

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting read about how after launching an atypical presidential election bid, Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign team is taking a more traditional path:

The campaign aims to build a political infrastructure that can operate regardless of what Mr. Trump says on stage or on social media. Mr. Trump’s Twitter feed is spoken of as his own brand, separate from the campaign.

Democrats are taking the president’s campaign very seriously, said Adrienne Watson, a spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee. “Congratulations to the president for having a functioning campaign this time,” she said, adding that Democrats plan to question his record on helping working-class Americans and lowering drug prices.

Four years ago, Mr. Trump’s campaign aides were shoehorned into an unused corner of Trump Tower, where drywall was never hung on some wood-framed walls and the few low-level aides on the payroll were crammed into offices so tight their knees touched. Aides used their own computers and cellphones for campaign business.

Now, dozens of staffers are spread out across a central campaign office that occupies the 14th floor of an Arlington, Va., office building, where conference rooms overlook the Potomac River. Some advisers say they hope Mr. Trump never visits the sprawling campaign office, worried he will disapprove of the size of the operation.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders has only a few weeks left of her tenure as White House press secretary and the rumor mill is churning with possible replacements.

Four possible replacements, according to Reuters, are: Stephanie Grisham, Melania Trump’s communications director; Heather Nauert, the former State Department spokeswoman; Tony Sayegh, the outgoing Treasury department spokesman and Hogan Gidley, deputy White House secretary.

In a January 2019 CNN article about how Trump was making the White House press team irrelevant, the news channel revealed Trump hadn’t quite grasped Gidley’s name (though he was impressed by his work):

Once, after watching Gidley on his screen in the residence, the President walked over to the communications office to tell the staff he thought they were handling the shutdown well.

In the days afterward, Trump confused several officials when he directed them to, “Get me Tidley.”

“Who?” puzzled staffers asked.

“Tidley,” Trump replied. “I want to talk to Hogan Tidley.”

They informed him that the deputy press secretary’s last name was Gidley, not Tidley.

Law professor Anita Hill said she would not rule out voting for Joe Biden if he were to become the Democratic nominee in next year’s presidential election in an interview broadcast Thursday night.

Biden oversaw the 1991 Congressional hearing where Hill testified that US supreme court nominee Clarence Thomas had persistently sexually harassed her when they worked together. Biden called Hill to discuss the matter before announcing his presidential bid. Hill said she was not satisfied with Biden’s comments and that she did not consider it a proper apology.

In response to a question about whether she could see herself voting for Biden if he were to become the 2020 nominee, she said: “Of course I could.”

She declined to name a favorite from the packed field of Democratic candidates, but she that she would like to see gender violence discussed in the debates and for political leaders to take the issue seriously.

“I want our leaders to stand up and say this is a serious problem that women are not safe in the workplace, not safe in our schools, they’re not safe on our streets and that we are going to use the government resources to illuminate the problem,” she said.

Donald Trump’s internal reelection campaign poll has him losing to Joe Biden in key battleground states, according to poll results obtained by ABC News:

The polling data showed a double-digit lead for Biden in Pennsylvania 55-39 and Wisconsin 51-41 and had Biden leading by seven points in Florida. In Texas, a Republican stronghold, the numbers showed the president only leading by two points.

Trump has said such data does not exist. When confronted with ABC’s findings, his campaign confirmed they were old, outdated numbers.

“These leaked numbers are ancient, in campaign terms, from months-old polling that began in March before two major events had occurred: the release of the summary of the Mueller report exonerating the President, and the beginning of the Democrat candidates defining themselves with their far-left policy message,” Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale told ABC News in a statement.

The Ninth Circuit court of appeals has sent Donald Trump’s transgender military ban back to a lower court, saying that the March 2018 policy requires heightened scrutiny.

The court did not address the legality of the ban, which was enacted in response to a 2016 Obama adminstration decision to end a ban on openly transgender people serving in the military.

The Guardian’s Ed Pilkington investigated the impact Trump’s ban is having on the 15,000 trans military members in an important piece published yesterday:

All are in aircrew and at the sharp end of the US fighting machine. They are familiar with the intense sacrifices to family and self that a military career involves, and have put their lives on the line in conflict zones.

Yet they are now having to cope with severe pressures brought about by the ban. That includes mounting hostility from transphobic peers who see Trump’s move as license to taunt and ridicule, as well as the daily fear that if they are outed as trans they could lose everything.

The stakes are now so high that all four spoke to the Guardian insisting on absolute anonymity. As one of them put it: “If I were found out by even one person, that would be the end of my flying career.”

The lawyer for Michael Flynn, a former national security adviser to Trump, called to further delay Flynn’s sentencing for the crime of lying to federal investigators about conversations he had with the Russian ambassador during the presidential transition period.

On Friday, the attorney requested the sentencing not be held for at least 60 days. Flynn recently changed lawyers.

Four years ago this weekend, Donald Trump announced he would run for president after descending a golden escalator.

The Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt spoke to people who were there:

For Heather Haddon, then a political reporter at the Wall Street Journal, one of the surprises was that Trump had finally done it. The president likes to insist that 2016 was the first time he had run for office, but as far back as 1988 he had flirted with running, and he ran for the Reform party nomination in 1999.

“Definitely the sense was … there’s no way this guy is going to make it,” Haddon said.

As for the event itself, Haddon remembers there being an “almost pro-wrestling” tone to the announcement.

“It was angry but it was also so matter-of-fact,” said Haddon, who now covers business at the Journal. “It just seemed so stream-of-consciousness. Going from one topic to another, things that might, I guess, excite people, set people off. It was all just sort of spewed out there.”

Afternoon summary

Updated

Here are the debate dates:

Wednesday, June 26:

Cory Booker, New Jersey senator; Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts senator; Beto O’Rourke, former Texas representative; Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota senator; John Delaney, former Maryland representative; Tulsi Gabbard, Hawaii representative; Julián Castro, former housing secretary; Tim Ryan, Ohio representative; Bill de Blasio, New York City mayor; Jay Inslee, Washington governor.

Thursday, June 27:

Kamala Harris, California senator; Joe Biden, former vice president; Bernie Sanders, Vermont senator; Pete Buttigieg, Indiana mayor; Kirsten Gillibrand, New York senator; Michael Bennet, Colorado senator; Marianne Williamson, author; California representative; Eric Swalwell, California representative; Andrew Yang, entrepreneur; John Hickenlooper, Colorado governor.

2020 Democrat debate groups set

With such a crowded Democratic field heading into the 2020 election, NBC’s primary debate has been split into two groups. One group will debate 26 June, the other 27 June.

In a draw closed to the press, the groups were determined as follows:

Updated

Taylor Swift, who for many years avoided speaking about politics, released a track from her forthcoming album at midnight and apparently Oregon senator, Ron Wyden, is a fan.

The tune - You Need to Calm Down - swings between Swift assailing internet critics and homophobes, with a shout out to the group Glaad, which pushes for improved representation of LGBTQ people in the media.

Swift sings: “Why are you mad when you could be GLAAD? / Sunshine on the street at the parade / But you would rather be in the dark ages / Makin’ that sign must’ve taken all night.”

Wyden highlighted the new track in a tweet to Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, encouraging him to support the Equality Act. The act would add “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” as protected classes under federal civil rights law.

Swift started a petition in support of the Equality Act earlier this month.

The Trump administration and Congress owe Washington DC more than $7m from Trump’s inauguration, reports the Washington Post, citing federal and city financial records.

The total cost of the four-day celebration, which culminated with a parade and gathering of roughly 600,000 people on the Mall, was $27.3 million.

As a result, the District has been forced to dip into a special fund that covers annual security costs for protecting the city from terrorist threats and hosting other events such as demonstrations, state funerals and the visits of foreign dignitaries. That fund, which for years was adequately replenished by federal dollars, is now on track to enter the red by this fall, records show.

This adds further fuel to criticism about Trump’s planned speech on the Fourth of July in Washington DC, which will likely drive up security costs for one of the most popular events in the Capitol each year.

Critics are not only worried about the cost, but are also concerned Trump will turn the event into a political rally instead of a staid, non-partisan, celebration.

After Donald Trump accused his former White House counsel of lying under oath in a clip released this morning, political analysts noted the president is also trying to stop McGahn testifying before congressional committees investigating the findings of the Mueller report.

Those findings include McGahn’s testimony that the president instructed him to find a way to fire Mueller, repeatedly.

In an interview clip ABC News released this morning, Trump said he never asked McGahn to fire Mueller. He also said McGahn “may have been confused” when he told investigators that Trump had directed him to fire Mueller – a stunning accusation to make against his former legal adviser.

Neoconservative political analyst, Bill Kristol, says McGahn needs to issue a statement:

Updated

Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren has dropped another plan for if she is elected president – this one targeting entrepreneurs of color who face more hurdles in starting new businesses than white entrepreneurs.

Under her plan, the government would provide $7bn in grants, not loans, to entrepreneurs by making adjustments to similar, existing government programs.

In a post on Medium, the Warren campaign outlined the plan and explained why she created it:

The small business gap is another example of how the racial wealth gap in America holds back our economy and hurts Black, Latinx, Native American, and other minority families and communities. And because the government helped create that wealth gap with decades of sanctioned discrimination, the government has an obligation to address it head on — with bold policies that go right at the heart of the problem.

The New York Times released a design for the $20 bill featuring anti-slavery activist Harriet Tubman, which has been embroiled in controversy since the Trump adminstration announced it was delaying the new bill’s release by six years.

Last month, treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin said the release of the redesigned bill would be delayed six years after the Obama administration’s planned launch of the bill in 2020.

During his campaign for president, Trump criticized the decision to redesign the bill, calling it “pure political correctness”.

Current and former treasury department officials told the New York Times that Mnuchin delayed the bill’s release out of concern Trump would cancel the plan outright. Mnuchin told the Times he delayed it for technical reasons.

Ship operator disputes US account of oil tanker attack

The US military has released video footage which it says shows an Iranian military patrol boat approaching one of two tankers attacked in the Gulf of Oman, to support the Trump administration’s claims that Iran was responsible – a claim the Iranian government denies.

The ship’s Japanese operator, Kokuka Sangyo, said Friday that the ship was attacked by a flying object, disputing part of the US description of the attack, according to the New York Times.

The operator’s president, Yutaka Katada, citing accounts from the ship’s crew, said: “I do not think there was a time bomb or an object attached to the side of the ship.”

The attacks escalated tension between the US and Iran, which have been in a standoff since the US imposed economic sanctions on Iran in an attempt to force the renegotiation of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

Donald Trump said Friday that the US had “exposed” Iran’s responsibility for the attacks on Friday and in an interview with Fox & Friend said: “Iran did do it.”

Tehran denied all responsibility for Thursday’s attacks and its foreign minister, Javad Zarif, suggested others could be trying to provoke a conflict between Iran and the US.

On Friday he tweeted that the US had “immediately jumped to make allegations against Iran without a shred of factual or circumstantial evidence”.

Speaking with Fox & Friends, Trump ever so slightly walked back his comments from two days ago about how he is willing to accept help from a foreign government in the next presidential election.

He would still listen to the information, Trump said, but if it is “bad”, he would tell US law enforcement. “Of course you give it to the FBI or report it to the attorney general,” he said.

Two days ago, he dismissed the notion of calling the FBI because the agency “doesn’t have enough agents”.

In the Fox & Friends interview, Trump in general maintained his earlier position, which was in favor of accepting help from foreign governments to win an election, by saying: “If I don’t listen, how am I going to know?”

Updated

Trump accuses his former White House counsel of lying under oath

Trump claims he never suggested firing special counsel Robert Mueller, despite his former White House counsel Don McGahn saying he did.

In the Mueller investigation, which Trump repeatedly described as a “witch-hunt”, McGahn testified under oath that the president repeatedly instructed him to have Mueller removed. Trump is now saying McGahn lied.

“The story on that very simply, number one, I was never going to fire Mueller. I never suggested firing Mueller,” Trump told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in a clip the network released earlier this morning.

Stephanopoulos then referenced McGahn’s testimony.

“I don’t care what [McGahn] says, it doesn’t matter,” Trump responded.

Then why would he lie?

“Because he wanted to make himself look like a good lawyer,” Trump said. “Or he believed it because I would constantly tell anybody that would listen, including you, including the media, that Robert Mueller was conflicted. Robert Mueller had a total conflict of interest.”

Updated

Fox and Friends anchors said they thought the interview with Trump, which just concluded at the 50 minute mark, would last ten minutes.

One of the more bizarre moments in the interview was when Trump sharply veered from speaking about relations with North Korea to declaring first lady Melania Trump the “new Jackie O.”

“We have our own Jackie O today, it’s called Melania. We’ll call it ‘Melania T,’” Trump said.

In March, Trump made a similar comparison in an interview with Breitbart:

“If Ivanka Trump were a Democrat or a liberal democrat, even better, she’d be the toast of the world. Same thing with our great first lady, who people love by the way. If our first lady, if I were a Democrat instead of a Republican, she’d be Jackie O times twenty. Instead, they go after her.”

Trump is on a characteristic marathon of breaking news on Fox & Friends right now, having spent about 40 minutes so far on a telephone interview with the show.

One big news item: apparently Thomas Homan – a former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) and current Fox News contributor – is being made “border czar”, a position the Trump administration invented.

Updated

Good morning and happy Friday

Donald Trump has just kicked off his birthday celebrations by chatting with Fox & Friends and announcing he will not fire Kellyanne Conway after a federal watchdog said she should be removed from her position as White House counselor.

“It looks to me like they’re trying to take away her right on free speech,” Trump said of Conway.

The US Office of Special Counsel (OSC) on Thursday recommended Conway be removed from the White House because she violated the Hatch Act, which bars government employees from engaging in political campaign activity.

Conway is “just a great person”, Trump told Fox & Friends.

We’ll have more on Trump’s morning interview with Fox & Friends shortly.

These frequent interviews with Fox are a prime example of how the public role of White House press secretary has shrunk under Trump.

Yesterday, he announced Sarah Sanders would be stepping down from the post at the end of the month, though her role was reduced well before then, writes the Guardian’s Washington DC bureau chief, David Smith:

The more [Trump] he talked, the more pointless Sanders’ briefings became, since she merely parroted his tweets, evaded serious policy questions and channeled her boss’s anti-media barbs.

Updated

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