Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
The US president has declined to say he will transfer power peacefully in the event he loses the 3 November election to Democratic rival, Joe Biden.
When asked the question by a reporter during a White House press briefing on Wednesday, Trump replied: 'We’re going to have to see what happens, you know that. I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots, and the ballots are a disaster.'
Trump refused to commit when asked again: 'Get rid of the ballots and you’ll have a very peaceful – there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation. The ballots are out of control. You know it. And you know who knows it better than anybody else? The Democrats know it better than anybody else'
David Smith’s sketch: President takes us through the looking glass amid the kneecapping of American democracy
Jared Kushner, the US president’s son-in-law, told journalist Bob Woodward that one of the best ways to understand Donald Trump is to study Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Kushner paraphrased the Cheshire Cat’s philosophy: “If you don’t know where you’re going, any path will get you there.”
Wednesday was one of those days when to have a seat in the White House briefing room felts like stepping through the looking-glass into Blunderland, where the mad hatter has an authoritarian streak a mile wide.
Donald Trump said he wants to confirm a ninth justice to the supreme court because he believes the court will determine the outcome of the presidential election.
'I think this will end up in the supreme court, and I think it’s very important that we have nine justices,' Trump told reporters at a White House event.
The president has previously indicated the federal courts will need to become involved in the election because it will be tainted by fraud. Trump has provided no evidence for that extraordinary claim, and voter fraud is rare.
A few moments ago, a driver drove into a group of protestors. There were no serious injuries, Denver police have confirmed, and a man has been detained.
#DPD Officers are at Colfax & Broadway in response to a vehicle that drove into a protest occurring at that location. No injuries are reported. One male has been detained. #Denver. pic.twitter.com/Ge8zDLZTju
JUST IN: Video from a @denverpost reporter shows the moment a driver ran their car over a protester outside the Colorado State Capitol.
The protester, Kate, told @ShellyBradbury she was not badly hurt.
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing the family of Breonna Taylor, has told CNN the indictment is, “like killing Breonna all over again.”
He called her death, “Legalized genocide of people of color, because no matter how much evidence we have, they always find a way to try to legally justify it.”
President Donald Trump has said the 200,000 US deaths from coronavirus were “a shame” in response to a reporter’s question about the milestone in the country’s fight against the pandemic.
As Trump was departing for an election campaign event in Pittsburgh he told the media: “I think if we didn’t do it properly and do it right, you’d have 2.5 million deaths.”
‘You could almost feel the spittle coming off the paper,’ he writes
Donald Trump’s original draft statement justifying his firing of the former FBI director James Comey was “tinfoil helmet material”, according to a top prosecutor who worked for the special counsel Robert Mueller, and who in a new book calls the draft “excruciatingly juvenile, disorganized and brimming with spite, incoherent and narcissistic”.
The US president says: 'Well, I think it’s a shame' when asked by a White House reporter about the 200,000 coronavirus deaths in the US – a fifth of the global total and the highest of any country worldwide. He claims the US could have had 2.5 million deaths 'if we didn't do it properly'. Trump also repeats his accusation that China is at fault for the pandemic.
McCain was motivated in part by Trump’s recent comments on the military, where he called war heroes ‘losers’ and ‘suckers’
Cindy McCain has endorsed Joe Biden for president, a stunning rebuke of Donald Trump by the widow of the Republican party’s 2008 nominee.
Cindy McCain tweeted on Tuesday: “My husband John lived by a code: country first. We are Republicans, yes, but Americans foremost. There’s only one candidate in this race who stands up for our values as a nation, and that is Joe Biden.”
Donald Trump received a major boost on Tuesday when Republican senator Mitt Romney announced his support for considering the US president’s supreme court nominee.
Follow live as Jair Bolsonaro, Donald Trump, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin – among others – deliver video messages
...and we have photos of Xi Jinping’s background:
Some more analysis, this time from our diplomatic editor, Patrick Wintour, on Turkey’s talk:
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan used his general assembly address to set out Turkey’s bitter objections to its exclusion from the East Mediterranean, but said he was ready to resume talks bound by international law to address their contested maritime claims in the eastern Mediterranean and Aegean. By his recent rhetorical standards, the speech was one of Erdoğan’s mildest.
Democrats’ hopes of keeping seat empty fade as two key Republican senators signal support for moving quickly
Donald Trump has raced to cement a conservative majority on the US supreme court before the presidential election on 3 November, and Democrats’ hopes of keeping the seat empty have faded as two Republican senators signalled their support for moving quickly.
The president said on Monday he would name his third supreme court nominee on Friday or Saturday, following memorials for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the liberal justice who died aged 87 on Friday.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden makes a plea to Senate Republicans, asking them to 'follow their conscience' and defy president Donald Trump's push to name his nominee for the supreme court ahead of November's election. Trump says he plans to nominate a women for the seat as soon as possible, after Ruth Bader Ginsburg died aged 87 six weeks out from the US election. 'I appeal to those few Senate Republicans, that handful who really will decide what happens. Please follow your conscience,' Biden says. 'Don't vote to confirm anyone nominated under the circumstances President Trump and Senator McConnell have created. Don't go there. Uphold your constitutional duty, your conscience'
Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, made an urgent plea on Sunday to the conscience of Senate Republicans, asking them to defy Donald Trump and refuse to ram through his nominee to the supreme court before the November election.
A further feud has emerged just weeks before the US election after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Donald Trump is advocating that the seat be filled with a ‘very brilliant’ woman as soon as possible. However, Democrats are rallying in an attempt to prevent Trump filling the seat until after the election. Joe Biden and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have said Republicans should follow the precedent that GOP legislators set in 2016 by refusing to consider a supreme court choice in the run-up to an election. If the Republicans were to get their way it could result in a conservative majority on the supreme court for decades to come
Speaking at a campaign rally in North Carolina, the US president told supporters he had a duty to nominate a candidate to fill the supreme court vacancy created by the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. 'It will be a woman,' Trump said. 'A very talented, very brilliant woman.'
Democrats including Joe Biden and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have said Republicans should follow the precedent that GOP legislators set in 2016 by refusing to consider a supreme court choice in the run-up to an election
Donald Trump has promised to put forward a female nominee in the coming week to fill the supreme court vacancy created by the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, pushing the Republican-controlled Senate to consider the pick without delay.
Taking the stage at a North Carolina rally to chants of “Fill that seat”, the president said he would nominate his selection despite Democrats’ objections.
“If there’s one Republican who could be convinced that filling the sudden supreme court vacancy is a bad idea,” he writes, “it’s President Donald Trump.”
Any number of variables could tip the scales in such a tight election. But it’s not difficult to deduce that had a supreme court seat not been hanging in the balance, Hillary Clinton would be president right now. When I offered this theory last year to McConnell … he grinned.
“I agree,” McConnell said.
Having been reminded countless times over the past 45 months that his Supreme Court gambit won him the trust of social conservatives – which, in turn, won him the election – Trump surely realizes that this is a moment of maximum leverage. Maybe he doesn’t bother using it; maybe he automatically produces more of the goods, keeping his most important customers satisfied, believing it’s one more accomplishment to point to.
But the president is transactional to his core. This was exactly the word– “transactional” – that Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, used when we discussed the supreme court list Trump unveiled in 2016.
News is starting to come out of the Senate Democrats’ caucus call today…
Per source Schumer started with moment of silence for RBG and said “nothing is off the table” next year if GOP moves forward w/nominating process