Three states to deploy hundreds of national guard troops to Washington DC
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines.
We start with news that three states have moved to deploy hundreds of members of their national guard to the nation’s capital as part of the Trump administration’s effort to overhaul policing in Washington through a federal crackdown.
West Virginia said it was deploying 300 to 400 guard troops, while South Carolina pledged 200 and Ohio said it would send 150 in the coming days.
The moves announced on Saturday came as protesters pushed back on federal law enforcement and national guard troops fanning out in the heavily Democratic city following Donald Trump’s executive order federalizing local police forces and activating about 800 District of Columbia national guard members.
West Virginia governor Patrick Morrisey’s office said in a statement that the deployment was “a show of commitment to public safety and regional cooperation” and the state would provide equipment and “approximately 300-400 skilled personnel as directed”.
The statement came after Donald Trump ordered hundreds of Washington DC national guard troops to mount a show of force and temporarily took over the city’s police department to curb what the president depicts as a crime and homelessness emergency in the nation’s capital.
Data compiled by the DC police department shows that violent crime was actually at a 30-year-low when Trump returned to office in January, and has declined a further 26% since then.
Read the full story here:
In other developments:
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In a combative series of interviews on Sunday, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said that “both sides are going to have to make concessions” for there to be a peaceful resolution to the war that erupted when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. “You can’t have a peace agreement unless both sides make concessions – that’s a fact,” the Trump administration’s top diplomat said Sunday on ABC’s This Week.
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A Texas judge has expanded a restraining order against former congressman Beto O’Rourke and his political organization over its fundraising for Democratic state lawmakers who left Texas to prevent a legislative session on congressional redistricting.
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The US state department announced on Saturday that it would stop issuing visas to children from Gaza in desperate need of medical care after an online pressure campaign from Laura Loomer, a far-right influencer close to Donald Trump who has described herself as “a proud Islamophobe”.
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When Donald Trump’s Department of Justice requested the release of grand jury transcripts in criminal proceedings against sex-traffickers Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, the move did little to quiet an ever-growing chorus of critics frustrated by the US president’s backtracking over disclosing investigative files. Read the full story here.
Key events
Germany said on Monday that the United States would have to follow through on agreed lower tariffs on Europe-made cars before a wider agreement on trade can be finalised in writing.
“In particular, car tariffs must be reduced quickly as agreed. We are also aware of the considerable burden on the export-orientated economy. … Our role here is to continue to fully support the European Commission in this process,” a German government spokesman said in a press conference.
The European Union and the United States struck a framework trade deal in late July with many key details yet to be clarified.
Steven Greenhouse
Donald Trump’s hugely disruptive trade war is setting the stage for a manufacturing renaissance in the US, administration officials say. Outside the White House, many economists are skeptical.
Global trade experts point to many reasons they believe the president’s tariffs will fail to bring about a major resurgence of manufacturing, among them: Trump’s erratic, constantly changing policies, his unfocused, across-the-board tariffs, and his replacing Joe Biden’s carrot-and-sticks approach to brandish sticks at the world.
“I think [Trump’s tariffs] will reduce the competitiveness of US manufacturing, and will reduce manufacturing employment,” said Michael Strain, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI). “They’re raising the costs of production to US manufacturing companies, and that makes manufacturers less competitive. There will be some winners and some losers, but the losers will outnumber the winners.”
The president and his aides insist that higher tariffs on more than 100 countries – making goods imported from overseas more expensive – will spur domestic manufacturing. “The ‘Made in USA’ label is set to resume its global dominance under President Trump,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai claimed recently.
But few economists see that happening. Ann E Harrison, an economics professor and former dean of the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, said the erratic, on-again-off-again rollout of Trump’s tariffs has already gone far to doom the president’s hopes of inspiring a huge wave of manufacturing investment.
Taiwan is an internal matter for China, Beijing’s foreign ministry said on Monday, in response to US president Donald Trump saying Chinese president Xi Jinping told him he will not invade the island while Trump is in office.
Trump made the comments in an interview with Fox News, ahead of talks in Alaska with Russian president Vladimir Putin over Moscow’s war with Ukraine.
Asked about Trump’s remarks at a daily news briefing in Beijing, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Taiwan is an inalienable part of Chinese territory.
“The Taiwan issue is purely an internal affair of China, and how to resolve the Taiwan issue is a matter for the Chinese people,” she said.
“We will do our utmost to strive for the prospect of peaceful reunification. But we will never allow anyone or any force to separate Taiwan from China in any way.”
China views Taiwan as its own territory and has vowed to “reunify” with the democratic and separately governed island. Taiwan vehemently opposes China’s sovereignty claims.
Trump-Zelenskyy meeting to take place at 1.15 pm ET
President Donald Trump’s bilateral meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will take place at 1.15 pm ET on Monday at the White House, the White House said in a press guidance statement on Sunday.
Trump will participate in a multilateral meeting with European leaders visiting Washington at 3 pm.
It comes as Trump on Sunday urged Zelenskyy to come to a negotiated settlement in the three-and-a-half-year-old conflict with Russia.
“President Zelenskyy of Ukraine can end the war with Russia almost immediately, if he wants to, or he can continue to fight,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.
“No getting back Obama given Crimea…and NO GOING INTO NATO BY UKRAINE. Some things never change!!!”
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said India’s purchases of Russian crude were funding Moscow’s war in Ukraine and has to stop, while adding that New Delhi was “now cozying up to both Russia and China.”
“If India wants to be treated as a strategic partner of the US, it needs to start acting like one,” Navarro wrote in an opinion piece published in the Financial Times, adding that it was risky for American companies to transfer cutting-edge military capabilities to India.
Three states to deploy hundreds of national guard troops to Washington DC
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines.
We start with news that three states have moved to deploy hundreds of members of their national guard to the nation’s capital as part of the Trump administration’s effort to overhaul policing in Washington through a federal crackdown.
West Virginia said it was deploying 300 to 400 guard troops, while South Carolina pledged 200 and Ohio said it would send 150 in the coming days.
The moves announced on Saturday came as protesters pushed back on federal law enforcement and national guard troops fanning out in the heavily Democratic city following Donald Trump’s executive order federalizing local police forces and activating about 800 District of Columbia national guard members.
West Virginia governor Patrick Morrisey’s office said in a statement that the deployment was “a show of commitment to public safety and regional cooperation” and the state would provide equipment and “approximately 300-400 skilled personnel as directed”.
The statement came after Donald Trump ordered hundreds of Washington DC national guard troops to mount a show of force and temporarily took over the city’s police department to curb what the president depicts as a crime and homelessness emergency in the nation’s capital.
Data compiled by the DC police department shows that violent crime was actually at a 30-year-low when Trump returned to office in January, and has declined a further 26% since then.
Read the full story here:
In other developments:
-
In a combative series of interviews on Sunday, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said that “both sides are going to have to make concessions” for there to be a peaceful resolution to the war that erupted when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. “You can’t have a peace agreement unless both sides make concessions – that’s a fact,” the Trump administration’s top diplomat said Sunday on ABC’s This Week.
-
A Texas judge has expanded a restraining order against former congressman Beto O’Rourke and his political organization over its fundraising for Democratic state lawmakers who left Texas to prevent a legislative session on congressional redistricting.
-
The US state department announced on Saturday that it would stop issuing visas to children from Gaza in desperate need of medical care after an online pressure campaign from Laura Loomer, a far-right influencer close to Donald Trump who has described herself as “a proud Islamophobe”.
-
When Donald Trump’s Department of Justice requested the release of grand jury transcripts in criminal proceedings against sex-traffickers Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, the move did little to quiet an ever-growing chorus of critics frustrated by the US president’s backtracking over disclosing investigative files. Read the full story here.
