Trump news: President launches attack on UK ambassador and Theresa May, as connections to Jeffrey Epstein stir controversy
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Donald Trump will reportedly not invite the US Women’s World Cup team to the White House – even after they beat the Netherlands 2-0 to win the tournament in France on Sunday – seemingly still bitter about his long-running feud with star winger Megan Rapinoe.
The president has meanwhile launched a surprise attack on Fox News, blasting his favourite media ally for its choice of weekend anchors and for “loading up with Democrats & even using Fake unsourced New York Times as ‘source’ of information” in a series of vicious late night tweets. “Fox News is changing fast, but they forgot the people who got them there!” the president wrote on Twitter.
Elsewhere in Washington, outgoing Republican Justin Amash has called on Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi to change her strategy and push for Mr Trump’s impeachment, not ruling out challenging the president with a 2020 run of his own.
Throughout the day on Monday, the White House had been touting a major environmental speech from Mr Trump, and the president delivered on that promise by touting in a long speech in the East Room what he felt was proof of his administration's leadership on the issue.
Environmentalists, meanwhile, called the notion that Mr Trump's administration was leading on the environment or climate change a "fantasy", and pointed to his history of killing regulations aimed at reducing carbon emissions.
Trump 2020 launch: Fascist Proud Boys, baby blimps and Uncle Sam
Show all 30And, in 2020 news, representative Eric Swalwell became the first to drop out of contention for the Democratic nomination, citing lackluster fundraising and low polls.
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More on the growing cult of Megan Rapinoe from Lowenna Waters for Indy100.
The purple-haired Team USA World Cup winner has become something of an anti-Trump protest icon among progressives over the last month, following her strongly-worded takedown of the administration and impressive displays on the pitch.
As her team celebrated their win yesterday, the crowd in the stadium began chanting "Equal pay!"
The team may not be invited to Washington anyway, it seems - with or without Rapinoe - after Trump appeared to walk back his earlier offer to host the victors.
I'm sure Alex Morgan and company will somehow manage to contain their disappointment and they will, at the very least, be getting an open top bus parade through the streets of New York.
Trump has apparently been testing out a new nickname for Democratic star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, calling her "Evita" after Argentina's celebrated first lady Eva Peron, a champion of women and the working class who died of cancer in 1952, aged just 33.
Trump probably recalls the Madonna musical from 1996.
The story comes from American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War, a new book by Politico journalist Tim Alberta, in which Trump is quoted first seeing her "ranting and raving like a lunatic on a street corner" in New York.
He says AOC "knows nothing" but has "a certain talent".
She has, of course, responded smartly on Twitter.
In the UK, a poll of Tory party members reveals they believe Donald Trump would make a good prime minister for Britain, which, fortunately, could never come to pass.
Oh look! They also consider Islam a threat to society and back the return of the death penalty, it says here...
Speaking of the Tories, international trade secretary Liam Fox says he will apologise to Ivanka Trump when he meets her in Washington later today over the leaking of our ambassador's thoughts on her father's "inept" administration, while foreign secretary and party leadership contender Jeremy Hunt says there will be "very serious consequences" for the guilty person.
Here's the latest from our political editor, Andrew Woodcock.
Agents from both the FBI and Trump's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) squad have been using the driving licences of ordinary Americans to carry out millions of facial recognition searches without the consent or knowledge of motorists or approval for such an invasion of privacy from Congress, according to The Washington Post.
While it was previously known that the FBI had engaged in the practice since 2011, the scale of the undertaking as a surveillance tool was only revealed when researchers at Georgetown Law passed their findings on to The Post.
Elijah Cummings, Democratic chair of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, lamented in a statement that "Law enforcement’s access of state databases is often done in the shadows with no consent."
Jim Jordan, the ranking Republican on the same panel, told a hearing last month on the use of the technology: "No individual signed off on that when they renewed their driver’s license, got their driver’s licenses. They didn’t sign any waiver saying, ‘Oh, it’s okay to turn my information, my photo, over to the FBI.’ No elected officials voted for that to happen."
The Justice Department is shaking up the legal team fighting for the inclusion of a citizenship question on the 2020 census but has offered no specifics on why the change was being made.
The substitution announced on Sunday comes days after the department vowed to continue to try to find a legal path forward to include the question on the census. The Trump administration has faced numerous roadblocks to adding the question, including a ruling from the Supreme Court that blocked its inclusion, at least temporarily.
President Trump said last week that he was "very seriously" considering an executive order to get the question on the form. The government has already started to print the census questionnaire without the question.
The Justice Department is expected to file court papers on Monday that show a new team of lawyers will take over.
"Since these cases began, the lawyers representing the United States in these cases have given countless hours to defending the Commerce Department and have consistently demonstrated the highest professionalism, integrity, and skill inside and outside the courtroom," Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said in a statement.
A department spokeswoman declined to comment when asked whether the change had been ordered by attorney general William Barr.
James Burnham, a top lawyer in the department's civil division, would no longer be leading the litigation team, said the official.
The Trump administration has argued that the question was being added to aid in enforcing the Voting Rights Act, which protects minority voters' access to the ballot box. But chief justice John Roberts joined the court's four more liberal members in last month's Supreme Court decision, saying the administration's justification for the question "seems to have been contrived."
The US Census Bureau's own experts have said a citizenship question would discourage immigrants from participating in the survey and result in a less accurate census that would redistribute money and political power away from Democratic-led cities where immigrants tend to cluster to whiter, rural areas where Republicans do well.
AP
Light duties for the president today, although he's usually good value on the environment.
I wonder if we'll be treated to his "no wind = no TV" diatribe against renewable energy again.
Michelle Obama has been reflecting on her final days in the White House and how it felt watch the handover of power at Trump's inauguration in January 2017.
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