Trump news: Jimmy Carter questions president's legitimacy as POTUS jokes with Putin about election interference
President laughs with Vladimir Putin about ousting journalists at G20 summit in Japan
Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox
Get our free Inside Washington email
Donald Trump has met with Russian president Vladimir Putin at the G20 in Osaka, Japan, wagging a finger at his Kremlin counterpart and saying, at the prompting of reporters and in a jovial manner: “Don’t meddle in the election.”
The pair bonded over their shared contempt for journalists on a long day of talks with fellow world leaders covering Iran, trade and defence spending before sitting down to an elegant banquet - where Mr Trump was seen slugging a huge glass of non-alcoholic wine - as the first day of the summit drew to a close.
That was one day after the Russian leader praised the president of the United States for his nationalist world views and vigorously declared the days of the West’s liberals are dying if not already dead.
For some time, Mr Trump has defied the once-entrenched Republican distrust if not outright hatred of the powerful nation at the heart of the former Soviet Union. But Friday’s joint appearance seemed to go even further.
As the two leaders sat down for their first meeting in nearly a year, a reporter asked Mr Trump if he would warn Putin not to meddle in America’s upcoming 2020 election.
The Democrat challengers to Trump in 2020
Show all 25The exchange at the Group of 20 summit in Osaka echoed one of the defining moments of Mr Trump’s presidency from a year ago in Helsinki, Finland. There, he pointedly did not admonish Mr Putin about election interference and did not side with US intelligence agencies over his Russian counterpart.
Mr Putin disputes special counsel Robert Mueller’s conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 US election to help Mr Trump win. Mr Putin told the Financial Times this week that it was “mythical interference.”
“What happened in reality? Mr Trump looked into his opponents’ attitude to him and saw changes in American society and he took advantage of this,” Mr Putin told the newspaper.
Meanwhile, in the second Democratic Party presidential debate in Miami, Florida, the standout moment of the night came when California senator Kamala Harris laid into former vice president Joe Biden over his “hurtful” recent remarks about being able to work with segregationists he disagreed with earlier in his career, reminding the veteran of the harmful legacy of their stance.
Additional reporting by AP. Please allow a moment for our liveblog to load
Trump and Putin bonded over more than just the US president's joke about election hacking. They also reportedly discussed reporters they dislike and the problems of media hostility and "fake news".
Tom Embury-Dennis has more.
The sand dunes at Trump's Aberdeenshire golf resort are set to lose their status as a protected wildlife site after experts said the course had "destroyed" the ecosystem, causing permanent habitat loss.
Scottish Natural Heritage, a government watchdog, said there is no longer a reason to protect the dunes at Menie as they do not include enough of the special features for which they were designated a site of special scientific interest.
President Trump joined leaders for dinner at the G20, with Shinzo Abe playing master of ceremonies and explaining what sounds like a highly sophisticated menu.
The Donald doesn't drink but here he is making light work of some non-alcoholic wine.
The US Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether President Trump acted lawfully when he moved to end a programme that shields from deportation hundreds of thousands of immigrants who were brought to the country illegally as children, a key part of his hardline immigration policies.
The nine justices took up the Trump administration's appeals of three lower court rulings that blocked his 2017 move to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) programme implemented in 2012 by his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama. The programme currently protects about 700,000 immigrants often called "Dreamers," mostly Hispanic young adults, from deportation and provides them work permits, though not a path to citizenship.
The court will hear arguments and issue a ruling in the case during its next term, which starts in October and ends in June 2020. The announcement came after a 5-4 ruling on Thursday, the last official day of the court's 2018-2019 term, that dealt a major setback to Trump's plan to add a contentious citizenship question to the 2020 census.
The DACA programme has remained in effect despite Trump's efforts to rescind it, part of his hard-line immigration policies that have become a prominent feature of his presidency and his 2020 re-election campaign. Trump has backed limits on legal and illegal immigration and has sought construction of a wall along the US-Mexican border since taking office in January 2017.
The legal question before the Supreme Court is whether the administration properly followed a federal law called the Administrative Procedure Act in Trump's plan to end DACA.
Three federal district court judges issued orders halting Trump's move to end DACA in lawsuits challenging the move filed by a group of states, people protected by the programme, rights groups and others. The Trump administration has argued that Obama exceeded his constitutional powers when he bypassed Congress and created the programme.
Trump announced his decision to rescind DACA in September 2017, planning for the Dreamers' protections to begin phasing out in March 2018. But courts in California, New York and the District of Columbia directed the administration to continue processing renewals of existing DACA applications while the litigation over the legality of Trump's action was resolved.
Obama created DACA by executive action in 2012 as what he called "a temporary stop-gap measure" after the failure in Congress of bipartisan legislation called the Dream Act that would have provided a path to citizenship to young immigrants brought by their parents illegally into the country as children, sometimes as infants.
When he created the DACA, Obama said that the people it protected were raised and educated in the United States, grew up as Americans in their hearts and minds, and may known little about their countries of origin. Under DACA, those eligible are protected from deportation and given work permits for two-year periods, after which they must re-apply.
The Trump administration said Trump possesses the authority to end a programme implemented by a previous president, acted lawfully in seeking to rescind it and that courts should have no say in the matter.
Lawsuits challenging Trump's action were filed in various courts by a group of states including California and New York, individual DACA recipients, the University of California, civil rights groups, labor unions and Microsoft Corp, which expressed concern its own employees would be affected.
The administration has sought to bypass the normal court process, filing papers on 5 November asking the high court to intervene even before some federal appeals courts considering the matter had issued rulings.
Since then, on 8 November, the San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld District Judge William Alsup's January 2018 ruling against Trump, saying the challengers provided evidence of "discriminatory motivation, including the rescission order's disparate impact on Latinos and persons of Mexican heritage."
The justices could have acted on the Trump administration appeals as early as January but did not do so, with no reason given for the delay. During that time, another appeals court, the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals, ruled against the administration. Two federal appeals court are still yet to issue rulings.
During the Supreme Court's inaction, Trump and Congress have made no progress toward reaching a deal to safeguard DACA recipients even as Democratic presidential candidates including front-runner Joe Biden pledge actions to protect the Dreamers and offer them citizenship.
The Supreme Court in February 2018 rejected an earlier Trump administration appeal in the California case.
2020 candidate Beto O'Rourke is taking Trump to task for cuddling up to Putin at the G20 in no uncertain terms.
“Get rid of them. Fake news is a great term, isn't it?”
It's worth bearing in mind Trump's remarks to Putin earlier given that today happens to mark the one-year anniversary of the mass shooting of five journalists in Annapolis, Maryland.
Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders is leaving the White House today for the final time before being replaced by Stephanie Grisham.
Try to hold back your tears.
Like O'Rourke, Kamala Harris also has strong words for Trump on the Dreamers news.
Elizabeth Warren is gunning for him too, responding to the Senate's decision to block an effort to restrict the president's ability to go to war with Iran after more than 40 Republicans in the upper chamber voted against a proposal by Tim Kaine and Tom Udall to rein in the White House.
Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article
Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies