Trump’s state dinner for Xi will not be televised as White House continues to deny CNN full access
Donald Trump just welcomed Xi Jinping back to the White House for a state dinner in honor of the Chinese leader that will not be televised because the White House continued to deny full access to the event to CNN journalists on Thursday, despite a court order.
Xi’s arrival for the dinner, with his wife Peng Liyuan, was streamed live on YouTube by the White House, but none of the major US networks provided live broadcast video of the event after the Trump administration refused to allow a CNN reporter and producer to cover the event.
“About an hour before Xi’s arrival was scheduled, the White House said CNN could cover the event but only with a photojournalist and audio technician, notably excluding the network’s editorial team consisting of a reporter and producer,” CNN reports.
CNN is one of the five major networks that provide pool video coverage of White House events to other broadcasters, in a rotation determined by the White House press office.
The other networks – ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News – have refused to resume video coverage of White House events until full access has been restored to CNN.
MS NOW, another outlet banned from the White House by Trump last week for what he calls overly negative coverage of his presidency, also reports it journalists were prevented from covering Xi’s arrival for the state dinner.
The live YouTube stream of Xi’s arrival attracted just 18,000 views on the White House YouTube channel.
Key events
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Closing summary
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Trump administration uses taxpayer money to air pro-Trump ad on Fox News
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Guest list for state dinner includes US tech executives, investors, supreme court justices and Fox News hosts
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Trump’s state dinner for Xi will not be televised as White House continues to deny CNN full access
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New York congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier arrested at Jewish Voice for Peace protest against Netanyahu
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Trump complains about lack of TV coverage stemming from his own effort to ban CNN
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Mamdani responds to Netanyahu’s attacks by doubling down on support for Palestinians in video with families from Gaza
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It’s been a busy Thursday in Washington. Here’s what you should know:
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Senate Republicans block Democratic effort to end US war with Iran
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Melania Trump and Peng Liyuan toured Smithsonian during Trump and Xi’s meeting
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Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas calls on Trump to “prevent the annexation” of Palestinian land in Gaza, West Bank
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Xi pushed US to oppose Taiwanese independence, according to Chinese readout of meeting
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Trump touts ‘great meeting’ as Xi departs the White House
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Trump’s pick to lead FDA bucks president on vaccines in hearing
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Democrats demand answers after man dies in car crash during ICE traffic stop in Michigan
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Journalists from CNN and MS Now belatedly regain access to White House after judge ruling
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Federal judge orders Trump administration to respond to concerns over barred White House journalists
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Xi says China and US must ensure AI ‘is always under human control’
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Trump and Xi, speaking to reporters, make friendly overtures in White House remarks
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Trump welcomes Xi Jinping at the White House
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News outlets banned from White House seek emergency hearing after being denied entry despite judge’s order
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Mary Peltola, Democratic challenger for Alaska’s Senate seat, berated, hurled slurs at staffers: report
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Trump and Xi to talk AI and trade in major Washington meeting
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Israeli, Palestinian leaders set to address the UN, with Netanyahu expected to attack Mamdani
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Politico, CNN, MS Now reporters blocked from White House despite judge’s ruling
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Ahead of talks with Xi, Trump points to AI as major subject
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Trump’s ban on CNN, Politico and MS Now likely unconstitutional, judge rules in restoring temporary access
Closing summary
This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day. Here are the latest developments:
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Donald Trump welcomed Xi Jinping to the White House for a state dinner in honor of the Chinese leader that was not televised because the White House continued to deny full access to the event to CNN journalists on Thursday, despite a court order.
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Writing on his social media platform, Trump complained that two of the three outlets he banned from the White House, CNN and MS Now, “refused to cover” his elaborate welcome of Xi to the White House. He did not mention that the two broadcasters were not in position to cover the event live because his own actions and those of his aides, who continued to block their reporters.
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As Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu attacked him at the UN, New York’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, doubled down on his support for Palestinians by making public video of himself hosting Palestinian families from Gaza.
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Darializa Avila Chevalier, the Democratic socialist congressional candidate from New York, was among dozens of activists arrested near the United Nations on Thursday at a protest against Netanyahu’s appearance organized by Jewish Voice for Peace.
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The Trump administration used taxpayer funds to air a White House-produced, pro-Trump ad on Fox News this week.
Trump administration uses taxpayer money to air pro-Trump ad on Fox News
The Trump administration used taxpayer funds to air a White House-produced, pro-Trump ad on Fox News this week, as Jim DeFede of CBS News Miami first reported.
The 30-second ad, which uses audio of Donald Trump telling supporters in Las Vegas last month: “Together we will defeat communism, socialism and Marxism in America,” includes a rapid-fire montage of images from his second term displayed beneath the on-screen text: “America will never be a communist country,” as a chorus sings the words “love me”, taken from a song of that name by JMSN.
The last 10 seconds of the ad includes text at the bottom the screen which says: “Paid for by the U.S. Government.”
It airs as Trump is hosting the leader of the world’s largest communist nation, China, for a lavish state visit.
In a statement provided to Politico, the White House described versions of the ad, which were also posted on official government accounts on TikTok and YouTube, as simply “public service announcements” that are “educational and unapologetically patriotic”.
In fact, the 30-second version of the ad broadcast on Fox was clearly a pro-Trump political campaign ad, running ahead of upcoming midterm elections, with on-screen text boasting about what the president calls his accomplishments. “Largest tax cuts in history” one slogan reads; “Reigniting American manufacturing” another says; “Defend law and order and police” comes next.
The broadcast version of the ad closes with a tribute to Trump from Dana White, the Ultimate Fighting Championship chief executive, who can be heard saying: “He is the toughest, most resilient human being I have ever met in my life.” White used that formulation to describe Trump multiple times during the 2024 presidential election campaign, most notably to sign his praises at the Republican national convention.
Congressman Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat and constitutional scholar, suggested on social media that the ad may violate federal laws including the Hatch Act.
“This may be felony criminal theft and conversion of government property for political campaign purposes,” Raskin wrote. “It is a Hatch Act violation for any government employees who worked on it or used government resources to make it. It is blatantly unethical under numerous federal ethics provisions proscribing the use of government resources for political campaigns.”
AdImpact, a firm that tracks political ads, told the Wall Street Journal that, in addition to Miami, the ad also aired on Fox News in New York, Los Angeles and Washington DC, as well as on Newsmax in Chicago.
JMSN, Detroit-born artist who wrote and performs the song Love Me, wrote on social media that it was used “illegally”, without permission. “I would never authorize my music to be used for ANY political agenda or campaign,” the singer wrote. “I am looking at lawyers handling this.”
The images featured in the ad were a bizarre mix of second-term highlights, including flash-frames of: Trump overseeing the US military raid on Venezuela; hosting a state dinner for the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman; accepting the Fifa peace prize; pardoning a turkey; announcing a new class of US Navy ships to be named for himself; attending a Kennedy Center performance; waiting to award the Fifa Club World Cup trophy celebration; showing Cristiano Ronaldo his Presidential Walk of Fame at the White House and addressing McDonalds owners.
Guest list for state dinner includes US tech executives, investors, supreme court justices and Fox News hosts
Donald Trump just delivered remarks at the state dinner he is throwing for China’s leader, Xi Jinping, to an audience of invited guests that includes not just US and Chinese officials, but US tech executives, investors, supreme court justices and several Fox News hosts.
The president went off-script from his prepared remarks to boast about the ballroom he is constructing before presenting Xi with a statue of a bald eagle and proposing a toast in his honor.
Xi and his wife Peng Liyuan are seated at the top table with Trump, his wife Melania, as well as tech executives Elon Musk, Jensen Huang of Nvidia and Tim Cook of Apple.
Others in attendance include: Sam Altman and Greg Brockman of OpenAI; Sergey Brin and Sundar Pichai of Google; Jeff Bezos of Amazon; Mark Zuckerberg of Meta; supreme court justices John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh; Fox hosts Bret Baier, Laura Ingraham and Jesse Watters; David Ellison of Paramount Skydance and Israeli-American Trump donor Miriam Adelson.
Trump’s state dinner for Xi will not be televised as White House continues to deny CNN full access
Donald Trump just welcomed Xi Jinping back to the White House for a state dinner in honor of the Chinese leader that will not be televised because the White House continued to deny full access to the event to CNN journalists on Thursday, despite a court order.
Xi’s arrival for the dinner, with his wife Peng Liyuan, was streamed live on YouTube by the White House, but none of the major US networks provided live broadcast video of the event after the Trump administration refused to allow a CNN reporter and producer to cover the event.
“About an hour before Xi’s arrival was scheduled, the White House said CNN could cover the event but only with a photojournalist and audio technician, notably excluding the network’s editorial team consisting of a reporter and producer,” CNN reports.
CNN is one of the five major networks that provide pool video coverage of White House events to other broadcasters, in a rotation determined by the White House press office.
The other networks – ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News – have refused to resume video coverage of White House events until full access has been restored to CNN.
MS NOW, another outlet banned from the White House by Trump last week for what he calls overly negative coverage of his presidency, also reports it journalists were prevented from covering Xi’s arrival for the state dinner.
The live YouTube stream of Xi’s arrival attracted just 18,000 views on the White House YouTube channel.
As we reported earlier, Donald Trump complained on social media about the lack of television coverage for his summit with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, despite the fact that his own administration’s reluctance to fully restore CNN to the White House pool was the cause of the disruption.
But it is worth noting that Trump’s post also seemed to undermine the argument put forward in court, by government lawyers and the White House press office, that Trump had banned CNN, and MS Now, for supposedly posing a threat to US national security rather than simply for reporting on his presidency he finds unflattering.
CNN and MS Now, Trump complained in the post, “only write badly about a man who won the Election IN A GIANT LANDSLIDE, winning all 7 Swing States, the Popular Vote, and 86% of the Counties, etc., and whose Popularity has grown because of the unprecedented SUCCESS our Country is having on both the World Stage, and at home”.
Trump’s argument, that news coverage of his presidency now should be glowing because he was the most popular candidate in the election held two years ago, seems like a frank admission that his attempt to ban outlets that cover his critically is indeed a first amendment violation.
His account of his electoral success is also exaggerated. Trump’s popular vote victory over Kamala Harris in 2024 was by a margin of just under 1.5% of the votes cast; his electoral college total was just six votes more than that achieved by Joe Biden in 2020 (when Biden’s popular vote margin was 4.4%).
While Trump is correct to say he got the most votes in about 85% of US counties in 2024, that statistic is misleading since many of those counties are among the most sparsely populated.
According to Ballotpedia, 48.1% of Americans, or 160m people, live in the 421 counties that voted for Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the 2016, 2020 and 2024 elections. Just 40.1% of the US population, or 134m people, lived in the 2,559 counties that voted for Trump in all three elections.
New York congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier arrested at Jewish Voice for Peace protest against Netanyahu
Darializa Avila Chevalier, the Democratic socialist congressional candidate from New York, was among dozens of activists arrested near the United Nations on Thursday at a protest against the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s appearance organized by Jewish Voice for Peace.
Chevalier’s arrest, along with that of New York City council member Chi Ossé, was caught on video by a local reporter. “He needs to be tried at the Hague,” Chevalier told another reporter as she waited, in handcuffs, to be removed from the scene by the police.
Two hours later, the Guardian published an opinion article by Chevalier in which she explained her reasoning:
As the Democratic nominee for New York’s 13th congressional district, I refuse to allow a war criminal to roam the streets of our city unchallenged. I refuse to play host to a man who has overseen the slaughter or injury of more than 64,000 children in Gaza with American taxpayer dollars. I refuse to be complicit in genocide.
That is why I was arrested today outside of the United Nations alongside hundreds of my fellow New Yorkers.
According to Jewish Voice for Peace, 104 protesters were arrested in all.
“Participants included Democratic nominees for Congress: Darializa Avila Chevalier, Brad Lander, Chris Rabb, Adam Hamawy, and Melat Kiros, alongside over 20 NY city and state representatives,” the protest organizers said in a statement. “Nine elected officials and nominees were arrested. Additionally, Hannah Einbinder, Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker of Boygenius, Chelsea Manning, Glennon Doyle, Elliot Page, Linda Sarsour, Tony Kushner, Mary Beth Barone, Caleb Hearon, Cynthia Nixon, Sarah Sherman and other notable New Yorkers also joined the historic protest.”
Trump complains about lack of TV coverage stemming from his own effort to ban CNN
Donald Trump has two hours to kill until he hosts a state dinner in honor of China’s president, Xi Jinping, so naturally he used the break to renew his hostilities with two US news outlets he attempted to punish for reporting unflattering details about his presidency.
Writing on his social media platform, Trump complained that two of the three outlets he banned from the White House, CNN and MS Now, “refused to cover” his elaborate welcome of Xi to the White House on Thursday.
“The event was magnificent — Actually made for Television but, because they’re Fake News, and because they knew how good it would be, they didn’t want credit to be given to ‘TRUMP,’ they refused to be there,” the president claimed.
What Trump failed to report to his followers on Truth Social was that the two broadcasters were not in position to cover the event live because his own actions and those of his aides.
Trump’s aides initially failed to give journalists from those news organizations access to the White House on Thursday morning, despite a court order issued before dawn that their passes be restored. Their passes were taken away last week following Trump’s decision to ban them, along with Politico. The outlets were eventually granted access after hours of delay.
It remained unclear, however, if the White House would still try to limit the kind of reporting the outlets are allowed to do.
Since CNN is also one of the five networks that provide pool video coverage of White House events to other broadcasters, in a rotation determined by the White House press office, the other networks refused to resume normal coverage until they were assured that the White House would restore CNN crews to the broadcast pool. The other networks – ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News – had refused to provide pool video of White House events in solidarity with CNN since Trump attempted to ban the cable news outlet from covering him in person last week.
“At the moment, the pool doesn’t have that assurance, so it has not filmed any of Trump and Xi’s events so far today,” CNN’s chief media analyst, Brian Stelter reported before Trump, a former reality television star, posted his complaint about the lack of coverage that was directly related to his own decision.
Mamdani responds to Netanyahu’s attacks by doubling down on support for Palestinians in video with families from Gaza
As Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu attacked him at the United Nations on Thursday, New York’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, doubled down on his support for Palestinians by making public video of himself hosting Palestinian families from Gaza the night before at his official residence, Gracie Mansion.
In the video posted on social media at about the same time as Netanyahu’s speech, Mamdani could be seen planting an olive tree at Gracie Mansion with Palestinian families from Gaza and hosting a dinner. “May peace be our future,” the mayor wrote in a social media caption for the video.
In his remarks at the UN, Netanyahu accused Mamdani of antisemitism for calling the Israeli destruction of Gaza after the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023 “a horrific genocide against the Palestinian people” in July, when the mayor also said that Netanyahu was an indicted war criminal who should be arrested.
Prominent Israeli human rights groups, and the Israeli-born Holocaust historian Omer Bartov, described the Israeli assault on Gaza as genocide before Mamdani.
It’s been a busy Thursday in Washington. Here’s what you should know:
Trump received Xi Jinping at the White House for a major state visit. After rolling out the red carpet for his landing in the US yesterday evening, Trump received Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife at the White House today. Both sides alluded to deeper cooperation between the two countries in their opening remarks, but tensions — over trade, Taiwan, and other subjects — likely linger.
Journalists from CNN, Politico, and MS Now were allowed back in the White House, after a delay. Last night, a judge ruled that the three outlets barred from the White House by President Trump’s surprise order had to be let back in. This morning, journalists from those outlets showed up to work to find they were still denied access. That touched off a furious back and forth that ultimately saw the outlets let into the building as litigation proceeds.
Accusations of angry outbursts, mistreatment of staffers rattle a key Alaska Senate race. The allegations, reported by The New York Times, include claims that Democratic Senate candidate Mary Peltola viciously berated and hurled slurs at staffers and others who drew her anger in a series of explosive outbursts.
The leaders of Israel and Palestine addressed the United Nations. Mahmoud Abbas, the longtime president of the Palestinian Authority, and Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, both addressed the United Nations today (though Abbas had to do so via a recorded video after the US denied his visa). Abbas appealed to Trump to swiftly implement a peace plan that would see Israel leave Palestinian territory. Netanyahu, whose speech was interrupted by mass walkouts, took time out of his address to attack New York City’s progressive mayor, Zohran Mamdani, who has been a fierce critic of Israel.
Trump’s pick to head the FDA broke with him over vaccine policy. When pressed, White House adviser Heidi Overton, Trump’s nominee to lead the agency, concerned that the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine that Trump described as “lethal” is “safe and effective.”
Senate Republicans block Democratic effort to end US war with Iran
Joseph Gedeon
Senate Republicans on Thursday blocked a Democratic effort to end the US war with Iran, voting 49-50 against a House-passed war powers resolution as the conflict passed the 200-day mark, with 19 American service members killed.
The measure passed the House earlier with bipartisan support. Senate Democrats, led by the minority leader, Chuck Schumer, and the senator Andy Kim of New Jersey, forced the vote under the War Powers Resolution, which allows lawmakers to bring such measures to the floor.
In June, the Senate adopted a similar House-passed resolution 50-48, with four Republicans – Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Rand Paul – voting in favor. But a month later, after the ceasefire collapsed, the chamber voted 47-49 against advancing a legally binding joint resolution, with Collins the only Republican in support.
After the vote, Ron Wyden, the Democratic senator from Oregon, acknowledged the uphill fight. “We’re going to stay at it until we win,” he said. Wyden said the biggest challenge was senators who were “pretty cautious and looking at the constitutional authority”.
Democratic senator Tim Kaine from Virginia echoed that sentiment, saying: “We’re going to keep doing them every week because we see Republican candidates out in the field now starting to change their position.”
“We started with one Republican vote, and we have five now,” he said. “So we’ll keep at it.”
Still, not all Republicans are convinced on the reasons to end the war. Dan Sullivan, the Republican senator from Alaska, said: “The war powers vote is about removing American forces from the region, and when there are troops in contact, I don’t believe in doing it.”
Speaking before the vote, Kim, a former state department official who served in the Middle East, said Americans were “sick and tired of this reckless and expensive war”.
“Democrats have taken action. We’ve come to this chamber 11 times in the past 208 days to try to bring this war to an end,” Kim said.
He cited a congressional budget office report estimating the war cost nearly $40bn in its first four months, and said at least 19 US service members had been killed and more than 750 injured. Kim also said estimates showed higher petrol prices had cost American households about $900 each since the war began.
“Chaos is not a negotiating tactic,” Kim said. “Trump is simply over his head here.”
Melania Trump and Peng Liyuan toured Smithsonian during Trump and Xi’s meeting
Shannon Ho
After leaving their husbands at the White House earlier, Melania Trump and Peng Liyuan toured one of the largest Asian art museums in the US, celebrating cultural ties between the US and China during a high-profile diplomatic visit to Washington.
The Associated Press reports that the first ladies visited the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art in a display of soft power that united two figures known for fusing style and diplomacy. It was the first public meeting in nearly a decade between the spouses, one a former fashion model and the other a famed soprano.
They arrived to crowds gathered on sidewalks across from the museum, many waving Chinese and American flags.
Inside the museum, the first ladies toured the Peacock Room, a gilded green, blue and gold dining room that was once housed in a London mansion before opening to the public in Washington in 1923. The room was created by American artist James McNeill Whistler.
They also paused to look at a stone disk from ancient China, along with “Princess from the Land of Porcelain,” an oil painting by Whistler hanging in the Peacock Room and featuring a kimono-clad woman standing and holding a fan. Later, youngsters from Hope Chinese School serenaded the women with renditions of famous Chinese folk songs, “Song and Smile” and “Jasmine Flower.”
The campaign of Dan Sullivan, a Republican senator from Alaska, on Thursday attacked Mary Peltola, the Democrat challenging Sullivan for his Senate seat this year, over allegations that she had harshly treated members of her staff.
“Nearly 30 people close to Mary Peltola were interviewed and more than 100 screenshots informed this reporting,” Nate Adams, a spokesman for Sullivan’s campaign, said in a statement. “What the Times printed is only a fraction of it, so imagine what was left out, and what else Mary Peltola is hiding from Alaskans.”
The allegations against Peltola, including that she had made a habit of viciously berating staffers, hurling slurs and cruel insults at them and others who drew her ire, emerged in a report by The New York Times.
Peltola’s campaign has denied that she engaged in any pattern of abuse toward her staff, and the Times also interview people who positive experiences with her. Still, a spokesperson acknowledged that Peltola, whose husband and mother died within months of each other in 2023, had been struggling with grief over those losses.
Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas calls on Trump to “prevent the annexation” of Palestinian land in Gaza, West Bank
Harry Cockburn
Speaking remotely to the United Nations General Assembly’s annual gathering of world leaders, Mahmoud Abbas, the longtime president of the Palestinian Authority, pressured Donald Trump to follow through on a peace plan for Gaza that would prevent the Israeli takeover of Palestinian land.
“We call upon President Trump to fulfill the commitments he made to the leaders of the Arab and Islamic states last September to prevent the annexation of Palestinian land and to reject displacement.”
Abbas said that while he welcomed Trump’s 20-point peace plan for Gaza, he warned that its implementation was falling short and called for the next phase to be accelerated, with a clear timetable for a lasting political settlement:
“Regretfully, we have not seen any of this materialise on the ground,” Abbas said. “The Israeli killing and aggression continue to claim the lives of men, women and children in Gaza. Nearly a year has passed since the adoption of [the peace plan] and the establishment of the Board of Peace. And only one year remains of the designated transitional period before the end of 2027.”
“Therefore, we called for accelerating the implementation of the second phase rather than wasting any more time. The transitional period must not be allowed to become a permanent or open-ended situation without any clear time-bound political horizon.”
“Rather, it must lead to the reunification of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, under the authority of the State of Palestine and its legitimate institutions, in accordance with the principle of one state, one government.”
Abbas delivered his remarks via a pre-recorded video for the second year in a row, after the Trump administration refused to grant him a visa.
The State Department said in a statement that the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization had “failed to live up to their commitments”, accusing the groups of “taking actions to internationalize the Israeli-Palestinian conflict including through the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice” and of “glorifying terrorism,” among other allegations.
Abbas pushed back on those allegations, saying: “We reject these unlawful punitive measures, and we reject the accusations and justifications on which they were based.”
The Palestinian Authority president painted a bleak picture of the situation in both Gaza and the West Bank, but concluded with a vow, directed at the Palestinian people themselves, that they would not yield to efforts to remove them from their land.
“We will not leave our homeland, we will not accept displacement, and we will not allow anyone to decide our future on our behalf,” Abbas said to conclude the speech.
Xi pushed US to oppose Taiwanese independence, according to Chinese readout of meeting
Shannon Ho
The subject of Taiwan came up during a bilateral meeting in which Xi Jinping urged the US to oppose “Taiwan independence,” according to a readout from the official Chinese news agency Xinhua.
The White House did not immediately provide its own readout of the discussion.
Xi had been expected to press Trump this week to halt arms sales to Taiwan, the Associated Press reported. After visiting China in May, the US president said he was suspending an arms package to Taiwan worth about $14 billion and called it a “very good negotiating chip.”
The move left some US allies in Asia and even some Republicans concerned that Trump may be tempted to soften Washington’s support for Taipei in exchange for economic wins with China.
China has long asserted territorial ownership of Taiwan, a democratically governed island that relies on US power to counter Beijing’s threats. Despite backing Taiwan, the US has traditionally avoided taking an official stance on its independence.
Trump touts ‘great meeting’ as Xi departs the White House
Shannon Ho
Donald Trump said that he and Xi Jinping had a “great meeting” after the two leaders met at the White House, Reuters reported.
Trump made the comments to reporters in response to shouted questions before the two boarded the Marine One helicopter on the White House grounds for a brief tour.
Xi has since left the White House, but he is expected to return this evening for a state dinner that expects to feature a number of tech CEOs, including Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Sundar Pichai of Alphabet, Sam Altman of OpenAI, Tim Cook of Apple, Elon Musk of Tesla, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta and Jensen Huang of Nvidia.
Trump’s pick to lead FDA bucks president on vaccines in hearing
Heidi Overton, the White House adviser who Trump has nominated to lead the Food and Drug Administration, publicly broke with the president on the subject of vaccine safety during Senate nomination hearing – though she tried not to say that in so many words.
Facing the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which holds the keys to her confirmation, Overton was pressed on the subject directly by committee chairman Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Republican and physician from Louisiana who has frequently pushed back on vaccine-skeptics in the Trump administration.
“You were behind the president in the Oval Office when he signed an executive order to break up the vaccine schedule into more doses,” Cassidy said to Overton as he opened the hearing.
He continued: “The order is based on zero scientific evidence. At the same time, the president called the MMR vaccine ‘quite lethal.’ There ain’t no scientific evidence of that. And, by the way, this comes as we see Americans dying from measles for the first time in decades.”
Later, questioned directly whether the MMR vaccine was safe and effective, Overton affirmed that “the MMR vaccine is not lethal” and that it is “safe and effective.”
But when pressed to say outright whether she disagreed with the president, or detail specifically what she would do to counter any anti-vaccine information being peddled to Americans, Overton was more vague.
“So you disagree with the President with that?” Cassidy said.
“The MMR vaccine is currently licensed and approved by the FDA,” Overton replied, avoiding any mention of the president. “It is safe and effective. And it is our best took right now in the public health response to the measles outbreak.”
She later added: “Every vaccine on the US market right now are safe and effective according to the FDA.”
Cassidy also noted his displeasure with Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the noted vaccine skeptic and figurehead of the the Make American Healthy Again movement. Kennedy, Cassidy said as the meeting opened, had also made assurances about
“Secretary Kennedy gave me guarantees,” he said. “Later, he did not keep those.”
Cassidy continued: “As opposed to keeping his promise to me, this committee, and by extension the American people, he had to do what the president told him to do.”
