Trump says Kim Jong-un has responded to his overtures but doesn’t offer details
Donald Trump has said that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has responded to his overtures after he ordered the US to scale back military exercises with South Korea.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump was asked why Kim had not responded to his overtures. Trump shot back at the reporter: “How do you know he hasn’t responded?” The reporter then asked again if he had.
“Um, yeah he has,” Trump said. Asked what stage the conversations with Kim were at, Trump said “it’s very positive”, but provided no further detail. He added:
Kim Jong-un has always treated me with great respect and we met on numerous occasions, actually two primary occasions, spoken and spent time. I understand him. He understands me.
Their relationship was a dominant theme during Trump’s first term, including a series of meetings between them, but has received less emphasis in his second term.
Key events
CNN has shared a statement saying it stands behind reporter Kristen Holmes after Donald Trump repeatedly told the CNN reporter to “be quiet” and accused her of being “a fake reporter” during questioning over conditions onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln.
“Kristen Holmes is one of the most respected and accomplished journalists covering the White House. This afternoon, she did her job and asked the President of the United States a tough, relevant and newsworthy question on behalf of the American people. Public officials are free to challenge reporting they disagree with, but personal attacks on journalists for asking questions are beneath the office and inconsistent with the principles of the free press. We stand firmly behind Kristen and reject these attacks in the strongest possible terms.”
Shortly after the president reprimanded Holmes, the White House invoked her children in a social media post further attacking the reporter.
“Someday, your children will come across your disgusting and inhumane question. They will be sickened and embarrassed to have a parent be so callous and vindictive. It’s quite troubling,” the White House wrote.
In a second social media post, it also called Holmes “a disgraceful, humiliating embarrassment to her alleged profession” and added “These scumbags are the lowest of the low.”
In a post on Truth Social, Donald Trump continued his years-long false claims of election fraud in the United States – including by implying that mail-in voting is insecure, the same day that Politico reported he himself voted by mail last week.
“Earlier this month, India’s Chief Election Commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, asked our Administration — How can you have Elections in the U.S. without a valid Photo ID? India’s last Election had 646,000,000 Voters! Less than 1% voted by mail, and every single Voter had to have a VALID Photo Identity Document. We need to pass THE SAVE AMERICA ACT, now!” Trump wrote.
James Talarico, the Texas Democratic candidate for Senate, has hired a staffer from outgoing Republican senator John Cornyn’s office, NOTUS reported. Across the aisle shuffling of campaign staff is highly rare.
NOTUS reports that Talarico’s campaign has hired Jacob Smith, who worked as Cornyn’s deputy legislative director and policy advisor, for five years.
“I’ve worked for Republicans like Senator Cornyn my entire career, but this year I’m proud to be joining James Talarico’s campaign,” Smith said in a statement to NOTUS. He also criticized Republican nominee Ken Paxton, calling him “the most corrupt, self-dealing politician in Texas.”
Smith is not the first surprising endorsement Talarico has won – in June, Houston attorney Dan Cogdell, who was part of Paxton’s defense team during the Republican’s historic impeachment trial in 2023 that ended in acquittal, endorsed Talarico and not his former client.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has proposed subsidising liability insurance for state and local police officers who enforce federal immigration laws, in an aim to shield officers who are accused of on-duty misconduct.
The Associated Press first reported the news, citing an ICE planning document detailing the policy.
According to the planning document, police officers would purchase liability insurance covering up to $500,000 – which could cover legal fees and settlements – for about $250 per year, and then be reimbursed that amount by ICE.
Dani Anguiano
A northern California county that has become a hotbed of activism for those who sow doubts about the reliability of voting machines plans to hire Tina Peters, the prominent Colorado election denier recently released from prison, to work on elections.
Clint Curtis, the top election official in Shasta county, told the Guardian he plans to hire Peters as a consultant to replace Brent Turner, his top deputy, who has been on medical leave. He said Peters would not have access to the county’s voting system. Plans to hire Peters were first reported by Action News Now.
Shasta county, a conservative region home to 182,000 people, has emerged as a center of the US election denialism movement in recent years. In 2023, the county’s governing body unsuccessfully sought to remake the voting process by cutting ties with the voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems and implementing a hand-count system that experts warned would be costly and far less accurate. The MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, one of the leading promoters of falsehoods about election fraud in the US, said he would support the county’s effort. The state ultimately blocked Shasta’s plans. In addition, several candidates who lost their race for local office have embraced baseless conspiracy theories about election fraud and sued to overturn results.
Read our full report below:
Trump votes by mail amid his administration’s ongoing attacks on policy
Donald Trump voted by mail in Florida’s Republican primary, Politico reports, citing Palm Beach County voting records. The White House has confirmed the president’s mail-in vote, according to the New York Times, which added that this is at least the third time the president has mailed his ballot.
In March, the president signed an executive order restricting the use of mail-in ballots ahead of the November midterm elections that will decide control of US Congress. Trump has repeatedly criticized mail-in voting, calling for restrictions on the policy for years and falsely claiming that his 2020 election defeat was the result of widespread voter fraud.
A federal judge has blocked the US Postal Service from implementing part of the executive order, although Trump’s administration has asked the supreme court to intervene.
After Politico reported on the president’s ballot Monday afternoon, citing local voting records, the New York Times reported that it “could not access these records through the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections website, which said that Mr. Trump’s voting record was ‘protected from public disclosure.’”
However, a White House spokeswoman later confirmed to the Times that Trump voted by mail, saying: “As everyone knows, the President is a resident of Palm Beach and participates in Florida elections, but he obviously primarily lives at the White House in Washington, D.C.”
In a post on Truth Social on Monday, Trump continued his years-long false claims of election fraud in the United States – including by implying that mail-in voting is insecure.
“Earlier this month, India’s Chief Election Commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, asked our Administration — How can you have Elections in the U.S. without a valid Photo ID? India’s last Election had 646,000,000 Voters! Less than 1% voted by mail, and every single Voter had to have a VALID Photo Identity Document. We need to pass THE SAVE AMERICA ACT, now!” Trump wrote.
Trump first registered to vote in Palm Beach County, Flordia in 2019. Since then, he has voted by mail in 2020, during a special election for statehouse earlier this year and last week, when he mailed his ballot on 13 August.
A federal judge halted the Trump administration’s effort to relocate the FBI headquarters to Washington DC, rather than a congressionally approved site in Maryland.
US District Judge Theodore Chuang sided with Marlyand’s attorney general and Prince George’s County, where the new FBI headquarters is slated to be located. Chuang wrote that the Trump administration’s selection of the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington violated congressional measures requiring the General Services Administration to select one of three locations outside Washington.
“Maryland and Prince George’s County committed more than a decade of work to earn the FBI headquarters and pledged hundreds of millions of dollars. By blocking the Trump Administration’s unlawful attempt to move the FBI to the Reagan Building and divert the funds Congress set aside for this project, the Court has cleared the path back to Greenbelt,” Maryland attorney general Anthony G. Brown said in a statement.
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan urged Donald Trump in a call today to continue talks with Iran to de-escalate tensions between the two countries, and offered Ankara’s support in peace efforts, the Turkish presidency said.
In a statement, the presidency said Erdoğan and Trump also discussed Israel’s war in Gaza, a defence pact signed between Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, and bilateral ties.
It added that Erdogan told Trump that Israel’s attacks on Palestinians in Gaza had increased at a time when the second phase of Trump’s peace plan was supposed to come into effect.
The day so far
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Donald Trump again threatened to bomb Oman if it “gets in the way” of his effort to end the US-Israel war on Iran, as the two-month window to negotiate peace with Iran expired on Monday with no end to the conflict in sight. “If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the shit out of them,” Trump told Fox News, the second time he has directed such a threat at Muscat, a longtime US strategic partner that has traditionally served as a key backchannel between Washington and Tehran.
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Trump said that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had responded to his overtures after he ordered the US to scale back military exercises with South Korea. Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump was asked why Kim had not responded to his overtures. Trump shot back at the reporter: “How do you know he hasn’t responded?” The reporter then asked again if he had. “Um, yeah he has,” Trump said. Asked what stage the conversations with Kim were at, Trump said “it’s very positive”, but provided no further detail.
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Trump also claimed he had third-hand reports that the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln is “beautifully maintained” despite extensive accounts of deteriorating living conditions during its lengthy deployment in the strait of Hormuz. “The Lincoln has been out there for a period of time – a good period of time – but over the years, we’ve had them out there much longer,” Trump said, describing an exchange with a veteran, whom he did not name, over the weekend. It has been more than 250 days since the Lincoln has touched land, and reports have described shortages of supplies and water and plumbing problems. Several sailors have attempted to leap from the ship according to their reports, prompting Democratic lawmakers to demand answers from the Pentagon.
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In Israel, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner met Benjamin Netanyahu for more than four hours after the Israeli prime minister rejected a US-backed peace plan for the Gaza war that included a withdrawal of Israeli troops from the devastated territory. Netanyahu has said he rejected any withdrawal that would take place before Hamas fully disarms. Kushner was said to have told Netanyahu not to create obstacles to a peace deal, US officials told media outlets. He also told Fox News that progress in getting Hamas to give up its weapons and move forward with a Gaza peace plan could materialize in about a month.
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Elsewhere, the US supreme court rejected for a second time Trump’s attempt to overturn a jury verdict in 2023 that found him liable for sexually abusing writer E Jean Carroll, and later defaming her. The court announced the decision in an unsigned order, without providing an explanation. The decision leaves intact the $5m civil judgment against Trump, that was returned by the jury after the two-week trial in 2023.
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The House ethics committee announced that it is investigating Democratic representative Jimmy Gomez over allegations of sexual misconduct. The committee said in a statement that it is reviewing allegations that Gomez “engaged in sexual misconduct in violation of the Code of Official Conduct or any other applicable standard of conduct, including engaging in inappropriate sexual contact with a House staffer.”
Trump dismisses USS Lincoln criticism and snaps at CNN reporter to ‘be quiet’
George Chidi
Further to my earlier post, my colleague George Chidi has this report on Donald Trump’’s claims today that he had third-hand reports that the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln is “beautifully maintained” despite extensive accounts of deteriorating living conditions during its record-breaking deployment in the strait of Hormuz.
At the White House earlier, Trump berated a CNN reporter at a press availability, insisting that she “be quiet” and describing the reporting as fake news.
“The Lincoln has been out there for a period of time – a good period of time – but over the years, we’ve had them out there much longer,” Trump said, describing an exchange with a veteran, whom he did not name, over the weekend.
“He happened to be an admiral, retired. He said, ‘I’ve been on ships that are out there much longer than that, sir. And I know people on the Lincoln, they say it’s beautifully maintained and beautifully taken care of.’ And other people went out and they found out that to be true,” said Trump. “It was fake news reporting from CNN.”
Trump also didn’t identify the “other people” he claimed had verified the anonymous admiral’s account.
The Lincoln, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier capable of long deployments without refueling, left port from San Diego on 21 November 2025 and has now set a modern record for the longest time at sea without a port call. It has been more than 250 days since it has touched land.
The Navy Times and Stars and Stripes – the latter notably under increased control of the Pentagon as a defense publication – have also largely confirmed reports of the Lincoln’s conditions.
The publications described shortages of supplies and water and plumbing problems. Several sailors have attempted to leap from the ship according to their reports, prompting Democratic lawmakers to demand answers from the Pentagon.
Naval families with loved ones deployed for months on US warships amid the Iran war have reacted with fury to Trump and defense secretary Pete Hegseth’s dismissal of their concerns about the extreme pressures and dire conditions they are enduring.
The Guardian also spoke to three naval families who have been following the physical and mental stresses bearing down on their relatives with mounting alarm.
“I grew up in a United States where you have to be very respectful of the military, as they’re making the ultimate sacrifice and protecting their country, and now you have the commander-in-chief and defense secretary dismissing their experiences and calling them liars,” said the sister of one Lincoln crew member, who spoke anonymously for fear of retribution. “I’m really angry.”
Kushner predicts Hamas disarmament progress in ‘as little as 30 days’
More now from Jared Kushner’s interview with Fox News in Tel Aviv, where Donald Trump’s special envoy and son-in-law said that progress in getting Hamas to give up its weapons and move forward with a Gaza peace plan could materialize in about a month.
“We could be seeing progress … in as little as 30 days, hopefully starting to take some of the weapons out,” Kushner said.
He said he met for nearly four hours with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and reassured him on several sticking points. “There were some valid concerns” on the Israeli side, Kushner said.
For example, he said, the Trump administration is committed to helping to rebuild Gaza. “But we will not allow Gaza to be rebuilt until the demilitarization occurs. Nobody wants to put more money into a place … if it’s just going to be taken over by terrorists,” he said.
“We’re also not going to restrict Israel’s right to defend itself if there are any imminent threats and so we had to clarify what that means,” Kushner said. “For Israel we think it’s a win-win situation.”
Either Hamas will go ahead in disarming “willingly over the next 60 to 90 days” or “Israel will have a lot more support from the US and others to go and finish the job in the appropriate way,” Kushner added.
He said he had had a “very cordial” meeting with Hamas officials, but added that “it’s very, very hard to trust a terrorist organization.”
Cecilia Nowell
Construction on a US-Mexico border project in Big Bend national park has halted, the Trump administration said today, as Customs and Border Protection (CBP) evaluates the controversial project in Texas.
“CBP is pausing all construction activity in Big Bend National Park while I visit and conduct a personal, on-the-ground evaluation,” CBP’s head, Rodney Scott, wrote in a social media post.
Footage of bulldozers ploughing through the 800,000-acre (325,000-hectare) Chihuahuan desert national park emerged earlier this month, after the Trump administration did not announce and initially denied construction on a multibillion-dollar “smart wall” expansion in the park.
Last year, Congress approved $46.5bn for a border wall expansion in the “big, beautiful” spending bill Donald Trump signed into law on 4 July 2025.
Although many Texas Republicans have remained silent about the construction, outgoing senator John Cornyn sent a letter to Markwayne Mullin, Trump’s homeland security secretary, asking him to halt construction on the wall.
“My constituents believe that the 1,000-foot riverbank cliffs and remote Big Bend terrain offers its own sources of deterrence for any illegal migrants crossing into the United States,” Cornyn wrote.
Scott, the CBP chief, has said that he expects the agency will build the first layer of the wall by the end of next year.
Trump approval falls to 33%, lowest of his presidency, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds
Donald Trump’s approval rating fell to the lowest level of his presidency with an overwhelming majority of Americans concerned the war with Iran will last a long time, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that concluded today.
Just 33% of respondents in the four-day survey said they approved of Trump’s performance in the White House, while 64% disapproved.
Trump’s approval rating, down from 35% in a poll that closed earlier this month and lower than at any point in his current term, has now tied the lowest level of his prior term reached in December 2017.
After returning to the White House last year with just under half the country approving of his presidency, Trump’s popularity this year took a hit after he ordered strikes on Iran alongside Israel.
The ensuing conflict paralyzed a fifth of the global oil trade, triggering a surge in the price of gasoline which is weighing on US households – and on Trump’s Republican allies defending congressional majorities in November’s crucial midterm elections.
Trump, who campaigned on promises to keep inflation in check and avoid long-lasting wars, initially pledged the conflict with Iran would take a few weeks, and argued the war was the only way to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon that could threaten the US and its allies.
But Iran has proved resilient and has choked the oil trade through the strait of Hormuz even as the conflict has cooled. Some 80% of Americans – including 87% of Democrats and 71% of Republicans – think US involvement in Iran “will go on for an extended period of time”, the Reuters/Ipsos poll found.
Texas parents ask US supreme court to hear Ten Commandments in classrooms case
A group of Texas parents have asked the US supreme court to block a state law that requires the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public schools.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other groups joined the parents of diverse faiths with children in Texas public schools in asking the high court to hear the case.
“The US Supreme Court has rejected this kind of government-imposed religion before, and it should do so again,” Chloe Kempf, an attorney at the ACLU of Texas, said in a statement.
“Our nation’s bedrock principle of separating church and state means that families and faith communities – not politicians – get to decide what role religion plays in children’s lives,” she said.
In a similar case in 1980, the Supreme Court ruled that the display of the Ten Commandments in schools in Kentucky was unconstitutional.
However in April, a conservative-dominated appeals court ruled in favor of the Texas law, which requires the scripture to be posted in every classroom.
The judges ruled that the bill did not violate the establishment clause of the US Constitution, the part of the first amendment that prohibits the government from establishing a national religion or showing preference to one over another.
Conservatives enjoy a 6-3 majority on the supreme court and the justices have sided with religious rights claims in a number of recent high-profile cases.
Along with Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Alabama have all passed laws requiring the posters of the commandments in public schools. South Carolina, West Virginia and Missouri are also considering similar bills.
A reminder that the memorandum of understanding between the US and Iran expired today. Further to Donald Trump’s comments in the Oval Office earlier that Tehran was “not going to make the kind of deal I feel is necessary”, his special envoy and son-in-law Jared Kushner has been speaking to Fox News.
“Right now, they’re not showing any interest in doing something that makes sense for us,” Kushner said of Iran.
Asked what he felt the biggest roadblock to reaching an agreement, Kushner said, “They have to be willing to make a real deal.” He added:
If they’re going to play a trick or do something to hide certain cards and get certain concessions … Trump wants to make a fair deal that could be a win-win … but they have to want to be a real country, which means no nuclear weapons and no funding terror in the region.
House ethics committee investigating Jimmy Gomez over sexual misconduct allegations
The House ethics committee has announced that it is investigating Democratic representative Jimmy Gomez over allegations of sexual misconduct.
The committee said in a statement that it is reviewing allegations that Gomez “engaged in sexual misconduct in violation of the Code of Official Conduct or any other applicable standard of conduct, including engaging in inappropriate sexual contact with a House staffer.”
It added that that existence of an investigation and public disclosure of the investigation “does not itself indicate that any violation has occurred”.
CNN reported back in June that the panel was investigating 51-year-old Gomez, of California, including over an alleged romantic relationship he had in 2023 with an aide who worked for another member of Congress. He’s been married since 2011.
According to CNN’s sources, the committee made early contacts in an attempt to follow up on a New York Post story, which alleged that Gomez had been spotted kissing a much younger aide, who worked for another member of Congress, outside a backyard party in 2023. A Gomez spokesperson told The Post at the time that the accounts were “not true” and the kiss “didn’t happen”.
While reaching out to look into that story, one of the sources told CNN that the committee had learned of other allegations of sexual misconduct against Gomez that it is now also investigating.
House rules don’t currently prohibit members of Congress from having relationships with staffers outside their own offices, but the bipartisan sexual misconduct task force is weighing whether to recommend changing this.
It comes not long after two other representatives, Democrat Eric Swalwell and Republican Tony Gonzales, recently resigned amid allegations of sexual misconduct with staffers.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported that an unnamed former staffer had accused Swalwell, of California, of sexually assaulting her on two occasions. CNN later published a similar account, as well as allegations from three other women of him sending them unwanted sexual messages.
In the case of Gonzales, of Texas, he weathered for weeks calls to resign after admitting to an affair with an aide who later died by suicide, before eventually caving to pressure to not run for re-election.
Republican Chuck Edwards also recently dropped his bid for re-election after the committee determined that he “fostered a hostile work environment and engaged in sexual harassment” by giving gifts and lavishing attention on two young female staffers.
The committee has also opened an investigation into Republican Cory Mills regarding campaign financial misconduct and domestic abuse allegations.
Trump then moved on to answering another reporter’s question, claiming that it was “a CNN fake report” that there isn’t enough food on the USS Abraham Lincoln, which hasn’t seen port in nine months.
“The Lincoln has been out there for a good period of time,” he said, claiming that it’s been out at sea for longer periods of time and is “beautifully maintained”. This echoes comments he made last Friday that the deployment was “not nearly long enough”.
Trump has repeatedly downplayed concerns from military families and members of Congress who have called attention to the intensifying mental health crisis and poor conditions for those onboard the aircraft carrier, as its 5,000 sailors and marines endure a record-breaking deployment at sea tied to Trump’s war with Iran.
