Trump news: President explodes in astonishing attack on Federal Reserve and orders US companies to cease trading with China 'immediately'

Hello and welcome to The Independent's rolling coverage of the Donald Trump administration.

Donald Trump finds himself under siege once more as the Democratic case for his impeachment gathers momentum.

Illinois congressman Brad Schneider is the latest to urge the House Judiciary Committee on in its obstruction of justice inquiry, saying: “Regrettably, it is clear that the administration has little regard for the constitution, is unwilling to provide any information to Congress, and is seeking to play out the clock.”

Judiciary chairman Jerry Nadler has meanwhile asked four congressional panels investigatingthe president to share documents and other information they may have accumiulated to aid his committee’s probe into whether to file articles of impeachment, according to Politico.

In a letter to the chairmen of the House Intelligence, Financial Services, Oversight and Reform and Foreign Affairs committees, Nadler asked for “documents and testimony, depositions, and/or interview transcripts” that might be relevant to the Judiciary ’s ongoing probe.

The five panels have together interviewed witnesses and subpoenaed documents relating to the president’s conduct, foreign business ties, presidential campaign, hush-money payments and personal finances, battling White House stonewalling in the wake of the release of ex-FBI special counsel Robert Mueller's report into Russian election hacking to get at the truth.

Nadler’s request on Thursday came a day after Trump administration attorneys argued that two of the committees - Intelligence and Financial Services - could not invoke the possibility of the president's impeachment in order to gain access to his personal financial information held by Deutsche Bank and Capital One.

Also, Harvard constiutional law professor Lawrence Tribe has argued on The Truth Report podcast with Salon journalist Chauncey DeVega that Trump's "treachery and betrayal" are now clear and impeachment is the only remedy. 

More grim news for the Trumpster as a new AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that 62 per cent of respondents - or six Americans in 10 - are not happy with his current job performance, with only 36 per cent in favour.

The president was up late last night firing out partisan tweets and retweets, some 37 in total.

Among the deluge of offerings from veep Mike Pence, Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch, National Review contributing editor Andy McCarthy, Ohio Republican congressman Jim Jordan and ambassador to Israel David Friedman, Trump backed his old press secretary Sean Spicer to do well on ABC's Dancing with the Stars and gave more vague reassurances about introducing "meaningful" gun control measures after seeming to back away from the issue earlier this week.

The US Justice Department's Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) is in hot water after sending out an email to all all immigration court employees featuring a link to VDare, a white nationalist blog, according to BuzzFeed.

According to the National Association of Immigration Judges, the EOIR included the link to the offending article in its morning news briefing earlier this week, intended to keep judges up to date with immigration reporting in the press.

Union chief Ashley Tabaddor wrote to EOIR director James McHenry to complain the piece in question: "The post features links and content that directly attacks sitting immigration judges with racial and ethnically tinged slurs and the label 'Kritarch'. The reference to Kritarch in a negative tone is deeply offensive and Anti-Semitic."

The term "kritarchy" refers to the rule of ancient Israel under a system of judges.

"VDare’s use of the term in a pejorative manner casts Jewish history in a negative light as an Anti-Semitic trope of Jews seeking power and control," she wrote, before continuing: "Publication and dissemination of a white supremacist, anti-semitic website throughout the EOIR is antithetical to the goals and ideals of the Department of Justice."

"Separately, EOIR should take all appropriate safety and security measures for all judges given the tone and tenor of this posting," she added.

EOIR assistant press secretary Kathryn Mattingly told BuzzFeed, “the daily EOIR morning news briefings are compiled by a contractor and the blog post should not have been included. The Department of Justice condemns Anti-Semitism in the strongest terms.”

The White House will not move forward with plans to cut billions of dollars in foreign aid, US officials said on Thursday, after an outcry from Congress about what was seen as an attempt to sidestep lawmakers' authority over government spending.

Trump said he was considering scaling back the effort to cut aid on Tuesday and would decide on the proposal within days.

Members of Congress, including several of the president's fellow Republicans as well as Democrats, had contacted administration officials to object to the latest Trump administration effort to cut foreign assistance and tie it more closely to support for US policies.

"I'm glad to see important foreign assistance programs - which Congress had already approved - going forward," Republican Jim Risch, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement.

"I share the president's concerns about waste, fraud, and abuse across some of these programs and I look forward to working with him on that issue in the future."

A senior administration official said Trump "has been clear that there is waste and abuse in our foreign assistance and we need to be wise about where US money is going, which is why he asked his administration to look into options to doing just that."

"It's clear that there are many on the Hill who aren't willing to join in curbing wasteful spending," the official added.

Administration officials this month briefly froze State Department and US Agency for International Development spending with an eye to using a budget process known as "rescission" to slash up to $4.3 billion (£3.5bn)  in spending already approved by the Senate and House of Representatives.

The White House tried a similar strategy last year and dropped that plan too amid congressional resistance.

Secretary of state Mike Pompeo is understood argued in favor of the aid money, while Mick Mulvaney, Trump's acting chief of staff and director of the Office of Management and Budget, wanted the cuts.

At a news conference in Ottawa, the Canadian capital, Pompeo did not say there had been a decision, but acknowledged he had "been engaged in meetings" on the subject.

Total foreign aid accounts for less than 2 per cent of the federal budget, and the assistance being considered for cuts accounts for an even smaller percentage.

Opponents of the plan argued that funding programs that fight poverty, support education and promote global health are worthwhile investments that save on security costs in the long run.

Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote to Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin on Friday citing the Government Accountability Office's finding that such a use of rescissions was not legal.

Under the US constitution, Congress, not the White House, controls spending.

Many sources said they expected the issue would end up in court if Trump pressed ahead with it instead of working with Congress.

Lawmakers also said the plan - developed within weeks of Congress' passing, and Trump signing into law, a two-year budget deal - could imperil lawmakers' future willingness to negotiate spending deals with the White House.

Advocacy groups welcomed the news.

"Americans can be pleased that the Administration recognised the importance of these vital foreign assistance programs for keeping America safe and on the global playing field," Liz Schrayer, president of US Global Leadership Coalition, which promotes diplomacy and development, said in a statement.

Reuters

Tom Cotton, the Republican senator for Arkansas, says Trump's proposal that the US buy Greenland from Denmark was his idea.

Cotton says he discussed the notion with the Danish ambassador to the US last year.

"There's a reason why - so you're joking - but I can reveal to you that several months ago I met with the Danish ambassador, and I proposed they sell Greenland to us," he told Roby Brock of Talk Business and Politics. "It's obviously the right decision for the United States, and anyone who can't see that is blinded by Trump derangement."

He still believes it would represent a sound investment.

"In the last few years, China has repeatedly tried to gain a strategic foothold in Greenland, by offering to buy a former US military base there and through a financing scheme for airport construction. Purchasing it would keep it out of the hands of both the Chinese and the Russians. It is rich in national resources with untold economic potential and already extremely important to US national security," he told CNN.

Trump of course blew his top and cancelled a trip to Copenhagen earlier this week after Danish PM Mette Frederiksen laughed off the idea as "absurd".

Mike Pompeo was subsequently forced to smooth things over with his Danish counterpart Jeppe Kofod as Frederiksen reminded Trump: "The time where you buy and sell other countries and populations is over".

Speaking of Greenland, Trump reportedly once joked about trading Puerto Rico for the Scandiniavian island.

Jon Sharman has the full story.

A hospital in El Paso has denied Trump’s claim doctors “were coming out of operating rooms” to meet him when he travelled to Texas and Ohio to console victims of two mass shootings. 

"At no time did, or would, physicians or staff leave active operating rooms during the presidential visit,” University Medical Center spokesperson Ryan Mielke told local TV station KVIA. “Our priority is always patient care."

Mielke’s statement came after the president, apparently angered by reports some victims refused to meet him earlier this month, lashed out on Wednesday at the media and claimed victims and their families actually “love our president”. 

Tom Embury-Dennis reports.

With Trump insisting the US economy is "strong" in public, walking away from introducing the tax cuts he mooted on Tuesday and accusing the media of willing a recession into existence, he continues to bash the Federal Reserve and its chairman Jerome Powell on Twitter (despite appointing him) and has admitted that consumers could ultimately bear some of the brunt of his trade war with China.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, the Congressional Budget Office said that the federal deficit will reach $960bn (£786bn) for the 2019 fiscal year and breach the $1trn (£819bn) mark in 2020. Those figures had been expected to come in at $896bn (£734bn) and $892bn (£730bn), respectively. Which has happened in spite of the US enjoying the longest economic expansion on record and its lowest jobless rate for 50 years.

As Vanity Fair points out, all of this is a long way from Trump's 2016 campaign pledge to balance the budget and wipe out the national debt.

How might he resolve the situation? While he is unlikely to push for budget cuts with the 2020 election looming on the horizon, Republicans have reportedly been encouraged to renege on his promise not to cut Social Security or Medicare should he win a second term.

"We’ve got to fix that,” senator John Thune, the number two Republican in the Senate, tells The New York Times. “It’s going to take presidential leadership to do that, and it’s going to take courage by the Congress to make some hard votes. We can’t keep kicking the can down the road. I hope in a second term, he is interested,” Thune said of Trump. “With his leadership, I think we could start dealing with that crisis. And it is a crisis.”

Another senator, John Barrasso, told The NYT he had "brought it up with President Trump, who has talked about it being a second-term project."