Trump’s state dinner for Xi Jinping will not be televised as White House continues to deny CNN full access – as it happened

This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day. Here are the latest developments: 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. 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. 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. 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. The Trump administration used taxpayer funds to air a White House-produced, pro-Trump ad on Fox News this week. 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. 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. 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. 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.” 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 compliant about the lack of coverage that was directly related to his own decision. 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. 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 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.” 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. 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. 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. ⁠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. 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.” Leading Democrats and immigration advocates in Michigan are demanding transparency from federal authorities after a man died in a fiery car crash as he attempted to avoid agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Mario David Coronado Juarez, a Guatemalan national, was killed Sunday in Grand Rapids when his vehicle struck a tree at high speed and burst into flames shortly after the ICE officers tried to conduct a traffic stop. His death came the same day as two other incidents of ICE violence, as critics say officers are pursuing increasingly aggressive tactics in support of Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. In Austin, Texas, an agent shot and wounded a Venezuelan man, Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, who was working as a Door Dash delivery driver. And in Evanston, Illinois, a US citizen needed hospital treatment for injuries sustained when two ICE agents attempted to arrest him in an apparent case of mistaken identity. A Washington Post analysis in July found that at least 17 motorists had been shot by federal immigration agents during enforcement operations, and six of those died. Gretchen Whitmer, the Democratic Michigan governor, said she had ordered a review of the Grand Rapids incident. Joseph Trigg, chief of the Grand Rapids police department, asked the Michigan state police (MSP) to join the investigation, noting in a statement that his own traffic detectives had been “limited in their ability” to obtain information from federal agencies. “MSP, under the direction of the governor and attorney general, may be in a better position to determine the timeframe and any other potentially relevant circumstances, and any next steps that may be appropriate,” Trigg’s statement said. According to the immigration advocacy group Movimiento Cosecha in Grand Rapids, Coronado, 36, was from the Guatemalan city of San Marcos, and came to the US alone to work as a construction worker and send money home for his wife and three young children. Hillary Scholten, a Democratic Michigan congresswoman, said she had asked ICE for an explanation of its agents’ actions prior to the accident. “No traffic stop should end with a fatality. Something went wrong, and we need to know what and how,” she said in a statement that requested “a transparent investigation into facts we don’t yet know.” ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), its parent agency, have not yet commented on the incident. One detail of the unfolding drama between Trump and the White House press that may have slipped past your notice, amid the recent back-and-forth: at least one of the sensitive stories that the Trump administration cited in justifying its ban on Politico was supplied by the administration itself, according to The Washington Post. And Status, a media news outlet, reported that the source behind one of those stories detailing the likelihood of an earlier deal to end the war with Iran was supplied by Vice President JD Vance, speaking on background with the administration’s blessing. A bit of context: when banning the outlets via a surprise Truth Social post last Friday, Trump offered no specific grievance to justify the action. But his administration was forced to provide just that when the affected outlets sued. In response, the Trump administration sent letters to the three outlets Trump axed (CNN, MS Now, and Politico) citing specific stories the outlets had published that the administration felt were false, unfair, or, in certain cases, contained sensitive information that posed a security risk. A social media post from the White House on Wednesday in response to the reporting appeared to confirm Vance was the source for what the Politico article in question. “For more context, the White House holds regular press briefings to ensure accurate information is provided — but even then the media lies and peddles misinformation,” the White House statement responding to the Status report said. “That article was included to highlight the White House going to great lengths to provide important access, only to have it distorted and manipulated by the propagandists in the media.” While Donald Trump is hosting Xi Jinping at the White House, the two first ladies Melania Trump and Peng Liyuan toured the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, one of the largest Asian art museums in the US. It was the first public meeting in nearly a decade between the spouses. Politico has also confirmed that their access to the White House has been restored. According to court filings, Micah Stopperich, the White House director of press operations, began the process of reinstating the press badges for CNN, MS NOW, and Politico at 7:25am. The Secret Service indicated that the badges were fully restored by 9:07am, and the confiscated badges were delivered back to the press gate and ready for pickup at around 9:55am. US ⁠news ⁠outlets MS ⁠Now and ⁠CNN have once again been ‌granted access to the ⁠White House, Reuters has just reported. The reinstated access was granted just hours after a federal judge ordered Trump to lift the ban. CNN has also just confirmed that they have been allowed back inside the White House, with reporter Betsy Klein being allowed to reenter on Thursday. She was previously denied access despite multiple attempts to enter the White House on Thursday morning. The Guardian’s Jeremy Barr reported late this morning that ABC, listed as the president’s TV pool for today, was refusing to enter any events during Xi Jinping’s visit until furnished with proof that CNN, the banned fifth member of the president’s standard TV pool rotation, had been allowed back on site. Federal Judge Timothy Kelly has ordered the Trump administration to respond imminently to the concerns from news outlets whose reporters, previously banned from the White House by Trump, were again denied access this morning after Kelly ordered their access be restored. With both China and the US leading the world in AI development, Xi Jinping told reporters at the White House that both nations have the capability and responsibility to manage AI for good, and “ensure the development of AI is always under human control and serve the wellbeing of the people”. Shortly after Xi Jinping’s arrival at the White House, Donald Trump gave remarks alongside the visiting Chinese president, in which the two expressed optimism for deepening the testy US-China relationship. Trump, speaking, noted that Xi is the first Chinese leader to make a second formal visit to the White House, and said the two have “forged a truly great friendship” since Trump was first elected in 2016. Trump went on to say that he’s “very proud” of the US-China relationship, and says the two countries are working towards a “more balanced trade relationship.” He said the two leaders will also discuss “pressing issues” concerning security, technology and artificial intelligence. “The decisions we make in these areas today can promote peace and prosperity for decades and decades to come,” Trump said. Taking to the podium after him, Xi said both China and the United States are “great countries” with “great peoples,” and that he came to Washington to “carry on our friendship, expand co-operation and promote the wellbeing of both our peoples”. He added that China and the US “shoulder a responsibility to promote human progress” and said he is willing to work with Trump to “steer the ship of China-US ties”. “The interests of China and the United States are deeply intertwined,” Xi said, adding that it would be hard to solve many of the world’s problems without the two countries co-operating with one another. Xi then issued an invitation for 100,000 American students to visit China in the next five years, and announced that two pandas – Ping Ping and Fu Shuang – will settle into their new home at the Atlanta zoo in the coming days. The move is reminiscent of China’s gift of two giant pandas to the Smithsonian national zoo in 1972, following Richard Nixon’s historic visit to Beijing in the detente era of the Cold War. To the blare of trumpets, Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump walked out of the White House residence onto the South Lawn, where they greeted Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan as they stepped out of a black vehicle and onto the red carpet. They warmly shook hands and then posed for the cameras. Anti-Beijing and pro-Beijing protesters gathered outside the White House ahead of Xi’s arrival, the Associated Press notes. “Down with Xi Jinping,” chanted those condemning Beijing’s brutal policy in Tibet. They also chanted, “Shame on Xi Jinping.” Another group has gathered about a block away with banners welcoming the Chinese leader. The two camps are separated and there has been no direct clash. Lawyers for the news outlets President Trump banned from the White House have requested an emergency hearing after several journalists were turned away from the building Thursday morning, in apparent defiance of a federal judge’s order to restore their access. “This morning journalists from each of CNN, MS NOW, and POLITICO attempted to enter the White House and were turned away, and Secret Service agents confiscated the hard pass of journalists whose hard passes had not previously been confiscated,” a new court filing read. Time, the request continued, is “of the essence. CNN is scheduled to the television pool this evening for President Xi Jinping’s visit to the White House.” Timothy Kelly, the federal judge, a Trump appointee who ruled in favor of a CNN journalist similarly barred from the White House during Trump’s first term, issued an order last night ordering the Trump administration to restore access to the three outlets while their case proceeds. But when journalists with the three outlets showed up for work this morning, they reported that they were turned away by security and had their credentials seized. The campaign of Mary Peltola, the former Democratic congresswoman gunning for a prized Republican-held Senate seat in Alaska, has been harmed by the former congresswoman’s alleged pattern of angry outbursts and viciously berating staff members, The New York Times reported on Wednesday evening. The alleged behavior described in the Times story includes profane tirades, slurs hurled at staff members, and, on one occasion, Peltola shoving an aide. Times interviews with staff members and text messages the outlet reviewed indicated that Peltola had on several occasions deployed slurs for gay people and people with intellectual disabilities, sometimes aimed at her staffers. Lately, Peltola’s ire toward staff members has begun to take a toll on her campaign, the Times reported. The outlet heard from sources that the firing of a slate of longtime staffers days before the Alaska primary election was, in part, the product of another angry outburst by Peltola. The dysfunction allegedly hindered Peltola’s office during her stint in Congress, contributing to an exceptionally high rate of staff turnover. The Times, however, also found several sources who said they had nothing but positive experiences with Peltola while serving under her. A spokesman for Peltola’s campaign disputed the conclusion that his boss had displayed any pattern of abuse toward staffers, while acknowledging that she had been grappling with the 2023 deaths of both her mother and her husband, which occurred in quick succession. “Like any person who has gone through multiple personal tragedies in the span of a few months, Mary sometimes struggled to deal with her grief,” the spokesman, Harry Child, told the Times. He continued: “Exaggerating and outright lying about moments from the hardest period of her life, and falsely presenting them as a pattern of behavior, is wrong.” Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping have plenty to cover when they sit down for talks Thursday at the White House. The US and Chinese leaders are tackling issues like trade irritants, artificial intelligence safeguards and the war in Iran. Trump wants China to use its influence with Iran, while Xi seeks a halt to US arms sales to Taiwan. A fragile trade truce had been set to expire in November, but the two countries agreed Wednesday to extend it for two months. This is Xi’s first state visit to the US in more than a decade. Stick with us as we bring you the latest lines. The third day of the UN General Assembly’s annual gathering of world leaders is about to kick off in New York City today, with speeches from leaders on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, is expected to devote at least part of his address to attacking Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s progressive mayor who has labeled Netanyahu a war criminal and threatened to arrest him for his country’s killing of civilians in Gaza. Michael Oren, the former Israeli ambassador, said he expected Netanyahu’s UN address to resemble a “campaign speech,” leveraging his feud with the mayor of the largest Jewish city outside of Israel to boost his political position at home. “Maybe he’s thinking, ‘if I can attack Mamdani and attack the Iranians, somebody who was wavering between ‌voting for me and voting for (Gadi) Eisenkot may decide to vote for me’,” Oren told Reuters, referring to Netanyahu’s main political rival in next month’s Israeli general election. In a video statement earlier this week, Netanyahu falsely accused Mamdani, New York City’s first Muslim mayor, of supporting Hamas and inciting riots against the city’s Jewish population. Mamdani said earlier this year that he was looking into whether his office could arrest Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) over alleged war crimes in Gaza, if he visited New York. But he later conceded that he did not have the legal authority to do so. The US is not a party to the ICC and does not recognize its authority. Despite his criticism of the Israeli government and staunch support for Palestinian rights, Mamdani is reportedly not taking part in the protests against Netanyahu scheduled to take place in New York. The New York Times reported that he will instead be visiting an LGBTQ+ centre with the prime minister of the Netherlands. The president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, will also be addressing the UN General Assembly via video. Like last year, Abbas was banned from entering the US by the Trump administration, with the State Department saying in a statement that the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) had “failed to live up to their commitments.” The news has been trickling in this morning from the White House reporters showing back up for work, but now it’s confirmed that all three outlets targeted in Trump’s White House press ban are saying they’re still being denied access to the building, after a judge’s order to let them back in. We’ll see as the morning wears on whether that changes. Yesterday evening, after briefly taking the case under consideration, a federal judge ordered the White House to temporarily restore access to CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, the three outlets the president banned from the building via a social media post last week. White House security may not have gotten the memo, according to Thursday morning reports from the three news outlets involved. All three reported that they had journalists turned away from the White House early in the morning. Politico wrote this morning that a reporter showing up for work was blocked from entering the White House on Thursday and had his press credentials seized. The alleged denial of entry came after a federal judge instructed the Trump administration last night to allow the news outlets their usual access while their lawsuit against the president over the ban moves forward. CNN reported that some its staff – including reporter Betsy Klein and a photojournalist – were barred from entering the White House early on Thursday around 6a.m., without receiving a reason for being denied entry. However, the channel said one of its producers gained entry to the building using their pass. Some CNN staff, however, were unable to gain access to the White House early Thursday morning. CNN reporter Betsy Klein and a photojournalist were denied access to the White House grounds in the 6:00 a.m. hour. The Associated Press also reported that a CNN journalist told the outlet she was denied access to the White House on Thursday morning. CNN said would it continue trying to gain access to the building as the day goes on. MS Now also reported on Thursday morning that one of its journalists had been barred entry. MS Now White House correspondent Laura Barrón-López said that a member of the secret service informed her that her press credentials were “still coming up as disabled” when scanned. “Then he confiscated my badge, and I had to leave the premises,” she said. Barrón-López said it was unclear whether the refusal of entry was in deliberate defiance of the court order or “incompetence or a lag in the system.” President Trump teased in a social media post this morning that artificial intelligence would be a major part of his talks today with Chinese leader Xi Jinping during his state visit to Washington. He also suggested that he would avoid entertaining any kind of agreement between the two nations limiting AI development. “A big day with President Xi of China,” Trump wrote in the post to his personal social media platform. “Super Intelligence (SI) will be a big topic of discussion, but I want to leave it exactly where it is. That is China’s position also. Our guardrail is the DOJ! President DJT.” (Super intelligence is the term Trump has been pushing to refer to artificial intelligence. He pitched the language earlier this week in a tangent during his speech to the world leaders at the United Nations. It’s unclear at this point if anybody is going to take him up on it.) After an unusually warm red carpet welcome ceremony on the tarmac yesterday, Trump is scheduled to receive Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, at the White House South Portico. The pair will deliver remarks, exchange gifts, and watch a military review before a busy day of talks and diplomatic pageantry. Donald Trump has been raging about a story first reported by MS Now on Wednesday that he is seeking to rename the Ford Theatre in Washington DC, a site infamous for the assassination of president Abraham Lincoln, after himself. Last night he posted on Truth Social about the news item, blaming “Dumocrats” for the “ridiculous lie.” This morning, hours after the late night ruling from the judge that temporarily reinstated CNN, Politico, and MS Now, Trump (again) said: The Dumocrats make up lie after lie. The new one is that I want Ford’s Theater named after me. That’s where Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. Who would want that? I don’t! It is FAKE NEWS started by MSDNC AND CNN. This is his first mention of the day of his lesser-favored media outlets. He has not acknowledged the judge’s ruling to restore them access to the White House – yet. We’ll bring you more lines as they come in. Some more background information on this ongoing situation between the Trump administration and the White House press correspondents: The three outlets sued Trump and other members of his administration in federal court in Washington on Monday, saying the ban violated the US constitution’s first amendment protections for free speech and a free press, as well as their due process rights. They requested a temporary restraining order that would immediately reinstate their White House access while their legal challenge plays out. Trump had said on social media that the three outlets “shouldn’t be ⁠able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES,” and justice department lawyers had ‌sought to justify the ban on national security grounds. A Justice Department lawyer told the judge the Trump administration provided a sufficient explanation for the revocation of the press passes in letters sent to the news outlets on Tuesday. But the judge signaled skepticism of that argument, noting that the letters were sent after the revocation occurred and the lawsuit was filed. In a legal filing on Tuesday, the Justice Department argued that access to the ‌White House is a privilege, not an entitlement, and that the president has the authority to suspend access by news organizations. Good morning and welcome to the US politics live blog. We start now with breaking news from the late night hours: a federal judge has temporarily restored White House access to journalists from CNN, Politico and MS Now after president Donald Trump banned them due to their coverage of his administration. US district judge Tim Kelly issued his order in a lawsuit that the news organizations filed ‌contesting the ban that the president announced on 18 September, saying it was ⁠likely unconstitutional. Kelly ordered the Trump administration to immediately return the outlets’ press passes and issued a temporary restraining order that will be in effect for 14 days. Such orders are typically designed to preserve the status quo pending a closer review of the case by the court. In other news today: US president Donald Trump and Chinese president Xi Jinping meet in Washington for high-stakes talks that expect to cover their competing economies, trade, artificial intelligence and Taiwan. Benjamin Netanyahu will speak at the UN general assembly today where he is expected to attack New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani, a vocal critic of the Israeli prime minister who has repeatedly described him as a war criminal. You can follow live coverage of the Israeli prime minister’s address here.