Journalists from CNN, Politico, and MS Now belatedly regain access to White House after judge ruling – live

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.

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.”