Tributes paid to police officer after gunman kills four in shooting at Manhattan skyscraper – US politics live | US politics
Gunman kills four people in shooting at Manhattan skyscraper
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. My name is Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news over the next few hours.
We start with the news that a gunman killed four people at a Manhattan skyscraper that houses the headquarters of the NFL and the offices of several major financial firms before turning the gun on himself, New York officials have said.
An NYPD officer identified as Didarul Islam, an immigrant from Bangladesh and a father of two whose wife is pregnant, was among those killed. He was working off-hours as a security guard at the time, New York mayor Eric Adams told reporters, describing him as a “true blue hero”.
Authorities offered few details about the three other victims killed by the suspect – two men and a woman. A third male was gravely wounded by the gunfire and was “fighting for his life” in a nearby hospital, the mayor said.
Jessica Tisch, the New York City police commissioner, confirmed that “the lone shooter has been neutralized”. New York police also said the shooter acted alone and was dead.
Tisch said the gunman, identified as Shane Tamura, a 27-year-old Las Vegas resident with a history of mental illness, had driven cross-country to New York in recent days.
The shooting spree in the evening rush hour began in the lobby of the Park Avenue tower in Midtown Manhattan. Tisch said that surveillance videos showed the gunman exiting a double-parked Black BMW between 51st and 52nd street on Park Avenue.
Read our full report here:
In other developments this morning:
-
Ghislaine Maxwell asked the supreme court to overturn her conviction for taking part in and facilitating Jeffrey Epstein’s sex crimes, arguing that a non-prosecution agreement with the late sex offender struck by federal prosecutors in Florida in 2008 should have barred any of his co-conspirators from prosecution as well.
-
Donald Trump said that he did indeed bar Epstein from his Mar-a-Lago club for “inappropriate” behavior. But the president explained that what was inappropriate was not, as his aides have suggested, doing something lewd or illegal, but hiring away staff from the club.
-
An Israeli settler who was sanctioned by Joe Biden as a violent extremist, but removed from the sanctions list by Trump, was arrested in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Monday after the fatal shooting of a Palestinian activist. The Palestinian man who was killed was denied entry to the United States last month when he arrived in San Francisco for a series of planned talks sponsored by faith groups, including a progressive Jewish synagogue.
-
The US justice department filed a misconduct complaint against a federal judge who has clashed with the administration over deportations to a notorious prison in El Salvador over private comments first reported by a far-right publication.
Key events
Joseph Gedeon
Twenty-one Senate Democrats are demanding Donald Trump immediately cut funding to a controversial Gaza aid organization they say has resulted in the killings of more than 700 civilians seeking food and violated decades of humanitarian law.
The letter, led by senators Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Peter Welch of Vermont, comes as international criticism mounts over the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s operations, arguing that its model “shatters well-established norms that have governed distribution of humanitarian aid since the ratification of the Geneva conventions in 1949” by blurring the lines between aid delivery and military security operations.
“According to reports and eyewitness accounts, civilians have been fired at by tanks, drones, and helicopters, as well as soldiers on the ground, as they attempt to get food and humanitarian supplies,” the senators wrote.
The Trump administration authorized a $30m grant to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in late June, with $7m already disbursed according to documents seen by the Guardian. The organization, which is backed by both Israeli and US interests, has been given preferential access to operate in Gaza through coordination with the Israeli military and private US security contractors.
However, the rollout of the new scheme has been marked by death and destruction from the outset. Jake Wood, the founding executive director and former US marine, resigned on 25 May, saying: “It is not possible to implement this plan while also strictly adhering to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence, which I will not abandon.”
Boston Consulting Group, the US firm handling some of the foundation’s logistics, also withdrew shortly after.
Joseph Gedeon
The US Department of Justice is facing a federal lawsuit for refusing to release a legal memorandum that reportedly cleared the way for Donald Trump’s acceptance of a $400m luxury aircraft from Qatar’s government.
The Freedom of the Press Foundation, represented by the watchdog group American Oversight, filed the Freedom of Information Act (Foia) lawsuit in Washington DC’s federal district court after the justice department failed to produce the document despite granting expedited processing more than two months ago.
The president’s “deal to take a $400m luxury jet from a foreign government deserves full public scrutiny – not a stiff-arm from the Department of Justice”, American Oversight’s executive director, Chioma Chukwu, said in a press release. “This is precisely the kind of corrupt arrangement that public records laws are designed to expose.”
The case revisits Trump’s decision to accept the extravagant foreign gift: a luxury Boeing 747-8 jetliner dubbed a “palace in the sky”. Before the president’s frustrated base would start to call for the release of all Jeffrey Epstein files, followed by renewed scrutiny of the convicted sex offender’s friendship with Trump, what came to be known as “Qatar-gate” was one of the first symbols of the new administration that even stalwart Trump allies shook their heads at when the deal first emerged in May.
At the time, the US senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, warned the aircraft “poses significant espionage and surveillance problems”. The senator Shelley Moore Capito, a West Virginia Republican, said she would “be checking for bugs”. Former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, also a Republican, called accepting foreign gifts “never a good practice” that “threatens intelligence and national security”.
The Democratic US House member Ritchie Torres called it a “flying grift” that violated the constitution’s emoluments clause prohibiting federal officials from accepting valuable foreign presents without congressional approval.
The justice department filed a misconduct complaint on Monday against US district court chief judge James Boasberg, a prominent Washington, DC, judge who has drawn president Donald Trump’s ire, US attorney general Pam Bondi said on X.
Boasberg said in April that the Trump administration appeared to have acted “in bad faith” when it hurriedly assembled three deportation flights on 15 March at the same time that he was conducting emergency court proceedings to assess the legality of the effort.
“Today at my direction, @TheJusticeDept filed a misconduct complaint against U.S. District Court Chief Judge James Boasberg for making improper public comments about President Trump and his Administration,” Bondi said, without specifying which comments was she referring to.
Donald Trump has said he is “working together” with Israel “to try and get things straightened out” in Gaza amid warnings of severe mass starvation in the enclave.
After opening his new golf course in Menie, Aberdeenshire, a reporter from the crowd asked the US president “what will you say next to Benjamin Netanyahu”, the prime minister of Israel.
“We’re working together to try and get things straightened out,” Trump said.
Earlier during his speech at the course, the US leader said he would fly back to the Washington to “put out fires all over the world”.
US government probes Duke University in latest federal funding threat
President Donald Trump’s administration has initiated a probe into Duke University and the Duke Law Journal over allegations of race-related discrimination, making it the latest American university to face the threat of cuts to federal funding.
The government said on Monday it will probe whether the Duke Law Journal’s selection of its editors gives preferences to candidates from minority communities.
“This investigation is based on recent reporting alleging that Duke University discriminates on the bases of race, color, and/or national origin by using these factors to select law journal members,” the Education Department said in a statement.
US education secretary Linda McMahon and health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr sent a letter to the university’s leadership alleging what the government called “the use of race preferences in Duke’s hiring, admissions, and scholarship decisions.”
The letter urged the university to review its policies and create a panel “with delegated authority from Duke’s Board of Trustees to enable Duke and the federal government to move quickly toward a mutual resolution of Duke’s alleged civil rights violations.” Duke had no immediate comment, Reuters reported.
Rights advocates have raised free speech and academic freedom concerns over the Trump administration’s attempted crackdown against universities.
Ed Pilkington
Donald Trump’s strategy of imposing sweeping tariffs on America’s main trading partners will face a major test in the US courts on Thursday, four days after the president hailed the “powerful deal” reached with the EU and just hours before a new round of punishing import duties is set to come into effect.
Trump has underpinned his tariff policy with an emergency power that is now being challenged as unlawful in the federal courts. On Thursday the US court of appeals for the federal circuit will hear oral arguments in the case, VOS Selections v Trump.
A group of small business owners are suing the US president on grounds that he lacks legal authority from Congress to impose severe tariffs that could damage their bottom line. The Trump administration has invoked a 1977 law, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), claiming that various national emergencies – including US trade deficits with trading partners and the scourge of fentanyl trafficking – demand urgent action.
But the plaintiffs have countered that the IEEPA does not give the president the power to impose tariffs, and has never been used in such a way in its almost half a century on the statute books.
The case has the potential to derail Trump’s most significant tariff deals and negotiations, which he has made a centrepiece of his second presidency. Given how much is riding on it, the suit is likely eventually to be settled by the US supreme court under its current 6-3 supermajority of hard-right justices.
In the short term, the challenge under the IEEPA looms as a black cloud over Trump’s desire to claim victory on the tariff front, as his controversial strategy of slapping hefty import duties on major trading partners continues to roil global trade and markets. On Sunday, Trump struck a deal at his golf club in Scotland with the European Commission chief, Ursula von der Leyen, that will see 15% import tariffs on most EU goods entering the US.
Then on Friday, a day after the appeals court hears oral arguments, Trump’s latest round of potentially destabilizing import duties is set to kick in. The targeted countries include some of the biggest suppliers of US imports, including Canada and Mexico.
George Chidi
Donald Trump’s timeline for a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine has sped up, the president said while visiting Nato ally Great Britain on Monday.
“I’m going to make a new deadline of about 10, 10 or 12 days from today,” Trump said in response to a question while sitting with the British prime minister, Keir Starmer.
“There’s no reason in waiting. There’s no reason in waiting. It’s 50 days. I want to be generous, but we just don’t see any progress being made.”
Russian and Ukrainian diplomats met in Istanbul last week, agreeing on little more than a prisoner exchange. Ukraine proposed a summit by the end of August between the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, but Russia’s reply was that such a meeting would only be appropriate if it were to sign an agreement.
The meeting was the third negotiation in Istanbul. Putin has not attended any of the talks, despite Trump’s exhortations.
Carter Sherman
The Trump administration must continue reimbursing Planned Parenthood clinics for Medicaid-funded services, a federal judge ruled on Monday, in an escalating legal war between the reproductive health giant and the White House over Republican efforts to “defund” Planned Parenthood.
Days after Donald Trump signed his sweeping tax bill, Planned Parenthood sued over a provision in the bill that ended Medicaid payments for one year to abortion providers that received more than $800,000 from Medicaid in 2023, such as Planned Parenthood.
The new court order, from US district judge Indira Talwani in Boston, will protect Medicaid funding for all Planned Parenthood clinics nationwide while litigation in the case continues.
The order also replaces and expands a previous edict handed down by Talwani, which initially granted a preliminary injunction specifically blocking the government from cutting Medicaid payments only to Planned Parenthood affiliates that did not provide abortions or did not receive at least $800,000 in Medicaid reimbursements in a given year.
“Patients are likely to suffer adverse health consequences where care is disrupted or unavailable,” Talwani wrote in her Monday order.
“In particular, restricting members’ ability to provide healthcare services threatens an increase in unintended pregnancies and attendant complications because of reduced access to effective contraceptives, and an increase in undiagnosed and untreated STIs.”
More than 80 million people rely on Medicaid, the US government’s insurance program for low-income people.
It is already illegal to use Medicaid to pay for most abortions, but Planned Parenthood clinics – which treat a disproportionate number of people who use Medicaid – rely on the program to reimburse it for services such as birth control, STI tests and cancer screenings.
President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he was not seeking a summit with Chinese president Xi Jinping, but added that he may visit China at Xi’s invitation, which Trump said had been extended.
“I may go to China, but it would only be at the invitation of President Xi, which has been extended. Otherwise, no interest!,” Trump said on Truth Social.
Aides to Trump and Xi have discussed a potential meeting between the leaders during a trip by the US president to Asia later this year, sources previously told Reuters.
North Korea said on Tuesday the United States must accept that reality has changed since the countries’ summit meetings in the past, and no future dialogue would end its nuclear program, state media KCNA reported.
Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un who is believed to speak for her brother, said she conceded that the personal relationship between Kim and US president Donald Trump “is not bad.”
But if Washington intended to use a personal relationship as a way to end the North’s nuclear weapons program, the effort would only be the subject of “mockery,” Kim Yo Jong said in a statement carried by KCNA.
“If the US fails to accept the changed reality and persists in the failed past, the DPRK-US meeting will remain as a ‘hope’ of the US side,” she said, referring to North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
North Korea’s capabilities as a nuclear weapons state and the geopolitical environment have radically changed since Kim and Trump held talks three times during the US president’s first term, she said.
“Any attempt to deny the position of the DPRK as a nuclear weapons state … will be thoroughly rejected,” she said.
US-China trade talks resume for second day in Stockholm
Top US and Chinese economic officials arrived on Tuesday at the venue where they are conducting their latest bilateral round of trade negotiations, this time held in Stockholm, after previous rounds in London and Geneva.
Japan’s top trade negotiator, Ryosei Akazawa, said on Tuesday the trade agreement with the US guaranteed Japan would always get the lowest tariff rate on chips and pharmaceuticals out of all the pacts negotiated by Washington.
“If a third country agrees with the United States on lower rates on chips and pharmaceuticals, the same rates would be applied to Japan,” he told a news conference.
Donald Trump has arrived at the opening ceremony for his new golf course in Aberdeenshire, arriving to the tune of bagpipes at the event at his course in Menie.
He thanked his son Eric, who he said had “worked so hard” on creating the New Course at the resort.
The president also thanked John Swinney, who was among the assembled audience.
Eric Trump had earlier said he and the Trump International team had created an “amazing masterpiece” at the New Course.
Diana Ramirez-Simon
US House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries expressed his concern over the “horrific shooting”, and said he was “praying hard” for the NYPD officer.
“May God watch over our city during this challenging moment,” Jeffries wrote in a post.
A large police presence converged on the area around the tower, according to Reuters journalists near the scene.
“I just saw a lot of commotion and cops and people screaming,” said Russ McGee, a 31-year-old sports bettor who was working out in a gym adjacent to the skyscraper, told Reuters in an interview near the scene.
The office building at 345 Park Avenue occupies an entire city block and houses the corporate offices for the National Football League and the headquarters of investment firm Blackstone. It also holds offices for JP Morgan Chase.
According to an ESPN reporter, Jeff Darlington, an NFL security alert was sent to employees: “Do not exit the building. Secure your location and hide until law enforcement clears your floor. Please switch phones to silent.”
This shooting is the 254th mass shooting in the US this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that tracks gun-related violence, who defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people, excluding the shooter, are killed or injured by firearms.
President Donald Trump has met with the Scottish first minister John Swinney at his Aberdeenshire golf club.
The president is opening a second course at his Menie Estate property on Tuesday and it is understood the first minister met with Trump shortly before the ceremony.
The leaders spoke for around 15 minutes, before posing together for pictures in front of a US flag and the saltire of Scotland ahead of the opening of a second course at the president’s golf club in Aberdeenshire.
Swinney has previously said he would push the president on an exemption to tariffs for Scotch whisky and raise the situation in Gaza, which also came up in the meeting between Trump and prime minister Keir Starmer on Monday.
Meanwhile, Trump was spotted on the driving range of his golf club during a delay in the opening ceremony for a new course.
Trump could be seen hitting shots from the driving range just yards where the first tee of the new course, where he is expected to be the first to tee off.
Trump caps his Scottish visit by opening a new golf course
President Donald Trump is opening a new golf course bearing his name in Scotland on Tuesday, capping a five-day foreign trip designed around promoting his family’s luxury properties and playing golf.
Trump and his sons, Eric and Donald Jr, are cutting the ceremonial ribbon and playing the first-ever round at the new Trump course in the village of Balmedie, on the northern coast of Scotland, AP reported.
The overseas jaunt let Trump escape Washington’s sweaty summer humidity and the still-raging scandal over the case of Jeffrey Epstein.
It was mostly built around golf – and walking the new course before it officially begins offering rounds to the public on 13 August, adding to a lengthy list of ways Trump has used the White House to promote his brand.
Billing itself the “Greatest 36 Holes in Golf,” the Trump International Golf Links, Scotland, was designed by Eric Trump. The course is hosting a PGA Seniors Championship event later this week, after Trump leaves.
Signs promoting the event had already been erected all over the course before he arrived on Tuesday, and, on the highway leading in, temporary metal signs guided drivers on to the correct road.
Golfers hitting the course at dawn as part of that event had to put their clubs through metal detectors erected as part of the security sweeps ahead of Trump’s arrival.
Several dozen people, some dressed for golf, including wearing golf shoes, had filled the sand trap near the tee box to watch the ribbon-cutting ceremony shortly before it was scheduled to start.
Another group of people were watching from the other side in tall grass growing on sand dunes flanking the first hole.
Gunman kills four people in shooting at Manhattan skyscraper
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. My name is Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news over the next few hours.
We start with the news that a gunman killed four people at a Manhattan skyscraper that houses the headquarters of the NFL and the offices of several major financial firms before turning the gun on himself, New York officials have said.
An NYPD officer identified as Didarul Islam, an immigrant from Bangladesh and a father of two whose wife is pregnant, was among those killed. He was working off-hours as a security guard at the time, New York mayor Eric Adams told reporters, describing him as a “true blue hero”.
Authorities offered few details about the three other victims killed by the suspect – two men and a woman. A third male was gravely wounded by the gunfire and was “fighting for his life” in a nearby hospital, the mayor said.
Jessica Tisch, the New York City police commissioner, confirmed that “the lone shooter has been neutralized”. New York police also said the shooter acted alone and was dead.
Tisch said the gunman, identified as Shane Tamura, a 27-year-old Las Vegas resident with a history of mental illness, had driven cross-country to New York in recent days.
The shooting spree in the evening rush hour began in the lobby of the Park Avenue tower in Midtown Manhattan. Tisch said that surveillance videos showed the gunman exiting a double-parked Black BMW between 51st and 52nd street on Park Avenue.
Read our full report here:
In other developments this morning:
-
Ghislaine Maxwell asked the supreme court to overturn her conviction for taking part in and facilitating Jeffrey Epstein’s sex crimes, arguing that a non-prosecution agreement with the late sex offender struck by federal prosecutors in Florida in 2008 should have barred any of his co-conspirators from prosecution as well.
-
Donald Trump said that he did indeed bar Epstein from his Mar-a-Lago club for “inappropriate” behavior. But the president explained that what was inappropriate was not, as his aides have suggested, doing something lewd or illegal, but hiring away staff from the club.
-
An Israeli settler who was sanctioned by Joe Biden as a violent extremist, but removed from the sanctions list by Trump, was arrested in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Monday after the fatal shooting of a Palestinian activist. The Palestinian man who was killed was denied entry to the United States last month when he arrived in San Francisco for a series of planned talks sponsored by faith groups, including a progressive Jewish synagogue.
-
The US justice department filed a misconduct complaint against a federal judge who has clashed with the administration over deportations to a notorious prison in El Salvador over private comments first reported by a far-right publication.
