Trump accuses NYT of being ‘mouthpiece’ for Democratic party as he announces defamation action — US politics live | New York Times

Carter Sherman

The Trump administration’s shakeup of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has forced Mississippi to stop gathering critical data on women’s experiences before, during and after pregnancy – even as the state recently declared a public health emergency over its surging infant mortality rate.

Mississippi has suspended data collection for Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (Prams), a national database that has been integral to policymaking on maternal and infant health for nearly four decades, the Guardian has learned.

Prams functions as a partnership between state-level health officials and a little-known but influential CDC agency called the Division of Reproductive Health, which has lost most of its staff – nearly 100 people – in the Trump administration’s purges of federal workers, according to records in a lawsuit filed by several Democratic-led states over the purges.

As a result, many of the division’s projects, including Prams, have sputtered to a halt, the lawsuit alleges.

The division will likely be unable to obtain accurate nationwide data on maternal and infant health in 2024, 2025 and 2026, an unnamed CDC staffer said in one declaration included in the lawsuit.

Researchers rely on Prams data to test out potential health interventions to improve maternal and child health, while states use it to make the case for federal funding for programs that aim to reduce infant deaths, improve care for women and help children with special needs.

The changes at the division forced Mississippi to terminate its 2024 Prams data collection and has delayed its 2025 collection, a Mississippi health department spokesperson said in an email. The spokesperson also attributed the work stoppage to “a federal directive” issued in January, but did not answer follow-up questions about the nature of that directive. In the meantime, the spokesperson said, the department is at work analyzing its existing Prams data.

Lauren Gambino

Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order that would send national guard troops into Memphis, in a “replica” of the administration’s expanding military-led response to urban crime in Democratic-run cities.

The move was welcome by Tennessee’s Republican governor, Bill Lee, who stood behind Trump in the Oval Office as he signed a presidential memo establishing a Memphis Safe Task Force.

“We’re going to fix that just like we did Washington,” Trump said.

Announcing the taskforce in an Oval Office meeting, Trump said the troops would work alongside federal authorities from various agencies, including the FBI; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; the Drug Enforcement Administration; Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice); the US Marshall’s service and the Department of Justice. In his remarks on Monday, the president cited a slew of crime statistics and vowed to end the “savagery” and to “make Memphis safe again”.

Lee thanked the president for the deployment. “I’m tired of crime holding the great city of Memphis back,” the governor said.

Trump told Lee that the crime-fighting crackdown “will be your proudest moment” and predicted that crime in the city would “plummet” within weeks.

Trump was also joined at the Oval Office signing by the state’s Republican senators, Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty.

Trump deployed national guard troops to Washington last month and federalized the city’s police force to “crack down” on crime in the nation’s capitol. Violent crime was already at a 30-year low in the city.

In response to a question about why he did not order flags lowered to half-staff to honor Melissa Hortman, the Democratic speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives who was assassinated alongside her husband this summer, Donald Trump initially said he was “not familiar” with the case.

The question came up during a briefing in the Oval Office on Monday, in light of the president’s order last week to lower flags in response to the killing of rightwing activist Charlie Kirk.

Trump was pressed on why he and Republicans continued cast blame the left for a rise in political violence when elected officials and activists from both parties have been targets.

The exchange began when the reporter asked about the tributes paid by the White House to Kirk, the founder of the conservative youth activist group Turning Point USA and a close ally of the president and his family.

“Do you think it would have been fitting to lower the flags to half-staff when Melissa Hortman, the Minnesota house speaker, was gunned down by an assassin as well?” asked Nancy Cordes, the chief White House correspondent for CBS News.

“I’m not familiar. The who?” Trump replied, leaning in across the Resolute Desk.

“The Minnesota house speaker, a Democrat, who was assassinated this summer,” she said.

“Oh,” Trump replied. “Well, if the governor had asked me to do that, I would have done that.”

JD Vance threatens crackdown on ‘far-left’ groups after Charlie Kirk shooting

Rachel Leingang

JD Vance has assailed what he called the “far left” and its increased tolerance for violence while guest-hosting Charlie Kirk’s podcast on Monday, saying the administration would be working to dismantle groups who celebrate Kirk’s death and political violence against their opponents.

Vance, hosting the podcast from his office next to the White House, spoke to high-profile members of the Trump administration and some of Kirk’s long-time friends in the movement, including Tucker Carlson and Trump adviser Stephen Miller.

Vance said the administration would “work to dismantle the institutions that promote violence and terrorism in our own country”.

The administration would be working to do that in the coming months and would “explore every option to bring real unity to our country and stop those who would kill their fellow Americans because they don’t like what they say”, Vance said.

The political leanings of the shooter who killed Kirk are not yet clear. Bullet casings found with the shooter’s gun were inscribed with references to video games and online culture. Still, prominent figures on the right – before a shooter was apprehended – declared war on the left, claiming it was responsible for Kirk’s death.

There is no evidence of a network supporting the shooter, and Miller did not provide substantiation of his claims that there is a “vast domestic terror movement” at play.

Miller also detailed how the administration would use the federal government to achieve this goal.

“With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, [Department of] Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks,” Miller said, adding that they would do this “in Charlie’s name”.

Good morning and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.

We start with news that Donald Trump has filed a $15bn defamation lawsuit against the New York Times in his latest use of legal action targeting a major media outlet.

The US president accused it of being a “mouthpiece” for the Democratic party and of “spreading false and defamatory content” about him.

It comes after the New York Times said last week that it had been threatened with legal action by the White House, following articles about a crude birthday note given to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The note bears Trump’s signature, but the president has denied being its author.

In July he launched legal action against another big US paper, the Wall Street Journal, and its proprietor Rupert Murdoch, after it first reported the existence of the note, which also featured a lewd drawing. It has since been published, but Trump continues to deny being its author.

The filing against the NYT, the latest demonstration of the president’s willingness to use legal action against the media, was made by Trump’s lawyers to a district court in Florida on Monday night.

It names several articles and one book written by two of the publication’s journalists and published in the lead-up to the 2024 election.

“The Times has betrayed the journalistic ideals of honesty, objectivity, and accuracy that it once professed,” it states, also accusing the NYT of being “a leading, and unapologetic, purveyor of falsehoods against President Trump”.

The NYT has not yet responded.

Read the full story here:

In other developments:

• Donald Trump announced he will deploy the national guard to Memphis during an Oval Office ceremony attended by the Tennessee governor Bill Lee. He added that he is considering sending national guard troops to “Chicago probably next” and floated cities such as St Louis may follow.

• A US appeals court ruled that Lisa Cook can remain on the Federal Reserve board, denying Trump’s attempt to remove Cook from the body ahead of a policy meeting scheduled later today. Trump will likely appeal the ruling to the supreme court. Meanwhile, Reuters reported that the city of Ann Arbor, Michigan, has “no reason to believe” that Cook broke any tax rules involving a home she declared her primary residence.

• The Senate voted to approve Stephen Miran to the Federal Reserve board in a narrow 48-47 vote largely along party lines. Miran, a Trump ally, currently serves as the White House’s chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. The vote comes just as the Fed is scheduled to gather for a two-day policy meeting where it is expected to vote on cutting interest rates.

• JD Vance guest-hosted the late Charlie Kirk’s podcast yesterday live from his office in the White House complex. Vance was joined by key conservative voices, and members of the Trump administration, including Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of policy and architect of the administration’s hardline immigration policy, press secretary Karoline Leavitt, chief of staff Susie Wiles and health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr.

• Marco Rubio met Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem today. Rubio will travel to Qatar today.

• Trump announced that the US military had conducted a strike on a second Venezuelan boat which he said was transporting narcotics. Trump said three men had been killed in the strike and that no US forces were harmed. Democratic lawmakers called for investigations into the legality of the strikes.