Donald Trump Jr says ‘maybe one day’ when asked if he would ever run for president – US politics live

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Kremlin says Russia and US should resume strategic stability contacts

The Kremlin said on Wednesday that the course of events meant that Russia and the United States should resume contacts about strategic stability.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that US plans for the launch of the ‘Golden Dome’ anti-missile system was a sovereign matter for the United States, Reuters reports.

“This is a sovereign matter for the United States. If the United States believes that there is a missile threat, then of course it will develop a missile defence system,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said, adding the plan would require resuming nuclear talks with Washington.

China 'seriously concerned' over US Golden Dome defence system

China is concerned about a US project to build the Golden Dome missile defence shield and urged Washington to abandon its development and deployment, a foreign ministry spokesperson said on Wednesday.

US president Donald Trump said on Tuesday he had selected a design for the project and named a Space Force general to head the ambitious program aimed at blocking threats from China and Russia, Reuters reported.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning, when asked about the project at a regular press conference, said it carries “strong offensive implications” and heightens the risks of the militarisation of outer space and an arms race.

“The United States, in pursuing a ‘US-first’ policy, is obsessed with seeking absolute security for itself. This violates the principle that the security of all countries should not be compromised and undermines global strategic balance and stability. China is seriously concerned about this,” Mao said.

She urged Washington to abandon the development of the system as soon as possible and take actions to enhance trust among major powers.

Trump rolls out Golden Dome missile defense project and appoints leader

Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that his administration will move forward with developing the so-called “Golden Dome” missile defense system that he envisions will protect the United States from possible foreign strikes using ground and space-based weapons.

Flanked by the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, in the Oval Office, Trump also said that he wanted the project to be operational before he left office. He added that Republicans had agreed to allocate $25bn in initial funding and Canada had expressed an interest in taking part.

“Once fully constructed, the Golden Dome will be capable of intercepting missiles even if they are launched from other sides of the world, and even if they are launched from space,” Trump said, “forever ending the missile threat to the American homeland.”

What exactly the Golden Dome will look like remains unclear. Trump has not yet decided which of three options proposed by the defense department he wants to pursue. Pentagon officials recently drafted three proposals – small, medium and large – for Trump to consider.

The proposals all broadly combine ground-based missile interceptors currently used by the US military with more ambitious and hi-tech systems to build a space-based defense program.

The option that Trump chooses will determine its timeline and cost. The $25bn coming from Republicans’ budget bill is only set to cover initial development costs. The final price tag could exceed $540bn over the next two decades, according to the congressional budget office.

Donald Trump Jr on running for president: "that calling is there"

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

Let’s start with the news that president Donald Trump‘s eldest son Donald Trump Jr said in Qatar on Wednesday that he could maybe run for president one day, adding “that calling is there.”

“So the answer is I don’t know, maybe one day. You know, that calling is there. I’ll always be very active in terms of being a vocal proponent of these things. I think my father has truly changed the Republican Party,” he said, speaking at the Qatar Economic Forum.

When asked by the panel moderator if he would run and “pick up the reins” after his father leaves office, his initial reaction was: “Here we go. Well … oh boy,” to faint applause from the audience, adding, “it’s an honour to be asked and an honour to see that some people are OK with it.”

Speaking alongside 1789 Capital founder Omeed Malik, Trump, 47, joked that the people clapping were “the couple of people we know”.

In other news:

• The Trump administration said it will permit use of Covid vaccines by adults over 65 and those with certain medical conditions in the fall, raising questions about whether some people who want a vaccine will be able to get one. The FDA framework, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, urges companies to conduct large, lengthy studies before tweaked vaccines can be approved for healthier people.

• A federal judge said that the Trump administration appeared to have violated his April court order by deporting a Burmese immigrant to South Sudan without giving him sufficient time to contest the removal, especially given the risk of being sent to a country that is not his own. Judge Brian E Murphy in Boston made the remarks during a hearing in Federal District Court after immigration attorneys raised alarm that at least one other immigrant may also have been deported to South Sudan without due process.

• Defense secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered a “comprehensive review” of the United States’ chaotic military withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, an evacuation operation in which 13 US service members and 150 Afghans were killed at Kabul’s airport in an Islamic State bombing. It was unclear how Hegseth’s review would differ from the many previous reviews that have been carried out – including by the US military, the state department and even Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans in the House of Representatives.

• The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, told the Senate foreign relations committee that the number of visas he has revoked was “probably in the thousands”, adding that he believed there was still more to do. “I don’t know the latest count, but we probably have more to do. A visa is not a right, it’s a privilege.”

• The Department of Homeland Security secretary, Kristi Noem, couldn’t correctly state what habeas corpus is when pressed to define the concept by the Democratic US senator Maggie Hassan. Asked what habeas corpus is, Noem claimed it’s “a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country and suspend their right to –”.

• A group of fired federal workers held a sit-in on the House-side steps of the US Capitol in an effort to pressure members of Congress to do more to reign in Doge’s “harmful and illegal cuts to federal programs”. According to the Fork Off Coalition, the group includes “federal employees illegally terminated by Doge; contractors on cancelled federal contracts; and other workers harmed by Doge”.

• Donald Trump defended the justice department’s decision to charge the Democratic representative LaMonica McIver of New Jersey for allegedly assaulting law enforcement officers earlier this month. McIver faces a felony assault charge over a physical confrontation with Ice officials outside an immigrant detention facility in New Jersey.