Trump tries to move on amid Epstein files backlash as speaker calls for their release – US politics live

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Vice-president JD Vance on Wednesday will head to the swing political turf of northeastern Pennsylvania to begin selling president Donald Trump’s sweeping budget-and-policy package in a working-class district that could see a ferocious congressional campaign next year.

Vance, whose tiebreaking vote got the bill through the Senate, has promoted the bill’s passage as another example of the Trump administration’s mantra of “promises made, promises kept” and a measure that will cut taxes, increase take-home pay for American families and strengthen border security, AP reports.

The historic legislation, which Trump signed into law earlier this month with near unanimous Republican support, includes key campaign pledges like no tax on tips but also cuts Medicaid and food stamps by $1.2 trillion.

Democrats have vowed to make the law a major issue in the midterm elections and recently held a town hall in House speaker Mike Johnson’s home state of Louisiana to denounce the legislation as a “reverse Robin Hood — stealing from the poor to give to the rich.”

The battle for control of the messaging on the bill could be critical to how well the measure is ultimately received, as some of the most divisive parts of the law, including Medicaid and food assistance cuts, are timed to take effect only after the midterm elections.

The bill was generally unpopular before its passage, polls showed, although some individual provisions are popular, like boosting the annual child tax credit and eliminating taxes on tips.

Adelita Grijalva won the Democratic House primary in Arizona to succeed her father, beating a young social media activist in a closely watched election seen as a test of the party’s generational divide.

Raúl Grijalva, a longtime congressman in southern Arizona, died from cancer earlier this year and left a vacancy in the state’s seventh district. The younger Grijalva, a 54-year-old who served for 20 years on a Tucson school board, has been a Pima county supervisor since 2020.

Grijalva, a progressive, has said upholding democracy, standing up for immigrant rights and protecting access to Medicaid and Medicare are among her top priorities.

“This is a victory not for me, but for our community and the progressive movement my dad started in Southern Arizona more than 50 years ago,” Grijalva said in a statement.

She faced an insurgent challenger in Deja Foxx, a 25-year-old social media influencer and activist whose campaign focused on her personal story of using the kinds of government programs the Trump administration has attacked. Foxx also called out Grijalva for her “legacy last name” and said political roles shouldn’t be inherited.

The district, which includes parts of Tucson and Arizona’s borderlands, is strongly blue, meaning the winner of the primary is the likely victor of the general. But three Republicans ran in their party’s primary; Daniel Butierez will face Adelita Grijalva in the general on 23 September.

Trump to meet Qatar's PM to discuss Gaza ceasefire deal, Axios reports

President Donald Trump will meet with Qatar’s prime minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani on Wednesday to discuss negotiations over a Gaza ceasefire deal, Axios reporter Barak Ravid posted on X.

Israeli and Hamas negotiators have been taking part in the latest round of ceasefire talks in Doha since 6 July, discussing a US-backed proposal for a 60-day ceasefire that envisages a phased release of hostages, Israeli troop withdrawals from parts of Gaza and discussions on ending the conflict.

Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff had said on Sunday that he was “hopeful” on the ceasefire negotiations underway in Qatar, a key mediator between the two sides.

US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators have been working to secure an agreement, however, Israel and Hamas are divided over the extent of an eventual Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian enclave.

Trump threatens to impose drug and chip tariffs as soon as 1 August

Donald Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on pharmaceutical products and semiconductors as soon as 1 August, the latest deadline for the introduction of his “reciprocal” levies on individual countries.

The US president told reporters late on Tuesday the taxes on drug imports could be announced “probably at the end of the month, and we’re going to start off with a low tariff and give the pharmaceutical companies a year or so to build, and then we’re going to make it a very high tariff”.

He added he had a similar timeline for imposing levies on semiconductors, as he believed it was “less complicated” to implement tariffs on the chips required by all electronic devices, but did not provide further details.

Earlier in the month, Trump told a meeting of his cabinet that he expected to raise tariffs on pharmaceuticals as high as 200%, once he had given drug companies a year to a year and a half to bring their manufacturing to the US. He also threatened a 50% tariff on imported copper in an effort to increase US production of the metal.

The Trump administration began investigations in April into imports of pharmaceuticals and semiconductors into the US under section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, as part of an attempt to impose tariffs on both sectors on national security grounds.

US sends migrants to Eswatini after ban lifted on third-country deportations

A flight carrying immigrants deported from the US has landed in Eswatini, the homeland security department announced, in a move that follows the supreme court lifting limits on deporting migrants to third countries.

In a post online, Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin named five deportees from Vietnam, Jamaica, Laos, Cuba and Yemen and said they were convicted of crimes ranging from child rape to murder.

“A safe third country deportation flight to Eswatini in Southern Africa has landed. This flight took individuals so uniquely barbaric that their home countries refused to take them back,” McLaughlin said late on Tuesday.

In late June, the US supreme court cleared the way for president Donald Trump’s administration to resume deporting migrants to countries other than their own without offering them a chance to show the harms they could face. The decision handed the government a win in its aggressive pursuit of mass deportations.

On 4 July, the US completed deportation of eight other migrants to conflict-plagued South Sudan. The men had been put on a flight in May bound for South Sudan, which was diverted to a base in Djibouti, where they had been held in a converted shipping container.

US House speaker Mike Johnson calls for release of Epstein files amid backlash

Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of US politics as the furore over the Epstein files continues to grip the country with the unusual public spectacle of normally-loyal House speaker Mike Johnson breaking with Donald Trump with his calls to make the files public.

It was a rare moment of friction between Trump and the speaker, a top ally on Capitol Hill, and came as the president faces growing backlash from conservatives who had expected him to make public everything known about Epstein, who killed himself in 2019 while in federal custody as he faced sex-trafficking charges.

Read the full story here:

The president has continued with his efforts to move from the issue, last night attempting to both downplay it and deflect it on to his opponents.

Stay with us for all today’s developments. In other news:

• Vice-president JD Vance on Wednesday will head to the swing political turf of northeastern Pennsylvania to begin selling president Donald Trump’s sweeping budget-and-policy package in a working-class district that could see a ferocious congressional campaign next year.

• Adelita Grijalva won the Democratic House primary in Arizona to succeed her father, beating a young social media activist in a closely watched election seen as a test of the party’s generational divide.

• Asked by a reporter if that would be grounds for getting rid of Fed chairman Jerome Powell, Trump answered affirmatively. “I think it sort of is, because if you look at his testimony ... he’s not talking about the problem,” Trump said. “It’s a big problem.” Trump has repeatedly demanded that Powell cut the short-term interest rate that the central bank controls, in part because the president believes it will lower the government’s borrowing costs.

• The Trump administration decided to withdraw half of the 4,000 national guard troops it dispatched to Los Angeles chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell confirmed to the Guardian.

• A flight carrying immigrants deported from the US has landed in Eswatini, the homeland security department announced, in a move that follows the supreme court lifting limits on deporting migrants to third countries.

• In a rambling set of remarks at an AI and energy investment summit, Trump veered wildly off-topic to praise two partisan, conservative reporters in attendance and made false claims about China having just one wind farm and about his uncle having once taught Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber.

• Mike Waltz, who was ousted as national security adviser after mistakenly adding a journalist to a group chat on Signal about strikes on Yemen, had his confirmation hearing to become UN ambassador.

• The US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, asked Israel to “aggressively” investigate the murder of a Palestinian American citizen who was beaten to death by Israeli settlers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.