Trump says he will sign order targeting mail-in ballots and voting machines ahead of 2026 midterm elections – live | Trump administration

The president has just posted on Truth Social ahead of today’s meetings with Volodymyr Zelenskyy and a key group of European leaders at the White House. In his post, he raged against the “fake news”, saying they wouldn’t credit him even if he got Russia to “surrender”.

Here’s his post in full:

I am totally convinced that if Russia raised their hands and said, ‘We give up, we concede, we surrender, we will GIVE Ukraine and the great United States of America, the most revered, respected, and powerful of all countries, EVER, Moscow and St. Petersburg, and everything surrounding them for a thousand miles, the Fake News Media and their Democrat Partners would say that this was a bad and humiliating day for Donald J. Trump, one of the worst days in the history of our Country.’ But that’s why they are the FAKE NEWS, and the badly failing Radical Left Democrats. Thank you for your attention to this matter!!!

My colleague, Jakub Krupa, is covering the lead-up to these crucial meetings in detail.

Donald Trump said on Monday that he will lead a movement to get rid of mail-in ballots, but as president, there’s little he can legally do to take on the practice.

The US constitution gives states the power to regulate the “The Times, Places and Manner” of federal elections. Congress can override those rules by passing federal laws. The constitution gives the president no power in setting federal elections standards and courts have already blocked a March executive order seeking to unilaterally change election practices.

Perhaps previewing a legal argument, Trump said on Truth Social on Monday “the States are merely an “agent” for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes.” That is not what the constitution says and is not an interpretation of the law that courts have ever endorsed.

Trump also suggested on Monday he would end the use of voting machines, but offered few details about what the alternative would be. He said he would replace them with “watermarked paper.” Several localities in the US have tried using hand counts to verify ballot totals, but have found them to be costly, take more time, and less accurate than using voting tabulators. Nearly all of the ballots cast in the 2024 election were cast on paper.

As California plans to fight back against Texas’ efforts to redraw their maps, Democrats who left the Lone Start state to break quorum in protest are now returning home from various blue states, according to various reports.

Chicago’s ABC station noted that several Democratic lawmakers were at O’Hare airport today heading back to the Texas state capitol.

The Texas House is set to reconvene and attempt to achieve quorum at 12pm CT today. The state’s governor, Greg Abbott, immediately called a second special session on Friday, saying that House Democrats were “delinquent” and that he will “continue to use all necessary tools to ensure Texas delivers results for Texans”.

It’s currently unclear though whether all returning Democrats plan to return to the House floor today – although they would only need a small number to achieve quorum (95 of the 100 representatives required were present last week).

Meanwhile, over the weekend, a Texas judge barred former congressman Beto O’Rourke and his political organization from sending money out of the state after it fundraised for the Democratic state lawmakers who left Texas.

Washington DC restaurants suffer sharp drop in diners since Trump crackdown

Adam Gabbatt

The number of people eating at restaurants in Washington DC has plummeted since Donald Trump deployed federal troops to the city, according to data, as the president’s purported crackdown on crime continues.

Research by Open Table found that restaurant attendance was down every day last week compared with 2024, with the number of diners dipping by 31% on Wednesday, two days after Trump ordered the national guard to patrol Washington.

Trump announced the move on 11 August, claiming that Washington had been “overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged out maniacs and homeless people”. His claims contradicted official statistics which show that violent crime in the capital is at a 30-year low.

Data from Open Table shows that the number of people making online reservations dropped by 16% on Monday compared with the previous year. The number fell by 27% on Tuesday and 31% on Wednesday, as military vehicles and armed troops were deployed to the city.

On Friday, Democrats introduced a joint resolution to end what they described as “egregious attacks on DC home rule”, stating that Trump was overreaching in his actions in Washington.

State lawmakers in California are set to return from recess today to get to work in considering a special election in November, and approving a new congressional map.

This is part of the overall redistricting race that California governor Gavin Newsom pushed for in order to offset Texas’s efforts to redraw their own map and pick up five more GOP house seats in the process.

Legislators have a deadline for the end of this week – 22 August – to approve these bills.

My colleague, Jakub Krupa, is bringing you the latest developments as Volodymyr Zelenskyy travels to the White House today for a meeting with the president, as well as a wider sit-down with Trump and a cadre of European leaders.

The president is set to welcome those leaders at 12pm ET at the White House, Trump will then greet Zelenskyy at 1pm ET, before holding a bilateral meeting with him at around 1:15pm ET. We can then expect a photo opportunity with all the leaders and the president at around 2:30pm ET, followed by a wider meeting at 3pm ET.

Anna Betts

As the new academic year is about to begin at most universities across the United States, many international students are navigating a mix of anxiety and uncertainty as the Trump administration’s crackdown on higher education and immigration continues.

The Guardian asked international students studying in the US to share how they are feeling as they prepare to return to campus. Some described how policy shifts have derailed their academic plans, while others said that they were now reconsidering whether the US is a place where they want to pursue their academic futures.

“Leaving the US after I receive my degree is increasingly a top priority,” said Andre Fa’aoso, a 20-year-old student from Auckland, New Zealand, who is entering his third year at Yale University.

“I have not been thinking too far into the future because I know policy settings are subject to change overnight, and I might wake up to find Yale at the center of a feud with the administration, with my right to study and remain in the US used as a pawn to leverage concessions from universities.”

While Fa’aoso is looking forward to resuming his studies, he said that his return to the US “is shadowed by a genuine nervousness about what it may be like to go through the US border in just over two weeks”.

“I am remaining optimistic that I will go through without a hitch,” he said, adding: “But a part of me has been preparing for what might happen if I get pulled into secondary screening or detained for some arbitrary reason, and I’m not alone in that thought process.”

Donald Trump said on Monday he would sign an executive order ahead of next year’s midterm elections, saying he would lead “a movement” targeting mail-in balloting and voting machines across the country.

“I am going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, and also, while we’re at it, Highly Inaccurate, Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES,” he wrote in a social media post

The US special envoy to Lebanon said Monday that his team would discuss the long-term cessation of hostilities with Israel, after Beirut endorsed a US-backed plan for the Hezbollah militant group to disarm.

Tom Barrack, following a meeting with Lebanese president Joseph Aoun, also said Washington would seek an economic proposal for post-war reconstruction in the country, after months of shuttle diplomacy between the US and Lebanon.

Barrack is also set to meet with prime minister Nawaf Salam and speaker Nabih Berri, who often negotiates on behalf of Hezbollah with Washington.

Robert Mackey

An aid group that coordinates medical care in the United States for badly injured children from Gaza has said it is “distressed” by the US state department’s decision to stop issuing visitor visas for Palestinians after a far-right influencer complained directly to the secretary of state about their work.

Laura Loomer, who has previously described herself as a “proud Islamophobe”, told the New York Times that she had spoken to Marco Rubio on Friday night to warn the secretary of state of what she called the threat posed by “Islamic invaders”.

The aid group, Heal Palestine, said in a statement that it was “an American humanitarian nonprofit organization delivering urgent aid and medical care to children in Palestine, including sponsoring and bringing severely injured children to the US on temporary visas for essential medical treatment not available at home”.

“After their treatment is complete, the children and any accompanying family members return to the Middle East,” the charity added, to rebut Loomer’s false claim that the visitors were part of a secret wave of “Islamic immigration”.

“This is a medical treatment program, not a refugee resettlement program,” the aid group stressed.

Stacy Garrity, Pennsylvania’s two-term elected state treasurer, said Monday that she will seek the Republican nomination to challenge Democratic governor Josh Shapiro’s re-election bid.

Garrity said in a statement that she will “will bring jobs back, strengthen our economy and make Pennsylvania more affordable for families in every corner of the state”.

Some top Pennsylvania Republicans support Garrity in the 2026 race for governor and hope she’ll see a clear primary field, although those hopes have been buffeted in recent weeks by 2022’s losing gubernatorial candidate, Doug Mastriano, suggesting that he will run again, AP reports.

Garrity has hinted at a run for months and stepped up her criticism of Shapiro. In campaign fundraising appeals, she accused Shapiro of being soft on law and order and hostile to her “pro-worker, pro-energy, pro-America agenda”.

Shapiro has returned fire, blasting her for supporting president Donald Trump‘s big tax break and spending cut package. Shapiro said it would hurt rural hospitals and people who rely on Medicaid, drive up the cost of energy and blow up the federal deficit.

JD Vance will attend the Monday meeting between Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Donald Trump in Washington, ABC News reported on Monday, citing a source familiar with the plans.

Reuters could not immediately verify the report.

Donald Trump is waging a war on truth by firing top officials who present facts he finds unpalatable, while he banks on key loyalists at executive agencies to bolster his policies and powers by “rewriting history’s narrative” and squelching dissent, say scholars and former officials.

Trump’s penchant for rejecting facts in an authoritarian style was especially revealed in August by his sudden firing of the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, charging without evidence that her latest report was “totally rigged”, just hours after she released data undercutting his rosy economic boasts, say critics.

The firing was emblematic of Trump’s expanding battle against people and policies that challenge the US president’s often conspiratorial views about truth such as his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden, which Trump last fall falsely blamed again on “fraud”.

From the justice department to the Environmental Protection Agency to other key agencies, Trump loyalists have pushed falsehoods and taken radical steps to promote Trump’s policies and what a Trump adviser in 2017 dubbed “alternative facts”. In doing so, Trump and his top allies are acting in an authoritarian style by revising history, rejecting facts and widely accepted science, critics add.

“The irony in firing the widely respected economist and BLS commissioner Erika McEntarfer is that the commissioner has very little to do with the actual production of the figures Trump says were ‘rigged’,” said Peter Shane, who teaches constitutional law at New York University.

Germany said on Monday that the US would have to follow through on agreed lower tariffs on Europe-made cars before a wider agreement on trade can be finalised in writing.

“In particular, car tariffs must be reduced quickly as agreed. We are also aware of the considerable burden on the export-orientated economy. … Our role here is to continue to fully support the European Commission in this process,” a German government spokesman said in a press conference.

The EU and the US struck a framework trade deal in late July with many key details yet to be clarified.

Steven Greenhouse

Donald Trump’s hugely disruptive trade war is setting the stage for a manufacturing renaissance in the US, administration officials say. Outside the White House, many economists are skeptical.

Global trade experts point to many reasons they believe the president’s tariffs will fail to bring about a major resurgence of manufacturing, among them: Trump’s erratic, constantly changing policies, his unfocused, across-the-board tariffs, and his replacing Joe Biden’s carrot-and-sticks approach to brandish sticks at the world.

“I think [Trump’s tariffs] will reduce the competitiveness of US manufacturing, and will reduce manufacturing employment,” said Michael Strain, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI). “They’re raising the costs of production to US manufacturing companies, and that makes manufacturers less competitive. There will be some winners and some losers, but the losers will outnumber the winners.”

The president and his aides insist that higher tariffs on more than 100 countries – making goods imported from overseas more expensive – will spur domestic manufacturing. “The ‘Made in USA’ label is set to resume its global dominance under President Trump,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai claimed recently.

But few economists see that happening. Ann E Harrison, an economics professor and former dean of the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, said the erratic, on-again-off-again rollout of Trump’s tariffs has already gone far to doom the president’s hopes of inspiring a huge wave of manufacturing investment.

Taiwan is an internal matter for China, Beijing’s foreign ministry said on Monday, in response to US president Donald Trump saying Chinese president Xi Jinping told him he will not invade the island while Trump is in office.

Trump made the comments in an interview with Fox News, ahead of talks in Alaska with Russian president Vladimir Putin over Moscow’s war with Ukraine.

Asked about Trump’s remarks at a daily news briefing in Beijing, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Taiwan is an inalienable part of Chinese territory.

“The Taiwan issue is purely an internal affair of China, and how to resolve the Taiwan issue is a matter for the Chinese people,” she said.

“We will do our utmost to strive for the prospect of peaceful reunification. But we will never allow anyone or any force to separate Taiwan from China in any way.”

China views Taiwan as its own territory and has vowed to “reunify” with the democratic and separately governed island. Taiwan vehemently opposes China’s sovereignty claims.

Donald Trump’s bilateral meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will take place at 1.15pm ET on Monday at the White House, the White House said in a press guidance statement on Sunday.

Trump will participate in a multilateral meeting with European leaders visiting Washington at 3pm.

It comes as Trump on Sunday urged Zelenskyy to come to a negotiated settlement in the three-and-a-half-year-old conflict with Russia.

“President Zelenskyy of Ukraine can end the war with Russia almost immediately, if he wants to, or he can continue to fight,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.

“No getting back Obama given Crimea…and NO GOING INTO NATO BY UKRAINE. Some things never change!!!”

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said India’s purchases of Russian crude were funding Moscow’s war in Ukraine and has to stop, while adding that New Delhi was “now cozying up to both Russia and China.”

“If India wants to be treated as a strategic partner of the US, it needs to start acting like one,” Navarro wrote in an opinion piece published in the Financial Times, adding that it was risky for US companies to transfer cutting-edge military capabilities to India.

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

We start with news that three states have moved to deploy hundreds of members of their national guard to the US capital as part of the Trump administration’s effort to overhaul policing in Washington through a federal crackdown.

West Virginia said it was deploying 300 to 400 troops, while South Carolina pledged 200 and Ohio said it would send 150 in the coming days.

The moves announced on Saturday came as protesters pushed back on federal law enforcement and national guard troops fanning out in the heavily Democratic city following Donald Trump’s executive order federalizing local police forces and activating about 800 District of Columbia national guard members.

West Virginia governor Patrick Morrisey’s office said in a statement that the deployment was “a show of commitment to public safety and regional cooperation” and the state would provide equipment and “approximately 300-400 skilled personnel as directed”.

The statement came after Trump ordered hundreds of Washington DC national guard troops to mount a show of force and temporarily took over the city’s police department to curb what the president depicts as a crime and homelessness emergency in the nation’s capital.

Data compiled by the DC police department shows that violent crime was actually at a 30-year-low when Trump returned to office in January, and has declined a further 26% since then.

Read the full story here:

In other developments:

• In a combative series of interviews on Sunday, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said that “both sides are going to have to make concessions” for there to be a peaceful resolution to the war that erupted when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. “You can’t have a peace agreement unless both sides make concessions – that’s a fact,” the Trump administration’s top diplomat said Sunday on ABC’s This Week.

• A Texas judge has expanded a restraining order against former congressman Beto O’Rourke and his political organization over its fundraising for Democratic state lawmakers who left Texas to prevent a legislative session on congressional redistricting.

• The US state department announced on Saturday that it would stop issuing visas to children from Gaza in desperate need of medical care after an online pressure campaign from Laura Loomer, a far-right influencer close to Donald Trump who has described herself as “a proud Islamophobe”.

• When Donald Trump’s Department of Justice requested the release of grand jury transcripts in criminal proceedings against sex-traffickers Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, the move did little to quiet an ever-growing chorus of critics frustrated by the US president’s backtracking over disclosing investigative files. Read the full story here.