Closing summary
Our US politics live coverage is coming to a close. We’ll be back on Tuesday. Here is a summary of today’s developments:
Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit against the BBC over its editing of a speech he made to supporters in Washington before they stormed the US Capitol in 2021, requesting up to $10bn in damages. The US president alleged the broadcaster “intentionally, maliciously, and deceptively” edited his 6 January speech before the insurrection, in an episode of Panorama just over a year ago. More here.
Celebrities and lawmakers from both of the US’s major political parties are condemning Donald Trump after the president blamed the death of Rob Reiner on what he described as the acclaimed Hollywood director’s dislike of him. After the apparent killings of Reiner, 78, and his 68-year-old wife, Michele, who were found dead at their home Sunday in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles, Trump took to social media to call the director “tortured and struggling”. Trump also claimed Reiner died “due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind-crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME”. More here.
Donald Trump signed an executive order designating fentanyl as a “weapon of mass destruction” – classifying the synthetic opioid not only a lethal drug, but as a potential chemical weapon. The order also directs the Pentagon and justice department to take additional steps to combat production and distribution of the drug. The designation comes amid the administration’s use of escalating and increasingly militaristic tactics to combat drug smuggling. More here.
The United States has offered to provide Nato-style security guarantees for Kyiv as US and European negotiators report progress in talks to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, but a deal on territorial concessions remained elusive. Envoys sent by Donald Trump made the unprecedented offer at talks on Monday with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in Berlin. US officials have warned that such a deal would not be on the table forever. European leaders stressed the outcome of the talks would affect their own countries’ security for decades to come, write Andrew Roth, Deborah Cole and Shaun Walker. More here.
Kash Patel, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations, is once again facing criticism for rushing to social media to tout his agency’s work on tracking down a person of interest in a shooting prematurely. After a shooter killed two and injured nine at Brown University on Saturday, Patel, a lawyer and rightwing commentator before his job in the administration, posted on X that his agency had helped detain a “person of interest in a hotel room” in Coventry, Rhode Island, acting off a lead from the Providence police. More here.
The Pentagon announced this evening that the US military conducted another deadly strike on a boat suspected of carrying illegal narcotics, killing eight men in the eastern Pacific.
A video posted on Twitter/X shows the strike by the US southern command, stating that at the direction of defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, the “Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted lethal kinetic strikes on three vessels operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations in international waters.”
The statement continues: “Intelligence confirmed that the vessels were transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and were engaged in narco-trafficking. A total of eight male narco-terrorists were killed during these actions—three in the first vessel, two in the second and three in the third.”
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