Trump’s attorney general announces return of federal capital punishment after 20 years – live | US news

Here’s where the day stands so far.

• The Justice Department announced it would resume capital punishment after a 16-year lapse of the policy. They have scheduled five executions of death-row inmates, with the first execution set for December 9.
• Nancy Pelosi has told House Democrats that they have to do their “own thing” when it comes to supporting an impeachment inquiry against Trump. It was reported after special counsel Robert Mueller’s hearing that the House speaker had pushed back against entreaties to launch impeachment proceedings.
• Most House Republicans are expected to oppose the budget deal negotiated between Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Pelosi. Trump has encouraged his party’s lawmakers to back the agreement, but a majority still seem inclined to vote “no.” That leaves the question of whether the president will actually sign a huge funding bill mostly backed by Democrats.

And we’re still watching this House judiciary committee hearing on the Trump administration’s migrant family separation policy and the conditions of detention centers. Stay tuned.

Trump just finished delivering remarks at a ceremony welcoming the new secretary of defense, Mark Esper.

“You’re going to do a great job. I have absolutely no doubt,” Trump said of Esper. The former Republican staffer and lobbyist secured Senate confirmation earlier this week by a vote of 90-8.

He will be the Pentagon’s first permanent chief since Jim Mattis, who resigned over policy differences with Trump and left the Defense Department in January.

Brian Hastings, Custom and Border Protection’s chief of law enforcement operations, contradicted a report that a 3-year-old migrant girl was forced to choose which of her parents would remain with her in the United States while the other was sent back to Mexico.

NPR reported earlier this month that a Honduran girl named Sofia was faced with the heart-wrenching choice at a Border Patrol holding facility in El Paso, Texas. “The agent asked her who she wanted to go with, mom or dad,” Sofia’s mother, Tania, said through an interpreter. “And the girl, because she is more attached to me, she said mom. But when they started to take [my husband] away, the girl started to cry. The officer said, ‘You said [you want to go] with mom.’ ”

But Hastings claimed during a House judiciary committee hearing that the child was not choosing which parent would be deported and which would remain in the United States. He said the whole family was sent back to Mexico but was briefly held in separate cells while they were processed at a detention center. According to Hastings, Sofia was only being asked which parent’s cell she wanted to wait in.

Only a fraction of the House Republican caucus is expected to support the budget deal negotiated by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and House speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Even though Trump has urged Republican lawmakers to back the two-year deal that would raise the debt ceiling and end harsh annual spending cuts, the party’s House leadership expects most of its caucus to vote “no” on the deal.

House minority whip Steve Scalise said Trump’s supportive tweet “helps” build support within the caucus. But he added, “We’ve heard from a lot of members who said they’re voting ‘No,’ no matter what.”

The president has already said he backs the deal, but the idea of signing a massive funding bill mostly passed with Democratic support may make him reconsider.

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has come out strongly against the Justice Department’s announcement that it would resume capital punishment after a 16-year lapse of the policy.

The California senator has a unique history on the issue. She has consistently opposed capital punishment, a position that has landed her in hot water more than once.

Most notably, while Harris was serving as San Francisco’s district attorney, she refused to seek the death penalty against the man eventually convicted of killing police officer Isaac Espinoza. The decision was lambasted by the law enforcement community and even some of Harris’ fellow Democrats, such as senator Dianne Feinstein.

A migrant child said she was “beaten and abused” while detained at a facility in Clint, Texas.

The alleged abuse occurred on March 12 and is still under investigation by the Customs and Border Protection’s internal watchdog, NBC News reports. The allegation follows other accusations of abuse against migrant children, including an alleged sexual assault against a girl at a facility in Yuma, Arizona.

House Democrats are expected to ask about the alleged abuse during a judiciary committee hearing on the Trump administration’s migrant family separation policy and the conditions of detention centers. The hearing is already underway and can be watched live here.

The US federal government has not executed a death-row inmate since 2003, when Louis Jones Jr. was put to death for the rape and murder of Pvt. Tracie Joy McBride.

McBride was kidnapped from an Air Force base in Texas in 1995 and later beaten to death with a tire iron, a murder that Jones confessed to.

Jones died by injection eight years later at the federal penitentiary near Terre Haute, Indiana, the same penitentiary where the Justice Department intends to carry out five more executions between December and January.

The five executions scheduled by the Justice Department are set to take place between December 9 and January 15.

The department noted the executions will take place at US Penitentiary Terre Haute, Indiana, adding that additional executions “will be scheduled at a later date.”

“Each of these inmates has exhausted their appellate and post-conviction remedies, and currently no legal impediments prevent their executions,” the Justice Department said in its statement.

The Justice Department’s noted in its statement about resuming capital punishment that the first person set to be executed belonged to a white supremacist group.

“Daniel Lewis Lee, a member of a white supremacist group, murdered a family of three, including an eight-year-old girl,” the Justice Department’s statement read. Lee was found guilty on three counts of murder, among other charges, in 1999. The department has set his execution for December 9.

Trump has previously downplayed the growing threat of white nationalism and white supremacy. After a white supremacist attack on two mosques in New Zealand left 49 people dead in March, he was asked whether he considered white nationalism to be a rising threat around the world. “I don’t really,” Trump said. “I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems.”

The Justice Department said in a statement that it would resume capital punishment after a nearly two-decade lapse on the policy.

The statement noted that Attorney General William Barr has asked the director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons to schedule the executions of five death-row inmates convicted of murder, with the first planned for December 9.

“Congress has expressly authorized the death penalty through legislation adopted by the people’s representatives in both houses of Congress and signed by the President,” Barr said. “The Justice Department upholds the rule of law—and we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.”

Nancy Pelosi told a CNN reporter that she has “never” discouraged fellow House Democrats from supporting an impeachment inquiry against Trump and that they need to follow their own instincts on the matter.

But reports started emerging last night that the House speaker had rebuffed efforts to launch impeachment proceedings after special counsel Robert Mueller’s testimony.

Some House Democrats also have a deadline of the upcoming recess on their minds, according to CNN. They fear that the impeachment issue could lose momentum if it is not raised before the August recess.

Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg is raising eyebrows with his hefty bill for private jet travel.

The millennial mayor has spent $300,000 on private jets this year, more than any other Democratic presidential hopeful, the AP reports.

Buttigieg’s campaign defended the charter flights as a necessary expense, given its headquarters in South Bend, Indiana. “We are careful with how we spend our money, and we fly commercial as often as possible,” a Buttigieg spokesperson said. “We only fly noncommercial when the schedule dictates.”

But his competitors seem to already be jumping on the potential gaffe. “No private planes for this campaign,” Beto O’Rourke said in a video posted to his campaign’s YouTube channel on Monday.

The pair of candidates may get a chance to spar over the travel issue next week. They are sharing the same stage on the first night of debates in Detroit.

Ford, Honda, Volkswagen and BMW of North America have struck a deal with California to produce more fuel-efficient cars in the US.

The agreement could undercut the Trump administration’s efforts to relax gas mileage standards for American cars.

The Washington Post reports:

Mary D. Nichols, California’s top air pollution regulator, said in an interview Wednesday that she sees the agreement as a potential ‘olive branch’ to the Trump administration and hopes it joins the deal, which she said gives automakers flexibility in meeting emissions goals without the ‘massive backsliding’ contained in the White House’s current proposal. …

In a joint statement, the four companies said their decision to hash out a deal with California was driven by a need for predictability, as well as a desire to reduce compliance costs, keep vehicles affordable for customers and be good environmental stewards.

Trump is up and tweeting about the two-year budget deal that would raise the debt ceiling and end painful annual spending cuts.

The president’s unequivocal endorsement should relieve House minority leader Kevin McCarthy and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell. When the deal between Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and House speaker Nancy Pelosi was announced, Trump said he was “pleased” with the agreement. But the lack of a full-throated endorsement worried some Republicans, particularly given a handful of conservatives’ complaints about the deal.

Trump’s endorsement should quiet those concerns before Congress votes on the bill — assuming the president doesn’t change his mind, which is always possible.

Good morning, live blog readers!

Washington is still processing everything we heard from special counsel Robert Mueller yesterday during his hearings before two House panels. But one (very important) person seems to have already reached a conclusion: Nancy Pelosi.

The House speaker rebuffed judiciary committee chairman Jerry Nadler’s entreaties to launch impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump during a closed-door meeting yesterday after Mueller’s appearance. Pelosi called Nadler’s idea to begin drafting articles of impeachment premature, standing by her insistence that the “slow, methodical approach” was the way to go.

Pelosi is sure to be asked about her position on impeachment during a media availability later today. Here are a few other things the blog is keeping its eye on:

• Jeffrey Epstein was found unconscious in his Manhattan jail cell with injuries to the neck, the New York Post reports. The wealthy financier was denied bail last week and is awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges in New York.
• Puerto Rico’s governor Ricardo Rosselló announced he would resign effective 2 August, our colleague Oliver Laughland reports. Rosselló has faced nearly two weeks of protests over misogynistic and homophobic comments he made in leaked text messages.
• US rapper A$AP Rocky has been charged with assault in Sweden. The artist has been in custody for more than three weeks following a fight in Stockholm late last month, and Trump has said he would reach out to Swedish authorities to discuss securing Rocky’s release.
• The House judiciary committee will hold a hearing at 10 am EDT on migrant family separations and the conditions of migrant detention centers.

The blog is covering all of that and more today. Stay tuned.