Wall Street Journal booted from White House press trip to Scotland after Epstein report
The reporters' removal, first reported by Politico, also follows the president's $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the newspaper and the journalists who wrote the story, as well as right-wing media mogul Rupert Murdoch and parent companies News Corp and Dow Jones.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement shared with The Independent that neither the newspaper nor 'any other news outlet are not guaranteed special access to cover President Trump in the Oval Office, aboard Air Force One, and in his private workspaces.'
'Due to the Wall Street Journal 's fake and defamatory conduct, they will not be one of the thirteen outlets on board,' she said. 'Every news organization in the entire world wishes to cover President Trump, and the White House has taken significant steps to include as many voices as possible.'
The Independent has requested comment from the WSJ and White House Correspondents Association.
Trump's lawsuit filed in federal court in Miami on July 18 claims the newspaper, its parent companies, executives and journalists falsely smeared the president by accusing him of writing a sexually suggestive birthday card to Epstein in 2003.
The birthday greeting is described by the newspaper as including a sexually suggestive drawing and a birthday wish that says 'may every day be another wonderful secret.'
A letter reportedly bearing Trump's name, which the WSJ report claims was reviewed by the newspaper, contains several lines of typewritten text framed by a drawing of a naked woman. His signature is a squiggly 'Donald' below her waist, mimicking pubic hair, according to the report.
The defendants 'failed to attach the letter, failed to attach the alleged drawing, failed to show proof that President Trump authored or signed any such letter, and failed to explain how this purported letter was obtained,' according to Trump's lawsuit.
'The reason for those failures is because no authentic letter or drawing exists,' the complaint claims.
This is a developing story
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The Independent
14 minutes ago
- The Independent
Keir Starmer will fight Corbyn's new party by copying Emmanuel Macron
It is easy to mock the new party launched in a struggle between its joint figureheads, but that is no reason to pass up the chance. It takes a special skill for one figurehead (Zarah Sultana) to announce the founding of a new party only for the other figurehead (Jeremy Corbyn) to deny, a day later, that it had happened (' discussions are ongoing '). Then, when Corbyn, three weeks later, announced that it was indeed ' time for a new kind of political party ', which appeared to be called Your Party because that was the name of the website, Sultana snapped on social media: ' It's not called Your Party!' It turned out that Your Party was a placeholder name and the real name will be decided democratically at the inaugural conference, details TBC. Mockery is always useful, because it reminds us how incapable the Corbynite tendency usually is at organising anything more complicated than a split. But it cannot be the whole story, because we know two other things. One is that there is a big pool of potential support for soft Corbynism, if it can suppress the doctrinaire Marxism, the disdain for Britain and the accusation of antisemitism (denied by Corbyn, of course) that is never far from the surface. The other is that Corbyn's allies showed that they could, briefly, run a competent general election campaign when they came close to unseating Theresa May in 2017. So the Not-Your-Party could be a force to be reckoned with. According to some opinion polls, it would take most support away from the Green Party, but it would also siphon votes away from Labour. It is all very well Peter Kyle, the science secretary, describing his former leader as ' not a serious politician ', but Labour has to take the threat from the new party seriously. It is doing so. Keir Starmer has been criticised – not least by Sultana – for copying Farage and thereby pushing Labour voters who are repelled by Reform in her direction. But I think this is to get Starmer's strategy the wrong way round. He knows that part of Labour's electoral coalition is repelled by Farage, but he wants to use that force of magnetic repulsion to try to keep hold of those voters, not to drive them away. This is what might be called the 'Emmanuel Macron' strategy. Macron twice fought off a threat from Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the French equivalent of Corbyn-Sultana, by becoming the leading candidate against Marine Le Pen, the anti-immigration candidate of the party formerly known as the Front National. In 2017, and again in 2022, Macron came top in a divided field (winning just 24 per cent and 28 per cent of the vote) in the first round, forcing voters to choose between him, a centrist with roots in the Socialist Party, and Le Pen, regarded with horror by polite French opinion. Each time, he won the run-off vote comfortably. By running against Le Pen, Macron was able to unite a coalition stretching from Mélenchon through Macron's former socialists to the remnants of the establishment conservatives. Starmer wants to fight the next general election as, in effect, a presidential run-off contest between him and Farage. He knows that the threat of Farage as prime minister is his most powerful weapon. Presenting the election as a contest between Starmer and Farage is the best way of squeezing not just the Corbyn-Sultana vote, but the Green Party vote and even that of the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives. The one point on which apologists for the Corbyn-Sultana party become evasive is when they are asked if they would be helping to let Farage in. That is the irresistible logic of the first-past-the-post voting system, but they have to try to deny it to keep their dream alive. Most longstanding Corbynites understand this very well. That is why Corbyn was so reluctant to launch the new party, which some of his acolytes were keen to do the moment he won his Islington North constituency as an independent last year. He knows that the only reason he nearly succeeded in 2017 was that his supporters had taken over the Labour Party. An outfit outside the party, on the other hand, will quickly discover that support for Gaza and anti-capitalism, however wide, is not deep. If Farage's popularity holds up, the next election will be decided in seats that are contested between Labour and Reform; in those seats, a vote for the new party will be a vote for Farage. It will be time, as Macron said in France, for all good people to rally to the cause of defeating anti-immigrant authoritarianism. That is a message that could work for Starmer here with voters otherwise tempted to vote Tory, Lib Dem, Green – and with voters attracted to whatever the Corbyn-Sultana party ends up being called.
The Independent
14 minutes ago
- The Independent
Free childcare crisis as surge in demand leaves Labour with funding black hole
Ministers have been warned the childcare sector is at risk of 'collapse' after a boom in demand for free care left a major government scheme in financial peril. A plan to expand free childcare for British families is set to cost the government an extra £1bn per year at a time when ministers are grappling to fill the gaping black hole in public finances. Labour has not spelled out how the funding gap will be filled, but experts predict the shortfall will create 'substantial pressure' on the government and could put the entire childcare sector under threat. In an exclusive interview with The Independent, Bridget Phillipson insisted the unexpectedly high take-up – a quarter higher than predicted – was a 'good problem to have' and would not leave children without places. But the education secretary could not guarantee that parents would get a space at their local nursery in September, when the scheme expands to offer eligible children aged nine months and older 30 hours a week of free childcare. Industry leaders said parents would be left 'disappointed' while nurseries warned a a lack of staff meant they were already struggling to deliver the government's pledge. CEO of the Early Years Alliance Neil Leitch told The Independent: 'One thing is absolutely clear: if 80 per cent of all hours delivered are government hours, and those hours are inadequately funded, the infrastructure will collapse over a period of time. 'I can't say it will be one year or five years, but you can bet your bottom dollar if you don't give somebody enough money to deliver a service, at some point they stop.' Figures published in March show the number of people newly entitled to free childcare was 26 per cent higher than originally estimated – 379,000 compared to 302,000. This meant that the Department for Education spent £2bn on the policy last year, up from a planned £1.6bn. But this is only set to grow as further hours of free childcare are rolled out. According to the highly-respected Institute for Fiscal Studies, the cost of extending free childcare to under-3s could end up costing £1bn more a year than previously expected, from 2026/7 onwards – up from around £4bn to approximately £5bn. A boost to funding announced in Rachel Reeves' Spending Review, of £640 million, would 'go some way to filling this gap… (but) could still leave substantial pressure from higher-than-expected take-up', the IFS said. Associate director Christine Farquharson said the DfE will still likely face 'difficult choices' within its budget and may have to 'trim back' spending in other areas to meet its childcare commitments. 'They have a fixed pot of money. When one thing becomes more expensive, that puts more pressure on other areas of the [education] budget,' she told The Independent. Ms Farquharson said predictions for how many parents would take up the free hours were 'complex' but added: 'It does seem like [the Tories] underestimated take-up pretty systematically.' It is just one of many financial decisions facing the chancellor ahead of the autumn Budget after planned welfare cuts, aimed at saving £5bn annually, were reversed. Ms Reeves is being pushed to bend her rules on borrowing or to rise taxes to keep public finances on track. The free childcare policy was launched in December 2023 with great fanfare under former Tory chancellor Jeremy Hunt. The first stage was put in place from September 2024, when the government extended 15 hours a week of free term-time childcare to working parents with a child aged nine months and over. From September, that will be extended to 30 hours a week . Labour say they were left a 'pledge without a plan' when they entered government. Ministers have been working to massively expand the number of nursery spaces and staff but the task has been made more difficult by the fact that, unlike schools, many nurseries are private providers. But industry leaders warned that, with 8 in 10 of all nursery hours soon set to be paid for by the government, the infrastructure was at risk of 'collapse' without more money. The sector has already been forced to absorb huge additional costs in recent years, including April's national insurance rise, it warned. Childcare in the UK is one of the most expensive in the world, according to the OECD. Mr Leitch added: 'What we have to bear in mind is that we've already got a recruitment and retention crisis. The reality is, many settings don't have the people to be able to accommodate those additional hours. So I'm afraid there will be parents that will be disappointed.' Sarah Ronan, the director of the Early Education and Childcare Coalition, said the IFS was right to sound the alarm, adding that if the government did not match demand with funding it is leaving providers with 'no choice' but to limit the number of places they offer – or raise fees. 'The harsh reality is that if providers don't do that, they'll face closure and then we'll have an even worse crisis on our hands,' she said. Purnima Tanuk, the executive chair of the National Day Nurseries Association (NDNA), said the government's ambitions 'will be put at risk if there is not sufficient investment in early years.' She added that 'almost 70 per cent of nurseries told us that staff shortages mean they cannot offer the children's places they have room to deliver'. Munira Wilson, the Lib Dem education spokesperson, said providers had been left 'hanging by a thread and parents (are) facing the prospect of childcare deserts'. 'The government need to ensure that the funding for childcare hours matches the actual costs of delivery,' she said. Official statistics released last week showed a 7.2 per cent increase in early years staff, the largest annual rise since the series began. The Department for Education would not be drawn on where any extra money might come from. But Ms Phillipson insisted she was unafraid of the policy's popularity. She urged families to check what they are are entitled to, adding: 'I want as many parents as possible to take up the offer. It allows parents to juggle work and family life, but it also sets up children to succeed And the demand that parents are showing is a good problem to have, because it also brings economic dividends as well. 'If people are able to work, or work a few more hours… that helps us all as a society as well and it gets economic growth going'. Ms Phillipson has previously warned that, as the policy expands again in September, parents in the first wave might not get their first choice of nursery. Asked if she could say that all parents who want a space would get one, she told The Independent: 'What I can't guarantee is that it will be as close to home as they would like or it will be their first choice, but we're confident that the roll out will go well in September.' Ms Farquharson did add that the higher uptake of free childcare could ultimately be a good sign for the economy, even if it is more expensive in the short term. 'This higher uptake might mean that we're getting a lot more parents moving into paid work because of these entitlements than first predicted,' she said. 'If the goal for this policy is to drive growth, then this would be a fantastic success story.' However, the extent to which that is the case will only become apparent over the next few years, she said. A DfE spokesperson said: "High-quality, affordable childcare plays a vital role in our Plan for Change, which is why early years funding will rise to over £9 billion next year helping us meet our target of getting tens of thousands more children each year ready for school. 'We're backing families with this record investment including a £75 million grant this year to support providers in delivering more places and a 45 per cent uplift in early year pupil premium, building on the real difference this is making for families as highlighted by the Coram survey who say costs for some has halved.'
The Independent
14 minutes ago
- The Independent
Police offer £20,000 reward for information over fatal stabbing
Police are offering £20,000 for any information into the fatal stabbing of a 20-year-old man in an east London park, a year after his death. Imran Maroof, 20, was killed on 27 July last year after reports of a fight in Plashet Park, Newham. Police officers arrived at the scene at 7.38pm to find the young man with stab injuries. Despite attempts by the emergency services to stabilise Mr Maroof, the Metropolitan Police said he was pronounced dead at the scene. A 16-year-old boy who could not be named for legal reasons was arrested the following month in connection with the murder, appearing later at Bexley Magistrates' Court, but he was subsequently released. A spokesperson for the force said the case against the teenager was then dropped. Detective Chief Inspector Samantha Townsend from Specialist Crime South said Mr Maroof's murder had a 'profound impact' on the young man's family, adding that the Met 'remains committed' to finding his killer. 'Imran's family and friends continue to live with the trauma,' she said. 'One year has passed since this senseless killing, and the Met remains committed to bringing those who killed Imran to justice. 'If you were in the vicinity of Plashet Park on the day of the stabbing or know anything that could help us, we need you to contact us.' Police have released a photo of the victim, with independent charity Crimestoppers offering a reward of up to £20,000 for information. Alexa Loukas, London regional manager for Crimestoppers, said: 'We know that some people may be reluctant or worried to speak directly to the police with information, which is why Crimestoppers is here. 'We are completely independent and guarantee you will remain 100% anonymous when you contact us. 'We offer a safe way for anyone to come forward and tell us what they know but not who they are. 'We are unable to identify any phone numbers or IP addresses if you are reporting online. 'Imran's family deserve answers, and we hope this reward will encourage someone to do the right thing and speak up with any information that may help the police.' Anyone with information is urged to call 101, quoting crime reference 6541/27JUL. Alternatively, to remain anonymous, contact Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
