Updates: Donald Trump meets with NATO’s Mark Rutte at White House

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This live page will soon be closed. Here were today’s top events:

• US President Donald Trump met with NATO chief Mark Rutte at the White House, where he maintained Russia and Ukraine want peace despite a recently cancelled meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
• Trump also defended a military strike on an alleged drug boat in the Pacific, maintaining the attacks in international waters were legal under US law.
• The US president also escalated his feud with Colombian counterpart Gustavo Petro, warning the US could take “very serious action against him”.
• The government shutdown continues to stretch on, with no breakthrough as it reaches its 22nd day.
• Trump is slated to head to Asia in a bid to ease trade tensions, particularly with China.
• White House officials confirmed the East Wing of the White House would be fully demolished to build a new $300m ballroom.

Trump has said he expects to reach a trade agreement with Chinese President Xi Jinping during their meeting in South Korea next week. He also said he would raise concerns about China’s purchases of Russian oil.

“I think we’ll make a deal,” Trump told reporters, adding he also expected an agreement to restart China’s purchases of US soya beans.

He said a deal was also possible to limit the proliferation of nuclear arms, noting that Russian President Vladimir Putin had raised the possibility of a nuclear de-escalation, and China could join that push.

Trump has escalated his feud with Colombian President Gustavo Petro during an Oval Office news conference, warning the US could take “very serious action” against the South American nation.

“He’s a thug and bad guy. He’s a guy that is making a lot of drugs,” Trump told his audience, which included NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte.

The US recently announced it would sever all aid to Colombia, after the left-wing Petro criticised Trump over his repeated military strikes in the Caribbean Sea.

“He’d better watch it, or we’ll take very serious action against him and his country,” Trump said, adding: “What he has led his country into is a death trap.”

The president has spent a sizeable portion of the news conference discussing the recent demolition of the White House’s East Wing to build a ballroom.

“It’ll be one of the great ballrooms anywhere in the world,” he said.

The White House has said the ballroom is being funded with $300m in donations.

“The government’s paying absolutely nothing,” Trump explained, adding that construction crews are “working with the military on it. Because they want to make sure everything’s perfect. And the military is very much involved in this. They want to make sure everything is absolutely beautiful.”

At his Oval Office meeting with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, Trump responded to questions about Tuesday’s military strike on a boat in the Pacific Ocean.

It was the first such strike in the Pacific, and the eighth attack on a boat overall since September 2.

“It is very violent,” Trump acknowledged, marvelling that “one shot” left “everyone dead centre”.

He also repeated his claim that the boats are carrying illicit drugs to the US, though no evidence has ever been produced to support that allegation. Critics have compared the air strikes to extrajudicial killings.

Still, he has justified the attack by saying every destroyed boat saves 25,000 US lives, a fictitious number. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found a total of 73,690 overdose deaths for the 12-month period ending in April.

“Every one of those boats that gets knocked out is saving 25,000 American lives, not to mention the torn-up families all over the country,” Trump said, making the argument that US citizens should not “feel badly” about the strikes.

He warned that he expects to conduct further strikes – including on land. He also claimed he had the legal authority and said he may approach Congress, though he added he did not need its authorisation.

“I will say that there are very few boats travelling on the water right now. Actually, that includes fishing boats. That includes any other kind of boat, but there are very few boats travelling on the water. So now, they’ll come in by land to a lesser extent, and they will be hit on land also.”

The East Wing of the White House has stood for more than a century, largely serving to house the first lady and her staff.

But this week, demolition began to tear the entire structure down and make room for a lavish ballroom. See the demolition below.

The University of Virginia has struck a deal to end federal investigations into its admissions and financial aid practices, as the Trump administration cracks down on diversity initiatives.

Wednesday’s agreement would see the public university, located in Charlottesville, follow Justice Department guidance to not engage in “unlawful racial discrimination” – a phrase the Trump administration has used to describe efforts to increase diversity at schools and workplaces.

The deal also requires the University of Virginia to provide data about its admissions and hiring for every quarter through 2028.

Already, in June, university president James Ryan stepped down amid a pressure campaign to oust him from his role.

The Trump administration has issued executive orders calling programmes meant to support diversity, equity and inclusion – or DEI, for short – a form of “illegal discrimination” that erodes merit-based standards.

Despite cancelling a planned meeting with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, the US president said he still thinks both Russia and Ukraine want peace.

“We cancelled the meeting with President Putin. It just didn’t feel right to me,” Trump told a news conference with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte. “It didn’t feel like we were going to get to the place we have to get. So I cancelled it, but we’ll do it in the future.”

Trump also hailed the “tremendous sanctions” imposed today on Russian oil companies.

Still, he added: “I think they want peace. I think they both want peace. At this point it’s been – you know, it’s almost four years.”

Earlier today, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration had eased restrictions on Ukraine’s use of Western-made long-range missiles, setting the stage for attacks deep in Russian territory.

But President Trump has taken to his platform, Truth Social, to deny the report.

“The Wall Street Journal story on the U.S.A.’s approval of Ukraine being allowed to use long range missiles deep into Russia is FAKE NEWS!” Trump wrote.

“The U.S. has nothing to do with those missiles, wherever they may come from, or what Ukraine does with them!”

President Trump has campaigned in part by appealing to the US heartland, the region of the country known for farming and ranching.

But in a social media post on Wednesday, he accused US cattle ranchers of setting their prices too high and took credit for their prosperity.

“The Cattle Ranchers, who I love, don’t understand that the only reason they are doing so well, for the first time in decades, is because I put Tariffs on cattle coming into the United States,” Trump wrote.

“It would be nice if they would understand that, but they also have to get their prices down.”

The country’s largest cattle association has shot back, though, with a statement of its own.

“The reality is that ranchers’ success is driven by their own hard work,” the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association wrote.

It reiterated its opposition to the Trump administration’s plan to import more beef from Argentina, where the US president has hoped to buoy the election prospects of fellow right-wing leader Javier Milei.

“We simply ask that the government not undercut them by importing more Argentinian beef in order to manipulate prices,” the association wrote.

“Cattlemen and women cannot stand behind President Trump while he undercuts the future of family farmers and ranchers by importing Argentinian beef.”

Last week, a rioter who attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, was charged with threatening to assassinate House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

According to prosecutors, 34-year-old Christopher Moynihan sent violent text messages that suggested he planned to attack the Democratic politician.

“Even if I am hated, he must be eliminated,” Moynihan’s messages read. “I will kill him for the future.”

President Trump had pardoned Moynihan and nearly 1,500 participants in the January 6 attack upon taking office this year.

On Wednesday, when asked if his Republican counterpart, Mike Johnson, had reached out after the threats, Jeffries gave a one-word reply: “No.”

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says new sanctions on Russia could be on the way after a planned meeting between Trump and Putin was cancelled.

“We are going to either announce after the close this afternoon or first thing tomorrow morning a substantial pickup in Russia sanctions,” Bessent told reporters at the White House on Wednesday.

The secretary did not provide details of what sanctions would look like, but the secretary’s announcement comes after months of stalled diplomacy between Moscow and Washington.

Putin and Trump spoke last week and unexpectedly announced they would hold a summit in Hungary that the Kremlin said could take place within a couple of weeks. However, plans changed after the two leaders spoke on the phone on Monday.

A White House official has acknowledged to the news agency Reuters that the entire East Wing of the White House will be demolished to make room for President Trump’s ballroom project.

“We can confirm that the entire East Wing is going to be modernised and renovated to, I guess, support the … ballroom project,” the official said.

The Trump administration has previously announced that the ballroom would span 8,360 square meters, or 90,000 square feet.

The main building of the White House, by comparison, is only 5,110 square meters, or 55,000 square feet.

Carol Quillen, the CEO of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, has called on the White House to stop the destruction. She warned that the new construction may overshadow the main facade.

“We are deeply concerned that the massing and height of the proposed new construction will overwhelm the White House itself — it is 55,000 square feet — and may also permanently disrupt the carefully balanced classical design of the White House with its two smaller, and lower, East and West Wings,” she wrote on Tuesday.

The demolition on the East Wing began on Monday and is expected to last two weeks.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has accused Republicans of attempting to “rig” next year’s midterm elections by redrawing congressional districts in their favour.

On Tuesday, North Carolina became the latest state to advance a gerrymandered map in its state legislature, in a bid to increase the number of Republican seats in the House of Representatives by one.

Normally, Republicans carry 10 congressional districts in the state. The new map would see that number increase to 11.

The manoeuvring suggests Republicans and Democrats are bracing for a tight race ahead in the 2026 midterms.

Jeffries sidestepped a reporter’s question about whether Democrats would follow suit and redraw congressional maps in their strongholds. He did, however, point to California — where a redistricting proposition is on November’s ballot — as an example to follow.

“As was the case, in California, it’s my expectation that Illinois’s Democrats are going to carefully consider their options and make sure that they draw the fairest map possible for the people of that great state,” Jeffries said.

He added that state leaders would take into account “Donald Trump’s efforts to gerrymander congressional maps all across the country, including most recently in North Carolina.”

“Republicans are running scared. They know that, if the election were held today, they would lose the House decisively, and that’s why they’re trying to rig the midterm elections.”

Earlier this year, the Trump administration declared that drug-trafficking organisations from South America constituted a terrorist threat, not a criminal threat to the United States, and that these organisations would now be treated as if they were al-Qaeda or ISIL (ISIS).

That essentially takes the enforcement of ending drug trafficking in and around the Americas away from the US Coast Guard and instead treats them as military threats.

As we have heard, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted on social media that, on Tuesday evening, the US military killed two alleged “narco-terrorists” — the Pentagon’s term — who were on their way, they say, to try to bring drugs to the United States.

It is not clear exactly where in international waters, beyond somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, this incident took place.

It’s also not clear which designated organisation these people allegedly belonged to.

We have heard before, in some of the previous incidents in the Caribbean, that some of the people who were killed by the US military belonged to Tren de Aragua, the Venezuela-based drug cartel that the Trump administration has accused the country’s president, Nicolas Maduro, of supporting.

United Nations Special Rapporteur Ben Saul has said that US military strikes on vessels off the coast of South America, which have killed dozens of people since early September, are a violation of international law.

“I condemn these strikes as illegal killings under international law,” Saul said in remarks. “There is no authority in international law for using military force on the high seas to kill suspected drug traffickers or narco gangs.”

Lawyers for Roberto Mosquera del Peral, a Cuban man deported to the small African nation of Eswatini, say that he has gone on hunger strike in the maximum security prison where he has been held for months without charge.

“My client is arbitrarily detained, and now his life is on the line,” said Peral’s lawyer, Alma David.

“I urge the Eswatini Correctional Services to provide Mr Mosquera’s family and me with an immediate update on his condition and to ensure that he is receiving adequate medical attention. I demand that Mr Mosquera be permitted to meet with his lawyer in Eswatini.”

Peral was one of five men sent to Eswatini as part of an agreement to accept migrants deported from the US.

Those agreements have been criticised by rights groups, which say they deprive deportees of due process and expose them to abusive conditions.

A group of 27 members of the US Congress have signed a letter calling on Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee to bring about the release of Mohammed Ibrahim, a 16-year-old Palestinian-American teenager who has been held in Israeli detention for eight months.

“We are concerned about reports of the mistreatment of Palestinians in Israeli detention facilities and prisons, including both of the prisons that have held Mohammed,” the letter reads.

“As we have been told repeatedly, ‘the Department of State has no higher priority than the safety and security of US citizens abroad,'” it added. “We share that view and urge you to fulfil this responsibility by engaging the Israeli government directly to secure the swift release of this American boy.”

Ibrahim has described abusive conditions in Israeli detention, including physical beating during his initial arrest, as well as cold cells and minimal food. The rights group Defense for Children International–Palestine (DCIP) says that he has lost “considerable weight”.

He has been charged with throwing stones at Israeli settlers, an allegation that Ibrahim denies and that is commonly used as a pretext by Israeli authorities for the arrest and detention of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

Ibrahim’s cousin, a US citizen named Sayfollah Musallet, was beaten to death by Israeli settlers in June, an event that Palestinian rights groups have depicted as a lynching. Israeli settlers almost never face consequences for frequent violent attacks on Palestinians.