monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

A United States congressional candidate has used a picture of a British seaside village to show what could happen if voters do not back President Trump.

An advert used an image of Jaywick Sands, near Clacton in Essex, to attack Nick Stella's Democrat opponent.

The campaign picture, which showed an unpaved road and rundown homes, said: "Help President Trump keep America on track and thriving."

It has received angry criticism from locals and Tendring District Council.

Republican Dr Stella is standing in the 11th Illinois congressional district in the US mid-term elections against Bill Foster.

The advert, which was shared on Dr Stella's campaign Facebook page, showed a billboard congratulating Congress speaker Nancy Pelosi and a message saying: "A vote for Foster is a vote for a speaker Pelosi. We can't go back to foreclosures, unemployment and economic recession."

Jaywick was the most deprived neighbourhood in England in 2010 and 2015, according to the government's deprivation index.

Since then Essex County Council has completed a £6.5m programme to improve the roads and drainage.

Paul Honeywood, Tendring District Council Cabinet Member with special responsibility for Jaywick, said it was appalling to use the old image for political gain and said the village was on the up.

He said: "I know that many Jaywick Sands residents will be outraged at being smeared in this way, and rightly so."

Police in New York are invesitgating the deaths of two sisters from Saudi Arabia who were found duct-taped together in the Hudson River last week.

Tala Farea, 16, and Rotana Farea, 22, were discovered facing each other and fully clothed without any obvious signs of trauma, police say.

Investigators say it is too early to determine if any crime occurred or if their deaths were caused by suicide.

The girls had recently applied for US asylum, police said.

The Farea sisters moved from Saudi Arabia to Fairfax, Virginia, in 2015 with their mother, and had a history of running away from home, according to US officials.

But investigators say it remains a "puzzle" as to how they came to be found dead on a riverbank more than 250 miles (400km) from their family's home.

The Saudi Consulate General said in a statement that embassy officials had contacted their family, and added that the sisters were students "accompanying their brother in Washington".

The Associated Press, citing New York police, said that the day before their bodies were discovered, their mother received a call from an official at the Saudi embassy ordering the family to leave because the girls had applied for political asylum.

The girls were discovered in Riverside Park last Wednesday wearing black leggings and black jackets and with duct-tape around their waists and ankles.

Police had originally theorised that the girls may have jumped from the George Washington Bridge, but ruled that out after finding a lack of obvious injuries which they would have sustained in the fall.

After releasing sketch drawings of the sisters, police were able to identify them on Friday, and are now seeking the public's help in learning more about their lives in the New York metro area in the past two months.

At a press conference on Tuesday, the city's chief of detectives said there are some "gaps" in the sisters' history, which investigators are trying to resolve.

"I'm confident that when the complete investigation is done we'll have a good idea of what exactly transpired," said Detective Dermot Shea.

The president may have enormous power, but he cannot change the constitution on his own authority.

On the other hand, congressional elections are due in a week's time.

In my opinion, Trump is making as much noise as possible to activate his base

The core of his communication strategy is that as long as everyone is talking about him, no other issues will come up.

This strategy usually works, to the annoyance of the Democrats and others.

President Trump defended his proclivity to spread misleading statements and falsehoods, saying in a television interview Wednesday that he tells the truth when he can.

“Well, I try. I do try . . . and I always want to tell the truth,” Trump said in an interview with ABC News. “When I can, I tell the truth. And sometimes it turns out to be where something happens that’s different or there’s a change, but I always like to be truthful.”
[...]
He, for instance, said a middle-class tax cut would be passed by Nov. 1, even though Congress wasn’t in session and had no plans to reconvene before the elections.

He has repeatedly asserted that Republicans are more committed than Democrats to protecting people with preexisting health conditions, despite numerous past actions contrary to that claim.

And he has asserted that the United States is the only country to grant automatic citizenship to children born on its territory, despite the fact that more than 30 other nations have a similar “birthright citizenship” policies.

In the interview with ABC’s chief White House correspondent, Jonathan Karl, Trump also took issue with the media’s estimates of the sizes of caravans of Central American migrants slowly making their way toward the United States.

“You have caravans coming up that look a lot larger than it’s reported, actually,” Trump said. “I’m pretty good at estimating crowd size. And I’ll tell you, they look a lot bigger than people would think.”

Trump has often overstated the size of crowds he draws, starting with the first day of his presidency. At Trump’s direction, his then-press secretary Sean Spicer falsely claimed that the crowd at his 2017 inauguration was “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe.”

President Trump suggested Wednesday that there might be truth to an unfounded conspiracy theory that philanthropist and Democratic megadonor George Soros is funding a caravan of Central American migrants, telling reporters that he “wouldn’t be surprised” if that is the case.

As he left the White House, Trump was asked whether he thinks somebody is funding the migrant caravan that is slowly making its way through Mexico toward the U.S. border.

“I wouldn’t be surprised, yeah. I wouldn’t be surprised,” Trump responded.

Asked whether the funder could be Soros, Trump said: “I don’t know who, but I wouldn’t be surprised. A lot of people say yes.”