Former real estate developer leads press corps on tour of grounds and says ‘one thing I know how to do is build’

As the US national debt climbed past $40tn for the first time on Wednesday, and the war with Iran that Donald Trump started nearly six months ago dragged on, forcing Americans already struggling to pay the bills to spend more on fuel, the US president led the press corps on a tour of the extensive remodeling of the White House grounds he is personally overseeing in his role as the self-styled “builder-in-chief”.

The tour, during which Trump showed off upgrades such as a new granite driveway and refurbished columns, and expounded at length on newly laid grass, culminated in Trump autographing the back of a stone, inscribed with his name, to go in the center of the ornate new helipad he insists he needs.

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Those unfamiliar with Alaska politics are likely raising an eyebrow at some repeated names.

No, we’re not talking about Dan S Sullivan and Dan J Sullivan, two Republicans with the same name running for US Senate – an issue that went to the state supreme court earlier this summer. We’re talking about the Begiches. Nick Begich III, a Republican, is currently leading the race to represent Alaska in the US House of Representatives for a second term while Tom Begich, a Democrat, is advancing to the general election for governor in November.

Outgoing Louisiana senator Bill Cassidy, a medical doctor, voted to confirm anti-vaccine activist RFK Jr as health secretary before speaking out

The Republican senator Bill Cassidy – a medical doctor who voted to confirm anti-vaccine activist Robert F Kennedy as federal health secretary in early 2025 – on Sunday denounced Donald Trump’s “crazy, stupid” claims about the safety of the combined MMR vaccine for undermining faith in immunization.

When Trump recently ordered changes to the recommended childhood vaccination schedule, with Kennedy by his side, the president called for two shots of the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine to be scrapped in favor of two doses of three separate vaccines, claiming that the MMR shots are “sort of like a nuclear weapon” that could be “quite lethal”.

US president credits himself with lowest drug prices in 60 years, when article says drop is more likely due to Biden

The White House flooded social media on Saturday with an image of Donald Trump showing off the recent Washington Post headline “Prescription drug prices record sharpest drop in more than 60 years”, but failed to mention that experts cited in the article actually attributed the price drop to Joe Biden, not Trump.

On its official accounts, the White House triumphantly captioned the photograph of Trump: “POV: you bring the receipts.” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, also shared it.

President has suggested steam catapults every year since 2017, saying digital systems are too ‘complicated’

After nearly a decade of loudly complaining about the fact that modern US aircraft carriers use electromagnetic systems to launch fighter jets instead of steam-powered catapults, Donald Trump has directed the Pentagon to redesign a new aircraft carrier to replace the modern system with the old-fashioned catapults he prefers.

Trump signed a national security memorandum on Thursday directing the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and the acting navy secretary, Hung Cao, to make the change he has had his heart set on since at least 2017, when he first described his idea to Time magazine.

As Karoline Leavitt plans to step down, it’s apparent how the president above all values a readiness to twist the truth

As Karoline Leavitt prepares to step down from her role as Donald Trump’s fifth White House press secretary, a brief review of her tenure, and that of her predecessors, makes clear that the most fabulist president in US history prizes one quality above all else in the women and men who speak for him: a willingness to tell outrageous lies.

Leavitt started her tenure by telling a wild falsehood at her very first news conference, when she claimed that the Biden administration had planned to use $50m in taxpayer dollars to send condoms to Gaza. Later the same day, the Guardian reported that the claim was directly contradicted by USAID records.

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Donald Trump’s executive order on vaccines does not change the US recommendations for the shots – but experts say it does create confusion and doubt about vaccines, which will lead to more illness and possibly deaths among children and will make it harder for families and pediatricians to protect them.

The executive order was an attempt to reinstate sweeping changes to the vaccine schedule made earlier this year by Robert F Kennedy Jr, secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services and a longtime vaccine opponent – changes that were later halted by a federal judge.