Trump’s UN remarks – in summary
Trump opened his speech to the UN by commemorating the nation’s 250th anniversary and focusing not on international issues, but touting his domestic record. Tax cuts, stock market highs, crime rates, and immigration enforcement, to name a few.
He once again framed the war he launched on Iran earlier this year with Israel the same way he has to his domestic audience — as a necessary conflict to addressing a long-ignored threat. The United States, Trump said, had acted to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, while other countries ignored the issue.
Trump then re-issued his threat to “annihilate” Iran and “drive them into Hell” if the regime didn’t capitulate and make a deal.” He touted his version of the war: one in which the US had defanged Iran militarily and driven the country to the brink of economic collapse. And hedged by saying he was confident Iran would make a deal after the US midterm elections – an argument he’s made to US voters.
Trump said he was “working closely with the leaders of Russia and Ukraine” to end the disastrous war. “It’s going to happen, I think, more quickly than people understand,” he said. The US president said he had signed into law “a powerful new law” on sanctions, and “if necessary, I will have to use them.” He added: “It’s time to stop the killing.”
Trump defended his administration’s actions in Latin America – including the midnight raid to arrest former Venezuelan president Nicólas Maduro, and the oil deal he struck with his more US-friendly successor, Delcy Rodriguez. “To the victor belong the spoils,” Trump declared, justifying the deal that will funnel a share of the nation’s immense oil wealth into the US treasury.
Defending his drone strikes on boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific, Trump equated the cartels he claims to be fighting with Islamist terrorist organizations. “The cartels are the ISIS of the western Hemisphere – not good people,” he said. “Like ISIS, they should be killed, exiled or detained as enemy combatants without the possibility of release, which is what we’re doing.”
He accused Mexico of being effectively controlled by the cartels, and said it was “unacceptable” for the US to share a border with a nation under such conditions. “So Mexico must reclaim control of its soil from the enemies of humanity,” Trump said.
Trump also pointed to regime change in Cuba. “My administration is also seeking a fundamental change in the situation in Cuba, where the communist regime is under great pressure, the biggest pressure they’ve ever been under,” he said. “It’s an absolutely failed state. It’s failing.”
Trump said the US has reached “an unprecedented agreement” on Greenland, with the Kingdom of Denmark. He said the deal – to be formally signed shortly after his speech – “gives the US permanent control over security and all of the needs on that territory” and that the US will build two “very major” military bases in Greenland.
Trump said he would reject any calls for a “globalist scheme” to control artificial intelligence, and made an impromptu pitch to world leaders to call the technology “super intelligence” or “SI”. Amid mounting fears over the dangers of AI as some, including leaders in the industry, call for international regulation on the technology, Trump said he would not hinder its growth. He said he believes will be “bigger than the industrial revolution,” and vowed the US would lead on AI. “We’re only going to encourage superintelligence.”
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Democratic attorneys general from California and New York have sued the Trump administration over its plans to buy back offshore wind leases as Donald Trump seeks to discourage the expansion of wind energy in favor of fossil fuels.
California attorney general Rob Bonta said he was suing over removal of a project off his state’s coast planned by Chicago-based Invenergy. The Trump administration said in June it was buying back the company’s US offshore wind leases for four wind projects on the east and west coasts.
New York attorney general Letitia James, meanwhile, led seven states in suits seeking to block the Invenergy deal and another proposal with Bluepoint Wind, which agreed in April to end a wind farm under development off the New York and New Jersey coast.
The deals would hand energy companies $1.4bn in taxpayer dollars in exchange for the cancellation of multiple projects. In all, the Trump administration has pledged nearly $4bn to companies to walk away from projects across the country.
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Richard Luscombe
Another prominent Florida Republican has publicly distanced himself from Donald Trump, days after María Elvira Salazar called out the US president’s immigration-enforcement policy targeting law-abiding undocumented immigrants.
Byron Donalds, the Republican nominee for governor in November’s US midterm elections, launched an updated campaign website on Tuesday that was stripped of almost every mention of Trump and removed a photograph of the congressman and his wife, Erika, posing with the president, the Miami Herald reported.
Until now, Donalds has proudly touted his close ties with the president, running a Republican primary campaign themed largely on Trump’s endorsement, and displaying a large banner on his website advertising his support.
The move comes as Trump’s overall approval rating fell below 30% for the first time, dragged down by dissatisfaction over his handling of the US economy and the Iran war, and Republicans brace for heavy losses in November, including the possible loss of the party’s majorities in the US House of Representatives and Senate.
ShareRepublican National Committee sues New Jersey election officials for refusal to turn over voter records
The Republican National Committee has sued top election officials in New Jersey, alleging they failed to produce public voter roll records, including the addresses of noncitizen voters.
The lawsuit follows New Jersey governor Mikie Sherril’s announcement in July that “a software error” in the state’s motor vehicle registration system added 6,600 noncitizens to the state’s voter registration list beginning in 2023. According to the state, 400 votes were cast by noncitizens – although Donald Trump claimed that “thousands of votes” were cast by noncitizens in the state, in an effort to drum up support for his SAVE America Act.
In 2024, Kamala Harris won New Jersey by more than 252,000 votes – meaning that even if all voters were registered as Democrats, which they were not, their votes would not have swung the presidential election.
In Tuesday’s lawsuit, the RNC states that, New Jersey “objected to or denied” several of its records requests “including the request for records of address confirmation notices”.
In July, assistant attorney general for civil rights Harmeet Dhillon wrote to Sherril requesting the “full names, dates of birth, nationalities, residential addresses, and registration dates and locations” of all 6,600 noncitizen voters.
Sherrill has said she will not provide that information. “We now have certain people that, through no fault of their own, have been registered to vote,” she said at a press conference. “It may imperil their immigration status.”
Updated at 18.33 EDT
Kamala Harris joined Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed for a roundtable on Black maternal health and mortality in Detroit today. The two spoke with local leaders for more than an hour at Birth Detroit, a Black-led birth center.
The roundtable marked Harris’s first campaign trip of the midterms.
“I’m here to support Dr. El-Sayed because on this subject, I know he will be a champion,” Harris said.
El-Sayed struggled to gain the support of Black voters in his primary election last month. While in Michigan, Harris will also attend a local NAACP event.
The Trump administration will accept 17,500 refugees in fiscal year 2027, CNN reports, citing a copy of the report to Congress.
The vast majority of the refugees are expected to be white South Africans, including Afrikaners. Earlier this year, the administration raised the cap for South African refugees, setting a limit of 17,500 refugees from the country.
“The United States anticipates that Afrikaners from South Africa will fully assimilate into the United States in a manner that preserves taxpayer resources for U.S. citizens and does not anticipate other countries resettling Afrikaners,” the report states.
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Tiago Rogero
US president Donald Trump called on all Latin American and Caribbean countries aligned with his administration to designate cartels as narco-terrorists and “apply crushing sanctions” against them.
During a meeting of the Shield of the Americas – an anti-drug cartel coalition formed by 14 Latin American and Caribbean countries governed by rightwing or far-right presidents – Trump said that “for years, cartels have waged war on the people of this hemisphere. Now, we’re waging war on them”.
He added: “So, today, I’m asking all nations in the Shield of the Americas to formally designate narco-terrorists as common threats to stability and apply crushing sanctions against all 24 U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organizations.”
The group, which includes countries such as Argentina, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic, met in New York after Trump said in his speech to the UN General Assembly that “the cartels are the ISIS of the Western Hemisphere” and that “like ISIS, they should be killed, exiled or detained as enemy combatants without the possibility of release”.
In a speech lasting just over 10 minutes to members of the coalition, Trump added: “You probably noticed that the drugs, the fentanyl being delivered by sea, by ocean and sea, it’s down 97 per cent coming into the US” – although many experts have repeatedly pointed out that there is no evidence of fentanyl being produced in or trafficked by sea to the US from South America.
The US president also used the meeting to boast that candidates he had backed had won every election in the region since he took office for a second term.
“There’s been a big shift in your countries, a big shift to the right. That’s a good thing,” said Trump, who particularly celebrated the victory in Colombia of the far-right millionaire former lawyer and businessman Abelardo de la Espriella – who was not present and sent his vice-president instead because he pledged not to leave the country during his four-year term.
“He was a big Trump fan,” said Trump of De la Espriella’s campaign. “All he did was talk about Trump, Trump, Trump. And I said, I like that guy. Let’s endorse him.”
Although the US president said that, after his endorsement, De la Espriella “went from number 10 to number one and won in a landslide”, Trump only endorsed him in the second round, after the Colombian had already won the first round – in which Trump had not backed any candidate.
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer has criticized Donald Trump’s remarks on Iran at the UN general assembly today, and called for Senate Republicans to join with Democrats in passing a War Powers Resolution this week.
“Only Trump could try to present himself as a peacemaker and then threaten to ‘annihilate’ an entire country in the same breath – that’s what he did at the UN this morning,” Schumer said in a statement.
“This week, Senate Democrats will force another vote on our War Powers Resolution to end this war and get our troops’ out of harm’s way,” he said. “Every Republican who votes against ending the war this week is choosing to pander to the president instead of protecting our troops and our country.”
The United States is withholding a visa for Sudan’s de facto leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan ahead of his scheduled Thursday appearance at the United Nations general assembly, Reuters reports, citing Sudanese and other sources who believe the move is tied to Burhan’s opposition to a US-backed ceasefire proposal.
“We in the Sudanese government express our deep regret because this is a violation of the UN Convention and international law,” a senior Sudanese source told Reuters, adding that Burhan had postponed his trip as he awaited official notice of the visa denial.
The country’s UN ambassador has asked UN secretary-general António Guterres to intervene. Although Burhan, Sudan’s army chief, has attended the UN general assembly before, the country is preparing to have foreign minister Mohieldin Salem stand in for him on Thursday.
In a statement, UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric told Reuters that Guterres is “deeply concerned that a visa has reportedly not yet been issued.”
Speaking at the sidelines of the UN general assembly, Donald Trump said his diplomatic representatives – real estate investor Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner – had “a very productive meeting today” with Iranian mediators.
While addressing a meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council – a security alliance comprised of leaders from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman – Trump suggested his team could reach a peace deal with Iran. Trump has claimed that the war with Iran, which began in February, would only last a few weeks.
According to Iranian state media, the country’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi met Witkoff to discuss conditions for reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
Updated at 16.31 EDT
Trump’s FBI killed corruption probe into Susan Collins’ campaign: report
The FBI under Trump killed an anti-corruption probe into Susan Collins, the Republican senator from Maine, stemming from a convicted former defense contracting executive’s claims that he’d paid off Collins’ campaign in exchange for government contracts, ProPublica reported Tuesday.
The report by ProPublica presents evidence that Kao contributed campaign funds in return for Collins steering funds toward Kao’s company, Navatek. Kao, facing criminal charges, began sharing details on an alleged scheme with the FBI to skirt campaign finance laws to contribute to Collins’ campaign treasury, ProPublica reported.
Annie Clark, Collins’ deputy chief of staff, denied the allegations in a post to social media.
“The seven-year-old allegations made against Senator Collins and her staff in this piece are categorically false,” Clark wrote. She said that Collins’ campaign cooperated fully with the FBI, and that ProPublica was amplifying false and “outlandish” allegations Kao made while trying deflect blame for his own crimes. “There have never been any allegations of wrongdoing by the Collins for Senator campaign, and the campaign was never the target of the FBI investigation.”
ShareTrump strikes warm tone in meeting with UK prime minister
Andrew Sparrow
Trump also met earlier this afternoon with the the United Kingdom’s new prime minister, Andy Burnham, with whom he appeared to enjoy a solid rapport – a divergence from his at-times testy relationship with Burnham’s predecessor in the role, Keir Starmer.
“I think he’s going to be a great prime minister,” Trump said of Burnham. “I think he’s got a lot of assets on his side.”
Trump added: “We talked about everything from Rolls-Royce to energy, immigration. We covered a lot.”
Donald Trump shakes hands with Andy Burnham during a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the 81st United Nations General Assembly in New York on 22 September. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
One point of tension in an otherwise cordial exchange: the Chagos Islands deal, a proposal by Keir Starmer’s goverment to give Mauritius sovereignty over the Chagos Islands, on condition that the US and the UK can continue to operate the Diego Garcia military base there for at least another 99 years.
“I don’t support it,” Trump said. “I think it’s a terrible deal.”
At one point the relationship between Trump and Starmer was good. But it worsened as Starmer started to criticize Trump publicly on issues like his proposal to annex Greenland, and his claim British troops avoided frontline action in Afghanistan. And the full rupture came when Keir Starmer refused to allow the US to use British airbases for attacks against Iran at the start of the war.
Updated at 15.40 EDT
Members of US delegation met Iranian leadership at UN, Trump says
During a press conference alongside Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Trump said some members of his team met today with the Iranian delegation, a meeting that he said lasted three hours and “went very well.”
Trump left the exact nature of the exchange – what was discussed, and what progress, if any, was made toward a deal – unclear, but said it was a “a very good meeting.” He then repeated his threat delivered to the assembled world leaders in an address earlier that morning that Iran had to choose between “potential greatness or obliteration.”
“They had a very good meeting, and they have another one scheduled in the near future,” Trump said, teasing future conversations with Iran.
Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law-turned-Middle East diplomat, sat alongside the president. Both declined to share specifics of the meeting.
“I feel very good right now,” Witkoff said when asked how he felt after the initial meeting.
“How will you feel tomorrow?” a reporter pressed him.
“I think very good,” he said.
Updated at 14.15 EDT
Trump endorses a US embargo on diesel exports in conversation with Zelenskyy
President Trump appeared to support the increasingly loud calls from some members of his party to halt the export of US diesel fuel, whose skyrocketing price has begun to ripple out through the American economy and stung Republicans ahead of the upcoming midterm elections.
“I’ve called for that too, I’ve said, ‘let’s not send out the diesel’,” Trump said, when asked about the outcry from his fellow Republicans.
He then turned to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, sitting at his side, who said the Trump administration is evaluating the feasibility of a full or partial plan. Trump declined to share a timeline for when such a ban could come down.
The subject was raised after a reporter mentioned Ukraine’s attacks on Russian oil infrastructure, which Trump was quick to point out had damaged global diesel supplies. (The conflict between the US and Iran, which Trump launched in February alongside Israel, has also strangled global energy markets.)
“It is a serious hit on the Russians,” Trump said. “It’s also a very serious hit on the price of diesel.”
Updated at 14.01 EDT