• Federal judge decides president does not have power to restrict travel from 6 of 8 countries

Trump dares Hillary to run in 2020 polls

US President Donald Trump has challenged former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to run against him in the 2020 presidential elections.

Clinton in recent months has been attributing external factors for her defeat, whereas Trump claimed that she was a weak candidate. “I hope Hillary runs. Is she going to run? I hope. Hillary, please run again. Go ahead,” Trump told reporters at  news conference in White House.

Trump said there a number of reasons for the defeat of Clinton in the presidential elections. “There are a lot of reasons she didn’t win, including the fact that she was not good at what she did,” Trump said.

He also slammed Clinton for defending NFL players who kneel during national anthem. “I think that her statement, in itself, is very disrespectful to our country,” he said. “It is very disrespectful to our country when they take a knee during the national anthem, number one. Number two, the people of our country are very angry at the NFL. All you have to do is look at their ratings and look at their stadiums. You see empty seats where you never saw them before. A lot of people are very angry at it,” he said. “It is highly disrespectful, they shouldn’t do it, Trump said in response to a question. Trump also said that Clinton blaming Russia for her defeat is an excuse.

“The whole Russian thing was an excuse for the Democrats losing the election, and it turns out to be just one excuse. I mean, today, Hillary blamed Nigel Farage. That one came out of nowhere,” he charged.

A US judge has blocked President Donald Trump’s latest bid to impose restrictions on citizens from several countries entering the United States, which had been set to take effect this week. The open-ended ban, announced in September, targeted people from Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Chad and North Korea, as well as certain government officials from Venezuela. It was the latest version of a policy that had previously targeted six Muslim-majority countries but had been restricted by the US Supreme Court.

The state of Hawaii sued in federal court in Honolulu to block Trump’s latest policy directive, arguing that federal immigration law did not give him the authority to impose the restrictions on six of those countries. Hawaii did not challenge entry restrictions relating to North Korea and Venezuela.US District Judge Derrick Watson in Honolulu had previously blocked Trump’s last travel ban in March. In his latest ruling , Judge Derrick Watson said Hawaii is likely to succeed in proving that Trump’s latest travel ban violates federal immigration law.The policy “suffers from precisely the same maladies as its predecessor: it lacks sufficient findings that the entry of more than 150 million nationals from six specified countries would be ‘detrimental to the interests of the United States’,” Judge Derrick Watson wrote. At a news briefing, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert declined to comment on how it would affect State Department consular operations.

As a candidate, Trump had promised “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”. In announcing the newest travel restrictions, the White House had portrayed them as necessary consequences for countries that did not meet new requirements for vetting of immigrants and issuing of visas. Those requirements were shared in July with foreign governments, which had 50 days to make improvements if needed, the White House said.

A number of countries made improvements by enhancing the security of travel documents or the reporting of passports that were lost or stolen. Others did not, sparking the restrictions.