Tuesday’s top story: President shrugs off impeachment threat over Zelenskiy call. Plus, how the US built the world’s largest immigration detention system

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

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Good morning, I’m Tim Walker with today’s essential stories.

Trump meets Ukraine accusations with baseless Biden claim

Donald Trump has tried to shrug off the growing demands for his impeachment amid allegations that he pressured the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to investigate his potential 2020 rival, Joe Biden, over baseless claims of corruption. Speaking in New York, the president insisted he did not take the threat of impeachment seriously and tried to turn the accusations against him back on his opponents, saying Biden was “corrupt” and the media “crooked”.

Whistleblower scandal. The House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has so far resisted calls to begin impeachment proceedings against Trump. Adam Gabbatt explains why the Ukraine scandal may be serious enough to change her mind.

Playground taunts. The president’s playground tactic of redirecting accusations of misconduct back at his accusers has proven disappointingly effective in the past, says Tom McCarthy.

Trump mocks Greta Thunberg’s emotional climate speech

Play Video 0:18 Greta Thunberg stares down Trump as he arrives for UN climate summit – video

Trump appeared to mock the teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg on Monday, after she made an impassioned speech at the UN climate summit, excoriating world leaders for their “betrayal” of young people by failing to tackle the climate crisis. Thunberg’s angry address was widely shared, including by the US president, who tweeted: “She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see!”

‘You are failing us.’ Thunberg’s criticisms of world leaders looked prescient after Monday’s summit. Trump only fleetingly attended the climate event, China failed to put forward any new climate measures, and Brazil skipped the summit altogether.

Missing targets. Just one in five of the world’s largest businesses are expected to to meet the targets agreed in the Paris climate agreement, according to an analysis by the investment data provider Arabesque S-Ray.

How the FBI targeted environmental activists

Facebook Twitter Pinterest An indigenous activist at a 2017 protest in Washington against the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

More than a dozen environmental activists who campaigned against fossil fuel extraction in North America were identified in domestic terrorism-related investigations by the FBI, according to hundreds of pages of the bureau’s files that were obtained by the Guardian through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The investigations were opened in 2013-14, at the height of opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, and characterised non-violent protesters as a potential threat to national security.

Keystone XL pipeline. In 2015, in a victory for campaigners, the Obama administration rejected the Keystone XL pipeline project. The Trump administration has since reversed that decision.

Boris Johnson calls for new ‘Trump deal’ with Iran

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Johnson hailed the US president as a ‘very, very brilliant negotiator’. Photograph: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

The UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, has hailed Trump as a “very, very brilliant negotiator” and called on him to forge a new “Trump deal” with Iran, after siding with the US president on the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, which Johnson described as a “bad deal”. Johnson’s remarks, in an interview with NBC, were a departure from previous UK rhetoric on Iran, apparently designed to emphasise his personal relationship with Trump at the expense of the UK’s European allies and co-signatories to the deal.

Proroguing threat. The British supreme court is set to rule on Tuesday as to whether Johnson’s recent suspension of parliament was lawful, but Johnson has nonetheless refused to rule out using the same tactic again.

American friend. Johnson’s close friendship with an American businesswoman – who was granted £126,000 in public money during his time as London mayor – is under scrutiny, as Matthew Weaver and Simon Murphy explain.

Cheat sheet

Must-reads

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Migrant families detained at an overcrowded US Border Patrol processing centre in McAllen, Texas. Photograph: Handout/Getty Images

America’s staggering immigration detention boom

More than 52,000 people are currently confined in US immigration detention centres. Forty years ago, the system didn’t even exist. In this investigative multimedia report, The Marshall Project’s Emily Kassie tells the story of America’s staggering immigration detention boom.

I ‘stormed’ Area 51 and it was weirder than I imagined

In June, a college student created a Facebook event, which suggested “storming” Area 51, the secret air force base where the US government is rumoured to be hiding evidence of aliens. Soon the joke event had more than a million RSVPs. J Oliver Conroy went to the Nevada desert to see what happened next.

Girl in a box: the mysterious crime that shocked Germany

On 15 September 1981, 10-year-old Ursula Herrmann set off for home on her bike from a cousin’s house. She never made it. Almost four decades later, her case remains contentious – and, Ursula’s brother believes, unsolved. Xan Rice reports.

Ken Burns’ Country Music celebrates the outsider

The celebrated documentarian Ken Burns’ latest opus is a 16-hour history of country music, a genre long seen as viewing outsiders with skepticism and hostility. Yet as an outsider himself, Burns presents an image of country far more diverse than its stereotype would suggest, says Jonathan Keefe.

Opinion

Chanel Miller, the victim of the convicted Stanford rapist Brock Turner, has waived her right to anonymity by publishing a memoir and giving her first TV interview. In speaking out, sexual assault survivors can stop the media’s victim-blaming, and shift focus away from the feelings of perpetrators, says Kristine Ziwica.

As Miller so powerfully demonstrates, victims who speak out can fundamentally change how we understand sexual assault, the culture that enables it and, most importantly, who should be held accountable. Hint: never the victim.

Sport

The USA World Cup winner Megan Rapinoe has spoken out about racism, homophobia and soccer’s gender pay gap after being named player of the year at Fifa’s The Best awards in Milan. Lionel Messi was named men’s player of the year, while the USA coach, Jill Ellis, and Liverpool’s manager, Jürgen Klopp, won the coaching prizes.

The World Anti-Doping Agency has given Russia three weeks to explain apparent inconsistencies in data from its Moscow drug-testing laboratory or face the possibility of being banned from the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.

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