Donald Trump does U-turn on database plan to track Muslims in the US

Donald Trump has backtracked from his support for a government database to track Muslims in the US — an idea that drew sharp criticism from his Republican presidential rivals and disbelief from legal experts.

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush called such a registry “abhorrent”, Florida senator Marco Rubio said the idea was “unnecessary” and not something Americans would support and Texas senator Ted Cruz said he was “not a fan of government registries of American citizens”.

The first reference to a database came in a Trump interview with Yahoo News published on Thursday. When asked about requiring Muslims to register in a database or carry a form of special identification noting their religion, the property tycoon said: “We’re going to have to look at a lot of things very closely.”