Summary
We’ll be shutting down today’s blog shortly. Here’s a glance at today’s major news items:
- US records more than 1,000 Covid deaths a day as Republicans mull relief. The US has recorded more than 1,000 deaths a day from Covid-19 for five days running, as cases surge in southern and western states, the national caseload nears 4.2m and the death toll approaches 150,000.
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John Lewis crosses Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma for final time. The civil rights leader and longtime congressman crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, for the last time on Sunday, as remembrances of his life continued.
- Trump aims barb at Reagan Foundation in fundraising coin kerfuffle. Donald Trump famously fell out with the Bush family and has regularly claimed to be the greatest Republican president since the first, Abraham Lincoln. He has largely avoided attacking another claimant to that title, Ronald Reagan. Until now.
- Hurricane Douglas: Hawaii prepares for high winds, rain and storm surge. Hawaii prepared for Hurricane Douglas on Sunday, with predictions of high winds, rain and storm surge. “It’s definitely going to be a triple threat,” said National Weather Service (NWS) meteorologist Vanessa Almanza, adding that rainfall could be anywhere from 5in-15in.
- Hurricane Hanna: storm hits Texas counties struggling with Covid-19. A day after roaring ashore as a hurricane, Hanna lashed the Texas Gulf coast on Sunday with high winds and drenching rains that destroyed boats, flooded streets and knocked out power across a region already reeling from a surge in coronavirus cases.
- Protesters in Portland bring down fence as confrontation with Trump agents rises. The confrontation between protesters and federal paramilitaries in the Oregon city escalated early on Sunday morning, when demonstrators finally broke down a steel fence around the courthouse after days of trying.
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Staff clear US Chengdu consulate as China’s closure deadline looms. Staff at the US consulate in Chengdu have been making final efforts to clear the premises before Monday closure ordered by Beijing as relations with Washington continue to worsen.
Arkansas senator Tom Cotton called the enslavement of millions of African people and their descendants “the necessary evil upon which the union was built” in an interview with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette published on Sunday.
The Republican lawmaker was speaking in support of legislation he introduced on Thursday that aims to prohibit use of federal funds to teach the 1619 Project, an initiative from the New York Times that reframes US history around the date of August 1619 and the first arrival of stave ships on American soil.
The Saving American History Act of 2020 and “would prohibit the use of federal funds to teach the 1619 Project by K-12 schools or school districts”, according to a statement from Cotton’s office.
“The entire premise of the New York Times’ factually, historically flawed 1619 Project … is that America is at root, a systemically racist country to the core and irredeemable. I reject that root and branch,” Cotton told the Democrat-Gazette on Friday. “America is a great and noble country founded on the proposition that all mankind is created equal. We have always struggled to live up to that promise, but no country has ever done more to achieve it.”
He added: “We have to study the history of slavery and its role and impact on the development of our country because otherwise we can’t understand our country. As the Founding Fathers said, it was the necessary evil upon which the union was built, but the union was built in a way, as Lincoln said, to put slavery on the course to its ultimate extinction.”
Nikole Hannah-Jones, who was awarded this year’s Pulitzer Prize for commentary for her introductory essay to the project, did not respond to a request for comment from the Little Rock newspaper, but tweeted on Friday that Cotton’s bill “speaks to the power of journalism more than anything I’ve ever done in my career”.
In June, the Times was forced to issue a mea culpa after publishing an op-ed written by Cotton entitled “Send in the troops”, which advocated for the deployment of the military against protesters rallying against police brutality toward black Americans and drew widespread criticism.
Times publisher AG Sulzberger initially defended the decision, saying the paper was committed to representing “views from across the spectrum”. But the Times subsequently issued a statement saying the op-ed fell short of its editorial standards, leading to the resignation of editorial page director James Bennet.
Updated
Shortly before he departed on Air Force One from Morristown Municipal Airport en route to Washington, Donald Trump announced that he will not be throwing out the ceremonial first pitch before a Red Sox-Yankees game at Yankee Stadium next month due to scheduling conflicts.
“Because of my strong focus on the China Virus, including scheduled meetings on Vaccines, our economy and much else, I won’t be able to be in New York to throw out the opening pitch for the @Yankees on August 15th,” he wrote on Twitter. “We will make it later in the season!”
Because of my strong focus on the China Virus, including scheduled meetings on Vaccines, our economy and much else, I won’t be able to be in New York to throw out the opening pitch for the @Yankees on August 15th. We will make it later in the season!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2020
The US president, a native New Yorker who has yet to throw out a first pitch while serving as president, had first revealed the invitation by Yankees president and “great friend” Randy Levine during Thursday’s daily coronavirus briefing at the White House.
But Trump’s announcement was received with contempt by New York City mayor Bill de Blasio, who criticized the team on Friday for aligning “with hatred” by welcoming Trump to the stadium.
Di Blasio wrote: “After CONDEMNING racism, the next step isn’t inviting it to your pitcher’s mound. To the players that knelt for the BLM movement, we applaud you. To the execs that have aligned with hatred, you are on the wrong side of history and morality.”
If Trump does make the trip to the Bronx ballpark, it will mark his first appearance at a baseball game since he was infamously booed by a Washington crowd when he attended Game 5 of the World Series between the Houston Astros and Washington Nationals in October.
Updated
The news website ProPublica has published a database containing complaint information for thousands of New York City police officers days after a federal judge paused the public release of such records.
The Associated Press reports:
ProPublica posted the database Sunday, explaining in a note to readers that it isn’t obligated to comply with judge Katherine Polk Failla’s temporary restraining order because it is not a party to a union lawsuit challenging the release of such records.
Deputy managing editor Eric Umansky said ProPublica requested the information from the city’s police watchdog agency, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, soon after last month’s repeal of state law that for decades had prevented the disclosure of disciplinary records.
Unions representing police officers and other public safety workers sued the city on July 15 to block Mayor Bill de Blasio from making good on a pledge to start posting misconduct complaints on a government website. The unions argue that allowing the public to see unproven or false complaints could sully officers’ reputations and compromise their safety.
A state judge who first handled the case had issued a narrower restraining order that temporarily blocked the public disclosure of records concerning unsubstantiated and non-finalized allegations or settlement agreements.
ProPublica said it excluded allegations that investigators deemed unfounded from the material it published. In all, the searchable database contains 12,056 complaints against 3,996 active NYPD officers.
Georgia’s department of public health reported 2,765 new coronavirus cases on Sunday, down from 3,787 on Saturday and Friday’s record high of 4,813.
Authorities reported three new deaths in the past 24 hours, down sharply from 53 on Saturday.
New hospitalizations also fell to 62 on Sunday from 277 on Saturday.
Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, has tweeted out a clip of her interview on CBS’s Face the Nation this morning in which she coined a new nickname for Donald Trump over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
“This president, I have a new name for him: Mr. Make Matters Worse,” Pelosi told host Margaret Brennan. “He has made matters worse from the start – delay, denial, it’s a hoax, it’ll go away magically, it’s a miracle, and all the rest – and we’re in this situation.”
At every turn, President Trump has made matters worse for our country as we seek to fight the coronavirus. Instead of denying facts and trying to rush our children back to school before it is safe, he should be supporting the policies found in the #HeroesAct. @FaceTheNation pic.twitter.com/sXSqCpFjje
— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) July 26, 2020
Donald Trump made an impromptu visit with his supporters after the presidential motorcade departed Trump National Golf Club in the New Jersey suburb of Bedminster at 2.11pm, according to a White House pool report.
At 2.20pm, the motorcade stopped at an intersection where a group of about 50 supporters were assembled in the town of Bedminster, several miles away from the club. Trump, who was wearing a white ‘Make America Great Again’ ballcap but not a facemask, then stepped out of his SUV and tossed out red ‘Keep America Great’ hats to the crowd, keeping about six feet away from the mass.
At 2.21pm, Trump returned to his vehicle and the motorcade was away and rolling again.
Today marks the 11th day that Trump has spent time at one of his golf courses in the past 30 days.
Texas governor Greg Abbott, who issued an executive order requiring all Texans to wear face masks at public gatherings in a reversal from his previous stance, has offered some words of encouragement in the battle to contain the virus.
Great job Galveston to slow the spread of COVID.
— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) July 26, 2020
You did it by wearing masks, reducing the size of gatherings, staying home when possible & good distancing practices.
COVID can’t spread if you don’t give it a chance to transmit.
Don’t let it return.
Keep crushing it. pic.twitter.com/ybZMgEXlxC
On Saturday, Texas reported 8,112 new coronavirus cases and 168 deaths, according to data from the state’s Department of Health and Human Services.
A total of 375,846 cases and 4,885 deaths have been reported across Texas since the start of the outbreak.
Updated
Pelosi: no red line on unemployment payments
Pelosi told CBS she and her party had been “anxious to negotiate for two months and ten days”, but though they have been waiting for Senate Republicans to do something, they will be willing to wait some more to get the next relief package done.
Asked about Republican cuts to the special unemployment payments which are now expiring, stoking fears of an “economic catastrophe”, she said: “The reason we had $600 was its simplicity.
“And figuring out 70% of somebody’s wages” – as Republicans have indicated they will do – “people don’t all make a salary. Maybe they do. They make wages and they sometimes have it vary. So why don’t we just keep it simple?”
Pelosi added that “over 60% the American people support that”, contrasted Republican intransigence on the issue with the party’s eagerness for tax cuts for the rich, and said that for Republicans, perhaps “this is an emergency that maybe they don’t understand. I don’t know what they have against working families in America”.
That said, the speaker would not say the $600 unemployment payments would be a “red line” in forthcoming talks.
“You don’t go into a negotiation with a red line,” she said. “But you do go in with your values.”
Pelosi also, as it happens, coined a new name for Donald Trump, saying: “This president – I have a new name for him. Mr Make Matters Worse. He has made matters worse from the start.”
Trump had called her “crazy” in a tweet on Sunday morning, so it was probably fair game to snap back.
The Texas senator Ted Cruz – remember him – made an ordinarily outlandish claim on CBS’s Face the Nation earlier, saying Democrats want to shutdown businesses and schools in the face of a pandemic that is infecting around 70,000 and killing 1,000 Americans every day purely to defeat Donald Trump in November.
“I am onboard with restarting the economy,” Cruz said. “What Democrats want to do – we’re 100 days out from the presidential election. The only objective Democrats have is to defeat Donald Trump, and they’ve cynically decided the best way to defeat Donald Trump is shut down every business in America, shut down every school in America.
“You know, Nancy Pelosi talks about working men and women. What she’s proposing is keeping working men and women from working.”
Republicans say special unemployment payments of $600 a week should be cut, because they are a disincentive to work. Democrats disagree.
Pelosi’s bill, as labelled by Cruz, is the Heroes Act, a $3tn stimulus and relief package passed by the House in May but not taken up by the Senate. Republicans in the upper chamber and the Trump White House say they should be proposing their package on Monday. Here’s more on that.
And here, from Lauren Gambino in Washington, is a consideration of just where Trump stands, 100 days from that election:
Pennsylvania reported 800 news cases and four new deaths from Covid-19 on Sunday.
While those numbers are low compared to the peak in a state that was among the hardest hit in the early days of the pandemic, the state’s department of health said there has been a “significant” increase in cases among 19-24 year olds.
There have been more than 110,000 confirmed cases and 7,100 deaths from Covid-19 in Pennsylvania since the start of the pandemic.
The confrontation between protesters and federal paramilitaries in Portland escalated early on Sunday morning, when demonstrators finally broke down a steel fence around the courthouse after days of trying.
The federal agents fired waves of teargas and “non-lethal projectiles” to drive back thousands besieging the courthouse to demand Donald Trump withdraw the paramilitaries, ostensibly sent to curb two months of Black Lives Matters protests. The city police, who had largely withdrawn in recent days, declared a riot and joined federal agents in making arrests.
Portland is now the focal point of nationwide protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May. But many other cities are affected.
In Seattle, in neighbouring Washington state, authorities said rocks, bottles and fireworks were thrown at officers who used flash bangs and pepper spray. The police chief, Carmen Best, told reporters she had not seen federal agents the Trump administration sent to the city.
In Oakland, California, after a peaceful protest, a courthouse was set on fire. In Aurora, Colorado, a car drove into a Black Lives Matter protest and a demonstrator was shot. In Richmond, Virginia, a dump truck was set on fire and police appeared to use teargas to disperse protesters.
In Portland, authorities erected the steel barrier around the federal courthouse after two earlier fences were swiftly torn down. The latest barrier was held in place by large concrete blocks and proved impregnable for several days.
Early on Sunday, protesters attempted to bring it down with teams pulling on ropes, but the ropes broke. Then they used a chain, a section of the fence gave way, and the rest was toppled to huge cheers before the crowd was driven back by teargas and rubber bullets.
You can read the full story below:
The health and human service secretary, Alex Azar, says he does not think there are “uniform thresholds” when it comes to reopening schools in the US.
“Each community is going to have to make the determination about the circumstances for reopening, and what steps they take for reopening,” Azar told CBS. “But the presumption should be that we get out kids back to school and figure out how to make that happen.”
It was another night of unrest across the US on Saturday as protesters and federal agents faced off in Portland, Oregon, and a car drove through a group of protesters in Aurora, Colorado.
There was also trouble in Seattle, as the Associated Press reports:
In Seattle, police officers retreated into a precinct station early on Sunday, hours after large demonstrations in the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. Some demonstrators lingered after officers filed into the department’s East Precinct around 1am, but most cleared out a short time later, according to video posted online.
At a late-night news conference, Seattle police Chief Carmen Best called for peace. Rocks, bottles, fireworks and mortars were fired at police during the weekend unrest, and police said they arrested at least 45 people for assaults on officers, obstruction and failure to disperse. Twenty-one officers were hurt, with most of their injuries considered minor, police said.
A procession carrying the body of civil rights activist and US congressman John Lewis has crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. The bridge is where Lewis was among civil rights marchers assaulted by state troopers in 1965. Lewis’s skull was fractured during the incident.
There will also be a memorial service for Lewis at the US Capitol in Washington DC, before funeral services in Georgia, which he represented in Congress for 33 years.
Lewis was remembered at a service in Pike county, where he was born, on Saturday.
“I remember the day that John left home,” his brother, Samuel Lewis, said. “Mother told him not to get in trouble, not to get in the way ... but we all know that John got in trouble, got in the way but it was good trouble. And the troubles that he got himself into would change the world.”
Chicago’s Democratic mayor, Lori Lightfoot, has said she does not want federal agents sent to her city to police the streets, despite threats from Donald Trump to do so.
“I have said it before and I will say it again, no troops, no agents that are coming in outside of our knowledge, notification, and control that are violating people’s constitutional rights,” she said during an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot reacts to increased federal presence in her city: “We can’t just allow anyone to come into Chicago, play police in our streets, in our neighborhoods when they don’t know the first thing about our city. That’s a recipe for disaster.” #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/eZO3Zng6vV
— State of the Union (@CNNSotu) July 26, 2020
“We can’t just allow anyone to come into Chicago, play police in our streets, in our neighborhoods, when they don’t know the first thing about our city. That’s a recipe for disaster. And that’s what you’re seeing playing out in Portland on a nightly basis ... We don’t need that here. That is not a value add, and it doesn’t help enhance our public safety.”
Lightfoot said she is not entirely opposed to receiving federal help if it is appropriate.
“Let me be clear, this is not about working with the Trump administration. For decades now in major cities across the country, FBI, DEA, AFT, those agents have been in our districts and do work and work in concert with local law enforcement to help support a number of efforts, not the least of which is violence in our cities,” she said.
Despite the fact that the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits rose again last week after four months of falls, whole states facing economic crises and alarming reports about the crushing effect of the pandemic on small businesses, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow remains upbeat.
“I will say again, the economy is improving by leaps and bounds. I will also say, there are more states that are reopening and doing very well. There are some key states, yes. California and Texas and Florida, right now that are having hot spot difficulties. But it’s nothing like it was last winter,” he said during an appearance on CNN.
He also denied ending the extra $600 week benefit for the unemployed would result in evictions.
“First of all, state unemployment benefits stay in place. Second of all, we will try to cap the benefits at about 70% of wages,” he said. “You know, a University of Chicago study showed virtually 70%, 68% of people actually have higher benefits than wages. We have had a flood of inquiries and phone calls and complaints that small stores and businesses, restaurants can’t hire people back. They went too far. Maybe last March, it was necessary for that. But, really, the consequences of people not returning to work – Secretary Mnuchin said it right. We want to pay folks to go back to work.”
You can read more about the worries about ending the $600 payments below:
White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has appeared on ABC’s This Week, and has spoken about November’s election.
Last week, Donald Trump refused to say he would accept the result if he loses to Joe Biden. The president has also repeated unfounded claims that mail-in voting is subject to fraud, which some see as a tactic he will use if he does lose in November.
Meadows is asked by host George Stephanopoulos: “When you listen to the president, you begin to wonder, is he worried about the legitimacy of the electoral process or is he worried about losing?”
“What we do know is a number of times as we have mail-in ballots, if there is not a chain of custody that goes from the voter to the ballot box, mischief can happen,” says Meadows. “And we’ve seen that throughout our history. We also see very clearly that if you’re going to cast a ballot, you want to make sure it goes in the ballot box and it’s your vote that counts, not your vote for someone else that gets decided by another person.”
Meadows also says that “I’m not suggesting that there’s widespread fraud.”
Meadows also does not seem to worried about Russian interference in the election. “Now, there’s a big difference between foreign interference and foreign influence. They continue to try to influence, as everyone does across the globe,” he says.
“But in terms of actually affecting the vote totals and interacting, I think we’re in a good place. We’ve been willing to work with secretaries of states of every – of all 50 states as we look at that and the territories to make sure that their systems have the needed resources for the integrity to be there and so that we can count on that.”
Florida now behind only California in confirmed Covid-19 cases
Reuters has news on the surge of coronavirus cases in Florida:
Florida on Sunday became the second state after California to overtake New York, the worst-hit state at the start of the US novel coronavirus outbreak, according to a Reuters tally.
Total Covid-19 cases in the Sunshine State rose by 9,300 to 423,855 on Sunday, behind California, which now leads the country with 448,497 cases. New York is in third place with 415,827 cases.
Still, New York has recorded the most deaths of any US state at more than 32,000 with Florida in eighth place with nearly 6,000 deaths.
On average, Florida has added more than 10,000 cases a day in July while California has been adding 8,300 cases a day and New York has been adding 700 cases.
The surge in Florida has continued as the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, has repeatedly said he will not make mask-wearing mandatory and that schools must reopen in August.
Meanwhile, New York state has managed to get the virus under control, with stores and restaurants shuttered and the wearing of masks mandatory.
Admiral Brett Giroir, assistant secretary of health and member of the White House coronavirus taskforce, has appeared on CNN’s State of the Union.
He said the administration wants children to return to school, but the policy is flexible.
“We have always been clear that the presumption needs to be that we want our kids in school, for all the reasons you know, social, emotional,” he said. “There is no one size that fits all. Obviously, if the virus is high in that community and spreading, you have to temper your opening or do alternative strategies. I think that’s been clear. One size does not fit all.”
Giroir added that testing still needs to be improved in the US, with many people reporting long delays between being tested and getting results.
“I’m never going to be happy until we have this under control,” he said. “We’re going to continue to push every single day to improve the testing, the type of testing that we have, in the rapidity of turnaround.”
Giroir added that the main problem was in larger testing labs. “The delays that most people talk about are at the large commercial labs that perform about half the testing in our country,” he said, adding the average wait time in those labs is “4.27 days”.
New Mexico’s Democratic governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, has appeared on ABC’s This Week to talk about, among other things, federal agents being sent to her state to police protests.
Some see the use of federal agents in US cities as the start of martial law. The governor is asked how she feels about the subject. “If we are cooperatively working to address violent crime and gun violence – absolutely [it’s fine]. If we’re going to try to incentivize unrest, then that’s something altogether different,” she says.
New Mexico has also seen a rise in Covid-19 cases in recent weeks. The governor says she has been hampered by the poor federal response.
“There is no national strategy,” she says. “I still spend most of my days chasing testing supplies for our state. It is the worst abdication of a national response and responsibility to protect Americans I have ever seen in my government career.”
White House says $600 unemployment payments will end
In Washington, Senate Republicans and the White House continue talks over what to put in the next stimulus package, with Democrats fretting on the sidelines over the imminent expiration of enhanced unemployment payments and rising evictions of Americans unable to make their rent.
On Sunday, key negotiators said the package would be unveiled on Monday, but the extra $600 a week for the unemployed will not be included.
On ABC’s This Week, the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, said: “The original benefits will not [be extended] ... The original unemployment benefits actually paid people to stay home. We are going to be prepared, on Monday, to provide unemployment insurance extension that would be 70% of wages.”
On CNN’s State of the Union, the economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, said there would be new $1,200 direct payments to many Americans, as well as an extension of eviction moratoriums.
On Fox News Sunday, the treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, said liability protections from coronavirus-related lawsuits were also a Republican priority.
“We can move very quickly with the Democrats on these issues,” he said. “We’ve moved quickly before, and I see no reason why we can’t move quickly again.”
Karen Bass, a Democratic congresswoman from California, says Los Angeles county should return to a stay-at-home order after a surge in Covid-19 cases in her state.
Los Angeles has more recorded cases of the coronavirus – 172,000 – than any other county in the US (although it is also the most populous). California last week also passed New York as the state with the most cases in the US.
“If I were in charge of LA county I would go back to that and be very, very conservative how we opened up so you know you have to show a certain amount before you open up, a time period around three weeks and I think we didn’t strictly adhere to that so yes. I would go back and I would reopen very, very conservatively,” Bass told CNN on Sunday morning.
In 2016, we didn’t know. We were innocent. We still believed social media connected us and that connections were good. That technology equalled progress. And progress equalled better.
Four years on, we know too much. And yet, it turns out, we understand nothing. We know social media is a bin fire and that the world is burning. But it’s like the pandemic. We understand in outline how bad things could get. But we remain hopelessly human. Relentlessly optimistic. Of course, we believe there’ll be a vaccine. Because there has to be, doesn’t there?
In Facebook’s case, the worst has already happened. We’ve just failed to acknowledge it. Failed to reckon with it. And there’s no vaccine coming to the rescue. In 2016 everything changed. As for 2020… well, we will see.
We have already been through the equivalent of a social media pandemic – an unstoppable contagion that has sickened our information space, infected our public discourse, silently and invisibly subverted our electoral systems. It’s no longer about if this will happen all over again. Of course, it will. It hasn’t stopped. The question is whether our political systems, society, democracy, will survive – can survive – the age of Facebook.
We are already through the looking glass. In 2016, a hostile foreign government used Facebook to systematically undermine and subvert an American election. With no consequences. Nobody, no company, no individual or nation state has ever been held to account.
Zuckerberg says Black Lives Matter and yet we know Donald Trump used Facebook’s tools to deliberately suppress and deny black and Latino people the vote. With no consequences.
You can read the rest of the story below:
Updated
Polls give Biden lead over Trump in three battleground states
In addition to the NBC News poll (see previous post) from Arizona, CNN polls show Biden with leads over Trump in two other battleground states, Michigan and Florida, among registered voters.
The polls give Biden a 51% to 46% lead in Florida, a 49% to 45% edge in Arizona and a double-digit margin in Michigan (52% to 40%). Trump won all three states in the 2016 election.
Trump’s approval ratings were negative on the coronavirus and race relations in all three states, although more voters approved than disproved of his handling of the economy in Florida and Arizona. Biden was seen as more trustworthy than Trump in all three states.
Updated
A new NBC News/Marist poll shows the presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden holds a five-point lead over Donald Trump in the key battleground state of Arizona.
The last NBC News/Marist poll in Arizona took place in March, when Biden held a one-point lead.
Biden had leads among Latinos, voters under 45, women, independents, and whites with college degrees. Trump did better among among men, over 45s, whites, and whites without college degrees.
Voters saw Biden as better at handling Covid-19 and race relations, but Trump was seen as better on the economy. Trump also had an edge in enthusiasm from his own supporters. Seventy-four percent of Trump’s backers strongly support him, compared to 61% of those who said they intend to vote for Biden.
It appears the Republicans are in trouble in the senate race too. Voters prefer the Democratic challenger Mark Kelly to Republican senator Martha McSally, 53% to 41%.
Trump won Arizona by a 3.55% margin over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. Arizona was last won by a Democrat in 1996, when Bill Clinton ran.
Should anyone not have noticed, two US states, both with Covid-19-related problems, are currently being threatened by hurricanes.
Hanna has come ashore in southern Texas, and although it has weakened back below hurricane status flooding could still be a big problem for quite a few people in an area hard hit by coronavirus cases. Likewise northern Mexico.
Hawaii, meanwhile, has escaped the worst of Covid but suffered economic damage in so going. It is awaiting a cuff from Hurricane Douglas.
Here’s the AP report on both storms.
And here’s Lauren Aratani on Hawaii’s current situation, Covid-wise:
The Washington Post columnist Karen Tumulty has an interesting little tale.
As she puts it: “The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, which runs the 40th president’s library near Los Angeles, has demanded that Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee (RNC) quit raising campaign money by using Ronald Reagan’s name and likeness.”
Reagan, who made Jimmy Carter a one-term president 40 years ago, is a modern Republican saint. Trump, down in the polls to Joe Biden, staring at being a one-term president himself, less so.
Tumulty has more:
What came to the foundation’s attention – and compelled officials there to complain – was a fundraising email that went out [on] 19 July with “Donald J Trump” identified as the sender and a subject line that read: “Ronald Reagan and Yours Truly.”
The solicitation offered, for a donation of $45 or more, a “limited edition” commemorative set featuring two gold-colored coins, one each with an image of Reagan and Trump. The coins were mounted with a 1987 photograph of Reagan and Trump shaking hands in a White House receiving line – the type of fleeting contact that presidents have with thousands of people a year.
The column is worth a read if you like this sort of schadenfreude-y thing. I do, which is also why I’m currently reading Rick Perlstein’s Reaganland, the fourth and final installment in his monumental work on the rise of US conservatism from 1960 to 1980. It’s out next month, by which time I may have finished its 900-plus pages and found where Trump makes his promised entrance.
Portland wasn’t the only city to see confrontations between protesters and law enforcement overnight, as the AP reports from Seattle:
Seattle police retreated to a precinct early on Sunday, just hours after declaring a riot during large demonstrations in the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood near where weeks earlier people set up an “occupied protest zone” that stretched for several blocks.
Some demonstrators lingered after officers filed into the department’s East Precinct around 1am, but most cleared out a short time later, according to video posted online.
Authorities said rocks, bottles, fireworks and mortars were thrown at officers as they attempted to clear the area using flash bangs and pepper spray over the course of several hours.
Seattle police Chief Carmen Best called for peace at a late-night news conference, and told reporters she hadn’t seen US agents the Trump administration dispatched to the city at Saturday’s protest.
Via Twitter, police said they arrested at least 45 people for assaults on officers, obstruction and failure to disperse. Twenty-one officers were left with mostly minor injuries.
Chris McGreal will file his latest dispatch from Portland, Oregon later this morning. In the meantime here’s what the Associated Press saw overnight, after, according to practice, peaceful demonstrations earlier in the evening:
Authorities declared a riot early on Sunday when protesters breached a fence surrounding the city’s federal courthouse building where US agents have been stationed.
Police described via Twitter the “violent conduct of people downtown” as creating a “grave risk of public alarm”. Police demanded people leave the area surrounding the courthouse at around 1.20am and said that those who fail to adhere may be arrested or subjection to teargas and impact weapons.
By 1.40am, both federal officers and Portland police could be seen on the streets surrounding the courthouse, attempting to clear the area and deploying teargas.
Protesters remained in the streets past 2.30am, forming lines across intersections and holding makeshift shields, as police patrolled and closed blocks abutting the area. Multiple arrests were made, but it wasn’t immediately clear how many.
The full report is here:
Good morning…
… and welcome to another day of coverage of politics in the US, the protests in Portland, the coronavirus pandemic and more.
Between Tuesday and Friday, the US saw more than 1,000 deaths each day from Covid-19, with confirmed cases in the mid-70,000s daily. According to Johns Hopkins University there have now been nearly 4.2m cases recorded and more than 146,000 people have died.
In many southern and western states, most led by Republicans, cases are surging and hospitals filling up alarmingly. Michael Sainato reports on the situation in one Texas hospital, which is now deciding who gets to stay and who gets sent home to die.
In Washington, Senate Republicans continue to discuss with the administration what will go into the next stimulus and relief bill as the White House looks to kickstart the battered US economy. Democrats, who passed a bill in the House in May, look on in anger as the end of enhanced unemployment benefits approaches – and technically passed on Saturday, due to the way payments are processed – and evictions begin, of Americans unable to make their rent.
Donald Trump has shifted his messaging to encouraging the wearing of masks, social distancing and other preventative measures – in large part because he is trailing Joe Biden, his challenger for the White House in November, in most national and battleground state polls. Here’s Lauren Gambino’s look at the state of the race, 100 days from the finish line:
In Portland, Oregon overnight, protesters for policing reform and against systemic racism once again clashed with police and federal agents sent to the city by the Trump White House, as it seeks to focus that election campaign on law and order and therefore seeks confrontation.
Chris McGreal is in the city for us and he has filed this fascinating dispatch on dynamics within the protests themselves: are white protesters facing off with Trump’s federal “goon squad” eclipsing the message that Black Lives Matter?
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