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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
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Kari Paul in Oakland (now), Joan E Greve in Washington, Martin Pengelly and Martin Belam (earlier)

Michelle Obama condemns shootings of Jacob Blake and protesters – as it happened

michelle obama
Michelle Obama criticized the ‘lack of empathy, division stoked in times of crisis, and age-old and systemic racism’ across the country and from the White House. Photograph: Vincent Thian/AP

This evening, summarized

Kari Paul here, closing this blog for the night. Here are the top stories from the past few hours you should know.

  • Former first lady Michelle Obama shared a statement about the shooting of Jacob Blake by police in Kenosha and the killings of protesters in the aftermath, saying she is “just devastated”.
  • Trump held a rally in New Hampshire where he made a lot of reckless exaggerations and outright lies, bullied his opponents in the upcoming election, and promised to put a woman on the moon.
  • A new report from the Washington Post found the Secret Service is repeatedly getting sick from Covid as it accompanies Trump to in-person rallies around the country.
  • Trump keeps tweeting he wants football back, and said in the rally on Friday that college football players are “young, strong” men who wouldn’t be affected by Covid. This is false: experts say people of any age can be sickened -- and badly so -- by the virus.
  • California officials have announced new eviction protections, but tenants groups warn they are not strong enough and could leave many vulnerable to displacement during the pandemic.
  • Three residents of New York City public housing said they were tricked into appearing in a Republican National Convention video.

Three residents of New York City public housing said they were tricked into appearing in a Republican National Convention video.

All three say they were never told the interviews they gave would be edited into a video clip shared at the RNC. One of the tenants, who said she is not a Trump supporter, said she was furious about her inclusion in the video.

“I am not a Trump supporter,” said one of the tenants, Claudia Perez. “I am not a supporter of his racist policies on immigration. I am a first-generation Honduran. It was my people he was sending back.”

Read the full story from the New York Times here.

Donald Trump in a Friday evening campaign rally in New Hampshire condemned recent protests in support of racial justice, demonized the “radical left”, and mocked his opponents in the upcoming presidential race.

Trump repeatedly criticized “Sleepy” Joe Biden in his speech, mocking him for remaining in quarantine amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. He said “no one will be safe” in Biden’s America. He said Kamala Harris is “not competent” and that his daughter Ivanka Trump would make a better president.

As always, Trump made many outlandish claims and told many lies, at one point saying he has done “more for the African American community than anyone in history, except perhaps Abraham Lincoln”. He also, without basis, accused Biden of reading answers from a teleprompter in a recent interview with Anderson Cooper.

At one Trump point appeared to threaten invoking the Insurrection Act, a federal law that empowers the President to deploy federal armed forces in US cities without permission to suppress civil disorder. This is not the first time he has done so.

He also condemned a “mob” that “attacked” Senator Rand Paul on Thursday and said he would give the DC police who aided him a medal. The commentary devolved from there. “It was a disgrace,” he said of the protestors who accosted Paul. “You know what I say? Protesters your ass. I don’t talk about my ass.”

Trump, who has been trailing Biden in polls, repeatedly positioned himself as a “law and order” candidate and the answer to the ongoing protests and unrest in the United States.

“We are not going to let the radical left, the socialists, or the communists take our country,” he said. “We aren’t going to let our country be destroyed by a bunch of nut jobs.”

California officials have announced new eviction protections that tenants groups warn could leave many vulnerable to displacement during the pandemic.

Days before existing regulations are set to expire, leaving millions at risk of eviction, governor Gavin Newsom unveiled a plan this afternoon that he said was the result of negotiations between landlord and tenant advocate groups. The compromise legislation (full text here) states that:

  • Tenants who can’t pay rent due to Covid-related financial hardships would be protected from evictions through January, but only if they pay 25% of their rent between September and January.
  • Tenants still owe the rent they couldn’t pay between March and August, but landlords cannot evict them for those debts (though they could take them to small claims court).
  • Landlords have to give tenants a 15-day notice before the eviction process begins in court.

Tenant and housing rights groups have criticized the plan, saying it does not go far enough to protect renters and could displace thousands as the courts begin to resume eviction cases next week. Loopholes in the existing protections have already allowed more than 1,600 evictions during the pandemic, according to one analysis, and activists fear it could get much worse under this plan.

Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, a tenant rights group, argued that the 25% requirement could be difficult for renters in California who have spent months out of work and have struggled to get aid and unemployment. Some activists say the plan unfairly places the burden on tenants to defend themselves in court.

The California Apartment Association, a key landlord group, praised the plan, arguing that it would allow renters who can’t pay while allowing landlords to “terminate the tenancies of renters who have the wherewithal to pay rent but refuse to do so”.

State lawmakers still have to approve Newsom’s bill before it goes into effect. For more on the crisis:

Trump tweeted, apparently from Air Force One en route to a campaign rally in New Hampshire, that states that have shut down due to the coronavirus should open up.

He demanded “all other football” including Big Ten football come back “NOW”. The death toll from coronavirus is expected to reach 200,000 by Labor Day, according to the CDC.

Updated

As revelers at Trump rally on Friday booed suggestions to wear masks, the Washington Post has published a story about the health toll Trump’s campaign events are taking on Secret Service members. From the story:

In the past two months, dozens of Secret Service agents who worked to ensure the security of the president and Vice President Pence at public events have been sickened or sidelined because they were in direct contact with infected people, according to multiple people familiar with the episodes, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the incidents.

In one instance, five secret service agents had to be swapped out after one agent they were working closely with tested positive for coronavirus. The ongoing infections amongst people closest to Trump represent the latest fallout from the current president’s decision to hold campaign rallies amidst an intensifying global pandemic.

Despite that, Trump has continued to hold large, in-person rallies. His acceptance speech for the RNC on Thursday night drew 1,500, mostly un-masked supporters on the South Lawn on the White House.

Trump’s actions “rebuff the scientific consensus that the best way tamp down the spread of the virus is to avoid large gatherings and close quarters”, the Post said.

Donald Trump is holding a rally for supporters in New Hampshire. He will speak any minute now. If you care to tune in you can here - if not, I will be blogging it here so stand by for updates.

Many supporters at the rally can be seen in close quarters, without masks. Apparently a number of Trump supporters have booed an announcement to put on masks.

Updated

Germany chancellor Angela Merkel laughed off a question during a Friday press conference of whether she had been “charmed” by Donald Trump.

The question was in response to a statement made this week by Richard Grenell, the former US director of national intelligence and ambassador to Germany, who claimed Trump had smoothed over the historically strained relationship between German and the US by enchanting Merkel.

Merkel looked down and smiled before saying, “I won’t comment on this.”

Reports from CNN on Trump’s classified calls with world leaders have revealed the president was “near-sadistic” in talks with female leaders, including Merkel, whom he called “stupid” and “a fool”. Sources CNN spoke to said Merkel was unbothered by the president’s antics: “like water off a duck’s back”.

When asked in the press conference Friday whether she plans to work with Trump if he is re-elected, Merkel said yes. “I work with every elected president of the United States,” she said. “What guides us are our values and of course the interests on the German and the American side.”

Updated

Michelle Obama condemns Jacob Blake shooting

Michelle Obama posted on Twitter a statement about the shooting of protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, this week and the police violence that preceded it.

She condemned the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Wisconsin man shot seven times by police in front of his children, as well as the shooting of two protesters, allegedly by a 17-year-old rightwing militant, in the protests that followed. Obama said she was “exhausted and frustrated” at the trauma Black and Brown people in the US are enduring once again.

The former first lady had some pointed words for the Trump administration as well, condemning the “lack of empathy, division stoked in times of crisis, and age-old and systemic racism” that is seen across the country, on the news and “from the White House Rose Garden” as stoking such violence.

She concluded by encouraging Americans to vote, keep protesting, and encourage reform across the country.

“We need to reach out to people, and ask them to search their hearts and listen to their inner voices - the voices that say this simply isn’t right,” she said. “Because when that happens, the change we seek cannot be denied.”

Updated

Kari Paul here, covering the blog for the next few hours. Stay tuned for updates.

Today so far

That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Kari Paul, will take over for the next few hours.

Here’s where the day stands so far:

  • Jacob Blake is no longer handcuffed to his hospital bed. The family of Blake, who was repeatedly shot in the back by a Kenosha police officer days ago, expressed outrage that he was being shackled to his bed when he is currently paralyzed from the waist down. A lawyer representing Blake told CNN that he is no longer handcuffed and felony warrants previously issued against him had been vacated.
  • Thousands attended the “Get Off Our Necks” rally and march on Washington. Family members of Blake, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor addressed the march to call for an end to police brutality. “I’m tired of looking at cameras and seeing these young black and brown people suffer,” said Blake’s father, Jacob Blake Sr. “We’re going to hold court on systematic racism.”
  • The White House dismissed concerns about the potential spread of coronavirus among the large crowd that assembled to hear Trump’s convention speech last night. White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said, “I think the vast majority of Americans are more concerned about what’s happening in their backyard than the backyard of the White House.” About 1,500 people were at the White House yesterday to hear Trump speak, defying DC recommendations against large gatherings. Most attendees did not wear masks, and their chairs were not physically distanced.
  • The House foreign affairs committee announced the opening of contempt proceedings against secretary of state Mike Pompeo. Democratic committee chairman Eliot Engel said, “From Mr Pompeo’s refusal to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry to his willingness to bolster a Senate Republican-led smear against the president’s political rivals to his speech to the RNC which defied his own guidance and possibly the law, he has demonstrated alarming disregard for the laws and rules governing his own conduct and for the tools the constitution provides to prevent government corruption.”
  • The NBA playoffs are set to resume on Saturday, days after players refused to take the court to protest Blake’s shooting. The league and the players’ union reached an agreement to resume play in exchange for advancing a number of social justice initiatives, including using some NBA arenas as polling places in the November elections.

Kari will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

The Milwaukee county sheriff’s office said it suspended its hospital watch of Jacob Blake because he posted a bond for an arrest warrant issued in July.

“From Sunday, August 23 to Friday, August 28, while receiving treatment at a local hospital, Mr. Jacob Blake remained in custody on a Kenosha county felony arrest warrant issued in July,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement.

Blake is receiving treatment for multiple gunshot wounds after a Kenosha police officer repeatedly shot him in the back.

“Earlier today, Mr. Blake posted the bond underlying the arrest warrant, enabling his release from custody. The hospital watch was discontinued immediately after receiving this information from Kenosha authorities,” the sheriff’s office said.

Blake’s family expressed outrage that he was being handcuffed to his hospital bed when he is currently paralyzed from the waist down.

An attorney representing Blake said earlier today that the handcuffs had been removed and the felony arrest warrants against him had been vacated.

In another sign of how unprecedented this election is: America’s top military officer just told Congress that the armed forces would have no role in carrying out the election process.

According to the AP, General Mark Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, addressed the issue in written responses to questions posed by two Democratic members of the House armed services committee.

“I believe deeply in the principle of an apolitical U.S. military,” Milley said. “In the event of a dispute over some aspect of the elections, by law U.S. courts and the U.S. Congress are required to resolve any disputes, not the U.S. military. I foresee no role for the U.S armed forces in this process.”

Milley’s comments come as Trump continues to stir up baseless allegations that mail-in ballots in the November elections will be extremely vulnerable to fraud, even though voter fraud is actually very rare.

Those false claims have sparked concerns about potential chaos surrounding the election, with some speculating the president would try to get the military involved to help him stay in office.

After the March on Washington made its way to the Martin Luther King memorial, the crowd began to disperse, but some of the march attendees crossed a nearby bridge while chanting “I can’t breathe,” the final words of George Floyd.

Food And Drug Administration commissioner Stephen Hahn has removed his top spokeswoman after just 11 days on the job, the New York Times reports.

Emily Miller is a former aide to the Texas senator Ted Cruz and a former journalist for One America News, Donald Trump’s favourite Fox News alternative on the extreme right of the political spectrum.

She was installed at the FDA by the Trump administration but has now left it, after a typically Trumpian farce last weekend, over the decision to authorise the use of convalescent plasma as an emergency treatment for the coronavirus.

“Ms Miller’s removal,” the Times reports, “came one day after the FDA’s parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, terminated the contract of a public relations consultant who had advised Dr Hahn to correct misleading comments about the benefits of blood plasma for Covid-19.”

Trump and his allies said the “deep state” was making the FDA go slow on vaccines and therapeutics for the coronavirus, which has killed anywhere between 180,000 and 200,000-plus Americans depending on which count you use.

To repeat: Steve Bannon, a former close Trump aide and key propagator of the deep state conspiracy theory, has said both that it isn’t true and that it is “for nut cases”.

Jacob Blake no longer handcuffed to hospital bed - report

Jacob Blake, who is still recovering from multiple gunshot wounds to the back, is reportedly no longer handcuffed to his hospital bed.

According to CNN, the felony warrants against Blake have been vacated, and officers are no longer guarding him at the hospital.

Blake’s family expressed outrage about how he was still being treated by police after he was repeatedly shot in the back by an officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Blake is currently paralyzed from the waist down, raising many questions about why the police felt it necessary to handcuff him to his hospital bed.

Trump’s critics have also raised objections to his convention speech at the White House because they say he misused the trappings of the presidency for political gain.

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows dismissed those concerns as well during a Fox News interview today.

“All of the criticism that comes out against this president is from the normal suspects,” Meadows said, emphasizing that no federal money was used for the Republican convention.

Walter Shaub, a frequent Trump critic who ran the Office of Government Ethics when the president first took office, said the night represented “the most visible misuse of official position for private gain in America’s history.”

Meadows dismisses concerns about spread of coronavirus among convention crowd

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows dismissed concerns about the possible spread of coronavirus among the large crowd that gathered on the South Lawn last night to hear Trump accept the Republican presidential nomination.

“I think the vast majority of Americans are more concerned about what’s happening in their backyard than the backyard of the White House,” Meadows told an NBC News reporter.

Trump addressed a crowd of around 1,500 people at the White House last night, despite DC government recommendations against such large gatherings.

Most of the attendees were not wearing masks, and their chairs were not physically distanced, sparking concerns about a possible “super-spreader” event.

Meadows’ comments come hours after North Carolina officials announced four people who were present for the in-person portion of the Republican convention in Charlotte have tested positive for coronavirus.

More than 300 Republican delegates gathered in Charlotte earlier this week to formally renominate Trump for president.

The Guardian’s Sam Levine reports:

A Texas appellate court declined on Thursday to re-hear an appeal from Crystal Mason, a Fort Worth woman who was sentenced to five years in prison for trying to vote in 2016.

Mason was ineligible at the time because she was on supervised release for a 2012 tax fraud felony conviction, but says she had no idea she was ineligible to vote.

Mason’s case has attracted widespread attention because of the severity of her sentence – The New Yorker magazine labeled her the “face of voter suppression in America” last year.

Mason was originally convicted in 2018. In March, a three-judge panel of the second court of appeals, based in Fort Worth, declined to overturn the sentence. The panel wrote that whether or not Mason knew she was ineligible to vote “was irrelevant to her prosecution”.

Mason’s lawyers asked the court to re-hear the case with all the judges sitting, but the judges declined to do so. They offered no explanation.

Mason’s 2016 vote wasn’t counted. Because she didn’t appear in the poll books, a teenage election worker offered her a provisional ballot that was rejected once election officials verified she was ineligible. More than 12,000 people have voted in her county using a provisional ballot since 2014: Mason is the only one who used one who has been prosecuted for illegally voting.

“My heart is very very heavy right now,” Mason said in a text message to the Guardian. “I’m not so strong now my faith is starting to get weary as I cry behind close doors so my mother and children don’t see.

“I will stay focused in my organization educating and advocating why we must vote.”

Mason’s conviction has taken a harsh toll on her and her family. Because she was convicted of a state crime while serving a federal sentence, she had to return to federal prison for several months. She lost her job and relied on her teenage daughter to support her family.

Mason’s attorneys have said they will appeal her conviction to the Texas court of criminal appeals. The court has discretion over whether or not to hear the case.

Trump grants Alice Johnson a full pardon

Trump called the White House press pool into the Oval Office to announce he was granting a full pardon to Alice Johnson.

“We’re giving Alice a full pardon. We are going to do it right now,” Trump said, going on to commend Johnson for the “incredible job” she has done since leaving prison to help others in the criminal justice system.

The president commuted Johnson’s prison sentence for a non-violent drug offense in 2018, and Johnson thanked Trump for the commutation in a speech at the Republican convention last night.

“I pray that you will not just hear this message, but that you will be inspired by my story, and your compassion will lead you to take action for those who are forgotten,” Johnson said last night.

“That’s what our president, Donald Trump, did for me. And, for that, I will be forever grateful.”

Johnson’s powerful speech attracted widespread praise, but her message seemed to clash with the repeated calls for “law and order” during the Republican convention.

Shortly after Johnson spoke, Trump said in his speech, “Your vote will decide whether we protect law-abiding Americans, or whether we give free reign to violent anarchists, agitators, and criminals who threaten our citizens.”

In reality, the recent protests against racism and protest brutality have been mostly peaceful.

The results are in, and the president will not be pleased: Trump’s convention speech last night received lower ratings than Joe Biden’s speech a week earlier.

CNN reports:

About 21.6 million viewers watched coverage of Trump’s RNC address across nine cable and broadcast networks, down from 23.6 million viewers who watched Biden’s DNC address on the same nine networks.

The totals may fluctuate slightly when final numbers are released later in the day, but Biden clearly edged out Trump.

The Democratic convention was also higher-rated than the Republican convention overall when the audience for all four days is tallied up.

The news will certainly be disappointing to Trump, who has bragged about his ratings on everything from “The Apprentice” to the White House coronavirus briefings.

The Biden campaign wasted no time trying to goad Trump into reacting to the ratings. Biden’s press secretary tweeted this:

Jacob Blake's family speaks at march on Washington

Jacob Blake’s family spoke at the march on Washington, just days after Blake was repeatedly shot in the back by police officers in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Blake’s sister, Letetra Widman, said African Americans were done “catering to your delusions.”

“We will not pretend,” Widman said. “We will not be your docile slave.”

Widman also called on protesters to continue to march peacefully. “You must fight, but not with violence and chaos -- with self-love,” Widman said.

Blake’s father, Jacob Blake Sr, then led chants of “No justice, no peace!”

“I’m tired of looking at cameras and seeing these young black and brown people suffer,” Blake said. “We’re going to hold court on systematic racism.”

Updated

George Floyd’s brother, Philonise Floyd, struggled to speak about his brother, and he said it was because he was so affected by the recent police shooting of Jacob Blake.

Floyd’s sister, Bridgett Floyd, then took the mic and told the crowd that they could be the change envisioned by Dr Martin Luther King 57 years ago.

“My brother cannot be a voice today,” Floyd’s sister said. “We have to be that voice. We have to be that change. We have to be his legacy. Thank you from the Floyd family.”

Tamika Palmer, the mother of Breonna Taylor, addressed the march on Washington, and she thanked everyone who has called for justice after her daughter was shot and killed by police officers carrying out a no-knock warrant.

The crowd chanted “Say her name!” and “Breonna Taylor!” as Palmer spoke from the podium.

George Floyd’s brother, Philonise Floyd, then stepped up to speak, and he said he was “overwhelmed” seeing the large crowd before him.

“I wish George were here to see this right now,” Floyd said. “That’s who I’m marching for. I’m marching for George.”

Floyd also listed several other African Americans who have been killed by police, including Ahmaud Arbery and Michael Brown.

As Floyd spoke, the crowd chanted the final words of his brother, who died after a white Minneapolis police officer kept a knee on his neck for nearly nine minutes: “I can’t breathe.”

This is Joan Greve in Washington, taking over for Martin Pengelly.

The Rev Al Sharpton is currently addressing the “Get Off Our Necks” rally and march on Washington, and the civil rights leader called on attendees to make sure they vote in the November elections.

Sharpton also called on Congress to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, in honor of the late congressman who spoke at the first March on Washington 57 years ago.

Sharpton is addressing a large crowd on the National Mall, and a few audience members have even spilled over into the Reflecting Pool between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial.

I’m handing over to Joan E Greve in our Washington office now, so according to a tradition I’ve just invented, I’ll leave you with a brief post about Leonard Cohen.

The great Canadian singer can’t object to versions of his song Hallelujah being played during Donald Trump’s acceptance of the Republican nomination at the White House on Thursday night, because he died in 2016, one day before Trump defeated Hillary Clinton. But his fans can.

Quite a lot of musicians and bands, including Elton John, whose track played before Ivanka Trump introduced her father, have complained about their work being associated with the Trump family’s political exploits.

Not that there’s much that they can do about it, of course, given said the set response of said family (and indeed allies, eh Mike Pompeo?) when told they are breaking norms, conventions, Hatch Acts and, many would say, the bounds of public decency itself:

So what?

NBA playoffs to resume after protest pause

The NBA playoffs will resume playoff play on Saturday, the league and the players’ union have said, after it paused during protests over police brutality and structural racism, in the aftermath of the shooting of Jacob Blake by a police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

The league has committed to working to establish a social justice coalition; to work with host cities to boost access to the vote; and to devote ad spots to promoting civic engagement.

Here’s Kareem Abdul Jabbar, our columnist, on the matter:

Ex-state staffer: Pompeo doesn't care about oversight efforts

There has been no state department response so far to the House foreign affairs committee announcement of contempt proceedings against Mike Pompeo. The department is increasingly selective about which queries to respond to.

There is a general sense among former foreign service officials that the secretary of state, who was a stickler for congressional oversight when he was in the House of Representatives, does not care about it at all, and is increasingly focused on a presidential run in 2024.

Rori Kramer, former deputy assistant secretary of state in the bureau of legislative affairs, said of Engel’s announcement: “That’s wonderful but there’s not as much teeth as there used to be with congressional oversight.

“It’s really shocking. Four years ago, it would have been completely bizarro Twilight Zone that Congress could subpoena you and hold you in contempt, and the answer of the administration would be: I don’t care.

“The people who work for the people who say we don’t care about oversight and then his senior leadership and/or political appointees also don’t follow the rules and then authoritarian dictators and other countries also see that, and continue not to follow the rules. And it’s a race to the bottom.”

Here’s Donald…

“Succes [sic]: Since the National Guard moved into Kenosha, Wisconsin, two days ago, there has been NO FURTHER VIOLENCE, not even a small problem. When legally asked to help by local authorities, the Federal Government will act and quickly succeed. Are you listening Portland?”

Of Kenosha, here’s our latest report after a fifth night of protests in Kenosha, which were peaceful on Thursday night for the second night in a row after a fatal shooting when agitators attacked protesters on Tuesday night.

Of the national guard deployment: “Although protests appear to have calmed, with fierce emotions but no violence, additional national guard members are expected to arrive in Kenosha on Friday. Wisconsin’s governor, Tony Evers, who first announced the deployment of state national guard members on Monday, has on several occasions authorized more troops.”

Of Portland, here’s Jason Wilson:

Four people who attended the Republican national convention in Charlotte this week have tested positive for the coronavirus. AP:

Nearly 800 people were tested who attended the event or who helped support it. Two attendees and two people supporting the convention tested positive. WBTV reported that those who tested positive were immediately isolated.

The Charlotte Observer reports that the disclosures come after county health officials raised concerned about a lack of social distancing and mask wearing at a business meeting of the RNC in Charlotte on Monday, the day Donald Trump attended events in the city. Strict protocols were supposed to be followed.

The public may need to wait weeks for an ‘after-action’ report detailing the true scope of convention-related infections.

The final event of the convention, on the South Lawn of the White House on Thursday night, saw Trump address a crowd of around 1,500, with masks scarce and social distancing non-existent:

House committee announces contempt proceedings against Pompeo

News from Congress, where the House foreign affairs committee has announced the opening of contempt proceedings against Mike Pompeo, Donald Trump’s secretary of state who, as it happens, gave a hugely controversial speech to the Republican national convention from Israel on Wednesday night.

The battle between the Democratic-controlled committee and Pompeo is a long one, as the secretary of state refuses to co-operate with the panel as it investigates his conduct in office, including regarding administration approaches to Ukraine for dirt on Joe Biden, the approaches which led to Trump’s impeachment.

In a statement, committee chair Eliot Engel said: “From Mr Pompeo’s refusal to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry to his willingness to bolster a Senate Republican-led smear against the president’s political rivals to his speech to the RNC which defied his own guidance and possibly the law, he has demonstrated alarming disregard for the laws and rules governing his own conduct and for the tools the constitution provides to prevent government corruption.

“He seems to think the office he holds, the Department he runs, the personnel he oversees, and the taxpayer dollars that pay for all of it are there for his personal and political benefit.

“I gave Mr Pompeo ample opportunity to fulfill my request for documents, which I first made more than three months ago. These documents were already produced to the Senate, and his refusal to provide them to the foreign affairs committee required that I issue a subpoena on 31 July.

“Mr Pompeo’s final response makes it clear where he stands: the department would turn over the documents if the committee announced that we, too, were pursuing an investigation into the same conspiracy theory that’s been debunked again and again. Mr Pompeo is demanding that the committee do essentially the same thing Russia is doing, according the Office of the Director of National Intelligence: ‘spreading claims about corruption’ in order to ‘interfere in the American presidential election.’ In other words, Pompeo will give the committee what we were seeking if we join in a smear of the president’s political rival. Sound familiar?

“I want no part of it. Under no circumstances will I amplify Putin’s debunked conspiracy theories or lend them credence. And I won’t stand by and see the committee or the House treated with such disdain by anyone.”

Updated

Here’s a livestream for the National Action Network’s event at the Lincoln Memorial, commemorating 57 years since the Marsh on Washington led by Dr Martin Luther King Jr. The main speakers are now taking the stage:

And here’s some further reading from Oliver Laughland, our southern bureau chief:

The Kenosha police department has posted an update on the case of Jacob Blake, the African American man who was shot in the back by a police officer last weekend and remains in hospital – according to his father, handcuffed to his bed – while protests continue in the Wisconsin city, gripping the national scene.

The update said officers confronted Blake “after a female caller reported that her boyfriend was present and was not supposed to be on the premises”.

It added: “During the investigation following the initial incident, Mr Blake admitted that he had a knife in his possession. DCI agents recovered a knife from the driver’s side floorboard of Mr Blake’s vehicle. A search of the vehicle located no additional weapons.”

It also details attempts to arrest Blake using Taser stun guns before, it says, an officer “fired his service weapon seven times”.

“Officer [Rusten] Sheskey fired the weapon into Mr Blake’s back”.

Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old white vigilante who has been charged in the shooting deaths of two protesters and the injuring of another in Kenosha on Tuesday night, is alleged to have used a Smith & Wesson AR-15 style .223 rifle – a popular style of rifle with many American gun owners and the gun of choice for young male perpetrators of some of America’s most infamous mass murders, including the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida.

He was arrested peacefully.

Harris hits Trump over lack of masks, distancing at convention speech

The morning after Donald Trump spoke to a largely maskless and certainly non-distanced throng at the White House, Kamala Harris accused him of doing only “what is necessary to feed his ego as opposed to what is necessary to feed the needs of the American people”.

The California senator and vice-presidential nominee also discussed a national mask mandate she and Joe Biden have proposed.

“It’s really a standard,” Harris told NBC. “I mean, nobody’s gonna be punished. Come on. Nobody likes to wear a mask. This is a universal feeling. Right? So that’s not the point, ‘Hey, let’s enjoy wearing masks?’ No.”

The rule would instead be about “what we as responsible people who love our neighbor … have to do right now”, she said. “God willing, it won’t be forever.”

Biden and Harris have said a rule requiring masks could save 40,000 lives over three months. Biden has also called on every governor to order mask-wearing in their states.

More than 180,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus, far more than any other country, and as our Washington chief David Smith pointed out in his report on Trump’s speech…

It was a formidable spectacle on several levels. With people crammed together and wearing ‘Make America Great Again’ hats rather than face masks, this was performance art that sent the message that the coronavirus pandemic is over, even though more people have died from it during this week’s Republican national convention than in the terror attacks of 11 September 2001.

Trump has urged Americans to wear masks but opposes a national requirement. He has worn a mask occasionally. On Thursday night, about 1,500 people packed the South Lawn of the White House. Masks were not required, in violation of District of Columbia guidelines.

Harris told NBC she and Biden would campaign “In every way we can, in a way that will be safe for the people that we are meeting with. It would be irresponsible of us to try and pack people into a situation where they cannot safely social distance.

“And that’s one of the problems, frankly with the way Donald Trump conducts himself. Because it … appears to be more about the people around him and himself doing what is necessary to feed his ego as opposed to what is necessary to feed the needs of the American people.”

“Every human being is a sinner. We’re all imperfect, we’re all flawed, and we’re redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ.”

When Jerry Falwell Jr, the US evangelical leader, president of the country’s premier conservative Christian university and close associate of Donald Trump, told me this in his spacious office in Lynchburg, Virginia, almost two years ago, it was in response to a question about the morality of the US president.

But after a turbulent week in which his status as a figurehead for the Christian right crashed and burned, Falwell may be reflecting on his own flaws and imperfections, and hoping redemption will not be too long coming:

However, according to Sarah Posner, the author of Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump, Falwell’s influence has been overestimated.

“His fall does not change anything. Trump has built relationships with the evangelical base and the religious right leadership in Washington, and they see him as their saviour – God’s hand is on him, he has come to save America at this critical juncture,” she said.

“His approval ratings among white evangelicals may have eroded a little over his presidency, but more than 80% are still likely to vote for him.”

Jerry Falwell scandal: Granda speaks out

Giancarlo Granda, the man at the center of a sex scandal involving Jerry Falwell Jr, detailed on Friday how the evangelical leader and outspoken Trump ally allegedly “enjoyed watching” his wife and Granda having sex.

In an interview with ABC News, Granda said he met Becki Falwell and Jerry Falwell, who resigned as president of Liberty University this week, at a hotel in Florida in 2012. Granda, who was 20 at the time, said: “He was aware from day one of our relationship, and he did in fact watch,” Granda said.

Falwell, one of the most influential evangelicals in the US and whose endorsement helped Donald Trump win the Republican nomination in 2016, resigned from Liberty this week after Granda went public, speaking to Reuters. Speaking to ABC, Granda gave a detailed account of the relationship.

Now 29, he said he was working the Fontainebleu hotel when he met Becki Falwell.

“I’m talking to some guests and I notice this woman behind me, staring at me, and she was noticeably drunk. And she was just flirting with me, and then we start flirting back and forth,” he said. “Towards the end of my work shift, she’s like: ‘Hey would you wanna go back to my hotel room?’. And as a single 20-year-old I’m like, ‘Yeah, of course.’

“And then she’s like: ‘But my husband wants to watch.’

Granda said: “Immediately I thought it was a bit strange, and I backed off. [Then] she’s like: ‘Oh no, he’s not going to do anything. He’s just gonna sit in a corner and he wants to watch and it’s his thing.’”

Falwell would later go into business with Granda, buying a Miami hostel. When Reuters published its interview with Granda on Monday, Falwell denied he was part of the trysts, and suggested his wife had an affair.

The news also emerged as Politico published a story alleging Becki Falwell had a sexual encounter with a former Liberty University student, a bandmate of her son. Liberty, founded by Falwell’s televangelist father in 1971, is known for its strict rules over students’ relationships.

“Sexual relations outside of a biblically ordained marriage between a natural-born man and a natural-born woman are not permissible at Liberty University,” the university’s honor code reads.

Events mark anniversary of March on Washington

In other protest news, today is the 57th anniversary of the March on Washington, the great civil rights moment in 1963 which culminated in Rev Martin Luther King Jr’s I Have a Dream speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

Thousands are expected to attend events on the National Mall commemorating what the AP calls, with understatement in the aftermath of Trump’s convention speech and amid ongoing protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, King’s “vision of racial equality that remains elusive for millions of Americans”.

“We’ve got to create a different consciousness and a different climate in our nation,” said Martin Luther King III, a son of the late civil rights icon and co-convener of events this year. “That won’t happen though, unless we are mobilized and galvanized.”

Protests have certainly been galvanised and mobilised by events in Kenosha, where Jacob Blake, 29, an African American man, was shot in the back by a police officer last weekend. He remains in hospital, gravely injured. Amid ensuing protests, two people have been killed, deaths in which a white 17-year-old vigilante is charged.

As Martin Belam noted earlier, Jacob Blake’s father, also called Jacob Blake, spoke to CNN this morning.

“We cannot have two justice systems, one for black America, and one for white America. And that’s what we saw in Kenosha, Wisconsin, with the shooting of Jacob Blake Jr and then with the young white supremacist who had an assault weapon, and shot two protesters to death, and then walked down the street with the assault weapon hanging from his neck. And no police officer that he walked by, no National Guard he walked by, shot him in the back. Nobody killed him.”

Back in Washington, family members of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, Ahmaud Arbery, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner and others will help commemorate the March. The civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who represents several such families, will speak. Participants will then march to the Martin Luther King Jr memorial, next to the National Mall.

Martin Luther King Jr speaks.

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has some thoughts about his experience at the White House last night, when he left the Republican convention and in the words of the Associated Press “a crowd enveloped [him], yelling for him to say the name of police shooting victim Breonna Taylor, who was killed in his state”.

Protesters confront Senator Rand Paul.
Protesters confront Senator Rand Paul. Photograph: Leah Millis/Reuters

Speaking to Fox & Friends, Paul said he believed he would have been killed if not for the police, who he says were shoved as they attempted to reach him. The senator also thinks the protesters were from out of state and had been paid to go after him.

From the AP:

Video posted online showed dozens of people confronting Paul and his wife, who were flanked by police officers, on a street after midnight. Protesters shouted ‘No Justice, No Peace’ and ‘Say Her Name’ before one appeared to briefly clash with an officer, pushing him and his bike backward, sending the officer into Paul’s shoulder.

Paul later tweeted that he had been attacked by a crazed mob a block from the White House.

The senator and his wife kept walking and did not appear to have been touched by any of the protesters or to have suffered any injuries.

As many presuming editors have so consistently pointed out, one of the themes of the Republican convention has been to repeat that such scenes of protest and violence as are on display across the US this summer – in Donald Trump’s America – will happen a lot in Joe Biden’s America if the Democrat wins in November. To quote the president … it is what it is.

Morning… Martin Pengelly here, taking over from another great Martin, Mr Belam (O’Malley, Van Buren … Amis, the list is almost literally endless) to take you through the morning after the night before.

Serious news in a minute but I wanted to leave this here first:

I could hazard a few guesses but instead I will point you to this story, which I wrote a couple of days ago after we got hold of an early copy of Melania & Me by Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a new book by Melania’s ex-best friend. (I am currently in a house containing six small girls in toto, thanks to three of my own and those parented by other friends, so I can attest to the, uh, problems such nuclear-grade fallings out can cause.)

The book is eagerly awaited, and comes out on Tuesday:

Updated

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer’s verdict on the Donald Trump speech is in this morning

And that’s it from me in London, I’m handing over to Martin Pengelly across the Atlantic. Take care, stay safe, and I look forward to blogging for you again soon.

Mike German, who was formally an FBI agent who infiltrated white supremacist groups, has written for us today on how too many local police don’t take the far right seriously – or actively sympathize.

If the government knew that al-Qaida or Isis had infiltrated American law enforcement agencies, it would undoubtedly initiate a nationwide effort to identify them and neutralize the threat they posed. Yet white supremacists and far-right militants have committed far more attacks and killed more people in the US over the last 10 years than any foreign terrorist movement. The FBI regards them as the most lethal domestic terror threat. The need for national action is even more critical.

Read it here: Mike German – The FBI warned for years that police are cozy with the far right. Is no one listening?

Father says Jacob Blake is handcuffed to bed in hospital, despite being paralysed

Jacob Blake’s father has been on CNN this morning, and he spoke, as you’d expect, passionately about the cause of racial justice in the US, with his son in hospital having been shot in the back seven times by the police. Blake Snr said:

We cannot have two justice systems, one for Black America, and one for white America. And that’s what we saw in Kenosha, Wisconsin, with the shooting of Jacob Blake Jr. and then with the young white supremacist who had an assault weapon, and shot two protesters to death, and then walked down the street with the assault weapon hanging from his neck. And no police officer that he walked by, no National Guard he walked by, shot him in the back. Nobody killed him. And so, it is the tale of two videos that perfectly highlight the frustration of African Americans, and the NBA players, and the major league players, and everybody who wants equal justice in this society.

And there’s this.

Blake said that the fact they have handcuffed his son to the bed in hospital “adds insult to injury” and is an example of the pattern of “deliberate indifference and excessive force” used by police on Black Americans.

Updated

Joe Biden has just tweeted to thank the first responders who have been working to put right the aftermath of Hurricane Laura.

He might have in mind one of the incredible stories that has emerged this morning, the Louisiana hospital staff who stayed behind to care for 19 babies as the hurricane hit. CNN report:

“It’s important to know the dedication of all the nurses and the respiratory therapists to keep taking care of the babies when they don’t even know the condition of their homes,” Dr. Juan Bossano told CNN on Thursday. “In a small town like this, people have to pull together. I’m proud of them.”

Bossano and a team of 14 nurses, 2 neonatal nurse practitioners and 3 respiratory therapists hunkered down in the NICU all night, he said. Two teams took shifts caring for the little angels, the staff trying to get some sleep when they could.

The staff had their hands full, said Bossano. Some of the babies were on respirators and ventilators, some as small as one or two pounds, Bossano said. Some of them were born premature at just 23 weeks.

Obviously the choreography and presentation of the Republican national convention was done very carefully, and the mix of virtual and in-person speeches, some with crowds, some notably without even if you are shouting, required a great deal of co-ordination. Here’s some clips of what you didn’t see from the White House live last night – protesters attempting to drown out Donald Trump’s acceptance speech.

Federal and state government handling of the coronavirus pandemic is sure to be a feature of how people choose to vote in November. Alexandra Villarreal has been in Austin for us, having a closer look at what is going on with the virus in Texas.

Local contact tracers are bombarded by exponentially more confirmed cases than they are equipped to handle, and Texans are still struggling with the deceptively simple distinction of which test actually confirms whether they’re infectious. Some students are already heading back to campus, including the state’s gargantuan public universities, despite pushback from co-eds and employees.

Testing has dropped off in recent weeks, possibly because people are letting their guard down. And, despite mitigation efforts, a continual, alarmingly high rate of positive test results indicates that Texas won’t be able to control the virus as successfully as in other places, warned Ashish K Jha, a professor of global health at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.

Read it here: Texas struggles with Covid tests as contact tracers bombarded

There have been more protests over the police shooting of Jacob Blake. The Associated Press has reports of marches and demonstrations in California.

Tisa Johnson of Sacramento came to one of them with her 15-year-old daughter, S’maya Johnson and told the AP that “I hate that I have to keep coming out here. I want to show up and bear witness and be counted.”

More than 150 people marched through downtown Sacramento Thursday night, KCRA-TV reported. Many wore black and some had helmets.

The station said several windows in downtown businesses were smashed, the City Hall was sprayed with graffiti, several other city buildings were vandalized, and there was at least one small fire set in the street.

The crowd dispersed late Thursday without any arrests made, Sacramento police said on Twitter. Officers were expected to stay downtown overnight and would be following up with vandalism reports.

In Los Angeles, protesters showed up at Police Chief Michel Moore’s home in a gated community and plastered the house with anti-police posters, KABC-TV reported.

Donald Trump left fact-checkers across the media extremely busy with his 70 minute speech to the Republican national convention yesterday. But perhaps indicating that the fact check is more of an art than a science, not everyone agrees on how many things the president didn’t tell the truth about.

CNN say they identified more than 20 false, exaggerated or misleading claims. For the New York Times, the score was precisely 6 falsehoods, 6 exaggerations and 9 misleading claims.

Some of the more egregious claims identified by the fact-checkers include:

  • Trump claimed he passed Veterans Choice. President Obama did.
  • Trump suggested Biden wants to take down the border wall. He hasn’t said that.
  • He claimed the US economy has gained a record nine million jobs over the past three months. It has. But it had lost 22m in March and April, which Trump omitted from his figures.
  • Trump said “Biden has promised to abolish the production of American oil, coal, shale and natural gas”. Biden has no such policy.
  • On coronavirus he said “The United States has among the lowest case fatality rates of any major country in the world”. It is in the top third.
  • Trump claimed he has done more for the African American community than any other president since Abraham Lincoln. CNN’s verdict? “While we give Trump lots of latitude to express opinions, this one is simply ridiculous.”

And spare a thought for the fact-checking team at the Washington Post, who are beginning to write all of their fact checks in the vexed tone of someone who can’t believe they’ve had to put up with this for 3-and-a-half years.

As well as labelling many things as false or misleading, they also at times describe Trump as “over-selling”, or demonstrating that he has “little notion”. Other sections of the speech get the verdict “this is all wrong”, or are described as “one of his signature lies”.

And then there’s this schoolmasterly paragraph par excellence: “Although this claim has been repeated every night of the convention, the president still did not preside over the strongest economy in US history.”

Updated

Mentioning Kenosha, Jamelle Bouie has written strongly about it today for the New York Times. He says:

What happened in Kenosha was a tragedy. Rittenhouse should not have been there, and we should agree — all of us — that the shooting should not have happened. We should also be troubled by police action, or the lack thereof, against armed militias. Tacit support from Kenosha police (at one point, an officer thanks the group for being there) almost certainly contributed to the permissive environment that led to the shooting. It is reminiscent, in that way, of the events in Charlottesville in 2017, where an official review found that law enforcement failed to “maintain order” and “protect public safety” leading to fights, skirmishes and the vehicular murder of a protester.

We should be appalled. But it appears only some of us are. Others are prepared to elevate Rittenhouse as a symbol of self-defense. It’s an ominous reaction, not the least because it might inspire other Rittenhouses to do the same, to travel to protests ready for the use of lethal force against protesters. Put differently, the extent to which Tucker Carlson and Ann Coulter and Turning Point are representative of conservative thought on violence against protesters is the extent to which we may have to prepare for further Kenoshas.

Read it here: New York Times – Jamelle Bouie: Kenosha tells us more about where the right is headed than the RNC did

Kenosha, Wisconsin has understandably been in the spotlight for violent attacks on Black Lives Matter protesters this week after three people were shot, two fatally. Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old from Illinois, has been charged with first-degree reckless homicide and first-degree intentional homicide.

Today we have a piece looking at rightwing vigilante actions in another town – Portland in Oregon. It has been the scene of three months of continuous Black Lives Matter protests. But it is increasingly attracting the attention of armed rightwingers who have attacked leftwing protesters and reporters, supplanting the nightly standoffs with police.

Jason Wilson writes for us: Portland suffers serious street violence as far right return ‘prepared to fight’

Over at CNN, Stephen Collinson has described Donald Trump as “defiant and dark as ever”.

He writes that Trump’s “demagogic convention speech” before the White House was “a potential super spreader viral event” which “explained why Democrats warn he must be driven from power at all costs”.

But Collinson also suggests that Trump may wind up with a second term anyway. He says:

Taken as a whole, the imagery of Thursday night’s speech, followed by a spectacular fireworks display over the Washington monument, and the Republican National Convention was a fitting explanation of why Trump is so attractive to millions of Americans who flock to his cultural warfare and embrace his disruptive personality.

“From the moment I left my former life behind, and a good life it was, I have done nothing but fight for you,” the President said, explaining a presidency that critics see as an exercise in self-serving egotism. But one in which his followers perceive a kindred spirit smashing a political and economic system they believe has left them behind.

Collinson marvelled at the set-up for the speech

Trump’s crowd of 2,000 people on the South Lawn, few wearing masks and sitting close together, was an extraordinary scene during a pandemic that has brought America to its knees -- but it exemplified Trump’s willingness to spin a false alternative reality for political gain.

The crowd at the White House last night.
The crowd at the White House last night. Photograph: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA

And he also had this chilling stat:

Trump delivered his speech amid a daily toll of suffering and death that would have been unimaginable at the start of his term. Since the convention opened on Monday morning, more than 3,600 Americans have perished from Covid-19 -- far more than died on 9/11 or from combat operations in Afghanistan.

It’s important to remember that Hurricane Laura may have weakened, but it hasn’t gone away entirely, and will be causing extreme weather in southern states for a while yet.

A reported tornado tore part of the roof from a rural church in northeastern Arkansas as the remnants of Hurricane Laura crossed the state.

Philip Kiefer has been in Lake Charles, Louisiana, reporting for us on the damage there.

Updated

James Oliphant at Reuters offers an analysis of what the RNC taught us this week about the Republican strategy for November.

He writes that Donald Trump used all of his reality-show talents to try to win back supporters alienated by his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. He desperately needs to change the subject from a pandemic that has killed 180,000 Americans and shackled the US economy, and find a way to blame Democrats for the violence on the streets.

Oliphant observes that Republicans largely abandoned talk of the health crisis as if it had abated, in favor of reminding voters of the robust economy that existed beforehand. During the Democratic convention the previous week, Joe Biden had very much put the focus on holding Trump accountable for his actions during the outbreak.

“These two conventions have offered very different pictures of reality, in terms of where our country is now and what our future may hold,” says Christopher Devine, an expert in US elections at the University of Dayton in Ohio.

Trump’s convention depicted the president as a champion of “law and order,” taking aim at voters who do not approve of his divisive and inflammatory rhetoric but may be jittery about months of protests over racial injustice and police brutality that have sometimes turned violent.

“This is their attempt to nail down the base and mobilize them to get out and vote,” said Kathleen Dolan, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
“But I do think he is trying to peel away some of those undecided women, the people who he’s calling the ‘suburban women.’”

But in reaching out to suburban voters with unapologetic tough-on-crime messages, while showing little empathy for the protesters who demand racial justice, Trump may have further bolstered Black American support for Biden, already strong.

Jim Messina, who was President Barack Obama’s campaign manager for the 2012 reelection, said Republicans’ fiery rhetoric against protests could turn off independents who want an end to the bitter polarization.

“Trump has gone so far right that he’s left the middle for the taking,” he said.

A number of athletes went on strike over racial injustice, and refused to participate in the NBA, baseball, tennis and MLS this week. We’ve got a piece this morning from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar explaining how these actions have rekindled hope. Abdul-Jabbar boycotted the 1968 Olympics himself as a protest against discrimination in the US. He writes:

The popularity of the Black Lives Matter movement that swept through America this summer after the killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd stoked hope inside us into a small but powerful sun.

Then this week, a black man, Jacob Blake, was shot seven times in the back by police, a 17-year-old was charged with murder after two men were killed at a subsequent protests, and the Republican National Convention featured speakers who, instead of voicing outrage over systemic racism and vowing to end it, complained about the audacity of ungrateful black people protesting that their husbands, sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers were being murdered by police while president Trump and the GOP conspired to take away their right to vote.

Yeah, hope in the black community took a big hit this week. The small sun set quickly. The dying ember had been extinguished. But then along came the Milwaukee Bucks, my old team…

It is a powerful piece, which you can read in full here: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar – Hope is a dying ember for black people in the US. Athletes have rekindled it

As you can imagine there is a lot of reaction to the final night of the Republican national convention (RNC) to pick through this morning. I was immediately struck by this in the Washington Post by Toluse Olorunnipa.

While all political confabs involve some level of spin and revisionism, the RNC this year has stood out for its brazen defiance of facts, ethical guidelines and tradition, according to experts on propaganda and misinformation. While Trump, a former reality television star, has long trafficked in mistruths and innuendo, the broad cast of characters who took up his tactics during prime-time speeches underscores how his brand of politicking has taken root in the GOP.

As Olorunnipa puts it:

For more than 10 hours this week, President Trump and his allies used the unfiltered platform of a national political convention to paint a portrait of two Americas that do not exist.

In one — a misrepresentation of life under Trump — the coronavirus has been conquered by presidential leadership, the economy is at its pre-pandemic levels, troops are returning home, and the president is an empathetic figure who supports immigration and would never stoke the nation’s racial grievances.

In the other — a hypothetical preview of a Joe Biden presidency that mischaracterizes many of his proposals — police are defunded, taxes are increased, infanticide is legal, suburbs are abolished and cities burn as violence spreads nationwide.

Read it here: Washington Post – GOP convention spins alternate reality with torrent of falsehoods aimed at rebooting Trump’s flagging campaign

Good morning, and welcome to our US politics live blog. The conventions are over, all eyes turn towards the debates as the next step of the election campaign, as the country tries to get to grips with the aftermath of a powerful hurricane, a coronavirus pandemic, and the continued fight for racial justice.

I’m Martin Belam, I’ll be with you for the first stint today – you can get in touch with me at martin.belam@theguardian.com

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