Summary
- The white Atlanta police officer who fatally shot Rayshard Brooks was charged with murder. Another officer who was involved in the killing faces three charges, including aggravated assault and violation of oath.
- Former national security adviser John Bolton alleges that Trump tried to halt criminal investigations as “personal favors” to dictators and asked China for re-election help in his upcoming book. Democrats have sized the revelations as more evidence to support Trump’s impeachment but have also criticized Bolton for declining to testify during the impeachment inquiry.
- Joe Biden accused Donald Trump of surrendering the fight against coronavirus said that the president “sold out” the US in allegedly asking China for re-election help. Biden said Trump had violated a “sacred duty” to the American people.
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Officials in Tulsa, Oklahoma, worried that the president’s plan to hold a huge political indoor rally in the city on Saturday will inflame racial tensions and put people at risk of catching coronavirus. Some have urged Trump to postpone the event. The city’s Republican mayor said that it was an “honor” to host the president, but said he would not be attending the rally.
- A CDC report found that nearly 70% of 220 patients hospitalized in Atlanta were Black. With cases rising in some parts of the nation as cities reopen bars, restaurants, and other public venues, the pandemic continues to expose deeply entrenched inequalities.
Updated
Joe Biden, in response to the allegation that Trump asked China for help getting re-elected, said that the president “sold out the American people to protect his political future”.
Here’s more from Biden:
Today, we learned from John Bolton, the President’s former national security advisor, that President Trump sold out the American people to protect his political future. He reportedly directly asked Xi Jinping, China’s leader, to help him get re-elected. He was willing to trade away our most cherished democratic values for the empty promise of a flimsy trade deal that bailed him out of his disastrous tariff war that did so much damage to our farmers, manufacturers, and consumers.
If these accounts are true, it’s not only morally repugnant, it’s a violation of Donald Trump’s sacred duty to the American people to protect America’s interests and defend our values.
Democrats have seized on allegations that Trump requested political help from China, emphasizing evidence to support having impeached Trump.
Here’s Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer:
It was clear then and could not be any clearer now: the vote to convict and remove Donald Trump from office was absolutely the right vote.
— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) June 17, 2020
The revelations in Bolton’s book make Senate Republicans’ craven actions on impeachment look even worse—and history will judge them for it.
But as Elizabeth Warren pointed out, any revelations in Bolton’s book have come too late. Bolton declined to testify during the impeachment inquiry last year.
It shouldn’t take a book deal for members of this administration to come clean about impeachable offenses they witnessed from Trump.
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) June 17, 2020
There's a reason he thinks he’s above the law. Those around him—from his cabinet to Republicans in Congress—have failed to hold him accountable.
Updated
In Boston, demonstrators organized a law enforcement “appreciation rally” and faced off against Black Lives Matter protesters.
Here’s a view of the scene, from WGBH reporter Tori Bedford.
there are clear sides to each protest, and the middle of the rotary is a meeting point where people are getting in little fights. pic.twitter.com/kQGIt4Od7M
— Tori Bedford (@Tori_Bedford) June 17, 2020
The pro-police protesters were carrying “Thin Blue Line” American flags, which defenders have said represent a solemn tribute to fallen officers. But the flag has also been criticized as a symbol of white supremacy, appearing next to the confederate flag at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.
Per witnesses at the rally in Boston today, someone carrying the Thin Blue Line flag spat at a passing car with a Black driver, and police escorted the driver away.
Updated
Officers were instructed not to use body cameras during the raid of journalist Bryan Carmody’s home, in a San Francisco police department memo obtained by the nonprofit Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
In the memo, lieutenant Pilar Torres said officers conducting the raid should “lieutenant Pilar Torres states that he told law enforcement officers conducting the raid “not to utilize our department issued BWC’s [body worn cameras] for this operation” to avoid compromising the “confidential investigation”.
San Francisco has reached a $369,000 settlement with Carmody. Officers raided the freelance journalist’s home in 2019 and seized notebooks and other materials after he refused to disclose the source who shared a confidential police report on the death of a San Francisco public defender.
The case is receiving renewed interest amid the new revelations and amid increased scrutiny over the police’s treatment of journalists covering the recent protests against police brutality.
Updated
CDC report: in Atlanta, Black coronavirus patients were much more likely to be hospitalized than white patients
In March and April, out of 220 coronavirus patients who were hospitalized, 79% were Black. Older Black men made up 52% of those hospitalized. By comparison, 13% of hospitalized patients were white, per the report published Wednesday.
The unequal toll of the coronavirus pandemic on Black and minority communities has now been well documented throughout the country. A previous CDC report found that more than 80% of patients hospitalized with Covid-19 in Georgia were Black.
As the state has loosened restrictions and increased testing, the number of cases reported has increased in four of the past five weeks.
Updated
The Republican mayor of Tulsa has said he won’t be attending Trump’s rally on Saturday.
At a press conference, mayor GT Bynum said it will be a “tremendous honor” to host Trump in Tulsa, but that he won’t attend the event. “I’m not positive that everything is safe,” he said, and encouraged attendees to wear masks.
Officials, residents and civil rights activists have called on Nynum to cancel the rally at the BOK Center in Tulsa, which as a 19,000-seat capacity — warning the event could not only cause the coronavirus to spread, but also inflame racial tensions.
Bynum said that the company managing the venue has “sole discretion” over hosting the event. “The president chose this city, and so it falls on us,” Bynum said. “And it is an honor.”
Several nooses were found hanging on trees in Oakland, California, the latest in a spate of racist, anti-black related crimes under investigation across the state.
Police are investigating the nooses as a hate crime. They were found in the Lake Merritt area, a popular outdoor space and neighborhood.
“Symbols of racial violence have no place in Oakland and will not be tolerated,” Oakland’s mayor, Libby Schaaf, said in a statement. “We are all responsible for knowing the history and present day reality of lynchings, hate crimes and racial violence. Objects that invoke such terror will not be tolerated in Oakland’s public spaces.”
Schaaf noted that there were some reports that the nooses might have been hung as part of exercise equipment, but that does not “remove nor excuse their torturous and terrorizing effects”.
The discovery of the nooses comes on the heels of investigations into the hanging deaths of two black men in southern California.
Robert Fuller, 24, was found dead hanging from a tree near Palmdale city hall in the early hours of 10 June. The county medical examiner initially labeled the preliminary cause of death as suicide pending a full autopsy, noting the lack of evidence of foul play. But following widespread outcry, the coroner deferred the decision and the Los Angeles county sheriff announced that the FBI and the state attorney general’s office will be monitoring the investigation.
Ten days earlier, 38-year-old Malcolm Harsch was found dead hanging from a tree in front of the Victorville public library in San Bernardino county, about 50 miles away from where Fuller was found dead.
Today is the fifth anniversary of the Charleston massacre when white supremacist Dylann Roof murdered nine people at Emanuel AME church.
Despite a South Carolina law protecting monuments, officials in Charleston announced that they will remove a statute of John C Calhoun, a former vice-president and advocate for slavery.
Mayor John Tecklenburg announced that he will send a resolution to the city council to have the statue taken down. To do so is “not to erase our long and often tragic history but to begin to write a new and more equitable future”, he said.
5 years ago on this date, these 9 people were killed by a white supremacist at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC. #Emanuel9 pic.twitter.com/Jl9AEvfIwZ
— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) June 17, 2020
Reverend Nelson Rivers said Calhoun “represents Dylann Roof to us”.
“The time has come to not just acknowledge your racist evil wicked past. The time has come to take down the monuments that honor the evil that was done in the name of Charleston, in the name of South Carolina,” Rivers said on Tuesday.
Updated
Hi there, this is Maanvi Singh on the west coast.
Keisha Lance Bottoms, the Atlanta mayor, told The View that though she’s “encouraged” by Donald Trump’s executive order on police reform, “it’s hard to take him seriously in this moment.”
Bottoms, who has found herself on a shortlist of contenders to be Joe Biden’s running mate, said he was disappointed that the president’s executive order didn’t address racial bias in policing.
“We don’t have another minute to spare. We convened an advisory task force in Atlanta to look at our use of force policies, and not three days later, then Rayshard Brooks was killed in Atlanta,” she said. “We don’t have time for the theatrics. We’ve gotta have action right now and we needed it yesterday.”
Updated
Today so far
It’s been a very busy afternoon in US politics and there will be more to come when Maanvi Singh takes over from the west coast for the next few hours.
Here’s what happened this afternoon:
- Joe Biden accused Donald Trump of surrendering the fight against coronavirus in the US, with the nation rushing to reopen as the president encourages it, despite cases rising in news hotspots across several states.
- The white Atlanta police officer who shot Rayshard Brooks, who is black, was charged with murder this afternoon in the man’s killing.
- In his upcoming book, former national security adviser John Bolton reportedly argues Trump should have been impeached for more than just the Ukraine controversy, claiming the president tried to halt criminal investigations as “personal favors” to dictators.
- Officials in Tulsa, Oklahoma, worry that the president’s plan to hold a huge political indoor rally in the city on Saturday will inflame racial tensions and put people at risk of catching coronavirus. Some have urged Trump to postpone the event.
Biden accuses Trump of "surrendering" nation to coronavirus
Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, on Wednesday laced into Donald Trump over his handling of the coronavirus, accusing him of “surrendering the fight” against the Covid-19 outbreak as more than a dozen US states experience sharp rises in reported cases.
“He’s waived a white flag, and has retreated,” Biden said.
He accused the administration of “engaging in self-congratulations” when the number of deaths each month still exceeds the number of war dead in World War II.
“Just like he couldn’t wish Covid-19 away in March, just like he couldn’t tweet it away in April, he can’t ignore it away in June,” Biden said.
“Mr President, wake up. Get to work,” he said in closing. “There’s so much more to be done.”
Biden began his remarks by marking the fifth anniversary of the Charleston massacre, when a white supremecist murdered nine black parishioners as they prayed.
Biden, who was vice president at the time, said he continues to marvel at their “amazing grace” and capacity to forgive the perpetrator of what he called a “poisonous expression of white supremacy that still infects our nation and many of our institutions.”
But, acknowledging the ongoing protests against racism and police brutality, he said “grace alone is not enough.”
The New York City mayor, Bill de Blasio, announced that the city is launching an online database that will let New Yorkers track disciplinary cases against police officers accused of excessive force and other violations and view their administrative records.
The New York police department will also adopt tighter deadlines to speed up the disciplinary process, the mayor said, according to the latest from the Associated Press.
The reforms are meant to bring more transparency to a system long criticized for being too secretive and plagued by lengthy delays in holding police officers accountable for misconduct.
“We have to know that if something’s done right, it will be recognized and when something’s done wrong, it will be acted on,” De Blasio said. “When people know that, that’s what helps them have greater faith.”
He added: “I want everything we have to be put on online.”
The move drew a swift rebuke from the head of the Police Benevolent Association, the city’s largest police union, who said it undermines privacy protections.
Lynch also labeled the measures to expedite cases “arbitrary” and vulnerable to predetermined outcomes driven by politics.
The announcement from De Blasio, who ran for the Democratic nomination for president in the 2020 election, but did not prevail, follows decisions in recent days to make officers’ body-camera footage more widely available and to disband a plainclothes anti-crime unit that critics said was too aggressive.
Last week, state governor Andrew Cuomo also signed legislation barring the NYPD and other police departments in the state from keeping the public in the dark about disciplinary records.
Updated
Donald Trump set out a plan on Wednesday aimed at helping to prevent suicides by US military veterans, which he described as a “tremendous problem”.
“Ending the tragedy of veteran suicide demands bold action at every level of society,” the president said in the east room of the White House. “Twenty veterans and service members take their own lives every single day. The loss of our heroes breaks our hearts and pains our souls.”
Trump announced 10 recommendations, including providing suicide prevention training and enhancing research, and a public health awareness campaign led by Second Lady Karen Pence, who said: “We’re all dealing with anxiety. We’re all dealing with stress right now so, if I can do anything as lead ambassador, it’s my goal to help take away the stigma of mental health.”
The initiative is called The President’s Roadmap to Empower Veterans and End a National Tragedy of Suicide, or PREVENTS, and had been delayed for three months by the coronavirus pandemic.
Although Trump stayed mostly on-script, he could not resist a swipe at his predecessor, Barack Obama, and his 2020 election rival, Joe Biden. “After years of shameful scandal and neglect under the Obama-Biden administration, and scandal and neglect it was, we have fundamentally reorganised the VA [Department of Veterans Affairs] from top to bottom,” he said.
The remarks occurred at the same time as a speech by Biden in Pennsylvania. All three major cable news networks – CNN, Fox News and MSNBC – gave live coverage to the former vice president instead of Trump.
The president’s relationship with the military has been strained by his aggressive reaction to the protests against racial injustice in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Fulton county district attorney Paul Howard revealed that Atlanta police officer Garrett Rolfe knew the taser Rayshard Brooks took from him was not functional.
The taser had already been fired twice and thus was of no use when Rolfe shot Brooks twice in the back as he was running away.
The detail underscores that Rolfe was aware he was in no physical danger when he fatally shot Brooks. Cameras also captured Rolfe kicking Brooks as he was on the ground struggling for his life.
Devin Brosnan, the other Atlanta police officer involved in the killing of Rayshard Brooks, is facing three charges, including aggravated assault and violation of oath.
The aggravated assault charge is in connection to Brosnan standing on Brooks’ shoulders after he was shot twice in the back by officer Garrett Rolfe.
Fulton county district attorney Paul Howard said Brosnan is cooperating with his office and is willing to testify against Rolfe.
Howard has asked the two officers to surrender themselves by 6 pm tomorrow. He said he would recommend no bond for Rolfe.
Fulton county district attorney Paul Howard said Atlanta police officer Garrett Rolfe is facing 11 charges in connection to the death of Rayshard Brooks, including felony murder.
Some of the other charges against Rolfe include three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, criminal damage to property, violation of oath and aggravated assault for kicking Brooks’ body after he was shot.
Police officer charged with felony murder in connection to Brooks' killing
Fulton county district attorney Paul Howard has announced an Atlanta police officer has been charged with felony murder in connection to the death of Rayshard Brooks.
Howard previously said his office was today issuing arrest warrants for the two officers involved in the killing of Brooks.
Fulton county district attorney Paul Howard said his office has concluded Rayshard Brooks was running away when a police officer shot him twice in the back.
“We have concluded at the time Mr Brooks was shot that he did not pose an immediate threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or officers,” Howard said.
Fulton county district attorney Paul Howard said the two officers involved in the killing of Rayshard Brooks continued to injure him after he was shot.
Howard said one officer kicked Brooks and the other stood on his shoulders as he lay on the ground struggling for his life.
Fulton county district attorney Paul Howard said Rayshard Brooks cooperated with officers’ instructions for more than 40 minutes before he was fatally shot.
Howard also noted Brooks was not told he was being arrested for driving under the influence, as police officers are required to do.
“Mr Brooks never presented himself as a threat,” Howard said, adding that Brooks did not display “any aggressive behavior.”
Fulton county DA issuing arrest warrants in connection to Brooks' killing
Fulton county district attorney Paul Howard has announced he will be issuing arrest warrants in connection to the police killing of Rayshard Brooks.
“We have decided to issue warrants in this case today,” Howard said at a press conference in Atlanta.
Brooks was shot in the back while running away from police officers on Friday night, prompting outcry in the city and across the country.
Updated
John Bolton’s allegation that Donald Trump asked Xi Jinping to help him win his re-election campaign, reported by the Washington Post, flies in the face of Trump’s anti-China campaign rhetoric.
Trump’s reelection campaign is currently running hundreds of ads attacking his Democratic rival Joe Biden as being too soft on China. The ads variously portray Biden as a puppet of Xi, hugging China, and wearing a red hat with the slogan “Make China Great Again”. Video spots reference the Chinese origins of the coronavirus pandemic and appear designed to invoke xenophobia, fear, and anger at Chinese trade policies.
Washington Post: "Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to help him win the 2020 US election"
— Julia Carrie Wong (@juliacarriew) June 17, 2020
Trump's current ad campaign on Facebook: pic.twitter.com/BppasQN3Vd
During a meeting with Xi in June 2019, Trump “turned the conversation to the coming US presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability to affect the ongoing campaigns, pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win”, Bolton writes in his book, according to the Washington Post.
“He stressed the importance of farmers, and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome. I would print Trump’s exact words but the government’s prepublication review process has decided otherwise.”
In a book excerpt provided to the Wall Street Journal, John Bolton claims Trump “nodded apporvingly” when Chinese President Xi Jinping suggested the US held “too many elections.”
Bolton writes:
In Buenos Aires on Dec. 1, at dinner, Xi began by telling Trump how wonderful he was, laying it on thick. Xi read steadily through note cards, doubtless all of it hashed out arduously in advance. Trump ad-libbed, with no one on the U.S. side knowing what he would say from one minute to the next.
One highlight came when Xi said he wanted to work with Trump for six more years, and Trump replied that people were saying that the two-term constitutional limit on presidents should be repealed for him. Xi said the U.S. had too many elections, because he didn’t want to switch away from Trump, who nodded approvingly.
The Wall Street Journal has published an excerpt from John Bolton’s upcoming book, which includes a claim that Trump encouraged the Chinese president to continue building concentration camps for the country’s Uighur citizens.
Bolton writes in the excerpt for the Journal:
At the opening dinner of the Osaka G-20 meeting in June 2019, with only interpreters present, Xi [Jinping] had explained to Trump why he was basically building concentration camps in Xinjiang. According to our interpreter, Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do. The National Security Council’s top Asia staffer, Matthew Pottinger, told me that Trump said something very similar during his November 2017 trip to China.
Up to 1 million Uighur citizens have disappeared into Chinese re-education camps, prompting outcry from human rights groups. Beijing has claimed the camps are meant to stamp out extremism.
The Washington Post has also obtained a copy of John Bolton’s book, in which the former national security adviser reportedly claims Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping for help in winning reelection.
The Post reports:
During a one-on-one meeting at the June 2019 Group of 20 summit in Japan, Xi complained to Trump about China critics in the United States. But Bolton writes in a book scheduled to be released next week that ‘Trump immediately assumed Xi meant the Democrats. Trump said approvingly that there was great hostility among the Democrats.
‘He then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability to affect the ongoing campaigns, pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win,’ Bolton writes. ‘He stressed the importance of farmers, and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome. I would print Trump’s exact words but the government’s prepublication review process has decided otherwise.’
That last sentence is particularly noteworthy, considering the Trump administration is claiming Bolton’s book cannot be released because it contains classified information.
The administration also alleged Bolton backed out of a review process for the book, but Bolton’s lawyer has accused the White House of exploiting the standard review process in an effort to prevent the publication of unflattering anecdotes about the president.
Updated
John Bolton reportedly accuses House Democrats of committing “impeachment malpractice” by focusing solely on the Ukraine controversy in their inquiry against Trump in his upcoming book.
The New York Times reports:
The book confirms House testimony that Mr. Bolton was wary all along of the president’s actions with regard to Ukraine and that Mr. Trump explicitly linked the security aid to investigations involving [Joe] Biden and Hillary Clinton. ...
Mr. Bolton, however, had nothing for scorn for the House Democrats who impeached Mr. Trump, saying they committed ‘impeachment malpractice’ by limiting their inquiry to the Ukraine matter and moving too quickly for their own political reasons. Instead, he said they should have also looked at how Mr. Trump was willing to intervene in investigations into companies like Turkey’s Halkbank to curry favor with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey or China’s ZTE to favor President Xi Jinping.
Mr. Bolton also recounts a discussion at the Group of 20 summit meeting in Osaka, Japan, last summer at which the president overtly linked policy to his own political fortunes as he asked Mr. Xi to buy a lot of American agricultural products to help him win farm states in this year’s election. Mr. Trump, he writes, was ‘pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win. He stressed the importance of farmers, and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome.’
According to the New York Times, John Bolton’s book includes numerous unflattering anecdotes about Trump and recounts episodes of senior aides mocking the president.
The Times reports:
It is a withering portrait of a president ignorant of even basic facts about the world, susceptible to transparent flattery by authoritarian leaders manipulating him and prone to false statements, foul-mouthed eruptions and snap decisions that aides try to manage or reverse.
Mr. Trump did not seem to know, for example, that Britain is a nuclear power and asked if Finland is part of Russia, Mr. Bolton writes. He came closer to withdrawing the United States from NATO than previously known. Even top advisers who position themselves as unswervingly loyal mock him behind his back. During Mr. Trump’s 2018 meeting with North Korea’s leader, according to the book, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo slipped Mr. Bolton a note disparaging the president, saying, ‘He is so full of shit.’
That closing anecdote could cause trouble for Pompeo, considering the president is notoriously sensitive to any indication that his advisers are criticizing or mocking him.
Bolton says Trump tried to halt criminal investigations to help dictators - report
In his upcoming book, former national security adviser John Bolton reportedly argues Trump should have been impeached for more than just the Ukraine controversy, claiming the president tried to halt criminal investigations as “personal favors” to dictators.
The New York Times reports:
Mr. Bolton describes several episodes where the president expressed willingness to halt criminal investigations ‘to, in effect, give personal favors to dictators he liked,’ citing cases involving major firms in China and Turkey. ‘The pattern looked like obstruction of justice as a way of life, which we couldn’t accept,’ Mr. Bolton writes, adding that he reported his concerns to Attorney General William P. Barr.
The book is set to be published next week, but the administration has filed a civil lawsuit against Bolton in an effort to block the book’s release.
Tulsa officials worry Trump rally could worsen racial unrest
In addition to the health concerns, Tulsa rallies have expressed fear that Trump’s Saturday campaign rally will worsen racial unrest in the city.
Reuters reports:
In Tulsa, officials said they were worried the rally would set the stage for potential clashes between Trump supporters and protesters who may try to crash the event to argue the Republican president has failed to address racial injustice or police brutality against African Americans.
The president has repeatedly criticized those protesting the police killing of George Floyd, calling the demonstrators “thugs” and suggesting some of them were just “following the crowd.”
Tulsa health official: Trump rally should be postponed
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany has just concluded her briefing, during which she was pressed on the Trump campaign’s decision to move ahead with its Tulsa rally this weekend.
As McEnany was speaking, Tulsa’s mayor held a press conference about the upcoming rally, and a senior city health official said he believed the event should be postponed out of concern about the spread of coronavirus.
“I recommended it be postponed until it’s safer,” said Dr Bruce Dart, the executive director of the Tulsa health department. “We’re concerned.”
But McEnany dismissed reporters’ questions about the safety of the rally, accusing the press of a double standard when it comes to covering large events.
She said news reports have not highlighted health concerns about the recent protests against police brutality, although such events are outdoors and thus pose a lower risk of coronavirus spread, according to health experts.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany defended the administration’s civil lawsuit against John Bolton over his upcoming book.
McEnany claimed Bolton’s book is “full of classified information,” saying the former national security adviser “should know all too well that it is unacceptable to have highly classified information from the government of the United States in a book that will be published.”
The publisher of Bolton’s book, Simon & Schuster, has said the lawsuit “is nothing more than the latest in a long-running series of efforts by the Administration to quash publication of a book it deems unflattering to the president.”
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany defended the Trump campaign’s decision to move forward with a rally planned for this weekend, despite concerns about the spread of coronavirus.
McEnany accused the press of having a double standard when it comes to large events, noting recent protests against police brutality have also drawn many participants. She held up a copy of the New York Post comparing the two events to underscore her point.
Press sec brought props to try to rebut questions about the coronavirus dangers of Trump's Tulsa rally pic.twitter.com/7VOSo09huM
— David Nakamura (@DavidNakamura) June 17, 2020
Many commentators have argued protests against racism should not be compared to a political rally. It’s also worth noting that the protests have largely been outdoors, while the rally would be indoors. Public health experts have said indoor events are more susceptible to the spread of coronavirus.
McEnany was then pressed on why rally attendees have been asked to sign waivers absolving the Trump campaign of any liability from coronavirus. “As with any event, you assume a personal risk,” McEnany said. “That’s part of life.”
Updated
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said the president supports Republican senator Tim Scott’s newly unveiled bill on police reform.
“We fully support the Scott bill and every element of it,” McEnany said during her briefing.
The press secretary claimed Democrats have offered “zero, nothing” on policing reform, even though House Democratic leadership has also released a police reform bill.
The House intends to vote on the measure next week, and the bill is expected to pass the chamber, considering it already has enough co-sponsors to secure its approval.
McEnany: Democrats are engaged in 'meaningless symbolism'
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany is holding a briefing, and she criticized congressional Democrats for alleged inaction on police reform.
“They’ve engaged in meaningless symbolism, as we saw them kneeling for minutes on end,” McEnany said.
That was a reference to congressional Democrats recently kneeling for eight minutes and 46 seconds in the Capitol, in recognition of the eight minutes and 46 seconds that a white Minneapolis police officer had a knee on George Floyd’s neck.
“This president isn’t about symbols or gestures,” McEnany said.
Trump has also repeatedly criticized professional football players for kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality.
White House revisiting renaming bases named after Confederate generals - report
The White House is reportedly revisiting the idea of renaming military bases named after Confederate generals, which the president previously ruled out.
NBC News reports:
Conversations among White House officials in recent days about renaming the bases have been spurred by a growing recognition in the West Wing that the names of the bases will eventually be changed — with or without Trump’s backing — given widespread support for the idea and the momentum it has gained in Congress even among lawmakers from the president’s own party. So White House officials are debating whether Trump should support a process for renaming them in order for him to have a say in who they are named after, officials said.
The officials said Trump is aware the conversations are taking place.
Trump previously said he would “not even consider” renaming the bases, but an amendment laying out a plan to rename the bases within three years has been added to the annual defense authorization act.
If the amendment remains in the final version of the bill, which seems likely, Trump would have to veto the defense legislation to block the renaming proposal. Such a move would likely spark criticism from members of both parties, considering the bill also includes a number of spending provisions that are popular with the Pentagon.
Today so far
Here’s where the day stands so far:
- Senate Republicans unveiled their police reform bill. The bill would incentivize police departments to ban chokeholds and increase reporting of use of force. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said the chamber would vote on the bill next week.
- Democrats criticized the Senate bill, saying the legislation did not go far enough to hold police officers accountable for misconduct. They noted House Democrats’ police reform bill specifically bans chokeholds and no-knock warrants, rather than incentivizing departments to do so.
- New York governor Andrew Cuomo is signing an executive order to make Juneteenth a holiday for state employees. Cuomo said he hopes to introduce legislation to make Juneteenth, which commemorates the end of slavery in America, an official state holiday next year.
The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.
White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway defended the lawsuit against John Bolton, after the Trump administration claimed the former national security adviser’s upcoming book was “rife with classified information.”
“It’s kind of remarkable to have a book be published while people are still in office,” Conway told reporters at the White House, even though a number of former Trump advisers have already published books about their time working for the president.
The senior adviser mockingly said to the journalists, “It is actually precious and adorable, how pro-John Bolton you all are now. It’s really cute.”
Conway argued Bolton’s book represented a threat to the presidency itself and to national security. “I would just think that it’s very important to the nation’s security, not even the president himself, but for the presidency itself and the nation’s security to make sure the review processes have been completed,” Conway said.
The publisher of Bolton’s book, Simon & Schuster, has said the lawsuit “is nothing more than the latest in a long-running series of efforts by the Administration to quash publication of a book it deems unflattering to the president”.
New York governor Andrew Cuomo made another noteworthy announcement during his coronavirus briefing: he is ending the daily briefings this Friday.
“These daily briefings, while fun, take a lot of time,” the Democratic governor told reporters. “And I’m going to finish the daily briefings on Friday.”
Yesterday there were 17 fatalities due to COVID. We mourn those we lost.
— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) June 17, 2020
But we are thankful this is the lowest number since the pandemic began.
Cuomo has held more than 100 daily briefings since the state’s coronavirus crisis started. The briefings made the New York governor one of the most recognizable faces of the US response to the pandemic.
Cuomo noted that 17 New Yorkers died of coronavirus yesterday, the lowest number since the start of the crisis. Overall, the state has lost more than 24,000 people to the virus.
Cuomo makes Juneteenth a holiday for state employees
New York governor Andrew Cuomo is signing an executive order to make Juneteenth a holiday for state employees, he announced at his daily coronavirus briefing today.
The Democratic governor also said he hoped to introduce legislation to make Juneteenth, which commemorates the end of slavery in America, an official state holiday next year.
Today I will sign an Executive Order recognizing #Juneteenth as a holiday for state employees.
— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) June 17, 2020
I will advance legislation to make it an official state holiday next year.
Cuomo’s announcement comes one day after Virginia governor Ralph Northam announced he would also be proposing legislation to make Juneteenth a state holiday.
The June 19 holiday has attracted more attention this year because of the George Floyd protests and Trump’s initial decision to hold his first campaign rally in more than three months on Juneteenth. The president later decided to delay the rally until June 20.
House Democrats are criticizing Senate Republicans’ police reform bill for not explicitly banning controversial policing practices like chokeholds.
“If they really wanted to get rid of chokeholds, they’d just ban chokeholds,” Democratic congressman Gerry Connolly said in a tweet. “Our bill does it. It’s not that complicated.”
If they really wanted to get rid of chokeholds, they’d just ban chokeholds.
— Rep. Gerry Connolly (@GerryConnolly) June 17, 2020
Our bill does it. It’s not that complicated. https://t.co/O84FJg1nna
House Democrats’ police reform bill bans both police chokeholds and no-knock warrants, but Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has crticized the legislation as overreaching.
This MSNBC graphic summarizes some of the major differences between the House and Senate bills on police reform:
Details behind the two Capitol Hill proposals on policing changes: pic.twitter.com/U5gPVEUZ9U
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) June 17, 2020
One of the most substantial differences is that the House bill explictly bans certain policing practices, such as chokeholds and no-knock warrants. The Senate bill, on the other hand, incentivizes police departments to ban such practices through the distribution of federal funds.
Democrats have said the Republican bill, as well as the executive order signed by Trump yesterday, do not go far enough to address officers’ misconduct.
Meanwhile, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has said Democrats are trying to “federalize” policing and has made clear that the House bill has no future in the Senate.
Those arguments foreshadow what a difficult task it will be for the two parties to negotiate on police reform and try to get a bill approved by both chambers.
The Guardian’s Sam Levine provides an update on a controversial voter fraud case in Texas:
Crystal Mason, the Texas woman sentenced to five years in prison for illegally voting even though she didn’t know she was ineligible, is asking a state appeals court to reconsider a March ruling upholding her punishment.
In March, a 3-judge panel for Texas’ 2nd court of appeals unanimously upheld that sentence, writing that whether or not Mason knew she was ineligible to vote was irrelevant to whether she was guilty of a crime.
In a June 1 filing, Mason’s attorneys asked the full court to reconsider the ruling. They argued Mason technically did not vote because her provisional ballot was rejected and that any ambiguity in the law should be seen in her favor. They also noted the March ruling could be used as a basis to prosecute thousands of Texans in upcoming elections.
Federal law requires election officials to offer anyone unsure of their voter eligibility a provisional ballot at the polls. Any voter who casts a ballot in good faith but turns out to be ineligible could be prosecuted under the court’s reasoning, Mason’s lawyers wrote. More than 11,000 provisional ballots have been rejected in Mason’s county since 2014.
Mason’s case has drawn national attention because of the severity of her sentence. Mason cast a provisional ballot in the 2016 presidential election while she was on supervised release, which is like probation, from a federal felony related to inflating tax returns (Texas does not allow people convicted of felonies to vote until they have entirely finished their sentences).
She has always maintained she didn’t know she couldn’t vote and only cast a provisional ballot when poll workers offered her one after they couldn’t find her on the rolls. Election officials never counted her provisional ballot, but in 2018 she was convicted of illegally voting anyway.
The appeals court on Tuesday asked Texas to respond to Mason’s request by June 26.
House minority leader Kevin McCarthy praised senator Tim Scott’s police reform bill, saying the legislation would improve relationships between “hardworking cops” and the communities they serve.
While Dems threaten to defund police, Republicans understand that real change comes from improving community and law enforcement relationships and helping hardworking cops carry out their duties.
— Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader) June 17, 2020
The #JUSTICEact from @SenatorTimScott & @RepPeteStauber will deliver exactly that.
McCarthy has complained that Democratic leaders have blocked Republicans from negotiations over the House police reform bill, but the Democrats already have enough co-sponsors to pass the legislation.
At Senate Republicans’ press conference today, Scott noted there were a number of overlaps between the Senate and House bills. However, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer has already said Scott’s bill does not go far enough to address police misconduct.
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer sharply criticized Republicans’ police reform bill, but he appeared to leave the door open to debating the measure next week.
Democrats hold 47 seats in the Senate, which would be enough to block the motion to proceed on the legislation if they are unified in opposition to taking up the bill.
Senator Tim Scott said at Senate Republicans’ press conference today, “If we don’t have the votes on a motion to proceed, that means that politics is more important than restoring confidence in communities of color in the institutions of authority.”
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer is already criticizing Republicans’ police reform bill, saying the legislation does not include meaningful changes to address misconduct.
“We’ve only had the bill for a few hours and are reviewing it,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “But what’s clear is that the Senate Republican proposal on policing does not rise to the moment.”
The New York Democrat said the bill’s “greatest flaw” was that it is “missing real, meaningful accountability for individual officers’ misconduct.” “This bill will need dramatic improvement,” Schumer said.
Democrats have called for banning qualified immunity so that police officers can be held accountable for misconduct in civil court, but Republican senator Tim Scott described that proposal as a “poison pill.”
Senator Tim Scott noted there were overlaps between his police reform bill and House Democrats’ bill, particularly on issues like the duty to intervene and police chokeholds.
“The legislation is already bipartisan,” the Republican senator said of his bill. “The question is, can we get bipartisan support?”
Scott added moments later, “If we don’t have the votes on a motion to proceed, that means that politics is more important than restoring confidence in communities of color in the institutions of authority.”
A reporter noted Republicans have not been using the word “systemic racism” to describe the problem with policing, as many Democrats have. She asked if that would impede negotiations between the two parties.
Scott, the only black Republican in the senator, emphasized the two bills shared many similarities and added, “We’re not a racist county. We deal with racism because there’s racism in the country.”
Senator Tim Scott took several reporters’ questions about his police reform bill. Asked if he was worried about the effort losing momentum if it is not passed next week, Scott said, “I don’t think the nation is going to allow us to lose the momentum.”
The Republican senator added he hoped Trump would support the bill as well. “I hope the president will join forces and jump on board,” Scott said.
Scott noted Trump was “the most presidential I’ve seen him” yesterday, as he met with families who had lost loved ones to police brutality.
Republican congressman Pete Stauber, a former police officer, will lead the effort on the House side to get senator Tim Scott’s police reform bill passed.
While introducing Stauber at the press conference, Scott noted Stauber had been shot in the head on the job in 1995.
Stauber said he was “devastated” by the video of George Floyd’s last moments, which showed a white police officer kneeling on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
“What I saw in that video goes against everything I stood for as a police officer,” Stauber said. “George Floyd’s life mattered. And the best way to honor his memory is by enacting meaningful and lasting change within policing.”
Republican senator Shelley Moore Capito said Tim Scott’s police reform bill represented an opportunity to be “pro-civil rights and pro-law enforcement.”
One of their Republican colleagues, Ben Sasse, added that the legislation would “restore and build more public trust” between law enforcement and communities of color.
Sasse also said the bill was an opportunity to use technology to address the issue of police brutality, noting officers are already being held more accountable thanks to cell phones.
Senate to vote on police reform bill next week, McConnell confirms
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has confirmed the chamber will vote on senator Tim Scott’s police reform bill next week.
The House will also vote on Democrats’ police reform bill next week, but McConnell has said that bill is a non-starter in the Senate.
“We’re serious about making a law here,” McConnell said. “This is about coming together and getting an outcome.”
There are some similarities between the two police reform bills, but the House bill is much more sweeping than the Senate version.
Senate Republicans unveil police reform bill
Senate Republicans are holding a press conference to unveil their police reform bill in response to the police killing of George Floyd.
Senator Tim Scott, who led the group who crafted the bill, said Americans are too often asked to choose between supporting the police and supporting communities of color.
“This is a false, binary choice,” Scott said. “If you support America, you support restroring the confidence that communities of color have in instiutions of authority.”
Scott, the only black Republican in the Senate, later added, “We believe that the overwhelming number of officers in this nation are good people.”
A one-page summary distributed to reporters showed the bill would call for reporting use of force and no-knock warrants, de-escalation training and incentivizing chokehold bans.
A one-pager handed out to all of us socially distanced at the press conference. pic.twitter.com/VBwQSAxKqG
— Emily Cochrane (@ESCochrane) June 17, 2020
This is Joan Greve in Washington, taking over for Martin Belam.
A Tulsa judge has denied a request to block the Trump campaign from holding a campaign rally this Friday, despite concerns that the large indoor event could intensify the spread of coronavirus.
Some of Tulsa’s residents and businessowners had asked Judge Rebecca Nightingale to intervene in order “to protect against a substantial, imminent, and deadly risk to the community,” but she declined to do so.
Many Democratic lawmakers and public health experts have expressed concern about holding the rally in the 19,000-seat BOK Center, but the Trump campaign appears determined to move forward.
Even Tulsa’s Republican mayor has expressed some concerns about the rally. “Do I share anxiety about having a full house at the BOK Center? Of course,” mayor GT Bynum said in a statement last night.
“As someone who is cautious by nature, I don’t like to be the first to try anything. I would have loved some other city to have proven the safety of such an event already.”
In England, soccer is re-starting today, playing in front of empty stands due to coronavirus restrictions. Some teams are filling the grounds with cardboard cut-outs of fans and celebrities so it doesn’t look so bleak.
Donald Trump is expected to feature in the crowd at a match due to be played in Cheltenham on Monday night - possibly the only match he’ll be seen at for some time since he has said he will no longer watch domestic matches after US Soccer repealed rule requiring players to stand for anthem. Shaquille O’Neal is also among those whose presence will be felt in the crowds in England.
Players in the country’s top division, the Premier League, will have their names on their shirts replaced with the slogan Black Lives Matter for one round of games. London-based side Tottenham Hotspur just posted a picture of their squad taking the knee before the re-opening matches.
Together We Are Stronger#BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/1P7ThBRuYk
— Tottenham Hotspur (@SpursOfficial) June 17, 2020
Ferguson has been at the heart of Black Lives Matter protests since it was thrust into the national spotlight after the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in 2014. Last night the town swore in its first ever African American Mayor, Ella Jones.
Jones, 65, was sworn in at City Hall Tuesday night, and a second ceremony is planned for Wednesday at the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis office in Ferguson. She won the three-year mayoralty in an election on 2 June. Term limit rules prohibited the incumbent, James Knowles III, from seeking a fourth term.
Jones wore a face-mask at the ceremony - Missouri has suffered around 900 deaths from Covid-19 during the coronavirus outbreak.
Eleanor Barr, wife of Kentucky Congressman, dies suddenly aged 39
It is being reported that the wife of Rep. Andy Barr from Kentucky, Eleanor Carol Leavell Barr, passed away unexpectedly in the family’s home in Lexington Tuesday night at the age of 39.
The Fayette County coroner was called to the family’s home following the announcement of her passing, WKYT-TV reported.
“During this tragic time, we respectfully ask for privacy for Congressman Barr and his family to grieve Mrs. Barr being called home to heaven,” the statement added. “Congressman Barr may release a more detailed statement at a later date, but right now is solely focused on being a father to his two beautiful daughters.”
US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement he and his wife are “stunned and heartbroken” by the news, and send their “sincere condolences to Andy, their family and his staff at this terribly painful time.”
Condolences for her passing flowed in through the night from other Kentucky politicians, including Gov. Andy Beshear and U.S. Sen. Rand Paul.
Barr, who went by Carol, grew up in the state, and went on to attend the University of Kentucky, news outlets reported.
She married Andy Barr in 2008 and the couple went on to have two children. She had worked for Pfizer, and as the executive director of Lexington’s Henry Clay Center for Statesmanship.
Updated
My colleague Amanda Holpuch in New York has been looking ahead to Friday’s Juneteenth anniversary, which, coming directly after weeks of protests, anger and grief over the death of George Floyd at the hands of the police, are sure to be more emotionally charged than ever.
She observes that this will be especially true in Tulsa, where Donald Trump has scheduled a contentious rally for the following day. Local lawyers have been trying - and failing - to block the Trump rally on the grounds that it will not be adhering to anti-coronavirus measures.
And local Black Lives Matters groups are also organising against the president’s provocatively visit to a state which he easily carried in 2016 and appears in no danger of losing this time around.
Read it here: Juneteenth 2020 will be infused with energy of anti-racist uprisings
Third Confederate statue torn down in Virginia
Another statue went down in Richmond, Virginia last night - this time from the Howitzers Monument which was erected in 1892 to commemorate a Richmond Civil War artillery unit.
It’s the third Confederate statue, and the fourth monument, to be torn down in Virginia in recent days - Confederate president Jefferson Davis, Confederate General Williams Carter Wickham and a figure of Christopher Columbus have been toppled as well. The Howitzer monument showed a Confederate artilleryman standing in front of a gun.
Meanwhile in New Orleans the whereabouts of a statue of a slave owner toppled by protesters and thrown into the Mississippi River remains unknown.
A video has emerged which shows a group of men using ropes and a plank to carry the paint-splattered bust of John McDonogh out of the river and onto a pickup truck Sunday - but it hasn’t been seen since. Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s office told the local newspaper that the bust is “considered stolen property”.
Activists have been demanding not just reforms to policing in the US, but a deep-seated change in police culture. A report this morning by Jesselyn Cook and Nick Robins-Early for the Huffington Post website illustrates exactly why some people see this as a necessary goal. They’ve been studying the places they describe as “the dangerous online fever swamps of American police”:
This police media ecosystem is not necessarily a broad representation of what most cops believe. But inside this echo chamber, which has thousands of users and readers, extremist views dictate the narrative. Wild misinformation and bigotry are rampant, with people who claim to be current and former officers posting debunked falsehoods and racist stereotypes about protesters.
Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University is quoted as saying “What I think we have here is a market for this kind of racist and divisive garbage across the internet, and unfortunately police are participating in that wave that is witnessed across various professions. It pains me as a former NYPD officer to see this. These posts are devastating.”
Read it here: Huffington Post - Inside the dangerous online fever swamps of American police
You might not have backed Nascar to be the sports organisation that has done the most in the last few weeks to respond to the wave of Black Live Matter protests across the country - but the sport has made several high profile moves aimed at improving its inclusivity.
Andrew Lawrence has been speaking to Nascar’s Bubba Wallace for us about the changes which he has helped bring about in the sport, including a confederate flag ban and driving in a car marked #BlackLivesMatter.
It’s a great little interview - and frank about how much work Nascar still has to do - including Wallace also talking about dealing with another driver who had tagged his car with “Back the Blue”.
Read it here: ‘We’re fighting for change’: Bubba Wallace on Nascar and the Confederate flag
Axios have what they are describing as a scoop this morning - the news that a group of prominent Republican operatives are launching a super PAC to turn out Republican voters in November - for Joe Biden.
The report says that they will initially target voters in six battleground states: Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. They plan to emphasise Biden’s record on “free trade, states’ rights, federal spending and respecting US diplomatic and military alliances — and highlight his Catholic faith — to make the case that most anti-Trump Republicans can feel comfortable supporting him.”
That might - of course - point out some of the reasons that the Bernie Sanders supporting left-wing of the Democrat party are a bit uncomfortable with Biden as their nominee.
One of the people involved is Anthony Scaramucci. He is quoted as saying he is “very confident that we can convince a large group of Republican voters that Biden is the right person to vote for if they want to stay true to their principles and to the legacy of the Republican Party.”
Time will tell if the super PAC are in it for the long haul, or another 10 day wonder like Scaramucci’s stint at the White House.
Read it here: Axios - Republican operatives launch pro-Biden super PAC
Coronavirus and the Black Lives Matter protests make 2020’s March primary campaigns seem like ancient history, but voting chaos is going to be a big theme for the November election. Politico this morning have a look at a report into why people had to queue for hours in California’s Super Tuesday primary on 3 March.
About 15 percent of Los Angeles County voters who responded to a county survey reported waiting more than two hours to vote, and 10 percent said they waited longer than three hours, according to people who responded to a county survey.
The report that has been quietly slipped out by Los Angeles County pins the blame on “malfunctions in the electronic tablets used to check in voters at the polls”.
The delays were caused by some poll books taking hours to sync their voter lists with each other and with the countywide voter registration database, making them unusable during this time. The devices also had another problem: Poll workers were supposed to be able to look up voters’ records by name and address but were limited to name searches, producing hundreds of false positives in some cases that poll workers had to sift through.
There was also a failure rate of around 5% in the electronic voting machines. None of the findings in the report give much confidence for November’s chances of a queue-free election.
Read it here: Politico - LA County report blames voter check-in tablets for Election Day chaos
Senate Republicans will be proposing changes to police procedures and accountability today with their JUSTICE Act - “Just and unifying solutions to invigorate communities everywhere Act”
Lisa Mascaro and Jim Mustain at Associated Press have seen a draft of the bill, and this morning are trailling what we can expect to see in it. They describe it as “the most ambitious GOP policing proposal in years”, although the 106-page bill is not as sweeping as the counter Democrat proposal, which is set for a House vote next week.
The proposed Republican legislation would beef up requirements for law enforcement to compile use of force reports under a new George Floyd and Walter Scott Notification Act. It would also establish the Breonna Taylor Notification Act to track “no-knock” warrants.
To focus on ending chokeholds, it encourages agencies to do away with the practice or risk losing federal funds. It also provides funding for training to “de-escalate” situations and establish a “duty to intervene” protocol to prevent excessive force.
In efforts to gain Democrat support, it also includes a long-sought bill to make lynching a federal hate crime.
South Carolina’s Senator Tim Scott is expected to formally unveil the plan later today.
Good morning - welcome to our live coverage of US politics and the Black Lives Matter protests that continue across the nation. Here’s the key points from yesterday and overnight to get you started.
- Democrats and civil rights groups criticized Trump’s executive order on police reform. Critics said the order, which incentivizes police departments to review their use-of-force policies and ban chokeholds in most cases, does not go far enough to address police brutality.
- The Trump administration has sued to block the publication of former security adviser John Bolton’s book. The lawsuit alleges that Bolton has risked exposing classified information.
- Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell signalled he would be comfortable with renaming military bases named after Confederate generals.
- Florida, Texas, Arizona reporting their biggest one-day rises in coronavirus cases.
What are we expecting today? At 2pm, Trump announces the “Prevents” task force roadmap. The programme is aimed at improving mental health provision for veterans and tackling the high suicide rate among them.
Joe Biden heads to Pennsylvania to meet with small business owners in Yeadon, and then will speak about the country’s economic reopening.
In Congress, Republican Sen. Tim Scott is expected to unveil his policing bill. The House Judiciary Committee will mark up the Democratic policing proposal.
I’m Martin Belam - you can drop me a line at martin.belam@theguardian.com if you want to get in touch.
