Good morning. The number of known US cases of coronavirus is nearing 2.4 million, but the Centers for Disease Control has estimated 10 times that number have caught the disease. The US is among 10 countries where cases have risen since lockdown measures were relaxed, with infections surging in its three most populous states:
Florida, where the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, has angrily denied accusations that his administration is “cooking the books” to hide the true impact of the disease.
Texas, where the oil industry is close to collapse as a result of the economic crisis with up to 1 million jobs reportedly at risk.
California, where a record 7,149 people tested positive on Tuesday, with cases surging particularly in Los Angeles.
In an exclusive interview, Ed Pilkington spoke to the progressive Democratic congresswoman Rashida Tlaib about her efforts to free vulnerable inmates from a prison system where the virus is rife: “Close to a million people right now are incarcerated who are legally innocent, waiting for trial because they can’t afford bail when the courts are closed because of the pandemic,” Tlaib said. “It’s crazy.”
Meanwhile, the EU is considering blocking American travellers when it reopens its borders at the beginning of July. The US has become a pariah nation of super-spreaders, writes Francine Prose:
America has done such a poor job of controlling the Covid-19 outbreak that our infection rate is increasing dramatically while that of most European nations is either remaining stable or decreasing. We’re simply too dangerous – too likely to bring the deadly virus along with the more welcome (and needed) tourist dollars.
The Covid-19 crisis has dented Sweden’s ‘superior’ self-image
Unlike most EU countries, Sweden did not impose tough lockdown rules on its citizens in response to the pandemic, instead relying on their innate sense of civic responsibility to slow the spread of Covid-19. Now, with the country’s relative death toll far outstripping its near neighbours’, polling has shown that Swedes are rapidly losing faith in their government’s handling of the crisis. It is a dent to the nation’s “morally superior” self-image, writes Erik Augustin Palm:
Covid-19 has toppled Swedish exceptionalism. How are we so open-minded with such limited room for divergence? How are we so rational when our Covid-19 strategy is an outlier compared to that of countries with more successful responses based on the same data?
Deaths in police custody are still under the spotlight
The governor of Colorado has appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the killing of a 23-year-old black man who died in police custody in 2019, amid the national reckoning over racism and police brutality. Elijah McClain died of cardiac arrest shortly after he was put in a neck-hold by a police officer, and given a dose of a sedative by a paramedic, in suburban Colorado last August.
The Tucson police chief has offered to resign over the death of 27-year-old Carlos Ingram-Lopez, who was handcuffed and placed face-down with a blanket over his head while in custody in April.
Oakland’s school board voted to abolish its dedicated police department, in a victory for the growing movement to banish police from US schools.
Liverpool won the English Premier League title
After three months away from the pitch amid the coronavirus lockdown, Liverpool FC at last won the English league title on Thursday night after their closest rivals, Manchester City, were beaten 2-1 at Chelsea. It is the historic club’s 19th championship victory, but their first of the Premier League era – and their first since the Merseyside side dominated the league during the 1980s.
The team’s coach, Jürgen Klopp, said it was an “incredible moment” for his team. Barney Ronay pays tribute to the footballing machine Klopp built, which is still operating at the peak of its power. “Make no mistake,” Ronay writes, “this was an annihilation.”
Police have warned jubilant fans who gathered at the team’s Anfield home against mass gatherings that flout physical distancing rules and risk spreading coronavirus.
In other news…
Nascar has released an image of the ‘noose’ found in Bubba Wallace’s garage at a racetrack in Alabama. The FBI found that the garage door pull had been in place since last year and so was not a threat directed at Wallace, who is black, but as Nascar notes: the image makes clear that “the noose was real”.
Donald Trump’s brother failed to block his niece’s book. A New York judge told Robert Trump “several improprieties” in the lawsuit he filed to block Mary Trump’s family memoir made his attempt to prevent its publication “fatally defective”.
More than 100 people have been killed by lightning strikes in India at the start of the annual monsoon season. At least 83 died in Bihar state, one of the region’s highest daily tolls in recent years.
A New Zealand supermarket chain will use the word ‘period’ to label menstrual products previously given euphemistic names such as “sanitary” or “feminine hygiene”, claiming it is the first retailer in the world to do so.
Great reads
Why the election is ‘a matter of life and death’ for immigrants
Marielena Hincapié, the chief of one of the US’s most high-profile immigrant advocacy groups, tells Amanda Holpuch defeating Trump in 2020 is an existential issue for immigrants: “We have been experiencing war, nothing short of what feels like an all-out war by the Trump administration, frankly, since he started running for office.”
The secretive agency planting ‘cyanide bombs’ across the US
In 2017, a teenage boy playing near his Idaho home came across a strange device that sprayed him with cyanide, killing his dog and leaving him with lasting health issues. The device, known as an M-44, had been planted by an obscure government agency, Wildlife Services, and was intended to kill predators. Jimmy Tobias reports.
Opinion: The FBI is still targeting black civil rights leaders
The FBI has always viewed black activism as a threat to national security, monitoring Black Lives Matter leaders much as it did Martin Luther King. Its time would be better spent holding accountable the police officers whose brutality fuelled the movement, says Mike German.
In 2018 and 2019, the FBI conducted nationwide assessments of ‘Black identity extremists’ under an intelligence collection operation it called Iron Fist, prioritizing these cases over investigations of far more prevalent violence from white supremacists and far right militants.
Last Thing: Denmark’s prime minister just can’t save the date
If you thought the coronavirus was messing with your plans, spare a thought for the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, who has postponed her wedding to her cinematographer fiance Bo Tengberg for a third time, because it clashes with a European Council meeting.
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