Good morning,
Donald Trump claimed again on Wednesday that the coronavirus would “go away”, and “sooner rather than later”. That is not the view of his administration’s top infectious disease expert, Dr Anthony Fauci, who told Reuters it would take at least a year to bring the pandemic under control and it was unlikely the virus would ever be eradicated altogether. Meanwhile, Facebook for the first time removed a post from the president’s page that contained false information about the disease.
The US has now recorded 4.8 million Covid-19 cases and 157,690 deaths. The US census bureau has suspended a weekly survey tracking Americans’ quality of life, which painted a bleak picture of the effects of the pandemic and the economic downturn. And as Trump continues to insist schools should return in person in September, Chicago’s public school system has announced plans to teach the start of the school year entirely online.
Trump and Joe Biden both plan to accept their party’s 2020 presidential nominations remotely, with Biden appearing from his home in Delaware, and Trump considering delivering his convention speech from the White House lawn.
How did Trump get the pandemic so wrong? Ed Pilkington examines the administration’s pitiful response to the coronavirus for the Guardian’s podcast, Today in Focus.
The Beirut blast was a disaster waiting to happen
The death toll from Tuesday’s massive explosion in Beirut has risen to 137, with at least 5,000 injured. It was a disaster that local officials have now admitted was foreseeable. There is growing anger in the Lebanese capital after a paper trail emerged showing repeated warnings over the vast stash of ammonium nitrate that had been stored at Beirut’s port since 2014. Martin Chulov reports again from the neighbourhoods flattened by the blast, which until this week were “the still functioning heart of an already dying city”.
Donald Trump’s off-the-cuff and unsubstantiated claim that the explosion was caused by an “attack” has caused alarm in Lebanon and beyond about the US president’s potential to unwittingly foment international crises.
How you can help: as international rescue workers descend on Beirut to help search for survivors, here’s a list of organisations that would welcome your contribution to their aid efforts.
Deutsche Bank gave Trump’s financial records to prosecutors
Earlier this week, lawyers for the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance, urged a New York judge to give them access to eight years of Trump’s personal and corporate tax records, citing public reports of “extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization”. Yet aside from the president’s hush-money payments to women to silence them about alleged affairs, Vance’s team remained tight-lipped about exactly what they were investigating.
On Wednesday it was reported that the prosecutors had issued a subpoena to Deutsche Bank, one of the foremost lenders to the president’s business, as part of their inquiry – and that the bank had complied, turning Trump’s records over to investigators.
The New York attorney general, Letitia James, has announced that she will make a “major national announcement” on Thursday at 11.30am EDT.
Iowa ended its lifetime voting ban for ex-felons
Until this week, Iowa was the only state in the US still enforcing a lifetime voting ban on citizens with felony convictions in their past, a policy that excluded roughly 52,000 people – including almost 10% of eligible African American voters – from the democratic process. On Wednesday, following months of protests by Black Lives Matter activists, Iowa’s Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, signed an executive order to end the ban.
On the 55th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, the Guardian is joining with other newsrooms around the US to highlight the continuing, nationwide battle for access to the ballot. Look at Florida, for example, where Republicans have gutted “amendment 4”, the Sunshine State’s own overwhelmingly popular measure to restore voting rights to ex-felons.
The fight to vote. On Thursday at 5pm EDT, the former US attorney general Eric Holder will join the Guardian’s Sam Levine for a live online event to discuss the longstanding power of the Voting Rights Act and the 2013 supreme court decision that paved the way for today’s wave of voter suppression.
In other news…
Minneapolis will not vote on disbanding its police department in November. The city council proposed the measure in the wake of George Floyd’s death, but a commission said on Wednesday it wanted more time to consider such an amendment before putting it on the ballot.
Michelle Obama is suffering from “low-grade depression”, the former first lady told listeners to her podcast: “Not just because of the quarantine, but because of the racial strife, and just seeing this administration, watching the hypocrisy of it, day in and day out, is dispiriting.”
An FBI Swat team searched the mansion of YouTuber Jake Paul in LA on Wednesday, gathering several rifles from the 23-year-old’s sprawling property, where he recently hosted a controversial house party in the midst of the pandemic.
Great reads
Why young TikTokers ‘don’t care’ about privacy concerns
Trump has threatened to ban the video-sharing app TikTok, citing concerns that its parent company could be collecting US user data and sharing it with the Chinese government. But the young people who use TikTok tell Kari Paul they’re already used to being tracked.
Can loneliness be cured with a pill?
Experts say chronic loneliness has little to do with actually being alone. Now, scientists are seriously considering whether there could be a medication to treat the problem, and to help sufferers form meaningful relationships with others. Abby Carney reports.
Opinion: the Pinterest moms who believe Plandemic
Debra Winter has watched a friend, a colleague and a doctor neighbour all succumb to the allure of Plandemic, an online Covid-19 conspiracy video. In the midst of the pandemic, these women have even flipped from being Democrats to Trump supporters.
This is not solely a fringe group of uninformed people blindly forwarding cat videos. These are college-educated women who (correctly or incorrectly) believe they have done their research.
Last Thing: Hannity changes his motto
First it was Don, Jr. Now, the Fox News host and fawning Trump acolyte Sean Hannity has become the second person in the president’s circle to quietly alter a cover line on his book – in this case, a Latin motto, after a classics student pointed out that it was “gobbledygook”.
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