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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Sam Levin (now) and Joan E Greve and Martin Belam (earlier)

Louisville and San Francisco latest cities to take steps toward police reform – as it happened

Protesters take to the street during a march against police brutality on Thursday in New York.
Protesters take to the street during a march against police brutality on Thursday in New York. Photograph: Scott Heins/Getty Images

Summary

That’s all for today, thanks for following along. A recap of some key developments of the day:

  • General Mark Milley, the nation’s top military officer, apologized for participating in Trump’s photo op after the forcible removal of peaceful protesters. “I should not have been there,” Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, told the National Defense University in a prerecorded video commencement address. “My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.”
  • Trump’s convention speech is officially moving to Florida after it was originally supposed to be in North Carolina.
  • Kevin McCarthy, the top House Republican, said he would support a national ban on police chokeholds. The House minority leader said he was also open to renaming military bases named after Confederate generals, which Trump has said he will “not even consider.”
  • Nancy Pelosi called for the removal of Confederate statues from the Capitol. The House speaker said she also believed the military bases should be renamed, telling reporters, “The American people know these names have to go.” Pelosi added that Trump “seems to be the only person left who doesn’t get it.”
  • Trump condemned a bill amendment to establish a commission for changing the base names within three years. The president called on Republicans to block the amendment, but the Republican-led Senate armed services committee has already adopted the amendment to the annual defense authorization bill, although it can still be stripped out.
  • Chicago police officers were caught on camera relaxing in a Democratic congressman’s office while looting took place nearby. House Democrat Bobby Rush shared some of the footage, which showed several officers lounging on couches and making themselves popcorn and coffee from the office’s supplies as the looting unfolded. “They were in a mode of relaxation, and they did not care about what was happening to businesspeople, to this city,” Rush said at a press conference with mayor Lori Lightfoot.
  • The mayor of San Francisco said today police would no longer respond to calls for “non-criminal activity”, such as disputes between neighbors and complaints about homeless people, part of reforms she is pushing amid protests.
  • The metro council in Louisville has unanimously passed a policy banning police from using “no-knock warrants”, the practice that led to the killing of 26-year-old Breonna Taylor.

Trump’s convention speech will take place in Florida, Republican officials have just announced.

The GOP is officially moving the speech to Jacksonville after there were disputes over coronavirus safety measures in the original North Carolina location. The speech will happen 27 August in a venue with a capacity for 15,000 people.

Florida recently reported a record number of Covid-19 diagnoses. The governor of North Carolina had required that there be a plan for social distancing and masks, which is why Trump and the GOP found a new location.

Updated

San Francisco mayor says police won't respond to calls over 'non-criminal activity'

The mayor of San Francisco said today police would no longer respond to calls for “non-criminal activity”, such as disputes between neighbors and complaints about homeless people, part of reforms she is pushing amid protests.

Mayor London Breed said officers in these cases would be replaced by professionals who are trained and unarmed and is meant to limit contact between police and the public.

Her announcement comes amid increasing calls to defund the police stemming from the George Floyd protests. Breed did not provide specifics about budget or implementation of her plans, which also included a call to “demilitarize police”.

Breed recently faced criticisms when records revealed that she had personally texted police officials to “clean up” homeless encampments that she saw.

Updated

Louisville metro council passes ban on 'no-knock warrants'

The metro council in Louisville has unanimously passed a policy banning police from using “no-knock warrants”, the practice that led to the killing of 26-year-old Breonna Taylor:

The ordinance, called Breonna’s law, comes three months after police entered Taylor’s home while executing a warrant and killed her.

“All Breonna wanted to do was save lives,” Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, said at the council meeting. “So it’s important this law passes, because with that, she’ll get to continue to do that, even in her death.”

The local ACLU said it would work to push this policy statewide.

Updated

An essential worker in New York City has spent a week in jail after he was arrested for violating curfew, according to a report in Gothamist:

The 27-year-old was leaving a job as a janitor and preparing to get a few hours of sleep before beginning a graveyard shift at another job when he briefly participated in the protest and was then arrested, Gothamist reported. The publication said the mayor’s office and police spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment.

At Trump’s Dallas event on policing, which has just ended and featured a panel of people who heaped praise on the president, there were some notable absences.

The local police chief, sheriff and district attorney, who are the county’s top three law enforcement officers and are all black, did not attend, the Dallas Morning News noted. The three were not invited, the paper noted. The event came as Trump is moving forward with his campaign rallies while the protests against police brutality continue across the country.

A physician speaking at Trump’s roundtable is repeatedly praising the president’s support of hydroxychloroquine, sparking loud applause from the audience.

The latest on hydroxychloroquine from the Guardian’s health editor, Sarah Boseley:

Hydroxychloroquine does not work against Covid-19 and should not be given to any more hospital patients around the world, say the leaders of the biggest and best-designed trial of the drug, which experts will hope finally settle the question.

“If you are admitted to hospital, don’t take hydroxychloroquine,” said Martin Landray, deputy chief investigator of the Recovery trial and professor of medicine and epidemiology at Oxford University. “It doesn’t work.”

Many countries have permitted emergency use of the drug for Covid-19 patients in hospitals, following claims from a few doctors, including Didier Raoult in France, that it was a cure, and the ensuing clamour from the public.

Landray said the hype should now stop. “It is being touted as a game-changer, a wonderful drug, a breakthrough. This is an incredibly important result, because worldwide we can stop using a drug that is useless.”

The National Football League announced it would donate $250m to the black community over the next ten years.

The NFL has been under increased scrutiny as reckonings around race and discrimination touch practically every industry. Numerous celebrities, from rapper Ludacris to tennis star Naomi Osaka, have called for the organization to redraft Colin Kaepernick. The football star and civil rights activist was allegedly blackballed after he began kneeling at games during the national anthem, in protest of police brutality and racial inequality. In 2017, an unemployed Kaepernick filed a grievance against the NFL and the two parties reached a confidential settlement last year.

In today’s announcement, the league acknowledged Kaepernick for pushing it to change. “We wouldn’t be where we are today without the work Colin and other players have led off,” an unnamed source told NFL.com. “That is a key point here. We listened to our players. We needed to listen more, we needed to move faster. We heard them and launched a social justice platform because of what Colin was protesting about.”

The NFL announcement comes after Major League Baseball, Nike, and other major players in the sports industry announced similar pledges as protests against racial injustice rage across the globe.

The Trump campaign’s invite for rallies now includes a coronavirus disclaimer, CNN notes:

There have been growing concerns that the recent mass protests could lead to a spike in coronavirus cases, though public health experts have said the police response, including tear gas, pepper spray and aggressively arresting people could exacerbate problems.

There are likely to be concerns about Covid exposure at the president’s upcoming rallies, which come as much of the US is reopening despite the ongoing pandemic.

The attorney general at Trump’s event also says, “The real oppression and danger to our communities comes more from violent crime and lawlessness than it does from the police.”

Fact check: Violent crime has steadily decreased in the US, but police continue to kill nearly 1,000 people every year. Police in the US kill more people in days than many countries do in years.

At Trump’s roundtable, attorney general Bill Barr says, “We’ve never had a president who’s more committed to reforming law enforcement.”

Fact check: The Trump administration abandoned Obama-era police reform efforts, which had included civil rights investigations into local police agencies with documented records of abuse and problems. “Police departments are not investigated under this administration,” Christy Lopez, who led the justice department group investigating police departments under Obama, recently told the Washington Post.

The roll-back of Obama’s efforts began under attorney general Jeff Sessions.

Fact check: Trump on defunding police

On the calls to defund the police, Trump said: “I heard they want to close up all police forces... What happens late at night when you make that call to 911 and there’s nobody there? What do you do, whether you’re white, black, or anybody else, what do you do?”

The calls to “defund police” come from community groups, who have long advocated for defunding law enforcement – taking money away from police and prisons – and reinvesting those funds in services. The basic principle is that government budgets and “public safety” spending should prioritize housing, employment, community health, education and other vital programs, instead of police officers.

Groups now have a range of demands, with some seeking modest reductions and others viewing full defunding as a step toward abolishing contemporary police services. Some lawmakers are responding and now proposing minor cuts that would allow police to continue to receive substantial funding.

Regarding questions about the impact of public safety if police budgets are defunded, abolition groups argue that policing and prison are at their core racist and harmful and make communities less safe. They also point out that the vast majority of police work has nothing to do with responding to or preventing violence, and that police have a terrible track record of solving murders or handling rape and domestic violence.

More here:

Hi all - Sam Levin in Los Angeles, taking over our live coverage. Trump is currently doing a roundtable on police. The president is focused on defending police and presenting problems with officers as isolated incidents. He said:

And you always have a bad apple no matter where you go. You have bad apples. And there are not too many of them, and I can tell you, there are not too many in the police department.”

In the massive protests of the last two weeks, there has been a growing interest in the movement to defund police, with activists arguing that brutality and killing are not isolated problems but systemic issues, and that the best way forward is to take funding away from law enforcement.

While many defenders of police have cited the “bad apple” argument in recent days, there have been increasing accusations of widespread abuse. In Los Angeles, for example, police are now investigating 57 cases of alleged misconduct by officers during the protests.

Today so far

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

Here’s where the day stands so far:

  • General Mark Milley, the nation’s top military officer, apologized for participating in Trump’s photo op after the forcible removal of peaceful protesters. “I should not have been there,” Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, told the National Defense University in a prerecorded video commencement address. “My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.”
  • Kevin McCarthy, the top House Republican, said he would support a national ban on police chokeholds. The House minority leader said he was also open to renaming military bases named after Confederate generals, which Trump has said he will “not even consider.”
  • Nancy Pelosi called for the removal of Confederate statues from the Capitol. The House speaker said she also believed the miliary bases should be renamed, telling reporters, “The American people know these names have to go.” Pelosi added that Trump “seems to be the only person left who doesn’t get it.”
  • Trump condemned a bill amendment to establish a commission for changing the base names within three years. The president called on Republicans to block the amendment, but the Republican-led Senate armed services committee has already adopted the amendment to the annual defense authorization bill, although it can still be stripped out.
  • Chicago police officers were caught on camera relaxing in a Democratic congressman’s office while looting took place nearby. House Democrat Bobby Rush shared some of the footage, which showed several officers lounging on couches and making themselves popcorn and coffee from the office’s supplies as the looting unfolded. “They were in a mode of relaxation, and they did not care about what was happening to businesspeople, to this city,” Rush said at a press conference with mayor Lori Lightfoot.

Sam will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

Trump has arrived in Dallas, Texas, for his rountable on “historic economic, health, and justice disparities in American communities.” as protests against police brutality continue across the country.

The president was greeted on the tarmac by Texas governor Greg Abbott, lieutenant governor Dan Patrick and attorney general Ken Paxton.

Two congressional candidates who the president has endorsed were also present for Trump’s arrival. Senate candidate Tommy Tuberville, who is running against Trump’s former attorney general, Jeff Sessions, in Alabama, and House candidate Ronny Jackson, who previously served as Trump’s White House physician, welcomed Air Force One in Dallas.

A lawyer for Martin Gugino said the 75-year-old is starting physical therapy, after he was pushed to the ground by two police officers during a George Floyd protest.

“As heartbreaking as it is, his brain is injured and he is well aware of that now,” lawyer Kelly Zarcone said in a statement, per NBC New York.

“He feels encouraged and uplifted by the outpouring of support which he has received from so many people all over the globe. It helps. He is looking forward to healing and determining what his ‘new normal’ might look like.”

Trump was widely criticized earlier this week after he suggested (without evidence) that Gugino was an Antifa plant, which Zarcone vehemently denied. One of Gugino’s friends told CNN that the man “had a good chuckle” about Trump’s tweet.

Republican senator Lindsey Graham expressed support for General Mark Milley, after the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff apologized for participating in Trump’s photo op at St John’s Church last week.

“I have nothing but deep admiration for and total confidence in General Milley as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” Graham said in a tweet. “I support his statement in both substance and spirit regarding the recent presidential visit to St. Johns.”

The tweet was a bit surprising coming from Graham, who is one of the president’s closest Senate allies and is generally reluctant to criticize him.

Milley said in a prerecorded video released today that he should not have been at St John’s moments after peaceful protesters nearby were forcibly removed using tear gas.

“My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics,” Milley told the graduates of National Defense University. “As a commissioned uniformed officer, it was a mistake that I have learned from, and I sincerely hope we all can learn from it.”

Democratic congressman Bobby Rush said his South Side office had been vandalized two weeks ago amid the George Floyd protests, and his staff later discovered the footage showing several officers in his office as looting took place nearby.

Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot said as many as 13 officers, including supervisors, were in Rush’s office at various points in the early hours of June 1, even as the mall where the office is located became the target of looting.

The mayor said the officers “abandoned” their obligations and would be “thoroughly” investigated to determine who was responsible.

“Not one of these officers will be allowed to hide behind the badge and go on like nothing happened,” Lightfoot said.

Police officers lounged in House Democrat's office amid nearby looting

Chicago police officers were caught on camera relaxing in the South Side office of Democratic congressman Bobby Rush as looting took place at a nearby shopping plaza.

Rush announced at a press conference alongside mayor Lori Lightfoot that the cameras in his office had captured footage of at least eight officers relaxing instead of addressing the looting.

Rush shared some of the footage, which showed several officers lounging on couches and making themselves popcorn and coffee from the office’s supplies. One of them was asleep on Rush’s couch.

“They even had the unmitigated gall to go and make coffee for themselves and to pop popcorn, my popcorn, in my microwave while looters were tearing apart businesses within their sight and within their reach,” Rush said.

“They were in a mode of relaxation, and they did not care about what was happening to businesspeople, to this city. They didn’t care. They absolutely didn’t care.”

Lightfoot apologized to Rush that his office had been treated “with such profound disrespect.”

“That’s a personal embarrassment to me,” Lightfoot said. “I’m sorry that you and your staff even had to deal with this incredible indignity.”

Miranda Bryant reports for the Guardian from New York:

Following widespread criticism over officers not wearing face masks – including from lawyers, protesters and the mayor - New York Police Department have issued a bizarre response, claiming: “We can put our energy to better use”.

The statement, sent out in response to questions over why the majority of officers do not appear to be wearing masks, references the weather, long days and uniforms, but makes no reference to coronavirus or public health in the middle of a pandemic.

“Perhaps it was the heat. Perhaps it was the 15-hour tours, wearing bullet resistant vests in the sun. Perhaps it was the helmets,” Sgt Jessica McRorie, a spokesperson for the deputy commissioner for public information, said last night.

“With everything New York city has been through in the past two weeks and everything we are working towards together, we can put our energy to a better use.”

It comes after legal experts warned of “abysmal” conditions for protesters who they said are being unnecessarily arrested and detained for as long as 48 hours without access to masks, food and water.

The Legal Aid Society told The Guardian that police officers “rarely” wear masks and are endangering protesters’ health and safety. On Sunday, New York mayor Bill de Blasio called on NYPD officers to wear masks, accusing them of “flouting the rules”.

Updated

Despite the president’s opposition, an increasing number of Republican lawmakers are expressing openness to renaming military bases named after Confederate generals.

Republican senator and veteran Joni Ernst, who is up for reelection this year, told Iowa reporters today, “I know there will be opposition to [renaming the bases], but it is a discussion that we absolutely need to have.”

Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota said he agreed with Trump that we should not “forget our history,” but he added, “At the same time, that doesn’t mean that we should continue with those bases with the names of individuals who fought against our country.”

Amid a similar debate over removing Confederate statues from the Capitol, senator James Lankford of Oklahoma said earlier today, “A lot of those statues and monuments were put there to kind of declare, ‘We’re not going to integrate.’ ... For those that were digging in during the time of Jim Crow, they need to know that time has passed.”

Trump condemns bill amendment to rename bases

Trump has sent a tweet condemning senator Elizabeth Warren’s bill amendment aimed at renaming military bases named after Confederate generals.

“Seriously failed presidential candidate, Senator Elizabeth ‘Pocahontas’ Warren, just introduced an Amendment on the renaming of many of our legendary Military Bases from which we trained to WIN two World Wars,” Trump tweeted from aboard Air Force One, reusing an offensive nickname for the Massachusetts senator. “Hopefully our great Republican Senators won’t fall for this!”

But the Republican-led Senate armed services committee has already adopted Warren’s amendment to the annual defense authorization bill, although it could later be stripped out of the legislation. The amendment calls for establishing a commission to devise a plan for removing Confederate names from military sites, with a goal of implementing the plan within three years.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said yesterday that the president would veto the defense authorization act if it included a proposal to rename the bases, but top House Republican Kevin McCarthy said he was “not opposed” to the idea earlier today.

Updated

A US senator this afternoon urged Attorney General Bill Barr to provide an account of how surveillance technology has been deployed against Americans during protests over the death of George Floyd.

Massachusetts Senator Edward Markey, a Democrat, told Barr that peaceful protesters “should not be subject to invasive surveillance” and asked whether the Department of Justice had authorized the use of facial recognition, unmanned aircraft, or cellphone tracking technology in connection with the rallies, Reuters writes.

Ed Markey at a Black Lives Matter protest in Boston.
Ed Markey at a Black Lives Matter protest in Boston. Photograph: Allison Dinner/ZUMA Wire/REX/Shutterstock

Concerns have risen amid sightings of drones and other surveillance aircraft deployed over American cities and reports about government plans to spy on protesters. A recent BuzzFeed News report said the Drug Enforcement Agency had been authorized to conduct “covert surveillance” at the gatherings. The news has intensified a backlash against the surveillance of protesters and surveillance technology in general.

On Tuesday, 35 members of Congress issued a letter to the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, describing urban drone flights as a “vast overreach of federal government surveillance” and demanding that officials “cease surveilling peaceful protests immediately and permanently.”

Companies that make and market the technology have also come under pressure from Congress. IBM lawmakers Monday it “no longer offers general purpose IBM facial recognition or analysis software.” Amazon said it was imposing a one-year moratorium on police use of its facial recognition software, dubbed Rekognition.

In a separate statement on Thursday, Markey said he was not satisfied by Amazon’s move. “Pressing pause on the use of this technology by law enforcement is a positive step, but what Amazon should really do is a complete about-face and get out of the business of dangerous surveillance altogether,” he said.

Updated

Joe Biden has released a plan on how to reopen the US economy in a way that is “as effective and safe as possible” amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The plan calls for guaranteeing coronavirus testing and personal protective equipment for anyone called back to work, as well as paid leave for anyone who gets sick. Biden also proposed creating a national contact tracing workforce and establishing best practices for schools and childcare facilities to reopen.

“A stronger, more effective reopening requires doing the work to keep workers safe, to restore consumer confidence, to support small businesses, to ensure seniors can participate, and to provide parents with the help they need to get back to work,” the Biden campaign said in a press release about the plan.

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee criticized Trump last week for celebrating the unemployment rate slightly dropping to 13.3%, emphasizing that 20 million Americans are still out of work.

“Trump has abdicated any effective federal leadership, leaving state, tribal, and local officials to do their best without help from Washington,” the Biden campaign said. “With cases of COVID-19 still rising rapidly in parts of the country, Trump has effectively ceased to mobilize any national public health response.”

Trump is now en route to Dallas, Texas, where he will host a roundtable discussion on plans for a national “holistic revitalization and recovery,” according to the White House. The president will also attend a high-dollar fundraiser for his reelection campaign.

Joe Biden released a statement earlier today criticizing Trump for making the trip, particularly because Texas is seeing a rise in coronavirus infections after relaxing some social distancing restrictions.

“For weeks we’ve seen President Trump run away from a meaningful conversation on systemic racism and police brutality. Instead, he’s further divided our country. Today’s trip to Texas won’t change any of that,” the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee said.

“He should be implementing an effective plan to re-open our communities so more Americans aren’t lost to this disease. Families in the Lone Star State are hurting and they deserve a President who will rise to the challenges facing our country.”

Today so far

Here’s where the day stands so far:

  • General Mark Milley, the nation’s top military officer, apologized for participating in Trump’s photo op after the forcible removal of peaceful protesters. “I should not have been there,” Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, told the National Defense University in a prerecorded video commencement address. “My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.”
  • Kevin McCarthy, the top House Republican, said he would support a national ban on police chokeholds. The House minority leader said he was also open to renaming military bases named after Confederate generals, which Trump has said he will “not even consider.”
  • Nancy Pelosi called for the removal of Confederate statues from the Capitol. The House speaker said she also believed the miliary bases should be renamed, telling reporters, “The American people know these names have to go.” Pelosi added that Trump “seems to be the only person left who doesn’t get it.”

The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

Mnuchin: 'We can't shut down the economy again'

Shifting to the coronavirus pandemic, treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin voiced opposition to shutting down the US economy again, even as many public health experts warn of a potential second wave of infections later this year.

“We can’t shut down the economy again,” Mnuchin said in a CNBC interview. “We’ve learned that if you shut down the economy, you’re going to create more damage. And not just economic damage, but there are other areas, and we’ve talked about this — medical problems and everything else that get put on hold.”

The cabinet secretary’s comments came as the number of US coronavirus cases surpassed 2 million, and about a dozen states are seeing a rise in infections since relaxing some social distancing restrictions.

The president has similarly praised states for reopening and warned the costs of shutdowns may outweigh the benefits, although the vast majority of public health experts disagree with that opinion and have expressed caution about relaxing restrictions.

McCarthy expresses support for banning chokeholds

House minority leader Kevin McCarthy said he would support a national ban on police chokeholds, which is included in congressional Democrats’ police reform bill.

During a press conference on Capitol Hill, McCarthy complained about Republicans being excluded from the drafting process of the Justice in Policing Act, but he said there are elements of the bill that his caucus “conceptually” agrees with.

Asked about the separate proposal to rename military bases named after Confederate generals, McCarthy said, “I think it could be appropriate to change some.” The California Republican said he would wait to see what came out of the defense authorization bill, which may include an amendment addressing the issue, but he noted he was “not opposed” to the idea.

McCarthy’s comments were noteworthy considering Trump said yesterday that he would “not even consider” renaming the bases, and the House minority leader is generally reluctant to distance himself from the president.

Pelosi: 'These names have to go from these bases'

House speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted the Army bases named after Confederate generals should be renamed and the Confederate statues remaining in the Capitol should be removed.

During her weekly press conference, Pelosi noted that she had a statue of Confederate general Robert E Lee relocated to the Capitol crypt during her first term as speaker, but she claimed she does not have the authority to remove the statues.

“When I was speaker, I did do what I had the authority to do,” Pelosi said. “Believe me, if I had more authority, we would have fewer of those statues around.”

Pelosi sent a letter yesterday to Republican senator Roy Blunt and Democratic congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, the chair and vice chair of the joint committee on the library, which oversees the placement of statues in the Capitol’s Statuary Hall. In her letter, the speaker called for the removal of 11 statues celebrating Confederate leaders.

“They committed treason against the United States of America, and their statues are still here because their states put them here,” Pelosi said today.

Shifting to the issue of renaming military bases named after Confederate generals, Pelosi said such a change might require legislation. But she added, “The American people know these names have to go.” Pelosi said Trump, who has expressed opposition to renaming the bases, “seems to be the only person left who doesn’t get it.”

She discussed the possibility of crafting legislation that addressed both the statues and the bases. “But these names have to go from these bases, and these statues have to go from the Capitol,” Pelosi said.

Judges at the International Crimnal Court gave the green light in March to an investigation into war crimes in Afghanistan, and began an investigation into crimes by Israeli and Palestinian forces in December. In his remarks, secretary of state Mike Pompeo made clear the newly announced US sanctions against the ICC were also aimed at defending Israel.

David Bosco, an associate professor at Indiana University who wrote a book on the court, “Rough Justice: The International Criminal Court in a World of Power Politics,” sent this comment on the Trump measures against the ICC: “I think this is as much directed at the looming Palestine situation as it is at the Afghanistan investigation. The executive order clearly allows for sanctions against ICC personnel who investigate US allies who have not consented to the court’s jurisdiction.

“The actual effect on the court’s Afghanistan investigation will probably not be significant. That investigation faces many logistical and evidentiary obstacles already and will take years to complete.”

The ICC was set up in 2002, as an attempt to extend the effort to impose international humanitarian law for war crimes and crimes against humanity begun by the war crimes tribunals on the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

Over 120 countries, including Washington’s closest allies in Europe, are party to the Rome Statute, the founding document of the ICC.

Bill Clinton signed for the US in 2000, but said the statute would not be sent to the Senate for ratification until the US had assessed the court’s operations. George W Bush informed the UN in 2002 that the US would not join the court.

The Trump administration is launching an economic and legal offensive on the International Criminal Court in response to the court’s decision to open an investigation into war crimes carried out by all sides, including the US, in Afghanistan.

The US will not just sanction ICC officials involved in the investigation of alleged war crimes by the US and its allies such as Israel, the administration declared it was launching a counter-investigation into the ICC for alleged corruption.

The secretary of state Mike Pompeo, national security adviser Robert O’Brien, defence secretary Mark Esper and attorney general William Barr gave a presentation of the decision at the state department, but then left without taking questions.

Barr made clear that this was the beginning of a sustained campaign against the ICC, and that Thursday’s measures were just an “important first step in holding the ICC accountable for exceeding its mandate and violating the sovereignty of the United States”.

“The US government has reason to doubt the honesty of the ICC, the Department of Justice has received substantial credible information that raises serious concerns about long history of financial corruption and malfeasance at the highest levels of the office of the prosecutor,” Barr said.

Even Trump’s former communications director is criticizing his decision to restart campaign rallies on Juneteenth in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Anthony Scaramucci, who spent an eventful 10 days in the Trump White House, said the campaign’s decision to hold its first campaign rally in three months on a holiday celebrating the end of slavery was “abhorrent and a wink at his racist supporters.”

Scaramucci noted Tulsa’s history as the site of a deadly 1921 race massacre targeting African Americans, and he pointed out that Oklahoma is not even considered a swing state for the presidential election.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany defended the Trump campaign’s decision to restart campaign rallies on Juneteenth, a holiday that celebrates the end of slavery in America.

“The African American community is very near and dear to his heart. At these rallies he often shares the great work he has done for minority communities,” McEnany said this morning.

“He’s working on rectifying injustices,” she added. “So it’s a meaningful day to him and it’s a day where wants to share some of the progress that’s been made as we look forward and more that needs to be done.”

The president announced yesterday that he would hold his first campaign rally in more than three months next Friday in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the site of a deadly 1921 race massacre that targeted African Americans and their businesses.

The announcement was quickly met with criticism from Democratic strategists and commentators.

From Joe Biden’s director of strategic communications:

From a progressive political strategist:

From a former National Security Council spokesperson under Barack Obama:

Various measures of support for the Black Lives Matter movement were agreed upon at Thursday’s meeting for the restarted Premier League.

A minute’s silence will also be held before each match in the first round of the restarted league to honour those who have died with Covid-19, and heart-shaped badges paying tribute to NHS workers will be embroidered into team kit.

The Guardian understands that the league will have no problem if players or teams wish to take a knee before games, as some clubs have done before recent friendlies. The names on the back of players’ shirts will be replaced, for at least the first set of games, by the words Black Lives Matter, following an initiative driven by club captains this week. One club explained that their kit staff had been primed to order shirts reflecting the change.

Black Lives Matter badges are also likely to be displayed on shirts, along with their NHS equivalents, although their exact placement is yet to be finalised.

The issue of what happens if a player removes his shirt to reveal a slogan in support of the movement was raised, after referees expressed concerns about the appropriateness of issuing a mandatory yellow card in such cases. Officials are expected to be asked to use their discretion.

Meanwhile, the president is being mocked on social media for referring to the US secret service as “SS,” the name of the Nazi military organization that helped to run Adolf Hitler’s death camps.

Trump tweeted this morning, “Our great National Guard Troops who took care of the area around the White House could hardly believe how easy it was. ‘A walk in the park’, one said. The protesters, agitators, anarchists (ANTIFA), and others, were handled VERY easily by the Guard, D.C. Police, & S.S. GREAT JOB!”

A Bloomberg reporter responded by sharing the history of the Nazi SS:

An AFP editor noted the secret service is usually referred to as USSS for obvious reasons:

The anti-Trump conservative commentator Bill Kristol offered the president this advice on the matter:

Here is the video of Gen Mark Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, apologizing for participating in Trump’s photo op at St John’s Church:

“As senior leaders, everything you do will be closely watched, and I am not immune,” the top military official told the graduates of the National Defense University in a prerecorded commencement address.

“As many of you saw the result of the photograph of me at Lafayette Square last week, that sparked a national debate about the role of the military in civil society. I should not have been there,” Milley continued.

“My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics. As a commissioned uniformed officer, it was a mistake that I have learned from, and I sincerely hope we all can learn from it.”

Updated

Gen Mark Milley has been “agonized” about participating in Trump’s photo op and expressed anger with the president about the issue, according to the New York Times.

The Times reports:

General Milley’s friends said that for the past 10 days, he has been agonized about appearing — in the combat fatigues he wears every day to work — behind Mr. Trump during the walk across Lafayette Square, an act that critics said gave a stamp of military approval to the hard-line tactics used to clear the protesters.

The general believed that he was accompanying Mr. Trump and his entourage to review National Guard troops and other law enforcement personnel outside Lafayette Square, Defense Department officials said.

In the days after the photo op, General Milley told Mr. Trump that he was angered by what had happened. The two had already exchanged sharp words last Monday when General Milley engaged the president in a heated discussion in the Oval Office over whether to send active-duty troops into the streets, according to people in the room.

Updated

Gen Mark Milley’s apology comes amid another standoff between the White House and the Pentagon over the potential renaming of military bases named after Confederate generals.

Milley and Esper signaled earlier this week that they were open to a conversation on renaming the bases, after years of critics complaining the bases’ names celebrated the Confederacy’s efforts to preserve slavery.

However, Trump announced yesterday that he would “not even consider” renaming the bases. The president also tweeted moments ago, “THOSE THAT DENY THEIR HISTORY ARE DOOMED TO REPEAT IT!”

Of course, the more common quote is, “Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” Critics of the bases’ names would almost certainly argue that removing the names of generals who actively fought against the US military from Army bases is an appropriate way of remembering the past.

Updated

The apology from Gen Mark Milley, the nation’s top military officer, comes after he and defense secretary Mark Esper received widespread criticism for participating in Trump’s photo op.

Former defense officials accused the two officials of giving the appearance of a Pentagon stamp of approval on the forcible removal of peaceful protesters using tear gas.

“The decision to use active military forces in crowd control in the United States should only be made as a last resort,” Mick Mulroy, a former deputy assistant defense secretary under Trump, told Politico. “Active Army and Marine Corps units are trained to fight our nation’s enemies, not their fellow Americans. American cities are not battlefields.”

One member of the defense science board actually resigned in protest of Esper’s participation in the photo op, which took place moments after the protesters were removed.

“You may not have been able to stop President Trump from directing this appalling use of force, but you could have chosen to oppose it. Instead, you visibly supported it,” James Miller wrote in his resignation letter to Esper.

Updated

Gen Mark Milley’s apology for participating in Trump’s photo op makes it very likely that the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff will soon be on the receiving end of a negative presidential tweet.

The president is notoriously sensitive to having senior officials publicly distance themselves from him, and he was reportedly on the brink of firing Mark Esper last week after the defense secretary said he did not support Trump’s proposal to send active-duty troops to states with George Floyd protests.

Esper has not apologized for participating in the photo op, telling reporters last week that he was not aware he would be taking part in it when he came to the White House to meet with Trump.

Updated

Milley apologizes for participating in Trump photo-op

Gen Mark Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, has apologized for participating in Trump’s photo op at St John’s Church last week, which took place moments after nearby peaceful protesters were removed using teargas.

“I should not have been there,” Milley told the National Defense University in a prerecorded video commencement address. “My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.”

Milley and defense secretary Mark Esper were widely criticized for participating in the photo op, with many former defense officials saying the two were helping Trump’s efforts to politicize the military.

“As a commissioned uniformed officer, it was a mistake that I have learned from,” Milley said, going on to described his anger about “the senseless and brutal killing of George Floyd.”

Updated

The Senate armed services committee has adopted an amendment for the Pentagon to rename military sites named after Confederate generals within three years, according to CNN.

The proposal was adopted by the Republican-led panel behind closed doors as an amendment to the annual defense authorization bill, which could make it more difficult for Trump to veto.

If the amendment makes it into the final version of the defense bill, the president would have to veto a number of popular proposals for the Pentagon in order to prevent the base renaming initiative from moving forward.

CNN reports:

The amendment was offered by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, defining assets as property own or controlled by the Pentagon, whether it’s a base, installation, facility, aircraft, ship, plane or type of equipment. The amendment would create an independent commission to review and develop a detailed plan for removing the names.

The news comes one day after Trump said he would “not even consider” renaming the bases, and press secretary Kayleigh McEnany specifically said the president would veto the defense authorization bill if it included a proposal to do so.

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

Trump’s most recent tweet that the National Guard troops who patrolled Washington amid the George Floyd protests “could hardly believe how easy it was” is at odds with recent reports about the troops.

The New York Times reports:

The first days of June, a calamitous period for the Trump presidency, have been a debacle for the National Guard.

There has been a torrent of criticism from Congress, senior retired military officers and Guard members themselves since more than 5,000 Guard troops — from the District of Columbia and a dozen states — were rushed to the streets of the capital to help in the crackdown on mostly peaceful protesters and occasional looters after the killing of George Floyd in police custody. The D.C. Guard has halted recruiting efforts, and at least four National Guard troops have tested positive for the coronavirus.

D.C. Guard members, typically deployed to help after hurricanes, floods and other natural disasters, say they feel demoralized and exhausted. More than 60 percent are people of color, and one soldier said he and some fellow troops were so ashamed in taking part against the protests that they have kept it from family members.

Donald Trump is up and tweeting, and is straight on the attack against “Antifa”.

This is somewhat in contrast to Trump’s final tweets last night, where he was labelling protesters in Seattle “domestic terrorists”, and not “a walk in the park” at all.

Axios has an interesting note about the next New York Times bestseller list. The top ten entries on the ‘combined print and e-nook non-fiction list’ are absolutely dominated by titles that focus on race in the US.

The top five consists of:

  1. White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo
  2. So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
  3. How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
  4. Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad
  5. The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

You can read the full list here.

It has been similar in the UK, where Bernardine Evaristo and Reni Eddo-Lodge have become the first black British women to top the UK’s fiction and nonfiction paperback charts.

And if you are wondering which books might be useful for your children at this moment in time, Aimée Felone has this list: ‘No reader is too young to start’: anti-racist books for all children and teens

Joe Biden was on Trevor Noah’s Daily Show on Wednesday night, and he touched on two important topics that are likely to make headlines - what he feels about defunding the police, and how willingly Donald Trump would leave the White House if he lost November’s election.

On the policing issue, Biden said “Well, I think there are a lot of changes that can take place period, without having to defund police completely”. He has in fact dismayed some activists by proposing extra money for police to tackle inequality.

He suggested that social workers couldn’t replace cops on call outs, but that maybe police should be accompanied when dealing with situations like suspected overdoses or mental health episodes. He also suggested a change of tack on drug policy, saying “Nobody should be going to jail for the use of drugs, they should be going to mandatory rehabilitation. We should be building rehab centers, not more prisons”

On Trump leaving the White House, in some quotes that seem to have excited Fox News, Biden suggested he had faith that if Trump did refuse to move, the military would happily step in.

“I promise you,” Biden said, “I’m absolutely convinced they [the military] will escort him from the White House with great dispatch.”

Another 1.5 million people file for unemployment benefits

Another 1.5 million people filed for unemployment benefits last week even as states across the US continued to relax their coronavirus quarantine measures. In just 12 weeks more than 44 million claims have been made for benefits as people lost their jobs.

Dominic Rushe and Amanda Holpuch in New York have our full report.

We’ll have further live economic reaction to the news on our Business live blog which my colleague Jasper Jolly is running over here.

Time magazine’s new cover and lead essay is out.

It does not mince its words

The origins of America’s unjust racial order lie in the most brutal institution of enslavement that human beings have ever concocted. More than 12 million Africans of all ages, shackled in the bottom of ships, were sold into a lifetime of forced labor defined by nonstop violence and strategic dehumanization, all cataloged methodically in sales receipts and ledgers. Around that “peculiar institution,” the thinkers of the time crafted an equally inhumane ideology to justify their brutality, using religious rhetoric in tandem with pseudoscience to rationalize treating humans as chattel. After the Civil War, the arrangements of legal slavery were replaced with those of organized, if not strictly legal, terror. Lynchings, disenfranchisement and indentured servitude all reinforced racial hierarchy from the period of Reconstruction through Jim Crow segregation and on until the movement for civil rights in the middle of the 20th century.

The essay - “America’s Long Overdue Awakening to Systemic Racism” by Justin Worland - was published online earlier today.

John F Harris has written a column this morning for Politico about Confederate statues. He used to live in Richmond, Virginia, where last night a statue of Confederate president Jefferson Davis was pulled down by protesters.

In it, he examines what has changed about the monuments he lived next to and the 1990s, and how they have been seen in recent years.

Why did I tolerate, and even, at times, take friends to see the statues? It wasn’t that the legacy of the Confederacy didn’t offend me. It was that the statues depicted a history that seemed functionally dead. They also seemed like a joke—and the joke was on the very racists who had erected them in the first place.

Along the way, Harris speaks to Donald P. Baker, known for his biography of the nation’s first black elected governor L. Douglas Wilder. Baker says of the statues on Monument Avenue: “The longer we lived here, the more they offended me.”

For him they weren’t so much about the civil war era, but about a constant reminder of the Jim Crow era, when so many Confederate statues were actually erected.

It’s a fascinating piece, well worth your time: On Monument Avenue, Liberal illusions about race come tumbling down

US passes two million coronavirus cases

The protests over the killing of George Floyd and the run-up to November’s election have all been taking place against the ominous backdrop of the coronavirus outbreak.

Recorded cases in the US - according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker - have breached the two million barrier. To put the accelerated spread of the disease in some perspective, it took 14 weeks to go from one case to one million cases. It only took another six weeks to go from one million to two million.

Oliver Milman reports for us on how the nation has failed to get to grips with the coronavirus:

Deficiencies in the stockpile of testing kits, swabs, ventilators and protective equipment for medical staff marked the opening stanza of the pandemic in the US. It was a muddled and sometimes astonishing response embodied by Donald Trump, who predicted the virus would vanish in the April sunshine, squabbled with state governors and pondered the merits of injecting bleach or taking hydroxychloroquine, an unproven anti-malarial drug.

Read his full report: ‘An American fiasco’: US hits grim milestone of 2m Covid-19 cases

Jon Ossoff, the 33-year-old media executive, has won Georgia’s Democratic primary for a Senate seat. He will contest it in November against Republican David Perdue, a Trump ally. Democrats are looking to flip the seat in what should be a competitive race in November.

That might not be the main thing to draw out of Tuesday’s election though. It was beset with organisational problems, with voting queues extending even longer than usual due to coronavirus social distancing rules.

David Daley writes for us today about the lessons it might teach us about November:

It wasn’t just in-person voting that malfunctioned on Tuesday. It was also impossible to watch Georgia’s expanded vote-by-mail system meltdown – forcing tens of thousands of voters who requested, but never received, absentee ballots to either join these long lines during a pandemic, or forfeit their civic voice entirely – without envisioning a train wreck this fall. Not just in Georgia, but in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and many other crucial states where any repeat of the chaos we have already seen this spring could precipitate a constitutional crisis unlike any other in our history. We are in deep, deep trouble and seemingly completely unprepared for this November’s elections.

It’s a worrying read: Georgia’s voting fiasco is a warning. The November election could be chaos

Before going to bed last night Donald Trump was tweeting vexedly about the protest situation in Seattle and issuing orders to Governor Jay Inslee.

The president also claimed that the protests in Seattle are being run by “radical left Democrats”

Mayor Jenny Durkan wasn’t having any of it.

Yesterday protesters in the “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” were doing something that has become a familiar sight in Washington DC and in Philadelphia - painting roads with huge anti-racism messages.

People paint a Black Lives Matter mural on East Pine Street in the so-called “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” in Seattle, Washington
People paint a Black Lives Matter mural on East Pine Street in the “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” in Seattle, Washington Photograph: David Ryder/Getty Images

Confederate statue torn down by protesters in Virginia

A statue of Confederate president Jefferson Davis in Richmond, Virginia, is the latest statue to be torn down by protesters. In the last couple of days statues of Christopher Columbus have also been targeted.

The statue, which stood on Richmond’s Monument Avenue, was pulled down shortly before 11pm according to local news reports. Jefferson was a Mississippi Democrat who served as the president of the Confederate states from 1861 until 1865.

The statue of Confederate president Jefferson Davis was defaced with paint and torn down
The statue of Confederate president Jefferson Davis was defaced with paint and torn down Photograph: Dylan Garner Richmond Times-Di/Reuters

Police were on the scene and videos on social media showed the statue being towed away as a crowd cheered.

Among graffiti painted on the Davis monument was the question: “How much more blood?”

The protests over the killing of George Floyd have spread globally and lead to the toppling and removal of statues in several countries.

A statue of slaver Edward Colston, which was thrown into Bristol’s harbour in England by protesters at the weekend, has been retrieved from the water by local authorities. They say they are keeping it in a secure location while deciding what to do with it.

Updated

Officer charged over George Floyd killing freed on $750,000 bail

One of the four former white Minneapolis police officers who were charged over the death of George Floyd was released on bail on Wednesday.

Reuters report that Thomas Lane, 37, had been held on $750,000 bail and was freed from Hennepin County jail.

He was one of three officers charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder and aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter over Floyd’s death on 25 May.

Former Minneapolis police officer Thomas Lane who has been charged with aiding and abetting the second-degree murder of George Floyd
Former Minneapolis police officer Thomas Lane who has been charged with aiding and abetting the second-degree murder of George Floyd Photograph: Hennepin County Sheriff/ZUMA Wire/REX/Shutterstock

Lane’s attorney, Earl Gray, has previously stated that Lane was only on his fourth day of patrol duty and that Derek Chauvin was his training officer, whom he should obey. Chauvin has been charged with second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

“What was my client supposed to do but follow what his training officer said?” Gray said in an earlier court hearing.

Chauvin remains in jail on $1.25 million bail. The other two officers, Tou Thao and J. Alexander Kueng, also remain in jail on $750,000 bail.

Updated

Hi, welcome to our US politics and protests live blog today. Here’s what you might need to get caught up on before we start:

  • The US now has more than 2 million recorded cases of coronavirus, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. There have been over 112,000 deaths
  • Thomas Lane, one of the officers involved in George Floyd’s killing, has been released after posting $750,000 bail
  • Protesters tore down a statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Richmond, Virginia
  • Donald Trump has announced he will resume in-person campaign rallies in Tulsa, Oklahoma next Friday. The rally will take place on Juneteenth, in the city where a 1921 massacre of Black people occurred.
  • Philonise Floyd, George Floyd’s brother, spoke before the House judiciary committee on Wednesday - read his full testimony.

Donald Trump is going to be in Texas today, where he will be fundraising for his re-election campaign, and attending a round table at Gateway Church in North Dallas which is modestly titled “Transition to Greatness: Restoring, Rebuilding, and Renewing”

We are also expecting new jobless figures today - indications are that the number may hit 45 million.

I’m Martin Belam, and I’ll be running our live coverage before handing over to my New York colleagues in a couple of hours. You can contact me on martin.belam@theguardian.com

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