The Arkansas Republican senator Tom Cotton has called the enslavement of millions of African people “the necessary evil upon which the union was built”.
Related: Trump aims barb at Reagan Foundation in fundraising coin kerfuffle
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Shortly before he departed on Air Force One from Morristown Municipal Airport en route to Washington, Donald Trump announced that he will not be throwing out the ceremonial first pitch before a Red Sox-Yankees game at Yankee Stadium next month due to scheduling conflicts.
“Because of my strong focus on the China Virus, including scheduled meetings on Vaccines, our economy and much else, I won’t be able to be in New York to throw out the opening pitch for the @Yankees on August 15th,” he wrote on Twitter. “We will make it later in the season!”
Because of my strong focus on the China Virus, including scheduled meetings on Vaccines, our economy and much else, I won’t be able to be in New York to throw out the opening pitch for the @Yankees on August 15th. We will make it later in the season!
The news website ProPublica has published a database containing complaint information for thousands of New York City police officers days after a federal judge paused the public release of such records.
The Associated Press reports:
ProPublica posted the database Sunday, explaining in a note to readers that it isn’t obligated to comply with judge Katherine Polk Failla’s temporary restraining order because it is not a party to a union lawsuit challenging the release of such records.
Deputy managing editor Eric Umansky said ProPublica requested the information from the city’s police watchdog agency, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, soon after last month’s repeal of state law that for decades had prevented the disclosure of disciplinary records.
Continue reading...The confrontation between protesters and federal paramilitaries in Portland escalated early on Sunday morning, when demonstrators finally broke down a steel fence around the courthouse after days of trying.
Related: What is happening in Portland and what does Trump hope to gain?
Continue reading...A car drove through a crowd and a person was shot in the Denver suburb of Aurora on Saturday during demonstrations against racial injustice.
The Aurora police department said on Twitter that protesters were walking on Interstate 225 when a vehicle drove through them, and a protester fired a weapon, wounding at least one person who was taken to a hospital in stable condition
Continue reading...On another night of confrontation with federal agents, activists said their message was in danger of being forgotten
Teal Lindseth surveyed the sea of mothers she was about to lead into the firing line.
“I look at this crowd and I don’t see many black people,” lamented the 21-year-old African American activist. “Oregon is white as hell. Whitewashed.”
Continue reading...Black Lives Matter protesters used leaf blowers to blow back teargas in clashes with federal troops in Portland, Oregon. On the 57th day of protests in the city, thousands of demonstrators marched on a federal courthouse where they have clashed with officers throughout the week. The troops, deployed by Donald Trump against the wishes of Portland's mayor, fired teargas and pepper rounds into the crowd, and some responded by throwing fireworks back
Among real storms blowing around the US today, hurricanes are approaching Texas and Hawaii while a tropical storm heads for the Caribbean. The Associated Press is keeping watch here.
Among other kinds of storm, the kinds that blow themselves out on Twitter, the billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk and his partner, the musician Grimes, appear to have had a public argument about pronouns.
Related: Explain it to me quickly: did Elon Musk and Grimes really name their baby X Æ A-12?
Miami Dade county has now recorded more than 100,000 cases of Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic. According to the Miami Herald, there were 3,424 new cases reported on Saturday. The county’s population is around 2.7 million.
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Donald Trump signed four executive orders related to prescription drug pricing at a White House event with HHS secretary Alex Azar and Florida governor Rod DeSantis, among others. Most attendees at the event wore masks, but Trump did not.
The executive orders come as Trump appears to have all but given up on controlling the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 145,000 people in the US – by far the most of any country.
Hello everyone, this is Julia Carrie Wong in Oakland, California, picking up the live blog for the rest of your Friday afternoon.
Yesterday, a judge in King County, Washington ordered five Seattle news outlets to comply with a subpoena and turn over unpublished video and photos from a 30 May protest.
Michele Matassa Flores, the Seattle Times’ executive editor, said the paper strongly opposed the subpoena and “believes it puts our independence, and even our staff’s physical safety, at risk.
“The media exist in large part to hold governments, including law enforcement agencies, accountable to the public,” Matassa Flores said. “We don’t work in concert with government, and it’s important to our credibility and effectiveness to retain our independence from those we cover.”
This ruling enforcing the subpoena is beyond disappointing. The right to protect sources and material exists so the press isn't used as an arm of law enforcement.
Journalists' work is protected, which is why we supported the challenge to this subpoena.https://t.co/OQEVLENdXz
This turns journalists into an arm of the government. We are not here to do surveillance for police. https://t.co/wlu4XAEgo3
Continue reading...Hopewell Chin’ono is in jail awaiting trial on charges he rejects of inciting violence
A prominent investigative journalist in Zimbabwe has said the struggle against corruption in the country must continue as he was sent back to prison to await trial on charges of incitement of public violence.
Hopewell Chin’ono, an internationally respected reporter, recently published documents raising concerns that powerful individuals in Zimbabwe were profiting from multimillion-dollar deals for essential supplies to fight the coronavirus pandemic.
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From me and Joan E Greve:
For coronavirus updates from around the world, follow the Guardian’s global blog:
Related: Coronavirus live news: US cases top 4m as WHO chief chides Pompeo for 'untrue' claims
Continue reading...Chairs of eight parliamentary foreign affairs committees say new security law infringes human rights
The chairs of eight parliamentary foreign affairs committees from across Europe have written to the Chinese government in opposition to Hong Kong’s new security law, saying it infringes on “basic human rights” in their countries.
The joint statement by the committee chairs – from countries including Germany, the UK, Belgium, Latvia, Norway and the European parliament itself – shows a network of parliamentarians is being constructed to shift European governments towards a harder stance on China’s abuse of human rights.
Continue reading...The mayor of Portland was teargassed by federal agents during protests against the presence of the agents sent by Donald Trump to quell unrest in the city.
Ted Wheeler, the Democratic mayor of the city in Oregon, said it was the first time he had been teargassed. Protesters had lit a large fire and armed agents launched teargas and stun grenades into the crowd.
Wheeler was mostly jeered by demonstrators who have clashed nightly with federal agents. The mayor has opposed the federal agents’ presence, but has faced harsh criticism for not taking more action to protect citizens
From me and Joan E Greve:
As the federal government pledges to send federal law enforcement to cities, and Donald Trump and William Barr connect Black Lives Matter protest against police brutality to alleged spikes in violence, here’s some more context to keep in mind: this isn’t the first time people have pointed to an increase in crime following protests against unjust policing.
It happened in 2014, after the police killing of Michael Brown sparked national protests. Police called it “the Ferguson effect” and argued that protesters had made police afraid to do their jobs.
Continue reading...A group of hundreds of mothers have attended demonstrations and stood as a human barricade between Black Lives Matter protesters and federal officers in Portland after seeing videos circulating online of federal agents in camouflage snatching demonstrators off the streets.
The Portland protests have occurred every night in the nearly two months since the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on 25 May, after a police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
Outrage at Donald Trump deploying federal agents to end what he called 'anarchy' reinvigorated protests in Portland In July
Prosecutor says actions of Mark and Patricia McCloskey’s actions led to risk of violence
A white couple who pointed guns at protesters marching against racial injustice outside their mansion will face criminal charges, the city’s top prosecutor announced on Monday.
Mark and Patricia McCloskey, both personal injury attorneys in their 60s, will be charged with felony unlawful use of a weapon and a misdemeanor charge of fourth-degree assault.
Continue reading...As the first young person in China to engage in Greta Thunberg-inspired Fridays for Future climate strikes, Howey Ou says she has become a target for the authorities who see that activism as a challenge to their control.
The 17-year-old claims she has been told to ditch her climate activism as a condition for her restarting studies at Guangxi Normal University affiliated high school in Guilin, where she studied until late 2018.
It is not necessarily her concerns for the climate that have sparked a pressure campaign from authorities, Kecheng Fang, an assistant professor at the school of journalism at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, told the Guardian. He said: 'Most importantly, because it is about collective action ... No matter what kind of collective action it is, it’s considered highly sensitive'
Continue reading...Donald Trump has equated the Black Lives Matter movement with displays of the Confederate flag, saying: “I’m not offended either by Black Lives Matter, that’s freedom of speech. You know the whole thing with cancel culture – we can’t cancel our whole history. We can’t forget that the north and the south fought.”
Related: Trump's 2020 strategy: paint Joe Biden as a puppet for the 'radical left'
Continue reading...Trio who participated in November demonstrations received public support following request of retrial
Iran’s supreme court has agreed to suspend the executions of three men on death row for their participation in anti-government protests in November, whose sentences sparked an online outcry last week.
Lawyers for the trio – Saeed Tamjidi, 26, Mohammad Rajabi, 28, and Amirhossein Moradi, 26 – said in a statement on Sunday the country’s supreme court had agreed to examine the men’s application for a retrial.
Continue reading...Lewis helped Martin Luther King organise the March on Washington in 1963 and once suffered a fractured skull at the hands of state troopers
John Lewis, the civil rights leader and Democratic congressman, has died. He was 80.
Related: John Lewis obituary
Continue reading...Demonstrators call for new constitution, new elections and end to repressive laws
Several thousand anti-government protesters rallied in Thailand’s capital on Saturday to call for a new constitution, new elections and an end to repressive laws.
Chanting and waving placards, the demonstrators, comprising mainly young Thais, converged on Bangkok’s iconic Democracy Monument in the old part of the city.
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