Category Archives: US domestic policy

Coronavirus US live: Georgia Senate candidate awaiting Covid-19 results after wife tests positive

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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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Trump White House reportedly seeks to defund coronavirus testing and tracing – live

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For what it’s worth, Trump seems to be heading out to play golf.

…and welcome to another day of coverage of politics in the US, which means coverage of the presidential campaign, the coronavirus pandemic, tributes to the late John Lewis and more.

Fox News Sunday will this morning broadcast an interview with Donald Trump, his first with a Sunday show in more than a year, which sees the president questioned by Chris Wallace, one of the more incisive interviewers in American television. A clip released on Friday showed Wallace putting Trump right on his claim Joe Biden wants to defund the police – which Biden doesn’t – and Trump not liking it.

But in talks over the weekend, administration officials instead pushed to zero out the funding for testing and for the nation’s top health agencies, and to cut the Pentagon funding to $5bn.

The suggestions infuriated several Republicans on Capitol Hill, who saw them as tone deaf.

Related: 'The virus doesn't care about excuses': US faces terrifying autumn as Covid-19 surges

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Trump claims victory as US nears 130,000 coronavirus deaths – live

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Houston mayor Sylvester Turner has appeared on CBS’s Face The Nation to discuss the Covid-19 outbreak in his city. He says staffing at the city’s hospital is a particular problem.

“If we don’t get our hands around this virus quickly, in about two weeks our hospital system could be in serious, serious trouble,” he says. “... We can always provide additional beds, but we need the people, the nurses and everybody else, the medical professionals to staff those beds. That’s the critical point right now.”

New Jersey’s Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, has appeared on NBC’s Meet The Press. New Jersey has been one of the worst-hit states in the US during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, and he says a national strategy is needed to combat Covid-19.

“This thing is lethal,” he says. “New Jersey’s paid an enormous price. We’ve [had] 13,000 confirmed fatalities from Covid-19. We’re starting to see small spikes in reinfection from folks coming back from places like Myrtle Beach and as well as in Florida, other hotspots.

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Trump threatens to deploy military against protesters as teargas fired outside White House – live

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Bobby Rush, an Illinois congressman and a Civil Rights era leader who co-founded the Illinois chapter of the Black Panthers in 1967, responded to Trump’s Rose Garden address with this:

We are living in a police state. https://t.co/YjO8x7QZjt

The Episcopal bishop of DC told The Washington Post that she was “outraged” after the officers cleared peaceful protestors gathered near the White House with tear gas and rubber bullets, to clear the way for Donald Trump to take photos outside St. John’s Church.

The Episcopal bishop of DC – who oversees the DC church Trump just stopped at – tells the @washingtonpost she is "outraged" and that neither she nor the rector was asked or told… “that they would be clearing with tear gas so they could use one of our churches as a prop.." 1/3

"We so disassociate ourselves from the messages of this president. We hold the teachings of our sacred texts to be so so grounding to our lives and everything we do and it is about love of neighbor and sacrificial love and justice." @Mebudde Bishop Mariann Budde 3/3

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As 100,000 die, the virus lays bare America’s brutal fault lines – race, gender, poverty and broken politics

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The US’s brutal fault lines – of race, partisanship, gender, poverty and misinformation – rendered it ill-prepared to meet the challenges of Covid-19

In one of the rare expressions of empathy that Donald Trump has displayed during the course of the coronavirus pandemic, he talked earlier this month about the disease claiming so many lives it was “filling up Yankee Stadium with death”.

Now the death toll from Covid-19 stands at almost twice the capacity of the Yankees’ home stadium, and has reached another booming landmark: 100,000 deaths.

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CDC reports more than 1.5 million cases – as it happened

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Here’s a look at today’s main stories:

After Donald Trump said on Friday that he believes places of worship should be deemed as essential services, Minnesota’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz, issued an executive order addressing the issue. Places of worship in the state will now be able to open at 25% of capacity. Individuals or households in the buildings must maintain six feet distance.

Walz said he still encouraged citizens to worship remotely. “I am under no illusion whatsoever: Every move we make that loosens up increases the risk,” Walz said.

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In shadow of pandemic, Trump seizes opportunity to push through his agenda

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With coronavirus occupying people’s attention, the Trump administration is giving handouts to big business, appointing judges and rolling back regulations

The last time America was facing a possible economic depression, Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama’s chief of staff, observed: “Never allow a good crisis go to waste. It’s an opportunity to do the things you once thought were impossible.”

It is advice Donald Trump and his Republican allies appear to have taken to heart.

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Judge blocks Trump’s rule requiring immigrants show they have healthcare

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  • Federal judge issues temporary stay after Oregon hearing
  • Litigator says ban would separate families

A federal judge in Portland, Oregon, has put on hold a Trump administration rule requiring immigrants to prove they will have health insurance or can pay for medical care before they can get visas.

US district judge Michael Simon granted a temporary restraining order that prevented the rule from going into effect Sunday. It was not clear when he would rule on the merits of the case.

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Ocasio-Cortez wants ‘9/11-style commission’ on family separations

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  • Democratic congresswoman hosts event in New York district
  • Tells crowd Trump ‘sent me back to Queens’ with racist attack

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called for a “9/11-style commission” to investigate child separation on the border with Mexico on Saturday, and said the US government has a life-long responsibility to children it severed from their parents, to provide them with mental health support.

Related: Bieber thanks Trump over A$AP Rocky but urges: 'Let those kids out of cages'

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Children at the border: the crisis that America wasn’t prepared for

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Despite fears stoked by Trump, fewer migrants are arriving at the border than in past years – but most are now children headed to facilities that are ill-equipped to receive them

At a border patrol processing facility in McAllen, Texas on 11 June, a group of lawyers and doctors met a 17-year-old girl from Guatemala. She was in a wheelchair and she held her tiny one-month-old daughter, who was swaddled in a gray sweatshirt so dirty it was almost black.

Related: ‘People with no names’: the drowned migrants buried in pauper’s graves

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Mexico could tighten migration controls to defuse Trump tariffs threat

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  • Andrés Manuel López Obrador hints at concession to US
  • Talks over US president threat in Washington next week

Mexico’s president hinted on Saturday that his country could tighten migration controls in order to defuse Donald Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on Mexican goods. Andrés Manuel López Obrador also said he expected “good results” from talks in Washington next week.

Related: 'No idea too lunatic': how Trump's shock troops attack US democracy

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Kirstjen Nielsen resigns as Trump homeland security secretary

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Kirstjen Nielsen, the homeland security secretary who has been the public face of some of the Trump administration’s most contentious policies, has resigned.

Related: Identifying separated migrant families may take two years, US government says

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Trump is cornered, with violence on his mind. We must be on red alert | Robert Reich

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As investigators close in, the president invokes the support of the military, police and vigilantes. This is a perilous moment

What does a megalomaniacal president of the United States do when he’s cornered? We’ll soon find out.

Related: 'It's a small group of people': Trump again denies white nationalism is rising threat

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Trump attacks ‘Wacky Nut Job’ Ann Coulter over border wall criticism

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  • President insults hard-right commentator and former ally
  • Official: budget to include request for more wall money

Donald Trump will be making a significant request for border wall funds and seeking money to stand up his “Space Force” as a new branch of the military in the White House budget being released next week, an administration official said on Saturday.

Related: SXSW: Warren tells tech audience plan to break up giants is 'like baseball'

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Will the 35-day shutdown lead to privatizing government functions?

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For one ideological constituency, the government shutdown may hold the seeds to privatizing functions such as air traffic control and airport security

The US government is open again. For now.

For many liberals, it will read as the spoils of Nancy Pelosi’s finest hour and proof of her superior bargaining acumen. For disappointed conservatives pundits, evidence that Trump is a proper “wimp” in his act of capitulation.

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Shutdown: Trump ‘amnesty’ hint angers right and fails to draw Democrats

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Donald Trump raised the possibility of one day granting amnesty to migrants living in the US illegally, after Democrats rejected his latest plan to fund a wall along the southern border and reopen the US government.

Related: Trump whisperers: are Stephen Miller and Fox keeping the shutdown alive?

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Forget the ‘border crisis’ – it is Trump’s shutdown that’s made us less safe

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With thousands of FBI and TSA staff furloughed and critical functions hit, the shutdown is a disaster for national security

President Trump closed the US government over a fabricated border crisis, and in doing so has sparked a real national security emergency. By shutting down the government, Trump has disabled America’s defenses against threats to national security.

Trump decided to shut down the government over the claim that America needs a wall to deal with a crisis at the border with Mexico. But there is no crisis on the border other than the humanitarian crisis of his own making, best illustrated by the thousands of children separated from their parents and the two children who died in Customs and Border Protection custody. Trump’s claims of more terrorists and crime flowing across the border are lies and the vast majority of hard drugs coming across the border come through official ports of entry, not between ports of entry where a wall might stand.

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Pelosi rejects Trump shutdown deal before president announces it

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  • President offers temporary concessions and demands wall
  • Little chance of progress as House speaker says no

Donald Trump forged ahead on Saturday and proposed a deal to end the US government shutdown, despite Democrats having rejected it before he began to speak.

Related: Republicans’ lack of alarm over the shutdown reveals a disturbing truth | Ross Barkan

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US government shutdown becomes longest in history

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The US government shutdown is now the longest such closure in history. On Saturday, day 22, members of Congress were out of Washington, Donald Trump was unmoved in the White House, his border wall unbuilt, and around 800,000 federal workers were still without pay and facing mounting hardship.

Related: 'Barely above water': US shutdown hits black federal workers hardest

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Trump threatens national emergency in ‘next few days’ over wall and shutdown

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Donald Trump said on Sunday he may declare a national emergency over immigration, to allow him to build a wall on America’s southern border.

Related: Is Mitt Romney the man to lead a Republican rebellion against Trump?

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