Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Mike Garcia leading in California’s special election while Tom Tiffany easily won a special congressional election in Wisconsin
Republicans appeared on track for a pair of congressional wins on Wednesday, after notching an easy victory in a Wisconsin House seat and appearing poised to take a seat away from the Democrats in California.
The wins would be seen as a boost to the party and President Donald Trump, whose re-election campaign has been battered by outrage over his response to the coronavirus pandemic and whose popularity has been dipping in many recent polls.
California is loosening its stay-at-home order for counties that meet certain criteria in containing the virus, allowing them to reopen some offices, schools and dine-in restaurants, governor Gavin Newsom announced Tuesday.
As of Tuesday morning, only the rural counties of Butte, north of Sacramento, and El Dorado, south of Tahoe National Forest, have gotten state approval to reopen more of their economy, but Newsom predicted that at least two more would receive the go-ahead by the end of the day.
It’s been a busy day in US politics and coronavirus news so far today and there’s more action to come. My colleague Maanvi Singh on the west coast will take over now and bring you the major developments over the next few hours.
Trump has refused to release documents but Sonia Sotomayor says there is a tradition of Congress ‘seeking records and getting them’
As the supreme court heard arguments concerning Donald Trump’s tax returns on Tuesday, justice Sonia Sotomayor told a lawyer for the president “there is a long, long history of Congress seeking records and getting them” from occupants of the Oval Office.
The president’s tax documents have been reported on by various outlets, even winning the New York Times a Pulitzer
The US supreme court is in its second week of working by telephone during the coronavirus pandemic. On Tuesday it will hear the highest-profile arguments so far presented remotely: regarding the release, or not, of Donald Trump’s tax returns.
When Trump ran for president in 2016, he bucked tradition by refusing to release such information. Saying he was under audit, which would not in fact have precluded action, he promised to release his returns in due course. He has not.
Days after tweeting about 'Obamagate' and accusing his predecessor, Barack Obama, of committing crimes, US president Donald Trump was asked to specify what those exactly were. He replied: 'Obamagate, it's been going on for a long time, it's being going on from even before I got elected and it's a disgrace that it's gone on.' He continued: 'some terrible things happened and it should never be allowed to happen in our country again.' When he is again asked what the crime is, Trump says: 'You know what the crime is.'
Donald Trump's press conference on coronavirus testing ended abruptly after a terse exchange with two female reporters. Asked by CBS's Weijia Jiang about his focus on international comparisons rather than US deaths, Trump snapped: 'Don’t ask me, ask China that question'. After being asked by Jiang, who is Asian-American, why he had directed the remark at her, Trump cut off the CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins as she asked a question and walked away from the podium
Trump ends the briefing on a very abrupt and sour note.
Asked by CBS White House Correspondent Weijia Jiang why he is so fixated on comparing the US’ testing capability to other countries as opposed to focusing on the lag that still exists here, Trump snapped: “Maybe that’s a question you should ask China. Don’t ask me, ask China that question, okay?”
Trump walked out of his own news conference after accusing @weijia of asking a "nasty question" and refusing to take @kaitlancollins's questions after calling on her.
Trump spent Mother’s Day sending conspiratorial tweets about his predecessor. In one tweet he accused Obama of committing the “biggest political crime in American history, by far!” Trump.
Asked to name the crime he is accusing Obama of committing, Trump replied: “Obamagate. it’s been going on for a long time it’s been going on before I even got elected.”
The genius may think we are suckers, but in Iowa we don’t ruin good corn liquor with Clorox
Drake Custer is a union man who, along with about 30 of his buddies, had an Old English “K” tattooed on their chests about 15 years ago. It stands for “Keokuk”, a deflated Mississippi River manufacturing town of 10,000 tucked into the south-east corner of Iowa that Washington and Des Moines forgot.
Administration is weakening protections ahead of the election, making changes that could take years for a Democratic president to undo
The Trump administration is diligently weakening US environment protections even amid a global pandemic, continuing its rollback as the November election approaches.
During the Covid-19 lockdown, US federal agencies have eased fuel-efficiency standards for new cars; frozen rules for soot air pollution; proposed to drop review requirements for liquefied natural gas terminals; continued to lease public property to oil and gas companies; sought to speed up permitting for offshore fish farms; and advanced a proposal on mercury pollution from power plants that could make it easier for the government to conclude regulations are too costly to justify their benefits.
Donald Trump continued to fume over the Russia investigation on Sunday, more than a year after special counsel Robert Mueller filed his report without recommending charges against the president but only three days after the justice department said it would drop its case against Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser.
Anthony Fauci and top advisers from CDC and FDA to work remotely because of potential exposure to Covid-19; global cases pass 4 million; Russia cases approach 200,000
While many people in Iran’s capital are taking advantage of loosened COVID-19 controls, some worry about a new spike in infections in what remains the Middle East’s deadliest virus epicentre.
“The line of fools,” muttered shopkeeper Manouchehr, peering disdainfully at a queue of customers outside a foreign currency dealer in the Sadeghieh district of western Tehran.
New clusters of coronavirus infections are igniting concerns about a second wave even as calls grow in some countries to relax restrictions even further.
In Germany, where thousands have protested in recent days against the remaining restrictions, health officials say the number of people each confirmed coronavirus patient infects rose above one again, reflecting a renewed increase in cases. The number must be below one for outbreaks to decline.
Precautions against Covid-19 infection have been stepped up at the White House but are hampered by the cramped and poorly ventilated conditions in the West Wing, Kevin Hassett, a special adviser to Donald Trump on the pandemic response, said on Sunday.
Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin has been talking to Fox News Sunday about the Trump administration’s attempts to reopen and restart the stalled US economy, and whether there will be another huge stimulus bill. Democrats who control the House want one of those but the White House doesn’t – that’s the short version.
The White House is “absolutely pushing for a payroll tax cut”, Mnuchin says. Most observers think that is a non-starter, because Democrats won’t let it. Payroll taxes, meaning deductions from regular paychecks, include funds for Social Security and Medicare, vital social benefits.
Donald Trump has asserted with no evidence that the coronavirus pandemic will 'go away without a vaccine'. Without mentioning specifics, he pointed to other viruses and flus that 'disappeared' before vaccines were created. 'They've never shown up again. They die, too. Like everything else, they die,' Trump said. 'It's going to go away. And we're not going to see it again, hopefully, after a period of time.'
Bundesliga suffers huge setback after footballers test positive; Belarus leader holds parade prompting safety concerns as other nations curb WW2 events; Russia records 10,000 new Covid-19 cases. Follow the latest updates
The novel coronavirus has killed at least 277,127 people since the outbreak first emerged in China last December, according to a tally from official sources compiled by news agency AFP.
At least 4,001,437 cases of coronavirus have been registered in 195 countries and territories. Of these, at least 1,312,900 are now considered recovered.
Coronavirus has robbed the Democrat of his typical back-slapping approach as he faces growing scrutiny and a third-party challenge
The Tampa, Florida, rally for Joe Biden on Thursday evening began as it normally might have, before a once-in-a-century pandemic transformed all aspects of American life, including the presidential campaign. A local high school student recited the pledge of allegiance, a campaign organizer pleaded with supporters to volunteer and a local DJ spun R&B music between speakers.
But in a sign of how profoundly the coronavirus crisis has reshaped American politics, that was where the similarities ended.
Trump’s mention of tapes in his extraordinary references, in a live phone call into Fox News, to how he learned from Richard Nixon is interesting, to say the least.
“When I fired Comey, you know what hit the fan,” Trump on Fox News. "I study history," including on Nixon. "Of course, there was one difference. ... #1 he may have been guilty. And #2 he had tapes all over the place. I wasn’t guilty. I did nothing wrong. And there were no tapes.” https://t.co/xJIkEuPY7O
Trump tweeted: “James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!”
The tweet, which if taken at face value would suggest Trump has been secretly taping White House meetings, came after the New York Times reported that he demanded “loyalty” from Comey in a private dinner held shortly after Trump took office.
Here’s transcript of Trump’s full comments about Richard Nixon during his call in to Fox News this morning.
Here's the transcript of Trump's comments this morning about what he learned from Richard Nixon. (Of course, Trump did fire a bunch of people.) pic.twitter.com/Ltl8WKvTPe
Donald Trump has told reporters that 'something happened' when asked about the theory that the virus was released from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. 'Probably it was incompetence. Somebody was stupid,' he said during a meeting with the Texas governor, Greg Abbott. It comes after the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, claimed he had seen 'enormous evidence' that the virus had originated at the lab. No evidence has been produced. China has denied the claims.
A migrant detained at the Otay Mesa Detention Center in California has died from Covid-19, according to the ACLU.
“This is a terrible tragedy, and it was entirely predictable and preventable. For months, public health experts and corrections officials have warned that detention centers would be Petri dishes for the spread of Covid-19 — and a death trap for thousands of people in civil detention,” said Andrea Flores, the ACLU deputy director of immigration policy. “Unless ICE acts quickly to release far more people from detention, they will keep getting sick and many more will die,” she added.
Luke Denman is shown on Venezuelan TV after being arrested. Denman was one of two American mercenaries apprehended after a failed attempt to topple Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro.
Denman claimed he was on a mission to seize control of Venezuela’s main airport in order to abduct its authoritarian leader – and he alleged that he was acting under the command of Donald Trump.
A cover of Live and Let Die by rock band Guns N’ Roses played in the background as Donald Trump walked around the Honeywell plant making N95 masks in Phoenix, Arizona, while not wearing a mask himself