Category Archives: US News

Rayshard Brooks funeral set for Atlanta, as Kentucky and New York vote – live updates

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Arwa Mahdawi’s latest column for us has arrived - she’s looking at why Trump believes playing the victim will help him win in November.

Donald Trump will not go gentle into that good night: he will rage, rage, rage-tweet against the dying of his might. Indeed, he is already doing so. After a humiliating turnout at Saturday’s rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma – which capped one of the worst weeks of his presidency – Trump’s re-election chances look shakier by the day. Rattled and belligerent, he seems to be gearing up to contest a defeat in November.

Related: Presidential harassment! Why Trump believes playing the victim will help him win

Donald Trump will be in Arizona today, and his visit is not entirely welcomed by the state’s official. Arizona will be a key battleground in November, but it is also a coronavirus hotspot - it has reported over 11,000 new Covid-19 cases in the last four days alone.

The Democratic mayor of Phoenix, Kate Gallego, has said that she does not believe that Trump’s planned speech can be safely held in the city. She urged him to wear a face mask - as she does on her own official Twitter avatar - saying “Everyone attending tomorrow’s event, particularly any elected official, should set an example to residents by wearing a mask. This includes the President.”

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Apple update to allow iPhone users to choose default apps

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Move in autumn will let users set Gmail as default email app and Firefox as main web browser

iPhone users will be able to set Gmail as their default email app, Firefox as their main web browser, and listen to Spotify on their HomePod speakers, after Apple announced concessions to competitors who argue the company is abusing its monopoly.

The new openness will arrive with a wave of software updates in the autumn, Apple said, alongside the other new features the company promised at its Worldwide Developers Conference, held remotely from Cupertino, California, on Monday.

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Revealed: millions of Americans can’t afford water as bills rise 80% in a decade

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Exclusive: analysis of US cities shows emergency on affordability of running water amid Covid-19 pandemic

Millions of ordinary Americans are facing rising and unaffordable bills for running water, and risk being disconnected or losing their homes if they cannot pay, a landmark Guardian investigation has found.

Exclusive analysis of 12 US cities shows the combined price of water and sewage increased by an average of 80% between 2010 and 2018, with more than two-fifths of residents in some cities living in neighbourhoods with unaffordable bills.

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Is it too much to ask for Americans to have access to clean water in 2020?

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The Guardian – in partnership with Consumer Reports and others – is launching a one-year series of investigations highlighting the US water crisis

Almost exactly 10 years ago, on 28 July 2010, the United Nations declared water a human right under international law. And not just any water, but clean water – and sufficient water for “drinking, personal sanitation, washing of clothes, food preparation, personal and household hygiene”.

Imagine a country where, 10 years years on, over two million people are denied access to running water and basic indoor plumbing.

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Trump faces pressure to reset campaign after Tulsa rally caps gloomy week

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President heads to Arizona for border-wall event in what amounts to a relaunch of a relaunch

Donald Trump flies to Arizona on Tuesday under pressure to change course in his re-election bid after a dismal week culminated in the debacle of thousands of empty seats at a campaign rally.

The US president was reportedly angry on Saturday when his first rally in three months, a defiant gamble amid the coronavirus pandemic intended as a daunting show of force, backfired with poor attendance in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a Republican heartland.

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Monsters are heinous, but they need collaborators to do their dirty work | Suzanne Moore

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Mouths to feed, rent to pay: there’s always an excuse if you’re tempted to do the wrong thing

Where is Ghislaine Maxwell? Where? I sat through the four episodes of Filthy Rich, the Netflix documentary on Jeffrey Epstein. I had to force myself, not because it was so upsetting – which, of course, it also was – but because the tales of his sexual abuse were so monotonous. Brave and defiant, his victims had to numb themselves slightly to tell and retell what happened to them when they were as young as 14. The interviews with the monster himself, as always, were disappointingly banal. Monsters often are tediously ordinary. The magnetic charm, the immense intellect, is one of the biggest delusions of “true crime”. See also Ted Bundy.

Anyway Ghislaine, accused of procuring underage girls for Epstein, is said to be a free woman in Paris, living in the swanky 8th arrondisement. French law prevents her extradition. Many of those implicated in Epstein’s world of obscene exploitation, including all the art world and socialite scum, must have a clue where she is. Alleged scum, I should say. They love their children just like we do. Sure.

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John Bolton calls Trump incompetent as president plans Phoenix speech amid pandemic – live

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White House press secretary Kayleigh McEanny said Trump was “very pleased” with his Saturday rally, even though there were thousands of unfilled seats in the Tulsa arena.

McEnany’s claim is at odds with multiple reports that Trump has privately lashed out against campaign officials for reports highlighting the event’s attendance.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany defended Trump’s use of the racist phrase “kung flu” to describe coronavirus during his Saturday rally.

“He is linking it to its place of origin,” McEnany said of the president’s use of the phrase.

Related: Donald Trump calls Covid-19 'kung flu' at Tulsa rally

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Half of US states see coronavirus surge as officials warn first wave far from over

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29 states reported a jump in cases, while Trump says increased testing is a problem: ‘It makes us look like we have more cases’

More than half of all US states have reported a rise in new coronavirus cases, with some breaking daily records. Amid fears of a second wave of Covid-19 infections and deaths, public health officials have warned that the first is far from over.

Related: ‘New York always comes back’: workers return as city enters phase two of reopening

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What does it mean to defund the police? – video

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The Black Lives Matter protests in the US, which escalated in response to the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, have brought the little-known but decades-old campaign to abolish US police into the spotlight. But what are abolitionists calling for, and how would a police-free society work? Josh Toussaint-Strauss explores the arguments for abolition with a campaigner from MPD150 and Reclaim the Block, and also Sam Levin, LA correspondent for Guardian US

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FBI investigates after noose found in garage of Bubba Wallace, Nascar’s only black driver

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The FBI has launched an investigation after a noose was found in the team garage of Bubba Wallace, Nascar’s only black full-time driver. The noose was discovered at Alabama’s Talladega Superspeedway as Nascar prepared for a race, which was subsequently delayed by bad weather, on Sunday.

“Regardless of whether federal charges can be brought, this type of action has no place in our society,” Jay Town, the US attorney for Alabama’s southern district, said on Monday. He added that his office, along with the FBI and the justice department’s civil rights division, were involved in the investigation.

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Voting in the New York primary is by no means futile for Sanders supporters | Billy Richling and Francisco Navas

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Voters need to understand that Sanders’ delegate candidates aren’t running against Biden’s delegate candidates – they’re running against each other

Although Joe Biden is the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, voting in the New York primary on Tuesday (or during early voting) is by no means futile for progressives who were largely supporting Bernie Sanders and policies such as the Green New Deal and Medicare for All.

Related: 'Just ridiculous': what it’s like to wait five hours in line to vote in the US

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US v China: is this the start of a new cold war?

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Coronavirus has brought the rivalry to a head sooner than expected – and the scope for non-alignment is narrowing

George Kennan, the US charge d’affaires in Moscow at the end of the second world war and the author of the famous Long Telegram in 1946, captured in his memoir how quickly perceptions in international relations can change.

The man widely seen as the intellectual author of the cold war recalled that if he had sent his telegram on the nature of the Soviet threat six months earlier, his message “would probably have been received in the state department with pursed lips and raised eyebrows. Six months later, it probably would have sounded redundant, a preaching to the converted.”

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Coronavirus live news: Bolsonaro silent as Brazil passes 50,000 deaths; global cases reach 9 million

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China halts imports from food plant where 481 tested positive; New York shops and bars reopen; Lisbon brings back lockdown restrictions

The Netherlands reported zero new deaths from Covid-19 on Monday, the first day since the beginning of March that the country’s pandemic death toll has not risen.

Deaths reported by Dutch national institute for public health are not necessarily from the past 24 hours, so it cannot be confirmed that no one has died from coronavirus-related illness. But it is the first day since 12 March that no death has been reported. The country’s total death toll is 6,090.

The number of confirmed cases of coronavirus around the world since the outbreak began has passed 9 million, according to Johns Hopkins University.

The US-based research university, which keeps a tally of official statistics, said that so far 9,003,042 cases had been reported. The United States is the world’s worst affected country by case numbers, with nearly 2.3 million cases alone, followed by Brazil with nearly 1.1 million, then Russia, with nearly 600,000.

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Trump and Navarro condemn John Bolton’s China claim

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The White House fired back at John Bolton on Sunday, seeking to rubbish a key claim in the former national security adviser’s bombshell new book, that Donald Trump asked Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, for help in winning re-election.

Related: Trump's Berman-SDNY disaster suggests William Barr is not so smart after all | Lloyd Green

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Tennessee paper religious ad claims ‘Islam’ will detonate nuclear bomb in Nashville

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  • Editor of the Tennessean calls full-page advertisement ‘horrific’
  • Newspaper investigating ‘breakdown in the normal process’

A Tennessee newspaper said on Sunday it was investigating what its editor called a “horrific” full-page advertisement from a religious group that predicts a terrorist attack in Nashville next month.

The paid advertisement that appeared in Sunday’s editions of the Tennessean from the group Future For America claims Donald Trump “is the final president of the USA” and features a photo of Trump and Pope Francis.

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Peter Navarro: Trump call to slow Covid-19 testing was ‘tongue-in-cheek’

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Trade adviser also claims without foundation that the virus ‘was a product of the Chinese Communist party’

White House adviser Peter Navarro claimed Donald Trump was being “tongue-in-cheek” when he claimed to have asked public health officials to slow down coronavirus testing.

Related: Donald Trump sows division and promises 'greatness' at Tulsa rally flop

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Brad Parscale faces Trump ‘fury’ after Tulsa comeback rally flops

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Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, was under pressure on Sunday after claiming hundreds of thousands of people had applied for tickets to the president’s return to the campaign trail in Tulsa, only for the rally to attract a sparse crowd.

Related: Trump 'played' by K-pop fans and TikTok users who disrupted Tulsa rally

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Daughter speaks out after her father dies of Covid-19: ‘It was preventable’

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Lina Washington calls for stricter rules in Arizona as cases rise, challenging the governor’s response to the pandemic

As her father lay dying in a hospital bed in Arizona, after testing positive for Covid-19, Lina Washington pleaded with him to keep fighting.

When they hung up, Washington scrolled through Instagram. She saw stories of friends and former classmates drinking and socializing at crowded bars and clubs, even as coronavirus infections rose exponentially across the state. Yet there they were, smiling, maskless, as if the threat had disappeared and life returned to normal.

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Meet Samelys López, the ex-homeless candidate running for New York’s most contested seat

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She is backed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and represents a voice much needed in the south Bronx - but can López beat the nine others vying for the seat?

The first time Samelys López stood up for an adult she was eight years old. She and her mother were waiting in the welfare office for food stamps when López overheard the case officer speaking down to her mother.

Their lives before they got there hadn’t been easy. López and her mother moved from Puerto Rico when López was a baby, relocating to Williamsburg in New York. Back then, Williamsburg was the most densely populated city in the US: a by-word for poverty rather than trendy coffee shops and vintage boutiques as it is today. It was also host to a fierce sweatshop trade, and López’s family were privy to its harsh hours and low pay.

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