theguardian--2020-08-15--The movement to defund police has won historic victories across the US. What's next?

In the days after the killing of George Floyd , an extraordinary wave of mass protests erupted across the US , with demonstrators setting fire to police buildings and cars , shutting down freeways and bridges and storming city halls and neighborhoods .
Amid familiar chants of Black Lives Matter , a new slogan emerged : “ Defund the police.
” In Minneapolis where Floyd was killed , those cries had swift and dramatic impact , with councilmembers making a historic pledge on 7 June to entirely dismantle the troubled local police department , declaring at an emotional rally their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we know it ” .
That was just the start .
In the past two months , a dozen municipal governments voted in favor of proposals that they say will reduce their local law enforcement budgets by a total of more than $ 1.4bn , including in major US cities such as New York City , Los Angeles , San Francisco and Philadelphia .
The defunding votes included proposals to remove police as responders for “ non-criminal ” calls , homeless services , traffic enforcement , mental health emergencies , substance abuse , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ service that advocates have long argued do not merit armed law enforcement responses .
School officials in Minneapolis , Milwaukee , Denver , Oakland , Portland , San Francisco , Seattle and Philadelphia also followed Minneapolis ’ lead , voting to reduce police presence in schools or completely end contracts with local law enforcement agencies .
The cuts mark a significant reversal in American politics , where police budgets have for decades consistently expanded , with governments hiring more officers to respond to all sorts of social challenges , passing laws that criminalize @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The shift is a testament to this year ’ s sustained protests and the long-term work of Black Lives Matter groups .
The fine print of some of the defunding proposals adopted so far , however , have yielded mixed reactions from activists , including criticisms that the changes are only cosmetic reforms meant to appease protesters , and that the scale of the divestment so far has been minuscule relative to activist proposals .
The movement has also sparked aggressive backlash from some police chiefs and unions , including high-profile resignations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by officers to protest the changes , and unsubstantiated and false claims linking defunding votes to a rise in crime .
“ It ’ s a huge and substantial shift , ” said Chris Harris , a community organizer in Austin , Texas , where the city council voted this week to cut $ 150m from the police budget .
“ But it needs to just be a first step .
This is still a far cry from community demands.
” The protests for Floyd , Breonna Taylor and other recent victims of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the notion that the systemic racism and militarization that runs through police departments in the US can ’ t be fixed by minor policy changes .
This idea is not new .
As the US has become an international leader in incarceration and killings by police in the last half century , activist groups have organized in response , fed up with the extreme power of these systems and the devastation they cause .
Abolitionist groups have long argued that reforms to law enforcement training and policy have been inadequate , and that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ violence , limit police departments ’ reach and minimize harm is to take away funding .
As the cost of policing in America has tripled to $ 115bn in four decades , local groups across the country protested annual budget hikes at council and commission meetings , arguing funds should go to programs and services that support the health and safety of neighborhoods .
For the most part , those activists have had little success until now .
“ This is a pivot point , ” said Alex Vitale , a Brooklyn College @ @ @ @ @ @ @ abolition .
The moment has “ put the brakes on the idea that there ’ s never enough police , and that itself is a huge victory that will pay off with additional dividends in the coming years ” .
When Minneapolis lawmakers vowed to disband the police department , supporters acknowledged that the transformation would not happen overnight .
But a series of bureaucratic obstacles and political opposition has already posed major challenges to the execution .
The council proposed rewriting the city ’ s charter to replace police with a new @ @ @ @ @ @ @ require a ballot measure , which a commission recently blocked .
And there have been tensions between local community activists who support defunding and other groups that are skeptical of the idea .
It ’ s unclear how the effort will advance next , though some councilmembers have suggested that they would not be abolishing the department but rather dramatically shrinking its mission and power .
In cities that have agreed to some amount of police defunding , the trend is “ looking to diminish the unnecessary interactions between police and community members @ @ @ @ @ @ @ executive director of Local Progress , a racial justice group that has been tracking defunding and divestment efforts and has catalogued two dozen jurisdictions that have adopted or considered some kind of cut .
“ But the call to reimagine public safety implicates hundreds of decisions in each of these cities , ” she added .
“ It ’ s not going to be answered in any single policy.
” In New York City , home to the largest police department in the country , mayor Bill de Blasio promised to cut $ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and accounts of police brutality against demonstrators .
With his new budget , de Blasio argued , he was meeting activists ’ demands .
But advocates and other city leaders have criticized de Blasio ’ s plan as pushing “ fake cuts ” , arguing that in practice he was reshuffling funds , presenting misleading or false information and relying on “ manipulated math ” .
The mayor , for example , claimed to cut $ 300m from police overtime , but an independent budget watchdog noted that police consistently exceed their allotted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a $ 42m cut would come from police reassigning some officers to do increased ticketing enforcement , which would raise revenue in fines .
Joo-Hyun Kang , the director of Communities United for Police Reform , said it was false to present new revenue as a cut , and that this change would lead to more harm for communities who are ticketed .
“ The fact that the mayor and council felt like they had to make a billion dollar cut and publicly present it that way is historic , ” said Kang @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do it .
And it ’ s not going to have an impact .
We see this as a very very long road.
” De Blasio ’ s spokeswoman did not respond to inquiries about the criticisms , but emailed past statements from the mayor defending his NYPD spending , arguing that the overtime reduction is a “ goal ” , that his new budget “ struck the right balance ” , and that the city is making a “ huge reinvestment in communities ” .
In Los Angeles , mayor Eric Garcetti @ @ @ @ @ @ @ budget by $ 150m and “ reinvesting in Black communities ” .
But that figure , activists have noted , came out of a proposed increase , so did not reflect much of a tangible shift in spending .
The overall police budget is $ 2bn .
“ It ’ s nothing compared to what the full budget is .
It ’ s classic bullshit , ” said Albert Corado , a community organizer whose sister , Melyda , was killed by LAPD in 2018 while she was working inside a Trader Joe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been out here for months and all we get are these really watered down superficial reforms.
” Corado criticized the LAPD ’ s continued emphasis on “ community policing ” , which is meant to improve relationships between police and Black neighborhoods , but can lead to more armed officers working in communities that already suffer from high rates of contacts with police : “ Just because this is the best version of the worst thing doesn ’ t mean we have to keep it going .
We can ’ t let people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ expansion of community policing was a “ dramatic step ” in support of “ a model that is about co-owning public safety ” .
Activists have pushed for cuts that directly eliminate the size of the force and have said they are closely monitoring to ensure the funds are not reinvested into programs that simply replicate police .
In Portland , Oregon , where nightly protests have continued since May , the council voted to remove $ 15m from police .
The cuts are aimed at eliminating numerous specialty units accused of targeting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from schools and public transit .
Some city leaders scoffed at community groups ’ demands for a $ 50m cut .
But Anna So , a Portland organizer with the abolitionist group Critical Resistance , said the activists ’ proposal was not radical given that the budget had increased by roughly $ 50m in just four years .
She argued the militarized show of force by local and federal law enforcement at the Portland protests provided another example of an outsized and harmful police response .
So said : “ It also shows @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to defund and how much they see it as a challenge to the need for them to actually exist.
” In most cities , the pushback from police unions , which have long opposed reforms , has escalated , with leaders making unsubstantiated threats that any cuts would lead to longer 911 wait times and a rise in crime , and lobbying intense and sometimes personal attacks on the mayors and lawmakers approving the defund measures .
Some cities , meanwhile , have rejected calls for defunding and pushed sizable police budget increases @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Diego and San Antonio .
While the initial concessions to community demands are not likely to radically transform policing across the US instantaneously , the process has set the groundwork for substantial changes moving forward , said Vitale , the professor .
Even in many cities that have entirely opposed defunding movements , the conversation appears to have shifted .
“ Politicians are having to grapple with this idea that they can ’ t just be moderate anymore , ” said Jamaar Williams , a member of the Black Lives Matter chapter in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ $ 24m increase , despite a deadly record and repeated brutality scandals .
“ The time is forcing them to say , do you respect the lives of normal working people or are you going to protect the status quo ?
You can ’ t get away with platitudes anymore .
”

In the days after the killing of George Floyd, an extraordinary wave of mass protests erupted across the US, with demonstrators setting fire to police buildings and cars, shutting down freeways and bridges and storming city halls and neighborhoods.
Amid familiar chants of Black Lives Matter, a new slogan emerged: “Defund the police.”
In Minneapolis where Floyd was killed, those cries had swift and dramatic impact, with councilmembers making a historic pledge on 7 June to entirely dismantle the troubled local police department, declaring at an emotional rally their “commitment is to end policing as we know it”.
That was just the start. In the past two months, a dozen municipal governments voted in favor of proposals that they say will reduce their local law enforcement budgets by a total of more than $1.4bn, including in major US cities such as New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Philadelphia.
The defunding votes included proposals to remove police as responders for “non-criminal” calls, homeless services, traffic enforcement, mental health emergencies, substance abuse, public transit and other areas of social service that advocates have long argued do not merit armed law enforcement responses.
School officials in Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Denver, Oakland, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle and Philadelphia also followed Minneapolis’ lead, voting to reduce police presence in schools or completely end contracts with local law enforcement agencies.
People protest outside Los Angeles unified school district headquarters to demand that the Board of Education defund school police. Photograph: Lucy Nicholson/Reuters
The cuts mark a significant reversal in American politics, where police budgets have for decades consistently expanded, with governments hiring more officers to respond to all sorts of social challenges, passing laws that criminalize poverty and building larger jails and prisons. The shift is a testament to this year’s sustained protests and the long-term work of Black Lives Matter groups.
The fine print of some of the defunding proposals adopted so far, however, has yielded mixed reactions from activists, including criticisms that the changes are only cosmetic reforms meant to appease protesters, and that the scale of the divestment so far has been minuscule relative to activist proposals.
The movement has also sparked aggressive backlash from some police chiefs and unions, including high-profile resignations, reports of organized “sick-outs” by officers to protest the changes, and unsubstantiated and false claims linking defunding votes to a rise in crime.
“It’s a huge and substantial shift,” said Chris Harris, a community organizer in Austin, Texas, where the city council voted this week to cut $150m from the police budget. “But it needs to just be a first step. This is still a far cry from community demands.”
‘A pivotal point’
The protests for Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other recent victims of police killings have brought mainstream attention to the notion that the systemic racism and militarization that runs through police departments in the US can’t be fixed by minor policy changes.
This idea is not new. As the US has become an international leader in incarceration and killings by police in the last half century, activist groups have organized in response, fed up with the extreme power of these systems and the devastation they cause. Abolitionist groups have long argued that reforms to law enforcement training and policy have been inadequate, and that the best way to reduce law enforcement violence, limit police departments’ reach and minimize harm is to take away funding.
As the cost of policing in America has tripled to $115bn in four decades, local groups across the country protested annual budget hikes at council and commission meetings, arguing funds should go to programs and services that support the health and safety of neighborhoods. For the most part, those activists have had little success until now.
A Washington DC police officer walks past an umbrella reading ‘Defund Police’ on the steps of a city government building, 19 June 2020. Photograph: Tom Brenner/Reuters
“This is a pivot point,” said Alex Vitale, a Brooklyn College sociology professor and scholar on defunding and abolition. The moment has “put the brakes on the idea that there’s never enough police, and that itself is a huge victory that will pay off with additional dividends in the coming years”.
When Minneapolis lawmakers vowed to disband the police department, supporters acknowledged that the transformation would not happen overnight. But a series of bureaucratic obstacles and political opposition has already posed major challenges to the execution.
The council proposed rewriting the city’s charter to replace police with a new public safety department, but that would require a ballot measure, which a commission recently blocked. And there have been tensions between local community activists who support defunding and other groups that are skeptical of the idea. It’s unclear how the effort will advance next, though some councilmembers have suggested that they would not be abolishing the department but rather dramatically shrinking its mission and power.
In cities that have agreed to some amount of police defunding, the trend is “looking to diminish the unnecessary interactions between police and community members”, said Sarah Johnson, the executive director of Local Progress, a racial justice group that has been tracking defunding and divestment efforts and has catalogued two dozen jurisdictions that have adopted or considered some kind of cut.
“But the call to reimagine public safety implicates hundreds of decisions in each of these cities,” she added. “It’s not going to be answered in any single policy.”
‘We don’t want superficial reforms’
In New York City, home to the largest police department in the country, mayor Bill de Blasio promised to cut $1bn from the NYPD following viral footage and accounts of police brutality against demonstrators. With his new budget, de Blasio argued, he was meeting activists’ demands.
But advocates and other city leaders have criticized de Blasio’s plan as pushing “fake cuts”, arguing that in practice he was reshuffling funds, presenting misleading or false information and relying on “manipulated math”.
The mayor, for example, claimed to cut $300m from police overtime, but an independent budget watchdog noted that police consistently exceed their allotted overtime spending. The mayor also said a $42m cut would come from police reassigning some officers to do increased ticketing enforcement, which would raise revenue in fines. Joo-Hyun Kang, the director of Communities United for Police Reform, said it was false to present new revenue as a cut, and that this change would lead to more harm for communities who are ticketed.
“The fact that the mayor and council felt like they had to make a billion dollar cut and publicly present it that way is historic,” said Kang. “But they didn’t do it. And it’s not going to have an impact. We see this as a very very long road.”
Just because this is the best version of the worst thing doesn’t mean we have to keep it going. We can’t let people keep dying Albert Corado
De Blasio’s spokeswoman did not respond to inquiries about the criticisms, but emailed past statements from the mayor defending his NYPD spending, arguing that the overtime reduction is a “goal”, that his new budget “struck the right balance”, and that the city is making a “huge reinvestment in communities”.
In Los Angeles, mayor Eric Garcetti announced he would be decreasing the LAPD budget by $150m and “reinvesting in Black communities”. But that figure, activists have noted, came out of a proposed increase, so did not reflect much of a tangible shift in spending. The overall police budget is $2bn.
“It’s nothing compared to what the full budget is. It’s classic bullshit,” said Albert Corado, a community organizer whose sister, Melyda, was killed by LAPD in 2018 while she was working inside a Trader Joe’s. “We’ve been out here for months and all we get are these really watered down superficial reforms.”
Corado criticized the LAPD’s continued emphasis on “community policing”, which is meant to improve relationships between police and Black neighborhoods, but can lead to more armed officers working in communities that already suffer from high rates of contacts with police: “Just because this is the best version of the worst thing doesn’t mean we have to keep it going. We can’t let people keep dying.”
Garcetti recently said his expansion of community policing was a “dramatic step” in support of “a model that is about co-owning public safety”.
Activists have pushed for cuts that directly eliminate the size of the force and have said they are closely monitoring to ensure the funds are not reinvested into programs that simply replicate police. In Portland, Oregon, where nightly protests have continued since May, the council voted to remove $15m from police. The cuts are aimed at eliminating numerous specialty units accused of targeting people of color and removing armed officers from schools and public transit. Some city leaders scoffed at community groups’ demands for a $50m cut.
LAPD arrive to arrests protesters for curfew violations after a day of peaceful protests against police brutality in Los Angeles, 2 Jun 2020 Photograph: Francine Orr/Los Angeles Times/REX/Shutterstock
But Anna So, a Portland organizer with the abolitionist group Critical Resistance, said the activists’ proposal was not radical given that the budget had increased by roughly $50m in just four years. She argued the militarized show of force by local and federal law enforcement at the Portland protests provided another example of an outsized and harmful police response. So said: “It also shows how hard they are resisting the calls to defund and how much they see it as a challenge to the need for them to actually exist.”
In most cities, the pushback from police unions, which have long opposed reforms, has escalated, with leaders making unsubstantiated threats that any cuts would lead to longer 911 wait times and a rise in crime, and lobbying intense and sometimes personal attacks on the mayors and lawmakers approving the defund measures. Some cities, meanwhile, have rejected calls for defunding and pushed sizable police budget increases, including Phoenix, Houston, San Diego and San Antonio.
While the initial concessions to community demands are not likely to radically transform policing across the US instantaneously, the process has set the groundwork for substantial changes moving forward, said Vitale, the professor.
Even in many cities that have entirely opposed defunding movements , the conversation appears to have shifted. “Politicians are having to grapple with this idea that they can’t just be moderate anymore,” said Jamaar Williams, a member of the Black Lives Matter chapter in Phoenix, where police recently received a $24m increase, despite a deadly record and repeated brutality scandals. “The time is forcing them to say, do you respect the lives of normal working people or are you going to protect the status quo? You can’t get away with platitudes anymore.”


theguardian--2020-08-15--Rick Perlstein: 'If you're not writing about the berserk, you're not writing about America'

Less than three months before the most consequential American election of modern times , Rick Perlstein has completed his epic history of the forces that ultimately put Donald Trump in power .
Reaganland , Perlstein ’ s fourth volume on the rise of US conservatism from 1960 to 1980 , is out on 18 August .
Including notes , the book runs to more than a thousand pages .
An hour or so before we speak , however , Perlstein puts out a rather shorter statement : a tweet .
“ Open letter to press .
I ’ ve given @ @ @ @ @ @ @ election ’ s lessons for 2020 .
Given Trump ’ s tweet on postponing , the political media ’ s determination to bound its discussion within the frame of normal politics is downright dangerous , and I won ’ t be complicit.
” So I don ’ t ask Perlstein to compare Richard Nixon – the subject of volume two , Nixonland ( 2008 ) – with a president repeating his “ law and order ” message and who the same day says “ universal mail-in voting ” will lead to “ the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” , and therefore suggests the US might “ Delay the Election until people can properly , securely and safely vote ?
?
?
” Trump can ’ t delay the election .
But he can fight and lie and cheat , as Nixon did , and that seems likely to keep reporters knocking on Perlstein ’ s door .
His tweet , he says , came “ from a frustrating interview in which I said over and over again : ‘ The real thing you need to be talking about as a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ going on in South America in the 1970s and Europe in the 1930s.
’ ” His point is that when Trump “ keeps doing things proven unpopular to all but the fascistically inclined , maybe he sees his audience as the fascistically inclined – those more useful to him for keeping permanent power than mere voters ” .
On the phone , from Chicago , he expands .
“ By talking about how many electoral votes [ Trump ’ s ] trying to get in the suburbs with his law-and-order appeal , you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to contemporary understanding .
That sort of consensus frame , that things aren ’ t really as bad as they seem , is a story that gatekeeping media elites tell about the world , that makes them actors in the story , not merely commentators.
” A man of the left , Perlstein agrees his books are as much about the failures of liberalism and the media as the success of the right .
“ The only reason we ’ re talking about 1968 is because Trump wants to talk about 1968 .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ law and order ’ and ‘ silent majority ’ .
That ’ s his story .
“ My shorthand is history is process , not parallels .
There really can ’ t be a historical parallel .
You can ’ t step in the same river twice or even once because the thing that happened in 1968 happened and we were responding to what happened .
Even if there are similarities .
“ It ’ s kind of a paradox .
It ’ s really important to understand history in order to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sometimes history can take you further away from understanding , instead of closer.
” Over thousands of pages , from Goldwater v Johnson ( Before the Storm , 2001 ) to Reagan v Carter , Perlstein seems to seek to embrace all understanding .
He ’ s been called the “ hypercaffeinated Herodotus of the American century ” and you suspect the first part at least must be right , if only so he can keep up the pace .
TV broadcasts and newspaper columns used as primary sources create a very American @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tune out , in order to show what is really going on , as turn all the way up to 11 .
Like trying to keep up with American politics in any election year , reading Perlstein can be like trying to drink from a firehose .
There ’ s something Melvillean about the sheer scale of the work , four leviathans to make up a whole .
“ The whole whale , ” he laughs , wary .
“ If I had a gun to my head [ and someone asked ] @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
’ I would definitely say that like Melville , I ’ m trying to get at the deepest wellsprings of psychological and political issues about how human beings body together as a community and get things done.
” “ It speaks to what is most profound to me , which is basically contributing to a civic conversation about this nation and its prospects .
I write it as an American for Americans.
” He also writes in the shadow of the author of American Pastoral , who died in 2018 .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” Perlstein says , “ I borrowed a phrase from one of Philip Roth ’ s novels : the politics and culture of the American berserk .
I mean , if you ’ re not writing about the berserk , you ’ re not writing about America.
” In Reaganland , one after another , major players take the stage .
More than 40 years later , many are still there .
Joe Biden was elected to the Senate in 1972 .
In Reaganland , in 1980 , he is in his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a long line of Democratic up-and-comers tagged with the coveted sobriquet ‘ Kennedyesque ’ ” , seen supporting the beleaguered Jimmy Carter but “ dropping remarks about running for – and some day becoming ” president himself .
Trump is there too , buzzing around Reagan ’ s campaign launch in New York City in the summer of 79 , already subject to grave doubts about his character , nonetheless “ held up as just the tonic a depressed city needed to get its swagger back ” .
In a book in which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ side by side , Perlstein constructs a typically vivid set piece .
“ It seems absolutely absurd that [ Reagan ] would choose to do this in New York because New York was basically such a shithole at the time .
I have this whole riff about how the buses can only travel 30 miles an hour on the freeway because the tires are so crappy .
There ’ s an epidemic of bank robberies going on and the bank robbers are not these kind of professionals that the cops are used to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of just poor , desperate young men .
“ It all comes from a single hour-long New York City newscast that somebody put up on YouTube .
And when you go to my website , you can click on that because wherever possible , all the source notes lead to where you can find them.
” Perlstein uses more traditional sources too , Reagan ’ s letters and Carter ’ s diaries among them , and cites deep debts to contemporary political reporting .
It all creates a remarkably intimate feel .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ control , ” he says .
“ You ’ re basically telling a person what sort of mood to feel , what sort of thing to think , how to experience the passage of time while they ’ re kind of consuming the text .
What I ’ m trying to do is to place a person in this civic dilemma of a person living through these events.
” Back to 2020 , a whole year of civic dilemma .
Roger Stone , who survived Nixon ’ s fall and was recently spared @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Reaganland , a man on the move himself .
“ After Nixonland came out , ” Perlstein says , Stone “ came out with one of his books about Nixon [ and ] basically proposed that we go on tour together : ‘ We can sell a lot of books and make a lot of money.
’ At the time he was very adamant he was no longer a Republican .
He was running for the Senate , I believe , from Florida as a Libertarian .
The depths of his attention-starved behavior @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reasons I kind of renewed the acquaintance online was because I was doing some factchecking about these insane dirty tricks he was doing in the 1977 Young Republicans election where he won that presidency , with Paul Manafort as his campaign manager … that was a news story that Roger Stone won because he was involved in Watergate dirty tricks and this was going to destroy the Republican party if these people ever got anywhere close to the seat of power .
On Perlstein ’ s pages , astride public life , Stone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , so shameless , so berserk that they almost come to seem funny .
“ We laugh to keep from crying , ” Perlstein counters , “ and the serious point being made is that as Richard Nixon said , ‘ If you want a serious political job done , you hire a rightwing exuberant.
’ “ These were the people who were , for example , running Ronald Reagan ’ s primary campaign in North Carolina in 1980 .
That was Lee Atwater [ who ] used all the Roger Stone-style dirty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is to point out that there ’ s nothing going on right now in Republican politics that wasn ’ t kind of latent then.
” Perlstein ’ s own “ engagement with Trump ” , he says , “ came at a time , in 2015 , when I was incredibly burned out from writing about Republican conservatism because it seemed so darn predictable .
Then something happened : history is a cunning thing to completely transform the story .
I think we always have to be alive and open to that.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the bad ?
How does Perlstein feel about the Never Trumpers , Republicans working to eject a Republican from the White House itself ?
“ You know , I would have six or seven or eight different strands to think about , kind of untangling that .
“ The one that ’ s the simplest is it ’ s a patriotic and humane act to say that the person who has in their possession the sole authority to launch a nuclear strike is not a responsible person .
That ’ s the simplest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ There ’ s also a cynical interpretation , which I ’ ve certainly entertained .
I wrote a piece reviewing one of the more meretricious Never Trumpers , a guy named Charlie Sykes , who really does seem like a guy who has decided that this is a way that he could kind of escape the local media pool in Wisconsin and become a national figure .
In fact he … has this atrocious history in my home town , Milwaukee , of stirring racial tension in order to help Republican candidates .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ think that they ’ re going to kind of inherit the wreckage and by washing themselves in the blood of the lamb they ’ re going to be the people who are going to be able to use that claim of innocence in order to be the leaders of the newly reconstituted Republican party .
“ Now , things get really interesting when these guys think critically about the Republican culture in which they were marinated .
A lot of these guys have done bad in impressive and interesting ways .
Max Boot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ writing about how he came into this as a Russian immigrant who was very sincere about fighting communism and hadn ’ t recognised the extent to which racist dog whistles were such a huge part of the Republican appeal .
“ … I mean , do you take the good with the bad ?
Do you throw out the baby with the bathwater ?
Ronald Reagan always said a half-loaf is better than no loaf .
“ Another complex thread is the next Democratic president – and this is something I was thinking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , who has a history of seeking ententes cordiale with the Republican party – are they going to feel like this is a constituency that they ’ re going to have to service as part of their coalition ?
Which is dangerous.
” It ’ s a very Perlsteinian response , wide-ranging , multifaceted , but it is given in a very different America from the one in which he started work in 1997 , nearly a quarter of a century ago .
Back then , Bill Clinton , the first Democrat in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not yet been impeached .
Since then , the right has given us Newt Gingrich and Ken Starr , the Iraq war , Hurricane Katrina , the Tea Party and Donald Trump .
How on earth did it come to this ?
“ It ’ s almost like I know too much to come up with a simple answer , ” Perlstein says .
“ I don ’ t have a simple answer .
The simplest answer is that we ’ re in an extraordinary moment .
”

Less than three months before the most consequential American election of modern times, Rick Perlstein has completed his epic history of the forces that ultimately put Donald Trump in power. Reaganland, Perlstein’s fourth volume on the rise of US conservatism from 1960 to 1980, is out on 18 August.
Including notes, the book runs to more than a thousand pages. An hour or so before we speak, however, Perlstein puts out a rather shorter statement: a tweet.
“Open letter to press. I’ve given my last interview about the ’68 election’s lessons for 2020. Given Trump’s tweet on postponing, the political media’s determination to bound its discussion within the frame of normal politics is downright dangerous, and I won’t be complicit.”
So I don’t ask Perlstein to compare Richard Nixon – the subject of volume two, Nixonland (2008) – with a president repeating his “law and order” message and who the same day says “universal mail-in voting” will lead to “the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT election in history”, and therefore suggests the US might “Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???”
Trump can’t delay the election. But he can fight and lie and cheat, as Nixon did, and that seems likely to keep reporters knocking on Perlstein’s door. His tweet, he says, came “from a frustrating interview in which I said over and over again: ‘The real thing you need to be talking about as a reporter … is parallels to what was going on in South America in the 1970s and Europe in the 1930s.’”
His point is that when Trump “keeps doing things proven unpopular to all but the fascistically inclined, maybe he sees his audience as the fascistically inclined – those more useful to him for keeping permanent power than mere voters”.
On the phone, from Chicago, he expands.
“By talking about how many electoral votes [Trump’s] trying to get in the suburbs with his law-and-order appeal, you’re kind of doing active harm to contemporary understanding. That sort of consensus frame, that things aren’t really as bad as they seem, is a story that gatekeeping media elites tell about the world, that makes them actors in the story, not merely commentators.”
A man of the left, Perlstein agrees his books are as much about the failures of liberalism and the media as the success of the right.
“The only reason we’re talking about 1968 is because Trump wants to talk about 1968. He sets the agenda by tweeting ‘law and order’ and ‘silent majority’. That’s his story.
“My shorthand is history is process, not parallels. There really can’t be a historical parallel. You can’t step in the same river twice or even once because the thing that happened in 1968 happened and we were responding to what happened. Even if there are similarities.
“It’s kind of a paradox. It’s really important to understand history in order to be a better citizen in the present but sometimes history can take you further away from understanding, instead of closer.”
‘The whole whale’
Over thousands of pages, from Goldwater v Johnson (Before the Storm, 2001) to Reagan v Carter, Perlstein seems to seek to embrace all understanding. He’s been called the “hypercaffeinated Herodotus of the American century” and you suspect the first part at least must be right, if only so he can keep up the pace. TV broadcasts and newspaper columns used as primary sources create a very American cacophony which Perlstein does not so much tune out, in order to show what is really going on, as turn all the way up to 11.
Presidents George HW Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon attend the dedication of the Ronald Reagan Library, in California in 1991. Photograph: David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images
Like trying to keep up with American politics in any election year, reading Perlstein can be like trying to drink from a firehose. There’s something Melvillean about the sheer scale of the work, four leviathans to make up a whole.
“The whole whale,” he laughs, wary. “If I had a gun to my head [and someone asked] ‘How is your book like Moby-Dick?’ I would definitely say that like Melville, I’m trying to get at the deepest wellsprings of psychological and political issues about how human beings body together as a community and get things done.”
“It speaks to what is most profound to me, which is basically contributing to a civic conversation about this nation and its prospects. I write it as an American for Americans.”
He also writes in the shadow of the author of American Pastoral, who died in 2018.
“For the original working subtitle for Nixonland,” Perlstein says, “I borrowed a phrase from one of Philip Roth’s novels: the politics and culture of the American berserk. I mean, if you’re not writing about the berserk, you’re not writing about America.”
‘Writing is mind control’
In Reaganland, one after another, major players take the stage. More than 40 years later, many are still there.
Joe Biden was elected to the Senate in 1972. In Reaganland, in 1980, he is in his late 30s, “the latest in a long line of Democratic up-and-comers tagged with the coveted sobriquet ‘Kennedyesque’”, seen supporting the beleaguered Jimmy Carter but “dropping remarks about running for – and some day becoming” president himself.
What I’m trying to do is to place a person in this civic dilemma of a person living through these events
Trump is there too, buzzing around Reagan’s campaign launch in New York City in the summer of 79, already subject to grave doubts about his character, nonetheless “held up as just the tonic a depressed city needed to get its swagger back”.
In a book in which picaresque narrative and forensic political analysis sit side by side, Perlstein constructs a typically vivid set piece.
“It seems absolutely absurd that [Reagan] would choose to do this in New York because New York was basically such a shithole at the time. I have this whole riff about how the buses can only travel 30 miles an hour on the freeway because the tires are so crappy. There’s an epidemic of bank robberies going on and the bank robbers are not these kind of professionals that the cops are used to dealing with – they’re kind of just poor, desperate young men.
“It all comes from a single hour-long New York City newscast that somebody put up on YouTube. And when you go to my website, you can click on that because wherever possible, all the source notes lead to where you can find them.”
Perlstein uses more traditional sources too, Reagan’s letters and Carter’s diaries among them, and cites deep debts to contemporary political reporting. It all creates a remarkably intimate feel.
“I always say that writing is mind control,” he says. “You’re basically telling a person what sort of mood to feel, what sort of thing to think, how to experience the passage of time while they’re kind of consuming the text. What I’m trying to do is to place a person in this civic dilemma of a person living through these events.”
Roger Stone poses in his office in Oakland Park, Florida. Photograph: The Washington Post/Getty Images
Back to 2020, a whole year of civic dilemma. Roger Stone, who survived Nixon’s fall and was recently spared prison by Trump, also appears in Reaganland, a man on the move himself.
“After Nixonland came out,” Perlstein says, Stone “came out with one of his books about Nixon [and] basically proposed that we go on tour together: ‘We can sell a lot of books and make a lot of money.’ At the time he was very adamant he was no longer a Republican. He was running for the Senate, I believe, from Florida as a Libertarian. The depths of his attention-starved behavior. .
“But one of the reasons I kind of renewed the acquaintance online was because I was doing some factchecking about these insane dirty tricks he was doing in the 1977 Young Republicans election where he won that presidency, with Paul Manafort as his campaign manager … that was a news story that Roger Stone won because he was involved in Watergate dirty tricks and this was going to destroy the Republican party if these people ever got anywhere close to the seat of power.
“And … yeah, that happened.”
On Perlstein’s pages, astride public life, Stone’s capers can seem so extraordinary, so shameless, so berserk that they almost come to seem funny.
“We laugh to keep from crying,” Perlstein counters, “and the serious point being made is that as Richard Nixon said, ‘If you want a serious political job done, you hire a rightwing exuberant.’
“These were the people who were, for example, running Ronald Reagan’s primary campaign in North Carolina in 1980. That was Lee Atwater [who] used all the Roger Stone-style dirty tricks … That part of the story is to point out that there’s nothing going on right now in Republican politics that wasn’t kind of latent then.”
There’s nothing going on right now in Republican politics that wasn’t kind of latent then
Perlstein’s own “engagement with Trump”, he says, “came at a time, in 2015, when I was incredibly burned out from writing about Republican conservatism because it seemed so darn predictable. Then something happened: history is a cunning thing to completely transform the story. I think we always have to be alive and open to that.”
‘Do you take the good with the bad?
How does Perlstein feel about the Never Trumpers, Republicans working to eject a Republican from the White House itself?
“You know, I would have six or seven or eight different strands to think about, kind of untangling that.
“The one that’s the simplest is it’s a patriotic and humane act to say that the person who has in their possession the sole authority to launch a nuclear strike is not a responsible person. That’s the simplest thing and good for them.
“There’s also a cynical interpretation, which I’ve certainly entertained. I wrote a piece reviewing one of the more meretricious Never Trumpers, a guy named Charlie Sykes, who really does seem like a guy who has decided that this is a way that he could kind of escape the local media pool in Wisconsin and become a national figure. In fact he … has this atrocious history in my home town, Milwaukee, of stirring racial tension in order to help Republican candidates.
“These are the guys who cynically think that they’re going to kind of inherit the wreckage and by washing themselves in the blood of the lamb they’re going to be the people who are going to be able to use that claim of innocence in order to be the leaders of the newly reconstituted Republican party.
Donald Trump waves as he walks with first lady Melania Trump during his inauguration parade in Washington in January 2017. Photograph: POOL/Reuters
“Now, things get really interesting when these guys think critically about the Republican culture in which they were marinated. A lot of these guys have done bad in impressive and interesting ways. Max Boot [a Washington Post columnist], writing about how he came into this as a Russian immigrant who was very sincere about fighting communism and hadn’t recognised the extent to which racist dog whistles were such a huge part of the Republican appeal.
“… I mean, do you take the good with the bad? Do you throw out the baby with the bathwater? Ronald Reagan always said a half-loaf is better than no loaf.
“Another complex thread is the next Democratic president – and this is something I was thinking about long before it was Joe Biden, who has a history of seeking ententes cordiale with the Republican party – are they going to feel like this is a constituency that they’re going to have to service as part of their coalition? Which is dangerous.”
It’s a very Perlsteinian response, wide-ranging, multifaceted, but it is given in a very different America from the one in which he started work in 1997, nearly a quarter of a century ago.
Back then, Bill Clinton, the first Democrat in the White House after Reagan, had not yet been impeached. Since then, the right has given us Newt Gingrich and Ken Starr, the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina, the Tea Party and Donald Trump. How on earth did it come to this?
“It’s almost like I know too much to come up with a simple answer,” Perlstein says. “I don’t have a simple answer. The simplest answer is that we’re in an extraordinary moment.”


theguardian--2020-08-15--From Oakland to the White House? The rise of Kamala Harris

Bancroft Way in Berkeley , California , is quaint and slow , the kind of street where everyone seems to know each other by name .
This week , neighbors sat outdoors drinking wine under the evening sun , as they chatted animatedly about their childhood companion who had just become headline news .
It was on Bancroft Way that Kamala Harris spent her formative years with her single mother , Shyamala , and sister , Maya .
Today , former neighbors reminisce about her following her selection this week as Joe Biden ’ s Democratic running mate in his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ White House .
“ I am really proud of her and think she will make a very good vice-president , ” Kenneth Hunter said .
He was standing at the same street corner where he said he and Harris had caught the bus every morning for Thousand Oaks elementary school in north Berkeley as part of efforts to desegregate local schools .
But even here , among her childhood friends , and just days away from the Democratic national convention , where Harris will enter the history books as the first woman of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ presidential ticket , there ’ s a note of hesitancy .
Octavia , a third-generation Berkeley resident who lives on the block , said she was worried that criticism of Harris ’ s record as a former prosecutor might dampen enthusiasm among Black voters , who make up a crucial share of the Democratic party ’ s support .
“ Not enough Black people are behind her , ” said Octavia , requesting not to give her last name .
“ When people say they don ’ t want to vote for her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Black or brown women who look like you and me are there in office right now ?
How could you not vote for her ?
’ ” That ’ s a debate that is likely to rumble on not just in Berkeley and neighboring Oakland , where Harris was born in 1964 , but throughout California and across the nation ahead of the US presidential election on 3 November .
Just who is Kamala Harris , and what does she represent for future of the Democratic party and , potentially , of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ most singular aspect of Harris ’ s newly elevated status is her identity as the daughter of immigrants who came to the US in search of world-class education and were thrown together during the 1960s protest marches at Berkeley .
Her father , Donald Harris , was an economist from Jamaica ; her mother , Shyamala Gopalan , came from southern India and became a breast cancer researcher .
Part of the reason that Harris ’ s rise has made such an emotive impact on large numbers of Americans lies in her quintessential @ @ @ @ @ @ @ – all the more so with the anti-immigrant Trump in the Oval Office .
In the wake of the seismic reckoning with systemic racism unleashed by Black Lives Matter , the shattering of this glass ceiling by a woman of color has also left a profound impression on many .
“ This doesn ’ t reconcile our past , but it does give us hope for the future , ” said Catherine Flowers , a leading environmental justice campaigner from Alabama who confessed she had grown teary-eyed when Biden announced his running mate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the civil rights movement and the Democratic party for decades , yet we have rarely gotten any credit.
” When Harris appeared in her new role alongside Biden for the first time on Wednesday , she spoke about how she had imbibed politics from a young age when she was taken by her parents to the Berkeley anti-Vietnam protests “ strapped tightly in my stroller ” .
After her parents divorced when she was seven , she was brought up mainly by her mother , who taught her “ to keep on marching @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sisters pride in their south Asian roots .
In her political autobiography , The Truths We Hold , Harris describes how Shyamala also recognized that her daughters would be perceived as Black in the US and “ was determined to make sure we would grow into confident , proud black women ” .
Harris went on to attend the historically black Howard University in Washington DC where she pledged to the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority and learned , she writes , that “ we were young , gifted and black , and we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the way of our success ” .
Harris emphasizes in her memoir those issues of identity .
She also leans into what might be categorized as her softer side , devoting several pages to her husband , Doug Emhoff , a Los Angeles-based corporate lawyer whom she married in 2014 , and his two children by an earlier marriage , Cole and Ella .
She depicts herself as someone who puts family before all else , cooking regular Sunday dinners and playing sports mom to the kids who call her “ Momala ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lot of titles in my career , and certainly ‘ vice-president ’ will be great , but ‘ Momala ’ will always be the one that means the most , ” she said on Wednesday .
It may be obligatory for aspiring American politicians ( with the exception of twice-divorced Trump ) to accentuate their family credentials .
For Harris it serves the added purpose of rounding off the edges of her public image as a spiky and at times controversial prosecutor , as she also faces sexist criticism focusing on her ambition @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her ability to forensically dissect an opponent , learned on the job as a local prosecutor in Alameda county and San Francisco and later as California ’ s attorney general from 2011 to 2017 , has been a major asset .
It brought her to the nation ’ s attention when she reduced Trump ’ s first attorney general , Jeff Sessions , to a quivering wreck in 2017 and when she grilled Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation to the US supreme court the following year .
It was on full display too @ @ @ @ @ @ @ little girl was me ” attack on Biden at the second Democratic debate last year , accusing him of opposing the same desegregationist policies that had put her on that bus to Thousand Oaks elementary school when she was a kid .
Though her abundant adversarial skills will undoubtedly be put to good use when she comes to face Mike Pence in the televised VP debate in October – expect her to tear him limb from limb over his record as head of the White House coronavirus taskforce – her career as a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ progressives .
In her role as California ’ s “ top cop ” , she presented herself not as “ tough on crime ” or “ soft on crime ” but “ smart on crime ” .
When she has tried to justify her choice to forge her legal career on the prosecutorial side , she has talked about her commitment to seeking justice for all .
“ I knew the history of brave prosecutors who went after the Ku Klux Klan in the south , or who went after corrupt politicians and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
That has not spared her from coming under heavy criticism about some of her more contentious stances while in positions of power .
She did not use her prosecutorial muscle to ensure accountability over police killings of Black people in the Bay Area , holding back from intervening in several cases and opposing moves to require her office to investigate all fatal police shootings .
Questions have been raised too about why she blocked the release of Daniel Larsen , a prisoner the courts had declared to be innocent , just because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ corpus .
As state attorney general she opposed legalizing marijuana for recreational use , even though it is a driver of mass incarceration of young Black men in the US .
Her sponsorship of a new Californian law that threatened parents with jail if they allowed their children to play truant from school has also come under scrutiny as excessively punitive .
All of which leaves progressive women of color feeling somewhat conflicted about her meteoric rise .
Rachel Carmona , the chief operating officer of the Women ’ s March , who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pick as historic and long overdue .
“ But it isn ’ t enough , ” she said .
“ We reject the idea that we need to trade representation for women in prominent roles for our politics and our values .
Both Harris and Biden need to be ready on day one to push a progressive agenda on justice and equality.
” Pressure from the left to effect change is one thing , racist and sexist tropes from the right quite another .
Trump and his cohorts have lost no time laying @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in an echo of his “ birther ” lies about Barack Obama ’ s nationality , is encouraging the false idea that Harris is ineligible for the second-highest office in the land because her parents were immigrants .
Other rightwing pundits have been trying to find her achilles heel with increasingly shrill attacks on her personality .
Fox News contributors have willfully mispronounced her name and derided her as angry , crazed or “ abrasive ” .
Harris says she takes her lead from her mother , who died in 2009 , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ strong Indian accent but who refused to let that hold her back from becoming a leading woman of color in science .
One of her favorite expressions is : “ Don ’ t let anybody tell you who you are – you tell them .
”

Kari Paul in Oakland and Ed Pilkington in New York

Bancroft Way in Berkeley, California, is quaint and slow, the kind of street where everyone seems to know each other by name. This week, neighbors sat outdoors drinking wine under the evening sun, as they chatted animatedly about their childhood companion who had just become headline news.
It was on Bancroft Way that Kamala Harris spent her formative years with her single mother, Shyamala, and sister, Maya. Today, former neighbors reminisce about her following her selection this week as Joe Biden’s Democratic running mate in his bid to evict Donald Trump from the White House.
“I am really proud of her and think she will make a very good vice-president,” Kenneth Hunter said. He was standing at the same street corner where he said he and Harris had caught the bus every morning for Thousand Oaks elementary school in north Berkeley as part of efforts to desegregate local schools.
But even here, among her childhood friends, and just days away from the Democratic national convention, where Harris will enter the history books as the first woman of color to be placed on a major-party presidential ticket, there’s a note of hesitancy.
Harris, left, with her sister, Maya, and mother, Shyamala, outside their apartment in Berkeley, California, in 1970. Photograph: Courtesy Kamala Harris Campaign/AP
Octavia, a third-generation Berkeley resident who lives on the block, said she was worried that criticism of Harris’s record as a former prosecutor might dampen enthusiasm among Black voters, who make up a crucial share of the Democratic party’s support.
“Not enough Black people are behind her,” said Octavia, requesting not to give her last name. “When people say they don’t want to vote for her, I ask: ‘How many Black or brown women who look like you and me are there in office right now? How could you not vote for her?’”
That’s a debate that is likely to rumble on not just in Berkeley and neighboring Oakland, where Harris was born in 1964, but throughout California and across the nation ahead of the US presidential election on 3 November. Just who is Kamala Harris, and what does she represent for future of the Democratic party and, potentially, of the most powerful country on Earth?
The most singular aspect of Harris’s newly elevated status is her identity as the daughter of immigrants who came to the US in search of world-class education and were thrown together during the 1960s protest marches at Berkeley. Her father, Donald Harris, was an economist from Jamaica; her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, came from southern India and became a breast cancer researcher.
Part of the reason that Harris’s rise has made such an emotive impact on large numbers of Americans lies in her quintessential story of a first-generation citizen made good – all the more so with the anti-immigrant Trump in the Oval Office.
In the wake of the seismic reckoning with systemic racism unleashed by Black Lives Matter, the shattering of this glass ceiling by a woman of color has also left a profound impression on many.
Kamala Harris, then California’s attorney general, at the California Democratic convention in 2012. Photograph: Sandy Huffaker/Corbis/Getty Images
“This doesn’t reconcile our past, but it does give us hope for the future,” said Catherine Flowers, a leading environmental justice campaigner from Alabama who confessed she had grown teary-eyed when Biden announced his running mate. “Black women have held up the civil rights movement and the Democratic party for decades, yet we have rarely gotten any credit.”
When Harris appeared in her new role alongside Biden for the first time on Wednesday, she spoke about how she had imbibed politics from a young age when she was taken by her parents to the Berkeley anti-Vietnam protests “strapped tightly in my stroller”. After her parents divorced when she was seven, she was brought up mainly by her mother, who taught her “to keep on marching”.
Her mother instilled in the sisters pride in their south Asian roots. In her political autobiography, The Truths We Hold, Harris describes how Shyamala also recognized that her daughters would be perceived as Black in the US and “was determined to make sure we would grow into confident, proud black women”.
Harris went on to attend the historically black Howard University in Washington DC where she pledged to the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority and learned, she writes, that “we were young, gifted and black, and we shouldn’t let anything get in the way of our success”.
This November 1982 photo provided by the Kamala Harris campaign shows her, right, with Gwen Whitfield at an anti-apartheid protest during her freshman year at Howard University in Washington. Photograph: Courtesy Kamala Harris Campaign/AP
Harris emphasizes in her memoir those issues of identity. She also leans into what might be categorized as her softer side, devoting several pages to her husband, Doug Emhoff, a Los Angeles-based corporate lawyer whom she married in 2014, and his two children by an earlier marriage, Cole and Ella.
She depicts herself as someone who puts family before all else, cooking regular Sunday dinners and playing sports mom to the kids who call her “Momala”. “I’ve had a lot of titles in my career, and certainly ‘vice-president’ will be great, but ‘Momala’ will always be the one that means the most,” she said on Wednesday.
It may be obligatory for aspiring American politicians (with the exception of twice-divorced Trump) to accentuate their family credentials. For Harris it serves the added purpose of rounding off the edges of her public image as a spiky and at times controversial prosecutor, as she also faces sexist criticism focusing on her ambition and toughness.
In recent times, her ability to forensically dissect an opponent, learned on the job as a local prosecutor in Alameda county and San Francisco and later as California’s attorney general from 2011 to 2017, has been a major asset. It brought her to the nation’s attention when she reduced Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to a quivering wreck in 2017 and when she grilled Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation to the US supreme court the following year.
Senators Cory Booker and Kamala Harris confer as the then supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh testifies on Capitol Hill in September 2018. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
It was on full display too when she made her viral “that little girl was me” attack on Biden at the second Democratic debate last year, accusing him of opposing the same desegregationist policies that had put her on that bus to Thousand Oaks elementary school when she was a kid.
Though her abundant adversarial skills will undoubtedly be put to good use when she comes to face Mike Pence in the televised VP debate in October – expect her to tear him limb from limb over his record as head of the White House coronavirus taskforce – her career as a prosecutor continues to cause her difficulties with progressives. In her role as California’s “top cop”, she presented herself not as “tough on crime” or “soft on crime” but “smart on crime”.
When she has tried to justify her choice to forge her legal career on the prosecutorial side, she has talked about her commitment to seeking justice for all. “I knew the history of brave prosecutors who went after the Ku Klux Klan in the south, or who went after corrupt politicians and corporate polluters,” she has said.
That has not spared her from coming under heavy criticism about some of her more contentious stances while in positions of power. She did not use her prosecutorial muscle to ensure accountability over police killings of Black people in the Bay Area, holding back from intervening in several cases and opposing moves to require her office to investigate all fatal police shootings.
Questions have been raised too about why she blocked the release of Daniel Larsen, a prisoner the courts had declared to be innocent, just because he missed a filing deadline for habeas corpus.
As state attorney general she opposed legalizing marijuana for recreational use, even though it is a driver of mass incarceration of young Black men in the US. Her sponsorship of a new Californian law that threatened parents with jail if they allowed their children to play truant from school has also come under scrutiny as excessively punitive.
All of which leaves progressive women of color feeling somewhat conflicted about her meteoric rise. Rachel Carmona, the chief operating officer of the Women’s March, who is Mexican American, welcomed Harris’ pick as historic and long overdue.
“But it isn’t enough,” she said. “We reject the idea that we need to trade representation for women in prominent roles for our politics and our values. Both Harris and Biden need to be ready on day one to push a progressive agenda on justice and equality.”
Harris listens as Joe Biden speaks at a campaign event, their first joint appearance since Biden named Harris as his running mate, on Wednesday. Photograph: Carlos Barría/Reuters
Pressure from the left to effect change is one thing, racist and sexist tropes from the right quite another.
Trump and his cohorts have lost no time laying into Harris. The US president, in an echo of his “birther” lies about Barack Obama’s nationality, is encouraging the false idea that Harris is ineligible for the second-highest office in the land because her parents were immigrants.
Other rightwing pundits have been trying to find her achilles heel with increasingly shrill attacks on her personality. Fox News contributors have willfully mispronounced her name and derided her as angry, crazed or “abrasive”.
Harris says she takes her lead from her mother, who died in 2009, and who was frequently overlooked because of her strong Indian accent but who refused to let that hold her back from becoming a leading woman of color in science.
One of her favorite expressions is: “Don’t let anybody tell you who you are – you tell them.”


theguardian--2020-08-15--Khizr Khan: 'Trump may damage American democracy permanently'

It was a warning that America chose to ignore , but a moment remembered long after the speeches of career politicians were done and forgotten .
Four summers ago , in the lead-up to the pivotal 2016 US election , Khizr Khan stood before the Democratic national convention in Philadelphia and told how his son , an American Muslim and army captain , died in Iraq .
He had a question for Donald Trump , the Republican nominee threatening to ban Muslim immigrants .
“ Have you even read the United States constitution ?
” he demanded , holding a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ seven-minute tour de force that became the emotional heart of one of the biggest weeks of the election campaign .
When Democrats convene for their 2020 convention next week , albeit virtually , Khan will again be taking part .
His darkest fears about Trump and the mortal threat he poses to the constitution have been realised , he says .
But he retains faith in America and finds hope in Joe Biden , the Democratic presumptive nominee , who understands what it is to endure the death of a child .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the parents ’ and family ’ s hearts which never fills , ” the 70-year-old lawyer told the Guardian in a phone interview from his home in Charlottesville , Virginia , as he recalled he and his wife , Ghazala , meeting the former vice-president .
“ We could see that he could feel the hole in our heart and we could feel the hole in his heart , and that connection has been everlasting .
“ The president of the United States is a father figure , a figure that must @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the nation .
Joe Biden has that element .
He has that character .
To our disappointment , the current president does not .
We had hoped that Trump would find somewhere along the way that element of character .
Alas , that never happened , but Joe Biden has that element.
” One of 10 children , Khan grew up in a small village in Pakistan and met Ghazala while studying in Lahore .
When he was 24 they left for Dubai , then eventually the US , inspired , like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dream .
He became a US citizen in 1986 and gained law degrees from Harvard University and the University of Missouri .
Their son , Humayun , 27 , was killed protecting his men from suicide bombers in Iraq in 2004 .
He is buried at Arlington national cemetery , Virginia , and was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart .
In 2016 , with Trump running an overtly anti-immigrant campaign , the Khans , a gold star family who had valued their privacy , found themselves thrust into the national @ @ @ @ @ @ @ convention : “ We were nervous as any ordinary person would be because , regardless of where you come from , you don ’ t get to speak at such events with such bright lights and such a crowd often , so you never develop 100 % confidence .
You ’ re always shaky and you ’ re always nervous in your heart and you try to manage that as much as you can.
” With Ghazala gripping the lectern tight lest she be overwhelmed by grief , Khan ’ s words stopped @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some wiping away tears as he spoke .
He had a rhetorical question for Trump : “ Have you ever been to Arlington cemetery ?
Go look at the graves of brave patriots who died defending the United States of America .
You will see all faiths , genders and ethnicities .
You have sacrificed nothing and no one.
” Trump delivered an angry retort , suggesting that Khan had “ no right ” to criticise him , claiming that he too has made “ a lot of sacrifices ” and asking why @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ She had nothing to say , ” Trump said .
“ Maybe she wasn ’ t allowed to have anything to say.
” It was a preview of all the bullying to come .
Looking back , Khan says : “ Donald Trump wasn ’ t aware of what this mother is going through at this time .
Her son ’ s picture and the tribute to her son has been paid and he could have simply looked the other way , but that is proof of the calibre of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ remained unfit .
We had hoped that the office of the presidency would emerge him from that pettiness , from that small-mindedness .
But he has not.
” The Khans refused to be cowed , giving a series of media interviews .
Yet despite widespread condemnation by military veterans and others , Trump went on to win a stunning upset over Hillary Clinton .
The Khans received hate mail and were targeted by conservative media .
Then came a call from outgoing Vice-President Biden , inviting them to his home in Washington in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as we entered the residence and he came forward , escorted us to the back office , ” Khan recounts .
“ He introduced his entire family that was in the pictures on the mantle of the fireplace in the back office , with me and Ghazala standing next to him and him pointing out who everybody was .
We were just so touched by that gesture of kindness and affection and empathy.
” When Biden showed a photo of his son Beau , an Iraq war veteran who died from brain cancer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the Khans felt a connection .
“ We felt so heartened by his expression .
It ’ s only military parents and families that know what it takes to send a loved one in harm ’ s way .
He was in full recognition and realisation of that aspect of our life .
“ Then he did something that even today remains remains really heartening to us .
He placed one hand on my shoulder , the other hand on Ghazala ’ s shoulder .
In a huddle form , he said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ am your family .
If you are ever worried about anything , reach out , I stand with you , don ’ t worry , be strong and we will deal with this all together.
’ Ghazala and I looked at each other and literally we felt as if a burden had been lifted from our shoulders .
“ That is the character of Joe Biden .
He wasn ’ t a candidate .
He wasn ’ t running for office .
He had completed eight years as vice-president successfully but that is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
As a military parent he has amazing empathy , amazing compassion and respect.
” When Biden asked for the Khans ’ support in the 2020 Democratic primary , he continues , “ we had no hesitation at all to say yes , we stand with you , we have your back .
That is what , to us , America needs : an empathetic , a decent , a passionate caring human being like Joe Biden .
That is why we support him.
” In Khan ’ s view , Trump embodies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ home city , Charlottesville , discovered three years ago this week .
A march by white supremacists and Ku Klux Klan members brandishing shields , clubs and guns led to violent clashes and the death of counter-protester Heather Heyer .
Khan says : “ As I went to pick up some books , I saw the traffic was blocked and there was a procession passing and , very much concerned about my safety , I saw people were standing outside their cars and I sat in because of the concern for being recognised @ @ @ @ @ @ @ seat and there was no way that I could take a U-turn because the traffic was totally blocked .
“ So I had rolled the window down to hear what was going on and I heard the chants : totally un-American vulgarities were being shouted .
I just slumped and was worried about my wellbeing and hoping and praying that this moment shall pass .
And of course , to my horror , a young woman was killed.
” Trump infamously claimed that there were “ very fine people ” on both sides @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Donald Trump declared support for the white supremacists and we were disappointed .
All my beloved city wanted was peace and quiet and back to normalcy but it was a horrifying experience .
“ Time after time after time he has proven to not represent what makes America great and prosperous , and that is diversity – diversity of people , diversity of values , and he has continued to pursue an agenda that has never been good for America .
Divisiveness weakens us .
Racism weakens us .
“ He has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by his politics , because he sees that is the only way left for him to continue to speak against immigrants , against minorities , against non-whites , and that is not what has made America a beacon of hope in the rest of the world.
” A year after Charlottesville came another shocking chapter in the Trump presidency : a zero-tolerance policy that prosecuted undocumented immigrants at the US-Mexico border , separating thousands of children from their parents .
It was denounced by watchdogs as a gross violation of human rights .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ can never forget it , it , still burdens my soul when I think of those children in cages .
I have grandchildren of those ages and I see their faces in the faces of those separated from their family and the small children in the cages .
I can not forget that this could have ever happened in a country like United States , which is a nation of immigrants , and how horrific that policy of Trump had been and remains in force.
” Khan believes that Trump ’ s defeat @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ America can not have four more years of this mentality that continues to divide us .
It ’ s selfish and self-centred so that anything and everything is from what benefits him personally.
” Some observers worry that Trump is seeking to exploit the coronavirus pandemic by discrediting mail-in balloting , sabotaging the post office and disenfranchising millions of voters .
If the result goes against him , will he claim the election was rigged and effectively barricade himself inside the White House ?
“ I do worry about that , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tendency of being an authoritarian and may damage the American fabric , American democracy permanently because that is what our adversaries and his biggest benefactor , Russia , wants .
But among the Republicans – I call them mute Republicans – I still have hope that they have a little ray of patriotism and , for the country , they will stand up and tell Trump to move forward.
” As the Cassandra of the 2016 convention , Khan takes no pleasure in having his prophecies vindicated .
But it was also a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ work , buoyed by the immigrant ’ s idealism , patriotism and faith in the American experiment .
He has now carried out 280 speaking engagements in America and beyond and will address – virtually – the Veterans and Military Families Council at the Democratic convention on Tuesday .
“ I feel comfortable speaking about our rule of law , about the human dignity that is enshrined in our constitution , and my experience as an immigrant coming from a country that had been ruled by the dictators , by authoritarians , to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is mine as a human being .
“ I remember the experience of becoming a citizen .
I paused at the door of the court before I entered to take the oath of citizenship and I reflected where I had come from and where I ’ m about to go .
Very clearly that image and that sentiment is seared in my soul , in my heart .
I could have never dreamed of having those dignities that are enshrined in our constitution .
So I continue to speak .
”

It was a warning that America chose to ignore, but a moment remembered long after the speeches of career politicians were done and forgotten.
Four summers ago, in the lead-up to the pivotal 2016 US election, Khizr Khan stood before the Democratic national convention in Philadelphia and told how his son, an American Muslim and army captain, died in Iraq. He had a question for Donald Trump, the Republican nominee threatening to ban Muslim immigrants.
“Have you even read the United States constitution?” he demanded, holding a copy aloft, as he delivered a seven-minute tour de force that became the emotional heart of one of the biggest weeks of the election campaign.
When Democrats convene for their 2020 convention next week, albeit virtually, Khan will again be taking part. His darkest fears about Trump and the mortal threat he poses to the constitution have been realised, he says. But he retains faith in America and finds hope in Joe Biden, the Democratic presumptive nominee, who understands what it is to endure the death of a child.
The president of the United States is a father figure, who must be compassionate to the suffering and pains of the nation
“Losing a family member creates a hole in the parents’ and family’s hearts which never fills,” the 70-year-old lawyer told the Guardian in a phone interview from his home in Charlottesville, Virginia, as he recalled he and his wife, Ghazala, meeting the former vice-president. “We could see that he could feel the hole in our heart and we could feel the hole in his heart, and that connection has been everlasting.
“The president of the United States is a father figure, a figure that must be compassionate to the suffering and pains of the nation. Joe Biden has that element. He has that character. To our disappointment, the current president does not. We had hoped that Trump would find somewhere along the way that element of character. Alas, that never happened, but Joe Biden has that element.”
Khizr Khan at home in Charlottesville, Virginia. Photograph: Jared Soares/The Guardian
One of 10 children, Khan grew up in a small village in Pakistan and met Ghazala while studying in Lahore. When he was 24 they left for Dubai, then eventually the US, inspired, like so many immigrants, by the American dream. He became a US citizen in 1986 and gained law degrees from Harvard University and the University of Missouri.
Their son, Humayun, 27, was killed protecting his men from suicide bombers in Iraq in 2004. He is buried at Arlington national cemetery, Virginia, and was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart. In 2016, with Trump running an overtly anti-immigrant campaign, the Khans, a gold star family who had valued their privacy, found themselves thrust into the national spotlight.
Khan says of the Democratic convention: “We were nervous as any ordinary person would be because, regardless of where you come from, you don’t get to speak at such events with such bright lights and such a crowd often, so you never develop 100% confidence. You’re always shaky and you’re always nervous in your heart and you try to manage that as much as you can.”
With Ghazala gripping the lectern tight lest she be overwhelmed by grief, Khan’s words stopped jaded party members in their tracks, some wiping away tears as he spoke.
He had a rhetorical question for Trump: “Have you ever been to Arlington cemetery? Go look at the graves of brave patriots who died defending the United States of America. You will see all faiths, genders and ethnicities. You have sacrificed nothing and no one.”
Trump delivered an angry retort, suggesting that Khan had “no right” to criticise him, claiming that he too has made “a lot of sacrifices” and asking why Ghazala had stood silent beside her husband. “She had nothing to say,” Trump said. “Maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say.” It was a preview of all the bullying to come.
Looking back, Khan says: “Donald Trump wasn’t aware of what this mother is going through at this time. Her son’s picture and the tribute to her son has been paid and he could have simply looked the other way, but that is proof of the calibre of the person. This person was unfit, remained unfit. We had hoped that the office of the presidency would emerge him from that pettiness, from that small-mindedness. But he has not.”
The Khans refused to be cowed, giving a series of media interviews. Yet despite widespread condemnation by military veterans and others, Trump went on to win a stunning upset over Hillary Clinton. The Khans received hate mail and were targeted by conservative media. Then came a call from outgoing Vice-President Biden, inviting them to his home in Washington in December 2016.
We felt so heartened by his expression. It’s only military parents that know what it takes to send a loved one in harm’s way
“He recognised us as we entered the residence and he came forward, escorted us to the back office,” Khan recounts. “He introduced his entire family that was in the pictures on the mantle of the fireplace in the back office, with me and Ghazala standing next to him and him pointing out who everybody was. We were just so touched by that gesture of kindness and affection and empathy.”
When Biden showed a photo of his son Beau, an Iraq war veteran who died from brain cancer in 2015 at the age of 46, the Khans felt a connection. “We felt so heartened by his expression. It’s only military parents and families that know what it takes to send a loved one in harm’s way. He was in full recognition and realisation of that aspect of our life.
“Then he did something that even today remains remains really heartening to us. He placed one hand on my shoulder, the other hand on Ghazala’s shoulder. In a huddle form, he said to us, ‘Folks, I am your family. If you are ever worried about anything, reach out, I stand with you, don’t worry, be strong and we will deal with this all together.’ Ghazala and I looked at each other and literally we felt as if a burden had been lifted from our shoulders.
Khizr Khan meets with volunteers for Joe Biden during the Iowa caucus campaign in December 2019. Photograph: Joseph Cress/AP
“That is the character of Joe Biden. He wasn’t a candidate. He wasn’t running for office. He had completed eight years as vice-president successfully but that is the character, that is the person. As a military parent he has amazing empathy, amazing compassion and respect.”
When Biden asked for the Khans’ support in the 2020 Democratic primary, he continues, “we had no hesitation at all to say yes, we stand with you, we have your back. That is what, to us, America needs: an empathetic, a decent, a passionate caring human being like Joe Biden. That is why we support him.”
In Khan’s view, Trump embodies the opposite of these qualities as his home city, Charlottesville, discovered three years ago this week. A march by white supremacists and Ku Klux Klan members brandishing shields, clubs and guns led to violent clashes and the death of counter-protester Heather Heyer.
Khan says: “As I went to pick up some books, I saw the traffic was blocked and there was a procession passing and, very much concerned about my safety, I saw people were standing outside their cars and I sat in because of the concern for being recognised. I kind of slumped into the seat and there was no way that I could take a U-turn because the traffic was totally blocked.
“So I had rolled the window down to hear what was going on and I heard the chants: totally un-American vulgarities were being shouted. I just slumped and was worried about my wellbeing and hoping and praying that this moment shall pass. And of course, to my horror, a young woman was killed.”
Trump infamously claimed that there were “very fine people” on both sides of the demonstration. Khan comments: “Donald Trump declared support for the white supremacists and we were disappointed. All my beloved city wanted was peace and quiet and back to normalcy but it was a horrifying experience.
Among the Republicans – I call them mute Republicans – I still have hope that they have a little ray of patriotism
“Time after time after time he has proven to not represent what makes America great and prosperous, and that is diversity – diversity of people, diversity of values, and he has continued to pursue an agenda that has never been good for America. Divisiveness weakens us. Racism weakens us.
“He has continued to divide by his rhetoric, by his politics, because he sees that is the only way left for him to continue to speak against immigrants, against minorities, against non-whites, and that is not what has made America a beacon of hope in the rest of the world.”
A year after Charlottesville came another shocking chapter in the Trump presidency: a zero-tolerance policy that prosecuted undocumented immigrants at the US-Mexico border, separating thousands of children from their parents. It was denounced by watchdogs as a gross violation of human rights.
Khan took it hard. “I can never forget it, it, still burdens my soul when I think of those children in cages. I have grandchildren of those ages and I see their faces in the faces of those separated from their family and the small children in the cages. I cannot forget that this could have ever happened in a country like United States, which is a nation of immigrants, and how horrific that policy of Trump had been and remains in force.”
Khizr Khan pauses at the grave of his son Capt Humayun Khan in Arlington national cemetery. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images
Khan believes that Trump’s defeat by Biden in November is imperative. “America cannot have four more years of this mentality that continues to divide us. It’s selfish and self-centred so that anything and everything is from what benefits him personally.”
Some observers worry that Trump is seeking to exploit the coronavirus pandemic by discrediting mail-in balloting, sabotaging the post office and disenfranchising millions of voters. If the result goes against him, will he claim the election was rigged and effectively barricade himself inside the White House?
“I do worry about that,” Khan admits. “Trump has the tendency of being an authoritarian and may damage the American fabric, American democracy permanently because that is what our adversaries and his biggest benefactor, Russia, wants. But among the Republicans – I call them mute Republicans – I still have hope that they have a little ray of patriotism and, for the country, they will stand up and tell Trump to move forward.”
As the Cassandra of the 2016 convention, Khan takes no pleasure in having his prophecies vindicated. But it was also a catalyst for him: he got to work, buoyed by the immigrant’s idealism, patriotism and faith in the American experiment. He has now carried out 280 speaking engagements in America and beyond and will address – virtually – the Veterans and Military Families Council at the Democratic convention on Tuesday.
“I feel comfortable speaking about our rule of law, about the human dignity that is enshrined in our constitution, and my experience as an immigrant coming from a country that had been ruled by the dictators, by authoritarians, to a country where the Bill of Rights is mine as a human being.
“I remember the experience of becoming a citizen. I paused at the door of the court before I entered to take the oath of citizenship and I reflected where I had come from and where I’m about to go. Very clearly that image and that sentiment is seared in my soul, in my heart. I could have never dreamed of having those dignities that are enshrined in our constitution. So I continue to speak.”


theguardian--2020-08-15--Trump speaks at press briefing as US sees number of daily Covid tests drop – as it happened

Trump is early to the podium , which must be a first .
He says there has been a “ steep decline ” in Covid-19 cases across the US over the last week .
The man who once suggested injecting disinfectant could be a good cure for Covid-19 then says Americans should use “ common sense ” treatments for the virus .
He insists on calling the Covid-19 the “ China virus ” as is his tiresome and racist custom .
He also says that the US economy is experiencing the “ fastest ” recovery in history .
He says @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” .
Economists have said that the US economy is far from back to normal and won ’ t be for some time .
“ Jobs for more-skilled workers in business/professional services are making little headway overall and are declining in computer services , management and advertising , ” Sophia Koropeckyj , economist at Moody ’ s Analytics , wrote in an investor note earlier this week .
“ These are the secondary effects of the stressed economy.
” ’ There was relatively good news on the jobs front .
The latest figures @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people filing claims after 20 weeks of claims above 1m .
Claims still remain historically high .
Before the pandemic , claims were averaging about 200,000 a week and the previous record for claims was 695,000 , set in 1982 .

15 Aug 2020 23.01 BST Trump wraps up his briefing with a number of pats on the back for himself about the great job he thinks he is doing.
15 Aug 2020 22.58 BST Trump is asked about a Newsweek article that called into question, falsely, Kamala Harris’s citizenship. Newsweek apologizes for op-ed that questioned Kamala Harris' citizenship Read more The article was reminiscent of the “birther” conspiracy theories around Barack Obama when he ran for president, and Trump helped circulate. Trump calls the article’s author a “brilliant lawyer” but says“I know nothing about [the article]”. He adds that Harris’s citizenship is not “something that bothers me” and he wont pursue the matter. Harris is a US citizen and was born in Oakland, California.
15 Aug 2020 22.53 BST Trump says “we’ve done it right” when it comes to Covid-19. He says the US, which has the most deaths in the world from Covid-19, is doing “very well” on Covid-19.
15 Aug 2020 22.51 BST Trump is asked if the postmaster general is purposely cutting postal services to hurt mail-in voting. Trump says DeJoy is “trying to streamline the postal service and make it great again”. Again, Trump has admitted admitted last week that he opposed aid for the USPS because he believed extra money would help the delivery of mail-in ballots.
15 Aug 2020 22.39 BST It’s not exactly clear what the point of this briefing is, apart from for Trump to tell America how great a job he thinks he is doing, while he trails Joe Biden in the polls. Talking of Biden, he says China “will own the United States” if Biden becomes president. He then says he wants college football to come back after several large conferences cancelled their seasons due to Covid-19. He then gives an in-depth analysis of the Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence. It’s true that Trevor Lawrence is very good at football, but quite how Trump’s scouting report helps the thousands of people who have had their lives devastated by Covid-19 is beyond me. He then takes a shot at the NBA, which has allowed players to kneel during the anthem. He then returns to Lawrence, who he reminds us is good at football (FACT CHECK: Lawrence is indeed good at football).
15 Aug 2020 22.34 BST Trump is early to the podium, which must be a first. He says there has been a “steep decline” in Covid-19 cases across the US over the last week. The man who once suggested injecting disinfectant could be a good cure for Covid-19 then says Americans should use “common sense” treatments for the virus. He insists on calling the Covid-19 the “China virus” as is his tiresome and racist custom. US unemployment claims dip below 1m for first time in 21 weeks Read more He also says that the US economy is experiencing the “fastest” recovery in history. He says retail spending is at an “all-time”. Economists have said that the US economy is far from back to normal and won’t be for some time. “Jobs for more-skilled workers in business/professional services are making little headway overall and are declining in computer services, management and advertising,” Sophia Koropeckyj, economist at Moody’s Analytics, wrote in an investor note earlier this week. “These are the secondary effects of the stressed economy.”’ There was relatively good news on the jobs front. The latest figures from the US labor department showed 963,000 people filing claims after 20 weeks of claims above 1m. Claims still remain historically high. Before the pandemic, claims were averaging about 200,000 a week and the previous record for claims was 695,000, set in 1982.
15 Aug 2020 22.27 BST Republican senator Lindsey Graham said the United Nations security council made a “major mistake” when it rejected a US request to extend an arms embargo against Iran on Friday. Only two countries - the US and the Dominican Republic - voted for the motion, while 11 abstained and two voted against. “The United Nations Security Council overwhelmingly rejected an extension of the Iranian arms embargo. This was a major mistake by the UN. It also makes a major conflict with Iran much more likely as they build up their military arsenal,” tweeted Graham on Saturday. Among those who abstained were traditional allies of the US such as the UK and France. Iran’s president said the result was a humiliation for the US. “I don’t remember the US preparing a resolution for months to strike a blow at the Islamic Republic of Iran, and it garners only one vote,” Hassan Rouhani said in a televised speech. “But the great success was that the US was defeated in this conspiracy with humiliation.”
Updated at 00.52 BST
15 Aug 2020 22.10 BST Donald Trump’s scheduled 5pm press conference from his Bedminster golf club has been moved to 5.30pm (or in roughly 20 minutes), per the man himself. It’s unclear whether it’s related to the delay, but the Secret Service tells NBC News it is investigating a small plane that violated the restricted airspace around Trump National. The plane landed as directed after US military aircraft were launched when it didn’t respond to radio.
Updated at 22.13 BST
15 Aug 2020 21.41 BST Nine University of Oklahoma football players tested positive for coronavirus after returning from a break in preseason camp. Head coach Lincoln Riley said he was “disappointed” by the news in a Zoom call with media on Saturday. “We did conduct a Covid test as planned with our players last night, got the results this morning we had nine players tested positive for Covid. We had a couple of other that have been isolated due to contract tracing,” Riley said. “Disappointed by the news. We’ve done such a tremendous job this entire time. You know when (you) give players time, there is risk in that. This isn’t the NBA, we don’t have a bubble. We all have to continue to work to do a better job by all accounts. We’re still confident in the plan that we have.” The entire program had returned only one positive result since the start of workouts on 1 July until Riley announced the one-week break on 8 August. The coach gave players the option of returning home, though most stayed on campus. An Oklahoma source told the Athletic that “the majority of those who tested positive were players that remained in the local area/community”. The Sooners are part of the Big 12, which is one of three major conferences that said this week they intend to move forward with fall football seasons.
15 Aug 2020 21.13 BST The Food and Drug Administration on Saturday granted emergency use authorization to Yale School of Public Health’s saliva test to detect Covid-19, after a trial on National Basketball Association players and staff. SalivaDirect, the fifth saliva test approved by the FDA for the disease, requires no swab or collection device and uses spit from people suspected of having the coronavirus, the agency said. FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn called the test “groundbreaking” in its efficiency and in being unaffected by crucial component shortages. SalivaDirect is seen as a cheap, simpler and less invasive testing method that requires no extraction of nucleic acid and can use several readily available reagents. The NBA has used the test in a program involving asymptomatic players, coaches and staff from various teams, after partnering with Yale in June, the school said in a separate statement. “We simplified the test so that it only costs a couple of dollars for reagents, and we expect that labs will only charge about $10 per sample,” Nathan Grubaugh, assistant professor at Yale School of Public Health said. The FDA said the test could lower the risk to healthcare workers from collecting samples as it is self-collected under the observation of a healthcare professional.