Pelosi dismisses postmaster general's delay to USPS changes as 'insufficient' – as it happened

Here’s more analysis of the Senate report that lays bare the Trump campaign’s links to Russia, from the Guardian’s Luke Harding and Julian Borger:

The report by the Senate intelligence committee provides a treasure trove of new details about Donald Trump’s relationship with Moscow, and says that a Russian national who worked closely with Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016 was a career intelligence officer.

The bipartisan report runs to nearly 1,000 pages and goes further than last year’s investigation into Russian election interference by special prosecutor Robert Mueller. It lays out a stunning web of contacts between Trump, his top election aides and Russian government officials, in the months leading up to the 2016 election.

The Senate panel identifies Konstantin Kilimnik as a Russian intelligence officer employed by the GRU, the military intelligence agency behind the 2018 poisoning of the Russian double agent Sergei Skripal. It cites evidence – some of it redacted – linking Kilimnik to the GRU’s hacking and dumping of Democratic party emails.

Kilimnik worked for over a decade in Ukraine with Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager. In 2016 Manafort met with Kilimnik, discussed how Trump might beat Hillary Clinton, and gave the Russian spy internal polling data. The committee said it couldn’t “reliably determine” why Manafort handed over this information, or what exactly Kilimnik did with it.

It describes Manafort’s willingness to pass on confidential material to alleged Moscow agents as a “grave counterintelligence threat”. The report dubs Kilimnik part of “a cadre of individuals ostensibly operating outside of the Russian government but who nonetheless implement Kremlin-directed influence operations”. It adds that key oligarchs including Oleg Deripaska fund these operations, together with the Kremlin.

The investigation found that Kilimnik tweets under the pseudonym Petro Baranenko (@PBaranenko). The account regularly propagates Moscow’s line on international issues, such as the conflict in Ukraine and the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17.

The fact that a Republican-controlled Senate panel established a direct connection between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence makes it harder for Trump and his supporters to allege that the investigation into possible collusion was a “witch-hunt” or “hoax” as the president has repeatedly claimed, in the remaining three months before the election.

Cindy McCain has promoted a clip of a video — which is set to air at the Democratic National Convention tonight — in which she discusses her late husband John McCain’s friendship with Joe Biden.

John McCain ran against Barack Obama and Biden in the 2008 elections.

The Democratic National Committee removed a portion of its official platform seeking to end subsidies for fossil fuel companies, even though Joe Biden and Kamala Harris campaigned on the promise that they would stop such subsidies, HuffPost reports.

From HuffPost:

On July 27, officials added an amendment to the Manager’s Mark, a ledger of party demands voted on as one omnibus package, stating: “Democrats support eliminating tax breaks and subsidies for fossil fuels, and will fight to defend and extend tax incentives for energy efficiency and clean energy.”

The amendment was approved. But the statement ― which reflects pledges presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, each made on the campaign trail ― disappeared from the final draft of the party platform circulated Monday.

In an emailed statement, a DNC spokesperson said the amendment was “incorrectly included in the Manager’s Mark” and taken out “after the error was discovered.”

Activists accused the DNC of retroactively removing the amendment from the final draft of the platform.

Earlier, my colleague Emily Holden reviewed the Biden climate plan. Read her assessment here:

Here’s a view from the Trump campaign event in Yuma, Arizona:

Speaking in Arizona, Trump has revived his racist, xenophobic rhetoric that baselessly casts immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers as criminals.

He also has falsely asserted that the media no longer discusses the border wall. Here is a selection of recent reporting on the border wall:

• Voice of San Diego: “Kumeyaay Band Sues to Stop Border Wall Construction”
• National Geographic: “Sacred Arizona spring drying up as border wall construction continues”
• The Guardian: “Officials ignored warnings about Trump wall threat to endangered species”
• Washington Post: “There’s new wall on 194 miles of the border. Sixteen miles didn’t have a barrier before”

Cindy McCain will be featured in a video that’s set to air during tonight’s Democratic National Convention, according to the AP. She is one oof several Republicans who are participating in the DNC.

From the AP:

Cindy McCain is not expected to offer an explicit endorsement, but her involvement in the video is her biggest public show of support yet for Biden’s candidacy. McCain was the 2008 Republican presidential nominee against Democrat Barack Obama, who won the election with Biden as his vice presidential running mate.

Both Cindy McCain and her daughter Meghan have been outspoken critics of President Donald Trump, and the family is longtime friends with the Bidens. Trump targeted John McCain personally in 2015, saying the former prisoner of war wasn’t a hero “because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” McCain later angered Trump with his dramatic thumbs-down vote against repealing President Barack Obama’s health care law.

When McCain died on a Saturday in 2018, the Trump administration lowered the American flag over the White House to half-staff but then raised it by Monday. After public outcry, the White House flags were again lowered. Trump wasn’t invite to McCain’s funeral.

Donald Trump is speaking at a campaign event in Arizona. According to the press pool, about five hundred people are in attendance, with no social distancing. Many of the supporters are reportedly wearing MAGA face masks.

Arizona governor Doug Ducey is among those who have appeared alongside Trump. As part of yesterday’s Democratic National Convention programming, Kristin Urquiza — who was mourning her father who died of Covid-19, delivered a stinging rebuke of Ducey and Trump.

“My dad was a healthy 65-year-old,” Urquiza said. “His only pre-existing condition was trusting Donald Trump, and for that, he paid with his life.”

Earlier this year, Urquiza also wrote an obituary for her father in which blamed his death on the “carelessness of the politicians who continue to jeopardize the health of brown bodies through a clear lack of leadership, refusal to acknowledge the severity of this crisis, and inability and unwillingness to give clear and decisive direction on how to minimize risk”.

Notre Dame University has canceled in-person classes for two weeks after starting the semester on 10 August. Students will be allowed to stay on campus, but activities will be limited and large gatherings barred.

Yesterday, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill also decided to switch to remote learning after at least 130 students tested positive for coronavirus.

Sam Levine reports:

In an unprecedented move, Louisiana’s top election official wants to require a positive Covid-19 test if a voter wants to vote absentee over concerns about the virus. This comes amid a lack of consistent access to testing in the state.

Louisiana is one of seven states that will still require an excuse to vote by mail this year, only allowing absentee voting if a voter is aged 65 or older or meets certain other conditions such as temporary absence from their county or hospitalization.

For its elections in July and August, Louisiana eased those restrictions for voters at risk of developing complications from Covid-19 or who had potential exposure to the virus. But under secretary of state Kyle Ardoin’s proposal for the state’s November and December elections released Monday, those accommodations won’t apply. Instead, a voter would need to test positive for Covid-19 between the end of early voting and election day, currently a week-long period to use the hospitalization excuse to request a mail-in ballot.

The proposal from Ardoin, a Republican, comes as Louisiana has seen lags in testing, meaning a voter could get tested and not have their results in time to be able to request a mail-in ballot. Louisiana has seen 138,485 cases of Covid-19 and 4,526 deaths so far. In April, African Americans accounted for 70% of Covid-19 deaths in the state.

Trump has arrived in Yuma, Arizona, for his campaign event on immigration and border security.