Trump seems to threaten protesters who attend his rally in Tulsa – live updates

Donald Trump told Politico in a new interview that the biggest threat to his re-election prospects was the well-funded effort to expand mail-in voting in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump and his campaign are arguing, baselessly, that the practice of voting by mail is rife with fraud and benefits Democrats. Republicans have launched a massive legal battle to challenge states efforts to expand access to the ballot in November. Millions of voters could be disenfranchised if they stay home on Election Day due to the risks of contracting the coronavirus at the polls.

“My biggest risk is that we don’t win lawsuits,” Trump told Politico. “We have many lawsuits going all over. And if we don’t win those lawsuits, I think — I think it puts the election at risk.”

As he did in 2016, Trump refused to directly answer a question about whether he would accept the outcome of the election no matter the result.

Trump was asked a two-part question during the interview: Would a substantial amount of mail-in voting — which is widely expected because of coronavirus — cause him to question the legitimacy of the election? And would he accept the results no matter what?

“Well, you can never answer the second question, right? Because Hillary kept talking about she’s going to accept, and they never accepted it. You know. She lost too. She lost good.’ Clinton conceded the day after the 2016 election.”

Clinton conceded to Trump by phone in the pre-dawn hours of November 9th, after it became clear he had won the election. She gave a concession speech in New York later that morning. He won the Electoral College while she won the popular vote.

Read the full story here.

The White House has just sent notice that press secretary Kayleigh McEnany will hold a previously unscheduled press briefing today at 1pm EST.

Trump has been very active this morning, lashing out at Democrats, boasting about his high approval ratings among Republicans and vowing to try again to end DACA, the Obama-era program shielding 650,000 young immigrants from deportation.

The Supreme Court on Thursday blocked Trump from cancelling DACA, which stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court’s four liberal justices to make up the majority in a 5-4 decision that determined the administration had improperly ended the program in 2017.

In a pair of Tweets on Friday, Trump contended that the court ruling wasn’t a blow to his efforts to suspend the program and said his administration would submit “enhanced papers” and try again.

This is a rosier assessment of the ruling than he held yesterday, when Trump wondered whether the Supreme Court didn’t like him after back-to-back rulings on gay rights and immigration were viewed as victories for progressives.

The Associated Press reports that family and friends are gathering to commemorate the life of a federal law enforcement officer who was shot while guarding a US courthouse in Oakland during the protests against police brutality.

Chad Wolf, acting chief of Homeland Security, will travel from Washington to honor the officer, 53-year-old David Patrick Underwood, who he called “a fallen hero who made the ultimate sacrifice.”

More from the AP:

Underwood was killed on “May 29 while guarding the Ronald V Dellums Federal Building in Oakland as a large demonstration was underway nearby over the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. A colleague was also shot and wounded. Authorities say an airman with ties to the so-called boogaloo right-wing extremist movement has been charged in the killing. … Federal authorities say the shooter used the protest as cover for the crime. Authorities say that Underwood, who is African American, was targeted because he wore a uniform.

Last week, the FBI announced murder charges against Air Force Staff Sgt. Steve Carrillo. Authorities say Carrillo used the same homemade AR-15-style rifle eight days later to kill of a Santa Cruz deputy in a hail of gunfire that wounded four other officers. Carrillo faces separate state charges for the June 6 fatal shooting of Santa Cruz County sheriff’s Sgt. Damon Gutzwiller.

Authorities allege that Carrillo, 32, had ties to the far-right, anti-government “boogaloo” movement and had hatched a plan to target federal law enforcement officials during the Oakland protest.

Senator Amy Klobuchar, a one-time Democratic rival turned vice presidential contender, has taken herself out of contention to be Joe Biden’s running mate.

The move comes after mounting pressure from black activists, who publicly urged Biden not to nominate Klobuchar, a former prosecutor from the Minnesota county where George Floyd was killed by police.

“I think this is a moment to put a woman of color on that ticket,” Klobuchar said on MSNBC Thursday night. “If you want to heal this nation right now, my party, yes, but our nation this is sure a hell of a way to do it.”

The Midwestern senator had long been a seen as a top contender, but her tough-on-crime record became even more of a liability in the wake of widespread protests against police brutality and systemic racism.

She was one of several women under consideration for the VP slot. Klobuchar’s exit, and her call for Biden to choose a woman of color, was seen as a blow to the prospects of Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, the progressive favorite.

Read more from my colleague Maanvi Singh:

The writers’ organisation Pen America has filed an amicus brief opposing the lawsuit brought by the Trump organisation in an attempt to stop the publication of a book by John Bolton, the president’s third national security adviser.

“Pen America supports the first amendment right of public employees to produce works that are critical of the government, and of readers to receive their unique perspective unfettered by government censorship,” the brief said.

Excerpts of Bolton’s book, The Room Where It Happened, have been widely published in the US media since the Department of Justice filed its suit in a federal court in Washington DC.

The excerpts have proved tremendously embarrassing to Trump, detailing what Bolton says is impeachable conduct, for example in asking China to help secure his re-election, and in depicting a president ignorant of basic geopolitical realities.

Bolton told ABC News on Thursday Trump is not “fit for office” and does not have “the competence to carry out the job”. An extensive interview is due to run on ABC on Sunday night. The book is due in stores on Tuesday, 23 June.

Trump has abused Bolton as a “wacko” who nobody liked, claiming his claims are untrue but also that his book should be suppressed as it betrays classified information.

Publisher Simon & Schuster and lawyers for Bolton have countered that all classified information was removed from the book in co-ordination with the administration. Some such information has since been leaked.

The Pen brief notes the vetting process and says: “It is not difficult to see what is going on. The president is employing the apparatus of the federal government to punish his political enemies, thwart freedom of speech, and pursue his political interests in an election year.”

In Washington, district cour judge Royce Lamberth will hear the DoJ’s case at 1pm today.

In a statement, Nora Benavidez, Pen America’s director of US free expression programmes, said: “A free society cannot abide the government silencing certain perspectives before they are even uttered; such censorship runs contrary to the very notion of what our first amendment was written to guard against.

“Any result other than dismissal in this case will be an affront to Bolton’s first amendment right to speak and to all of our rights as members of the public and as readers to learn about his views.

“We know the president has a penchant for lobbing attacks at those whose commentary he wants to suppress. It’s why we sued President Trump in 2018, as he has engaged in an unconstitutional pattern of targeting reporters whose coverage he dislikes. We’ll continue to fight these censorship tactics for our writer Members and their readers.”

Bolton also details comments by Trump in which the president said some reporters should be imprisoned or executed.

Most observers do not expect the administration to successfully block Bolton’s book. The attorney Ted Boutros, who worked on the brief on a pro bono basis, said: “The supreme court has never upheld a prior restraint on speech about matters of public concern, nor should the district court do so in this case.”

Trump books have become big business, ever since the publication of Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury in January 2018. Then, after the Guardian published excerpts, the president threatened to go to court to prevent publication. Publisher Henry Holt & Co responded by rushing the book to stores.

Donald Trump’s rally in Tulsa on Saturday continues to cause huge controversy, not just because it falls so close to the Juneteenth holiday in a city where the worst race massacre in US history happened 99 years ago.

Tulsa has confirmed the extension of a curfew, as worries mount over protests against the president.

And on Thursday, the venue for the rally added its voice to a growing chorus of concern over the fact that Trump is coming to town to stage a large indoor event as Covid-19 cases in Tulsa and Oklahoma as a whole continue to rise steeply.

The Trump campaign has said masks and hand sanitisers will be supplied and social distancing encouraged (an interesting concept in a full arena) but all such measures will be voluntary. Attendees also have to sign a waiver accepting that the campaign will not be responsible should they contract the coronavirus.

In a statement on Thursday, managers at the 19,000-capacity BOK Center (Trump has claimed more than a million people want to attend) asked for a detailed plan from the campaign about how it proposes to guard against the spread of Covid-19. They also said facility staff would be tested and the venue “cleaned and disinfected repeatedly throughout the event, with special emphasis on high-touch areas”.

Trump campaign director of strategic communications Marc Lotter, meanwhile, told the Guardian he would encourage those in “high-risk categories” to watch the rally on television.

“I personally would encourage anyone who might find themselves to be in one of the high-risk categories and encourage them not to come,” Lotter said. “Watch it on television, protect yourself, protect your family if someone in your direct family has those kinds of high-risk factors.”

Also, as the Washington Post reports, like former national security adviser John Bolton, an attempt to stop the rally is headed for the state supreme court:

A number of Tulsa residents and business owners, alarmed by the prospect of a large-scale outbreak of coronavirus if the rally proceeds, have sued the venue manager attempting to block the event unless it is held in accordance with social distancing guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A Tulsa county judge on Tuesday denied the request for a temporary injunction, but the decision was appealed to the Oklahoma supreme court.

A new ABC News/Ipsos poll neatly illustrates national divides over race issues and one issue in particular, the need – or not – to rename US military bases named for Confederate generals, from Fort Bragg in North Carolina to Fort Benning in Georgia and on.

The Confederacy, remember, was composed of states which seceded from the United States and fought a brutal four-year civil war, that they might maintain African American slavery. They lost, but their leaders have been given a lasting place in US culture nonetheless.

According to the ABC poll, overall, 56% of Americans are opposed to renaming the bases (like Donald Trump, but not necessarily the Republican-held Senate). Two-thirds of African Americans support renaming, as do 71% of Democrats and 55% of people aged between 18 and 29. Older Americans, Republicans and independents are strongly against renaming.

The poll also considered the issue of reparations, payments to African Americans in compensation for the lasting effects of slavery. Oddly enough, the poll finds that:

Black Americans (72%) are more than five times as likely to back reparations than whites (14%) and over twice as likely than Hispanics (34%).

In Decatur, north-east of Atlanta last night, a Confederate monument which had stood since 1908 came down amid cheers from onlooking protesters.

The Associated Press reports:

The stone obelisk was lifted from its base with straps amid jeers and chants of “Just drop it!” from onlookers, who were kept a safe distance by sheriff’s deputies.

DeKalb County spent several years trying to rid itself of the Lost Cause monument erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1908. A marker added last September says the monument was erected to “glorify the ‘lost cause’ of the Confederacy” and has “bolstered white supremacy and faulty history.”

Mawuli Davis, a driving force behind the lobbying effort to remove the monument, watched with others as the obelisk was slowly lowered onto its side and slid to a waiting flatbed truck. Davis’ organization, the Beacon Hill Black Alliance for Human Rights, held a demonstration in front of the monument just a day earlier, pleading for its removal.

“This feels great. This is a people’s victory. All of our young people from Decatur High School that made this happen. All of these organizers, everybody came together,” Davis said. “This is it. This is a victory for this country. This is an example of what can happen when people work together.”

That the statue dates from 1908, 43 years after the civil war ended with the defeat of the slave power, should not be a surprise. As has been documented extensively, most statues to the Confederacy went up during periods of racial repression: the Jim Crow years, the civil rights period and so forth. Here’s a story about a similar statue removal in Kentucky last week: