George Floyd: fires burn near White House as US-wide protests rage – live

George Floyd’s killing has led to a global pouring of outrage and solidarity with protesters in the US. That has included four solidarity rallies in New Zealand, a large demonstration in London’s Trafalgar Square and protests in Berlin and Copenhagen. Demands for justice also featured in this weekend’s Bundesliga, the German football championship. Floyd’s visage also now features on a part of the former Berlin Wall, along with some of his last words, “I can’t breathe”.

We’ve pulled those threads together into this story, just published:

A striking detail from tonight’s coverage has been reports that as protesters surged towards the White House on Friday night, US president Donald Trump, his wife Melania and son Barron briefly retreated to the Presidential Emergency Operations Centre – a fortified bunker-like structure beneath the residence.

The last time a US head of state was publicly known to have used the bunker was on 11 September, 2001, where senior members of the George W Bush administration spent that day after their west wing offices were evacuated. There are no other public reports of presidents needing to use the area since – the New York Times, which first reported this detail, says “it has not been used much, if at all” since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. But it notes the area has since been strengthened to withstand the impact of a passenger jet.

The White House has declined to comment on the reports.

My colleague Julian Borger in Washington DC has just filed this update on a tense evening the capital.

Multiple fires broke out near the White House late on Sunday evening, as angry protesters gathered in Washington DC for the third night in a row following the death of George Floyd.

Sunday evening’s protests in front of the White House started relatively cheerfully, with a crowd of a few thousand in Lafayette park. Earlier in the day, demonstrators had marched through the city’s downtown, chanting “George Floyd! Say his name!” and “No Justice! No Peace!”

But as the 11 pm curfew approached, tensions between protesters and police mounted. Demonstrators faced off against a line of a few hundred police supported by national guardsmen. The lights illuminating the north side of the White House, which had provided the backdrop to the face off between protesters and police, were turned off. In normal times, they are only ever turned off when a president dies.

Inside it was reported that Donald Trump, his wife, Melania and son Barron, had been taken down to the White House bunker at the height of the protests and then brought back up as the crowds dispersed.

When 11pm came, the police line in front of the White House advanced with tear gas rounds across Lafayette park clearing out the protesters, with intermittent sprints.

Read the full story here:

Many of the reporters on the ground are heading for some rest as the unrest quietens down for now.

It’s the middle of the night in the US, where cities continue to reel under protest and violence and where Black Lives Matter leaders say president Donald Trump, has failed his country. This report from David Smith in Washington:

For three years, the first president elected without political or military experience rode his luck and skirted past disaster. In the fourth year, the fates demanded payback.

Not even Trump’s harshest critics can blame him for a virus believed to have come from a market in the Chinese city of Wuhan, nor for an attendant economic collapse, nor for four centuries of slavery, segregation, police brutality and racial injustice.

But they can, and do, point to how he made a bad situation so much worse. The story of Trump’s presidency was arguably always leading to this moment, with its toxic mix of weak moral leadership, racial divisiveness, crass and vulgar rhetoric and an erosion of norms, institutions and trust in traditional information sources. Taken together, these ingredients created a tinderbox poised to explode when crises came.

Read Smith’s full report here.

How US newspapers have covered the George Floyd protests

What does American coverage of the George Floyd protests look like to people in the rest of the world?

My Guardian colleague Alison Rourke looks at the front pages of US newspapers over the past few days:

Austin, Texas: Police firing ‘beanbag rounds’ at protesters

ProPublica reporter Jessica Huseman is covering protests in Austin tonight. She tweeted that she can see an officer firing beanbag rounds at protesters, and that he is “smiling.”

Earlier today, the Austin Police Association tweeted about why the city’s police were using beanbag rounds against protesters:

‘Major show of force’ outside police headquarters in Denver

Reporters on the scene in Denver, Colorado are describing a “major show of force” as more than a thousand protesters defied the city’s curfew and continued to march towards the city’s police headquarters.

Journalist Alex Burness of the Denver Post was hit with multiple nonlethal rounds despite screaming “press,” a New York Times reporter covering the protest with him tweeted.

Burness called it “definitely the most violent single moment I’ve covered over these four days” and a “Major show of force by cops outside Denver PD headquarters.”

“Denver feels like a rolling street battle right now,” another reporter on scene tweeted less than twenty minutes ago.