George Floyd: Trump claims Buffalo man pushed by police was 'Antifa provocateur' – live

Two law enforcement agencies acknowledged that police officers in Minneapolis cut some drivers’ tires as the George Floyd protests played out across the city.

Mother Jones previously shared videos showing police officers slashing tires in a K-Mart parking lot on May 30 and a highway overpass on May 31, both of which became police staging grounds near the protests.

The Star Tribune reports:

Images from S. Washington Avenue at Interstate 35W also showed officers with knives deflating the tires of two unoccupied cars with repeated jabs on May 31. Department of Public Safety spokesman Bruce Gordon confirmed that tires were cut in ‘a few locations.’

‘State Patrol troopers strategically deflated tires … in order to stop behaviors such as vehicles driving dangerously and at high speeds in and around protesters and law enforcement,’ Gordon said. …

Deputies from Anoka County followed state orders and joined the patrol and also cut the tires on vehicles on Washington Avenue, said Anoka County Sheriff’s Lt. Andy Knotz.

Knotz said the deputies got their directions from the state-led Multiagency Command Center [MACC], which was coordinating law enforcement during the protests[.]

Georgia is holding its primary today, three weeks after the election was originally supposed to take place. Governor Brian Kemp delayed the primary because of the coronavirus pandemic.

State officials had encouraged voters to vote by mail in order to limit the potential spread of the virus at polling places, and 943,000 absentee ballots had been returned as of Sunday.

However, Georgians attempting to vote in person are already running into issues, with Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms complaining of long lines and broken machines in her city.

Georgia attracted scrutiny for its handling of the state’s 2018 gubernatorial race, with Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams alleging voter suppression by her opponent, Kemp, who was then Georgia secretary of state.

Abrams and her allies have argued that she would have won the race, which she lost by 1.4 points, if the vote had not been suppressed.

Trump’s baseless claim that the 75-year-old Buffalo protester who was shoved to the ground by police was an Antifa plant appears to have been sparked by this segment from the far-right One America News Network.

The segment was done by OAN’s Kristian Rouz, who has previously written for the Kremlin-owned outlet Sputnik. The US intelligence community has concluded that Sputnik played a role in Russia’s election interference efforts during the 2016 presidential race.

Rouz did a report last month peddling the theory that the coronavirus pandemic was “a globalist conspiracy to establish sweeping population control” backed by George Soros.

Former Republican senator Jeff Flake accused Trump of “trafficking in conspiracy theories” after the president suggested a 75-year-old protester who was shoved to the ground by police might have been an Antifa plant.

George Conway, who is married to senior White House adviser Kellyanne Conway, responded to the president’s tweet by resharing a less-than-flattering anecdote about another time when Trump saw someone in physical pain.

Trump is now threatening to release dirt on former defense secretary James Mattis, who released a scathing statement last week criticizing the president’s response to the George Floyd protests.

“Mattis was our Country’s most overrated General,” Trump wrote in a tweet. “He talked a lot, but never ‘brought home the bacon.’ He was terrible! Someday I will tell the real story on him and others – both good and bad!”

In his statement last week, Mattis said Trump was further dividing the country as it wrestled with how to crack down on police brutality.

Directly addressing the forcible removal of peaceful protesters near the White House last week, Mattis said, “We know that we are better than the abuse of executive authority that we witnessed in Lafayette Park. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our constitution.”

This is Joan Greve in Washington, taking over for Martin Belam.

The Buffalo man who Trump claims was an Antifa plant is actually a “longtime peaceful protester and human rights advocate,” according to a statement from his lawyer released over the weekend.

The Washington Post reported that 75-year-old Martin Gugino, who was shoved to the ground by two police officers while he was protesting, is a member of PUSH Buffalo, which advocates for affordable housing, and the human rights organization Western New York Peace Center.

His lawyer said he was in serious but stable condition after the incident and is now “alert and oriented.” The two officers who shoved him have been charged with assault.

Georgia is holding a combined state and presidential primary today, after votes earlier in the year were postponed due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Voting doesn’t seem to have got off to a great start, with reports of long lines and broken voting machines. Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, who was talking only yesterday about her fears for her children’s safety with the police, has been tweeting urging people to stick with the voting process.

The row over Arkansas senator Tom Cotton’s New York Times op-ed column has claimed a high profile casualty at the paper in the form of James Bennet’s resignation.

But that’s certainly not the last we will hear about the matter – or Cotton. Arwa Mahdawi has written about him for us today.

Cotton’s moment in the spotlight has passed – but he will almost certainly be back there soon. Despite having the charisma of a soggy bag of lettuce, the senator is hugely powerful: Cotton has influenced many of Trump’s decisions, including cuts to legal immigration and the banning of commercial flights between the US and China during the early days of Covid-19. He is also the guy who told Trump it would be a great idea to buy Greenland. When not urging the acquisition of the world’s largest island, Cotton can often be found fanning the flames of racism and xenophobia. He has repeatedly used the phrases “China virus” and “Wuhan virus”…he is a dangerous man with dangerous ambitions. Indeed, a number of experts believe he is angling to be the heir to Trumpism.

You can read Arwa Mahdawi’s full piece here: Think Trump is bad? President Tom Cotton would be even more terrifying

There’s no denying the international impact that the #BlackLivesMatter movement has been having on urban landscapes across the world. As well as Confederate monuments being taken down in the US, and the toppling by protesters of a statue of a slave-trader in Bristol, England, this morning has seen the removal of a statue of King Leopold II in Antwerp, Belgium.

Leopold II ruled viciously over the Congo Free State as a personal fiefdom between 1885 and 1908, and millions perished under his rule. His monuments in Belgium have been a target for anti-racism protesters in the last fortnight.

Houston’s police chief Art Acevedo has been on television this morning, talking about George Floyd’s funeral, which will take place later today. He talked about how the police in Houston has been supporting Floyd’s family since his death, and said:

Our message to them is, first we extended our condolences, we wanted them to to know that we feel their pain, but the most important thing is, that this is different. The nation has united against police misconduct, and some of the other social, economic challenges in this country. [Floyd’s] death will not be in vain. I really believe we’re at a watershed moment, and I am very hopeful that we’re going to see some, some real change, systemic change, in our country.

He also discussed proposals for police reform and the “Defund the police” movement. You can watch the full clip here:

Lawrence Douglas has written for us today about something that may have escaped your attention with all the news that has been around in the last few days – Trump’s former personal lawyer, John Dowd, describing citizens engaging in peaceable protest as “terrorists”.

Trump’s presidency has largely inured us to overheated rhetoric. We’ve grown accustomed to Trump and his allies vilifying journalists as “enemies of the people” or characterizing officials trying to hold him to account as treasonous criminals. All the same, Dowd’s brandishing of the term “terrorist” represents a frightening rhetorical escalation at a perilous time in the life of our nation.

Douglas goes on to argue this key point about the use of the word:

In labeling protesters as terrorists, Dowd engages in something far more ominous and shocking than mere rhetorical overkill. He is effectively erasing the difference between Americans peaceably exercising their constitutional rights and Isis insurgents laying down roadside explosives.

You can read the piece in full here: In case you missed it, Trump’s former lawyer compared protesters to terrorists

Away from the #BlackLivesMatter protests and coronavirus outbreak, there is still some business as usual politics going on in DC. This morning the Senate permanent subcommittee on Investigations has released a bipartisan report which states that three Chinese telecoms firms were allowed to operate in the US without appropriate oversight for nearly two decades.

The report calls on the Federal Communications Commission to conduct a full review of China Telecom Americas, China Unicom Americas and ComNet USA – claiming that there has not been an adequate assessment of what national security threats they might pose.

Republican Ohio Senator Rob Portman is quoted by The Hill as saying: “The Chinese Communist Party uses its state-owned enterprises to further its cyber and economic espionage efforts against the United States, and they’ve been exploiting our telecommunications networks for nearly two decades while the federal government historically put in little effort to stop it.”

You can read the full Senate report here.

The killing of George Floyd sparked a wave of protest that has put police reform back in the spotlight – but much of the moderate action being proposed doesn’t meet activists more radical aims for changing the way law and order is enforced in the US.

My colleagues Victoria Bekiempis and Adam Gabbatt have been having a look at how different the approaches of some cities and states have been to reform, with an overview of the measures being enacted not just in New York City, but in Minneapolis, Los Angeles and Portland among others.

You can read their report here: New York police budget to be cut as debate rages over reforms

The Houston Chronicle has some more details of what is expected at George Floyd’s funeral today. He will be laid to rest at Houston Memorial Gardens in Pearland, where his mother is buried.

Police will escort Floyd’s body into Pearland following a private funeral at the Fountain of Praise Church, and the procession will finish with Floyd’s body carried in a horse-drawn carriage.

The public are allowed to view the procession, but they are not allowed into the services. There are expected to be road closures to ease the procession, and mourners are being encouraged to wear face-coverings and to practice social distancing.

One thing that will have been in the back of many people’s minds when they were out standing for the #BlackLivesMatter movement in the last fortnight – with coronavirus around, how much of a risk is this?

An Axios-Ipsos survey has tried to measure people’s attitudes. It says that one in ten of the people surveyed knew “someone in their immediate family or close circle of friends who attended an in-person protest or demonstration in the last week”.

That in itself is an incredible statistic speaking to sheer volume of people who have engaged in the protests.

Perhaps not surprisingly, younger people (20%), people who describe themselves as Democrats (16%), and residents of urban areas (14%) are more likely to have told the survey that they knew someone who attended a demonstration.

And there is a perceived widespread health concern – almost all respondents (86%) see going to protests or demonstrations to be a large or moderate risk, and half of those surveyed say they are extremely or very concerned about a spike in coronavirus cases as a result of these protests.

There’s more detail here: One in ten Americans have a protest attendee in their family or close friends

Hi, and welcome to our US politics and protest live blog, on the day of George Floyd’s funeral. Thousands have attended his memorials in the last few days, and today there will be a final family ceremony in Houston to say farewell to the 46 year old whose death at the hands of the police on 25 May has sparked a global wave of grief and protest.

Here are some of the key stories and developments from yesterday and overnight:

• Congressional Democrats unveiled their police reform bill. It would ban chokeholds but many criminal justice activists have said reforms do not go far enough
• Economists say the US entered a recession in February as businesses started to close down in response to coronavirus
• New Coronavirus cases are accelerating again in more than a dozen US states

The president’s diary is empty for today, save a meeting with secretary of state Mike Pompeo this afternoon. His diary wasn’t empty yesterday though. In a bit of symbolism that couldn’t be stronger, Joe Biden met privately with members of George Floyd’s family in Houston. Donald Trump met with police.

I’m Martin Belam, and I’ll be live blogging more reaction to the Black Lives Matter movement protests and US political developments for a couple of hours until my colleagues in New York pick up the baton. You can email me on martin.belam@theguardian.com