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    Donald Trump to be formally nominated for election as Republican convention gets underway – US politics live

    Trump and Pence to be formally nominated by RNC this morning
    Kellyanne Conway set to leave White House at end of month
    Wisconsin protests after video appears to show police shooting man
    446 deaths and 32,340 new cases of Covid-19 reported in US on Sunday
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    Donald Trump formally nominated on first day of Republican convention – watch live

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    Deputy secretary of state Stephen Biegun to travel to Moscow tomorrow to discuss crisis in Belarus

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    California wildfires death toll rises to at least seven

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    Pompeo reassures Netanyahu over US commitment to ensure Isreal retains military advantage in Middle East

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    Donald Trump launches 50 point 2nd term agenda called ‘Fighting for you!’

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    Former Republican members of congress to launch ‘Republicans for Biden’ on opening day of RNC

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    11.12am EDT11:12

    While the Republican National Convention holds a series of events today in Washington DC and Charlotte, North Carolina, let’s not forget about Jacksonville, Florida.
    When Covid-19 caused officials in Charlotte, North Carolina to institute social distancing requirements Trump balked, and began an effort to move the convention to Florida.
    But soon cases of Covid-19 began to balloon in Florida. The state has been one of the worst hit in the country. Eventually, Trump gave up his push to have a full-scale convention in the state, conceding it was “not the right time”.
    Well, now we have some evidence of how history repeats itself. Almost 100 years ago, Florida officials expressed “concern” and “regret” about lack of public health funding. A similar story has taken place over the last decade, as Florida slashed local public health funding under Republican leadership.
    Today, Florida has had more than 600,000 cases, more than 10,000 deaths, and testing is falling off even as positivity rates remain high at more than 13%, according to Johns Hopkins University.

    Hannah Recht
    (@hannah_recht)
    Almost 100 years ago, after the last pandemic, the Florida Department of Health wrote it needed more local public health workers. “It is a source of regret and a matter of grave concern to public health workers that the funds available are not sufficient.” https://t.co/62DLI2jGi0 pic.twitter.com/l9CSP0hVHC

    August 24, 2020

    10.56am EDT10:56

    DeJoy has taken today’s hearing as an opportunity to distance himself from recent controveries at the postal service. Here’s reporting from The Guardian’s voting rights reporter Sam Levine, who is following the hearings closely:

    Sam Levine
    (@srl)
    “While we have had temporary service declines, which should not have happened, we are fixing this,” DeJoy says

    August 24, 2020

    And as a short recap, here is some of Sam’s reporting from last week, when DeJoy appeared at a Senate hearing:

    America’s postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, conceded on Friday he had implemented recent changes that led to mail delays at the United States Postal Service (USPS) but said he would not reverse the decision to remove mail equipment ahead of the election.
    DeJoy, a major Republican donor without prior USPS experience, made his first appearance before Congress amid widespread scrutiny over the mail delays and his management of the agency since taking over in June.

    10.41am EDT10:41

    The House Oversight and Reform committee hearing on mail delays is now underway. Postmaster general Louis DeJoy is warning in prepared remarks that Americans should request a mail-in ballot at least 15 days in advance of election day, Nov. 3, and return it at least a week before the election.

    DeJoy said his remarks, “should in no way be misconstrued to imply that we lack confidence in our ability to deliver those ballots,” DeJoy told the House panel in prepared remarks obtained by The Associated Press. “We can, and will, handle the volume of Election Mail we receive.”
    The pre-election warning “has nothing to do with recent operational initiatives or concerns about delayed mail,” DeJoy said, and is merely intended to help ensure that ballots will be delivered on time and counted.
    “While we will do whatever we can to deliver ballots even when they are mailed at the last second, it should also be obvious to fair-minded election officials that urging voters to mail back their ballot at least a week before the deadline is a simple and straightforward step to ensure that ballots are delivered on time and, most importantly, counted under state law,” he said. More

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    With a word of Tamil, Kamala Harris boosts her fanbase in India

    As a child wandering between the legs of the aunts, uncles and family friends who filled her grandparents’ apartment in Chennai, in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, a young Kamala Harris grew used to being addressed in Tamil.It was the main language spoken by her grandmother, who had only fragmented English, and over the years of Harris’s childhood trips from California to Chennai – which back then was called Madras – to visit her mother’s side of the family, she slowly learned to understand, if not speak, the mother tongue of her Indian relatives.Standing at the Democratic convention podium last week accepting her historic nomination for US vice-president, Harris made a passing but significant nod to this aspect of her heritage. She said her mother had “raised us to know and be proud of our Indian heritage”, adding: “Family is my uncles, my aunts and my chithis.” More

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    Biden indicates he could run for second term if he beats Trump in November

    Joe Biden, who will be the oldest US president ever inaugurated if he beats Donald Trump in November, has indicated he could run for a second term.Biden is 77 but he will be 78 on inauguration day in January. He is running against the current oldest president to take power, who was 70 in January 2017 and is now 74.Trump has faced questions about his own health and mental ability, but it hasn’t stopped him attacking his challenger on the same grounds.Asked about such attacks in an ABC interview scheduled for broadcast on Sunday night, Biden said: “Watch me. Mr President, watch me. Look at us both. Look at us both, what we say, what we do, what we control, what we know, what kind of shape we’re in.“I think it’s a legitimate question to ask anybody over 70 years old whether or not they’re fit and whether they’re ready. But I just, [the] only thing I can say to the American people, it’s a legitimate question to ask anybody. Watch me.”Biden has previously challenged Trump to a press-up competition and suggested he would have beaten him up in high school.ABC released clips of its interview with Biden and Kamala Harris, the 55-year-old California senator who is Biden’s running mate.Biden has said he sees himself as a transitional figure, leading many to predict he will serve only four years if elected. If he ran and won in 2024 he would be 82 on inauguration day. On handing over power, he would be 86.“We haven’t spent nearly enough time building the bench in the Democratic party,” Biden told ABC. “…So [what] I want to do is make sure when this is over, we have a new Senate, we won back statehouses, we’re in a position where we transition to a period of bringing people up to the visibility that they need to get to be able to lead nationally. And that’s about raising people up. And that’s what I’m about.”Asked if he was “leaving open the possibility you’ll serve eight years if elected”, Biden said: “Absolutely.”Also on ABC on Sunday, deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield told This Week Biden has not had the coronavirus and “has not been tested”. “Moving forward,” she said, “should he need to be tested, he would be.” She also said the campaign had “put in place incredibly strict protocols to ensure that everybody involved who is around Vice-President Biden, who’s around Senator Harris, is undergoing the appropriate testing”.In the joint interview, Biden was asked about how he would handle the pandemic in office.“I would shut it down,” he said, asked if he would close the country if necessary. “I would listen to the scientists.“I will be prepared to do whatever it takes to save lives because we cannot get the country moving until we control the virus. That is the fundamental flaw of this administration’s thinking to begin with. In order to keep the country running and moving and the economy growing, and people employed, you have to fix the virus, you have to deal with the virus.”Trump responded on Twitter, writing: “Despite biggest ever job gains and a V-shaped recovery, Joe Biden said, ‘I would shut it down’, referring to our country. He has no clue!”In fact the US economy continues to struggle and this week the number of people applying for unemployment benefits, of down on the dizzying highs of the spring, climbed back over 1 million.In a separate, solo interview with ABC, Biden was asked about another subject central to the campaign, as protests over police brutality continue: “President Trump says that you want to defund the police. Do you?”“No I don’t,” he said. “I don’t want to defund police departments. I think they need more help, they need more assistance, but that, look, there are unethical senators, there are unethical presidents, there are unethical doctors, unethical lawyers, unethical prosecutors, there are unethical cops. They should be rooted out.”In the joint interview, ABC’s David Muir brought up Trump’s attacks on Harris, which seem in part inspired by her tough questioning of appointees including supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh during Senate proceedings.“President Trump has referred to you as ‘nasty’, ‘a sort of madwoman’, ‘a disaster’, ‘the meanest, most horrible, most disrespectful of anybody in the US Senate’. How do you define what you hear from the president?”Harris laughed, and said: “Listen, I think there is so much about what comes out of Donald Trump’s mouth that is designed to distract the American people from what he is doing every day that is about neglect, negligence and harm to the American people.”“And incompetence,” Biden chipped in. “The idea that he would say something like that – no president, no president has ever said anything like that. No president has ever used those words.“And no president has said people coming out of fields with torches and spewing antisemitic bile and met by people who oppose them, and someone dies, and he says they’re good people on both sides. No president of the United States has ever said anything like that ever.”That was a reference to far-right protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, in which a counter-protester, Heather Heyer, was killed. Biden said those events, and Trump’s response, helped inspire his third run for the White House. More