Eliana Willis

Trump calls election ‘inaccurate’ amid news of GDP plummet
Former presidential candidate Herman Cain dies from Covid-19
Economy suffers worst quarter since second world war as GDP shrinks by 32.9%
US passes 150,000 deaths
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Mourners arrive for John Lewis memorial service – watch live

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11.16am EDT11:16
Funeral for civil rights leader John Lewis begins in Atlanta

10.39am EDT10:39
Former presidential candidate Herman Cain dies from Covid-19

9.01am EDT09:01
Nasa successfully launches Perseverance mission to Mars

8.56am EDT08:56
Trump appears to call for delay to November election over his mail-in voting fears

8.41am EDT08:41
Mike Pompeo appears before the Senate foreign relations committee

8.34am EDT08:34
Grim GDP and jobless figures reveal extent of Covid-19 damage to economy

8.18am EDT08:18
Biden posts video with Obama criticising administration over approach to schools during Covid-19 crisis

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11.16am EDT11:16

Funeral for civil rights leader John Lewis begins in Atlanta

The funeral for civil rights leader John Lewis has just begun at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia.
The church’s senior pastor, reverend Raphael Warnock, is leading the service, which has dozens of attendees who are keeping social distance and wearing masks.
“Here lies a true American patriot,” Warnock said.
This morning, the New York Times published a powerful essay Lewis submitted two days before he died from pancreatic cancer at age 80.
The Guardian’s Ed Pilkington writes:

The essay rehearses several of the key moments that for Lewis shaped his life in non-violent protest and what he called “good trouble”. He said he was inspired into the movement against America’s brutal history of race discrimination by the lynching in Mississippi of Emmett Till, aged 15, in 1955 – when Lewis was himself just 14.
“Emmett Till was my George Floyd. He was my Rayshard Brooks, Sandra Bland and Breonna Taylor,” he writes.
He recalls how in his childhood in Alabama, the white supremacist threat was a fact of everyday life. “Unchecked, unrestrained violence and government-sanctioned terror had the power to turn a simple stroll to the store for some Skittles or an innocent morning jog down a lonesome country road into a nightmare.

Updated
at 11.22am EDT

11.00am EDT11:00

Julian Borger

The Guardian’s world affairs editor, Julian Borger, is watching secretary of state Mike Pompeo testify before the Republican-led Senate Foreign Relations committee.
Mike Pompeo has been questioned on the decision announced yesterday to pull nearly 12,000 US troops out of Germany, bringing 6,400 of them back to the US, and how that squared with Pompeo’s claims to be leading a tough policy towards Russia. He confirmed the state department was “very involved at the strategic level” but argued that bringing the troops home did not mean they were “off the field”
“These units will participate in rotational activity. They’ll be forward deployed. They won’t be stationed or garrisoned. But make no mistake about it they will be fully available to ensure that we can properly prosecute the challenges we have from the global powers.”Senator Jeanne Shaheen asked him whether the impact on relations with Germany had been taken into account, to which Pompeo replied: “This is personal for me I fought on the border of East Germany when I was a young soldier I was stationed there.”
Pompeo was stationed in West Germany as an army lieutenant in the late eighties. There was no fighting there.
Mitt Romney, who continues to be the only Republican senator to seriously challenge the administration, picked up the issue in his own remarks, saying: “I have heard from the highest levels of the German government that this is seen by them as an insult to Germany, and I can’t imagine, at a time when we need to be drawing in our friends and allies so that we can collectively confront China, we want to insult them.”
Pompeo was also questioned about Donald Trump’s suggestion that the election might be delayed.
Senator Tom Udall asked the secretary of state: “Will you respect the results of the certified election as the State Department typically does throughout the world?”
Pompeo replied: “Senator I’m not going to speculate. You had about 15 ‘ifs’ in there.. I’ve said repeatedly to this committee I will follow the rule of law, follow the Constitution. I’ve endeavored to do that in everything I’ve done and I’ll continue to do that every day.”

10.39am EDT10:39

Former presidential candidate Herman Cain dies from Covid-19

Former presidential candidate Herman Cain, 74, has died from Covid-19 after contracting the illness nearly one month ago.
His official Twitter account, which had been providing updates on Cain’s hospitalization due to Covid-19, posted an announcement of his death on Thursday morning.

Herman Cain
(@THEHermanCain)
You’re never ready for the kind of news we are grappling with this morning. But we have no choice but to seek and find God’s strength and comfort to deal… #HermanCain https://t.co/BtOgoLVqKz

July 30, 2020

Cain, the co-chair of Black Voices for Trump, had attended Donald Trump’s rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma in June, where he did not wear a mask.
“We’re heartbroken, and the world is poorer,” said a post on Cain’s website, which provided insight into his Covid-19 infection.
“There were hopeful indicators, including a mere five days ago when doctors told us they thought he would eventually recover, although it wouldn’t be quick,” the post said. “We were relieved to be told that, and passed on the news via Herman’s social media. And yet we also felt real concern about the fact that he never quite seemed to get to the point where the doctors could advance him to the recovery phase.”

Updated
at 10.49am EDT

10.10am EDT10:10

Dominic Rushe

More on the staggering drop in GDP figures from the Guardian US’s business editor, Dominic Rushe:
The fall came as large parts of the US economy shutdown in March in an attempt to halt the spread of the coronavirus across the US. The closures led to a historic number of layoffs and sent unemployment soaring to levels unseen since the 1930s Great Depression.
Lexie Testa, 26, from Lansing, Michigan lost her hotel job at the end of May and waited two months to receive her first unemployment payment. While her husband has retained his job, she said it had been a struggle since her layoff and that she was wary about finding new work as the virus continues to spread.
Testa said it was too early to cut benefits given how hard it remains to find work and the fact that the virus is still spreading. “I know a lot of people who aren’t really comfortable returning to work with children in their home and actually I have a few friends that cannot because they have no child care,” she said.
“I am lucky enough that I have a grandmother who usually babysits for me but I just am not really comfortable yet as I have always worked in the food service industry and I see places in my city of Lansing shut down and reopen due to Covid cases often.”

9.47am EDT09:47

The Guardian’s voting rights report, Sam Levine, notes that the president can’t unilaterally change the election date.

Sam Levine
(@srl)
The president cannot unilaterally move the election. The date of the election is set by Congress. The constitution says the President and Vice President’s term ends on January 20 https://t.co/LMVTeCOgRs https://t.co/LOz4qLjDBH

July 30, 2020

This is why people are speculating one of the reasons Trump asked whether the election should be delayed this morning is to distract from the very bad economic news this morning.
Government figures revealed Thursday morning that the US economy shrank by an annualized rate of 32.9% between April and June, its sharpest contraction since the second world war.

9.35am EDT09:35

Julian Borger

Secretary of state Mike Pompeo is appearing before the Senate foreign relations committee for the first time in more than a year, in what is already a particularly contentious hearing.
The ranking Democrat, Bob Menendez said the Trump administration had “at worst simply abetted Putin’s efforts” to undermine the US, and said the state department was “at risk of catastrophic failure.”
Menendez started his questioning on Trump’s admission on Wednesday that he had not confronted Vladimir Putin with intelligence reports that Russia was paying bounties to Taliban fighters for killing US soldiers in Afghanistan and asked Pompeo whether he had raised the issue with his counterpart, Sergei Lavrov.
Pompeo’s reply avoided confirming the reports, which Trump called “fake news”, but claimed that if it was true, he raised it.
“Anytime there was a tactical threat on the lives for the health of the safety and security or our assets in place, we have raised this with our Russian counterparts not only at my level but Ambassador Sullivan [US ambassador to Moscow], and every one of our team that interacts with the Russians we’ve made very clear our expectations.”

9.18am EDT09:18

One thing undermining Donald Trump’s ongoing quest against mail-in voting is that he and his officials have used it in the past.
Mother Jones reporter Ari Berman notes that at least 16 Trump officials have either voted by mail or requested absentee ballots, including the president himself. Others include attorney general William Barr, adviser and president’s daughter Ivanka Trump and White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany.
McEnany has voted by mail in every Florida election she has participated in since 2010, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
When asked about this in late May, McEnany said: “Absentee voting has the word absent in it for a reason. It means you’re absent from the jurisdiction or unable to vote in person. President Trump is against the Democrat plan to politicize the coronavirus and expand mass mail-in voting without a reason, which has a high propensity for voter fraud. This is a simple distinction that the media fails to grasp.”

Ari Berman
(@AriBerman)
16 top Trump officials have voted by mail or requested absentee ballots:TrumpPence Barr McEnanyConway IvankaMelaniaAzarRossDeVosMcDanielKushner GlassnerStepienAyersParscaleGOP only opposes mail voting when Dems use itpic.twitter.com/rBOKnJUoNe

July 30, 2020

9.01am EDT09:01

Nasa successfully launches Perseverance mission to Mars

On a brighter note, and sticking to their timetable, Nasa appears to have successfully launched the Perseverance mission, the third and final Mars launch from Earth this summer. China and the United Arab Emirates got a head start last week, but all three missions should reach their destination in February.
Nasa’s science mission chief, Thomas Zurbuchen, pronounced the launch the start of “humanity’s first round trip to another planet.”
“Oh, I loved it, punching a hole in the sky, right? Getting off the cosmic shore of our Earth, wading out there in the cosmic ocean,” he said. “Every time, it gets me.” More

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Top US tech bosses are told they are censoring political speech, spreading fake news and ‘killing’ the engines of the US economy in a combative and historic congressional hearing.
Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Tim Cook of Apple, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Sundar Pichai of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, appeared before members of the house judiciary’s antitrust subcommittee and faced intense questioning on everything from market dominance and data surveillance to military contracts and political censorship.
‘Too much power’: Congress grills top tech CEOs in combative antitrust hearing

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Donald Trump on Thursday morning floated the idea of delaying November’s presidential election, justifying the extraordinary suggestion by repeating his false claim that widespread voting by mail from home would result in a “fraudulent” result.Trump’s incendiary proposal was dropped in a Thursday morning tweet, as the US was reeling from bad economic news, digesting the death toll of 150,000 having been reached in the coronavirus pandemic and preparing for the funeral of Congressman John Lewis in Atlanta. In it he claimed without evidence that “universal mail-in voting” would lead to “the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT election in history”.Trump, pontificating that the result would be a “great embarrassment to the USA”, he raised the prospect of a postponement. “Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???” he tweeted.The idea that the US president should suggest a delay in a ballot that will decide whether or not he stays in the White House for another four years is certain to inflame fears that he is preparing for a fierce battle that could threaten the integrity of US democracy. Recent polls have him falling significantly behind his Democratic rival Joe Biden.Trump has already indicated that he might not accept a Biden victory on election day, 3 November. In a recent interview with Fox News Sunday he declined to commit to abiding by the results.The idea that voting from home in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic would lead to an explosion of fraud has become a growing theme for Trump. Most states have a long history of administering mail-in voting, without any significant incidence of fraud.Trump himself and numerous members of his administration, including Vice-President Mike Pence, have voted by mail.16 top Trump officials have voted by mail or requested absentee ballots:TrumpPence Barr McEnanyConway IvankaMelaniaAzarRossDeVosMcDanielKushner GlassnerStepienAyersParscaleGOP only opposes mail voting when Dems use itpic.twitter.com/rBOKnJUoNe— Ari Berman (@AriBerman) July 30, 2020
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More than 1,300 lives lost from coronavirus in the US yesterday
Virus takes heavy toll in south Texas
Portland protesters unleash fury over BLM, Covid-19 and economy
Hateful incidents against Americans of color surge
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US officials say Russian intelligence services are using a trio of English-language websites to spread disinformation about the coronavirus pandemic, seeking to exploit a crisis that America is struggling to contain ahead of the presidential election in November.Two Russians who have held senior roles in Moscow’s military intelligence service known as the GRU have been identified as responsible for a disinformation effort reaching American and western audiences, US government officials said on Tuesday. They spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.The information had previously been classified, but officials said it had been downgraded so they could more freely discuss it. Officials said they were doing so now to sound the alarm about the particular websites and to expose what they say is a clear link between the sites and Russian intelligence.Between late May and early July, one of the officials said, the websites published about 150 articles about the pandemic response, including coverage aimed either at propping up Russia or denigrating the US.Among the headlines that caught the attention of US officials was one that said “Russia’s Counter Covid-19 Aid to America Advances Case for Détente”, which suggested that Russia had given urgent and substantial aid to the US to fight the pandemic. “Beijing Believes Covid-19 is a Biological Weapon”, which amplified statements by the Chinese, was another one.The disclosure comes as the spread of disinformation, including by Russia, is an urgent concern heading into November’s presidential election. US officials look to avoid a repeat of the 2016 race, when Russia launched a covert social media campaign to divide American public opinion and to favor then-candidate Donald Trump over his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. The US government’s chief counterintelligence executive warned in a rare public statement Friday about Russia’s continued use of internet trolls to advance their goals.Even apart from politics, the twin crises buffeting the country and much of the world – the pandemic and race relations and protests – have offered fertile territory for misinformation or outfight falsehoods. Trump himself has come under scrutiny for sharing misinformation about a disproven drug for treating the coronavirus in videos that were taken down by Twitter and Facebook.Officials described the Russian disinformation as part of an ongoing and persistent effort to advance false narratives and cause confusion. They did not say whether the effort behind these particular websites was directly related to the November election, though some of the coverage appeared to denigrate Joe Biden, and does call to mind Russian efforts from 2016 to exacerbate race relations in America and drive corruption allegations against US political figures.Though US officials have warned before about the spread of disinformation tied to the pandemic, they went further on Tuesday by singling out a particular information agency that is registered in Russia, InfoRos and that operates a series of websites – InfoRos.ru, Infobrics.org and OneWorld.press – that have leveraged the pandemic to promote anti-western objectives and to spread disinformation.An email to InfoRos was not immediately returned on Tuesday.The sites promote their narratives in a sophisticated but insidious effort that US officials liken to money laundering, where stories in well-written English – and often with pro-Russian sentiment and anti-US sentiment – are cycled through other news sources to conceal their origin and enhance the legitimacy of the information.The sites also amplify stories that originate elsewhere, the government officials said.Beyond the coronavirus, there’s also a focus on America, global politics and topical stories of the moment.A headline Tuesday on InfoRos.ru about the unrest roiling major American cities read “Chaos in the Blue Cities”, accompanying a story that lamented how New Yorkers who grew up in the tough-on-crime approach of mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg “must adapt to life in high-crime urban areas”.Another story carried the headline of “Ukrainian Trap for Biden”, and claimed that “Ukrainegate” – a reference to stories surrounding Biden’s son Hunter’s former ties to a Ukraine gas company – “keeps unfolding with renewed vigors”.Two individuals who have also held leadership roles at InfoRos, identified Tuesday as Denis Valeryevich Tyurin and Aleksandr Gennadyevich Starunskiy, have previously served in a GRU unit specializing in military psychological intelligence and maintain deep contacts there, the officials said.InfoRos and One World’s ties to the Russian state have attracted scrutiny in the past from European disinformation analysts.In 2019, a European Union task force that studies disinformation campaigns identified One World as “a new addition to the pantheon of Moscow-based disinformation outlets”. The task force noted that One World’s content often parrots the Russian state agenda on issues including the war in Syria.A report published last month by a second, nongovernmental organization, Brussels-based EU DisinfoLab, examined links between InfoRos and One World to Russian military intelligence. The researchers identified technical clues tying their websites to Russia and identified some financial connections between InfoRos and the government.“InfoRos is evolving in a shady grey zone, where regular information activities are mixed with more controversial actions that could be quite possibly linked to the Russian state’s information operations,” the report’s authors concluded.On its English-language Facebook page, InfoRos describes itself as an “Information agency: world through the eyes of Russia”. More

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Trump announces troop ‘surge’ of hundreds of federal agents into the streets of US cities. Plus, how fashion is complicit in China’s human rights abuses
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Kim Kardashian West has spoken for the first time about her husband Kanye West’s bipolar disorder after he posted and deleted a string of erratic tweets regarding his family life after the launch of his presidential campaign in Charleston, South Carolina, on Monday.“Those who are close with Kanye know his heart and understand his words sometimes do not align with his intentions,” she wrote on her Instagram Stories.The fashion and reality TV mogul said she had previously avoided commenting on West’s mental health in order to protect her children and West’s right to privacy. In breaking that silence, she said she wished to address the “stigma and misconceptions” surrounding mental health.She wrote: “Those that understand mental illness or even compulsive behaviour know that the family is powerless unless the member is a minor. People who are unaware or far removed from this experience can be judgmental and not understand that the individual themselves have to engage in the process of getting help no matter how hard family and friends try.”In the US, involuntary hospitalisation and treatment is deemed to violate an individual’s civil rights. An individual must pose a danger to themselves or others in order to be held, for evaluation only, which typically lasts no longer than 72 hours. An elderly or “gravely disabled” person may be placed under a conservatorship. Britney Spears has been subject to such an arrangement since she experienced a breakdown in 2008, which has given rise to controversy over its appropriateness to her situation.West was willingly admitted to hospital in 2016, after an emergency call regarding his welfare during a period of erratic behaviour.Kardashian West added: “I understand Kanye is subject to criticism because he is a public figure and his actions at times can cause strong opinions and emotions. He is a brilliant but complicated person who on top of the pressures of being an artist and a black man, who experienced the painful loss of his mother, and has to deal with the pressure and isolation that is heightened by his bipolar disorder.”West has been subject to more widespread media attention than usual since he announced his presidential campaign in early July. While he is not thought to have filed official paperwork, he has tweeted asking fans to get him on the ballot in certain states.In Charleston on Monday, he gave a rambling address referencing the terms of his deal with Adidas for his fashion brand Yeezy, his faith in God and racism in the US, including an assertion that “[abolitionist] Harriet Tubman never actually freed the slaves, she just had the slaves go work for other white people”. He has since expressed doubt over whether to continue with his run this year, or postpone until 2024.Kardashian West asked the media and the public to give their family “compassion and empathy” and thanked those who had expressed concern for her husband’s wellbeing. “We as a society talk about giving grace to the issue of mental health as a whole, however we should also give it to the individuals who are living with it in times when they need it the most,” she wrote.West has said he will release a new album, Donda: With Child – named after his late mother – this Friday. More