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      Donald Trump claims Anthony Fauci ‘wrong’ about cause of Covid-19 surge

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      President again contradicts his own health expert after doctor highlights troubled US response to virusDonald Trump launched an extraordinary attack on his own top infectious disease expert, Dr Anthony Fauci, arguing against the doctor’s claim that high rates of infection in the US stem from a less aggressive reaction to the virus in terms of economic shutdowns and stay-at-home orders.“Wrong!” countered the president as he retweeted a video of Fauci making the point in recent congressional testimony. Continue reading… More

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      TikTok: Trump reportedly to order parent company to sell Chinese-owned app

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      Microsoft is reported to be looking into buying the TikTok’s US operations as the app’s data privacy practices have come under fireDonald Trump will reportedly order the parent company of TikTok to sell the popular video sharing platform because of national-security concerns.Trump on Friday again suggested the US may take action against the Chinese-owned social media platform. Continue reading… More

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      in Elections

      Will Trump actually pull federal agents from Portland? – video explainer

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      Federal agents accused of behaving like an ‘occupying army’ are said to be pulling out of Portland, Oregon, in an embarrassing climbdown by the White House, but many protesters are sceptical over whether the agents will actually withdraw from the city.
      The force, which have been dubbed by some as ‘Donald Trump’s troops’, were sent in by the president a month ago to end what he called ‘anarchy’ during Black Lives Matter protests sparked after the police killing of George Floyd.
      The Guardian’s Chris McGreal looks at what Trump was hoping to gain by sending paramilitaries into the city, if and how they will leave, and how their presence has fuelled anger among most residents
      Federal agents show stronger force at Portland protests despite order to withdraw

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      Trump’s Covid-19 testing tsar Brett Giroir faces monumental challenge

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      Jesuit high school, an all-boys Catholic school in New Orleans, is proud of its alumni. In 1978, its website records, student debaters Moises Arriaga and Brett Giroir “had a legendary season, winning the City Championship, District Championship, State Championship and the NFL National Championship”.Forty-two years later, Giroir’s debating skills are facing their ultimate test. As Donald Trump’s coronavirus testing tsar, he is repeatedly grilled by America’s top political news hosts about what is seen as an epic disaster. And despite his gilded career at school, Giroir’s qualifications and track record have come under increasing scrutiny as the US pandemic death toll tops 150,000.“What he does over and over again in his public statements is always put the most positive spin he can on what is clearly just an abysmal failure in terms of the US testing strategy,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, who led the government response to international disasters at USAid from 2013 to 2017.Now 59 years old, Giroir spent his childhood in a small town outside New Orleans, the son of an oilfield worker and police officer. “Growing up, I had significant hearing problems and hearing loss, and there was no ENT physician in my small hometown; we had to drive 30 miles to the city to see a specialist,” he told Texas Medical Center News online in 2014.“It just so happened that clinic was near the Jesuit high school, one of the best high schools in the region. It looked like an interesting place to be, so I set my goal, which was astronomical at that time, to be admitted in the Jesuit high school. Luckily, I got in, and that was the academic launching point for me.”Success on the debate team meant touring universities, including Harvard, where he won a place to study biology before gaining a medical doctorate from the University of Texas Southwestern medical center. Giroir began his career as a pediatrician in Texas and became the head of Children’s medical center Dallas. More

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      Donald Trump makes racial dog-whistle appeal to white suburban voters

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      Donald Trump on Wednesday said Americans “living their Suburban Lifestyle Dream” will no longer be “bothered” by low-income housing in their communities, an explicit effort to stoke racial fears among affluent, white voters who are abandoning the Republican party under his leadership.The remark is part of a pattern from the US president as he tries to rebuild his standing in the suburbs, which has cratered amid his administration’s failure to contain the coronavirus pandemic and economic recession as well as the president’s aggressive response to the nationwide protests against systemic racism, which polls suggest most Americans support.“I am happy to inform all of the people living their Suburban Lifestyle Dream that you will no longer be bothered or financially hurt by having low income housing built in your neighborhood….,” Trump tweeted, as he traveled to Texas on Wednesday. “Your housing prices will go up based on the market, and crime will go down. I have rescinded the Obama-Biden AFFH Rule. Enjoy!”The tweet references Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing, an Obama-era program designed to combat racial segregation in American suburbs. The rule, implemented in 2015, requires cities and towns that receive federal funding to identify patterns of racial bias and take corrective action to address discrimination.Last week, the administration announced it would rescind the program, agreeing with conservative critics that the fair-housing policy amounted to federal overreach into local communities.In the announcement, the housing and urban development secretary, Ben Carson, called the program “complicated, costly and ineffective” and said it would be replaced by a new rule, called “Preserving Community and Neighborhood Choice”.Trump had previewed his administration’s plan to gut the policy earlier this month, a day after he posted a video of an angry, white couple who brandished firearms in the direction of protesters who marched past their mansion inside a gated community in St Louis. The couple were later charged with unlawful use of a weapon.Once a cornerstone of the Republican base, suburban voters and particularly suburban women will probably play a crucial role in determining control of the Senate and White House.Democrats gained control of the House in 2018’s midterm elections by storming through once-Republican districts from California and Texas to Virginia and Georgia. Current polling shows Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, buoyed in part by his support from college-educated women and suburban voters.An ABC News/Washington Post poll found Biden ahead of Trump by nine percentage points among suburbanites. Among suburban women, Biden led Trump by a margin of 60% to 36%. By contrast, Biden narrowly edges past Trump among suburban men, 49% to 45%.In recent weeks, Trump has shed any semblance of subtlety in his appeals to this constituency. More

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      in US Politics

      Covid-19: Florida reports record one-day deaths as concerns grow for other states

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      Florida reported another record one-day rise in coronavirus deaths on Tuesday, and cases in Texas passed the 400,000 mark, fueling fear that the United States is still not taking control of the outbreak and adding pressure on Congress to pass another massive economic aid package.Public health experts are becoming concerned about the levels of infection in states such as Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee and Kentucky, while the surge in Florida along with Texas, Arizona and California this month has strained many hospitals.The increase in cases has forced a U-turn on steps to reopen economies after the end of lockdowns put in place in March and April to slow the spread of the virus.Florida has had 191 coronavirus deaths in the last 24 hours, the highest single-day rise since the start of the epidemic, the state health department said.Texas, the second-most populous state, added more than 6,000 new cases on Monday, pushing its total to 401,477, according to a tally being kept by the Reuters news agency. Only three other states – California, Florida and New York – have more than 400,000 total cases.The widening outbreak has pushed the US death toll from Covid-19 closer to the bleak 150,000 milestone, which the country is expected to cross this week and comes just over three months before the 3 November election, where Donald Trump seeks a second term. The US has more than 4.3m confirmed cases, according to totals tracked by Reuters and Johns Hopkins University.The surge in cases in Florida prompted Trump last week to cancel the Republican convention events in Jacksonville in late August, which had already been rearranged from North Carolina.There is, however, a glimmer of hope in the data from Texas, where the state health department reported that current hospitalizations due to Covid-19 fell on Monday.Anthony Fauci, a top infectious diseases expert and the leading public health figure on the White House coronavirus task force, said there were signs the recent surge could be peaking in hard-hit states like Florida and Texas. But he warned that other parts of the country may be on the cusp of growing outbreaks.“They may be cresting and coming back down,” Fauci told ABC’s Good Morning America regarding the state of the outbreak in several southern states.But Fauci said there was a “very early indication” that the percentage of coronavirus tests that were positive was starting to rise in other states, such as Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee and Kentucky.Fauci added on the same TV show that he was not in “any circumstances” misleading the American public, after another attack on him by the US president.In New York, the state governor, Andrew Cuomo, added Illinois, Kentucky, Minnesota, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico to a list of places whose travelers must quarantine for 14 days when visiting New York. Thirty-one other states are on the list, which was unveiled last month. More

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      Trump administration to give one-year Daca extension to some recipients

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      The Trump administration will allow so-called Dreamers to renew deportation protections for a year while it reviews a supreme court ruling before a fresh attempt to kill the program in question, a senior administration official said on Tuesday.Hundreds of thousands of Dreamers live in the US without documentation, after entering as children. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) was put in place by Barack Obama and some 644,000 people are enrolled.The Trump review follows the ruling last month that found the administration had erred in the way it decided to end the program.The administration plans to continue its existing policy of not accepting new applicants, in place since 2017, the official told Reuters. But the administration will extend eligibility by a year for those whose protection from deportation was due to expire, as long as they do not have a criminal record.“For anyone who refiles, if they are eligible and were set to expire, we will renew them on a case-by-case basis into the next year for an extension,” the official said.The decision means the program will remain in place through the presidential election, in which Trump is fighting for a second term against Democrat Joe Biden. Trump has made his hardline stance on legal and illegal immigration a central platform of his presidency and his re-election campaign.Daca is increasingly supported by the public. A February Reuters/Ipsos poll found 64% of US adults supported its core tenets. A similar December 2014 poll found 47% support.The supreme court left the door open for Trump to attempt again to rescind the program, ruling only that the administration had not met procedural requirements and its actions were “arbitrary and capricious”.The administration is due to file paperwork with the district court in Maryland on Tuesday. The decision to not accept new applications will probably face more legal challenges.The official said the administration would conduct “an exhaustive review” of the memos it initially used to justify winding down the program.“We’re going to review all of that and all the underlying communications that informed those documents, so that when the administration next acts on Daca, it will be anchored on this comprehensive review,” the official said.The official said it was unclear how long the review would take.In an interview with Noticias Telemundo earlier this month, Trump said he would soon unveil an immigration measure that would include some protections for Daca.“We’re working out the legal complexities right now,” he said, “but I’m going to be signing a very major immigration bill as an executive order, which the supreme court now, because of the Daca decision, has given me the power to do that.”Trump’s interpretation of the meaning of the supreme court ruling – that it can allow him to govern without Congress – has proved highly controversial. More