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      Kim Kardashian requests compassion for Kanye West's bipolar disorder

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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

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      Trump may not respect the election. We need a Democratic senate more than ever | Sidney Blumenthal

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      Donald Trump’s declaration that he might not accept the results of the 2020 election has fundamentally transformed the campaign, making plain what had previously only been suspected. No other president has ever made such a statement.“I have to see,” said Trump in an interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News on 19 July, after Wallace asked him if he would accept the election outcome. “No, I’m not going to just say yes. I’m not going to say no, and I didn’t last time either.” Indeed, in 2016, Trump claimed that the election was being “rigged” against him.“I will look at it at the time,” Trump said to Wallace. “I will keep you in suspense.”Unlike last time, Trump is the president and has taken an oath to uphold the constitution. His refusal to accept the election results would be a clear violation of that oath and an impeachable offense. Indeed, simply by announcing he might reject the results by his own fiat, Trump has issued the most blatant desecration of the constitution’s values since the Confederate secession in 1860-61.No one has proposed a more urgent and persuasive argument for the election of a Democratic-controlled Senate than Trump. America needs a Democratic-controlled Senate as a warning to Trump that if he attempts to overturn an election that goes against him he will face a second impeachment and a full and fair trial. If anything, Trump’s lawless contempt for the constitution is the strongest possible incentive to elect Democrats this fall. Remember what happened last time, in the absence of a Democratic-controlled Senate: Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives for coercing the government of Ukraine to fabricate false information to damage Joe Biden, then, in the Senate, the case ran into Trump’s most powerful firewall, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell. McConnell ensured that no witnesses were heard in the Senate and that Republican members were whipped into line to dismiss the evidence gathered by the House impeachment inquiry.Trump has sought to subvert the 2020 election through every conceivable effort at voter suppressionTrump has sought to subvert the 2020 election through every conceivable effort at voter suppression, including opposing mail-in ballots during the coronavirus pandemic, forcing voters to put their lives potentially at risk by waiting in lengthy lines. Even if his tactics to thwart the vote fail, his comments to Wallace indicate that Trump may cause a constitutional crisis to deny the people’s judgment. He may, as he has in the past, incite violence, calling on his armed supporters to threaten state officials to prevent accurate ballot tabulations.But whatever scenarios, gambits and tricks that Trump and his attorney general, William Barr, have up their sleeves, they should understand that the newly elected 117th Congress, especially if the Democrats have House and Senate majorities, could intervene to expose whatever they might do, beginning on the day the new congress members are sworn in on 3 January 2021. Without McConnell staging a farce to maintain Trump in power, the House can immediately impeach a defiant Trump’s repudiation of constitutional democracy and the Senate can conduct a trial with witnesses, starting with Barr, in fulfillment of the voters’ verdict. If Senate Republicans, even after their election losses, maintain their phalanx to frustrate a two-thirds majority, their disgraceful identification with the utterly discredited Trump would be complete. And if it comes to this, Trump and the Republicans will have delivered the nation to an authoritarian regime that dispenses with the constitution.In the meantime, Democrats in state legislatures should propose resolutions calling on the presidential candidates to accept the results of the election. Let every Republican be presented with an opportunity to stand for or against Trump’s disregard for democracy. The practice of passing such statements, even legislatures instructing elected federal office holders to adhere to certain policies, goes back to Thomas Jefferson and James Madison’s Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions to protest against the trampling of civil liberties imposed through the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798.Trump’s statement that he may not accept the election result has only one precedent, the most glaring example of illegality and treason. According to the Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union, secession was compelled because of the election of Abraham Lincoln, “whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that ‘Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,’ and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.”Lincoln answered the counter-revolution against democracy in a special message to the Congress on 4 July 1861. “It presents to the whole family of man,” he said, “the question of whether a constitutional republic or democracy – a government of the people, by the same people – can or cannot maintain its territorial integrity against its own domestic foes. It presents the question whether the discontented individuals – too few in numbers to control the administration, according to organic law, in any case – can always, upon the pretenses made in this case or on any other pretenses, or arbitrarily without any pretense, break up the government and thus practically put an end to free government upon the earth.”It is hardly a surprise that Trump defends Confederate monuments and the Confederate battle flag. With his scorn for democracy and disdain for the constitution, Trump is preparing for the last battle of his own “Lost Cause”.Sidney Blumenthal is the author of All the Powers of Earth, A Self-Made Man, and Wrestling with His Angel, the first three volumes in his five-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln. He is a former assistant and senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and senior adviser to Hillary Clinton. He has been a national staff reporter for the Washington Post, Washington editor and writer for the New Yorker and senior editor of the New Republic More

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      ‘The sleepers are waking up’: hope for Democrats in city that backed Trump

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      Pennsylvania

      President Trump’s re-election plan had relied on bringing jobs back to cities like Erie, Pennsylvania, which has had its hopes of economic resurgence rocked by the pandemic
      This is the third of three pieces by Capital and Main on regions of the country that never fully recovered from the Great Recession and that are located in critical battleground states More

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      Trump admits pandemic will 'get worse' at first Covid-19 briefing in months

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      Donald Trump has admitted that the coronavirus pandemic is likely to “get worse before it gets better” at his first press briefing devoted to the issue since April.Facing dire poll numbers, surging cases and sharp criticism for lack of leadership, the US president returned to the White House podium attempting to show more discipline in both style and substance.In several notable reversals, he urged people to wear face masks, promised his administration was working on a “strategy” and wrapped up in less than half an hour, avoiding his digressions in past briefings that culminated in a proposal to inject disinfectant in Covid-19 patients.The pandemic will “probably, unfortunately, get worse before it gets better”, Trump said, reading from scripted remarks. “Something I don’t like saying about things, but that’s the way it is.”It was a marked shift from his claims last month the virus is “fading away” and “dying out”. And having once dismissed its remnants as “embers”, he now conceded that it is raging in states led by Republican governors.“We have embers and fires and we have big fires and unfortunately now, Florida is a little tough or in a big tough position,” he said. “You have a great governor there, great governor in Texas.”Trump has been widely condemned for failing to lead with a national strategy and instead shifting responsibility to state governors. Among the problems is a lack of infrastructure to process and trace test results, leaving people waiting seven days or longer.On Tuesday he claimed: “We are in the process of developing a strategy that’s going to be very, very powerful. We have developed it as we go along.”After months of refusing to wear a mask in public, Trump finally did so on 11 July and has since claimed it is patriotic. “We’re asking everybody that when you are not able to socially distance, wear a mask,” he said. “Get a mask, whether you like the mask or not, they have an impact. They’ll have an effect, and we need everything we can get.”Producing a mask from his suit pocket, he added: “I carry the mask … I have the mask right here. I carry it and I will use it gladly.”The belated appeal was insufficient to placate the president’s critics, however. Heather McGhee, the co-chair of the civil rights group Color of Change, told the MSNBC network: “This is three months too late and 30 or 40,000 lives lost too late.”Despite the more subdued and realistic tone, Trump also offered upbeat words about a reduction in deaths and progress on vaccines and treatments for Covid-19. “The vaccines are coming, and they’re coming a lot sooner than anybody thought possible,” he said.He also repeatedly used the racist term “China virus” and recycled his promise that one day “it will disappear”.More than 3.8 million cases have been reported in the US, including 141,000 deaths. The briefing was the latest of several attempts to relaunch Trump’s public response to the pandemic, after months of shifting from apparent denial to a “wartime” footing to a focus on the economy and other topics.Trump has previewed the briefings as having a good “slot” at 5pm that previously boasted strong “ratings”. But on Tuesday, he was not joined by Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, who had told an interviewer he was not invited, nor by the response coordinator, Deborah Birx, whom Trump claimed was “right outside” the briefing room.Critics have suggested that briefings have returned, albeit in a different form, in an attempt to dominate the media limelight at the expense of Trump’s election rival, Joe Biden. Asked whether he thinks Americans should judge him in November on his handling of the pandemic, Trump replied: “This, among other things. I think the American people will judge us on this. But they’ll judge us on the economy that I created.”Earlier on Tuesday, Biden reiterated his criticism of Trump’s response to the pandemic. “His own staff admits that Donald Trump fails the most important test of being the American president: the duty to care – for you, for all of us,” the former vice-president said in New Castle, Delaware. “He has quit on you and he has quit on this country.” More

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      Donald Trump to resume coronavirus briefings as approval ratings plummet

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      With Donald Trump’s approval rating plummeting as coronavirus cases in the US continue to rise, the president plans to resume daily briefings on the pandemic at the White House on Tuesday.Keenly aware of the need to change perceptions of how he is handling the virus if he hopes to win re-election, Trump also came out for the first time on Monday as a supporter of facial masks.Trump tweeted a picture of himself wearing a mask with the line: “Many people say that it is patriotic to wear a face mask when you can’t socially distance.”It represented a whiplash reversal by Trump, who was facing a Republican mutiny. Governors in 28 states have now made mask-wearing in public mandatory as virus cases have exploded across the south and west, mostly in states governed by Republicans.The US recorded about 60,000 new cases of Covid-19 on Monday, up more than 30% in the last two weeks for a total of more than 3.8m. Deaths over the same period are up 64% and total confirmed deaths have passed 140,000.For months, Trump has punished and exiled public health experts such as Dr Anthony Fauci, the longtime head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who have advanced basic recommendations such as mask-wearing and hand-washing.Trump’s mockery of his election rival Joe Biden for wearing a mask and his own refusal to wear one in the 19 weeks since the World Health Organization declared a pandemic helped to create a partisan divide on mask-wearing and provoke violent clashes in shops and streets.But aides have reportedly shown polling to Trump demonstrating that he is out of step with the public. Eight out of 10 Americans, and 66% of Republicans, say they wear a mask all or most of the time when they leave home, an ABC News-Washington Post poll last week found.The poll also found that only 38% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the pandemic, down 13 points from March, and 60% disapprove, up 15.It is unknown whether Trump’s plan to reverse those numbers includes any new action to fight the coronavirus. As the reality of the pandemic has settled in, criticism of the federal government’s failure to establish routine testing, contact tracing and supported isolation has intensified.As negotiations continue over a new stimulus and relief package for the battered US economy, the White House is widely reported to want to cut new funding for testing and tracing and other efforts against the pandemic. While Senate Republicans aim to reduce special unemployment payments, Trump is pushing for a payroll tax cut, a move which would hit social security and Medicare in the middle of a public health crisis. More