Trump claims victory as US nears 130,000 coronavirus deaths – live

by | Jul 5, 2020 | The Guardian

…and welcome to another day of politics, protest and public health crisis in the US.

Donald Trump spoke at the White House on Saturday night, at a Fourth of July celebration, duly blaming China for the coronavirus outbreak and claiming “we’ve learned how to put out the flame”.

Related: Donald Trump rushed to reopen America – now Covid is closing in on him | Robert Reich

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Seattle: one woman killed and one injured as car drives into protesters

by | Jul 5, 2020 | The Guardian

  • I-5 freeway protest hit by car early on Saturday, driver arrested
  • Authorities say road will now be closed to protesters

One woman died and one remained in serious condition after a car drove into protesters on a freeway in Seattle.

Summer Taylor, 24, of Seattle, died on Saturday evening at Harborview Medical Center, hospital spokeswoman Susan Gregg said.

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Mississippi’s racist state flag has finally come down. Now the real work begins | Kimberly Griffin and Donna Ladd

by | Jul 5, 2020 | The Guardian

There’s no time for self-congratulation. We must keep working to root out white supremacy across this state and this nation

The 1 July ceremony to retire the Mississippi flag was dignified and solemn, ending with a trio of white state officials – the lieutenant governor, the speaker of the Mississippi house of representatives and the director of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History – walking slowly away from what looked like a black hearse, with folded Mississippi flags resting in each person’s outstretched hands. Bits of the garish red-white-and-blue Confederate battle canton peeked out from the folds as the sentries handed them to the Black director of the state-run history and civil rights museums.

Suddenly, after 126 years of taunting and jeering at Black Mississippians and their white allies from atop flagpoles, the flag is history, another consequence of the tipping-point killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. The lightning-strike epiphany that the flag actually does hurt Black Mississippians, after decades of callous indifference from most white people here with many insisting those who don’t like it can just leave, finally drew enough additional ayes from the Republican-controlled state legislature to end the flag’s racist reign in an emotional Sunday vote.

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Social media backlash forces Trump to find new ways to spread his message

by | Jul 5, 2020 | The Guardian

Twitter, Reddit and other platforms are taking action against the president’s rhetoric. The alternatives have far less reach

Donald Trump’s campaign manager sent a warning to Twitter last month, weeks after the social media company first took steps to add labels and context to the president’s often inflammatory tweets.

“Hey @twitter, your days are numbered,” Brad Parscale wrote in a tweet, linking to one of his posts on the much lesser-known social media site Parler.

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