US politics: Russian bounty payments claim sparks Trump briefing row – live updates | Latest unbiased news snippets about US Politics

2.19pm BST

This is Joanna Walters in New York taking over from my colleague Martin Belam in London on what is unfolding as a busy morning in US political news on many fronts.

Soon the group of Democratic members of Congress will emerge to let us know what the White House had to say earlier this morning about the Russian US military bounty scandal.

1.50pm BST

One of the results of the Black Lives Matter push for change that has swept across the US in the wake of the killing of George Floyd by police has been a reappraisal of national monuments and racist symbolism in the country.

Alexandra Villarreal has been looking at this movement, and talking to historians about the history and meaning of these symbols.

A different logic has been used to justify the Confederate shrines that commemorate men who committed treason in an effort to uphold slavery. Defenders, including Donald Trump, decry “the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart”. But the monuments they are trying to protect aren’t usually civil war artifacts; they were instead erected decades after the conflict ended, as “a reminder for Black and brown people to remember their place”, said Alvita Akiboh, an assistant professor of history at the University of Michigan.

The sculpture is an irreparable scar on an ancient mountain with a long history of habitation and use by indigenous people. More blatantly offensive, however, is the sculpture’s undeniable reverence for hate and violence and the honor it bestows on the generals, who, by definition, were American traitors.

1.45pm BST

Politico have a useful wrap here about the eight Democratic party representatives who are to be briefed this morning over the ‘Russian bounty’ controversy.

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer will lead the group that includes Adam Schiff and Eliot Engel.

Our national security should never be a partisan issue. Every Member of Congress should have access to this information, not just Members of the President’s party. We all have neighbors on the front lines, and we all know families who are concerned about their loved ones.

1.36pm BST

Carol E. Lee and Kristen Welker for NBC have a piece up this morning looking at the scramble at the White House to get Donald Trump to take down a tweet that appeared to feature a supporter shouting “White power”

In their piece they claim that two White House officials told them:

The video remained on the president’s Twitter page for more than three hours because White House officials couldn’t reach him to ask him to delete it. The president was at his golf club in Virginia and had put his phone down.

1.27pm BST

Reuters are reporting that Google has said it has removed ads for companies that charge people large fees to register to vote or harvest their data, which appeared when users searched for voter information.

A Google spokeswoman told Reuters that the company’s misrepresentation policy barred such ads, which were found by the nonprofit watchdog Tech Transparency Project (TTP) when searching for terms such as “register to vote,” “vote by mail,” and “where is my polling place.”

1.11pm BST

Virginia Rep. Abigail Spanberger is one of eight Democrats due to be briefed on the ‘Russian bounty’ controversy by the administration today. She’s has been on television this morning describing the episode as “Shameful”.

I am beyond words at times over this. The role of the commander-in-chief, of our entire intelligence community, is to keep our nation, our service members, our infrastructure, our people, our citizens safe. I represent hundreds of thousands of Virginians, and I represent service members. I represent people whose family members are deployed, and the idea that they now have the added worry, not just that their family members are in a war zone, but that they’re in the war zone with a bounty on their head, and we’re not doing anything about it. It’s just shameful.

The fact that he didn’t take the time to read the document is not an excuse. What comes next? That’s my question, what comes next? He maybe didn’t know it, he maybe didn’t read the brief, but now he knows it. Now everyone knows it. What are we going to do about it?

“[Trump] maybe didn’t know it. He maybe didn’t read the brief, but now he knows it. Now everyone knows it. What are we going to do about it?” @RepSpanberger says about the intelligence that Russia attempted to pay the Taliban to kill US soldiers.https://t.co/ZhkcQ4AfAb pic.twitter.com/HfyFb2Kagp

12.51pm BST

Jacob Knutson writes for Axios this morning about the sheer volume of anti-transgender legislation currently being proposed across the US. Human Rights Campaign state legislative director Cathryn Oakley has identified 66 anti-transgender bills that have been introduced in state legislatures so far in the legislative session — the most filed in one year.

14 state legislatures are considering bills that would limit transgender students’ participation in athletics. While most legislation is currently stalled due to the coronavirus pandemic, these bills are still likely to be picked up or re-proposed at a later date.

12.44pm BST

Washington is going to be busy today talking about the Trump administrations pandemic response. Coronavirus task force member Dr. Anthony Fauci, CDC Director Robert Redfield and other top health officials will testify before a Senate Committee later today on the latest efforts to contain the pandemic. Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell will testify before the House financial services committee about their respective agency’s response.

Bernie Sanders has written for us this morning to put his proposal down on the table for re-establishing the US economy after the impact of Covid-19 – a 10% cut to the US military budget.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

12.30pm BST

Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy was on the All In with Chris Hayes show last night talking about the ‘Russian bounty’ controversy. He raised what he saw as a key issue, which is that regardless of whether Donald Trump was personally briefed or not – National Security Advisor O’Brien insists that he was not – the administration as a whole still appears to have done nothing about the allegations.

We didn’t even ask them to stop, and that does beg the question, what on earth could Russia to do us that this administration would actually take seriously?

We sent the exact opposite signal. We could have tried a number of different means to affect their decision-making in Afghanistan, and save the lives of brave young American soldiers. But instead we invited them back into the G7, we engaged with them on multiple occasions without even mentioning the fact that we apparently knew they were putting bounties on these American soldiers. And so we effectively green-lit their assassination campaign against American soldiers which is, of course, in many ways, worse than doing absolutely nothing at all about it.

12.01pm BST

Overnight another development emerged with the Elijah McClain case. McClain, 23, was killed in Aurora, Colorado, in August last year, after being put in a chokehold by police and injected with ketamine by paramedics. At the weekend police used pepper spray to disperse a largely peaceful event featured violin-playing in honour of McClain.

Denver investigative reporter Brian Maass broke the news that three officers in the Aurora police department were under investigation for taking inappropriate photos at a memorial for McClain.

#Breaking: multiple sources say 3 @AuroraPD officers under investigation for taking inappropriate photos at a memorial for #ElijahMclain. Aurora PD tells @cbsdenver “An IA is in progress regarding photographs that were taken at that location”. Statement coming soon from APD Chief

Thursday afternoon, I was apprised of allegations reported to Internal Affairs by an Aurora Police Officer alleging multiple Aurora Police officers were depicted in photographs near the site where Elijah McClain died. All involved officers were immediately placed on administrative leave with pay in non-enforcement capacities.

I immediately ordered Internal Affairs to make this investigation their top priority. This accelerated investigation was completed this evening.

He just wanted to be better every day. And when he wasn’t down playing guitar or violin for the baby kittens, he was running, exercising outside … He was always fully booked and it was a massage that you couldn’t get again. Just his energy and his spirit, it just put you in a better mood. He truly was just a healer.

11.47am BST

National Security Advisor Robert C. O’Brien has issued a statement over the ‘Russian bounty’ controversy, insisting Donald Trump had not been briefed on the intelligence. He says:

Over the past several days, the New York Times and other news outlets have reported on allegations regarding our troops in Afghanistan. While we do not normally discuss such matters, we constantly evaluate intelligence reports and brief the President as necessary. Because the allegations in recent press articles have not been verified or substantiated by the Intelligence Community, President Trump had not been briefed on the items. Nevertheless, the Administration, including the National Security Council staff, have been preparing should the situation warrant action.

To those government officials who betray the trust of the people of the United States by leaking classified information, your actions endanger our national security. No matter the motivation, there is never a justification for such conduct.

Let me be clear that there is nothing more important to President Trump than America’s security and the safety of our men and women in uniform. He has demonstrated this commitment time and again.

11.42am BST

Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of NAACP has written for us this morning, arguing that the George Floyd uprising has brought hope, but that campaigners must now turn protest into policy. It is a passionate rallying cry – but one that also cautions that there is much that needs to be done:

Since Floyd’s murder, police have killed Black and brown men in Georgia and California. Around the country, six Black people have been found hanging from trees, supposed suicides that chillingly resemble lynchings and have sparked demands for investigation. As of now, no charges have been filed against the Louisville police officers who broke into Breonna Taylor’s home last March (using a no-knock warrant that has since been banned) and shot her dead as she slept.

The changes triggered by the protests are crucial, but more is needed to uproot the racism so thoroughly embedded in our nation’s social, economic, and political systems. Public policies of the past helped create our current practices of exclusion and disinvestment. For instance, today’s residential segregation is the direct result of 20th century mortgage lending policies and restrictive housing covenants that limited where Black people could live. Time has not much altered these discriminatory patterns; only policy change can do so. Now is our chance to escalate the energy of the moment and move from protest to power to policy change. We have done it before.

11.17am BST

David Ignatius at the Washington Post is one of several op-ed columnists to tackle this story, in an overnight piece asking “Were Trump’s aides too afraid to tell him about the Russian bounties?”. He writes:

A basic truth about Russian President Vladimir Putin, which President Trump evidently doesn’t understand: Putin is in the payback business. He believes the United States destroyed his former country, the Soviet Union. He likes the United States to feel pain, in Afghanistan and everywhere else.

Trump has his own, much rosier take on Putin. And I can’t help wondering whether that explains why, assuming his account is true, the American president was never briefed about intelligence reports early this year that Russia was offering bounties to Taliban fighters to kill U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan.

Trump is an obstacle to good policy. Either people don’t tell him the truth, or he doesn’t want to hear it. Whichever way, he’s defaulting on his most basic responsibility as commander in chief.

11.04am BST

Tom McCarthy was reporting for us in New York in the early hours about the new claims surrounding the mystery of whether Donald Trump was briefed about Russia offering bounties for attacks on US troops in Afghanistan.

He explains how multiple US media outlets have claimed that Donald Trump was given a written briefing months ago about the intelligence.

The New York Times quoted two sources as saying details were included in a daily intelligence briefing the president received in late February. CNN said an official with direct knowledge told them it was included in the briefing – a written document – briefing “sometime in the spring”.

Senior White House officials were aware as far back as early 2019 and the intelligence assessment was included in at least one of the president’s written daily briefings, the Associated Press reported, according to multiple officials.

11.00am BST

Good morning and welcome to our live US politics coverage for Tuesday. Here are some of the key points from yesterday and overnight, and what we are expecting today

The president’s diary is empty today save for his intelligence briefing at 3:30pm this afternoon. Donald Trump maintains he didn’t get briefed earlier in the year on the Russian bounty issue – reports say otherwise

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/joebiden

US politics: Russian bounty payments claim sparks Trump briefing row – live updates

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