US sees deadliest day of summer in coronavirus outbreak – live

Here’s more perspective on Trump’s move to pull troops out of Germany from Guardian reporter Julian Borger:

Trump wrongly claimed, as he has many times in the past, that Germany was not paying its “Nato fees”. In fact, the friction between the US and Germany, as well as other European allies, is about national defence spending. The allies agreed in 2014 to spend 2% of their GDP on defence by 2024. Germany is currently on just under 1.4%, but Belgium, where the US will move some of its European Command (Eucom) headquarters, spends less than 1%, and Italy, to where the US will move an F-16 fighter squadron and two army battalions from Germany, spends 1.2%.

Diplomats and former US officials have described Trump as fixated on Germany and its chancellor, Angela Merkel.

“He’s obsessed with the idea that Germany is taking advantage of the US, over defence, but on trade, selling too many cars to the US for example. He has always been particularly rude to Merkel,” a former White House official said.

A second Texas Republican who was supposed to greet Trump in Midland, Texas has tested positive for coronavirus. Conservative Republican House candidate Wesley Hunt tested positive for Covid-19 while he was driving to Midland to greet the president. Hunt said in a tweet he was asymptomatic.

US Representative Louie Gohmert, who refused to wear a mask and today tested positive for Covid-19, apparently forced his entire staff to come into the Capitol every day to work as an example of “how to open up safely”.

Also, Republican Alabama Governor Kay Ivey has extended the state’s mandatory statewide mask mandate through August 31, including for children aged second grade (about 7-years-old) and up.

More on Trump’s decision to pull 11,900 American troops out of Germany, the president said because he does not believe Germany pays enough toward the NATO alliance. The process is likely to take years and cost American taxpayers billions of dollars.

Donald Trump tweeted today about the anti-discrimination housing law his administration rescinded, but it’s not the first time the president’s family has been accused of racist housing policies.

In the 1970s, the Trumps were also accused of working to prevent black tenants from moving into the middle class buildings that made his father, Fred Trump, rich. Here’s more from a New York Times investigation, describing Maxine Brown, a black New York nurse who appeared to be a perfect tenant:

Stanley Leibowitz, the rental agent, talked to his boss, Fred C. Trump.

“I asked him what to do and he says, ‘Take the application and put it in a drawer and leave it there,’” Mr. Leibowitz, now 88, recalled in an interview.

Revered American folk singer Woody Guthrie, who was Fred Trump’s tenant, also wrote about Donald Trump’s father in a song titled Old Man Trump. Here are the lyrics, which address racial discrimination in housing:

I suppose
Old Man Trump knows
Just how much
Racial Hate
he stirred up
In the bloodpot of human hearts
When he drawed
That color line
Here at his
Eighteen hundred family project

Will Kaufman, a professor of American literature and culture at the University of Central Lancashire in Britain told the New York Times that Guthrie, “thought that Fred Trump was one who stirs up racial hate, and implicitly profits from it.” Kaufman discovered the song while working on a book.

In a move that will take years and cost billions of dollars, Donald Trump wants to pull 11,900 troops out of Germany and reposition them in Poland and other European countries.

US Defense Secretary Mark Esper told reporters the move did relate to Trump’s demands that Germany give more money to the NATO alliance, a claim Trump contradicted almost immediately after Esper asserted it.

Here’s more from AFP:

The move, which will cost the US government several billion dollars, will cut the presence of US military personnel in Germany to around 24,000, Esper said.

He stressed that the action is part of his broader plan to reposition US military forces around the world to better address key threats and enhance flexibility, including with the NATO alliance, which is focused on deterring a possible Russian threat to Europe.

But at the White House Trump told reporters that Germany has not paid its fair share for the defense of Europe.

“They are there to protect Europe, they are there to protect Germany, and Germany is supposed to pay for it,” Trump said of the troops, and move nearly 5,600 to other NATO countries, including Italy and Belgium.

While scientists work day and night to develop a Covid-19 vaccine, leaders at the National Institutes of Health are already preparing for the blowback.

In what observers see as a play for white voters, Trump has tweeted people living their “Suburban Lifestyle Dream” won’t be “bothered” by a fair housing rule meant to combat racial housing discrimination.

Racial segregation in housing is a key driver of the health disparities and chronic health conditions which have made black and minority Americans more susceptible to Covid-19. Housing discrimination has been illegal for decades, but has persisted as a structural legacy of racism and inequality.

The Trump administration repealed the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing last Thursday, according to an announcement by the US Housing and Urban Development agency.

The law required cities and towns to identify areas of racial segregation and make corrective plans, but has been tied up in courts since the end of the Obama administration.

Meanwhile, progressive Democrat US Representative Jan Schakowsky has introduced a bill to repeal an abortion restriction called the Helms Amendment, which has ripple effects the world over.

The Helms Amendment bans US funding for abortion services internationally, much like the Hyde Amendment bans federal funding of abortion services nationally.

There is almost no chance of the bill passing. Even if the bill got a vote in the Democrat-led House, it would die in the Republican-controlled Senate, and Trump would not sign it.

However, the bill could be the opening salvo in a progressive push to expand reproductive rights – a sea change from the tepid support centrist Democrats have expressed in recent decades.

One more thing – if the US did repeal the Helms Amendment, the Guttmacher Institute reports it could cost just $10 per person per year to provide sexual and reproductive health services to people the world over.

That’s just $4.80 more than the US currently spends.

With less than 100 days to the November presidential election, Trump has seen flagging numbers with one group in particular: college-educated white women. Guardian reporter Adam Gabbatt explains:

In 2016, Trump still lost this group, but narrowly. Exit polls showed him just seven points behind Clinton among college-educated white women. In June this year, a New York Times poll found Trump trailing Biden by 39%.

Female voters speaking to the Guardian cited everything from healthcare costs to the push to reopen schools during the coronavirus pandemic as reasons they no longer support Trump. And many felt flat-out guilt.

I just want to apologize to the world,” said Julie, a fraud manager from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who asked that the Guardian not use her real name.

“I feel so guilty for having a part in voting this moron in.”