Yahoo Movies First Thing: DoJ called Trump election claims ‘pure insanity’, emails show
Good morning.
Donald Trump attempted to enlist top US law enforcement officials in his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election – an effort branded “pure insanity” – newly released emails reveal.
The documents, released by the House of Representatives’ oversight committee on Tuesday, show an increasingly desperate attempt by the former president and his allies to hold on to power after he lost November’s election.
“These documents show that President Trump tried to corrupt our nation’s chief law enforcement agency in a brazen attempt to overturn an election that he lost,” Carolyn Maloney, chair of the House of Representatives’ oversight committee, said.
Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told justice department officials to investigate false allegations of voter fraud at least five times, according to the documents, including the conspiracy theory “Italygate”. Richard Donoghue, then acting deputy attorney general, responded to an email about the theory as “pure insanity”.
What’s the significance of the emails? They show Trump pressured the then acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, to make the justice department take up election fraud claims, writes our Washington DC bureau chief, David Smith.
Republicans are trying to block a Senate inquiry into the Trump justice department’s secret data seizure from Democrats to track down leaks of classified information.
And woes are mounting for the lawyers who pushed Trump’s election conspiracies. Lawyers including L Lin Wood and Sidney Powell face federal inquiries and defamation suits threatening their careers, writes Peter Stone.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden was due to meet the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, in Geneva on Wednesday in a highly anticipated summit. On Tuesday Biden attended his first EU-US summit in Brussels.
Israel launches Gaza airstrike after militants release incendiary balloons
Israel carried out an airstrike on the Gaza Strip on Tuesday night in response to incendiary balloons released from the Palestinian territory.
The strike was the first since a truce ended 11 days of deadly violence last month, and the violence is a preliminary test for Israel’s new government, sworn in just three days ago.
It came after a march by Jewish nationalists in East Jerusalem on Tuesday prompted threats of action by the Palestinian militant group Hamas, write Oliver Holmes and Quique Kierszenbaum.
More than a year after shutting down, California lifts Covid rules with a ‘grand reopening’
Photograph: Alberto E Rodríguez/Getty Images
California lifted its major coronavirus restrictions on Tuesday with a “grand reopening”, 15 months after it became the first US state to shut down because of the pandemic.
At midnight almost all of its restrictions on social distancing and capacity limits were removed and vaccinated residents permitted to go maskless in most spaces (exceptions include public transit, healthcare facilities, K-12 schools and prisons).
“With all due respect, eat your heart out, the rest of the United States,” said the California governor, Gavin Newsom. “The state is not just poised to recover, it’s poised to come roaring back.”
What’s the background? California went from an early pandemic success story to the US center of the virus, report Lois Beckett and Peter-Astrid Kane. After shutting down in March 2020, businesses started to reopen last June but restrictions were reimposed after cases started rising and there followed a deadly winter with two Covid deaths an hour.
How many Californians are vaccinated? At least 70% of adults have had at least one dose.
Meanwhile, Vermont has become the first US state to reach 80% vaccination and is lifting all statewide coronavirus restrictions.
New York also lifted many of its restrictions – celebrating with fireworks – as it reached 70% of adults to have had at least one vaccine dose.
But, despite all the progress, the Delta variant has roughly doubled every two weeks in the US. What does it mean? Jessica Glenza reports.
An ex-St Louis police officer convicted of beating a suspect had been forced out of a neighboring police force
A former police officer in St Louis, Missouri with a track record of violence has been convicted of beating a suspect as he lay restrained and prostrate on the ground.
Ellis Brown III was found guilty by a federal jury last week after an internal police inquiry cleared him over a 2019 car chase that ended with him severely kicking Steven Kolb, who was so badly injured he was taken to hospital, after he surrendered.
But Brown is better known as one of two St Louis officers who shot Kajieme Powell, a Black man, dead in 2014, reports Chris McGreal, 10 days after another police officer killed Michael Brown in nearby Ferguson.
In other news …
Joe Biden reportedly plans to appoint antitrust researcher Lina Khan as chair of the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The anticipated move would represent a win for progressives who have pushed for laws to tackle monopolies and corporate power. Khan was confirmed by the Senate as an FTC commissioner on Tuesday with strong bipartisan support.
Indigenous Canadians who were forced to use European names on official documents have won the right to have their original names restored as the government attempts to atone for historical abuses. It comes after the discovery last month of hundreds of unmarked graves at the site of a former residential school.
Athlete Shelby Houlihan, the US 1,500 and 5,000m record holder, has been issued with a four-year ban for doping after testing positive for the anabolic steroid nandrolone and attempting to blame a burrito. Houlihan, 28, who was considered a leading Olympic medal contender for the Tokyo Games, said she had “never taken any performance-enhancing substances”.
Peruvians from the Huinchiri community in the Cusco region are rebuilding a 500-year-old Incan hanging bridge using traditional weaving techniques after it collapsed in March. The Q’eswachaka bridge, which connects two communities across the Apurímac River, is 3o meters (98ft) long.
Stat of the day: 10 of America’s richest families, including the Walmart family, saw their combined net worth soar by over $136bn during the pandemic
Silver Spoon Oligarchs, a report by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) published on Wednesday, found their wealth soared in 14 months and shows how the families have acted to make sure the system supports their growing wealth over decades.
Don’t miss this: is ‘no-kill meat’ too good to be true?
Raised in a laboratory bioreactor from cells derived from living animals, “no-kill” or lab-grown meat is being billed as a way of getting all meat’s benefits minus the ethical and environmental downsides. But is the movement, being led by the California startup Eat Just, as good as it sounds? Experts question its bold claims, writes Erin McCormick.
Last Thing: Fox reporter goes off-script
Ivory Hecker’s colleagues and Fox 26 viewers had been expecting a report on the impact of hot weather on Houston. But instead, the disgruntled reporter used her report to mount an on-air attack on her employer, who she accused of “muzzling” her, and claimed she had passed information about her colleagues to ProjectVeritas, a rightwing non-profit. She then seamlessly returned to her planned subject: “As for this weather across Texas, you can see what it’s doing to AC units …”
Sign up
First Thing is delivered to thousands of inboxes every weekday. If you’re not already signed up, subscribe now.
Get in Touch
If you have any questions or comments about any of our newsletters please email newsletters@theguardian.com
