Trump wanted to deploy 10,000 troops in Washington D.C., official says


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump told his advisors at one point this past week he wanted 10,000 troops to deploy to the Washington D.C. area to halt civil unrest over the killing of a black man by Minneapolis police, according to a senior U.S. official.

The account of Trump’s demand during a heated Oval Office conversation on Monday shows how close the president may have come to fulfilling his threat to deploy active duty troops in U.S. cities, despite opposition from Pentagon leadership.

At the meeting, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, and Attorney General William Barr recommended against such a deployment, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The meeting was “contentious,” the official added.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump has since appeared satisfied with deployments by the National Guard, the option recommended by the Pentagon and a more traditional tool for dealing with domestic crises. Pentagon leaders scrambled to call governors with requests to send Guard forces to Washington. Additional federal law enforcement were mobilized too.

But also key for Trump appears to have been Esper’s move to preposition — but not deploy — active duty soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division and other units in the Washington D.C. area. Those troops have since departed.

“Having active duty forces available but not in the city was enough for the president for the time,” the official said.


Barr told CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday that no active duty troops were deployed on Washington streets, but there were some military police nearby.

“We had them on standby in case they were needed,” Barr said.

Trump’s bid to militarize the U.S. response to the protests has triggered a rare outpouring of condemnation from former U.S. military officials, including Trump’s first defense secretary, Jim Mattis, and retired four-star generals who normally try to steer clear of politics.

Those comments reflect deep unease inside and outside the Pentagon with Trump’s willingness to inject the U.S. military into a domestic race relations crisis following the killing of George Floyd, 46, who died on May 25 after a Minneapolis policeman knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

Floyd’s death has led to a wave of protests and national soul-searching over the country’s legacy of violence and mistreatment of African Americans and other minorities.

It has also led some Pentagon leaders of color to issue unprecedented statements bit.ly/30mxTlD about their experiences dealing with issues of race in the U.S. military.

ESPER’S FUTURE?

Esper publicly voiced his opposition on Wednesday to invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy active duty forces — remarks to reporters that did not go over well with either Trump or his top aides.

The senior U.S. official said Trump yelled at Esper after that news conference.

As speculation swirled over whether the president might fire him, White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany said Trump “remains confident in Secretary Esper.”

“Secretary Esper has been instrumental in securing our nation’s streets and ensuring Americans have peace and confidence in the security of their places of business, places of worship, and their homes,” McEnany said in a statement.

Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy told reporters on Sunday he believed “we came right up to the edge of bringing active troops here,” but added that he did not speak to the president. He expected all National Guard who came from out of state to be heading back home within 72 hours as the crisis eased.

Esper issued a memo on Tuesday reminding Defense Department personnel “we commit to protecting the American people’s right to freedom of speech and to peaceful assembly.”

Milley issued a similar statement reminding troops of their oath to the U.S. Constitution, which protects the right to peaceful protests.

Those statements by Milley and Esper came after they took fierce criticism for using military planning terms like “battlespace” to describe American protest sites during a conference call with state governors that Trump hosted on Monday, a recording of which leaked.

FILE PHOTO: National Guard members look on while mounting guard at the Lincoln Memorial during a protest against racial inequality in the aftermath of the death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd, in Washington, U.S., June 6, 2020. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo

At the time, the Pentagon was concerned that Trump might deploy active duty troops if the governors did not sufficiently employ the National Guard, the official said.

Esper and Milley have also faced criticism for accompanying Trump for a photo opportunity outside a church near the White House on Monday after police cleared the area by firing smoke grenades and chemical irritant “pepper balls” and charging into peaceful protesters.


Reporting by Phil Stewart; Additional reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Daniel Wallis
Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

China demands proof from U.S. senator for COVID-19 accusation


BEIJING (Reuters) - China on Monday challenged U.S. Senator Rick Scott to show evidence supporting his accusation that Beijing is trying to slow down or sabotage the development of a COVID-19 vaccine by Western countries.

“Since this lawmaker said he has evidence that China is trying to sabotage western countries in their vaccine development, then please let him present the evidence. There’s no need to be shy,” Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a daily briefing in response to the Republican senator’s comments to BBC TV.

Scott declined to give details of the evidence when asked during the interview on Sunday but said it had come through the intelligence community.


“China does not want us ... to do it first, they have decided to be an adversary to Americans and I think to democracy around the world,” he told the BBC.

Scott and six other Republican senators introduced a bill last month aimed at preventing China from stealing or sabotaging vaccine research.

Asked to comment on Hua’s remarks, Scott’s office referred to a statement from the FBI last month saying it was investigating attempts by Beijing-affiliated hackers to steal COVID-19-related research.

Hua said development of a COVID-19 vaccine was not a bilateral competition and Beijing hoped the United States would mirror China’s pledge and offer any vaccine it develops to the world for free.

U.S. President Donald Trump and other top officials in Washington have repeatedly criticised China’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak, which has infected more than 4 million people globally and killed more than 400,000.

China has bristled at Washington’s accusations of wrongdoing regarding COVID-19 and insists it has been open and transparent about the outbreak, which first emerged from the city of Wuhan in late 2019.

Gov. Rick Scott took responsibility? No, he took $300 million ...

https://www.sun-sentinel.com › opinion › fl-op-col-rick-scott-medicare-fra...

Oct 2, 2018 - Gov. Rick Scott is trying to run from his past when he ran a hospital company that committed massive Medicare fraud. Rather than take ...

Of Course, Trump's New Health Care Guy Was Involved in ...

https://www.gq.com › story › rick-scott-trump-health-care-fraud

Apr 3, 2019 - Florida Senator Rick Scott was CEO for a hospital network charged with $1.7 billion for Medicare fraud. Now, he's helping Trump with health ...

How much responsibility did Rick Scott really take in Medicare ...

https://floridapolitics.com › archives › 276048-how-much-responsibility-di...

Sep 30, 2018 - ... released this week seeking to address the 1990s Medicare fraud scandal has the Republican U.S. Senate campaign of Gov. Rick Scott.

Rick Scott 'oversaw the largest Medicare fraud' in ... - PolitiFact

https://www.politifact.com › factchecks › mar › florida-democratic-party

Claim: Says Rick Scott "oversaw the largest Medicare fraud in the nation’s history."

Claimed by: Florida Democratic Party

Man who drove into Virginia protest is KKK leader, prosecutor says

(Reuters) - Virginia prosecutors said on Monday a man facing charges for driving his pickup truck into racial equality protesters is a local leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

Harry H. Rogers, 36, was charged with assault and battery, malicious wounding and felony vandalism, the Henrico County police department said in statement on Monday.

The statement says Rogers on Sunday night drove through a crowd blocking a street near Richmond, Virginia, and protesting the death of George Floyd, a black man who died in Minneapolis police custody. One person was hit by Rogers’ vehicle, but not seriously injured.

Henrico Commonwealth’s Attorney Shannon Taylor said in a statement on Monday that Rogers “by his own admission and by a cursory glance at social media, is an admitted leader of the Ku Klux Klan and a propagandist for Confederate ideology.”

The Richmond CBS TV affiliate WTVR aired archive footage it had of Rogers from past years, wearing KKK robes and waving a Confederate flag.


Taylor said prosecutors were investigating to see if hate crimes should be applied to the case.

It was not immediately known if Rogers has an attorney.

Separately on Monday, a man was charged with assault for shooting a demonstrator in Seattle after he drove his car up to a march and was surrounded by protesters, according to King County jail records.

Nikolas Fernandez was captured by a bystander’s video shooting a protester who had reached into his car. The protester was hit in the arm and treated at a hospital.


Fernandez quickly exited his vehicle and brandished a gun, then dashed through the crowd and turned himself over to police who were monitoring the rally.

Fernandez is being held on a $200,000 bond.

Reporting by Nathan Layne in Wilton, Connecticut, and Brad Brooks in Austin, Texas; Editing by Bill Tarrant and Christopher Cushing

Black business owners on Washington's historic U Street see echoes of 1968

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - For the owners of some of the venerable black-owned businesses on U Street in Washington’s Northwest section, the protests against racism and police brutality that have flared on the streets of the U.S. capital seem like an echo of the past.

FILE PHOTO: Sonya Ali closes out the register at the end of service at Ben's Chili Bowl under the image of her parents-in-law and founders Ben and Virginia Ali, who famously kept the restaurant running through very difficult times in the past, as the eatery navigates the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak with no seating, limited hours and help from a federal Payroll Protection Program Loan in Washington, U.S. April 30, 2020. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo

Rioting that erupted in April 1968 in Washington and many other U.S. cities after the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King inflicted scars on the neighborhood that lasted decades.

Three black-owned U Street businesses that existed then are still are open today in a corridor of the District of Columbia once known as “Black Broadway” for its flourishing theaters and restaurants that welcomed affluent African-American customers from the 19th century through the mid-20th century.

“It’s saddened me to realize that our sons and daughters are fighting today for the same rights that we fought for back then, 52 years ago,” said Virginia Ali, 86, the co-founder of Ben’s Chili Bowl. “They’re fighting for the same basic human rights that we were fighting for.”

Ben’s Chili Bowl joins Lee’s Flower and Card Shop and Industrial Bank as U Street establishments that have managed to stand the test of time.

Three generations of the Lee family have owned Lee Flower and Card Shop since 1945, decorated the White House, and recently advised Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser on the reopening of businesses amid the coronavirus pandemic. But in 1968, the Lee family was not sure whether the neighborhood would survive.


Hundreds of buildings in Washington were burned. Some neighborhoods were pushed into an economic tailspin that took decades to recover from, according to historian Jane Levey of the Historical Society of Washington, D.C.

Rick Lee, son of business co-founder William Lee, recalls huddling in the shop with his mother Winifred, and a shotgun, praying that God would keep them safe.

“It would have been a catastrophe if something had happened to the shop,” said Lee, now 77.

The family had finally purchased the building housing the shop on a U Street corner that year after renting a different location for decades.

Several businesses, including Lee’s, placed “Soul Brothers” signs on their windows to make clear they were owned by black entrepreneurs. Those businesses were largely untouched in the 1968 unrest, Levey recalled.

‘A SAFE PLACE’

Ali recalled that Ben’s Chili Bowl, located three blocks away, was the only business allowed to stay open during the curfew imposed to try to quell the 1968 rioting.

“We were able to accommodate city officials, police officers, even activists. This was kind of a safe place to just pop in during those turbulent times,” Ali said.

Ben’s Chili Bowl - known for a menu that includes burgers, chili dogs and fries as well as the colorful murals adorning the outside of the restaurant - is a local institution. Its customers over the years have included former President Barack Obama, activist and performer Harry Belafonte, civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, comedians Kevin Hart and Dave Chappelle and U2 frontman Bono.

The protests in the past two weeks in Washington and other cities in the United States and abroad were sparked by the death of a black man named George Floyd in Minneapolis after a police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

In 1968 and today, people took to the streets because they were angry about an unjust killing, but also over a range of other issues including lack of economic opportunity and police brutality, Levey said.

Ali and Lee family members said they are looking at the recent protests with a mixture of sadness and hope.

“I’m so glad that the young people are picking up the mantle,” said Stacie Lee Banks, Rick Lee’s daughter and the current president and co-owner of the flower shop

The protesters today are more racially diverse than in 1968, which could put pressure on U.S. political leaders, Ali said.

U Street’s remaining black businesses have witnessed the end of segregation policies, survived the scourge of drugs like heroin and cocaine in the neighborhood in the 1970s and 1980s, and are holding on through a new wave of gentrification.

Ali is still waiting to see a broader transformation in the United States, observing, “I hope to see positive change in this country before I leave this Earth.”

TRUDEAU ORDERS BODY CAMERAS FOR RCMP
Canadian Mounted Police to seek body cameras to 'enhance trust,' accountability

David Lj

OTTAWA (Reuters) - The head of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on Monday said she would seek to equip officers with body-worn cameras to increase trust, accountability and transparency, according to a statement from a spokesman.

FILE PHOTO: Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau rubs hand sanitiser on his hands, given to him by a protestor, while taking part in a rally against the death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd, on Parliament Hill, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada June 5, 2020. REUTERS/Blair Gable
Earlier on Monday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he wanted police to wear body cameras to help overcome what he said was public distrust in the forces of law and order.

Protesters in Montreal and other Canadian cities took to the streets on Sunday in the latest international demonstrations against police brutality, sparked by the death of black man in Minnesota as a police offer knelt on his neck.

RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki has agreed to “engage in work and discussion... on a broader rollout of body-worn cameras” with the National Police Federation union, a statement from spokesman Dan Brien said.


“The commissioner agrees it is critically important for Canadians to feel protected by the police and is committed to take whatever steps are required to enhance trust between the RCMP and the communities we serve.”

“The use of body-worn cameras by RCMP officers was discussed as a means of ensuring accurate evidence gathering and accountability... (and) increased transparency,” the statement said.

Earlier on Monday, Trudeau said he had spoken to Lucki.

“One of the things we discussed was the adoption of body cameras. I’m committing to raising this with the provinces this week so we can move forward as quickly as possible,” Trudeau told a daily briefing. “Body cameras (are) a significant step towards transparency.”


The RCMP, which is a federal police force, also services eight of the 10 provinces. Ontario and Quebec, the two most populous provinces, have their own police.

“Many people in this country simply do not feel protected by the police. In fact, they’re afraid of them,” Trudeau said.


Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Dan Grebler, Steve Scherer and Leslie Adler
Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Closing in on all sides: Cuba nears declaring coronavirus victory

 (Reuters) - Reina Paula, a saleswoman at Havana’s La Epoca supermarket, said the same day that a worker tested positive for the coronavirus, local authorities sent the rest of the staff in a fleet of state vehicles to isolation facilities for testing.

Nurse Yosian Diago checks door-to-door for people with symptoms amid concerns about the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in downtown Havana, Cuba, June 8, 2020. REUTERS/Alexandre Meneghini

Healthcare providers traced their relatives and sent them into quarantine, while state news outlets publicly appealed to anyone who had had close contact with them to come forward to prevent the virus from spreading.

“They followed the clinical steps like a Swiss clock,” said Paula, at home after recovering from the worst of COVID-19, the respiratory disease the novel coronavirus causes.

Those who tested positive were transferred to hospital, where they were given antivirals and immune system boosters, while the others were sent home to quarantine for two weeks.

Paula’s story illustrates the rigorous approach Cuba has taken to curb the coronavirus outbreak - helped by the Caribbean island nation’s preventive, universal and well-staffed healthcare system, centralization and use of coercion.

Doing so was politically vital for Cuba’s ruling Communist Party, which claims the country’s strong healthcare system as a key achievements, even as it has failed to deliver on the economy, partly due to a U.S. trade embargo.

New cases have dropped to less than 10 per day on average from a peak of around 50, and two thirds of the island is virus-free, according to official data.

Monday was the ninth consecutive day with no deaths from COVID-19, while the highly infectious disease continues to rage throughout the Americas.

“We could be shortly closing in on the tail end of the pandemic and entering the phase of recovery from COVID,” President Miguel Diaz-Canel said this weekend.

Like many countries, Cuba closed its borders and schools at the start of the outbreak and urged Cubans to practice social distancing, though that was complicated by large queues outside shops amid growing scarcity.

But Cuba swiftly made face masks obligatory and quarantined large numbers of people rather than just telling them to stay home.

Disobeying pandemic measures carried a fine or even a prison sentence. And the Cuban state has used its monopoly of traditional news media to broadcast trials for such offenses to set an example and educate citizens on the virus.

It has also sent tens of thousands of family doctors, nurses and medical students to homes nationwide daily to conduct screenings, underscoring a strength of the healthcare system, even as tight resources in recent decades have seen hospitals fall into disrepair and more frequent medicine shortages.

Cuba’s top epidemiologist, Francisco Duran, said early detection, hospitalization and the application of experimental treatments - many developed by the country’s own biotech sector - have helped reduce COVID-19’s fatality.

Cuba, with a population of 11 million, has reported 2,200 cases and 83 deaths. That translates to 0.73 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, according to a Johns Hopkins University tally, slightly above Costa Rica’s 0.20 per 100,000 but far below Brazil’s 17.4.

The success has won plaudits from citizens.

“Once more,” Havana resident Marina Rodriguez said, “our country has shown that despite its difficulties, it is always able to control an epidemic.”

Reporting by Sarah Marsh and Nelson Acosta; Editing by Leslie Adler

George Floyd protests in France give bereaved family new hope for justice

BEAUMONT-SUR-OISE, France (Reuters) - Since the wave of protests triggered by the brutal killing of George Floyd reached France, protesters have been chanting another name too: Adama Traore.



“They died in exactly the same way,” said his sister Assa Traore. “Adama carried the weight of three officers on his body.”

Adama Traore was celebrating his 24th birthday on July 19, 2016, when three police officers restrained him using the weight of their bodies. By the time he was delivered to a police station, he was unconscious and could not be revived.

Like Floyd, Traore was black, and his death triggered huge protests in France, where the police’s record of brutality and racism remains unaddressed.

For four years, his family have demanded that French police be held to account for the death of her brother in police custody. Noone has been prosecuted. Medical experts are unable to agree on whether the way he was restrained killed him, or an underlying medical condition. Attention to the death had faded.

Now, anger over the killing of George Floyd in the United States is giving their campaign new impetus.

“It’s a strong, powerful echo,” Assa Traore told Reuters in an interview in Beaumont-sur-Oise, the neighbourhood near Paris where her brother lived.

The Traore family and their supporters are this week calling for a nationwide day of protests in France.

“All the light shed on the George Floyd case has served as a reminder of the numerous other victims who died in the same conditions as George Floyd,” said Almamy Kanoute, a French actor involved in the Traore campaign.

“We’re not saying the police in France are the same as in the United States. But the deadly techniques used in the United States are the same ones as in some European countries, the same ones that kill the same type of people.”

Reporting by Noemie Olive, Lucien Libert and Yonathan Van der Voort; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky

GREAT TRUMP NEWS AGGREGATOR 
CALLED APPROPRIATELY
https://whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com/all/

Trump ordered National Guard troops to begin withdrawing from the streets of Washington, D.C. “now that everything is under perfect control.” Trump warned that the troops “will be going home, but can quickly return, if needed.” The move comes amid a barrage of criticism over his violent response to mostly peaceful protests across the city and his threats to further militarize the government’s response to nationwide demonstrations against police brutality and the murder of George Floyd. (New York Times / Washington Post)

TRUMP'S REAL BASE IS 15%

poll/ 80% of Americans say things are out of control in the United States, while 15% say things are under control. 59% say they’re more troubled by Floyd’s death and the actions of police than they are about recent protests or occasional looting, compared to 27% who are more concerned about the protests. (NBC News / Wall Street Journal)

U.S. economy entered recession in February, business cycle arbiter says

2020 BC, BEFORE CORONAVIRUS

TRUMP CRASHES ECONOMY IN FEBRUARY

(Reuters) - The U.S. economy ended its longest expansion in history in February and entered recession as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, the private economics research group that acts as the arbiter for determining U.S. business cycles said on Monday.

The Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research said in a statement that members “concluded that the unprecedented magnitude of the decline in employment and production, and its broad reach across the entire economy, warrants the designation of this episode as a recession, even if it turns out to be briefer than earlier contractions.”

The designation was expected, but notable for its speed, a mere four months after the recession began. The committee has typically waited longer in order to be sure. When the economy started declining in late 2007, for example, the committee did not pinpoint the start of the recession until a year later.

But the depth and speed of this collapse left little doubt.“In deciding whether to identify a recession, the committee weighs the depth of the contraction, its duration, and whether economic activity declined broadly across the economy ... The committee recognizes that the pandemic and the public health response have resulted in a downturn with different characteristics and dynamics than prior recessions,” the committee said in a released statement.

U.S. gross domestic product fell at a 4.8% annualized rate in the first three months of the year. The outcome for the April to June period is expected to show an even worse annualized decline of perhaps 20% or more. The unemployment rate rose from a record of 3.5% in February to 14.7% in April and 13.3% last month.

But growth may well recover from there, possibly making the current downturn not only among the sharpest, but also among the shortest, on record. 

THIS IS CALLED MAGICAL THINKING BY THE SHAMAN'S OF WALL ST. WHO FOLLOW THE ANIMAL SPIRITS OFTHE MARKET

Recession - Bureau of Labor Statistics
https://www.bls.gov › spotlight › recession › pdf › recession_bls_spotlight
In December 2007, the national unemployment rate was 5.0 percent, and it had been at or below that rate for the previous 30 months. At the end of the recession, .

Weekly Economic Perspectives - State Street Global Advisors
https://www.ssga.com › us › institutional › etfs › library-content › pdfs › w...
May 8, 2020 - Contraction in US retail sales and industrial production set to deepen. Data to show UK, German, and eurozone Q1 GDP contraction. ... Still, the 2.5% annualized decline was considerably more ... unemployment rate increased by 5.2 percentage points (ppts) to ... US. Monthly Budget Statement (Apr, $ bil.).

Arkansas Economist | A forum for information and analysis on ...

https://arkansaseconomist.com

Arkansas Employment and Unemployment – April 2020 ... Since February, the U.S. labor force has declined by 4.9% and the Arkansas labor force is down 3.7%. ... The predicted values in the table show the results of applying the national ... The new IHS forecast projects GDP growth falling at nearly a 37% annual rate in the ...

WE SPY ON YOU
Israel's NSO showcases drone tech, pushes to counter rights abuse allegations

Dan Williams

TEL AVIV (Reuters) - Israel’s NSO Group showcased a new anti-drone defence on Monday, giving the public a rare look at its technology as it seeks to counter allegations that another of its products has aided privacy breaches and political surveillance.

A test drone operator prepares to launch a drone during a demonstration for Reuters of Israel's NSO Group's product, Eclipse, a system that commandeers and force-lands intruding drones, at Bloomfield Stadium, in Tel Aviv, Israel June 8, 2020. REUTERS/Ammar Awad

The new system, Eclipse, commandeers intruding drones and, according to NSO, costs “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to provide stadium-sized protection. More than 10 countries have bought it to safeguard sites like energy facilities, NSO said.

The promotion follows controversy for the company around Pegasus, spyware that has drawn a lawsuit by WhatsApp alleging it helped government spies hack the phones of roughly 1,400 users including journalists and dissidents.

Pegasus has been linked to political surveillance in Mexico, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, according to the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, which researches digital surveillance

NSO denies wrongdoing and says it sells only to government agencies, subject to oversight by Israel’s Defence Ministry.

On Monday, Chief Executive Shalev Hulio also sought to highlight a heightened transparency drive.

NSO has declined deals worth around $500 million on ethical grounds and, as of next year, will issue annual compliance reports, Hulio told Reuters at an empty soccer stadium where Eclipse, in a test-run, intercepted a drone within seconds.

Like other security exporters, NSO maintains secrecy around its client list and spyware, citing a reluctance to tip off those being tracked. This makes independent verification of its business practices difficult.

“The beauty of this product, unlike other products that we developed, is this is something we can demonstrate,” Hulio said of Eclipse.

In November, NSO set up a compliance department which it says brings the company into line with U.N. “guiding principles” on safeguarding against human-rights abuses.

“We always want to be more transparent,” Hulio said.

Hulio said NSO had about a dozen products that saved lives. He is also promoting Fleming, an analytics system aimed at mapping the spread of the novel coronavirus.