First Thing: 'A chapter in the book of Washington Covid mismanagement'
Good morning.
The US surpassed 5m confirmed Covid-19 cases on Sunday, meaning it accounts for a quarter of the global tally of 20 million. Over the weekend Donald Trump sought to break a congressional impasse over continued economic relief, signing executive orders to reduce federal enhanced unemployment benefits while providing payroll tax cuts and protection against evictions. Congress controls federal spending, which means the orders are not just ineffectual but may be illegal.
The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, described the president’s proposals as “illusions”. Nebraska’s Republican senator, Ben Sasse, dismissed them as “unconstitutional slop”. The New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, said Trump’s plan was “laughable,” adding: “I expect this is just a chapter in the book of Washington Covid mismanagement.”
The midwest is bracing itself for a surge in cases after the region’s governors questioned the value of face coverings as the virus swept through the coasts and the sun belt.
The shortage of PPE could persist for years if the US government fails to develop a strategic plan to supply hospitals, experts say.
The US health secretary, Alex Azar, praised Taiwan’s Covid-19 response on a visit to Taipei, which is expected to further inflame tensions between Washington and Beijing.
Hong Kong media mogul arrested under its new law
Jimmy Lai, the founder of Hong Kong’s biggest pro-democracy newspaper and a strident critic of Beijing, has been arrested under a sweeping new security law imposed by China on the supposedly semi-autonomous territory.
The 71-year-old self-made entrepreneur, known as the Rupert Murdoch of Asia, is the highest-profile figure detained under the law so far. He is accused of fraud and “collusion with foreign forces”. The offices of Lai’s Apple Daily tabloid also raided, in an escalation by the authorities on what pro-democracy activists described as “the day press freedom officially died”.
Apple imported clothes from a company facing US sanctions over its use of forced labour at a subsidiary firm in China’s Xinjiang region, where Beijing is reportedly overseeing the mass persecution of the country’s Uighur Muslim minority.
Beirutis want to toss out the leaders they blame for blast
Days after the explosion at Beirut’s port that killed 150 people and destroyed a swathe of the Lebanese capital, crowds of protesters hurled rocks at the country’s parliamentary precinct on Sunday evening, demanding the fall of the government whose negligence and dysfunction they blame for the disaster. Police fired teargas at rioters, who tried to break into the fortified central Beirut district.
Lebanon’s information minister resigned on Sunday. Manal Abdel Samad was the first minister to quit since the explosion; later, the environment minister joined her. At least 43 MPs would need to resign for the government to fall. So far nine have done so, with more expected to follow.
Protests rock Belarus after suspect presidential vote
Alexander Lukashenko has ruled Belarus for 26 years, but in recent months the country’s opposition held some of the biggest political rallies seen there since the Soviet era. So after the preliminary results of the presidential election were announced on Sunday, giving Lukashenko a landslide 82% of the vote, protests broke out in cities across the country amid widespread accusations of vote-rigging. Police in the capital, Minsk, used rubber bullets, teargas and water cannon to try to quell the unrest.
A member of the Belarus electoral commission was filmed climbing down a ladder from the window of a polling station in Minsk, carrying a bag assumed to contain voting slips.
The opposition leader, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, was forced into hiding on the eve of the election when police detained several of her campaign staff, but she re-emerged to vote in Minsk on Sunday afternoon.
In other news…
The prime minister of Mauritius has said a leaking Japanese oil tanker that ran aground off the coast of the Indian Ocean island two weeks ago is breaking up and could spill a further 2,500 tonnes of oil, threatening an ecological and economic disaster.
Protests in Portland flared up again over the weekend after a small group of demonstrators set a fire inside a police union building, leading the police to declare the situation a riot, deploying flashbangs and smoke to disperse the crowds.
The president of Kiribati, a Pacific archipelago threatened by rising sea levels, has told the Guardian he plans to raise the islands above the ocean by dredging, with help from his country’s new diplomatic partner, China.
Climate countdown: 86 days to save the Earth
The 2018 fire in Paradise, California, killed 86 people. And wildfires will only get more ferocious as the climate emergency progresses – which is one reason we’re highlighting the crisis in our climate countdown series, with just 86 days to go before the US pulls out of the Paris agreement.
Great reads
The big Gen X animation comeback
Generation X, the forgotten middle child of American culture, is about to enjoy a TV mini-revival with reboots of Daria, Ren & Stimpy and Beavis & Butthead. Charles Bramesco asks how these distinctly 1990s animations will deal with the 2020s.
The sidewalk fridges helping Americans in the pandemic
The Covid era has inspired a wave of mutual aid, and no example is clearer than that of sidewalk fridges, where community members can take or donate free food, no questions asked. Frida Garza spoke to some of the people keeping the fridges stocked and secure.
Opinion: trans women pose no threat to cisgender women
Growing up in San Francisco, Rebecca Solnit learned early that giving trans people legal recognition did not threaten anyone else’s rights. So why, she asks, do supposed feminists keep focusing on the imaginary dangers posed by trans women?
Trans women do not pose a threat to cisgender women, and feminism is a subcategory of human rights advocacy, which means, sorry, you can’t be a feminist if you’re not for everyone’s human rights, notably other women’s rights.
Last Thing: the pandemic kept us apart for five months
When Helen Sullivan left her husband behind in Beirut in March, neither realised that the lockdown would end up keeping them apart for five months. In that time, the world changed completely; as they prepared to reunite at last in Sydney, she wondered: had they?
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