America

In Minneapolis, where George Floyd was killed, a black entrepreneur had his bar destroyed before he even had a chance to open its doors for the first time. In Richmond, Virginia, a mob set light to a building, then blocked firefighters who were trying to save a child from the flames (-thankfully the child survived). These actions, repeated in cities all over America, are harmful in two ways: night after night, rioters are trashing their own backyard, destroying private property and putting innocent lives at risk. They are also diverting attention away from the legitimate grievances of peaceful protestors, whose efforts are far more laudable than looting.

In Britain and America, the employment news is grim. Nearly a million Brits – 850,000 more than usual – have applied for Universal Credit in the last fortnight. While in the United States, unemployment has reached an historic high. As of the end of last week, 6.6 million people claimed for out-of-work benefits. This is the highest increase in adjusted seasonal claims on record and is made even more astonishing when you consider that just four weeks ago fewer than 200,000 people applied for jobless benefits.  With every day that goes by, the health implications of Covid-19 are becoming clearer, as are the economic effects.

In Iowa, Americans had to wait the entire night before a caucus winner was declared. Today in Nevada, the wait was much, much shorter – with barely four per cent of the state’s precincts reporting, Bernie Sanders was announced as the victor. That the result was declared so decisively and so early on, was a fitting illustration of how superior the senator’s get-out-the-vote organisation was on the ground. Democratic voters in Nevada know Bernie, and they like what they see. While MSNBC’s Chris Matthews was comparing a Bernie Sanders victory in the Democratic primaries to the fall of France in 1940, Bernie’s supporters were jubilantly celebrating a big win in a state with diverse demographics.

If someone walks up to you and bangs a drum in your face, are you guilty of harassing the drummer? You might be if you’re white and wearing a MAGA hat. Just a day after rushing to judgment about a BuzzFeed story that claimed President Trump had instructed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress — a story Robert Mueller’s own office subsequently debunked, the blue-checkmark media elite had a new instant narrative to promote. It was a tale perfectly tailored to liberal biases: white Catholic teenagers in MAGA hats had harassed an old and frail Indian veteran during the March for Life, which was also the date of an Indigenous People’s March.