Here’s what you need to know:
- Trump discounts the fact that police kill Black Americans at a higher rate than white people.
- Trump’s support lifts Tuberville to victory.
- Gideon, with enormous war chest, will challenge Susan Collins in Maine.
- Texas has key runoff elections in potentially competitive House districts.
- Trump turns a White House speech into a Biden attack session.
- Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been hospitalized with a fever and chills.
- Some Texas poll workers refuse to wear masks, causing others to leave their sites.
Trump discounts the fact that police kill Black Americans at a higher rate than white people.
President Trump, struggling in his re-election race against his Democratic opponent, mounted a lengthy and often rambling attack on Tuesday against Joseph R. Biden Jr., while nodding to his predominantly white base of voters with a series of startling remarks about the Confederate flag, victims of police violence and a St. Louis couple who pointed guns at protesters peacefully marching by their house.
Mr. Trump added to his long record of racially inflammatory remarks during an interview with CBS News, in which he brushed off a question about Black people killed by police officers, saying that white people are killed in greater numbers.
Mr. Trump reacted angrily when asked about the issue, which has led to nationwide protests calling for major law enforcement changes.
“Why are African-Americans still dying at the hands of law enforcement in this country?” the interviewer, Catherine Herridge of CBS News, asked the president.
“What a terrible question to ask,” Mr. Trump responded. “So are white people. More white people, by the way.”
Statistics show that while more white Americans are killed by the police over all, minorities are killed at higher rates. A federal study that examined lethal force used by the police between 2009 and 2012 found that a majority of victims were white, but the victims were disproportionately Black. Black people had a fatality rate at the hands of police officers that was 2.8 times higher than that of white people.
In a separate interview published on Tuesday with the conservative website Townhall.com, Mr. Trump falsely claimed that a white couple in St. Louis who confronted peaceful marchers outside their home with guns were on the verge of being beaten and having their home burned down.
“They were going to be beat up badly, and the house was going to be totally ransacked and probably burned down,” Mr. Trump said.
Video of the incident, which became a flash point in the national debate over racial inequality, showed that the protesters at no point physically threatened the couple.
The president’s remarks were the latest example of his refusal to acknowledge the racial discrimination that even many in his own party have said must be addressed. But Mr. Trump, who recently posted on Twitter a video of a supporter shouting “white power” and said he would oppose a bipartisan effort in Congress to remove Confederate names from military bases, has displayed no intention of trying to bridge the country’s racial divide.
Asked in the CBS interview how he felt about the use of the Confederate battle flag in public settings like NASCAR races, the president said: “With me, it’s freedom of speech. Very simple. Like it, don’t like it, it’s freedom of speech.”
Asked if he understood that the flag was a painful symbol to many people as a reminder of slavery, Mr. Trump said, “Well, people love it and I don’t view — I know people that like the Confederate flag and they’re not thinking about slavery.” He added, “I just think it’s freedom of speech, whether it’s Confederate flags or Black Lives Matter or anything else you want to talk about.”
Trump’s support lifts Tuberville to victory.
Jeff Sessions spent his final days on the campaign trail reiterating his support for President Trump’s agenda, reminding voters of his efforts to curb illegal immigration while attorney general and emphasizing how, as a senator, he had endorsed Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign at a time when few others in Washington would.
But in the end, it wasn’t enough. And in truth, after Mr. Trump endorsed Mr. Sessions’s opponent, it probably never was.
On Tuesday, Mr. Sessions lost the Alabama Senate Republican runoff election to Tommy Tuberville, a former Auburn University football coach whose platform was largely a blanket promise to support the president at all times.
“People in Alabama voted against Jeff Sessions because Donald Trump told them to,” said Angi Stalnaker, a Republican strategist in Alabama. “If it had been Donald Trump saying, ‘Go write in Mickey Mouse,’ 50 percent of them would have gone to write in Mickey Mouse.”
“They wanted to please the president,” Ms. Stalnaker said. “This was never about Tommy Tuberville.”
Mr. Tuberville now advances to the November general election, where he will face Senator Doug Jones, a Democrat.
The loss most likely marks the end of Mr. Sessions’s three-decade political career, which included four terms as a senator and less than two years as Mr. Trump’s attorney general.
Mr. Sessions was once among Alabama’s most popular politicians, a deeply conservative Republican in a deeply conservative state. But in a testament to the president’s immense pull among the state’s Republicans, much of that good will evaporated the moment that Mr. Sessions, as attorney general, recused himself from the investigation into Russia’s influence in the 2016 election, and ignited in Mr. Trump a rage that has never seemed to dim.
Gideon, with enormous war chest, will challenge Susan Collins in Maine.
Sara Gideon, the speaker of the Maine House of Representatives, on Tuesday formally became the Democratic nominee to challenge Senator Susan Collins of Maine, wielding a formidable war chest in a race that could determine whether Republicans retain control of the Senate in November.
Ms. Gideon, backed by the Senate Democratic campaign arm and a number of outside political groups, had long been the favorite to challenge Ms. Collins, the sole remaining New England Republican in Congress. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report has rated the race a tossup, and the election has already become the most expensive in Maine history.
While Ms. Collins coasted to a fourth term in 2014 with 69 percent of the vote, her reputation for independence and bipartisanship has suffered under the Trump administration, and her approval ratings have plummeted at home. Though she has split with President Trump on a number of issues, she faced a significant backlash after supporting the $1.5 trillion tax-cut package in 2017 and voting to confirm Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in 2018.
Millions of dollars have flooded the race and the airwaves in Maine, with Ms. Gideon raising $23 million from both voters in Maine and national Democratic donors eager to flip the seat and secure control of the Senate.
Having defeated two progressives — Betsy Sweet, a lobbyist, and Bre Kidman, a lawyer — Ms. Gideon is set to receive another windfall: at least $3.5 million raised by a crowdfunding campaign during and after the confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh.
Texas has key runoff elections in potentially competitive House districts.
Back in December, the Senate Democrats’ campaign arm waded into the Texas primary, endorsing M.J. Hegar over a field of candidates. Now Ms. Hegar, a former Air Force helicopter pilot who narrowly lost a 2018 bid for the House, faces a runoff against Royce West, a state legislator vying to become the first Black senator from Texas.
The winner will face Senator John Cornyn, a three-term incumbent who is the second-ranking Senate Republican and will be a heavy favorite in the general election. But Democrats are becoming more optimistic about Texas by the week, with Mr. Biden’s campaign announcing Tuesday that it is buying television airtime in the state. Still, Ms. Hegar or Mr. West would need a major increase in fund-raising to become competitive in November.
In Texas House races, Democratic voters will choose a candidate in the primary runoff in the state’s 24th Congressional District, which covers suburbs between Dallas and Fort Worth. It’s a longtime Republican stronghold that Democrats think they can flip in November.
The candidates are Kim Olson, 62, a white Air Force veteran, and Candace Valenzuela, 36, an Afro-Latina former school board member.
Ms. Olson has advertised her 25 years of military experience and how she was part of the first generation of female fighter pilots. Ms. Valenzuela has emphasized her difficult childhood — her family was poor, and she was homeless for a time — and her personal connections to the community. If elected she would be the first Afro-Latina member of Congress.
Ms. Olson was initially seen as the heavy favorite, and she finished more than 10 percentage points ahead of Ms. Valenzuela in the first round of voting in March. But Ms. Valenzuela has racked up prominent endorsements, including from Senators Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Cory Booker.
The winner will face the Republican nominee, Beth Van Duyne, for a House seat currently held by Kenny Marchant, a retiring Republican.
Another congressional runoff will unfold for Republicans in the 22nd District, which is expected to be competitive in November.
The district, which is in the Houston area and currently represented by the retiring Pete Olson, is home to a bitter race between Troy Nehls, the Fort Bend County sheriff, and Kathaleen Wall, a conservative activist. Mr. Nehls was far ahead of Ms. Wall in the first round of voting in March, but did not reach the 50 percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff.
Trump turns a White House speech into a Biden attack session.
On Tuesday evening, Mr. Trump turned a White House Rose Garden news conference about China’s crackdown on Hong Kong into a campaign-style screed against Mr. Biden, his Democratic rival.
Mr. Trump announced several measures aimed at punishing China, but soon veered into attacking Mr. Biden on a wide range of topics. He criticized Mr. Biden’s record on trade policy with China and assailed him for supporting the Paris Climate Agreement. Mr. Trump said Mr. Biden hadn’t done enough to maintain roads and falsely claimed that Mr. Biden wants to defund the military.
“Joe Biden and President Obama freely allowed China to pillage our factories, plunder our communities and steal our most precious secrets,” Mr. Trump alleged, using the backdrop of the White House to press his case for re-election.
After speaking about China for just a few minutes, Mr. Trump completely abandoned any pretense that his purpose was to announce a new policy. CNN and MSNBC both stopped carrying the president’s news conference live after it became clear that he intended to use it as a televised campaign event.
Mr. Trump’s long and rambling remarks were more like a 2020 Make America Great Again rally than the usual sober announcements made in the Rose Garden. In front of White House reporters who had assembled for the Hong Kong announcement, the president assailed Mr. Biden with false and misleading attacks.
“Where is Hunter?” the president asked, referring to a conspiracy theory pushed by the president’s allies about Hunter Biden, the former vice president’s son, and his involvement in a Ukrainian company called Burisma.
“You all know about Burisma, but nothing happens,” Mr. Trump lamented. “Nobody cares.”
He attacked Mr. Biden’s environmental proposals and accused him of embracing the agenda of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
“His agenda is the most extreme platform of any major party nominee, by far, in American history,” Mr. Trump said. “I think it’s worse than actually Bernie’s platform. It’s gone so far and he’s doing that because he’s begging for that vote.”
The Biden campaign responded to Mr. Trump’s remarks in a statement, and sought to redirect attention to the speech Mr. Biden gave on the environment earlier in the day.
“Today’s statement that was ostensibly supposed to be about China, but there was one topic that President Trump couldn’t seem to get off his mind: Joe Biden, whose name the President invoked nearly 30 times,” said Kate Bedingfield, Mr. Biden’s deputy campaign manager.
“What we heard in the Rose Garden today wasn’t a president at all. It was a politician who sees his re-election slipping away from him and who is furious that his own botched response to the coronavirus pandemic has denied him the campaign events he so craves. The American taxpayer should be reimbursed for the abuse of funds this spectacle represented.”
Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been hospitalized with a fever and chills.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was hospitalized on Tuesday for a possible infection, the Supreme Court announced, and will stay there for “a few days” to receive intravenous antibiotics.
The court said in a statement that Justice Ginsburg had experienced a fever and chills last night, underwent a procedure on Tuesday “to clean out a bile duct stent,” and was now resting comfortably.
Justice Ginsburg, 87, is the oldest member of the Supreme Court as well as the leader of its liberal wing, and her health is a matter of intense focus because of the possibility of an election-year vacancy that could fundamentally reshape the court. If she were to die or step down before the election, Mr. Trump would have an opportunity to nominate a third justice, setting up an extraordinary clash in the Senate.
When Justice Antonin Scalia died in February 2016, President Barack Obama nominated Judge Merrick Garland to replace him — and Senate Republicans took the unprecedented step of refusing to grant Judge Garland a hearing. The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, argued at the time that because it was an election year, whoever won that November should nominate Justice Scalia’s replacement.
To Democrats’ fury, Mr. McConnell succeeded in keeping the seat open through the election, and Mr. Trump ultimately nominated Justice Neil Gorsuch. But Mr. McConnell has since said that if there were a Supreme Court vacancy this year, he would hold a vote on Mr. Trump’s nominee.
Justice Ginsburg has survived numerous serious health problems over the years, including pancreatic cancer and lung cancer. In May, she was hospitalized briefly for an infection caused by a gallstone.
Some Texas poll workers refuse to wear masks, causing others to leave their sites.
Earlier this month, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas offered an exemption to his statewide mandate that people wear masks in public: Voters wouldn’t have to wear them at polling locations. The reason, the governor said, was so that Texans do not lose their right to vote “simply because they don’t have a mask.”
On Tuesday, some Republican poll workers in Collin County, one of the most populous counties in the state, refused to wear masks while working at the polls, Democrats said.
“I’d been worried about the voters,” said Cynthia Riley, 59, a Democrat who was working at a polling location at Clark High School. “I didn’t realize I needed to be worried about the person I’m standing next to on the other side of the plastic.” Ms. Riley said that Democratic county officials told her that all Democratic poll workers had to wear masks.
Ms. Riley left after 45 minutes, saying she did not feel safe.
Allison St. Claire, 60, said she had a similar experience as a poll worker at another site, the Islamic Association of Collin County. She stayed for a few hours before also deciding to leave after multiple other poll workers did not put on masks, even though there were masks and face shields provided by the county at the location.
“I have mild COPD, and if I catch Covid, I’m the one who’s going to be on a ventilator and I’m the one whose children won’t even be able to see me,” said Ms. St. Claire. “They don’t care what happens to me, but my children sure do, and they weren’t wild about me doing this in the first place.”
Officials from the Collin County Republican Party did not respond to requests for comment.
Officials with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a voting rights group, said that they had heard “a smattering of reports” that election workers weren’t properly utilizing masks. But, they said, the governor’s mask exemption mandate scared many poll workers away.
“The big issue we’ve seen is poll workers saying, ‘We don’t want to work this election because the governor isn’t requiring masks at polling locations,’” said Anthony Gutierrez, the executive director of Common Cause Texas, another voting rights group.
In a speech, Biden announces a $2 trillion climate plan.
Mr. Biden on Tuesday announced a new plan to spend $2 trillion over four years to significantly escalate the use of clean energy in the transportation, electricity and building sectors.
In a speech in Wilmington, Del., Mr. Biden built on his plans, released last week, for reviving the economy in the wake of the coronavirus crisis, with a new focus on enhancing the nation’s infrastructure and emphasizing the importance of putting the United States on a path to significantly cut fossil fuel emissions.
“These are the most critical investments we can make for the long-term health and vitality of both the American economy and the physical health and safety of the American people,” he said, repeatedly criticizing President Trump’s leadership on issues including climate and the pandemic. “When Donald Trump thinks about climate change, the only word he can muster is ‘hoax.’ When I think about climate change, the word I think of is ‘jobs.’”
The proposal is the second plank in Mr. Biden’s economic recovery plan. His team sees an opportunity to take direct aim at Mr. Trump, who has struggled to deliver on his pledges to finance major improvements to American infrastructure. Republicans are sure to criticize the proposal as an attack on jobs in the energy sector — but the plan will also test whether Mr. Biden has found a way to win over environmental activists and other progressives who have long been skeptical about the scope of his ambitions on climate.
His plan outlines specific and aggressive targets, including achieving an emissions-free power sector by 2035 and upgrading four million buildings over four years to meet the highest standards for energy efficiency. The plan also calls for establishing an office of environmental and climate justice at the Justice Department and developing a broad set of tools to address how “environmental policy decisions of the past have failed communities of color.”
Reporting was contributed by Maggie Astor, Alexander Burns, Emily Cochrane, Nick Corasaniti, Catie Edmondson, Reid J. Epstein, Lisa Friedman, Trip Gabriel, Katie Glueck, Maggie Haberman, Jon Hurdle, Patricia Mazzei, Thomas Kaplan, Jeremy W. Peters, Elaina Plott, Charlie Savage and Michael D. Shear.
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