Fauci says White House’s ‘bizarre’ attacks on him damage Trump – live | US news

Candace Valenzuela has won the Democratic primary in the Dallas suburbs, setting her up to become the first Afro-Latina member of the US Congress if she wins in November.

Valenzuela will face off against Republican Beth Van Duyne in November, competing for a seat vacated by Kenny Marchant, a staunch conservative and founding member of the House Tea Party Caucus.

The district that Valenzuela is hoping to represent has been a Republican stronghold that progressives are hoping to flip this year. Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren and Georgia representative John Lewis, a civil rights, both backed her in the primaries.

Registered voters are backing Biden over Trump 52% to 37%, per a Quinnipiac national poll. Biden’s lead has increased since last month – in a poll released on 18 June, 49% backed Biden and 41% supported Trump.

Voters trusted Biden over Trump to handle a number of key issues, including the coronavirus crisis and racial inequality. Their disapproval of Trump is also growing. The economy was the only issue on which Trump had a positive rating in Quinnipiac polling but in this most recent tally, only 44% approved of Trump’s handling of the economy – last month that figure was 52%.

Barack Obama’s account also seems to have been affected.

From The Guardian’s Julia Carrie Wong:

The scam messages included the address of a bitcoin wallet whose balance grew rapidly to more than 11 BTC (more than $100,000) as the scam spread. Tweets with similar messages were repeatedly deleted and re-posted by some of the compromised accounts over the course of Wednesday afternoon

The Twitter accounts of major public figures and corporations, including Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Apple appear to have been hacked as part of a bitcoin scam Wednesday. Twitter said it was looking into the situation.

The apparently compromised accounts, which count tens of millions of followers, sent a series of tweets proposing a classic scam: followers were told that if they transferred cryptocurrency to a specific bitcoin wallet, they would receive double the money in return.

Other compromised accounts include those of Kanye West, Michael Bloomberg, Uber, and a number of cryptocurrency exchanges or organizations

My colleague Vivian Ho reports from San Francisco:

California recorded its largest number of coronavirus infections in a single day on Tuesday, amid efforts to halt reopening statewide.

The state tallied 11,126 cases, the highest number since the pandemic began, according to the Los Angeles Times’ coronavirus data tracker. With testing throughout the state more readily available, an uptick in cases would be expected, but the positivity rates among test results has also been steadily increasing to 7.3% over the last seven days.

The number of positive cases has increased 3.3% in the past seven days and 47.2% in the past 14 days, according to state data. In total, the state has reported 347,634 cases since the pandemic started and seen 7,227 deaths. In the past 24 hours, there have been 140 new coronavirus-related deaths.

Hi there, it’s Maanvi Singh, reporting from the West Coast.

Donald Trump has wrapped up in Atlanta, where he announced changes to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), to speed the approval of federal projects like highways, mines and gas pipelines.

“Today’s action is part of my administration’s fierce commitment to slashing the web of needless bureaucracy that was holding back our citizens,” Trump said. He also used another opportunity to criticize Joe Biden, deriding what he painted as progressive Democratic environmental policies.

NEPA was signed into law by Richard Nixon in 1970. Trump’s rollback “drastically curtails environmental reviews for thousands of federal agency projects nationwide, a move that will weaken safeguards for air, water, wildlife and public lands,” the Center for Biological Diversity said, in reaction to the news.

That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Maanvi Singh, will take over for the next few hours.

Here’s where the day stands so far:

• Ruth Bader Ginsburg was discharged from Johns Hopkins hospital. The liberal supreme court justice was admitted to the hospital yesterday for treatment of a possible infection.
• Dr Anthony Fauci said the White House’s “bizarre” attacks on him only hurt the president. Fauci’s comments were published in the Atlantic a day after Trump’s senior trade adviser, Peter Navarro, wrote a USA Today op-ed raising doubts about the infectious disease expert’s credibility.
• The governor of Oklahoma announced he has tested positive for coronavirus. Despite his positive test result and the climbing number of cases in Oklahoma, Republican governor Kevin Stitt said he does not currently plan to roll back the state’s reopening or institute a statewide mask requirement.
• The US once again saw a record number of new coronavirus cases in a single day. According to data compiled by Johns Hopkins, more than 67,000 new cases were reported yesterday. Since the start of the crisis, the US has confirmed 3,465,031 cases and recorded 136,940 deaths from the virus.
• Walmart announced it would require masks at all of its stores. The CEO of Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, said the new policy would take effect on Monday.

Maanvi will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

The vice president tweeted a photo of Dr Anthony Fauci, as the infectious disease expert weathers criticism from some of Trump’s advisers.

Mike Pence, who leads the White House coronavirus task force, shared a picture of the team meeting, with Fauci at the center of the photo.

“Productive meeting of the @WhiteHouse Coronavirus Task Force today,” Pence wrote in the tweet. “As we continue to put the health and well-being of the American people first, we are working closely with states to move forward, safely reopening our Nation and get Americans back to work.”

The tweet comes a day after senior trade adviser Peter Navarro published an op-ed raising doubts about the credibility of Fauci, who has led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984.

Pence doubled down on his praise of Fauci in a call with reporters this afternoon, describing him as a “valued” member of the task force. “We couldn’t be more grateful for his steady counsel,” Pence said.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been discharged from Johns Hopkins Hospital, a day after being admitted for treatment of a possible infection.

“Justice Ginsburg has been discharged from the hospital. She is home and doing well,” a spokesperson for the court said in a statement.

The court previously said Ginsburg was admitted to the hospital after experiencing a fever and chills and underwent a procedure to clean out a bile duct stent that was placed last year.

The 87-year-old liberal justice has had a number of medical issues in recent years, sparking concern that she may step down from the court and give Trump another seat to fill.

Asked yesterday about Ginsburg’s admission to the hospital, Trump said, “I wish her the best, I hope she’s better. … She’s actually giving me some good rulings.”