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The co-author of Donald Trump’s 1987 book, The Art of the Deal, has labelled the president a “psychopath,” and speculated that he might try to steal November’s presidential election.Tony Schwartz, the co-author of Mr Trump’s first book, made the comments when asked about an interview given by Joe Biden on Thursday, in which the former vice president suggested that Mr Trump would refuse to leave office if he loses in November.

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The head of the Seattle’s Police Department told officers in a video address on Thursday that the decision to abandon the city’s Third Precinct to activists was “not my decision,” and has prevented the department from responding to emergency calls in the Capitol Hill neighborhood.Police Chief Carmen Best, who joined Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan at a news conference Thursday afternoon, revealed that “ultimately the city had other plans for the building and relented to public pressure.”“You should know, leaving the precinct was not my decision,” Best told her fellow officers. “You fought for days to protect it. I asked you to stand on that line. Day in and day out, to be pelted with projectiles, to be screamed at, threatened and in some cases hurt. Then to have a change of course nearly two weeks in, it seems like an insult to you and our community.”On Wednesday, the Seattle Police Department said it would try to reopen the East Precinct, and Best was able to visit the location on Thursday. “Our calls for service have more than tripled,” she told reporters. “These are responses to emergency calls — rapes, robberies, and all sorts of violent acts that have been occurring in the area that we’re not able to get to.”At the press conference with Durkan, who claimed the occupants of the "Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” (CHAZ) were engaging in an act of “patriotism,” Best remained noncommittal on a when police might return to the area, but explained that the evacuation had come after reports that the precinct could be burned down.“We were asked to do an operational plan, in case we needed to leave," Best said, not saying who exactly gave the order to withdraw. "We got an update that there was the potential for fire — of course if the precinct goes down in fire, the whole block could potentially burn up."Best also clarified that her department had not received “any formal reports” of CHAZ occupants extorting businesses, after saying in the video address that police had heard of “armed people” in the area “demanding payment from business owners in exchange for protection.”Michael Solan, the head of Seattle’s police union, also slammed the decision to leave the precinct, calling it “the closest I’ve seen to our country becoming a lawless state.”“Where is the safety of the reasonable community of the city of Seattle? To me, that is absolutely appalling, and I am embarrassed being a Seattle resident to even talk about this,” Solan told Tucker Carlson.

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Fired scientist Rebekah Jones’ site shows thousands more people with COVID-19 than the site run by the Florida Health Department.

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The Emirati ambassador to Washington warned Friday that annexation by the Jewish state of parts of the West Bank would jeopardise any warming of Arab-Israeli ties. "Annexation will certainly and immediately upend Israeli aspirations for improved security, economic and cultural ties with the Arab world and with the UAE," Yousef al-Otaiba wrote in a rare op-ed by an Emirati official in Israel's top-selling daily Yediot Aharonot.

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A Los Angeles man was fatally shot in his home by deputies Thursday morning in a tragic domestic dispute call gone wrong. His family, however, insists the tragic incident could have been avoided if authorities didn’t prematurely pull the trigger. Michael “Blue” Thomas, 62, was killed in his living room in the early hours on Thursday after Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputies responded to a domestic dispute call, a spokesperson told The Daily Beast. But while authorities claim Thomas was shot after reaching for one of the deputy’s guns, his fiancée and attorney insist the opposite—that he was turning away. “They broke the front down and they grabbed Mr. Thomas immediately,” Bradley Gage, the family’s attorney, told The Daily Beast on Friday. “As they were holding him, they hurt him by twisting his arm. At that point, because he was uncomfortable, Mr. Thomas tried to move and one deputy just stepped back and shot him.”“He was murdered without justification,” he added. “It was 100 percent avoidable.” According to the Sheriff’s Department, deputies responded to a “domestic violence in progress call” in Lancaster at around 5:30 a.m. The 911 call was made by Thomas’s fiancée, Kimberly. She later told deputies she “was assaulted by the suspect,” according to a statement from authorities.“During the call to 911, she never speaks to the operator but rather the phone line is left open,” the statement said. “For several minutes arguing and fighting between the caller and the suspect can be heard in the background.”Once deputies arrived, authorities said they tried to detain Thomas, but he “refused to comply with the deputy’s orders and an altercation” ensued. “During the altercation, the suspect reached down and attempted to gain control of one of the deputy’s firearms. It was at that time when a deputy-involved shooting occurred,” the statement said. However, Gage said that Thomas did not own a weapon and was only having a verbal argument with his fiancée when police arrived—which police could have observed “from a window outside instead of barging in.” He said that Kimberly did not go into detail with him about why she initially called the police—but he noted that the pair had lived together for 21 years and often communicated loudly because she is “mostly deaf.” “The claim that he reached for a gun is completely false,” Gage added, noting that the incident “completely defies the fourth amendment.” “He was disabled, he had problems with his hands. It would have been painful for him to try to grab a gun.”In an interview with CBS Los Angeles, which first reported the shooting, Kimberly also said that Thomas never tried to grab one of the deputies’ guns. “I heard Michael say, ‘I have a right to not let you in the house,’” she said. Authorities said Thomas was taken to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead. No deputies were injured. Gage, who has represented police officers and victims of officer-involved assaults for more than 35 years, stated that Thursday’s incident was a violation of the constitution. He was demanding accountability for all the officers involved. He said the officer who shot Thomas should be charged and the other deputies who were present should come forward and “admit the criminal act.”“It’s time to take ownership,” Gage said.Black Lives Matter Protests Over George Floyd’s Death Spread Across the CountryThe Sheriff’s Department told The Daily Beast that the Homicide Bureau, internal affairs and the county’s Office of the Inspector General are doing separate investigations—which is standard procedure during officer-involved shootings. It was not immediately clear if any of the officers involved had been disciplined for the Thursday incident. The fatal shooting comes as residents in all 50 states have taken to the streets, engaging in both peaceful and destructive protests following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. While demonstrators are speaking out against racial injustice and police brutality, many of them have been met with further violence from law enforcement. It has prompted several cities to confront the brutal methods used by their own police officers, many of them captured in harrowing video footage. But for Gage, Thursday’s incident is another painful reminder that law enforcement reform has a long way to go. “There is no doubt in my mind that if Mr. Thomas was white, he would be alive today,” he said. Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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Fox News has continuously run older footage showing looting, though a network spokesman pointed to examples of peaceful protests being covered.

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Here's the latest.

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Joe Biden’s search for a running mate is entering a second round of vetting for a dwindling list of potential vice presidential nominees, with several black women in strong contention. Democrats with knowledge of the process said Biden’s search committee has narrowed the choices to as few as six serious contenders after initial interviews. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Kamala Harris of California, as well as Susan Rice, who served as President Barack Obama's national security adviser.

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In the past week, public officials, military leaders and sports executives have made moves to take down Confederate symbols.

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For three days, the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, or Chaz, has offered ‘a snippet of a reality the people can have’Hundreds of protesters have taken over several blocks of Seattle and transformed it into the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, or “Chaz”, helping to amplify nationwide protests while offering a real-world example of what a community can look like without police.For three days, protesters have filled several blocks and at least part of a park in the artsy Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle, after police abandoned their east precinct, following dangerous clashes between protesters and law enforcement.“I think what we’re seeing in Chaz is just a snippet of a reality that the people can have,” said Dae Shik Kim Jr, 28, one of the many organizers at the site. “I think what it’s doing is exposing the unnecessary need of an over-policed state.”The space has both a protest and street fair vibe, with a small garden, medic station, smoking area, and a “No Cop Co-op”, where people can get supplies and food at no cost. There’s also a trio of shrine-like areas filled with candles, flowers and images of George Floyd and many others who have been killed by police.But in a tweet, Donald Trump described the protesters as “Domestic Terrorists” who “have taken over Seattle, run by Radical Left Democrats, of course. LAW & ORDER!”In another tweet addressing the Seattle mayor, Jenny Durkan, and the Washington governor, Jay Inslee, he told them to “take back your city NOW… If you don’t do it, I will. This is not a game,” adding: “These ugly Anarchists must be stopped IMMEDIATELY. MOVE FAST!”Inslee responded with his own tweet: “A man who is totally incapable of governing should stay out of Washington state’s business.”Durkan pushed back against Trump’s tweets during a press conference on Thursday, saying the story he is trying to tell about domestic terrorists and a radical agenda was “simply not true”. “The threat to invade Seattle, to divide and incite violence in our city, is not only unwelcome, it would be illegal,” she said.Kim said he saw a silver lining to the president’s tweets, as they could force Seattle leaders to decide whether they are going to side with Trump or with the community.“In a lot of ways they have been trying to pacify the movement, and undercut the efforts of the organizers, but they’ve been unsuccessfully doing that,” he said.For days the area has been filled with all manner of speeches, concerts and movie nights, including 13th, the Ava DuVernay documentary about racial inequality and the criminal justice system.Throughout the space are images and signs claiming this space for the people. “You are now entering free Cap Hill,” reads one sign at the edge of the zone in Capitol Hill, which has long had a leading role in the city’s political and social movements. Across the main road in the encampment are three words written in large white block letters: “Black Lives Matter.”Protesters have described the site as a safe and peaceful place, where the vast majority of people wear masks to protect each other against coronavirus and offer whatever skills or supplies they have. On Wednesday, people could be seen handing out masks, hand sanitizers, snacks and water.A variety of demands have been raised during the course of the occupation, but the main three involve defunding the police, using that money to invest in community health and services, and dropping criminal charges against protesters.Shaun Scott, a Seattle writer and activist, said he saw some parallels between what was happening in Seattle and the Occupy movement, calling them “kindred spirits in a lot of ways”.“But the movement for police abolition in Seattle right now has differentiated itself by presenting three very clear and actionable demands that the city can take action on in a pretty short period of time,” he said.Lisa McCallister, 30, a case worker in Seattle who has attended the protests, described Chaz as “amazing”.“It’s the retaking of a space that was covered in violence for no reason,” she said. “They were teargassing and flash-banging at 12.30 at night for hours. And then to kind of completely retake this space with peace and love.”

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As protests across Chicago devolved into chaos last week and residents started to loot nearby stores, police officers were making popcorn and drinking coffee while “lounging” inside Congressman Bobby Rush’s office, officials said in a stunning news conference on Thursday. Speaking alongside Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Rush said at least 13 Chicago Police officers were loitering inside his South Side campaign office in the early hours of June 1 and were “relaxing” while nearby stores were being looted and burned, and their fellow officers were clashing with demonstrators. “They even had the unmitigated gall to make coffee for themselves and to pop popcorn, my popcorn, in my microwave, while looters were tearing apart businesses within their sight and within their reach,” Rush (D-IL) said. The incident, which Rush and Lightfoot said was captured on CCTV, showed the officers—and at least three supervisors—with feet up on desks. One officer “was asleep on my couch” while another “was on his cellphone,” Rush said. “They were in a mode of relaxation and did not care about what was happening. They did not care. They absolutely did not care,” Rush added.Rush’s office is located in a strip mall that had been looted for several hours that night. While Lightfoot clarified that the officers were responding to a call that the campaign office had been broken into and burglarized, Rush said that when he finally got around to viewing the CCTV—he was horrified to see it filled with cops.The shocking news comes amid scrutiny of Chicago cops, who have been accused of using excessive force during protests and riots in the wake of George Floyd’s death. The Cook County state’s attorney’s office and the FBI are reviewing allegations that one Chicago officer pulled a woman from a car by her hair before placing a knee on her neck—a move similar to how Floyd died at the hands of police in Minneapolis. Lightfoot, at times visibly angry and tearful during the Thursday press conference, said the officers “demonstrated a total disregard for their colleagues [and] for the badge” and should be held accountable. She said she and her team were “enraged” when they learned of the incident. None of the 13 officers has been identified, and she urged them to come forward before investigators find them. Calling it a “personal embarrassment,” Lightfoot offered an apology on behalf of the city, saying the officers had “abandoned” their obligations to keep the city safe. She said she would push for the state to pass a law requiring police officers to be licensed. “We should all be disgusted, and we should all feel hurt and betrayed in this moment, of all moments,” Lightfoot said, adding that the officers were inside Rush’s office, located in a shopping plaza that had been looted for about “four to five hours.”Chicago Police Supt. David Brown also condemned the officers’ actions, stating that he planned to hold them accountable and “uphold the nobility of this profession.” “If you sleep during a riot, what do you do during a regular shift when there is no riot?” Brown asked, before apologizing on behalf of the police department.Rush, the co-founder of the Illinois Black Panther Party, has been a member of Congress since 1993. The Democratic lawmaker has had a tense relationship with Lightfoot in the past, after Rush falsely accused her of being the Fraternal Order of Police’s preferred candidate in 2019. While he was campaigning for a Cook County Board president last year, Rush said those who vote for Lightfoot would have “the blood of the next young black man or black woman who is killed by the police” on their hands. Seemingly alluding to their history on Thursday, Lightfoot said that, despite their differences, she would work together with Rush against misconduct during a historical period of reckoning for the police. “We haven’t always agreed on every issue but today, we are in total alignment in our righteous anger and our steadfast determination, and I want to make sure that’s very clear,” Lightfoot said. “What I know of Congressman Rush is this—he has committed his life to calling out and fighting against injustice and this presents exactly one of those moments.”Editor’s note: This headline has been updated to reflect that the police officers are accused of loitering inside Congressman Bobby Rush’s office after responding to a call there. They were not accused of burglarizing the office. Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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Last year, China replaced the United States as the No. 1 importer of oil from Venezuela, yet another front in the heated rivalry between Washington and Beijing. The United States had imposed sanctions on Venezuela's state-owned oil company as part of a bid to topple that country's socialist president, Nicolas Maduro. U.S. refineries stopped buying Venezuelan crude.

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Derrick Scott died an hour after he arrest in 2019. Footage was obtained much later after a push from Black Lives Mater protesters.

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A group of Minneapolis police officers on Thursday condemned the former officer charged with murder in George Floyd’s death, and said they're ready to back the police chief’s promised overhaul of the department. Fourteen officers signed an open letter Thursday addressed to “Dear Everyone -- but especially Minneapolis citizens.” The letter says Officer Derek Chauvin “failed as a human” and “stripped George Floyd of his dignity and life.”

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Joe Biden’s campaign has made it clear that the former vice president does not support the campaign to “defund the police.” On Wednesday night, The Daily Show host Trevor Noah tried to see if he could get him there.“You know, many activists and organizers have come out saying, there have been repeated attempts to reform many police departments,” Noah said. “Were it not for civilian cameras, we wouldn’t know the truth oftentimes.” As police departments continue to be “contradicted” by video evidence, the host asked Biden directly, “If you were to become president, do you think that there would be a world where defunding the police would be the solution?” “Well I think there are a lot of changes they can take place, period, without having to defund the police completely,” Biden replied, seeming to make the same conflation that those on the right have been making between defunding and abolishing police departments. “I don’t think the police should be defunded,” the Democratic presidential candidate said definitively. “But I think that conditions should be placed upon them where departments are having to take significant reforms.” He cited a “national use of force standard” and mandatory reporting of misconduct to the Justice Department as two examples of changes he would make. Biden went on to push back on defunding the police by saying that he doesn’t believe his social worker daughter should have to respond to potentially dangerous situations that would normally be handled by armed cops. Noah, in turn, asked Biden if he thinks there is anyone besides the police who should be responding to mental health crises, for instance. He pointed to the old adage, “If you’re a hammer, then everything is a nail.” Ice Cube’s Long, Disturbing History of Anti-SemitismSamantha Bee Goes After the Media for Ignoring Breonna Taylor and ‘Murderer’ CopsWhen Noah argued that it’s not police who are defusing situations in mental institutions, Biden replied, “No, but they are, though. They also use force in those mental institutions when someone’s out of hand. They put them in straitjackets.” “It’s not that simple,” Biden said. “But that should be the objective. We should put the police second in those circumstances and not first.” By the end of this section of his interview, Noah had more or less moved Biden to endorse what activists call “defund the police,” even if he wasn’t willing to use those words. “I think we should turn over as much as we can to non-armed police officers to de-escalate things related to mental illness, homelessness and drug abuse,” Biden said. Kamala Harris Schools Meghan McCain on ‘Defund the Police’Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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In New Delhi, a sprawling capital region of 46 million and home to some of India's highest concentration of hospitals, a pregnant woman’s death after a frantic hunt for a sickbed was a worrying sign about the country’s ability to cope with a wave of new coronavirus cases. “She kept begging us to save her life, but we couldn’t do anything,” Shailendra Kumar said, after driving his sister-in-law, Neelam, and her husband for hours, only to be turned away at eight public and private hospitals. Two and a half months of nationwide lockdown kept numbers of infections relatively low in India.

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White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Wednesday sought to defend the president’s baseless claim that a 75-year-old man who was seen knocked to the ground by police in Buffalo, N.Y., last week during a protest over George Floyd’s death was a member of antifa and that the incident was “a setup.” Watch an abridged history of instances of President Trump and his administration attempting to use a similar defense.

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U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie's staff did not respond to multiple phone calls and emails seeking comment on whether the flag is still hanging.

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Hospitalizations from coronavirus rose sharply in at least nine U.S. states following Memorial Day weekend.Seven-day average cases of coronavirus have risen across the country in a trend not attributable solely to an increase in testing, the Washington Post has found. While coronavirus hospitalizations are difficult to track because of differences in how states report data, the nine states in which hospitalizations have clearly risen are Texas, California, Oregon, North and South Carolina, Mississippi, Utah, Arkansas, and Arizona.Texas has seen a 36 percent increase in new cases since Memorial Day, with coronavirus hospitalizations at a record high of 2,056 as of Tuesday. There were 1,935 hospitalizations in the state on Monday.Arizona reported a 49 percent increase in hospitalizations, from 833 on Memorial Day to 1,243 by Tuesday. At the same time, 76 percent of the state's ICU beds were occupied. Other states that have seen an increase in coronavirus cases, including Arkansas, reported that ICU's were still operating below full capacity.States have been steadily moving to reopen businesses and tourist sites initially closed to prevent coronavirus spread, with Texas lifting restrictions in early May. Cities throughout the U.S. have also seen massive demonstrations following the death of George Floyd, an African American man killed during his arrest by police officers, in which protesters have not adhered to social-distancing guidelines.However, in certain instances large gatherings of people do not seem to have caused a spike in coronavirus cases. For example, Memorial Day parties at Missouri's Lake of the Ozarks, in which hundreds of revelers were photographed in close proximity, have not led to any new coronavirus outbreaks.

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