Author: TheGuardian

In normal times, a militia-supporting man caught on video shooting dead two protesters and seriously wounding another on the streets of an American city would be a pariah. These are not normal times. Kyle Rittenhouse, 17, who was charged with committing intentional homicide in Kenosha, has instead found himself being defended by Donald Trump, and hailed as a hero by rightwing punditry and an assorted bunch of Republicans and conservatives. Experts warn that Trump’s embrace of Rittenhouse, who sat in the front row at a Trump rally in January and was in Kenosha as part of a rightwing militia...

The vast majority of the thousands of Black Lives Matter protests this summer have been peaceful, with more than 93% involving no serious harm to people or damage to property, according to a new report tracking political violence in the United States. But the Trump Administration has taken a “heavy-handed approach” to the demonstrations, with authorities using force “more often than not” when they are present, the report found. And there has been a troubling trend of violence and armed intimidation by individual actors, including dozens of car-ramming attacks targeting demonstrators across the country. The new data on protests...

White supremacist groups have infiltrated U.S. law enforcement agencies in every region of the country over the last two decades, according to a new report about the ties between police and far-right vigilante groups. In a timely new analysis, Michael German, a former FBI special agent who has written extensively on the ways that US law enforcement have failed to respond to far-right domestic terror threats, concludes that US law enforcement officials have been tied to racist militant activities in more than a dozen states since 2000, and hundreds of police officers have been caught posting racist and bigoted...

Tom Gram bought the business eight years ago though he does not own the building, which was destroyed by fire during recent protests. The owner of a camera shop that was destroyed in Kenosha and highlighted during Donald Trump’s visit on Tuesday, September 1, said the president used his store for political gain by appearing with a former owner of the business – as Joe Biden announced he and his wife Jill will visit the Wisconsin city on Thursday. Tom Gram said he bought the Rode’s Camera Shop business from the Rode family eight years ago, though John Rode...

The “Last Week Tonight” host tears apart the Republican national convention’s triumphant vision of America after the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha. John Oliver returned to the white void of a socially distant Last Week Tonight to address “one hell of a week”, in which the Republican national convention projected a triumphant distortion of America disjointed from the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, which resulted in a week of protests, a wildcat strike by NBA and WNBA players, and the alleged killing of two protesters by a 17-year-old white vigilante. But first, the convention, whose...