A homeland security intelligence report obtained by The Nation shows government officials trying to establish links between left-wing “antifa” activists and a foreign power, which would give the government much more power to search and surveil them. “They targeted Americans like they’re Al-Qaeda,” a former homeland security official told The Nation’s Ken Klippenstein. The intelligence report focuses on Americans who fought with Kurdish forces in Syria and are now affiliated with left-wing causes. “Once someone (or some group) is identified as an agent of a foreign power, they are subject to warrantless search and surveillance in a way that would be illegal and unconstitutional for any other US person,” Steven Aftergood, from the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, told The Nation. Some of the individuals targeted were linked to “antifa” based on photographers in front of an anti-fascist flag. One of the named targets, Brace Belden, co-hosts a left-wing podcast, The Nation Reported. TikTok users were already making jokes about Trump ‘as your landlord’ Donald Trump first threatened to ban TikTok, a popular social media app owned by a Chinese company, then said that he would not ban it if an American company bought its US operations, but said that he believed the US government deserved a cut of the money from that sale. At a press conference Monday evening, he said the US government deserved money from the sale because it’s equivalent to the app’s “landlord” or “lease.” “It’s like the landlord and the tenant. Without the lease, the tenant doesn’t have the value. We’re sort of, in a certain way, the lease. We made it possible to have this great success,” Trump said. “TikTok’s a tremendous success. But a big portion of it is in this country.” TikTok’s young American users frequently use the platform to criticize the president, including making jokes about what Trump would be like as your landlord given his conduct during the coronavirus epidemic. It’s not yet clear if Trump’s comments will spark any reaction from TikTok users. Trump compares US government to TikTok"s "landlord" or "lease" Trump said again that he thinks that the US Treasury should get a “very large percentage” of the price of the sale of part of the Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok to an American company, suggesting that the US government is the Chinese app’s “landlord.” Trump had previously threatened to ban TikTok altogether, though how he would do so is not clear, and then said earlier on Monday that Microsoft or another US company could purchase it before September 15. If that sale goes through, Trump said, he believes the US Treasury should get a percentage of the money. “It’s like the landlord and the tenant. Without the lease, the tenant doesn’t have the value. We’re sort of, in a certain way, the lease. We made it possible to have this great success,” Trump said. “TikTok’s a tremendous success. But a big portion of it’s in this country.” The money the US government should get “would come from the sale,” Trump added. “Whatever the number is, it would come from the sale.” “Which nobody else would be thinking about but me,” the president added. “But that’s the way I think. It’s very fair.” The Chinese-owned social media company has been one of the most popular apps in recent years, with rapid growth among Americans teens. The company says it has tens of millions of users in the US and hundreds of millions globally. Trump made his name in real estate in New York City. Trump and other administration officials have claimed there are privacy and security reasons to be concerned about Chinese ownership of a video app. On Monday. China’s foreign ministry said it strongly opposed any US actions against Chinese software companies, and it hoped the US could stop its “discriminatory policies”. Trump’s comments on the US government being owed money for the forced sale of a Chinese company that produces a a product that is popular with Americans came during the same press conference as he used xenophobic terms for the coronavirus, calling it the “China virus” and the “China plague.” Trump officials have routinely blamed the Chinese government for the spread of a pandemic that has killed more people in the United States than in any other country, according to statistics from Johns Hopkins University. 13 rural hospitals have closed this year As Trump touts his administration’s efforts to keep rural hospitals functioning during the pandemic, it’s worth noting that the number of rural hospitals that closed permanently this year rose to 13 today, according to the NC Rural Health Research Program. In all, 130 rural hospitals have closed in the past decade. Fact-check: are other countries seeing COVID-19 flare ups like the US? A fact-check on a frequent theme of Trump’s recent press conferences: https://twitter.com/pbump/status/1290404405465042944 Trump is touting statistics about ‘telehealth’ Trump is sharing a series of statistics about how many more Americans done medical appointments remotely during the pandemic. “Telehealth has been incredible,” he says. Trump pushes back against the idea of a lockdown In his press conference this afternoon, Trump appeared to respond to a federal reserve official who argued yesterday that there needs to be a nationwide lockdown for a month or more to stop the spread of coronavirus. “It’s important for all Americans to understand that a permanent lockdown is not a viable path towards producing the result that you want,” Trump said this afternoon, arguing that lockdowns cause more harm than good. He emphasized that he wanted schools to open. Still waiting on the Trump press conference This is Lois Beckett picking up our live politics coverage from our West Coast office. The White House announced a press conference earlier today, slated for 5 pm, but it has not started yet. Afternoon summary Before I hand the blog over to my colleague Lois for Trump’s press conference, here’s a quick summary of what’s happened so far today: For much of the morning and afternoon, Congress has been doing what is does best these days: nothing. Lots of scuttling between the White House and Capitol Hill have failed to achieve much – if any – progress. According to Democratic leaders, negotiations over the next round of coronavirus relief funding remain at an impasse, days after the $600 unemployment benefit expired leaving millions of Americans in the lurch. Fed policymakers said the US economy needs more stimulus funding and more masks The US House Intelligence Committee launched an investigation into the Department of Homeland Security’s intelligence office, including its actions in Portland, Oregon, and its involvement in other anti-racism protests across the country. The Guardian’s Mario Koran sends this dispatch on how Southern California’s Imperial County, bordered by Arizona to the east and Mexico to the south, “became an early poster child for the disproportionate toll coronavirus has taken on communities of color.” In the rural, arid county, coronavirus has exacerbated long standing inequities and made the virus all the more difficult to combat. California governor Newsom said today that more than 650 patients have had to be airlifted to neighboring counties with more capacity to treat patients, some transported as far as the Bay area, 600 miles north. In response, said Newsom, the state launched strike teams, flooding the zone with resources and technical support and pushing reluctant county officials to scale back plans to reopen the economy. The efforts have appeared to have shown up in the numbers. The positivity rate for those tested is at 11.2% -- still higher than the state average of 7%, but far below its peak in June of 33%. Now, the state is launching similar efforts to address needs in California’s central valley, the state’s new hotspot, which last week saw the state’s first death of a teenager from coronavirus. Like Imperial County, the central valley is largely agricultural, home to a high number of Latinos and essential workers who are disproportionately represented in coronavirus cases and deaths. The state is allocating $52 million to expand contact tracing and disease investigation efforts in the central valley, as well as an additional $6.5 million from philanthropy to help vulnerable residents pay for food, rent and utilities. “Disproportionately this disease is impacting the Latino community, the communities in the Central Valley. I hope we can paint a picture of how impactful this has been on the Latinx community. That’s why we’re disproportionately focusing on farmworkers, essential workers” Newsom said. Meantime, hospitalizations and admissions to ICU are trending downward in California, a positive sign. The steady count of new fatalities, however, make clear the state is not out of harm’s way. Texas senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, both Republicans, both El Paso shooting. Cornyn, who is running for re-election this year, called it an “act of terrorism tried to drive a wedge in this wonderful community and failed. Cruz called the killer a “deranged white supremacist.” The state of negotiations is ... not great. According to reporters staking out the ongoing discussions, Democratic and Republican congressional leaders and White House officials have yet to even broach the beginning of what could possibly become a deal. Both sides are digging in. Mask, Meadows? No breakthrough on federal unemployment insurance talks on Capitol Hill so far. More on the latest shortly. But first this: US economy needs more stimulus and more masks, Fed policymakers say The US economy, battered by a the new, worrying phase in the spread of Covid-19, needs increased government spending to tide over households and businesses and broader use of masks to better control the virus, several US central bankers said earlier today. The calls for increased government intervention came as US lawmakers and the White House resumed talks on a new government relief package, including a possible extension of unemployment benefits that expired on Friday. Two hours of talks in Washington this morning did not produce a deal. “Four months ago, when we did the first stimulus, we thought the economy faced a pothole and the stimulus put a plate over it so we could navigate. Now escalation of the virus may be making that pothole into a sinkhole and creating a need for a longer plate,” Richmond Federal Reserve Bank president Thomas Barkin said in webcast remarks to the Northern Virginia Chamber of Commerce, Reuters writes. “Quickly pulling away the support that consumers and businesses are receiving would be a pretty traumatic move for what’s happening in the economy.” Echoing those sentiments, though in slightly different terms, were Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Robert Kaplan and St. Louis Fed President James Bullard. Kaplan pushed back on the notion that the extra $600 weekly benefits to the unemployed had made it harder for businesses to hire, while Bullard said earlier efforts to keep businesses and households whole through the crisis have paid off so far. “We’ve looked at a number of studies, we’ve done our own work: we don’t see it as much in the data but I can tell you I’m hearing it from business people,” Kaplan told Bloomberg TV earlier Monday when asked about whether the enhanced jobless aid was deterring people from returning to work. “While it may have made it hard for certain individual businesses to hire, it has helped create jobs, because it has helped bolster consumer spending, so the net effect still has probably been positive for the economy for employment.” Kaplan also said he did not agree with his colleague, Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari, who at the weekend said he thought the US economy should shut back down again for four to six weeks to suppress spread of Covid-19. Instead, Kaplan said, universal mask-wearing could substantially mute transmission of the virus without a widespread lockdown. “I think we are going to have to learn to live with this virus. We are going to have to learn to re-engage in our daily activities but still control the virus,” he said. “Widespread mask-wearing is essential to that.”