The Commentariat -- July 1, 2020

Late Morning Update:

The Washington Post's live updates of coronavirus developments Wednesday are here. The New York Times' live updates for Wednesday are here: "Health officials are urging Americans to scale back Independence Day plans after virus case levels reached disheartening new highs on Tuesday, with eight states setting single-day reporting records. The Oregon Health Authority warned that 'the safest choice this holiday is to celebrate at home.' In Nebraska, state leaders suggested that holiday cookout hosts keep guest lists to make contact tracing easier. In Los Angeles County, where 10,000 new cases have been announced since Friday, the public health department ordered beaches closed and fireworks shows canceled. Elsewhere, the pleas were similar: Skip the party. Stay home. Don't make a bad situation worse."

Susan Rice, in a New York Times op-ed: "As a former national security adviser, I find it exceedingly difficult to believe that no one told Mr. Trump about this intelligence [about Russia paying the Taliban bounty for killing U.S. soldiers].... If Mr. Trump was told about Russian actions, why did he not respond? If he was not told, why not?... A perilous pattern persists that underscores Mr. Trump's strange propensity to serve Russian interests above America's.... Now Mr. Putin knows he can kill Americans with impunity.... At best, our commander in chief is utterly derelict in his duties, presiding over a dangerously dysfunctional national security process that is putting our country and those who wear its uniform at great risk. At worst, the White House is being run by liars and wimps catering to a tyrannical president who is actively advancing our arc adversary's nefarious interests."

Axios: "President Trump attacked New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on Wednesday for reallocating $1 billion from the NYPD's budget and ordering a large Black Lives Matter mural to be painted on Fifth Avenue, condemning it in a tweet as a 'symbol of hate.'... It's yet another example of the president digging in on racial issues that explicitly appeal to his base, even as his poll numbers continue to spiral in the wrong direction months ahead of the election."

Mark Berman of the Washington Post: "Seattle police moved to clear a protest zone early Wednesday morning that had drawn national attention and has been marred by multiple shootings, including one that killed a teenager early this week. Police said they began taking action after Mayor Jenny Durkan (D) issued an executive order calling for the area to be vacated, aiming to end the weeks-long occupation around a police precinct. Officers began making a wave of arrests as they moved to enforce that directive, they said, and warned that anyone who remained in the area or returned could be taken into custody.... Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best issued a statement early Wednesday saying that she supports peaceful protests and would continue her department's work to engage with activists. 'But enough is enough,' Best said in a statement. 'The CHOP has become lawless and brutal. Four shootings -- two fatal -- robberies, assaults, violence and countless property crimes have occurred in this several block area. My job, and the job of our officers, is to protect and serve our community.'" A New York Times report is here.

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The New York Times' live updates of coronavirus developments Tuesday are here. "More than 48,000 coronavirus cases were announced across the United States on Tuesday, the most of any day of the pandemic. Officials in eight states -- Alaska, Arizona, California, Georgia, Idaho, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas -- also announced single-day highs.... Tuesday was the fourth time in a week that the United States posted a new single-day case record. The number of new cases in the United States has shot up by 80 percent in the past two weeks, according to a New York Times database.... The increase in infections came as the leaders of the most populous counties in Texas pleaded with Gov. Greg Abbott to allow them to issue stay-at-home orders.... California’s case count has exploded in recent days -- leading the governors of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to tell travelers from California to quarantine for 14 days, joining the ranks of travelers from other hard-hit states." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

~~~ The Washington Post's live updates for Tuesday are here. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

~~~ The New York Times has state-by-state data here.

See also story about Joe Biden's speech, linked under "Elections 2020."

Jessie Hellmann of the Hill: "Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, warned members of Congress on Monday that the U.S. could reach 100,000 new COVID-19 cases per day if the country does not get a handle on the pandemic. Speaking before the Senate health committee, Fauci said..., 'We're going in the wrong direction if you look at the curves of the new cases.... We need to do something about that and we need to do it very quickly.'" (Also linked yesterday.) Update: The New York Times' story is here. ~~~

~~~ Republicans Go Medieval. Dana Milbank followed the hearing & heard Sen. Rand Paul (R-Quack) advise, "'We just need more optimism.'... Not for the first time, it feels as though 21st-century America is 14th-century Europe, reacting with all manner of useless countermeasures to the plague.... The president ridicules mask wearing as politically correct and unmanly. His campaign staff tears down social distancing signs at his mass rally. Governors of hard-hit states tamper with data, sideline public health experts and blame the spread on Latino farmworkers, civil rights demonstrations and increased testing -- anything but their reckless and premature relaxing of restrictions. And then there's Vice President Pence, head of the White House coronavirus task force. 'I'd just encourage every American to continue to pray,' he said at Friday's task force briefing."

Phil Mattingly of CNN: "The US Senate, just hours before the expiration of the small business loan Paycheck Protection Program, passed an extension of the program to August 8. The move to keep the application process for the program open comes as it was set to expire with more than $130 billion in allocated funds that remain unused. The program was designed to offer small business loans to bridge the shutdowns and help businesses keep employees in their jobs -- and in turn, the loans taken out would be forgiven, essentially shifting into a grant.... Tuesday's extension came as a surprise, even to Democrats who forced the action on the floor.... The bill, proposed by Senate Democrats, was passed by unanimous consent. The Democratic-led House would still need to act on the extension."

Your European Vacation Has Been Cancelled. Bill Chappell of NPR: "U.S. travelers won't be among those allowed to visit the European Union when the bloc begins opening its external borders on July 1. EU ambassadors endorsed a list of 15 travel partners on Tuesday, including South Korea, Japan and China -- countries that were hit early by the pandemic but have been able to bring the coronavirus under control. The U.S. was seen as a long shot to make the travel list, which requires that only those countries with epidemiological situations -- taking into account both the infection rate and current trends -- that are equal to or better than the EU's can send tourists and other nonessential visitors to the open-border region." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ CNN has the graph that explains why. (Also linked yesterday.)

Philip Rucker & Seung Min Kim of the Washington Post: "... Richard B. Cheney and his Wyoming congresswoman daughter, Liz, say wearing masks is manly. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) says there should be no stigma associated with covering one's face as public health experts advise, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) says doing so is essential to fully reopening the economy.... And even Sean Hannity and Steve Doocy, two of Trump's most fervent and loyal boosters on Fox News Channel, have joined the chorus of mask advocates.... The president ... has used his bully pulpit to mock others who do and to cast doubt on the efficacy of masks. But with coronavirus cases soaring across the nation -- and most precipitously across Florida, Texas and other parts of so-called Trump country -- many prominent Republicans are now ... [urging] people [to] wear masks to slow the spread of the virus and help the economy reopen safely."

James Wagner of the New York Times: "... the 2020 minor league baseball season will not happen. It is the first time in the history of Minor League Baseball, which was founded in 1901, that a season has been canceled.... Technically, the season's fate was sealed when Major League Baseball informed MiLB that it would not be providing the players needed for the season because of the national emergency brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. The MiLB Board of Trustees met earlier on Tuesday to finalize what had been apparent for months. Many of the roughly 8,000 minor league players -- those who are not part of their affiliated M.L.B. team's 60-man player pool for the 2020 season -- will miss an entire year of their careers. Most M.L.B. teams have committed to paying their minor league players, many of whom earn less than $15,000 per season, $400 a week beyond June 30." ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Too bad. I used to regularly attend L.A. Dodgers games, and years later, I sometimes went to Durham Bulls games. The Bulls games, where spectators could get up close & personal, were way more fun.

** They Followed the Money. Charlie Savage, et al., of the New York Times: "American officials intercepted electronic data showing large financial transfers from a bank account controlled by Russia's military intelligence agency to a Taliban-linked account, which was among the evidence that supported their conclusion that Russia covertly offered bounties for killing U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan, according to three officials familiar with the intelligence. Though the United States has accused Russia of providing general support to the Taliban before, analysts concluded from other intelligence that the transfers were most likely part of a bounty program that detainees described during interrogations.... The disclosures further undercut White House officials' claim that the intelligence was too uncertain to brief President Trump." (Also linked yesterday.) UPI has a summary report here. ~~~

     ~~~ Jerry Lambe of Law & Crime: “Following bombshell allegations that the Russian government offered Taliban militants secret bounties for killing U.S. troops, the Trump administration on Monday invited a bloc of eight GOP lawmakers to the White House for a briefing where administration officials insisted that there was conflicting intelligence on the matter. However, the White House reportedly refrained from divulging a key piece of evidence [-- the money transfers --] which legal experts say casts further doubt both on the Trump administration's shifting explanations and the president's claims that the entire story is a 'hoax.... University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck, a noted expert in national security law and military justice..., [commented], 'It's almost impressive how the Trump White House keeps making this series of scandals *worse.* It's bad enough that they lied all weekend about what they knew and when; now it turns out that they even misled the hand-picked congressional Republicans who they 'briefed' yesterday.'" Story reports other similar comments. ~~~

~~~ Heather Caygle, et al., of Politico: "Senior House Democrats left a White House briefing on Russian bounties disappointed on Tuesday, saying they were given 'no substantive information' about allegations that the Kremlin paid Taliban militants to kill U.S. troops -- and that ... Donald Trump sat on the information for months. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who led a group of nearly a dozen Democrats to the White House early Tuesday, said Congress still needs to hear from the heads of various Intelligence agencies -- not White House officials -- on the stunning allegations. The Trump administration officials tasked with briefing the Democrats, Hoyer said, expressed their opinion of the allegations but didn't share the underlying evidence." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

~~~ Karen DeYoung, et al., of the Washington Post: "White House officials were first informed in early 2019 of intelligence reports that Russia was offering bounties to Taliban-linked militants to kill U.S. and coalition military personnel in Afghanistan, but the information was deemed sketchy and in need of additional confirmation, according to people familiar with the matter.... At a White House briefing Tuesday, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany ... said Trump is briefed only 'when there is a strategic decision to be made.'...But several people familiar with the matter noted that information is sometimes withheld from Trump, who often reacts badly to reports that he thinks might undermine what he considers his good relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.: ~~~

~~~ Ben Mathis-Lilley of Slate: "What was Trump doing on Feb. 27 instead of reading the brief ... that a Russian military intelligence unit may have paid bounties for killing American troops in Afghanistan...? According to the transcript of a White House Black History Month event held that Thursday, his attention was mainly occupied by the idea that he hadn't gotten enough credit for preventing a coronavirus outbreak in the United States.... On the ostensible topic of the day, Trump said that 'nobody has done more for Black people than I have' and praised himself for passing a criminal justice reform bill. The event also included minuteslong digressions about the media's alleged failure to report on the impressive size of his rally audiences, the media's alleged failure to report on Joe Biden's verbal gaffes, and CNN commentator Van Jones' failure to thank him by name for supporting the reform bill during a TV appearance.... A Feb. 27 story from the Daily Beast reported that Trump's activities that day also included a meeting, not on the official schedule, with the cast and playwright of 'a low-budget conservative play about the so-called Deep State,' the script of which drew on 'the text messages between former FBI agent Peter Strzok and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page....'"

We are tracking down the two Anarchists who threw paint on the magnificent George Washington Statue in Manhattan. We have them on tape. They will be prosecuted and face 10 years in Prison based on the Monuments and Statues Act. Turn yourselves in now! -- Donald Trump, tweet, Tuesday morning ~~~

~~~ Wanted Posters: Trump's Re-election Plan. Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post: "President Trump returned from his Virginia golf course Saturday afternoon and turned his Twitter feed into a crime blotter. In less than five minutes, the president posted 15 fliers from the United States Park Police..., complete with grainy photos of Americans suspected of vandalism at Lafayette Square. The images hearkened to the kinds of posters one would see on the wall of a local post office. The president's messages about protesters and vandals have continued apace, often in the early hours of the morning or the late hours of the evening when he is not surrounded by aides, but sometimes in interviews and executive orders.... As the country convulses from incidents of police killings, mass protests and a rapidly spreading pandemic that has led to double-digit unemployment, the president seems most intent on inflaming an already burning culture war, using his Twitter feed to focus on vandalism by protesters and the well-being of statues that have been targeted.... In several Oval Office meetings, the president has argued that looters and rioters, which have been a small part of largely peaceful protests across the country, as well as the toppling of statues, will ultimately help him win election because people will grow tired of their behavior and appreciate his harsh rhetoric." ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: As John Berman of CNN put it this morning, "Overnight, Trump tweeted that he would protect Robert E. Lee, but Lee has no chance of contracting the coronavirus." (Slight paraphrase.) ~~~

~~~ What If the Ole Boys of Mississippi Were More Woke Than the POTUS*? Mark Berman & Ben Guarino of the Washington Post: "Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves (R) signed a bill Tuesday abandoning the state's flag and stripping the Confederate battle flag symbol from it, capping a remarkable turnaround on a banner that had flown over the state for more than a century. With Reeves's move, Mississippi will take down one of the country's most prominent Confederate tributes, withdrawing the only state flag that still bears such an emblem. The new flag's design will be determined later, but lawmakers have barred it from including the most recognizable icon of the Confederacy, which many people associate with racism, slavery and oppression."

Missouri. Lee Brown of the New York Post: "The St. Louis lawyers who pulled weapons on protesters marching past their home are being investigated for possible criminal charges, the city's lead prosecutor has revealed. Mark and Patricia McCloskey -- who went viral after brandishing an AR-15-style rifle and a silver-colored handgun, respectively -- were the only ones to lodge a police report over Sunday's confrontation, insisting they were 'victims' of threatening trespassers who entered a gated community, the St. Louis American noted. But the husband-and-wife lawyers are being probed by police and prosecutors for possible threats against the crowd, authorities announced Monday. 'I am alarmed at the events that occurred over the weekend, where peaceful protestors were met by guns,' St. Louis Prosecutor Kimberly Gardner said...." Mrs. McC: Mind you, the couple thinks they are heroes for drawing weapons to protect their mansion from noises that disturbed their dinner.

Maggie Haberman & Alan Feuer of the New York Times: "A judge in Dutchess County, N.Y., on Tuesday temporarily blocked publication of a tell-all book by President Trump's niece Mary L. Trump that is currently scheduled for release July 28. Judge Hal Greenwald of the New York State Supreme Court issued the temporary restraining order until a hearing on July 10 to decide whether Ms. Trump's book, 'Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man,' violated a confidentiality agreement she signed with other members of the Trump family in connection with a dispute over the estate of Fred Trump Sr., the president's father. The judge acted in response to a court action filed by Robert S. Trump, the president's brother, against Ms. Trump and Simon & Schuster, the book's publisher. Ms. Trump is the daughter of Fred Trump Jr., who died in 1981 and was estranged from his family. A lawyer for Ms. Trump, Theodore J. Boutrous, vowed to appeal the decision." A Politico story is here.

Ken Vogel & Ben Protess of the New York Times: "A handful of major donors footed the bill for nearly $500,000 worth of Vice President Mike Pence's legal fees related to the special counsel's investigation, according to a financial filing released Tuesday. Mr. Pence listed the donations as gifts on a mandatory annual financial disclosure statement covering last year."

Payments for Dead People, Not for Live Children. Michelle Singletary of the Washington Post: "IRS officials initially told the GAO that up to 450,000 low-income people did not receive the money they were due for dependent children. During testimony to the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday, IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig revised the figure down to 365,000.... A recent report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the IRS made $1.4 billion in stimulus payments to dead people. The report also revealed that from April 10 to May 17, some stimulus payment calculations did not include additional money for qualifying children, even though the recipients had correctly submitted information about their dependents to the IRS. The incomplete payments went to people who aren't required to file a federal tax return because of their low income.... The IRS told the GAO it was 'working to identify and adjust the accounts' and would make the missing payments for dependent children by the end of July."

Elections 2020

Eric Bradner of CNN: "... Joe Biden lambasted ... Donald Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic Tuesday, saying that Trump is 'in retreat' with more 125,000 Americans dead and the virus worsening in many states. In a speech in Wilmington, Delaware, the former vice president recounted what he cast as Trump's missteps, from Trump's early dismissals of the virus to his more recent refusals to wear a mask in public appearances. Pointing to Trump in March declaring himself a wartime president in battling the coronavirus, Biden said: 'What happened? Now it's almost July, and it seems like our wartime president has surrendered -- waved the white flag and left the battlefield.' Biden's speech tied together proposals he has issued in recent months, including calls for a national board to oversee a 'massive surge' in coronavirus testing. He framed most of his remarks as directly addressing Trump, urging the President to adopt Biden's proposals immediately." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

~~~ Video of the full speech is here.

Trump, Allies Encourage Foreign Intervention in Election. Paul Sonne, et al., of the Washington Post: "Last week, a Ukrainian lawmaker who was once affiliated with a pro-Russian political party and has met with [Rudy] Giuliani released 10 edited snippets of what appeared to be Biden's official vice presidential phone calls with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in 2016. It was the second cache of recordings the lawmaker, who studied under the KGB in Moscow in the early 1990s, has released since May.... Efforts to promote the recordings in Ukraine and the United States -- and pledges by other Trump allies to release more in the coming months -- suggest a new push by foreign forces to sway American voters in the run-up to the 2020 election, one welcomed by ... Giuliani.... The developments further illustrate Trump's willingness to benefit from foreign intervention in U.S. elections, even after being impeached for pressuring Ukraine to launch investigations into his political rivals." ~~~

~~~ Robyn Dixon & David Stern of the Washington Post: "Andriy Yermak, the chief of staff for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said the administration plans a new law that would make it a crime to publish secretly taped conversations of officials. The changes, he told The Washington Post in an interview by video link from Kyiv, seeks to end the 'malicious practice,' adding this was necessary to 'protect state security.' 'I want to emphasize that we regard this as a direct violation of the national security of our country,' he said." ~~~

~~~ MEANWHILE. Trump's Wiseguys. Jeremy Herb of CNN: "The Senate will incorporate the annual intelligence policy legislation into the National Defense Authorization Act -- but only after stripping language from the intelligence bill that would have required presidential campaigns to report offers of foreign election help. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Tuesday that Senate Republicans forced the removal of the election reporting provision as a condition to include the intelligence bill on the must-pass defense policy legislation. Earlier this month, the Senate Intelligence Committee approved an amendment on an 8-7 vote from Warner and GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, which added a provision to the Intelligence Authorization Act requiring campaigns to notify federal authorities about offers of foreign election help."

Kaitlin Collins & Kevin Liptak of CNN: "... Donald Trump's campaign has scrapped plans to hold a rally in Alabama next weekend.... Trump was slated to travel to the state ahead of the Senate race between his former attorney general Jeff Sessions and the former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville, but plans were called off as state officials voiced concerns about a mass gathering and campaign officials ultimately decided against it. A person close to the campaign said there are currently no rallies on the horizon, but aides are scoping out possible venues for when they decide to host them again."

Colorado. John Wagner of the Washington Post: "BREAKING: Colorado Democrats nominated John Hickenlooper on Tuesday to challenge Sen. Cory Gardner [R] in race that could decide control of U.S. Senate[.] The two-term former governor and onetime Denver mayor stumbled in recent weeks, as he apologized for racially insensitive comments and as an independent ethics panel found he violated Colorado's gift ban on two occasions. But the former presidential candidate prevailed over former Colorado House speaker Andrew Romanoff in the primary. Democrats see Gardner as vulnerable in the Democratic-leaning state. This story will be updated."

Kentucky. James Arkin of Politico: "Amy McGrath has fended off Charles Booker to clinch the Democratic nomination for Senate in Kentucky, setting up an expensive showdown with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in November. McGrath had 45 percent of the vote, compared to 43 percent for Booker when The Associated Press called the race on Tuesday -- a week after the primary which saw historic turnout and significant use of absentee ballots. Though she was the frontrunner throughout the race, McGrath faced a spirited challenge from Booker, a liberal first-term state representative who surged in momentum in just three short weeks to turn the race from a sleepy affair into one of the most closely-watched Senate primaries this year. Booker';s rise began late last month as he took part in protests against police brutality in his hometown of Louisville." The New York Times report is here. (Also linked yesterday.)

Oklahoma. Max Greenwood of the Hill: "Oklahoma voters narrowly approved a ballot measure on Tuesday to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), defying Republican state and federal officials who have long opposed such a move. The ballot measure passed by only a few thousand votes, prevailing by 50.5 percent to 49.5 percent who opposed it. Still, it makes Oklahoma the fifth state controlled by Republicans to approve Medicaid expansion through a ballot measure, joining the ranks of Idaho, Maine, Nebraska and Utah."

Alabama. Elaina Plott has a long piece in the New York Times Magazine on Jeff Sessions, who is running to reclaim his old Senate seat because, well, nobody would give him a job. He's currently in a runoff with former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville, whom Donald Trump has endorsed. He came in second to Tuberville in the primary. Accompanied by a portrait photo of Sessions with a weird expression on his face. The article is titled "The Fall of Jeff Sessions...," a reminder that everyone who attaches himself to Donald Trump is toast.

California. Eric Hananoki of Media Matters: "Writer and GOP-backed House candidate Mike Cargile has frequently posted bigoted content on Facebook, including writing a racist rant in which he used the n-word and told Black people to 'quit blaming white folks for your problems. Take your black ass out there and show them kids there's a better way than husslin' on the street.' Cargile has also shared memes which questioned whether Muslim members of Congress are working with terrorists; stated that '2 illegal aliens having an anchor baby does not produce an American' and suggested that LGBTQ people are leading to the end of days. (Cargile has shared his personal Facebook page on his campaign's Facebook page.)... He is running in California's 35th Congressional District against incumbent Democratic Rep. Norma Torres."

Maine. Susan Collins Is Often "Disappointed" in Donald Trump. Josh Israel of the American Independent: Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) "has voted with [Donald Trump] more than two-thirds of the time, according to FiveThirtyEight's tracker. She voted to give lifetime appointments to the vast majority of Trump's 200 judicial appointees, including Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. She also backed the confirmation of Cabinet appointees such as Attorney General William Barr, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar. She voted to acquit Trump in February during his impeachment trial, suggesting that he had learned a 'pretty big lesson' and 'would be more cautious in the future.' She later walked back that assessment, admitting it was 'more aspirational on my part.' A review of Collins' public statements finds at least 24 instances of her expressing concern, dismay, or disagreement with Trump." Israel lists every instance.

Wisconsin. Jonathan Sadowski of Up North News: "More than 80 percent of Wisconsin's Republican legislators voted absentee in April, even though the party has continually opposed Democrats' attempts to expand mail-in voting. Proponents of mail-in voting argue that it should be easier to cast absentee ballots due to health concerns amid the coronavirus pandemic, but Republicans often make false claims that mailed ballots greatly increase the risk of fraud. The Associated Press first reported on the Republicans' voting records after liberal group A Better Wisconsin Together provided the information to the publication.... The absentee voting fraud rate is about 0.0025 percent, or just 372 possible cases out of 14.6 million votes analyzed by the Washington Post."

Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that states must allow religious schools to participate in programs that provide scholarships to students attending private schools. The decision, a victory for conservatives, was the latest in a series of Supreme Court rulings that the free exercise of religion bars the government from treating religious groups differently from secular ones. It opens the door to more public funding of religious education. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote the majority opinion in the 5-to-4 ruling. The court's four more liberal members dissented.... At the same time, writing for four justices, Chief Justice Roberts emphasized the narrowness of the court's decision. 'This case involves express discrimination based on religious identity with respect to playground resurfacing,' he wrote. 'We do not address religious uses of funding or other forms of discrimination.'" (Also linked yesterday.)

Capitalism Is Awesome, Ctd. Tiffany Hsu & Mike Issac of the New York Times: "Last Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, attended a virtual meeting with some of the company's top advertising partners [and said] ... the social network [would] keep hate speech unaltered and accessible on its site.... But over the past week, Facebook's attitude has changed. Marketing giants like Unilever, Coca-Cola and Pfizer announced that they were pausing their Facebook advertising. That outcry has grown, hitting the company's wallet. To contain the damage, Facebook began holding daily calls and sending emails to advertisers to soothe them, advertising executives said. [This] Tuesday morning, [in] another video meeting with advertisers..., [company executives] took a more conciliatory tone.... Yet even as Facebook has labored to stanch the ad exodus, it is having little effect. Executives at ad agencies said that more of their clients were weighing whether to join the boycott, which now numbers more than 300 advertisers and is expected to grow.... The big-name brands that have pulled back are recognizable and may create a trickle-down effect, analysts said." ~~~

~~~ Ben Collins & Brandy Zadrozny of NBC News: "Facebook announced Tuesday that it is removing groups dedicated to the Boogaloo extremist movement one month after federal officials alleged the anti-government network's adherents used the platform to plan the murder of a federal agent. The social media giant said it removed 220 Boogaloo Facebook groups and 95 Instagram accounts that violated its policies against organized violence. It said 400 additional groups that were tangentially associated with the movement would be taken down, too.... The Boogaloo is a heavily armed, mostly conservative libertarian militia movement with extreme anti-government views that advocates for a violent uprising targeting mostly law enforcement. The movement, which has strong ties to current and former military members, grew to tens of thousands of followers since January, mostly in Facebook groups." ~~~

Here's why Facebook is so reluctant to drop hate groups: ~~~

~~~ Ryan Mac & Caroline Haskins of BuzzFeed News: "As right-wing extremists have used [Facebook]'s tools to organize, the world's largest social network has also profited from ads pushing for white supremacy.... On Sunday, [for instance,] the @docscustomknives Instagram account placed an ad on the popular photo-sharing social network advocating that people 'join the militia, fight the state.'... The account that ran the Instagram ad was not among those that the company removed [on Tuesday]."

The Commentariat -- June 30, 2020

Late Morning Update:

The New York Times' live updates of coronavirus developments Tuesday are here. The Washington Post's live updates for Tuesday are here.

Eric Bradner of CNN: "... Joe Biden lambasted ... Donald Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic Tuesday, saying that Trump is 'in retreat' with more 125,000 Americans dead and the virus worsening in many states. In a speech in Wilmington, Delaware, the former vice president recounted what he cast as Trump's missteps, from Trump's early dismissals of the virus to his more recent refusals to wear a mask in public appearances. Pointing to Trump in March declaring himself a wartime president in battling the coronavirus, Biden said: 'What happened? Now it's almost July, and it seems like our wartime president has surrendered -- waved the white flag and left the battlefield.' Biden's speech tied together proposals he has issued in recent months, including calls for a national board to oversee a "massive surge" in coronavirus testing.He framed most of his remarks as directly addressing Trump, urging the President to adopt Biden's proposals immediately."

Jessie Hellmann of the Hill: "Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, warned members of Congress on Monday that the U.S. could reach 100,000 new COVID-19 cases per day if the country does not get a handle on the pandemic. Speaking before the Senate health committee, Fauci said..., 'We're going in the wrong direction if you look at the curves of the new cases.... We need to do something about that and we need to do it very quickly.'"

Your European Vacation Has Been Cancelled. Bill Chappell of NPR: "U.S. travelers won't be among those allowed to visit the European Union when the bloc begins opening its external borders on July 1. EU ambassadors endorsed a list of 15 travel partners on Tuesday, including South Korea, Japan and China -- countries that were hit early by the pandemic but have been able to bring the coronavirus under control. The U.S. was seen as a long shot to make the travel list, which requires that only those countries with epidemiological situations -- taking into account both the infection rate and current trends -- that are equal to or better than the EU's can send tourists and other nonessential visitors to the open-border region." ~~~

     ~~~ CNN has the graph that explains why.

Kentucky Senate Race. James Arkin of Politico: "Amy McGrath has fended off Charles Booker to clinch the Democratic nomination for Senate in Kentucky, setting up an expensive showdown with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in November. McGrath had 45 percent of the vote, compared to 43 percent for Booker when The Associated Press called the race on Tuesday -- a week after the primary which saw historic turnout and significant use of absentee ballots. Though she was the frontrunner throughout the race, McGrath faced a spirited challenge from Booker, a liberal first-term state representative who surged in momentum in just three short weeks to turn the race from a sleepy affair into one of the most closely-watched Senate primaries this year. Booker's rise began late last month as he took part in protests against police brutality in his hometown of Louisville." The New York Times report is here.

** They Followed the Money. Charlie Savage, et al., of the New York Times: "American officials intercepted electronic data showing large financial transfers from a bank account controlled by Russia's military intelligence agency to a Taliban-linked account, which was among the evidence that supported their conclusion that Russia covertly offered bounties for killing U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan, according to three officials familiar with the intelligence. Though the United States has accused Russia of providing general support to the Taliban before, analysts concluded from other intelligence that the transfers were most likely part of a bounty program that detainees described during interrogations."

Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that states must allow religious schools to participate in programs that provide scholarships to students attending private schools. The decision, a victory for conservatives, was the latest in a series of Supreme Court rulings that the free exercise of religion bars the government from treating religious groups differently from secular ones. It opens the door to more public funding of religious education. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote the majority opinion in the 5-to-4 ruling. The court's four more liberal members dissented.... At the same time, writing for four justices, Chief Justice Roberts emphasized the narrowness of the court's decision. 'This case involves express discrimination based on religious identity with respect to playground resurfacing,' he wrote. 'We do not address religious uses of funding or other forms of discrimination.'"

Heather Caygle, et al., of Politico: "Senior House Democrats left a White House briefing on Russian bounties disappointed on Tuesday, saying they were given 'no substantive information' about allegations that the Kremlin paid Taliban militants to kill U.S. troops -- and that ... Donald Trump sat on the information for months. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who led a group of nearly a dozen Democrats to the White House early Tuesday, said Congress still needs to hear from the heads of various Intelligence agencies -- not White House officials -- on the stunning allegations. The Trump administration officials tasked with briefing the Democrats, Hoyer said, expressed their opinion of the allegations but didn't share the underlying evidence."

~~~~~~~~~~

** Carl Bernstein of CNN: "In hundreds of highly classified phone calls with foreign heads of state..., Donald Trump was so consistently unprepared for discussion of serious issues, so often outplayed in his conversations with powerful leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Erdogan, and so abusive to leaders of America's principal allies, that the calls helped convince some senior US officials -- including his former secretaries of state and defense, two national security advisers and his longest-serving chief of staff -- that the President himself posed a danger to the national security of the United States, according to White House and intelligence officials intimately familiar with the contents of the conversations."

James LaPorta of the AP: "Top officials in the White House were aware in early 2019 of classified intelligence indicating Russia was secretly offering bounties to the Taliban for the deaths of Americans, a full year earlier than has been previously reported, according to U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the intelligence. The assessment was included in at least one of ... Donald Trump's written daily intelligence briefings at the time, according to the officials. Then-national security adviser John Bolton also told colleagues he briefed Trump on the intelligence assessment in March 2019. Bolton declined to comment.... The AP reported Sunday that concerns about Russian bounties were also included in a second written presidential daily briefing earlier this year and that current national security adviser Robert O'Brien had discussed the matter with Trump. O'Brien denies he did so."

** Charlie Savage, et al., of the New York Times: "American officials provided a written briefing in late February to President Trump laying out their conclusion that a Russian military intelligence unit offered and paid bounties to Taliban-linked militants to kill U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan, two officials familiar with the matter said. The investigation into the suspected Russian covert operation to incentivize such killings has focused in part on an April 2019 car bombing that killed three Marines as one such potential attack.... Moreover, a description of the intelligence assessment that the Russian unit had carried out the bounties plot was also seen as serious and solid enough to disseminate more broadly across the intelligence community in a May 4 article in the C.I.A.'s World Intelligence Review, a classified compendium commonly referred to as The Wire, two officials said.... The new information emerged as the White House tried on Monday to play down the intelligence assessment that Russia sought to encourage and reward killings -- including reiterating a claim that Mr. Trump was never briefed about the matter and portraying the conclusion as disputed and dubious....

"Top Democrats in the House and Senate demanded all members of Congress be briefed, and the White House summoned a small group of House Republicans friendly to the president to begin explaining its position. The lawmakers emerged saying that they were told the administration was reviewing reporting about the suspected Russian plot to assess its credibility, and that the underlying intelligence was conflicting, echoing comments from the White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany.... Late on Monday, John Ratcliffe, the recently confirmed director of national intelligence, issued a statement warning that leaks about the matter were a crime." Mrs. McC: Notice that Ratcliffe is effective confirming the multiple stories about the intelligence.

Barbara Starr & Paul LeBlanc of CNN: "The intelligence that assessed there was an effort by a Russian military intelligence unit to pay the Taliban to kill US soldiers was included in one of ... Donald Trump's daily briefings on intelligence matters sometime in the spring, according to a US official with direct knowledge of the latest information. That assessment, the source said, was backed up by 'several pieces of information' that supported the view that there was an effort by the Russian intelligence unit -- the GRU -- to pay bounties to kill US soldiers, including interrogation of Taliban detainees and electronic eavesdropping. The source said there was some other information that did not corroborate this view but said, nonetheless, 'This was a big deal. When it's about US troops you go after it 100%, with everything you got.'"

Jason Slotkin & Mark Katkov of NPR: "In a tweet late Sunday night, President Trump said the intelligence community told him he was not briefed about allegations Russia had offered the Taliban bounty payments to kill Western forces -- including U.S. troops -- because it did not find the reports credible[:] 'Intel just reported to me that they did not find this info credible, and therefore did not report it to me or @VP. Possibly another fabricated Russia Hoax, maybe by the Fake News @nytimesbooks, wanting to make Republicans look bad!!!'" Mrs. McC: What's "not credible" is Trump's tweet. In various, and sometimes multiple, forms, the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, NBC News and CNN all have confirmed the reports. And the U.K.'s Sky News, relying on British intel sources, also has confirmed the story (linked below). There may be others. Moreover, the WashPo (story linked below) also has confirmed that American soldiers were killed for the Russian bounties. Flag-draped coffins are tragically "credible." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Tell Everybody But Trump. Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany held a briefing Monday amid a growing furor over bounties that U.S. intelligence says Russia placed on U.S. troops in Afghanistan.... But her answers didn't match up with President Trump's, nor did they jibe with basic logic.... Rather than say that the information wasn't credible [as Trump claimed], she instead suggested that it was merely unconfirmed.... Second, McEnany was asked whether Trump had a message for Russia.... 'No, because he has not been briefed on the matter.'... [Trump claimed] he had spoken with 'intel' about the matter and heard back that the intelligence wasn't credible.... Wouldn't speaking to 'intel' constitute a briefing of some sort?... Third..., McEnany ... said that intelligence ... needs to be verified before it will be shared with the president. But that's not generally accurate; the President's Daily Brief, or PDB, has historically shared unconfirmed or even raw intelligence with the president.... At the same time, McEnany confirmed reports that congressional leaders are being briefed on the intelligence. In addition, The Washington Post and others have reported that this intelligence was shared with British officials last week. In other words..., this is information that is being shared with plenty of people who aren't the chief executive of the United States government but for some reason not with him."

Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Nancy Pelosi, speaking to Jake Tapper Monday afternoon, posed one plausible reason intel agencies might not have briefed Trump: they feared he would alert Putin to U.S. intel that should remain secret, like sources & methods. (See also Carl Bernstein's report, linked above.)

Jeremy Herb & Lauren Fox of CNN: "A bipartisan group of congressional leaders is demanding the Trump administration explain what it knew about reports US intelligence concluded Russia offered bounties to Taliban fighters to kill US troops.... The swift response underscored the congressional push for information about the US intelligence -- and whether ... Donald Trump was briefed on the matter, which Trump denied. [Speaker] Pelosi also said that the 'Gang of Eight,' the congressional leaders who are briefed on sensitive intelligence matters, were not told about the bounties offered to the Taliban." (Also linked yesterday.)

Adam Silverman of Balloon Juice explains the obvious to Trump's toadies: "... while we now know that the Democrats in Congress will get a briefing on this [Tuesday], doing it this way is a SERIOUS PROBLEM!!!! The reason we have a Gang of 8 -- the Speaker and Minority Leader in House, the Majority and Minority Leaders in the Senate, and the chairs and ranking members of the intelligence committees in each chamber -- is to ensure that everyone gets briefed on this stuff at the same time. This is also the reason we are supposed to have a bipartisan intelligence oversight process within both the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI).... And the reason that the Gang of 8 or the members of both parties on the intelligence committees get briefed at the same time is to prevent ... one side [from] being told something the other side isn't. To avoid the politicization of intelligence." Read on. Silverman has much more to say.

MEANWHILE. Martin Matishak of Politico: "... GOP members of the House Intelligence Committee have skipped all but one of the panel's proceedings, public and private, since before Congress went into its coronavirus-lockdown in early March. And that impasse shows no signs of ending, even as the panel takes up issues like China, Covid-19 and the annual intelligence policy bill.... Democrats say the Republicans haven't provided a good explanation about why they've withdrawn or indicated what could get them back to the table."

David Ignatius of the Washington Post: "... starting in 2018, U.S. commanders noticed ... the Russians appeared to be helping the Taliban. Gen. John 'Mick' Nicholson Jr., who commanded U.S. forces in Afghanistan for more than two years, revealed the secret Russian aid for the Taliban in a March 23, 2018, interview with the BBC. He said Afghan leaders had showed U.S. commanders Russian-supplied weapons that had been smuggled across the border to Taliban fighters. Nicholson's 2018 interview was a rare public protest by a U.S. official. Trump didn't press the Russians to stop, and so they continued.... [As] U.S. military and intelligence officials became increasingly concerned..., Trump kept up a buzz of happy talk about improving relations with Putin.... Trump is an obstacle to good policy. Either people don';t tell him the truth, or he doesn't want to hear it. Whichever way, he’s defaulting on his most basic responsibility as commander in chief."

The New York Times' live updates for coronavirus developments Monday are here. The Washington Post's live updates for Monday are here: "Jacksonville, the largest city in Florida and host of the Republican National Convention in August, announced Monday that masks will be mandatory in public and indoor locations, as the World Health Organization warned that the outbreak is far from over. The news comes as the global community marked yet another grim milestone on Sunday, with the confirmed worldwide death count from the novel coronavirus surpassing 500,000, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University." Mrs. McC: Hope the Jax police arrest Trump mid-speech, cuff him & throw him in the tank with the usual riffraff. Ugliest mugshot ever. (Also linked yesterday.)

William Feuer of CNBC: "The coronavirus is spreading too rapidly and too broadly for the U.S. to bring it under control, Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Monday. The U.S. has set records for daily new infections in recent days as outbreaks surge mostly across the South and West. The recent spike in new cases has outpaced daily infections in April when the virus rocked Washington state and the northeast, and when public officials thought the outbreak was hitting its peak in the U.S."

The Art of the Deal: Trump Administration Pays about 5 Times a Fair Price for Covid-19 Drug. Hannah Denham, et al., of the Washington Post: "Gilead Sciences, the maker of the first covid-19 treatment found to have worked in clinical trials, remdesivir, said Monday it will charge U.S. hospitals $3,120 for the typical patient with private insurance. Soon after the announcement, the Trump administration said it had secured nearly all of the company's supply of the drug for use in U.S. hospitals through September, with a contract for 500,000 treatment courses, which it will make available to hospitals at Gilead's price. Other developed countries will pay 25 percent less than the United States, a discount Gilead said reflects a need to make the drug as widely available as possible throughout the world.... An independent analysis last week by the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review said Gilead could recover its costs by distributing the drug for as little as $1 to $60 per dose, or $100 to $160 per dose if all of the company's 2020 costs are taken into account. Under Monday's pricing, Gilead set the price at $520 per dose in the United States and $390 per dose in other developed countries."

California. Shawn Hubler & Thomas Fuller of the New York Times: "Over the past week California’s case count has exploded, surpassing 200,000 known infections, and forcing [Gov. Gavin] Newsom [D] to roll back the state's reopening in some counties. On Monday, he said the number of people hospitalized in California had risen 43 percent over the past two weeks. Los Angeles County, which has been averaging more than 2,000 new cases each day, surpassed 100,000 total cases on Monday, with the virus actively infecting one in every 140 people, according to local health officials.... On Sunday, Mr. Newsom shut down the bars in a half-dozen counties, including Los Angeles County and in the Central Valley, and recommended that another eight counties voluntarily close their nightspots and gathering places. On Friday, Imperial County, along the Mexican border, was told to return to a stay-at-home order.... The head start that California appeared to enjoy -- the companies that allowed employees to work from home as early as February, the governor who warned residents in daily briefings to stay home and appeared to be listened to -- was not protective enough in the long run. Younger people appear to account for the large surge in new cases, as they have in many other states."

Trump, an Unapologetic Racist. Ashley Parker & Toluse Olorunnipa of the Washington Post: Sunday morning, Donald Trump "shared a video on Twitter that included a Trump supporter shouting 'white power' at counterprotesters during a demonstration at the Villages, a retirement community in central Florida, and had called his supporters there 'great people.' Senior staffers ... began trying to reach the president to convey their concerns about the tweet. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, son-in-law Jared Kushner and other senior advisers spoke with [the] president.... Roughly three hours later, the president gave the go-ahead to delete his incendiary tweet -- moved, in large part, by the public calls from Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the Senate's only black Republican, to do just that, aides said.... But neither the president nor his team publicly condemned the racist phrase.... As protests over police brutality and racial injustice have erupted across the country in recent weeks, Trump has dialed up his inflammatory rhetoric, repeatedly turning to racist tropes."

Marissa Lang of the Washington Post: "Congress on Monday began to investigate tactics used by federal law enforcement officers to clear protesters near Lafayette Square ahead of President Trump's photo op in front of the pale yellow facade of St. John's Episcopal Church. Protesters, journalists and witnesses who were caught in clouds of chemical irritants, hit with police batons, pelted by projectiles and shoved with riot shields described their experiences and injuries to lawmakers, whose confidence in police officers' tactics seemed to splinter along party lines.... None of the witnesses heard verbal warnings issued, they testified.... No members of the Trump administration were called to testify. Park Police officials, who led the charge against protesters on June 1, declined to attend, lawmakers said, because one protester called to speak is part of a federal lawsuit alleging the administration authorized an 'unprovoked and frankly criminal attack' on demonstrators engaging in their First Amendment right to protest."

Brian Kilmeade of Fox "News" to Donald Trump: Since you have done a lot for the African-American community, what is your message to them who say, 'my ancestors were enslaved because of their...

Donald Trump: My message is that we have a great country. We have the greatest country on Earth. We have a heritage, we have a history. We should learn from the history. And if you don't understand your history, you'll go back to it again. You will go right back to it. You have to learn. Think of it -- take away that whole era, and you'll go back to it sometime -- people won't know about it. ~~~

~~~ Donald Trump, History Professor. Matt Novak of Gizmodo: "In a bizarre interview with Fox News [Sunday] night, President Trump stood next to a sculpture in the Oval Office that he said depicts former president Teddy Roosevelt, and explained that statues are vital to learning about history. Trump went on to complain that some people want to tear down statues of President Roosevelt, just like the art in his office. The only problem? The sculpture Trump was talking about isn't Teddy Roosevelt. It's an anonymous cowboy from the 1890s.... The sculpture in the Oval Office of the White House is called The Bronco Buster and was originally designed in 1895 by Frederic Remington.... Trump appears to be saying that if you don't leave up statues of slaveholders then slavery will somehow become legal again in the United States. Or something. Who knows at this point?" Mrs. McC: The Bronco Buster is well-known, and many people of Trump's generation are familiar with it.

Karoun Demirjian of the Washington Post: "The Senate is poised to challenge President Trump this week with legislation requiring the military to rename bases bearing the names of Confederate generals, a proposal that is shaping up to be one of the most contentious items in this year's annual defense bill.... The bill that emerged from the Republican-led Senate Armed Services Committee included a provision giving the Pentagon three years to come up with new names, while an amendment filed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and 35 other Senate Democrats last week would speed up that process, requiring the name changes within a year. Although there is still vocal opposition to removing the Confederate names -- Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has proposed an amendment to strip the renaming requirement -- Republican support for the measure suggests that it will survive any challenges during this week's floor debate."

Kansas. The Kansas City Star: "Kansas City's mayor [Quinton Lucas, an African American] was sent text messages calling him a racial slur and saying he 'should swing from a tree' because of his order requiring face coverings to be worn in public." --s

Michigan. Timothy Bella of the Washington Post: "A largely peaceful protest in Detroit against systemic racism and police brutality turned violent on Sunday night as a police SUV plowed through a group of protesters, striking multiple people and sending a couple of demonstrators who had climbed on the hood flying from the vehicle. Police accelerated the vehicle multiple times as dozens of protesters surrounded it, according to videos of the incident posted to social media. After each acceleration, protesters could be heard shrieking in shock, pleading for the driver to stop hitting the gas while people were in front of the vehicle and being thrown from its hood.... [Ethan Ketner, a protester who filmed the scene,] wrote that 'multiple people injured' were receiving treatment at local hospitals." (Also linked yesterday.)

Missouri. Teo Armus of the Washington Post: "... as [a] peaceful crowd of about 500 [protesters calling for the removal of the city's mayor] walked along a private, gated street, a white couple ... emerged from a marble mansion.... A barefoot man in a pink collared shirt walked out from the five-story house, carrying a semiautomatic rifle as he appeared to threaten the group. A few feet away, a woman pointed a pistol at the crowd, her finger directly on the trigger.... A video of the scene on social media had been viewed almost 9 million times. President Trump retweeted it without explanation on Monday morning. The White House later declined to say why he did so." (Also linked yesterday.)

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Allow me to answer for "the White House": "President Trump retweeted the video of rich white people pointing guns at peaceful protesters because he wants everyone to know that he approves of vigilantes threatening lethal force & perhaps shooting you dead for exercising your First Amendment rights. SECOND AMENDMENT!" (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ An AP story is here. "Police said they were still investigating but labeled it a case of trespassing and assault by intimidation against the couple by protesters in the racially diverse crowd.... [The barefoot man in the pink shirt] Mark McCloskey told KMOV-TV that a mob rushed toward the home as the family was having dinner and 'put us in fear of our lives.'" Mrs. McC: Well, of course the McCloskeys were in fear of their lives. They were dining at home when a 'racially diverse crowd' happened by. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

~~~ Annie Karni of the New York Times pulls no punches in her straight report on Trump's retweet: "Mr. Trump's promotion of the St. Louis confrontation was the second time in two days that the president used his social media platforms ... to exacerbate racial divisions.... The protesters were participating in a peaceful march to the home of Lyda Krewson, the Democratic mayor of St. Louis, in order to demand her resignation after she released the names and identifying details of individuals who supported defunding the police.... The confrontation, which looked like something out of a Quentin Tarantino film, was captured on video and quickly drew more than 10 million views online.... The White House did not respond to requests for comment about the president's decision to promote the clip. But in the past, Mr. Trump has positioned himself as a strong defender of Second Amendment rights. He has also failed to distinguish between peaceful protesters, whose right to assemble is protected by the Constitution, and violent looters...."

All the Best People, Ctd.

Jonathan Swan of Axios: "President Trump intends to nominate John Gibbs to run the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), according to two sources with direct knowledge of the decision.... Gibbs is a former conservative commentator who currently serves as a senior official at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Gibbs received national media attention when CNN reported, in 2018, that he 'spread a false conspiracy theory that claimed Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign chairman took part in a Satanic ritual.'" --s

Chris D'Angelo of the Huffington Post: "...Donald Trump will formally nominate William Perry Pendley, a self-proclaimed 'sagebrush rebel' with extreme anti-environmental views and a long history of advocating for the sale of federal lands in the West, to serve as director of the Bureau of Land Management.... Pendley's first stint in government was under James Watt, President Ronald Reagan's Interior Department chief, who is widely considered among the most anti-environment Cabinet appointees in U.S. history.... Along with extreme views on federal land policy, Pendley detests the Endangered Species Act, once writing the conservation law seeks 'to kill or prevent anybody from making a living on federal land.' He has sued the federal government numerous times in the last three decades, railed often against environmental 'terrorists' and 'eco-fascists,' and compared the climate crisis to a 'unicorn' because 'neither exists.'" --s

Andrew Kaczynski & Nathan McDermott of CNN: "A Trump administration appointee at the United States' agency responsible for foreign aid has a history of inflammatory rhetoric aimed at refugees, the LGBTQ community and women. The comments come from Merritt Corrigan, the recently appointed deputy White House liaison at the US Agency for International Development, in tweets in 2019 and 2020.... Axios reported Wednesday that USAID employee groups requested to meet with John Barsa, the acting administrator of USAID, over concerns about Corrigan and several other recent appointees. On June 8, Barsa defended Corrigan and two other appointees with a history of anti-LGBTQ and anti-Muslim remarks, saying in a statement articles on their comments were 'unwarranted and malicious attacks.'"

Amy Goldstein of the Washington Post: "The House Monday passed the first significant expansion of the Affordable Care Act since its birth a decade ago, providing Democrats a high-wattage platform to castigate President Trump for his efforts to overturn the landmark law during a pandemic and an election year. The 234-179 vote, almost entirely along party lines, was a hollow exercise in terms of any chance the bill would become law and reshape federal health policy. Moments after the debate began, the White House announced the president would veto the legislation if it reached his desk, though a wall of Senate Republican opposition to the measure makes that a moot point. Still, the vote ... forced Republicans to go on the record about the ACA and showed anew the parties' highly charged ideological differences on health care -- an issue that consistently polls as a prime concern among U.S. voters."

Elections 2020

Alex Kaplan of Media Matters: "Multiple supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory, which got its start on far-right message boards, are running campaigns for Congress in 2020.... Here are 58 current or former congressional candidates who embrace it." --safari: Surprise, they're almost all Republicans.

** Ave, Ave Stare Decisis! Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court on Monday struck down a Louisiana law that could have left the state with a single abortion clinic. The vote was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. voting with the court's four-member liberal wing but not adopting its reasoning. The chief justice said respect for precedent compelled him to vote with the majority. The case was the court's first on abortion since President Trump's appointments of two justices shifted the court to the right. The Louisiana law, which was enacted in 2014, requires doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals." An NBC News story is here. The AP story is here. Mrs. McC: Gosh, I seem to remember when Sen. Susan Collins (Gullible-Maine) voted to put Cowardly Liar Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court because he assured her that he would preserve abortion rights. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

~~~ Dahlia Lithwick of Slate: "Roberts' concurrence is classic Roberts -- cloak a major blow to the left in what appears to be a small victory for it.... He ... does essentially what he did in last year's census case and last week's challenge to the DACA rescission: He hints that essentially any old pretextual defense of an abortion law will serve; he just doesn't like when lazy litigants offer up sloppy pretexts.... As was the case in the census litigation, and the DACA litigation, the outcome here is correct, but one can easily reverse-engineer the chief justice's opinion to say, 'Come back to me with the right road map and I&'m all yours,' and in fact, he actually grabs your pencil, flips over the napkin, and sketches the map out at no extra cost.... To be sure, nobody is more grateful than I am that the chief justice has opted, yet again, this week, not to tether himself to a conservative legal project that seeks to return women's rights to the Paleozoic era (thanks, Clarence Thomas! And thanks, Susan Collins, for Brett Kavanaugh!).... But the drumbeat that fêtes Roberts as a 'liberal' or a 'moderate' or 'evolving' fails to capture what he is."~~~

~~~ Ian Millhiser of Vox: "The Supreme Court just delivered the narrowest, most temporary victory for abortion rights. Though Chief Justice John Roberts, a conservative who votes fairly consistently to uphold abortion restrictions, cast the key fifth vote to strike down a Louisiana anti-abortion law, his opinion makes it clear that his views about abortion haven't changed. The best reading of the Court's decision in June Medical Services v. Russo is that Roberts just gave the constitutional right to an abortion a potentially very brief reprieve. And he did so largely because Louisiana presented the weakest possible case in June Medical. As Justice Stephen Breyer notes in his plurality opinion, June Medical involves a Louisiana law that is 'almost word-for-word identical' to a Texas law the Supreme Court struck down four years ago in Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt (2016).... 'I joined the dissent in Whole Woman's Health and continue to believe that the case was wrongly decided,' the chief justice writes. Nevertheless, 'the question today however is not whether Whole Woman's Health was right or wrong, but whether to adhere to it in deciding the present case.'... But Roberts also signals that he's open to a lawsuit challenging this right on other grounds." (Also linked yesterday.)

Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court ruled Monday that the president is free to fire the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau without cause. The decision, rejecting a federal law that sought to place limits on presidential oversight of independent agencies, was a victory for the conservative movement to curb the administrative state. The vote was 5 to 4, with the court's five more conservative justices in the majority." (Also linked yesterday.)

Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "The Supreme Court will not take up a challenge to new federal death penalty protocols proposed by the Justice Department, which wants to resume executions as early as July for the first time since 2003. The court, without comment, declined Monday to take up the lawsuit filed by four death row inmates. As is customary, it gave no reason. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor said they would have accepted the case." Mrs. McC: Barr's purpose here, I suppose, is to make Trump look tough on heinous crime. (Also linked yesterday.)

Cristiano Lima of Politico: "Video streaming platform Twitch temporarily suspended ... Donald Trump's channel and social media site Reddit banned a longtime forum used by his supporters in separate actions Monday aimed at curtailing hateful content that come as the tech industry grapples with its handling of the president. Reddit CEO Steve Huffman announced in a post that the r/The_Donald forum, which boasted over 790,000 subscribers as of earlier Monday.... Twitch, a subsidiary of the e-commerce giant Amazon, confirmed on Monday that it has separately suspended Trump's campaign channel on the platform for posting videos that ran afoul of its rules against content that 'promotes, encourages or facilitates discrimination, denigration, objectification, harassment or violence' based on an individual's identity. A company spokesperson said the channel violated its rules by rebroadcasting a video of Trump's 2015 event kicking off his presidential candidacy, in which he referred to Mexican immigrants as 'rapists.'" ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: IOW, Twitch is affirming that Donald Trump was unacceptable from the git-go.

Jared Holt of Right Wing Watch: "YouTube ​banned six accounts used by high-profile white nationalists on Monday. According to YouTube, the respective channels 'repeatedly or egregiously violated our policies by alleging that members of protected groups were innately inferior to others, among other violations.' The removed accounts include those ​owned by far-right political entertainer Stefan Molyneux, white nationalist outlets American Renaissance and Radix Journal, as well as longtime Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. YouTube also removed two associated channels: one belonging to alt-right poster boy Richard Spencer and another hosting American Renaissance podcasts."

Beyond the Beltway

California. Justin Juvenal of the Washington Post: "The man accused of being the 'Golden State Killer' pleaded guilty to 13 murders and admitted to other crimes Monday, finally bringing to a close an infamous string of long-unsolved slayings, rapes and burglaries that terrorized California during the 1970s and 1980s. Joseph James DeAngelo Jr., 74, admitted he was one of the nation's worst serial predators, as part of deal with prosecutors in a handful of California counties that spared him the death penalty. The deal calls for him to serve life in prison without parole."

Way Beyond

China/Hong Kong. Eva Dou & Shibani Mahtani of the Washington Post: "China on Tuesday adopted a contentious national security law that will allow Beijing to override Hong Kong's judicial system and target political opponents in the city, stripping the territory of autonomy promised under the handover agreement with Britain and raising the prospect of further retaliation from Washington. The move has strained China's relations with the United States and other Western nations, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo saying on Friday that Washington would place visa restrictions on Chinese officials responsible for curtailing freedoms in Hong Kong. On Monday, China said it would impose reciprocal measures on unspecified American officials, while the U.S. Commerce Department suspended some of Hong Kong's preferential trade treatment under U.S. law."

News Lede

New York Times: "Carl Reiner, who as performer, writer and director earned a place in comedy history several times over, died on Monday night at his home in Beverly Hills. He was 98." Mrs. McC: My favorite sentence in the obit: "A photo showing Mr. Reiner, [Mel] Brooks and Annie Reiner [-- Carl's daughter]] wearing 'Black Lives Matter T-shirts' was posted on Twitter this week." A mensch till he died.

The Commentariat -- June 29, 2020

Late Morning Update:

Ave, Ave Stare Decisis! Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court on Monday struck down a Louisiana law that could have left the state with a single abortion clinic. The vote was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. voting with the court's four-member liberal wing but not adopting its reasoning. The chief justice said respect for precedent compelled him to vote with the majority. The case was the court's first on abortion since President Trump's appointments of two justices shifted the court to the right. The Louisiana law, which was enacted in 2014, requires doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals." An NBC News story is here. The AP story is here. Mrs. McC: Gosh, I seem to remember when Sen. Susan Collins (Gullible-Maine) voted to put Cowardly Liar Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court because he assured her that he would preserve abortion rights. ~~~

~~~ Ian Millhiser of Vox: “The Supreme Court just delivered the narrowest, most temporary victory for abortion rights. Though Chief Justice John Roberts, a conservative who votes fairly consistently to uphold abortion restrictions, cast the key fifth vote to strike down a Louisiana anti-abortion law, his opinion makes it clear that his views about abortion haven't changed. The best reading of the Court's decision in June Medical Services v. Russo is that Roberts just gave the constitutional right to an abortion a potentially very brief reprieve. And he did so largely because Louisiana presented the weakest possible case in June Medical. As Justice Stephen Breyer notes in his plurality opinion, June Medical involves a Louisiana law that is 'almost word-for-word identical' to a Texas law the Supreme Court struck down four years ago in Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt (2016).... 'I joined the dissent in Whole Woman's Health and continue to believe that the case was wrongly decided,' the chief justice writes. Nevertheless, 'the question today however is not whether Whole Woman's Health was right or wrong, but whether to adhere to it in deciding the present case.'... But Roberts also signals that he's open to a lawsuit challenging this right on other grounds.

Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court ruled Monday that the president is free to fire the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau without cause. The decision, rejecting a federal law that sought to place limits on presidential oversight of independent agencies, was a victory for the conservative movement to curb the administrative state. The vote was 5 to 4, with the court’s five more conservative justices in the majority."

Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "The Supreme Court will not take up a challenge to new federal death penalty protocols proposed by the Justice Department, which wants to resume executions as early as July for the first time since 2003. The court, without comment, declined Monday to take up the lawsuit filed by four death row inmates. As is customary, it gave no reason. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor said they would have accepted the case." Mrs. McC: Barr's purpose might be to make Trump look tough on heinous crime.

Michigan. Timothy Bella of the Washington Post: "A largely peaceful protest in Detroit against systemic racism and police brutality turned violent on Sunday night as a police SUV plowed through a group of protesters, striking multiple people and sending a couple of demonstrators who had climbed on the hood flying from the vehicle. Police accelerated the vehicle multiple times as dozens of protesters surrounded it, according to videos of the incident posted to social media. After each acceleration, protesters could be heard shrieking in shock, pleading for the driver to stop hitting the gas while people were in front of the vehicle and being thrown from its hood.... [Ethan] Ketner[, a protester who filmed the scene,] wrote that 'multiple people injured' were receiving treatment at local hospitals."

Missouri. Teo Armus of the Washington Post: "... as [a] peaceful crowd of about 500 [protesters calling for the removal of the city's mayor] walked along a private, gated street, a white couple ... emerged from a marble mansion.... A barefoot man in a pink collared shirt walked out from the five-story house, carrying a semiautomatic rifle as he appeared to threaten the group. A few feet away, a woman pointed a pistol at the crowd, her finger directly on the trigger.... A video of the scene on social media had been viewed almost 9 million times. President Trump retweeted it without explanation on Monday morning. The White House later declined to say why he did so."

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Allow me to answer for "the White House": "Mr. Trump retweeted the video of rich white people pointing guns at peaceful protesters because he wants everyone to know that he approves of vigilantes threatening lethal force & perhaps shooting you dead for exercising your First Amendment rights. SECOND AMENDMENT!" ~~~

     ~~~ An AP story is here. "Police said they were still investigating but labeled it a case of trespassing and assault by intimidation against the couple by protesters in the racially diverse crowd.... [The barefoot man in the pink shirt] Mark McCloskey told KMOV-TV that a mob rushed toward the home as the family was having dinner and 'put us in fear of our lives.'" Mrs. McC: Well, of course the McCloskeys were in fear of their lives. They were dining at home when a 'racially diverse crowd' happened by.

The New York Times' live updates for coronavirus developments Monday are here. The Washington Post's live updates for Monday are here: "Jacksonville, the largest city in Florida and host of the Republican National Convention in August, announced Monday that masks will be mandatory in public and indoor locations, as the World Health Organization warned that the outbreak is far from over. The news comes as the global community marked yet another grim milestone on Sunday, with the confirmed worldwide death count from the novel coronavirus surpassing 500,000, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University." Mrs. McC: Hope the Jax police arrest Trump mid-speech, cuff him & throw him in the tank with the usual riffraff. Ugliest mugshot ever.

Jason Slotkin & Mark Katkov of NPR: "In a tweet late Sunday night, President Trump said the intelligence community told him he was not briefed about allegations Russia had offered the Taliban bounty payments to kill Western forces — including U.S. troops -- because it did not find the reports credible[:] 'Intel just reported to me that they did not find this info credible, and therefore did not report it to me or @VP. Possibly another fabricated Russia Hoax, maybe by the Fake News @nytimesbooks, wanting to make Republicans look bad!!!'" Mrs. McC: What's "not credible" is Trump's tweet. In various, and sometimes multiple, forms, the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, NBC News and CNN all have confirmed the reports. And the U.K.'s Sky News, relying on British intel sources, also has confirmed the story (linked below). There may be others. Moreover, the WashPo (story linked below) also has confirmed that American soldiers were killed for the Russian bounties. Flag-draped coffins are tragically "credible." ~~~

~~~ Jeremy Herb & Lauren Fox of CNN: "A bipartisan group of congressional leaders is demanding the Trump administration explain what it knew about reports US intelligence concluded Russia offered bounties to Taliban fighters to kill US troops.... The swift response underscored the congressional push for information about the US intelligence -- and whether ... Donald Trump was briefed on the matter, which Trump denied. [Speaker] Pelosi also said that the 'Gang of Eight,' the congressional leaders who are briefed on sensitive intelligence matters, were not told about the bounties offered to the Taliban."

~~~~~~~~~~

** Ellen Nakashima, et al., of the Washington Post: "Russian bounties offered to Taliban-linked militants to kill coalition forces in Afghanistan are believed to have resulted in the deaths of several U.S. service members, according to intelligence gleaned from U.S. military interrogations of captured militants in recent months.... The intelligence was passed up from the U.S. Special Operations forces based in Afghanistan and led to a restricted high-level White House meeting in late March.... The disturbing intelligence -- which the CIA was tasked with reviewing, and later confirmed -- generated disagreement about the appropriate path forward, a senior U.S. official said.... As more details have unfolded, the primary controversy in Washington over the weekend revolved around denials by President Trump and his aides that the president was ever briefed on the intelligence.... House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday joined other lawmakers -- including leading Republicans -- in expressing concern and calling for the administration to provide Congress with an explanation. 'This is as bad as it gets, and yet the president will not confront the Russians on this score, denies being briefed,' Pelosi said on ABC's 'This Week.'... Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), a Trump ally who golfed with the president Sunday..., said it was 'Imperative Congress get to the bottom' of the Russian offer 'to pay the Taliban to kill American soldiers with the goal of pushing America out of the region.'" ~~~

~~~ Eric Schmitt, et al., of the New York Times: "United States intelligence officers and Special Operations forces in Afghanistan alerted their superiors as early as January to a suspected Russian plot to pay bounties to the Taliban to kill American troops in Afghanistan, according to officials briefed on the matter. The crucial information that led the spies and commandos to focus on the bounties included the recovery of a large amount of American cash from a raid on a Taliban outpost.... Interrogations of captured militants and criminals played a central role in making the intelligence community confident in its assessment that the Russians had offered and paid bounties in 2019, another official has said. Armed with this information, military and intelligence officials have been reviewing American and other coalition combat casualties since early last year to determine whether any were victims of the plot.... The details added to the picture of the classified intelligence assessment, which The New York Times reported Friday has been under discussion inside the Trump administration since at least March, and emerged as the White House confronted a growing chorus of criticism on Sunday over its apparent failure to authorize a response to Russia." ~~~

~~~ Trump: I Was Clueless! Lynn Berry & Zeke Miller of the AP: "... Donald Trump on Sunday denied that he had been briefed on reported U.S. intelligence that a Russian military intelligence unit secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing American troops in Afghanistan, and he appeared to minimize the allegations against Moscow. American intelligence officials concluded months ago that Russian officials offered rewards for successful attacks on American service-members last year, at a time when the U.S. and Taliban were holding talks to end the long-running war, according to The New York Times. Trump, in a Sunday morning tweet, said 'Nobody briefed or told me' or Vice President Mike Pence or chief of staff Mark Meadows about 'the so-called attacks on our troops in Afghanistan by Russians.... Everybody is denying it & there have not been many attacks on us,' he said.... Trump's director of national intelligence, John Ratcliffe, also said neither the president nor vice president was 'ever briefed on any intelligence alleged' in the Times' report and he said the White House statement was 'accurate.'" (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: This is a remarkable response. Trump is downplaying the attacks as "not many" and saying that "everybody is denying it," when "everybody" = Russia & the Taliban. That is, Trump is once again taking Putin -- and even the Taliban's! -- word over the U.S. intel community's. In addition, a real president who learned that his own intel staff had not informed him of proxy acts of war against U.S. military personnel would immediately find out why, & staff heads likely would roll. ~~~

~~~ Tom Boggioni of the Raw Story: "Appearing on MSNBC early Sunday morning, [Jeremy Bash,] the former chief of staff at the U.S. Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency said it was 'inconceivable' that Donald Trump was not aware that Russia has been paying a bounty for every American soldier killed in Afghanistan and said the administration's protestations 'don't add up.'... 'They don't appear to be denying the underlying intelligence,' Bash began. 'They don't appear to be denying they have intelligence that Russia and Russian intelligence paid Taliban elements to go out and kill U.S. service-members..., but they appear to be saying the president and other senior leaders at the White House were not briefed, which I find totally inconceivable and totally noncredible.'" ~~~

~~~ Juan Cole: "Director of National Security John Ratcliffe, a strong Trump supporter who is a political appointee rather than an intelligence professional, denied the report that Trump was briefed on the GRU instigation. I'll say right away that I don't find Ratcliffe's denial plausible. If the intelligence were gathered, it would have been briefed to the president.... A leak like this makes you ask questions.... The entire scenario is baffling. The most plausible thing in the story is that Trump would have been told that the Russians had harmed US troops, and that Trump should have ignored it and gone on pursuing his creepy friendship with Vladimir Putin. And, yes, you could imagine US military and intelligence analysts seeing that happen and being so frustrated that they risked their careers and possibly their freedom in order to blow the whistle." ~~~

~~~ Riley Beggin of Vox has a good summary of the reports here. ~~~

** Alistair Bunkall of Sky News: "British security officials have confirmed to Sky News that the reports about the plot are true.... The report, which was first published on Friday evening by The New York Times, is 'on the nose', according to a source briefed on the matter.... There are currently around 1,000 British troops deployed in Afghanistan, mainly in the capital Kabul, and no confirmation any have been hurt as a result of the Russian efforts." --s

~~~ J.L. Cauvin, on the other hand, says Putin did not place a bounty on our troops; after seeing Donald strongly throw the paper towels at Puerto Ricans, Putin offered to send our troops Bounty paper towels. (Also linked yesterday.)

It was a day ending in "y", so another Trumpatrocity:

** Michael Shear of the New York Times: "President Trump on Sunday retweeted a video of one of his supporters yelling 'White power!,' once again using the vast reach of his social media platforms to inflame racial divisions in a nation roiled by weeks of protests about police brutality against black people and demands for social justice reforms. The edited racist video shows a white man riding in a golf cart bearing 'Trump 2020' and 'America First' signs during what appears to be an angry clash over the president and race between white residents of a Florida retirement community.... In response to a protester shouting 'Where's your white hood?' and other taunts, the man in the golf cart pumps his fist in the air and says 'White power!' twice. The two-minute video continues to show profane exchanges between protesters and other Trump supporters riding on more golf carts. The president retweeted the video to his millions of followers just after 7:30 a.m., thanking 'the great people of The Villages,' the Florida retirement community where the clash apparently took place. He added: 'The Radical Left Do Nothing Democrats will Fall in the Fall. Corrupt Joe is shot. See you soon!!!'... Mr. Trump deleted the tweet more than three hours after posting it."* An NPR story is here. (Also linked yesterday.)

     * Mrs. McCrabbie: No, "Mr Trump did not delete the tweet." According to NBC News, someone deleted the tweet while Trump was on the golf course with Lindsey Graham. The "White Power" yells came right at the top of the video, also according to NBC. In fairness to Trump, it does seem quite possible that he didn't notice or see anything wrong with someone yelling "White Power" twice. (An amazed protester immediately repeats it, too: "He said 'White Power.' Did you hear that?" So that's three times.) But it seems like a normal remark to Trump. Neither he nor anyone from the White House condemned the "White Power" sentiment. Judd Deere of the White House eventually put out this statement: ""President Trump is a big fan of The Villages. He did not hear the one statement made on the video. What he did see was tremendous enthusiasm from his many supporters." Big fan. A real president, of course, would be embarrassed if his supporters were doddering old white supremacists & would disavow them.

I will ALWAYS PROTECT PEOPLE WITH PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS,ALWAYS!!! -- Donald Trump, in a tweet last week, after DOJ filed a brief demanding the pre-existing-condition provisions of the ACA be abolished

Trump has claimed nearly 100 times since he took office that he will 'always protect people with preexisting conditions,' but the legal brief filed by the Justice Department last week belies the president's claim. It says point blank that the entire Affordable Care Act -- including its coverage guarantee for people with preexisting conditions -- 'must fall.' -- Salvador Rizzo of the Washington Post

Mark Mazzetti, et al., of the New York Times have written (what I consider) a devastating story on how AG Bill Barr colluded with Michael Flynn's attorney Sidney Powell to drop the charge against Flynn. "Ms. Powell and her client won a significant victory on Wednesday when a divided appeals court panel -- in a surprise ruling written by Judge Neomi Rao, a former White House official whom Mr. Trump appointed to the bench -- ordered Judge Sullivan to drop the case without scrutiny. Judge [Emmet] Sullivan suspended his review but has not dismissed the charge, suggesting that the extraordinary legal and political saga is not yet over." (Also linked yesterday.)

The Trumpidemic, Ctd.

John Harwood of CNN: "... Donald Trump, ever impulsive, often acts against his own interests. But nothing tops his self-defeating resistance to mask wearing during the coronavirus pandemic. His dogged stance, mimicked by supporters, undercuts efforts by public health officials to stop the summer resurgence of coronavirus. That in turn impedes efforts to revive the US economy, now staggering under the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression. Failures on both fronts has left Trump in a deep hole on his pre-eminent priority of winning reelection. And they leave public health experts mystified."

Felicia Sonmez, et al., of the Washington Post: "Vice President Pence on Sunday implored Americans to wear face masks, practice social distancing and stay away from senior citizens protect them amid a new spike in coronavirus infections, as the United States surpassed 2.5 million confirmed cases.... But earlier Sunday, a 'Celebrate Freedom' rally Pence attended at First Baptist Church in Dallas featured a large choir that did not wear masks while singing, despite evidence that some choir practices have served as 'superspreader' events. Members of the choir put on their masks after they finished singing, and about two-thirds of attendees were wearing masks during the event, although many were sitting side-by-side in the pews." ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Funny how mike didn't think wearing face masks & practicing social distancing was important till the coronavirus began hitting hard in states that tend to vote Republican. You might think he didn't care when Democrats were getting sick & dying in the long, cold months of winter & spring. ~~~

     ~~~ Jamie Ehrlich of CNN: "A choir of more than 100 people performed without masks at a robustly attended event in Texas at the First Baptist Church on Sunday that featured a speech by Vice President Mike Pence. Nearly 2,200 people attended the 'Celebrate Freedom Rally,' in the Lone Star State, according to rally organizers, which has seen a severe surge in coronavirus cases since easing restrictions.... Throughout the service, the members of the choir sang at full volume, behind an orchestra.... When Pence arrived at the event, he was wearing a mask. Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, who traveled with the vice president, also wore masks." ~~~

~~~ Justin Wise of the Hill: "... Joe Biden's campaign on Sunday denounced Vice President Pence for his scheduled trip to Dallas, saying it 'epitomizes the dismissive attitude"'the Trump administration has taken toward addressing the coronavirus outbreak. Pence, the head of the White House coronavirus task force, is set to visit Texas Sunday to receive an on-the-ground report from officials about the surge in coronavirus cases throughout the state. He is also scheduled to speak at an event at the First Baptist Dallas, a church led by Pastor Robert Jeffries, during the visit. 'Our leaders should be tackling this pandemic head on and laying out concrete recovery plans for the American people -- not jet setting across the country to hold events that go against basic public health guidance,' Biden campaign manager Kate Bedingfield said in a statement." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

~~~ Mike Morris & Zach Despart of the Houston Chronicle: "Texas Medical Center hospitals [in Houston] have stopped reporting key metrics showing the stress rising numbers of COVID-19 patients are placing on their facilities, undermining data that policy makers and the public have relied upon during the pandemic to gauge the spread of the coronavirus. The change came one day after the hospitals reported their base intensive care capacity had hit 100 percent for the first time during the pandemic, with projections showing the institutions -- which together comprise the world's largest medical complex -- were on pace to exceed their 'unsustainable surge capacity' by July 6." Oops! Firewalled.

Jamie Ehrlich, et al., of CNN: "Senior Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander said Sunday that he thinks it would 'help' if ... Donald Trump wore a mask because it would eliminate political stigma around doing so as the coronavirus continues to spread across the US. 'If wearing masks is important and all the health experts tell us that it is in containing the disease in 2020, it would help if from time to time the President would wear one to help us get rid of this political debate that says if you're for Trump, you don't wear a mask, if you're against Trump, you do,' the Tennessee Republican, who chairs the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, said on CNN's 'Inside Politics.'" (Also linked yesterday.)

Worth Remembering. Catherine Thorbecke & Arielle Mitropoulos of ABC: "At least 45 million people have filed for unemployment since the pandemic began. Yet between March 18 and June 17, as the pandemic raged, the combined wealth of the 614 U.S. billionaires increased by $584 billion[.]" --s

The New York Times' live updates for coronavirus developments Sunday are here. The Washington Post's live updates for Sunday are here. (Also linked yesterday.)

Christina Maxouris & Eliott McLaughlin of CNN: "Only two US states are reporting a decline in new coronavirus cases compared to last week: Connecticut and Rhode Island. A rise was reported in a staggering 36 states, including Florida, which some experts have cautioned could be the next epicenter for infections.... Florida reported 9,585 new coronavirus cases Saturday, a single-day record.... The number rivals those of New York's peak in early April (New York's new case tally Saturday was about 6% of Florida's)." (Also linked yesterday.)

Florida. Frances Robles of the New York Times: "On Saturday, for the second straight day, Florida crushed its previous record for new coronavirus cases, reporting 9,585 infections. Another 8,530 were reported on Sunday.... Six-hour lines formed in Jacksonville over the weekend as thousands of people flocked to get drive-through tests. Orlando has seen an explosion of coronavirus: nearly 60 percent of all cases diagnosed in that county came in just the past two weeks.... Statewide, about 20 percent of people aged 25 to 34 are testing positive, [Gov. Ron DeSantis (R)] said at a news conference Sunday.... Much of Florida's new surge in cases appears to follow from the reopening of beaches, bars, restaurants and other social activities. The state's beaches are full and throngs of revelers pack its waterways on boats.... The median age of new coronavirus patients is now 36, the Department of Health said.... Officials have done little so far to halt public interactions.

Presidential Race

Shane Goldmacher & Thomas Kaplan of the New York Times: "Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. released statistics on the diversity of his presidential campaign staff on Saturday evening, announcing that 35 percent of his full-time staff members and 36 percent of his full-time senior staff members are people of color. A majority of Mr. Biden's staff members and senior staff members are women -- 53 percent and 58 percent, respectively.... [Donald Trump's] campaign said on Saturday that 25 percent of senior staff members are people of color.... The Trump campaign also said on Saturday that 52 percent of its full-time staff members, and 56 percent of its senior staff members, are women." (Also linked yesterday.) Mrs. McC: Re: Trump campaign, pardon my skepticism. And here's a good reason why:

     ~~~ Zoe Tillman of BuzzFeed News: There are 93 U.S. attorney positions. Trump has filled 81 of them. Of those, seven and women. Two are black: "Louis Franklin Sr. in Alabama and Kenji Price in Hawaii, who is also Asian American." (Also linked yesterday.)

** Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. James Gordon of The Daily Mail: "Bob Woodward, the investigative journalist most famous for his original reporting on the Watergate scandal in 1972, was apparently going to publish a story exposing Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh as being an anonymous source in his 1999 book Shadow: Five Presidents and the Legacy of Watergate ... while serving as a lawyer on [Ken] Starr's team.... Kavanaugh publicly denied ever being a source for Woodward's book in a letter to the Washington Post in 1999.... The fact that Kavanaugh had lied on record enraged Woodward, who was prepared to expose the judge using evidence that he had indeed contributed to the 1999 book.... Woodward's article was due to come out just as he was to be nominated to the Supreme Court in 2018.... The New York Times described the article by two Post journalists who read it as being 'explosive'.... Ultimately, the executive editor of the Washington Post, Martin Baron, stepped in and urged Woodward not to breach his 19-year-old confidentiality agreement and to protect Kavanaugh's anonymity. The piece was ultimately spiked." --s ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Emphasis added. Lying under oath, as he did in his confirmation hearings, is just one step up from lying on record. Kavanaugh was, is & ever shall be a bald-faced liar. Here's the New York Times story, by Ben Smith, titled "Marty Baron made the Post Great Again. Now the News Is Changing." "The revival of The Post by Mr. Baron and its owner, the Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, is perhaps the greatest news business success story of the past decade. But that journalistic revival has in some ways masked a messier story, one of many contradictions.... Mr. Baron's opposition to Mr. Woodward's story, people who work with him said, wasn't about favoring Mr. Kavanaugh, or being afraid of a fight. Publishing the article would simply violate the traditional principle that sources should be protected." It's worth reading.

Elizabeth Dwoskin, et al., of the Washington Post: Largely in an effort to accommodate Donald Trump's incendiary posts, "Facebook has constrained its efforts against false and misleading news, adopted a policy explicitly allowing politicians to lie, and even altered its news feed algorithm to neutralize claims that it was biased against conservative publishers, according to more than a dozen former and current employees and previously unreported documents obtained by The Washington Post. One of the documents shows it began as far back as 2015, when as a candidate Trump posted a video calling for a ban of Muslims entering the United States. Facebook's executives declined to remove it, setting in motion an exception for political discourse. The concessions to Trump have ... paved the way for a growing list of digitally savvy politicians to repeatedly push out misinformation and incendiary political language to billions of people. It has complicated the public understanding of major events such as the pandemic and the protest movement, as well as contributed to polarization."

Beyond the Beltway

Mississippi. Rick Rojas of the New York Times: "Mississippi lawmakers voted on Sunday to bring down, once and for all, the state flag dominated by the Confederate battle emblem that has flown for 126 years, adding a punctuation point to years of efforts to take down relics of the Confederacy across the South. The flag, the only state banner left in the country with the overt Confederate symbol, served for many as an inescapable sign of Mississippi's racial scars and of the consequences of that history in defining perceptions of the state.... The vote in the Mississippi House was 91 in favor of removal and 23 opposed. The vote in the Senate was 37-14. The measure now goes to Gov. Tate Reeves, a Republican, who has said he will sign it." ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: It's probably worth noting that Mississippi also was the last state to ratify the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery. The state did not do so until -- wait for it -- 2013.

Way Beyond

Good News Network: "Ocean Voyages Institute says it made history this week, returning to the port of Honolulu Tuesday, after successfully removing 103 tons of fishing nets and consumer plastics from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It more than doubled its own record-setting results from a 25-day stint last year during this 48-day expedition. And, Mary Crowley, the group's founder and executive director, says they are headed back to sea in two days to collect more debris.... The team is committed to 0% ending up in any landfill and is sending the sorted debris to recycling companies to be turned into insulation, energy, etc.... Ocean Voyages Institute is launching a second voyage that will depart in two days to continue clean-up of the area, but its length (between 25-30 days) will be determined by donations and fundraising. You can donate by check, paypal, or other method on their website." --s

China. AP: "The Chinese government is taking draconian measures to slash birth rates among Uighurs and other minorities as part of a sweeping campaign to curb its Muslim population, even as it encourages some of the country's Han majority to have more children. While individual women have spoken out before about forced birth control, the practice is far more widespread and systematic than previously known.... The campaign over the past four years in the far west region of Xinjiang is leading to what some experts are calling a form of 'demographic genocide.' The state regularly subjects minority women to pregnancy checks, and forces intrauterine devices, sterilization and even abortion on hundreds of thousands, the interviews and data show." --s