The Commentariat -- June 22, 2020

Afternoon Update:

The New York Times' live updates of coronavirus developments Monday are here. "As the coronavirus spreads at record speeds around the world, the United States accounted for 20 percent of all the new infections worldwide on Sunday, according to New York Times data, even as the country's population makes up about 4.3 percent of the world's."

Putting Our Money Where His Mouth Is -- In a Hidey-hole. Rebecca Shabad of NBC News: "The Trump administration has been sitting on nearly $14 billion in funding that Congress passed for coronavirus testing and contact tracing, according to Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York and Patty Murray of Washington. The top Democrats said in a letter Sunday to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar that ... Congress passed these funds as part of a coronavirus relief bill in April.... Donald Trump told a crowd of his supporters at his first campaign rally in months Saturday that he wanted to slow down testing for the coronavirus." ~~~

~~~ Jessie Hellmann & Brett Samuels of the Hill: "President Trump on Monday refused to say whether he told staff to slow down COVID-19 testing to make it look like the U.S. had fewer cases, while White House officials denied he had ever given such an order. Trump has been blaming rising case numbers of coronavirus in the U.S. on increased testing, arguing the country has been doing 'too good a job.'... Trump generated outrage this weekend when he said at his first campaign rally in months that he told staff to 'slow the testing down, please.' Trump aides later said his comments were a joke."”

Shannon Pettypiece & Monica Alba of NBC News: "The White House has stopped conducting mandatory temperature checks for all staffers and visitors entering the grounds, removing another layer of safeguards put in place after two officials became ill with the coronavirus last month. While those who come in close contact with the president and vice president are still having their temperature checked and being questioned about symptoms, the steps are no longer being taken for others who enter the White House campus, said spokesman Judd Deere. Tents that had been manned for the past month by staffers with thermometers were being taken down on Monday.... The White House had already stopped requiring all staffers in the West Wing to wear masks.... The move comes after the virus once again touched on Trump's orbit last week when six staffers preparing for his campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, tested positive for the coronavirus." Thanks to Bobby Lee for the lead. ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: @3:40 pm ET, NBC News is reporting that two more members of Trump's Tulsa advance team have tested positive for coronavirus. @4:05 pm ET, CNN reported that the two staffers attended the rally "but were wearing masks." CNN also reported that two Secret Service agents who went to Tulsa tested positive for the virus.

Justine Coleman of the Hill: "... Joe Biden's campaign is committing to participate in three debates in the fall, while President Trump's campaign is pushing for four events. Biden's campaign manager, Jen O'Malley Dilllon, confirmed in a letter to the Commission on Presidential Debates sent on Monday and obtained by The Washington Post that the former vice president would debate Trump on the dates previously scheduled by the commission -- Sept. 29, Oct. 15 and Oct. 22. Biden's running mate, who has not yet been announced, will debate Vice President Mike Pence on Oct. 7.... Biden's commitment to the debates comes days after several Trump aides, including his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, started advocating for another debate and to conduct them earlier in the day than usual. Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale said last week that the aides don't want the debates to compete with football games." Mrs. McC: The candidate who wants more debates is usually the candidate who is losing.

Just can't get enough of these Trump rally fiasco post-mortems: here's one from Alex Isenstadt of Politico, who focusses on Trump's inability to effectively attack Joe Biden. "Trump advisers have long been convinced that if the race is a referendum on him, rather than a choice between him and Biden, Trump will likely lose." ~~~

Zack Budryk of the Hill: "Geoffrey Berman, the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, refused to sign a letter criticizing New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) for okaying protests but not religious gatherings a day before Attorney General William Barr announced he would be replaced, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday. Justice Department supervisors asked both Berman and Eric Dreiband, the head of the agency's civil rights division, to sign the letter, but after a brief back-and-forth, Berman objected to its characterization of de Blasio's handling of the protests as a double standard and said signing the letter would hurt relations between the city and his office, the newspaper reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The letter was never sent. It is unclear whether the episode contributed to the Justice Department's removal of Berman." ~~~

~~~ Quinta Jurecic & Benjamin Wittes in the Atlantic: "The administration's handling of [SDNY U.S. Attorney Geoffrey] Berman's firing was comically -- and typically -- inept.... And yet, for all the drama, the little matter of why Trump and Barr decided to get rid of Berman in the first place remains a mystery.... The most benign explanation -- though not exactly a comforting one -- is simple patronage. According to Barr's original statement, Trump had decided to appoint Jay Clayton ... to the job. Clayton, according to The New York Times, had recently golfed with the president ... and had expressed interest in the U.S. attorney job.... A second, more troubling possibility is that Berman's removal was retaliatory.... Trump has a long history of firing people who cause him trouble -- often those who are investigating him -- as a means of retribution.... Then there is the third possibility, the most sinister: that the removal of Berman was a specific effort to interfere with a specific investigation.... Trump does this as well.... If the goal of Berman's firing was to send yet another message to law-enforcement officials around the country that those who are not on the team will have to look over their shoulders at all times as long as Trump is president and Barr is running the Justice Department -- well, that message has been heard loud and clear."

Jeff Stein of the Washington Post: "One of President Trump's most trusted economic advisers will leave the White House this summer amid one of the worst economic crises in decades. Kevin Hassett, who returned to the White House as an unpaid volunteer in March, said in an interview that his departure is in line with the administration's initial plan when he was brought back. Hassett said his agreement was to return to the White House for about 90 days, and he has already stayed for more than that amount of time. But Hassett's upcoming departure -- first reported by Axios -- could alarm critics who worry that the White House lacks respected economic officials to guide the nation through the economic calamity caused by the virus."

Robin Pogrebin of the New York Times: "The bronze statue of Theodore Roosevelt, on horseback and flanked by a Native American man and an African man, which has presided over the entrance to the American Museum of Natural History in New York since 1940, is coming down. The decision, proposed by the museum and agreed to by New York City, which owns the building and property, came after years of objections from activists and at a time when the killing of George Floyd has initiated an urgent nationwide conversation about racism. For many, the equestrian statue at the museum's Central Park West entrance has come to symbolize a painful legacy of colonial expansion and racial discrimination."

~~~~~~~~~~

Presidential Race

This Just Gets Better & Better. Jacob Knutson of Axios: "Just under 6,200 people attended President Trump's rally in Tulsa Saturday, well below the BOK Center's total capacity of 19,200, a public information officer for the Tulsa Fire Department told Forbes Sunday.... Trump's campaign had planned to turn the rally into a massive pro-Trump festival to energize his re-election bid amid the coronavirus pandemic and nation-wide protests against police brutality." (Also linked yesterday.)

Monica Alba, et al., of NBC News: "... Donald Trump is 'furious' at the 'underwhelming' crowd at his rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Saturday evening, a major disappointment for what had been expected to be a raucous return to the campaign trail..., according to multiple people close to the White House. The president was fuming at his top political aides Saturday even before the rally began after his campaign revealed that six members of the advance team on the ground in Tulsa had tested positive for COVID-19, including Secret Service personnel, a person familiar with the discussions said. Trump asked those around him why the information was exposed and expressed annoyance that the coverage ahead of his mega-rally was dominated by the revelation.... 'This was a major failure,' one outside adviser said. (Also linked yesterday.)

Anatomy of a Disaster. Kevin Liptak & Kaitlan Collins of CNN: "Once viewed inside the White House and Trump's campaign as a reset button for a presidency beset by crises and self-inflicted wounds, Saturday evening's campaign rally in Tulsa instead became plagued with pitfalls, a disappointing microcosm of the blindspots, denial and wishful thinking that have come to guide the President as he enters one of the most precarious moments of his first term. By the time he strode out to the strains of Lee Greenwood on Saturday evening into a partially-full Bank of Oklahoma Center, the event had devolved from a triumphant return to the campaign trail after a 110-day pandemic-forced absence into something else altogether. The launch of a new assault on former Vice President Joe Biden fizzled, replaced by recycled grievances and race-baiting. The sparse crowd was a reminder that many Americans, even Trump's supporters, remain cautious of a pandemic that continues to rage in places like Oklahoma...." (Also linked yesterday.)

Maggie Haberman & Annie Karni of the New York Times: "The president, who had been warned aboard Air Force One that the crowds at the arena were smaller than expected, was stunned, and he yelled at aides backstage while looking at the endless rows of empty blue seats in the upper bowl of the stadium, according to four people familiar with what took place.... By the end of the rally, Mr. Trump's mood had improved, advisers said. But after he left the stage, the fight seemed to have left him, at least temporarily. Leaving the arena, he wasn't yelling. Instead, he was mostly muted. When he landed back at the White House and walked off Marine One, his tie hung untied around his neck. He waved to reporters, with a defeated expression on his face, holding a crumpled red campaign hat in one hand.... [Campaign manager Brad Parscale] blamed the news media for the low turnout. 'The fact is that a week's worth of the fake news media warning people away from the rally because of Covid and protesters, coupled with recent images of American cities on fire, had a real impact on people bringing their families and children to the rally,' he said.... In an interview, Mr. Parscale said the empty arena was not his fault, and that local law enforcement in Tulsa had overreacted, making it difficult for supporters to gain entry. He claimed to have thousands of emails from supporters who tried to get into the Bank of Oklahoma Center and were turned away, but he did not share those messages or names of supporters."

The Kids Punked Trump. Taylor Lorenz, et al., of the New York Times: "Hundreds of teenage TikTok users and K-pop fans say they're at least partially responsible [for Trump's disappointment].... TikTok users and fans of Korean pop music groups claimed to have registered potentially hundreds of thousands of tickets for Mr. Trump's campaign rally as a prank. After the Trump campaign's official account @TeamTrump posted a tweet asking supporters to register for free tickets using their phones on June 11, K-pop fan accounts began sharing the information with followers, encouraging them to register for the rally -- and then not show. The trend quickly spread on TikTok, where videos with millions of views instructed viewers to do the same, as CNN reported on Tuesday.... Many users deleted their posts after 24 to 48 hours in order to conceal their plan and keep it from spreading into the mainstream internet.... Twitter users on Saturday night were quick to declare the social media campaign's victory. 'Actually you just got ROCKED by teens on TikTok, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York tweeted in response to Mr. Parscale, who had tweeted that 'radical protestors' had 'interfered' with attendance." A CNN story is here.

Jose Del Real of the Washington Post: "... while much attention on his Saturday night appearance in Tulsa focused on the sparse turnout..., Trump's litany of racially offensive stereotypes sent a clear signal about how he plans to try to revive his flagging reelection effort.... But today, amid an emerging movement against racism and police brutality, the president's rhetoric on race is increasingly out of step with polling that shows a surge in support for the idea that racial discrimination is a major problem in the United States, including among white voters.... [At his rally,] He attacked several Democratic women of color, in one instance accusing Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) of 'telling us how to run our country.' The congresswoman, who came to the United States when she was 12 as a refugee from Somalia, is a United States citizen. In repeated comments about 'heritage,' the president also embraced those defending the controversial tokens of Confederate history.... As he railed against recent calls by some activists to defund or dismantle police forces, he made up a scenario involving a criminal 'hombre,' the Spanish-language word for man. As he railed against recent calls by some activists to defund or dismantle police forces, he made up a scenario involving a criminal 'hombre,' the Spanish-language word for man."

Gabby Orr of Politico: In 2008, Barack "Obama's campaign stops at churches, sermonlike speeches and his professed belief in Jesus Christ earned him 24 percent of the white evangelical vote -- doubling Democrats' support among young white evangelicals and gaining 3 percentage points with the overall demographic from the 2004 election. Now, allies of ... Donald Trump worry his 2020 opponent, Joe Biden, can do the same -- snatching a slice of a critical voting bloc from Trump when he can least afford departures from his base. Biden, a lifelong Roman Catholic, has performed better in recent polling among white evangelicals -- and other religious groups -- than Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton did in 2016 and is widely perceived as more religious than the current White House occupant."

Mr. Mustache Says. Conor Finnigan of ABC News: 'Donald Trump's longest-serving national security adviser John Bolton condemned his presidency as dangerously damaging to the United States and argued the 2020 election is the last 'guardrail' to protect the country from him. In an ... interview with ABC News, Bolton offered a brutal indictment of his former boss, saying, 'I hope (history) will remember him as a one-term president who didn't plunge the country irretrievably into a downward spiral we can't recall from. We can get over one term -- I have absolute confidence, even if it's not the miracle of a conservative Republican being elected in November. Two terms, I'm more troubled about.'... 'I don't think he's a conservative Republican. I'm not going to vote for him in November -- certainly not going to vote for Joe Biden either. I'm going to figure out a conservative Republican to vote in,' he told Raddatz." Here's the transcript of Martha Raddatz's interview of Bolton.

The New York Times' live updates for coronavirus developments Sunday are here. "Nationwide, cases have risen 15 percent over the last two weeks. Cases are rising in 18 states across the South, West and Midwest. Seven states hit single-day case records yesterday, and five others hit a record earlier in the week.... At the same time, overall deaths have dropped dramatically. The 14-day average was down 42 percent as of Saturday. Strikingly, the new infections have skewed younger, with more people in their 20s and 30s testing positive, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

~~~ Capitalism Is Awesome, Ctd., Coronavirus Edition. Jessica Silver-Greenberg & Amy Harris of the New York Times: "More than any other institution in America, nursing homes have come to symbolize the deadly destruction of the coronavirus crisis. More than 51,000 residents and employees of nursing homes and long-term care facilities have died, representing more than 40 percent of the total death toll in the United States. But even as they have been ravaged, nursing homes have also been enlisted in the response to the outbreak. They are taking on coronavirus-stricken patients to ease the burden on overwhelmed hospitals -- and, at times, to bolster their bottom lines.... They are kicking out old and disabled residents -- among the people most susceptible to the coronavirus -- and shunting them into homeless shelters, rundown motels and other unsafe facilities..." to make room for more profitable Covid-19 patients. (Also linked yesterday.)

~~~ New York. Sharon Otterman of the New York Times: "New York City's ambitious contact-tracing program, a crucial initiative in the effort to curb the coronavirus, has gotten off to a worrisome start just as the city's reopening enters a new phase on Monday, with outdoor dining, in-store shopping and office work resuming. The city has hired 3,000 disease detectives and case monitors, who are supposed to identify anyone who has come into contact with the hundreds of people who are still testing positive for the virus in the city every day. But the first statistics from the program, which began on June 1, indicate that tracers are often unable to locate infected people or gather information from them. Only 35 percent of the 5,347 city residents who tested positive or were presumed positive for the coronavirus in the program's first two weeks gave information about close contacts to tracers, the city said in releasing the first statistics. The number ticked up slightly, to 42 percent, during the third week.... Contact tracing is one of the few tools that public health officials have to fight Covid-19 in lieu of a vaccine...." (Also linked yesterday.)

Alison Rourke of the Guardian: "China has suspended imports of poultry products from a plant owned by an Arkansas-based meat processor, Tyson Inc, that has been hit by coronavirus, as authorities struggle to bring an outbreak in Beijing under control." --s

Jonathan Swan of Axios: "... President Trump told Axios that his niece, Mary Trump, is 'not allowed' to write her forthcoming book about him because doing so would violate a nondisclosure agreement she signed.... 'You know, when we settled with her and her brother, who I do have a good relationship with -- she's got a brother, Fred, who I do have a good relationship with, but when we settled, she has a total ... signed a nondisclosure.' Trump said his niece's nondisclosure agreement with him was a 'very powerful one. ... It covers everything.'" ~~~

~~~ Speaking of books Donald Trump says should not be published, if you really want to read John Bolton's book but are loathe to see him collect his halfpenny on your purchase ~~~

~~~ AP: "A PDF of 'The Room Where It Happened' has turned up on the internet, offering a free, pirated edition of the former national security adviser's scathing takedown of ... Donald Trump, who has alleged that the book contains classified material that never should have been released."

Jennifer Senior of the New York Times: "... it's precisely because Trump feels overwhelmed and outmatched that I fear we've reached a far scarier juncture: he seems to be attempting, however clumsily, to transition from president to autocrat, using any means necessary to mow down those who threaten his re-election....Trump has torn through almost all of [the honorable civil servants & appointees] and replaced them with loyalists. He now has a clear runway. What we have left is an army of pliant flunkies and toadies at the agencies, combined with the always-enabling Mitch McConnell and an increasingly emboldened attorney general, William Barr."

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Margaret Sullivan of the Washington Post: Journalist Maria "Ressa was convicted, in her native Philippines, on trumped-up charges of cyber libel.... While [a highly-respected journalist in] the Philippines' fragile democracy was under attack by the authoritarian Rodrigo Duterte, a Trump appointee was purging highly respected news executives within the United States taxpayer-funded agency whose intended role is to counter disinformation around the world.... All of [the] departures stemmed from Trump's appointment of Michael Pack, a conservative filmmaker and associate of his longtime adviser Stephen K. Bannon.... [According to John Bolton,] at a summer 2019 meeting in New Jersey, Trump said journalists should be jailed so they have to divulge their sources, according to the former national security adviser's account. 'These people should be executed. They are scumbags,' Trump said. Maybe he didn't mean that literally, but it's still language that ought to shock every American." (Also linked yesterday.)

David Edwards of RawStory: "Attorney General William Barr suggested recently that the investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. election was similar to the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. During an interview that aired Sunday on Fox News, host Maria Bartiromo posed [a] question to Barr. 'A source said to me a couple of years ago, speaking of the Russia collusion story, that this was the closest the United States ever came to a coup to take down a president since the assassination of Lincoln,' Bartiromo told Barr. 'Is that an appropriate statement?' Barr agreed: 'In this sense, I think it is the closest we have come to an organized effort to push a president out of office.'" --s

Sarah Westwood of CNN: "House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler said Sunday that he believes Attorney General William Barr deserves to be impeached, but that pursuing it would be a 'waste of time' because of the Republican-controlled Senate. Nadler, a New York Democrat, told CNN's Jake Tapper on 'State of the Union' that House Democrats would instead work to withhold $50 million from the Department of Justice in an effort to punish Barr.... Nadler called the Republican Senate 'corrupt' over its decision earlier this year to acquit Trump on on two articles of impeachment, and he stressed there was nothing to be gained from pursuing Barr's impeachment because it would likely end in the same not guilty vote."

Susan Page of USA Today: "If he had been a senator during ... Donald Trump's impeachment trial earlier this year, John Bolton says he probably would have voted for a conviction. There's a certain irony in that, given that ... [Bolton] refused to testify in the House impeachment hearings and then offered to testify in the Senate trial if subpoenaed; Senate Republicans predictably declined before voting to acquit.... One tantalizing passage in the book suddenly seemed prescient this weekend when the Trump administration fired Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. When Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan complained in December 2018 about the office's investigation into a Turkish state-owned bank, Bolton wrote, 'Trump then told Erdogan he would take care of things' once he replaced Southern District prosecutors with 'his people.'"

Preet Bharara in a New York Times op-ed: "Forcing out a well-performing U.S. attorney of the same party, without explanation, on the eve of election, in favor of a less qualified candidate who golfs with the president (as [nominee Jay] Clayton does), in the midst of investigations known to be irksome to the president, does not reflect a commitment to law enforcement independence. Within the Department of Justice, hardworking public servants ... are angry, dismayed and demoralized.... They are disheartened by the bad faith of Bill Barr and his determined efforts to undermine prosecutorial independence. On Saturday, finally assured his well-regarded and principled deputy, Audrey Strauss, would take over the reins, [Geoffrey] Berman left S.D.N.Y. with his head held high. I believe the wrong Department of Justice official left office that day."

John Zenor of the AP: "A noose was found in the garage stall of Black driver Bubba Wallace at the NASCAR race in Alabama on Sunday, less than two weeks after he successfully pushed the stock car racing series to ban the Confederate flag at its tracks and facilities. NASCAR said it had launched an immediate investigation and will do everything possible to find out who was responsible and 'eliminate them from the sport.'" --s

AP: "A Tennessee newspaper said on Sunday it was investigating what its editor called a 'horrific' full-page advertisement from a religious group that predicts a terrorist attack in Nashville next month. The paid advertisement that appeared in Sunday's editions of the Tennessean from the group Future For America claims Donald Trump 'is the final president of the USA' and features a photo of Trump and Pope Francis. It begins by claiming that a nuclear device will be detonated in Nashville and that the attack will be carried out by unspecific interests of 'Islam'.... According to its [Future for America] website, the group's ministry warns of so-called end-of-the-world Bible prophecies whose fulfillment 'is no longer future_for it is taking place before our eyes'." --s

Natasha Bertrand of Politico (June 19): "The Trump administration is warning law enforcement and public safety officials that a far-right extremist movement known as 'boogaloo' may be setting its sights on the nation's capital. On Monday, the National Capital Region Threat Intelligence Consortium, a fusion center for Washington, D.C., that provides support to federal national security and law enforcement agencies, warned in an intelligence assessment that 'the District is likely an attractive target for violent adherents of the boogaloo ideology due to the significant presence of US law enforcement entities, and the wide range of First Amendment-Protected events hosted here'."

Daniel de Simone & Ali Winston of BBC: "Secret efforts to groom and recruit teenagers by a neo-Nazi militant group have been exposed by covert recordings. They capture senior members of The Base interviewing young applicants and discussing how to radicalise them. The FBI has described the group as seeking to unite white supremacists around the world and incite a race war.... Rinaldo Nazzaro, founder of The Base, is a 47-year-old American. Earlier this year the BBC revealed he was directing the organisation from his upmarket flat in St. Petersburg, Russia.... The BBC investigation reveals the real identity of a man who is both a senior member of The Base and the creator of a successor online forum linked to several UK terrorism prosecutions involving teenagers. Matthew Baccari, an unemployed 25-year-old from Southern California, used the alias 'Mathias' to run a notorious website called Fascist Forge, where terrorism and sexual violence were openly encouraged." --s

The Commentariat -- June 21, 2020

Late Morning/Afternoon Update:

This Just Gets Better & Better. Jacob Knutson of Axios: "Just under 6,200 people attended President Trump's rally in Tulsa Saturday, well below the BOK Center's total capacity of 19,200, a public information officer for the Tulsa Fire Department told Forbes Sunday.... Trump's campaign had planned to turn the rally into a massive pro-Trump festival to energize his re-election bid amid the coronavirus pandemic and nation-wide protests against police brutality." ~~~

~~~ Monica Alba, et al., of NBC News: "... Donald Trump is 'furious' at the 'underwhelming' crowd at his rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Saturday evening, a major disappointment< for what had been expected to be a raucous return to the campaign trail..., according to multiple people close to the White House. The president was fuming at his top political aides Saturday even before the rally began after his campaign revealed that six members of the advance team on the ground in Tulsa had tested positive for COVID-19, including Secret Service personnel, a person familiar with the discussions said. Trump asked those around him why the information was exposed and expressed annoyance that the coverage ahead of his mega-rally was dominated by the revelation.... 'This was a major failure,' one outside adviser said. ~~~

~~~ Anatomy of a Disaster. Kevin Liptak & Kaitlan Collins of CNN: "Once viewed inside the White House and Trump's campaign as a reset button for a presidency beset by crises and self-inflicted wounds, Saturday evening's campaign rally in Tulsa instead became plagued with pitfalls, a disappointing microcosm of the blindspots, denial and wishful thinking that have come to guide the President as he enters one of the most precarious moments of his first term. By the time he strode out to the strains of Lee Greenwood on Saturday evening into a partially-full Bank of Oklahoma Center, the event had devolved from a triumphant return to the campaign trail after a 110-day pandemic-forced absence into something else altogether. The launch of a new assault on ... Joe Biden fizzled, replaced by recycled grievances and race-baiting. The sparse crowd was a reminder that many Americans, even Trump's supporters, remain cautious of a pandemic that continues to rage in places like Oklahoma...."

The New York Times' live updates for coronavirus developments Sunday are here. "Nationwide, cases have risen 15 percent over the last two weeks. Cases are rising in 18 states across the South, West and Midwest. Seven states hit single-day case records yesterday, and five others hit a record earlier in the week.... At the same time, overall deaths have dropped dramatically. The 14-day average was down 42 percent as of Saturday. Strikingly, the new infections have skewed younger, with more people in their 20s and 30s testing positive, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said." ~~~

~~~ Sharon Otterman of the New York Times: "New York City's ambitious contact-tracing program, a crucial initiative in the effort to curb the coronavirus, has gotten off to a worrisome start just as the city's reopening enters a new phase on Monday, with outdoor dining, in-store shopping and office work resuming. The city has hired 3,000 disease detectives and case monitors, who are supposed to identify anyone who has come into contact with the hundreds of people who are still testing positive for the virus in the city every day. But the first statistics from the program, which began on June 1, indicate that tracers are often unable to locate infected people or gather information from them. Only 35 percent of the 5,347 city residents who tested positive or were presumed positive for the coronavirus in the program's first two weeks gave information about close contacts to tracers, the city said in releasing the first statistics. The number ticked up slightly, to 42 percent, during the third week.... Contact tracing is one of the few tools that public health officials have to fight Covid-19 in lieu of a vaccine...." ~~~

~~~ Capitalism Is Awesome, Ctd., Coronavirus Edition. Jessica Silver-Greenberg & Amy Harris of the New York Times: "More than any other institution in America, nursing homes have come to symbolize the deadly destruction of the coronavirus crisis. More than 51,000 residents and employees of nursing homes and long-term care facilities have died, representing more than 40 percent of the total death toll in the United States. But even as they have been ravaged, nursing homes have also been enlisted in the response to the outbreak. They are taking on coronavirus-stricken patients to ease the burden on overwhelmed hospitals -- and, at times, to bolster their bottom lines.... They are kicking out old and disabled residents -- among the people most susceptible to the coronavirus -- and shunting them into homeless shelters, rundown motels and other unsafe facilities..." to make room for more profitable Covid-19 patients.

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Margaret Sullivan of the Washington Post: Journalist Maria "Ressa was convicted, in her native Philippines, on trumped-up charges of cyber libel.... While [a highly-respected journalist in] the Philippines' fragile democracy was under attack by the authoritarian Rodrigo Duterte, a Trump appointee was purging highly respected news executives within the United States taxpayer-funded agency whose intended role is to counter disinformation around the world.... All of [the] departures stemmed from Trump's appointment of Michael Pack, a conservative filmmaker and associate of his longtime adviser Stephen K. Bannon.... [According to John Bolton,] at a summer 2019 meeting in New Jersey, Trump said journalists should be jailed so they have to divulge their sources, according to the former national security adviser's account. 'These people should be executed. They are scumbags,' Trump said. Maybe he didn't mean that literally, but it's still language that ought to shock every American."

~~~~~~~~~~

Presidential Race, Schadenfreude Edition

What if you hosted a rally for a million people and only 10,000 6,200 showed up?

Michael Shear, et al., of the New York Times deliver a withering assessment of the Traveling Trump Show: "President Trump's attempt to revive his re-election campaign sputtered badly on Saturday night as he traveled to Tulsa for his first mass rally in months and found a far smaller crowd than his aides had promised him, then delivered a disjointed speech that did not address the multiple crises facing the nation or scandals battering him in Washington. The weakness of Mr. Trump's drawing power and political skills, in a state that voted for him overwhelmingly and in a format that he favors, raised new questions about his electoral prospects for a second term at a time when his poll numbers were already falling. And rather than speak to the wide cross-section of Americans who say they are concerned about police violence and systemic racism, he continued to use racist language, describing the coronavirus as 'Kung Flu.' While the president's campaign had claimed that more than a million people had sought tickets for the rally, the 19,000-seat BOK Center was at least one-third empty during the rally. A second, outdoor venue was so sparsely attended that he and Vice President Mike Pence both canceled appearances there. Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, falsely blamed the small numbers on 'radical protesters' and the news media who he said had frightened away supporters. But there were few protests in the area and no sizable effort to block entrances, and there was a strong security presence." ~~~

     ~~~ Here's how Trump tried to explain away the sparse attendance. It's 100% false. "Look at what happened tonight. Law enforcement said, 'Sir, they can't be outside, it is too dangerous.' We had a bunch of maniacs come and sort of attack our city. The mayor, the governor did a great job. But they were very violent. And our people are not nearly as violent, but if they ever were, it would be a terrible, terrible day for the other side." ~~~

~~~ Philip Rucker & Robert Costa of the Washington Post: "To a nation broken by a pandemic and a recession -- and with a racial justice movement roiling communities across the country -- Trump offered neither reconciliation nor rapprochement. Instead, he put up a fight.... With cities coast to coast pulsating in protest of racial injustice, Trump used his bully pulpit to exacerbate the chaos and division in hopes of capitalizing on the nation's fraying bonds. He condemned what he called 'this cruel campaign of censorship' and, in reference to the debate over removing monuments and memorials to Confederate generals, declared: 'They want to demolish our heritage.... We have a great heritage. We're a great country.'... His 101-minute address was rambling and discordant, ranging from some of his favorite hits, such as attacks on CNN and the 'fake news' to dark imagery about 'Joe Biden's America' as overrun by rioters and looters to a lengthy monologue explaining his slow and unsteady walk down a ramp and two-handed sip of water last weekend at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point." Here's a portion of Trump's reconstruction of his harrowing afternoon at West Point: ~~~

~~~ Washington Post live updates are here. "In a speech lasting nearly two hours -- filled with grievances, falsehoods and misleading claims -- Trump said that because more testing means higher numbers of known coronavirus cases, his direction was to curtail it. 'So I said to my people, "Slow the testing down,"' he said. A White House official said later the president was 'obviously kidding,' but he has previously expressed skepticism about testing, which public health experts say is required to contain the outbreak." ~~~

"A Tulsa mayoral aide resigned Saturday in response to the city's handling of the president's campaign rally. Jack Graham said the decision has been building since the pandemic began, but the lack of enforcement of CDC guidelines at the presidential rally was the last straw.... Graham told the Post...., '... I started becoming unsupportive [of the mayor] when people kind of just passed the baton along and didn't want to make a firm decision to adhere to the CDC guidelines or social distancing that any other event like this should deal with,' he said. 'Someone told me the basic test for anything is: Are people going to die? In this case, people are going to die.'" ~~~

~~~ The New York Times' live updates of Trump's Tulsa rally are here. "Inside the arena..., most of the attendees were not wearing masks or social distancing. But the bigger concern for Mr. Trump was that as the rally started the arena appeared only a little more than half full. Campaign advisers, who had hyped a mega-rally that would help undercut polls that show Mr. Trump's support sagging nationwide, claimed that their supporters had trouble entering the arena, and blamed 'radical' protesters and the media. 'Sadly, protestors interfered with supporters, even blocking access to the metal detectors, which prevented people from entering the rally,' said Tim Murtaugh, the campaign communications director. 'Radical protestors, coupled with a relentless onslaught from the media, attempted to frighten off the President's supporters. We are proud of the thousands who stuck it out.' But in reality, there were few protests across the city, and black leaders in Tulsa called for people to stay away from the rally. There was also a huge security presence around the arena." ~~~

~~~ A Politico story is here.

Donald Judd of CNN: "The Trump campaign confirmed six staffers working on the Tulsa rally tested positive for coronavirus." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Kaelan Deese of the Hill: "The Trump Death Clock truck moved in to join the camaraderie in Tulsa, Okla. ahead of President Trump's rally there Saturday evening. The truck displays digital statistics on three different faces of the vehicle, delivering a real-time tracker of alleged needless American deaths due to Trump's response to the coronavirus pandemic, The Guardian reported. The mobilized death clock is strategically placed outside of the Bank of Oklahoma (BOK) Center, where Trump's rally is scheduled for at 7 p.m. CT Saturday. Eugene Jarecki, an award-winning filmmaker, is the administer behind the clock, and said the truck's presence in Tulsa is a public service. 'We want everyone who attends Trump's rally to have an opportunity to make an informed choice based on real numbers,' Jarecki said. The display uses information pulled from the Trump Death Clock webpage, which claims, 'Experts estimate that, had mitigation measures been implemented one week earlier, 60% of American COVID-19 deaths would have been avoided.' The tracker currently suggests around 71,700 American deaths could have been avoided had the administration acted sooner in response to the pandemic." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Michelle Lee of the Washington Post: "... Joe Biden outraised President Trump in May for the first time, outpacing Trump by nearly $7 million as he ramped up his high-dollar fundraising capacity, new figures show. But Trump's reelection committees maintain a significant war chest, entering June with $265 million of cash on hand, according to his campaign. Biden's campaign has not yet released its cash-on-hand figure, but his committees had about $105 million at the end of April, according to filings."

Alan Feuer, et al., of the New York Times: "President Trump on Saturday personally fired the United States Attorney in Manhattan, Geoffrey S. Berman, whose office has pursued one case after another that has rankled the president and his allies, putting his former personal lawyer in prison and investigating his current one.It was the culmination of an extraordinary clash after years of tension between the White House and New York federal prosecutors. In a letter released by the Justice Department, Attorney General William P. Barr accused of Mr. Berman of choosing 'public spectacle over public service' because he would not voluntarily step down from the position. 'Because you have declared that you have no intention of resigning, I have asked the President to remove you as of today, and he has done so,' the letter read. Mr. Barr said Mr. Berman's top deputy, Audrey Strauss, would become the acting United States Attorney.... Speaking briefly to reporters outside the White House before heading to a campaign rally in Tulsa, Okla., Mr. Trump appeared to try to distance himself from the firing.Mr. Trump insisted that he was 'not involved,' despite Mr. Barr's letter, which made clear that Mr. Trump had dismissed Mr. Barr.... In a statement released Saturday evening, Mr. Berman said he would step down immediately in light of Mr. Barr's 'decision to respect the normal operation of law' in replacing him with Ms. Strauss." Emphasis added. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Betsy Swan, et al., of Politico: "Geoffrey Berman ... is ending his standoff with Attorney General William Barr, stepping down voluntarily after Barr reversed course and named Berman's deputy to lead the powerful U. S. attorney's office. 'In light of Attorney General Barr's decision to respect the normal operation of law and have Deputy U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss become Acting U.S. Attorney, I will be leaving the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, effective immediately,' Berman said in a statement, following a tense 12-hour-period in which Barr twice sought to remove Berman, only to see his efforts frustrated.... Barr, who hasn't explained why he issued a false initial statement about the circumstances of Berman's departure, then accused Berman of creating a 'public spectacle' and said he had gotten Trump's authorization to fire him.... Barr's drive to oust Berman hit [another] speed bump Saturday when Trump told reporters he was 'not involved' in Barr's handling of the matter. The episode has prompted the House Judiciary Committee to open an investigation, with the explicit backing of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who suggested Barr's involvement had 'base and improper motives.'"

~~~ Harry Siegel & others of the Daily Beast have a good post on this fiasco titled, "Berman Leaves SDNY in Trusted Hands After Bill Barr Fucks Up His Ouster." ~~~

~~~ Renae Merle of the Washington Post: "President Trump's pick to be the next U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Jay Clayton, is the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and a longtime corporate lawyer with deep connections to Wall Street. But he has no experience as a federal prosecutor. On his 2017 SEC financial disclosure form, for example, Clayton listed Deutsche Bank as a source of compensation 'exceeding $5,000.... The German bank has repeatedly run afoul of federal and state laws and was implicated in large money laundering schemes. It is also at the center of a battle between the Trump administration and House Democrats over the release of the president's financial records. The bank has played critical role in Trump's real estate business, lending him more than $360 million since 2012.

"Clayton is facing an uphill battle to win Senate confirmation. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) has already called on Clayton to drop out. 'Jay Clayton can allow himself to be used in the brazen Trump-Barr scheme to interfere in investigations by the U.S. Attorney for SDNY, or he can stand up to this corruption, withdraw his name from consideration, and save his own reputation from overnight ruin,' Schumer said on Twitter. Schumer also called on the Justice Department's inspector general as well as its office of professional responsibility to investigate why Trump and Barr dismissed Berman. Meanwhile, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said Saturday that he would not move forward on confirmation hearings for Clayton unless the appointment is supported by New York's two U.S. senators, Schumer and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.)." Mrs. McC: I do wonder what got into Lindsey. ~~~

~~~ Manu Raju, et al., of CNN: "Attorney General Bill Barr's effort to push out one of the most powerful prosecutors in the country ran into headwinds Saturday, with Republicans signaling little appetite to fight to confirm a new US attorney amid Democratic accusations that the move was an effort to shield ... Donald Trump's associates from federal investigation. Republicans on Capitol Hill were blindsided by the late Friday night effort by Barr to seek the ouster of Geoffrey Berman, whose office at the Southern District of New York was investigating Trump confidante Rudy Giuliani and other sensitive matters." Mrs. McC: Maybe Lindsey is just pissed off that Barr didn't tell him he was planning to fire Berman. ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: And don't kid yourself. Firing Berman & replacing him with a lawyer for the miscreants at Deutsche Bank isn't about Rudy, Lev & Igor. It's about SDNY investigations into Trump's finances. Full stop. Trump's pretense that he was "not involved" in Berman's firing is as true as his assertion that he had no idea why Michael Cohen had paid Stormy Daniels $130K.

Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "... John R. Bolton can go forward with the publication of his memoir, a federal judge ruled on Saturday, rejecting the administration's request for an order that he try to pull the book back and saying it was too late for such an order to succeed. 'With hundreds of thousands of copies around the globe -- many in newsrooms -- the damage is done. There is no restoring the status quo,' wrote Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the Federal District Court of the District of Columbia. But in a 10-page opinion, Judge Lamberth also suggested that Mr. Bolton may be in jeopardy of forfeiting his $2 million advance, as the Justice Department has separately requested -- and that he could be prosecuted for allowing the book to be published before receiving final notice that a prepublication review to scrub out classified information was complete.... The judge wrote that after viewing classified declarations and discussing them in the closed hearing, he was 'persuaded that defendant Bolton likely jeopardized national security by disclosing classified information in violation of his nondisclosure agreement obligations.'... Judge Lamberth will also oversee the part of the lawsuit that seeks to seize Mr. Bolton's proceeds...." Politico's story is here. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: On the other hand, Bigmouth Donald may have hurt the so-called "Justice" Department's case for clawing back Bolton's profits. As Savage notes, "Mr. Trump has accused Mr. Bolton of lying -- and false information is not classified." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

~~~ Fortunately, Donald Trump accepted the ruling in a mature & circumspect manner: ~~~

~~~ Tax Axelrod of the Hill: "President Trump touted a judge's ruling on former national security adviser John Bolton's memoir that allowed the book to proceed with publishing but panned its author as possibly threatening the nation. 'BIG COURT WIN against Bolton. Obviously, with the book already given out and leaked to many people and the media, nothing the highly respected Judge could have done about stopping it...BUT, strong & powerful statements & rulings on MONEY & on BREAKING CLASSIFICATION were made,' Trump tweeted. 'Bolton broke the law and has been called out and rebuked for so doing, with a really big price to pay. He likes dropping bombs on people, and killing them. Now he will have bombs dropped on him!'" Mrs. McC: You may find it odd to characterize a loss as a win, but you're not Donald Trump. And you probably don't have a phalanx of obsequious aides telling you, "You won, Sir. You won!" (Also linked yesterday.)

The Washington Post's live updates for coronavirus developments Saturday are here. "New daily coronavirus cases in the United States on Friday exceeded 30,000 for the first time in seven weeks as states in the South and West continued to report alarming spikes in new infections.... The last time new daily cases in the United States topped 30,000 was on May 1...." The New York Times' live updates for Saturday are here. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

The Commentariat -- June 20, 2020

Afternoon Update:

Alan Feuer, et al., of the New York Times: "President Trump on Saturday personally fired the United States Attorney in Manhattan, Geoffrey S. Berman, whose office has pursued one case after another that has rankled the president and his allies, putting his former personal lawyer in prison and investigating his current one. It was the culmination of an extraordinary clash after years of tension between the White House and New York federal prosecutors. In a letter released by the Justice Department, Attorney General William P. Barr accused of Mr. Berman of choosing 'public spectacle over public service' because he would not voluntarily step down from the position. 'Because you have declared that you have no intention of resigning, I have asked the President to remove you as of today, and he has done so,' the letter read. Mr. Barr said Mr. Berman's top deputy, Audrey Strauss, would become the acting United States Attorney.... Speaking briefly to reporters outside the White House before heading to a campaign rally in Tulsa, Okla., Mr. Trump appeared to try to distance himself from the firing. Mr. Trump insisted that he was 'not involved,' despite Mr. Barr's letter, which made clear that Mr. Trump had dismissed Mr. Barr.... In a statement released Saturday evening, Mr. Berman said he would step down immediately in light of Mr. Barr's 'decision to respect the normal operation of law' in replacing him with Ms. Strauss." Emphasis added.

Donald Judd of CNN: "The Trump campaign confirmed six staffers working on the Tulsa rally tested positive for coronavirus."

Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "... John R. Bolton can go forward with the publication of his memoir, a federal judge ruled on Saturday, rejecting the administration's request for an order that he try to pull the book back and saying it was too late for such an order to succeed. 'With hundreds of thousands of copies around the globe -- many in newsrooms -- the damage is done. There is no restoring the status quo,' wrote Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the Federal District Court of the District of Columbia. But in a 10-page opinion, Judge Lamberth also suggested that Mr. Bolton may be in jeopardy of forfeiting his $2 million advance, as the Justice Department has separately requested -- and that he could be prosecuted for allowing the book to be published before receiving final notice that a prepublication review to scrub out classified information was complete.... The judge wrote that after viewing classified declarations and discussing them in the closed hearing, he was 'persuaded that defendant Bolton likely jeopardized national security by disclosing classified information in violation of his nondisclosure agreement obligations.'... Judge Lamberth will also oversee the part of the lawsuit that seeks to seize Mr. Bolton's proceeds...." Politico's story is here. ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: On the other hand, Bigmouth Donald may have hurt the so-called "Justice" Department's case for clawing back Bolton's profits. As Savage notes, "Mr. Trump has accused Mr. Bolton of lying -- and false information is not classified." ~~~

~~~ Fortunately, Donald Trump accepted the ruling in a mature & circumspect manner: ~~~

~~~ Tax Axelrod of the Hill: "President Trump touted a judge's ruling on former national security adviser John Bolton's memoir that allowed the book to proceed with publishing but panned its author as possibly threatening the nation. 'BIG COURT WIN against Bolton. Obviously, with the book already given out and leaked to many people and the media, nothing the highly respected Judge could have done about stopping it...BUT, strong & powerful statements & rulings on MONEY & on BREAKING CLASSIFICATION were made,' Trump tweeted. 'Bolton broke the law and has been called out and rebuked for so doing, with a really big price to pay. He likes dropping bombs on people, and killing them. Now he will have bombs dropped on him!'" Mrs. McC: You may find it odd to characterize a loss as a win, but you're not Donald Trump. And you probably don't have a phalanx of obsequious aides telling you, "You won, Sir. You won!"

The Washington Post's live updates for coronavirus developments Saturday are here. "New daily coronavirus cases in the United States on Friday exceeded 30,000 for the first time in seven weeks as states in the South and West continued to report alarming spikes in new infections.... The last time new daily cases in the United States topped 30,000 was on May 1...." The New York Times' live updates for Saturday are here.

Kaelan Deese of the Hill: "The Trump Death Clock truck moved in to join the camaraderie in Tulsa, Okla. ahead of President Trump's rally there Saturday evening. The truck displays digital statistics on three different faces of the vehicle, delivering a real-time tracker of alleged needless American deaths due to Trump's response to the coronavirus pandemic, The Guardian reported. The mobilized death clock is strategically placed outside of the Bank of Oklahoma (BOK) Center, where Trump's rally is scheduled for at 7 p.m. CT Saturday. Eugene Jarecki, an award-winning filmmaker, is the administer behind the clock, and said the truck's presence in Tulsa is a public service. 'We want everyone who attends Trump's rally to have an opportunity to make an informed choice based on real numbers,' Jarecki said. webpage, which claims, 'Experts estimate that, had mitigation measures been implemented one week earlier, 60% of American COVID-19 deaths would have been avoided.' The tracker currently suggests around 71,700 American deaths could have been avoided had the administration acted sooner in response to the pandemic."

~~~~~~~~~~

Fired by Press Release: Your Friday Night News Dump. Benjamin Weiser, et al., of the New York Times: "The Justice Department on Friday abruptly tried to oust the United States attorney in Manhattan, Geoffrey S. Berman, the powerful federal prosecutor whose office sent President Trump's former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, to prison and who has been investigating Mr. Trump's current personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani. But Mr. Berman said in a statement that he was refusing to leave his position, setting up a crisis within the Justice Department over one of its most prestigious jobs. 'I have not resigned, and have no intention of resigning, my position,' Mr. Berman said, adding that he learned that he was 'stepping down' in a press release from the Justice Department. Attorney General William P. Barr's announcement that President Trump was seeking to replace Mr. Berman was made with no notice. Mr. Barr said the president intended to nominate as Mr. Berman's successor Jay Clayton, current chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Mr. Barr asked Mr. Berman to resign but he refused so Mr. Barr moved to fire him, according to a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Trump had been discussing removing Mr. Berman for some time with a small group of advisers, the person said. Mr. Berman has taken an aggressive approach in a number of cases that have vexed the Trump administration, from the prosecution and guilty pleas obtained from Mr. Cohen to a broader investigation, growing out of that inquiry, which focused on Mr. Trump's private company and others close to him." Read on. ~~~

~~~ "Friday Night Standoff." Devlin Barrett of the Washington Post: "The Trump administration announced Friday night that Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman, who has handled a number of investigations involving the president or his campaign, will be leaving that job, though Berman fired back that he hadn't resigned and would stay on to ensure his office's cases proceed unimpeded. The surreal Friday night standoff marks the latest battle over the Trump administration's management of the Justice Department. Democrats have decried what they charge has been the politicization of the department under President Trump and his attorney general, William P. Barr." An NBC News story is here. An AP story is here. ~~~

~~~ Josh Kovensky of TPM: In a tweet, "House Judiciary Committee chair Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) invited Berman to testify before Congress at a previously scheduled hearing on Wednesday featuring DOJ whistleblowers." ~~~

~~~ Matt Naham of Law & Crime explains why Barr may not be able to dispatch Berman: 1. Berman said he isn't going anywhere till the Senate confirms a new U.S. attorney. 2. "Berman noted [in a statement last night] that he was appointed to his position by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York not the President. In 2018, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions first appointed Berman as interim SDNY U.S. Attorney. After the 120-day interim stint expired, the court appointed Berman to his current position. Trump never sent Berman's nomination to the Senate. The April 2018 court order said that Berman was appointed U.S. Attorney 'unless the President of the United States nominates and the Senate confirms a United States Attorney for this district [...]'.... [However,] NYU Law Professor Ryan Goodman pointed to the United States v. Solomon case, which happens to have been decided in the SDNY. That decision noted that 'the President may, at any time, remove the judicially appointed United States Attorney, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 504 [...] regardless of the nature of his appointment.'"

Justin Moyer, et al., of the Washington Post: "Demonstrators spread across Washington[, D.C.,] on Friday to celebrate the death of slavery 155 years ago and continue the national street crusade against the racial oppression that pervades the country today.... By late evening, the marches and speeches of the day near Lafayette Square had given way to music and laughter along U Street, making the protests feel more like a street festival.... Around 10 p.m. a small group of protesters scaled the statue of Confederate Gen. Albert Pike near Judiciary Square. They had come prepared with ropes and chains in hopes of toppling the statue, which has long been the site of protests. After more than an hour they succeeded, and then set the statue on fire. Police were nearby but did not intervene.... Celebrations and marches were held in Atlanta and Salt Lake City, in Richmond and Minneapolis.... In Richmond, [Va.,] hundreds of protesters gathered for a candlelight vigil around the statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, which has been the focus of demonstrations on police brutality. Like the scene in Washington, a diverse group of people danced and sang as they demonstrated."

Oklahoma. Astead Herndon of the New York Times: "Hundreds gathered along Greenwood Avenue [in Tulsa, Oklahoma] -- the site of one of America's worst racist attacks -- to celebrate Juneteenth, the holiday that commemorates when enslaved black Americans in Texas formally learned of emancipation. The end of a centuries-long massacre.... Organizers planned to cancel their annual Juneteenth celebration amid the national coronavirus pandemic. Then President Trump announced a campaign rally in the city, originally slated to be held on the Friday holiday but later moved to Saturday evening. With that event looming, and national protests raging about racial injustice and police brutality, what was typically a celebration of resilience had transformed into one of defiance. 'Black Lives Matter' was painted in bright yellow letters across Greenwood Avenue. Attendees said they were celebrating not only how black ancestors were freed from enslavement, but also the persistence of black Americans today -- from a pandemic that has disproportionately affected black communities, police departments that disproportionately kill black people, and a president who has shown little willingness to acknowledge the reality of both." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Nikki Carvajal of CNN: "Vice President Mike Pence declined to say the words 'Black lives matter' during an interview with an ABC affiliate in Pennsylvania on Friday, instead saying that 'all lives matter.' The reporters repeatedly asked pence to say "black lives matter," and he repeatedly refused to do so. pence also defended Trump's posting of what was a sweet video which was manipulated to become racist propaganda, claiming it showed that Trump had "a good sense of humor." Mrs. McC: Yeah, ha ha. If the photo that accompanies Carvajal's report is any indication, the reporter who asked pence to say "black lives matter" is black. It takes either a tremendous Fear of Trump and/or fundamental racist bigotry to refuse to tell a black man that his life matters. ~~~

~~~ Oh, and Trump's "good sense of humor" also was a copyright violation: ~~~

~~~ Donie O'Sullivan of CNN: "Facebook and Twitter on Friday removed a video posted by ... Donald Trump's account that had twisted a viral video of two toddlers after one of the children's parents lodged a copyright claim. The video had more than 4 million views on Facebook ... and more than 20 million views on Twitter ... before it was taken down. The now-removed clip is a crude and misleading edit of a video that went viral last year which shows a Black child and a White child running to hug each other. The version posted to Trump's account made it first appear as if the Black child was running away from the White child. Jukin Media, a company that represents creators of videos including the parent who owns this video, said in a statement..., 'Neither the video owner nor Jukin Media gave the President permission to post the video, and after our review, we believe that his unauthorized usage of the content is a clear example of copyright infringement without valid fair use or other defense.'... Responding to Trump's use of the video, [Michael] Cisneros[, father of one of the toddlers,] wrote in a Facebook post Thursday night [of Trump], 'HE WILL NOT TURN THIS LOVING, BEAUTIFUL VIDEO TO FURTHER HIS HATE AGENDA!! !! !! !!'"

Rebecca Shabad of NBC News: "Senators on Friday announced legislation to make Juneteenth, a widely observed holiday that marks the federal order to free slaves in Texas on June 19, 1865, a national holiday.... The day, which began as a Texas holiday in 1980, is now recognized by 47 states and the District of Columbia as a state holiday or observance and is marking its 155th anniversary this year.... The bill was proposed by Sens. Ed Markey, D-Mass., [Corey] Booker, [D-N.J.,] Tina Smith, D-Minn., and Kamala Harris, D-Calif. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, is a cosponsor. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Jonathan Swan of Axios: "President Trump declined on Friday to say he retains full confidence in Defense Secretary Mark Esper, and said Esper and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley should have been 'proud' to join him on the now-infamous walk across Lafayette Square.... Trump initially said of Esper and Milley, 'I don't think they broke with me' and 'I think they should do what they want to do.' But the president soon pivoted to say, 'I would have handled it differently.' He said he understood that their responses appeared to be prompted by their desire to adhere to 'exact, strict' regulations, but that 'if I were in their position I would have done it somewhat differently. Under regulation, perhaps they're right,' Trump said, but claimed, 'I know the regulation even better than they do. But they also would have been right to say, "We're proud to walk alongside our president and we want our president to be safe."'... Asked whether he considered firing Esper -- as Axios and others reported -- Trump hesitated and chose not to directly deny it. 'I really wasn't focused on it," he replied, "because I have many things that I do focus on very much.'"

** Your Government Is Spying on You. Zolan Kannos-Young of the New York Times: "The Department of Homeland Security deployed helicopters, airplanes and drones over 15 cities where demonstrators gathered to protest the death of George Floyd, logging at least 270 hours of surveillance, far more than previously revealed, according to Customs and Border Protection data. The department's dispatching of unmanned aircraft over protests in Minneapolis last month sparked a congressional inquiry and widespread accusations that the federal agency had infringed on the privacy rights of demonstrators. But that was just one piece of a nationwide operation that deployed resources usually used to patrol the U.S. border for smugglers and illegal crossings. Aircraft filmed demonstrations in Dayton, Ohio; New York City; Buffalo and Philadelphia, among other cities, sending video footage in real time to control centers managed by Air and Marine Operations, a branch of Customs and Border Protection. The footage was then fed into a digital network managed by the Homeland Security Department, called 'Big Pipe,' which can be accessed by other federal agencies and local police departments for use in future investigations, according to senior officials with Air and Marine Operations." ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: This is astounding. The federal government is widely using military-style equipment to spy on Americans exercising their First Amendment rights.

Georgia. Brittany Shammas of the Washington Post: "Hundreds of pages of personnel records regarding the former [Atlanta police] officer, Garrett Rolfe, [accused of murdering Rayshard Brooks] were made public Friday, including investigations into several misconduct allegations made about him. In what appears to be the most serious misconduct case previously lodged against Rolfe, the former officer was issued a written reprimand for pointing his gun at a fleeing car. The police department's office of professional standards found the September 2016 chase, which hit speeds over 100 miles per hour, violated policy and culminated in unreasonable force against a 15-year-old suspect, who was black. One officer was arrested, while several others faced disciplinary actions. A sergeant retired before the investigation concluded."

Kentucky. Ray Sanchez & Elizabeth Joseph of CNN: "The city of Louisville, Kentucky, and its police department are taking the first steps toward firing an officer involved in the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor last March. Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer has initiated termination proceedings against Louisville Metro Police Det. Brett Hankison, Fisher said in a statement without elaborating. The 26-year-old African American EMT was killed more than two months ago when police broke down the door to her apartment in an attempted drug sting and shot her eight times. Hankison and two other officers remain on administrative leave.... They have not been charged with any crimes." Mrs. McC: Oh, they're just thinking of firing the officer now? Every time I see a well-circulated photo of Taylor's smiling face, my heart breaks. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

A Tweet from the Darkest Side. Colby Itkowitz & Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "President Trump on Friday promised to renew his effort to end the Obama-era program that protects undocumented immigrants brought here as children from deportation, a day after the Supreme Court ruled to keep it in place. In a morning tweet, Trump seized on the fact that the 5-4 decision did not address the merits of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA program[)], but rather said that the administration had not provided proper legal justification for ending it. 'The Supreme Court asked us to resubmit on DACA, nothing was lost or won. They "punted," much like in a football game (where hopefully they would stand for our great American Flag). We will be submitting enhanced papers shortly in order to properly fulfil the Supreme Court's ruling & request of yesterday,' Trump wrote." ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: As I read Trump's tweet, he is promising to ruin the lives of hundreds of thousands of young people in order to save face for losing a Supreme Court case. What a twisted monster. Dorian Gray hid the picture of his real self in the attic; Trump tweets his out nearly every day. ~~~

~~~ Linda Greenhouse of the New York Times: "The DACA decision contained a message threaded through its dry language of administrative procedure -- a warning to the Trump administration not to assume that it gets a free pass, not to take the Supreme Court for granted. 'This is not the case for cutting corners,' the chief justice wrote.... Given the decisions due in the next few weeks on abortion, religion, the president's tax returns and the Electoral College, among other cases, it's too soon to place a label on this pandemic-disrupted Supreme Court term."

Oregon. Thomas Elfrink of the Washington Post: "As hundreds of Black Lives Matter protesters marched through Medford, Ore. earlier this month, one driver ... drove steadily into the mass of demonstrators. When one woman stopped to hold up her sign, the bright yellow car struck her with its left bumper and mirror. The woman who was hit now says ... the driver ... was ... Chris Luz -- the mayor ... [of] the neighboring town of Phoenix, Ore." The victim, Mikala Johnston, confronted Luz during a Phoenix city commission meeting. "Medford police have now opened a criminal investigation into the allegation, Sgt. Jason Antley told The Washington Post on Thursday."

David Nakamura & John Hudson of the Washington Post: "President Trump was in a White House event with governors Thursday when he took a moment to punch out a tweet from his cellphone -- threatening to decouple the U.S. economy from China, the world's second largest economy [Mrs. McC: a virtual impossibility]. The missive was another salvo in a long bilateral trade dispute but it also represented an effort by the president to reestablish himself as a hard-liner on China -- a day after shocking revelations from his former national security adviser John Bolton painted him as obsequious to Chinese President Xi Jinping in private conversations. Trump's urgency underscores how Bolton's disclosures ... could complicate a key pillar of the president's reelection strategy as his campaign has attacked former vice president Biden ... as soft on China." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "Lawyers for the Justice Department and John R. Bolton, President Trump's former national security adviser, clashed on Friday as a federal judge [Royce Lamberth] weighed a Trump administration request to order Mr. Bolton to somehow claw back his memoir even though hundreds of thousands of copies were printed and distributed around the world.... The main elements of the book, an unflattering account of Mr. Trump's conduct in office, have already been widely reported.... The judge opened the hearing with a suggestion that he may be inclined to agree with Mr. Cooper about the request for an order. 'The horse, as we used to say in Texas, seems to be out of the barn,' Judge Lamberth said. But he also will be asked to decide other matters -- like the government's request to seize Mr. Bolton's $2 million advance -- and asked why Mr. Bolton had walked away from the prepublication review and did not tell the government that he had told Simon & Schuster to start printing.... Judge Lamberth made no ruling on the request for a restraining order from the bench, and he said that before making any decision he needed to hold a second, closed-door hearing with only the government to discuss the details of information in the book the administration now says are classified. He held the closed hearing later on Friday -- in person because it involved discussion of classified information -- according to a notation added to the case's electronic docket." ~~~

     ~~~ The Washington Post's story is here.

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Dan Froomkin of Press Watch: "In Friday's New York Times, the paper's White House bureau chief, Peter Baker, tut-tutted the 'normalization' of Donald Trump's presidency -- as if he himself, along with his colleagues, weren't among the people most responsible for it.... [Baker's piece is here, also linked yesterday] Reading, listening to and watching the news coverage of Donald Trump, I am often struck at the lack of context, alarm, and outrage from the mainstream political media. There's an awful lot of stenography and credulousness.... Way too often, especially in his daily articles, Baker has downplayed the profoundly aberrational, deviant nature of the Trump presidency. He has taken what Trump says at face value even when he knows better. He has internalized Trump's framings, refused to call lies lies, and engaged in mind-boggling false equivalence." Mrs. McC: There's an art to reading articles MSM writers like Peter Baker & Dan Balz. You have to look for the things they find remarkable. My commentary on a piece by Baker, for instance, should always begin, "Even Peter Baker says ..." because Peter Baker not only find the most aberrant presidential behavior or remark normal, he tries to normalize it.

Sharon LaFraniere of the New York Times: "New details from the Justice Department's inquiry into Russian influence over the 2016 election released on Friday underscored President Trump's keen interest in weaponizing information stolen by the Russians and funneled to WikiLeaks for use against his 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton. The new disclosures also emphasized prosecutors' doubts about whether Mr. Trump told them the truth when he was questioned during the two-year investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, into Russian interference in that election and whether the Trump campaign conspired with Moscow to influence its outcome. Over all, however, the new information shed little new light on the special counsel's inquiry that dominated the first two years of Mr. Trump's presidency. It was released in response to a lawsuit claiming that the Justice Department's redactions of sensitive information in the Mueller report violated the Freedom of Information Act." ~~~

~~~ Jason Leopold, et al., of BuzzFeed News: "Donald Trump was told in advance that Wikileaks would be releasing documents embarrassing to the Clinton campaign and subsequently informed advisors that he expected more releases would be coming, according to newly unredacted portions of special counsel Robert Mueller's report into Russia's interference in the 2016 election. In July 2016, political consultant Roger Stone told Trump as well as several campaign advisors that he had spoken with Julian Assange and that WikiLeaks would be publishing the documents in a matter of days.... The new revelations are the strongest indication to date that Trump and his closest advisors were aware of outside efforts to hurt Clinton's electoral chances, and that Stone played a direct role in communicating that situation to the Trump campaign. Trump has publicly denied being aware of any information being relayed between WikiLeaks and his advisors." ~~~

~~~ Katelyn Polantz, et al., of CNN: "Special counsel Robert Mueller examined whether ... Donald Trump lied to him in written answers during the Russia investigation, a possibility House Democrats have said they continue to look into even after Trump's impeachment. With fresh detail, the special counsel's investigation also documented how several Trump campaign officials heard from the then-candidate abou WikiLeaks releases that ultimately helped his campaign, a new version of the Mueller report said on Friday.... 'According to multiple witnesses involved with the Campaign, beginning in June 2016 and continuing through October 2016, [Roger] Stone spoke about WikiLeaks with senior Campaign officials, including candidate Trump,' Mueller wrote.... 'No wonder they kept this hidden,' Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff ... tweeted Friday night." ~~~

     ~~~ A Whopping Benefit of the Doubt. Mrs. McCrabbie: Mueller apparently decided that "I forgot" was a plausible excuse for Trump's lying in his written responses, just as comedian Steve Martin explained to the IRS his failure to pay taxes on a million dollars. Martin's "I forgot" was a joke. But in a real case, Mueller decided to credit Trump with forgetfulness and let him get away with a lie in an answer made under oath.

The Trumpidemic, Ctd.

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

Are You Ready for Some Football? Max Cohen of Politico: "... Donald Trump on Friday rebuked his administration's top infectious disease expert, rejecting Dr. Anthony Fauci's warning that the ongoing coronavirus pandemic could keep football from returning this fall. 'Tony Fauci has nothing to do with NFL Football,' Trump wrote on Twitter. 'They are planning a very safe and controlled opening.'... 'Unless players are essentially in a bubble -- insulated from the community and they are tested nearly every day -- it would be very hard to see how football is able to be played this fall,' Fauci told CNN's Sanjay Gupta on Thursday. 'If there is a second wave, which is certainly a possibility and which would be complicated by the predictable flu season, football may not happen this year.'" More on Trump's rejection of Fauci's advice linked under "Presidential Race."

Not All of the Corruption of the Trump Administration is Up-front & Noisy. Katie Thomas of the New York Times: "When the coronavirus kills, it attacks the lungs.... But earlier this month, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, a federal health agency, abruptly notified companies and researchers that it was halting funding for treatments for this severe form of Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. The new policy highlights how staunchly the Trump administration has placed its bet on vaccines as the way to return American society and the economy to normal in a presidential election year. BARDA has pledged more than $2.2 billion in deals with five vaccine manufacturers for the coronavirus, compared with about $359 million toward potential Covid-19 treatments. But the shift in strategy also shows that the administration is backing away from the relatively modest funding it has provided so far for treatments that address the severe lung ailments, while continuing support for antiviral therapies that could treat people earlier in the course of the disease." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Rick Noack of the Washington Post: "As coronavirus cases surge in the U.S. South and West, health experts in countries with falling case numbers are watching with a growing sense of alarm and disbelief, with many wondering why virus-stricken U.S. states continue to reopen and why the advice of scientists is often ignored. 'It really does feel like the U.S. has given up,' said Siouxsie Wiles, an infectious-diseases specialist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand -- a country that has confirmed only three new cases over the last three weeks and where citizens have now largely returned to their pre-coronavirus routines.... China's actions over the past week stand in stark contrast to those of the United States. In the wake of a new cluster of more than 150 new cases that emerged in Beijing, authorities sealed off neighborhoods, launched a mass testing campaign and imposed travel restrictions." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Tim Mak of NPR: "The Transportation Security Administration withheld N95 masks from staff and exhibited 'gross mismanagement' in its response to the coronavirus crisis-- leaving employees and travelers vulnerable during the most urgent days of the pandemic, a senior TSA official alleges in a new whistleblower complaint. On Thursday evening, the Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal agency that handles whistleblower complaints, said it had found 'substantial likelihood of wrongdoing' in the complaint and ordered the Department of Homeland Security to open an investigation. TSA Federal Security Director Jay Brainard is an official in charge of transportation security in the state of Kansas and has been with the agency for almost 20 years. He told NPR that the leadership of his agency failed to protect its staff from the pandemic, and as a result, allowed TSA employees to be 'a significant carrier' for the spread of the coronavirus to airport travelers.... His allegations include that personal protective equipment was withheld from TSA employees, that local supervisors were not permitted to mandate masks, that the TSA failed to adequately execute contact tracing, and the TSA declined to require that employees change or sanitize gloves between passengers." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Aaron Gregg & Jeff Stein of the Washington Post: "The U.S. Small Business Administration and Treasury Department announced Friday that they would release a data set showing which businesses received many taxpayer-funded Paycheck Protection Program loans, walking back an earlier stance that all of the business names would remain hidden because the Trump administration considered them proprietary. The disclosures will include the names of recipients who received loans of more than $150,000 and it will also reveal a dollar range for each loan.... The announcement came after several weeks of tense negotiations with congressional leadership, in which members of both parties pressed for some form of disclosure. The plan announced Friday amounts to an attempted compromise.... It was the Trump administration's latest reversal on the matter. The SBA said in response to open records requests throughout April and May that it would release 'individual loan data' in accordance with its past practice for subsidized loans. But [Treasury Secretary Steve] Mnuchin claimed in a June 11 hearing before the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship that the business names and loan amounts were considered confidential and therefore would not be disclosed."

Lara Seligman & Connor O'Brien of Politico: "The Navy has decided to uphold the firing of Capt. Brett Crozier, the former commanding officer of the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt who was relieved of duty after raising the alarm about a Covid-19 outbreak on his ship in March, according to two people familiar with the investigation. 'The results of the investigation justified the relief,' said one person who has seen the investigation.'He failed to take appropriate action, to do the things that the commanding officer of a ship is supposed to do, so he stays relieved.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

~~~ Spencer Ackerman of the Daily Beast: "Navy Capt. Brett Crozier has been vindicated after warning of a dire coronavirus outbreak aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt -- just not by the Navy, which on Friday announced that it will not reverse Crozier' firing for the infraction of trying to save his sailors' lives. Instead, the Navy leadership implied that Crozier was responsible for the outbreak that he loudly warned he needed urgent help from the Navy to redress.... A final report into Crozier's firing, released Friday, accused the Roosevelt commander and his team of being 'biased by groupthink, emotion and a loss of perspective as to the real risk at hand' -- as well as an insufficient appreciation of how the fleet commander was working tirelessly to aid evacuation from the ship, something Crozier had challenged. The report ... levied the extraordinary claim that Crozier's team 'took little to no action within their own span of control to improve the crew's safety.'... [Crozier's firing] was a debacle for the Navy. An initial outbreak afflicting around 100 sailors among the 4,000-strong crew ultimately swelled to 1,273 -- including Crozier himself."

Florida. Michelle Marchante of the Miami Herald: "Florida's Department of Health on Friday morning confirmed 3,822 additional cases of COVID-19, setting another daily total record high since the start of the pandemic. The state now has a total of 89,748 confirmed cases. And as bars, gyms, vacation rentals and movie theaters reopened at partial capacity in all but three South Florida counties, the number and rate of new COVID-19 cases were rising statewide -- a troubling indicator that the disease could be spreading more quickly." ~~~

~~~ Gov. Ron DeSantis is not about to blame people enjoying Florida's recreational amenities -- bars, vacation spots, movie theatres, etc., for the uptick in coronavirus cases: ~~~

~~~ Amanda Woods of the New York Post: "Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis pointed to clusters of 'overwhelmingly Hispanic' day laborers and agriculture workers driving the state's recent coronavirus spike -- but farmworkers and industry associations argue that resources and testing came too late to those communities, according to new reports. The Republican governor told reporters Tuesday that cramped living and working conditions for migrant workers and Hispanic construction workers are partly to blame, according to WFOR-TV. 'Some of these guys go to work in a school bus, and they are all just packed there like sardines, going across Palm Beach County or some of these other places, and there's all these opportunities to have transmission,' DeSantis said during a press conference in Tallahassee. He pointed to cases in migrant camps, a watermelon farm and Immokalee, a major hub for tomato production, as evidence of the uptick. But Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried argued that the majority of farmworkers left several weeks ago after harvests ended and that the real uptick is in non-agricultural areas, according to the Miami Herald." ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: So Ron's message to Americans is a kind of tourist boosterism laced with overt racism & classism. To nice, middle-income (mostly white) people: come to Florida, have fun, enjoy the beaches, lie in the sun, chill out in a cool movie theatre and stop in a bar. Unless you're a Hispanic tomato-picker who likes riding around sardine-style in old school busses, you won't get sick.

Presidential Race

Monica Alba, et al., of NBC News: "Leading members of the coronavirus task force warned White House officials about the health risks of holding large-scale indoor campaign rallies and advised against such mass gatherings, according to two people familiar with the discussions. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, and task force response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx both vocalized concerns internally in the last week about the safety of holding a rally on Saturday with as many as 19,000 people in an enclosed arena in Tulsa, Oklahoma.... It has been nearly two months since the last coronavirus task force briefing and four weeks since Birx answered questions about the coronavirus pandemic from the White House briefing room.... Asked whether the [task force] briefings will ever return, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters Friday it was unlikely and that instead she will be the one to present new information after consulting with Birx." ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: It's really unfair for reporters to claim that Trump & pence pay no attention to their own task force medical advisors. After all, Trump has required attendees at his Tulsa rally to hold him & his campaign harmless when said Trumpbots contract the coronavirus at the rally. However, in the weeks to come, many people may contract the virus in contacts with rally-goers, and those new victims of the Trumpidemic will not have signed any waivers.

Jonathan Swan of Axios: "President Trump defended his decision to move ahead with a controversial large-scale Tulsa rally this weekend amid the pandemic, saying in an interview Friday with Axios that 'we have to get back to living our lives" and "we're going to have a wild evening tomorrow night at Oklahoma.' Pressed on why he wasn't using his presidential bully pulpit to encourage rally attendees to wear masks, Trump described masks as 'a double-edged sword.' When asked if he recommended people wear them, he added: 'I recommend people do what they want.'... Ahead of the rally expected to draw tens of thousands of supporters and protesters, the president's comments underscore his skepticism of the effectiveness of strict enforcement of masks and social distancing to combat the virus that has killed more than 118,000 Americans and devastated the U.S. economy. And his advice flies in the face of warnings from Trump's own government's top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci."

Ziva Branstetter, et al., of the Washington Post: "As thousands of Trump fans and protesters poured into [Tulsa] in advance of President Trump's first campaign rally in months, authorities imposed a curfew as fears of potential violence mingled with anxiety about a spike in new cases of coronavirus. Metal barricades went up around downtown and police cars began blocking off streets after Tulsa announced a last-minute curfew for the downtown area Thursday night that will continue Friday and Saturday.... The move came after Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum declared a 'civil emergency,' saying law enforcement informed him that 'individuals from organized groups who have been involved in destructive and violent behavior in other states are planning to travel to the City of Tulsa for purposes of causing unrest in and around the rally,' according to his executive order.... Trump ... [tweeted] Friday that 'any protesters, anarchists, agitators, looters or lowlifes who are going to Oklahoma, please understand, you will not be treated like you have been in New York, Seattle or Minneapolis. It will be a much different scene!'" An AP story is here. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Notice how Trump threatens protesters exercising their First Amendment rights & lumps them in with "anarchists, agitators, looters [and] lowlifes." ~~~

     ~~~ Update. Barbara Sprunt of NPR: "The city [of Tulsa] was originally intended to be under curfew for the weekend, but it was lifted at the request of the Secret Service, according to a city press release. 'Last night, I enacted a curfew at the request of Tulsa Police Chief Wendell Franklin, following consultation with the United States Secret Service based on intelligence they had received,' Mayor G.T. Bynum said in a statement. 'Today, we were told the curfew is no longer necessary so I am rescinding it.'"

~~~ Kevin Liptak of CNN: "... Donald Trump warned those protesting his planned rally in Oklahoma they could be treated roughly, an opening threat a day ahead of what he says is the new kickoff of his reelection campaign. Writing on Twitter, Trump lumped together 'protesters, anarchists, agitators, looters or lowlifes' and said they would not be afforded what he's decried as gentle treatment if they gather outside his Tulsa event. It came the morning after he used a blatantly false video of young children to decry media coverage of American race relations, a move that drew a rebuke from Twitter. The messages, which came as the nation marks the day in 1865 that the last enslaved Black people in the US learned they had been freed from bondage, made no attempt at striking a unifying or commemorative tone. Instead, Trump used his platform to heighten the drama surrounding his return to the campaign trail after a 110-day pandemic-forced absence and warn those who oppose him to stay away." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Pete Williams & Dareh Gregorian of NBC News: "The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Friday denied a request to order a Tulsa arena to enforce federal recommendations for preventing the spread of the coronavirus at ... Donald Trump's campaign rally. The groups suing could not establish a clear legal right to the order they were seeking, the court said in a unanimous, one-page order." (Also linked yesterday.)

Greg Sargent of the Washington Post: "President Trump's campaign is under fire for employing a symbol once used by Nazis in a new batch of Facebook ads -- a red inverted triangle that appeared alongside a warning about the dire threat posed by 'antifa,' a loose motley group allied against neo-fascist activity. An internal Department of Homeland Security document -- which I obtained from a congressional source -- makes the Trump campaign's use of this symbol, and its justification for it, look a whole lot worse, by undercutting the claim that antifa represents any kind of threat in the first place.... The document -- which is an assessment of ongoing 'protest-related' threats to law enforcement dated June 17 -- makes no mention at all of antifa in its cataloging of those threats.... The broader story here ... is that the continued fearmongering about antifa by Trump and many top officials seems designed to distort the true nature of these multiracial, largely peaceful and broadly representative national protests in a very fundamental way." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Arden Farhi, et al., of CBS News: "Brad Parscale, Donald Trump's campaign manager, did not vote for President Trump in 2016. In fact, he didn't vote in the general election at all, according to election records obtained by CBS News.... He did cast a ballot in the 2012 and 2018 federal elections. And his 2018 vote was submitted by mail. 'In 2016, I was in New York working to elect Donald Trump and encountered a series of problems receiving my absentee ballot from Texas and missed the deadline,' Parscale said in a statement to CBS News. 'Just further proof that vote-by-mail is not the flawless solution Democrats and the media pretend it is.'" Mrs. McC: No, it's evidence either that (1) you couldn't get your act together to properly request an absentee ballot, OR (2) Texas needs to improve its absentee-ballot request system. Jerk.

Kentucky Senate Race. Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "With just over a week until the Democratic primary, the fury in Kentucky over [Breonna] Taylor's death, uncertainty about voting in a pandemic and a host of late endorsements from progressive leaders have provided fresh momentum to [state Rep. Charles] Booker's candidacy [for the U.S. Senate] -- upending a nominating contest few in the national party were even following last month. Polls indicate Mr. Booker is closing the gap against [heavy favorite Amy] McGrath, even though she had raised nearly $41 million to his $788,000 as of the start of the month. In just a few weeks since then, though, he has raised almost $3 million.... An unabashed progressive, Mr. Booker is running on 'Medicare for all' and the Green New Deal.... Kentucky ... amounts to something of a dry run for the left, a test of whether grass-roots energy can overcome fearsome fund-raising, and whether [Chuck] Schumer's ability to keep coronating candidates from Washington can be sustained...." ~~~

~~~ Michelle Lee of the Washington Post: "Fewer than 200 polling places will be open for voters in Kentucky's primary Tuesday, down from 3,700 in a typical election year. Amid a huge influx in requests for mail-in ballots, some voters still had not received theirs days before they must be turned in. And turnout is expected to be higher than in past primaries because of a suddenly competitive fight for the Democratic Senate nomination.... Because of a shortage of workers willing to staff voting sites during the health crisis, each of the commonwealth's 120 counties is opening a very limited number of polling locations. The two largest counties will have just one in-person location each." Mrs. McC: But another looming voting disaster in the backward, third-world nation known as the USA.

Colby Itkowitz of the Washington Post: "Rep. Matt Gaetz created a social media frenzy Thursday when he revealed he had a teenage son named Nestor and later introduced the young man during an appearance on Fox News. Gaetz (R-Fla.) shared that he has a Cuban-born son to explain why he became so irate when Rep. Cedric L. Richmond (D-La.), who is black, said the white lawmakers in the room couldn't understand what it was like to father a black child.... Gaetz told People Magazine in an interview that he never formally adopted 19-year-old Nestor but that Nestor has lived with him since immigrating from Cuba at age 12." (Also linked yesterday.) Here's the committee-room exchange:

~~~ Happy Father's Day, Matt! Mrs. McCrabbie: As is often the case with Gaetz, the story of his relationship with Nestor is not exactly what he claimed. Ken W. made a comment in yesterday's thread that forced me to look a teensy bit further into the "reason" for Gaetz's manufactured outrage we hear in the clip above. ~~~

~~~ Aaron Navarro of CBS News: "In a tweet featuring a picture of him and Nestor Galban, whom he calls his son, Gaetz said, "We share no blood but he is my life. He came from Cuba (legally, of course) six years ago and lives with me in Florida...," he said.... He added that Galban arrived to America when he was 12 years old and is now 19.... In an interview with People, Gaetz said Galban has been living with him for most of the time he's been in the U.S., about four years, before he went to Miami to live with his biological father.... Gaetz has not formally adopted Galban.... Jose Felix Diaz, a former state legislator who served with Gaetz, tweeted that the congressman had dated Galban's sister." Gaetz has previously referred to Nestor as "a House page." Mrs. McC: IOW, Gaetz used his relationship with a young man to grandstand in a very public forum. Pretty disgusting.

Joe Concha of the Hill: "ABC's Jimmy Kimmel on Thursday announced he will be taking the summer off after facing criticism over wearing blackface in a recurring skit he performed while working on 'The Man Show' on Comedy Central.... Kimmel, as a co-host of the 'The Man Show,' performed a recurring skit that included him dressed in blackface as then-NBA star Karl Malone. Videos and photos of the skits on the show, which ran from 1999-2004, have been circulating online recently with calls for Kimmel to apologize." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)