bounty – The Past 24 Hours Or So

The Past 24 Hours or So – Protests/Racial & Social Justice, Trump Administration, and Presidential Campaign Updates

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Protests/Racial and Social Justice

A Utah officer accused of unnecessarily siccing his police K9 on a Black man, who was on his knees with his hands up at the time, has been suspended.

Authorities launched an internal investigation into the incident, most of which was captured on body camera video.

A Virginia mayor is facing calls for his resignation over a Facebook post in which he said that Joe Biden “just announced Aunt Jemima” as his running mate.

Luray Mayor Barry Presgraves posted the comment last weekend on his Facebook page. The comment was condemned by members of the Luray Town Council and other residents before he took it down.

Police declared a riot late Wednesday night after hundreds of demonstrators returned to downtown Portland after more than a week when the biggest events were held in other parts of the city. As many as 300 people had gathered by about 9:30 p.m.

The gathering remained largely peaceful until about 11 p.m., when a couple of small fires were lit near the federal courthouse. A fake pig’s head and a Trump flag were set ablaze in the middle of a major thoroughfare. Some fireworks and other objects were thrown over the fence surrounding the courthouse.

Oregon State Police troopers, Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office deputies and Portland police officers took to the streets to disperse the crowds, making arrests and deploying tear gas as they moved.

Oregon State Police said they were withdrawing protection from Portland’s federal courthouse over frustration at a prosecutor’s decision not to indict many people arrested in protests there.

Protesters in Minneapolis are demanding that 24 conditions be met before the cement barricades around the George Floyd memorial are brought down.

A Ronald McDonald House in Chicago where over 30 families were staying was damaged amid looting in the city early Monday morning, according to multiple reports.

As FC Dallas and Nashville SC players took a knee during the national anthem ahead of their soccer match, fans at Toyota Stadium in Frisco, TX began booing them.

Dolly Parton voiced her support for the Black Lives Matter movement in a recent interview saying: “Of course Black lives matter. Do we think our little white asses are the only ones that matter? No!”

She went on to discuss changing her dinner show attraction name after she was told its name with “Dixie” in the title was offensive, saying it was an easy decision. “As soon as you realize that [something] is a problem, you should fix it. Don’t be a dumbass.”

Los Angeles police are investigating the attempted “swatting,” or making a hoax emergency call to send heavily-armed police to an address of a local Black Lives Matter activist.

Melina Abdullah, a professor at Cal State Los Angeles, on Wednesday streamed a live video on Instagram of the officers outside her home.

In the stream she said, “They have guns pointed at my house. There’s a helicopter overhead. Nobody’s knocked at the door, but apparently they’ve made announcements for people to come out with our hands up. My children are in the house. My children are in the house. I don’t know what this is.”

“We got a call to this location that there is a male in there holding you guys hostage, and he wants a million dollars or he’s going to kill you within an hour,” an officer said in the video.

LAPD spokesman Josh Rubenstein told the Times the incident was “most likely a swatting” and that the Major Crimes Division is investigating it.

City council members in Austin, Texas, have just approved a new budget slashing nearly $150 million from the city’s police force. Some of the funding that would have gone to police will be redirected to alternative forms of public safety, such as social work involvements.

Trump Administration

White House national security adviser Robert O’Brien called for President Trump to be considered for the Nobel Peace Prize, citing his role in a diplomatic breakthrough between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo revealed in a new interview that he and the Pentagon issued a warning to Russia over the reported bounties placed on US troops in Afghanistan.

“If the Russians are offering money to kill Americans or, for that matter, other Westerners as well, there will be an enormous price to pay,” Pompeo said.

The Trump administration has accused Yale University of illegally discriminating against white and Asian American applicants in favor of Black and Hispanic applicants, and threatened to file a civil rights lawsuit against the school if it refused to change its admissions practices.

Yale is refusing to change procedures, setting up a potentially high-profile court battle.

Presidential Campaign

Trump said that he does not want to fund the Postal Service because he wants to prevent mail-in voting during the pandemic, making explicit the reason he has declined to approve $25 billion in emergency funding for the cash-strapped agency.

“Now, they need that money in order to make the Post Office work, so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” Trump said in an interview on Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo. He added: “Now, if we don’t make a deal, that means they don’t get the money. That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting, they just can’t have it.”

The day before publicly opposing funding to accommodate an expected surge in Americans voting by mail in this year’s presidential election, President Trump and the First Lady requested mail-in ballots to vote in Florida’s upcoming primary.

The U.S. Postal Service warned Pennsylvania officials earlier this year that the state’s election deadlines were too tight for the service’s “delivery standards” and could result in mail-in ballots being delayed for several days in a key 2020 battleground.

The Supreme Court denied the Republican Party’s request that it reinstate witness requirements for absentee ballots in Rhode Island after the state agreed to waive the restrictions in light of the coronavirus pandemic.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) responded to President Trump’s insult calling her a “poor student” by challenging the president to release his own college transcripts.

“Let’s make a deal, Mr. President: You release your college transcript, I’ll release mine, and we’ll see who was the better student. Loser has to fund the Post Office.”

President Trump has reportedly confirmed he will accept the Republican nomination from the White House lawn, despite criticism about the location and some allegations it may violate the Hatch Act.

President Trump is facing swift backlash after he refused to shut down a baseless and racist conspiracy theory that Sen. Kamala Harris would not be eligible to serve as vice president, and instead entertained the idea saying, “I’ll take a look.”

“I can’t believe I have to say this, but we can’t let Donald Trump open up the Grand Canyon for uranium mining,” Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden recently said as he vows to undo President Trump’s controversial mining projects.

Sources: ABC News, Associated Press, The Atlantic, Axios, Bloomberg, CBS News, CNN, Chicago Tribune, Financial Times, Fox News,The Hill, Independent, NBC News, NJ.com, NPR, NY Times, Politico, Reuters, Salon, Slate, Vanity Fair, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post

The Past 24 Hours or So – Protests/Racial and Social Justice, Trump Administration, and Presidential Campaign Updates

Read Time: 5 Minutes

Protests/Racial and Social Justice

Democrat Jaime Harrison went off on Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) for running a Facebook ad that features an apparently darkened image of the Senate hopeful, blasting Graham for “playing a part in a 400-year history of an Old South that had no room for people who looked like me.” Harrison has fought hard in the race to unseat Graham, who is facing one of his toughest reelection bids yet.

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D) said the federal government has agreed to withdraw agents from Portland, a step toward ending a standoff with President Trump over the use of federal force, although the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said it would maintain its presence until conditions improved.

A number of people arrested at Portland protests say the terms of their release prevent them from attending protests going forward — a stipulation First Amendment experts have called cause for concern.

The City Council in the border town of Laredo, Texas, voted to paint “Defund The Wall” on the street in front of a downtown federal courthouse in a similar fashion to the many “Black Lives Matter” streets painted in cities across the country.

Douglas County (NV) Sheriff Dan Coverley told a local library not to bother calling 911 for help after it expressed support for Black Lives Matter.

In a statement The Douglas County public library had denounced, “all acts of violence, racism and disregard for human rights.” “We support #BlackLivesMatter.” “We resolutely assert and believe that all forms of racism, hatred, inequality and injustice don’t belong in our society.”

Coverley posted an open letter on the sheriff’s office website, “Due to your support of Black Lives Matter and the obvious lack of support or trust with the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office, please do not feel the need to call 911 for help,” Coverley wrote.

“I wish you good luck with disturbances and lewd behavior, since those are just some of the recent calls my office has assisted you with in the past.”

In what the state attorney says appears to be a case of racial profiling, Luis Santos, a former Florida theme park security guard, has been arrested for falsely detaining a Black teen who was on his way to basketball practice, prosecutors said.

“You work here? You live here?” asked Santos, 54, as he recorded with a cellphone, according to excerpts released by prosecutors. The teen stopped and answered Santos’ questions before the situation escalated.

“You’re not going anywhere,” said Santos, stepping out of his vehicle. “You’re being detained. You’re not going anywhere.” Santos held his hand over his pocket as if he had a weapon. He also forced the victim to put his hands in the air.

Santos called 911 claiming that the unidentified teenager was seen on video “breaking into cars” and that he thought the teen had stolen a bike. Prosecutors with the Hillsborough State Attorney’s Office said there was no evidence of any crimes.

Trump Administration

The U.S. military unveiled plans to withdraw about 12,000 troops from Germany, in fallout from President Donald Trump’s long-simmering feud with Berlin, but said it will keep nearly half of those forces in Europe to address tension with Russia.

U.S. officials stressed that only a relatively small number of advanced units would move anytime soon. The rest of the troop movements would take years to fully implement, in part given the potentially billions of dollars in additional cost.

Lawmakers in both parties are panning the Trump administration’s plan.

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) blasted the move as a “grave error,” while Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NB) said President Trump shows a “lack of strategic understanding.”

“Once more, now with feeling: U.S. troops aren’t stationed around the world as traffic cops or welfare caseworkers – they’re restraining the expansionary aims of the world’s worst regimes, chiefly China and Russia,” Sasse said in a statement.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin “are reckless – and this withdrawal will only embolden them,” Sasse added. “We should be leading our allies against China and Russia, not abandoning them. Withdrawal is weak.”

The Trump administration is sending additional federal agents and funding to Cleveland, Milwaukee and Detroit, expanding a program that has targeted Democratic-run cities facing increases in violent crime.

The Trump administration’s controversial “public charge” rule that would make it easier for immigration officials to deny entry to people likely to rely on government assistance has been blocked by a federal judge who cited the coronavirus pandemic.

President Trump mistakenly tagged an Ohio HVAC company as Air Force One in a tweet, prompting the company to offer its services.

“As a family owned business, we don’t take sides in politics but we were flattered by the mention… but if this is an invitation to provide mechanical services in the White House or on Air Force One, we’re all ears!”

President Trump attacked Fox News tweeting:“I was on Air Force One flying to the Great State of Texas, where I just landed. It is AMAZING in watching @FoxNews how different they are from four years ago. Not even watchable. They totally forgot who got them where they are!”

President Trump confirmed that he has never confronted Russian President Vladimir Putin with intelligence reports that Russian units paid Taliban-linked militants to attack U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

During a clip from an interview with “Axios on HBO,” Trump said he “never discussed it” with Putin during a phone call last week.

“That was a phone call to discuss other things, and frankly that’s an issue that many people said was fake news,” Trump said when pressed about why the matter wasn’t raised.

NOTE: The CIA has been analyzing the intelligence for several months and has assessed that the Russian program is real. Intelligence analysts believe that the bounties resulted in the deaths of three Marines killed in April 2019 when the vehicle they were traveling in was blown up just outside Bagram.

More than 50 facilities across the country that have faced enforcement actions for alleged Clean Water Act violations are among those taking advantage of an EPA policy that lets companies forgo pollution monitoring during the pandemic.

In a tweet, the president suggested delaying the November election because of the false claim there are problems with the legitimacy of mail-in voting: “With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???”

The U.S. economy contracted at its steepest pace since the Great Depression. The economy shrunk at a rate of 32.9 percent during the second quarter of 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic spurred an economic collapse of record-breaking speed and size, the Commerce Department reported.

The Labor Department reported that initial unemployment claims rose for the second week in a row, with 1.4 million registering for benefits for the first time.

Presidential Campaign

President Trump’s reelection campaign has halted new ad buys in Michigan in recent days as polling shows former Vice President Joe Biden with a widening lead in the state.

Trump’s recent withdrawal came as his campaign shifted advertising dollars to other battlegrounds like Iowa.

Sources: ABC News, Associated Press, The Atlantic, Axios, Bloomberg, CBS News, CNN, Financial Times, Fox News,The Hill, Independent, NBC News, NJ.com, NPR, NY Times, Politico, Reuters, Salon, Slate, Vanity Fair, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post

The Past 24 Hours or So – Trump Administration News

Read Time: 5 Minutes

The Supreme Court shielded a trove of President Trump’s financial records from Congress.

The justices in Trump v. Mazars declined to grant Congress access to financial documents subpoenaed by a trio of Democratic-led House committees.

The Supreme Court granted New York state prosecutors access to President Trump’s tax returns. The ruling in Trump v. Vance makes it more likely that Trump’s tax returns are eventually made public, though it’s unclear if they would be disclosed before the November general election.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. declared a “tremendous victory” after the Supreme Court upheld his office’s subpoena for President Trump’s tax returns, calling it a win for the “nation’s system of justice and its founding principle that no one – not even a president – is above the law.”

In what could be considered an unhinged rant, the president took to Twitter following the SCOTUS ruling.

“We have a totally corrupt previous Administration, including a President and Vice President who spied on my campaign, AND GOT CAUGHT…and nothing happens to them. This crime was taking place even before my election, everyone knows it, and yet all are frozen stiff with fear….”

“…Won all against the Federal Government and the Democrats send everything to politically corrupt New York, which is falling apart with everyone leaving, to give it a second, third and fourth try. Now the Supreme Court gives a delay ruling that they would never have given…”

“….for another President. This is about PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT. We catch the other side SPYING on my campaign, the biggest political crime and scandal in U.S. history, and NOTHING HAPPENS. But despite this, I have done more than any President in history in first 3 1/2 years!”

Courts in the past have given “broad deference”. BUT NOT ME!

“The Supreme Court sends case back to Lower Court, arguments to continue. This is all a political prosecution. I won the Mueller Witch Hunt, and others, and now I have to keep fighting in a politically corrupt New York. Not fair to this Presidency or Administration!”

President Trump, who is already more than a week late filing his annual financial disclosure, is being given 45 additional days to file the annual forms. A White House official said that Trump had requested an extension because the 2019 finances were “complicated” and he has “been focused on addressing the coronavirus crisis and other matters.”

Michael Cohen, the former personal lawyer for President Trump, was taken into custody by U.S. Marshals for violating the terms of his furlough. Cohen, who was supposed to be confined to his house, was photographed eating at a Manhattan restaurant weeks after being released from prison.

The Department of Justice said in a court filing that it’s “reasonable” for longtime Trump adviser and former Republican operative Roger Stone to begin his prison sentence next week, saying Stone failed to provide adequate reasoning as to why he should be treated differently from other convicted felons.

The judge hearing the criminal prosecution against U.S. President Donald Trump’s former adviser Michael Flynn asked an appeals court to reconsider a recent decision dismissing the case.

Attorney General William Barr persistently pressured Manhattan’s former top federal prosecutor to resign during a June 18 meeting at a New York hotel and in a subsequent phone call, the ousted prosecutor, Geoffrey Berman told lawmakers Thursday, detailing for the first time the series of events that led to his removal the next day.

Berman, in a written statement to the House Judiciary Committee, said Barr repeatedly attempted to coax Berman into resigning his post by suggesting he consider other positions in government, including the chairmanship of the Securities and Exchange Commission or the head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division.

“I said that there was no job offer that would entice me to resign from my position,” Berman told lawmakers in his opening statement

In contrast to efforts by the Trump administration to dismiss the C.I.A.’s judgment and to justify the White House’s failure to authorize any response to Moscow by downplaying the assessment of Russian bounties on U.S. troops as uncorroborated, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a Congressional hearing, “If in fact there’s bounties, I am an outraged general.” “If, in fact, there’s bounties directed by the government of Russia or any of their institutions to kill American soldiers, that’s a big deal. That’s a real big deal.”

He also said that while the government so far lacks proof that any caused specific military casualties, “we are still looking.”

“We’re not done,” he continued. “We’re going to run this thing to the ground.”

Intelligence that included accounts from interrogated detainees and electronic intercepts of data showing payments from a bank account linked to Russia’s military intelligence agency, the G.R.U., to the Taliban, the C.I.A. concluded that Russia had escalated its support to the Taliban to include financial incentives for killing Americans and other coalition troops.

Secretary of Defense Mark Esper confirmed that he had been briefed on information regarding Russian payments to the Taliban, seemingly acknowledging that Russia’s support for the militant group in Afghanistan is not a “hoax,” as President Donald Trump has claimed. However, Esper also made clear that he has not seen intelligence that corroborates claims that American troops were killed as a result of the “bounty” payments, walking a delicate line between acknowledging a well-known threat and potentially clashing with the President.

The Trump administration has sanctioned four Chinese officials and a regional security agency for the Chinese government’s repressive campaign against ethnic minorities.

The economic penalties and visa bans come on the same day that the White House confirmed it is finalizing a ban on federal contracts and contractors using five Chinese companies, some of which have ties to the campaign against Uighurs.

More than 100 Democratic House lawmakers are calling on the Trump administration to end its transgender military ban following a Supreme Court ruling barring discrimination against LGBT workers.

Michael Pack, the Trump-appointed CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, has reportedly signaled that he will not approve of visa renewals for foreign reporters who work for Voice of America and has fired the Radio Free Asia chief.

The White House pushed for a “correction” of a National Weather Service Tweet that contradicted President Trump during the “Sharpigate” scandal in 2019, according to a new internal watchdog report. The report from the Commerce Department inspector general also found that the White House was involved in an unsigned statement rebuking the tweet.

Sources: ABC News, The Atlantic, Axios, Bloomberg, CBS News, CNN, Financial Times, Fox News,The Hill, NBC News, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, NJ.com, NPR, NY Times, Politico, Reuters, Salon, Slate, Vanity Fair, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post

The Past 24 Hours or So – Protests/Race Relations and Trump Administration News

Read Time: 4 Minutes

Protests/Race Relations

Lafayette County (Mississippi) Board of Supervisors unanimously voted to keep its monument to Confederate soldiers.

“Enough is enough” was the headline in all capital letters across the front page of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Monday, repeating the frustrated words of Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms at a news conference on Sunday and echoing a sentiment shared in other parts of the country as a number of children have died in recent days in a surge of gun violence.

“The reality is this: These aren’t police officers shooting people on the streets of Atlanta, these are members of the community shooting each other,” Ms. Bottoms said in her news conference.

Work crews in Richmond, Virginia took down a monument to Confederate Gen. J.E.B. Stuart, the third major statue to be removed in the former Confederate capitol in less than a week. Richmond is rushing to remove symbols of oppression after protests.

The city council in a Mississippi city named after Andrew Jackson votes to move a statue of the former U.S. president from the city’s downtown to a less prominent place. Jackson owned enslaved people and oversaw the forced migration of Native Americans.

On Monday, Tucker Carlson criticized Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth for suggesting during a recent CNN interview that the US should consider arguments for removing monuments of George Washington. Carlson said, “Most people just ignore her. But when Duckworth does speak in public, you’re reminded what a deeply silly and unimpressive person she is… These people actually hate America.”

Duckworth, who lost both of her legs while serving in Iraq when the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter she was co-piloting was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade fired by Iraqi insurgents., replied by challenging Carlson to “walk a mile” in her legs.

A car in Bloomington, Indiana on Tuesday struck demonstrators protesting an alleged attempted lynching captured on video earlier in the week, and the driver has yet to be identified.

Witnesses told NBC affiliate WTHR a passenger in the car had stepped out and thrown a scooter that had been left in the road, prompting the woman to attempt to intervene by putting her hands on the hood of the car, at which point the car accelerated.

Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) is coming under criticism from the WNBA Players Association after writing a letter saying that the league should not go forward with a plan to put the names of Black victims of police violence on player jerseys.

“The truth is, we need less—not more politics in sports. In a time when polarizing politics is as divisive as ever, sports has the power to be a unifying antidote,” Loeffler wrote to WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert. “And now more than ever, we should be united in our goal to remove politics from sports.”

Loeffler has co-owned the Atlanta Dream, one of the WNBA’s franchises, since 2011.

The Contra Costa County District Attorney’s Office announced that Nichole Anderson, 42, and David Nelson, 53, both residents of Martinez, California, would be charged with three misdemeanor counts, including a hate crime. The pair were caught on camera vandalizing a Black Lives Matter mural on July 4. Anderson covered up a Black Lives Matter mural with black paint and Nelson directly aided in her alleged criminal conduct.

Surveillance video released Tuesday shows a Michigan teenager being forcefully restrained by at least seven staff members in a youth facility before his death days later.

16-year-old Cornelius Fredericks was pushed and held down by staff members at the Lakeside Academy in Kalamazoo after he threw a sandwich in the cafeteria.

The teenager screamed “I can’t breathe” as he was being restrained for about eight minutes on April 29. Fredericks went into cardiac arrest when being detained and died on May 1.

The U.S. Park Police has said that its radio communications system did not record any transmissions when the agency and other law enforcement officers dispersed a crowd of protestors gathered around Lafayette Square on June 1 ahead of President Trump’s visit to a nearby church. The episode is now the subject of investigation from Congress and the Interior Department’s internal watchdog.

Administration News

Top White House aides are reportedly narrowing in on a list of fewer than 10 potential Trump administration officials who could have leaked information about Russian agents providing funds to Taliban-linked militants to target American troops in Afghanistan.

President Trump is scheduled to receive his first intelligence briefing this month on Tuesday. It is his first “daily” intelligence briefing since June 30.

Some White House officials are privately expressing frustration over President Trump’s recent embrace of a message stoking racial and cultural divisions.

But Trump is “going with his gut” and “relying on instinct,” the two officials said. Instead of touting wins, Trump has opted to zero in on the national debate about race and side with supporters who view themselves as victims unfairly cast as racists in the renewed national discussion about discrimination targeting minorities.

The United States will leave the World Health Organization on July 6, 2021, the United Nations said on Tuesday, after receiving notification of the decision by President Donald Trump, who has accused the agency of becoming a puppet for China during the coronavirus pandemic.

Payday lenders won’t have to check whether borrowers can afford to repay their high-interest loans under a new rule from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Its director, Kathleen L. Kraninger, said the new provision will provide “access to credit from a competitive marketplace.”

The rule rolls back a 2017 provision by the Obama administration to protect consumers from taking out expensive payday loans, which can carry interest rates as high as 400%. With the new rule, lenders will no longer be required to “reasonably” determine whether a consumer can repay the loan in a timely manner.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun met with South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha in Seoul on Wednesday for wide-ranging talks, overshadowed by Pyongyang’s insistence that it has no intention of returning to denuclearisation negotiations any time soon.

The Past 24 Hours or So – Protests/Race Relations and Trump Administration News

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Protests/Race Relations

A WWII-era Coast Guard ship named after the Supreme Court chief justice who penned the majority opinion in the Dred Scott ruling will be renamed.

The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter “Taney” was originally named to honor Roger B. Taney’s service as U.S. Treasury secretary. But Taney’s legacy is defined principally by his majority opinion in the 1857 ruling in Dred Scott v. Sanford, which said slaves were property and African Americans — whether enslaved or free — could not be U.S. citizens.

The Washington Redskins today announced a “thorough review” of the team’s name amid mounting pressure to make a change.

The Cleveland Indians released a statement that they are considering changing the name of the team.

Police used smoke bombs to disperse Indigenous protesters who blocked a highway as Trump made his way to Mount Rushmore.

An Indiana Catholic diocese has suspended a priest from public ministry after he faced backlash for comparing the Black Lives Matter movement and demonstrators to “maggots and parasites.”

Father Theodore Rothrock of St. Elizabeth Seton Catholic Church in Carmel, Indiana, made the comparison in his weekly message on Sunday, The Indy Star reported.

“The only lives that matter are their own and the only power they seek is their own,” Rothrock wrote. “They are wolves in wolves clothing, masked thieves and bandits, seeking only to devour the life of the poor and profit from the fear of others. They are maggots and parasites at best, feeding off the isolation of addiction and broken families, and offering to replace current frustration and anxiety with more misery and greater resentment.”

The Texas Tribune obtained, via a public information request, a voicemail of June 6, left several days after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott activated the Texas National Guard as some of the protests became violent.

In the voicemail conservative power broker Steve Hotze of Houston told Abbott’s chief of staff, Luis Saenz, “I want you to give a message to the governor. I want to make sure that he has National Guard down here and they have the order to shoot to kill if any of these son-of-a-bitch people start rioting like they have in Dallas, start tearing down businesses — shoot to kill the son of a bitches. That’s the only way you restore order. Kill ‘em. Thank you.”

Following the resignation of one of the officers involved, three Aurora, Colorado police officers were fired Friday. The four officers shared photographs they took of themselves re-enacting a chokehold officers used to subdue Elijah McClain who later died.

Jason Rosenblatt, who was among the officers who subdued McClain, was fired for responding “HaHa” after receiving the photo.

Vanessa Wilson, interim chief of police in the Denver suburb of Aurora, called the officers’ actions surrounding the death of Elijah McClain, who was unarmed, “reprehensible.” “I am disgusted to my core.”

President Trump on Friday during a Fourth of July event at Mount Rushmore lashed out at protesters calling for the removal of Confederate statues, accusing them of wanting to “overthrow the American Revolution” and fundamentally change the country adding that protestors’ goal is to “end America.”

“The violent mayhem we have seen in our streets and cities are run by liberal Democrats in every case is the predictable result of years of extreme indoctrination and bias in education, journalism and other cultural institutions,” Trump said. “Against every law of society and nature, our children are taught in school to hate their own country and to believe that the men and women who built it weren’t heroes, but villains. The radical view of American history is a web of lies.”

President Trump has unveiled an executive order to create a “National Garden of American Heroes” that will feature statues of prominent Americans in response to protesters calling for the removal of Confederate statues or statues of racist figures.

The executive order says the garden will include statues of John Adams, Susan B. Anthony, Clara Barton, Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Frederick Douglass, Amelia Earhart, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, Jackie Robinson and Harriet Tubman, among others.

Administration News

The president’s arrival at his Sterling, VA country club marks the 365th day he has spent at one of his properties since assuming the office.

The Senate finalized passage of a sanctions bill to penalize China for its new national security law for Hong Kong that U.S. lawmakers say effectively ends the island’s autonomous legal status. The bill now heads to President Donald Trump, who is expected to sign it.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau warned he may skip a summit in Washington next week with President Trump and Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador over the Trump administration’s threats of tariffs and due to the coronavirus pandemic which is raging and seeing record-breaking days in the states.

“I have reviewed the classified information regarding bounties, upon which recent news reports are based. This information raises many questions and administration officials should come before the Senate and provide a classified briefing and answer questions from all members,” GOP Sen. Pat Toomey said, demanding a briefing on the controversial reports Russia has been targeting U.S. troops.

President Vladimir Putin on Friday mocked the U.S. embassy in Moscow for flying a rainbow flag to celebrate LGBT rights, suggesting it reflected the sexual orientation of its staff.

The Pentagon released a report claiming that the Russians have been working alongside the Taliban to drive US troops out of Afghanistan.

The report comes just days after the New York Times reported that Russian intelligence agents were paying bounties to Taliban-connected fighters for killing US troops.

“As of February, the Russian government was working with the central government, regional countries and the Taliban to gain increased influence in Afghanistan, expedite a US military withdrawal,” the report states.

The Pentagon report covers the time period between December 2019 and May 2020.

The Past 24 Hours or So – Protests/Race Relations and Trump Administration News

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Protests/Race Relations News

Boston city officials voted to remove “The Emancipation Statue” depicting President Lincoln standing tall above a formerly enslaved Black man kneeling at his feet. Critics argue the controversial monument is a “reductive representation” of the role Black Americans played in the abolition movement and the Civil War.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said on Thursday he plans to introduce legislation withholding federal funding for states and cities that don’t enforce laws protecting statues and monuments.

GOP Rep. Andy Biggs is calling for the White House to dissolve its coronavirus task force so that health officials like Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx can’t contradict many of Trump’s “stated goals and actions” when it comes to the economy.

U.S. Senators Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and James Lankford (R-Oklahoma) are proposing scrapping Columbus Day as a federal holiday and replacing it with Juneteenth.

Newly released body-camera footage shows two officers laughing about shooting protesters in Fort Lauderdale, Florida with rubber bullets, with one saying, “Did you see me fuck up those motherfuckers?” Fort Lauderdale Police Chief Rick Maglione defended the footage and said his officers were under attack.

Video shows protesters were mostly peaceful, however, and police were responding to a water bottle being thrown at them because another officer had pushed a kneeling woman to the ground.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley has confirmed that soldiers who were deployed to Washington, D.C. to quell the protests over George Floyd’s death were given bayonets, knife-like attachments for rifles and other guns that allow them to be used as spears.

The members of the division and the regiment never were sent to the demonstrations to respond and were told no weapons would enter the city without orders or before nonlethal response methods were analyzed.

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson called on protesters across the U.S. to cease efforts to dismantle statues of some historical figures and called on state leaders to dismantle “autonomous zones,” an apparent reference to the now-dismantled Seattle Capitol Hill Organized Protest zone.

The NFL is planning to have “Lift Ev’ry Voice And Sing,” long referred to as the Black national anthem, played or performed before games during the first week of this year’s season.

An Aurora, CO police officer who was involved in taking pictures reenacting the police chokehold used on Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old Black man who died three days after the encounter, has resigned from the force.

The photos show officers from the Aurora Police Department posing inappropriately near his memorial site and reenacting the carotid restraint used on McClain before his death

A husband and wife were charged with assault Thursday, one day after pulling a gun on a Black mother and her two daughters amid an alteration in Oakland County, Mich.

Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica Cooper charged Jillian and Eric Wuestenberg with one count each of felonious assault.

As statues are removed in the U.S., Spain’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has offered to take the statues and move them to Spain. Foreign Minister Arancha González Laya has sent diplomatic letters to “federal, state and local authorities” in the United States to address the issue.

“We have made them aware of the importance we award to this shared history with the United States, as shared as it is unknown.”

Parole, a historically Black suburb of Annapolis, MD, will soon be the site of a large mural of Breonna Taylor, an unarmed Black woman who was fatally shot by police in her home in Kentucky earlier this year.

According to The Capitol Gazette, the mural of Taylor, which also will feature the phrase “Black Lives Matter” along with her date of birth and death, is expected to span 7,000-square feet across several basketball courts at Chambers Park, with creators aiming to make it visible from space.

FedEx has requested the NFL’s Washington team change its name from the Redskins. A FedEx spokesperson released this statement: “We have communicated to the team in Washington our request that they change the team name.”

FedEx is the title sponsor of the team stadium in Landover, MD.

Fans of Waverly-Shell Rock High School baseball team in Iowa taunted the opposition’s only Black player with racially charged insults. Charles City High School’s Center Fielder, Jeremiah Chapman, said, “They called me Colin — I assumed they were just calling me Colin Kaepernick.” After making a play, “They said, ‘You need to go back to the fields to do your job.’”

“They looked at me and said, ‘You should have been George Floyd,'” the Minneapolis man killed by a police officer. “Then they started chanting ‘Trump 2020,'” Chapman said.

Waverly-Shell Rock High School put out a statement on their Facebook page saying they “fully acknowledge” the remarks happened. “This behavior is unacceptable. We make no excuses, because there are none,” the post said. “We do, however, wish to make a sincere apology to the Charles City school district and community and, in particular, the young man towards whom these comments were directed.”

Administration News

The U.S. Supreme Court says it will decide whether US House investigators can get access to grand jury material from Mueller’s special counsel team; the court will hear the case during the new term in the fall, delaying Congress’ potential access to the material.

The U.S. economy added 4.8 million jobs in June.

The Commerce Department’s internal watchdog is accusing the department of “actively preventing” it from releasing a full report expected to detail a “flawed process” during what is now known as the Sharpiegate controversy.

The Trump administration has reportedly awarded a contract to a California-based tech startup to set up hundreds of “autonomous surveillance towers” along the U.S.-Mexico border to aid its immigration enforcement efforts.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced on Thursday that the towers, which use artificial intelligence and imagery to identify people and vehicles, were now a “program of record” for the agency and that 200 would be deployed along the southern border by 2022.

A little-known North Dakota construction firm that was awarded the single largest border wall contract–after its CEO praised the president in a slew of conservative media appearances–is now defending its product as experts warn the structure is in danger of collapsing, ProPublica and the Texas Tribune reported Thursday.

Several experts interviewed for the report said poor planning and shoddy engineering have left the wall “in danger of falling into the Rio Grande.”

Mark Burkhalter, president Trump’s nominee to be ambassador to Norway, is facing demands that he abandon his pursuit of the diplomatic post following the unearthing of a 1994 court filing indicating his involvement in the production of a racist campaign flier against an African American politician in Georgia.

Burkhalter helped create a flier that distorted and exaggerated the features of Gordon Joyner, a candidate for county commissioner in north-central Georgia. Joyner was pictured with some features darkened, a large Afro, enlarged eyebrows and a warped eye.

Joyner sued for libel, resulting in an out-of-court settlement, an apology signed by Burkhalter and three other men, and payment of an undisclosed sum.

Geoffrey Berman, the former top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, who resigned last month under pressure from Attorney General William Barr, will testify to the House Judiciary Committee next week about the circumstances of his departure, according to a congressional aide.

Weeks after the firing of former U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman, Richard Donoghue, a top Washington deputy to U.S. Attorney General William Barr, is under consideration to replace an outgoing prosecutor for the Eastern District of New York, CNN reported.

Former Trump administration officials said President Trump’s national security advisers began limiting their briefing of the president on matters relating to Russia due to his frequent pushback on such assessments, CNN reported.

Former officials responsible for briefing Trump on national security issues said they found he frequently became angry when being presented with intelligence implicating Russia in political interference.

“The president has created an environment that dissuades, if not prohibits, the mentioning of any intelligence that isn’t favorable to Russia,” a former senior national security staffer told the network.

President Trump retweeted a series of tweets from ACT for America, which is an anti-Muslim hate group.

The Past 24 Hours or So

Read Time: 6 Minutes

Protests/Race Relations News

NYC Mayor de Blasio said “Black Lives Matter” will be painted on Manhattan’s 5th Ave. in “a matter of days.”

Whenever President Trump comes back to New York, “he’ll get a message that he still doesn’t understand. Maybe seeing it outside his doorstep will help him get the point.”

“NYC is cutting Police $’s by ONE BILLION DOLLARS, and yet the @NYCMayor is going to paint a big, expensive, yellow Black Lives Matter sign on Fifth Avenue, denigrating this luxury Avenue. This will further antagonize New York’s Finest, who LOVE New York & vividly remember the….

….horrible BLM chant, “Pigs In A Blanket, Fry ‘Em Like Bacon”. Maybe our GREAT Police, who have been neutralized and scorned by a mayor who hates & disrespects them, won’t let this symbol of hate be affixed to New York’s greatest street. Spend this money fighting crime instead!”

President Trump has told people in recent days that he regrets following some of son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner’s political advice — including supporting criminal justice reform — and will stick closer to his own instincts, three people with direct knowledge of the president’s thinking tell Axios.

Behind the scenes: One person who spoke with the president interpreted his thinking this way: “No more of Jared’s woke shit.” Another said Trump has indicated that following Kushner’s advice has harmed him politically.

In response to this Axios report, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said in a statement, “President Trump is very proud of the historic work that he’s done to benefit all communities. The First Step Act made historic strides toward rectifying racial disparities in sentencing while his executive order to secure America’s streets works with our nation’s heroic police officers to ensure we have safe policing and safe communities.”

A vehicle carrying Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) on Tuesday hit a Des Moines Black Lives Matter protester who officials say intentionally stepped in front of its path.

Police in Seattle arrested thirteen people Wednesday as officers returned to a police precinct and an area of downtown that demonstrators had taken control of during protests last month following the police killing of George Floyd.

The arrests came after the mayor’s executive order directing all residents to vacate the area of downtown now known as the Capitol Hill Organized Protest zone.

Selwyn Jones, one of George Floyd’s uncles, is pushing officials in Gettysburg, South Dakota, to remove the Confederate battle flag from the local police department’s logo, and has inspired a petition with over 4,000 petitions calling for its removal.

The mayor has pushed back, however, saying it won’t be removed because “the liberals and the press telling us we have to change it. People here do not feel it’s racism.”

The House Armed Services Committee has approved an amendment to ban the display of the Confederate battle flag at all Pentagon property, which includes bases, workspaces and front porches of military housing.

Dozens of investment firms and shareholders are calling on Nike, FedEx and PepsiCo to end their business relationships with the Washington Redskins unless the team changes its name.

Several students protested outside a Montclair, NJ woman’s home after footage went viral of her accusing her Black neighbors of building a stone patio without a permit and eventually calling the police.

The Los Angeles City Council voted to reduce their police department budget by $150 million amid local and nationwide activists’ calls to defund the police, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday.

The council voted 12 to 2 to bring the Los Angeles Police Department workforce down to 9,757 officers by next summer. The last time that level of police staffing was seen in the city was 2008.

The Los Angeles Board of Education on Tuesday approved an immediate 35% cut to its school police force, a reduction of $25 million, in response to weeks of protests by student activists and community groups who had called for the elimination of the department.

In the wake of the decision, the department’s police chief, Todd Chamberlain, who has been in the job less than a year, resigned from his post Wednesday.

A whipping post was removed from the grounds of a historic Delaware courthouse on Wednesday after calls from activists to address its troubled, racist history. The removal was carried out by the state’s Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs.

Virginia’s capital city began taking down its statue of Stonewall Jackson after Mayor Levar Stoney ordered the immediate removal of multiple Confederate statues in Richmond.

A construction crew removed the massive Christopher Columbus statue from outside Columbus, Ohio’s City Hall on Wednesday morning, in one of the most dramatic cases yet of a city reshaping how its monuments reflect its sense of history and community identity.

The Dept. of Homeland Security says it will deploy personnel across the U.S. to carry out President Trump’s order to protect statues and monuments from vandalism amid ongoing protests for racial justice.

Clay County, Florida Sheriff Darryl Daniels says he will deputize every gun owner in his county to put down violent protests his deputies can’t handle alone.

Trump Administration News

The USMCA trade pact, which replaces NAFTA, went into effect Wednesday.

As Sen. Elizabeth Warren exited the Senate SCIF after what appeared to be a briefing on Russian bounties, she said, “There was no one there who had any information about what information was given to the president or when it was given to him.”She added: “That was NOT a briefing.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is accusing journalists of spreading misinformation related to reports that Russia offered bounties to Taliban-backed fighters to kill U.S. service members in Afghanistan, alleging reporters don’t have enough intelligence information but refusing to discuss what he knows of the issue.

Three NATO officials say they had been briefed on intelligence that Russian operatives were secretly offering cash bounties to Taliban-linked militants for US casualties in Afghanistan — as President Donald Trump claimed he was not, and dismissed news reports on the intelligence as a “possibly another fabricated Russia Hoax.”

The revelation that US intelligence had briefed the White House on the Taliban bounties had been a closely-held secret for several months, until US officials began briefing UK and other European allies last week.

“The Taliban have been paid by Russian intelligence for attacks on U.S. forces—and on ISIS forces—in Afghanistan from 2014 up to the present,” says Mullah Manan Niazai, who was formerly a senior figure in the Taliban.

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) said on Wednesday that after reading classified intelligence he believes the Trump administration should brief the Senate on reports that Russians offered bounties to Taliban-linked fighters to target U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Senate Democrats are requesting a briefing on wire transfers intercepted by U.S. intelligence connected to reports of bounties being offered by Russian forces to incentivize Taliban-linked militants to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Afghan contractor Rahmatullah Azizi was named in a U.S. intelligence report as one of the key middlemen who delivered cash from Russia’s GRU to the Taliban to target American troops, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

American and Afghan officials reported that Azizi spent several years transferring money to reward Taliban-linked fighters for targeting American troops in Afghanistan.

CIA Director Gina Haspel and National Security Agency Director Paul Nakasone will brief congressional leaders known as the Gang of Eight on intelligence related to suspected Russian bounties on U.S. forces on Thursday.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany confirmed at a press briefing that the classified briefing would take place on Thursday. The Gang of Eight includes the top Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate as well as the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Intelligence committees.

The Past 24 Hours or So – Trump Administration News

Read Time: 2 Minutes

Senior US officials believed President Trump posed a danger to national security after he “demeaned and denigrated” female leaders during phone calls with other heads of state, according to classified phone calls obtained by CNN.

Trump reportedly told former UK Prime Minister Theresa May that she was “a fool” and spineless in her approach to Brexit, NATO and immigration policy. He also told German Chancellor Angela Merkel that she was “stupid” and accused her of being in the pocket of the Russians.

Senior House Democrats left a White House briefing on Russian bounties disappointed on Tuesday, saying they were given “no substantive information” about allegations that the Kremlin paid Taliban militants to kill U.S. troops — and that President Donald Trump sat on the information for months.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who led a group of nearly a dozen Democrats to the White House early Tuesday, said Congress still needs to hear from the heads of various Intelligence agencies — not White House officials — on the stunning allegations. The Trump administration officials tasked with briefing the Democrats, Hoyer said, expressed their opinion of the allegations but didn’t share the underlying evidence.

American officials intercepted electronic data showing large financial transfers from a bank account controlled by Russia’s military intelligence agency to a Taliban-linked account, which was among the evidence that supported their conclusion that Russia covertly offered bounties for killing U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan, according to three officials familiar with the intelligence.

The disclosures further undercut White House officials’ claim that the intelligence was too uncertain to brief President Trump. In fact, the information was provided to him in his daily written brief in late February, two officials have said.

President Trump has now been briefed on intelligence regarding Russian bounties on coalition forces in Afghanistan, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Tuesday.

McEnany confirmed during a press briefing that Trump had been briefed on the matter but emphasized that there is still not a “consensus” in the intelligence community regarding the validity of the information.

President Trump claimed early Wednesday that reports about suspected Russian bounties on coalition forces in Afghanistan were a “hoax” meant to damage him politically.

“The Russia Bounty story is just another made up by Fake News tale that is told only to damage me and the Republican Party,” Trump tweeted. “The secret source probably does not even exist, just like the story itself. If the discredited @nytimes has a source, reveal it. Just another HOAX!”

Rep. Steny Hoyer: “The President called this a hoax publicly. Nothing in the briefing that we have just received led me to believe it was a hoax.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says that Russia should not be readmitted to the Group of Seven (G-7), breaking with President Trump who has repeatedly floated having Moscow attend the group’s summits. The suggestion comes as intelligence reports reveal Russia targeted US troops abroad.

A federal judge ordered the Trump administration on Tuesday to stop enforcing an immigration rule that disqualifies most non-Mexican migrants from asylum at the U.S. southern border, saying the broad restriction was enacted unlawfully in the summer of 2019.

The Past 24 Hours or So – Trump Administration News

Read Time: 4 Minutes

Intelligence officials told the Associated Press that the president was briefed on the Russian/Taliban bounty matter earlier this year. “The administration discussed several potential responses, but the White House has yet to authorize any step.”

American officials provided a written briefing in late February to President Trump laying out their conclusion that a Russian military intelligence unit offered and paid bounties to Taliban-linked militants to kill U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan, two officials familiar with the matter said.

The assessment was backed up by “several pieces of information” that supported the view that there was an effort by the Russian intelligence unit, the GRU, to pay bounties to kill U.S. soldiers, but added that there was also information that did not corroborate this view.

“This was a big deal. When it’s about U.S. troops you go after it 100 percent, with everything you got,” the official said.

Trump has denied being briefed on the matter.

Late Monday night, the Associated Press reported that top officials in the White House were aware in early 2019 of classified intelligence indicating Russia was secretly offering bounties to the Taliban for the deaths of Americans, a full year earlier than has been previously reported, according to U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the intelligence.

The assessment was included in at least one of President Donald Trump’s written daily intelligence briefings at the time, according to the officials. Then-national security adviser John Bolton also told colleagues he briefed Trump on the intelligence assessment in March 2019.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are demanding answers after reports revealed the intelligence community concluded months ago that Russia offered bounties to incentivize Taliban-linked militants to kill U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan.

The uproar includes a chorus of Republicans who are typically reticent to confront President Trump, who has sought to deflect blame and responsibility by arguing he was not briefed on the intelligence that he claims is not credible.

President Trump set off a “five-alarm fire” in the White House on Sunday morning after he retweeted a video of one of his supporters saying “white power,” according to two White House officials.

The video remained on the president’s Twitter page for more than three hours because White House officials couldn’t reach him to ask him to delete it. The president was at his golf club in Virginia and had put his phone down, the officials said.

Aides also tried unsuccessfully to reach deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino to ask him to delete the retweet.

Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C) added to the urgency when he called the tweet “indefensible” and demanded that the president take it down during an interview on CNN.

Once officials were able to reach the president, he agreed to delete it.

Iran issued arrest warrants for President Trump and 35 others in relation to Islamic Revolution Guard Corps commander Qasem Soleimani’s death. The Tehran attorney general says Trump was at the top of the list.

A group of top House Democrats is introducing a new proposal to empower the House to levy stiff fines against Trump officials who defy subpoenas.

President Trump threatened to veto House Democrats’ $1.5 trillion green infrastructure plan on Monday, arguing it should eliminate or reduce environmental reviews and doesn’t route enough money to rural America.

The bill contains billions to repair the nation’s crumbling roads and bridges while setting aside funds for broadband, schools and hospitals. It would also require states to commit to reducing greenhouse gases and other climate measures in order to receive funding.

But Republicans have branded it as an iteration of the Green New Deal crafted without their input.

The Supreme Court declined to take a case challenging President Trump’s border wall, leaving in place a decision that rejected environmental groups’ quest to stop construction. The lawsuit was over the Trump administration’s decision to waive environmental reviews to speed up construction of the wall.

Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who last week ordered former Trump adviser, Roger Stone, immediately into home confinement and to prison on July 14, said she was turning down Stone’s request to delay his reporting to prison until September.

The Trump administration placed new restrictions on U.S. exports of defense equipment and certain high-technology products to Hong Kong on Monday, in response to a new Chinese law aimed at tightening Beijing’s control over the territory.

A bipartisan group of senators is trying to place limits on President Trump’s ability to remove troops from Germany unless the administration is able to meet a slew of requirements.

The proposal, spearheaded by Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), would prohibit the administration from reducing the number of active-duty troops in Germany below 34,500 unless the Pentagon can certify to Congress that it is in the national security interest of the United States and would not negatively undermine European alliances or NATO.

Sources: ABC News, Axios, Bloomberg, CBS News, CNN, Financial Times, Fox News,The Hill, NBC News, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, NJ.com, NPR, NY Times, Politico, Reuters, Salon, Slate, Vanity Fair, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post

The Past 24 Hours or So

Read Time: 7 Minutes

Coronavirus/COVID-19

The death toll from COVID-19 reached half a million people on Sunday.

Vice President Mike Pence said new outbreaks of the coronavirus may be arising because younger Americans aren’t abiding by federal guidance.

Pence said people “should wear masks whenever social distancing is not possible” and “wherever it is indicated by state or local authorities.”

A choir of more than 100 people performed without masks at an event in Texas at the First Baptist Church on Sunday that featured a speech by Vice President Mike Pence.

Nearly 2,200 people attended the “Celebrate Freedom Rally,” according to rally organizers. The venue capacity for the indoor event was close to 3,000 attendees, organizers say. Face masks at the event were “strongly encouraged,” with signs posted around the venue. According to reports, at least half of the crowd was wearing a face covering.

Throughout the service, the members of the choir sang at full volume, behind an orchestra. Between songs, the choir members put their masks back on when they sat down.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Sunday a nationwide mandate to wear face coverings to prevent the spread of coronavirus is “definitely long overdue.”

The speaker called on President Trump to “be an example” to the U.S. and wear a face covering, saying “real men wear masks.”

Vice President Pence said the federal government would extend support for coronavirus testing in Texas as long as necessary amid a dangerous surge in new cases. U.S. health officials had originally moved to end supporting sites at the end of the month..

Florida Gov. DeSantis says his state’s rise in coronavirus cases is being “driven by a big increase over the last three weeks in individuals testing positive throughout the state of Florida in younger age groups.”

California Governor. Gavin Newsom ordered bars in several counties to close due to the spread of COVID-19, including Los Angeles County.

Newsom tweeted the order around Noon on Sunday, which also affects Fresno, Imperial, Kern, Kings, Los Angeles, San Joaquin, and Tulare counties.

The governor also recommended bars close in Contra Costa, Riverside, Sacramento, San Bernardino, Santa Barbara, Santa Clara, Stanislaus and Ventura counties.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar warned Sunday that “the window is closing” to take action to curb the spread of the coronavirus as cases across the southern United States continue “surging.”

In an interview with “Meet the Press,” Azar said that the country has “more tools than we had months ago” to fight the virus and the disease it causes, including new treatments and more personal protective equipment. But he stressed that America is facing a “very serious situation.”

A CBS News poll shows record numbers saying efforts against the outbreak are going badly (including new highs saying efforts are going very badly); President Trump receives his lowest marks for handling the pandemic since it began; and the outlook for the summer is grim. Twice as many expect the outbreak to worsen, rather than improve.

In addition to coronavirus concerns, overall, views of how things are generally going in the country are decidedly negative. Seventy-six percent of Americans say things are going badly compared to 56% who felt that way in December 2019.

Allegheny County, PA officials say they are banning on-site consumption of alcohol following a recent surge of new Coronavirus cases.

“For the first time since COVID-19 cases were confirmed in the state, Allegheny County led the state in the number of new COVID-19 cases,” said County Executive Rich Fitzgerald. “We’re going the wrong direction.”

The United Kingdom reported a weekly total of 6,820 coronavirus infections, that’s a decrease of 19.2% over last week and 80.9% since the week of April 19th.

Brazil tallied 38,693 new coronavirus cases in 24 hours and 1,109 additional deaths. The number of COVID19 infections stands at 1,313,667 and the death toll at 57,070 as of Saturday night, with no sign of policy changes by the Bolsonaro government.

The University of Tennessee will require students to have both flu and, when available, COVID-19 vaccines.

Governor Andrew Cuomo announced Sunday New York State’s lowest death toll and hospitalizations due to COVID-19 since the pandemic began. Saturday, there were five deaths and 869 hospitalizations in New York State.

Of the 61,906 tests conducted in New York State Saturday, 616, or 0.99 percent, were positive.

Oklahoma (478), South Carolina (1,384), Louisiana (1,454), North Carolina (1,576), Georgia (2,225), and Arizona (3,857) all set records for new coronavirus cases.

Protest/Race Relations News

Two street murals, one reading, “All Black Lives Matter” and the other “Abolish White Supremacy” were painted on two streets in Newark, NJ by artists with the support of the city.

The Mississippi state legislature — both the House and Senate — passed a bill on Sunday to change the state’s flag in a historic step toward removing the flag’s Confederate battle emblem.

The bill will now go to Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves, who has said he would sign legislation that state lawmakers send him to remove the Confederate insignia. The legislation cleared the state House in a 91-23 vote and the state Senate with a 37-14 vote

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy Tweeted: “Today, Mississippi lawmakers voted to remove the Confederate symbol from its state flag.

We replaced the MS flag with the American flag at Liberty State Park last year due to its hateful imagery. We look forward to raising a new MS flag soon.”

Administration News

United States intelligence officers and Special Operations forces in Afghanistan alerted their superiors as early as January to a Russian plot to pay bounties to the Taliban to kill American troops in Afghanistan, according to officials briefed on the matter.

Interrogations of captured militants and criminals played a central role in making the intelligence community confident in its assessment that the Russians had offered and paid bounties in 2019, another official has said.

Officials briefed on the matter said the assessment had been treated as a closely held secret but that the administration expanded briefings about it over the last week — including sharing information about it with the British government, whose forces were among those said to have been targeted.

In addition to saying he was never “briefed or told” about the intelligence report, Mr. Trump also cast doubt on the assessment’s credibility. He described the intelligence report as being about “so-called attacks on our troops in Afghanistan by Russians.” The report described bounties paid to Taliban militants by Russian military intelligence officers, not direct attacks. Mr. Trump also suggested that the developments could be a “hoax” and questioned whether The Times’s sources existed.

Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the third-ranking House Republican, said in a Twitter message on Sunday: “If reporting about Russian bounties on U.S. forces is true, the White House must explain: 1. Why weren’t the president or vice president briefed? Was the info in the [Presidential Daily Briefing]? 2. Who did know and when? 3. What has been done in response to protect our forces & hold Putin accountable?”

Russian bounties offered to Taliban-linked militants to kill coalition forces in Afghanistan are believed to have resulted in the deaths of several U.S. service members, according to intelligence gleaned from U.S. military interrogations of captured militants in recent months.

Several people familiar with the matter said it was unclear exactly how many Americans or coalition troops from other countries may have been killed. U.S. forces in Afghanistan suffered a total 26 deaths from 2018-2019.

British security officials have confirmed to Sky News that the reports about the Russian bounty plot are true.

The president Tweeted late Sunday night: “Intel just reported to me that they did not find this info credible, and therefore did not report it to me or @VP . Possibly another fabricated Russia Hoax, maybe by the Fake News @nytimesbooks, wanting to make Republicans look bad!!!

Presidential Campaign

5% of Americans say they feel things in America today, generally speaking, are going “very well” according to a new CBS poll.

Following pressure to disclose the number of minorities on their staffs, the campaigns for former Vice President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump released diversity statistics.

In a summary of staff data obtained by NBC News, the Biden campaign disclosed that 35 percent of the full-time staff and 36 percent of senior advisors are people of color.

After the Biden campaign revealed its numbers, the Trump campaign followed, announcing that 25 percent of its senior staff are people of color but declining to provide information for all full-time staff.

Fox News Senior Correspondent Charles Gasparino Tweeted: “BREAKING— (thread)GOP operatives are for the first time raising the possibility that @realDonaldTrump could drop out of the race if his poll numbers don’t rebound. Over the weekend I spoke to a sample of major players; one described Trumps current psyche as “fragile.”

“I’m not convinced yet; he’s got time and he’s running against an opponent who is literally hiding in his basement. Plus the public isn’t focusing yet on just how left wing @JoeBiden has become, so much so, he can bring himself to denounce rioting.

“That said the speculation indicates how tense GOP operatives are about Trump losing and the party losing the senate and having their entire agenda abolished in a leftist wave election. Again lots of time and Trump has endured a horrible couple of months but that’s the snap [shot]”