Tag: epa

The Past 24 Hours or So – Protests/Racial & Social Issues and Trump Administration Updates

Read Time: 4 Minutes

Protests/Racial & Social Issues

  • President Trump compared police officers using excessive force inappropriately to a golfer missing a short putt, saying sometimes “they choke.”

“They choke. Just like in a golf tournament, they miss a three-foot putt,” Trump said.

  • President Trump decried Black Lives Matter as a “discriminatory” organization that is “bad for Black people” as part of a broader diatribe against protests in response to racial injustice.

“Black Lives Matter is a Marxist organization,” Trump claimed. “The first time I ever heard of Black Lives Matter, I said, ‘That’s a terrible name.’ It’s so discriminatory. It’s bad for Black people. It’s bad for everybody.”

  • President Trump says that he is not planning to meet with members of Jacob Blake’s family while in Kenosha, Wisconsin because he claimed they wanted to have “lawyers involved” which he called “inappropriate.”

“They wanted me to speak but they wanted to have lawyers involved and I thought that was inappropriate so I didn’t do that,” Trump said.

  • Jacob Blake’s father said that the family does not have a pastor after President Trump said during his press briefing that he spoke with the family’s pastor.

“We don’t have a family pastor,” Jacob Blake Sr. said. “I don’t know who he talked to. I don’t care who he talked to.”

  • An uncle of Jacob Blake accused Trump of “drumming” up violence in the country and said the Blake family doesn’t want “anything to do with him.” 

“How could they not be feeding on violence when the man in the White House is steady drumming it up? Did you not think it would not trickle down to the streets? It has.”

  • President Trump defended the actions of Kyle Rittenhouse, a teenager accused of killing two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, saying during a new press briefing that Rittenhouse was acting in self-defense and was “very violently attacked” by demonstrators and would have been killed if he didn’t open fire. Trump also refused to condemn his supporters who were accused of using paintball guns on protesters in Portland, instead lashing out at what he said were leftist protesters.
  • Republican Wisconsin lawmakers did not participate in a special session by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers to address police training and criminal justice reforms in the wake of the shooting of Jacob Blake in the state.
  • Republican Rep. Jim Banks has introduced legislation that would bar individuals from receiving federal unemployment assistance if they are convicted of a crime during a protest, and suggested protesters are being paid by far-left groups to violently protest.
  • President Trump does not want to invoke the Insurrection Act to quell protests in U.S. cities, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Monday, after he had previously floated the possibility amid persistent demonstrations against racial injustice that have at times grown violent.
  • Sgt. Chad Walker, a police officer in Columbia, South Carolina was suspended without pay after video emerged of him using a racist slur multiple times outside of a crowded bar.

In a video, Walker could be seen and heard Saturday outside of Bar None in the city’s Five Points neighborhood using the N-word multiple times after a Black man who is not seen on video yelled the word at the officer who was leaving the bar. Walker, who is white, appears to be arguing with patrons in the video, asserting that he can say the N-word because a Black patron had just referred to him by the term.

  • Hundreds of University of Alabama athletes marched on campus on Monday to protest against racial injustice, with football coach Nick Saban appearing to lead the crowd. 

Trump Administration

  • Vice President Mike Pence was told to be on standby to assume presidential powers during President Trump’s abrupt visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center last year, according to New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt’s upcoming book, “Donald Trump v. The United States.”

Schmidt wrote that he learned “in the hours leading up to Trump’s trip to the hospital, word went out in the West Wing for the vice president to be on standby to take over the powers of the presidency temporarily if Trump had to undergo a procedure that would have required him to be anesthetized.”

  • President Trump offered the position of FBI director to then-Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly in exchange for a guarantee of personal loyalty, New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt writes in his book.

“Kelly immediately realized the problem with Trump’s request for loyalty, and he pushed back on the president’s demand,” Schmidt writes, according to an excerpt obtained by Axios. “Kelly said that he would be loyal to the Constitution and the rule of law, but he refused to pledge his loyalty to Trump.”

  • EPA has finalized a rollback of wastewater regulations from coal-fired power plants, which critics say will allow dangerous substances including arsenic and mercury to leach into waterways.
  • President Trump’s lawyers warned in a court filing that they will take the fight over the subpoena for his tax returns back to the Supreme Court if they lose the current round at a New York-based federal appeals court.
  • House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney announced a subpoena Postmaster General Louis DeJoy for documents related to recent reforms to the U.S.Postal Service that have prompted nationwide concerns and fears ballots may go uncounted in the November election.
  • A court has, for the second time, struck down a Trump administration attempt to limit the penalties faced by automakers who do not meet mileage standards.

“Once again, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has ruled that the Trump Administration cannot give away polluting passes to automakers who lag behind on meeting standards required by law,” an environmental group said celebrating the ruling.

  • A federal appeals court has just rejected Michael Flynn’s effort to force a judge to immediately dismiss the charges against him, overturning an earlier decision that would have allowed Trump’s Department of Justice to drop its case against the former national security adviser.

Sources:  ABC News, Associated Press, The Atlantic, Axios, Bloomberg, CBS News, CNN, Chicago Tribune, Financial Times, Forbes,  Fox News,The Hill, Independent, MSNBC, 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 & Social Issues,
Trump Administration, and
Presidential Campaign Updates

Read Time: 9 Minutes

Protests/Racial & Social Issues

  • On the anniversary of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr’s historic “I Have a Dream” speech, thousands took part in the “Get Your Knee Off Our Necks” march in Washington, D.C. to denounce racism 
  • Two police officers deployed tasers in failed attempts to stop Jacob Blake before one of the officers shot him multiple times in the back with a gun, the Wisconsin Department of Justice said, unveiling new details of its probe into the shooting.
  • Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth is facing renewed criticism for controversial comments he made in 2018 amid protests over the police shooting of Jacob Blake and the fatal shooting of two protesters. 

“I’m to the point where I think society has to come to a threshold where there are some people that aren’t worth saving,” Beth said after five people were arrested for shoplifting and leading police on a chase. “We need to build warehouses to put these people into it and lock them away for the rest of their lives.”

  • Jacob Blake, the 29-year-old Black man who was shot multiple times by a Kenosha, Wisconsin police officer, is no longer handcuffed to his hospital bed, a detail that drew viral attention after Blake’s father revealed he was restrained.
  • Jacob Blake’s father said that he and his family have not heard from President Trump. However, he did speak to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris, describing it as “speaking to my uncle and one of my sisters.”

“I appreciate everything that they’ve done and everything that they’re doing because they keep my son in mind, and President Biden kept telling me his own issues with his family, that he identifies with what I’m going through. I didn’t have to keep telling him, he knew. It felt like he knew … Vice President Harris felt like they knew what was going on.”

Blake said his calling of the candidates “President Biden” and “Vice President Harris,” was intentional as the November election approaches.

  • Dwindling numbers of anti-racism protesters milled about the streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin, as a tense calm prevailed for a second night following a wave of unrest.
  • Utah Jazz star Donovan Mitchell announced he is donating $45,000 raised from sales of his latest shoe release to help fund the education of the children of Jacob Blake, with Adidas announcing it would match his donation and bring the total to $90,000.
  • President Trump described protesters who surrounded the White House during the final night of the Republican National Convention as “thugs,” and suggested he was looking at invoking the Insurrection Act to send troops to quell protests in U.S. cities.
  • Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler (D) fired back at President Trump after he suggested sending the National Guard to Oregon’s largest city to deal with protests saying “no thanks” and “stay away, please.”

In a scathing letter, Wheeler wrote, “We don’t need your politics of division and demagoguery. Portlanders are onto you. We have already seen your reckless disregard for human life in your bumbling response to the COVID pandemic. And we know you’ve reached the conclusion that images of violence or vandalism are your only ticket to reelection.”

  • Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took responsibility and faulted his company for not removing the page and event for a militia group before two people were killed at a protest in Kenosha, saying it was “largely an operational mistake.”
  • The Baltimore Ravens in a statement demanded the arrests of the police officers who killed Breonna Taylor in March, as well as those involved in the shooting of Jacob Blake on Sunday.

“With yet another example of racial discrimination with the shooting of Jacob Blake, and the unlawful abuse of peaceful protesters, we MUST unify as a society. It is imperative that all people — regardless of race, religion, creed or belief — come together to say, ‘Enough is enough!'” the NFL team said.

“This is bigger than sports,” they continued. “Racism is embedded in the fabric of our nation’s foundation and is a blemish on our country’s history. If we are to change course and make our world a better place, we must face this problem head-on and act now to enact positive change.”

  • NBA star, LeBron James, has become an increasingly influential political force as issues of racial justice and voter suppression move to the forefront in the November presidential election.

James, an outspoken activist and frequent critic of President Trump, helped form a group that will spend millions of dollars to battle voter disenfranchisement in predominantly Black communities ahead of the Nov. 3 election.

He also has helped push the National Basketball Association to recognize racial justice issues and the Black Lives Matter movement, including the decision to postpone playoff games this week after a player boycott to protest the shooting of Jacob Blake.

  • A New Jersey 18-year-old says she has been billed nearly $2,500 in police overtime costs after she organized a Black Lives Matter rally in her town over affordable housing, even though the protest only included no more than 40 people who were not disruptive and even cleaned up their trash after protesting. Police reportedly complained to the mayor about overtime costs and the “extensive preparation” required to respond to the protest.
  • The NBA and the National Basketball Players Association announced that the league will return to playoff games on Saturday and will commit to converting arenas into in-person voting locations during the November general election to “allow for a safe in-person voting option for communities vulnerable to COVID.”

Trump Administration

  • The U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee announced contempt proceedings against Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, citing his refusal to comply with a subpoena for records into his “transparently political misuse” of department resources.
  • U.S. consumer spending increased more than expected in July, boosting expectations for a sharp rebound in economic growth in the third quarter, though momentum is likely to ebb as the COVID-19 pandemic lingers and money from the government runs out.

The Commerce Department reported a rise in personal income after two straight monthly declines, but a large portion of the increase was from unemployment benefits, which were bolstered by a weekly $600 supplement from the government that expired on July 31. Both consumer spending and income remain well below their pre-pandemic levels.

  • The Boston Globe ripped Postmaster General Louis DeJoy in an editorial following his testimony on Capitol Hill, calling for his resignation and blaming him for a host of problems that have plagued the Postal Service in recent months.

“These supposedly cost-saving measures have resulted in slowing down mail delivery, potentially disenfranchising voters at a massive scale come November if their mail-in ballots are not processed or delivered on time,” the editorial stated.

  • The U.S. government warned Brian Kolfage. a co-defendant of Steve Bannon, chief executive of Donald Trump’s 2016 election, that he should not make social media posts that could undermine a fair trial on corruption charges tied to the U.S. president’s effort to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Kolfage’s online descriptions of their case as a “witch hunt,” an effort to take “political prisoners” and an “assault” on the freedom of donors to his “We Build the Wall” fundraising campaign created a substantial risk that pretrial publicity could make it hard to find an impartial jury.

  • Trump administration officials are reportedly interviewing to replace President Trump’s Federal Trade Commission Chair Joe Simons, who would be in charge of implementing Trump’s new executive order targeting social media companies but has reportedly resisted Trump’s crackdown. One of the replacements being considered is reportedly a Fox executive.
  • A coalition of 21 states sued the Trump administration for rolling back what they say is a “rule that is, at its heart, the gutting” of America’s bedrock environmental law.

The White House in July finalized a rollback of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which for 50 years has required the government to weigh environmental and community concerns before approving pipelines, highways, drilling permits, new factories or any major action on federal lands.

Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson (D) called the law the Magna Carta of environmental law.

  • A University of Pennsylvania professor is asking the school to launch a probe into the allegations that President Trump faked his admission exam. 

When six faculty members asked the school’s provost to investigate the claims in mid-July, the provost said that although they found the allegations concerning, “this situation occurred too far in the past to make a useful or probative factual inquiry possible.”

Presidential Campaign

  • In another example of how President Trump has deployed government resources to further his political ambitions, the head of the New York office of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Lynne Patton, told a leader of a tenants’ group at the New York City Housing Authority that she was interested in speaking with residents about conditions in the authority’s buildings, which have long been in poor repair.

Four tenants were interviewed by Ms. Patton. Three of the tenants said they were never told that their interviews would be edited into a two-minute video clip that would air prominently on Thursday night at the Republican National Convention and be used to bash Mayor Bill de Blasio.

“I am not a Trump supporter,” said one of the tenants, Claudia Perez. “I am not a supporter of his racist policies on immigration. I am a first-generation Honduran. It was my people he was sending back.”

  • President Trump’s convention speech drew fewer views than former Vice President Joe Biden’s, according to preliminary numbers released by Nielsen Media Research.

An estimated 19.9 million Americans watched Trump’s speech on television, while Democratic nominee Joe Biden drew 21.7 million viewers.

  • The estate of Leonard Cohen said it was considering legal action over the use of the Canadian singer’s “Hallelujah” at the Republican National Convention, calling it a brazen attempt to politicize the song.
  • A California gas station reportedly purchased six pro-Trump billboards just months after securing a coronavirus relief loan between $150,000 and $350,000  from the Paycheck Protection Program, which is meant to help struggling businesses avoid layoffs during the pandemic.

The total cost of the billboards was $120,000.

  • Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley told lawmakers that he did not foresee the military playing a role in the election process or resolving disputes that may come during the November presidential election

President Trump has made unsubstantiated allegations that voting will be rigged and has refused to say whether he would accept official election results if he lost.

  • At a campaign stop in New Hampshire, President Trump said he would support seeing a female president, but not Sen. Kamala Harris, adding that people tell him they want his daughter Ivanka Trump to be president, prompting cheers from the crowd.
  • The campaign of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has purchased the web domain for President Trump’s reelection slogan “Keep America Great,” using it to list campaign promises they say Trump broke. Inexplicably, no one on the Trump campaign team had acquired the address. 
  • The president of University of Notre Dame said that the school does not endorse any candidate, political party or the views of Lou Holtz after the former football coach participated in the Republican National Convention and accused Joe Biden of being “Catholic in name only.”

“We Catholics should remind ourselves that while we may judge the objective moral quality of another’s actions, we must never question the sincerity of another’s faith.”

  • A coalition of more than 350 faith leaders endorsed Joe Biden for president, citing a “need of moral leadership” and “hope for a better future.”

“This election presents a stark moral contrast between the common good values of the Biden-Harris agenda and the divisiveness of the current administration.”

  • Battleground states are seeing a drop in the number of likely voters planning to vote by mail, according to a newly released poll that follows reports of the U.S. Postal Service instituting changes that have delayed mail, including the removal of mail sorting machines and mailboxes.

Sources:  ABC News, Associated Press, The Atlantic, Axios, Bloomberg, CBS News, CNN, Chicago Tribune, Financial Times, Forbes,  Fox News,The Hill, Independent, MSNBC, 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 & Social Issues, Trump Administration, and Presidential Campaign Updates

Read Time: 5 Minutes

Protests/Racial & Social Issues

  • The father of Jacob Blake, the 29-year-old Black man shot seven times by a Kenosha, Wisconsin police officer in front of his children, says Blake was handcuffed to the hospital bed where he is recovering and has been told he is at least temporarily paralyzed from the waist down.
  • The NBA’s players have decided to resume the postseason. Discussions on when the postseason will begin again are ongoing, but for now, both sides are aiming for Friday.
  • President Trump derisively referred to the NBA as a “political organization” after players have been outspoken on social justice issues and skipped playoff games in protest of the police shooting of Jacob Blake.
  • Vice President Pence’s chief of staff dismissed NBA teams’ refusal to play Wednesday night’s playoff games in protest of the police shooting of Jacob Blake, calling it “absurd” and “silly.”
  • The WNBA postponed its scheduled games for a second straight night in a protest over the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
  • The NHL postponed its playoff games for Thursday and Friday 
  • White House Adviser Jared Kushner on Thursday said he would reach out to basketball superstar LeBron James following an NBA player boycott to protest racial injustice in the wake of a police shooting that paralyzed a Black man in Wisconsin.
  • Vice President Pence will be replaced as the commencement speaker at an upcoming graduation for Wisconsin Lutheran College in Milwaukee, the school announced, citing the protests in Kenosha following the police shooting of Jacob Blake. 
  • White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany accused the media and Democrats of “aiding and abetting the violence” in US cities, as protests persist in Wisconsin following the police shooting of Jacob Blake.

“It’s a real travesty that it took the Democrats this long to mention the violence in our streets, that it was ignored. When they had the biggest platform, it was entirely ignored.”

  • Fox News host Tucker Carlson sparked vehement backlash online after saying it was not surprising that the white teen accused of fatally shooting two protesters “decided they had to maintain order when no one else would” during Black Lives Matter protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
  • Just two weeks after the city of Lake Charles, Louisiana voted to keep a Confederate monument standing, Hurricane Laura brought it down on Thursday with 150 mph winds as it made landfall along the state’s coast.

The Daily Advertiser reported that the statue, The South’s Defenders Monument, was the subject of a contentious debate, which ended in a vote on Aug. 13. The Calcasieu Parish Police Jury ultimately voted 10-4 to keep the statue in place.

Trump Administration

  • Another 1 million American workers filed for first-time unemployment benefits last week on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Labor Department reports.
  • North Carolina is suing the federal government over its decision to try to locate oil and gas off the state’s coast despite objections from the state. 

In June, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration allowed a company to move ahead with seismic testing, which uses blasts from air guns to try to detect oil and gas deposits in the ocean.

  • Environmentalists won their battle challenging the EPA’s regulation of Pennsylvania’s air quality, with the court ruling the agency used a “pernicious loophole” when greenlighting laxer standards for coal-fired power plants.
  • The EPA is facing another suit over its rule that limits states’ ability to block pipelines and other controversial projects that cross their waterways.

The Clean Water Act previously allowed states to halt projects that risk hurting their water quality, but that power was scaled back by the EPA in June

  • The U.S. is officially participating in a global program that aims to plant 1 trillion trees worldwide, something that Republicans, including President Trump, have latched on to as a way to combat climate change.
  • The Pentagon called out China over test launches of ballistic missiles in the South China Sea, a move that the United States views as “counterproductive” to quelling tensions in the region.
  • The U.S. Embassy in Ottawa issued a rare statement praising Canada’s military service in Afghanistan after White House trade adviser Peter Navarro sharply criticized Canadian policies in a new book.

Presidential Campaign

  • Dept of Homeland Security employees received an email reminding them to not to engage in “partisan political activity” just days after Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf participated in a naturalization ceremony that was broadcast at the Republican National Convention.
  • Officials launched an investigation Thursday into what they said was an erroneous, racist robocall aimed at discouraging voters in battleground states from casting their ballots by mail.

The recorded message features a woman who says she works for “Project 1599,” founded by the right-wing operatives Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, and falsely warns that personal information of those who vote by mail will be shared with police tracking down warrants and credit card companies collecting outstanding debt, according to recordings of the call reviewed by The Washington Post. Wohl and Burkman denied their involvement in the call, blaming “leftist pranksters.”

  • “Don’t be finessed into giving your private information to the man,” the recording says. “Stay safe and beware of vote-by-mail.”
  • “Well, QAnon is batshit crazy,” GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham said. “Crazy stuff. Inspiring people to violence. I think it is a platform that plays off people’s fears, that compels them to do things they normally wouldn’t do. And it’s very much a threat.”
  • “The violence you’re seeing in Donald Trump’s America,” Joe Biden said in a statement. “Is Donald Trump even aware he’s president? These are not images from some imagined ‘Joe Biden’s America’ in the future. These are images from Donald Trump’s America today. The violence we’re witnessing is happening under Donald Trump. Not me. It’s getting worse, and we know why.”
  • A Tennessee judge this week ordered state election officials to clearly note on absentee ballot applications that voters can opt for mail-in ballots if they or someone in their care believe they are at higher risk for contracting COVID-19, ruling that the forms as they currently are read deceptively and don’t inform voters that the state Supreme Court said it is a valid reason to obtain an absentee ballot.
  • Vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris denounced the looting and acts of violence that followed the police shooting of a Black man, as Republicans sought to paint the two Democrats as weak on crime.
  • More than 300 LGBT leaders threw their support behind Democratic nominee Joe Biden for president, stating that the former vice president and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), together make “the most pro-equality ticket in American history.”

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

The Past 24 Hours or So – Coronavirus/COVID-19 Update

Read Time: 3 Minutes

  • The U.S. reported 34,567 new cases and 449 additional deaths. 
  • New cases appear to be declining in many states. At least 25 states reported fewer cases in the past week compared to the previous week. Another 14 states have a steady amount of new cases.
  • China has been giving an experimental coronavirus vaccine candidate to frontline workers since July, a senior Chinese health official announced. Zheng Zhongwei, director of the National Health Commission’s science and technology development center said that the Chinese government authorized the emergency use of a vaccine on July 22. The “emergency” vaccine appears to be China’s first in use outside of clinical trials.
  • The head of the FDA said criticism for his praise of convalescent plasma treatment was warranted, but denied the decision to authorize the emergency use of the treatment for COVID-19 patients was politically motivated.
  • The EPA said it has granted emergency approval for American Airlines to use a disinfectant against the coronavirus on certain surfaces that lasts for up to seven days, and is studying whether it could be effective in places like schools.
  • Republican National Committee officials were warned by Mecklenburg County, N.C., health officials about a failure by some convention attendees to wear masks or practice social distancing following the roll call vote.
  • Zoom video conferencing app experienced outages in some parts of the world. In the United States, the problem mainly affected those in the East Coast.

Atlanta Public Schools tweeted that the Zoom outage interrupted online education on its first day of classes.

  • Ohio State University issued 228 interim suspensions on Monday to students who they say have broken the university’s Covid-19 regulations.
  • The University of Notre Dame added a total of 50 additional cases of Covid-19 over the weekend.
  • The University of Missouri has 159 active student Covid-19 cases. Monday was the first day of classes. 
  • Twelve students at Duke University tested positive for coronavirus out of a total of 4,497 tests performed for the week of Aug. 15 to 21. 
  • Georgia Tech reported 51 new cases of COVID-19.
  • University of Alabama reported 566 cases of COVID-19 since August 19. 
  • The University of Kansas has issued disciplinary actions against two fraternities for hosting social events this weekend in violation of county and university health guidelines on Covid-19.
  • More than 100 students from the University of Southern California are under a 14-day quarantine due to a coronavirus outbreak among students who live in the university’s off-campus housing.
  • For the fourth consecutive week the NHL announced zero positive COVID-19 tests results from its Toronto and Edmonton bubbles.
  • Across an eight-day period from August 12 to 20, zero NFL players tested positive for COVID-19 on 23,260 administered tests.
  • Olympic legend Usain Bolt says he’s self-isolating while awaiting his Covid-19 testing results.
  • There are now 27 cases of Covid-19 in Minnesota linked to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally that took place in South Dakota earlier this month.
  • Danbury, Connecticut, is facing a “serious outbreak” of Covid-19 stemming mostly from recent domestic and international travel, according to a statement attached to Governor Ned Lamont’s latest Covid-19 update. 

Between August 2 and 20, there were at least 178 new Covid-19 cases reported in Danbury, compared to the 40 new cases that were recorded in the prior two week period.

  • New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and NY Health and Hospitals will be setting up new Covid-19 testing sites at John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports in New York City for incoming passengers.
  • New York State saw a 0.66% reported infection rate, the lowest the state has had since the pandemic began. 
  • Florida reported 2,258 new cases and 72 additional deaths.
  • A Florida judge temporarily halted a statewide order that would have forced schools to reopen for in-person classes this month amid the coronavirus pandemic or risk losing funding.
  • The Miami Dolphins announced that a maximum of 13,000 fans will be allowed to the opening game against the Buffalo Bills on September 20.

Masks will be mandatory for all fans entering the Hard Rock Stadium.

  • Coronavirus testing sites in Louisiana have been suspended through Wednesday as the state prepares for Tropical Storms Marco and Laura.

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

The Past 24 Hours or So

Read Time: 8 minutes

Coronavirus/COVID-19 Update

  • The U.S. reported 42,003 new cases and 427 additional deaths.
  • President Trump repeated his false assertion that children are “essentially immune” from COVID-19 while downplaying a new report showing nearly 100,000 children tested positive for COVID-19 at the end of July, and said he does not think it means schools should stay closed.

“There may be a case, a tiny, a tiny fraction of death, tiny fraction, and they get better very quickly,” Trump said at a press briefing at the White House.

  • According to a report by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association, there were 179,990 new Covid-19 cases among US children between July 9 and August 6.
  • President Trump lashed out at Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) after he criticized the president’s executive action over the weekend.

“RINO Ben Sasse, who needed my support and endorsement in order to get the Republican nomination for Senate from the GREAT State of Nebraska, has, now that he’s got it (Thank you President T), gone rogue, again,” Trump tweeted.

  • Sasse defended his opposition and indicated he would rather have the discussion privately with Trump – “since you moved our conversation from private to public, here we are.”

“On the topic that had you mad this weekend: No president — whether named Obama or Trump or Biden or AOC — has unilateral power to rewrite immigration law or to cut taxes or to raise taxes. This is because America doesn’t have kings,” Sasse wrote.

  • President Trump revealed that he is considering a capital gains tax cut in an effort to create more jobs.

NOTE: Studies have shown that reducing taxes on capital gains cannot be expected to generate significant new investment or jobs.

  • Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said the administration is “prepared to put more money on the table” as stalled stimulus negotiations continue on Capitol Hill.
  • Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) denied President Trump’s claim that Democrats called him to resume negotiations, and said he has not seen any evidence that the President is personally involved in the negotiations for the next coronavirus relief bill.

“Fables from Donald Trump,” Schumer said in an interview on MSNBC.

  • Actress Alyssa Milano revealed that she was hospitalized for complications due to COVID-19 in April and that she still had symptoms of the disease months later.
  • Actor Antonio Banderas disclosed on Monday, his 60th birthday, that he has tested positive for the novel coronavirus.
  • The Mountain West Conference postponed all fall sports. 
  • President Trump is calling on college sports leaders to allow the student athletes to play this season.
  • The NHL announced no new positive test results during the past week inside the league’s two hub cities of Toronto and Edmonton.
  • 107 school districts in New York state haven’t submitted plans for reopening.

“How you didn’t submit a plan is beyond me,” Gov. Cuomo said. “If they don’t submit a plan by this Friday, they can’t open.”

  • A Cedar Knolls, NJ QuickChek cashier suffered burns when John Dedolce, 42, of Randolph, threw his hot coffee on her after she asked him to readjust his face mask.

Dedolce refused to fix his mask, prompting the cashier to cancel his order and ask him to leave.

Dedolce then threw the food he was attempting to purchase onto the floor and threw hot coffee at the cashier before leaving the store, authorities said.

  • A teen employee at Sesame Place had to undergo surgery after being punched by a man he told to wear a face mask. Police are still searching for the suspect.

The employee asked a man to wear a face mask, noting they are required in the park. Police say the man later confronted the teen at a ride and punched him in the face.

Park security chased the man, but he and a woman fled and reportedly were last seen driving away in a vehicle registered in New York.

  • The Cherokee County School District in Georgia reported that 826 students and 42 staff members are in quarantine due to possible exposure to Covid-19.
  • Florida reported 4,155 new cases and 91 additional deaths. The number of new infections is the lowest increase since June 23. 
  • More than 40 members of a family tested positive for coronavirus after an infected relative from another state attended a funeral in West Virginia. 

Several received medical treatment due to worsening conditions. The latest, a 2-year-old girl, was diagnosed Sunday night after being taken to a Huntington hospital with a high fever.

  • Twenty-two schools in Mississippi are reporting positive Covid-19 cases. There have been nineteen cases reported among students and fifteen cases among staff.
  • In Kansas, fifteen counties with mask mandates reduced coronavirus case numbers, Lee Norman, the secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, told the Kansas City Star.

“Some counties have been the control group with no mask and some counties have been the experimental group where masks are worn, and the experimental group is winning the battle. All of the improvement in the case development comes from those counties wearing masks,” Norman told the Kansas City Star.

Trump Administration

  • President Trump said he has asked that the G7 meeting be postponed until after the election in November, after a previous delay due to Covid-19 concerns.
  • The deficit climbed to a record $2.8 trillion during the first 10 months of fiscal 2020, roughly doubling the biggest annual deficit, according to figures released by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
  • The EPA is set to end requirements this week that force gas and oil producers to find methane leaks, meaning some leaks could go unaddressed even as methane is 25 times more impactful than carbon dioxide and a major contributor to human-linked climate change. The rules will roll back requirements on smog as well.
  • Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar met with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-Wen in the highest-level meeting between officials of the two nations in decades. China, which considers Taiwan a part of the country, condemned Azar’s visit.
  • China sanctioned eleven U.S. politicians and heads of organizations promoting democratic causes after the Trump administration leveled sanctions against eleven individuals last week over Beijing’s crackdown in Hong Kong.

Presidential Campaign

  • In a tweet, the president announced the two locations being considered for his acceptance speech: ”The Great Battlefield of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and the White House, Washington, D.C. We will announce the decision soon!”
  • The Sierra Club, one of the nation’s most influential environmental groups, endorsed Joe Biden for president on Monday saying that “No president has been worse for our environment or our nation’s public health than Donald Trump,” and they are “confident” in Biden’s work for climate justice.
  • Trump campaign senior legal adviser Jenna Ellis tweeted a link to an article in which Pennsylvania Secretary of Health Rachel Levine, a transgender woman, asked people to stop misgendering her. Ellis wrote in the tweet: “This guy is making decisions about your health.”
  • Federal Elections Commission Commissioner Ellen Weintraub warned that a shift to mail-in ballots during the coronavirus pandemic means there is a “substantial chance” that the results of the presidential and down-ballot races may not be called on election night.

“Let me just tell everybody, we’re all going to need to take a deep breath and be patient this year because there’s a substantial chance we are not going to know on election night what the results are.”

Protests/Racial and Social Justice

  • Hundreds of people swept through downtown Chicago early Monday, smashing windows, looting stores, confronting police and at one point exchanging gunfire with officers, authorities said.

More than 100 people were arrested according to Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown. Thirteen officers were injured, including a sergeant who was hit by a bottle. A civilian and private security guard were shot and wounded.

City officials said the seeds for the violent crime spree were sown on social media Sunday afternoon following an officer involved shooting in the Englewood neighborhood. Officers shot and wounded a 20-year-old man Sunday after he fired shots at them while being chased, authorities said.

“This was not an organized protest,” Brown said. “Rather this was an incident of pure criminality. This was an act of violence against our police officers and against our city.”

  • Portland police declared another riot on Sunday night after fireworks injured two officers during demonstrations around the Portland Police Association office. Police said protesters barricaded streets with dumpsters and fencing and a fire was lit on the sidewalk outside the police association office. 
  • The Seattle City Council approved proposals that would reduce the police department by as many as 100 officers through layoffs and attrition — an action supported by demonstrators who have marched in the city following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis but strongly opposed by the mayor and police chief.
  • Multiple police officers in Santa Clarita Valley, CA are under scrutiny after footage went viral showing them pointing guns at a group of Black teenagers shortly after the teens were attacked at a bus stop. 

In footage, three officers could be seen pointing guns at the teens, who had their hands raised, as people could be heard repeatedly yelling to them off-camera “It’s not them” and “It’s the other guy.”

The mother of one of the boys said the police arrived on the scene shortly after her son and his friends had been attacked by a homeless man. The man had initially approached her son and his friends to ask them “if they had any crack, then tried to take their things.” 

The man allegedly became aggressive, removed his shirt, and “pulled out a knife and whip,” attempting to stab the group.

  • Opponents of the Black Lives Matter movement have shared a viral video of the protesters interrupting a church service in New York, blasting them for protesting at a church, but an investigation reveals the video was shared without the context that its pastor has a history of racist and inflammatory comments.

The church’s pastor, John Koletas, is a self-proclaimed “bigot,” subscribes to the “Curse of Ham,” a fringe Christian belief that Black people are the descendants of Noah’s son Ham and cursed by God.

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 – Protests/Race Relations, Trump Administration, and Presidential Campaign News

Read Time: 2 Minutes

Protests/Race Relations

  • The U.S. Army wants to remove any sort of divisive symbols from military bases, potentially including Confederate flags, the Army secretary said, suggesting that the Pentagon was close to a broader policy barring such symbols from all military installations.

A number of military services, including the Marine Corps, have already banned the display of Confederate flags even as President Donald Trump has said that flying the flag is “freedom of speech.”

  • The South Orange-Maplewood School District in NJ, which was accused of allowing racial segregation of schools and classrooms, has agreed to a settlement that will see its integration efforts overseen by a retired New Jersey Supreme Court justice.
  • Eighty-seven people were arrested and charged with a felony after a protest on the lawn of Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, the Louisville Metro Police Department said in a statement. The protesters were demanding that charges be filed against the officers responsible for the March shooting death of Breonna Taylor. 
  • House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) introduced legislation that would cut federal aid to state and local governments if they do not protect statues, after protesters attacked monuments to people who owned slaves or fought for the Confederacy.
  • The parish school board agreed to rename a Baton Rouge high school bearing the name of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee to Liberty High School.

Trump Administration

  • A federal court has struck down a Trump administration rule that weakened restrictions on methane gas releases from drilling on public land, which would have allowed increased air pollution, restoring an Obama-era rule. The judge said Trump officials failed to explain the rollback and “failed to consider scientific findings and institutions relied upon by both prior Republican and Democratic administrations.”
  • CNN host Chris Cuomo railed against President Trump’s “pandemic priorities” on Wednesday evening after the president posed for an Oval Office photo with several Goya Foods products as the White House doubled down on its support of the company amid boycott calls after its CEO praised Trump. 

“You tell me how a president in the middle of a pandemic has got time for this bullshit,” Cuomo said on his nightly news program. “Are you kidding me?”

  • A new inspector general report out today finds that Trump’s Medicare chief Seema Verma broke federal rules when she spent $5M of taxpayer money on consultants who helped polish her image, including writing her tweets.⁣
  • The U.S. Space Force has chosen an initial batch of more than 2,400 airmen to transfer into the military’s newest branch.

Presidential Campaign

  • Republicans will significantly limit the number of attendees at the party’s August convention nominating President Donald Trump for a second White House term in Jacksonville, Florida, as coronavirus cases continue to spike sharply across the state.
  • Democratic officials are instructing members of the House and Senate and party delegates to skip their national convention this summer.

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 – Protests/Race Relations, Trump Administration, and Presidential Campaign News

Read Time: 4 Minutes

Protests/Race Relations 

  • Attorneys representing the family of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man who died earlier this year after a police officer kneeled on his neck for several minutes, have filed a civil suit against the city of Minneapolis and the four officers involved.
  • Kimberly Gardner, the circuit attorney for St. Louis County ripped President Trump and her state’s governor in a statement after the two criticized her office’s investigation into a couple seen on a viral video threatening Black Lives Matter protesters at gunpoint.

“While they continue to play politics with the handling of this matter, spreading misinformation and distorting the truth, I refuse to do so,” Gardner said.

  • The Asheville City Council has apologized for the North Carolina city’s historic role in slavery, discrimination and denial of basic liberties to Black residents and voted to provide reparations to them and their descendants.

The measure calls for a plan to provide reparations to its Black residents in the form of investments in their community such as “increasing minority homeownership,” “increasing minority business ownership and career opportunities,” and “strategies to grow equity and generational wealth,” according to the resolution.

  • A Confederate flag banner was flown over the Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee on Wednesday ahead of NASCAR’s All-Star Race.

The banner flown over the Wednesday race also included the website “SCV.org,” a website operated by the organization The Sons of Confederate Veterans.

Trump Administration News

  • The Trump administration is escalating its fight against the Chinese telecom giant Huawei by placing unspecified restrictions on visas of company employees within U.S. borders, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced.
  • Senior adviser Ivanka Trump was accused of violating a federal ethics law that bans government employees from using their public office to endorse products when she posted a picture supporting Goya. The White House, however, blamed the media and the “cancel culture movement” for the criticism she received.
  • President Donald Trump said that he would welcome retired Gen. Michael Flynn back into his administration now that the former national security adviser’s legal troubles are on the verge of receding.
  • Nearly two dozen of the country’s Democratic attorneys general are suing Education Secretary Betsy DeVos over her rollback of Obama-era regulations that allowed students to seek student loan relief if they were scammed by their higher education institution.
  • President Trump has officially finalized the rollback to one of the nation’s bedrock environmental laws in a move critics say will be particularly harmful to minority communities. The change would undo the requirement for environmental reviews of major construction projects and pipelines, which some say will allow for increased pollution in non-white communities.
  • President Trump intends to fight a subpoena for his tax returns and financial records from the Manhattan district attorney after the Supreme Court rejected his claim that he’s immune to criminal investigation, the president’s lawyers told a judge
  • A report by the Government Accountability Office, Congress’s nonpartisan investigative arm, found the Trump administration set a rock-bottom price on the damages done by greenhouse gas emissions, enabling the government to justify the costs of repealing or weakening dozens of climate change regulations.

The report said the Trump administration estimated the harm that global warming will cause future generations to be seven times lower than previous federal estimates.

  • Last week, Lt. Col. Alex Vindman announced his retirement from the Army, with his attorney accusing Trump of “a campaign of bullying, intimidation, and retaliation” since Vindman’s testimony. Now, the White House is accusing the former National Security Council member of creating a hostile work environment after testifying in the impeachment inquiry against President Trump.

An earlier review found no basis for the claim against Vindman.

  • The Supreme Court has cleared the way for a second federal execution to take place this week.
  • Senior White House adviser Jared Kushner has reportedly halted his plans to divest from a tech startup that he co-founded even after it was revealed that it had been partially fueled by foreign investors, which critics worry violates ethics rules and creates a conflict of interest.

Presidential Campaign

  • Joe Biden’s choice of a running mate is the talk of Washington, but a majority of American voters said Biden’s VP selection won’t affect their vote, according to a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll released Wednesday.

Fifty-four percent of respondents said that Biden’s running mate will have no impact on how they’ll cast their ballot. Only 16 percent said that it would have a “major impact” on their vote. Another 20 percent said it would have a “minor impact.”

  • President Trump is replacing his campaign manager less than four months from Election Day, removing Brad Parscale from the role and promoting another top political aide, Bill Stepien.
  • Former Vice President Joe Biden has widened his lead over President Trump to 15 points in a new national Quinnipiac University poll.

The poll released Wednesday shows Biden with 52 percent of the vote to Trump’s 37 percent, the widest lead for the presumptive Democratic nominee recorded by a Quinnipiac survey to date.

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 – Protests/Race Relations, Trump Administration, and Presidential Campaign News

Read Time: 6 Minutes

Protests/Race Relations

  • A man who the authorities say drove into a group of Black people at a Southern California hotel, injuring one person, has been accused of a hate crime, prosecutors said on Monday.

The man, Dennis Wyman, 42, of Redondo Beach, struck an off-duty security guard after he yelled “racial insults” at the group last month, the Torrance Police Department said

  • Sgt. Janak Amin, a 21-year veteran with the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office in Tampa has been fired and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon after aiming his gun inches from a handcuffed black man’s head and threatening to kill him if the man did not give his name, according to the sheriff.

Employees at the Hillsborough County Jail had accidentally released the victim, “inadvertently” transferring him to a treatment facility for those with substance-abuse or mental-health issues, where he was not supposed to be. He then left the facility.

Once the sheriff’s office realized the mistake, they went looking for him. They found him hiding behind a trailer. When officers confronted the man and put him in a “prone position,” the handcuffed man would not give his name.

So Amin knelt down next to him. He drew his firearm and pointed it inches from the man’s head.

Then, he told the man that if he refused to give his name, he would “splatter his brains all over the concrete.” Other officers on site then intervened.

  • The House Appropriations Committee has approved a $694.6 billion defense spending bill that includes money for the Army to change Confederate base names and that seeks to block President Trump’s use of Pentagon funds for his border wall.
  • U.S. Forces Japan has joined U.S. Forces Korea in banning the display of the Confederate flag, the latest move by the military aimed at preventing racial division in the ranks.

“The Confederate Battle Flag does not represent the values of U.S. Forces assigned to serve in Japan,” Air Force Lt. Gen. Kevin Schneider, commander of U.S. Forces Japan, said Monday in announcing the ban.

  • The Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers is calling for the immediate removal of a mural containing a depiction of Ku Klux Klan riders from the Baker County Courthouse in Macclenny.

The mural, located prominently inside the courthouse in Macclenny, was painted 19 years ago with the intention of illustrating significant events in the history of the small, rural county north of Jacksonville.

Three KKK riders in white robes and hoods on horseback are depicted in one section of the mural.

  • President Trump defended a St. Louis couple who went viral after they stood outside their home brandishing weapons as a group of protesters marched past them.

“They were going to be beat up badly if they were lucky, OK, if they were lucky,” Trump asserted in an interview at the White House with the conservative outlet Townhall.

“They were going to be beat up badly, and the house was going to be totally ransacked and probably burned down like they tried to burn down churches,” the president continued.

  • President Trump falsely asserted that “more” white Americans die at the hands of police than Black Americans and criticized a reporter for asking why African Americans are still dying in law enforcement custody.

“So are white people. So are white people. What a terrible question to ask,” Trump told CBS News’s Catherine Herridge when asked about the deaths of Black Americans at the hands of police. “So are white people. More white people, by the way. More white people.”

NOTE: A study published by Harvard University researchers in June that analyzed data from 2013 to 2017 found that Black Americans were more than three times more likely than white Americans to be killed by police.

Trump Administration News

  • The Trump administration carried out the first federal execution since 2003, following a series of court battles and a Supreme Court order, released shortly after 2 a.m., clearing the way for the lethal injection to take place. 

At a penitentiary in Terre Haute, IN, federal officials executed Daniel Lewis Lee, 47, who was convicted in 1999 of killing a family of three. Lee was pronounced dead at 8:07 a.m. Tuesday.

“I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, but I’m not a murderer,” Lee said when asked if he wanted to make a final statement, according to the pool report. His final words were: “You’re killing an innocent man.”

  • President Trump is expected to finalize a rollback to the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), one of the nation’s bedrock environmental laws. A move critics say will be particularly harmful to minority communities.

The changes to NEPA, which mandates environmental reviews of major construction projects and pipelines, are being pitched by the Trump administration as a way to cut regulations, expedite energy and infrastructure projects, and give a boost to the economy.

Critics argue that Trump’s erosion of 50-year-old protections will hit minority communities the hardest since polluting industries are disproportionately likely to be located in neighborhoods with large nonwhite populations.

“The Trump administration’s NEPA rollback will further endanger those bearing the greatest burden of legacy environmental injustice and structural racism,” said Rep. A. Donald McEachin (D-Va.) on a press call.

  • The Trump administration is resisting calls — even from political allies — to withdraw a proposal to make it more difficult to bring discrimination claims under the Fair Housing Act.
  • President Trump said he signed legislation and an executive order ending Hong Kong’s preferential treatment as a punishment against China for what he called its “oppressive” actions against the people of Hong Kong.
  • President Trump said the immigration executive order his administration was planning would be “merit-based.”

“We’re going to take care of DACA because I’m going to be doing, in the not too distant future, pretty soon, I’m going to be signing a new immigration action – very, very big merit-based immigration action – that based on the DACA decision, I’ll be able to do.”

  • Trump said California’s two largest school districts were making a “terrible mistake” by making students stay home for the upcoming term in the face of the resurgent coronavirus pandemic.
  • The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to reinstate Medicaid work requirements in Arkansas. Over 18,000 people lost their Medicaid coverage in Arkansas in the five months the requirements were in effect before they were blocked by the court.
  • The Defense Department has announced that U.S. troops have withdrawn from five military bases and reduced the size of its forces in Afghanistan to the mid-8,000s as part of the agreement reached with Taliban in February.

Presidential Campaign

  • Roger Stone, who was convicted of charges stemming from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, said that he plans to start campaigning for President Trump’s reelection now that his prison sentence has been commuted, saying that he is prepared to “do anything necessary to elect my candidate, short of breaking the law.”
  • Biden told reporters that, although he supported the filibuster in the past and still harbors hopes for bipartisan compromise, the level of defiance from Senate Republicans could influence his thought process.
  • Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA) said that polls showing President Trump trailing in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania do not accurately reflect the state of the race on the ground.

Speaking with reporters on a conference call, Kelly said the polls are not taking into account Trump’s support from those who turned out to vote for the first time ever in 2016.

  • Joe Biden released a plan Tuesday aimed at combating climate change and spurring economic growth in part by overhauling America’s energy industry, with a proposal to achieve entirely carbon pollution-free power by 2035.

Biden’s plan differs with the Progressive Green New Deal’s target of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across the economy by 2030.

In the plan, Biden pledges to spend $2 trillion over four years to promote his energy proposals, a significant acceleration of the $1.7 trillion over 10 years he proposed spending in his climate plan during the primary.

Senior campaign officials who requested anonymity to discuss strategy said it would require a mix of tax increases on corporations and the wealthy and deficit spending aimed at stimulating the economy.

  • President Trump said he “could go on for days” as he railed against Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, the “radical left”, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and others in a Rose Garden event that, to many, sounded like a campaign rally.

During the nearly hour long presser in 90-degree heat, Trump claimed Biden “never did anything, except make very bad decisions, especially on foreign policy” and declared he was not the underdog and has widespread support in the fall race.

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 – Protests/Race Relations and Trump Administration News

Read Time: 3 Minutes

Protests/Race Relations

  • Open Society Foundation, the philanthropic organization founded by billionaire George Soros, is investing $220 million in efforts to promote racial equality, including grants to Black-led organizations working to expand voting rights and advocate for police reform.
  • Residents in Norman, Oklahoma launched a petition this week to recall the city’s mayor and several members of its city council as they express outrage over its decision to vote to cut the police budget by over $800,000 in the wake of nationwide protests, accusing the city council of having “succumbed to an angry mob.”
  • In 1828, North Carolina Supreme Court Judge Thomas Ruffin wrote that a slave owner must have “uncontrolled authority over the body” of a slave to “render the submission … perfect.” Today Thomas Ruffin’s statue was removed from the NC Court of Appeals.
  • A man was recorded on video throwing red paint onto the Black Lives Matter mural that was recently painted on the street in front of Trump Tower, and which President Trump has sharply criticized as a “symbol of hate.”

Mayor Bill de Blasio later clapped back, tweeting: “To whoever vandalized our mural on 5th Avenue: nice try. [NYC Department of Transportation] has already fixed it. The #BlackLivesMatter movement is more than words, and it can’t be undone.”

Administration News

  • The Trump administration is moving forward with the end of a long-standing ban on the sale of gun silencers, also known as suppressors, to foreign buyers, handing a victory to firearm manufacturers after President Trump’s former deputy assistant and White House lawyer launched a campaign as a lobbyist for a gun silencer trade group.
  • President Donald Trump’s executive clemency to his longtime friend and adviser Roger Stone not only commuted the veteran Republican operative’s prison term but it also spared him a fine and two years of supervised release.

“I commute the entirety of the prison sentence imposed upon the said Roger Stone, Jr. to expire immediately,” according to Trump’s order.

“I also commute the entirety of the two-year term of supervised release with all its conditions, and finally, I remit any unpaid balance of the $20,000 fine imposed.”

  • A federal judge in Washington, D.C., again blocked the Trump administration from resuming executions just hours before the first federal death sentence since 2003 was scheduled to be carried out.
  • A private company that President Trump criticized over its efforts to construct a wall near the U.S.-Mexico border received $1.7 billion in federal contracts from the administration after lobbying the president personally on cable news, according to a new report.
  • More than 350 facilities nationwide have taken advantage of a temporary Environmental Protection Agency rule that lets companies forgo monitoring their water pollution during the coronavirus pandemic. The move is causing great concern among environmentalists: “Where facilities don’t monitor their own discharges and emissions, that can present significant environmental problems depending on what wasn’t reported that got into the environment.”
  • President Trump says the federal government may “take over cities” to combat rising crime: “Numbers are going to be coming down even if we have to go and take over cities.”
  • The United States budget deficit grew to a record $864 billion in June as the federal government continued pumping money into the economy to prop up workers and businesses affected by the coronavirus pandemic
  • The Chinese government announced that it would impose sanctions on three American lawmakers and a diplomat in retaliation for similar moves last week by the Trump administration against four officials in China.

The sanctions targeted Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Representative Chris Smith of New Jersey, all of whom are Republicans. Also named was Trump’s ambassador at large for international religious freedom, Sam Brownback.

The Trump administration banned four Chinese officials and a Chinese government agency last Thursday from accessing American banks and other financial institutions. It also restricted them from obtaining visas to the United States.

The sanctions are mostly symbolic on both sides, as neither the Chinese officials nor the Americans are known to have assets in each other’s financial systems.

  • A federal appeals court has ruled that the Trump administration cannot withhold federal grants from California sanctuary cities, affirming previous rulings in the state.

Sources:  ABC News, 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