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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.
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
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