Tag: nascar

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

Read Time: 4 Minutes

Protests/Race Relations

  • A statue of Frederick Douglass, installed in 2018 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the abolitionist’s birth, was ripped from its pedestal in Rochester, N.Y., on Sunday.

The statue was found about 50 feet away from its base in Maplewood Park, just beyond a fence near the Genesee River gorge. It “had been placed over the fence to the gorge and was leaning against the fence,” Rochester police said.

  • NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace on Monday called for Americans to meet hate with love after President Trump attacked the top racing league’s only African American driver and falsely accused him of carrying out a “hoax” involving a noose found in his garage stall.
  • Trump criticized possible moves by the Washington Redskins and Cleveland Indians to change their team names as “politically correct,” writing in a Tweet: “They name teams out of STRENGTH, not weakness, but now the Washington Redskins & Cleveland Indians, two fabled sports franchises, look like they are going to be changing their names in order to be politically correct. Indians, like Elizabeth Warren, must be very angry right now!”
  • Authorities in Indiana are investigating after a Black man said he was attacked by a group of white people as he mistakenly walked through private property to get to a public lake shore on Saturday.

Videos of the incident show multiple white men holding Vauhxx Rush Booker’s body against a tree as a few white women stand next to them, telling the men to let him go.

In another video, a shirtless man is seen apparently yelling at a bystander, calling her a “nappy-headed bitch.” A third video shows the same man yelling at bystanders “you invaded us.”

“We were having a great time and you invaded us,” he says. “You stupid fucking liberal fucks.”

  • Police have identified a suspect, a Black man, 27-year-old Cedric Charles Moore Jr. and charged him with second-degree felony assault and first-degree child endangerment, after a 12-year-old White boy was attacked while he was dancing in downtown Cape Girardeau, Missouri.

The incident happened around 11:40 p.m. Friday. The boy was performing with his dance instructor and a fellow student on a sidewalk on Main Street. A man got out of a nearby vehicle, sneaked up behind the boy, hit him hard on the back of the head and fled back to his vehicle. The boy fell to the pavement, and he had to be taken to a local hospital. The incident was recorded in a Facebook Live video.

  • Disney is partnering with former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick to deliver “scripted and unscripted stories” exploring race and social justice, including a documentary series chronicling Kaepernick’s life. The deal will extend across Disney platforms, including ESPN, Hulu, Pixar and The Undefeated, a site dedicated to exploring the intersection of race, culture and sports.
  • Amy Cooper, a White woman who was caught on video calling the police on a Black man who was birdwatching in New York’s Central Park, is now facing charges of falsely reporting an incident in the third degree
  • Restaurant chain Jimmy John’s says it has fired workers who were seen in a viral clip laughing and playing with what appeared to be a noose shaped from dough at one its stores in Georgia over the weekend with a filter reading “Happy 4th of July.”
  • Philadelphia Eagle DeSean Jackson shared anti-semitic quotes attributed to Adolf Hitler on his Instagram story over the July 4th holiday, and continued to use the quotes as a conversation piece during several posts on the social media network on Monday afternoon.
  • The Pentagon is working on a policy that would ban the display of Confederate flags at military bases, according to multiple reports on Monday.

The draft policy, if put into effect, would ban the flag’s display in Department of Defense  workplaces or public areas by service members and civilian personnel.

  • Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has declared a state of emergency and called up the National Guard after what he said were “weeks of dramatically increased violent crime and property destruction in the City of Atlanta.”
  • Kanawha County, WV school board members have unanimously voted in favor of changing the name of Stonewall Jackson Middle School in Charleston.

Administration News

  • President Trump is expected to refile paperwork this week to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that offers protections for thousands of young immigrants after the Supreme Court ruled last month that the administration failed to give an adequate justification for terminating the program as required by federal law.
  • EU lawmakers overwhelmingly backed a proposal on Monday to allow the European Union to retaliate more quickly in trade disputes, with a clear eye on the tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump.
  • The January U.S. drone strike in Iraq that killed top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and nine other people represented a violation of international law, a U.N. human rights investigator said on Monday.
  • Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada confirmed he won’t attend a meeting in Washington this week with President Donald Trump and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico.
  • Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said late on Monday that the United States is “certainly looking at” banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok.

“I don’t want to get out in front of the president, but it’s something we’re looking at,” Pompeo said.

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 News

Read Time: 2 Minutes

  • Breonna Taylor Taylor, a 26-year-old Black EMT, died in March after she was fatally shot by plainclothes police who arrived at her home in Louisville late at night to execute a no-knock warrant as part of a drug case but no drugs were found.

FBI investigators say the months-old case is a “top priority” for them and their “best agents” are working on it.

  • Police are looking to identify a white man and white woman who vandalized a city-approved Black Lives Matter mural in Martinez, California, on the Fourth of July.

The woman was caught on video by onlookers as she painted over the words “Black Lives Matter” on the street in front of the Contra Costa County courthouse while the man appeared to film her on his phone. Authorities are asking the public to identify the couple so they may be “held accountable for their actions,” Martinez Police Chief Manjit Sappal said in a Sunday press release.

“The community spent a considerable amount of time putting the mural together only to have it painted over in a hateful and senseless manner,” the release said. “The City of Martinez values tolerance and the damage to the mural was divisive and hurtful.”

  • Police in Lincoln City, Oregon, said this weekend that they arrested 7 men on various charges after a group of white people they were a part of allegedly harassed a Black family on Independence Day by using racial slurs and Nazi salutes.

At one point, the agency said officers at the scene had to form “a line between the group of white persons and the black family allowing the black family to safely leave the beach and return to their room.”

  • A predominantly Black group of heavily armed protesters marched through Stone Mountain Park near Atlanta on Saturday, calling for removal of the giant Confederate rock carving at the site that civil rights activists consider a monument to racism.
  • Several hundred people gathered in Sydney on Sunday as part of weekend-long protests in Australia’s large cities in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and increased focus of the mistreatment of indigenous peoples.
  • In an apparent appeal to race-based voters, Monday morning the president Tweeted in defense of the confederate flag and accused NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace of propagating a hoax: “Has @BubbaWallace apologized to all of those great NASCAR drivers & officials who came to his aid, stood by his side, & were willing to sacrifice everything for him, only to find out that the whole thing was just another HOAX? That & Flag decision has caused lowest ratings EVER!”

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 News

Read Time: 4 Minutes

Protest/Race Relations News

  • “I have not heard a true, official apology to Colin Kaepernick on what he was going through and what he was trying to tell the NFL and tell the world about why he was kneeling when he was doing that as a San Francisco 49er,” LeBron James said. “I just see that to still be wrong. Now they are listening some, but I still think we have not heard that official apology to a man who basically sacrificed everything for the better of this world.”
  • Rep. Matt Gaetz plans to introduce legislation that would force U.S. Soccer players to stand for the national anthem. The proposal is, on its face, unconstitutional.
  • Sioux Rapids Police Chief Tim Porter may face disciplinary action over a social media post he made earlier this week.

In response to an image of a pickup attempting to drive through a crowd of protesters, Porter commented, “HIT THE GAS AND HANG ON OVER THE SPEED BUMPS.”

According to KCCI TV in Des Moines, issued the following statement Tuesday: “I have a huge apology to all that saw my Facebook page yesterday of myself making a comment about running over a person in the street holding a USA sign.”

Porter’s apology says he was working on another post when he “accidentally posted on the wrong post.”

  • The owner of a North Carolina racetrack advertised so-called “Bubba Rope” for sale this week, alluding to a noose that was found earlier this month in the garage used by NASCAR driver Darrell “Bubba” Wallace Jr. at a different track in Alabama.

According to a report by ESPN, 311 Speedway owner Mike Fulp posted on Facebook Marketplace on Wednesday that he was selling “Bubba Rope” for just under $10 each.

“Buy your Bubba Rope today for only $9.99 each, they come with a lifetime warranty and work great,”

  • Newark, New Jersey removed a statue of Christopher Columbus from Washington Park.

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka announced the removal in a press release and said it was taken down with city work crews to avoid the potential danger of people toppling it over. The statue will be kept in storage until the city decides what to do with it.

  • Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed into law the state’s first hate-crime law, which will give sentencing guidelines for anyone convicted of targeting a victim based on race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender, mental disability or physical disability.

Georgia was previously one of four states in the country without a law explicitly against hate crimes.

  • Thomas Blanton, the last surviving Ku Klux Klan member convicted in the 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Baptist Church in Birmingham that killed four little girls, has died in prison.
  • Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said Friday the Church of England and other religious institutions worldwide should “of course” reconsider portrayals of Jesus that depict him as a white man.

“You see Jesus portrayed in as many ways as there are cultures, languages and understandings,” Welby said. “You don’t see a white Jesus—you see a Black Jesus or a Chinese Jesus or a Middle Eastern Jesus, which is the most accurate.”

  • President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Friday to protect federal monuments after a rash of recent incidents involving the vandalism of statues memorializing the Confederacy and some of the nation’s Founding Fathers.

“I just had the privilege of signing a very strong Executive Order protecting American Monuments, Memorials, and Statues – and combatting recent Criminal Violence. Long prison terms for these lawless acts against our Great Country!” Trump said in a tweet.

  • Showrunners of “The Simpsons” announced that the series would no longer use white actors to voice nonwhite characters, according to the Wall Street Journal.
  • Aurora, Colorado officials announced Friday that the three police officers involved in the death of 23-year-old Elijah McClain last year have been reassigned and are off the streets for their own protection as McClain’s case gains national attention.

McClain was stopped by police while walking home from a convenience store. Police had been called over “suspicious” activity as McClain was walking with a face covering on, something family said he did to aid in his social anxiety and keep him warm as he suffered from anemia.

McClain’s last words include him saying: “I’m an introvert. I’m just different. That’s all. I’m so sorry. I have no gun. I don’t do that stuff. I don’t do any fighting. Why are you attacking me? I don’t even kill flies! I don’t eat meat! But I don’t judge people, I don’t judge people who do eat meat. Forgive me … I’m so sorry.”

He was held in a chokehold before vomiting. Police then injected him with ketamine to sedate him, leading to a heart attack. He was pronounced dead three days later

  • The Minneapolis City Council unanimously approved a proposal that would amend the city’s charter to allow the city police department to be dismantled.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D) has previously said he doesn’t support dismantling the police. He’s been criticized for that stance by people with the Black Lives Matter movement.

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

The Past 24 Hours or So

Read Time: 6 Minutes

Protest/Race Relations News

  • North Carolina’s governor called for the removal of Confederate monuments from State Capitol grounds on Saturday, citing public safety after anti-racism protesters in Raleigh pulled two statues down with ropes Friday night.
  • ▪NASCAR launched an investigation after noose was found in Black driver Bubba Wallace’s garage stall. at the race in Alabama. It comes less than two weeks after Wallace successfully campaigned to ban the displaying of the Confederate flag at NASCAR events. Wallace, who is the circuit’s only full-time Black driver, released a statement of his own, saying “This will not break me, I will not give in nor will I back down.”
  • South Africa’s last apartheid president, F.W. de Klerk, has withdrawn from a U.S. seminar about minority rights because he did not want to embarrass himself or his hosts in the current charged racial climate.

De Klerk was scheduled to speak at an American Bar Association virtual event on issues such as minority rights, racism and the rule of law.

  • Eight minority corrections officers in Minnesota have filed discrimination charges with the state’s Department of Human Rights after they were barred from guarding Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis cop charged in George Floyd’s death.

As Chauvin was brought to the lockup, all officers of color were ordered to another floor, according to the Star Tribune, which obtained a copy of the racial discrimination charges.

A supervisor told one of the minority officers that, because of their race, they would be a possible “liability” around Chauvin. 

“I understood that the decision to segregate us had been made because we could not be trusted to carry out our work responsibilities professionally around the high-profile inmate — solely because of the color of our skin,” wrote one acting sergeant, who is black, the Star Tribune reported.

“I am not aware of a similar situation where white officers were segregated from an inmate,” the officer added.

  • At least one person is dead and another is in critical condition after a reported shooting early Saturday morning in Seattle’s Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ). 

The Seattle Police Department, which was driven out of the CHAZ by Black Lives Matter protesters last week, tweeted that it was investigating a shooting in the area.

  • The New York Police Department said on Sunday that it was investigating the use of force during an arrest of a black man in Queens, after cellphone video of the encounter that was posted online showed an officer appearing to use a chokehold on the man until he became limp.
  • Three Thousand Oaks, CA men — including two who worked as civilian employees for local law enforcement agencies — were recently arrested on suspicion of vandalizing a Black Lives Matter sign in Westlake Village, authorities said.

The sign, described as a tarp with the letters BLM painted on it, has been displayed on a fence on Westlake Boulevard for the past three weeks, officials said, and has been damaged or removed on several occasions.

The sign’s owner installed a surveillance camera which documented the damage, officials said. When video of one of the crimes was posted on social media, detectives with the sheriff’s office recognized the employee.

Coronavirus/COVID-19

  • In a CNN interview, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said the coronavirus was a “product of the Chinese Communist party” and suggested without evidence that the potentially fatal virus may have been purposefully created by the Chinese government.
  • Navarro also defended the president’s statement that he directed officials to “slow the [coronavirus] testing down.” “Come on now, Jake. You know it was tongue in cheek. Come on now. That was tongue in cheek,” cutting off Tapper as he repeatedly asked about the president’s remarks.

“I don’t know that it was tongue in cheek at all,” Tapper retorted.

  • Navarro said that the White House was working to prepare for the possibility of a second wave of the coronavirus in the fall, though he said it wouldn’t necessarily come.

“We are filling the stockpile in anticipation of a possible problem in the fall,” “We’re doing everything we can.”

  • Nationwide, cases have risen 15 percent over the last two weeks. Cases are rising in 18 states across the South, West and Midwest. Seven states hit single-day case records Saturday, and five others hit a record earlier in the week.
  • Spain opened its borders to most European countries and ended a state of emergency imposed to contain the coronavirus.
  • Chinese researchers have started phase 2 tests on humans of a possible vaccine against the new coronavirus.
  • Authorities in Germany’s Goettingen and North Rhine Westphalia regions have called on police to enforce quarantine measures following a rise in local coronavirus infections, which caused the country’s virus reproduction rate to spike.
  • The Trump administration is doing “a great job” reopening the country after lockdowns to contain the novel coronavirus outbreak, Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said on Sunday, as infections continued to spike in several states.
  • Beijing is capable of screening almost 1 million people a day for the coronavirus, an official said on Sunday, as testing continued across the city to try to contain the spread of a fresh outbreak.
  • The drastic reduction in pollution during coronavirus lockdowns around the world should lead to greater concern for the environment as restrictions are lifted, Pope Francis said.
  • India’s drug regulator has given Hetero Labs the green light to manufacture and market its generic version of Gilead Science’s experimental COVID-19 treatment remdesivir.
  • Britain will outline its plans to ease the coronavirus lockdown this week, health minister Matt Hancock said on Sunday, potentially relaxing the two-metre rule on social distancing, allowing many businesses to reopen in early July.

Administration News

  • The Tulsa Fire Department said just under 6,200 people attended President Trump’s campaign rally at the BOK Center in Oklahoma, a figure far short of the arena’s full capacity of 19,000 and well below the campaign’s expectations.
  • Trump was “furious about the unused outdoor stage and the comparatively thin crowd in the stadium,” according to two people familiar with his reaction. News broadcasts carried video of the partially empty stadium.
  • The family of Tom Petty sent a cease and desist notice to the Trump campaign after it played one of the rock legend’s songs, “I Won’t Back Down,” at a rally in Tulsa,OK: “Both the late Tom Petty and his family firmly stand against racism and discrimination of any kind. Tom Petty would never want a song of his used for a campaign of hate. He liked to bring people together.”
  • At least 135 former U.S. attorneys and assistant U.S. attorneys signed an open letter condemning the firing of former Southern District of New York U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman, saying that they “deplore” President Trump and Attorney General William Barr’s actions: “The actions of the President and the Attorney General are an attack on the concept that investigations should be conducted in a nonpartisan manner.”
  • President Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton said in an interview published Sunday that he intends to vote against Trump in November.

“In 2016 I voted for Trump over Hillary Clinton. Now, having seen this president up close, I cannot do this again. My concern is for the country, and he does not represent the Republican cause that I want to back.”

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

The Past 24 Hours or So

Read Time: 7 Minutes

Protest News

  • Despite repeated Trump administration assertions that the antifa movement has hijacked the ongoing protests around the country, a new federal intelligence bulletin points to white supremacists and other would-be domestic terrorists as the main problem lurking behind potentially lethal violence.

“Based upon current information, we assess the greatest threat of lethal violence continues to emanate from lone offenders with racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist ideologies and [domestic violent extremists] with personalized ideologies,” according to the bulletin, which was obtained by ABC News.

It says would-be domestic terrorists “including militia extremists and [groups] who advocate a belief in the superiority of the white race have sought to bring about a second civil war, often referred to as a ‘Boogaloo’ by intentionally instigating violence at First Amendment-protected activities. Racially charged events, coupled with the accompanying widespread media attention, and the rapid dissemination of violent online rhetoric by [extremists], are likely to remain contributing factors to potentially ideologically motivated violence.”

  • Andre Lamar, a Gannett staff reporter-photographer was arrested Tuesday night in Delaware while covering a protest over the police killing of George Floyd near the state’s capital, Dover.

Lamar asked officers why the protesters were being detained. Lamar was tackled by police despite his repeated explanation that he was a member of the press. He was still taken into custody, with the officers confiscating his press badge and camera bag.

Delaware State Police confirmed the arrest in a statement, but said that “[a]s a result of the investigation, the media reporter was released with no charges filed.”

  • White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Wednesday that President Trump could take action on police reform through an executive order.
  • More than a thousand Department of Justice alumni are calling on the department’s internal watchdog to investigate Attorney General William Barr’s role in the aggressive dispersal last week of protesters gathered near the White House so that President Trump could walk down the street for a photo op, saying if he “deprived Americans of their constitutional rights or that physically injured Americans lawfully exercising their rights, that would be misconduct of the utmost seriousness.”
  • National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow told reporters on Tuesday that he didn’t believe systemic racism existed in the US, adding that “law and order is good for growth.”
  • Philonise Floyd, brother of George Floyd, testified before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. Floyd made an impassioned plea to Congress to enact sweeping changes to law enforcement in America to address police brutality and systemic racism.
  • NASCAR said that it would ban the Confederate flag from its events and properties.
  • US Soccer’s board of directors voted to end the league’s ban on kneeling during the national anthem.
  • Prosecutors in Hennepin County, MN, said they were negotiating a plea deal with Derek Chauvin, a former officer charged in the death of George Floyd, before the deal fell through, ABC News reported.

The arrangement under discussion would have reportedly allowed Chauvin to plead guilty to local murder charges and federal civil rights violation charges, the prosecutor’s office told ABC.

Administration News

  • Slightly more than one-quarter of all Americans questioned in a new Politico-Morning Consult Poll said they see President Trump as a man of faith.

The poll found that 27 percent of respondents somewhat or strongly agree that Trump is religious, compared to 55 percent who somewhat or strongly disagree. Forty percent of evangelicals also agreed that Trump was a man of faith,

  • Louis DeJoy, a top donor to President Trump and the Republican National Committee will be named the new head of the Postal Service, putting a top ally of the president in charge of an agency where Trump has long pressed for major changes in how it handles its business.

The Postal Service’s board of governors confirmed late Wednesday that DeJoy, a North Carolina businessman who is currently in charge of fundraising for the Republican National Convention in Charlotte, will serve as the new postmaster general.

  • White House tells Bolton lawyer that the book still has classified information. But the book has already shipped to warehouses, per publisher.
  • A former federal judge on Wednesday blasted the U.S. Justice Department for what he called “a gross abuse of prosecutorial power” in seeking to drop its criminal case against Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump’s first national security advisor.

“The Government has engaged in highly irregular conduct to benefit a political ally of the President,” the ex-judge, John Gleeson, wrote in a scathing legal filing opposing the proposed dismissal.

Gleeson, who was assigned by the judge in Flynn’s case to advise him on several questions, also wrote that the retired Army lieutenant general “has indeed committed perjury” in his statements to the case judge during proceedings in the case, “for which he deserves punishment.”

  • President Donald Trump is expected to arrive at his Bedminster golf club Thursday evening for a busy weekend that includes a political fundraiser at the Lamington Road property and an address to the graduating class at West Point.

Trump had been scheduled to visit his Bedminster club last weekend, but the trip was canceled because of the ongoing protests following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on Memorial Day.

  • President Trump says he will “not even consider” renaming Army bases that were named after Confederate military leaders even as reports emerge that his top military leaders are open to the idea.

“These Monumental and very Powerful Bases have become part of a Great American Heritage, and a history of Winning, Victory, and Freedom,” Trump tweeted.

  • President Trump’s campaign is demanding CNN retract and apologize for a recent poll that showed him well behind presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

The demand, coming in the form of a cease and desist letter to CNN President Jeff Zucker that contained numerous incorrect and misleading claims, was immediately rejected by the network. “We stand by our poll,” said Matt Dornic, a CNN spokesman.

  • President Trump said his first rally since March 2nd will be in Tulsa, Oklahoma next Friday.
  • A federal court in New York City determined that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent may no longer arrest immigrants at U.S. courthouses. U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff declared the policy “illegal” in a huge blow to the Trump administration.
  • The Federal Reserve on Wednesday kept interest rates close to zero amid the economic damage of the coronavirus pandemic, and officials expect them to remain there until at least 2022.
  • The deficit in the first eight months of the 2020 fiscal year hit a record $1.9 trillion, surpassing the largest annual deficit on record, $1.4 trillion in 2009.

Treasury Department data released Wednesday found that the deficit for May hit $399 billion, the second highest monthly level after April’s record-shattering $738 billion figure.

Coronavirus/COVID-19

  • Dr. Anthony Fauci reacted to news that the DC National Guard says some of its troops contracted coronavirus while responding to protests, calling the development “disturbing,” but “not surprising,” given the lack of social distancing amid protests last week.
  • Starbucks expects the coronavirus pandemic to reduce sales this quarter by as much as $3.2 billion, dragging down the coffee chain’s performance as it sees a recovery stretching into next year. 

Starbucks will close up to 400 company-owned locations over the next 18 months while also speeding up the expansion of “convenience-led formats” such as curbside pickup, Drive-Thru and mobile-only pickup locations.

  • Though AstraZeneca has said it is laying plans to be able to ship 2 billion doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, once it is created and approved, “The challenge is not so much to make the vaccine itself, it’s to fill vials,” said Pascal Soriot, CEO of AstraZeneca, on a conference call hosted by an industry trade group last week. “There’s not enough vials in the world.”
  • The US has now seen 2,000,000 coronavirus cases.

As of June 10 at 4:40 p.m. ET, there have been 2,002,229 COVID-19 cases and 113,344 reported deaths in the US.

  • A month into its reopening, Florida reported the most new cases of any 7-day period.
  • In Texas, hospitalizations jumped to the highest yet and the third consecutive daily increase.
  • California’s hospitalizations have risen in nine of the past 10 days.
  • The Trump administration opposes a Democratic proposal to extend a $600 per week federal unemployment benefit approved in response to the coronavirus pandemic, Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia said Tuesday.
  • After Arizona lifted its stay at home restrictions in the middle of May, coronavirus cases have spiked 115 percent. On Saturday, Arizona’s health director told hospitals to activate coronavirus emergency plans
  • During a hearing on whether to declare racism a public health crisis, state Sen. Steve Huffman (R-Tipp City, OH)  asked if “the colored population” is hit harder by the coronavirus because perhaps they don’t wash their hands as well as other groups.

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