protest – The Past 24 Hours Or So

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

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Coronavirus/COVID-19 Update

The U.S. reported 48,694 new cases and 515 additional deaths.

In a racially charged early morning tweet, President Trump accused the press of failing to report coronavirus outbreaks in other nations as cases surge in the U.S.

“Big China Virus breakouts all over the World, including nations which were thought to have done a great job. The Fake News doesn’t report this. USA will be stronger than ever before, and soon!” Trump tweeted.

NOTE: Trump has repeatedly claimed the high numbers in the U.S. are the result of more testing, but the positivity rate has remained high as well, averaging 8 percent over the past seven days.

When asked about why the U.S. has not been able to stop the coronavirus spread, the White House coronavirus task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx said, “Across America right now, people are on the move,” she said. “And so all of our discussions about social distancing and decreasing gatherings to under 10 — as I traveled around the country, I saw all of America moving.”

Birx added that the U.S. is in a “new phase” of the pandemic and called on all Americans to wear masks and to practice social distancing and proper personal hygiene.

“What we’re seeing today is different from March and April,” she said. “It is extraordinarily widespread. It’s into the rural as equal urban areas. And to everybody who lives in a rural area, you are not immune or protected from this virus.”

White House coronavirus testing czar Adm. Brett Giroir said the anti-malaria drug touted by President Trump is not beneficial as a coronavirus treatment. “At this point in time, there’s been five randomized-controlled, placebo-controlled trials that do not show any benefit to hydroxychloroquine, so at this point in time, we don’t recommend that as a treatment,” he said. “Right now, hydroxychloroquine, I can’t recommend that,” he added.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin rejected the prospect of extending $600 unemployment benefits throughout the the coronavirus pandemic, suggesting that the payments led to some out-of-work Americans being “overpaid.”

Doug Pederson, the head coach of the National Football League’s Philadelphia Eagles, has tested positive for Covid-19.

New York Mets outfielder Yoenis Céspedes decided to opt out of the season “for Covid-related” reasons.

Tennis star Nick Kyrgios announced that he will not play at the upcoming US Open due to the coronavirus pandemic.

36 crew members on Norwegian Arctic cruise ship MS Roald Amundsen have tested positive. As a result, 387 passengers from two July expeditions on the cruise ship have been asked to self-quarantine.

New Jersey reported 331 new cases and six additional deaths.

Florida reported 7,047 new cases and 62 additional deaths.

Fifteen state-supported Covid-19 testing sites will reopen Monday after closing because of Tropical Storm Isaias.

Miami-Dade students will continue virtual learning until at least October.

At least 46 Ohio bars and restaurants have been cited for violations related to Covid-19 since May.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) announced 463 new cases and two new deaths. Of the new cases, 11 were in children age 5 or younger.

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) told CNN the state will not shut down bars and restaurants despite the recent spike in cases because “so far we have not seen any correlation between an increase in cases and lifting of restrictions.”

Protests/Racial and Social Justice

Colorado is declaring racism a public health crisis after employees inside the state’s Department of Public Health and Environment put pressure on its top health official to address the issue.

Protesters gathered in Albuquerque, New Mexico to demonstrate against the Trump administration for deploying federal law enforcement to the city like those that were used in Portland, Oregon.

U.S. women’s soccer star Megan Rapinoe will host a conversation on the cultural, social and political climate in the United States in an HBO special featuring Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, “1619” founder Nikole Hannah-Jones, and comedian Hasan Minhaj.

Three members of Allentown’s city council say they support a resolution to censure two other council members over their participation in Black Lives Matter protests.

The resolution demanding a censure and no-confidence vote against council members Ce-Ce Gerlach and Joshua Siegel stems from alleged conflicts of interest for participating in the protests in the city, raising questions about their objectivity in matters related to the city’s police department

Trump Administration

Seven Marines and one sailor who went missing following a training accident off the coast of Southern California are presumed dead.

The Pentagon has not regularly assessed risks posed to contractors by climate change, potentially jeopardizing the department’s ability to carry out its mission, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office.

Microsoft said it would continue to pursue acquiring TikTok after speaking with President Trump, who seemed to be backing off a pledge to ban the app.

President Trump has agreed to give China’s ByteDance 45 days to negotiate a sale of popular short-video app TikTok to Microsoft.

Retired Army Brig. Gen. Anthony Tata, the controversial Trump administration pick for a top Pentagon post, has formally withdrawn his nomination to be the Defense Department undersecretary of defense for policy and has been designated “the official Performing the Duties of the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Policy.”

Presidential Campaign

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott will not attend the Republican National Convention in North Carolina, saying in a letter to the RNC chairwoman that his top priority remains combatting the coronavirus pandemic in his home state.

President Trump vowed to challenge a bill approved Sunday by the Nevada legislature that would expand mail-in voting in the state for the November general election. Trump accused Gov. Steve Sisolak (D), who is expected to sign the bill into law, of using the novel coronavirus to “steal” the election and make it “impossible” for Republicans to win in Nevada.

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 – Protest/Racial & Social Justice, Trump Administration, and Presidential Campaign Updates

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Protests/Racial and Social Justice

President Trump insisted that federal agents would not leave Portland until Democratic Oregon Gov. Kate Brown “clear[s] out” protesters from the city, a day after Brown announced that she had reached an agreement with Trump’s administration to begin a phased withdrawal of federal tactical teams.

A middle school teacher in Kentucky has resigned instead of facing disciplinary proceedings, after making racist online comments. Responding to a video of protestors apparently in a road or parking lot, she suggested that, if run over, the victims would “blend in with the pavement.”

Amid the ongoing clashes between protesters and federal officers in downtown Portland, the Department of Homeland Security created intelligence reports about two U.S. journalists it claims reported on leaked, damning information about law enforcement operations.

Michael Jordan and his Jordan Brand are set to donate $2.5 million to organizations combating voter suppression of Black Americans across the country.

Players with the New Orleans Pelicans and the Utah Jazz restarted the NBA’s season by kneeling during the National Anthem.

Moments before tipoff on Thursday evening, the players, who were joined by coaches and game officials, all took a knee.

The players also wore black “Black Lives Matter” shirts both during warm-ups and the National Anthem.

Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke has been permanently banned from Twitter for repeatedly breaking the social media site’s rules blocking hate speech.

Trump Administration

President Trump expressed his sadness over the death of Herman Cain, who passed away from Covid-19 after spending nearly a month in the hospital with the virus. “He was a very special person, and I got to know him very well.”

Amazon has received authorization from the FCC to proceed with Project Kuiper, its initiative to launch a fleet of low-orbiting satellites that would be used to provide broadband internet access to underserved communities in the U.S.

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and other top officials reportedly worked to preserve memos by former FBI Director James Comey and other key documents in the Russia investigation amid fears that President Trump would interfere in the probe.

Federal prosecutors lifted a gag order on Michael Cohen, allowing President Trump’s former attorney to continue writing a tell-all memoir as he serves out his three-year prison sentence at home during the coronavirus pandemic.

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) has proposed a new bill aiming to prevent oil and gas drilling near polar bear dens, targeting the Trump administration’s plans to open up a wildlife refuge in Alaska for drilling.

A federal appeals court will revisit an earlier decision ordering a district court judge to allow the Department of Justice to withdraw its criminal charges against former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Presidential Campaign

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) reportedly declined to answer at a closed-door committee hearing whether he has received materials from Ukrainian sources meant to damage former Vice President Joe Biden’s reputation ahead of the 2020 election.

The Trump campaign has paused its digital advertising efforts to “review” its strategy, a campaign official told NBC News. The campaign official pointed to the recent changes in staff as the reason.

47 percent of Democratic or left-leaning Generation Z voters said in a new poll that they have seen far more ads from President Trump’s reelection campaign online than ads from former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign.

The Past 24 Hours or So – Protests, Trump Administration, and Presidential Campaign Updates

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Protests/Racial and Social Justice

Portland Commissioner Chloe Eudaly who oversees the transportation bureau said the city is fining the federal government $500 every 15 minutes – the maximum charge allowed — until it removes an unpermitted fence blocking a bike lane on Southwest Third Avenue.

On the sixty-second consecutive night, protests continued in downtown Portland with hundreds of demonstrators converging on the area of the Multnomah County Justice Center and federal courthouse.

Around 9:30 p.m., the Wall of Moms, a group of moms that received national attention for positioning themselves between demonstrators and police during recent protests, joined demonstrators already gathered in downtown Portland.

Seattle mayor Jenny Durkan (D) said U.S. agents deployed to the city to protect federal property have left after local officials complained their presence was escalating tensions.

Seven people were arrested in connection to a Black Lives Matter protest in Tempe on Monday night, according to officials.

Police say a man captured on surveillance video breaking windows at a south Minneapolis auto parts store in the days after George Floyd’s death is suspected of ties with a white supremacist group and sought to incite racial tension.

Police identified the 32-year-old suspect through an emailed tip last week and, though police will not release his name, he is understood to be a Hell’s Angels member who was bent on stirring up social unrest.

A GOP state lawmaker in Alabama is facing criticism and calls for his resignation after he posted on social media about honoring Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate army general and founder of the Ku Klux Klan.

“Had a great time at Fort Dixie speaking and giving the invocation for Nathan Bedford Forrest annual birthday celebration,” Rep. Will Dismukes wrote in a since-deleted post.

The American Civil Liberties Union petitioned a federal court to hold federal agents in contempt for alleged attacks on journalists and legal observers at protests in Portland.

A Black family in Florida received a racist note last week over decorations outside their home celebrating their twin daughters’ graduation from high school.

Trump Administration

The Trump administration says it will renew deportation protections for DACA recipients for one year instead of the usual two years while it reviews the Supreme Court ruling that stopped Trump from ending DACA. But, any new applications for DACA will be rejected.

Attorney General William Barr faced criticism from Democrats as he appeared before the House Judiciary Committee.

For a thorough recap of the proceedings, visit The Hill https://bit.ly/thehillbarr

The head of the Park Police said he knew that President Trump was going to Lafayette Square on June 1, but denied that was why protesters were cleared from the area before the president’s visit, which ended with him posing with a Bible outside St. John’s Church.

California sued the Trump administration to require it to count undocumented immigrants in the census for the purpose of allocating congressional representation.

Presidential Campaign

Rock legend Neil Young said he is now exploring the possibility of suing President Trump for using his music after previously saying he believed he had no legal recourse against it.

A nonpartisan watchdog filed a complaint with the Federal Election Committee alleging President Trump’s reelection campaign broke the law by “laundering” $170 million in spending in an effort to conceal payments to people close to the Trump family and campaign.

Joe Biden Tweeted: “My housing plan will give a $15,000 tax credit to first-time home-buyers, expand affordable housing, and reverse President Trump’s efforts to gut fair housing enforcement. We’re going to remove the barriers to homeownership that hold back too many Americans of color.”

Joe Biden told reporters he would name his running mate in the first week of August, days before he formally accepts his party’s nomination at the Democratic National Convention.

Joe Biden was photographed during an event holding talking points about Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), a former rival in the Democratic presidential primary who is in top contention to be his running mate.

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

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Walmart will stop selling “All Lives Matter” merchandise, a phrase typically used to counter Black Lives Matter protests against racial injustice and police brutality.

“We fundamentally believe all lives do matter and every individual deserves respect. However, as we listened, we came to understand that the way some, but not all, people are using the phrase ‘All Lives Matter’ in the current environment intentionally minimized the focus on the painful reality of racial inequity.”

Hulu has removed a 1988 episode of “The Golden Girls” in which actresses Betty White and Rue McClanahan wear black mud on their faces as some were concerned it could be mistaken as black face. But the removal is being met with pushback as many Black activists say it is not anything advocates have pushed for and takes away from actual demands and policy change being requested.

Protesters outside of City Hall reportedly clashed with New York Police Department officers on Tuesday morning ahead of an expected vote on a city budget that includes a $1 billion cut to the NYPD.

Police in riot gear are seen pushing protesters back, in video footage reported by ABC News.

The clash between protesters and police followed the arrest of an 18-year-old from Brooklyn who police said was caught spray-painting a statue outside of City Hall at 2:40 a.m. on Tuesday, ABC reported.

Gov. Tate Reeves on Tuesday signed into law a measure that removes the Mississippi state flag, which features the blue bars and white stars of the Confederate battle flag. The legislation requires it to be removed within 15 days.

Facebook has removed a network of anti-government accounts associated with the fringe “boogaloo” movement after designating the group as a dangerous organization, the company said. The network, which represents a subset of the broader movement, actively planned violence, Facebook said, though it declined to share additional details, saying it did not want to interfere with ongoing law enforcement investigations.

On Tuesday afternoon, the company removed: 220 Facebook accounts.95 Instagram accounts, 28 Facebook pages, 106 Facebook groups,

In addition, Facebook removed more than 400 other groups and 100 other pages that were “hosting similar content as the violent network but were maintained by accounts outside of it.” As of today, the boogaloo network will fall under Facebook’s policy for Dangerous Individuals and Organizations, which bans posts “praising, supporting, or representing it.”

Injured Buffalo protester Martin Gugino has been released from the hospital, nearly four weeks after he was pushed to the ground by two Buffalo police officers.

The Justice Department announced Tuesday that it is reviewing Elijah McClain’s death to determine if a federal civil rights probe is “warranted.”

McClain, a Black man who worked as a massage therapist, died after a confrontation with police. Police placed McClain in a chokehold, and the man then experienced a heart attack in an ambulance before being declared brain dead three days later.

His last words were documented on police body camera footage: “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.”

The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday approved the first step in a plan to replace Los Angeles Police Department officers with community-based, unarmed emergency responders for non-violent calls for service.

A Fort Lauderdale police officer captured on video last month appearing to push over a kneeling protester who had her hands up was charged with battery on Tuesday, authorities said.

The president Tweeted: “I will Veto the Defense Authorization Bill if the Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren (of all people!) Amendment, which will lead to the renaming (plus other bad things!) of Fort Bragg, Fort Robert E. Lee, and many other Military Bases from which we won Two World Wars, is in the Bill!”

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

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Coronavirus/COVID-19

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Protest/Race Relations News

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

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

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

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

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

Administration News

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Presidential Campaign

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Protest/Race Relations News

Following years of criticism about the racist origins of the ride, Splash Mountain at both Disneyland and Walt Disney World Resort will be re-themed to reflect the story of The Princess and the Frog, the company said Thursday. The re-themed ride has been planned since at least last year.

Native American activists have for years protested what they view as the desecration of the Black Hills, a sacred Lakota Sioux site that was sculpted into Mount Rushmore by KKK member Gutzon Borglum, saying “It’s an injustice to actively steal Indigenous people’s land then carve the white faces of the conquerors who committed genocide.”

Now, as President Trump is set to visit next week, more protests are planned.

A New York police officer who allegedly used an illegal chokehold while conducting an arrest earlier this week has been detained and charged with second-degree strangulation. A viral video caught the officer holding a man in a chokehold as onlookers screamed: “Stop choking him! Let him go!”

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis has directed officials in his office to reexamine the death of Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old unarmed Black man who died in police custody last year, after more than 2.6 million people signed a petition demanding justice.

McClain was placed in a chokehold by police and injected with ketamine after someone called 911 to report him as suspicious while he walked home from a convenience store.

Three employees of a Michigan youth center have been charged with involuntary manslaughter and second-degree child abuse in the death of 16-year-old Cornelius Fredericks. The Black teenager went into cardiac arrest and died of asphyxia after he was restrained by staff for allegedly throwing part of his sandwich at another resident.

A newly-released State Department report found that racial and ethnic terrorism — particularly white supremacist threats — are “on the rise and spreading geographically.” The report warned that white terrorist groups are increasingly targeting immigrants, LGBTQ people, as well as Jewish, Muslim and other religious minorities.

The University of Alabama football team released a powerful new video calling for “building a better, more just future” and saying that “All lives can’t matter until Black lives matter.”

“We speak for justice, for fairness, for equality, for greater understanding. We stand together against racism, against brutality, against violence, for a better world.”

NAACP President Derrick Johnson sees some of the Trump administration’s actions on race and citizenship as reminiscent of the US before the Civil War, likening the president’s efforts to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program to the Supreme Court’s infamous Dred Scott decision of 1857 that ruled Black Americans were not citizens.

“He’s operating from a space of creating a divisive tone, allowing for levels of racism to germinate from the White House.”

A new bill proposed by Republican Sen. Joni Ernst would withhold federal funding from local governments that don’t disband autonomous zones created by non-government figures and accused local leaders of not doing an adequate job keeping peace in their areas. The proposal comes as Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan addresses what was initially dubbed the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone and later the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest

New York City appears set to receive a “Black Lives Matter” street mural outside Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan, according to a statement from Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office.

“The president is a disgrace to the values we cherish in New York City. He can’t run or deny the reality we are facing, and any time he wants to set foot in the place he claims is his hometown, he should be reminded Black Lives Matter,” Julia Arredondo, the mayor’s spokeswoman, said Wednesday, the New York Daily News reported.

The statement will be painted along Fifth Avenue between 56th and 57th streets in front of President Trump’s notable Manhattan building sometime before July 4.

The new mural is one of seven that will be added throughout the city’s five boroughs.

President Trump accused a Black Lives Matter leader of promoting treasonous activity and objected to New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plans to install a street mural in support of the movement outside Trump Tower.

“Black Lives Matter leader states, ‘If the U.S. doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it,’” Trump tweeted Thursday. “This is Treason, Sedition, Insurrection!”

The president’s comments appeared to be in response to remarks made by Hawk Newsome, leader of Black Lives Matter Greater New York, in an interview Wednesday on Fox News about the movement’s objectives after the killing of George Floyd in police custody.

“If this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it. I can be speaking figuratively, I can be speaking literally, it’s a matter of interpretation.”

“Told that @NYCMayor Bill de Blasio wants to paint the fabled & beautiful Fifth Avenue, right in front of Trump Tower/Tiffany, with a big yellow Black Lives Matter sign. ‘Pigs in a Blanket, Fry ‘Em Like Bacon’, referring to killing Police, is their chant. NYC Police are furious!” Trump tweeted.

The Madison, Wisconsin police department is investigating a Wednesday assault as a hate crime after four white men allegedly poured lighter fluid and threw a lighter at a teenage bi-racial woman after yelling “the N-word really loud”. The 18-year-old, Althea Bernstein, works as an EMT and was in her car at a red light when the incident took place and said medical professionals “had to pretty much scrub the skin off, which was extremely painful.”

Prosecutors added hate crime charges Thursday against Harry H. Rogers, a self-identified leader in the Ku Klux Klan, accused of driving through peaceful protesters in Richmond.

Henrico Commonwealth’s Attorney Shannon Taylor brought additional charges against Rogers, including four counts of assault with hate crimes, two counts of felonious attempted malicious wounding and one count of felony hit and run.

Video footage and photos shown during the hearing Thursday show Rogers driving onto the median to pass a group of cars behind an estimated 300 protesters headed north on Lakeside Avenue near Vale Street. From there, footage shows Rogers’ driving into at least two bicyclists and one demonstrator on foot.

The U.S. Senate voted 90-7 on Thursday to debate the annual National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, setting the stage for a battle between Democrats and President Donald Trump’s Republicans over changing the names of military bases named after Confederate generals.

President Trump suggested unruly protesters who deface or topple monuments and statues will likely face “retribution,” likening them to “terrorists.”

Trump sat for a town hall with Fox News host Sean Hannity during a trip to Wisconsin. During the question-and- answer session, one attendee asked what the government was doing to “give us back our streets” amid national unrest over racial injustice and police brutality.

“Every night we’re going to get tougher and tougher, and at some point there is going to be retribution because there has to be,” Trump said. “These people are vandals, but they’re agitators, but they’re really, they’re terrorists in a sense.”

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 – Protest/Race Relations News

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Protest/Race Relations News

GOP Sen. Josh Hawley unveiled a proposal to remove language in the mammoth defense bill that requires the Pentagon to implement a plan to rename Confederate-named bases and other military installations, saying the requirement “smacks of the cancel culture the Left wants to impose on the nation.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren and dozens of other Senate Democrats have introduced a bill that would require the Pentagon to strip Confederate names from military bases and other property within one year.

NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace dismissed an FBI investigation that concluded a noose found in the garage he was recently assigned to at Talladega Superspeedway was a garage door pull that had been there since last year and not a hate crime directed at him, with the 26-year-old driver calling it “a straight-up noose” in an interview.

The National Guard has agreed to send unarmed members to assist U.S. Park Police in securing Washington’s national monuments.

GOP Sen. Mike Braun introduced legislation to scale back qualified immunity, an idea that divides Senate Republicans.

Braun’s bill, titled the Reforming Qualified Immunity Act, would get rid of a current standard that shields police officers from civil lawsuits if their behavior didn’t violate a “clearly established” law.

Instead, a police officer would be eligible for qualified immunity if the conduct in question “had previously been authorized or required by federal or state statute or regulation” or if a court has found it is “consistent with the Constitution and federal laws.”

Senate Democrats blocked a narrow Republican bill to incentivize police departments to change their tactics. They denounced the measure as an insufficient and irredeemably flawed answer to the problem of systemic racism in law enforcement.

The Department of Justice has told lawmakers that it is considering launching a probe into potential discriminatory practices taking place at the Minneapolis Police Department.

Three Wilmington, NC police officers – Michael ‘Kevin’ Piner, James ‘Brian’ Gilmore, and Jessie E. Moore II – have been fired after a customary review of dashcam footage revealed the officers engaging in racist conversations. Among the comments, Moore was discussing with Piner the arrest of a Black woman the previous day, “‘she needed a bullet in her head right then and move on. Let’s move the body out of the way and keep going.”

After more derogatory comments about the arrestee and the magistrate, the conversation took an even bleaker turn, as the two officers discussed an upcoming civil war.

“Piner tells Moore later in the conversation that he feels a civil war is coming and he is ‘ready.’ Piner advised he is going to buy a new assault rifle in the next couple of weeks. A short time later Officer Piner began to discuss society being close to ‘martial law’ and soon “we are just gonna go out and start slaughtering them fucking niggers. I can’t wait. God, I can’t wait.”

The three white men arrested in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a black man who was chased while running in a South Georgia neighborhood, have been indicted on murder charges by a Georgia grand jury, the prosecutor in the case announced on Wednesday.

The men — Gregory McMichael, 64; his son Travis McMichael, 34; and their neighbor William Bryan, 50 — were arrested and charged last month with murder and other charges in connection with Mr. Arbery’s death, which prompted nationwide protests and indignation, particularly after a graphic video of his Feb. 23 killing was released online.

NASA will rename its Washington, D.C., headquarters after Mary W. Jackson, the agency’s first Black woman engineer, Administrator Jim Bridenstine announced Wednesday.

Jackson worked for seven years in the agency’s segregated West Area Computing division in 1951 before becoming an engineer in 1958. She had achieved the senior-most engineering title within NASA by 1979, and voluntarily took a demotion to work as an Equal Opportunity Specialist, seeking out accomplished women and minorities for recruitment within NASA.

Jackson retired in 1985 after 34 years at NASA; she died in 2005 at the age of 83.

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: 5 Minutes

Protest/Race Relations News

Faced with growing pressure to crack down on an “occupied” protest zone following two weekend shootings, Seattle’s mayor said that officials will move to wind down the blocks-long span of city streets taken over two weeks ago.

Senate Democrats began laying the groundwork to block a Republican-drafted police reform measure that they say falls far short of responding adequately to a national crisis over racial disparities in law enforcement practices.

The legislation written by Republicans, led by Sen. Tim Scott, is “not salvageable,” the Democrats say, adding that “we need bipartisan talks to get to a constructive starting point.”

Rhode Island Gov. Raimondo issued an executive order stripping the word “plantation” from official state documents and symbols, including the state seal.

The Louisville Police Department on Tuesday fired an officer over his role in the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman who died after city police fired several shots in her apartment while she was in her bed.

The FBI has determined that NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace was not the victim of a hate crime and that a pull rope fashioned like a noose had been on a garage door at Talladega Superspeedway since as early as October, NASCAR said Tuesday.

“The FBI report concludes, and photographic evidence confirms, that the garage door pull rope fashioned like a noose had been positioned there since as early as last fall,” NASCAR said in its statement. “This was obviously well before the 43 team’s arrival and garage assignment.

The Charleston city council has unanimously voted to remove and relocate a statue of former vice president and slave advocate John C. Calhoun from a downtown square, a move that comes amid renewed calls for the removal of Confederate leaders and other figures believed to be symbols of racism.

President Trump called for Congress to take action against “lowlifes” who burn the American flag, seeking to put fresh pressure on lawmakers to pursue potential legislation.

“It is ashame [sic] that Congress doesn’t do something about the lowlifes that burn the American Flag. It should be stopped, and now!” Trump tweeted.

NOTE: The United States Supreme Court has ruled the rights of protesters to burn the American flag is protected under the First Amendment.

Administration News

President Trump again took aim at Fox News on Tuesday, saying he’s “not happy” with the network while arguing it “wants to be politically correct all of a sudden.”

“I’m not happy with Fox at all,” Trump told Christian Broadcast Network’s David Brody.

“My base hates what Fox News is doing,” he said before later adding that “Fox News wants to be politically correct all of a sudden.”

“Roger Ailes would never have let this happen.”

Twitter added an advisory to one of President Trump’s tweets that threatened protesters seeking to establish an “autonomous zone” in Washington, D.C., saying it violated the platform’s rules against abusive behavior.

“This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about abusive behavior. However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible,” reads the advisory added to Trump’s tweet.

Career prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky, who withdrew from the Roger Stone case after DOJ leaders intervened to recommend a lighter sentence, will tell the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that Justice Department leadership intervened in the sentencing of former Trump adviser Roger Stone for political purposes, according to his opening statement.

Part of the statement reads, “I was told that the U.S. Attorney’s instructions had nothing to do with Mr. Stone, the facts of the case, the law, or department policy. Instead, I was explicitly told the motivation for changing the sentencing memo was political, and the U.S. Attorney was “afraid of the President.”

Roger Stone has asked a federal judge for a months-long delay to the start of his prison term, saying that underlying health issues placed him at “heightened risk of serious medical consequences” if exposed to the coronavirus while in prison.

The Pentagon’s top technology official and his deputy are resigning next month, a Defense Department official confirmed on Tuesday.

Mike Griffin, the Pentagon’s first undersecretary of research and engineering, and his deputy, Lisa Porter, will leave July 10.

A Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation into California’s efforts to reduce vehicle emissions appeared to be politically motivated, a DOJ whistleblower wrote in testimony to lawmakers that was released Tuesday.

John W. Elias, a DOJ career employee slated to appear before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, wrote that an investigation into California’s emissions agreements with four automakers was spurred shortly after tweets from President Trump complaining about the deal.

Presidential Campaign

President Trump has reportedly questioned the mental fitness of his opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, in recent days and suggested that Biden would fail a simple cognitive test administered to Trump in 2018.

The Washington Post reported Tuesday that the president recently made comments to several White House aides hinting that he did not believe Biden would pass the cognitive exam administered by his White House physician last year as part of an annual physical.

Long-serving White House communications official Hogan Gidley is moving over to Donald Trump’s campaign.

Gidley, who has spent nearly three years as a top White House spokesman, will serve as the campaign’s national press secretary. The reelection effort has made several major staff moves in recent weeks as it prepares for the general election, elevating longtime Trump political adviser Bill Stepien and rehiring 2016 campaign aide Jason Miller.

Dozens of Republican former U.S. national security officials are forming a group that will back Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, people familiar with the effort said, in a further sign that President Donald Trump has alienated some members of his own party.

The group includes at least two dozen officials who served under Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, with dozens more in talks to join.

President Trump on Tuesday rallied a crowd – estimated to be 3,000 young attendees – of largely maskless student supporters in Phoenix, claiming Democrats were trying to keep the country “shut down” during the coronavirus pandemic in order to hurt the economy before the election.

Trump referenced the coronavirus throughout his remarks, repeatedly calling it “the plague” and at one point claiming it was “going away.” Trump also twice referred to the virus as the “kung flu,” a term that is widely condemned as racist. The term prompted cheers from the crowd Tuesday.

Sources: ABC News, Axios, Bloomberg, CBS News, CNN, ESPN, Financial Times, Fox News,The Hill, KTUL, 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

President Trump slammed a decision to remove a statue of former President Theodore Roosevelt from the front steps of the Museum of Natural History in New York City, calling it “ridiculous.”

In a Monday morning tweet, Trump urged officials not to remove the statue, which depicts Roosevelt on horseback leading two figures, one Native American and one African.

Witnesses say police in Columbus, OH pepper sprayed a double amputee and tried to take his prosthetic legs during a clash with protesters. The man reportedly crawled on his hands to get medical help, while other protesters rushed the cops to demand his legs back.

As many as 200 armed protesters marched outside Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Sitt’s home over the weekend to protest police killings of unarmed Black Americans. The event was organized by 1,000 Brothers and Sisters in Arms, a gun-rights group for people of color with members warning: “If you come into our community, know we are armed.”

Seattle police said they were investigating a reported shooting inside the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP) zone in what would be the second such incident there in the past 48 hours.

“Police investigating reported shooting inside CHOP zone. One person at HMC (Harborview Medical Center) with gunshot wound,” the police department said in a Tweet.

New York Police Commissioner Dermot Shea testified, in an online public hearing held by New York Attorney General Letitia Jameson, that his officers had been attacked with bricks, knives, trash cans and bottles during recent protests against racial injustice, saying it was some of the “worst rioting” in the city for years.

Last week, scores of protesters testified that New York Police Department officers kicked or shoved them, hit them with night sticks, doused them with pepper spray or cuffed wrists so tightly that hands turned blue.

Sen. Tom Cotton called on the Department of Justice to bring charges against “mob vigilantes” taking down statues: “We cannot tolerate mob rule and we cannot allow it to go unpunished.”

Police in DC deployed chemical irritants to disperse a group of protesters who attempted to tear down a statue of Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square on Monday night.

President Trump said in a tweet on Tuesday, “I have authorized the Federal Government to arrest anyone who vandalizes or destroys any monument, statue or other such Federal property in the U.S. with up to 10 years in prison, per the Veteran’s Memorial Preservation Act, or such other laws that may be pertinent…This action is taken effective immediately, but may also be used retroactively for destruction or vandalism already caused. There will be no exceptions!”

“There will never be an “Autonomous Zone” in Washington, D.C., as long as I’m your President. If they try they will be met with serious force!” Trump Tweeted

Administration News

Trump confirmed in an interview with Axios that he held off on imposing sanctions against Chinese officials involved with the Xinjiang mass detention camps because doing so would have interfered with his trade deal with Beijing.

The president Tweeted: “Because of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, 2020 will be the most RIGGED Election in our nations history – unless this stupidity is ended. We voted during World War One & World War Two with no problem, but now they are using Covid in order to cheat by using Mail-Ins!”

NOTE: Tampering with ballots is widely seen to be nearly impossible, because they’re printed on very specific stock and often have tracking systems like barcodes. In states that have long embraced mail voting, there’s been no evidence of widespread fraud.

Vice President Pence and his wife, Karen Pence, voted by mail in Indiana earlier this year using the address of the Indiana governor’s mansion, where he hasn’t lived in years.

One of President Trump’s most trusted economic advisers will leave the White House this summer amid one of the worst economic crises in decades.

Kevin Hassett, who returned to the White House as an unpaid volunteer in March, said in an interview that his departure is in line with the administration’s initial plan when he was brought back. Hassett said his agreement was to return to the White House for about 90 days, and he has already stayed for more than that amount of time.

A day before Attorney General William Barr announced he would be replaced, Geoffrey Berman, the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, refused to sign a letter criticizing New York Mayor Bill de Blasio for okaying protests but not religious gatherings during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new report.

A U.S. soldier is accused of sending information to a neo-Nazi group as part of an alleged plot to facilitate a “mass casualty” event on his Army unit, federal prosecutors said Monday.

The FBI arrested the 22-year-old soldier, Ethan Melzer, of Louisville, Ky., on June 10 after the FBI and Army thwarted his alleged plot in late May.

President Trump blocked visas for a wide variety of jobs, including those for computer programmers and other skilled workers who enter the U.S. under the H-1B visa, as well as those for seasonal workers in the hospitality industry, students on work-study summer programs and au pairs who arrive under other auspices.

Sen. Lindsey Graham said that the order President Trump signed earlier in the day suspending certain temporary work visas through the end of the year will have a “chilling effect” on the nation’s economic recovery amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Graham said in a series of tweets: “This decision, in my view, will have a chilling effect on our economic recovery at a time we should be doing all we can to restore the economy”

“Legal immigration is a positive for the American economy, and visa programs allowing American companies to secure qualified, legal labor throughout the world have benefitted economic growth in the United States.”

“The shuttering of these programs may not lead to employment opportunities for displaced American workers, but could instead increase the cost of consumer goods for Americans — particularly service industry related products.”

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler is planning to issue a subpoena to compel Attorney General Bill Barr to testify before lawmakers next month, following the sudden ousting of Geoffrey Berman, the former US attorney for the Southern District of New York who was overseeing investigations into several of Trump’s allies.

President Trump suggested, without evidence, that former President Obama committed treason in connection with the investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia.

“Treason. Treason. It’s treason,” Trump said in an interview with CBN News. The president did not elaborate on the specific charge but repeated his assertion that the previous administration “spied” on his campaign in the course of the Russia probe.

“They’d been spying on my campaign,” Trump told CBN News’s David Brody. “Turned out I was right. Let’s see what happens to them now.”

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