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

Read Time: 4 Minutes

Protests/Racial & Social Issues

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trump Administration

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Past 24 Hours or So

Protests/Racial & Social Issues,
Trump Administration, and
Presidential Campaign Updates

Read Time: 9 Minutes

Protests/Racial & Social Issues

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trump Administration

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Presidential Campaign

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read Time: 6 Minutes

Protests/Racial & Social Issues

  • A white, 17-year-old was taken into custody in Illinois on suspicion of first-degree intentional homicide in the killing of two people gunned down during a third night of protests in Kenosha over the police shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake.

Two people were shot to death Tuesday night in an attack carried out by a young white man who was caught on cellphone video opening fire in the middle of the street with a semi-automatic rifle.Witness accounts and video show that the shootings took place in two stages: The gunman first shot someone at a car lot, then jogged away, stumbled and fell in the street, and opened fire again as members of the crowd closed in on him.

  • In another widely circulating video, police can be seen tossing bottled water from an armored vehicle to what appear to be armed civilians walking the streets. One of the civilians appears to be the gunman who later shot protesters.

“We appreciate you being here,” an officer is heard saying to the group over a loudspeaker.

  • In the wake of the killings, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D) authorized 500 members of the National Guard to support local law enforcement around Kenosha, doubling the number of troops sent in. The governor’s office said he is working with other states to bring in additional National Guard troops and law officers. Authorities also announced a 7 p.m. curfew.
  • The sheriff of Kenosha, WI, said he rejected requests to deputize armed citizens amid protests and violence in the city following the police shooting of Jacob Blake: “I had a person call me and say why don’t you deputize citizens who have guns to come out and patrol the city of Kenosha, and I’m like, ‘oh hell no.'”
  • President Donald Trump announced he will order additional federal forces to tamp down violence in Kenosha.

“We will NOT stand for looting, arson, violence, and lawlessness on American streets,” Trump tweeted. “TODAY, I will be sending federal law enforcement and the National Guard to Kenosha, WI to restore LAW and ORDER!”

  • In a tweet, the NBA announced, “The NBA and the NBPA today announced that in light of the Milwaukee Bucks’ decision to not take the floor today for Game 5 against the Orlando Magic, today’s three games – MIL-ORL, HOU-OKC and LAL-POR have been postponed. Game 5 of each series will be rescheduled.”

Discussions within teams are ongoing about postponing Thursday’s three games too – and beyond. “The season is in jeopardy,” one veteran player told ESPN.

The entire NBA season is currently at risk of being cancelled, with the Los Angeles Lakers and the Los Angeles Clippers both reportedly voting to boycott the remainder of the 2019- 2020 season as a way to protest police brutality and racial injustice.

  • NBA star LeBron James, who has been a leading voice for social justice in the NBA, joined other prominent basketball players in voicing support for the Milwaukee Bucks’ boycott of the NBA following the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin on Sunday.

“FUCK THIS MAN!!!! WE DEMAND CHANGE. SICK OF IT” James tweeted.

  • News of the Bucks walking out has sent a ripple effect across sports in the United States. Here’s a look at all of the games postponed as a sign of protest:

NBA: Orlando Magic vs. Milwaukee Bucks (Game 5 — first round)
NBA: Oklahoma City Thunder vs. Houston Rockets (Game 5 — first round)
NBA: Portland Trail Blazers vs. Los Angeles Lakers (Game 5 — first round)
WNBA: Washington Mystics vs. Atlanta Dream
WNBA: Los Angeles Sparks vs. Minnesota Lynx
WNBA: Connecticut Sun vs. Phoenix Mercury
MLB: Cincinnati Reds vs. Milwaukee Brewers
MLB: Seattle Mariners vs. San Diego Padres
MLB: Los Angeles Dodgers vs. San Francisco Giants
MLS: Atlanta United vs. Inter Miami
MLS: FC Dallas vs. Colorado Rapids
MLS: Real Salt Lake vs. Los Angeles FC
MLS: San Jose Earthquakes vs. Portland Timbers
MLS: Los Angeles Galaxy vs. Seattle Sounders

  • The ACLU is suing the Trump administration over federal agents’ conduct in responding to Black Lives Matter protests in Portland, Oregon, claiming the illegally detained veterans and that they used excessive force to silence demonstrators.
  • A Florida woman has been charged with child abuse after she allegedly slapped an 11-year-old Black boy and called him a racial slur at a go-kart track.

Three employees said that they witnessed Haley Zager, 30, step out of her go-kart and smack the boy after his kart slammed into hers, the South Florida Sun Sentinel reported.She told police that the child did not apologize and she “tapped” him in the face, according to a police report. The report also claimed that Zager told an employee “that fucking nigger hit me in the back.”

  • A federal appeals court has ruled that schools cannot bar students from using the bathroom corresponding to their gender identity, handing a major victory to supporters of LGBTQ rights.
  • A mixed-race couple in Florida whose home in Jacksonville had initially been valued by an appraiser at $330,000 back in June said the same residence was valued at over 40 percent higher at a second appraisal after they removed images of their Black family members. They instead put up paintings of her husband and his white family, and left him home to handle the appraisal alone.

Trump Administration

  • A West Palm Beach USPS processing center recently had four mail sorting machines dismantled, even as postage centers across the country prepare for a record number of mail-in ballots cast ahead of Election Day.
  • The House Intelligence Committee has announced that it would narrow its subpoena for President Trump’s financial records after the Supreme Court dealt a temporary setback for the congressional investigation last month. The House panels won every round of the court fights until they reached the Supreme Court, which ruled 7-2 that the lower courts did not adequately balance the interests of both branches in the dispute.
  • Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman, the twin brother of impeachment witness Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, has filed a complaint with a Pentagon watchdog raising concerns that he was retaliated against for reporting that the national security adviser and his chief of staff “committed several ethics and legal compliance violations” late last year and into 2020.
  • Amid deteriorating relations with Beijing, the Commerce Department has blacklisted 24 Chinese companies, saying that they are helping the ruling Chinese Communist Party construct artificial islands in the South China Sea, which the U.S. sees as a military provocation.
  • Chicago and three other cities on Wednesday sued the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, demanding it correct how it interprets what is a firearm and halt the sale of untraceable “ghost gun” kits increasingly used in crimes.
  • Trump administration officials reportedly floated using a microwave heat ray — a military-designed device that makes people’s skin feel like it is burning — to deter migrants from crossing the border illegally in the days leading up to the 2018 midterm elections.
  • A coalition of 13 groups sued the Interior Department and National Park Service over its decision to ease restrictions on hunting bear cubs and wolf pups at national preserves in Alaska.

Presidential Campaign

  • President Trump is calling for drug tests to be administered before the first presidential debate between him and Democratic nominee Joe Biden next month.

Trump made the demand in an Oval Office interview with The Washington Examiner Wednesday, saying he noted a sudden improvement in Biden’s primary debate performance against Sen. Bernie Sanders in March.

  • A senior FBI official said the agency has not seen any “coordinated” mail-in voter fraud effort ahead of the November election, undercutting President Trump’s repeated attacks on voting by mail.
  • “Burning down communities is not protest, it’s needless violence,” Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said after protests erupted in Kenosha, Wisconsin over the police shooting of Jacob Blake. “Violence that endangers lives. Violence that guts businesses and shutters businesses that serve the community. That’s wrong.”

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

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

Read Time: 5 Minutes

Trump Administration

  • In a bombshell report, the GOP-led Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded that Trump campaign contacts with Russian spies amounted to “a grave counterintelligence threat.” Over the course of nearly 1,000 pages, the Senate report pulverizes President Trump’s endless claims that the “Russia collusion hoax is the greatest political scandal in the history of this country.”

New evidence makes it abundantly clear: Not investigating the vast number of “alarming” Trump connections to Russian intelligence operatives would have amounted to a “dereliction of duty and responsibility” by America’s law enforcement agencies.

More importantly, the Senate report shows that the FBI’s probe of the Trump campaign and special counsel Robert Mueller did not go nearly far enough.

  • The president of the U.N. Security Council, Indonesia, said on Tuesday it was “not in the position to take further action” on a U.S. bid to trigger a return of all U.N. sanctions on Iran because there is no consensus in the 15-member body.
  • U.S. consumer confidence fell for the second straight month in August as households worried about the economic outlook.

The Conference Board said on Tuesday its consumer confidence index dropped to a reading of 84.8 this month from 91.7 in July. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the index edging up to a reading of 93 in August.

  • A federal court has struck down a Pentagon policy requiring immigrant troops to serve for six months to a year before they are eligible for expedited citizenship, calling it “arbitrary and capricious” and violates the Administrative Procedure Act.
  • Miles Taylor, the former Trump administration official who has endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, says that President Trump offered to pardon Homeland Security officials who broke the law to carry out illegal tasks he wanted, allegedly saying “do it. If you get in trouble, I’ll pardon you.”
  • President Trump tweeted that he plans to nominate acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf to take on the role in a full-time capacity after the agency has gone more than a year without a Senate-confirmed leader.
  • On July 24, President Trump held a highly-touted signing ceremony for four executive orders aimed at lowering drug prices and gave pharmaceutical companies until Aug. 24 to make a deal. 

That deadline passed at midnight on Tuesday without the announcement of any deal with drug companies. The White House has not moved forward with the order and is not saying if it will.

  • New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against the Trump administration aimed at stopping what she said was an effort to disrupt operations at the U.S. Postal Service at a time when a pandemic has prompted millions more people than usual to plan to vote by mail.

Hawaii, New Jersey, New York City and the City and County of San Francisco joined the suit. 

Protests/Racial and Social Issues

  • Jacob Blake’s father told the Chicago Sun-Times that his son is now paralyzed from the waist down after being shot by police over the weekend.
  • A GoFundMe to support Jacob Blake and his family has raised over $1 million just one day after the fundraising campaign was launched. 
  • Lawyers representing the family of Jacob Blake, the Black man shot in the back at point-blank range by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin announced that a civil suit would be launched against the Kenosha Police Department.
  • Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D) will increase the National Guard presence in Kenosha, Wisconsin, after the second night of unrest following the police shooting of Jacob Blake.
  • The Gwinnett County Police Department fired the police officer who was shown on video using a Taser in the arrest of a Black woman on her front porch, the authorities said.

“One of our core values is courtesy,” the department said in a statement. “We strive to conduct ourselves in a manner that promotes mutual respect with the community and our peers. The investigation in this case has shown that Officer Oxford violated our policy and did not meet our core values.”

  • Protesters reportedly began gathering Monday afternoon at an event titled “Resist RNC 2020” near the site of the Republican National Convention, with the group later growing to more than 100 demonstrators marching peacefully. 

But seven were ultimately arrested and 2 were hospitalized after police confronted the crowd with pepper spray. Video also depicts police using bikes to knock down demonstrators, with one woman getting her legs run over.

  • For the third consecutive night, unrest unfolded in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Nearly two hours after the 8 p.m. curfew took effect, police were heard on a bullhorn telling a group of protesters at the Kenosha Courthouse that they were taking part in an “unlawful assembly.” 

The police fired tear gas into the crowd of protesters. 

A CNN team saw either officers or guardsmen perched on the roof of the courthouse shooting pellets down at rowdy protesters.

  • At least 64 people were arrested in Louisville, Kentucky, as crowds marched Tuesday over the death of Breonna Taylor.

The protests were largely peaceful but a large group of demonstrators “crossed several intersections, creating dangerous situations as traffic continued to try to make its way in the area,” Robert Schroeder, interim chief for the Louisville Metro Police Department, told reporters.

Officers gave directions to stay on the sidewalk and those who did not were eventually arrested.

  • A federal grand jury has indicted four men on arson charges in connection to the burning of the Minneapolis Police Department’s Third Precinct building at the end of May amid protests over the death of George Floyd.
  • Fabiana Pierre-Louis is set to become the first Black woman on the New Jersey Supreme Court, The New York Times reported.

Pierre-Louis, the daughter of Haitian immigrants, will also be the court’s only Black judge and, at 39, its youngest.

  • The Detroit Lions canceled practice on Tuesday. Players and coaches addressed the media with “The World Can’t Go On” and “We Won’t Be Silent” signs. The team’s message: Football is not important today after what happened over the weekend to Jacob Blake.

Presidential Campaign

  • The former cast of “The West Wing” plans to reunite for the first time in 17 years to promote When We All Vote, the voter registration initiative co-chaired by former first lady Michelle Obama.
  • Donald Trump continued to shift money from his donors to his business last month, as his reelection campaign paid his private companies for rent, food, lodging and other expenses, according to a review of the latest Federal Election Commission filings. The richest president in American history, who has yet to donate to his 2020 campaign, has now moved $2.3 million of contributions from other people into his private companies.
  • The Supreme Court has declined to take up an emergency petition from Montana Secretary of State Cory Stapleton (R) to allow candidates for the Green party to appear on the state’s ballots this fall.

Democrats had convinced people to disavow their support for the third party candidates after it was revealed that the Republican Party funded the signature-gathering effort to get the contenders’ names on the ballot under the Green Party and that the Green Party itself did not support the effort. 

  • Georgia congressional candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is a supporter of the QAnon conspiracy theory and has expressed racist and anti-Muslim views, said she was invited and plans to be in attendance when President Trump accepts the Republican presidential nomination from the White House later this week.
  • House Democrats are launching an investigation into Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s expected speech to the Republican National Convention, raising concerns that the move is an illegal violation of the Hatch Act and a breach of State Department regulations.

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

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

Read Time: 5 Minutes

Trump Administration

  • U.S. Postmaster Louis DeJoy told lawmakers on Monday that he planned to resume some cost-cutting measures that have factored in widespread service delays, defying Democratic lawmakers who have sought to block his changes.
  • A KREX 5/Fox 4 viewer said she went to the USPS sorting annex on Patterson Road and Burkey Street Monday morning when she noticed a red dumpster by the loading docks.

When she asked what was being thrown out, a clerk said it was a brand new mail sorting machine.

The clerk added, “It took two months to set up and they were just about to do a test run when the postmaster general ordered us to take it out, now we’re sorting by hand. No wonder they say we’re losing money when they throw out expensive machines like that.”

  • New York Attorney General Letitia James is investigating whether President Trump illegally inflated his assets to attract investors and earn loans, her office revealed in court documents on Monday. James filed a lawsuit against the president’s son, Eric Trump, and the Trump Organization, accusing them of failing to comply with subpoenas as part of the investigation.
  • Manhattan’s top prosecutor, Cyrus Vance Jr., to delay enforcement of a subpoena for eight years of President Trump’s tax returns.

Though Vance had the legal right to enforce a subpoena to obtain Trump’s corporate and personal tax records, he agreed to temporarily shelve the subpoena against Trump’s accounting firm. The delay allows for another round of litigation, extending the nearly year long court battle over the subpoena in which Trump has lost every bout, including a landmark decision last month at the Supreme Court.

  • Canada largely won a case before the World Trade Organization on Monday in a long-running dispute with the United States over U.S. duties imposed on Canadian softwood lumber exports.

The panel found that duties, designed to counter Canadian subsidies, did not breach global trading rules because Washington had not shown that prices paid by Canadian firms for timber on government-owned lands were artificially low.

The Trump administration levied tariffs of up to 17.99% against what it saw as unfair subsidies for Canadian exporters of softwood lumber, which is used in home construction.

  • The Trump administration threw up major hurdles for a planned copper and gold mine in Alaska, a move that could kill the project that had drawn opposition from environmentalists, recreational groups and prominent Republicans.

The current proposal for the Pebble Mine at Bristol Bay “cannot be permitted,” the Army Corps of Engineers said, and it called for a series of strict conditions the project’s developers would need to meet to offset the environmental harms that the massive project would have on the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery.

  • Environmental groups wasted no time challenging the Trump administration’s attempt to allow oil and gas drilling in an Alaska refuge where polar bears and caribou roam.

Two lawsuits filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Anchorage sought to block the Interior Department’s plan to allow oil and gas lease sales on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — a 1.56 million-acre strip of land along Alaska’s northern Beaufort Sea coast, or about 8% of the 19.3 million-acre refuge.

  • A federal appeals court has narrowed an anti-riot law the Trump administration is wielding to bring federal charges against individuals accused of fueling civil unrest.

The three-judge appeals court panel unanimously concluded that language in the Anti-Riot Act that makes it a crime to “encourage,” “promote” or urge a riot is unconstitutionally overbroad because it encompasses speech protected by the First Amendment.

  • Social Security Chief Actuary Stephen C. Goss: Trump’s proposal to eliminate payroll taxes would deplete the Social Security Trust Fund by 2023, “with no ability to pay benefits thereafter.”

Protests/Racial and Social Issues

  • Police shot a Black man in the back multiple times in Kenosha, Wisconsin, as his three sons watched on Sunday, his family’s lawyer said, sparking a night of unrest during which protesters hurled firebombs and bricks at law enforcement officers.

A video circulating on social media showed Jacob Blake walking toward the driver’s side of a gray SUV followed by two officers with their guns drawn at his back. Seven gunshot sounds can be heard as Blake, who appears to be unarmed, opens the car door.

It was unknown whether the officer saw something inside the vehicle to justify deadly force. It was also not clear whether one or both officers fired their weapons.

  • The Kenosha County Sheriff’s Department announced an 8 p.m. curfew for the second night in a row Monday. The curfew follows unrest in Kenosha after the police shooting of Jacob Blake Sunday.
  • Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden called for an immediate investigation into the shooting of Jacob Blake.
  • Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D) activated the National Guard to assist local law enforcement after protests in Kenosha turned violent following the police shooting of Jacob Blake.
  • Police in Kenosha deployed tear gas in an attempt to disperse protesters who converged on the county courthouse during a second night of protests. 
  • Angry, maskless spectators forced themselves into the Idaho House special session on the coronavirus pandemic, shattering a glass door, rushing into the gallery that had limited seating because of the virus and forcing lawmakers to ask for calm in a crowd that included a man carrying an assault-style weapon.

After some people shoved their way past Idaho State Police, Republican House Speaker Scott Bedke allowed the gallery to fully open as long as the crowd stopped chanting and was respectful.

“I want to always try to avoid violence,” he told The Associated Press later.

Presidential Campaign

  • President Trump on Monday claimed Democrats are using the coronavirus to “steal” the 2020 election, arguing closures of businesses and demands for mail-in voting are not driven by a pandemic that has killed nearly 180,000 Americans in five months, but to defeat him.

“They’re using COVID to defraud the American people, all of our people, of a fair and free election. We can’t do that.”

  • Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s decision to share a message with the Republican National Convention this week is a break from all sorts of norms and precedents designed to keep America’s chief diplomat out of the partisan fray. It may also be violating State Department policy he himself approved.
  • A progressive pro-immigration group is launching an ad targeting Asian American voters in battleground states by highlighting President Trump’s controversial rhetoric about the coronavirus. The 60-second ad intersperses clips of Trump calling the virus the “Chinese flu,” “Chinese virus” and “kung flu,” along with reports of rises in anti-Asian discrimination.
  • More Than a Vote, a group of athletes headlined by LeBron James is launching a campaign to increase the number of poll workers in Black electoral districts ahead of November’s general election.
  • The federal government has largely implemented the election security recommendations that the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and National Institute of Standards and Technology generated in 2016. 

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

The Past 24 Hours or So

Read Time: 5 Minutes

Coronavirus/COVID-19 

  • The U.S. reported 46,295 new cases and 1,024 additional deaths. At least 6,913 Americans died this week as a result of COVID-19.
  • The number of people who have been infected with the novel coronavirus globally surpassed 23 million on Saturday, according to Johns Hopkins University. JHU is reporting more than 801,000 people have died from the virus.

The United States has the highest numbers of coronavirus infections and deaths in the world.

  • The World Health Organization said children aged 12 and over should wear masks to help tackle the COVID-19 pandemic under the same conditions as adults, while children between six and 11 should wear them on a risk-based approach.
  • President Trump accused the FDA of making it difficult for drug companies to test possible coronavirus vaccines and therapeutics on people.

“The deep state, or whoever, over at the FDA is making it very difficult for drug companies to get people in order to test the vaccines and therapeutics. Obviously, they are hoping to delay the answer until after November 3rd. Must focus on speed, and saving lives!” Trump tweeted.

  • Schools across the U.S. are facing shortages and long delays, of up to several months, in getting this year’s most crucial back-to-school supplies: the laptops and other equipment needed for online learning, an Associated Press investigation has found.

The world’s three biggest computer companies, Lenovo, HP and Dell, have told school districts they have a shortage of nearly 5 million laptops, in some cases exacerbated by Trump administration sanctions on Chinese suppliers, according to interviews with over two dozen U.S. schools, districts in 15 states, suppliers, computer companies and industry analysts.

  • Rep. Dan Meuser (R-PA) announced on Saturday he has tested positive for COVID-19. 

The Pennsylvania Republican said that he is complying with health guidelines and postponing public events following his diagnosis.

  • Springfield, Massachusetts police are looking for a man who allegedly gave a Walmart shopper a “Covid hug.” 

The suspect, whom the victim had never seen before, took an item out of his hand and then gave him a hug.

“Just giving you a Covid hug. You now have Covid,” the suspect said before laughing and walking away, according to the Springfield Police Department.

The victim is a cancer survivor, the police department said, adding that the suspect did the same thing to several other customers.

  • New Jersey reported its lowest number of coronavirus-related hospitalizations since March 24.
  • Georgia surpassed 5,000 COVID-19 deaths since the start of the pandemic.
  • A 6-year-old girl from Hillsborough County became the youngest person to die from coronavirus complications in Florida.
  • The number of Covid-19 hospitalizations in Mississippi dropped below 1,000 for the first time in two months.
  • Covid-19 hospitalization rates in Los Angeles County are the lowest since April.

Trump Administration

  • Maryanne Trump Barry was serving as a federal judge when she heard her brother, President Trump, suggest on Fox News, “maybe I’ll have to put her at the border” amid a wave of refugees entering the United States. At the time, children were being separated from their parents and put in cramped quarters while court hearings dragged on.

“All he wants to do is appeal to his base,” Barry said in a conversation secretly recorded by her niece, Mary L. Trump. “He has no principles. None. None. And his base, I mean my God, if you were a religious person, you want to help people. Not do this.”

Barry, 83, was aghast at how her 74-year-old brother operated as president. “His goddamned tweet and lying, oh my God,” she said. “I’m talking too freely, but you know. The change of stories. The lack of preparation. The lying. Holy shit.”

Barry also said at one point, “It’s the phoniness of it all. It’s the phoniness and this cruelty. Donald is cruel,” according to the audio scripts and recordings.

According to the Washington Post, Barry said to Mary: “He went to Fordham for one year and then he got into University of Pennsylvania because he had somebody take the exams.” “No way!” Mary responded. “He had somebody take his entrance exams?”

Barry then replied, “SATs or whatever…I even remember the name. That person was Joe Shapiro,” Barry said.

  • The U.S. was further isolated over its bid to reimpose international sanctions on Iran with 13 countries on the 15-member U.N. Security Council expressing their opposition, arguing that Washington’s move is void given it is using a process agreed under a nuclear deal that it quit two years ago.
  • The House on Saturday passed legislation that would prevent the U.S. Postal Service from making any changes to its operations that could slow delivery of mailed-in ballots for this fall’s elections.

It would also provide $25 billion for Postal Service operations, which is an amount originally recommended by the agency’s board of governors. House Democrats also included the funding in the $3.4 trillion coronavirus relief package that they passed in May.

  • A California Superior Court judge has ordered President Donald Trump to pay $44,100 to Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, to reimburse her attorneys’ fees in the legal battle surrounding her nondisclosure agreement.
  • TikTok plans to sue the Trump administration over its executive order banning transactions between U.S. companies and the popular video-sharing app as well as its Chinese parent company, ByteDance.

Protests/Racial and Social Issues

  • Federal authorities on Saturday forced demonstrators away from a plaza near a federal building as dueling demonstrations in Portland by right-wing and left-wing protesters turned violent. No arrests were reported.
  • A Kansas City police sergeant has been indicted on a felony charge of third-degree assault after he allegedly kneed a 15-year-old boy on his neck and head and forced his head into the pavement while the teenager repeatedly said “I can’t breathe,” a Missouri prosecutor announced Friday.
  • Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan (D) said she will veto City Council-approved proposals that would include reducing the police department by as many as 100 officers through layoffs and attrition.
  • Westerly, Rhode Island Police said Friday that they caught two people red-handed trying to vandalize a statue of Christopher Columbus.

Westerly Police Chief Shawn Lacey said the two had been among a group that tried to spray paint on the Columbus statue across from town hall at around 3:30 a.m. on Thursday.

  • Someone sprayed black paint on a giant mural of George Floyd at the Minneapolis intersection where he died in May. A Minneapolis police spokesman said the department hasn’t taken any reports about the vandalized mural.

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

The Past 24 Hours or So

Read Time: 5 Minutes

Trump Administration

  • President Trump will hold a funeral service Friday for his late brother, Robert Trump, at the White House. The Trump family has invited 200 friends and family members to attend the private service that is expected to be held in the East Room. The costs of the service are being covered personally by the president.
  • Six states led by Pennsylvania on Friday sued the U.S. Postal Service and the new postmaster general, saying service changes in recent weeks have harmed the ability of states to conduct free and fair elections.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Pennsylvania, was joined by California, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, North Carolina and the District of Columbia.

  • Louis DeJoy, the Trump campaign donor who has served as postmaster general since June, said that he was committed to ensuring mail-in ballots are delivered securely and on time for the November election. 
  • Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said board members for the U.S. Postal Service should fire Postmaster General Louis DeJoy or resign themselves amid controversy over planned changes he’s announced.
  • Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-WI) accused Democrats of using a “false narrative” to carry out a “character assassination” of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy. 
  • The White House says President Trump will likely veto a bill introduced by House Democrats to halt changes to U.S. Postal Service operations until after the coronavirus pandemic and provide billions in funding to the beleaguered agency, one day before lawmakers return to Washington to vote on the measure.

The lawmakers hope the bill helps the agency as it faces delays and says some mail-in votes are at risk of not being counted due to changes under President Trump.

  • Poultry farmers in Maine have complained of an increasing number of young chicks dying en route to their farms, blaming it on operational changes to the U.S. Postal Service.

Pauline Henderson, who owns Pine Tree Poultry in New Sharon, Maine, said all 800 chicks in a shipment from Pennsylvania were dead by the time they arrived last week.

  • Former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon claimed he was the victim of a “political hit job” after he was charged with fraud relating to a fundraising campaign aimed at supporting the US-Mexico border wall.

“I’m in this for the long-haul. I’m in this for the fight. I’m going to continue to fight,” added Bannon, who pleaded not guilty.

  • A federal judge in New York on Friday denied President Trump’s request to temporarily halt a grand jury subpoena for his tax returns from taking effect.

The ruling by District Judge Victor Marrero comes a day after he dismissed Trump’s latest attempt to block a New York grand jury subpoena for eight years of Trump’s financial documents, including his personal and corporate tax returns.

  • Attorney General William Barr said that he “vehemently” opposes pardoning Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor charged with espionage after he released a trove of classified documents on surveillance programs, after President Trump said he was considering it.
  • A former Green Beret was arrested and faces charges related to conspiring with Russian intelligence operatives to provide them with U.S. national security defense information.
  • Vice President Pence dismissed QAnon, telling “CBS This Morning” that he doesn’t “know anything about that conspiracy theory,” adding when pressed: “I dismiss it out of hand.”

The theory, which posits that President Trump and his allies are working to expose an elite group of Democrats, media figures and celebrities who are running an international child trafficking ring.

Protests/Racial and Social Issues

  • Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) quietly signed a bill into law ramping up punishments for certain kinds of protests, including losing the right to vote. The new law also slaps a mandatory 45-day sentence for aggravated rioting, boosts the fine for blocking highway access to emergency vehicles and enhances the punishment for aggravated assault against a first responder to a Class C felony.
  • Cincinnati Reds play-by-play announcer Thom Brennaman was suspended by the organization after uttering a homophobic slur on a live microphone. 

On Wednesday, referring to Kansas City where the game was being played, Brennaman could be heard saying, “One of the fag capitals of the world.”

  • The Gwinnett County, Georgia police department is investigating an officer’s use of force after a viral video showed a white officer tasing a Black woman on her own porch.

Presidential Campaign

  • Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) was asked by ABC News’s David Muir in a joint interview with Joe Biden about various names Trump has called her. 

“President Trump has referred to you as ‘nasty,’ ‘a sort of madwoman,’ ‘a disaster,’ ‘the meanest, most horrible, most disrespectful of anybody in the U.S. Senate.’ How do you define what you hear from the president?” Muir asked.

Harris started to laugh halfway through the question.

“Listen, I really — I think there is so much about what comes out of Donald Trump’s mouth that is designed to distract the American people from what he is doing every day that is about neglect, negligence and harm to the American people,” she said.

  • President Trump said at a private Trump Tower meeting days before his inauguration that lower turnout by Black voters helped him in the 2016 election, according to newly obtained audio first reported by The Independent.

“Many Blacks didn’t go out to vote for Hillary ‘cause they liked me. That was almost as good as getting the vote, you know, and it was great.”

Trump started the meeting by name-dropping his Black friends and celebrities and showcased a collection of memorabilia including a sneaker that belonged to NBA star Shaquille O’Neal, Mike Tyson’s belt and his chair from “The Apprentice.”

“The first thing that I can never forget was how when you walked in, [Trump] name-drops all these Black celebrities and tries to give the illusion that they’re his friends,” Tootsie Warhol told Politico.

  • Despite President Trump’s repeated attacks on mail-in voting, the Republican parties in Arizona, North Carolina and Pennsylvania have sent mailings to registered GOP voters encouraging them to cast absentee ballots for November’s general election. The Arizona GOP mailer even includes a quote from President Trump about how he is an absentee voter.
  • President Trump’s reelection campaign and the Republican National Committee have spent more than $1 billion combined since the beginning of 2017, according to FEC filings. Most of that spending — nearly $625 million — was spent since the beginning of the 2020 election cycle in 2019.
  • Vermont Gov. Phil Scott (R) said he will not be voting for President Trump in the 2020 White House race and would consider backing former Vice President Joe Biden.
  • NBA star LeBron James shut down a misleading ad that quotes him and uses his image while promoting the unfounded theory that voting by mail leads to widespread voter fraud.

“Everyone needs to know the kind of BS happening about this election and get organized,” James tweeted. “Secondly, Nobody should be able to use my name (or anyone else name) to lie and deceive about the election.”

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

The Past 24 Hours or So

Read Time: 6 Minutes

Trump Administration

  • The Labor Department reported that initial jobless claims for the week ended Aug. 15 came in at 1.106 million. Economists polled by Dow Jones expected a total of 923,000. Initial claims for the previous week were also revised higher by 8,000 to 971,000. Last week marked the first time in 21 weeks that initial claims came in below 1 million.
  • Many of the Trump administration’s most powerful officials voted in favor of separating migrant children from their parents in 2018, NBC News reports.

The zero tolerance policy ultimately resulted in the separation of nearly 3,000 children from their families, but Stephen Miller actually proposed a policy that would split every migrant family at the border, even those who arrived legally and sought asylum. That would’ve ripped 25,000 more children from their parents.

  • The National Susan B. Anthony Museum and House in Rochester, New York, explained in a Twitter thread its objection to Trump’s pardon for Anthony, who was charged in 1872 with voting illegally.

Critics accused Trump of performing an empty gesture with the pardon, given his relentless attacks on mail-in voting and baseless allegations of fraud in the 2020 election. 

The museum noted she was “outraged to be denied a trial by jury” and thought paying a fine would validate the unfair trial. “To pardon Susan B. Anthony does the same,” the museum wrote.

It added: “If one wants to honor Susan B. Anthony today, a clear stance against any form of voter suppression would be welcome.”

  • JPMorgan Chase is reportedly in talks with the U.S. Postal Service about a proposal to set up ATMs in post offices in several states across the country—a plan critics warned is an effort to eliminate the possibility of a public postal banking system.

The Postal Service is considering a proposal from JPMorgan Chase to offer banking services in post offices in a move that could give the Wall Street giant an exclusive right to solicit postal customers.

  • The NAACP filed suit against the U.S. Postal Service and Postmaster General Louis Dejoy. The lawsuit alleges that Dejoy has impeded the timely distribution of mail, implemented crippling policies on postal workers, and sabotaged the United States Postal Service in a blatant attempt to disenfranchise voters of color.
  • Shortly after USPS Postmaster General Louis DeJoy issued a public statement saying he wanted to “avoid even the appearance” that any of his policies would slow down election mail, USPS instructed all maintenance managers around the country not to reconnect or reinstall any mail sorting machines they had already disconnected, according to emails obtained by Motherboard.
  • Due to USPS slowdowns, the Department of Veterans Affairs, which fills about 80 percent of prescriptions by mail, has already reported problems, and has been forced to use more expensive alternative methods of shipping prescriptions in certain areas of the country.
  • White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said the Trump administration remains engaged on the Phase 1 trade deal with China and is pleased with the agreement’s progress so far, especially Beijing’s purchases of U.S. commodities.
  • President Trump reiterated his promise to withdraw the few U.S. troops still in Iraq, but said Washington would remain ready to help if neighboring Iran took any hostile action. There are currently about 5,000 U.S. troops stationed in Iraq.
  • Donald Trump cannot block a prosecutor’s subpoena for eight years of his tax returns, a federal judge ruled on Thursday, in the latest setback in the U.S. president’s longstanding effort to keep his finances under wraps.

U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero in Manhattan rejected Trump’s claims that the grand jury subpoena from Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance to the president’s accounting firm Mazars USA was “wildly overbroad” and issued in bad faith.

  • The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to reverse a lower court ruling that found President Trump violated the First Amendment by blocking his critics on Twitter.

The lawsuit arose in 2017 after Trump’s social media account blocked seven people who had tweeted criticism of the president in comment threads linked to his Twitter handle.

Lower federal courts found that Trump’s twitter account, where he often weighs in on official matters, constitutes a public forum and that blocking his detractors violated their constitutional free speech protections.

  • China will take “all necessary measures” to protect its firms’ legitimate interests, the Commerce Ministry said on Thursday, in response to the U.S. move this week to further tighten restrictions on Huawei Technologies. 

Protests/Racial and Social Issues

  • TikTok has removed more than 380,000 videos in the United States for violating its hate speech policy so far this year, the short-form video app said on Thursday.

The app, owned by China’s ByteDance, also said it banned more than 1,300 accounts for posting hateful content.

  • The NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs announced changes to what fans will be allowed to wear at games. 

The team’s statement reads, in part: 

“While we have discouraged fans from wearing headdresses for several years, effective immediately, fans will be prohibited from wearing headdresses into the stadium.

Face painting is still allowed for all fans, but any face paint that is styled in a way that references or appropriates American Indian cultures and traditions will be prohibited.

Fans will be asked to remove any American Indian-themed face paint prior to passing security screening outside the stadium.” 

Presidential Campaign

  • Over 70 former Republican national security officials endorsed Joe Biden while launching a scathing indictment of President Trump, calling him corrupt and unfit to serve.

The officials have served under President Trump and former Republican Presidents George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. 

“While we – like all Americans – had hoped that Donald Trump would govern wisely, he has disappointed millions of voters who put their faith in him and has demonstrated that he is dangerously unfit to serve another term,” the officials said in a statement.

  • Drop boxes are being promoted as a convenient and reliable option for voters who don’t want to entrust their ballots to the U.S. Postal Service.

President Trump’s campaign, meanwhile, has sued to prevent their use in Pennsylvania, a key battleground state, baselessly alleging that the receptacles could enable voting fraud.

Republican officials in other states have prevented their use. Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett (R) told a U.S. Senate committee in July that drop boxes could enable people to violate a state law against collecting ballots.

In Missouri, Republican Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft decided not to distribute 80 drop boxes he had purchased because state law requires those ballots to be returned by mail.

Connecticut, Secretary of State Denise Merrill said, “I do not understand why people think they’re such a problem. They’re more secure than mailboxes.”

  • President Trump’s campaign, ordered by a federal court judge in Pennsylvania to back up its claims of fraud in the state’s vote-by-mail system, has documented only a handful of cases of election fraud in recent years — none of which involved mail-in ballots. The revelation, which came in the form of a partially redacted 524-page document produced by the Trump campaign last week, undermines the claim by Trump team operatives that mail-in ballot fraud is a grave risk to Pennsylvania voters.
  • When pressed by reporters on whether President Trump would accept the November election results, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said he will “see what happens.”
  • At a campaign stop in Old Forge, PA, Trump dusted off his bizarre theory of raking forests. “I see again the forest fires are starting. They’re starting again in California. You’ve gotta clean your floors. You’ve gotta clean your forests. There are many, many years of leaves and broken trees. I’ve been telling them this for years, but they don’t want to listen. The environment. The environment.  Maybe we’re just gonna have to make them pay for it.”

Trump said Joe Biden “abandoned Scranton” because his family moved when he was 10 years old.

Trump again demonstrated his misunderstanding of how tariffs work. “We will give tax credits to companies to bring jobs back to America. And if they don’t do it, we’ll put tariffs on those companies. They’ll have to pay us a lot of money.”

He added, “Liberal hypocrites…want to cancel you – totally cancel you – take your job, turn your family against you for speaking your mind, while they indoctrinate your children with twisted, twisted world-views.”

  • Joe Biden officially accepted the Democratic presidential nomination at the. “If you entrust me with the presidency, I will draw on the best of us, not the worst,” he said.

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

The Past 24 Hours or So

Read Time: 5 Minutes

Trump Administration

  • A new U.S. Postal Service rule bans clerks from signing mail-in ballots as witnesses while on duty. 

Alaska Division of Elections Director Gail Fenumiai sent the USPS a letter seeking an explanation as Alaskans complained that postal workers in her state had been telling voters they were not allowed to sign the ballots.

“This came as a surprise to the state because we know in past elections postal officials have served as witnesses,” Fenumiai wrote. “Rural Alaska relies heavily on postal officials as they are often sometimes the only option for a witness.

Alaska is one of several states that require people who vote by mail to have their ballots signed by a witness.

  • Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) tweeted: “Earlier today, I spoke with Postmaster General DeJoy regarding his alleged pause in operational changes. During our conversation, he admitted he has no intention of replacing the sorting machines, blue mailboxes and other infrastructure that have been removed.”

“This, taken with his unwillingness to plan for adequate worker overtime, directly jeopardizes the election and threatens to disenfranchise voters in communities of color, while also slowing delivery of medicines to veterans.”

  • The Trump administration’s method of keeping the controversial acting head of the Bureau of Land Management in power even after his nomination is withdrawn is likely not legal, according to experts.

William Perry Pendley’s nomination was withdrawn amid doubts he had the votes to be confirmed because of his opposition to federal ownership of public lands and his controversial comments on climate change and the Black Lives Matter movement. 

But Pendley is still running the agency because of succession orders dictating that the acting chief will lead the department if the director role remains unfilled. 

Legal experts say the succession orders are dubious because Pendley is essentially giving himself the authority to act as director.

  • A federal major disaster declaration approved Monday does not include financial assistance for Iowans recovering from last week’s devastating derecho, despite President Donald Trump tweeting he approved the state’s application in “FULL.” 

Gov. Kim Reynolds’ request for $82.7 million to cover the 8,273 homes that were damaged or destroyed was not approved. Neither were her requests for $3.77 billion for agriculture damage to farmland, grain bins and buildings and $100 million for private utilities repair.

  • The Trump administration is pushing to sell F-35 fighter jets and drones to the United Arab Emirates, officials said. Israel and Congress may object.
  • “The president’s talked before about wanting to purchase Greenland, but one time before we went down, he told us not only did he want to purchase Greenland, he actually said he wanted to see if we could sell Puerto Rico. Could we swap Puerto Rico for Greenland,” Miles Taylor, a former DHS official, said. “Because in his words Puerto Rico was dirty and the people were poor.”
  • President Trump praised Laura Loomer, a far-right candidate with a history of spreading anti-Muslim rhetoric, after her Republican primary victory in a Florida House race.
  • Twitter says it will not reverse its decision to ban far-right activist and self-described “proud Islamophobe” Laura Loomer from its platform after her Republican primary win in Florida.
  • President Trump offered measured praise for followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory,

“I don’t know much about the movement other than I understand they like me very much, which I appreciate. But I don’t know much about the movement,” he said at a press briefing.

“I’ve heard these are people that love our country…I don’t know really anything about it other than they do supposedly like me.”

A reporter attempted to explain to the president that QAnon is a conspiracy theory that Trump and his allies are working together to expose and arrest an underground cabal of global elites who control the government and run child sex trafficking rings.

The once-fringe movement has grown dramatically in the last few years, with estimates that put its adherents in the hundreds of thousands.

That expansion has been enough to have the FBI label the loose community of believers as a domestic terror threat.

  • President Trump has just announced that his administration would notify the United Nations of plans to restore “virtually” all sanctions on Iran.
  • Former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith pleaded guilty to falsifying a document to justify surveillance of a former Trump campaign adviser as part of the 2016 investigation into Russian interference in the presidential election.

Protests/Racial and Social Issues

  • A realtor who had been with RE/MAX for nearly 50 years was fired for removing Black Lives Matter signs in an affluent neighborhood where she sells homes. 

RE/MAX Alliance Owner Chad Ochsner said, “We’re not a company that can condone trespassing on people’s private property and theft.” “For us, it doesn’t matter what the politics is.”

  • Ashton Bindrup, a waiter at an Ogden, UT restaurant, found a bigoted message written on a cash tip that was left for him.

The bill, marked in pen with the words, “Get out of America, Fag!” was left behind by three adults — all of whom were wearing “Trump 2020” hats.

“They’d asked me for a pen during the meal,” Bindrup explained. “They paid with card, but it was all an electric system so there was no receipt… that’s why I thought it was odd when they asked for the pen.”

  • A Long Island man and his live-in girlfriend have been arrested after their black next-door neighbor accused them of a yearslong campaign of racist intimidation that included throwing feces and a dead squirrel onto her property.
  • The New York Police Department admits it used facial recognition software during its investigation targeting Black Lives Matter organizer Derrick Ingram, who saw his apartment surrounded by officers, police dogs and a helicopter earlier this month as part of the operation. He was allegedly being targeted for assault charges after yelling into a megaphone directed at an officer.
  • A new report from the American Civil Liberties Union reveals that even though Americans have spent most of 2020 inside their homes social distancing because of the coronavirus pandemic, fatal police shootings haven’t stopped or slowed down. As of June 30, law enforcement officers had shot and killed 511 people.

Presidential Campaign

  • President Trump’s reelection campaign sued New Jersey over the state’s decision to use a hybrid voting model for November’s election in which all residents will be mailed a ballot, leaving it up to them to decide if they would like to vote by mail or in person.
  • The Trump campaign is suing three Iowa counties over their absentee ballot request forms, marking the latest effort to go after states and localities that seek to make it easier to vote by mail this fall. The counties were sending ballots with some personal information already filled out for voters as they argued blank forms could disenfranchise voters who do not know their voting pin or driver’s license number.

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

The Past 24 Hours or So

Read Time: 5 Mniutes

Trump Administration

  • New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal tweeted: “I can confirm: New Jersey will be suing @USPS. Voting by mail is safe, secure, and reliable. We intend to keep it that way. As AG, I’ve made it my mission to hold accountable those who try to corrupt our political process. Lawsuit coming soon.”
  • Pennsylvania and Washington state Attorneys General said they plan to launch separate lawsuits seeking to reverse alterations to postal delivery procedures, the removal of mail sorting machines and limits on overtime that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has rolled out in recent weeks.
  • Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said he doesn’t share President Trump’s “concern” surrounding the U.S. Postal Service and mail-in voting ahead of the November election and said the agency “is going to be just fine.”
  • Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said in a statement that he would halt operational changes and cost-cutting to the U.S. Postal Service until after the 2020 election to “avoid even the appearance of any impact on election mail.”
  • The Senate Intelligence Committee released its final investigative report on Russia, the 2016 election, the FBI and the Trump campaign.

Some notable highlights in the report:

  • “The Committee found evidence suggesting …it was the intent of the Campaign participants in the … meeting, particularly Donald Trump Jr., to receive derogatory information… from a source known, at least by Trump Jr., to have connections to the Russian government.”
  • “The Committee found that certain FBI procedures and actions in response to the Russian threat to the 2016 elections were flawed.”
  • Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman Paul Manafort worked closely with a Russian intelligence officer who may have been involved in the hack and release of Democratic emails during the election.
  • “The Committee found that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian effort to hack computer networks and accounts affiliated with the Democratic Party and leak information damaging to Hillary Clinton and her campaign for president. “
  • “Staff on the Trump Campaign sought advance notice about WikiLeaks releases, created messaging strategies to promote and share the materials in anticipation of and following their release, and encouraged further leaks.”
  • “Russia is actively interfering again in the 2020 U.S. election to assist Donald Trump, and some of the President’s associates are amplifying those efforts. It is vitally important that the country be ready.”
  • The report ends “It is our conclusion, based on the Committee’s Report that the Russian intelligence services’ assault on the integrity of the 2016 U.S. electoral process and Trump and his associates’ participation in and enabling of this Russian activity, represents one of the single most grave counterintelligence threats to American national security in the modern era.” 
  • Former CIA operations officer, Evan McMullin, tweeted: “This Senate report on Russian interference in 2016 confirms that Trump’s campaign chairman did provide critical targeting data to the Kremlin through his associate Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian intel officer. It’s the greatest betrayal of the country ever.”
  • Longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone unexpectedly dropped the appeal of his seven federal felony convictions for seeking to thwart a House investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Stone had his sentence commuted by the president last month.

  • The Department of Justice sued Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, accusing the drugmaker of causing the submission of false claims to Medicare by using kickbacks to boost sales of its multiple sclerosis drug Copaxone.
  • President Trump said that he rejected a proposal from the Pentagon to cut military health care by $2.2 billion during the pandemic. 
  • Fourteen states and Washington, D.C., are suing the Trump administration over a new rule that would allow for the transportation of liquefied natural gas by rail, citing environmental, health and safety risks.
  • A coalition of 30 trade groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has sent a blistering letter to Congress and the White House blasting President Trump’s executive order on payroll taxes, saying it was unworkable without congressional action and warning that it will leave employees with massive tax bills once the deferral is over.
  • The Trump administration has officially expanded hunting and fishing at nearly 150 national wildlife refuges and fish hatcheries, increasing hunters’ ability to kill big game, migratory birds and other animals – a move that worries environmentalists who say the weakened protections could harm ecosystems and jeopardize protected species by allowing hunters to go after more predators.

Protests/Racial and Social Issues

  • Thomas Lane, one of the police officers that is charged in connection with the killing of George Floyd, is calling for the charges against him to be dropped, claiming that Floyd died from an overdose of fentanyl, not from former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
  • A billboard demanding the arrest of the officers involved in the killing of Breonna Taylor at her home in Louisville, KY, was vandalized, the Louisville Courier Journal reported Tuesday. 

The billboard, featuring Taylor’s face with the words, “Demand that the police involved in killing Breonna Taylor be arrested and charged,” was vandalized with red paint.

  • NBA star LeBron James and members of the Los Angeles Lakers wore caps that built upon President Trump’s signature “Make America Great Again” logo to call for justice for Breonna Taylor. The hats struck the words “Great Again” and replaced them with the message: “Arrest the cops who killed Breonna Taylor.”
  • A federal judge in Texas ruled in favor of a Black student whose school district prohibited him from wearing his hair in dreadlocks, issuing a preliminary injunction against the district and allowing the 16-year-old to wear locks without fear of punishment.
  • Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said that he’s in favor of capping property tax revenue from Texas cities that decide to cut funding from their police departments.
  • A federal judge temporarily blocked a Trump administration policy that would scrap ObamaCare’s nondiscrimination protections for sex and gender identity, one day before it was set to take effect.

The rule, issued during Pride Month, made clear that the government’s interpretation of sex discrimination would be based on “the plain meaning of the word ‘sex’ as male or female and as determined by biology.”

Presidential Campaign

  • Democrats officially nominated former Vice President Joe Biden to be their presidential nominee, setting up an election battle against President Trump in November.

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