Abyss 

Viral Musings:  Well it looks like Trump’s decision to move on to bigger and better things like reviving the economy and campaigning and VP Pence’s declaration that remarkable progress had been made in the fight against COVID 19 were just a wee bit premature.  So much for mission accomplished, instead we’re teetering on the edge of an epic abyss.  Yesterday in an effort to right a sinking armada, several more states and cities stalled or pulled back on their reopening’s.  Governor Ducey of hard hit Arizona who had prematurely opened up too many of his state’s businesses to show fealty to Trump ordered the reclosure of  bars, gyms, and theaters and added restrictions to the size of large gatherings.  Bars are closed again in hard hit Texas, another state where the Governor prioritized impressing Trump to taking care of his citizens.  NJ Governor Murphy, who has been cautiously moving his state out of its early COVID mess announced that he’s pushing off plans to allow indoor restaurant dining while New York Governor Cuomo appears to be on the verge of doing the same for NYC.  The tide is turning on face masks too. A number of prominent Republicans are now getting with the program.  Over the weekend Representative Liz Cheney tweeted out a picture of her father former VP Dick Cheney captioned “Real Men Wear Masks” and yesterday Senate Leader McConnell reiterated that Americans should continue to wear masks, emphasizing that there is “no stigma” associated with them.   Jacksonville Florida, the city that Trump moved his planned acceptance speech and related festivities to after growing frustrated with the RNC’s first choice location, Charlotte North Carolina, over their requirements that virus appropriate protocols be followed, is now requiring that facemasks be worn in public settings and even Pence is in on the action, well a little, he’s modeling mask wearing in more and more pictures.  Trump of course remains mask-less, as does his mini me Don Jr, who reportedly attended a crowded party in Bridgehampton over the weekend with his similarly uncovered campaign financed girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle. Someone is going to have to be retested and/or quarantined before his next visit/rally with dad. Speaking of rallies, virtually everyone who showed up for a COVID test in Tulsa over the past few days tested positive, compare that to New York State where the positivity rate is below 1%.  On the vaccination front, while Trump continues to promise that we’ll have one before year end or better yet the day before the November election, a pipedream at best, the Chinese are moving forward with one of theirs because they can do that kind of thing. They plan to start injecting members of their military with a vaccination jointly produced by a government research unit and CanSino Biologics, safety testing be damned.

Russia, Russia, Afghanistan:  The spin, excuses and denials related to what and when Trump learned about the Russians offering bounties to the Taliban for killing US and allied soldiers continued to take on lives of their own yesterday.  According to Press Secretary Kayleigh “lies a lot” McEnany the bounty story is a fiction drummed up by the failing NY Times which should be forced to give back all its underserved Pulitzers.  According to Director of National Intelligence Ratcliffe, who was not even in his position in March the time that NY Times and several other confirming news outlets report that Trump was briefed, the intelligence was too raw and unproven to share with the so called Commander in Chief even though it was shared with allies. Former national security advisor John Bolton says that Trump was told and the NY Times insists that two different sources report that the Russia/Taliban information was most definitely included in Trump’s daily briefing, that’s the briefing that he doesn’t read and only listens to sometimes, when it doesn’t interfere with his twittering. For some inexplicable reason through yesterday morning Trump continued to insist that he still hadn’t been brought in to the bounty/Russia/Taliban loop because the intel was too flimsy for his eyes and ears and anyway he’d been too busy playing golf and tweeting racists memes to be bothered.  The White House knows that it has a mess on its hands, so yesterday a select group of mostly fawning House Republicans were invited in for an intel update because that’s what you do when you have nothing to hide, you call in only Republicans.  Suffice it to say the uninvited Democratic contingent was fairly outraged at being left out of the meeting.  Apparently, some of them are now invited to one today, though it’s not clear that they will be offered as much information as their Republican colleagues were yesterday. Nevertheless, it is fair to assume that we’ll learn what they learn immediately after the meeting concludes.  Providing further evidence that a lot of scurrying and cover-ups are in process, late last night, the Department of Defense said it is evaluating intelligence about Russian “malign activity against the US and coalition forces in Afghanistan” and CIA head Gina Haspel issued a similarly evasive,  non-committal statement that looked like it was written at the behest of the White House. Though he’ll probably backtrack at some point because he always does, Republican Senator Ben Sasse tweeted what a lot of others are thinking but are too afraid to say “No. 1, Who knew what, when? And did the commander-in-chief know? And if not, how the hell not? And No. 2, What are we going to do as a proportional cost in response? In a situation like this, that would mean GRU and Taliban body bags.”  

The Supremes: Though we are still waiting for a ruling on the release of Trump’s financial information, yesterday the court issued a bigly one, overturning a law that had made it virtually impossible to obtain an abortion in Louisiana by imposing intentionally over restrictive and unnecessary requirements on those few doctors still performing abortions in the state.  Chief Justice Roberts joined the Court’s four liberal Justices, saying that because the Louisiana law was virtually identical to a Texas law that the Court had overturned a few years ago, he felt compelled to overturn this one.  That’s particularly notable because he wrote the dissenting opinion in the Texas case.  He hasn’t changed his anti-abortion stance, he’s just sticking with stare decisis, the principle of going with precedent.  Notably, Justice Kavanaugh who supposedly promised Maine Senator Susan Collins that he wouldn’t do anything to block access to abortion, dissented, joining the court’s conservative, anti-abortion contingent.  That’s not all that surprising because most of us knew that Kavanaugh was prevaricating, but it may turn out to be the final nail in Susan Collin’s electoral coffin.  Left with little to say, she uttered something along the lines that there is nothing about yesterday’s dissent that indicates that Kavanaugh would vote to overturn Roe V Wade, a response that was laughable at best and that her Democratic opponent Sara Gideon is already using in a political ad.

Primaries:  Believe it or not primary season isn’t over yet.  Though we still don’t have final results from last week’s Kentucky and New York primaries, a few more are on the docket today, one in Colorado where former Governor/presidential candidate John Hickenlooper is up against a more progressive opponent for the Democratic nomination to run against vulnerable Republican Cory Gardner and another in Utah where former Governor/Russia Ambassador/sometime Trump critic John Huntsman is seeking the Republican nomination to become governor again.  As to last week’s primaries, Kentucky’s are expected this morning, as of now Amy McGrath appears to have a few more votes than progressive Charlie Booker but NY’s might not show up for a while, the state is still counting a flood of absentee ballots.

All Roads Lead to Moscow

Russia, Russia, Russia:  Late Friday, the New York Times reported that back in March Trump was told that the Russians, through the same GRU unit responsible for US election interference, has been paying the Taliban bounties for killing US and allied forces troops in Afghanistan.  At that time Trump was presented with several retaliatory options, none of which have been implemented.  Over the weekend,  the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post confirmed the NYT report while providing additional details, including that the information about the bounties was included in the PDB (the president’s daily briefing), that at least one, possibly more, soldiers had been killed and others injured by the Taliban as a result of the bounties and that British officials have been brought into the intelligence loop. The response from the White House apparatchiks was fast, furious and deceptive.  Press Secretary Kayleigh “Kay-lie” McEnany said that neither Trump nor Pence had ever been briefed about any of this, a denial  that notably didn’t actually deny the veracity of the report.  Newest Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe called the story false, saying that he knew nothing about it, not all that surprising since he was promoted to his post because he’s a Trump fan boy who denies anything that implicates the Russians. Similarly a number of other White House denizens claimed that Chief of Staff Meadows hadn’t sat in on any related briefing, which means little since Meadows wasn’t in place yet in March.  Late last night Trump, who spent a good part of the weekend doing important things like retweeting support for White Power chanting Floridians and golfing in Virginia even though he said he was staying in Washington to protect statues and promote law and order against all those thuggish demonstrators, moved his usual denial cycle forward a few steps by tweeting “intel just reported to me that they did not find this info credible and therefore did not report it to me or the @VP. Possibly another fabricated Russian Hoax maybe by the  Fake News @nytimesbooks wanting to make Republicans look bad!!!”  He’s right in one respect, the story does make Republicans look bad, because despite his efforts to dissemble, it’s very likely that he was told about the Russian’s actions in March, that he either failed to pay attention when he was told, or that he didn’t care because keeping Vlad happy is more important than the lives of a few American soldiers.  The bounty story has hit a nerve across the aisle.  A number of Republicans including rising star Representative Liz Cheney, veterans Adam Kinzinger and Dan Crenshaw aren’t happy; they want to know what Trump knew and when he knew it. Senator Lindsey Graham who played golf with Trump wants us to know that he’s distressed too.  Similarly Speaker Pelosi is furious, neither she nor any other Democrats in the Gang of Eight who are supposed to briefed on this type of intel were ever brought into the loop, not surprising since the Trump machine no longer does that kind of thing.  Anyway, whatever Putin has on Trump, whether it’s something along the lines of the oft rumored but never proven pee tape or more likely something financially impactful it’s got to be bigger than bigly because instead of pushing back against or punishing Putin, since learning about the bounties Trump has continued to  push for Russia to be welcomed back into the G8 economic group, has announced that he’s withdrawing troops from Germany, two things that top Putin’s wish list, and has sent Russia ventilators. 

Viral Musings: As despicable as the Russia bounty story is, it pales in comparison to the deaths and disruptions associated with the Trump administration’s criminal mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic where the death count is 128,000 and growing. Virus tallies continue to implode especially in early to open Texas, Arizona and Florida and even in California, which for a short time looked like it was flattening the curve.  Nevertheless, on Friday the White House Virus Task force held a press conference where VP Pence reported that we’ve made “remarkable progress,” that all of the Trump administration’s actions have paid off and that masks while cute, weren’t all that necessary as along as people social distanced while toasting each other in jam packed bars and going to crowded churches.  Dr Debby Birx uttered some of her increasingly ridiculous gobbledy gook and Virus Guru Fauci looked like he was  exploding in frustration.  Almost immediately after Pence reassured us that there was no reason to be at all concerned about all those young’uns getting the virus because none of them would get sick and if any of them did they would probably survive even if hospitals were at capacity, the Governors of Texas, Florida and California pulled backed on their re-openings, somewhat, temporarily closing beaches and limiting the serving of alcohol in bars.  Though neither Texas Governor Abbot nor Florida Governor DeSantis mandated wearing facemasks they both said that people should kind of if they wanted to.  As to virus “expert” Pence, he cancelled some planned campaign events but then attended a huge indoor church service, huge as in thousands of people, in Texas where he sat by as a choir belted out prayerful songs along with zillions of teeny weeny COVID germs.  After that service, Pence finally recommended that people wear masks and notably the choir did put theirs on after they shared their germs with everyone else.  To round out the weekend HHS Secretary Azar warned that the “window was closing” for the US to get the virus under control, but did that while giving the contradictory message that the US is better positioned to handle the pandemic than before, citing increased testing, contact tracing, hospital capacity, reserves of personal protective equipment, and advancement toward therapeutics and potential vaccines for the virus.  That all sounds good except that we are still way behind in testing, so much so that Dr Fauci is now advocating pooled testing, the process where the samples of groups of people are lumped together, test waiting times remain prohibitive in hard hit areas and it’s not clear that we’ll have enough personal protective equipment in the fall nor that the promised treatments and or vaccines will be available when promised, or all that effective.     

Barr News: Attorney General Barr tried to have the campaign finance charges against Trump fixer/lawyer Michael Cohen’s removed, not out of any affection for Cohen, but because of the implication for Trump.  Though Barr didn’t succeed with Cohen, his interference is likely the reason that no one else from the Trump organization was ever charged.  Similarly it’s reported that its due to his efforts that Giuliani is still out and about and that his odd  partners in crime Lev and Igor’s cases won’t be heard until after the election.  Questions are also being raised about the possibility that Barr interfered in a case against Walmart, and that Joseph Brown, a lesser known US Attorney in Texas, who was pushed out in May was another victim of Barr’s efforts to protect a Trump friendly crowd.  Despite the administration’s efforts to keep the migrant children from an earlier episode of the Trump chronicles locked up forever, Federal Judge Dolly Gee ruled that 124 of them must be released ASAP to relatives and in some cases with their relatives due to the severity of the virus in their detention facilities and a Federal Appeals court ruled that Trump’s diversion of $2.5 billion of funds to wall construction from the Pentagon wasn’t Kosher.  Trump wants voters to believe that the reason that he had Barr’s DOJ join the case to overturn Obamacare is because he’s got a much better plan, one that will take care of pre-existing conditions.  Ignoring that his plan doesn’t exist and that the Republicans in Congress have had years to come up with one and haven’t, the DOJ lawsuit specifically attacks the coverage of pre-existing conditions.  Roger Stone’s judge Amy Berman Jackson has given him until July 14^th to turn himself in to start serving his sentence which is probably why Trump also tweeted again about pardoning him this weekend and lastly one more member of the White House team, or at least one more that we know of, has tested positive for COVID.  Though we don’t know who that person is we do know that he’s part of the economic team.  Curiously enough two members of that team announced they were leaving last week.

Lobster Salad

Viral Musings: Yesterday as Trump tweet/bragged about saving Maine’s lobster industry by directing bribe funding into the state where vulnerable/pearl clutcher Senator Susan Collins is up for reelection and continued to threaten those “radicals” and “thugs” overturning statues, the coronavirus raged on bigly, reaching new levels across the country.  Nationwide cases are up 30% compared to the beginning of June. Over the past week twenty-six states have seen their caseloads increase, up 77% in Arizona, 75% in Michigan, 70% in Texas, 66% in Florida and 47% in California.  Only the New York region and parts of New England have consistently managed to get caseloads down through May and June (so far?). Despite all of this, yesterday VP Pence, the purported leader of the virus task force, told governors that the problem only affects a few counties and, like Trump, erroneously laid the blame on an increase in testing which may explain why the administration has decided to end federal funding for testing sites in places like Texas at the end of the month.  No testing, no virus. Right?  With COVID rates declining in Europe, where most leaders took the pandemic seriously, the EU is now giving serious consideration to blocking travel from the US and yesterday the Governors of New York, Connecticut and New Jersey announced a travel advisory requiring that anyone arriving from states with high coronavirus rates will be required to self-quarantine for 14 days.  The advisory applies to people coming from states with positive test rates higher than 10 per 100,000 residents over a 7-day rolling average or a state with a 10% or higher positivity rate over a seven-day rolling average. As of yesterday, that list includes Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah and Texas. 

Wishing on a Star:  Though Trump continues to try to orate the virus away, someone in the White House appear to understand that the Tinkerbell strategy isn’t working all that well.  Yesterday, during the news conference with visiting Polish President Duda, the press seating arrangement which last week had been moved back to pre-virus spacing was back in a socially distanced formation.  Maybe that’s because dozens of Secret Service officers and agents who were in Tulsa for the first leg of Trump’s COVID tour have been ordered to self-quarantine for 14 days because two of their colleagues tested COVID positive.  No news yet as to whether those who attended the Phoenix rally will also be subjected to a similar stay at home order.  It’s only a matter of time before Trump will have to contract out for protection.  Maybe Erik Prince or Vlad Putin have some extra mercenaries to share. The stock market gods aren’t happy either, investors appear to be waking up to the fact that the failure to take the virus seriously has consequences for economic growth.  On the bright side, although enough time has passed for the virus to have shown up in demonstrators, there hasn’t been an uptick in cases in New York, a result being attributed to the wide spread wearing of facemasks. If only someone was in a position to insist that all of his MAGA hatted followers also went the face mask route. 

InJustice:  Yesterday’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee went about as expected.  Aaron Zelinsky (who I mistakenly called Andrew yesterday) testified that that the decision to adjust the sentencing recommendation for Trump buddy Roger Stone was politically influenced.  Though he didn’t initially name the DOJ official who told him that, when pushed by the ever skeptical, not too bright Jim “Gym” Jordan to cough up the name, he did, identifying the supervisor as JP Cooney, the head of the fraud and public corruption unit.  Thanks to “Gym”, Cooney is likely to be invited to come in and testify, not the result that “Gym” intended. Zelinsky also named another Justice official, Alessio Evangelista and then when “Gym” asked whether  these officials had spoken with Attorney General Barr, Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen or then-U.S. Attorney Timothy Shea, Zelinsky responded, “My understanding is they did.”  Again not the responses that Jordan wanted or expected.  As expected  John Elias, another career Justice Department attorney, said that AG Barr had pushed for improper, politically motivated investigations of cannabis industry companies.  And, Don Ayer, who previously served as the Deputy Attorney General under George HW Bush testified that he believes that AG Barr “poses the greatest threat, in my lifetime, to our rule of law and to public trust in it….that is because he does not believe in its core principle: that no person is above the law.” Under threat of a subpoena, Barr has now agreed to come in and testify at the end of July.  Don’t ink that into your calendar, he’s been known to come up with last minute excuses.  Chairman Nadler who earlier said that there was no point in trying to impeach Barr given the Senate’s willingness to ignore Trump administration criminality now says that impeachment is on the table.  One more thing, and this one is a bit hard for me to explain so I might not get it completely right.  Yesterday, by a 2 to 1 vote, an Appeals court ordered Judge Sullivan to accede to the Justice Department’s request to dismiss the charges against Trump’s former national security advisor Michael Flynn, not because they questioned Flynn’s guilt but because Barr/Trump want the charges dropped.  That opinion was written by Neomi Rao, one of Trump’s appointees.  Though the ruling is good news for Flynn and by extension Trump and Barr, it may not be the last word on the issue as any active judge on the DC Circuit, including the judge who cast the dissenting vote could call for a vote to bring the matter before the full court “en banc.”  Stay tuned.  Also, stay tuned to the Supreme Court, some more decisions are likely to be handed down today.

Et Cetera:  Democrats voted against bringing Republican Senator Tim Scott’s version of a police reform bill to the floor for debate, partially over concerns that they won’t be able to strengthen the bill to include a total ban on chokeholds, because it doesn’t address limiting police protections for bad acts and because they want to start with the House version.      

No blog tomorrow.  Have a nice weekend! Stay safe and #WearAMask.

Shambolic Governance

COVID Tour:  Overall the number of new cases of the coronavirus is rising in the US with new infection rates reaching particularly alarming levels in Arizona, Texas and Florida.  Yesterday CDC Head Redfield told Congress that “the virus has brought this nation to its knees,” while  Virus guru Fauci described a “disturbing surge” of infections in some parts of the country, as Americans “ignore social distancing guidelines and states reopen without adequate plans for testing and tracing the contacts of those who get sick.”  Though both of them, as well as the others testifying before the House said that they hadn’t been directly told to cut back on virus testing, Trump, who continues to blame testing for the rise in infection rates, said that he never jokes, confirming that when he says that we test too much, he means it.  He doubled, or at this point I should say quadrupled down on that point while on his COVID Tour, this time during a presentation to 3000 young adults/fans in a crowded, unmasked crowd in a Phoenix, Arizona church yesterday.  During that speech/campaign rally he once again used an ethnic slur, referring to COVID 19 as the Kung Flu questioning where that 19 comes from anyway, he called Democrats totalitarians, extolled the country’s Confederate history, threatened long jail time for those thuggish demonstrators, especially the ones tearing down statues celebrating the heroes of slavery and Native American massacres (and a few other statues that should probably be left standing) and called for the crowd to rise up and take back their America.  It’s worth mentioning that one of the warm-up speakers, a picture perfect blondette, expressed her deep distress over how the country could possibly move forward now that Quaker Oats was changing the name of Aunt Jemima maple syrup. Apparently the virus is of no concern to her nor is the woeful lack of testing capability in Arizona, but the loss of a racist brand name, that keeps her up at night.  While Trump was traipsing around Arizona, Joe Biden held a virtual fund raiser with former President Obama.  Obama called out Trump’s shambolic governance, promising that if “we do our work right help will be on the way.”  The two raised a total of $11 million.  This morning’s NY Times/Siena national poll shows Biden leading Trump 50% to 36% with a widening advantage among women and nonwhite voters, making “deep inroads with some traditionally Republican-leaning groups, like male voters and older Americans.  However, voters still believe that Trump is better for the economy despite the current environment and his woeful handling of the coronavirus epidemic, so though Trump is down now, it’s way too early to predict where he’ll be come election day.   

Primaries: The results of many of yesterday’s key primaries remain undecided as a large number of absentee ballots, the ones that Trump has been attacking as illegal, counterfeit and/or sourced from foreign players, have not yet been counted.  After a smoother than expected start, things got crazy in Kentucky as those who did not take advantage of the state’s expanded absentee ballot provisions amassed outside of the limited number of voting sites in minority heavy Louisville.  A judge refused to extend polling hours from 6 to 9PM but relented a little, allowing the polls to stay open until 630 PM permitting a rush of voters to get into the polling locations before the doors slammed shut for good.  As of now the much watched race between establishment candidate Amy McGrath and progressive insurgent candidate Charles Booker to run against Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is too close to call.  One time Congressional candidate/retired Marine Lt. Col. McGrath leads State Representative Booker, the African American progressive, who was endorsed by Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and Congresswoman AOC, by about 8 points, a lead that could go away once absentee ballots are counted.  Final results aren’t expected for a week.  The same results delay holds true for New York, where absentee ballot totals won’t be made available until next week.  As of now, long time Congressman Eliot Engel is lagging behind progressive Jamaal Bowman while Oversight Committee Chair and long term Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney has a small but not insurmountable lead over challenger Suraj Patel.  On the MSNBC front, the results are split, it looks like SDNY alum Mimi Rocah is well on her way to beating incumbent Anthony Scarpino in the race to become the Westchester District Attorney while former Obama staff member Evelyn Farkas appears out of the money in the race to succeed long time retiring Congresswoman Nita Lowey.

Injustice: On the what in the world is going on at the DOJ front, Andrew Zelinsky, the former Mueller team prosecutor who withdrew from the Roger Stone case after senior Justice Department officials “intervened to recommend a lighter sentence” will testify before Congress that he and his colleagues were repeatedly pressured to cut Stone "a break," and were told that it was because of his relationship with Trump. Zelinsky who is testifying even though he is still with the Department of Justice will be joined by also current antitrust prosecutor John Elias, who will testify that Attorney General Barr personally ordered the Department's Antitrust Division to launch politically motivated reviews of 10 cannabis mergers because of his personal anti marijuana bias.  To no one’s surprise, AG Barr will not be testifying and as of now is expected to ignore the subpoena expected to be issued by Judiciary Chair Nadler.  His excuse is that he’s too busy dealing with the virus outbreak, particularly flimsy given that Drs Redfield, Fauci, and the FDA’s Hahn, the people actually dealing with the virus, found time in their schedules to appear before Congress.  The NY Bar has called on Congress to investigate Barr for his conduct and ethical lapses.  Good luck with that.  

Et Cetera:  As expected the Trump family is suing to prevent the publication of niece Mary Trump’s tell all book, claiming that it violates her NDA with them. Doesn’t everyone have an NDA with their family?    

Shocking

COVID Tour:  Trump is off to Arizona today, another state with spiking virus numbers and full intensive care units.  First he’ll be heading to Yuma to celebrate the construction of the 200^th mile of his famed wall.  For the record, only three miles of Trump’s wall have been built, in areas with no previous border barrier, the rest is just the replacement of what was already there, so just more smoke and mirrors. After Yuma, Trump will be heading to Phoenix to deliver remarks at a Students for Trump rally at Dream City Church.  Three thousand students are expected to attend but nothing to worry about as the pastors involved claim that their church has a special air purification system that kills 99.9% of the virus. Tulsa could have used that special “miraculous” purification system, two more members of Trump’s advance team, the team for the rally that was a bust, but that Trump and his press secretary claim was seen by more TV viewers than any other rally ever held, have tested COVID positive, that makes for eight or ten positives, depending on the media source.  Since only Trump’s advance team has been tested and a significant percentage of them are now positive, it’s fair to assume that a lot of the attendees are too, not that they will know until they show symptoms which will likely be after they’ve shared their germs with others. On the testing front, though Trump’s spokespeople insist he was only kidding when he said that he should cut back on testing because it makes our COVID problem look as bad as it is, yesterday Trump pretty much doubled down, telling a Scripps interviewer that "If it (virus testing) did slow down, frankly, I think we're way ahead of ourselves, to tell you the truth." As to that, Senators Chuck Schumer and Patty Murray have sent a letter to HHS Secretary Azar asking him to explain why $14 billion of the money allocated to virus testing and tracking have not been spent, as if they don’t know why.  Also on the virus front, with levels going through the roof in Texas, Governor Abbott acknowledged that recent spikes in cases and hospitalizations were “unacceptable” but didn’t announce any new requirements to halt the spread of the virus. He did however say the virus needs to be “corralled” and if they feel like it people should wear masks. Thoughts and prayers?  Likewise, Florida’s Governor has admitted that his state’s virus levels are heading up but blames that on partying young people and Hispanics and says it’s not a bigly problem because he’s got plenty of hospital beds.  That explanation hasn’t swayed either the Yankees or the Mets, they are moving their training camps back to the relative safety of New York.  Good news for NY, but no time to get cocky.  It also hasn’t impressed Miami’s mayor who has ordered that masks be worn in public and has postponed phase three re-openings. While Trump and his sometime economist Larry Kudlow insist that the virus is under control and that there will be no second wave, trade advisor Peter Navarro, who was one of the few who took the virus seriously says that he’s busy preparing the country for that wave, the one that might prove indistinguishable from the first wave that we might not get out of for a long, long time.  By the way Navarro who is again saying that China intentionally created the virus briefly threw the markets into turmoil by saying that the China trade deal was dead, an assertion that he and others quickly denied.  On the economist front, Trump’s other one, the exceedingly polite and usually overly optimistic Kevin Hassett who once developed a COVID model of his own, one that predicted the virus would be gone by May, is leaving the administration again, saying that he never planned to stick around for more than ninety days.  His parting words “"I think everyone should be worried about how this is going to turn out in the end, because it's a shock unlike anything we've ever seen."

Electioneering: Trump who appears to be growing increasingly concerned about his 2020 election prospects, is already screaming election fraud, targeting mail in ballots again.  He started yesterday with a serious of tweets including one where he said “RIGGED 2020 ELECTION: MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES, AND OTHERS. IT WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES! and another where he said that “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!” Trump appears to be doing the two step with Attorney General Barr who also dissed mail-in voting, by telling Fox’s Maria Bartiromo that such “ballots open the floodgates of potential fraud….undermining confidence in the outcome of the election.” Their assertions are nonsense but frightening, an indication that Trump plans to question election results if they don’t go his way. By the way, though Republican officials routinely suppress minority voter participation in devious ways there is no indication that facilitating mail-in ballots leads to fraud. Trump, VP Pence, Press Secretary McEnany, RNC Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel all vote by absentee ballot.  On the suppression front, today is primary day in Kentucky and New York.  While New York made it easier than ever for voters to obtain absentee ballots and opened a number of sites early, Kentucky has reduced the number of its voting sites from 2700 to 200, leaving the 767,000 people living in its most populous and minority dominated country with only one polling site because who doesn’t want to wait in a long line during the year of the coronavirus  

The Berman Affair:  Getting back to Attorney General Barr, last night Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler said that he plans to subpoena him about the firing of ousted US Attorney Geoffrey Berman.  While Trump administration spokespeople continue to assert that Berman wasn’t replaced because of his failure to put the kibosh on cases investigating Trump and his friends but only because Trump wanted to accommodate his golfing buddy, SEC head Jay Clayton’s desire to move back to NYC, few rational people believe that. Even NJ US Attorney Craig Carpenito who Barr planned to tap to assume Berman’s responsibilities while Clayton was going through the confirmation process was shocked to learn that Berman was being forced out as Barr told him that Berman had decided to leave on his own.  Curiously the WSJ is now saying that Barr, rather than Trump, wanted Berman gone because he refused to sign a letter criticizing NY  Mayor DeBlasio for allowing protests to go forward while limiting church/synagogue/mosque attendance but while that would inflame the “religious” Barr, it’s a stretch to believe that is the reason that Berman was fired.  Nadler, who knows that getting Barr to abide by a subpoena will be near impossible, is also threatening to cut his funding.  As to Clayton, if he wants to return to NYC he should call his old law firm, it’s unlikely that he will ever be confirmed to the US Attorney position.          

Tik Tok

Another Weird Weekend:  It turns out that scheduling a political rally during a pandemic on Juneteenth weekend in a city closing in on the 100^th anniversary of a racial pogrom during a time of racial discord was not such a good idea. Though Trump’s team, most notably current and possibly soon to be ex-campaign manager Brad Parscale and Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany spent last week bragging about the humongous demand for rally tickets, asserting that a million tickets had been requested and that at least 100,000 people would turn up in Tulsa, only 6,200 people showed up to the 19,000 seat arena leaving rows of bright Democratic blue seats empty and exposed to the cameras. The turnout was so small that an outdoor stage built so that Trump and VP Pence could say a few words to the overflow crowd that wasn’t remained unused, quickly torn down while the not so festive, festivities were taking place inside what was likely, given the lack of masking and social distancing, a virus invested arena.  As to COVID, the death toll is above 120,000 and six members of Trump’s advance team, including two Secret Service agents are now among the 2.2 million in the US who have or have had the virus. They were moved into quarantine before the rally even began.  Apparently, Trump, who grew increasingly furious and judging by pictures of him after the rally, despondent, as Saturday went on wasn’t all that concerned about the health of his infected staff but was livid that their test results had been made public which does make you wonder how many others on team Trump are super spreaders.  That might explain why he attacked the value of virus testing saying it is a “double-edged sword,” because when you do lots of testing “you're going to find more people; you're going to find more cases. So I said to my people, slow the testing down please.”  Later, his spokespeople claimed he was just kidding, but really, he was just saying the quiet stuff out loud.  The rest of Trump’s rally diatribe went as expected, it was chock full of references to those demonstrating thugs and radicals, the need for law and order, the dangers of electing any Democrat especially Joe Biden, and sadly, he made no attempt to sooth the country or to appeal to anyone outside of his base.  He even called the coronavirus the Kung flu, a smear that Kellyanne “cupcake” Conway once denied that anyone in the Trump administration would ever use.  Still smarting from the snarky press about his inability to drink water with one hand and his stumbling walk down the ramp at last week’s West Point graduation, Trump spent an inordinate amount of time defending himself, going so far as to prove his drinking prowess by lifting a glass to his lips with one hand to prove that he could leaving some to wonder how many  physical therapy sessions it took for him to achieve that feat.  And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the Tik Tok army, the teenagers who punked team Trump by ordering thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of free Tulsa rally tickets.  Though Parscale denied that their “orders” had at all influenced his rally attendance predictions, we know they did, a lot. 

Friday Night Massacre Redux:  Southern District of New York (SDNY) US Attorney Geoffrey Berman is now gone, but he didn’t leave without causing a ruckus.  Late on Friday, Attorney General Barr announced that Berman was departing, an announcement that caught everyone, including Berman by surprise.  Details of Berman’s forced departure sputtered out over the weekend and the story was messy even by Trump standards. In his original announcement AG Barr said that Berman would be temporarily replaced by Craig Carpenito, the US Attorney for New Jersey rather than Audrey Strauss, the second in command in the SDNY, pending the confirmation of his permanent replacement, Jay Clayton the current head of the SEC, whose only qualification for the position is that he’s a regular golfing buddy of Trump.  Berman responded that Barr’s announcement was news to him and that he didn’t intend to step down, adding that given that he had been appointed to his position by a judge, rather than through the usual Senate confirmation only Trump could firm him.  On Saturday, Barr announced that Trump was firing him, but then Trump distanced himself, saying that he had nothing to do with Berman’s dismissal, that the whole thing was Barr’s doing.  By the end of the day, Berman had stepped down but not before he backed Barr into agreeing that his second, the respected Audrey Strauss, rather than the NJ US Attorney would step into the acting role pending the confirmation of Clayton, that all ongoing “controversial” prosecutions, as in cases involving individuals named Trump and/or Giuliani would continue and that the Justice Department Inspector General would make sure that nothing untoward happened to disrupt any of those ongoing cases.  To further muddy the waters, the Trump team then claimed that the decision to replace Berman, who by the way is a Republican who contributed to Trump in 2016 but who has “failed” by doing his job instead of kowtowing to Trump, had nothing to do with any pending indictments, that it was just Trump awarding Clayton, his golfing buddy, a position that he wanted to “burnish” his resume and that they had offered Berman two other slots, the head of the SEC position being vacated by Clayton and the head of the Justice Department Civil Division, another about to be vacated spot.  It’s fair to assume that’s just smoke and mirrors, that something is up at the SDNY and that Trump and Barr thought that they could pull a fast one while all eyes were on Tulsa.  As to Clayton’s confirmation, that isn’t going to happen anytime soon.  Judiciary Chair Lindsey Graham, who is doing the usual post primary shuffle back towards reasonable to help him win his upcoming election, announced that he will only put Clayton up for a confirmation vote if he receives “blue slips” from NY’s two Senators Gillibrand and Schumer.  The “blue slip” convention which allows Senators to put the kibosh on nominees in their region has mostly been ignored by the Republicans of late so Graham’s announcement is a bit surprising, it also wouldn’t be surprising if he changed his mind as nothing about this tale is normal.  In any case, NY’s twosome will oppose Clayton’s nomination. And of course, House Judiciary Chair Nadler has invited Berman to testify.  As to Barr, this weekend Nadler agreed with Senator Elizabeth Warren’s call for his impeachment but added that given the complicity of the Republican controlled Senate there’s no point in trying.

Et Cetera:  Over the weekend a Judge refused to block the publication of former national security advisor John Bolton’s book, largely because everyone already knows what’s in the book, that Trump’s done lots of bad things and isn’t fit for office.  That said, he didn’t rule out the possibility that Bolton might have to hand over his profits, nor did he rule out that he could be further punished for telling state secrets.  As to those secrets, Trump claims that Bolton is mostly lying and lies aren’t secrets, something that complicates some of those punishments ever happening.  Bolton’s book goes on sale tomorrow but pirated copies are already available on the internet.  On the DACA front, Trump is now saying that he owes the Supreme Court a favor as they’ve said he can unwind the program as long as he does it the right way.  He now plans to try to do it the right way.  We may hear more from the Supremes today, a decision related to abortion rights is thought to be coming shortly.  Lastly, someone left a noose hanging in NASCAR’s sole Black driver Bubba Smith’s racing stall yesterday, payback for him weighing in against the Confederate flag. If only we had a president who would speak out against that kind of thing.   

Once in Love with Amy

The Supremes:  Yesterday in a 5-4 vote with Chief Justice Roberts joining the liberal four, the Supreme Court threw the DACA Dreamers a temporary lifeline, ruling that the Trump administration had failed to provide a “reasoned explanation” for rescinding the program.  That’s a big deal for the 700,000 or so Dreamers who’ve been in the US since early childhood and should also be a win, or at least a temporary win, for those who seek admission into the program.  It’s also a win for the economy and the strained US healthcare system where many of the largely well-educated, tax paying DACA recipients work.  As expected, Trump was outraged.  Asserting that the Court doesn’t like him, because in his “me, me” mind it’s always about him, he tweeted “These horrible & politically charged decisions coming out of the Supreme Court are shotgun blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves Republicans or Conservatives,” a not so subtle dog whistle to his supporters concerned about their gun rights.   He’s right about some of those Conservatives, a few like Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley attacked the Court’s decision as did his appointed heads of the INS and DHS, however many were secretly or in the case of Texas’s Senator John Cornyn and Maine’s Senator Susan Collins openly pleased as the deportation of thousands of Dreamers in the run up to the election would hardly help their case with swing voters. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was so relieved by the decision that he cried on the Senate floor.  Still, the Dreamers’ future hangs in the balance, the program was only saved because of procedural incompetence.  If Trump gets reelected his henchman Attorney General Barr who is far more competent that his predecessors will make sure that things are done “right” during  their next attempt to throw the Dreamers out, and it’s fair to assume that with Trump and his devious underling Stephen Miller in charge there will be a next time.  The Court isn’t done yet, we’re still waiting for their ruling on Trump’s taxes and a restrictive Louisiana abortion law.

Tulsa or Bust:  Virus spikes or no virus spikes, Trump who continues to assert that the “Chinese” virus is so over and/or only effects old people, still plans to head to Tulsa, Oklahoma to reenergize his flailing campaign with a weekend chock full of aerosol spreading speeches, cheering and partying.  A number of locals still don’t want him or any of his followers to come, and at least one court case seeking to limit his festivities is still pending, but the odds are that Trump will show up as will the virus, although we won’t know much about COVID’s stealthy participation in what is expected to be a largely unmasked/not socially distanced crowd for an additional two weeks. On the masking front, Trump told the Wall Street Journal that, contrary to evidence and expert recommendations, he thinks masks are “overrated” and that people wear them only to spite him. In the same WSJ interview he doubled down on his criticism of testing, saying that testing only runs up virus totals, because you know, no testing, no virus. Right?  He also said that he doesn’t plan to ramp up testing  in the event of a second virus wave, that’s the second wave we are likely to see during the Fall flu season, the wave we’ll only notice as a second wave, if we get out of the increasingly spiking first wave that parts of the country are still in. Yesterday, during his daily news conference, NYS’s Governor Cuomo launched into an attack of the Trump administration’s failed handling of the virus onslaught. He also made it clear that he wasn’t impressed with the way a number of red state governors were dealing with the virus, implying that he might impose a quarantine on people coming in from places like Florida, a particularly ironic payback for the way that Florida Governor DeSantis treated New Yorkers in April.  Virus Guru Fauci isn’t all that impressed with the Trump administration either.  Yesterday he lamented the anti-science bias that appears to be controlling some decision making and it was clear he was talking about the Oval Office.  On the face masking front, yesterday California’s Newsom issued a mandatory face mask order and, in a bow to reality, Arizona’s Governor Ducey and Texas’ Governor Abbott are lifting bans that had prohibited local officials from imposing face mask requirements. Yup, those two rocket scientists had previously banned masks.

Revolving Door:  Trump who had no idea what Juneteenth was all about or that even existed even though his administration has previously sent out messages on the holiday is now taking credit for giving it the publicity it “deserves.” With virtually no Black people in his inner circle, he had to reach out to one of his Secret Service men to learn what the emancipation holiday was all about.  On the personnel front, yesterday the State Department’s Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs Mary Elizabeth Taylor, a lifelong Republican who at one point in her career worked for Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, resigned.  Taylor, one of Trump’s few Black appointees, quit over his handling of the protests over the police killing of George Floyd and police brutality. In her resignation letter she said that Trump’s “comments and actions surrounding racial injustice and Black Americans cut sharply against my core values and convictions. I must follow the dictates of my conscience and resign.”  She’s not the only administration official leaving, however she does appear to be the only one leaving of her own volition.  Two senior defense department officials are departing, pushed aside for not being sufficiently loyal to Trump while the heads of at least three outlets overseen by Trump’s new chief of the US funded Voice of America and its sister outlets have been fired by Michael Pack, Trump’s new head of the US Agency for Global Media, raising fears that Trump is turning the tax-payer funded entities into Trump administration propaganda machines. It’s rumored that Pack is even considering hiring Nazi sympathizer Sebastian Gorka.  On the Nazi front, yes with Trump there actually is a Nazi front, yesterday Facebook took down Trump campaign posts that prominently featured an inverted red triangle symbol used by the Nazis to classify political prisoners during World War II, saying the imagery violated company policy. And Twitter marked another Trump tweet, this time for using manipulated media.

Democrats:  Last night, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar formally pulled herself out of the Biden Veepstakes.  An early leader in the race, her star has been falling, not helped by her prior experience serving as a prosecutor in the Hennepin County (Minneapolis) District Attorney’s office.  Appearing on MSNBC’s Last Word, she told host Lawrence O’Donnell that she had already advised Biden of her decision, telling him that “now is the moment to put a woman of color on the ticket.”  So effectively, while pulling out she advanced Senator Kamala Harris’ chances, while knocking Senator Elizabeth Warren down more than a few rungs.       

Books and Felonies

Bolton’s Room: Former National Security Advisor John Bolton’s book still hasn’t been published, but everyone in the press has seen it and even though the Justice Department is still trying to prevent its  formal release, the details are out and they are quite damning which explains why Trump and company were and still are trying so hard to stop its official release.  For the record, Bolton is no hero, he refused to testify during the House impeachment hearings and is now blaming House Democrats for not trying harder to force his hand, and even though they knew, or more likely because they knew that he had lots of implicating things to say, the Republican controlled Senate opted not to call him in, even after he said that he would be willing to show up for them.  Well, assuming what Bolton has written in his book is true, and it’s fair to assume that it is because why else would it be freaking the White House out so much, he knew many things that we all should have heard sooner although it’s not clear that they would have altered the outcome of the impeachment vote because as Republican Senator Lamar Alexander, who is viewed as one of the more moderate Republicans, told a reporter yesterday, the new revelations wouldn’t cause him to rethink his decision because he already knew that Trump did what he was accused of doing, he just didn’t think that any of it was impeachable.  As to Bolton’s revelations, some are truly disturbing, others are just silly.  Among other things he says that Trump asked China to help him with the 2020 election, that he signed off on President Xi imprisoning his Uyghur population in harsh detainment camps, that most of his actions were motivated by self-interest, that he didn’t expect to get any nuclear concessions from Kim Jong un but saw personal value in the press surrounding their meetings and was obsessed about getting an Elton John CD that he rather than the famed musician had signed into the Little Rocket Man’s hands to prove that the insulting moniker wasn’t mean, that he didn’t know that the UK had nukes, that he tried to halt criminal investigations to help “dictators that he liked,” that Secretary of State Pompeo though he was full of sh-t,  and, my personal favorite, that he didn’t know that Finland was an independent country, he thought it was part of Russia.  Last night the Justice Department filed another injunction to prevent the book’s distribution which Simon and Schuster, the book’s publisher called a “frivolous, politically motivated exercise in futility,” while noting that it would do nothing as hundreds of thousands of copies of the book are already in the hands of book distributors.  And because everything in Trumpland is good for lawyers,  Ellen Knight, the NSA official who signed off on the book’s contents before the White House decided that it was still chock full of “secrets,” has now hired her own lawyer in anticipation of being called in to testify.  For his part, Trump wants us all to know that Bolton is a washed up liar.  Trump, by the way, knows lots about lying.

Driving While Black:  Before the Bolton book took over yesterday’s news cycle, the focus was on police reform.  Surrounded by his face masked(!) colleagues, Tim Scott, the Republican’s one Black Senator, took to the microphone to describe the Republican proposed reform legislation.  Senator Scott who didn’t acknowledge that there is much in the way of inherent police racial bias began by discussing the way too many times that he’s been stopped for driving while Black, including a recent time when he was actually stopped for failing to flip his turning signal “sufficiently” in advance of his turn, making it clear that he has been the victim of that bias that he won’t admit is rampant.  Though the Republican legislation doesn’t go far enough for most Democrats, it doesn’t include all of the things proposed by Democratic Senators Booker and Harris in their proposal, doesn’t address lifting qualified immunity, and falls short of what’s being proposed in the House, it’s a start, although if you believe Scott and Senate Majority Leader McConnell, it’s as far as the Republicans plan to go, a statement which is probably more a negotiating position than anything else.  Anyway, McConnell now says that he wants to get legislation passed before the July 4 break, but not before he gets two more of his unqualified, extremely conservative judges confirmed proving that regardless of the trauma the country is facing McConnell has his priorities.  Curiously enough, Senator Susan Collins announced yesterday that she plans to vote against the confirmation of one of those judges, Justin Walker who currently serves as a district judge in McConnell’s home state of Kentucky.  Walker has been nominated to serve on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, the second highest court.  It’s not clear that Collins’ vote will matter, so far no other Republicans have joined her, but since she’s taking heat for Justice Kavanaugh’s vote against LGBT rights, she probably felt that she had to do something.  Whatever.  Getting back to the trauma, yesterday the Fulton County District Attorney announced charges against the two now ex-police officers involved in the shooting death of Rayshard Brooks, the Black man who was shot after falling asleep in his car outside of a Wendy’s.  The DA disclosed additional information about the killing that makes it fairly clear that the police acted with wanton disregard for Brooks’ life. Garrett Rolfe, the officer who shot Brooks faces 11 charges, including felony murder, with prosecutors revealing that after he shot Brooks he kicked him as he was lying in a pool of blood but still breathing. The other officer, Devon Brosnan, who stepped on Brooks after he was shot instead of trying to help him, is facing three counts including aggravated assault.  He appears to be cooperating with the DA’s office, though his lawyer wants it to be known that while he’s telling the “truth” he’s not testifying against his fellow policeman because that’s the kind of thing that could get him and his family hurt which says a lot about the problem at hand.

Viral Musings:  The coronavirus is still running rampant, Trump is still planning to go off to Tulsa to see what he can do to make things worse and, when asked about the risk to his fans, Trump’s press secretary said so what, life is full of risks.       

Writing on the Wall?

Smoke, Mirrors, and Orders:   Bowing to pressure and declining poll numbers, Trump held one of his press conference/pep rallies on the White House lawn yesterday where he trumpeted his relatively modest executive order on police reform.  The order, mostly an effort by Trump to appear to be doing something, encourages limiting, rather than eliminating, the use of chokeholds and moves to create a national database for police misconduct. Before making the announcement he met with families of some of the victims of police brutality and a large group of law enforcement professionals.  During the press conference Trump talked about the need for strong law enforcement and his intent to provide police with more powerful equipment, because really, that’s all he cares about, criticized the Obama/Biden administration for their lack of action, neglecting to mention that his administration had largely rolled back Obama’s policing reforms, and again threatened to do something about those lawless, largely peaceful protesters who’ve taken over a section of Seattle.  The usual group of Republican leaders and token Black officials were in the audience, not a problem for Democrats who likely breathed a sigh of relief at being left off the invite list since those present, with the exception of the Secret Service, the folks that Trump is now referring to in his tweets as his SS, wore no masks as they shook(!) hands. And why wouldn’t they shake hands, the coronavirus thing is going to disappear soon, or like AIDs will be eliminated via vaccine.  At least that’s the official Trump administration position.  To be clear, COVID 19 is still out there, currently at 113,000 the country’s mortality is predicted to reach 213,000 by October and though one or more of those promised COVID vaccines might actually be available next year if we’re lucky, there still is no vaccine for AIDS, just a few highly effective therapeutics that took years to develop.  Virus guru Anthony Fauci who is still warning of a second wave in the fall, and who wants us, especially Trump and those Governors in the spiking states to know that the first wave hasn’t left yet, reports that he hasn’t met with Trump in weeks, another indication that Trump has put the virus behind him.  None of that is much of a concern to VP Pence, the purported head of the Virus Task Force.  Yesterday the Wall Street Journal published his op-ed in which he celebrated the administration’s “success” in containing the coronavirus epidemic while slamming the press for “sounding the alarm bells over a ‘second wave’ of infections,” saying “such panic is overblown.”  Having failed to contain the virus, Pence is all in on pretending it away, the same strategy he applied to AIDS when he was Governor of Indiana. 

On the Road Again: Trump is still planning to head to Tulsa this weekend for his first “post” virus rally.  According to campaign manager Brad Pascale somewhere north of a bazillion of his die hard fans have applied for tickets to the event in the 18,000 capacity indoor, poorly ventilated arena. While there have been some reports that the Trump team is looking for a more suitable outdoor venue, it’s probably too late for that so the rally will likely move forward as planned even though many in Tulsa, at least those into facts and science are fearful that Trump’s campaign stop will cause their already spiking virus count to go even higher.  In other virus news, though Texas Governor Abbot insists that he still has plenty of ICU beds and that his spiking virus counts are due to a combination of all those not so invincible young’uns out partying and too many virus tests, a conclusion also reached by Florida Governor DeSantis, officials in several Texas cities and Florida counties are seeking to impose facemask requirements.  Hopefully, they will have more luck than Montgomery, Alabama did with their attempt to impose masking.  Despite pleas from medical professionals and a number of businesses, their City council voted down a face mask proposal, sad but not surprising given Trump’s popularity and his failure to model lifesaving behavior.

Book Prevention: Trump might not be into face coverings but he’s all in on restraining book publication.  Late yesterday, the Justice Department filed a civil lawsuit against former national security advisor John Bolton, alleging that publication of his “The Room Where it Happened” book would be a violation of the nondisclosure agreements he signed and will compromise national security.  That’s the book that has been more than thoroughly vetted but that Trump wants quashed.  Likewise, it appears that Trump is also looking to prevent the publication of his niece Mary Trump’s tell all book, asserting that she signed an NDA back when the family “resolved” their fight over Trump’s father’s  estate.  It’s not clear that Trump and the Justice Department’s actions will stop the publication of either book. Notably preview copies are already in the hands of various press outlets.  Anyway, Mary Trump’s book is already pre-selling like hotcakes and it’s fair to assume that Trump’s attempts to stop Bolton’s book from seeing the light of day will goose his sales as well, compensating for some if not all of the sale depressing disdain that hit Bolton after he failed to testify during the Trump impeachment hearings.  On the Justice front, House Judiciary Chair Jerome Nadler has subpoenaed former Mueller prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky who now works in the Maryland US Attorney office to appear next week.  Zelinsky had resigned from the Roger Stone case in protest over the handling of his sentencing.  Nadler also subpoenaed John Elias, the Acting chief of staff of the Justice Department’s Antitrust division to testify about Attorney General Barr’s politicization  of the Justice Department.  Zelinsky’s lawyer says that he will comply with the subpoena.  In other Justice Department news, three officials are leaving, including Joseph Hunt the Head of the Civil Division who signed yesterday’s lawsuit against John Bolton, Brian Benczkowski, the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division,  and Noel Francisco, the solicitor general who was responsible for representing the administration at the Supreme Court.  Maybe they’re just ready to move on, maybe they see the writing that we all hope is on the wall.

Most Dangerous Man

Supreme Surprise:  Yesterday in a 6 to 3 decision the Supreme Court extended the Civil Rights Act’s Title VII employment protections to the LGBT community, providing a shock to those who thought that Trump’s newest justices were preprogrammed to always rule in the interests of the most conservative of the conservatives.  Even more surprising, the groundbreaking opinion was written by Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch who based his decision on a “textualist” reading of the word sex, concluding that the Title VII prohibition against employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin covered sexual orientation and identity even though it’s fair to conclude that few, if any, gave that expanded definition much consideration in 1964.  Chief Justice Roberts and the four liberal judges joined Gorsuch’s opinion while newest Justice Kavanaugh, who Senator Susan Collins once assured us would do the right thing for the LGBT community, joined conservative Justices Alito and Thomas in their dissent, arguing that only Congress had the right to extend the Title VII protections.  A number of conservatives, particularly the usual chorus of evangelists and faux evangelists expressed outrage while a number of Republicans actually breathed a sigh of relief at having the Court take the heat for “interpreting” the law to reflect changing public views.  Curiously enough, the Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board blamed the decision on Justice Elena Kagan, saying that her influence had turned Gorsuch to the dark side.  As to Gorsuch, don’t be too impressed, he’s hardly gone soft, he’s likely to find other ways to torture progressives going forward.  Separately the Court also rejected the Trump administration’s efforts to void California’s sanctuary law, that’s the law that restricts state and local law enforcement agencies from cooperating with federal immigration authorities, and turned down the opportunity to rule on several pending Second Amendment cases that gun control advocates feared and gun advocates hoped would have expanded gun ownership rights.   Finally, at least for yesterday as the Court has more rulings to make including one on DACA, the Court also refused to reexamine the highly topical and much criticized legal doctrine that shields police and other government officials from lawsuits over their conduct.  Trump who has been doing his best to screw with the LGBT community’s rights, responded to the Court’s ruling by saying it’s a “very powerful decision” adding that he’d abide by the ruling.  Assuming he does, his ban on transgender people in the military as well as his Friday announcement rolling back Obamacare’s protections for transgender people should go away but don’t expect him to stop trying to make his most conservative followers happy.  Over the weekend Trump’s State Department ordered the US Ambassador to South Korea take down a rainbow flag and a Black Lives Matter banner.  As to the Black Lives Matter movement and police reform, Trump has promised to deliver one of his “powerful” orders on that subject today but he’s also threatening to invade Seattle to force the city’s Mayor and the State’s Governor to exert more control over the city.  In other disruptive news, the North Korean’s blew up their liaison office with South Korea last night.  Either they find being out of the spotlight problematic, want to extort something from the west, are suffering more from coronavirus than they’d like to admit, are just frustrated with good buddy Trump or all of the above.

Viral Musings:  Although Trump continues to insist that hydroxychloroquine is a COVID cure-all, yesterday the FDA pulled the emergency authorization for the drug to be used for the treatment of COVID. Not to worry, Trump’s HHS head Azar says that Trump’s followers can still press their doctors to write them off label prescriptions. As to the pandemic, nothing to worry about there either because Trump says that the only reason that the virus is spiking in states like Arizona, Florida, Texas and even upcoming political rally locale Oklahoma is because of all the testing that’s being done. Who but Trump knew that “if we stopped the testing we’d have fewer cases.”  That’s a message that Virus Chair/VP Pence told Governors to share with their constituencies on a secret but leaked call yesterday. Not surprisingly, Trump and Pence are most definitely wrong about that, there is more testing, still not enough but more, however the percentage of people tested who are showing up positive in those hotspots is too high, an indication that the virus is still spreading like wild fire through an inadequately swept forest, to borrow another one of Trump’s favorite excuses. As to Trump’s Tulsa plans, his campaign team is now planning to accommodate Trump’s overflow fans in a neighboring arena and unlike the super rich donors who attended Trump’s recent NJ fundraiser, the Tulsa crowd won’t get free COVID tests, though they will have their temperatures checked, have access to sanitizer and will be given masks if they want them.  What could go wrong?

Et Cetera:  Former national security advisor John Bolton, who refused to testify to Congress about Trump’s illegal Ukraine actions, is about to release his “The Room Where it Happened Book” even though the administration still hasn’t signed off on its content.  Trump who insists that everything he ever said to Bolton is protected by executive privilege is freaked and threatening to sue.  The Bolton book isn’t the only one about to drop, Trump’s niece psychologist Mary Trump, who apparently was the source of much of the financial and tax information that served as the basis of the NY Times’ Pulitzer Prize winning article on Trump’s real estate inheritance and tax finagling is also about to drop a book.  Her book entitled “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” is due out on July 28.  To put it mildly Mary, the daughter of Trump’s deceased brother Fred, is no fan of her uncle, her book is expected to contain some damning revelations.  Also on the revelatory   front, although he promised lots of transparency Treasury Secretary Mnuchin is doing his best to hide the names of the corporate recipients of the trillions of dollars of stimulus aid.  Makes you wonder what he’s hiding. And to no one but Republican Senator Tim Scott’s surprise, Senate Majority Leader McConnell doesn’t plan to take up a police reform package until after the July 4^th recess, just because.      

Slip Sliding Away

More of the Same:  Nothing much changed this weekend; the coronavirus is still raging, especially in those early to open states, it’s even back in parts of China; another Black man was shot, this time in Atlanta in what appears to be still another case of excessive police action; and Trump is still Trump. Friday Fox News aired Trump’s interview with Harris Faulkner.  No doubt Trump thought that sitting down with a Black, female Fox correspondent would provide him with an opportunity to shine. Suffice it to say it didn’t.  During that interview though he said that “generally speaking chokeholds should end”  he revealed his true feelings by quickly adding that the “concept of a chokehold sounds so innocent, so perfect.”  He said that he's done more for the Black community than any president with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln, but then added that though Lincoln “did good” …. it’s always questionable, you know the end result.” Faulkner responded to that bizarre word jumble by staring him down and pointing out that “we are free,”  Trump shrugged, as if to say, that’s the problem.  Trump followed up that performance with another one that set the twitterverse ablaze.  On Saturday, he gave a speech to West Point graduates, one that he insisted on delivering in person, forcing the whole class to return to the academy to sit in quarantine for fourteen days.  He stuck with his usual nonsense, another Stephen Miller special where he repeated that upon taking office he’d found the military totally depleted and it was only because of him that they now had bullets but we’re used to that, it was his obvious physical limitations that caused twitter to go nuts.  He had trouble lifting a glass of water to his lips while speaking and then when leaving the stage required assistance while descending a gradually descending ramp.  Those obvious infirmities might have gotten lost in the news cycle, particularly given the Atlanta shooting, but Trump, who’d spent the 2016 campaign harping about Hillary Clinton’s health and who is now going after “sleepy” Joe, was so freaked out about suggestions that he was suffering from dementia or some other age related infirmity that yesterday, his 74^th birthday, he tweet defended his performance, saying that the ramp had been very slippery, that the last thing he wanted to do was give the “fake” press an opportunity to see him fall, and that anyway he’d run like a gazelle down the last ten feet.  For the record, the ramp was dry and he most definitely didn’t run anywhere and we still don’t know anything about that emergency trip he made to Walter Reed medical center six months ago.  Despite the rampant virus, Trump still plans to return to the campaign trail this week but now instead of holding his rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma on the Juneteenth emancipation holiday, he’s moved it a day to June 20.  The virus will still be raging, the 19,000 or so attendees who will be crammed into an indoor arena and who probably won’t be wearing masks will still have to sign liability waivers, but the rally will go on, despite the objection of Tulsa’s chief public health official.  And if you know any Black actors who are interested in attending, direct them to Craigslist where the Trump campaign team is running ads promising payment for the “right” kinds of potential attendees, well maybe not so right, the ad also says that in lieu of payment, interested potential attendees can get credit for community service.    

Et Cetera: On the racial equality/policing front, the Republican party’s sole Black Senator, South Carolina’s Tim Scott spent his Sunday on the morning news circuit trying to explain how he’s going to get the rest of his party to agree with those lefties in the much more diverse House to agree on reform, that’s the House with one Black Republican Congressman who is leaving at the end of this term.  That’s not to say that nothing will happen, a number of other Republican Senators have actually been expressing their concerns, agreeing about things like renaming bases and moving Trump’s rally away from the emancipation day holiday, but don’t be surprised if the ultimate resolution is some data gathering combined with a study commission of some sort instead of substantive federal action.  In other political news, Trump’s mishandling of the policing issue, demonstrations and the virus do seem to be taking a toll on his polling numbers as well as on the polling numbers of his echo chamber.  A recent poll shows Iowa’s Senator Joni Ernst down a few points to her Democratic challenger Theresa Greenfield, though that’s within the margin of error, it’s  a notable decline for Ernst who’s viewed as a shining star in the Republican party from a state that Trump easily won in 2016.  Another recent poll shows Trump in a dead heat with Biden in Arkansas of all places, there’s no way that Biden will really win Arkansas, after all Senator Cotton, of the call out the active military to bash those demonstrators fame,  is running for reelection there unopposed.  That poll, unlike the Iowa one, is probably an outlier but just the fact that it looks close in Arkansas has got to be freaking Trump out.  To that end, Trump isn’t making any effort to expand his base but is still working on solidifying it with the evangelists so on Friday night, during Gay Pride month on the anniversary of the Pulse Nightclub murder spree, the administration announced the elimination of Obamacare’s health care protections for transgender people. Not all that surprising since the Trump administration continues to ban the flying of the rainbow flag at US Embassies around the world but still it does make you wonder about the types of people who stay up at night thinking about ways to make life tough for those who already have it difficult enough.  On the world front, North Korea is no longer talking to South Korea and has given up on anything but increasing the nuclear arsenal that’s been increasing during Kim Jong un’s faux lovefest with pen pal Trump  and Greece has announced that visitors from high virus countries will not be welcome anytime soon.  So cancel that trip to Mykonos because the US is most certainly one of those verboten countries.   As to COVID, the Surgeon General says wear a mask, they don’t infringe but do provide more freedom to move around more safely, but Trump’s still not listening and sadly a lot of people out there are looking for him to set an example.  As if.