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.