President Trump slammed Dr. Deborah Birx on Twitter after she said the pandemic was “extraordinarily widespread.”
Said Trump: “So Crazy Nancy Pelosi said horrible things about Dr. Deborah Birx, going after her because she was too positive on the very good job we are doing on combatting the China Virus, including Vaccines & Therapeutics. In order to counter Nancy, Deborah took the bait & hit us. Pathetic!”
CNN: “While Trump and other top White House officials have publicly attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci, the tweet marked the first time Birx, the coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, publicly drew Trump’s ire.”
The CDC predicts that up to 11,000 people will die every week this month from the coronavirus, CBS News reports.
U.S. District Judge Esther Salas provided a video statement on the death of her son and the injuries to her husband caused by a right wing Republican terrorist.
The video is very hard to watch.
“The dollar is flashing a warning sign to U.S. policy makers — get a grip on the virus,” Bloomberg reports.
“After hitting an all-time high in March, a gauge of the greenback has lost 10% of its value, with declines accelerating in recent weeks as infections spread seemingly unchecked across the nation. Much of the sell-off has come during New York trading hours, suggesting domestic investors are closing out bets on U.S. strength and spurring renewed questions about the supremacy of the dollar. Meanwhile, a popular model that’s guided dollar traders for the past two decades has warped.”
The Manhattan district attorney’s office suggested on Monday that it has been investigating President Trump and his company for possible bank and insurance fraud, a significantly broader inquiry than the prosecutors have acknowledged in the past, the New York Times reports.
“The office of the district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., made the disclosure in a new federal court filing arguing Mr. Trump should have to comply with its subpoena seeking eight years of his personal and corporate tax returns. Mr. Trump has asked a judge to declare the subpoena invalid.”
“The Trump administration is looking at options for unilateral actions it can take to try to address some of the economic fallout caused by the novel coronavirus pandemic if no relief deal is reached with Congress,” the Washington Post reports.
“The discussions are a reflection of officials’ increasingly pessimistic outlook for the talks on Capitol Hill. The White House remains in close contact with Democratic leaders, but a wide gulf remains and deadlines have already been missed.”
“Democrats are warning Republicans not to fill a possible Supreme Court vacancy this year after denying President Barack Obama the chance in 2016, saying it would embolden a push on the left to add seats to the court whenever they regain power,” NBC News reports.
Said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA): “If they show that they’re unwilling to respect precedent, rules and history, then they can’t feign surprise when others talk about using a statutory option that we have that’s fully constitutional in our availability. I don’t want to do that. But if they act in such a way, they may push it to an inevitability. So they need to be careful about that.”
Fox News’ daytime ratings “fell off a cliff” on Thursday when the network broadcast the funeral for congressman and civil-rights hero John Lewis, CNN reports.
Ed Yong: “How did it come to this? A virus a thousand times smaller than a dust mote has humbled and humiliated the planet’s most powerful nation. America has failed to protect its people, leaving them with illness and financial ruin. It has lost its status as a global leader. It has careened between inaction and ineptitude. The breadth and magnitude of its errors are difficult, in the moment, to truly fathom.”
“Despite ample warning, the U.S. squandered every possible opportunity to control the coronavirus. And despite its considerable advantages—immense resources, biomedical might, scientific expertise—it floundered. While countries as different as South Korea, Thailand, Iceland, Slovakia, and Australia acted decisively to bend the curve of infections downward, the U.S. achieved merely a plateau in the spring, which changed to an appalling upward slope in the summer.”
Newly obtained body-cam footage from two of the police officers charged in George Floyd’s death reveal more details of the horrific arrest that led to his death, the Daily Mail reports.
The video shows Floyd’s horror when one officer points a gun at his head as he begs not to be shot. The video also shows Floyd asking for compassion.
“Under constant pressure from a White House anxious for good news and a public desperate for a silver bullet to end the crisis, the government’s researchers are fearful of political intervention in the coming months and are struggling to ensure that the government maintains the right balance between speed and rigorous regulation,” the New York Times reports.
“The president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, who is helping to steer the re-election campaign from the White House, is a regular participant in meetings of a board formed to oversee the vaccine effort.”
“While White House officials do not specifically mention the election during the board’s discussions, people familiar with the conversations say they ask regularly about October, a date that hangs over the effort. Trump campaign advisers privately call a pre-election vaccine ‘the holy grail.’”
“President Trump gave the go-ahead for Microsoft to pursue an acquisition of TikTok, in his first public comments about the popular Chinese-owned video app after he had threatened to ban it from the United States entirely,” the New York Times reports.
“He added that the U.S. Treasury Department would need to receive a lot of money in return for the deal, without explaining how that would work.”
The Wall Street Journal quotes Trump: “I did say that ‘If you buy it…a very substantial portion of that price is going to have to come into the Treasury of the United States, because we’re making it possible for this deal to happen.’ Right now they don’t have any rights unless we give it to them.”
Philadelphia Inquirer: “Neighborhoods across the Philadelphia region are experiencing significant delays in receiving their mail, with some residents going upwards of three weeks without packages and letters, leaving them without medication, paychecks, and bills.”
“According to local union leaders and carriers, mail is piling up in offices, unscanned and unsorted. Mail carriers who spoke with The Inquirer said they are overwhelmed, working long hours yet still unable to finish their routes. Offices are so short-staffed that when a carrier is out, a substitute is often not assigned to their route.”
White House staff received an email this morning notifying them of random Covid-19 testing beginning today across the executive complex, Politico reports.
Per the email: “Failure to report to testing will be considered a refusal to test.”
“The maneuvering for power in a possible post-Trump world has already broken out among House Republicans — a worrisome preview for the GOP of potentially chaotic leadership fights this fall,” Politico reports.
“The party’s long-simmering divides were largely papered over after Donald Trump won the White House in 2016. But members expect the truce among the GOP’s warring factions to crumble if Trump’s presidency ends, and the current leadership could face the fallout.”
Rep. Louie Gohmert’s (R-TX) daughter Caroline tweeted that she is disappointed her father “ignored medical expertise” and didn’t wear a mask, and now has COVID-19.
Said Caroline Gohmert: “This has been a heartbreaking battle because I love my dad and don’t want him to die. Please please listen to medical experts. It’s not worth following a president who has no remorse for leading his followers to an early grave.”
Michigan state Sen. Tom Barrett (R), who has been outspoken in opposition to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s (D) use of emergency powers during the coronavirus pandemic, has tested positive for he coronavirus, the Detroit News reports.
The largest school district in Georgia reported that 260 employees have tested positive for the coronavirus or are in quarantine because of possible exposure as they prepare for the new school year, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.
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