When Black Lives Matter protesters marched up Kingshighway on June 28 and turned through an iron gate into the magnificent private street of Portland Place, they encountered a couple who have for years, nearly constantly, sued other people and ordered people off their property.
There have been more than 3,300 racial justice protests nationwide since late May, including hundreds in sparsely populated communities.... [It's] noted that many of the small-town protesters of George Floyd's death were white, a phenomenon ...partially explained by the growing diversity of their neighbors. (M)inorities make up nearly half of the under-30 population nationwide compared to just 27 percent of the over-55 population, signaling that the United States is on the brink of seismic changes in culture, politics and values. Read more
(CNN)President Donald Trump paid a visit to wounded service members at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Saturday and wore a mask after months of refusing to be seen doing so in public. "I'll probably have a mask if you must know. I'll probably have a mask. I think when you're in a hospital especially in that particular setting, where you are talking to a lot of soldiers, people that in some cases just got off the operating table. I think it's a great thing to wear a mask. I've never been against masks but I do believe they have a time and a place," Trump told reporters ahead of his visit.
Robert Mueller III served as special counsel for the Justice Department from 2017 to 2019. The work of the special counsel's office " its report, indictments, guilty pleas and convictions " should speak for itself. But I feel compelled to respond both to broad claims that our investigation was illegitimate and our motives were improper, and to specific claims that Roger Stone was a victim of our office. The Russia investigation was of paramount importance. Stone was prosecuted and convicted because he committed federal crimes. He remains a convicted felon, and rightly so. Read more
Quinta Jurecic, Benjamin Wittes: Roger Stone isn't just Trump's confidante or friend. According to newly unsealed material in the Mueller report, he's also a person who had the power to reveal to investigators that Trump likely lied to Mueller"and to whom Trump publicly dangled rewards if Stone refused to provide Mueller with that information. Now, it seems, the president is making good on that promise. Read more
Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told the Financial Times on Friday that he last saw President Trump in person at the White House on June 2 -- and hasn't briefed the president on the coronavirus pandemic for at least two months.
Three months ago " all the way back on April 5 " I proclaimed Donald Trump the worst president ever. Think about all that has happened since April 5. That was before security forces attacked peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square so that Trump could stage a bizarre photo-op. Before he pushed to send the armed forces into the streets. Before he embraced "white power" and called Black Lives Matter "a symbol of hate." Before he vowed to veto the defense authorization bill to prevent the renaming of military bases named after Confederate generals. Before he used the novel coronavirus as an excuse to shut down immigration and threatened to revoke the visas of college students unable to attend classes in the fall. Before he ignored reports that a Russian intelligence unit had placed a bounty on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. Before he moved to pull out of the World Health Organization during the worst pandemic in a century. Read more
Callers on President Trump in recent weeks have come to expect what several allies and advisers describe as a "woe-is-me" preamble. The president rants about the deadly coronavirus destroying "the greatest economy," one he claims to have personally built. He laments the unfair "fake news" media, which he vents never gives him any credit. And he bemoans the "sick, twisted" police officers in Minneapolis, whose killing of an unarmed black man in their custody provoked the nationwide racial justice protests that have confounded the president. The president has cast himself in the starring role of the blameless victim " of a deadly pandemic, of a stalled economy, of deep-seated racial unrest, all of which happened to him rather than the country.
President Donald Trump ordered the Treasury Department on Friday to review the tax-exempt status of colleges and universities, following his threats to cut federal funding to schools that do not reopen due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The president's attack on institutions of higher education comes as they're struggling with how to handle the upcoming fall semester due to the virus, which has dealt a financial blow to many.
In a pair of tweets, Trump accused institutions of higher education of focusing on "Radical Left Indoctrination" rather than educating their students.
"I am telling the Treasury Department to re-examine their Tax-Exempt Status and/or Funding, which will be taken away if this Propaganda or Act Against Public Policy continues. Our children must be Educated, not Indoctrinated!" Trump said in a pair of tweets made while traveling to Florida.
Trae Crowder and Mark Agee discuss whether Joe Biden is too boring to win - Evening Skews Clip (2 mins) Read more
"Herd immunity" can happen once a large part of a population"say 70-90%"develops immunity to a disease. This generally happens by infection (conferring natural immunity) or vaccination. Herd immunity can help slow or stop a disease's spread, but many people may die before it happens.
It is currently unclear how herd immunity could happen for COVID-19. For example, the data are insufficient to show how much immunity infection confers, or whether it's enough to prevent re-infection. How long any immunity will last is also unknown. Related viruses confer some immunity after infection, but that immunity doesn't seem to last longer than a year.
If it wasn't coming from a credible source I wouldn't believe it but Jefferson tried to outlaw the transatlantic slave trade as part of a larger effort to apparently wean America off of slavery.
When President Donald Trump told U.S. Army leaders in June not to remove Confederate names from bases, he also effectively halted an Army effort to create and implement a policy on divisiveness in the ranks far broader than a simple ban on the display of the Stars and Bars on military property. Rather than targeting just the flag or the base names, the idea was to take a commission-style approach that would look at anything that might be divisive and address not only the symbol, but the cultural forces behind it. The expectation and hope was that as the review progressed, other long-buried issues would become apparent. Among the potential friction points eyed were Army National Guard units with nicknames honoring Confederate leaders.
Geoffrey Berman, the man who until recently served as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, told members of Congress on Thursday about Attorney General Bill Barr's "unprecedented, unnecessary and unexplained" efforts to oust him. In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, Berman explained how Barr contacted him and repeatedly pressed him to step down from his position at SDNY to take another high-profile position within the government.
Public health experts decried the anti-lockdown protests as dangerous gatherings in a pandemic. Health experts seem less comfortable doing so now that the marches are against racism. Read more
"Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling, cognitive scientist Noam Chomsky and other figures signed a public letter on Tuesday warning about the "restriction of debate" in society. The open letter, which has gathered 150 signatures from activists and writers, warns that the "free exchange of information and ideas" is "daily becoming more constricted." The letter was published on the Harper's Magazine website and will be featured in the magazine's October issue. Read more
