New York Times: “A body believed to be of the suspect in a Kentucky highway shooting that left five people seriously injured this month was found on Wednesday, the authorities said, ending a manhunt that stretched into a second week and set the local community on edge. The Kentucky State Police commissioner, Phillip Burnett Jr., said in a Wednesday night news conference that at approximately 3:30 p.m., two troopers and two civilians found an unidentified body in the brush behind the highway exit where the shooting occurred.... The police have identified the suspect of the shooting as Joseph A. Couch, 32. They said that on Sept. 7, Mr. Couch perched on a cliff overlooking Interstate 75 about eight miles north of London, Ky., and opened fire. One of the wounded was shot in the face, and another was shot in the chest. A dozen vehicles were riddled with gunfire.”
To keep the Conversation going, please help me by linking news articles, opinion pieces and other political content in today's Comments section.
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OR here's a link generator. The one I had posted died, but Akhilleus found this new one that he says is easy to use.
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Thank you to everyone who has been contributing links to articles & other content in the Comments section of each day's "Conversation." If you're missing the comments, you're missing some vital links.
New York Times: “Hvaldimir, a beluga whale who had captured the public’s imagination since 2019 after he was spotted wearing a harness seemingly designed for a camera, was found dead on Saturday in Norway, according to a nonprofit that worked to protect the whale.... [Hvaldimir] was wearing a harness that identified it as “equipment” from St. Petersburg. There also appeared to be a camera mount. Some wondered if the whale was on a Russian reconnaissance mission. Russia has never claimed ownership of the whale. If Hvaldimir was a spy, he was an exceptionally friendly one. The whale showed signs of domestication, and was comfortable around people. He remained in busier waters than are typical for belugas....” ~~~
~~~ Marie: Oh, Lord, do not let Bobby Kennedy, Jr., near that carcass. ~~~
~~~ AP Update: “There’s no evidence that a well-known beluga whale that lived off Norway’s coast and whose harness ignited speculation it was a Russian spy was shot to death last month as claimed by animal rights groups, Norwegian police said Monday.... Police said that the Norwegian Veterinary Institute conducted a preliminary autopsy on the animal, which was become known as 'Hvaldimir,' combining the Norwegian word for whale — hval — and the first name of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'There are no findings from the autopsy that indicate that Hvaldimir has been shot,' police said in a statement.”
New York Times: Botswana's “President Mokgweetsi Masisi grinned as he lifted the diamond, a 2,492-carat stone that is the biggest diamond unearthed in more than a century and the second-largest ever found, according to the Vancouver-based mining operator Lucara, which owns the mine where it was found. This exceptional discovery could bring back the luster of the natural diamond mining industry, mining companies and experts say. The diamond was discovered in the same relatively small mine in northeastern Botswana that has produced several of the largest such stones in living memory. Such gemstones typically surface as a result of volcanic activity.... The diamond will likely sell in the range of tens of millions of dollars....”
Click on photo to enlarge.
~~~ Guardian: "On a distant reef 16,000km from Paris, surfer Gabriel Medina has given Olympic viewers one of the most memorable images of the Games yet, with an airborne celebration so well poised it looked too good to be true. The Brazilian took off a thundering wave at Teahupo’o in Tahiti on Monday, emerging from a barrelling section before soaring into the air and appearing to settle on a Pacific cloud, pointing to the sky with biblical serenity, his movements mirrored precisely by his surfboard. The shot was taken by Agence France-Presse photographer Jérôme Brouillet, who said “the conditions were perfect, the waves were taller than we expected”. He took the photo while aboard a boat nearby, capturing the surreal image with such accuracy that at first some suspected Photoshop or AI."
Washington Post: “'Mary Cassatt at Work' is a large and mostly satisfying exhibition devoted to the career of the great American artist beloved for her sensitive and often sentimental views of family life. The 'at work' in the title of the Philadelphia Museum of Art show references the curators’ interest in Cassatt’s pioneering effort to establish herself as a professional artist within a male-dominated field. Throughout the show, which includes some 130 paintings, pastels, prints and drawings, the wall text and the art on view stresses Cassatt’s fixation on art as a career rather than a pastime.... Mary Cassatt at Work is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Sept. 8. philamuseum.org”
New York Times: “Bob Newhart, who died on Thursday at the age of 94, has been such a beloved giant of popular culture for so long that it’s easy to forget how unlikely it was that he became one of the founding fathers of stand-up comedy. Before basically inventing the hit stand-up special, with the 1960 Grammy-winning album 'The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart' — that doesn’t even count his pay-per-view event broadcast on Canadian television that some cite as the first filmed special — he was a soft-spoken accountant who had never done a set in a nightclub. That he made a classic with so little preparation is one of the great miracles in the history of comedy.... Bob Newhart holds up. In fact, it’s hard to think of a stand-up from that era who is a better argument against the commonplace idea that comedy does not age well.”
Washington Post: “An early Titian masterpiece — once looted by Napolean’s troops and a part of royal collections for centuries — caused a stir when it was stolen from the home of a British marquess in 1995. Seven years later, it was found inside an unassuming white and blue plastic bag at a bus stop in southwest London by an art detective, and returned. This week, the oil painting 'The Rest on the Flight into Egypt' sold for more than $22 million at Christie’s. It was a record for the Renaissance artist, whom museums describe as the greatest painter of 16th-century Venice. Ahead of the sale in April, the auction house billed it as'the most important work by Titian to come to the auction market in more than a generation.'”
Washington Post: The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., which houses the world's largest collection of Shakespeare material, has undergone a major renovation. "The change to the building is pervasive, both subtle and transformational."
The New York Timeshas published an interactive quiz covering the 10 hardest questions on the U.S. citizenship test, according to a 2011 study. A number of Reality Chex contributors have remarked that Donald Trump would flunk the test. I, Mrs. Bea McCrabbie, have learned that Trump did take the test Saturday while waiting for his caddy to move his ball out of a sand trap. Here's the guaranteed-authentic Trump Q&A.
1. How many amendments does the Constitution have?
None. It has 12 articles.
2. Which of these is something Benjamin Franklin is known for?
First head of the FAA and NASA. (Mrs. McC: answer cribbed from Akhilleus' quiz paper)
3. Who was president during World War I?
Andrew Jackson.
4. What statement correctly describes the “rule of law”?
When the President does it, it is not illegal.
5. Under the Constitution, which of these powers does not belong to the federal government?
None of the above. All powers vested in the POTUS.
6. We elect a U.S. Senator for how many years?
Until the President writes an angry tweet about him.
7. Who is the Chief Justice of the United States now?
William P. Barr (until further notice).
8. The House of Representatives has how many voting members?
Not Applicable (N/A). Mitch McConnell buries every House bill.
9. The Federalist Papers supported the passage of the U.S. Constitution. Which of these men was not one of the authors?
Robert Mueller. NO COLLUSION!!! NO OBSTRUCTION!!!
10. When was the Constitution written?
Daily. The Constitution is what they call a living document. (Not many people know that.) The President rewrites the Constitution with tweets and executive orders.
"They" Made Trump Hire Undocumented Workers. Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs & Miriam Jordan of the New York Times: "After months of silence, President Trump responded on Friday to reports that the Trump Organization has employed dozens of undocumented immigrants by saying that he doesn't know whether the organization does or not. 'I don't know because I don't run it,' Mr. Trump said when asked if he was confident that undocumented immigrants were no longer working at his golf courses. 'But I would say this: Probably every club in the United States has that because it seems to be, from what I understand, a way that people did business.... But we've ended -- whatever they did, we have a very strict rule that, those rules are very strict,' Mr. Trump said...." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: In fairness to the slackard children of America, "The dog ate my homework" is a far more plausible excuse than "I don't run it" when in fact he did "run it" right down to picking the fabrics & colors of the uniforms of the undocumented workers he hired. Democrats should run ads, ad nauseum, in Trump country featuring Trump's former undocumented employees.
I thought Ivanka was amazing at the G-20. The foreign leaders loved her. They think she's great. -- Donald Trump, to reporters Friday
Uh, how exactly would Trump know this? Does he think other heads of state are going to say, "What is that dimwit doing here?" -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie
~~~~~~~~~~
Morgan Chalfont of the Hill: "President Trump told reporters on Friday that he is considering an executive order to ensure a citizenship question is included on the U.S. census. Trump told reporters on the White House lawn that he has four or five options and is 'thinking of' the executive order. He also said his administration could begin printing the 2020 census and later include the question as part of an addendum." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: In another Trumpian open-mouth-insert-foot moment:
Trump says citizenship has to be asked on the census to determine congressional districts. Actually, districts are drawn up based on total population, not the number of citizens, a practice upheld by the Supreme Court as recently as 2016. -- Peter Baker of the New York Times, in a tweet ...
... That's a new argument in this case, though not one that we haven't heard from Republicans in the past. U.S. population always has been measured by number of residents, not by number of citizens, for the purpose of apportioning Congressional seats. If seats were alloted by number of citizens, rather than number of residents, urban areas would lose big -- and that's something Republicans want. Since judges have considered Trump's statements & tweets in making their decisions (including in a Census case last week), Trump's admission that he wants to change the basis for Congressional representation should matter.
... Caitlin Oprysko of Politico: "In a court filing Friday, lawyers for the Justice Department confirmed that both DOJ and the Commerce Department were still weighing 'whether the Supreme Court's decision would allow for a new decision to include the citizenship question.' The filing reiterated what the lawyers told U.S. District Court Judge George Hazel Wednesday, after the president contradicted the government's earlier assertion that it would drop efforts to include the question on next year's survey." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Ari Berman of Mother Jones: "In response, Maryland federal district court judge George Hazel said he was weighing whether to reopen a case looking at whether the administration added the question to intentionally discriminate against Hispanics, based on smoking-gun evidence, uncovered after the death of the GOP's longtime gerrymandering mastermind, Thomas Hofeller, showing that he had pushed for the question in order to draw new political districts that he said would be 'advantageous to Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites.'... Notably, the president has never mentioned a desire to enforce the Voting Rights Act -- the administration's principal, and now rejected, rationale for adding the question -- in his numerous tweets and public comments about the issue. In fact, on Friday morning, Trump told reporters that the 'number one' reason the question was needed was 'for Congress for districting,' which suggested that Republicans, if allowed to collect citizenship data, would use it to exclude non-citizens from counting toward voting district populations, as Hofeller had advised -- a step which would again boost representation for white Republicans." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... We Have a New Excuse, But We Don't Know What It Is. Mark Stern of Slate: "On Friday..., DOJ attorneys asked Hazel to pause discovery while they develop a different justification for the citizenship question. They argued that, by 'providing a new rationale,' they will have magically cleansed the question of any discriminatory intent.... Hazel did not agree, rejecting the DOJ's request on Friday in an order allowing discovery to move forward.... The Justice Department is not being helped by Trump, who acknowledged on Friday that the 'number one' reason for a citizenship question is 'for districting.' Presumably, Trump means that he wants to let states draw districts by counting only citizens of voting age, not all persons -- a scheme that would dramatically boost white voting power. (It has been neither permitted or prohibited by SCOTUS.) That's a troubling concession, because Solicitor General Noel Franciscotold the Supreme Court that using citizenship data for redistricting was not the purpose of the census citizenship question. Once again, Trump is telling a very different story from the narrative carefully crafted by DOJ attorneys." ...
... David Graham of the Atlantic: "In the real world, the fact that the executive branch apparently plans to offer some new, unspecified rationale for a decision it has already made is proof it has been lying about the motives all along.... In the legal world, however, this maneuver might yet succeed.... The Trump administration seems to want to base the allotment on the citizen population instead, which would likely enhance the power of Republican-leaning states at the expense of Democratic ones heavy with noncitizens. The Census Bureau itself concluded that the question would lead to a significant undercount of the United States population. The plaintiffs argued that one motive for the question was to allow for redistricting on the basis of the citizen voting-age population. The president's solicitor general explicitly denied that, calling it a 'conspiracy theory ... nonsensical even on its own terms.' Now Trump is baldly saying it was true." ...
... Tax Axelrod of the Hill: "Plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the Department of Commerce over the 2020 census are asking a federal court to block the Trump administration from delaying the printing of census forms or changing them to include a citizenship question. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed the motion Friday with the state of New York and other groups seeking to block the citizenship question from being added.... 'In addition to deceiving the judiciary and the public and putting the success of the 2020 Census in jeopardy, Defendants' efforts to prolong uncertainty and drag out this matter are sowing confusion and exacerbating fear among immigrant communities, and directly injuring the Plaintiffs' efforts to mobilize participation in the Census,' the ACLU wrote in its filing."
Fore! S. V. Date of the Huffington Post: "... Donald Trump began a three-day golf weekend Friday, making his 16th visit to his New Jersey golf club since entering office and pushing his total travel and security costs for his hobby to $108.1 million.... While he was a reality TV host and then as a presidential candidate, Trump frequently pounded President Barack Obama for spending too much time on the golf course. Trump often told audiences he would be too busy to take any vacations, let alone play golf. But since taking office, Trump has spent 187 days, counting Friday, on a course that he owns. (He has spent two additional days on courses in Japan at the invitation of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during visits there.) That is two and a half times the number of days Obama had visited golf courses at the same point in his first term. And because Trump insists on playing at his own courses in Florida and New Jersey so much, his golf-associated costs to taxpayers are more than triple Obama's figure through the same time period. Obama played the vast majority of his rounds at military bases within a short drive of the White House."
Trump's "Somewhat Soviet" Speech. Tom Nichols of the New York Daily News: "Let's get an obvious point about President Trump's Independence Day speech out of the way right at the top. It was a bad speech.... Perhaps this was unavoidable, since it was never meant to salute America, but rather to provide the military display Trump has wanted for two years. Like any enforced celebration, it was flat and labored.... It would have been a challenging speech to deliver even for a better speaker, and Trump, who hates reading from prepared remarks, plodded through it with a strangely detached presence and a certain amount of mushy enunciation, including a weird blip* where he referred to the glorious military capture of some airports in colonial America.... Not only did it attempt to militarize our most sacred national holiday, but Trump tried to bathe himself in borrowed legitimacy from a military that was forced to march, sing and fly for him.... Mining the glories of past military battles while flanked by defense chiefs is the kind of thing Soviet leaders used to do while droning from their reviewing stand in Moscow." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... * Someone Left the Teleprompter out in the Rain. BBC News: "Explaining away the slip-up on Friday, Mr Trump also said it was hard to read the teleprompter in the rain.... 'I knew the speech very well so I was able to do it without a teleprompter but the teleprompter did go out and it was actually hard to look at anyway because there was rain all over it but despite the rain it was just a fantastic evening.'... Twitter users had some fun with the garble, using the hashtag #RevolutionaryWarAirports." Mrs. McC: This is an awfully strange excuse, inasmuch as Trump used to regularly criticize both President Obama & Hillary Clinton for using teleprompters. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
One if by Land. Two if by Sea. Three if by the Delta Shuttle from LaGuardia. ~Paul Revere -- Marco Price, in a tweet
Put ye powder hornes and buckled shoes in ye olde bins. Poultices over 3 ounces must be left with the magistrate and can be retrieved at ye postmaster's office upon return. Muskets and pipes are stryctly forbidden on board ye airecrafte. #RevolutionaryWarAirports -- Seth Cotlar, in a tweet
... Ellen Ioanes of Business Insider: "Russian state media mocked ... Donald Trump's 'Salute to America' July Fourth event, The Washington Post reported on Thursday. The hosts of Rossiya 1's '60 Minutes' program, Yevgeny Popov and Olga Skabeyeva, both scoffed at the footage of tanks rolling into Washington, DC, ahead of Trump's military extravaganza.... According to Julia Davis, a writer who studies Russian disinformation tactics, Russian state news also criticized Trump's display as being 'low energy' and 'weak,' with 'rusty tanks.'... Skabayeva scoffed that the condition of US military machinery was less important to Trump than 'that the parade takes place with much fanfare.'"
Geneva Sands & Nick Valencia of CNN: "At least one other social media group with an apparent nexus to Customs and Border Protection has been discovered to contain vulgar and sexually explicit posts, according to screenshots shared by two sources familiar with the Facebook pages. The secret Facebook group, "The Real CBP Nation," which has around 1,000 members, is host to an image that mocks separating migrant families, multiple demeaning memes of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, and other derisive images of Asians and African Americans." Mrs. McC: Apparently a large percentage of CBP officers are social deviants, just like Trump.
Beyond the Beltway
Utah. What Could Possibly Go Wrong? Morgan Smith of the AP: "Active shooter training for educators is becoming more common nationwide, and Utah is one of several states that generally allow permit holders to carry guns in public schools. Other states, including Florida and Texas, have programs that allow certain teachers to be armed if they are approved under a set of stipulations.... [Thirty-one] Utah teachers [attended] a series of trainings where police instructed them on how to respond to an active shooter. Teachers went through the shooting drill inside a warehouse set up to look like a school, then moved outside to a shooting range.... At the recent session, officers showed teachers how to disarm a gunman, where to shoot on the body, how to properly aim and unload a firearm. They also went over de-escalation techniques, self-defense and medical responses such as how to pack a wound and tie a tourniquet on a child."
Way Beyond
Sudan. Declan Walsh of the New York Times: "... this week the protest leaders and their military foes [in Sudan] ... sat down in the same room, face-to-face, and within two days hammered out a power-sharing deal to run Sudan until elections can be held in just over three years. Although the details are still being finalized, the agreement offers the people in one of Africa's largest and most strategically important countries the fragile hope of a transition to democracy after 30 years of dictatorship under former president Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who was ousted in April."
News Ledes
Miami Herald: "A possible gas explosion at a Broward County shopping center blasted through a section of the plaza on Saturday afternoon near an LA Fitness, injuring nearly two dozen people and leading to a search-and-rescue mission for others who might be trapped. The blast happened in a strip center across from The Fountains shops along busy University Drive in Plantation. The likely ground zero was a vacant pizza restaurant undergoing renovation, but authorities on the scene have yet to confirm the site of the blast or its cause. Reports of the explosion came in about 11:30 a.m.... Authorities said 21 people were injured."
AP: "A quake with a magnitude as large as 7.1 jolted much of California, cracked buildings, set fires, broke roads and caused several injuries, authorities and residents said. The quake -- preceded by Thursday's 6.4-magnitude temblor in the Mojave Desert -- was the largest Southern California temblor in at least 20 years and was followed by a series of large and small aftershocks. It hit at 8:19 p.m. and was centered 11 miles from Ridgecrest in the same areas where the previous quake hit. But it was felt as far north as Sacramento, as far east as Las Vegas and as far south as Mexico."
Morgan Chalfont of the Hill: "President Trump told reporters on Friday that he is considering an executive order to ensure a citizenship question is included on the U.S. census. Trump told reporters on the White House lawn that he has four or five options and is 'thinking of' the executive order. He also said his administration could begin printing the 2020 census and later include the question as part of an addendum." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: In another Trumpian open-mouth-insert-foot moment, according to Peter Baker of the NYT in a live report on MSNBC, Trump said he wanted the citizenship question on the Census in order to apportion Congressional representation. That's a new argument in the case, though not one that we haven't heard from Republicans in the past. U.S. population always has been measured by number of residents, not number of citizens, for the purpose of apportioning Congressional seats. If seats were allotted by number of citizens, rather than number of residents, urban areas would lose big -- and that's something Republicans want. Since judges have considered Trump's statements & tweets in making their decisions (including in a Census case last week), Trump's admission that he wants to change the basis for Congressional representation should matter. I'll look for some print reporting on this. Update: There's this:
Trump says citizenship has to be asked on the census to determine congressional districts. Actually, districts are drawn up based on total population, not the number of citizens, a practice upheld by the Supreme Court as recently as 2016. -- Peter Baker of the New York Times, in a tweet ...
... Update 2: Caitlin Oprysko of Politico: "In a court filing Friday, lawyers for the Justice Department confirmed that both DOJ and the Commerce Department were still weighing 'whether the Supreme Court's decision would allow for a new decision to include the citizenship question.' The filing reiterated what the lawyers told U.S. District Court Judge George Hazel Wednesday, after the president contradicted the government's earlier assertion that it would drop efforts to include the question on next year's survey." ...
... Ari Berman of Mother Jones: "In response, Maryland federal district court judge George Hazel said he was weighing whether to reopen a case looking at whether the administration added the question to intentionally discriminate against Hispanics, based on smoking-gun evidence, uncovered after the death of the GOP's longtime gerrymandering mastermind, Thomas Hofeller, showing that he had pushed for the question in order to draw new political districts that he said would be 'advantageous to Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites.'... Notably, the president has never mentioned a desire to enforce the Voting Rights Act -- the administration's principal, and now rejected, rationale for adding the question -- in his numerous tweets and public comments about the issue. In fact, on Friday morning, Trump told reporters that the 'number one' reason the question was needed was 'for Congress for districting,' which suggested that Republicans, if allowed to collect citizenship data, would use it to exclude non-citizens from counting toward voting district populations, as Hofeller had advised -- a step which would again boost representation for white Republicans."
Trump's "Somewhat Soviet" Speech. Tom Nichols of the New York Daily News: "Let's get an obvious point about President Trump's Independence Day speech out of the way right at the top. It was a bad speech.... Perhaps this was unavoidable, since it was never meant to salute America, but rather to provide the military display Trump has wanted for two years. Like any enforced celebration, it was flat and labored.... It would have been a challenging speech to deliver even for a better speaker, and Trump, who hates reading from prepared remarks, plodded through it with a strangely detached presence and a certain amount of mushy enunciation, including a weird blip* where he referred to the glorious military capture of some airports in colonial America.... Not only did it attempt to militarize our most sacred national holiday, but Trump tried to bathe himself in borrowed legitimacy from a military that was forced to march, sing and fly for him.... Mining the glories of past military battles while flanked by defense chiefs is the kind of thing Soviet leaders used to do while droning from their reviewing stand in Moscow." ...
... * Someone Left the Teleprompter out in the Rain. BBC News: "Explaining away the slip-up on Friday, Mr Trump also said it was hard to read the teleprompter in the rain.... 'I knew the speech very well so I was able to do it without a teleprompter but the teleprompter did go out and it was actually hard to look at anyway because there was rain all over it but despite the rain it was just a fantastic evening.'... Twitter users had some fun with the garble, using the hashtag #RevolutionaryWarAirports." Mrs. McC: This is an awfully strange excuse, inasmuch as Trump used to regularly criticize both President Obama & Hillary Clinton for using teleprompters.
~~~~~~~~~~
Tyrant in the Rain.Michael Shear of the New York Times: "In a made-for-television Independence Day production starring America's military weaponry, President Trump on Thursday used the Lincoln Memorial as the backdrop for a homage to the country's armed forces and a call for unity that has been largely absent during his divisive presidency. Flanked by Bradley armored vehicles and M1A2 tanks in front of the statue of Abraham Lincoln, Mr. Trump paid tribute to the five branches of the military as a chorus sang each service hymn and he cued the arrival of fighter jets and other military aircraft roaring by in the skies overhead.... [Trump] avoided any of his usual attacks on the news media, Democrats or his intelligence agencies." Also, it rained. ...
... David Smith of the Guardian: "The US president's unique interpretation of the declaration of independence was on full display on Thursday when he staged a militaristic, jingoistic and untraditional jamboree at the Lincoln memorial in Washington to celebrate the Fourth of July.... In a speech that lasted 47 minutes, Trump laboured over a heroic version of American military history..., summoned military leaders to the podium, paid tribute to gold star families and at one point referenced his proposed space force. The president sailed close to one of his campaign lines when he claimed, 'our nation is stronger than it ever was before', but otherwise swerved past party politics for once.... But in a city that projects power through monuments, statues and its own Capitol, critics said it was the moment Trump went full Roman emperor, turning a traditionally nonpartisan day of events into a vanity project. Some observers have been tempted to see the military pomp not as a show of strength, but of weakness -- a harbinger of imperial decline." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: I saw less than 30 seconds of Trump's speech, but I could tell his was on script because he was using that sing-songy cadence he employs to signal he's reading somebody else's words off a teleprompter.
Kate Lyons of the Guardian: "Donald Trumpmade an awkward blunder during his speech on Independence Day, praising the army, which he said 'took over the airports' from the British during the revolutionary war in the late 1700s.... [A]ir travel did not occur in the US until early in the 1900s.... However this was not the only historical confusion in this section of Trump's speech. As astute listeners picked out, the battle of Fort McHenry occurred during the war of 1812, and not the American revolutionary war which took place several decades earlier." --s ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: I looked at Trump's remarks in context, & I think the stuff about the airports & Fort McHenry was supposed to convey events that occurred after the American Revolution, although the speechwriter does throw in airports & "manning the air" before s/he gets to Fort McHenry's defense of Baltimore Harbor in 1812, which doesn't make a lot of sense. The whole speech was garbled, jumping from one historical event to another with no clear connections. Trump, of course, was oblivious to it all.
Quid Pro Quo. Devin Dwyer & Stephanie Ebbs of ABC News: "President Donald Trump's Fourth of July celebration will feature $750,000 of donated fireworks from an Ohio retailer who has lobbied the White House against expanded tariffs on Chinese imports. And last week, the same day the donation was announced, the company -- Phantom Fireworks of Youngstown, Ohio -- got what it wanted: Trump decided to hold off on his threatened $300 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods, which include fireworks." --s (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Steve M.: "It looks like bribery because it is bribery. Remember, the Constitution doesn't limit the reasons for impeachment to 'high Crimes and Misdemeanors' -- the full phrase is 'Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.'... If I were Tom Steyer, I would stop running ads full of people simply demanding impeachment. I'd commission ads that succinctly summarize every obstruction allegation in the Mueller report -- maybe one ad for each allegation."
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs of the New York Timesgives an online quiz of the questions which applicants for U.S. citizenship most often get wrong. Mrs. McC: I got them all right, but if I had not lived here all my life & gone to school here, I certainly would have missed some, as a few are not things that would have registered even if I'd read a couple of U.S. history books. (Also linked yesterday.)
Trump Administration Thinks of Another Way to Harass Undocumented Immigrants. Elizabeth Dias of the New York Times: "Citing the Immigration and Nationality Act, ICE officials said the agency has the right to impose civil fines, up to $799 a day, on undocumented immigrants who have been ordered removed, or who have failed to leave the country. Officials said the agency began issuing such notices in December, though it was not clear on Thursday how many had been sent.... President Trump ... signed an executive order shortly after his inauguration that called on the Department of Homeland Security to collect all fines and penalties from anyone who had entered the country illegally...." Edith Espinal, who has been living in a church in Ohio, received a bill for $497,777 last week. Hilda Ramirez Mendez, living in a church in Texas, received notice she would be fined $303,620.would be fined $303,620.
Your Constitutional Crisis of the Day: Trump Considers Blowing off Supreme Court. Jonathan Swan & Mike Allen of Axios: "President Trumpis considering an executive order to try to move forward with a citizenship question on the 2020 census.... But there is considerable skepticism within the administration that an executive order would succeed.... Trump's insistence on pushing ahead with the question, potentially without doing the legwork the Supreme Court called for, reflects his expansive view of executive power. A source familiar with some of the administration's internal deliberations said: 'I think that there's a good argument to be made that even though the president may lose in litigation at the end of the day, going through that process ultimately makes it clear that it's the chief justice, and not the Executive Branch, that bears responsibility for that unfortunate outcome.'" (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Rick Hasen publishes a chunk of the Washington Post's story on DOJ lawyers' attempts to come up with a new pretext for adding the citizenship question to the Census. Here's a piece of that piece: "Before Trump's tweets plunged their week into chaos, Justice officials thought the president understood how few legal options remained, according to people familiar with he matter. They had earlier told the White House that the case was a dead-end and that pursuing it would be a waste of time. Those people said that Attorney General William P. Barr had talked to Trump and had tried to explain his limited options after the Supreme Court's ruling." Mrs. McC: Like "explaining" to a cranky toddler why he can't have a cookie.
Emily Holden of the Guardian: "Donald Trump plans to go on the offensive against criticism of his industry-friendly rollbacks of environment protections in a speech on Monday, according to three sources familiar with the plans. Trump will tout America's clean air and water, although his administration has advanced many efforts that experts say have undercut the country's environmental record.... He is not expected to make any major announcements of new policy initiatives. Yet in an off-the-record conference call on Wednesday, the White House reached out to key supporting groups requesting they spread the message that the US under Trump continues to be an environmental leader." --s (Also linked yesterday.)
Kathy Gannon of the AP: "Taliban and U.S. negotiators are scrambling to finalize a draft agreement that will outline the withdrawal of American and NATO troops from Afghanistan and a verifiable Taliban guarantee to fight terrorism ahead of an all-Afghan peace conference Sunday. Officials familiar with the talks, but not authorized to speak about them, say negotiations went late into the night on Wednesday and throughout Thursday -- the sixth day of direct talks between the insurgents and U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad. They were to resume again on Friday."
Presidential Race 2020
Jonathan Martin & Katie Glueck of the New York Times report on Joe Biden & Kamala Harriscampaigning in Iowa on Independence Day.
Julia Manchester of the Hill: "Democratic presidential hopefuls will be criss-crossing Iowa and New Hampshire on Thursday, using a series of appearances at Independence Day events to try to inject momentum for their campaigns in a highly volatile race." (Also linked yesterday.)
Julia Kollewe of the Guardian: "Nearly half of all global pay is scooped up by just 10% of workers, according to the International Labour Organization (ILO), while the lowest-paid 50% receive just 6.4%. The lowest 20% -- around 650 million workers -- get less than 1% of total pay, a figure that has barely moved in 13 years, the ILO analysis found. It used labour income figures from 2004 to 2017, the latest available data. A worker in the top 10% receives $7,445 a month (£5,866), while a worker in the bottom 10% gets just $22." --s (Also linked yesterday.)
Damian Carrington of the Guardian: "Planting billions of trees across the world is by far the biggest and cheapest way to tackle the climate crisis, according to scientists, who have made the first calculation of how many more trees could be planted without encroaching on crop land or urban areas.... New research estimates that a worldwide planting programme could remove two-thirds of all the emissions that have been pumped into the atmosphere by human activities, a figure the scientists describe as 'mind-blowing'.... [T]he forest restoration envisaged would take 50-100 years to have its full effect of removing 200bn tonnes of carbon." --s
Beyond the Beltway
Georgia. Pema Levy of Mother Jones: "Georgia has been requiring Puerto Rican natives seeking Georgia driver's licenses to answer a special set of questions such as identifying 'what a meat filled with plantain fritter' is called; where a specific beach is located; and 'the name of the frog [that is] native only to PR,' according to a lawsuit filed this week." --s ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Read the whole story. I guess we have to give Georgia Republicans the prize for "Most Original Form of Voter Suppression," even if the effort doesn't pass the laugh test.
Pennsylvania. Akela Lacy of The Intercept: "The state of Pennsylvania is on the cusp of approving a major piece of voter suppression legislation ahead of the 2020 election, despite a Democrat serving as governor. The bill, passed largely along party lines with nearly universal opposition from Democrats in the state legislature, is on the governor's desk. If signed into law, it would ban what's known as 'straight-ticket' voting, which allows a voter to cast a ballot for all Democrats, or all Republicans, at once.... [B]anning straight-ticket voting would mean much longer lines at the polls, as each voter needs more time behind the curtain. Studies have shown the longer lines depress Democrat turnout significantly.... In late 2015, Republicans succeeded in banning straight-ticket voting in Michigan, spurring litigation that lasted for a couple of years.... Donald Trump carried Michigan by 10,700 votes and Pennsylvania by 44,000 in 2016, meaning a swing of just a percentage point could be the difference between Trump's reelection and his defeat." --s
Way Beyond
Brazil. Reuters: "Deforestation in Brazil's portion of the Amazon rainforest rose more than 88% in June compared with the same month a year ago, the second consecutive month of rising forest destruction under the rightwing presidentJair Bolsonaro.... While the final text of [a newly created] EU-Mercosur deal has not been released, an outline from the EU states the agreement includes a provision that the Paris agreement on climate change must by effectively implemented along with other commitments to fight deforestation. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, had warned last week before agreement on the deal that he would not sign off on it if Brazil leaves the Paris accord." --s (Also linked yesterday.)
China. Christy Choi of the Guardian: "China is reportedly separating Muslim children from their families, religion and language, and is engaged in a rapid, large-scale campaign to build boarding schools for them. The attempts to 'remove children from their roots' exists in parallel to Beijing's ongoing detention of an estimated 1 million Uighur adults from the western Xinjiang region in camps and sweeping crackdown on the rights of the minority group, the BBC reported." --s
News Ledes
New York Times: :Employers added 224,000 jobs in June, the Labor Department reported on Friday. Economists had expected a gain of about 170,000. The unemployment rate was 3.7 percent, up from 3.6 percent in May.Average earnings rose 6 cents an hour from May, and are up 3.1 percent over the past year.... The job market roared back to life last month, shaking off a spring slowdown and easing fears that the record-setting economic expansion could be running out of steam. The rebound from May's disappointing figure was stronger than economists had predicted, suggesting that trade tensions and cooling global growth have done little to sap the job market's fundamental strength."
CNN: "Alaska's heat wave continued through Independence Day, and in Anchorage, the temperatures shattered an all-time record. The temperature at the airport was 90 degrees Thursday, besting June 14, 1969, for the highest mark ever recorded in the city, according to the National Weather Service. Last month was the warmest June on record, with an average temperature of 60.5 degrees -- 5.3 above average, according to the National Weather Service Anchorage, whose records for this location date to 1954 (66 total Junes). June marks the 16th consecutive month in which average temperatures ranged above normal. 'All 30 days in June had above average temperatures, the service noted."
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