| Polls deliver more bad news for Trump Posted: 26 Jun 2020 02:25 PM PDT  If the latest national and state polls are correct, President Trump's bid for a second term faces serious headwinds in the four months until the election.
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| CDC maps show Florida's deepening coronavirus crisis, as state shatters daily case record Posted: 26 Jun 2020 09:55 AM PDT  The Sunshine State reported nearly 9,000 new cases on Friday as its death toll ticked over 3,400.
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| St. Louis mayor faces calls to resign after she was accused of doxxing the names and addresses of constituents who wrote letters calling for police defunding Posted: 27 Jun 2020 10:19 AM PDT  Mayor Lyda Krewson, a Democrat, faced calls to resign after she shared on Facebook names and addresses of protestors who called for police defunding.
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| White couple calls Mexican American 'criminal,' blocks him from his building Posted: 26 Jun 2020 12:07 PM PDT  Michael Barajas, 28, said he started recording the incident after a white man got aggressive and falsely called him a "criminal."
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| Italy sends in army after riot erupts on council estate near Naples over new virus outbreak Posted: 26 Jun 2020 10:16 AM PDT  Italy sent soldiers and riot police as reinforcements on Friday to a council estate in the south of the country where a cluster of coronavirus cases among foreign farm workers has sparked tensions with locals. Violence flared between Italian residents and migrant workers on Thursday and Friday in the town of Mondragone, north of Naples, after five blocks of flats were locked down in an outbreak of 43 positive cases, mostly among Roma and Bulgarian field workers. The trouble reportedly began after a group of Bulgarians attempted to force their way through a cordon put in place earlier this week, to protest not being able to return to work. Police persuaded them to return inside, but a few were later spotted heading out. A throng of angry resident Italians then gathered below the tower blocks shouting insults at the inhabitants, some of whom responded by throwing chairs and objects from their balconies. The affected council estate is home to some 300 Italians and 400 migrant workers from Eastern Europe, North Africa and South America. "We have put all the tower blocks in quarantine. Now they need to stay in their homes and respect the rules: for 15 days no-one enters or exits those buildings," said Campania governor Vincenzo De Luca, who requested extra law enforcement from the interior ministry and threatened to lock down the whole town if screening identifies more than 100 cases. Several vehicles with Bulgarian plates were vandalized and a van was set alight with a molotov cocktail on Friday morning before the army unit arrived.
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| Editorial: Goodbye, diesel exhaust. California adopts nation's first zero-emission truck rule Posted: 26 Jun 2020 05:00 AM PDT  The rule is among the most ambitious efforts in the world to replace dirty diesel trucks with electric and other zero-emission vehicles.
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| Lawmakers in Canada and Scotland have pointed to the US as an example of failed coronavirus containment Posted: 26 Jun 2020 05:19 PM PDT  On Friday, the European Union said they would likely bar travelers from the US and other countries that have not curbed the coronavirus.
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| William Barr claims an election with mail in voting is not secure – but admits he has no evidence for it Posted: 26 Jun 2020 11:18 AM PDT  US attorney general William Barr has suggested that an election that uses mainly mail-in voting will not be secure, but admits he has no evidence to back up his claim.Speaking to NPR on Thursday, the attorney general was asked if he thinks an election that is voted on predominately by mail can be implemented without widespread fraud.
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| Several active, retired San Jose police officers accused of participating in closed Facebook page with racist posts Posted: 26 Jun 2020 11:23 PM PDT  'The union will provide you no shelter': Several active and retired San Jose police officers are accused of participating in a closed Facebook page, full of racist posts.
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| A Major GOP Nightmare Moves a Step Closer to Reality Posted: 26 Jun 2020 01:32 AM PDT  Legislation to make the District of Columbia a state is poised to pass the House on Friday, a major advance from the last time the measure came before Congress 27 years ago and 40 percent of Democrats joined with all but one Republican to defeat D.C. statehood. After decades of benign neglect, the movement to make D.C. the 51st state has gained new life with Black Lives Matter and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser's heightened profile. President Trump's efforts to use federal force to dominate streets around the White House exposed the subservient status of a city that must answer to Congress for how it spends money while its 706,000 residents are without full voting representation in the House or Senate. Republicans appear unmoved by pleas for equality. Republican Sen. Tom Cotton took to the Senate floor to denounce the Democrats' move in a racially tinged speech depicting D.C. as an elitist conclave of the "deep state" and Mayor Bowser as someone who could not be trusted to keep the city and its statues safe. "Yes, Wyoming is smaller than Washington by population," he tweeted, "but it has three times as many workers in mining, logging, and construction, and 10 times as many workers in manufacturing. In other words, Wyoming is a well-rounded working-class state."Opinion: I Fixed Tom Cotton's Op-EdThe bill to rename D.C. "Washington, Douglass Commonwealth" is going nowhere in Mitch McConnell's Senate. But if the Democrats win the White House and flip the Senate, statehood becomes imaginable, since statehood requires only a vote of Congress. "Trump says Republicans would have to be stupid to support D.C. statehood and that's what the battle is about these days, maybe that's what it's always been about," says Michael Brown, D.C.'s non-voting "shadow senator." Actually, Trump said Republicans would have to be "very, very stupid" to support statehood for D.C. because it would add two Democratic senators, which McConnell would never let happen. "But it's about more than McConnell," Brown told the Daily Beast. "We can't get one Republican (in the Senate), and there are still six (Senate) Democrats who are not on the bill." In the modern Senate, 60 votes are needed to overcome a filibuster and proceed to a vote on legislation of any significance. The exception is judges, where Republicans exercised what is known as the "nuclear option" to confirm two Supreme Court judges and 200 lower court lifetime judges with a simple majority. Democratic leader Harry Reid opened this dangerous door by striking the filibuster for Executive Branch confirmations that McConnell was blocking. Several Democrats who ran for president, including Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Pete Buttigieg, favor doing away with the filibuster if Democrats win the Senate. Otherwise, they argue, McConnell (or his successor, should he happen to lose his own race) will obstruct everything Democrats try to do. The District of Columbia has a population of 706,000, more than Wyoming and Vermont, and D.C. residents pay more in total federal income tax than 22 states. It has long been a sore point that fighting in every war and contributing blood and treasure is not enough to gain more than a symbolic vote in Congress. D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, who has served almost 30 years, has a vote in committee but not on the House floor, and if her committee vote breaks a tie, it doesn't count. Even that small measure of democratic largesse was taken away by Republicans when they gained control of the House in 1994 and again in 2010. Democrats restored Norton's limited right to vote when they won the House in 2006 and 2018, and since then Norton has been on a roll when it comes to statehood. She has 226 co-sponsors for the bill, including the No. 2 Democrat in the House, Steny Hoyer from Maryland, who opposed statehood until now. Speaking before the Rules committee Wednesday, Norton explained how the legislation before her colleagues was personal to her own history. "My great-grandfather, Richard Holmes, who escaped as a slave from a Virginia plantation, made it as far as D.C., a walk to freedom but not to equal citizenship," she said. "For three generations my family has been denied the rights other Americans take for granted." Opponents of statehood argue that the Founding Fathers didn't want the District to be a state, but our vaunted forebears also didn't want women to vote, or Black people to vote, so that argument seems lame. "Whether you're a textualist or an originalist, I don't believe the Founding Fathers had any more reason to deny representation to people who pay federal taxes, serve in war and do everything a citizen should—than they would have wanted my neighbor down the hall to have a closet full of AK-47s," says Ellen Goldstein, who served until recently as a neighborhood advisory commissioner for the Sheridan-Kalorama neighborhood, home to the Obamas, the Kushners, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. "You can unearth the minds of the Founding Fathers to justify anything," Goldstein told the Daily Beast. "As somebody who has lived here for 50 years, I believe the only reason we're not a state is because of race." Race has a lot to do with it, says Brown, a former political consultant whose unpaid position's main perk is identifying as a senator. The Constitution grants Congress jurisdiction over the District in "all cases whatsoever," which allowed some committee chairmen of the House and Senate Committees on the District of Columbia to run the city like a plantation. In his recent book Class of 1974, John Lawrence recounts how John McMillan, a South Carolina Democrat and a segregationist, sent a truckload of watermelons to the office of appointed Mayor Walter Washington to let him know how little he thought of the budget Washington submitted in 1967 for the committee's review. The District couldn't even elect its own mayor until after Home Rule passed Congress in 1973. For a long time, D.C. pridefully called itself "Chocolate City," acknowledging its majority Black population. No state has ever come into the union with a majority minority population, says Brown. In 1993, the last time Congress voted on statehood, the city was 56 percent Black, a factor in the outcome despite President Bill Clinton's advocacy for statehood. During his final weeks in office, Bill Clinton had the newly authorized D.C. license plate with the slogan "taxation without representation" affixed to the presidential limousine. His successor, President George W. Bush, had the plate removed. It wasn't until after President Obama won re-election in 2012 that he ordered the controversial plate installed on all presidential vehicles. In 2011, the District's Black population fell below 50 percent for the first time in over 50 years. According to 2017 Census Bureau data, the African-American population is 47.1 percent. Unlike the Clinton-era vote, when Democrats were divided on the political merits of D.C. statehood, a newly awakened Democratic leadership is rallying around the cry for equal rights. "It's beyond statehood," says Goldstein, citing congressional meddling in District policies on marijuana legalization, gun regulation, and funding for abortion. "If we decide to do it, they take it away. They take our money and tell us how to spend it." Goldstein doubts the House vote will change anything, but in her thinking, modern America cannot continue to deny D.C. is a state any more than Macy's Department store in the movie classic Miracle on 34th Street could deny Kris Kringle was Santa when bags of letters addressed to him were delivered by the Post Office. Using the same reasoning, Goldstein notes that when she shops online on Amazon and scrolls down, D.C. is a state: "If the Post Office thinks you're Santa, you're Santa. And if Amazon thinks we're a state, then by golly, we're a state."Until a miracle happens on Capitol Hill, that will have to do. Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| South Korea backs remdesivir for COVID-19, urges caution with dexamethasone Posted: 26 Jun 2020 04:18 AM PDT  South Korea has added Gilead's anti-viral drug remdesivir to its coronavirus treatment guidelines in its first revision of recommendations since the outbreak began and urged caution in the use of the steroid therapy dexamethasone. Remdesivir is designed to hinder certain viruses, including the new coronavirus, from making copies of themselves and potentially overwhelming the body's immune system.
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| Mandatory masks? Biden says as president he would require wearing face coverings in public Posted: 26 Jun 2020 07:23 AM PDT  The presumptive Democratic nominee said he would use all the powers at his disposal to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
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| 5 Stealth Weapons Have Made The U.S. Military Unstoppable Posted: 26 Jun 2020 10:30 PM PDT  Stealth, or the idea of reducing the ability of the enemy to detect a weapon, has been around since the first caveman sewed a pocket into his clothing and hid a rock in it.
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| Galwan Valley: China to use martial art trainers after India border clash Posted: 27 Jun 2020 12:50 PM PDT  The move follows deadly fighting between Indian and Chinese troops in an area where guns are banned.
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| The Trump administration told Facebook and Twitter to remove posts that call for tearing down statues Posted: 26 Jun 2020 12:05 PM PDT  President Donald Trump has railed against protesters over the past month, and has repeatedly clashed with tech companies in the process.
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| Amid coronavirus surge, Abbott expresses regret on reopening bars Posted: 26 Jun 2020 07:21 PM PDT  The number of people hospitalized in Texas from the coronavirus increased for the 15th consecutive day, surpassing 5,000 for the first time.
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| COVID-19 may be linked to brain complications, study finds. But does it cause them? Posted: 27 Jun 2020 02:01 PM PDT  Severe cases of COVID-19 may be linked to brain complications, according to the first nationwide survey of the neurological complications.
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| Sahara Desert 'Godzilla' Dust Cloud Approaching the United States Posted: 26 Jun 2020 08:21 AM PDT  "This is the most significant event in the past 50 years."
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| White House does not commit to temperature checks in meeting with U.S. airlines Posted: 26 Jun 2020 10:01 PM PDT  Top U.S. airline executives met on Friday with Vice President Mike Pence and other senior administration officials but did not come away with any commitments from the White House on mandating temperature checks for airline passengers. Airlines want the U.S. government to administer temperature checks to all passengers in a bid to reassure the public.
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| Sean Hannity's town hall with President Trump: Part 2 Posted: 25 Jun 2020 07:14 PM PDT  President Trump discusses his administration's achievements, media bias, priorities for a second term, John Bolton's book and concerns over voter fraud with Sean Hannity in Green Bay.
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| The H-20 Stealth Bomber: China's Biggest Threat to the U.S.? Posted: 27 Jun 2020 08:30 AM PDT  The bomber, which has yet to be revealed, is expected to enter service in the mid-2020s.
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| Southern states report record coronavirus surges Posted: 27 Jun 2020 03:18 PM PDT  The U.S. has also seen a record number of cases nationwide, according to the latest figures released.
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| A journalist who covered Trump's Tulsa rally tests positive for COVID-19 Posted: 26 Jun 2020 07:52 PM PDT  A reporter who covered US President Donald Trump's rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, has tested positive for the coronavirus.
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| Coronavirus: US has 'serious problem', says Fauci Posted: 27 Jun 2020 02:44 PM PDT  The infection is rampant in 16 states, some of which are now freezing their reopening plans.
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| Gingrich: The mob rule in large parts of America can't be sustained Posted: 26 Jun 2020 10:27 AM PDT  The U.S. needs to have an honest conversation about what it takes to make America safe again, Newt Gingrich says on 'Outnumbered.'
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| Seattle mayor meets with protesters over dismantling zone Posted: 26 Jun 2020 08:34 AM PDT  Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan met with demonstrators Friday after some lay in the street or sat on barricades to thwart the city's effort to dismantle an "occupied" protest zone that has drawn scorn from President Donald Trump and a lawsuit from nearby businesses. Crews arrived with heavy equipment early Friday morning at the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest, an occupied protest zone in Seattle, ready to dismantle barriers set up after protesters seized the area June 8 following clashes with police.
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| How the officers charged in George Floyd's death could get their jobs back Posted: 27 Jun 2020 03:01 AM PDT  The Minneapolis police union has had great success convincing arbitrators to reinstate fired officers.
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| In 2017, Two Historic Accidents Shook The U.S. Navy (Here Is What They Learned) Posted: 26 Jun 2020 08:30 PM PDT  Two deadly collisions involving U.S. Navy destroyers in June and August 2017 may have cost the lives of up to sixteen sailors, leading the Navy to declare a day-long operational pause to reflect upon its safety culture.
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| Trump’s Raving About Carnage. Biden’s Channeling Reagan. Posted: 26 Jun 2020 01:30 AM PDT  The Republican Party's latest casualty is optimism about America's future. The most Reaganesque presidential candidate in 2020 is the Democrat, Joe Biden.Once upon a time, that would have been the ballgame. Until recently, the most optimistic candidate almost always won the presidency. Still, for Democrats, optimism might be the key to the 2020 election.That's because the so-called "Trump-Biden voter" could be the most vital bloc of swing voters in November—and people yearning for a "shining City on a Hill" instead of more "American Carnage" could do worse than a candidate who is taking a page from the Gipper's playbook. As an added benefit, by tapping into Reaganesque language, Biden can aesthetically signal kinship to this constituency without bucking his progressive base on policy issues.Trump Needs a Villain to Demonize, and Joe Biden Ain't ItThat this was already an overt Biden strategy eluded me until recently, when I saw the Lincoln Project's latest video, which features rhetoric from modern presidents, juxtaposed against Trump's toxic talk. The ad closes with Biden's saying, "It's time to pick up our heads. Remember who we are. This is the United States of America." To my ear, that evoked Reagan's "We are Americans" line.It's important to note that Reagan's rebranding of the GOP as the party of optimism and American exceptionalism was an incredible maneuver. Once upon a time, conservatism was thought to be an inherently pessimistic—even reactionary—philosophy. William F. Buckley, Jr., founded National Review magazine with a mission statement promising to "Stand athwart history yelling Stop!" Whittaker Chambers, who left Communism in favor of conservatism, famously lamented that he was "leaving the winning side for the losing side."Reagan, whose boyhood hero was Franklin Roosevelt ("The only thing we have to fear is fear, itself"), assiduously sought to reverse that dim view. He was aided (like Biden) by running against a president (Jimmy Carter) who seemed to have lost his grip—to lead a nation, plagued by "malaise," that seemed to have lost its nerve."I will not stand by and watch this great country destroy itself under mediocre leadership that drifts from one crisis to the next, eroding our national will and purpose," Reagan said at his nomination in 1980. "The time is now, my fellow Americans, to recapture our destiny, to take it into our own hands" and reject leadership that "drifts from one crisis to the next." He might as well have been talking about the current administration. But Reagan didn't just criticize, he inspired. He accomplished this by borrowing FDR's lines ("You and I have a rendezvous with destiny") and talking about how "our best days are yet to come." He did it by rejecting the defeatist view that the U.S. had "lost its day in the sun," and reminding us that we have it in our power to remake the world (Thomas Paine), that America was still "the country of tomorrow" (Emerson), and by aiming to appeal rhetorically to our best hopes, not our worst fears.For a generation of conservatives, optimism (not the delusional "Mission Accomplished" kind to score short-term political points, but a calm reassurance that our future is bright) and American exceptionalism became synonymous with Reagan conservatism. But it's not just a group of disgruntled Never Trump conservatives who see a market demand for sunny optimism. Biden's current slogan, "Our best days still lie ahead," is right out of the Gipper's playbook. It's not a new line for Biden, but it is one that suddenly resonates more than ever. New battleground polls show voters have rejected Trump's handling of the major crises that have confronted him this year: coronavirus and the controversy over race, protests, and policing.Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan, itself borrowed from Reagan, tapped into the hunger for a better future. But Trump clearly hasn't delivered on that promise. What is more, Trump's worldview is premised on a pessimistic assumption that this is a zero-sum game and that the powerful will (and should) win. To be sure, Biden's vision of hope may be gauzy, and he lacks the charisma and eloquence of a Reagan (or a Barack Obama). But in this milieu, a return to normalcy might pass for inspirational. What is important—for now, at least—is that voters can graft whatever dreams they might have onto him. And in doing so, they can imagine a better future.Every winning presidential candidate (including Trump in 2016) seems to possess this quality, regardless of how unrealistic this optimism might later seem (see how Obama's "Hope and Change" era was followed by Trump).And while 2020 should still generally be considered a referendum on Trump's tenure, Biden has assumed the optimistic high ground the president has abandoned, making the contrast all the more stark. The Party of Reagan has become the Party of Trump. And it's hard to quantify just how much ground has been squandered for what might turn out to be one Trump term. Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| American will start filling planes after doing the least of big US airlines to protect passengers. Here's what it was like to fly the airline during the pandemic. Posted: 26 Jun 2020 10:00 AM PDT  American had been already not been blocking middle seats and only limiting capacity at 85% and will start filling its planes July 1
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| China rebuts Canadian criticism over detention of two men Posted: 27 Jun 2020 11:19 AM PDT  China lashed out at Canada on Saturday over criticism about Chinese prosecution of two Canadians, saying the matter is based on evidence and urging Ottawa to cease "megaphone diplomacy." Chinese prosecutors this month charged Canadians Michael Kovrig, a former diplomat, and Michael Spavor, a businessman, for suspected espionage. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called on Beijing to cease the "arbitrary detention," and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also called for their release.
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| The US still does a wretched job of teaching Black history. An expert in African American history education explains how to fix it. Posted: 27 Jun 2020 07:00 AM PDT  An expert in African American history education, LaGarrett King, breaks down the school system's flaws and explains how to teach Black history better.
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| In reversal, Texas and Florida order bars to shut, restaurants to scale back as coronavirus cases surge Posted: 26 Jun 2020 08:11 AM PDT  The governors of Texas and Florida backpedal on their states' aggressive reopenings amid resurgences of COVID-19 cases.
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| US intercepts Russian warplanes off Alaska Posted: 27 Jun 2020 12:43 PM PDT  US warplanes intercepted four Russian reconnaissance aircraft near Alaska on Saturday, US commanders said. The Russian Tu-142's came within 65 nautical miles south of Alaska's Aleutian island chain and "loitered" in the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) for eight hours. An ADIZ is a perimeter within which air traffic is monitored by the air forces of one or more friendly countries so they have extra time to react to hostile action.
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| Lawsuit brewing in fight over game bird in Sierra Nevada Posted: 25 Jun 2020 09:08 PM PDT  Conservationists are headed back to court to try to force the Trump administration to protect a rare game bird along the California-Nevada border as the government keeps changing its mind about whether to list the cousin of the greater sage grouse as threatened or endangered. Three groups have filed formal notice of their intent to sue after the Fish and Wildlife Service reversed course in March and abandoned its 2018 proposal to list the bi-state grouse under the Endangered Species Act. The hen-sized bird is similar but separate from the greater sage grouse, which lives in a dozen Western states and is at the center of a dispute over the government's efforts to roll back protections adopted under President Barack Obama.
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| White officer caught on camera mocking George Floyd's death could lose job Posted: 26 Jun 2020 10:34 AM PDT  The officer was among two white men posing with one kneeling on the other's neck at a counterprotest of a rally against police brutality and systemic racism.
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| History Hell: These 5 Submarine Accidents Were True Disasters Posted: 27 Jun 2020 04:30 PM PDT  And the Navy won't forget them.
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| Pence hails 'remarkable progress' on COVID-19 as new cases surge in many states Posted: 26 Jun 2020 12:27 PM PDT  Vice President Mike Pence hailed "remarkable progress" toward returning the nation to normalcy at the first public briefing of the coronavirus task force in nearly two months on Friday, a day the U.S. saw a new high for coronavirus cases recorded.
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| Explorers in Antarctica found the largest soft-shelled egg ever seen. It may have come from an ancient reptile that preyed on sharks. Posted: 27 Jun 2020 05:55 AM PDT  Researchers think the creature that laid the egg, which is about 66 million years old, was more than 20 feet long.
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