New lawsuit demands details on Bolton book review

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/25/john-bolton-book-review-lawsuit-339368

Officials, including a federal judge, have accused Bolton of putting national security at risk by bailing out of the review process. He contends he thought the process was done in April and that an additional round of checks senior officials initiated was a transparent effort to cater to Trump’s desire to suppress the tell-all book, which paints a deeply unflattering portrait of Trump.

“The Bolton case describes a prepublication review process driven by the whims of the political appointees in the White House, shrouded in the deference courts traditionally give the Intelligence Community on questions of national security,” he said. “The public deserves to know if the claims made behind closed doors about Bolton's book hold up to the scrutiny of a skeptical judge in a more demanding FOIA context.”

 

As feud with Trump erupts, Bolton goes from pro-Israel hero to ‘John who?’

https://www.timesofisrael.com/as-feud-with-trump-erupts-john-bolton-goes-from-pro-israel-hero-to-john-who/

Bolton is dominating headlines this week with his new tell-all book, “The Room Where It Happened,” in which he depicts Trump as a know-nothing prone to placing his personal fortunes above the country’s and seeking political favors from Ukraine, China, and Turkey. In response, Trump is threatening his former national security adviser with criminal action for allegedly disseminating classified information (Bolton says the book was cleared by censors for publication; the White House disagrees). 

The Trump-Bolton clash puts Jewish Republicans and right-wing pro-Israel groups in an especially tricky situation. They have long hailed Bolton as a voice of moral clarity willing to speak hard truths in defending Israel, often in the face of international consensus. But this time, Bolton is fixing his aim on a president whom many of his erstwhile pro-Israel allies view as the best friend Jerusalem has ever had in the White House.

 

Senior health official advises elders to avoid events, public transportation

Prof. Sadetzki says authorities should discuss scaling down number of participants at events, public not observing health regulations to blame for resurgence of coronavirus

 

In light of the recent spike in coronavirus cases, the head of Public Health Services at the Health Ministry Prof. Siegal Sadetzki on Thursday advised senior citizens to avoid attending events with many participants and traveling on public transportation to avoid getting infected.

 

New York imposes quarantine on eight US states

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53167780

New York, New Jersey and Connecticut have asked people travelling from states where Covid-19 cases are rising to go into self-isolation for 14 days.

 

19 attorneys general sue Education Secretary Betsy DeVos over gainful employment rule

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/attorneys-general-sue-education-secretary-betsy-de-vos-over-gainful-employment-rule-205153783.html

 

The 2014 gainful employment rule was created by the Obama administration to ensure that schools — many of them for-profit colleges — were denied access to federal aid if their graduates had weak career prospects and heavy debt loads.

DeVos repealed the rule in July 2019, and her decision goes into effect on July 1.

On June 24, attorneys general of the states of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Colorado, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin, as well as the District of Columbia sued Betsy DeVos and her agency. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in D.C.

Randi Weingarten, president of the teachers’ union American Federation of Teachers, added: “Betsy DeVos has already made history as one of the most unproductive, unpopular and frankly embarrassing cabinet appointments — and today, states across the country are holding her to account.”

Michael Flynn: Court rules in favour of ex-Trump aide

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53168278

All four prosecutors assigned to the Stone case - including Mr Zelinsky - quit after the lower sentence was requested.

Mr Zelinsky told lawmakers on Wednesday that he had been pressured to change a sentencing memo to the judge to ask for a lighter sentence for Stone. He said he was warned he could be fired if he did not co-operate.

"I was explicitly told that the motivation for changing the sentencing memo was political, and because the US Attorney was 'afraid of the President'."

He also said that he was directed to investigate an environmental deal made between US auto manufacturers and the state of California after Mr Trump criticised it on Twitter.

DOJ spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said: "Mr Zelinksy's allegations concerning the US Attorney's motivation are based on his own interpretation of events and hearsay (at best), not first-hand knowledge."

 

GOP aghast as Trump's polls sink amid divisive racial rhetoric: 'It's been a bad couple weeks'

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/24/politics/republican-reaction-trump-racist-rhetoric/index.html

Racial overtones filled Trump's appearance in Phoenix. The President was onstage and nodded in approval as a young woman lamented the loss of the branding of the Aunt Jemima pancake mix and accused White, evangelical pastors of telling their congregations to "kneel and apologize for the color of their skin."

 

Another speaker, an African American woman, claimed her college had shut down a conservative student group but allowed a group that supported Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. The mention of Sanders' name brought more boos and led one person in the crowd to yell: "And he's a Jew!" (The group Students for Trump later said the comment does not reflect its views and the individual would have been "promptly removed" had "we been alerted" to the incident when it occurred.)

Appeals court orders judge to dismiss Michael Flynn case

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/24/politics/michael-flynn-dismiss/index.html

 A federal appeals court on Wednesday ordered Judge Emmet Sullivan to dismiss the case against former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, a possible conclusion to a long-running political fight.

Despite Flynn twice pleading guilty for lying to the FBI about his conversations with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the presidential transition, the Justice Department moved last month to dismiss the case against him. Sullivan did not immediately act, instead asking for a review of the decision.

If unchallenged with further appeals, the ruling exonerates Flynn after he sought to change his plea and claimed innocence.

 

Charlie Kirk: Trump's 'incredible' youth turnout in Arizona defied the mainstream media narrative

https://www.foxnews.com/media/charlie-kirk-trump-youth-turnout-ignored-media

In an interview on 'Fox & Friends"  with hosts Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt and Brian Kilmeade, Kirk noted that the president's Students for Trump event in Phoenix, Ariz., on Tuesday was held "in defiance" of the liberal media's narrative.

 

"Well, I’ll tell you with young people, in defiance to the media narrative, it was absolutely incredible yesterday," Kirk remarked. "3,300 students in Phoenix, Arizona."

The appearance, at the Dream City megachurch came on the heels of a disappointing weekend for the president in Oklahoma – filling only 6,200 of Tulsa's BOK Center's 19,000 seats at his first rally following a three-month coronavirus-related hiatus.

Trump swiped at "left-wing intolerance," telling his young audience that Democrats are "totalitarian" and radical.

“They hate our history, they hate our values, and they hate everything we prize as Americans,” he asserted. “Our country didn’t grow great with them. It grew great with you and your thought process and your ideology. The left-wing mob is trying to demolish our heritage, so they can replace it with a new oppressive regime that they alone control."

In Arizona, Trump has a redo of his Oklahoma rally

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/23/trump-rally-arizona-336565

 After a disappointing showing at his campaign rally over the weekend, President Donald Trump renewed his performance for a packed crowd of students on Tuesday, telling his Arizona audience that they were guardians in a cultural war over the heritage of the country.

“We’re here today to declare that we will never cave to the left wing and the left-wing intolerance,” the president said at a Students for Trump event in Phoenix.

 

The appearance, at the Dream City megachurch, was one of his first rallies since taking a three-month hiatus because of the coronavirus pandemic. Images from the event showed a large crowd tightly packed together, with almost no one wearing protective masks. There were no temperature checks for the estimated 3,000 cheering attendees who, like many of Trump’s staunchest fans, ignored a new local ordinance requiring them to wear a mask, despite a public-health plea from the Democratic mayor on Monday.

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Fauci warns of disturbing trend as Trump ignores viral surge

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/23/politics/donald-trump-coronavirus-pandemic-election-2020/index.html

Political mismanagement of the situation, the glaring lack of a national strategy and the nation's exhausting, inconclusive struggle with the coronavirus was reflected Tuesday in three key developments. Fully half of US states are now seeing rising cases of the disease with the situation especially acute in Texas, Florida and Arizona, which embraced aggressive reopening programs. The European Union, which has been more successful than the US in suppressing Covid-19, warned it might bar visitors from America in what would be a major embarrassment for Trump. And the President persisted with his counter-logical argument that the US is only seeing more cases of the virus because it is doing more testing, leaving the implication that it would be better if rising cases, infections and ultimately deaths were simply ignored.

 

 

The hope of everyone was the states that reopened first would find a way to do so without triggering a surge in new cases and therefore begin to mitigate the terrible economic cost and knock-on psychological effects of lockdowns. But some 25 states are now seeing new infections rising, while the situation is steady in 12 and down in 13. It is dispiriting that the picture seems to get a little worse by the day. States like Michigan and California, which has already experienced painful months, have seen their curves begin to rise again. And while states like New York and the Washington metropolitan areas begin to emerge from lockdowns, the worsening data elsewhere offers daunting omens.