Governors Who Quickly Reopened Their States Are Backpedaling as Coronavirus Surges

https://time.com/5860146/coronavirus-record-restrictions-governors-reopening/

The escalating crisis is testing governors — many of them Republicans who aggressively reopened before most of the U.S. — as pressure mounts from their biggest cities, health experts and even friendly business groups. Any move backward could land them at odds with President Donald Trump, who has sought to move on from the virus and return to the campaign stage, all while refusing to wear a mask in public.

 

Trump entrenched in failed strategy as virus surges and polling drops

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/25/politics/donald-trump-campaign-coronavirus-strategy/index.html

 While advisers say Trump is aware of his weakened standing, he has rejected public surveys showing him trailing former Vice President Joe Biden by double digits, claiming they are flawed attempts to suppress the vote. And while advisers and allies have privately -- and, this week, publicly -- begun to encourage Trump to moderate his tone and change behaviors they fear are alienating wide swaths of the electorate, he has shown almost no willingness to change course.

"He didn't think he would win in 2016, he doesn't think he can lose in 2020," one senior White House official said.

 

Haredi lawmaker Uri Maklev urges public to accept discriminatory arrangement for ultra-Orthodox communities despite 2011 High Court ruling banning such practices, says the move is 'for the benefit of women'

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/26/politics/donald-trump-coronavirus-single-worst-day-new-cases/index.html

 America's single worst day of new coronavirus cases obliterated President Donald Trump's fantasyland vision of a post-Covid America -- even as he sowed new diversions in an effort to hide the reality of his leadership void in a deepening national crisis.

More than 37,000 new cases of Covid-19 were reported on Thursday, according to Johns Hopkins University data. The numbers superseded the previous darkest day of the pandemic, on April 24. The new data suggests that the sacrifices made by tens of millions of Americans who stayed at home, that cost many of them their jobs, might have been in vain. It also suggest that the aggressive state re-openings championed by Trump, who wants a quick economic reboot to boost his reelection hopes, exacerbated a situation that now seems close to tipping out of control across a swathe of southern states.

Dep. transportation minister: Women should sit at back of bus

https://www.ynetnews.com/article/Sy8y114zRL

Haredi lawmaker Uri Maklev urges public to accept discriminatory arrangement for ultra-Orthodox communities despite 2011 High Court ruling banning such practices, says the move is 'for the benefit of women'

Jason Greenblatt to settler leaders: Stop attacking Trump

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/jason-greenblatt-to-settler-leaders-stop-attacking-trump-632885

Former US special envoy Jason Greenblatt noted during the hearing: "Settlement leaders and the right-wing leadership should not attack President Trump and Jared Kushner. They need to explain what their concerns are without simply criticizing. It's not fair. A future Palestinian state will not pose a threat to Israel. "

Appellate Court Rules Judge Sullivan Must Dismiss Flynn Case. Sullivan Pushes Back

How A President Leads

Trump Amps Up the Racism Because He’s Failed at Everything Else: A Closer Look

Federal appeals court orders Flynn judge to dismiss charges

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/24/dc-circuit-orders-flynn-judge-to-dismiss-charges-337751

The ruling Tuesday may not be the last word on the issue. Any active judge on the D.C. Circuit — including dissenting Judge Robert Wilkins — could call for a vote to bring the matter before the full court en banc. The court’s active bench is currently made up of seven Democratic appointees and five Republican ones.

But the victory, no matter how temporary, was greeted with celebration — not just by Trump, who called the ruling “great!” but his Justice Department too.

 

Bolton’s book reveals: Trump was America’s first anti-Kurdish president

https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/boltons-book-reveals-trump-was-americas-first-anti-kurdish-president-632756

The US President, according to former National Security Advisor John Bolton, is actually anti-Kurdish and dislikes a minority group in the Middle East that has been consistently pro-American.

532 new coronavirus cases in 24 hours

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/282444

Health Ministry reports that the number of coronavirus cases is greater than 460 for just the second time since April 9.

 

US said to slam covering of Jerusalem embassy Pride sign as sovereignty breach

https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-said-to-slam-covering-of-jerusalem-embassy-pride-sign-as-sovereignty-breach/

 

The Jerusalem Municipality’s covering of an LGBT pride banner from an external wall of a US Embassy facility in the capital continued to draw protest on Wednesday, with one American official comparing the issue to Israel’s planned annexation of parts of the West Bank.

“While Ambassador Friedman is fighting for annexation in the United States, are you invading our sovereign territory here?” the senior embassy official fumed to Channel 12 news, referring to the envoy’s trip to Washington for talks at the White House on whether the Trump administration should back Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to begin the process of annexation from July 1.

 

 

Trump promised to pay for Covid care. But patients with long-term symptoms see huge bills.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/24/trump-pay-coronavirus-symptoms-338924

The Trump administration’s pledge to protect Covid-19 patients from massive medical bills is falling short for a growing number of survivors who experience long-term complications from the virus.

Doctors are discovering life-threatening and costly long-term health effects ranging from kidney failure to heart and lung damage. That’s exposing a major gap in the federal government’s strategy for ensuring patients won’t go broke because of a coronavirus diagnosis.

The 6 Trump Bombshells Still Waiting to Explode

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/06/25/trump-bombshells-waiting-explode-altitude-339203

Three and a half years into his presidency we know so much that it raises the question: What do we not yet know about Donald Trump?

The question itself is a sign of the times. All presidents have gaps between the heroic picture they seek to project to the world and the messy, chaotic, compromised reality of daily life in the White House. Understanding any presidency is a vast puzzle. But never before have so many pieces of the puzzle been disgorged contemporaneously, in such a relentless and flamboyant way. Almost every turn of the news cycle produces an episode that—in more conventional times—could easily be the headline of the last Woodward book or the kind of revelations coaxed from deep in the archives decades after the fact by the likes of a historian like Robert A. Caro.

How Bill Barr's Manhattan transfer went awry

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/25/william-barr-jay-clayton-sec-338703

Shortly after 9 p.m. that evening, Attorney General Bill Barr made two announcements in one fateful missive: Geoffrey Berman, the powerful U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, was stepping down from his job, effective immediately. And President Donald Trump would nominate Clayton to take his place. In the meantime, the U.S. attorney for New Jersey would step in.

There was just one hiccup: Berman hadn’t actually resigned.

 

Trump team looks to prevent a Tulsa-style debacle in Jacksonville

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/25/trump-team-prevent-tulsa-debacle-jacksonville-florida-339124

“Sadly, protesters interfered with supporters, even blocking access to the metal detectors, which prevent people from entering the rally,” Tim Murtaugh, communications director for the Trump campaign, said in a statement following the Tulsa rally. The campaign didn’t say how many people were turned away; reporters on the ground disputed that protests at the entries prevented rallygoers from ultimately entering.

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.