July 2021 News2 - Eagle View DC

Editor’s Choice: Scroll below for our monthly blend of mainstream and alternative July, 2021 news and views.

July 31

Top Headlines

New York Times, Where the Delta Variant and Low Vaccination Rates Are Colliding
Washington Post, Ban on evictions expires as renters face rising covid cases, lack of aid
Washington Post, Analysis: Newly revealed notes drag congressional Republicans into Trump’s election-subversion effort, Philip Bump
Washington Post, Jan. 6 panel faces choice of whether to call GOP lawmakers to testify
Palmer Report, Opinion: Merrick Garland: how do you like me now? Bill Palmer
New York Times, Biden Promised to Restore the Iran Nuclear Deal. Now It Risks Derailment

Virus Victims, Responses

New York Times, Vaccinated People With Rare Breakthrough Cases Can Spread Virus, C.D.C. Reports
New York Times, New Rule Raises Question: Who’ll Pay for All the Covid Tests?
Washington Post, Disney, Walmart mandate workers to be vaccinated as cases spike nationwide
Washington Post, Vaccine holdouts relent as delta variant takes hold
Washington Post, ‘We can’t take another blow’: Some restaurants may not survive renewed mask mandates
Washington Post, 190.5 million U.S. vaccinated
Worldometer, World & U.S. Coronavirus Case Totals, U.S. Deaths: 629,065
Washington Post, French police clash with anti-vaccine protesters amid tensions over ‘health pass’ plans,

2020 Tokyo Olympics

New York Times, Olympic Soccer Live Updates: U.S. Women’s Team Beats Netherlands in Shootout‘
Washington Post, The Tokyo Games went on. But American viewers aren’t coming along
Washington Post, The Tokyo Olympics schedule, day by day

U.S. Politics, Governance

Palmer Report, Opinion: Tucker Carlson over the edge
New York Times, Carl Levin, the Senate Scourge of Corporate America, Dies at 87

Jan. 6 Pro-Trump Insurrection

Daily Beast, NFL Star’s Ex Brought Knife to Capitol, Got Framed as Antifa

World News, Corruption, Human Rights

New York Times, Hong Kong Protester Is Sentenced to 9 Years in First Security Law Case
Washington Post, Beijing police detain Chinese Canadian pop star Kris Wu on rape allegations

U.S. Law, Prisons, Crime

Top Stories

New York Times, Where the Delta Variant and Low Vaccination Rates Are Colliding, Lauren Leatherby, July 31, 2021. Many places in the U.S. that are seeing more new cases than at any point in the outbreak also have some of the country’s lowest vaccination rates.The Branson, Mo., and Harrison, Ark., areas have both set records this month, and Louisiana now has daily case rates more than 10 times higher than in June.

The highly contagious Delta variant is now responsible for almost all new Covid-19 cases in the United States, and cases are rising rapidly. For the first time since February, there were more than 100,000 confirmed cases on Tuesday, the same day the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that vaccinated people should resume wearing masks in public indoor spaces in communities where the virus is surging.

That updated guidance was based in part on a new internal report that cited evidence that vaccinated people experiencing breakthrough infections of the Delta variant, which remain infrequent, may be as capable of spreading the virus as infected unvaccinated people.

Several studies, including ones referenced in the C.D.C.’s presentation, have shown that vaccines remain effective against the Delta variant, particularly against hospitalization and death. That has held true in the real world: About 97 percent of those recently hospitalized by the virus were unvaccinated, the C.D.C. said. But in counties where vaccination rates are low, cases are rising fast, and deaths are also on the rise.

Washington Post, Ban on evictions expires as renters face rising covid cases, lack of aid, Rachel Siegel, July 31, 2021. Moody’s data shows there are still well over 6 million renters behind on payments.

The federal ban on evictions expires Saturday, marking a new, worrisome phase in the race to keep people in their homes amid the slow trickle of emergency rental aid and surging coronavirus cases.

The moratorium — put in place almost 11 months ago by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — has created new divisions pitting landlords against tenants, judges versus housing advocates, Republicans versus Democrats. While parts of the economy show signs of strength, the recovery has not carried everyone equally. Almost a year and a half since the pandemic began, many renters still haven’t caught up on their bills or gotten access to federal aid.

It’s difficult to know how many people could be served with eviction notices in the coming days and weeks, housing experts say. Moody’s data shows there are still well over 6 million renters behind on payments.

Evictions are about to restart as tenants wait on billions in unspent rental aid

In June, the CDC extended the ban for one final month, intensifying pressure on the Biden administration, along with state and local governments, to significantly ramp up the amount of rental assistance reaching tenants and landlords. All together, Congress appropriated $46 billion toward emergency rental aid. Only a fraction has been spent.

Washington Post, Analysis: Newly revealed notes drag congressional Republicans into Trump’s election-subversion effort, Philip Bump, July 31, 2021 (print ed.). President Donald Trump called acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen, below left, on Dec. 27 last year to discuss the issue at the center of his concerns. Not the 2,200 people a day dying of covid-19 at that point but, instead, his desperate attempts to cling to power after losing the presidential election on Nov. 3.

Before digging into that call, it’s worth remembering the context. The election was called for Joe Biden on Nov. 7, as it became apparent that Trump had no path to victory. The Trump campaign and Trump himself tried to block states from certifying their results, without success.

On Dec. 11, the Supreme Court rejected the Texas attorney general’s flailing effort to toss vote totals from Biden-voting states. Three days after that, electors met in every state to cast their final ballots for president and vice president. By Dec. 27, Trump and an increasingly fringe group of allies had tried to gin up myriad conspiracy theories about the vote, each of which was quickly debunked or facially ridiculous. But here was Trump, insisting that Rosen do something.

Notes taken by Rosen’s deputy Richard Donoghue reveal Trump’s plan, such as it was.

Trump appears to have suggested that he was better versed on the situation than the top Justice Department official, because, he said, Rosen and his team “may not be following the internet the way I do.” (As a nation, we can be grateful that they were not.)

“[U]nderstand that the DOJ can’t + won’t snap its fingers + change the outcome of the election, doesn’t work that way,” Rosen said to Trump, according to Donoghue’s summary.

“[D]on’t expect you to do that,” Trump said in response, “just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen.”

Everything until those last four words was pretty well-established. It was clear from the first hours after polls closed on Nov. 3 that Trump was grasping at every conspiracy theory that popped up on websites or in conservative media, a habit that continues unabated.

Washington Post, As Trump sought probes of 2020 election, he called acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen almost daily

Washington Post, Jan. 6 panel faces choice of whether to call GOP lawmakers to testify, Karoun Demirjian, Marianna Sotomayor and Jacqueline Alemany, July 31, 2021. Several congressional Republicans have admitted to having contact with President Donald Trump during the Capitol insurrection or in the days leading up to it, making their testimony potentially key to the panel’s stated goal of being ‘guided solely by the facts.’

The Jan. 6 panel’s chairman, Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), said in an interview that there is “no reluctance to subpoena” any member of Congress “whose testimony is germane to the mission of the select committee” if they resist cooperating voluntarily.

Thompson said the panel will be seeking the White House telephone and visitor logs to further scrutinize which members were in touch with the White House on Jan. 6.

“I would say between noon and 6 p.m., any call that went to the White House, you assume had to be something that had to do with it,” he said.

But legal experts said there is little precedent for forcing lawmakers to testify as part of a congressional inquiry if they resist a subpoena, an issue members of the Jan. 6 panel said they have yet to fully investigate or plan for as they plot out the next steps of their probe.

Palmer Report, Opinion: Merrick Garland: how do you like me now? Bill Palmer, right, July 31, 2021. For the first few months Attorney General Merrick Garland, above, was on the job, pundit after pundit insisted that he was either doing “nothing” or that he was part of some wacky conspiracy to protect Donald Trump.

These claims were always asinine on their face. But for awhile it was difficult to make an effective counter argument, because the Attorney General and the DOJ tend to be deliberate with their actions and careful with their words. In other words we had to wait until the crux of Garland’s DOJ finally began to spill over into the public eye – but now that’s beginning to happen.

This past week alone has been a barnburner. Garland’s DOJ told the Treasury Department to give Trump’s tax returns to the House Ways and Means Committee, making clear that it’s not trying to “cover up” anything. Garland’s DOJ also refused a request from Mo Brooks to represent him in civil action he’s facing for his actions on January 6th – setting a clear precedent that insurrectionist politicians are in a legally precarious position. Garland also took action against rogue Texas Governor Greg Abbott over an illegal executive order.

Impatient observers, who don’t have much of a sense for how these things actually work, are now remarking that Garland is “finally doing something.” But in reality, all we usually get to see out of the DOJ is the end result of any given lengthy internal legal process, and it just so happens that some of these processes happen to be spilling into public view at the same time. Arguing that Garland was doing “nothing” prior to this week is akin to arguing that the chef has been doing “nothing” right up until the moment your food comes out. Legal positions and criminal cases take time to cook as well.

All along Palmer Report has been pointing out that we had far too little data to work with when it came to evaluating Merrick Garland; most of the negative opinions of his work were based on a handful of poorly understood DOJ positions, or the lack of publicly visible results. Now we’re finally starting to get some real evidence of what Garland has been up to these past months, and it turns out most “Resistance” types are happy with most of what he’s been doing.

There’s plenty more to be done. Last month Garland laid out a DOJ comprehensive plan to protect voting rights, but it’s largely going to consist of civil suits against red states, meaning it’ll take time to play out. Hanging insurrectionist politicians out to dry is a good start, but now that hundreds of lower level Capitol attackers have been indicted, more of them need to be flipped so viable criminal cases can be brought against the insurrectionist politicians directly. And while the arrest of Tom Barrack and the raid of Rudy Giuliani are progress, this needs to culminate in a criminal case against Donald Trump himself.

And the lone “bad” ruling out of the Garland DOJ thus far – its decision to continue representing Trump in the civil suit brought by E. Jean Carroll – should be reversed. But given the DOJ’s refusal to represent Trump’s allies in January 6th litigation, it now appears that the Garland DOJ’s decision to continue representing Trump against Carroll was based solely on the fact that the DOJ was already representing Trump in this case before Garland got there.

But for now, Merrick Garland seems to have fended off the teeming hordes of angry people with pitchforks who were demanding that he be fired simply because… well, even they probably aren’t even sure why at this point. Of course that could change on a dime again, depending on whether the DOJ’s next move happens to be something like the arrest of Matt Gaetz, or whether it happens to be a legal position on an arcane matter that’s poorly understood and spun inaccurately by pundits. But if anything, this week should teach us that sizing up a new Attorney General requires taking a longer view of things, and not merely basing that assessment on which way the wind is blowing.

New York Times, Biden Promised to Restore the Iran Nuclear Deal. Now It Risks Derailment, David E. Sanger, Lara Jakes and Farnaz Fassihi, July 31, 2021. Both sides have much to lose if a delicate negotiation over limiting Iran’s activities in return for a lifting of sanctions falls short.

Days before a new hard-line president is set to be inaugurated in Iran, Biden administration officials have turned sharply pessimistic about their chances of quickly restoring the nuclear deal that President Donald J. Trump dismantled, fearing that the new government in Tehran is speeding ahead on nuclear research and production and preparing new demands for the United States.

The concerns are a reversal from just a month ago, when American negotiators, based in part on assurances from the departing Iranian government, believed they were on the cusp of reaching a deal before Ebrahim Raisi, 60, right, a deeply conservative former head of the judiciary, takes office on Thursday. In June, they were so confident that another round of talks was imminent that a leading American negotiator left his clothes in storage at a hotel in Vienna, where the talks took place through European intermediaries for the past four months.

That session never happened. International inspectors have been virtually blinded. At Iran’s major enrichment site at Natanz, centrifuges are spinning at supersonic speeds, beginning to enrich small amounts of nuclear fuel at near bomb-grade. Elsewhere, some uranium is being turned to metallic form — for medical purposes, the Iranians insist, though the technology is also useful for forming warheads.

Virus Victims, Responses

New York Times, Vaccinated People With Rare Breakthrough Cases Can Spread Virus, C.D.C. Reports, Apoorva Mandavilli, Updated July 31, 2021. The proof is an outbreak in Provincetown, Mass., the agency said. An internal C.D.C. document paints an even more harrowing picture.
In yet another unexpected and unwelcome twist in the pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released on Friday a report strongly suggesting that fully immunized people with so-called breakthrough infections of the Delta variant can spread the virus to others just as readily as unvaccinated people.

The vaccines remain powerfully effective against severe illness and death, and the agency said infections in vaccinated people were comparatively rare. But the revelation follows a series of other recent findings about the Delta variant that have upended scientists’ understanding of the coronavirus.

In the new report, which was intended to explain the agency’s sudden revision to its masking advice for vaccinated Americans, the C.D.C. described an outbreak in Provincetown, Mass., this month that quickly mushroomed to 470 cases in Massachusetts alone, as of Thursday.

Three-quarters of the infected were fully immunized, and the Delta variant was found in most of the samples that were genetically analyzed. Vaccinated and unvaccinated people who were infected carried high levels of the virus, the agency reported.

New York Times, New Rule Raises Question: Who’ll Pay for All the Covid Tests? Sarah Kliff, July 31, 2021. With the Delta variant surging, many companies decide that unvaccinated workers will need to get regular testing.

Spurred by rising Covid cases and the Delta variant’s spread, a wave of major employers announced the same rule for unvaccinated workers this week: They will need to submit to regular surveillance testing. The new requirement raises a thorny question: Who pays for those coronavirus tests?

Doctors typically charge about $50 to $100 for the tests, so the costs of weekly testing could add up quickly. Federal law requires insurers to fully cover the tests when ordered by a health care provider, but routine workplace tests are exempt from that provision.

“It’s really up to the employer,” said Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms. “They can require employees to pick up the tab.”

Employers have so far taken a range of approaches, from fully covering the costs to having unvaccinated workers pay full freight.

The U.S. government will pay for its unvaccinated workers’ coronavirus testing, Karine Jean-Pierre, the deputy White House press secretary, said at a news briefing Friday.

President Biden announced rules on Thursday that amount to a two-tier system for the country’s four million federal employees. Those who do not get vaccinated will have to social-distance, wear face coverings and comply with limits on official travel. Those who do get vaccinated will have no such requirements.

Washington Post, Disney, Walmart mandate workers to be vaccinated as cases spike nationwide, Timothy Bella, July 31, 2021 (print ed.). Disney and Walmart announced Friday that they are implementing coronavirus vaccine mandates for some of their employees, as two of the largest U.S. companies became the latest corporate giants to embrace vaccination in the face of renewed pandemic restrictions.

Disney, the world’s largest entertainment company, said it is requiring all salaried and nonunion hourly employees working in the country to be fully vaccinated to help fight against the deadly delta variant. The same mandate will go for new hires who are required to be fully vaccinated before they begin working at Disney, the company said.

Those Disney employees who are working at one of the company’s sites but remain unvaccinated must do so within the next 60 days to comply with the new mandate, according to a company statement. Disney added that it has reached out to unions representing its employees regarding a vaccine mandate to be included under collective bargaining agreements, Bloomberg News reported.

Washington Post, Vaccine holdouts relent as delta variant takes hold, Ariana Eunjung Cha, Rose Hansen and Jacqueline Dupree, July 31, 2021 (print ed.). Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri and other states have seen increases in coronavirus vaccinations recently.

“My friend works at the hospital, and she told me there’s 18-year-olds on ventilators. That scared me,” said Tyler Sprenkle, a recent high school graduate in Goodman, Mo., who got a shot this month.

More than 4.7 million newly vaccinated Americans have made similar calculations in the past two weeks, as misgivings about the shots based on ideology, apathy or fear have taken a back seat to the desire to protect themselves and their loved ones.

Washington Post, ‘We can’t take another blow’: Some restaurants may not survive renewed mask mandates, Laura Reiley, July 31, 2021 (print ed.). A spike in Delta variant infections is making restaurant goers leery of dining in, which may bankrupt already-strapped eateries

Washington Post, Charlie Kirk’s pro-Trump youth group stokes vaccine resistance as covid surges again, Isaac Stanley-Becker

Washington Post, At least 190.5 million U.S. vaccinated, as of July 31, 2021, measuring the number of people who have received at least one dose of the vaccine. This includes more than 164.2 million people fully vaccinated.

Worldometer, World & U.S. Coronavirus Case Totals (updated July 31, 2021, with some governments reporting lower numbers than the totals here and some experts saying the numbers are far higher, as the New York Times reported in India’s true pandemic death toll is likely to be well over 3 million, a new study finds):

World Cases: 198,196,583, Deaths: 4,228,175
U.S. Cases:    35,688,597, Deaths:     629,065
India Cases:    31,613,993, Deaths:     423,842
Brazil Cases:   19,880,273, Deaths:     555,512

Washington Post, French police clash with anti-vaccine protesters amid tensions over ‘health pass’ plans, Miriam Berger, July 31, 2021. Police in Paris used tear gas Saturday as thousands of protesters joined marches to denounce plans for vaccine “health passes,” the latest tensions around the world over government mandates to reward those who get vaccinated and maintain restrictions on those who refuse.

About 3,000 members of police and security forces were deployed in the French capital ahead of the demonstrations, which have flared weekly since the government announced the vaccine pass plans. Police fired tear gas and clashed with protesters in some areas. Protests also were held in other cities across France.

2020 Tokyo Olympics

New York Times, Olympic Soccer Live Updates: U.S. Women’s Team Beats Netherlands in Shootout, Andrew Das, July 31, 2021 (print ed.). The United States women’s soccer team beat the Netherlands in a penalty shootout on Friday to advance to the semifinals of the Tokyo Olympics, leaning on its veterans to deliver a thrilling and resilient moment in a tournament journey that had previously been marked by defeat and frustration.

Megan Rapinoe, the U.S. team’s steely and outspoken veteran forward, delivered the winning kick that beat the Netherlands, 4-2 in the shootout, after the teams played to a 2-2 tie.

Rapinoe, as is her custom, struck a victory pose after converting her kick, and was soon engulfed by her teammates. But it was goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher who had truly saved the game, making several big stops long before the shootout — including a late Netherlands penalty kick that could have sealed the Americans’ second straight medal-free exit from the Games — and then stopping two more Dutch penalty attempts in the shootout.

Washington Post, The Tokyo Games went on. But American viewers aren’t coming along, Ben Strauss, July 31, 2021. Leading up to the Tokyo Olympics, a group of NBC executives held a news conference to talk about their approach to these unusual Games.

“I really believe this is going to be the most meaningful Olympics of our lifetime,” said NBC Olympics executive producer Molly Solomon. “After everything the world has gone through … I do think that people are craving the shared experience. What better way to come together than through the stories of these athletes?”

The message was hope, as it is for every Olympics, but NBC also wanted these Games to mark the symbolic end of the global pandemic — a return to everyday life and a celebration of the triumph of the human spirit after a difficult 18 months. The sales pitch, from NBC’s perspective, made sense: the network is paying around about $12 billion to televise 10 Olympic Games from 2014 through 2032. But the network’s narrative was also running headlong into a state of emergency in Japan due to rising coronavirus cases and opposition to the Games on the ground there. When it was announced that there would be no fans, the television presentation suddenly became more challenging, too.

Indeed, the Games so far suggest that NBC overestimated America’s appetite for the Games and their pomp. Viewership is down significantly; public polling shows Americans are not enthusiastic about these Olympics; and the plight of Olympians and their mental health struggles have become the dominant story lines after Simone Biles withdrew from the gymnastics competition.

According to Nielsen, the opening ceremony in Tokyo drew 16.7 million viewers on NBC on July 23, accounting for both the live morning broadcast and the replay in prime time — the smallest audience for an opening ceremony in the past 33 years. It was down from 26.5 million who watched the event in Rio de Janeiro in 2016 and 40.7 million people who watched London’s ceremony.

Through the first four nights of the Games, according to Sportico, viewership of NBCUniversal’s Olympics coverage, across its networks, is down 43 percent compared with Rio de Janeiro, to 17.5 million viewers from 30.7 million. Primetime coverage on the NBC is down nearly 50 percent.
Any viewership numbers must take into account that the number of homes with cable TV or satellite subscriptions has fallen significantly since 2016, from 86 million to 77 million. There is also the splintering of TV audiences with access to so much on-demand entertainment, as well as the time difference with Tokyo which puts many events on tape delay during prime time. And NBC is showing events on its streaming service, Peacock.

“You’ve got the normal head winds from an Olympics on that side of the world,” said former Fox executive and industry consultant Patrick Crakes. “It’s a year delayed and it feels in some ways like we’re getting this out of the way because we have to.”

Washington Post, The Tokyo Olympics schedule, day by day, Staff Report. The Tokyo Olympics officially begin Friday with the Opening Ceremonies and end Aug. 8 with the Closing Ceremonies. Some events, such as softball and the men’s and women’s soccer tournaments, began Wednesday, before the official start of the Games.

The first medals will be handed out Saturday, followed by more than two weeks of dizzying action. Swimming and gymnastics likely will take center stage in the opening week. Many Olympic tournaments run nearly the duration of the Games, including basketball, baseball, softball, soccer and beach volleyball, and medals aren’t awarded until the final days.

Here’s the complete schedule of Olympic events, day by day.

U.S. Politics, Governance

New York Times, Carl Levin, the Senate Scourge of Corporate America, Dies at 87, Robert D. McFadden, July 31, 2021 (print ed.). The longest-serving U.S. senator in Michigan history, Mr. Levin was regarded by colleagues as a person of strong moral principles.

Carl Levin, right, a liberal Michigan Democrat who served 36 years in the Senate and scared the wits out of America’s biggest C.E.O.s by demanding explanations for shadowy schemes that hid billions in profits overseas and avoided vast corporate taxes at home, died on Thursday in Detroit. He was 87.

His death was confirmed by the Levin Center at Wayne State University. Mr. Levin had disclosed in March that he had lung cancer, Jim Townsend, a spokesman for the family, said.

The longest-serving senator in Michigan history — from 1979 to 2015 — Mr. Levin was regarded by Senate colleagues and Washington observers as a paragon of probity as the chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. He wielded subpoena power, huge briefing books, a big gavel and an unquenchable zeal for grilling high-profile witnesses at public hearings.

Palmer Report, Opinion: Tucker Carlson over the edge, Bocha Blue, July 31, 2021. I cannot read every Palmer Report comment, but I have read enough to understand the frustrations of many of you that Tucker Carlson, above, has not yet been canceled. And I remain firm in my belief that it will happen.

Tucker’s psychosis is becoming more apparent every day. The backlash is getting stronger. And there will come the point where the evil little hate-doll will go too far.

Right now, he is testing the corporate robots over at Fox-Non-news. And he is moving ever so stealthily toward the edge of the cliff.

It would seem our least favorite non-news pundit has decided to go after our beloved Vice President.

In a vicious and loathsome attack, Carlson referred to VP Harris as “Willie Brown’s girlfriend…a person with no adult skills, a person who can’t figure out how to pronounce her first name.”

It was a racist and misogynistic attack that SHOULD be enough to get his ass hauled off our television screens – I doubt it will be. He is going to have to go further, and he will. So, what can be done? Write to Fox. Put pressure on the remaining advertisers like USAA. And we wait. We wait for him to step over the edge.

World Crisis Radio, Poverty declines in US by 20% ! Webster G. Tarpley, July 31, 2021. Failure of trickle-down economics exposed; GDP now back above the pre-pandemic level: Two big wins for Biden.

Putin Papers leaked from Kremlin confirm official January 2016 decision by Russian NSC to install “unstable” and “impulsive” Trump in White House to weaken US;

With dictatorial powers flagging, Trump cannot prevent debate on bipartisan infrastructure bill from starting in Senate with 17 GOP votes; Trump’s protegee loses Texas House primary; DoJ nixes executive privilege for Don, and his tax returns are headed to Congress

House Oversight committee gets notes from ex-AG Rosen about Trump’s illegal demand to reverse result of election; 6 DoJ witnesses set to testify; Breaking: House Dems can’t pass eviction freeze needed by Saturday midnight to protect 11 million tenants; Biden should use emergency powers!

Jan. 6 Capitol Riot, Insurrection

Daily Beast, NFL Star’s Ex Brought Knife to Capitol, Got Framed as Antifa, Kelly Weill, Updated July 31, 2021. A woman accused of being an “agitator” at the Jan. 6 riot by “Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander is actually a pro-Trump vlogger.

A month after organizing a rally that led to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, Ali Alexander and his organization Stop The Steal finally got around to blaming eight people for the day’s violence.

In a report titled “agitators,” the group uploaded pictures of seven men and one woman it accused of being infiltrators who lured unsuspecting “patriots” into the Capitol. Those supposed outsiders were missing from an FBI database, the report claimed.

But, in fact, the woman pictured is not off the FBI’s radar; the agency has released wanted posters with her face. And far from being a mysterious entity, she is a public figure—Candace Williams, ex-wife of NFL star Terrell Suggs, The Daily Beast has learned.

A pro-Trump vlogger, Williams marched on the Capitol with a large, double-bladed knife, which she brandished outside the Capitol during a conflict with other demonstrators. Though she remains a Donald Trump supporter, she said the suspicious treatment she received from some of her comrades has turned her off MAGA-type Trumpists.

Williams has not been accused of a crime, and does not appear to have entered the Capitol. Still, her appearance outside the building with a large knife caught the attention of the FBI, internet sleuths, and Trump supporters—the latter of which looked for reasons to accuse Williams of being an anti-fascist agitator.

Before her turn as a pro-Trump social media personality, Williams was best known for her marriage to Suggs, a longtime defensive star for the Baltimore Ravens. The pair’s sometimes-rocky relationship made headlines even after their 2015 divorce, with Williams criticizing her ex on social media.

By 2018, however, much of Williams’ social media presence had turned political, denouncing Barack Obama and the movement for transgender rights. Archived videos from a pair of now-deleted Instagram accounts show her promoting conspiracy theories about mass shootings and George Soros. By the time one of her accounts was banned that year, Williams had a high enough profile to land a spot on a conspiracy-friendly podcast to discuss her Instagram ban.

But even with her pro-Trump credentials, Williams found herself in conflict with other Trump supporters outside the Capitol, footage shows. One of those disputes, partially filmed, appears to have begun when rioters surrounded a not-yet-breached Capitol door. (The Capitol had previously been breached from another door.)

Off-screen, Williams can be heard arguing with people who want to enter the building. “The people you want are not in there,” she shouts. People nearby respond with alarm.

Another video, which captures the end of the dispute, shows Williams holding a large, double-bladed folding knife.

In a video four days after the Capitol attack, Williams told another pro-Trump vlogger that she’d gotten in an argument with men in Trump hats who wanted to enter the building.

“I told them, ‘No, stop telling people that. The people you want are gone. They took them down to underground tunnels or whatever,’” Williams recalled. “He said, ‘Shut up, bitch.’ When he said, ‘Shut up, bitch,’ he then proceeds to jump down and get in my face.”

Williams said the man took a swing at her. “When he did that, I decided, as I should have because I’m a woman—now mind you, I had my gun, I had a knife, and I had throw knives. When he swung on me, I decided to pull out Bessie,” she said in the Jan. 10 video, taking out the same folding knife.

Reached for comment this week, Williams told The Daily Beast she was not carrying a gun on Jan. 6, only a knife.

World News, Corruption, Human Rights

New York Times, Hong Kong Protester Is Sentenced to 9 Years in First Security Law Case, Austin Ramzy, July 31, 2021 (print ed.). A Hong Kong court sentenced a protester to nine years in prison on Friday for terrorism and inciting secession, the first demonstration of the teeth of a sweeping new national security law aimed at those who might speak out against Beijing.

The protester, Tong Ying-kit, had faced up to life in prison after being convicted this week. The case against Mr. Tong, who crashed a motorcycle into police officers while flying a protest flag, was the first brought under the security law, which was imposed last year on Hong Kong by China’s central government.

Washington Post, Beijing police detain Chinese Canadian pop star Kris Wu on rape allegations, Eva Dou, July 31, 2021. Beijing police said Saturday night they have detained a 30-year-old Canadian man for suspected rape, with state media reporting it is Chinese Canadian pop star Kris Wu.

It marks a rare detention in a #MeToo case in China, a country where few allegations have been lodged against public figures, and even fewer resulting in investigations.

But Beijing has turned tough on the private-sector wealthy this year, and there were indications that authorities would scrutinize Wu’s case. State media commentators were harsh on him this month after a number of young women came forward with allegations of sexual assault — a departure from previous cases — and a string of brands canceled endorsement deals. Wu had denied any wrongdoing.

U.S. Law, Prisons, Crime

New York Times, He Hired 2 Men to Kidnap His Wife. They Ended Up Drowning, Michael Levenson, July 31, 2021 (print ed.). Lawrence Handley, 53, below right, a business executive from Lafayette, La., pleaded guilty this week to three criminal charges after a plot to kidnap his estranged wife went badly awry.

Schanda Handley was at home with her daughter and a neighbor when two men showed up at the door, dressed in what looked like blue uniforms from an appliance store.

They had a carpet steamer and asked Ms. Handley if they could demonstrate it for her. When she said no, the men forced their way into her house at gunpoint, put a hood over her head and handcuffed her and her neighbor, she said.

Then they pushed Ms. Handley into a van and drove off, leaving Ms. Handley’s 14-year-old daughter and the neighbor behind.

The kidnappers had been hired by Ms. Handley’s estranged husband, Lawrence Michael Handley, who was planning to have Ms. Handley driven to his camp near Woodville, Miss., from her home in Lafayette, La., prosecutors said. What he planned to do after that was not clear, the authorities said.

But as the men drove east on Interstate 10 on Aug. 6, 2017, with Ms. Handley handcuffed in the back, sheriff’s deputies noticed the van was swerving and tried to stop it, prosecutors said.

The men, Sylvester Bracey and Arsenio Haynes, drove off the interstate, turned down a dead-end gravel road, and were penned in by the police, prosecutors said. Both men tried to escape by swimming through a canal, prosecutors said. They drowned.

On Monday, nearly four years later, Mr. Handley, 53, pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree kidnapping and one count of attempted second-degree kidnapping, prosecutors said. He faces 15 to 35 years in prison. A sentencing date has not been set.

Under a plea deal, Mr. Handley avoided a charge of aggravated kidnapping, which carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison, prosecutors said.

Ms. Handley, 50, said in an interview on Thursday that it was “really unfortunate” that Mr. Handley — now her ex-husband — would not face the possibility of life in prison.

“My hope is when he’s sentenced, he’s given the 35 years,” she said. “I think my life, my freedom, ends when he gets out.”

A once successful businessman, Mr. Handley had run software and vitamin businesses and had been the chief executive of a series of drug treatment centers that sold in 2015 in a deal worth about $21 million, Ms. Handley said.

He subjected Ms. Handley to hundreds of threats, once telling her “Armageddon is coming,” as they went through a divorce, she said. For two months, she said, she had live-in security at her house.

Mr. Handley’s lawyer, Kevin Stockstill, said in an interview that his client had been using methamphetamine and cocaine for days when he hatched the plan to have his wife kidnapped. He said that Mr. Handley had planned to “come in as a hero” and rescue Ms. Handley in an effort to “win her back.”

DailyMail, Florida man,, 76, is jailed for performing botched CASTRATION on a man he met on eunuch fetish website — after officers found victim’s testicles in a jar on a bedside table, Andrew Court and Adam Schrader, Updated July 31, 2021. Gary Vanryswyk, 76, performed a botched castration on a man he met on the fetish website eunuch.com The victim was bleeding uncontrollably and had to be airlifted to hospital; he says he has suffered from suicidal thoughts since the procedure

Vanryswyk told cops he had castrated a number of animals while he was growing up on a farm in Minnesota. On Thursday, Vanryswyk pleaded no contest to unlicensed practice of a health care profession resulting in serious bodily injury.

July 30

Top Headlines

New York Times, Biden Seeks to Revive Vaccine Effort With New Rules and Incentives
Washington Post, As new school year looms, debates over mask mandates stir anger and confusion
Washington Post, ‘The war has changed’: CDC document warns delta likely causes more severe infections, may be easily spread by the vaccinated
New York Times, Analysis: How Biden Got the Infrastructure Deal Trump Couldn’t
Palmer Report, Commentary: DOJ makes major ruling against Donald Trump on his tax returns, Bill Palmer

Haitian Assassination Followup

New York Times, ‘They Thought I Was Dead’: Haitian President’s Widow Recounts Assassination, Frances Robles
Wayne Madsen Report, Opinion: GAO issues scathing report on private security contractors, Wayne Madsen

U.S. Voter Suppression, Election Rigging

Washington Post, Opinion: It’s a good thing Republican election-stealers are so incompetent, Paul Waldman

Virus Victims, Responses

Washington Post, Opinion: Require the vaccine. It’s time to stop coddling the reckless, Ruth Marcus
Washington Post, Live Updates: Biden’s move to encourage masks, vaccinations spurs backlash in some states
Washington Post, Opinion: In vaccine-resistant Alabama, hospitals face a two-front war, Michael Saag
Washington Post, 189.9 million U.S. vaccinated
Worldometer, World & U.S. Coronavirus Case Totals, U.S. Deaths: 628,502
Washington Post, Privileges for the vaccinated, fines for refusers: How other nations have approached vaccine mandates
Daily Beast, Christian Summer Camp Turns Into Nationwide Superspreader Nightmare

U.S. Law, Prisons, Crime

Washington Post, Opinion: Will Trump ever be held accountable? The Justice Department just increased the odds, Laurence H. Tribe
New York Times, Navy Charges Sailor With Arson in Fire That Destroyed Warship
New York Times, He Hired 2 Men to Kidnap His Wife. They Ended Up Drowning
New York Times, Ace Gallery Founder Arrested on Embezzlement Charges
Palmer Report, Opinion: Appeals court rules against Donald Trump, Ron Leshnower,

2020 Tokyo Olympics

New York Times, Olympic Soccer Live Updates: U.S. Women’s Team Beats Netherlands in Shootout‘
CNN, ‘I didn’t think I would ever be here,’ says Sunisa Lee after winning ‘surreal’ all-around gymnastics gold at the Tokyo Olympics
Washington Post, Live Updates: Sunisa Lee wins gold in gymnastics all-around, Team USA’s fifth straight in the event
New York Times, The Chinese Sports Machine’s Single Goal: Golds, at Any Cost
Washington Post, The Tokyo Olympics schedule, day by day

U.S. Politics, Governance

Palmer Report, Opinion: Is the dam finally breaking? Bill Palmer
Washington Post, Pelosi says Biden has no authority to cancel student loans on his own
New York Times, Carl Levin, the Senate Scourge of Corporate America, Dies at 87

More On Jan. 6 Pro-Trump Insurrection

Washington Post, A former New York senate candidate stormed the Capitol, then asked friends to delete video evidence, feds say
Washington Post, D.C. officer who had a heart attack during Capitol riot received vulgar, threatening voice mail for testifying
Washington Post, ‘Some are still suffering’: Months after Capitol riot, police who fought the mob contend with physical, psychological pain
Wayne Madsen Report, Opinion: WMR, UN should live up to its original mandate, Wayne Madsen

World News, Corruption, Human Rights

BBC, Inquiry On Daphne Caruana Galizia: Malta responsible for journalist

Media News

Justice Integrity Project, Whistleblower Summit This Week Highlights 50 Years of the Pentagon Papers and Investigative Journalism
Wall Street Journal, MyPillow to Pull Ads From Fox News in Disagreement With Network
New York Times, Hedge Fund Buys Paper. Hedge Fund Closes Paper

Top Stories

New York Times, Biden Seeks to Revive Vaccine Effort With New Rules and Incentives, Michael D. Shear, Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Annie Karni, July 30, 2021 (print ed.). President Biden on Thursday sought to revive the nation’s stalled push to vaccinate Americans against the surging Delta variant of the coronavirus, announcing new requirements for federal workers to be vaccinated and urging local and state governments to offer $100 to anyone willing to get a shot voluntarily.

He also ordered the Defense Department to move rapidly toward requiring coronavirus vaccines for all members of the military, a step that would affect almost 1.5 million troops, many of whom have resisted taking a shot that is highly effective against a disease that has claimed the lives of more than 600,000 Americans.

The announcement marked the first time he has suggested that a mandate could come for active-duty members of the military before any of the three federally authorized vaccines receives full approval from the Food and Drug Administration.

In a speech from the East Room of the White House, Mr. Biden effectively conceded that the worst-in-a-century viral scourge he once thought was under control had come roaring back, threatening public health and the economic recovery that is central to the promise of his presidency.

But after months of trying to persuade and cajole, the president on Thursday cast the crisis as one that pits the vaccinated against the unvaccinated, and said those refusing to get a coronavirus shot should expect inconveniences as long as they decline a vaccine that protects them and others from illness and death.

“This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Mr. Biden said, calling it an “American tragedy” and talking directly to the 90 million Americans who are eligible for a vaccine but have not gotten one. “People are dying and will die who don’t have to die. If you’re out there unvaccinated, you don’t have to die. Read the news.”

Mr. Biden said that federal workers who remained unvaccinated would have to submit to testing as often as twice a week, be restricted from traveling, and be required to wear masks and remain socially distant — essentially creating a two-tier system for the government’s more than two million civilian employees and hundreds of thousands of private contractors who work at federal facilities around the world.

The move stopped short of a vaccine mandate for federal workers. But the president said he hoped that by imposing new requirements on daily work life, more unvaccinated federal employees will choose to get a shot.

President Biden announced new requirements for federal workers and urged local and state governments to pay people $100 to get the vaccine.
Effectively conceding that the coronavirus had come roaring back, Mr. Biden also said those refusing to get a shot should expect inconveniences.

Washington Post, As new school year looms, debates over mask mandates stir anger and confusion, Moriah Balingit, Donna St. George and Valerie Strauss, July 30, 2021 (print ed). School leaders are contending with conflicting health guidance, as well as pressure from state leaders and frustrated parents.

Washington Post, ‘The war has changed’: CDC document warns delta likely causes more severe infections, may be easily spread by the vaccinated, Yasmeen Abutaleb, Carolyn Y. Johnson and Joel Achenbach, July 30, 2021 (print ed). The internal presentation shows that the agency thinks it is struggling to communicate on vaccine efficacy amid increased breakthrough infections.

The delta variant of the coronavirus appears to cause more severe illness than earlier variants and spreads as easily as chickenpox, according to an internal federal health document that argues officials must “acknowledge the war has changed.”

The document is an internal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention slide presentation, shared within the CDC and obtained by The Washington Post. It captures the struggle of the nation’s top public health agency to persuade the public to embrace vaccination and prevention measures, including mask-wearing, as cases surge across the United States and new research suggests vaccinated people can spread the virus.

The document strikes an urgent note, revealing the agency knows it must revamp its public messaging to emphasize vaccination as the best defense against a variant so contagious that it acts almost like a different novel virus, leaping from target to target more swiftly than Ebola or the common cold.

New York Times, Analysis: How Biden Got the Infrastructure Deal Trump Couldn’t, Jim Tankersley, July 30, 2021 (print ed.). The early success of the deal vindicated President Biden’s faith in bipartisanship and repudiated former President Trump’s slash-and-burn politics. If he can keep it on track, it will help affirm the rationale for his presidency. But the vote on Wednesday was no guarantee.

President Biden’s success at propelling an infrastructure deal past its first major hurdle this week was a vindication of his faith in bipartisanship and a repudiation of the slash-and-burn politics of his immediate predecessor, President Donald J. Trump, who tried and failed to block it.

Having campaigned as the anti-Trump — an insider who regarded compromise as a virtue, rather than a missed opportunity to crush a rival — Mr. Biden has held up the promise of a broad infrastructure accord not just as a policy priority but as a test of the fundamental rationale for his presidency.

His success or failure at keeping the bill on track will go a long way to determining his legacy, and it could be the president’s best chance to deliver on his bet that he can unite lawmakers across the political aisle to solve big problems, even at a time of intense polarization.

“President Biden ran on the message that we need to bring people together to meet the challenges facing our country and deliver results for working families,” Mike Donilon, a senior adviser to the president, wrote in a memo the White House released on Thursday, as senior officials crowed about the significance of the accord. “And the American people embraced that message. While a lot of pundits have doubted bipartisanship was even possible, the American people have been very clear it is what they want.”

That may be the case, but the vote on Wednesday that paved the way for the Senate to consider the bipartisan infrastructure plan was no guarantee that the effort would succeed. The measure still has several hurdles to clear, including anger from progressives in the House who are upset at the concessions Mr. Biden made to court Republicans, and skepticism from G.O.P. lawmakers who could still balk at a bill Mr. Trump has repeatedly panned.

Palmer Report, Commentary: DOJ makes major ruling against Donald Trump on his tax returns, Bill Palmer, right, July 30, 2021. New York prosecutors already have Donald Trump’s tax returns as part of the criminal case they’re building against him and the Trump Organization. But those tax returns still haven’t become public, because Congress’ ongoing attempts at acquiring them never did work out – until now.

The Department of Justice determined today that the Treasury Department should give Trump’s tax returns to Congress. There is every reason to expect that the Treasury will comply. This means that the House Ways and Means Committee is about to have the tax returns, and will surely hold public hearings exposing the most corrupt and criminal aspects of the returns – particularly the parts that show Trump’s personal finances overlapping with his political moves while in office.

The precise timeframe for the returns being handed over, and the resulting hearings, isn’t immediately clear. But we now know that it will almost certainly happen. So the public is about to find out what New York prosecutors already know: what dark and dirty secrets Donald Trump has been hiding in his tax returns all along.

Haitian Assassination Followup

Martine Moïse, the Haitian president’s wounded, is shown at center at the president’s funeral in Cap-Haitien, days after gunmen entered the couple’s official residence and attacked them in their bedroom (Photo by Federico Rios for The New York Times).

New York Times, ‘They Thought I Was Dead’: Haitian President’s Widow Recounts Assassination, Frances Robles, July 30, 2021. Martine Moïse, the Haitian president’s widow, recounted the night her husband was killed. She wants the F.B.I. to find the mastermind of the attack.

With her elbow shattered by gunfire and her mouth full of blood, the first lady of Haiti lay on the floor beside her bed, unable to breathe, as the assassins stormed the room.

“The only thing that I saw before they killed him were their boots,” Martine Moïse said of the moment her husband, President Jovenel Moïse of Haiti, was shot dead beside her. “Then I closed my eyes, and I didn’t see anything else.”

She listened as they ransacked the room, searching methodically for something in her husband’s files, she said. “‘That’s not it. That’s not it,’” she recalled them saying in Spanish, over and over. Then finally: “‘That’s it.’”

The killers filed out. One stepped on her feet. Another waved a flashlight in her eyes, apparently to check to see if she was still alive.

“When they left, they thought I was dead,” she said.

In her first interview since the president’s assassination on July 7, Mrs. Moïse, 47, described the searing pain of witnessing her husband, a man with whom she had shared 25 years, being killed in front of her. She did not want to relive the deafening gunfire, the walls and windows trembling, the terrifying certainty that her children would be killed, the horror of seeing her husband’s body, or how she fought to stand up after the killers left. “All that blood,” she said softly.

But she needed to speak, she said, because she did not believe that the investigation into his death had answered the central question tormenting her and countless Haitians: Who ordered and paid for the assassination of her husband?

The Haitian police have detained a wide array of people in connection with the killing, including 18 Colombians and several Haitians and Haitian Americans, and they are still seeking others. The suspects include retired Colombian commandos, a former judge, a security equipment salesman, a mortgage and insurance broker in Florida, and two commanders of the president’s security team. According to the Haitian police, the elaborate plot revolves around a 63-year-old doctor and pastor, Christian Emmanuel Sanon, who officials say conspired to hire the Colombian mercenaries to kill the president and seize political power.

But critics of the government’s explanation say that none of the people named in the investigation had the means to finance the plot on their own. And Mrs. Moïse, like many Haitians, believes there must have been a mastermind behind them, giving the orders and supplying the money.

She wants to know what happened to the 30 to 50 men who were usually posted at her house whenever her husband was at home. None of his guards were killed or even wounded, she said. “I don’t understand how nobody was shot,” she said.

At the time of his death, Mr. Moïse, 53, right, had been in the throes of a political crisis. Protesters accused him of overstaying his term, of controlling local gangs and of ruling by decree as the nation’s institutions were being hollowed out.

Mr. Moïse was also locked in battle with some of the nation’s wealthy oligarchs, including the family that controlled the nation’s electrical grid. While many people described the president as an autocratic leader, Mrs. Moïse said her fellow citizens should remember him as a man who stood up to the rich and powerful.

And now she wants to know if one of them had him killed.

“Only the oligarchs and the system could kill him,” she said.

Wayne Madsen Report, Opinion: GAO issues scathing report on private security contractors, Wayne Madsen, left, a former Navy intelligence officer and the author of a score of books, including an “almost classified” encyclopedia of publicly reported CIA contractors and partners, July 30, 2021. Just a few weeks after a team of Colombian private security contractors (PSCs) carried out a brutal assassination of the president of Haiti, Jovenal Moïse, the Government Accountability Office issued a scathing report on private security firms and the lack of oversight of their activities by the Department of Defense. It is purely coincidental that the GAO report, which took several months to complete, came out after the recent events involving PSCs in Haiti.

The GAO found that the DoD “has been unable to comprehensively identify private security contractor (PSC) contracts and personnel supporting contingency, humanitarian, peace-keeping, or other similar operations, limiting DoD’s ability to readily and accurately identify the use of PSCs.”

GAO conducted the study based on the fact that during Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, from 2001 to 2014, and Operation Iraqi Freedom from 2003 to 2011, the Pentagon “significantly increased its use of PSCs.”

A tangled web of such PSCs has been uncovered in the plot to kill the Haitian president. Among the firms being investigated is Miami-based CTU Security, owned by Antonio “Tony” Intriago. Intriago and his company have been charged by the chief of the Haitian National Police with hiring a Colombian hit team of over 20 men to carry out the assassination of Moïse. The Colombians were all veterans of the Colombian Special Forces and some had been trained by the U.S. military.

U.S. Voter Suppression, Election Rigging

Washington Post, Opinion: It’s a good thing Republican election-stealers are so incompetent, Paul Waldman, right, July 30, 2021. The Arizona election audit, a kind of Renaissance fair for deranged conspiracy theorists and Donald Trump dead-enders, has finally wound down its work, returning nearly 2.1 million ballots to county officials after they were massaged, squinted at, passed under UV lights and examined for traces of bamboo to see if they might have come from Asia (I kid you not). We await the final report, which may at last reveal that it was aliens from the planet Xerpdorp, working with George Soros and D.B. Cooper, who stole the state’s election.

You might say that I shouldn’t joke about this, since it’s part of a wide-reaching attack on the U.S. system of elections. But that’s just the point: The preservation of our democracy may depend in no small part on Republicans continuing to be too incompetent to steal future elections.

Not all Republicans, of course; there are lots of people in the GOP who are quite smart. But the ones working hardest on undermining our system are the looniest bunch the party could find.

The Maricopa County audit, which Trump has insisted all along would show that he really won the state, has been such a farce that even many Arizona Republicans have tried to distance themselves from it. GOP state senators are feuding with one another over whose fault it is; the governor says, “I don’t think we should spend any more time thinking about 2020”; and the whole thing has proved to be a gigantic embarrassment.

Yet Republicans in other states, from Pennsylvania to Michigan, are trying to organize similar “audits,” causing more internal disarray. To which Democrats could almost breathe a sigh of relief. If the GOP is going to keep trying to steal elections, better if they assign their worst and dimmest to the task.

To understand just how much the Republican Party has changed, it’s instructive to think back to the last contested election before 2020, in 2000. When the results in Florida were thrown into uncertainty, the GOP mobilized its smartest and most ruthless operatives to make sure the outcome was secured in George W. Bush’s favor. The enterprise was run by the cool and efficient James Baker, who had been a Cabinet secretary and chief of staff to two presidents.

Baker assembled a team of the party’s best lawyers, including three future Supreme Court justices — John G. Roberts Jr., Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — to fight the battle in state and federal courts. There was no “release the Kraken” courtroom buffoonery and no Four Seasons Total Landscaping-style face plants. The drama may have been chaotic, but inside the chaos was a highly competent group of Republican professionals who navigated it all the way to the Supreme Court, where five Republican justices handed the victory to Bush.

Now imagine if people like them — rather than Rudolph W. Giuliani, a bunch of QAnon believers and the MyPillow guy — were the ones trying to steal elections today.

Washington Post, Opinion: Be careful, Arizona Republicans. The DOJ just made clear your phony election audit is on thin ice, Jennifer Rubin

Virus Victims, Responses

Washington Post, Opinion: Require the vaccine. It’s time to stop coddling the reckless, Ruth Marcus, right, July 30, 2021. Pay people to get vaccinated, no matter whether that is unfair to those who didn’t receive checks for jabs. Require them to do so as a condition of going to work or enrolling in school. Do whatever it takes — and, recent weeks have shown, it is going to take steps like these — to get the pandemic under control.

Those of us who have behaved responsibly — wearing masks and, since the vaccines became available, getting our shots — cannot be held hostage by those who can’t be bothered to do the same, or who are too deluded by misinformation to understand what is so clearly in their own interest.

The more inconvenient we make life for the unvaccinated, the better our own lives will be. More important, the fewer who will needlessly die. We cannot ignore the emerging evidence that the delta variant is transmissible even by those who have been fully vaccinated. “The war has changed,” as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded.

Washington Post, Live Updates: Biden’s move to encourage masks, vaccinations spurs backlash in some states, Adela Suliman and Bryan Pietsch, July 30, 2021. The tensions between the federal government and state officials come as health experts are sounding the alarm over the spread of the more contagious delta variant. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned in an internal document that this particularly virulent variant can cause more severe illness than other versions — and spread as easily as chickenpox.

The document, which has not been made public, was obtained by The Washington Post.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) signed an executive order Thursday prohibiting cities and other government entities in the state from enacting vaccine requirements or mask mandates, even as new daily infections there reached 13,000 — the first time since February that Texas has reported a single-day caseload above 10,000.

The path forward relies on “personal responsibility rather than government mandates,” Abbott said. He insisted that Texans “have the individual right and responsibility to decide for themselves and their children whether they will wear masks, open their businesses, and engage in leisure activities.”

Vaccinated people infected with the delta variant may be able to spread the virus as easily as unvaccinated people, according to unpublished data cited in a federal presentation obtained by The Post.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog, 60, received his third coronavirus vaccine on Friday, Reuters reported. Israel, in a world first, will begin offering a third vaccine shot to people over age 60.
Australia is calling in its military to help enforce a lockdown in Sydney. Some 300 unarmed Australian Defense Force soldiers will begin patrols on Monday, in a move some have criticized as heavy-handed.
Japan, currently hosting the Olympic Games, announced on Friday it would expand states of emergency in Tokyo, Okinawa, Osaka and elsewhere. The measures will be in effect until at least the end of August, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said.
As delta cases rise in Asia, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte approved a strict lockdown for the Manila capital region from Aug. 6 until Aug. 20, a state-run news agency reported. The area is already under heightened restrictions.
Wall Street is proving immune to the impacts of the delta variant with stocks continuing to climb. The Dow Jones industrial average closed at a record high five times this month and is up nearly 15 percent so far this year.

Washington Post, Privileges for the vaccinated, fines for refusers: How other nations have approached vaccine mandates, Claire Parker, July 30, 2021 (print ed). / The vaccination rules for federal workers mark an escalation in efforts to incentivize vaccination as a new covid-19 wave mounts.

They are part of a growing trend around the world to require — or nearly require — vaccinations for certain categories of people to stem the tide of variant-fueled infections and get the pandemic under control.

Vaccination requirements have proven highly controversial, with some public health leaders and health workers calling for mandates, while some international human rights groups have raised concerns. In many developing countries, meanwhile, demand for vaccines still outpaces supply.

Washington Post, Opinion: In vaccine-resistant Alabama, hospitals face a two-front war, Michael Saag, July 30, 2021 (print ed). Michael Saag is professor of medicine and infectious diseases and virology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

All of us have suffered mightily from the covid pandemic during the past 18 months. Some of us have had the infection. Many more have provided support to a friend or colleague who fought the infection. More than 611,000 Americans have lost their lives to this global plague.

Through the spring and into the early summer, owing in large part to large-scale vaccine production and distribution, every American age 12 and over had access to the vaccine. Many received their “jab” as soon as it was available. As a result, the number of covid cases plummeted, the grip on our hospital systems relaxed, death rates fell and we began to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

But in many regions of the country, including the Southeast where I live, up to two-thirds of the population chose not to protect themselves. I’ve heard all the reasons: “The vaccines are experimental.” “I am young and healthy; I don’t need the vaccine.” “So what if I get covid?” “The epidemic is over.” “The vaccine will destroy my fertility.” “The vaccine is a government plot.” “I have the freedom to choose.” “Nobody can tell me what to do.” “The doctors are lying to me.”

Opinion by Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey: The Trump administration gave us the best weapons against covid-19. We should use them.

Like most of my fellow health-care workers, these comments stunned and stung me. We had spent a year fighting a raging pandemic. We suspended activities in our usual disciplines of medical care, rolled up our sleeves and provided care to the more than 30 million people who showed up in our ERs, clinics and hospitals. Covid was more than disruptive; it was exhausting. Most of us survived. But we were also fatigued and battle-worn.

Washington Post, Charlie Kirk’s pro-Trump youth group stokes vaccine resistance as covid surges again, Isaac Stanley-Becker

Washington Post, 189.9 million U.S. vaccinated, as of July 30, 2021, the number of people who have received at least one dose of the vaccine. This includes more than 163.9 million people fully vaccinated, 49.4 % of the eligible population.

Worldometer, World & U.S. Coronavirus Case Totals (updated July 30, 2021, with some governments reporting lower numbers than the totals here and some experts saying the numbers are far higher, as the New York Times reported in India’s true pandemic death toll is likely to be well over 3 million, a new study finds):

World Cases: 197,561,327, Deaths: 4,218,546
U.S. Cases:     35,585,915, Deaths:    628,502
India Cases:     31,572,344, Deaths:    423,244
Brazil Cases:   19,839,369, Deaths:     554,626

Daily Beast, Christian Summer Camp Turns Into Nationwide Superspreader Nightmare, Zoe Richards, Updated July 30, 2021. Teen campers and staff returned home to 17 states with more than just memories from The Wilds camp in North Carolina.

For several weeks earlier this summer, teen campers from across the country converged at a rural Christian camp in North Carolina for faith and fun that within weeks had turned into a superspreader nightmare.

The camp is billed as a “funtastic” escape, and campers’ families pay around $350 a week to send their kids onto campgrounds nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains to hike, swim, zipline, barbecue and huddle together for “a healthy portion of God’s Word,” according to descriptions on the camp’s websites.

But public health officials in Transylvania County told The Daily Beast that campers came home with both memories and cases of COVID-19, after tracking at least 76 cases nationwide back to The Wilds’ campgrounds.

Health officials say 76 cases in 17 states have been linked to The Wilds, which has served up games and Bible verses to teens during its summer sessions for more than five decades.

U.S. Law, Prisons, Crime

New York Times, Navy Charges Sailor With Arson in Fire That Destroyed Warship, John Ismay, July 30, 2021 (print ed.). The Navy charged a sailor on Thursday with deliberately starting a fire last year that destroyed the Bonhomme Richard, one of the worst blazes to engulf an American warship outside of combat.

The Navy said the sailor was a member of the ship’s crew at the time of the fire, which began on July 12, 2020. The Navy declined to provide any other details about the sailor except for his or her rank — seaman apprentice — and said the sailor would face charges of willfully hazarding a vessel and aggravated arson.

Initial firefighting efforts were halted after an explosion inside the ship forced sailors to temporarily withdraw for safety. More than 400 sailors from 16 nearby ships fought the blaze, which reached temperatures of 1,000 degrees and took four days to extinguish. Dozens of military and civilian firefighters were treated for injuries including heat exhaustion and smoke inhalation while fighting the blaze.

The ship was decommissioned on April 14 after the Navy determined that repairing it would ultimately be far more expensive than building a replacement. The Bonhomme Richard had been in service since August 1998 and participated in peacekeeping missions in East Timor in 2000 and later supported combat operations in Iraq. The ship’s home port was Sasebo, Japan, from 2012 to 2018 before it returned to San Diego. It was undergoing an extended period of repair and refitting when the fire broke out.

According to the U.S. Naval Institute, the ship, which cost an estimated $761 million to build, was sold for $3.66 million to a company in Brownsville, Texas, that will break it apart and sell the metal for scrap.

New York Times, He Hired 2 Men to Kidnap His Wife. They Ended Up Drowning, Michael Levenson, July 30, 2021. Lawrence Handley, 53, elow right, a business executive from Lafayette, La., pleaded guilty this week to three criminal charges after a plot to kidnap his estranged wife went badly awry.

Schanda Handley was at home with her daughter and a neighbor when two men showed up at the door, dressed in what looked like blue uniforms from an appliance store.

Then they pushed Ms. Handley into a van and drove off, leaving Ms. Handley’s 14-year-old daughter and the neighbor behind.

But as the men drove east on Interstate 10 on Aug. 6, 2017, with Ms. Handley handcuffed in the back, sheriff’s deputies noticed the van was swerving and tried to stop it, prosecutors said.

Under a plea deal, Mr. Handley avoided a charge of aggravated kidnapping, which carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison, prosecutors said.

Ms. Handley, 50, said in an interview on Thursday that it was “really unfortunate” that Mr. Handley — now her ex-husband — would not face the possibility of life in prison.

“My hope is when he’s sentenced, he’s given the 35 years,” she said. “I think my life, my freedom, ends when he gets out.”

New York Times, Ace Gallery Founder Arrested on Embezzlement Charges, Jori Finkel, July 30, 2021 (print ed.). The Los Angeles art dealer Douglas Chrismas has surrendered to the F.B.I. and a trial date has been set for September.

The art dealer Douglas Chrismas, who has a decades-long track record of discovering major artists and an equally lengthy history of not paying artists in full for their sales, has been arrested on charges of embezzlement.

Chrismas, 77, surrendered to F.B.I. agents on Tuesday and was released on a $50,000 bond. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges, which carry a sentence of up to 15 years in federal prison. A trial date has been set for Sept. 21.

The indictment, filed on March 16, 2020, was unsealed on Tuesday. In it, Chrismas is accused of redirecting about $265,000 in funds from the bankruptcy estate of Ace Gallery, which he opened in Los Angeles in 1967, to a separate corporation that he owned.

Chrismas’s bankruptcy lawyer, Jonathan Shenson, did not respond to requests for comment this week and it was not clear who was representing Chrismas in the criminal case.

Chrismas organized important early exhibitions at his gallery for such artists as Robert Irwin, Michael Heizer, Tim Hawkinson and Mary Corse. But many of his relationships with artists soured over his missing payments to them for sold artworks and his failure to return unsold pieces. The gallery filed for bankruptcy in 2013.

2020 Tokyo Olympics

New York Times, Olympic Soccer Live Updates: U.S. Women’s Team Beats Netherlands in Shootout, Andrew Das, July 30, 2021. The United States women’s soccer team beat the Netherlands in a penalty shootout on Friday to advance to the semifinals of the Tokyo Olympics, leaning on its veterans to deliver a thrilling and resilient moment in a tournament journey that had previously been marked by defeat and frustration.

Megan Rapinoe, the U.S. team’s steely and outspoken veteran forward, delivered the winning kick that beat the Netherlands, 4-2 in the shootout, after the teams played to a 2-2 tie.

U.S. Olympian Sunisa Lee en route to winning a Gold Medal at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo on July 29, 2021.

CNN, ‘I didn’t think I would ever be here,’ says Sunisa Lee after winning ‘surreal’ all-around gymnastics gold at the Tokyo Olympics, George Ramsay, July 29, 2021 The American gymnast won the women’s all-around title in Tokyo on Thursday ahead of Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade in second and the Russian Olympic Committee’s Angelina Melnikova in third.

Lee, who extends the USA’s run of Olympic gold medals in the event to five, scored 57.433 as teammate and 2016 all-around champion Simone Biles watched on from the stands.

Given what Lee has experienced over the past two years, no wonder the word she twice landed on to describe her victory was “surreal.”
In 2019, she won gold on uneven bars at the US Championships shortly after her father had fallen off a ladder and become paralyzed from the chest down, while last year she lost her aunt and uncle to Covid-19.

Lee, who turned 18 in March, has also overcome a spate of injuries, including a broken bone in her foot and an Achilles tendon injury last year.
Lee, 18, is the first Hmong-American to compete as an Olympic gymnast.

“The past two years have been absolutely crazy with Covid and my family and everything else,” Lee told reporters at the Ariake Gymnastics Centre.

“This medal definitely means a lot to me because there was a point in time when I wanted to quit and I just didn’t think I would ever be here, including injuries and stuff.

“So there are a lot of emotions, but I’m definitely super proud of myself for sticking with it and believing in myself.”

Much of the build-up to the final had been dominated by Biles’ withdrawal from the event to protect her mental health. Biles, a four-time Olympic gold medalist, had pulled out of the team competition earlier this week after landing awkwardly on her vault.

Alongside teammate and close friend Jordan Chiles, Biles was there cheering and clapping Lee and Team USA’s Jade Carey from the stands.

From left, US gymnasts Riley McCusker, Jordan Chiles, Simone Biles and MyKayla Skinner cheer for teammate Suni Lee after her gold-medal performance.

Washington Post, Sunisa Lee wins gold in gymnastics all-around, Team USA’s fifth straight in the event, Roman Stubbs, Des Bieler, Cindy Boren and Matt Bonesteel, July 30, 2021 (print ed.). Sunisa Lee, an 18-year-old from Minnesota, won the Olympic all-around title in a competition that came down to the final routines. Team USA has won every all-around title at the Games since 2004, and even after Simone Biles withdrew as she continues to work through mental health struggles, the Americans’ streak remains intact.

Rebeca Andrade of Brazil had an opportunity to climb ahead of Lee with her floor routine, but she went out of bounds twice and finished fewer than two tenths behind. Lee earned a 57.433, and Andrade finished with a 57.298. With an immense amount of pressure during the final rotation, Lee hit her floor routine with poise and earned the best score she’s gotten on that apparatus at these Games.

The United States’ Jade Carey replaced Biles in this competition after the defending Olympic champion withdrew. Carey fell on beam and finished eighth.

In other news: Day 6 of the Tokyo Olympics has already been a big one. Katie Ledecky brought her star power to the pool, leading the U.S. team to a dramatic silver in the women’s 4×200-meter freestyle relay. Americans Caeleb Dressel and Bobby Finke both won swimming gold.Novak Djokovic takes another step toward a Golden Slam; U.S. team advances to final of first Olympic mixed medley relay; German cycling official sent home after yelling racial slur during competition; Spain’s Pablo Carreño Busta topples Daniil Medvedev in men’s tennis competition; Americans Rhyan White, Phoebe Bacon advance in 200-meter backstroke.

New York Times, The Chinese Sports Machine’s Single Goal: Golds, at Any Cost, Hannah Beech, July 30, 2021 (print ed.). China’s system puts tens of thousands of children in government-run training schools. Many go into less prominent sports that Beijing hopes to dominate.

Six days a week since she was 12 years old, with only a few days of time away each year, Hou Zhihui has been driven by one mission: heaving more than double her body weight into the air.

On Saturday, at the Tokyo Olympics, Hou’s dedication — sequestered from her family, dogged by near constant pain — paid off. She won gold in the 49-kilogram division and shattered three Olympic records, part of a fearsome Chinese women’s weight lifting squad that aimed to sweep every weight class it was contesting.

“The Chinese weight lifting team is very cohesive, and the support from the entire team is very good,” Hou, 24, said after winning gold. “The only thing we athletes think about is focusing on training.”

China’s sports assembly line is designed for one purpose: churning out gold medals for the glory of the nation. Silver and bronze barely count. By fielding 413 athletes in Tokyo, its largest ever delegation, China aims to land at the top of the gold medal count — even if the Chinese public is increasingly wary of the sacrifices made by individual athletes.

Here’s the complete schedule of Olympic events, day by day.

U.S. Politics, Governance

Palmer Report, Opinion: Is the dam finally breaking? Bill Palmer, right, July 29, 2021. Donald Trump publicly encouraged Republican Senators to vote against the bipartisan portion of President Biden’s infrastructure package. Fifteen Republican Senators voted last night to advance it anyway. Even as Trump’s grip on the Republican House seems to be nearly as intact as ever, Trump’s grip on the Republican Senate seems to be slipping pretty severely. So what’s going on?

Consider that the Republican House is led by Kevin McCarthy, a political idiot who owes his current job to Trump, and who may therefore be inclined to continue following Trump’s lead no matter how poorly is goes for him. Also consider that the Republican Senate is led by Mitch McConnell, who is overwhelmingly corrupt in his own right, but who cares a whole lot more about his own ambitions than about protecting Trump.

But is the difference between the Republican House and the Republican Senate really as straightforward as the difference in leadership? We may soon find out. McCarthy made an awfully dumb move by refusing to put any of his own House Republicans on the January 6th Committee, which as a result will carry out a very honest investigation led by six Democrats plus Republicans Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. As this investigation goes on, will House Republicans in general begin to realize they’ve made a mistake by following McCarthy, right, down this Trump-led rabbit hole?

There are plenty of House Republicans who still believe that they need Donald Trump’s blessing – or that they at least need to avoid his wrath – in order to keep their own seats in 2022. But in this week’s Texas special election for a U.S. House seat, the Trump-endorsed Republican lost by seven points to another Republican candidate. Trump’s support doesn’t seem to be of that much help to Republican politics these days, even in a red state like Texas.

Then there’s the reality that as the January 6th investigation continues, things are likely to get a lot uglier for Donald Trump and his fellow insurrectionists. House Republicans like Jim Jordan and Mo Brooks will likely be called as witnesses. If they lawyer up and try to fight the subpoenas, it’ll mean that they fear criminal prosecution.

The public will grow angrier about January 6th, and voters in the middle may look to take out their frustrations on Republicans in the midterms. If that’s the direction this heads in, House Republicans who aren’t directly connected to the Capitol attack may begin looking for a way to insulate themselves from it by publicly standing against the insurrectionists. They could turn against McCarthy in the process. So maybe the dam really is about to break.

Washington Post, Pelosi says Biden has no authority to cancel student loans on his own, Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, July 30, 2021 (print ed.). The speaker of the House, right, is breaking from members of her party, including Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, who are urging President Biden to cancel up to $50,000 in federal student loans through executive action.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi broke from Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer and other powerful Democrats Wednesday by disputing President Biden’s authority to cancel federal student debt.

“People think that the president of the United States has the power for debt forgiveness. He does not,” Pelosi (D-Calif.) said during a news conference Wednesday. “He can postpone, he can delay, but he does not have that power. That has to be an act of Congress.”

Pelosi, who has largely remained quiet on the issue of debt cancellation, is wading into murky waters.

Progressive Democrats in the House and Senate have been urging Biden to cancel up to $50,000 in debt held by federal student loan borrowers as an act of economic relief. They insist Biden could use the same legal authority President Donald Trump used to temporarily waive interest on federal student loans during the pandemic. But Biden has questioned whether he could make a unilateral decision on any portion of the $1.6 trillion in federal debt held by Americans.

New York Times, Carl Levin, the Senate Scourge of Corporate America, Dies at 87, Robert D. McFadden, Updated July 30, 2021. The longest-serving U.S. senator in Michigan history, Mr. Levin was regarded by colleagues as a person of strong moral principles.

His death was confirmed by the Levin Center at Wayne State University. Mr. Levin had disclosed in March that he had lung cancer, Jim Townsend, a spokesman for the family, said.

Washington Post, Did Trump follow his pledge to donate the last 6 months of his presidential pay? It’s a mystery, David A. Fahrenthold, July 30, 2021 (print ed). Donald Trump promised to give away his $400,000 presidential salary. And he kept that promise, publicly announcing each gift — at least, for his first three and a half years in office.

Then, in the middle of last year, the announcements stopped.

Trump’s White House never said where — or even if — he donated the last $220,000 of his salary, covering the final six months of 2020 and the first 20 days of 2021.

Now, six months after he left office, it’s not clear where Trump donated that remaining salary — or if he donated it at all.

Palmer Report, Opinion: Appeals court rules against Donald Trump, Ron Leshnower, July 30, 2021. Donald Trump’s many misdeeds are continuing to catch up to him. Justice can’t come quickly enough to right the wrongs, compensate the victims, and expose the full truth behind the evils of the man who occupied the Oval Office for four years longer than he deserved. Yet, justice is coming for the proud miscreant in many ways.

One way came this week in the form of an appellate court ruling that was overshadowed by coverage of more pressing Trump-influenced events, including the January 6 attack and the rising pandemic death toll. In addition to shining greater light on Trump’s fraudulent schemes and making victims whole, this new ruling could produce bombshell videos that are said to be far more damaging than the infamous Access Hollywood tape.

In a 3-0 unanimous decision, the Second Circuit rejected Trump’s appeal trying to limit the victims of the desktop video phone service scheme he promoted on “Celebrity Apprentice” to arbitration. In 2018, investors filed a federal class-action lawsuit against the Trump family and the Trump Organization for losses suffered after Trump, Don Jr., Eric, and Ivanka promoted the fraud for a decade.

In April 2020, a district court judge ruled the investors were only bound to arbitrate with ACN (the marketing company behind the fraudulent phone service). There was no legal basis for giving the Trumps the benefit of an arbitration agreement that they never signed, and so the judge ruled they must defend themselves in court against fraud, false advertising, and unfair competition claims.

To enable the investors to proceed against the Trumps, the judge also ordered Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) to show them hundreds of hours of recordings from two episodes of “The Celebrity Apprentice” that were never broadcast. According to former contestants, this footage contains an offensive treasure trove of Trump’s racist and sexist speech, which prompted former producer Bill Pruitt to tweet in the wake of the Access Hollywood tape release in 2016 that these recordings are “far worse.”

Robbie Kaplan, a partner at the law firm representing the defrauded investors, hailed the victory on Twitter. She then announced her firm’s intention to move forward with obtaining the tapes from MGM and taking depositions of the Trump family “ASAP.” Although it may resemble the proverbial tortoise more than the hare, justice is coming for Donald Trump.

Jan. 6 Capitol Riot, Insurrection

Washington Post, D.C. officer who had a heart attack during Capitol riot received vulgar, threatening voice mail for testifying, Jaclyn Peiser, July 29, 2021. As D.C. police officer Michael Fanone, above, sat before nine House lawmakers Tuesday morning recounting his harrowing and traumatizing tale of defending the U.S. Capitol from a pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6, his phone rang on silent mode. The unknown caller left a voice mail.

“I wish they would have killed all you scumbags, ’cause you people are scum,” the man said, referring to the police officers.

“Too bad they didn’t beat … you more,” he added.

Fanone shared the full, uncensored voice mail — riddled with racist and homophobic expletives — Tuesday on CNN’s “Don Lemon Tonight.” The caller, who has not been publicly identified, also repeated former president Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen election and accused Fanone of lying.

“They stole the election from Trump and you know that, you scumbag,” he said.

Fanone said he wanted to share the voice mail to remind people that many Americans believe the false, downplayed retelling of the events on Jan. 6 by Trump and several GOP lawmakers.

“Unfortunately, I’ve come to expect this type of response,” Fanone told Lemon. “It’s not the first time that people have expressed similar opinions to me. … There is an element in this country that believes that.”

Former New York Republican State Senate candidate Daniel Christmann, shown circled in yellow inside the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection via an FBI photo.

Washington Post, A former New York senate candidate stormed the Capitol, then asked friends to delete video evidence, feds say, Andrea Salcedo, July 30, 2021 (print ed.). Daniel Christmann faces multiple charges over his role in the Capitol insurrection, according to a criminal complaint that was unsealed Wednesday. ( Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) )

Moments after Daniel Christmann climbed through an open window to get into the Capitol on Jan. 6, the former New York state senate candidate took out his phone to record the insurrection for his Instagram followers, prosecutors said.

That afternoon, Christmann walked around the building taking videos he posted to his @dannyforsenate account, according to a 19-page criminal complaint that was unsealed Wednesday.

In the following days, private messages obtained by federal authorities show Christmann bragged about participating in the riot, explaining to those messaging him on Instagram how he reached unauthorized areas.

When Christmann later became aware that authorities arrested two people he knew who were inside the Capitol on Jan. 6, he began reaching out to Facebook friends to ask them to delete any videos showing him on the grounds that day, prosecutors said.

“Please remove those videos,” Christmann wrote, according to a screenshot in the complaint. “My friend jake got taken in and my campaign manager from this summer got taken in. Its go time on the end of times.”

The Monroe, N.Y., man is among hundreds of people who have been charged in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection, including many turned in by relatives, friends and co-workers after they posted about the riot on social media.

Christmann, who was charged with knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds; disorderly and disruptive conduct; and parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building, was arrested Wednesday. His arrest came a day after four Capitol police officers delivered emotional testimony during a congressional hearing of the insurrection, detailing the abuse they endured while attempting to hold back the mob of President Donald Trump supporters on Jan. 6.

Wayne Madsen Report, Opinion: WMR, UN should live up to its original mandate, Wayne Madsen, left, July 29-30, 2021.On January 1, 1942, during the Arcadia Conference in Washington, DC, the “Big Four” powers — the United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union, and the Republic of China — signed the Declaration of the United Nations. The four nations pledged to engage in a common struggle against the “savage and brutal forces” of fascism and Nazism that sought to “subjugate the world.”

In 2021, the forces of fascism and Nazism are, again, on the march and the United Nations should live up to its original intent and lead in the effort to stamp out far-right ideology once and for all. Not even during World War II were the Nazis able to disrupt the functions of government in Washington, DC. This year they did. Had Donald Trump’s attempted coup d’état succeeded on January 6, there is very little doubt that a fascist American government led by the likes of Trump, retired General Michael Flynn, Mike Pompeo, and others of their ilk would have ejected the UN from New York. The UN and its member states all face an existential threat from present-day Nazism and fascism. As an organization, it should identify and root out fascists and Nazis wherever they are found.

In writing my forthcoming book on the rise of fascism during the Trump era, I identified, after analyzing election results in several countries in Europe, North America, and the Pacific Rim, where fascists and Nazis have achieved the most strength, calculating their average high-water marks for electoral support. These represent the far-right political cancer cells that should be quickly removed from the body politic.

World News, Corruption, Human Rights

New York Times, Hong Kong Protester Is Sentenced to 9 Years in First Security Law Case, Austin Ramzy, July 30, 2021. A Hong Kong court sentenced a protester to nine years in prison on Friday for terrorism and inciting secession, the first demonstration of the teeth of a sweeping new national security law aimed at those who might speak out against Beijing.

Washington Post, U.S. flies 200 Afghan interpreters and family members to Virginia in first wave of evacuations, Alex Horton, July 30, 2021. About 200 Afghan interpreters and their families arrived in Virginia on Friday, the first evacuations of thousands imperiled because of their work with the United States in Afghanistan as the Taliban gains control of more territory nationwide.

The first flight departed Kabul with Afghans on their first leg of travel to Fort Lee, Va., where they will finish the last rounds of processing over the next several days, Ross Wilson, head of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Afghanistan, said Friday. The Afghans will then be resettled across the country.

“Today is an important milestone as we continue to fulfill our promise to the thousands of Afghan nationals who served shoulder-to-shoulder with American troops and diplomats over the last 20 years in Afghanistan,” President Biden said in a statement.
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The Afghans are part of a broader group of about 2,500 who are furthest along in the special immigrant visa process and who will arrive on subsequent flights, said Russell E. Travers, a senior adviser at the National Security Council, in a call with Biden administration officials Thursday.

The evacuees escaped the clutches of Taliban militants who have targeted interpreters, in some cases killing them as retribution for their work with U.S. troops on the front lines and as crucial workers for diplomats and humanitarian agencies. The urgency has mounted in recent months as the Taliban has wrested control of wide swaths of the country from the Afghan government. The insurgent group has seized about half the country’s district centers, U.S. officials have said.

BBC, Inquiry On Daphne Caruana Galizia: Malta responsible for journalist death, Staff report, July 29, 2021. A public inquiry into the assassination of Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia has found the state responsible for her death.

The report, quoted by Maltese media, said the state had failed to recognise risks to the reporter’s life and take reasonable steps to avoid them.

Caruana Galizia died in a car bomb attack near her home in October 2017. An investigation led to PM Joseph Muscat’s resignation in 2019 after his close associates were implicated. However, he has denied corruption allegations.

Called a “one-woman Wikileaks”, Caruana Galizia, right, uncovered networks of corruption in the country and abroad.

Aged 53 when she died, she spent 30 years as a journalist. She relentlessly accused Maltese politicians and other officials of corruption in her popular Running Commentary blog.

She was a harsh critic of government. In 2017 she effectively triggered an early election by publishing allegations linking Mr Muscat to the Panama Papers scandal, which exposed the use of tax havens by the rich.

Caruana Galizia’s family sought an independent public inquiry into her murder. Mr Muscat gave it the go-ahead, a few months before he resigned.

In the last two years, the inquiry has heard from dozens of witnesses, including investigators, politicians and journalists. In its conclusions, written up in a 437-page report, it said the state had “created an atmosphere of impunity, generated by the highest echelons”.

It cited an “unwarranted closeness” between big business and government. So far only a handful of individuals have been charged. In February, one of three men accused of murdering Caruana Galizia pleaded guilty and was jailed for 15 years. The others are yet to go to trial.

A fourth person, Maltese businessman Yorgen Fenech, has also been charged with complicity over the killing — an allegation he denies.

He was arrested in November 2019 as he tried to sail away from Malta on a yacht, and is now awaiting trial.

After Caruana Galizia’s assassination, her son Paul hit out at what he called the country’s “mafia state.” His mother had been killed “because she stood between the rule of law and those who sought to violate it”, he said.

U.S. Media News

Justice Integrity Project, Whistleblower Summit This Week Highlights 50 Years of the Pentagon Papers and Investigative Journalism, Andrew Kreig, Updated July 30, 2021. The annual Whistleblower Summit & Film Festival this week continues to empower whistleblowers and advocates and encourages others to stand for truth. Film presentations began July 23 and the panel program begins Sunday with the program extending to Aug. 1.

The event presents more than 50 film screenings and panel presentations over ten days.

The films focus on whistleblowing, free speech/press freedom, civil and human rights, or social justice themes. Check out Film Festival Flix to see the titles, which are also listed below.

This year’s keynote speaker on July 30 was former U.S. Department of Defense analyst Daniel Ellsberg, thereby marking the 50th year anniversary of his courageous release of what are now known as “The Pentagon Papers” disclosing scandalous aspects of the Pentagon’s secret operations during the then-raging Vietnam War.

Dr. Ellsberg, shown at left in a photo by the University of Massachusetts, which now houses his collected papers, made disclosures first via the New York Times and later via other news organizations that risked federal prosecution, as endured by Ellsberg. The late U.S. Sen. Mike Gravel (D-Alaska), right, who died last month, helped publicize the revelations by reading excerpts on the Senate floor.

The still-vigorous Ellsberg delivered highly newsworthy remarks praising the need for whistleblowers currently and described his goal in the Pentagon Papers of showing that four previous presidents to Richard Nixon, who took office in January 1969, had been lying to the American people about the then-raging Vietnam War, and so the public, Congress and other institutions should scrutinize Nixon with the strong suspicion that he might be lying also about the war.

Ellsberg raised the possibilty that the charge of second degree murder, sometimes described as homicide with “depraved indiference,” might be valid against former President Trump and others who deliberately downplayed the coronavirus to advance their political agendas. He said at least half of the more than 600,000 American deaths from Covid-19 are probably attributable to Trump’s policies of minimizing warnings and preventive measures.

He noted also deadly threats to Americans and those around the world to disasters caused by climate change, which he described as similarly downplayed for political reasons.

His wide-ranging and powerful remarks praised whistleblowers who risk everything to help the public noted with alarm what he called a dangerous tendency by American policymakers almost across the political spectrum to describe China and Russia as “the enemy.” He noted that they are both capitalist countries but, more importantly, he said that name calling increases the chances of nuclear war.

Among those in the audience for Ellsberg, who received a lifetime achievement award for his whistleblowing, were other Summit and Film Festival honorees. This year’s expanded Pillar Award ceremony recognizes notable civil and human rights champions among politicians, community activists and journalists — including documentary filmmakers.

They included Madison Mosier, accepting an award on behalf of her late father, Sen. Gravel. Another was former Defense Departmen contractor Reality Winner, who was recently released from prison after being convicted on espionage charges for releasing in 2017 to The Intercept news site documents showing that Russians had interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump win. She is currently under home detention and is limited in her comments as a condition of release, but was able to thank the Summit leaders for the encouragement of her award and to congratulate other whistleblowers.

This year’s Summit and Festival included more than 30 documentary films and shorts, plus special segments. The segments include sessions led by the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), a co-host of the event, and the Government Accountability Project and the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), both long-time partners at the Summit. A day-long segment on July 30 by the National Whistleblower Center, another major partner, features prominent U.S. elected and appointed officials regarded as welcoming to whistleblowers and their causes.

The main organizers of the event are former ACORN whistleblowers Michael McCray and Marcel Reid, who were both honored earlier this year by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners at the world’s largest anti-fraud conference. The two were among the “ACORN 8” activists who helped expose gross corruption and self-dealing in the inner circle of leadership at the community activist organization ACORN.

The Summit is organized in collaboration with such longtime partners as the Pacifica Foundation.

Click here for schedule and ticket information for the sessions. Please note that this is a corrected link, https://filmfestivalflix.com/Whistleblower/Purchase-Tickets/%20, from one previously published here. The panels may all be accessed for free, with film views purchased either individually or with a full-conference pass for $150. To access the panels, register and then locate the panels section at the top of the next page. Click on your preferred panel. Registration is for functionality and security purposes. So, you have to be registered and logged into your Film Festival Flix (FFF) account to activate the Zoom links. Here is a short video that informs you how to create a Film Festival Flix account if you have a problem: https://vimeo.com/578502564

Our Justice Integrity Project, a member of the Summit host committee for a half dozen years, opened the panel segment at noon EDT on Sunday, July 25, with a major panel on Watergate that featured former Washington Post editor Barry Sussman and two critics of the Post’s coverage, authors Jim Hougan and John O’Connor.

The session title is Pentagon Papers and Watergate Revelations After Five Decades: What’s the Rest of the Story? The session remains available for viewing after its start time, like all Summit sessions.

Wall Street Journal, MyPillow to Pull Ads From Fox News in Disagreement With Network, Alex Corse and Benjamin Mullin, July 30, 2021 (print ed.). The chief executive of MyPillow Inc., one of Fox News’s big advertisers, said he is pulling his ads from the network after a disagreement over a proposed commercial.

Mike Lindell, shown above in a file photo, said he made the decision after Fox News declined to run a commercial linked to his efforts to promote his claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Security and election officials have said there is no proof of widespread election fraud.

“It’s unfortunate Mr. Lindell has chosen to pause his commercial time on FOX News given the level of success he’s experienced in building his brand through advertising on the number one cable news network,” Fox News said in a statement.

July 29

U.S. Olympian Sunisa Lee en route to winning a Gold Medal at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo on July 29, 2021.CNN: ‘I didn’t think I would ever be here,’ says Sunisa Lee after winning ‘surreal’ all-around gymnastics gold at the Tokyo Olympics.

From left, US gymnasts Riley McCusker, Jordan Chiles, Simone Biles and MyKayla Skinner cheer for teammate Suni Lee after her gold-medal performance. Stories below.

Top Headlines

New York Times, Biden Seeks to Revive Vaccine Effort With New Rules and Incentives
Washington Post, Opinion: Jan. 6 police officers give a master class on the dangers of right-wing extremism, E.J. Dionne Jr.
Washington Post, As Trump sought probes of 2020 election, he called acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen almost daily
Washington Post, Opinion: Be careful, Arizona Republicans. The DOJ just made clear your phony election audit is on thin ice, Jennifer Rubin
Washington Post, Charlie Kirk’s pro-Trump youth group stokes vaccine resistance as covid surges again
Associated Press, Ex-Cardinal McCarrick charged with sexually assaulting teen
Washington Post, Dozens of Afghan troops killed in insider attacks during U.S. military withdrawal, watchdog says,

U.S. Economy, Infrastructure Deal

Washington Post, Economy grew 6.5% in second quarter, marking full recovery from pandemic
New York Times, Analysis: Growth Is Strong, but Obstacles to Full Recovery Are Big, Neil Irwin
Washington Post, Bipartisan infrastructure pact clears key Senate vote after breakthrough in talks
New York Times, A Look at What the Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal Would Do

Extreme Weather and Climate Updates

New York Times, Triple-Digit Temperatures Will Scorch the Pacific Northwest Again
Washington Post, Survivors of California’s deadliest wildfire feel haunted as new blaze nears: ‘I can’t do it again’
New York Times, Democrats call the $1 trillion infrastructure bill a down payment on the climate

U.S-Mexican Border, Security Issues

Washington Post, Surges in migration, coronavirus cases along the U.S.-Mexico border stall Biden plan to end expulsions
Washington Post, Mexico declares $3 billion U.S. security deal ‘dead,’ seeks revamp

Virus Victims, Responses

New York Times, Opinion: How Covid Became a Red-State Crisis, Paul Krugman
Washington Post, New CDC mask guidance could upend economy, return-to-work plans
Washington Post, CDC reversal on indoor masking prompts experts to ask, ‘Where’s the data?’
Washington Post, St. Louis public health leader said a mob called him racist slurs for promoting masks: ‘We are not the enemy’
New York Times, Opinion: What if the Unvaccinated Can’t Be Persuaded? Ezra Klein
Washington Post, House Republicans refuse to follow new mask mandate, leading Pelosi to call McCarthy a ‘moron’
Washington Post, 189.5 million U.S. vaccinated
Worldometer, World & U.S. Coronavirus Case Totals, U.S. Deaths: 628,098

U.S. Law, Prisons, Crime

New York Times, Ace Gallery Founder Arrested on Embezzlement Charges
Washington Post, Prison officials allowed convicted sex abuser Larry Nassar to pay little to victims while spending thousands on himself
Washington Post, A Texas deputy attorney general called Simone Biles a ‘national embarrassment.’ His boss publicly disagreed

Olympics, Biles, Nasser

CNN, ‘I didn’t think I would ever be here,’ says Sunisa Lee after winning ‘surreal’ all-around gymnastics gold at the Tokyo Olympics
Washington Post, Simone Biles said she got the ‘twisties.’ Gymnasts immediately understood
Washington Post, Live Updates: Sunisa Lee wins gold in gymnastics all-around, Team USA’s fifth straight in the event
Washington Post, Opinion: Simone Biles was abandoned by American Olympic officials, and the torment hasn’t stopped, Sally Jenkins
New York Times, The Chinese Sports Machine’s Single Goal: Golds, at Any Cost
Washington Post, The Tokyo Olympics schedule, day by day

U.S. Politics, Governance

Palmer Report, Opinion: Is the dam finally breaking? Bill Palmer
Washington Post, Pelosi says Biden has no authority to cancel student loans on his own
Palmer Report, Opinion: Jim Jordan is in trouble, Robert Harrington
Washington Post, Cost announced for GOP Ariz. ballot review: More than $5.7 million, nearly all from private donors
Daily Beast, Miserable Residents of South Carolina Town Fume at Billionaire Robert Kraft

More On Jan. 6 Pro-Trump Insurrection

Washington Post, A former New York senate candidate stormed the Capitol, then asked friends to delete video evidence, feds say
Washington Post, GOP Rep. Clyde stands by comparison of Jan. 6 mob to ‘tourists’ when pressed by Democratic Rep. Raskin
Washington Post, D.C. officer who had a heart attack during Capitol riot received vulgar, threatening voice mail for testifying
Washington Post, ‘Some are still suffering’: Months after Capitol riot, police who fought the mob contend with physical, psychological pain
New York Times, ‘A Hit Man Sent Them’: Capitol Officers Recount the Horrors of Jan. 6
New York Times, How a Respected N.Y.P.D. Officer Became the Accused Capitol Riot #EyeGouger
New York Times, U.S. Declines to Defend Trump Ally in Lawsuit Over Jan. 6 Riot
Roll Call, GOP ‘holds’ threaten quick action on supplemental spending bill
\Wayne Madsen Report, Opinion: WMR, UN should live up to its original mandate, Wayne Madsen

World News, Corruption, Human Rights

BBC, Inquiry On Daphne Caruana Galizia: Malta responsible for journalist death
Washington Post, Opinion: A Saudi official’s harrowing account of torture reveals the regime’s brutality, David Ignatius
New York Times, Investigation: They Pooled Their Art to Create a Nest Egg. They Say It Was a Mistake, Robin Pogrebin and Siddhartha Mitter

U.S. Media News

Justice Integrity Project, Whistleblower Summit This Week Highlights 50 Years of the Pentagon Papers and Investigative Journalism
New York Times, Hedge Fund Buys Paper. Hedge Fund Closes Paper

Top Stories

New York Times, Biden Seeks to Revive Vaccine Effort With New Rules and Incentives, Michael D. Shear, Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Annie Karni, July 29, 2021. President Biden on Thursday sought to revive the nation’s stalled push to vaccinate Americans against the surging Delta variant of the coronavirus, announcing new requirements for federal workers to be vaccinated and urging local and state governments to offer $100 to anyone willing to get a shot voluntarily.

President Biden announced new requirements for federal workers and urged local and state governments to pay people $100 to get the vaccine.
Effectively conceding that the coronavirus had come roaring back, Mr. Biden also said those refusing to get a shot should expect inconveniences.

From left, Sgt. Aquilino Gonell of the U.S. Capitol Police, Officer Michael Fanone of the D.C. Metropolitan Police, Officer Daniel Hodges of the D.C. Metropolitan Police and Private First Class Harry Dunn of the U.S. Capitol Police are sworn in to testify before the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on U.S. Capitol on July 27, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

Washington Post, Opinion: Jan. 6 police officers give a master class on the dangers of right-wing extremism, E.J. Dionne Jr., right, July 29, 2021 (print ed.). Four law enforcement heroes made abundantly clear at Tuesday’s inaugural hearing of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol why this inquiry is essential and why so many Republicans wanted to keep it from happening.

Their dramatic, heartfelt testimony also made an airtight case that right-wing extremism is a clear and present danger to the United States.

“What makes the struggle harder and more painful is to know so many of my fellow citizens, including so many of the people I put my life at risk to defend, are downplaying or outright denying what happened,” D.C. police officer Michael Fanone said.

“I feel like I went to hell and back to protect them and the people in this room,” he went on, “but too many are now telling me that hell doesn’t exist, or that hell actually wasn’t that bad.”

His next point was devastating as a commentary on what large sections of the Republican Party are committed to doing — and in its accuracy.

“The indifference shown to my colleagues is disgraceful,” he said, “nothing, truly nothing, has prepared me to address those elected members of our government who continue to deny events of that day. And in doing so betray their oath of office.”

Yes, they do.

At Tuesday’s hearing, D.C. police officers Fanone and Daniel Hodges, Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn and Sgt. Aquilino Gonell made clear why so many Republicans want us to forget what happened on Jan. 6.

Republicans don’t want us to focus on “the hit man,” in Dunn’s resonant phrase.

They want to let Donald Trump off the hook.

And they resolutely do not want to do what Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) rightly said the committee must do: try to account for “what happened every minute of that day in the White House — every phone call, every conversation, every meeting leading up to, during and after the attack.”

What happened on Jan. 6 was monstrous, the product of a dangerous, anti-democratic sickness haunting parts of the American right. This is the sort of event that a free nation must come to terms with, not ignore; investigate, not sweep under the rug; and understand, not dismiss as a one-off display of violence. That’s why this committee’s work is so important.

Washington Post, Opinion: The select committee is already exceeding all expectations, Jennifer Rubin,

Washington Post, As Trump sought probes of 2020 election, he called acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen almost daily, Josh Dawsey and Devlin Barrett, July 29, 2021 (print ed.). President Donald Trump called his acting attorney general nearly every day at the end of last year to alert him to claims of voter fraud or alleged improper vote counts in the 2020 election, according to two people familiar with the conversations.

The personal pressure campaign, which has not been previously reported, involved repeated phone calls to acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen in which Trump raised various allegations he had heard about and asked what the Justice Department was doing about the issue. The people familiar with the conversations spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive legal and political issues that are not yet public.

Rosen, left, told few people about the phone calls, even in his inner circle. But there are notes of some of the calls that were written by a top aide to Rosen, Richard Donoghue, who was present for some of the conversations, these people said.

Donoghue’s notes could be turned over to Congress in a matter of days, they added, if Trump does not file papers in court seeking to block such a handover. In addition, both Rosen and Donoghue could be questioned about the conversations by congressional committees examining Trump’s actions in the days after the election.

The Justice Department recently notified Rosen, Donoghue and others who were serving there during the end of Trump’s presidency that the agency would not seek to invoke executive privilege if they are asked about their contacts with the president during that period.

That posture — which the letter to Rosen calls a departure from normal agency practice — means that individuals who are questioned by Congress would not have to say the conversations with the president were off-limits. They would be able to share details that give a firsthand account of Trump’s frantic attempts to overturn the 2020 election and involve the Justice Department in that effort.

U.S. Attorney Gen. Merrick Garland (file photo).

Washington Post, Opinion: Be careful, Arizona Republicans. The DOJ just made clear your phony election audit is on thin ice, Jennifer Rubin, right, July 9, 2021. The Justice Department stepped up its visibility on the enforcement of voting rights on Wednesday, issuing new guidance on efforts by Republicans to curb access to the ballot and to stage phony election audits.

That part on audits is the most intriguing, as it attempts to keep Republicans from undermining or even changing election results. The Justice Department zeroed in on Section 20701 of Title 52 in the U.S. Code, which requires election officials to maintain custody of all election related materials for 22 months.

“Election audits are exceedingly rare. But the Department is concerned that some jurisdictions conducting them may be using, or proposing to use, procedures that risk violating the Civil Rights Act,” the department found. “The duty to retain and preserve election records necessarily requires that elections officials maintain the security and integrity of those records and their attendant chain of custody, so that a complete and uncompromised record of federal elections can be reliably accessed and used in federal law enforcement matters.”

It means that, even when private “auditors” are given access, state election officials still must preserve their integrity. (Enforcing this part of the law something voting-rights groups have called on the administration to do.)

In a swipe at the unprofessional audit underway in Maricopa County, Ariz., the department stated: “Where election records leave the control of elections officials, the systems for maintaining the security, integrity and chain of custody of those records can easily be broken.” It added that the “risk of the records being lost, stolen, altered, compromised, or destroyed . . . is exacerbated if the election records are given to private actors who have neither experience nor expertise in handling such records and who are unfamiliar with the obligations imposed by federal law.”

The department also made clear it is prepared to enforce criminal penalties for violation of these document retention requirements. That is clearly a shot across the bow of the Arizona Republicans, who have allowed an inexperienced outfit led by conspiracy theorists to rifle through ballots and despoil voting machines.

Further, the department warned against various forms of voting intimidation that violate federal law, again signaling that phony GOP audits, especially Arizona’s, are on thin ice.

“There have been reports, with respect to some of the post-2020 ballot examinations, of proposals to contact individuals face to face to see whether the individuals were qualified voters who had actually voted,” the department stated, referencing Cyber Ninjas, the outfit that has proposed canvassing Arizona voters in search of voter fraud. “This sort of activity raises concerns regarding potential intimidation of voters. . . . Jurisdictions that authorize or conduct audits must ensure that the way those reviews are conducted has neither the purpose nor the effect of dissuading qualified citizens from participating in the electoral process. If they do not, the Department will act to ensure that all eligible citizens feel safe in exercising their right to register and cast a ballot in future elections.”

The directive is not a lawsuit, but it provides a clear predicate should Arizona or other jurisdictions flout voting laws. Given the uphill climb for new voting-rights legislation, aggressive enforcement of existing laws is critical. Attorney General Merrick Garland seems willing to combat fake audits, something not covered by legislation under consideration in Congress.

When coupled with this other developments at the Justice Department regarding matters related to Jan. 6, it seems Garland is attempting to dispel the impression that he intends to be a passive observer of an assault on voting rights. He does not have a lot of arrows in his quiver thanks to the filibuster and the Supreme Court’s cramped view of voting rights, but he sounds ready to make the most of what he has. That’s a development all Americans should cheer.

Washington Post, Charlie Kirk’s pro-Trump youth group stokes vaccine resistance as covid surges again, Isaac Stanley-Becker, July 29, 2021. Turning Point USA and its affiliates are urging students to resist mandates and spreading baseless claims about ‘medical raids’ as part of a bid for donations.

A young emergency room doctor stood before dozens of students in a Tampa convention center this month and gave them a script for resisting coronavirus vaccines.

“You say, ‘I’m 18 years old. I have no health conditions. Based on the five-year mortality data, I have a highly likelihood of dying from flu vs. covid, and I don’t get the flu vaccine, so I’m not going to get this one,’” Sean Ochsenbein, a 33-year-old attending physician in Johnson City, Tenn., told students gathered for a summit hosted by the conservative youth group Turning Point USA, according to a recording of the session obtained by The Washington Post. “Drop the mic. You’re done. That’s it.”

That presentation is just one way the group led by Charlie Kirk, 27, has recently sought to rally young people against vaccine mandates. Kirk, a college dropout who gained further clicks and notoriety by using his podcast to claim the much-honored gymnast Simone Biles was a “sociopath” for dropping out of events at the Olympics, is shown above.

Text messages announcing Kirk as their author warn that President Biden is “sending goons DOOR-TO-DOOR to make you take a covid-19 vaccine.” Facebook ads from Kirk’s tax-exempt nonprofit insist the government has “NO RIGHT to force you to inject yourself with an experimental vaccine,” and say the best response to outreach about the shots is to, “LOCK YOUR DOORS, KIDS!!”

Associated Press, Ex-Cardinal McCarrick charged with sexually assaulting teen, Alanna Durkin Richer, July 29, 2021. Former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who was defrocked after a Vatican investigation confirmed he had sexually molested adults as well as children, has been charged with sexually assaulting a teenage boy during a wedding reception in 1974, court records show. McCarrick is charged with three counts of indecent assault and battery on a person over 14, according to documents filed in the Dedham District Court on Wednesday.

He’s the first cardinal in the U.S. to ever be criminally charged with a sexual crime against a minor, according to Mitchell Garabedian, a well-known lawyer for church sexual abuse victims who is representing the man alleging the abuse by McCarrick.

“It takes an enormous amount of courage for a sexual abuse victim to report having been sexually abused to investigators and proceed through the criminal process,” Garabedian said in an email. “Let the facts be presented, the law applied, and a fair verdict rendered.”

Barry Coburn, an attorney for McCarrick, told the Associated Press that they “look forward to addressing the case in the courtroom,” and declined further comment.

The man said the abuse started when he was a young boy, according to the court records. The man told authorities during an interview in January that McCarrick was close to his family and would perform wedding masses, baptisms and funerals for them.

The man said that during his brother’s wedding reception at Wellesley College in June 1974 — when he was 16 — McCarrick told him that his father wanted him to have a talk with McCarrick because the boy was “being mischievous at home and not attending church.”

The man said that the two of them went for a walk around campus and McCarrick groped him before they went back to the party. The man said McCarrick also sexually assaulted him in a “coat room type closet” after they returned to the reception, officials wrote in the documents.

Before leaving the room, McCarrick told him to “say three Our Fathers and a Hail Mary or it was one Our Father and three Hail Marys, so God can redeem you of your sins,” according to the report.

McCarrick, who now lives in Missouri, has been ordered to appear in Massachusetts for his arraignment on Aug. 26.

McCarrick, 91, was defrocked by Pope Francis in 2019 after a Vatican investigation confirmed decades of rumors that he was a sexual predator.

The case created a credibility crisis for the church since the Vatican had reports from authoritative cardinals dating to 1999 that McCarrick’s behavior was problematic, yet he became an influential cardinal, kingmaker and emissary of the Holy See’s “soft diplomacy.”

Jeff Anderson, an attorney who has represented others who say they were victimized by McCarrick, said in a statement that the defrocked cardinal’s “history of prolific sex crimes has been ignored by the highest-ranking Catholic officials for decades.”

“For too long Catholic institutions have been self-policing while making pledges and promises without action. McCarrick should be behind bars for his crimes,” Anderson said.

Washington Post, Dozens of Afghan troops killed in insider attacks during U.S. military withdrawal, watchdog says, Dan Lamothe, July 29, 2021. The Taliban’s offensive this spring included more than two dozen insider attacks during the 90-day period ending June 30, a wave of violence that left at least 81 Afghan troops dead, a new U.S. government report revealed Thursday, highlighting the rapid deterioration of security throughout much of Afghanistan as the United States completes its military withdrawal.

At least 37 Afghan troops were wounded in those attacks, according to the report released by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), and American military officials told the watchdog’s investigators that the numbers could be incomplete, citing gaps in knowledge during the pullout, which is now effectively over.

The data underscores the enormous challenges and immense pressure facing Afghan forces, who’ve been left to fight the militants with little U.S. support. Thousands of Afghan troops are killed annually, and those numbers are on the rise. Others, meanwhile, have abandoned the security forces, cutting deals with the Taliban, surrendering their weapons and allowing a growing number of districts to fall under insurgent control.

U.S. Economy, Infrastructure Deal

Washington Post, Economy grew 6.5% in second quarter, marking full recovery from pandemic, Rachel Siegel and Andrew Van Dam, July 29, 2021. For the first time since covid took hold, gross domestic product eclipsed its pre-pandemic high during a period when hiring picked up, stimulus checks hit bank accounts, and Americans returned to restaurants, concerts and hotels.

The U.S. economy was officially back and fully recovered from the pandemic as of June, although a recent surge in covid cases could threaten new uncertainty ahead.

The economy grew at an annual rate of 6.5 percent in the quarter ending in June, below expectations, as coronavirus vaccinations and unleashed consumer spending added momentum to the recovery.

For the first time since the pandemic took hold, economic output eclipsed its pre-pandemic high, after adjusting for inflation. However, that doesn’t mean the economy is back to the level it would have been had the pandemic not happened, because there is roughly a year of continued economic growth missing.

The gross domestic product (GDP) report, released Thursday by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, offered a backward-looking snapshot of the months when hiring picked up speed and people felt comfortable booking vacations, eating at restaurants and buying tickets to concerts or movies. Some Americans got $1,400 stimulus checks in the late spring or received extended unemployment benefits, providing a financial cushion that helped households step back into their old routines — and spend.

New York Times, Analysis: Growth Is Strong, but Obstacles to Full Recovery Are Big, Neil Irwin, July 29, 2021. The new G.D.P. numbers paint a vivid picture of a nation still struggling to complete an economic readjustment.

Most of the time, a 6.5 percent rate of economic growth would warrant celebrations in the streets. Only in the weird economy of 2021 can it be a bit of a disappointment.

It’s not simply that forecasters had expected a G.D.P. growth number a couple of percentage points higher, though they did. And it’s not even that America’s output remains below its prepandemic growth path in inflation-adjusted terms, though it is.

What makes the new G.D.P. numbers on Thursday feel less than buoyant is the degree to which they paint a picture of a nation still struggling to complete a huge economic readjustment.

Washington Post, Bipartisan infrastructure pact clears key Senate vote after breakthrough in talks, Tony Romm, July 29, 2021 (print ed.). Measure has White House support. Portman, Sinema say all significant disagreements have been resolved around roughly $1 trillion package.

Senate Democrats and Republicans banded together on Wednesday to advance a roughly $1 trillion proposal to improve the country’s aging infrastructure, overcoming months of political deadlock on one of President Biden’s signature economic policy priorities.

The day of breakthroughs began with news of a deal, as a bipartisan bloc of 10 negotiators coalesced around a package to upgrade the nation’s roads, bridges, pipes, ports and Internet connections. The announcement from some of the group’s leaders, including Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), capped off a series of frenetic talks that nearly collapsed amid behind-the-scenes battles about the new spending and how to pay for it.

With that once-elusive agreement finally in hand, the Senate hours later then took its first formal legislative step. Lawmakers voted 67-32 to put themselves on track to begin debating infrastructure reform this week, clearing the first of many hurdles toward adopting a proposal that the White House has described as historic.

New York Times, A Look at What the Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal Would Do, Madeleine Ngo, Updated July 29, 2021. The White House and bipartisan lawmakers have agreed on a package that would provide funding for roads, bridges and other physical infrastructure.

The $1 trillion package is far smaller than the $2.3 trillion plan that President Biden had originally proposed and would provide about $550 billion in new federal money for public transit, roads, bridges, water and other physical projects over the next five years, according to a White House fact sheet. That money would be cobbled together through a range of measures, including “repurposing” stimulus funds already approved by Congress, selling public spectrum and recouping federal unemployment funds from states that ended more generous pandemic benefits early.

Although Mr. Biden conceded that “neither side got everything they wanted,” he said the deal would create new union jobs and make significant investments in public transit.

Lawmakers have yet to release legislative text of the bill, and although the Senate voted to advance it in an initial vote on Wednesday evening, it still faces several hurdles. But if enacted, the package would mark a significant step toward repairing the nation’s crumbling infrastructure and preparing it for the 21st century.

Extreme Weather and Climate Updates

New York Times, Triple-Digit Temperatures Will Scorch the Pacific Northwest Again, Staff reports, July 29, 2021. It won’t be as bad as it was a month ago, but more heat is coming for the U.S. region. Here’s the latest on extreme weather.

A month after a record-shattering heat wave, forecasters predict that temperatures on Friday and Saturday will again approach or exceed 100 degrees in cities including Portland, Ore., and Spokane, Wash. — places that rarely experience triple-digit heat.

But it could be enough to cause more misery and health concerns in a region where air conditioning isn’t standard issue, and where residents aren’t used to sweating for multiple days in scorching heat, which killed hundreds across the region in late June.

A powerful 8.2-magnitude earthquake struck off the southern coast of Alaska late Wednesday night, prompting a tsunami warning for parts of the state and a tsunami watch as far as Hawaii. They were lifted within hours.

Washington Post, Survivors of California’s deadliest wildfire feel haunted as new blaze nears: ‘I can’t do it again,’ María Luisa Paúl, Hannah Knowles and Frances Stead Sellers, July 29, 2021 (print ed.). Former residents of Paradise hoped their new home would keep them safe. But this summer’s blaze threatens once again.

Dozens of families forced from Paradise and surrounding communities about three years ago have resettled in small towns around Lake Almanor, about 40 miles away, finding comfort in stunning wilderness and shared pain among survivors. But as California’s biggest blaze of the year raged toward that haven this week, they relived a nightmare. Their repeat trauma underscores wildfires’ growing, climate change-fueled threat in the West.

What should you do if you need to evacuate for a wildfire?
What you need to know about how wildfires spread

New York Times, Democrats call the $1 trillion infrastructure bill a down payment on the climate, Coral Davenport and Lisa Friedman, July 29, 2021. The $1 trillion infrastructure deal reached by a bipartisan group of senators on Wednesday would make a significant down payment on President Biden’s ambitious environmental agenda, including the first federal expenditure on electric vehicle charging stations and the largest investment in public transit and clean water systems in the nation’s history.

The plan also includes the first federal spending designated for “climate resilience” — to adapt and rebuild roads, ports and bridges to withstand the damages wrought by the rising sea levels, stronger storms and more devastating heat waves that will come as the planet continues to warm.

U.S-Mexican Border, Security Issues

Washington Post, Surges in migration, coronavirus cases along the U.S.-Mexico border stall Biden plan to end expulsions, Nick Miroff, July 29, 2021 (print ed.). A spike in coronavirus infections in Mexico and along the southern U.S. border has shelved Biden administration plans to phase out the controversial public health law used to return more than 1 million migrants to Mexico, according to U.S. officials working on border policy.

The delay points to President Biden’s deepening predicament at the border, where the migration surge he has described as seasonal is growing larger this summer while coronavirus caseloads rise. Republicans have hammered Biden’s moves to ease Trump-era restrictions as a threat to public health. But the president is also taking fire from immigrant advocates who have denounced the expulsion program known as Title 42 and challenged it in court because it prevents most asylum seekers from applying for humanitarian protection under U.S. law.

Officials said last month that the government was preparing to end the return-to-Mexico policy, without providing a timetable, though several media outlets reported Title 42 would no longer be used on families after July 31. But the explosive spread of the delta variant in recent weeks, and a huge influx of Central American families crossing into the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, have recalibrated the Biden administration’s thinking, according to four U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal deliberations.

The administration now fears it will be blamed for a pandemic resurgence made worse by the border influx.

“It’s the hottest part of the summer and apprehensions are skyrocketing!” Brian Hastings, chief of the Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley sector, said in a Twitter post after agents there made more than 20,000 arrests in a single week.

More than 188,000 border crossers were taken into custody in June, the largest monthly total in 21 years. This month that figure is projected to be even higher, according to preliminary U.S. enforcement data. While most single adult migrants are returned to Mexico under Title 42, the majority of families are allowed to seek humanitarian protection under U.S. law. But the arrival of more parents and children — some testing positive for the coronavirus — has alarmed border authorities and angered communities hit hard by the pandemic.

With Rio Grande Valley Border Patrol stations and migrant shelters stretched beyond capacity, and large groups with 300 or more adults and children arriving in the dangerous heat, Biden administration officials said this week they will reinstate fast-track deportations for families, while quietly acknowledging the Title 42 policy will remain in use.

The administration has provided few details about how the fast-track deportations will work, but one government official and one former official with knowledge of the plans said U.S. authorities will fly families back to Central America using the Electronic Nationality Verification program, which relies on biometric data to identify migrants who lack identification or travel documents.

The Trump administration made aggressive use of the ENV program, also known as “no-doc flights.” Biden officials had not been doing so but are now planning to deport the families directly from Border Patrol custody in less than 72 hours, said one official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the plans.

Washington Post, Mexico declares $3 billion U.S. security deal ‘dead,’ seeks revamp, Mary Beth Sheridan and Kevin Sieff, July 29, 2021 (print ed.). Frustrated by raging violence, the Mexican government is seeking to overhaul the Merida Initiative, a $3 billion U.S. aid program that’s been the centerpiece of security cooperation between the two nations for more than a decade — but has failed to reduce bloodshed.

Mexican officials say they have been meeting with Biden administration officials since late spring to refocus their cooperation against drug cartels and other criminal groups, amid growing concerns that such gangs are expanding their control over Mexican territory.

“The Merida Initiative is dead. It doesn’t work, okay?” Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard told the Washington Post in the government’s first detailed comments on the discussions. “We are now in another era.”

Violent criminal groups are claiming more territory and eroding the Mexican government’s control

Launched during the presidency of George W. Bush, the Merida Initiative initially provided hundreds of millions of dollars for aircraft, helicopters and other hardware for Mexico’s security forces. In recent years, the funding shifted to technical aid and training to strengthen Mexico’s police and justice system.

But despite the billions of dollars in aid, there has been a “huge, huge increase in violence,” Ebrard noted. Homicides in Mexico have quadrupled since the initiative was announced in 2007. Drug overdose deaths in the United States, meanwhile, soared to a record 93,331 last year, fueled by the rising use of fentanyl, much of it smuggled across the southwest border.

“We haven’t reduced either trafficking or drug abuse,” Ebrard said. “So we have to do something else.”

He said Mexico’s priorities included a greater focus on reducing homicides, rather than capturing cartel kingpins; stepped-up efforts to seize chemicals used to make fentanyl and other drugs; and slashing the number of U.S. guns trafficked illegally over the border.

Mexican officials say they didn’t attempt to renegotiate Merida with the Trump administration because the sides had clear disagreements over security strategy. The divergence became especially obvious in 2019, they say, when then-President Donald Trump offered to send troops to Mexico to “wage WAR” on drug cartels after the massacre of nine people with dual U.S.-Mexican nationality.

Virus Victims, Responses

Washington Post, CDC reversal on indoor masking prompts experts to ask, ‘Where’s the data?’ Joel Achenbach, Yasmeen Abutaleb, Ben Guarino and Carolyn Y. Johnson, July 29, 2021 (print ed.). As the coronavirus delta variant spreads, the significance of breakthrough infections remains unclear.

New recommendations from federal health officials this week on when vaccinated Americans should don face masks came with a startling bolt of news: People who have had their shots and become infected with the delta variant of the coronavirus can harbor large amounts of virus just like unvaccinated people. That means they could become spreaders of the disease and should return to wearing masks indoors in certain situations, including when vulnerable people are present.

But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not publish the new research. In the text of the updated masking guidance, the agency merely cited “CDC COVID-19 Response Team, unpublished data, 2021.”

Some outside scientists have their own message: Show us the data.

“They’re making a claim that people with delta who are vaccinated and unvaccinated have similar levels of viral load, but nobody knows what that means,” said Gregg Gonsalves, an associate professor at the Yale School of Public Health. “It’s meaningless unless we see the data.”

When CDC Director Rochelle Walensky spoke to reporters Tuesday, she cited the “new scientific data” but provided limited details about how the research was done. She said the data comes from outbreak investigations in which researchers compared delta infections among vaccinated and unvaccinated people.

The data will be “published imminently,” according to a federal official knowledgeable about the research but who was not authorized to be a spokesperson for the government.

New York Times, Opinion: How Covid Became a Red-State Crisis, Paul Krugman, right, July 29, 2021. Less than a month ago President Biden promised a “summer of joy,” a return to normal life made possible by the rapid progress of vaccinations against Covid-19. Since then, however, vaccination has largely stalled — America, which had pulled ahead of many other advanced countries, has fallen behind. And the rise of the Delta variant has caused a surge in cases all too reminiscent of the repeated Covid waves of last year.

That said, 2021 isn’t 2020 redux. As Aaron Carroll pointed out Tuesday in The Times, Covid is now a crisis for the unvaccinated. Risks for vaccinated Americans aren’t zero, but they’re vastly lower than for those who haven’t gotten a vaccine.

What Carroll didn’t say, but is also true, is that Covid is now a crisis largely for red states. And it’s important to make that point both to understand where we are and as a reminder of the political roots of America’s pandemic failures.

Just to be clear, I’m not saying that only Republicans are failing to get vaccinated. It’s true that there are stark differences in attitudes toward the vaccines, with one poll showing 47 percent of Republicans saying they are unlikely to get a shot, compared with only 6 percent of Democrats. It’s also true that if we compare U.S. counties, there’s a strong negative correlation between Donald Trump’s share of the 2020 vote and the current vaccination rate.

That said, vaccination rates among Black and Hispanic Americans remain persistently lower than among the non-Hispanic white population, an indication that issues like lack of information and trust are also inhibiting our response.

But simply looking at who remains unvaccinated misses what may soon become a crucial point: The danger from Covid’s resurgence depends not just on the number of cases nationwide but also on how concentrated those cases are geographically.

To see why, it may help to remember all the talk about “flattening the curve” early in the pandemic.

At that point effective vaccines seemed a distant prospect. This in turn made it seem likely that a large fraction of the population would eventually contract the virus whatever we did. Prevaccine, it seemed as if the only way to avoid long-run mass infection was the New Zealand strategy: a severe lockdown to reduce cases to a very low level, followed by a test-trace-isolate regime to quickly put a lid on any flare-ups. And it seemed all too clear that the U.S. lacked the political will to pursue such a strategy.

Yet there was still good reason to impose social distancing rules and mask requirements. Even if most people would eventually get the virus, it was important that they not all get sick at once, because that would overload the health care system. This would cause many preventable deaths, not just from Covid-19 but also because other ailments couldn’t be treated if the hospitals, and especially intensive care units, were already full.

This logic, by the way, was why claims that mask mandates and distancing guidelines were attacks on “freedom” were always nonsense. Do we think people should be free to drive drunk? No, not just because in so doing they endanger themselves, but even more because they endanger others. The same was true for refusing to wear masks last year — and for refusing to get vaccinated now.

As it turned out, masks and social distancing were even better ideas than we realized: They bought time until the arrival of vaccines, so that a great majority of those who managed to avoid Covid in 2020, and have since been vaccinated, may never get it.

New York Times, Hedge Fund Buys Paper. Hedge Fund Closes Paper, Marc Tracy, July 29, 2021. Since Alden Global Capital bought the Tribune Publishing newspaper chain, newsrooms have shrunk and a Maryland weekly has shut down.

The Bowie Blade-News, a 41-year-old weekly newspaper in Bowie, Md., published its final print edition on Thursday, two months after its parent company, Tribune Publishing, was sold to the New York hedge fund Alden Global Capital for $633 million.

A brief, unsigned note to readers at the bottom of Thursday’s front page announced the closing.

“Due to the changing habits of our readers and the shifting demands of our advertisers, The Bowie Blade-News will cease print publication effective immediately,” the note said.

The note added that readers could now find coverage of Bowie and the surrounding area at the website of The Capital Gazette, another Maryland paper acquired by Alden in the Tribune deal.

New York Times, Opinion: What if the Unvaccinated Can’t Be Persuaded? Ezra Klein, right, July 29, 2021. There is nothing more overrated in politics — and perhaps in life — than the power of persuasion.

Which brings me to the difficult choice we face on coronavirus vaccinations. The conventional wisdom is that there is some argument, yet unmade and perhaps undiscovered, that will change the minds of the roughly 30 percent of American adults who haven’t gotten at least one dose. There probably isn’t. The unvaccinated often hold their views strongly, and many are making considered, cost-benefit calculations given how they weigh the risks of the virus, and the information sources they trust to inform them of those risks. For all the exhortations to respect their concerns, there is a deep condescension in believing that we’re smart enough to discover or invent some appeal they haven’t yet heard.

If policymakers want to change their minds, they have to change their calculations by raising the costs of remaining unvaccinated, the benefits of getting vaccinated, or both. If they can’t do that, or won’t, the vaccination effort will most likely remain stuck — at least until a variant wreaks sufficient carnage to change the calculus.

You can see the weakness of persuasion in the eerie stability of vaccination preferences. The Kaiser Family Foundation has been surveying Americans about their vaccination intentions since December. At that time, 15 percent said they would “definitely” refuse to get vaccinated. Six months later, Kaiser asked the same question. By then, most of the wait-and-see crowd had seen enough to get vaccinated. But the definitely-notters had barely budged: They numbered 15 percent in December and 14 percent in June.

Washington Post, St. Louis public health leader said a mob called him racist slurs for promoting masks: ‘We are not the enemy,’ Gina Harkins, July 29, 2021. When Faisal Khan left the St. Louis County council meeting Tuesday after promoting a new mask mandate, he said he was shoulder-bumped and pushed by people in the aisle.

When he made it through the door, the St. Louis County Department of Health’s acting director said things got worse. Khan was surrounded by an “angry mob,” he said, and called an expletive and a brown b—–d. Others mocked his accent.

“It was the saddest, most bizarre and disgusting thing that I’ve ever witnessed in my 30 years in public health,” he told The Washington Post on Wednesday night. “I would hope that even the community members who were in attendance to speak out about and oppose the mask mandate would be shocked at the behavior of some people in the crowd.”

St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones (D) and County Executive Sam Page had announced on Monday a new face mask requirement for indoor public places and transportation. Covid-19 rates in the region have crept up to levels not seen since February, and Khan said during Tuesday’s council meeting that infections from the new delta variant have reached an all-time high.

His comments were met with heckles from some in the crowd. The racial slurs and physical abuse he said he faced when leaving reflect the “deterioration of the political discourse in the United States.”

Burned out by the pandemic, 3 in 10 health-care workers consider leaving the profession

Khan is the latest public health official to describe threats or mistreatment during the global pandemic. A 56-year-old Maryland man was charged this week with threatening to harm Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-diseases expert. Public health officials in Germany, Australia and Sweden have also been threatened for suggesting precautions to prevent the spread of a deadly virus that has killed more than 4 million globally.

Washington Post, House Republicans refuse to follow new mask mandate, leading Pelosi to call McCarthy a ‘moron,’ Marianna Sotomayor and John Wagner, July 29, 2021 (print ed.). Many House Republicans refused to wear masks on the House floor during a series of morning votes, before they called for the chamber to adjourn as GOP members rebuffed attempts by staff to get them to put on a mask.

House Republicans on Wednesday angrily criticized a new order from the Capitol Hill physician to wear masks inside the Capitol due to the spread of the delta variant of the coronavirus, leading Speaker Nancy Pelosi, left, to call House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy a “moron” over his argument that the decision was not based on science.

Many House Republicans refused to wear masks on the House floor during a series of morning votes, before they called for the chamber to adjourn as GOP members rebuffed attempts by staff to get them to put on a mask.

“This is some serious nanny-state stuff that will only breed resentment. No kidding,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.) said on the floor, complaining that the House should be focusing on border security. He added: “This institution is a sham. We should adjourn and shut the place down.”

When Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) entered the chamber, a Democratic staff member handed her a mask. Boebert grabbed it and dropped it on the floor, according to people familiar with the interaction, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record. The congresswoman’s office said she slid it back across the table to the staffer.

Boebert, right, is among the most outspoken Republicans against mask requirements, arguing that they are a sign of authoritarianism rather than an attempt to prevent the spread of a disease that has killed more than 611,000 Americans.

McCarthy (R-Calif.) joined Republicans in deriding the new mask mandate despite concerns from public health officials that the delta variant poses a renewed threat to the public, particularly because of the refusal of many people in areas represented by Republicans to get vaccinated.

Asked Wednesday morning by NBC News about McCarthy’s comment, Pelosi responded: “He’s such a moron.” A survey of all 535 members of Congress by CNN found that in May, 100 percent of Democrats from both chambers were fully vaccinated, while 44.8 percent of House Republicans and 92 percent of Republican senators said the same. Democrats say the lag in vaccinations among conservatives has been holding them back in easing restrictions on Capitol Hill.

Washington Post, 189.5 million U.S. vaccinated, as of July 29, 2021, the number of people who have received at least one dose of the vaccine. This includes more than 163.6 million people fully vaccinated.

Worldometer, World & U.S. Coronavirus Case Totals (updated July 29, 2021, with some governments reporting lower numbers than the totals here and some experts saying the numbers are far higher, as the New York Times reported in India’s true pandemic death toll is likely to be well over 3 million, a new study finds):

World Cases: 196,785,699, Deaths: 4,205,022
U.S. Cases:     35,487,490, Deaths:    628,098
India Cases:     31,528,114, Deaths:    422,695
Brazil Cases:   19,797,516, Deaths:    553,272

U.S. Law, Prisons, Crime

Washington Post, Prison officials allowed convicted sex abuser Larry Nassar to pay little to victims while spending thousands on himself, Devlin Barrett, July 29, 2021 (print ed.). Federal prison officials have allowed Larry Nassar, the former USA Gymnastics doctor accused of sexually abusing hundreds of girls and women, to avoid paying financial penalties that are part of his sentence — even as he spent more than $10,000 from his Federal Bureau of Prisons account while behind bars, according to a new court filing.

The spending details are contained in a prosecutor’s motion Wednesday that seeks to force the Bureau of Prisons to turn over Nassar’s current prison account balance to help cover a court-
ordered payment of $5,300 to the federal Crime Victims Fund.

Bureau of Prisons officials have required Nassar (shown at left during his guilty pleas) to pay only about $100 a year, according to court papers, or about $300 since he entered the federal prison system in late 2017 after pleading guilty to receiving and possessing child pornography.

“Nassar has paid approximately $8.33 toward his criminal monetary penalties per month, despite receiving deposits into his account over this period totaling $12,825.00,” said the filing by Assistant U.S. Attorney Joel Fauson. It reported Nassar’s current account balance as $2,041.57.

“If the Bureau of Prisons isn’t enforcing these policies with Larry Nassar — who is among the worst of offenders — then which inmates are held to account?” said Jason Wojdylo, who retired from the U.S. Marshals Service months ago after spending years unsuccessfully trying to convince the Bureau of Prisons to make felons pay court orders and other debts.

Federal prisoners hold $100 million in government-protected accounts

Nassar — whose alleged victims include gymnastics star Simone Biles and several former Olympians — has seen $12,825 move through his prison account over the last 3½ years, the court filing said, including two payments for covid-19-related stimulus from the federal government totaling $2,000.

Washington Post, A Texas deputy attorney general called Simone Biles a ‘national embarrassment.’ His boss publicly disagreed, Jonathan Edwards, July 29, 2021 (print ed.). A conservative media publisher on Tuesday posted a video of Kerri Strug’s gritty performance 25 years ago, when the legendary gymnast battled through a serious ankle injury to help the U.S. women’s team on its way to winning Olympic gold.

“The great ones find a way,” the publisher wrote on Twitter.

The message was unsaid but clear: Simone Biles — who has withdrawn from both the gymnastics team and individual all-around finals in this year’s Olympics, citing mental health reasons — was not great.

For anyone who didn’t connect the dots, a Texas deputy attorney general did it for them.

“Contrast this with our selfish, childish national embarrassment, Simone Biles,” Aaron Reitz wrote in a tweet that quoted the original about Strug.

Biles, a fellow Texan, is the most decorated gymnast of all time, with 31 Olympic and world championship medals. Explaining why she withdrew from this week’s Games, Biles cited the overwhelming pressure to perform, the stress of dealing with pandemic life and a sudden onset of “the twisties” — a dangerous condition in which a gymnast becomes disoriented while flipping and twisting through the air.

Simone Biles said she got the ‘twisties.’ Gymnasts immediately understood.

Other Texas conservatives joined Reitz in criticizing Biles, according to the Houston Chronicle. A conservative radio host in Dallas wrote a column about how the gymnast’s decision “reveals our softened world.” The head of Texans for Fiscal Responsibility tweeted a video of a robot at the Olympics sinking a basketball shot from half court, saying “they will never have to take a mental health day.”

Reitz’s boss, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, was not one of them. A day after Reitz attacked Biles, Paxton chastised “one of our employees” for making “a very inappropriate and insensitive tweet.”

The tweet from the Attorney General’s Office account included more from Paxton: “I know Simone Biles — she is a fantastic athlete but an even better person. Mental health is far more important than any athletic competition and I fully support her decision.”

Six hours later, Reitz deleted his original tweet and apologized on Twitter: “I owe [Simone Biles] an apology. A big one,” he said, adding that he spoke out of turn in “frustration and disappointment.”

New York Times, Ace Gallery Founder Arrested on Embezzlement Charges, Jori Finkel, July 29, 2021. The Los Angeles art dealer Douglas Chrismas has surrendered to the F.B.I. and a trial date has been set for September.

Chrismas’s bankruptcy lawyer, Jonathan Shenson, did not respond to requests for comment this week and it was not clear who was representing Chrismas in the criminal case.

2020 Olympics, Biles, Nasser

U.S. Olympian Sunisa Lee en route to winning a Gold Medal at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo on July 29, 2021.

Lee, who extends the USA’s run of Olympic gold medals in the event to five, scored 57.433 as teammate and 2016 all-around champion Simone Biles watched on from the stands.

“The past two years have been absolutely crazy with Covid and my family and everything else,” Lee told reporters at the Ariake Gymnastics Centre.

“This medal definitely means a lot to me because there was a point in time when I wanted to quit and I just didn’t think I would ever be here, including injuries and stuff.

“So there are a lot of emotions, but I’m definitely super proud of myself for sticking with it and believing in myself.”

Alongside teammate and close friend Jordan Chiles, Biles was there cheering and clapping Lee and Team USA’s Jade Carey from the stands.

From left, US gymnasts Riley McCusker, Jordan Chiles, Simone Biles and MyKayla Skinner cheer for teammate Suni Lee after her gold-medal performance.

Washington Post, Live Updates: Sunisa Lee wins gold in gymnastics all-around, Team USA’s fifth straight in the event, Roman Stubbs, Des Bieler, Cindy Boren and Matt Bonesteel, July 29, 2021. Sunisa Lee, an 18-year-old from Minnesota, won the Olympic all-around title in a competition that came down to the final routines. Team USA has won every all-around title at the Games since 2004, and even after Simone Biles withdrew as she continues to work through mental health struggles, the Americans’ streak remains intact.

The United States’ Jade Carey replaced Biles in this competition after the defending Olympic champion withdrew. Carey fell on beam and finished eighth.

Washington Post, Simone Biles said she got the ‘twisties.’ Gymnasts immediately understood, Emily Giambalvo, July 29, 2021 (print ed.). Imagine flying through the air, springing off a piece of equipment as you prepare to flip on one axis while twisting on another. It all happens fast, so there’s little time to adjust. You rely on muscle memory, trusting that it will work out because, with so much practice, it usually does.

But then suddenly you’re upside down in midair and your brain feels disconnected from your body. Your limbs that usually control how much you spin have stopped listening, and you feel lost. You hope all the years you spent in this sport will guide your body to a safe landing position.

When Simone Biles, left, pushed off the vaulting table Tuesday, she entered that terrifying world of uncertainty. In the Olympic team final, Biles planned to perform a 2½-twisting vault, but her mind chose to stall after just 1½ twists.

“I had no idea where I was in the air,” Biles said. “I could have hurt myself.”

Biles, who subsequently withdrew from the team competition and then the all-around final a day later, described what went wrong during that vault as “having a little bit of the twisties.”

The cute-sounding term, well-known in the gymnastics community, describes a frightening predicament. When gymnasts have the “twisties,” they lose control of their bodies as they spin through the air. Sometimes they twist when they hadn’t planned to. Other times they stop midway through as Biles did. And after experiencing the twisties once, it’s very difficult to forget. Instinct gets replaced by thought. Thought quickly leads to worry. Worry is difficult to escape.

Washington Post, Opinion: Simone Biles was abandoned by American Olympic officials, and the torment hasn’t stopped, Sally Jenkins, right, July 29, 2021 (print ed.). The trouble with the phrase “mental health” is that it’s an abstraction that allows you to sail right straight over what happened to Simone Biles and, in a way, what is still happening to her. To this day, American Olympic officials continue to betray her. They deny that they had a legal duty to protect her and others from rapist-child pornographer Larry Nassar, and they continue to evade accountability in judicial maneuvering. Abuse is a current event for her.

It’s a perilous endeavor to project what Biles, the most uniquely superior gymnast in the world, is feeling or thinking at this juncture. But she has been frank about these things: her profound lingering distrust of USA Gymnastics and the USOPC and her conviction they will not do right by her and other athletes of their own accord. Remember, if it wasn’t for Biles bringing her clout to the issue, these users would still be making women train in the buggy squalor of the Karolyi Ranch, the USOPC-sanctioned hellhole where they were molested.

As Biles told NBC’s Hoda Kotb in a recent interview, one of the main reasons she came back for another Olympics at age 24 was to try to ensure some accountability. “If there weren’t a remaining survivor in the sport, they would’ve just brushed it to the side,” she said.

It was only two weeks ago that the Justice Department’s inspector general released a report on the Nassar case, in which Biles learned in new infuriating detail how corrupt officials hushed up evidence that the gymnastics doctor was a serial sex assaulter and how then-USAG chief Steve Penny traded favors with local FBI agent Jay Abbott to bottom-drawer it.

Documents produced in a long-stalled civil suit against USOPC and USAG have brought other aggravating recent revelations. One in particular is worth looking at, in light of what happened to Biles on the vaulting floor in Tokyo on July 27, 2021. That’s the day Biles became so disoriented on her vault that she couldn’t risk competing in the team finals.

As chance would have it, that’s the same date that, six years earlier, Steve Penny threw her to the wolf.

New York Times, The Chinese Sports Machine’s Single Goal: Golds, at Any Cost, Hannah Beech, July 29, 2021. China’s system puts tens of thousands of children in government-run training schools. Many go into less prominent sports that Beijing hopes to dominate.

Six days a week since she was 12 years old, with only a few days of time away each year, Hou Zhihui has been driven by one mission: heaving more than double her body weight into the air.

Here’s the complete schedule of Olympic events, day by day.

U.S. Politics, Governance

Washington Post, Pelosi says Biden has no authority to cancel student loans on his own, Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, July 29, 2021. The speaker of the House, right, is breaking from members of her party, including Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, who are urging President Biden to cancel up to $50,000 in federal student loans through executive action.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi broke from Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer and other powerful Democrats Wednesday by disputing President Biden’s authority to cancel federal student debt.

Pelosi, who has largely remained quiet on the issue of debt cancellation, is wading into murky waters.

Washington Post, Cost announced for GOP Ariz. ballot review: More than $5.7 million, nearly all from private donors, Rosalind S. Helderman, July 29, 2021 (print ed.). Private contractor Cyber Ninjas detailed donations from the former president’s allies who funded the controversial audit.

A private contractor conducting a Republican-commissioned review of 2020 presidential ballots in Arizona’s largest county announced late Wednesday that it has collected more than $5.7 million in private donations to fund the process.

The controversial ballot review, which included a hand recount of Maricopa County’s nearly 2.1 million ballots and a review of ballot tabulating machines, has been underway since April. It was ordered by the state’s Republican-led Senate, which agreed to spend $150,000 in taxpayer money to fund the audit. But the Senate allowed Cyber Ninjas, a Florida-based firm hired to lead the process, to collect donations as well.

It has been clear for months that the lengthy ballot review, which was conducted by dozens of workers, some working nearly round-the-clock, was being largely financed by allies of former president Donald Trump. The newly released figures put that fact in sharp relief: More than 97 percent of the audit’s costs have so far been shouldered by donations from five organizations led by people who have promoted the false claim that the election was stolen.
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In a statement, Cyber Ninjas indicated that $3.25 million came from the America Project, a group led by former Overstock chief executive Patrick Byrne.

Byrne became a key player in challenging the legitimacy of the election after the November vote, joining former national security adviser Michael Flynn and pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell in a raucous December meeting with Trump in the Oval Office. During the meeting, the trio urged Trump to appoint Powell as special counsel to investigate voting machines in key counties across the country. Flynn now serves as a paid adviser to the group.

Palmer Report, Opinion: Jim Jordan is in trouble, Robert Harrington, July 29, 2021. Let’s be clear here. There exists evidence sufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that then Ohio State coach Jim Jordan refused to protect members of his wrestling team from sexual assault by the team doctor Richard Strauss. Were it possible to put Republican Congressman Jordan on trial for that offense today he almost certainly would be convicted. While Jordan denies knowing anything about the assaults there are eight witnesses who say otherwise, and each of those witnesses are credible and have nothing to gain from lying.

These facts are fairly well-known, and they have long served as an embarrassment for Jordan. His conduct as wrestling coach will haunt him the remainder of what I hope is his moribund political life. But what’s particularly relevant today about Jordan’s disgraceful and cowardly actions back then was Jordan’s refusal to cooperate with investigations into Strauss. Back then he described his accusers as “pawns in a political plot.”

Say what you like about Jim Jordan (and that is a direct invitation for you to do so) but he’s consistent. Jordan’s deflection sounds a lot like what he’s saying today about the current investigation into the attempt by a violent mob to overthrow the government and murder members of Congress and the Vice President on January 6th. He’s calling the investigation a “political stunt.” Does that make Jordan a pawn in a political plot? Jordan is stupid and unoriginal enough to say just that. Don’t be surprised if he does.

Jordan’s latest trick is to blame Nancy Pelosi for the insurrection, because she was “unprepared for it.” Victim blaming is yet another dishonorable vestige from his coaching days. Once again this yellow-tied, yellow-spined coward is trying to lay the blame at the feet of the blameless. Just as the victims of Dr. Strauss were casualties not causes so too Nancy Pelosi played no role in the assault on the Capitol. But it might turn out that Jordan himself did.

In two stuttering and clearly uncomfortable interviews Jordan finally admitted that he talked to Trump on January 6th. He claims he’s not sure if he spoke with him before, during or after the insurrection. For my readers who are old enough to remember, that’s a little like saying you don’t know what you were doing the day you heard JFK was shot.

This revelation just might make Jordan a material witness and he could be called before the January 6th Select Committee to testify under oath. That will be the one place he knows he cannot lie, and if he does it might get him expelled from Congress. It requires a two-thirds majority to expel a Congressional member, and given the popularity of the pro-America, anti-Trump stances being struck by Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger these days, that two-thirds just might (if we are very, very lucky) become available exactly when we need it. Because Jordan is a coward it’s hard to know which way his cowardice will sway him. Will he lie to protect his shameful complicity or will he tell the truth to avoid expulsion? Then there’s the other hazard: telling the truth could also get him expelled. His complicity might be bad enough. In any case, testifying is going to be very bad for him politically. He will not come off well.

Meanwhile Jordan continues his Kellyanne Conway-like catechism of distractions and whataboutisms. Trump’s drooling base of cretins are fooled, of course. Fools are always easy to fool. But we’re not. We see him for the mealy-mouthed, whining, lying piece of crap that he is. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.

Daily Beast, Miserable Residents of South Carolina Town Fume at Billionaire Robert Kraft, Noah Kirsch, Updated July 29, 2021. Locals say the New England Patriots owner’s paper mill is spewing noxious gases and making them sick.

Scott Stevens says he doesn’t have a history of nosebleeds. Now he gets them all the time. “I feel like I have a runny nose. It’s actually blood,” the 43-year-old resident of Fort Mill, South Carolina, told The Daily Beast. The culprit, in Stevens’ mind: the New-Indy paper mill in nearby Catawba, which makes containerboard used for cardboard boxes.

About six months ago the mill significantly ramped up production, likely boosting revenues for its owners, including the billionaire chairman of the New England Patriots, Robert Kraft. Residents claim that caused a major spike in airborne pollutants—and that the company is doing little to help.

Stevens is far from alone. Locals have filed a staggering 27,000 complaints with the state’s Department of Health and Environmental Control, alleging that noxious gases like hydrogen sulfide are causing migraines, dizziness, vomiting, nosebleeds, and burning eyes. The fumes—which smell like rotten eggs, spoiled cabbage, or feces, depending on whom you ask—have proliferated as far as 30 miles away, an area encompassing more than 1.5 million people.

“We feel like we’re being poisoned and gassed in our homes,” says Karen Reilly, who lives seven miles from the plant, which The Kraft Group co-owns with another firm, Schwarz Partners.

“Please just ask Robert, like, ‘Why would you do this to people?’” says Jerry Wansack, who says he has suffered from severe congestion and burning eyes. “Why? Why? I mean, is it really that much about money?”

Jim Stover and Karen Reilly are among the local residents who say Robert Kraft’s paper plant is making their lives miserable.
Courtesy Jim Stover, Karen Reilly

Representatives and lawyers for New-Indy did not respond to requests for comment. Schwarz Partners also did not respond. A spokesperson for Robert Kraft simply directed The Daily Beast to the New-Indy Catawba website, which houses a daily emissions report and other public filings.

Nobody is alleging that the company has broken laws. Yet some locals do claim that the firm, and its owners, have downplayed their culpability and made harmful changes to their emissions control systems, like temporarily stopping use of a “steam stripper” that can filter out pollutants. The plant even sought a permit to increase production in April, despite ongoing environmental and health complaints.

“I’ve been a buyer for 16 years in manufacturing, and I’m going to go ahead and say that [it’s] to save money on operational costs,” says Kerri Bishop, a five-year resident of South Carolina who launched a Facebook page critical of New-Indy and Kraft. The 3,400-person group is flooded with messages from locals who blame the mill for a host of ailments.

During a site inspection this spring, the Environmental Protection Agency’s own employees experienced headaches, itchy eyes, and nausea. They found that the plant’s emissions were “presenting an imminent and substantial endangerment to public health.” Some residents have spent thousands of dollars installing air scrubbers in their homes. And at least three class-action lawsuits have been filed

Jan. 6 Capitol Riot, Insurrection

Washington Post, D.C. officer who had a heart attack during Capitol riot received vulgar, threatening voice mail for testifying, Jaclyn Peiser, July 29, 2021. As D.C. police officer Michael Fanone sat before nine House lawmakers Tuesday morning recounting his harrowing and traumatizing tale of defending the U.S. Capitol from a pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6, his phone rang on silent mode. The unknown caller left a voice mail.

“I wish they would have killed all you scumbags, ’cause you people are scum,” the man said, referring to the police officers.

“Too bad they didn’t beat … you more,” he added.

“They stole the election from Trump and you know that, you scumbag,” he said.

Fanone said he wanted to share the voice mail to remind people that many Americans believe the false, downplayed retelling of the events on Jan. 6 by Trump and several GOP lawmakers.

Former New York Republican State Senate candidate Daniel Christmann, shown circled in yellow inside the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection via an FBI photo.

Washington Post, A former New York senate candidate stormed the Capitol, then asked friends to delete video evidence, feds say, Andrea Salcedo, July 29, 2021). Daniel Christmann faces multiple charges over his role in the Capitol insurrection, according to a criminal complaint that was unsealed Wednesday. ( Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) )

That afternoon, Christmann walked around the building taking videos he posted to his @dannyforsenate account, according to a 19-page criminal complaint that was unsealed Wednesday.

Washington Post, GOP Rep. Clyde stands by comparison of Jan. 6 mob to ‘tourists’ when pressed by Democratic Rep. Raskin, John Wagner, July 29, 2021. The fiery clash between Raskin, Clyde on Jan. 6 ‘tourist’ label.

Rep. Andrew S. Clyde (R-Ga.), who infamously compared the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol to “a normal tourist visit,” steadfastly stood by his contention Tuesday night during an extended spirited exchange with Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.), right.

The clash came during a Rules Committee meeting several hours after Raskin had taken part in a House select committee hearing with four police officers who were on the scene when a violent mob of supporters of President Donald Trump breached the Capitol.

During the earlier hearing, Raskin questioned one of the officers, Daniel Hodges of the D.C. force, about Clyde’s comparison. Hodges rejected it, instead repeatedly using the word “terrorists” to describe those who took part in the riot.

During the Rules Committee meeting, Raskin pressed Clyde on whether he had watched the testimony of the officers earlier in the day.

Clyde, left, said that question was “absolutely irrelevant” to the matter in front of the Rules Committee.

“He refuses to say whether or not he heard the Capitol officers who risked their lives and have experienced traumatic medical injuries,” Raskin said. “That’s his prerogative.” Raskin then noted that the “tourist” comparison was rejected by Hodges.

Wayne Madsen Report, Opinion: WMR, UN should live up to its original mandate, Wayne Madsen, left, July 29, 2021.On January 1, 1942, during the Arcadia Conference in Washington, DC, the “Big Four” powers — the United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union, and the Republic of China — signed the Declaration of the United Nations. The four nations pledged to engage in a common struggle against the “savage and brutal forces” of fascism and Nazism that sought to “subjugate the world.”

World News, Corruption, Human Rights

The report, quoted by Maltese media, said the state had failed to recognise risks to the reporter’s life and take reasonable steps to avoid them.

Called a “one-woman Wikileaks”, Caruana Galizia, right, uncovered networks of corruption in the country and abroad.

Aged 53 when she died, she spent 30 years as a journalist. She relentlessly accused Maltese politicians and other officials of corruption in her popular Running Commentary blog.

Caruana Galizia’s family sought an independent public inquiry into her murder. Mr Muscat gave it the go-ahead, a few months before he resigned.

A fourth person, Maltese businessman Yorgen Fenech, has also been charged with complicity over the killing — an allegation he denies.

He was arrested in November 2019 as he tried to sail away from Malta on a yacht, and is now awaiting trial.

Washington Post, Opinion: A Saudi official’s harrowing account of torture reveals the regime’s brutality, David Ignatius, right, July 29, 2021. Salem Almuzaini was a senior official in the Saudi government. Then he was seized — and, he says, tortured — by the Saudi security forces he had once helped.

Held captive by Saudi agents, Salem Almuzaini, once an official of the regime, was beaten repeatedly on the soles of his feet, his back and his genitals, according to a harrowing account of his torture and captivity filed in a Canadian court. He says he was whipped, starved, battered with iron bars and electrocuted; he also describes being ordered to crawl on all fours and bark like a dog. Accompanying his report are graphic photos of Almuzaini’s extensive scars from injuries he said were inflicted by operatives of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS).

As set out in the court papers, Almuzaini was first seized in Dubai on Sept. 26, 2017, by United Arab Emirates security officials and sent to the kingdom; he vanished on Aug. 24, 2020, after visiting a senior Saudi state security official, and has not been seen since. His description of his treatment in the intervening years — at two Saudi prisons, and at Riyadh’s Ritz-Carlton hotel, where suspected opponents of the regime were detained in 2017 — offers a horrifying view of the lengths to which the regime under the crown prince, known as MBS, has gone to punish its perceived enemies.

His narrative, translated from Arabic and filed in June in an Ontario court, was sent via text message to the cellphone of his wife, Hissah, in September 2019, according to her family, with instructions that she release it if he were to disappear again. The chilling description, reminiscent of memoirs of suffering by political prisoners in Iran, Chile, South Africa and the Soviet Union, offers the most extensive personal account to date of the alleged brutal conduct of the Saudi regime.

“The days passed, and I continued to fear hearing the keys and the door opening,” Almuzaini writes at one point. “I didn’t know what was in store for me, whether torture or elimination.” He describes how one interrogator ordered him to kiss his shoe, then struck his head. “The sad irony is that there was no other agency I had helped more than the Mabahith and Special Affairs, and now I was under their arrest and subject to their torture,” Almuzaini writes of the Saudi secret police.

The degree of psychological torture and attempted dehumanization that Almuzaini describes is as horrifying as the physical abuse. At one point, his interrogator told him to reach into a box and choose a whip for his next beating; when he hesitated, the interrogator chose one and used it to lash Almuzaini while urinating. Almuzaini was instructed not to say his name, and instead refer to himself as “9,” At another point, he was ordered to eat his dinner off the floor, like a dog.

The Saudi Embassy in Washington, informed about the allegations of torture by Almuzaini and his wife, declined to comment, as did the embassy of the UAE.

Almuzaini, a graduate of the Saudi police academy, joined the Interior Ministry and supervised airline projects for Mohammed bin Nayef, who was then in charge of the ministry’s counterterrorism projects and later interior minister and crown prince. According to Almuzaini’s account, when MBN decided to create a private airline company called Alpha Star Aviation Services, he asked Almuzaini to run it. Later, when MBN formed his own commercial private airline company, Sky Prime Aviation, he asked Almuzaini to oversee it in Dubai.

Almuzaini’s alleged crime, judging from the questions he says he was asked by his torturers, was that he aided in a plot to skim money from the two airlines — something he says he denied throughout the torture sessions.

But Almuzaini’s real offense, as outlined in the court documents, may have been that he married Hissah, the daughter of Aljabri. MBS, right, a rival of MBN, has been pursuing Aljabri since 2017, when he deposed MBN as crown prince and Aljabri fled the kingdom. MBS has been trying to force him to return to the kingdom since then.

The alleged treatment of Almuzaini is just one example of MBS’s seeming obsession with Aljabri’s family. The crown prince blocked two of Aljabri’s then-teenage children, Omar and Sarah, from leaving the country in 2017, when he began his internal putsch to consolidate power and has used them as seeming hostages to try to force their father to return to the kingdom. Omar and Sarah are now imprisoned. I described their plight in The Post in June 2020, and it was featured in a recent report by Human Rights Watch. Aljabri’s friends, relatives and business associates have also been detained.

New York Times, Investigation: They Pooled Their Art to Create a Nest Egg. They Say It Was a Mistake, Robin Pogrebin and Siddhartha Mitter, July 29, 2021. Hundreds of artists entrusted thousands of works to a company, the Artist Pension Trust, on the promise of sharing in sale proceeds, but many say they haven’t heard anything for years.

It began as a worthy experiment: a fund to create some rare financial security for artists by having them pool their paintings and sculptures and sell the work years later when it had appreciated in value. Everyone would share in the proceeds.

A for-profit company, the Artist Pension Trust, hatched the idea in 2004 and promised to store, insure and market the works in exchange for a cut of the revenue. The venture got off to a promising start, fueled by the involvement of art world luminaries like the former Whitney Museum director David Ross and well-regarded curators who recruited emerging artists from around the world.

Over time, the company gathered more than 13,000 artworks from 2,000 artists in 75 countries, with an insured value of at least $70 million as of 2013, according to company records.

Given an unpredictable art market, in which artists rarely break out, do not benefit from auction sales and cannot count on long-term success, the pension trust offered an enticing model: When one artist got hot and sold work, all artists would share in the benefits.

The fund invited artists to contribute 20 pieces of their work over 20 years on the theory that some of the art would significantly appreciate before being sold. The contract did not specify when sales would happen, or project payouts. After 20 years, it said, artists would be able to reclaim their unsold works.

“It got people talking about this kind of collective action on the part of a large number of artists located around the world,” said Ross, who no longer works for the company. “I still think that’s a beautiful idea.”

The contracts gave artists the right to block lending their work for exhibition, though it did not give them the right to initiate lending, or commit to keeping them in the loop on where their artworks were. But over the trust’s first 10 years or so, artists said in interviews, arranging such loans was usually not an issue and they were typically told where their work was stored by regional directors who ran the various pools.

Those directors chose which artists to recruit by consulting with curators. Some of the artists quickly won recognition, including 14 who were featured in the 2008 Whitney Biennial, such as Edgar Arceneaux, Drew Heitzler, and Leslie Hewitt. Richard Wright, another trust artist, won the 2009 Turner Prize.

“There was a bit of pomp around it at the time, talking about it being exclusive,” said the Los Angeles sculptor Amanda Ross-Ho.

An early advisory board featured art world figures who gave artists comfort, such as the dealer Jeffrey Deitch and the artists Kiki Smith and John Baldessari — none of whom are still involved.

The first pool was established in New York and led by Pamela Auchincloss, a former gallery owner and head of an arts management company.

U.S. Media News

Justice Integrity Project, Whistleblower Summit This Week Highlights 50 Years of the Pentagon Papers and Investigative Journalism, Andrew Kreig, Updated July 29, 2021. The annual Whistleblower Summit & Film Festival this week continues to empower whistleblowers and advocates and encourages others to stand for truth. Film presentations began July 23 and the panel program begins Sunday with the program extending to Aug. 1.

The event presents more than 50 film screenings and panel presentations over ten days.

The films focus on whistleblowing, free speech/press freedom, civil and human rights, or social justice themes. Check out Film Festival Flix to see the titles, which are also listed below.

This year’s keynote speaker on July 30 will be former U.S. Department of Defense analyst Daniel Ellsberg, thereby marking the 50th year anniversary of his courageous release of what are now known as “The Pentagon Papers” disclosing scandalous aspects of the Pentagon’s secret operations during the then-raging Vietnam War.

Ellsberg, shown at left in a photo by the University of Massachusetts, which now houses his collected papers, made disclosures first via the New York Times and later via other news organizations that risked federal prosecution, as endured by Ellsberg. The late U.S. Sen. Mike Gravel (D-Alaska), right, who died last month, helped publicize the revelations by reading excerpts on the Senate floor.

This year’s Summit and Festival includes more than 30 documentary films and shorts, plus special segments. The segments include sessions led by the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), a co-host of the event, and the Government Accountability Project and the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), both long-time partners at the Summit. A day-long segment on July 30 by the National Whistleblower Center, another major partner, features prominent U.S. elected and appointed officials regarded as welcoming to whistleblowers and their causes.

This year’s expanded Pillar Award ceremony recognizes notable civil and human rights champions among politicians, community activists and journalists — including documentary filmmakers.

The Summit is organized in collaboration with such longtime partners as the Pacifica Foundation.

July 28

Top Headlines

Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell, previously a combat veteran, tears up during House testimony on July 27, 2021 (Associated Press pool photo).

Washington Post, ‘You will die on your knees’: D.C. officer recalls being pinned
Washington Post, Opinion: The select committee is already exceeding all expectations, Jennifer Rubin
Palmer Report, Opinion: January 6th Committee gets off to a roaring start, Shirley Kennedy
Washington Post, Opinion: As Jan. 6 hearings begin, Republicans side with the terrorists, Dana Milbank
New York Times, Politics Live Updates: Key Republicans Say They Are Ready to Advance Infrastructure Measure

Breaking News: U.S. Infrastructure

Washington Post, Bipartisan infrastructure pact clears key Senate vote after breakthrough in talks

Virus Victims, Responses

Washington Post, New CDC mask guidance could upend economy, return-to-work plans
Washington Post, House Republicans refuse to follow new mask mandate, leading Pelosi to call McCarthy a ‘moron’
Washington Post, Mask mandates are coming back, including in Vegas. Tourists aren’t happy
Washington Post, Biden plans to require federal workers to be vaccinated or undergo repeated tests
Washington Post, CDC urges vaccinated people in areas of high transmission to resume wearing masks indoors
New York Times, As Cases Rise, a New Feeling Spreads Among the Vaccinated: Anger
Washington Post, Evangelical pastor tells churchgoers to ditch their masks: ‘Don’t believe this delta variant nonsense,’
Washington Post, 189.5 million U.S. vaccinated
Worldometer, World & U.S. Coronavirus Case Totals, U.S. Deaths: 627,351

U.S. Law, Crime

Washington Post, Maryland man charged with threatening Anthony S. Fauci
Washington Post, Daniel Hale, who leaked information on U.S. drone warfare, sentenced to 45 months in prison
New York Times, Woman Faces Murder Charge After Man Who Was Shaken as Baby Dies at 35
Law & Crime, Trump Family Loses Big Appeals Court Fight to Force Fraud and Deceptive Practices Lawsuit into Secret Arbitration,

More On Trump Capitol Riot, Insurrection

Washington Post, ‘Some are still suffering’: Months after Capitol riot, police who fought the mob contend with physical, psychological pain
New York Times, ‘A Hit Man Sent Them’: Capitol Officers Recount the Horrors of Jan. 6
New York Times, How a Respected N.Y.P.D. Officer Became the Accused Capitol Riot #EyeGouger
New York Times, U.S. Declines to Defend Trump Ally in Lawsuit Over Jan. 6 Riot
Roll Call, GOP ‘holds’ threaten quick action on supplemental spending bill

U.S. Media News

New York Times, Trump Is Gone, but the Media’s Misinformation Challenge Is Still Here
Justice Integrity Project, Whistleblower Summit This Week Highlights 50 Years of the Pentagon Papers and Investigative Journalism

U.S. Politics, Governance

New York Times, Biden is traveling to Pennsylvania to promote U.S. manufacturing, but the Delta surge may draw the spotlight
New York Times, L.G.B.T.Q. Elected Officials in U.S. Number Nearly 1,000, Rising Fast
Politico, Investigation: “He’s a Great Guy’: Trump’s Favored Aide Has Troubled Past, Michael Kruse
New York Times, Jake Ellzey Defeats Widow of Former Congressman in Race for Texas Seat
Palmer Report, Opinion: Donald Trump just lost, Bill Palmer
Reuters, Jared Kushner to leave politics, launch investment firm: sources
Washington Post, Arizona cleanup bill could exceed $9 million after partisan election audit

World News

Wayne Madsen Report, Commentary: Travel intelligence analysts finally see some action after a year of Zoom conferences, Wayne Madsen
The Guardian, Democrats call for possible action against NSO over Pegasus revelations
New York Times, Hong Kong Protester Is Convicted in First Trial Under Tough Security Law

2020 Olympics

Washington Post, U.S. women’s gymnastics takes silver with Simone Biles out. Russian Olympic Committee wins gold
Washington Post, The Tokyo Olympics schedule, day by day

Top Stories

Washington Post, ‘You will die on your knees’: D.C. officer recalls being pinned, John Wagner, Kim Bellware, Karoun Demirjian, Marianna Sotomayor, Jacqueline Alemany and Mariana Alfaro, July 28, 2021 (print ed.). New video footage shows how D.C. police officer lost consciousness from insurrectionist’s violence; Rep. Murphy recalls being in proximity to officer pinned between rioters and Capitol door frame; ‘I guess it is America,’ Capitol Police officer says of racist abuse that Black officers faced.

Four police officers are delivering emotional testimony Tuesday about the physical and verbal abuse they endured defending the Capitol on Jan. 6 from a mob of supporters of President Donald Trump, as a House select committee holds its first hearing on the insurrection.

In an opening statement, Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), the panel’s chairman, pledged not to give ground to “the big lie” — Trump’s claim to have won the 2020 election — that he said propelled the attack. Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), one of two Republicans appointed to the panel by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), said no member of Congress should “whitewash what happened that day.”

A heavily disguised man invades the U.S. Capitol as part of the pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” protest carrying plastic “ties,” which are normally used by law enforcers to bind the wrists of suspects but which are used also by terrorists to subdue hostage victims.

Washington Post, Opinion: We have started investigating the attack on the Capitol. Nothing will be off-limits, Bennie G. Thompson, right, Bennie G. Thompson, a Democrat who represents Mississippi’s 2nd Congressional District in the U.S. House, is chairman of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.
New York Times, Opinion: I’m on the Jan. 6 Committee. Here Are the Questions I Want Answered, Adam Kinzinger (Mr. Kinzinger, a Republican, is a United States representative from Illinois)

Washington Post, Opinion: The select committee is already exceeding all expectations, Jennifer Rubin, right, July 28, 2021. Rarely does a congressional hearing manage to avoid grandstanding, uncover new and compelling evidence and exceed expectations. The Jan. 6 select committee managed to do all three.

Indeed, the surprises kept coming on Monday. The sincere and spontaneous emotional reactions from Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) and law enforcement officers stood as a rebuke to the cynicism of Republicans who continue to lie about the insurrection. It also rebuffed the media, which too often dabbles in bothsidesism, even to this day.

Kinzinger could barely get through his tribute to the officers’ bravery. “You guys won,” he said tearfully. “You guys held. Democracies are not defined by our bad days. We are defined by how we come back from bad days.”

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), left, who has pulled no punches concerning the insurrection, was even more emphatic in skewering her own party. “On Jan. 6 and in the days thereafter, almost all members of my party recognized the events of that day for what they actually were,” she said. She added, “No member of Congress should now attempt to defend the indefensible, obstruct this investigation or attempt to whitewash what happened that day.” It’s no wonder she gives Republican toadies the shakes, especially when she warns that failure to hold all those involved responsible would allow the cancer on our democracy to go unchecked. As she put it: “We must know what happened here at the Capitol. We must also know what happened every minute of that day in the White House. Every phone call. Every conversation. Every meeting leading up to, during, and after the attack.”

The use of clear language — Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.) spoke of “fascist traitors” while D.C. Police officer Daniel Hodges referred to “terrorists” — was a refreshing departure from mealy-mouth descriptions that obscure the violence and the ideology of the insurrectionists. It was critical to hear the granular description of that day, especially as it helps to expose the galling dishonesty and appalling bad of Republicans.

In particular, the thoughtfulness, constitutional sophistication and love of democracy that the four police officers displayed during their testimonies should serve as a model for the country:

Hodges explained “there is no moving on without accountability.”

Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn asked, “Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger are being lauded as courageous heroes. And while I agree with that notion, why? Because they told the truth? Why is telling the truth hard?” He remarked that when a hit man goes to jail, so too should the person who hired him. That sentiment should resonate with the Justice Department as it considers investigating and indicting those who enabled the insurrection. Asked whether what he witnessed was America, he candidly replied, “I guess it is America. It shouldn’t be, but I guess that’s the way that things are.”
D.C. Police officer Michael Fanone called the indifference shown to his colleagues by Republican members of Congress “disgraceful.”

The officers’ description of the racism and viciousness that insurrectionists directed toward police officers was a proper corrective following efforts to paint the crowd as peaceful. So, too, was Kinzinger’s moral clarity that debunked attempts by Republicans to create a false equivalence between the violence on Jan. 6 and largely peaceful Black Lives Matter protests. “There’s a difference between crimes, even grave crimes and a coup,” Kinzinger said.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s judgment in refusing to seat two Republicans bent on making a mockery of the committee proved wise. For 2½ hours, serious questions engendered serious answers. In place of flat-out lies or attempts to blame the victims of the attack for not being prepared, the hearing provided a poignant, precise account of the events of Jan. 6. It clarified who was defending democracy and who was seeking to destroy it. Without the antics of unhinged MAGA Republicans on the committee, a coherent narrative emerged.

Finally, if the Justice Department harbored any doubt that it should investigate whether there was any involvement in the attack by lawmakers or whether the former president’s incitement of the mob rose to the level of criminality, that vanished on Monday. The officers pleaded with the committee to find anyone who “collaborated” or spurred the attack. They are not willing to let bygones be bygones. None of us should. The Justice Department should follow the facts and indict anyone found to be criminally liable for the violent insurrection.

Palmer Report, Opinion: January 6th Committee gets off to a roaring start, Shirley Kennedy, July 28, 2021. Testimony before the select committee began, and it was heartbreaking. The four testifying officers emphasized why this incident needs to be thoroughly investigated. Live coverage of the opening testimony was carried by several outlets.

Sergeant Aquilino Gonell placed blame squarely at the feet of former “president” Donald Trump. He discussed the lack of support the Capitol police received from the White House: “What he was doing, instead of sending the military, instead of sending support or telling his people, his supporters, to stop this nonsense, he begged them to continue fighting.” Trump caused this violence and sat on his hands, gleefully watching because it was all about him. All four officers were still visibly shaken.

Officer Michael Fanone was extremely passionate, pounding the table as he spoke. What bothers Fanone the most is not that he almost died but the fact that Republicans continue pretending January 6 never happened. He told the committee: “I feel like I went to hell and back to protect them and the people in this room.” As Officer Fanone said, this is disgraceful. How do Republicans sleep as night espousing their nonsense to the public? How can they claim to represent anyone when all they do is lie and obfuscate? Every one of them should be driven out of office, except for Cheney and Kinzinger, whose raw emotions were visible as he spoke.

The officers who came to the aid of Congressmembers suffered at the hands of these thugs, and Officer Harry Dunn shared that for the first time while in uniform, he was called the “n” word. These are Trump’s people. Make no mistake about that. These crude, violent, vile people are who Trump said he “loves,” and they are the ones whose votes are being courted by other Republicans. They should be ashamed to associate themselves with them, but their desire for power is far too great. They could care less what these people did and what many of them will do in the future. It is doubtful that they have enough feeling to understand Adam Kinzinger’s words ripping into them, but that is exactly what he did.

Kinzinger discussed the importance of self-governance and the truth, which is owed to the American people. He said that is why he agreed to serve on the committee; he also wants the truth and “to get the facts out there, free of conspiracy.” Kinzinger further voiced his shame that his fellow Republicans have turned the incident into a partisan fight, when it is nothing of the sort. It is a fight for the truth and a fight for our democracy.

Republicans showed their indifference by refusing to help Democrats form a bipartisan committee to hold these hearings. Now, Kevin McCarthy thinks it is a joke, referring to Cheney and Kinzinger as “Pelosi Republicans.” Laugh while you can, Kevin. You and those like you are a disgrace to this country. Officer Daniel Hodges told the committee: “This was a fight we could not afford to lose.” We must let his words drive us into the battle for our democracy, which we also cannot afford to lose.

Washington Post, Opinion: As Jan. 6 hearings begin, Republicans side with the terrorists, Dana Milbank, right, July 28, 2021 (print ed.). The select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol held its first hearing Tuesday, and Republican lawmakers took the occasion to demand justice — for the terrorists who took up arms against the U.S. government on that terrible day.

Six Republican members of the House, escorted by a man in a giant Trump costume bearing the message “TRUMP WON,” marched on the Justice Department Tuesday afternoon to speak up for those they called “political prisoners” awaiting trial for their roles in the insurrection.

“These are not unruly or dangerous, violent criminals,” Rep. Paul Gosar (Ariz.) proclaimed at a news conference outside DOJ headquarters. “These are political prisoners who are now being persecuted and bearing the pain of unjust suffering.”

The half-dozen lawmakers, including Matt Gaetz of Florida and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, made explicit what has become more obvious by the day: Republicans stand with those who attempted a violent coup on Jan. 6. And it’s not just the wingnuts. House Republican leaders held a news conference before the hearing, blaming Jan. 6 not on seditionists but on Capitol Police and, particularly, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

With the Capitol Dome behind her, Rep. Elise Stefanik (N.Y.), left, the House Republican conference chair, proclaimed: “The American people deserve to know the truth: that Nancy Pelosi bears responsibility, as speaker of the House, for the tragedy that occurred on Jan. 6.” Stefanik charged that Pelosi “doesn’t want a fair or bipartisan investigation.”

Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana, one of the saboteurs House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy had tried to place on the select committee, announced that Capitol Police “weren’t trained” adequately and that “Nancy Pelosi is ultimately responsible.”

The Republican whip, Steve Scalise (La.), right, repeatedly accused Pelosi of a “coverup” about Jan. 6. And Rep. Troy Nehls (Tex.) denounced fellow Republicans Liz Cheney (Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), for serving on the select committee. “Those Pelosi Republicans aren’t interested in the truth,” he alleged. “We’re interested in the truth.”

Right. Seven of the eight Republicans standing there had voted down an independent, bipartisan commission negotiated by the top Republican on the House Homeland Security commission. And now they claim Pelosi is the one blocking a fair, bipartisan investigation? All this while faulting the Capitol Police, who at that very moment shielded them with a ring of officers, barriers, vehicles and a canine unit.

New York Times, Politics Live Updates: Key Republicans Say They Are Ready to Advance Infrastructure Measure, Staff Reports, July 28, 2021. The announcement, after weeks of negotiations, suggested the Senate could move forward soon on a bipartisan bill, a crucial piece of President Biden’s agenda. The bill would pump the largest infusion of federal money in more than a decade into the nation’s aging public works system. Here’s the latest in politics.

The announcement, after weeks of negotiations, suggested the Senate could move forward soon on a bipartisan bill.
Biden to sign an executive order aimed at protecting critical American infrastructure from cyberattacks.

Breaking News: U.S. Infrastructure

Washington Post, Bipartisan infrastructure pact clears key Senate vote after breakthrough in talks, Tony Romm, July 28, 2021. Measure has White House support. Portman, Sinema say all significant disagreements have been resolved around roughly $1 trillion package.

Virus Victims, Responses

Washington Post, New CDC mask guidance could upend economy, return-to-work plans, David J. Lynch and Abha Bhattarai,July 28, 2021. Corporate chief executives are growing worried about bringing workers back into crowded offices, with some privately discussing mandatory vaccination. The federal government’s abrupt about-face on the need for indoor mask-wearing is clouding prospects for Americans to return to the office in large numbers, raising fears that the ultra-infectious delta variant could threaten the economic recovery.

What just weeks ago seemed like a smooth return to pre-pandemic life suddenly felt shaky on Tuesday following the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s call for vaccinated individuals to resume indoor mask-wearing in high-risk areas.

Washington Post, House Republicans refuse to follow new mask mandate, leading Pelosi to call McCarthy a ‘moron,’ Marianna Sotomayor and John Wagner, July 28, 2021. Many House Republicans refused to wear masks on the House floor during a series of morning votes, before they called for the chamber to adjourn as GOP members rebuffed attempts by staff to get them to put on a mask.

Washington Post, Mask mandates are coming back, including in Vegas. Tourists aren’t happy, Bryan Pietsch, July 28, 2021. Nevada reinstalled a statewide mask mandate within hours of a CDC announcement that even vaccinated people should wear masks indoors in public in high-transmission areas.

New York Times, In Reversal, C.D.C. to Recommend Some Vaccinated People Wear Masks Indoors, Staff report, July 28, 2021 (print ed.). The agency is expected to reverse course on a decision made two months ago, saying that vaccinated people should wear masks indoors in certain areas of the country. Details are expected later today. The change follows surges in areas with low vaccination rates and reports of breakthrough infections with the Delta variant.

Reversing a decision made just two months ago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to recommend on Tuesday that people vaccinated for the coronavirus resume wearing masks indoors in certain areas of the country.

The change follows reports of rising breakthrough infections with the Delta variant of the virus in people who were fully immunized, and case surges in regions with low vaccination rates. The vaccines remain effective against the worst outcomes of infection with the virus, including those involving the Delta variant.

But the new guidance, the details of which are expected later Tuesday, would mark a sharp turnabout from the agency’s position since May that vaccinated people do not need to wear masks in most indoor spaces.

As recently as last week, an agency spokesman said that the C.D.C. had no plans to change its guidance, unless there were a significant change in the science. Federal officials met on Sunday night to review new evidence that may have prompted the reversal, CNN reported on Tuesday.

“I think that’s great,” said Dr. Celine Gounder, an infectious disease specialist at Bellevue Hospital Center in New York. Based on what scientists are learning about the Delta variant’s ability to cause breakthrough infections, she said, “this is a move in the right direction.”

As worries mount over the Delta variant, the U.S. retains travel bans and weighs tougher steps.
A program to aid the economy brings Mexican workers into San Diego for vaccinations.
New virus cases are falling in the U.K., baffling scientists.
U.S. students ended the pandemic school year 4 to 5 months behind, a new report finds.
As virus cases rise, another contagion spreads among the vaccinated: anger.
Lockdowns ease in parts of Australia, but Sydney’s outbreak swells.
Against the odds, tiny Bhutan rolls out a second round of mass vaccinations.
Outside the Olympic bubble, Tokyo sets a new daily record in coronavirus cases.

New York Times, As Cases Rise, a New Feeling Spreads Among the Vaccinated: Anger, Roni Caryn Rabin, July 28, 2021 (print ed.). The rising sentiment is contributing to support for more coercive measures, such as vaccine mandates. But experts warn that a tougher stance may backfire.

As coronavirus cases resurge across the country, many inoculated Americans are losing patience with vaccine holdouts who, they say, are neglecting a civic duty or clinging to conspiracy theories and misinformation even as new patients arrive in emergency rooms and the nation renews mask advisories.

The country seemed to be exiting the pandemic; barely a month ago, a sense of celebration was palpable. Now many of the vaccinated fear for their unvaccinated children and worry that they are at risk themselves for breakthrough infections. Rising case rates are upending plans for school and workplace reopenings, and threatening another wave of infections that may overwhelm hospitals in many communities.

“It’s like the sun has come up in the morning and everyone is arguing about it,” said Jim Taylor, 66, a retired civil servant in Baton Rouge, La., a state in which fewer than half of adults are fully vaccinated.

“The virus is here and it’s killing people, and we have a time-tested way to stop it — and we won’t do it. It’s an outrage.”

The rising sentiment is contributing to support for more coercive measures. Scientists, business leaders and government officials are calling for vaccine mandates — if not by the federal government, then by local jurisdictions, schools, employers and businesses.

“I’ve become angrier as time has gone on,” said Doug Robertson, 39, a teacher who lives outside Portland, Ore., and has three children too young to be vaccinated, including a toddler with a serious health condition.

Washington Post, Biden plans to require federal workers to be vaccinated or undergo repeated tests, Eli Rosenberg and Tyler Pager, July 28, 2021 (print ed.). New directive, planned for Thursday, comes as the White House tries to arrest the delta variant’s spread The plan is part of a change in tack by the White House in recent days as the delta variant has spread markedly through parts of the United States, particularly among unvaccinated Americans.

Washington Post, Evangelical pastor tells churchgoers to ditch their masks: ‘Don’t believe this delta variant nonsense,’ Jaclyn Peiser, July 28, 2021 (print ed.). Since the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, Greg Locke, the pastor at a Nashville-area church, has repeatedly called covid a hoax, undermined emergency mandates and refused to comply with guidance from public health officials.

This week, Locke took his defiance a step further, making a sharp warning regarding mask-wearing.

If “you start showing up [with] all these masks and all this nonsense, I will ask you to leave,” Locke, 45, told scores of Global Vision Bible Church parishioners during his sermon on Sunday. His statement was followed by cheers and applause.

“I am not playing these Democrat games up in this church,” he added.

Locke’s fiery five-minute diatribe, in which he also denied the existence of the delta variant, comes as vaccination rates in his home state slow and infection rates climb. So far, about 44 percent of Tennesseans have received at least one dose of the vaccine, according to the Washington Post’s vaccine tracker, making it among the states with the lowest rate. The state recently reported that 98 percent of people who died of covid and 97 percent of covid hospitalizations are among the unvaccinated.

Locke’s evangelical church in Mount Juliet, Tenn., about 20 miles east of downtown Nashville, has grown during the pandemic, CNN reported. The pastor’s controversial commentary on covid and the 2020 presidential election has attracted far-right churchgoers.

During a sermon last month, Locke called President Biden a fraud and “a sex trafficking, demon-possessed mongrel,” a reference to QAnon, an extremist ideology based on false claims.

He h+as also falsely claimed the pandemic is “fake,” the death count is “manipulated,” and the vaccine is a “dangerous scam.”

And the pastor has preached misinformation about the vaccine, including falsely claiming it’s made of “aborted fetal tissue.”

Washington Post, 189.5 million U.S. vaccinated, as of July 28, 2021, the number of people who have received at least one dose of the vaccine. This includes more than 163.6 million people fully vaccinated.

Worldometer, World & U.S. Coronavirus Case Totals (updated July 28, 2021, with some governments reporting lower numbers than the totals here and some experts saying the numbers are far higher, as the New York Times reported in India’s true pandemic death toll is likely to be well over 3 million, a new study finds):

World Cases: 196,155,146, Deaths: 4,196,619
U.S. Cases:     35,353,923, Deaths:    627,351
India Cases:     31,484,605, Deaths:    422,054
Brazil Cases: 19,749,073, Deaths:    551,906

More On Trump Capitol Riot, Insurrection

Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell, previously a combat veteran, tears up during testimony on July 27, 2021 (Associated Press pool photo).

New York Times, ‘A Hit Man Sent Them’: Capitol Officers Recount the Horrors of Jan. 6, Luke Broadwater and Nicholas Fandos, July 28, 2021 (print ed.). At the first hearing of the House panel investigating the Capitol riot, an officer begged lawmakers to uncover the full extent of former President Trump’s role.

One officer described how rioters attempted to gouge out his eye and called him a traitor as they sought to invade the Capitol.

Another told of being smashed in a doorway and nearly crushed amid a “medieval” battle with a pro-Trump mob as he heard guttural screams of pain from fellow officers.

A third said he was beaten unconscious and stunned repeatedly with a Taser as he pleaded with his assailants, “I have kids.”

A fourth relayed how he was called a racist slur over and over again by intruders wearing “Make America Great Again” garb.

“All of them — all of them were telling us, ‘Trump sent us,’” Aquilino A. Gonell, a U.S. Capitol Police sergeant, said on Tuesday as he tearfully recounted the horrors of defending Congress on Jan. 6, testifying at the first hearing of a House select committee to investigate the attack.

One by one, in excruciating detail, Sergeant Gonell and three other officers who faced off with the hordes that broke into the Capitol told Congress of the brutal violence, racism and hostility they suffered as a throng of angry rioters, acting in the name of President Donald J. Trump, beat, crushed and shocked them.

New York Times, How a Respected N.Y.P.D. Officer Became the Accused Capitol Riot #EyeGouger, Michael Wilson, July 28, 2021 (print ed.). Thomas Webster, above in red vest, once was part of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s security detail. As he awaits trial, the retired cop is on the other side of the law.

The F.B.I. agents showed Thomas Webster a wanted flier with a picture taken during the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. In the photograph, a middle-aged man is shouting angrily across a metal barricade with a pole in his raised right hand.

“That’s a picture of you, right, Mr. Webster?” an agent asked, according to a transcript of the interview.

He was a former New York City police officer, a decorated member of the force who once worked as an instructor at the firing range and with a detail that protected the mayor at public appearances and at Gracie Mansion. But on this afternoon in February, sitting across from two agents in an interrogation room in Lower Manhattan, he found himself on the other side of the law.

He looked at the picture. “Yeah,” he said, and tried to explain how it all began.

“I kept on saying to myself, ‘All right, Tom, this is your first protest’ — I’ve never been to one before,” he told the agents. “I said, ‘Stay behind the freakin’ barrier, don’t threaten anyone and keep the flagpole away from everyone.’”

This plan would not last long — not more than a minute or two. Mr. Webster, in fact, quickly did the opposite, prosecutors said — starting a brawl that stood out, even amid the many hours of video from that day. Then he drove back home, to his wife and three children and his landscaping business in Florida, N.Y.

New York Times, U.S. Declines to Defend Trump Ally in Lawsuit Over Jan. 6 Riot, Katie Benner, July 28, 2021 (print ed.). The move could mean that the Justice Department is also unlikely to defend former President Donald J. Trump in the case.

The Justice Department declined on Tuesday to defend a congressional ally of former President Donald J. Trump in a lawsuit accusing them both of inciting supporters at a rally in the hours before the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol.

Law enforcement officials determined that Representative Mo Brooks, right, Republican of Alabama, was acting outside the scope of his duties in an incendiary speech just before the attack, according to a court filing. Mr. Brooks had asked the department to certify that he was acting as a government employee during the rally; had it agreed to defend him, he would have been dismissed from the lawsuit and the United States substituted as a defendant.

“The record indicates that Brooks’s appearance at the Jan. 6 rally was campaign activity, and it is no part of the business of the United States to pick sides among candidates in federal elections,” the Justice Department wrote.

“Members of Congress are subject to a host of restrictions that carefully distinguish between their official functions, on the one hand, and campaign functions, on the other.”

The Justice Department’s decision shows it is likely to also decline to provide legal protection for Mr. Trump in the lawsuit. Legal experts have closely watched the case because the Biden Justice Department has continued to fight for granting immunity to Mr. Trump in a 2019 defamation lawsuit where he denied allegations that he raped the writer E. Jean Carroll and said she accused him to get attention.

Such a substitution provides broad protections for government officials and is generally reserved for government employees sued over actions that stem from their work. In the Carroll case, the department cited other defamation lawsuits as precedent.

The Brooks decision also ran counter to the Justice Department’s longstanding broad view of actions taken in the scope of a federal employee’s employment, which has served to make it harder to use the courts to hold government employees accountable for wrongdoing.

Roll Call, GOP ‘holds’ threaten quick action on supplemental spending bill, Jennifer Shutt, July 28, 2021. Funds included for National Guard deployments, Afghan relocation. A $2.1 billion emergency spending bill to bolster Capitol Hill security, reimburse the National Guard and relocate Afghans who helped the U.S. government during two decades of war in that country stalled Wednesday after several Senate Republicans put holds on the bill.

Senate Appropriations ranking member Richard C. Shelby, R-Ala., said as many as seven lawmakers have objections to the $1.1 billion the legislation would provide to help relocate Afghans to ensure their safety as U.S. troops withdraw.

“I believe we have an obligation to the Afghan people who are our allies, who helped us. We know what’s going to happen to a lot of those people,” Shelby said, adding that it would be “shameful” not to help those Afghans now.

The package would provide $521 million to reimburse the National Guard for the cost of activating troops from throughout the country to protect the Capitol for months following the Jan. 6 attack.

The U.S. Capitol Police would receive $70 million for salaries, equipment and other expenses related to the insurrection by pro-Trump rioters. And the Architect of the Capitol would get $300 million to bolster windows and doors throughout the complex and to install new security cameras.

The bill would also appropriate $42.1 million to the Architect of the Capitol, the Sergeant at Arms and the Capitol Police to assist the agencies with COVID-19.

Washington Post, ‘Some are still suffering’: Months after Capitol riot, police who fought the mob contend with physical, psychological pain
Washington Post, Opinion: Merrick Garland, don’t politicize the pursuit of justice, Jennifer Rubin
Reuters, Biden nominates top prosecutors, including one to oversee Jan. 6 riot cases

U.S. Media News

New York Times, Trump Is Gone, but the Media’s Misinformation Challenge Is Still Here, Marc Tracy, July 28, 2021 (print ed.). Should news outlets contextualize false claims made by powerful people? Or ignore them completely? There is no consensus in the industry, but its thinking continues to evolve.

In American life, truth is now contested. And while this has profoundly affected the country’s politics, and so much else, it has raised unique challenges for one group in particular: journalists.

After all, the high-profile Republicans who are obfuscating the events of Jan. 6 are undeniably newsworthy. Ms. Stefanik is the third-ranking House Republican; Mr. Johnson may seek re-election in a pivotal Senate race; polls indicate that Mr. Trump would be the commanding front-runner if he seeks the Republican presidential nomination in three years.

Their political influence would normally demand coverage. Yet journalists will never feel comfortable publishing anything they know to be false. Social media has also raised the stakes of airing misleading statements, even in the service of conveying the news. If a lie can make it halfway around the world before the truth can get its pants on, then maybe the act of printing a falsehood and debunking it in the next sentence is just giving the falsehood a head start.

Mainstream outlets have tried to square this circle by contextualizing problematic quotes and allegations. But this is difficult to do well, and it may be impossible to strike the exactly correct balance.

Justice Integrity Project, Whistleblower Summit This Week Highlights 50 Years of the Pentagon Papers and Investigative Journalism, Andrew Kreig, Updated July 28, 2021. The annual Whistleblower Summit & Film Festival this week continues to empower whistleblowers and advocates and encourages others to stand for truth. Film presentations began July 23 and the panel program begins Sunday with the program extending to Aug. 1.

The event presents more than 50 film screenings and panel presentations over ten days.

The films focus on whistleblowing, free speech/press freedom, civil and human rights, or social justice themes. Check out Film Festival Flix to see the titles, which are also listed below.

This year’s expanded Pillar Award ceremony recognizes notable civil and human rights champions among politicians, community activists and journalists — including documentary filmmakers.

The Summit is organized in collaboration with such longtime partners as the Pacifica Foundation.

Click here for schedule and ticket information for the sessions. Please note that this is a corrected link, https://filmfestivalflix.com/Whistleblower/Purchase-Tickets/%20, from one previously published here. The panels may all be accessed for free, with film views purchased either individually or with a full-conference pass for $150. To access the panels, register and then locate the panels section at the top of the next page. Click on your preferred panel. Registration is for functionality and security purposes. So, you have to be registered and logged into your Film Festival Flix (FFF) account to activate the Zoom links. Here is a short video that informs you how to create a Film Festival Flix account if you have a problem: https://vimeo.com/578502564

Sussman, right, was Washington Post city editor when DC police arrested burglars for breaking into a suite of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office and residential complex in Washington, DC. Sussman was soon named special Watergate editor, helping direct the coverage that won a Pulitzer grand prize for the newspaper. In 1974, he authored The Great Cover-up: Nixon and the Scandal of Watergate, a best-seller and widely praised account whose fifth edition will be published at the end of this year with an update focused on the enduring lessons for today of the abuses of presidential power that the scandal uncovered.

This panel is rare because critics such as Hougan and O’Connor of the Post’s coverage almost never appear alongside the most noted Watergate-era journalists or officials.

Hougan, former Washington editor of Harper’s Magazine, and O’Connor, a prominent San Francisco attorney who represented the late former FBI Associate Director Mark Felt, are at the forefront of such criticism, which tends to focus on the role of the CIA and on other elements of the scandal that critics regard as under-reported by major news organizations.

In 1984, Hougan, shown at left, authored Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat and the CIA. By then, he had authored two previous books, with one focused on private spies affecting American civic and government operations. In Secret Agenda, he reported that “accounts of the break-in have been deliberately falsified by a CIA cover story” and that “The President was spied upon by his own intelligence agents.” He reported also, “False evidence was planted for the FBI to find…Sexual espionage and not election politics was at the heart of it all.”

Hougan’s book is one of a score or so volumes since then illuminating such themes. Another pioneering effort was Silent Coup by the late Len Colodny and his co-author Robert Gettlin in 1991 (republished in 2015). These books included accounts by CIA-affiliated burglary participants such as G. Gordon Liddy and James McCord, and accounts by whistleblowers and historians. One multi-year research project by USA Today DC Enterprise Editor Ray Locker, who as a Tampa-based reporter had met Colodny, resulted in Nixon’s Gamble (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016) and Haig’s Coup: How Richard Nixon’s Closest Aide Forced Him From Office (University of Nebraska Press, 2019). Both Gettlin, now retired from a career in journalism and as an executive in a federal inspector general’s office, and Locker have spoken at previous Whistleblower Summit conferences.

In O’Connor’s Postgate published in 2019, he argued that famed Washington Post reporter and editor Bob Woodward and his powerful allies within the news and publishing industries “betrayed” Woodward’s’ source Mark Felt, who became O’Connor’s client beginning in 2005 after O’Connor confirmed that the aging and memory-impaired former FBI executive had been “Deep Throat.”

O’Connor, left, argues that Woodward and his allies have sought to diminish Felt through malicious tactics to preserve what O’Connor describes as “historically significant misrepresentations woven throughout the Post’s Watergate journalism.”

The 64-minute panel was organized and moderated by this editor (Andrew Kreig), a former newspaper reporter during the 1970s and more recently director of the Justice Integrity Project, and, among other civic volunteer efforts, a member of the Colodny Collection Board of Advisors at Texas A & M University. The advisory board includes the university’s liberal arts college dean, Dr. Jerry Jones, among the 24 author, historian and other research members. The collection houses some 500 tape-recorded interviews by Colodny and his co-author Gettlin of key figures in the scandal and its follow-ups.

Colodny died last month in Florida after working exhaustively for many years to help new researchers, including this editor and the university. Colodny and the university have been digitizing the research to make the materials more widely available, including via the site Watergate.com.

Shown below at the bottom of an appendix is additional information on this panel’s participants, their credentials and their views.

More generally, the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) published on Friday a lengthy account of the program, including a special focus on its own SPJ panel presentation July 27. That panel describes new government restrictions on reporters’ access to newsmaking officials and public records. The SPJ account, a listing of the films being shown and other event details are provided on a runover-page below.

The film program began on July 23 and continues through the weekend before the opening plenary session July 26. The schedule is here. Each film will be available at the scheduled release time and date, and available for viewing also 72 hours after its release window.

U.S. Law, Crime

Washington Post, Maryland man charged with threatening Anthony S. Fauci, Emily Davies, July 28, 2021 (print ed.). Prosecutors allege that Thomas Patrick Connally Jr., 56, also threatened Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health.

A 56-year-old man from Maryland has been charged with threatening to harm Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, and Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health.

The criminal complaint, made public Tuesday, accused Thomas Patrick Connally Jr. of sending emails detailing the ways in which the leading health experts and their families would die.

“You and your entire family will be dragged into the street, beaten to death, and set on fire,” he allegedly wrote in one of several emails to Fauci, according to the complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Maryland.

The profanity-laced emails allegedly revealed ardent disapproval of “mandatory vaccines,” though the government has not imposed any such mandate. He also accused Fauci of engaging in an “HIV scam,” according to the affidavit in support of the criminal complaint.

Fauci’s security is stepped up as he receives threats

The investigation grew out of a government response last year to an increasing number of threats directed at Fauci, with the Department of Health and Human Services’ inspector general’s office vetting the threats. The charge landed in court as the federal government is under pressure by some to curb the spread of the highly transmissible delta variant of the coronavirus with more-stringent mask and vaccine mandates and by others to maintain what they view as the freedoms necessary to live as they please.

“I came to believe that the policy of drone assassination was being used to mislead the public that it keeps us safe… I began to speak out, believing my participation in the drone program to have been deeply wrong”

— Whistleblower Daniel Hale, who was sentenced July 27, after pleading guilty to violating the Espionage Act by leaking classified information about the U.S. targeted drone assassination program. (Source: Bob Hayes/handout)

Washington Post, Daniel Hale, who leaked information on U.S. drone warfare, sentenced to 45 months in prison, Rachel Weiner, July 28, 2021 (print ed.). In 2013, Daniel Hale was at an antiwar conference in D.C. when a man recounted that two family members had been killed in a U.S. drone strike. The Yemeni man, through tears, said his relatives had been trying to encourage young men to leave al-Qaeda.

Hale realized he had watched the fatal attack from a base in Afghanistan. At the time, he and his colleagues in Air Force intelligence viewed it as a success. Now he was horrified.

It was such experiences, Hale told a federal judge in Alexandria, Va., on Tuesday, that led him to leak classified information about drone warfare to a reporter after leaving the military.

“I believe that it is wrong to kill, but it is especially wrong to kill the defenseless,” he said in court. He said he shared what “was necessary to dispel the lie that drone warfare keeps us safe, that our lives are worth more than theirs.”

U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady sentenced Hale, 33, of Nashville, to 45 months in prison for violating the Espionage Act, saying his disclosure of documents went beyond his “courageous and principled” stance on drones.

“You are not being prosecuted for speaking out about the drone program killing innocent people,” O’Grady said. “You could have been a whistleblower … without taking any of these documents.”

Hale’s attorneys and advocates argued that the disclosures provided a valuable public service. The documents included a report finding that reliance on deadly attacks was undermining intelligence gathering. During one five-month stretch of an operation in Afghanistan, the documents revealed, nearly 90 percent of the people killed were not the intended targets.

Hale also disclosed the criteria for placing a person on the terrorism watch list, information that Muslim civil rights lawyers said in a letter to the court had helped them challenge the constitutionality of that system.

“I believe he only spoke out for humanitarian and educational purposes,” journalist Sonia Kennebeck told the court in a letter. She featured Hale in a 2016 documentary about drone warfare.

Prosecutors countered that Hale had put Americans at risk to boost his own ego. They noted that he began taking classified information to his home only a few weeks into a job at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency in 2014, not long after swearing to preserve the government’s secrets.

“Hale did not in any way contribute to the public debate about how we fight wars,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Kromberg said in court. “All he did was endanger the people who are doing the fighting.”

Friends and family members said military service was an awkward fit for Hale, who suffered from mental health issues throughout his life. His attorney said he joined the Air Force to escape an abusive atmosphere in a poor, fundamentalist home.

“Recently, someone asked me to tell them a happy memory I have with Daniel,” his sister wrote to the court. “Sadly, this was not an easy task.”

But Hale tested well and was steered into signals intelligence. He went to Afghanistan in 2012. When he left the following year, he said, he already had deep misgivings about the work he had done. He recalled in a letter to the judge learning after one drone strike on a car that a small child had been killed and another seriously injured. He wondered whether any of the other strikes he had helped carry out had killed innocent civilians deemed “enemy combatants” by virtue of being male and of military age.

“You had to kill part of your conscience to keep doing your job,” he said in court Tuesday.

New York Times, Woman Faces Murder Charge After Man Who Was Shaken as Baby Dies at 35, Neil Vigdor, July 28, 2021. Terry McKirchy was arrested after a grand jury indicted her in the death of Benjamin Dowling, who was disabled after his parents left him in her care.

A former babysitter who served a few months in jail for shaking a 5-month-old boy so forcefully 37 years ago that he suffered permanent brain damage now faces a possible life sentence after his death from those injuries in 2019, at age 35, the authorities said.

Terry McKirchy, 59, who now lives in Texas, was arrested again on July 2 after a grand jury in Broward County, Fla., indicted her on a first-degree murder charge in the death of Benjamin Dowling, prosecutors said this week.

Law & Crime, Trump Family Loses Big Appeals Court Fight to Force Fraud and Deceptive Practices Lawsuit into Secret Arbitration, Colin Kalmbacher, July 28, 2021. Former president Donald Trump, his prized family business, the Trump Organization, and three of his adult children, Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Eric Trump, all suffered a significant legal setback in a federal appeals court opinion issued Wednesday morning.

For years the Trump family and its namesake entity have fought to keep a potentially ugly pyramid scheme lawsuit from being litigated in the public sphere. The 45th first family’s weapon of choice to keep those details under wraps was private and compelled arbitration clauses.

In a 43-page opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit denied the Trump family’s request to settle the numerous complaints against them behind the veil, and with the help, of arbitrators.

“The truth or falsity of the plaintiffs’ allegations is not before us,” Circuit Judge Robert D. Sack wrote. “We neither express nor imply any views with respect to them. The only question before us is whether this case should be resolved before the district court or an arbitrator.”

An attorney for the plaintiffs praised the court’s decision via Twitter.

“We look forward to resuming discovery in this case about a fraud on hard-working Americans perpetrated by Donald Trump and three of his adult children,” Roberta Kaplan tweeted. “We’re eager to receive the documents etc. requested from ACN, MGM and the parties so that we can begin taking depositions ASAP.”

Procedural in nature, the ruling is still a solid victory for the plaintiffs. And, though the court insisted the merits were not at stake, the alleged facts and details of the case loom large in the panel’s decision here.

Asserting myriad claims including “racketeering,” conspiracy and fraud, several class action plaintiffs originally sued the Trumps in October 2018 alleging the defendants – by way of “videos, print and online media” – promoted and endorsed a sure-fire loser of a multi-level marketing, or pyramid, scheme known as ACN Opportunity, LLC.

Those endorsements came, the anonymous plaintiffs allege, even though the various Trumps at issue failed to conduct due diligence about the likelihood of economic losses and the slim probability of commercial success from such schemes. And, as it turns out, each of the plaintiffs produced evidence to show that the vast majority of people who were convinced to become “Independent Business Owners” for ACN went on to suffer losses or earned minimal profits.

Instead, the plaintiffs claim, the Trump family simply parroted ACN’s allegedly untrue claims because they were being paid millions of dollars. And those pay-for-play payments to the Trumps were not publicly disclosed at the time their endorsements were made.

From the court’s opinion:

The four pseudonymous plaintiffs are persons of modest financial means who maintain that they fell victim to the defendants’ allegedly fraudulent scheme to induce consumers to invest in ACN by making false and misleading promotional statements about ACN’s business. The defendants allegedly concealed the fact that they were paid handsomely by ACN for what purported to be unsolicited endorsements.

More specifically, the plaintiffs allege that in exchange for millions of dollars in secret payments from ACN to the defendants between 2005 and 2015, the defendants fraudulently promoted and endorsed ACN as offering legitimate business opportunities that were likely to afford IBOs success. The defendants allegedly misled consumers, including the plaintiffs, to believe that: (1) IBOs would have a reasonable likelihood of commercial success if they invested in ACN; (2) the defendant Donald J. Trump was independently promoting and endorsing the ACN business opportunity because he thought that it offered a reasonable probability of commercial success for investors; and (3) Mr. Trump’s endorsement was predicated on the defendants’ due diligence, familiarity with ACN and its business, and personal experience with ACN. The defendants conveyed this message in various forums, including at ACN events, in ACN recruiting publications and videos, and on two episodes of “The Celebrity Apprentice” television show, where contestants seeking a job at the Trump Organization promoted ACN. The defendants’ message was critical, the plaintiffs assert, in convincing consumers – including them – to invest in ACN as IBOs.

“This message, however, was allegedly materially false,” Sack’s opinion goes on. “Contrary to the defendants’ representations that ACN’s business opportunity was a low-risk entrepreneurial venture that offered investors a viable source of income, investigations by regulatory agencies allegedly have demonstrated that ACN’s business was high-risk and that investors had a minimal likelihood of commercial success.”

The alleged facts are only cited by the court as relevant background to explain the basis of the legal claims. And, again, the merits (or lack thereof) viz. those allegations are not really what the court relied on here. This is, at the present stage, a procedural battle. But those facts are important to note because of the case’s procedural history.

At first, the Trumps litigated the lawsuits in the court system and successfully batted away a few of the causes of action – including the headline-generating racketeering claim. After winning those victories, however, and failing to secure a motion to dismiss, the Trumps moved to have the remaining claims settled by secretive arbitration.

Last April, a district court in New York City declined to allow the arbitrators newfound purview over the matter.

“These wins and benefits on the defense side represent defeats and prejudice on the Plaintiffs’ side,” Judge Lorna G. Schofield noted. “Now that Defendants have extracted what they can from the judicial proceedings, they seek to move to a different forum. This conduct is both substantively prejudicial towards Plaintiffs and seeks to use the [Federal Arbitration Act (FAA)] as a vehicle to manipulate the rules of procedure to Defendants’ benefit and Plaintiffs’ harm.”

The next month, a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York refused to stay the decision pending appeal. So, the lawsuit moved forward.

U.S. Governance, Politics

New York Times, Biden is traveling to Pennsylvania to promote U.S. manufacturing, but the Delta surge may draw the spotlight, Annie Karni, July 28, 2021. President Biden is set to travel on Wednesday to Lehigh Valley, Pa., to bolster support for his infrastructure package as bipartisan negotiations near a make-or-break point.

But a backslide in the country’s progress toward ending the coronavirus pandemic threatened to overshadow the trip, the president’s sixth visit to the critical swing state since taking office. On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called for universal masking in schools and told vaccinated Americans that they should begin wearing masks again in the many counties in the country where the virus is surging.

Speaking and touring a Lehigh Valley plant that produces Mack Trucks, Mr. Biden was expected to underscore the importance of American manufacturing and unveil a new proposal that seeks to support domestic production by increasing the amount of U.S.-made products purchased by the federal government.,

New York Times, L.G.B.T.Q. Elected Officials in U.S. Number Nearly 1,000, Rising Fast, Shane Goldmacher, July 28, 2021. Every state but Mississippi now has at least one L.G.B.T.Q. elected official, a new report says. Most are Democrats, and anti-Trump fervor spurred many to run.

The number of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender elected officials has continued to surge, growing by about 17 percent in the last year to nearly 1,000 nationwide — more than double the number just four years ago, according to a new annual report.

Their ranks now include two governors, two United States senators, nine members of Congress, 189 state legislators and 56 mayors, according to the report from the L.G.B.T.Q. Victory Institute, which provides training to candidates seeking public office. All told, the group identified 986 L.G.B.T.Q. elected officials.

“There are more L.G.B.T.Q. folks who are taking the plunge and deciding to run for office,” said Annise Parker, the institute’s president and chief executive. The mayor of Houston from 2010 to 2016, Ms. Parker was one of the first openly gay mayors of a major American city.

This is the fifth year that the institute has surveyed the nation, and total L.G.B.T.Q. representation in elected offices has risen to 986 today, from 843 in 2020, 698 in 2019 and 448 in 2017, out of roughly a half-million elective positions.

Of all racial groups, Black L.G.B.T.Q. elected officials grew at the fastest rate in the last year, with a 75 percent increase in representation, according to the report. The number of multiracial L.G.B.T.Q. elected officials rose by 40 percent.

The institute tracks federal officeholders, statewide officials, state legislators, as well as municipal and judicial officials. Every state except Mississippi now has at least one elected officeholder who identifies as L.G.B.T.Q., the report said.

Politico, Investigation: “He’s a Great Guy’: Trump’s Favored Aide Has Troubled Past, Michael Kruse, July 28, 2021. Sources say Max Miller has a history of aggressive behavior that includes slapping his ex-girlfriend, former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham. “Max Miller,” said Donald Trump.

The former president stood behind the microphone at the lectern at one of the most recent of his trademark rallies late last month at the county fairgrounds here and told the thousands who had gathered to support him to also support Miller—the staunch former aide Trump eagerly tapped to try to unseat Anthony Gonzalez, one of the 10 Republican members of the House of Representatives who voted to impeach Trump, in the intensifying bellwether of the GOP primary in Ohio’s 16th congressional district.

“Great guy,” Trump said of Miller.

Miller, 32, is the poster child of Trump’s post-impeachment retribution tour. In his mounting efforts to punish Republican apostates in next year’s midterms and to bolster his political sway for a potential run of his own in 2024, Trump has endorsed an array of supportive candidates in House, Senate and state-level races—but there’s nobody on the list like Miller. He’s not merely a loyalist—he’s a loyalist who worked on both Trump campaigns as well as in the White House and used proximity to the president to foster by all accounts an actual affinity and rapport. He’s not just one of Trump’s “Complete and Total” House endorsements—he was the first. And he’s pitted against one of the impeachment voters who galls Trump the most—in a state he won twice. While the statement that accompanied Trump’s late February endorsement called Miller “a wonderful person,” this rally on a sweltering summer Saturday marked a yet more full-throated and visual showing of his backing.

“An incredible patriot,” Trump said, “who I know very well.”

Maybe not well enough, according to police records, court records and interviews with more than 60 people. Ranging from people who grew up with Miller in the affluent Cleveland inner suburb of Shaker Heights to those he worked with and for in the White House and on Trump’s campaigns—some of whom were granted anonymity because they fear retaliation from Miller, Trump or both—these people told me Miller can be a cocky bully with a quick-trigger temper. He has a record of speeding, underage drinking and disorderly conduct—documented charges from multiple jurisdictions that include a previously unreported charge in 2011 for driving under the influence that he subsequently pleaded down to a more minor offense.

And barely more than a year ago, according to three people familiar with the incident, Miller’s romantic relationship with former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham ended when he pushed her against a wall and slapped her in the face in his Washington apartment after she accused him of cheating on her.

Grisham declined to comment. Through his attorney, Miller denied that this happened. “Mr. Miller has never, ever assaulted Ms. Grisham in any way whatsoever,” the attorney, Larry Zukerman of Cleveland, wrote in a nine-page letter.

New York Times, Jake Ellzey Defeats Widow of Former Congressman in Race for Texas Seat, David Montgomery, Updated July 28, 2021. Mr. Ellzey, a state representative, was victorious in a runoff against Susan Wright, whose husband had represented the Sixth Congressional District before he died of Covid-19.
The widow of a Texas congressman who died early this year of Covid-19 lost to a freshman state representative on Tuesday in a special runoff election between Republicans seeking to fill the vacant House seat.

State Representative Jake Ellzey, who narrowly missed capturing the Republican nomination for the seat in 2018, defeated Susan Wright, whose husband, Ron Wright, died in February about two weeks after testing positive for the coronavirus. Mr. Ellzey obtained 53.3 percent of the vote and will join the second-largest congressional delegation — 23 Republicans and 13 Democrats — in the U.S. House behind California.

Mr. Ellzey, basking in what he described as “a great day of celebration,” credited his victory to a positive message that played well among his future constituents.

“I believe in a brighter tomorrow, and a great country, and that our best days are ahead of us,” he said in a telephone interview.

Mr. Ellzey, 51, was elected to serve the remainder of Mr. Wright’s unexpired term, which ends in January 2023, but he will quickly start running for a full two-year term in next year’s election.

Palmer Report, Opinion: Donald Trump just lost, Bill Palmer, July 28, 2021. It’s puzzling how many Republican office holders are still afraid of Donald Trump, given that his endorsements have never counted for all that much when it comes to winning. Even when Trump was in office, the candidates he endorsed would often end up losing. Trump was always able to get people to turn out for rallies, but not at the ballot box. Now that he’s gone from office and his favorability rating is in the toilet, it’s getting even worse for him.

Last night a special election took place in Texas to fill a U.S. House of Representatives seat that was vacated when the Republican incumbent died. The last two candidates standing in the race were both Republicans. Trump endorsed one of the Republicans, but the other Republican ended up winning by about seven points instead.

It’s the latest reminder that Donald Trump’s endorsement isn’t worth all that much when it comes to winning an election, and it never has been. It further raises the question of why most House and Senate Republicans are still kissing Trump’s backside, even now that he’s little more than a half-senile blob with no social media presence who rarely leaves the house. What does he have on them?

Reuters, Jared Kushner to leave politics, launch investment firm: sources, Steve Holland, July 28, 2021. Jared Kushner, a top adviser to former President Donald Trump, plans to launch an investment firm in coming months, a move that will take him away from politics for the foreseeable future, sources familiar with the plan said on Wednesday.

Kushner, right, the former chief executive of Kushner Companies, who served as the Republican president’s senior adviser in the White House, is in the final stages of launching an investment firm called Affinity Partners that will be headquartered in Miami.

Kushner, who is married to Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, is also looking to open an office in Israel to pursue regional investments to connect Israel’s economy and India, North Africa and the Gulf, said two people briefed on the plan, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Kushner has spent the last six months with his family in Miami writing a book about his White House experiences that is expected to be published early next year.

Kushner helped broker deals between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco in a six-month flurry last year. He also helped negotiate a new U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement.

Kushner and his family have been spending the summer as Trump’s next-door neighbor at Trump’s golf property in Bedminster, New Jersey.

Washington Post, Arizona cleanup bill could exceed $9 million after partisan election audit, Joseph Marks, July 28, 2021 (print ed.). That’s more than half the money the state received from Congress to improve election security before 2020.

Arizona’s heading into the red on election security, driven by a partisan audit in Maricopa County and baseless claims by former president Donald Trump and his allies that his election loss wasn’t legitimate.

The state’s already on the hook for roughly $3 million to replace the county’s voting machines because of concerns the partisan firm conducting the audit, Cyber Ninjas, can’t ensure the machines weren’t infected with malicious software during the process.

Now, Trump and his allies are pushing hard for the county to hand over routers that will cost an additional $6 million to replace if they similarly can’t be trusted.

Top Arizona state Senate officials issued a new subpoena last night demanding the county turn over the routers along with envelopes from all mail-in ballots or images of them and detailed voter registration records, The Associated Press reports. The GOP-controlled state Senate is the main body supporting the audit while Maricopa County’s Board of Supervisors, which is also Republican controlled, has firmly opposed it.

Here’s some troubling math: Arizona got just about $16 million for election security in a pair of congressional spending bills in recent years aimed at preventing a repeat of the 2016 election, which was undermined by Russian interference. More than half of that could be lost to cleaning up after the audit.

That would be a whopping $9 million for a review that has been roundly pilloried as inept and lacking basic security and methodological controls by election experts, Maricopa County’s own officials and the Arizona secretary of state.

Cyber Ninjas’ CEO Doug Logan was an ardent Trump supporter and has tweeted conspiracy theories supporting him. Maricopa County has already conducted two audits that found the 2020 election result was legitimate.

World News

Wayne Madsen Report, Commentary: Travel intelligence analysts finally see some action after a year of Zoom conferences, Wayne Madsen, left, July 28, 2021. There are units within major intelligence agencies that are responsible for keeping track of the comings and goings of world leaders because their very presence in certain capital cities may yield some major intelligence findings. Since the pandemic, however, these special travel intelligence units have had very little to do other than keeping track of video conferences and who or who is not in attendance.

On July 25, travel intelligence branches around the world finally had something worthy to analyze and report. The Deputy Prime Minister Foreign Minister of Qatar, Sheikh Mohammad Bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, fresh from visiting Washington, where he met with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, showed up unannounced in Tehran to hold discussions with Iran’s hard-line president-elect Ebrahim Raisi.

There was little doubt that the Qatari official was carrying a private message from Blinken, President Joe Biden, or both that dealt with resurrecting the moribund Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on Iran’s nuclear program that was unilaterally scuttled by Donald Trump, who was acting more in the interests of the former Likud government of Israel than U.S. national security interests.

The Guardian, Democrats call for possible action against NSO over Pegasus revelations, Stephanie Kirchgaessner, July 28, 2021 (print ed.). Four Democrats in Congress tell Biden administration that such firms ‘should be sanctioned, and if necessary, shut down.’

Democratic lawmakers in Washington have called on the Biden administration to consider placing NSO Group on an export blacklist and said recent revelations of misuse reinforced their conviction that the “hacking-for-hire industry must be brought under control.”

The statement by four members of Congress followed reports by the Pegasus project, a collaboration of 17 media organisations including the Guardian, which investigated NSO, the Israeli company that sells its powerful surveillance software to government clients around the world.

The leak at the heart of the Pegasus project contained tens of thousands of phone numbers of individuals who are believed to have been selected as candidates for possible surveillance by clients of NSO. The numbers included those of heads of state such as the French president, Emmanuel Macron, government ministers, diplomats, activists, journalists, human rights defenders and lawyers.

It includes some people whose phones showed infection or traces of NSO’s Pegasus spyware, according to examinations of a sample of the devices by Amnesty International’s security lab.

“Private companies should not be selling sophisticated cyber-intrusion tools on the open market, and the United States should work with its allies to regulate this trade,” the lawmakers said. “Companies that sell such incredibly sensitive tools to dictatorships are the AQ Khans of the cyber world. They should be sanctioned, and if necessary, shut down.”

They added that NSO had shown an “arrogant disregard for concerns that elected officials, human rights activists, journalists, and cyber-security experts have repeatedly raised”.

The statement represented a rare rebuke of an Israeli company by U.S. members of Congress, who suggested that NSO Group should join the ranks of blacklisted companies like Huawei and Hikvision of China. Any decision to add NSO to what is known as the entities list, forcing it to comply with new export rules, would be made by the Biden administration’s commerce department.

The statement was released by four influential lawmakers: Tom Malinowski of New Jersey, Katie Porter and Anna Eshoo of California, and Joaquin Castro of Texas.

They also singled out authoritarian governments like Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, and Rwanda, which are believed to have used NSO spyware and “make no distinction between terrorism and peaceful dissent”.

New York Times, Hong Kong Protester Is Convicted in First Trial Under Tough Security Law, Austin Ramzy, July 28, 2021 (print ed.). Tong Ying-kit, 24, who struck police officers with his motorcycle while carrying a protest banner, was found guilty of terrorism and inciting secession.

In the first trial under the tough national security law imposed by China, a Hong Kong court convicted a protester of terrorism and inciting secession on Tuesday, a ruling that sets new limits on dissent and raises the risks of challenging Beijing.

The protester, Tong Ying-kit, was arrested last year on July 1, after he drove his motorcycle around a Hong Kong neighborhood with a protest banner, then collided with police officers who tried to stop him, injuring three.

Under the security law, which went into effect hours before his arrest, Mr. Tong could be sentenced to life in prison. The court will hand down his sentence at a later date.

The trial was regarded as a test of how the city’s traditionally independent courts would enforce the security law while upholding the city’s much cherished civil liberties. In convicting Mr. Tong, the court showed the extent to which the new law would criminalize political speech.

“I think we would be kidding ourselves if we think the national security law would not be enforced in the way the Chinese government conceived it,” said Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute in London. “The idea that the Hong Kong judiciary would be able to moderate it would be a mistake.”

2020 Olympics

Washington Post, U.S. women’s gymnastics takes silver with Simone Biles out. Russian Olympic Committee wins gold, Emily Giambalvo, July 28, 2021 (print ed.). Biles struggled on the vault and withdrew, and the United States couldn’t capture its third straight gold medal.

When Simone Biles exited the arena, the U.S. women’s gymnastics team’s gold medal chances plummeted. The world’s best gymnast later returned to the sideline but she withdrew from the competition for what USA Gymnastics cited as a “medical issue.”

Without Biles, the team scrambled to fill those holes in the lineup, and even though the United States had an opportunity to catch the Russian Olympic Committee heading into the final rotation, the Americans could not close the deal. The U.S. team earned the silver medal behind the ROC. A gap of more than three points separated the two nations after Jordan Chiles fell on a tumbling pass, crushing any hope the team had left. On the final routine from the ROC, Angelina Melnikova only needed to avoid disaster, and she hit her routine, bringing the team’s total to a 169.528, well ahead of Team USA’s 166.096.

Here’s the complete schedule of Olympic events, day by day.

July 27

Top Headlines

Washington Post, Opinion: We have started investigating the attack on the Capitol. Nothing will be off-limits, Bennie G. Thompson
Washington Post, Live Updates: Panel hears from 4 police officers about Capitol riot, John Wagner
New York Times, Opinion: I’m on the Jan. 6 Committee. Here Are the Questions I Want Answered, Adam Kinzinger
Esquire, Opinion: Let the politicians bluster and fume. The videos do not lie, Charles P. Pierce
Washington Post, Biden seeks to end post-9/11 era, pulling combat forces from Iraq
New York Times, In Reversal, C.D.C. to Recommend Some Vaccinated People Wear Masks Indoors
Washington Post, Senate infrastructure talks in jeopardy as infighting spills out into the open

Virus Victims, Responses

Washington Post, Biden plans to require federal workers to be vaccinated or undergo repeated tests
Washington Post, CDC urges vaccinated people in areas of high transmission to resume wearing masks indoors
New York Times, As Cases Rise, a New Feeling Spreads Among the Vaccinated: Anger
Washington Post, Evangelical pastor tells churchgoers to ditch their masks: ‘Don’t believe this delta variant nonsense,’
New York Times, N.Y.C. and California Will Require Workers to Be Vaccinated or Tested
Washington Post, Democrats broaden probe into Trump-era meddling at CDC
Washington Post, States that cut jobless aid early didn’t get a hiring boom
Washington Post, 188.7 million U.S. vaccinated
Worldometer, World & U.S. Coronavirus Case Totals, U.S. Deaths: 627,039
Washington Post, U.S. warns against travel to Israel, Portugal and Spain as delta variant surges
Washington Post, Analysis, Vaccine mandates are mounting — and courts are upholding them so far

U.S. Law, Crime

New York Times, Guilty Plea in Four Atlanta-Area Spa Killings
Washington Post, Maryland man charged with threatening Anthony S. Fauci
Washington Post, Daniel Hale, who leaked information on U.S. drone warfare, sentenced to 45 months in prison

More On Trump Capitol Riot, Insurrection

U.S. Governance, Law, Crime, Politics

Washington Post, Arizona cleanup bill could exceed $9 million after partisan election audit
Washington Post, Biden administration to curb toxic wastewater from coal plants with new rule
Reuters via Daily Beast, Former Wyoming Republican Senator Mike Enzi Dies in Cycling Accident
Daily Beast, ‘Traitor’ Tom Barrack Gets Heckled Before Not Guilty Plea
Palmer Report, Opinion: “There is so much more” to the Matt Gaetz creep show, Bill Palmer
Daily Beast, Matt Gaetz’s Future Sister-in-Law Says He’s a Gaslighting ‘Creep’

World News

New York Times, Hong Kong Protester Is Convicted in First Trial Under Tough Security Law
New York Times, Wildfires Ravage Sardinia in ‘a Disaster Without Precedent’
California News Times, Former US diplomat, 45, pleads guilty to raping and drugging 23 women over 14 years
Washington Post, Tunisia’s president takes emergency powers; country in crisis

U.S. Media News

Northwestern University’s Medill Local News Initiative via Poynter Institute, More chain-owned news organizations are returning to local ownership

2020 Olympics

New York Times, Biles Says She Left Gymnastics Final Over Mental State; Russia Wins Gold
Washington Post, U.S. women’s gymnastics takes silver with Simone Biles out. Russian Olympic Committee wins gold
New York Times, Critic’s notebook: Jill Biden, Changing the Fashion Game, Vanessa Friedman
Associated Press via Daily Beast, ‘This One Sucks’: Osaka Distraught After Straight-Sets Defeat in Tokyo
Washington Post, The Tokyo Olympics schedule, day by day

Top Stories

Washington Post, ‘You will die on your knees’: D.C. officer recalls being pinned, John Wagner, Kim Bellware, Karoun Demirjian, Marianna Sotomayor, Jacqueline Alemany and Mariana Alfaro, July 27, 2021. New video footage shows how D.C. police officer lost consciousness from insurrectionist’s violence; Rep. Murphy recalls being in proximity to officer pinned between rioters and Capitol door frame; ‘I guess it is America,’ Capitol Police officer says of racist abuse that Black officers faced.

What’s happening in today’s hearing:

The panel is hearing from two members of the Capitol Police — Officer Harry Dunn and Sgt. Aquilino Gonell — along with two members of D.C.’s police force: officers Michael Fanone and Daniel Hodges.
During his testimony, Fanone slammed his fist on the table and called the indifference of some lawmakers to the attack disgraceful. “Nothing, truly nothing, has prepared me to address those elected members of our government who continue to deny the events of that day. And in doing so, betray their oath of office.”
Lawmakers on the nine-member panel are now asking questions following statements from the four officers.
The Washington Post is providing live coverage of the hearing, which began shortly after 9:30 a.m.
How pro-Trump insurrectionists broke into the U.S. Capitol | How the rioters came dangerously close to Vice President Mike Pence | How one of America’s ugliest days unraveled

Washington Post, Live Updates: Panel hears from 4 police officers about Capitol riot, John Wagner, July 27, 2021. House GOP leaders attack Pelosi ahead of hearing; Cheney hits back at criticism from party members over role in Jan. 6 probe, calling it ‘a disgrace;’ Post Reports: Investigating the insurrection.

Washington Post, Opinion: We have started investigating the attack on the Capitol. Nothing will be off-limits, Bennie G. Thompson, right, July 27, 2021. Bennie G. Thompson, a Democrat who represents Mississippi’s 2nd Congressional District in the U.S. House, is chairman of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.

On Jan. 6, a violent mob attacked the citadel of our democracy — the U.S. Capitol — in an attempt to prevent Congress from doing its constitutional duty to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election.

On Tuesday, the bipartisan Select Committee on the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol begins its work investigating the facts, circumstances and causes of this assault on our democracy.

I had hoped that such an investigation would be carried out by an independent commission composed of national security experts, like the panel created by Congress after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. However, once the House Republican leadership rejected — and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell filibustered — bipartisan legislation to establish such a commission, we in the House believed we had no choice but to establish a select committee. In a recent poll, 72 percent of Americans agree there is more we must learn about that day.
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Many of the Jan. 6 rioters have stated in their court pleadings that they stormed the Capitol believing they were acting on behalf of, or even at the behest of, then-President Donald Trump. The protection of our democracy demands that we comprehensively investigate what drove Americans to riot and violently assault Capitol Police, Metropolitan Police and other law enforcement officers to access the inner sanctum of Congress and private offices of top congressional leaders, including the speaker of the House.

Jan. 6 was supposed to be about the peaceful transfer of power after an election, a hallmark of democracy and our American tradition. The rioters went to the Capitol that day to obstruct this solemn action — and nearly succeeded while defacing and looting the halls of the Capitol in the process. The committee will provide the definitive accounting of one of the darkest days in our history. Armed with answers, we hope to identify actions that Congress and the executive branch can take to help ensure that it never happens again.

New York Times, Opinion: I’m on the Jan. 6 Committee. Here Are the Questions I Want Answered, Adam Kinzinger (Mr. Kinzinger, a Republican, is a United States representative from Illinois), July 27, 2021. On Jan. 6, hundreds of our fellow citizens stormed the U.S. Capitol, armed and ready for battle. For hours, broadcast live on television and streamed on social media, rioters attacked law enforcement and eventually breached the halls of Congress in an effort to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election.

Their goal was to subvert America’s democratic process — and their means to this end was brute force and violent assaults on the men and women of the Capitol Police and Metropolitan Police Department.

How did this happen? Why? Who spurred this effort? Was it organized? When did our government leaders know of the impending attacks and what were their responses? What level of preparation or warnings did our law enforcement have? Was there coordination between the rioters and any members of Congress, or with staff?

We need answers and we need accountability, and the only way to get that is a full investigation and understanding of what happened to ensure nothing like this ever happens again. Such an investigation should include a serious look at the misinformation campaigns and their origins, the lies being perpetuated by leaders — including by former President Donald Trump — and what impact such false narratives had on the events leading up to and following Jan. 6. We need to be fearless about understanding the motivations of our fellow Americans, even if it makes us uncomfortable about the truth of who they are and the truth of who played what role in inspiring them.

I’ve never been pessimistic about the future of this country, but if we fail to do this — and do this right — I will have serious doubts about what the future looks like for America and for our democracy. Self-governance requires accountability and responsibility, and it’s why I accepted Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s appointment to serve on the House select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, which is holding its first hearing on Tuesday.

Esquire, Opinion: Let the politicians bluster and fume. The videos do not lie, Charles P. Pierce, July 27, 2021. The body-cam videos. Always the body-cam videos.

Let the politicians bluster and fume. Let the unreconstructed bastards lie about what happened on January 6. Let the duplicitous pond scum create their own narrative out of their dark, unquenchable ambitions, and the carefully cultivated ignorance of their prime audiences. The body cams don’t lie. They’re hard to watch. They leave a hot, sour aftertaste of revulsion and rage. But they do not lie.

It’s strange, in a way. For years, police-reform activists pleaded for body cams to become mandatory in order to catch bad cops doing bad things, and to defeat orchestrated cover-ups by prosecutors, police unions, and the aforementioned bad cops. Now, here we are, watching the body-cam videos of the crimes of January 6, and the videos are irrefutable proof of the offenses committed against law-enforcement officers.

This is in no way to minimize the impact of the testimony given before the Select Committee investigating the insurrection by the officers who’d been invited to appear. You cannot dismiss the description of what happened to him offered by D.C. Metro police officer Michael Fanone:

But yet they tortured me. They beat me. I was struck with a taser device at the base of my skull numerous times. And they continued to do so, until I yelled out that I have kids.

You cannot dismiss DC Metro police officer Daniel Hodges’ description of the nightmarish moments in which he was trapped in a Capitol doorway at the mercy of the mob. “A meat grinder,” Hodges said, and he described how he’d hoped not to be pulled to the ground: “At worst, [I might] be dragged down into the crowd and lynched.”

Washington Post, Biden seeks to end post-9/11 era, pulling combat forces from Iraq, Anne Gearan, July 27, 2021 (print ed.). Biden is set to welcome the Iraqi prime minister Monday and announce the end of the U.S. combat mission in Iraq — part of a broad goal of shifting the U.S. focus from the Middle East.

President Biden has announced the full withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. He has started transferring prisoners from Guantánamo Bay in hopes of eventually shutting down the prison. And on Monday, he will welcome Iraq’s prime minister to the White House for an expected announcement that U.S. combat forces will leave that country within months.

The moves reflect what is emerging as an unmistakable pillar of Biden’s foreign policy: seeking to push America past the post-9/11 phase of its history, ending 20 years of relentless focus on the Middle East and terrorism rather than threats like China and cyberattacks. The United States needs to “fight the battles for the next 20 years, not the last 20,” Biden has said.

Daily Beast, Iraqi PM: American Combat Troops No Longer Needed

Washington Post, Senate infrastructure talks in jeopardy as infighting spills out into the open, Tony Romm, Seung Min Kim and Ian Duncan, July 27, 2021 (print ed.). Republicans initially said they had hoped to finalize a more robust blueprint by today, but the prospect now seems unimaginable.

Negotiations between Senate Democrats and Republicans over a roughly $1 trillion infrastructure package appeared to be in political jeopardy on Monday, as lawmakers continued to feud publicly over how to dole out the money and finance the new federal spending.

The impasse arrives after lawmakers toiled away into the weekend over their proposal to improve the nation’s roads, bridges, pipes, ports and Internet connections. Republicans including Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah initially hoped to finalize a more robust blueprint as soon as Monday so that the long-stalled debate could finally start, but the prospect now seems unlikely given the sheer scope of policy obstacles that negotiators must resolve.

Lawmakers must still sort through lingering disputes over how to spend billions of dollars to upgrade the country’s railways, for example, along with thorny policy issues around broadband spending — including efforts by Democrats to ensure Internet access is affordable.

Infrastructure deal in precarious state as endgame nears.

Both sides also have failed to come to terms on the formula for doling out money to improve the nation’s highways, as well as the exact funding available for water improvements. And lawmakers remain at odds over provisions sought by Democrats that aim to ensure any federal spending to improve infrastructure will pay workers prevailing wages to do the job.

Virus Victims, Responses

New York Times, As Cases Rise, a New Feeling Spreads Among the Vaccinated: Anger, Roni Caryn Rabin, July 27, 2021. The rising sentiment is contributing to support for more coercive measures, such as vaccine mandates. But experts warn that a tougher stance may backfire.

“The virus is here and it’s killing people, and we have a time-tested way to stop it — and we won’t do it. It’s an outrage.”

Washington Post, Biden plans to require federal workers to be vaccinated or undergo repeated tests, Eli Rosenberg and Tyler Pager, July 27, 2021. New directive, planned for Thursday, comes as the White House tries to arrest the delta variant’s spread The plan is part of a change in tack by the White House in recent days as the delta variant has spread markedly through parts of the United States, particularly among unvaccinated Americans.

Washington Post, CDC urges vaccinated people in areas of high transmission to resume wearing masks indoors, Yasmeen Abutaleb, Joel Achenbach, Dan Diamond and Adam Taylor, July 27, 2021. The agency advised that people who live in high-transmission communities wear masks in indoor public spaces, even if they’ve been vaccinated.

Vaccinated people may be able to spread the coronavirus and should resume wearing masks under certain circumstances, the nation’s top public health official said Tuesday in a gloomy acknowledgment that the mutated delta variant has reversed the promising trend lines of spring.

Speaking to reporters in an afternoon news briefing, Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, expressed disappointment and dismay that the summer surge in cases, driven by the delta variant’s startling transmissibility and low vaccination rates in many areas, had forced her agency’s hand.

“It is not a welcome piece of news that masking is going to be a part of people’s lives who have already been vaccinated,” Walensky acknowledged. “This new guidance weighs heavily on me.”

The agency advised that people who live in high-transmission communities wear masks in indoor public spaces, even if they’ve been vaccinated. It also recommended that vaccinated people with vulnerable household members, including young children and those who are immunocompromised, wear masks indoors in public spaces.

New York Times, N.Y.C. and California Will Require Workers to Be Vaccinated or Tested, Staff Reports, July 27, 2021 (print ed.). The move by Mayor Bill de Blasio, with a mid-September deadline, comes days after a similar mandate for public health care workers.

The mandates extend to municipal employees in New York City, including police officers and teachers, and state and health care workers in California. A group of nearly 60 major medical organizations called for mandatory vaccination of U.S. health care workers. Here’s the latest on the pandemic.

New York City will require all municipal workers to be vaccinated against the coronavirus by the time schools reopen in mid-September or face weekly testing, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Monday morning.

Last week, Mr. de Blasio, left, announced a similar mandate for public health care workers — part of an effort to speed up vaccinations as the city faces a third wave of coronavirus cases driven by the spread of the Delta variant.

The new requirement will apply to roughly 340,000 city workers, including teachers and police officers. The Sept. 13 deadline, when about a million students are set to return to classrooms, shows the importance of the reopening of schools for the city’s recovery and for Mr. de Blasio’s legacy.

Speaking at his morning news conference, Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat in his final year in office, also reiterated his call to private employers to set similar or stronger vaccine mandates for their workers. “September is the pivot point of the recovery,” Mr. de Blasio said, “and so on Sept. 13, the first day of school, every single city employee will be expected to be either vaccinated or be tested weekly.”

In other news:

Coronavirus cases in Tokyo continue to pull athletes out of competition.
In Louisiana, vaccine misinformation is a huge challenge for public health workers.
France approves a contentious law making health passes mandatory.
Requests for U.S. college aid are down, with experts linking the drop to the economic uncertainty caused by the pandemic. Here’s the latest on Covid-19

Washington Post, Democrats broaden probe into Trump-era meddling at CDC, Dan Diamond, July 27, 2021 (print ed.). House investigators are seeking interviews with former CDC professional staff, including Anne Schuchat and Nancy Messonnier.

Congressional investigators expanded their inquiry Monday of political interference at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under President Donald Trump, citing newly obtained documents and additional reports of the administration’s meddling in government scientists’ work.

The expanded investigation centers on efforts to blunt the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports (MMWRs), which offer public updates on scientists’ findings. The reports had been considered sacrosanct for decades and untouchable by political appointees in the past, but Trump appointees pushed last year to edit the findings, worried that they undermined Trump’s more optimistic spin on the coronavirus pandemic.

Senior officials also discussed how to respond to a Trump appointee’s demand to edit the reports, according to a newly released email obtained by the House’s select subcommittee on the pandemic.

Washington Post, Analysis, Vaccine mandates are mounting — and courts are upholding them so far, Paige Winfield Cunningham, July 27, 2021. Judges historically have given governments and private companies wide latitude to mandate vaccines. Now, at least two courts have reaffirmed those broad powers.

Washington Post, Evangelical pastor tells churchgoers to ditch their masks: ‘Don’t believe this delta variant nonsense,’ Jaclyn Peiser, July 27, 2021. Since the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, Greg Locke, the pastor at a Nashville-area church, has repeatedly called covid a hoax, undermined emergency mandates and refused to comply with guidance from public health officials.

This week, Locke took his defiance a step further, making a sharp warning regarding mask-wearing.

“I am not playing these Democrat games up in this church,” he added.

Global Vision Bible Church did not immediately respond to The Washington Post’s request for comment.

Locke’s fiery five-minute diatribe, in which he also denied the existence of the delta variant, comes as vaccination rates in his home state slow and infection rates climb. So far, about 44 percent of Tennesseans have received at least one dose of the vaccine, according to The Washington Post’s vaccine tracker, making it among the states with the lowest rate. The state recently reported that 98 percent of people who died of covid and 97 percent of covid hospitalizations are among the unvaccinated.

During a sermon last month, Locke called President Biden a fraud and “a sex trafficking, demon-possessed mongrel,” a reference to QAnon, an extremist ideology based on false claims.

He has also falsely claimed the pandemic is “fake,” the death count is “manipulated,” and the vaccine is a “dangerous scam.”

And the pastor has preached misinformation about the vaccine, including falsely claiming it’s made of “aborted fetal tissue.”

Washington Post, States that cut jobless aid early didn’t get a hiring boom, Heather Long and Andrew Van Dam, July 27, 2021. States that scaled back unemployment aid have seen a decline in teen employment and an increase in workers over 25, early evidence has found.

The 20 Republican-led states that reduced unemployment benefits in June did not see an immediate spike in overall hiring, but early evidence suggests something did change: The teen hiring boom slowed in those states, and workers 25 and older returned to work more quickly.

A new analysis by payroll processor Gusto, conducted for The Washington Post, found that small restaurants and hospitality businesses in states such as Missouri, which ended the extra unemployment benefits early, saw a jump in hiring of workers over age 25. The uptick in hiring of older workers was roughly offset by the slower hiring of teens in these states. In contrast, restaurants and hospitality businesses in states such as Kansas, where the full benefits remain, have been hiring a lot more teenagers who are less experienced and less likely to qualify for unemployment aid.

Washington Post, 188.7 million U.S. vaccinated, as of July 27, 2021, the number of people who have received at least one dose of the vaccine. This includes more than 163.2 million people fully vaccinated, representing 49.1 %of the eligible population and with 58.8 % with at least one dose.

Worldometer, World & U.S. Coronavirus Case Totals (updated July 27, 2021, with some governments reporting lower numbers than the totals here and some experts saying the numbers are far higher, as the New York Times reported in India’s true pandemic death toll is likely to be well over 3 million, a new study finds):

World Cases: 195,548,821, Deaths: 4,187,077
U.S. Cases: 35,287,269, Deaths: 627,039
India Cases: 31,440,951, Deaths: 421,414
Brazil Cases: 19,707,662, Deaths: 550,586

Washington Post, U.S. warns against travel to Israel, Portugal and Spain as delta variant surges, Erin Cunningham, July 27, 2021. The White House said it had no plans to lift broad restrictions on visitors from Britain, countries in Europe’s Schengen region and other nations.

The United States is now warning against travel to Israel and several European countries as the more contagious delta variant fuels coronavirus outbreaks mostly among the unvaccinated.

The State Department and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued new travel advisories Monday for Israel, Cyprus, Portugal and Spain, as well as Kyrgyzstan, citing surging case numbers in all five countries.

The warnings came as the White House also said it had no plans to lift broad restrictions on visitors from Britain, countries in Europe’s Schengen region and other nations such as Brazil, China, India and South Africa. Spain and Portugal have already reopened to U.S. travelers — and Canada said it would allow entry to vaccinated Americans beginning next month.

But, “given where we are today … with the delta variant, we will maintain existing travel restrictions at this point,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday.

More On Trump Capitol Riot, Insurrection

Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell, previously a combat veteran, tears up during testimony on July 27, 2021 (Associated Press pool photo).

Washington Post, ‘Some are still suffering’: Months after Capitol riot, police who fought the mob contend with physical, psychological pain, Peter Hermann, July 27, 2021 (print ed.). Officers who plan to testify before Congress say recognition of insurrection is crucial to officers’ their recovery.

More than six months after Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell battled the mob that stormed the Capitol, he remains hobbled, a hand scarred, a shoulder aching, recovering from surgery to an injured foot that swelled so large it no longer fit his shoe.

The 42-year-old Capitol Police officer and Army reservist is also seeing a therapist to help with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), first diagnosed after he served in the war in Iraq.

He said bouts of anxiety returned after his battle on American soil in the Jan. 6 riot.

“I can be fine now and see or hear something and next thing I get tears and get emotional,” said Gonell, who was hurt when rioters tried to yank away his ballistic shield, threw a speaker at him, struck him in the face with a pole and sprayed him with chemical irritants.

“I tried to be strong,” he said of the months following the riot. “I tried not to show my emotion.” But once, he said, he retreated to a quiet space at his home in Virginia, away from his wife and 9-year-old son: “I completely broke down.”

In the aftermath of the riot, authorities said about 140 Capitol and D.C. police officers were hurt when supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol in a failed effort to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory. Police were bludgeoned with poles and bats, pushed and trampled, and sprayed with chemical irritants.

A Capitol officer, Brian D. Sicknick, shown above, collapsed after confronting rioters and died a day later of a stroke. Two other officers in the riot, one Capitol, one D.C., later died by suicide. One Capitol officer surrendered her weapon, fearing she might use it on herself, Rep. David N. Cicilline (D-R.I.) said.

But the full toll on police is still coming into view as officers continue to grapple with the impact of hours of hand-to-hand fighting. They have emerged with a complex jumble of physical and emotional trauma that has made diagnoses and treatment challenging, a problem some officers said is made more difficult by efforts of Republican lawmakers to downplay the riot.

Washington Post, Opinion: Merrick Garland, don’t politicize the pursuit of justice, Jennifer Rubin
Reuters, Biden nominates top prosecutors, including one to oversee Jan. 6 riot cases

Washington Post, Democrats elevate Liz Cheney’s role on Jan. 6 commission, giving her prime speaking slot, Marianna Sotomayor, July 27, 2021 (print ed.). Democrats are seeking to elevate the role of Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) on the committee examining the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, scheduling her to deliver one of the two opening statements at the panel’s first public hearing Tuesday, according to two people familiar with the decision.

The move is intended to present the committee as a bipartisan effort following Republican leadership’s decision not to participate in the panel after Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) last week rejected two of Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s picks for the panel.

During a closed-door meeting last week, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) proposed to Pelosi and Cheney, right, that having the Wyoming congresswoman speak after Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) would present a “strong visual” for the committee’s goals and intentions as it embarks on a months-long process to investigate the insurrection, according to a person familiar with the conversation, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private deliberations.

Jan. 6 select committee to open investigation amid political chaos and controversy

“The vast majority of the Republicans, both in the House as well as across the country, recognize and understand that this was an assault on our democracy and assault on our Constitution, and that there must be a fact-based investigation so that this never happens again,” Cheney said last week. “And we cannot allow those voices who are attempting to prevent the American people from getting the truth to prevail, and we certainly will not.”

Washington Post, Jan. 6 select committee to start work amid political chaos and controversy,
New York Times, Pelosi Appoints Kinzinger to Panel Scrutinizing Jan. 6
Palmer Report, Opinion: Nancy Pelosi just made her Adam Kinzinger power move, Bocha Blue

U.S. Law, Crime

New York Times, Guilty Plea in Four Atlanta-Area Spa Killings, Richard Fausset, July 27, 2021. The suspect, Robert Aaron Long, still faces four murder charges in neighboring Fulton County, where the prosecutor is seeking the death penalty.

The man accused of killing eight people at a string of Atlanta-area spas pleaded guilty on Tuesday to four counts of murder in suburban Cherokee County and will serve four consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole plus 35 years in prison. But the man, Robert Aaron Long, still faces four other murder charges in nearby Fulton County, where the prosecutor is seeking the death penalty.

Mr. Long, 22, appeared in court in a white dress shirt and gray dress slacks, his wrists shackled at his sides. He was clean shaven and wore glasses, with his hair shaved at the sides and long at the top.

He stood before the judge and quietly answered, “Yes, ma’am,” when a prosecutor asked him if he understood the terms of the plea agreement.

The March 16 shooting spree set off a nationwide wave of concern over racially motivated attacks on Asian people at a time of broader anxiety and anger over racism in the United States. Six of the eight victims were women of Asian descent. Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, has indicated in court filings that she intends to seek enhanced penalties against Mr. Long, who is white, for committing crimes because of the “actual or perceived race, national origin, sex and gender” of the victims.

Mr. Long had not made a court appearance since he was arrested a few hours after the shootings at three spas. He was identified that evening by a state trooper while driving in an S.U.V. on Interstate 75, about 150 miles south of Atlanta.

Washington Post, Daniel Hale, who leaked information on U.S. drone warfare, sentenced to 45 months in prison, Rachel Weiner, July 27, 2021. In 2013, Daniel Hale was at an antiwar conference in D.C. when a man recounted that two family members had been killed in a U.S. drone strike. The Yemeni man, through tears, said his relatives had been trying to encourage young men to leave al-Qaeda.

Hale realized he had watched the fatal attack from a base in Afghanistan. At the time, he and his colleagues in Air Force intelligence viewed it as a success. Now he was horrified.

It was such experiences, Hale told a federal judge in Alexandria, Va., on Tuesday, that led him to leak classified information about drone warfare to a reporter after leaving the military.

“I believe he only spoke out for humanitarian and educational purposes,” journalist Sonia Kennebeck told the court in a letter. She featured Hale in a 2016 documentary about drone warfare.

“Recently, someone asked me to tell them a happy memory I have with Daniel,” his sister wrote to the court. “Sadly, this was not an easy task.”

“You had to kill part of your conscience to keep doing your job,” he said in court Tuesday.

U.S. Governance, Law, Politics

Washington Post, Biden administration to curb toxic wastewater from coal plants with new rule, Dino Grandoni, July 27, 2021 (print ed.). The move would reverse a major Trump administration regulatory rollback. But in the near term, the EPA will not try reverting to Obama-era standards, upsetting some of Biden’s environmental allies.

Reuters via Daily Beast, Former Wyoming Republican Senator Mike Enzi Dies in Cycling Accident, Barbie Latza Nadeau, July 27, 2021. Mike Enzi, a former U.S. senator from Wyoming, died after a bicycle accident near his home. He was 77.

Enzi served as mayor of Gillette and as a state lawmaker before winning a Senate seat in 1996. He had just retired in January of this year after 24 years in Washington.

His family wrote on Facebook that the accident happened at 8:30 p.m. Friday evening near his home. He was airlifted to the U.C. Health Medical Center in Colorado and died Monday. “His family expresses their deep appreciation for all of the prayers, support and concern. They now ask for privacy and continued prayers during this difficult time,” his family tweeted from the late senator’s account.

Palmer Report, Opinion: “There is so much more” to the Matt Gaetz creep show, Bill Palmer, July 27, 2021. Most observers on social media have found it pretty bizarre that Matt Gaetz suddenly decided to get engaged right around the time he learned that he was under federal criminal investigation for crimes like underage sex trafficking. Now it turns out someone very close to the situation is sounding the alarm.

Matt Gaetz’s financée’s sister is now publicly lashing out at Gaetz, calling him “weird and creepy” and a “literal pedophile.” She added that “There is so much more to the story and about what I know about Matt Gaetz.”

It sounds like she should be talking to federal prosecutors – and maybe she already is. Matt Gaetz’s ex-girlfriend, and his former best bud Joel Greenberg, are already cooperating with prosecutors, so who knows who else has joined the fray?

In any case, the decision by Gaetz’s financée’s sister to go public with her accusations about Gaetz gives us the feeling that this is all about to come to a head. Federal prosecutors let it be known to ABC News last month that they were looking to indict Gaetz sometime in July. Today is July 27th. Tick tock.

Daily Beast, Matt Gaetz’s Future Sister-in-Law Says He’s a Gaslighting ‘Creep’
Daily Beast, ‘Traitor’ Tom Barrack Gets Heckled Before Not Guilty Plea

World News

New York Times, Hong Kong Protester Is Convicted in First Trial Under Tough Security Law, Austin Ramzy, July 27, 2021. Tong Ying-kit, 24, who struck police officers with his motorcycle while carrying a protest banner, was found guilty of terrorism and inciting secession.

Under the security law, which went into effect hours before his arrest, Mr. Tong could be sentenced to life in prison. The court will hand down his sentence at a later date.

New York Times, Wildfires Ravage Sardinia in ‘a Disaster Without Precedent,’ Gaia Pianigiani, July 27, 2021 (print ed.). A 25-mile swath of vegetation, farms and villages was hit by one of the largest wildfires in decades, devastating the Italian tourist destination. About 1,000 residents and tourists have been evacuated from areas of western Sardinia that were ravaged by wildfires over the weekend, with forests, pastures and villages on the Italian island engulfed in flames.

No deaths or injuries have been reported, the Italian authorities said. But the fires were still raging on Monday, when four firefighting planes from France and Greece joined the Italian firefighters’ air fleet to help control the blaze.

California News Times, Former US diplomat, 45, pleads guilty to raping and drugging 23 women over 14 years, Staff Report, July 26, 2021. Brian Jeffrey Raymond, 45, of La Mesa, California, pleaded guilty to federal sexual abuse and the transportation of obscene physical charges on Friday.

Raymond’s investigation began last May after the discovery of a naked woman screaming for help on the balcony of an apartment in Mexico City. The following account comes from the FBI, which investigated and provided the photo at right:

She had no memory of what happened after eating the drinks and food provided by Raymond. FBI agents recovered hundreds of photos and videos of more than 20 unconscious nude or partially nude women from Raymond’s cell phones, iCloud accounts, and other electronics. The file dates back to 2006 and lasts until May 2020.

The photos and videos not only clearly depict Raymond caressing the victim’s chest and buttocks, but also lie in bed with an unconscious woman on two different occasions.

During her stay with Raymond, the women experienced memory loss and claimed to have no knowledge of photography, video, or physical contact.

According to court documents, Raymond has served the US government for 23 years in many countries. Prosecutors did not identify what position he was in Mexico, other than saying he worked for the embassy.

Washington Post, Tunisia’s president takes emergency powers; country in crisis, Siobhán O’Grady, July 27, 2021 (print ed.). The dramatic political crisis moved into its second day after President Kais Saied fired the prime minister and suspended parliament, in the most serious test to the country’s institutions since its transition to democracy a decade ago.

U.S. Media News

Northwestern University’s Medill Local News Initiative via Poynter Institute, More chain-owned news organizations are returning to local ownership, Mark Jacob, July 26, 2021. From New England to Arkansas, local investors are buying news outlets from large chains and seek to reverse what they see as decades of disinvestment.

As chain consolidation brings new uncertainty to an already fluid news landscape, another trend is emerging in which local investors buy news outlets from large chains and seek to reverse what they see as decades of disinvestment.

Media acquisitions lawyer Sara April expects to see more news outlets go into local hands as some big chains focus on their larger products and spin off their smaller ones.

“It’s definitely safe to say that there is a trend of some newspapers returning to local ownership,” said April, a partner in Dirks, Van Essen & April. “… It made sense for these large newspaper companies to build when they did, but now it’s making sense for them to peel off these papers and put them in the hands of people who can really operate them in this day and age.”

In some ways, large chains can be beneficial for local news consumers. They often bring website expertise, technical support and consistent business practices. And they may have a greater ability to recruit talent.

But local owners’ strong presence in the community may be more important, according to Penny Abernathy, creator of the influential “news deserts” reports and visiting professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications.

“All things being equal,” Abernathy said, “local ownership is always best for the community where the newspaper is located. That’s because a local owner is going to know that market and know the residents.”

As Tim Schmidt, who is building a small newspaper group in central Missouri, put it: “The newspaper has to care about the community. I think local ownership plays a huge part in that.”

In the wake of the Gannett-GateHouse merger in November 2019, Gannett is selling off some of its smaller news outlets. And industry observers are watching for what comes out of Alden Global Capital’s recent acquisition of Tribune Publishing and whether any of Tribune’s news outlets will end up in the hands of local owners.

Hedge funds such as Alden now control about half of daily newspapers in the United States. Does this suggest greater volatility, with hedge funds likely to sell their news outlets to local owners?

“Every newspaper publisher is constantly looking at their options,” April said. “Are they financial owners known to be long-term holders of newspaper assets? Historically, no.”

Tim Franklin, senior associate dean and John M. Mutz Chair in Local News at Medill, said acquisitions by local investors make sense under the right conditions.

“After decades of consolidation in local news ownership, we could be on the cusp of a back-to-the-future moment with more local operators, especially in smaller communities,” Franklin said.

Fredric Rutberg has been both a buyer and a seller of local news outlets. In 2016, he was part of a group that bought New England Newspapers from Digital First Media, owned by Alden. This May, Rutberg and other owners kept the flagship Berkshire Eagle in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, from that deal while selling off three Vermont newspapers and a magazine to tech entrepreneur Paul Belogour.

“This is my retirement project,” Rutberg said. “I was a judge in the local Massachusetts state court, and Massachusetts judges have mandatory retirement at age 70.”

So he and his partners went into the newspaper business.

2020 Olympics

New York Times, Critic’s notebook: Jill Biden, Changing the Fashion Game, Vanessa Friedman, July 27, 2021 (print ed.). Cheering the American Olympians, the first lady broke with recent sartorial customs. The game of first lady fashion is one played 12 months a year, at pretty much any time, watched by a global mass of avid spectators who care for reasons national, personal and political. Participants are drafted as soon as they get their jobs, whether they like it or not.

Jill Biden has famously been a reluctant player (“It’s kind of surprising, I think, how much commentary is made about what I wear,” she told Vogue).

Not for her the strategy of fashion diplomacy, mastered by Michelle Obama, wherein you champion a designer who bridges both your home country and a host country. Not for her the high fashion tactics of Melania Trump, conflating runway with realpolitik.

But she has, nevertheless, proved there are a variety of ways to score, as least judging by her first solo trip leading the American delegation at the Tokyo Olympics.

During her four days abroad, she not only represented the American industry, wearing a roll call of local designers. She also, perhaps more important, embodied the theme of the Olympics, which was billed as the greenest Games yet with the motto “Be better, together — For the planet and the people.” Dr. Biden apparently wore only a single new garment during the entirety of her trip to Japan: the Ralph Lauren navy jacket and pants that were part of the official U.S. Olympic Team uniform, and that she wore in her role as official U.S. Olympic Team booster.

Other than that, her clothes were all recycled outfits from her closet. And not just at fun family getaways: At public events. Often very big, photo op-filled, recorded-for-history public events.

That Dr. Biden would just say no to this cycle is as big a break with recent tradition as the fact that she is continuing to work as a professor during her time in the White House. And it may be just as important, and maybe even (if people pay attention) influential.

Associated Press via Daily Beast, ‘This One Sucks’: Osaka Distraught After Straight-Sets Defeat in Tokyo, Blake Montgomery, July 27, 2021. Naomi Osaka admitted the pressure had got to her after falling to a straight-sets defeat in the third round of the Olympic tennis tournament.

“I’m disappointed in every loss, but I feel like this one sucks more than the others,” Osaka said after a 6-4, 6-1 defeat to 42nd-ranked Marketa Vondrousova of the Czech Republic. Making a return to competition after a two-month mental-health break, the Japanese world No. 2 became the iconic image of the Tokyo Games after lighting the Olympic cauldron last Friday night. She said that had been the honor of her life but there had been too much pressure on court. “I definitely feel like there was a lot of pressure for this,” she told reporters. “I think it’s maybe because I haven’t played in the Olympics before and for the first year [it] was a bit much.”

The Associated Press said Osaka — who walked out of the French Open after deciding she no longer wanted to talk to the press — eft the court after Tuesday’s defeat without saying anything, but came back a bit later and spoke to a small group of reporters. “I’ve taken long breaks before and I’ve managed to do well,” she said. “I feel like my attitude wasn’t that great because I don’t really know how to cope with that pressure so that’s the best that I could have done in this situation.”

Here’s the complete schedule of Olympic events, day by day.

July 26

Top Headlines

Washington Post, Biden seeks to end post-9/11 era, pulling combat forces from Iraq
Washington Post, Senate infrastructure talks in jeopardy as infighting spills out into the open
Washington Post, Jan. 6 select committee to start work amid political chaos and controversy
Washington Post, Democrats elevate Liz Cheney’s role on Jan. 6 commission, giving her prime speaking slot
New York Times, Pelosi Appoints Kinzinger to Panel Scrutinizing Jan. 6
Palmer Report, Opinion: Nancy Pelosi just made her Adam Kinzinger power move
Washington Post, Civilian casualties in Afghanistan hit record highs as U.S. forces withdraw, U.N. mission reports

Virus Victims, Responses

Washington Post, As virus surges, GOP lawmakers are moving to limit public health powers
New York Times, Live Updates: New York Will Require Vaccines or Weekly Tests for City Workers
Washington Post, Opinion: Republicans unleashed a deadly vaccine skepticism. Can they now contain it? E.J. Dionne Jr.
Washington Post, Democrats broaden probe into Trump-era meddling at CDC
Washington Post, 188.7 million U.S. vaccinated
Worldometer, World & U.S. Coronavirus Case Totals, U.S. Deaths: 626,713
Washington Post, Australian prime minister calls lockdown-violating protests ‘selfish and self-defeating’
Washington Post, An activewear company told customers its clothes repelled covid. The false claims led to a $3.7 million fine
Washington Post, An unvaccinated radio host is sick with covid. His family is ‘elated’ listeners are now getting the vaccine

More On Trump Capitol Riot, Insurrection

Washington Post, ‘Some are still suffering’: Months after Capitol riot, police who fought the mob contend with physical, psychological pain
Washington Post, Opinion: Merrick Garland, don’t politicize the pursuit of justice, Jennifer Rubin
Reuters, Biden nominates top prosecutors, including one to oversee Jan. 6 riot cases

U.S. Law, Courts, Election Claims

Covert Action Magazine, In Pre-Sentencing Letter, Drone Whistleblower Daniel Hale Says Crisis of Conscience Motivated Leak, Brett Wilkins
Daily Beast, ‘Traitor’ Tom Barrack Gets Heckled Before Not Guilty Plea
Palmer Report, Opinion: The DOJ has got to make a move on Michael Flynn, Justin Hodges
Washington Post, Pegasus Project Global Investigation: Chief of WhatsApp, which sued NSO over alleged hacking of its product, disputes firm’s claims about spyware operations
Washington Post, Bob Moses (1935–2021): 1960s civil rights leader who saw math as road to equality dies at 86
Washington Post, First came the ransomware attacks. Now come the lawsuits
Washington Post, Facing 11 years in prison, a former intel analyst condemns ‘undeniable cruelties’ of Afghanistan drone strikes
Daily Beast, Crowd Turns on Gunman Who Killed One, Stoning Him to Death
Palmer Report, Opinion: This phony Arizona election “audit” just got even more idiotic, Shirley Kennedy

U.S. Politics, Governance

Washington Post, Biden administration to curb toxic wastewater from coal plants with new rule
Washington Post, House Ethics Committee declines to investigate arrest of Rep. Beatty at voting rights protest
Washington Post, New Jersey Democrats want ‘fairness’ in Biden’s trillion-dollar agenda. They’re in for a fight
New York Times, Nancy Mace Called Herself a ‘New Voice’ for the G.O.P. Then She Pivoted
Daily Beast, Matt Gaetz’s Future Sister-in-Law Says He’s a Gaslighting ‘Creep’

World News

California News Times, Former US diplomat, 45, pleads guilty to raping and drugging 23 women over 14 years
Washington Post, Tunisia’s president takes emergency powers; country in crisis
Washington Post, Businessman becomes Lebanon’s latest prime minister designate

U.S. Media News

Northwestern University’s Medill Local News Initiative via Poynter Institute, More chain-owned news organizations are returning to local ownership

2020 Olympics

New York Times, U.S. Men’s Basketball Team Loses Opening Game
New York Times, Critic’s notebook: Jill Biden, Changing the Fashion Game, Vanessa Friedman
Washington Post, The Tokyo Olympics schedule, day by day

Top Stories

Washington Post, Biden seeks to end post-9/11 era, pulling combat forces from Iraq, Anne Gearan, July 26, 2021. Biden is set to welcome the Iraqi prime minister Monday and announce the end of the U.S. combat mission in Iraq — part of a broad goal of shifting the U.S. focus from the Middle East.

Daily Beast, Iraqi PM: American Combat Troops No Longer Needed

Washington Post, Senate infrastructure talks in jeopardy as infighting spills out into the open, Tony Romm, Seung Min Kim and Ian Duncan, July 26, 2021. Republicans initially said they had hoped to finalize a more robust blueprint by today, but the prospect now seems unimaginable.

Infrastructure deal in precarious state as endgame nears.

Washington Post, Jan. 6 select committee to start work amid political chaos and controversy, Karoun Demirjian, July 26, 2021 (print ed.). Democrats are still finalizing their plans for the probe, while GOP leaders are boycotting it altogether — and threatening to retaliate with countermeasures.

The House select committee envisioned to be the ultimate arbiter of what led President Donald Trump’s supporters to invade the U.S. Capitol in January is scheduled to begin its work this week under a cloud of controversy that threatens to compromise the investigation from the outset.

Republican leaders, who declared a boycott after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) last week rejected two of their picks for the panel, have signaled to the GOP’s rank and file that there could be consequences for anyone who participates. As of Sunday, two have agreed to do so anyway, and Pelosi has hinted that there could be others.

It’s unclear when a roster may be finalized, and Democrats running the committee have yet to articulate specific plans or timelines for their investigation.

New York Times, Pelosi Appoints Kinzinger to Panel Scrutinizing Jan. 6, Luke Broadwater, July 26, 2021 (print ed.). The selection of Representative Adam Kinzinger for the special committee adds a second Republican who has been an unsparing critic of former President Donald J. Trump.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday appointed Representative Adam Kinzinger to the special committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, adding a second Republican who is a forceful critic of former President Donald J. Trump to the panel.

The move, which bolsters the committee’s bipartisan credentials, came after Ms. Pelosi rejected two Republicans who are among Mr. Trump’s most vociferous defenders in Congress from joining, saying their conduct suggested they could not be trusted to participate.

Mr. Kinzinger, right, a six-term congressman from Illinois who has drawn censure from his own party for disavowing Mr. Trump and the conspiracy theories the former president perpetuated, said in a statement that he had accepted the post.

“While this is not the position I expected to be in or sought out, when duty calls, I will always answer,” said Mr. Kinzinger, one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump. “This moment requires a serious, cleareyed, nonpartisan approach. We are duty bound to conduct a full investigation on the worst attack on the Capitol since 1814 and to make sure it can never happen again.”

Ms. Pelosi, who has final say over the committee’s membership, has already given one of the eight seats normally reserved for the majority party to Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming. Ms. Cheney was ousted from House leadership in May for criticizing Mr. Trump and his actions before and during the riot.

About 140 police officers were injured on Jan. 6 as Trump loyalists stormed the Capitol, where Congress was meeting to formalize President Biden’s election, chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” stalking the halls for Ms. Pelosi and forcing lawmakers to evacuate their chambers.

Palmer Report, Opinion: Nancy Pelosi just made her Adam Kinzinger power move, Bocha Blue, July 25, 2021. Warrior Nancy Pelosi has done it again! She has appointed Rep. Adam Kinzinger to the January sixth committee. And this is a GREAT move.

Washington Post, Civilian casualties in Afghanistan hit record highs as U.S. forces withdraw, U.N. mission reports, Susannah George, July 26, 2021. Civilian casualties in Afghanistan have hit record highs as U.S. forces are withdrawing from the country, a U.N. mission reported Monday. The mission warned the conflict is likely to become more deadly as fighting draws closer to urban areas.

Nearly 800 civilians were killed and more than 1,600 wounded between May and June, the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said. The figures are the highest recorded during those two months since the mission began keeping track in 2009.

The war has entered a deadlier phase during the withdrawal of foreign forces that began in May. With less foreign support for Afghan government forces, the prolonged combat in rural areas and along the urban peripheries is proving more dangerous for civilians.

Virus Victims, Responses

Washington Post, As virus surges, GOP lawmakers are moving to limit public health powers, Frances Stead Sellers and Isaac Stanley-Becker, July 26, 2021 (print ed.). In some states, anger at perceived overreach by health officials has prompted legislative attempts to limit their authority, and some state courts have reined in the emergency and regulatory powers governors have wielded against the coronavirus.

New York Times, Live Updates: N.Y.C. and California Will Require Workers to Be Vaccinated or Tested, Staff Reports, July 26, 2021. The move by Mayor Bill de Blasio, with a mid-September deadline, comes days after a similar mandate for public health care workers.

In other news:

Coronavirus cases in Tokyo continue to pull athletes out of competition.
In Louisiana, vaccine misinformation is a huge challenge for public health workers.
France approves a contentious law making health passes mandatory.
Requests for U.S. college aid are down, with experts linking the drop to the economic uncertainty caused by the pandemic. Here’s the latest on Covid-19

Washington Post, Opinion: Republicans unleashed a deadly vaccine skepticism. Can they now contain it? E.J. Dionne Jr., right, July 26, 2021 (print ed.). Bad news is leading to at least a bit of good news: The surge of the coronavirus delta variant seems to have lit a fire under many Republican politicians. As the virus spreads largely in GOP regions with low vaccination rates, leaders of a party where anti-vax sentiment has run rampant have started sounding the alarm: Not getting vaccinated really can kill you.

One of the most unequivocal statements came from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). “These shots need to get in everybody’s arm as rapidly as possible,” he said last week, adding a swipe at those pushing falsehoods about vaccines, who happen to include many in his own party:

“I want to encourage everybody . . . to ignore all of these other voices that are giving demonstrably bad advice.”

As Republican pollster Whit Ayres notes, McConnell, who endured polio as a child, has always embraced the power of vaccination. More surprising was a vaccine plug from Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, a longtime baiter of federal authorities whose reelection campaign is selling merchandise mocking Anthony S. Fauci, the White House health adviser.

Yes, even the man peddling “Don’t Fauci My Florida” T-shirts seems to have noticed that over the past two weeks, 20 percent of all the nation’s new covid-19 cases were in his state.

Washington Post, Democrats broaden probe into Trump-era meddling at CDC, Dan Diamond, July 26, 2021. House investigators are seeking interviews with former CDC professional staff, including Anne Schuchat and Nancy Messonnier.

Senior officials also discussed how to respond to a Trump appointee’s demand to edit the reports, according to a newly released email obtained by the House’s select subcommittee on the pandemic.

Washington Post, 188.7 million U.S. vaccinated, as of July 26, 2021, the number of people who have received at least one dose of the vaccine. This includes more than 163.2 million people fully vaccinated, representing 49.1 %of the eligible population and with 58.8 % with at least one dose.

Worldometer, World & U.S. Coronavirus Case Totals (updated July 26, 2021, with some governments reporting lower numbers than the totals here and some experts saying the numbers are far higher, as the New York Times reported in India’s true pandemic death toll is likely to be well over 3 million, a new study finds):

World Cases: 194,985,522, Deaths: 4,178,555
U.S. Cases: 35,199,465, Deaths: 626,762
India Cases: 31,411,262, Deaths: 420,996
Brazil Cases: 19,688,663, Deaths: 549,999

Washington Post, Australian prime minister calls lockdown-violating protests ‘selfish and self-defeating,’ Miriam Berger, July 26, 2021 (print ed.). Though many had looked forward to the easing of social and economic restrictions with the advent of coronavirus vaccines, the emergence of highly transmissible variants has upended expectations.

This weekend’s anti-lockdown protests in Sydney were “selfish and self-defeating,” Australia’s prime minister said Sunday, amid a global wave of renewed restrictions and resulting demonstrations as the highly contagious delta variant spreads.

Some 3,500 people protested Saturday in Sydney after New South Wales tightened its regulations last week in response to rising coronavirus cases, even as the city’s lockdown enters its fifth week. The demonstrations violated the region’s strict stay-at-home orders, restrictions on public gatherings and face mask mandates.

Authorities are warning it could have been a superspreader event.

New South Wales police said Sunday on their website that they had arrested 63 people allegedly involved in the protest and charged 35 for violations such as resisting, assaulting and obstructing officers. Two men were charged with striking a police horse and refused bail.

Washington Post, An activewear company told customers its clothes repelled covid. The false claims led to a $3.7 million fine, Jonathan Edwards, July 26, 2021 (print ed.). Pandemic fear racked Australia last summer. The virus had ripped through nursing homes. A government official warned of more funeral homes and hospitals being overrun. One headline screamed about the virus’s deadliest day — a record that stood for four days, until a higher death toll replaced it.

No one knew if coronavirus cases were about to explode.

Amid the uncertainty, an Australian clothing company started trumpeting its “anti-virus activewear.” That July, Lorna Jane launched an advertising campaign for apparel covered in a “groundbreaking” spray called LJ Shield that the company claimed would eliminate and repel covid and other viruses, bacteria and fungus.

“Cure for the Spread of COVID-19? Lorna Jane Thinks So,” one advertisement read.

“With Lorna Jane Shield on our garments it meant that we were completely eliminating the possibility of spreading any deadly viruses,” another claimed.

Except there was no scientific evidence Lorna Jane’s clothes did any of those things, government regulators said. On Friday, a federal judge ordered the company to pay $3.7 million for violating the country’s consumer protection laws, calling the clothing maker’s conduct “exploitative, predatory and potentially dangerous.”

“This was dreadful conduct as it involved making serious claims regarding public health when there was no basis for them,” said Rod Sims, chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the regulatory agency that took the company to court.

Lorna Jane admitted it had made several false claims during the peak of the pandemic’s second wave in Australia but blamed a supplier for giving it bad information, the Guardian reported. The company won’t fight the court’s decision, according to BBC News.

Washington Post, An unvaccinated radio host is sick with covid. His family is ‘elated’ listeners are now getting the vaccine, Katie Shepherd, July 26, 2021. When his brother first caught the novel coronavirus, Mark Valentine did not think he was suffering too much.

Phil Valentine continued posting regularly on Facebook, joked about his condition and even hosted a segment for his conservative talk radio show on WTN-FM in Nashville. He had chosen not to get the vaccine and frequently mocked Democrats’ campaigns to drive more people to get the shot. When the brothers spoke on the phone a few days after Phil tested positive in early July, he told Mark that he was already feeling better.

“He said, ‘I don’t think it’s going to be a big deal,’” Mark Valentine told The Washington Post on Sunday. “I frankly quit worrying about it.”

But by the end of the week, after nearly recovering, Phil Valentine’s health began a rapid descent. His family persuaded the 62-year-old to check into the emergency room. Medical scans showed the coronavirus infection had caused pneumonia in his right lung, Mark Valentine told The Post.

More On Trump Capitol Riot, Insurrection

Washington Post, ‘Some are still suffering’: Months after Capitol riot, police who fought the mob contend with physical, psychological pain, Peter Hermann, July 26, 2021. Officers who plan to testify before Congress say recognition of insurrection is crucial to officers’ their recovery.

The 42-year-old Capitol Police officer and Army reservist is also seeing a therapist to help with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), first diagnosed after he served in the war in Iraq.

He said bouts of anxiety returned after his battle on American soil in the Jan. 6 riot.

A Capitol officer, Brian D. Sicknick, collapsed after confronting rioters and died a day later of a stroke. Two other officers in the riot, one Capitol, one D.C., later died by suicide. One Capitol officer surrendered her weapon, fearing she might use it on herself, Rep. David N. Cicilline (D-R.I.) said.

Washington Post, Opinion: Merrick Garland, don’t politicize the pursuit of justice, Jennifer Rubin, right, July 26, 2021. On Tuesday, the Justice Department and the House of Representatives will file briefs explaining to a federal court whether each believes that Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) was acting within the scope of his employment when he allegedly incited the violent attack on the Capitol and sought to subvert the peaceful transfer of power on Jan. 6.

This sounds absurd, but in effect Brooks is asking the Justice Department to certify that he was acting in the scope of his duties when he tried to overthrow the government. If he succeeds, he would be immune from suit, and the Justice Department would step in on behalf of the government in civil suits arising from the violent insurrection.

It would be a gross error and invitation for future insurrections if either the House or Justice Department agreed that Brooks is protected. How can encouraging a mob to disrupt the electoral college tabulation possibly be within Brooks’s duties? That would be akin to saying Gen. Robert E. Lee was acting within the scope of his duties in the U.S. Army when he attacked Union troops. Sedition is not within the scope of any official’s duties.

Constitutional scholar Laurence H. Tribe wrote last week, “If the attorney general decides to treat such action as merely one way of discharging official duties, then self-government will become a mirage, and those who are guilty of trashing it will have been placed beyond the reach of legal accountability to those they injure.” He argued, “That would mean that popular sovereignty is dead and the twin principles that no one is above the law and that every legal wrong deserves a remedy might as well be tossed into history’s dust heap.”

If [Attorney General Merrick] Garland, right, comes even close to suggesting that the elected head of the executive branch and those members of Congress so beholden to him that they will join him in his crusade to “stop the steal,” as the president put it, are to be shielded by the Justice Department from liability — whether civil or criminal — for seeking to prevent Congress from peacefully certifying an election replacing that chief executive with a successor, our system of government will be in mortal peril.

And it would be folly for Garland to pretend that saying Brooks was acting within his authority still leaves open the possibility of denying that Donald Trump was acting within his when that question is teed up for decision, as it shortly will be in all three cases. Brooks’s basic defense, after all, is that he — like the mob he was addressing — was just doing Trump’s bidding.

Reuters, Biden nominates top prosecutors, including one to oversee Jan. 6 riot cases, Sarah N. Lynch and Nate Raymond, July 26, 2021. President Biden on Monday nominated a slate of eight people to serve as U.S. attorneys, including the top federal prosecutor who will oversee the Jan. 6 Capitol riots cases if he is confirmed, and a progressive prosecutor in Massachusetts.

Matthew Graves, a former federal prosecutor now with the corporate law firm DLA Piper, is Biden’s choice to run the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, which has been overwhelmed with a flood of cases stemming from the riots.

Federal prosecutors have arrested more than 535 people on charges of taking part in the violence, in which followers of then-President Donald Trump fought police, smashed windows and sent members of Congress and then-Vice President Mike Pence running for safety.

Graves earlier in his career served as a prosecutor in the same U.S. Attorney’s Office he would lead, securing a guilty plea from former U.S. Representative Jesse Jackson Jr for misusing campaign funds and investigating banks for sanctions violations.

Biden also nominated Rachael Rollins, a local prosecutor in Boston who is part of a growing national movement of “progressive prosecutors” who support efforts to eliminate racial disparities by rejecting the traditional “tough on crime” culture that has led to the disproportionate incarceration of Black men.

The nominations must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

Rollins, who earlier in her career worked as a federal prosecutor, was elected in 2018 as the first Black woman to serve as the district attorney in Suffolk County, which covers Boston. She would be the first Black woman to serve as the top federal prosecutor in Massachusetts.

Rollins campaigned on a promise to decline prosecution for some low-level crimes, and she had been vocal about the need for police reform even before the nationwide protests following the May killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.

Other nominees to serve as U.S. attorneys include Erek Barron for the District of Maryland, Nicholas Brown for the Western District of Washington, Clifford Johnson for the Northern District of Indiana, Zachary Myers for the Southern District of Indiana, Trini Ross for the Western District of New York and Vanessa Waldref for the Eastern District of Washington.

U.S. Law, Courts, Election Claims

— Whistleblower Daniel Hale, who faces sentencing tomorrow, July 27, after pleading guilty to violating the Espionage Act by leaking classified information about the U.S. targeted drone assassination program. (Source: Bob Hayes/handout)

Covert Action Magazine, In Pre-Sentencing Letter, Drone Whistleblower Daniel Hale Says Crisis of Conscience Motivated Leak, Brett Wilkins, July 26, 2021. Attorneys for drone whistleblower Daniel Hale—who faces sentencing tomorrow after pleading guilty earlier this year to violating the Espionage Act—last Thursday submitted a letter to Judge Liam O’Grady in which the former Air Force intelligence analyst says a crisis of conscience drove him to leak classified information about the U.S. targeted assassination program.

The 11-page handwritten letter (pdf) begins with a quote from U.S. Admiral Gene La Rocque, who said in 1995 that “we now kill people without ever seeing them. Now you push a button thousands of miles away… Since it’s all done by remote control, there’s no remorse.”

“It is not a secret that I struggle to live with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder,” the 33-year-old Hale wrote in the letter. “Depression is a constant… Stress, particularly stress caused by war, can manifest itself at different times and in different ways.”

“The first time that I witnessed a drone strike came within days of my arrival to Afghanistan,” Hale recounted. “Early that morning, before dawn, a group of men had gathered together in the mountain ranges of Patika province around a campfire carrying weapons and brewing tea. That they carried weapons with them would not have been considered out of the ordinary in the place I grew up, much less within the virtually lawless tribal territories outside the control of the Afghan authorities.”

“Except that among them was a suspected member of the Taliban, given away by the targeted cell phone device in his pocket,” he wrote. “As for the remaining individuals, to be armed, of military age, and sitting in the presence of an alleged enemy combatant was enough evidence to place them under suspicion as well.”

Daniel Hale’s letter in his sentencing proceedings, on the trauma of war and how his conscience compelled him to inform the American people https://t.co/SaTpizr2vu pic.twitter.com/2pItkYKKJc
— Courage Foundation (@couragefound) July 22, 2021

In 2012—the same year that Hale deployed to Afghanistan to support the U.S. Defense Department’s Joint Special Operations Task Force and was responsible for identifying, tracking, and targeting “high-value” terror suspects—the New York Times reported then-President Barack Obama, who dramatically increased U.S. drone strikes in the so-called War on Terror, “embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties” that effectively “counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants.”

Critics condemned the policy as an attempt by the administration to artificially lower the war’s civilian casualty figures—which by then already numbered in the hundreds of thousands, with most victims killed during former President George W. Bush’s tenure.

Daily Beast, ‘Traitor’ Tom Barrack Gets Heckled Before Not Guilty Plea, Justin Rohrlich, July 26, 2021. As the longtime Trump pal was led into Brooklyn federal court, a protester shouted, “It’s our democracy, you asshole!” Private equity billionaire and former Trump inaugural committee chairman Tom Barrack pleaded not guilty on Monday to federal charges that he illegally lobbied the White House on behalf of the United Arab Emirates while his longtime pal was president.

As Barrack, 74, entered the Brooklyn courthouse, a protester outside hoisted a sign that read “DIRTY TRAITOR” and shouted, “It’s our democracy! It’s our democracy, not yours! Traitor! It’s our democracy, you asshole!”

A seven-count indictment accuses Barrack, 74, Aspen resident Matthew Grimes, 27, and UAE national Rashid Sultan Rashid Al Malik Alshahhi, 43, of “acting and conspiring to act as agents of the UAE” in an attempt to influence the policy positions of the Trump administration.

Barrack, the founder of investment firm Colony Capital and a staunch Trump ally and friend, is also facing charges of obstruction of justice and making false statements. Barrack was released from jail last Friday after posting a $250 million bond, which was secured by $5 million in cash, some $21 million in securities, and Barrack’s California home. Prosecutors argued in a detention memo that Barrack was a “serious flight risk,” as he holds Lebanese citizenship and has access to a private jet.

Former Trump National Security advisor and four-star general Michael Flynn, third from the left at center, takes what was described as an “oath” to the conspiracy movement Q-Anon in 2020.

Palmer Report, Opinion: The DOJ has got to make a move on Michael Flynn, Justin Hodges, July 26, 2021. Michael Flynn hates the United States, and he hates democracy. Nothing he does seems to indicate otherwise.

That he’s a retired United States Army Lieutenant General with strong ties and apparent allegiance to QAnon is particularly disconcerting. It’s unclear just when Flynn turned on the country he had pledged to serve altruistically.

Footage has recently surfaced of a California event at which Flynn was given a semi-automatic rifle at a church. It’s rich that the pro-life crowd saw no inappropriateness in gifting a killing machine to an inciter of violence. That was bad enough, but Flynn then made this dog whistle of a remark: “Maybe I’ll find somebody in Washington, DC,” to the delighted laughter and glee of the crowd assembled in the house of worship. Flynn may try to pass his quip off as a joke, but it’s more likely that it could serve as instructional to the conspiracy-loving, anti-democracy QAnon crowd. We all know exactly to what Flynn was referring, just as we all know the message he was unsubtly sending.

As a reward for his multiple wrong-doings on behalf of the previous administration, Flynn received a corrupt pardon from the then-president in November of 2020. Angry at the outcome of the 2020 election, Flynn suggested that the former commander in chief suspend the Constitution, silence the media, and hold a new and rigged election under direction of the military. Flynn is dangerous to the country, as his deranged voice is far-reaching and falls on many susceptible ears.

Flynn’s Twitter account was permanently suspended in early 2021, but he continues to communicate with other traitors via other channels and remains highly popular with the QAnon lot. Referencing assassination with a gun in hand is a serious threat, and Flynn should not be walking around free; it’s time for his arrest. After all, Flynn is no longer pardon-protected.

Washington Post, Pegasus Project Global Investigation: Chief of WhatsApp, which sued NSO over alleged hacking of its product, disputes firm’s claims about spyware operations, Dana Priest and Elizabeth Dwoskin, July 26, 2021 (print ed.). Messaging app leader says claims ‘don’t match all the facts’ its investigation unearthed.

The leader of the world’s most popular instant messaging app this week challenged the statements made by NSO Group’s chief executive in response to media reports that its military-grade software had been used to spy on journalists and human rights activists across the globe.

WhatsApp chief executive Will Cathcart said the denials by Shalev Hulio “don’t all match the facts” that he said WhatsApp uncovered while investigating alleged hacking of its app in recent years by NSO’s Pegasus software. The incident resulted in Facebook-owned WhatsApp suing NSO in a case that’s still pending. NSO denies the allegation.

“This reporting matches what we saw in the attack we defeated two years ago,” including the types of targets “who had no business being spied on in any shape or form,” Cathcart said in an interview this week with Stephanie Kirchgaessner, a reporter for the Guardian newspaper in London and a member of the Pegasus Project reporting team. The team of 16 media outlets, including The Washington Post, was organized by Paris-based Forbidden Stories, a nonprofit journalism group.

Washington Post, Biden administration to curb toxic wastewater from coal plants with new rule, Dino Grandoni, July 26, 2021. The move would reverse a major Trump administration regulatory rollback. But in the near term, the EPA will not try reverting to Obama-era standards, upsetting some of Biden’s environmental allies.

Washington Post, House Ethics Committee declines to investigate arrest of Rep. Beatty at voting rights protest, John Wagner, July 26, 2021. The House Ethics Committee announced Monday that it would not launch an investigation into the arrest this month of Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio) at a voting rights protest in a Senate office building.

Beatty, the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, was among the demonstrators arrested by the U.S. Capitol Police on July 15 after chanting in the atrium of the Hart Senate Office Building. Speakers at the event expressed frustration that the Senate had yet to pass sweeping voting rights legislation approved by the House.

In a statement Monday, the Ethics Committee, whose membership is evenly divided among Democrats and Republicans, noted that Beatty had paid a $50 fine before her release.

Washington Post, Bob Moses (1935–2021): 1960s civil rights leader who saw math as road to equality dies at 86, Paul W. Valentine, July 26, 2021 (print ed.). Bob Moses, a towering but self-effacing leader of the civil rights movement who, after enduring beatings and jailings to register Black voters in Mississippi in the 1960s, picked up the civil rights torch 20 years later by founding the Algebra Project, a math education initiative aimed at rural and inner-city students, died July 25 at his home in Hollywood, Fla. He was 86.

Ben Moynihan, the director of operations for the Algebra Project, confirmed the death to the Associated Press.

Bespectacled, owlish and bearing a master’s degree in philosophy from Harvard, Mr. Moses was an unlikely front-line activist — much less an obvious candidate to quit his comfortable prep-school teaching job in the Bronx in 1960 and immerse himself in the most violently segregationist precincts of Mississippi.

A janitor’s son raised in New York public housing, he showed precocious talent for academic fields involving logic, especially mathematics and philosophy. He found kinship with Quaker friends in college, and he submerged himself in the writings of Albert Camus, the French-Algerian Nobel laureate whose books explored universal questions of human existence and justice.

Washington Post, First came the ransomware attacks. Now come the lawsuits, Gerrit De Vynck, July 26, 2021 (print ed.). Companies that have been locked out of their computer networks by hackers are now getting sued by consumers and workers claiming they were hurt by lax cybersecurity.

Washington Post, Facing 11 years in prison, a former intel analyst condemns ‘undeniable cruelties’ of Afghanistan drone strikes, Julian Mark, July 26, 2021. Months after U.S. Air Force intelligence analyst Daniel Hale arrived in Afghanistan in 2012, he watched as a car sped eastbound near Jalalabad toward the Pakistan border. It was a cloudy and windy afternoon, and the man driving the car was a suspected member of a car-bomb manufacturing ring.

A U.S. Predator drone fired a missile at the speeding car, but it missed by several feet. The car eventually stopped. The man got out and checked himself, and then a woman emerged. She started to frantically pull something out of the car. But Hale could not see what it was because the drone through which he watched the scene diverted its camera.

A couple of days later, Hale’s commanding officer told him the woman was the suspect’s wife, and in the back of the car were their two daughters, ages 5 and 3. Afghan soldiers had discovered the girls in a nearby dumpster. The elder girl was dead from shrapnel in her body, and the younger girl was alive but severely dehydrated.

Calling it the “most harrowing day of my life,” Hale described the episode in a handwritten 11-page letter to a judge who is expected to decide on Tuesday how long Hale will spend in prison for leaking classified documents on the U.S. drone program to a journalist. Hale pleaded guilty in March to leaking documents under the Espionage Act that revealed secrets about U.S. drone operations in Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia.

Prosecutors have recommended that Hale spend up to 11 years in prison, arguing that “vanity overrode the commitments he made to his country.” In court papers, the government argued Hale wanted to “ingratiate” himself with journalists and took a job with the Defense Department’s National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency so he could access top-secret information and share it with reporters.

Hale argues that he should be sentenced to just 12 to 18 months in prison. It was not vanity but “irreconcilable moral conflict,” his lawyers argue, that drove him to print out documents and share them with a journalist from the Intercept. “He felt extraordinary guilt for having been complicit in what he viewed as unjustifiable killings,” his lawyers wrote in sentencing documents filed last week.

Hale and his lawyers argue that the former airman suffered from “moral injury” during his short stint as a signals intelligence analyst and that his only coping mechanism for the post-traumatic stress was to attempt to “make a difference” and leak documents.

According to a New York Magazine profile, Hale grew up in Bristol, Va. In his early 20s, after an argument with this father, he enlisted in the military, took an exam, aced it, and was funneled into intelligence work. For three years he floated around, training at a military language program in Monterey, Calif., and then working at an Air Force dental office in Maryland. In March 2012, he was transferred to Bagram air base in Afghanistan.

There, Hale’s job was to identify targets for drone strikes. And he struggled with the risk that those he identified as enemies — a teenager or a farmer, for example — could be innocent civilians, he argued in recent court documents.

Hale contacted a reporter with whom he had previously communicated and printed out documents. That reporter, while not named in court documents, is widely believed to be Jeremy Scahill of the Intercept. He eventually used the leaked documents to build the Intercept series “The Drone Papers,” according to New York Magazine, which detailed the “inner workings” of the U.S. unmanned operations program, such as how the Obama administration approved airstrikes.

Daily Beast, Crowd Turns on Gunman Who Killed One, Stoning Him to Death, Cheyenne Ubiera, July 26, 2021. The gunman had fired into a group of people.\

After a gunman in Fort Worth, Texas, killed one person while firing into a crowd of people, the group sought revenge, pelting him with stones that left him dead. Officials say the man started shooting into the crowd just before 1 a.m. Monday.

One person was killed and two others who are expected to survive were injured in the shooting. The crowd then began to throw gardening stones at the gunman, ultimately killing him. Police say that the cause of the shooting is still unknown but it’s believed to have stemmed from some kind of altercation. Everyone involved knew each other, according to police. The names of those involved have yet to be released.

Palmer Report, Opinion: This phony Arizona election “audit” just got even more idiotic, Shirley Kennedy, July 26, 2021. With this being their first undertaking, one must wonder how well or accurately they will conduct this so-called audit. CNN gave us some insight.

Doug Logan is the CEO of Cyber Ninjas. He claimed that they found 74,243 mail-in ballots with “no clear record of them being sent.” How does Logan know this without seeing missing postal markings? His auditors conducted “door-to-door questioning” of Maricopa County voters, and that by talking with people, they were able to determine whether inconsistencies are “real problems” or “clerical errors of some sort.” What? That makes no sense whatsoever, none. So, is he saying the people they spoke with did not use mail-in ballots? If so, what in the world does that prove? Only Republicans could find such an ill-equipped, incompetent outfit to conduct an “audit,” but it gets worse. According to CNN, Liz Harrington, a spokesperson for Trump, Lauren Boebert, and Trump jumped on the bandwagon, repeating the information as truth. No wonder the Republican party is such a hot mess right now. If Logan told them he had a bridge for sale cheap in San Francisco, they would probably repeat that as well.

CNN gave us the facts on these allegedly “miscounted” ballots. CNN reported that there are no “magically appearing ballots” in Maricopa County, which was verified by Maricopa County and experts. Instead of these ballots “missing,” the numbers derive from both mail-in ballots and early in-person voting ballots. Garrett Archer, who is an ABC election analyst and former official in the Arizona Secretary of State’s office, said that the ballot request list is never updated after a date certain, and thereafter, the total is added to the in-person vote totals, so what Logan is looking at is a combination of in-person voting and mail-in ballots, not mail-in ballots alone. Logan is merely proving that he is unqualified to audit elections since he does not even bother to learn how this works.

Logan’s other claim is that Maricopa County “stopped verifying voters’s signatures at some point in the election.” Where did Logan get this nonsense? He claims to have an affidavit (from whom no one knows) that verifies that the “comparison points” of signatures were systematically reduced “after some time” from 20 to 10 to 5 before they stop comparing altogether. Stephen Richer, a Republican member of the Maricopa County Recorder’s office told CNN that Maricopa County never modified its “rigorous signature verification requirements” and that “any suggestion to the contrary is categorically false.” Yet, the lies keep coming. The problem is the people who believe this crap. As long as they have people willing to fall for anything they are fed, the lies will continue.

U.S. Politics, Governance

New York Times, Nancy Mace Called Herself a ‘New Voice’ for the G.O.P. Then She Pivoted, Catie Edmondson, July 26, 2021 (print ed.). Her shift reflects how rank-and-file Republicans — even those who may disagree with him — have decided it is too perilous to openly challenge former President Donald J. Trump.

Representative Nancy Mace had just delivered the kind of red-meat remarks that would ordinarily thrill the Republican voters in attendance here on a recent sweltering evening, casually comparing liberal Democrats to terrorists — the “Hamas squad,” she called them — and railing against their “socialist” spending plans.

But asked to give an assessment of her congresswoman, Mara Brockbank, a former leader of the Charleston County Republican Party who previously endorsed Ms. Mace, was less than enthusiastic.

“I didn’t like that she back-stabbed Trump,” Ms. Brockbank said. “We have to realize that she got in because of Trump. Even if you do have something against your leaders, keep them to yourself.”

Ms. Brockbank was referring to Ms. Mace’s first weeks in office immediately after the Jan. 6 riot, as the stench of tear gas lingered in the halls of the Capitol and some top Republicans were quietly weighing a break with President Donald J. Trump. Ms. Mace, a freshman congresswoman, placed herself at the forefront of a group of Republicans denouncing Mr. Trump’s lies of a stolen election that had fueled the assault and appeared to be establishing herself as a compelling new voice urging her party to change its ways.

But these days, as Republicans in Congress have made it clear that they have no intention of turning against Mr. Trump, Ms. Mace has quietly backpedaled into the party’s fold. Having once given more than a dozen interviews in a single day to condemn Mr. Trump’s corrosive influence on the party, Ms. Mace now studiously avoids the subject, rarely if ever mentioning his name and saying it is time for Republicans to “stop fighting with each other in public.”

Washington Post, New Jersey Democrats want ‘fairness’ in Biden’s trillion-dollar agenda. They’re in for a fight, Mike DeBonis, July 26, 2021 (print ed.). The way New Jersey Democrats see it, President Donald Trump and his congressional allies targeted affluent, left-leaning states like theirs to fund Republican priorities such as massive tax cuts. And now, with President Biden pushing his own far-ranging agenda through Congress, it’s time to even the score.

“We were literally targeted as a Democratic state,” said Rep. Donald W. Norcross, one of 12 congressional Democrats from the state who are pushing for tax relief and infrastructure funding. “This is about fairness.”

Said Sen. Cory Booker (D), “We knew we were sort of in the crosshairs before. But now the floodgates have opened.”

But the state’s parochial concerns — which include restoring a major tax break used by about 40 percent of the state’s filers and protecting its powerful drug industry — are starting to conflict with the larger Democratic agenda of overhauling climate policy, reshaping the tax code and delivering new assistance to American families through a sweeping expansion of social programs.

Every dollar used to preserve a tax break mainly enjoyed by the wealthy or preserve pharmaceutical company profits, other Democrats say, is a dollar that can’t be used on more urgent priorities.

New Jersey Democrats need to “realize they’re part of a team,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “This is about whether or not Democrats deliver for the people on the promises we made.”

The state’s influential congressional delegation has not been deterred, however, and the intraparty conflict — amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars — has put the Garden State at the center of the action as Democrats try to maneuver the biggest social agenda in a generation through the smallest congressional majorities in decades.

Some New Jerseyans say they recognize that if the party is to pass anything over the unified Republican opposition, they — and other states looking for post-Trump payback — might have to sacrifice some of their goals, though not without a battle.

Daily Beast, Matt Gaetz’s Future Sister-in-Law Says He’s a Gaslighting ‘Creep,’ Roger Sollenberger, July 26, 2021. Matt Gaetz’s fiancée’s sister says the Florida Republican tried to set her up with a man much older than her when she was 19, and went “full lawyer” on her when she confronted him.

Rep. Matt Gaetz’s future sister-in-law appears to have had more than enough with the Florida congressman, posting three TikTok videos in the last two days slamming him as “weird and creepy” and “a literal pedophile.”

Roxanne Luckey—the sister of Gaetz’s fiancée, Ginger Luckey—was sharply critical of the congressman and his treatment of young women, saying she “unfortunately was not surprised” to have learned Gaetz was under federal investigation for sex crimes.

In one video Monday night, Roxanne Luckey told a story about Gaetz pressuring an older man to court her when she was 19. Roxanne Luckey called the move “weird and creepy”—and she claims Gaetz yelled at her and her mother and went “full lawyer” when she confronted him.

“I saw the character and type of person he is, and when everything came out about him, I honestly, unfortunately, was not surprised,” Luckey said in one video.

“As someone who has personally experienced a ton of creepy old politician men hitting on me when I was underage, and experiencing sexual assault at that age by people of power, it’s very disheartening and I have zero tolerance of people like [Gaetz],” said Roxanne, who in 2020 worked briefly as a White House intern. She added that she is “tired of them getting away with this type of stuff.”

After the videos were posted, Ginger Luckey hit back at her sister, telling The Daily Beast she had a history of “destructive behavior.”

Roxanne, who is 20 now, said she was sharing her experiences in part because of her interactions with powerful men and her belief that it is important to “hold people accountable to whatever extent we can.”

“There is so much more to the story and about what I know about Matt Gaetz,” she added. “It is definitely a serious situation.”

The first of the videos, posted on Sunday, features Luckey dancing and lip-synching to Lana Del Ray’s “Jealous Girl” with a New York Times headline in the background, reading “Matt Gaetz Is Said to Face Justice Dept. Inquiry Over Sex With an Underage Girl.” She added her own text, writing, “When a creepy old man tries to hit on you at the bar but your sisters engaged to a literal pedophile.”

Rep. Matt Gaetz and Ginger Luckey at a rally in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
Michael Ciaglo/Getty

In a follow-up video Monday night, Luckey apologized for using the term “pedophile” and shifted to “ephebophile”—someone primarily attracted to mid- to late-adolescents—which she reasoned felt more appropriate for Gaetz.

While The Daily Beast couldn’t reach Roxanne Luckey, the woman in the TikTok video appears to be the same person seen in a family photo on Ginger Luckey’s Facebook page, and the two women have multiple overlapping social media contacts. Ginger Luckey’s mother also appears to like posts on Roxanne’s Facebook. The TikTok account also shares two videos showing the person working in the White House as an intern. The Daily Beast was able to verify with a former Trump official that Roxanne Luckey did work as an intern during the summer of 2020, as the TikTok account claims.

Reached for comment Monday evening, Ginger Luckey claimed she and Roxanne had been estranged. (A video posted by Roxanne Luckey suggests she was close with her sister and Gaetz as recently as November.)

“Matt and I are enjoying our engagement and are deeply in love. My estranged sister is mentally unwell,” Ginger Luckey said in a text message. “She has been in therapy for years and our family hopes that after receiving in-patient mental health treatment, she will overcome the tendency she has repeatedly shown to engage in destructive behavior.”

World News

The photos and videos not only clearly depict Raymond caressing the victim’s chest and buttocks, but also lie in bed with an unconscious woman on two different occasions.

During her stay with Raymond, the women experienced memory loss and claimed to have no knowledge of photography, video, or physical contact.

Washington Post, Tunisia’s president takes emergency powers; country in crisis, Siobhán O’Grady, July 26, 2021. The dramatic political crisis moved into its second day after President Kais Saied fired the prime minister and suspended parliament, in the most serious test to the country’s institutions since its transition to democracy a decade ago.

Washington Post, Businessman becomes Lebanon’s latest prime minister designate, Nader Durgham, July 26, 2021. Najib Mikati is the third nominee in less than a year to seek to form a government to rescue the country from collapse.

U.S. Media News

Media acquisitions lawyer Sara April expects to see more news outlets go into local hands as some big chains focus on their larger products and spin off their smaller ones.

As Tim Schmidt, who is building a small newspaper group in central Missouri, put it: “The newspaper has to care about the community. I think local ownership plays a huge part in that.”

Hedge funds such as Alden now control about half of daily newspapers in the United States. Does this suggest greater volatility, with hedge funds likely to sell their news outlets to local owners?

“Every newspaper publisher is constantly looking at their options,” April said. “Are they financial owners known to be long-term holders of newspaper assets? Historically, no.”

Tim Franklin, senior associate dean and John M. Mutz Chair in Local News at Medill, said acquisitions by local investors make sense under the right conditions.

“After decades of consolidation in local news ownership, we could be on the cusp of a back-to-the-future moment with more local operators, especially in smaller communities,” Franklin said.

“This is my retirement project,” Rutberg said. “I was a judge in the local Massachusetts state court, and Massachusetts judges have mandatory retirement at age 70.”

So he and his partners went into the newspaper business.

2020 Olympics

New York Times, U.S. Men’s Basketball Team Loses Opening Game, July 26, 2021 (print ed.). The team fell to France, 83-76, remaining on unsteady footing after taking a rocky path to Tokyo. The Americans shot only 36 percent and were outscored badly in the third quarter, 25-11, when they blew an 8-point halftime lead and fell behind for good. Evan Fournier, who played for the Boston Celtics last season, led France with 28 points. Jrue Holiday, fresh off winning the N.B.A. title with the Milwaukee Bucks, scored 18 for the United States less than 24 hours after landing in Tokyo. In other news:

United States wins first gold medal on second day as Biles slips.
Simone Manuel and the U.S. win bronze in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay.
Chase Kalisz wins the first U.S. gold medal in Tokyo.
She celebrated as if she had won a gold. Except she hadn’t.
Yuto Horigome wins the first skateboarding medal as Nyjah Huston falters.
The U.S. women’s gymnastics team fell short of its usual standards.

New York Times, Critic’s notebook: Jill Biden, Changing the Fashion Game, Vanessa Friedman, July 26, 2021. Cheering the American Olympians, the first lady broke with recent sartorial customs. The game of first lady fashion is one played 12 months a year, at pretty much any time, watched by a global mass of avid spectators who care for reasons national, personal and political. Participants are drafted as soon as they get their jobs, whether they like it or not.

Jill Biden has famously been a reluctant player (“It’s kind of surprising, I think, how much commentary is made about what I wear,” she told Vogue).

But she has, nevertheless, proved there are a variety of ways to score, as least judging by her first solo trip leading the American delegation at the Tokyo Olympics.

Other than that, her clothes were all recycled outfits from her closet. And not just at fun family getaways: At public events. Often very big, photo op-filled, recorded-for-history public events.

Washington Post, The Tokyo Olympics schedule, day by day, Staff Report, July 23, 2021. The Tokyo Olympics officially begin Friday with the Opening Ceremonies and end Aug. 8 with the Closing Ceremonies. Some events, such as softball and the men’s and women’s soccer tournaments, began Wednesday, before the official start of the Games.

Here’s the complete schedule of Olympic events, day by day.

July 25

Top Headlines

Washington Post, Amid fire and floods, a moment of truth for climate action
New York Times, Analysis: Variant Keeps Spreading, but Vaccine Refusal Is the Real Threat
Washington Post, Summer music festivals have returned — just in time for the latest coronavirus surge
Daily Beast, Iraqi PM: American Combat Troops No Longer Needed
Washington Post, Oklahoma reels after Supreme Court ruling on Indian tribes

Virus Victims, Responses

New York Times, The Most Influential Spreader of Coronavirus Misinformation Online
Washington Post, 188.5 million U.S. vaccinated
Worldometer, World & U.S. Coronavirus Case Totals, U.S. Deaths: 626,713
Washington Post, Australian prime minister calls lockdown-violating protests ‘selfish and self-defeating’

Probe of Jan. 6 Pro-Trump Insurrection

Palmer Report, Opinion: Nancy Pelosi just made her Adam Kinzinger power move

U.S. Politics, Governance

Palmer Report, Opinion: Donald Trump’s “stop the steal” is even more of a scam than we knew, James Sullivan
Washington Post, Opinion: What Biden can do to show he’s serious about voting rights, Jennifer Rubin
New York Times, Skilled in Strategy (and Grudges), Top Biden Adviser to Depart White House
Palmer Report, Opinion: No wonder Donald Trump’s handlers rarely let him out in public anymore, Bill Palmer

World News

Washington Post, Power outages cripple parts of the Middle East amid record heat waves and rising unrest

U.S. Media News

2020 Olympics

Washington Post, The Tokyo Olympics schedule, day by day
Daily Beast, Naomi Osaka at the Olympics: ‘I’m Happy Again’

Top Stories

Washington Post, Amid fire and floods, a moment of truth for climate action, Sarah Kaplan and Brady Dennis, July 25, 2021. ‘We are all in the same boat,’ says one diplomat from the developing world. ‘That is what this summer is telling us.’

Scientists have repeatedly warned that the planet remains on track to exceed a critical threshold for warming within a decade. Yet experts and activists also see a rare opportunity to change course — possibly the last chance before many effects become irreversible.

New York Times, Analysis: Variant Keeps Spreading, but Vaccine Refusal Is the Real Threat, Apoorva Mandavilli, July 25, 2021. The United States is again at a crossroads in the pandemic: Infections are up, and the country may again see overflowing hospitals and needless deaths. The contagious Delta variant may be getting the blame, but fueling its rise is vaccine hesitancy and refusal, long pervasive among Americans.

After an all too brief respite, the United States is again at a crossroads in the pandemic. The number of infections has ticked up — slowly at first, then swiftly — to 51,000 cases per day, on average, more than four times the rate a month ago. The country may again see overflowing hospitals, exhausted health care workers and thousands of needless deaths.

The more contagious Delta variant may be getting the blame, but fueling its rise is an older, more familiar foe: vaccine hesitancy and refusal, long pervasive in the United States. Were a wider swath of the population vaccinated, there would be no resurgence — of the Delta variant, or Alpha variant, or any other version of the coronavirus.

While mild breakthrough infections may be more common than once thought, the vaccines effectively prevent severe illness and death. Yet nearly half of the population remains unvaccinated and unprotected. About 30 percent of adults have not received even a single dose, and the percentage is much higher in some parts of the country.

America is one of the few countries with enough vaccines at its disposal to protect every resident — and yet it has highest rates of vaccine hesitance or refusal of any nation except Russia.

Public health experts have fruitlessly warned for months that the virus — any version of it — would resurge if the country did not vaccinate enough of the population quickly enough. Bill Hanage, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, predicted in January that Florida might have a rough summer. Now one in five new infections nationwide is in Florida.

True, the speed and ferocity with which the Delta variant is tearing through Asia, Europe, Africa and now North America has taken many experts by surprise. It now accounts for about 83 percent of the infections in the United States.

But Delta is by no means the wickedest variant out there. Gamma and Lambda are waiting in the wings, and who knows what frightful versions are already flourishing undetected in the far corners of the world, perhaps even here in America.

Every infected person, anywhere in the world, offers the coronavirus another opportunity to morph into a new variant. The more infections there are globally, the more likely new variants will arise.

Washington Post, Summer music festivals have returned — just in time for the latest coronavirus surge, Kim Bellware, July 25, 2021. Over 16 months after summer music festivals were silenced by the coronavirus pandemic, a more infectious variant is showing up to this year’s gatherings like an unwelcome gate-crasher.

As of Friday, the seven-day average for new daily cases in the United States jumped 57 percent from the previous week, according to data tracked by The Washington Post. With the delta variant pushing new infections and hospitalization rates upward, the horns of triumph for summer music festivals are starting to sound more like a sad trombone.

After 2020′s summer of shutdowns, fans, musicians and promoters are eager to return to the stage — as are many of the cities that host the lucrative events. It’s made major music festivals seem like an unstoppable force and, to health experts, an avoidable risk.

“I would probably not recommend [going],” said Maria Alcaide, an infectious-disease specialist who directs the Infectious Diseases Research Unit with the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. She cited the “significant” uptick in the number of new cases and hospitalizations, primarily driven by unvaccinated people.

Daily Beast, Iraqi PM: American Combat Troops No Longer Needed, Barbie Latza Nadeau, July 25, 2021. Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi (shown at center in a government photo via Reuters) has announced that U.S. combat troops are no longer needed to bolster Iraqi forces in their fight against Islamic State militants, according to a wide ranging interview with the Associated Press.

Al-Kadhimi said Iraq will, however, still ask the U.S. for support in training and intelligence gathering. The Iraqi P.M. is heading to Washington, D.C. this week to meet with President Joe Biden in what will be a fourth round of strategic talks. “There is no need for any foreign combat forces on Iraqi soil,” he said, but declined to set his preferred date for their withdrawal. “The war against IS and the readiness of our forces requires a special timetable, and this depends on the negotiations that we will conduct in Washington,” he told the AP.

Washington Post, Oklahoma reels after Supreme Court ruling on Indian tribes, Annie Gowen and Robert Barnes, July 25, 2021 (print ed.). Over the past year since justices ruled that a large part of eastern Oklahoma is still Indian country, convictions have been imperiled in thousands of cases, confusion has grown for police and more than 50 criminals have been released, state records show.

The Supreme Court’s landmark decision in McGirt v. Oklahoma said prosecution of Native Americans for crimes in the expanded Indian country must be carried out in federal and tribal courts, rather than by state or local officials. It was celebrated across the country by Native Americans last July, who saw it as a historic affirmation of treaties signed with the U.S. government in the 1800s.

But in the year since, the ruling has upended Oklahoma’s criminal justice system, imperiled convictions in thousands of cases, sowed confusion for police and emergency responders and led to the direct release of more than 50 criminals convicted on charges including second-degree murder and child abuse, state records show.

And there may be wider impacts for the region, which covers 19 million acres in eastern Oklahoma, includes a portion of the state’s second-biggest city, Tulsa, and is home to 1.8 million people.

Virus Victims, Responses

New York Times, The Most Influential Spreader of Coronavirus Misinformation Online, Sheera Frenkel, July 25, 2021 (print ed.). Researchers and regulators say Joseph Mercola, an osteopathic physician, creates and profits from misleading claims about Covid-19 vaccines.

The article that appeared online on Feb. 9 began with a seemingly innocuous question about the legal definition of vaccines. Then over its next 3,400 words, it declared coronavirus vaccines were “a medical fraud” and said the injections did not prevent infections, provide immunity or stop transmission of the disease.

Instead, the article claimed, the shots “alter your genetic coding, turning you into a viral protein factory that has no off-switch.”

Its assertions were easily disprovable. No matter. Over the next few hours, the article was translated from English into Spanish and Polish. It appeared on dozens of blogs and was picked up by anti-vaccination activists, who repeated the false claims online. The article also made its way to Facebook, where it reached 400,000 people, according to data from CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned tool.

The entire effort traced back to one person: Joseph Mercola.

Dr. Mercola, 67, right, an osteopathic physician in Cape Coral, Fla., has long been a subject of criticism and government regulatory actions for his promotion of unproven or unapproved treatments. But most recently, he has become the chief spreader of coronavirus misinformation online, according to researchers.

An internet-savvy entrepreneur who employs dozens, Dr. Mercola has published over 600 articles on Facebook that cast doubt on Covid-19 vaccines since the pandemic began, reaching a far larger audience than other vaccine skeptics, an analysis by The New York Times found. His claims have been widely echoed on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

The activity has earned Dr. Mercola, a natural health proponent with an Everyman demeanor, the dubious distinction of the top spot in the “Disinformation Dozen,” a list of 12 people responsible for sharing 65 percent of all anti-vaccine messaging on social media, said the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate. Others on the list include Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist, and Erin Elizabeth, the founder of the website Health Nut News, who is also Dr. Mercola’s girlfriend.

“Mercola is the pioneer of the anti-vaccine movement,” said Kolina Koltai, a researcher at the University of Washington who studies online conspiracy theories. “He’s a master of capitalizing on periods of uncertainty, like the pandemic, to grow his movement.”

Some high-profile media figures have promoted skepticism of the vaccines, notably Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham of Fox News, though other Fox personalities have urged viewers to get the shots. Now, Dr. Mercola and others in the “Disinformation Dozen” are in the spotlight as vaccinations in the United States slow, just as the highly infectious Delta variant has fueled a resurgence in coronavirus cases. More than 97 percent of people hospitalized for Covid-19 are unvaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Washington Post, 188.5 million U.S. vaccinated, as of July 25, 2021, the number of people who have received at least one dose of the vaccine. This includes more than 163 million people fully vaccinated, representing 49.1 %of the eligible population and with 58.8 % with at least one dose.

Worldometer, World & U.S. Coronavirus Case Totals (updated July 25, 2021, with some governments reporting lower numbers than the totals here and some experts saying the numbers are far higher, as the New York Times reported in India’s true pandemic death toll is likely to be well over 3 million, a new study finds):

World Cases: 194,582,835, Deaths: 4,171,672
U.S. Cases: 35,184,671, Deaths: 626,713
India Cases: 31,371,901, Deaths: 420,585
Brazil Cases: 19,670,534, Deaths: 549,500

Washington Post, Australian prime minister calls lockdown-violating protests ‘selfish and self-defeating,’ Miriam Berger, July 25, 2021. Though many had looked forward to the easing of social and economic restrictions with the advent of coronavirus vaccines, the emergence of highly transmissible variants has upended expectations.

Authorities are warning it could have been a superspreader event.

Probe of Jan. 6 Pro-Trump Insurrection Palmer Report, Opinion: Nancy Pelosi just made her Adam Kinzinger power move, Bocha Blue, July 25, 2021. Warrior Nancy Pelosi has done it again! She has appointed Rep. Adam Kinzinger to the January sixth committee. And this is a GREAT move.

Kinzinger (I wish he’d change parties, Republican, Illinois) is a smart and courageous man who wants to get to the bottom of the American terrorist attack as much as the Democrats do.

I think this is an excellent move on Pelosi’s part. The GOP cannot say this committee was not bi-partisan, although they will surely try.

Time and again, Warrior Pelosi has outwitted cowardly Kevin McCarthy. It’s a pleasure to watch.

“Today, I am announcing the appointment of Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger, an Air Force veteran and Lieutenant Colonel in the Air National Guard, to serve on the Select Committee,” Pelosi said.

The addition of Kinzinger gives even more legitimacy to the commission and really shows the difference between the two parties. Our party wants answers. The insurrection party wants a cover-up.

Can you imagine what the committee would have been like with the two Jims on it? Jordan would have belligerently raised hell, and we’d have been subject to that dreadful and nightmarish voice that frequently comes close to shattering the ears of viewers everywhere.

Never ever underestimate Pelosi. McCarthy did, and now he is forced to stew in his own juices as the Select Committee sets sail in search of the truth.

U.S. Politics, Governance

Palmer Report, Opinion: Donald Trump’s “stop the steal” is even more of a scam than we knew, James Sullivan, July 25, 2021. While Donald Trump’s biggest lackeys are making fools of themselves – like Rudy Giuliani, Mike Lindell and Sidney Powell – and often finding themselves in legal jeopardy of their own as a result with each passing day, the former guy hardly gives it a thought.

How do we know this?

None of the money from his 2020 campaign fund has been spent on ballot audits in any of the states where he claims people voted illegally. Since vacating the Oval Office, his Save America PAC has raised $75 million – and all the money has gone to paying for Trump’s travel, legal fees, and even staff members, with the PAC retaining most of the money.

This shouldn’t really be a surprise to those of you who saw the fine print at the bottom of his campaign’s “stop the steal” emails. Like everything else Trump’s been ranting about for the last four years, the Big Lie turned out to be yet another scam to test the mental hijinks and loyalty of his supporters, while also taking a sizable portion of money from their wallets. It’s also a tacit admission that Donald Trump lost the election, even if he’s incapable of ever openly admitting that he lost anything in his life.

The crop of shady non-profits and pro-Trump outlets that have opened up in the wake of this disaster have made it more clear than ever that it’s not simply Donald Trump who is at fault here, but also an entire political party that defined itself as simply running on whatever he says – and is still with him – even if they want to keep leaking stories to suggest they aren’t. They’re a party of losers rallying around a lost cause that deserves to stay buried.

Washington Post, Opinion: What Biden can do to show he’s serious about voting rights, Jennifer Rubin, right, July 25, 2021. After President Biden gave a major speech on voting rights this month without uttering the word “filibuster,” the reaction from voting rights advocates fell somewhere between miffed and angry. Just days before his remarks, they had met with Biden to convey how essential new legislation — which would require modifying the filibuster — was to the fight. Many of these leaders concluded that his refusal to signal any support on filibuster reform means he is humoring them, not really listening.

There are several ways Biden can reassure the voting rights community.

The White House would be making a grave error if it concludes Democrats can out-organize their way around Republican efforts to impede access to the ballot box and undermine election integrity. If Biden does not go all out for voting rights reform and Democrats lose the House or Senate (thereby imperiling the 2024 presidential process), the verdict of his party and history will be severe.

New York Times, Nancy Mace Called Herself a ‘New Voice’ for the G.O.P. Then She Pivoted, Catie Edmondson, July 25, 2021. Her shift reflects how rank-and-file Republicans — even those who may disagree with him — have decided it is too perilous to openly challenge former President Donald J. Trump.

But asked to give an assessment of her congresswoman, Mara Brockbank, a former leader of the Charleston County Republican Party who previously endorsed Ms. Mace, was less than enthusiastic.

New York Times, Skilled in Strategy (and Grudges), Top Biden Adviser to Depart White House, Annie Karni, July 25, 2021. Anita Dunn, who is returning to her Democratic consulting company next month, has long faced questions about how her influence in the White House intersects with her company’s corporate work.

For the past 17 months, since shaking up his campaign after an embarrassing fourth-place finish in the Iowa caucuses, Joseph R. Biden Jr. has relied on Anita Dunn, a veteran Washington consultant, for both guidance and grudge-holding.

Ms. Dunn, 63, provided direction when Mr. Biden’s campaign was flailing. Later, she refused to give Julián Castro, a former housing secretary, a requested speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention, still upset about his debate-night jab at Mr. Biden’s mental acuity, according to people familiar with the snub. And in the West Wing, she has had a hand in shaping every major policy push so far.

Now Ms. Dunn is set to return to her powerful Democratic consulting company, leaving a hole in Mr. Biden’s small inner circle as the highly infectious Delta variant is ripping through unvaccinated communities and the fate of Mr. Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure deal is teetering on the edge of collapse.

“She brings stability and a faithfulness to strategy,” said David Plouffe, the former Obama campaign manager. “You see it in the White House, where they’re very disciplined on their approach to Covid, to the economy, to the use of the president. That discipline and not swinging at every pitch is really classic Anita.”

Ms. Dunn has prepped the president for every interview and news conference since she took over his campaign and driven the administration’s buttoned-up approach to dealing with the news media. She is widely credited with elevating women to senior positions in the West Wing. And she is adamantly opposed to Mr. Biden regularly taking questions from reporters, which she believes does little to advance his agenda. She prefers town hall events.

But for all her discipline and expertise, Ms. Dunn’s presence in the Biden administration, and in the Obama administration before that, has raised questions about how her influence in the government intersects with the corporate work of her company, which represents clients seeking to influence policy.

Ms. Dunn has only separated herself from SKDK, the corporate and political consulting company she helped found and is returning to next month, for brief periods of campaign and government work. And the fact that she is exempt from filing public financial disclosures required of full-time presidential appointees has drawn criticism from some ethics watchdogs.

Palmer Report, Opinion: No wonder Donald Trump’s handlers rarely let him out in public anymore, Bill Palmer, July 25, 2021. On Saturday night, Donald Trump (shown in a file photo) tried to give a speech at a political event in Arizona. We say tried because the performance he ended up putting on could only be referred to as a “speech” under the most charitable definition of the word.

Trump loves few things more than giving speeches to his adoring fans. In fact it was arguably the only part of the presidency that he seemed to truly enjoy. If he had his way, he’d still be out there giving rally speeches every few days. So why isn’t he? There’s nothing stopping him; after all, New York hasn’t criminally indicted him yet.

Trump’s own performance on Saturday night, or lack thereof, is the increasingly obvious explanation. His visible physical condition, which has been going downhill since he caught COVID, appeared to be worse than ever. And his cognitive abilities… let’s just say that at one point Trump ended up rambling about LeBron James becoming a transgender woman.

Donald Trump is no doubt constantly demanding that his handlers allow him to give rally speeches. And yet when his handlers do occasionally let him on stage, it becomes clear why they allow it so rarely: putting him out there merely makes the general public aware that he’s way too far gone to be relevant.

Trump’s idiot base may love him no matter how much of a senile blob he’s turned into. But it’s never been about them. It’s about voters in the middle, and let’s just say that Trump is lucky so few TV outlets air his speeches these days. Moreover, it tells you something about how far gone Trump is that he’s unwilling or unable to overrule his own handlers, as they surely feed him excuses each day about why he can’t hold regular rallies. Trump isn’t even in charge of his own dumpster fire anymore.

World News

Washington Post, Power outages cripple parts of the Middle East amid record heat waves and rising unrest, Louisa Loveluck, Kareem Fahim and Sarah Dadouch, July 25, 2021. Record heat waves and crippling energy shortages across much of the Middle East are plunging homes and businesses from Lebanon to Iran into darkness and stirring unrest as poor families swelter while many of the rich stay cool with backup generators.

Power outages have pushed hospitals to a crisis point. Family businesses are struggling to survive. In some cities, the streetlights barely work.

Temperatures in several Middle Eastern countries this summer have topped 122 degrees Fahrenheit — 50 degrees Celsius — including in Iran, which hit 123.8, and Iraq, which nearly matched last year’s record of 125.2. Decades of neglect and underinvestment have left power grids unable to cope. Drought has crippled hydroelectric generation. Economic crises roiling several countries mean governments are now even struggling to purchase the fuel needed to generate power.

“It’s aggravated by climate change and increasing temperatures, but the roots of this are poor planning, weak governance and low investment in the power sector,” said Jessica Obeid, a nonresident scholar at the Washington-based Middle East Institute.

In Iran, the outages have sparked protests in several cities and prompted a rare apology this month from outgoing President Hassan Rouhani. As anger spreads, demonstrations have also erupted over water shortages in Khuzestan, a province in southwestern Iran. Amnesty International said in a report released Friday that security forces had responded to the protests with live ammunition and killed at least eight protesters and bystanders.

In Iraq’s oil-rich city of Basra, demonstrators have blocked highways and burned tires as they decried a lack of power and poor public services. Protesters have done the same in scattered demonstrations in Lebanon.

With government power grids faltering across the region, sites ranging from state ministries to family homes have turned to privately run backup generators, with an army of operators working in hot, dark trailers round-the-clock to keep them going.

U.S. Media News

Washington Post, A Catholic newsletter promised investigative journalism. Then it outed a priest using Grindr data, Michelle Boorstein, Marisa Iati and Elahe Izadi, July 25, 2021. A report that identified a senior official in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops as having visited gay nightclubs led to his resignation — and a loud debate on ethics and morals.

In January, when Ed Condon and JD Flynn broke off from their jobs at a long-standing Catholic news agency, they promised readers of their new newsletter that they would deliver reporting without an agenda, or a foregone conclusion. “We aim to do serious, responsible, sober journalism about the Church, from the Church and for the Church. . . . We want The Pillar to be a different kind of journalism.”

Six months later the Pillar broke the kind of story mainstream news organizations would be unlikely to touch: They said they had obtained commercially available data that included location history from the hookup app Grindr, and used it to track a high-ranking priest from his offices and family lake house to gay nightclubs.

Now Condon and Flynn, two 38-year-old canon lawyers-turned-muckrakers, are at the center of both a global surveillance-ethics story as well as a mud fight among their fellow Catholics over whether this week they served or disgraced the church. One Catholic writer described it as “a witch hunt aimed at gay Catholic priests.”

Washington Post, Top U.S. Catholic Church official resigns after cellphone data used to track him on Grindr and to gay bars

In some ways the Pillar story and reaction to it feels almost like a throwback: Conservative Catholics who point to the 1960s and liberalizing sexual mores for society’s troubles and focus on gay priests. But in 2021 the availability of personal digital data and the use of smartphones for surveillance are far bigger fears for the vast majority of Americans than is news about a member of the clergy possibly using a hookup app.

Flynn and Condon’s story also punctuates how America’s religious and journalistic landscapes have changed. Institutions and hierarchies now have to contend with scrappy start-ups taking matters into their own hands.

And in the growing conservative Catholic media scene, their newsletter and its takedown of Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill, right, represents a new power and boldness of those demanding their church be purged of leaders who they see as too permissive on issues like abortion, gender norms and sex outside of heterosexual marriage.

Washington Post, James Polk: 1937–2021: Pulitzer Prize winner for Watergate reporting at the old Washington Star dies at 83, Matt Schudel, July 25, 2021. James R. Polk, a journalist who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1974 for his reporting on the Watergate scandal for the old Washington Star, and who later worked with NBC News and CNN, died July 15 at his home in Marietta, Ga. He was 83.

He had complications from a series of strokes, said his wife, Cara Polk.

Mr. Polk, right, spent only two years with the Star, then called the Washington Star-News, but in that time he uncovered financial irregularities concerning the reelection campaign of President Richard M. Nixon, including a secret contribution from a shady financier, delivered in a briefcase.

After the break-in at the Watergate office complex in June 1972, Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein led an investigation that led to a Pulitzer Prize in 1973. But reporters from other news organizations, including Mr. Polk, also pursued the story about White House corruption, centered on Nixon’s reelection committee.

Early in 1973, Mr. Polk revealed that Robert L. Vesco, who was under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for stealing $224 million in assets from an offshore investment fund he controlled, had made an unreported $200,000 contribution to Nixon’s 1972 campaign.

Mr. Polk’s findings, which were printed in newspapers across the country, showed that Nixon’s onetime Attorney General John N. Mitchell and Commerce Secretary Maurice H. Stans were part of an effort to funnel the money to the reelection effort and to defendants in the Watergate break-in. Mr. Polk uncovered details of the transaction that seemed to be drawn from a movie about organized crime.

“A Vesco business aide, Laurence B. Richardson, who carried the $200,000 in a briefcase to Nixon fundraiser Maurice H. Stans,” Mr. Polk wrote, delivered the cash by saying, “I have a message from Mr. Vesco.”

2020 Olympics

New York Times, U.S. Men’s Basketball Team Loses Opening Game, The team fell to France, 83-76, remaining on unsteady footing after taking a rocky path to Tokyo. The Americans shot only 36 percent and were outscored badly in the third quarter, 25-11, when they blew an 8-point halftime lead and fell behind for good. Evan Fournier, who played for the Boston Celtics last season, led France with 28 points. Jrue Holiday, fresh off winning the N.B.A. title with the Milwaukee Bucks, scored 18 for the United States less than 24 hours after landing in Tokyo. In other news:

United States wins first gold medal on second day as Biles slips.
Simone Manuel and the U.S. win bronze in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay.
Chase Kalisz wins the first U.S. gold medal in Tokyo.
She celebrated as if she had won a gold. Except she hadn’t.
Yuto Horigome wins the first skateboarding medal as Nyjah Huston falters.
The U.S. women’s gymnastics team fell short of its usual standards.

Here’s the complete schedule of Olympic events, day by day.

Daily Beast, Naomi Osaka at the Olympics: ‘I’m Happy Again,’ Tracy Connor, July 25, 2021. Naomi Osaka spoke after winning her first match in two months: “The Olympics has been a dream of mine since I was a kid, so I feel like the break that I took was very needed.”

Two months ago, Naomi Osaka took a break from competition after quitting the French Open amid an uproar over her refusal to do media interviews. But the tennis star, who revealed she suffered from “bouts of depression,” is back in a big way. Representing Japan at the Olympics, she won her first match on Sunday and, more surprisingly, spoke with reporters afterward.

July 24

Top Headlines

Washington Post Sunday Magazine, Merrick Garland will not deliver your catharsis, David Montgomery
Daily Beast, Heavy Metal Guitarist-Turned-Capitol Rioter Has Feces Thrown at Him in Jail
New York Times, They Waited, They Worried, They Stalled. This Week, They Got the Shot
New York Times, Biden Officials Now Expect Vulnerable Americans to Need Booster Shots
Washington Post, Oklahoma reels after Supreme Court ruling on Indian tribes
New York Times, Guest Essay: Why I’m Sure Trump Will Run for President in 2024, Michael Wolff
Washington Post, Biden attacks Trump at Virginia rally, tying McAuliffe’s opponent to ex-president
Washington Post, In a city besieged by the Taliban, Afghan military advances disappear with forces stretched thin

Police Threats, Spyware & Scandals

Tampa Bay Times, Investigation: Pasco Sheriff’s Office letter targets residents for ‘increased accountability,’ Kathleen McGrory
Washington Post, Indicted Trump ally Thomas Barrack to be released on $250 million bond, must appear in New York next week
Washington Post, FBI official’s romantic relationship broke rules, inspector general says

Virus Victims, Responses

Daily Beast, Maine GOP Lawmaker Who Blasted COVID Restrictions Tests Positive for Virus
Washington Post, Alabama’s GOP governor says ‘it’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks’ for covid-19 spike
Washington Post, Tennessee resumes most vaccine outreach to minors paused after GOP backlash
New York Times, Some Florida Hospitals Have More Covid Patients Than Ever
Washington Post, Frustration mounts over coronavirus vaccine holdouts
Washington Post, CDC warns this is a ‘pivotal moment’ in fight against delta variant
New York Times, N.F.L. Sets Stiff Penalties for the Unvaccinated, Jolting Teams, Emmanuel Morgan
Washington Post, 187.6 million U.S. vaccinated
Worldometer, World & U.S. Coronavirus Case Totals, U.S. Deaths: 626,658

U.S. Congressional Battles

Washington Post, Analysis: Trump, now deplatformed, will lack GOP defense on Jan 6. committee, Jacqueline Alemany

U.S. Politics, Health, Governance

Washington Post, A scandal-scarred Senate candidate wants a Trump endorsement. Some GOP advisers worry he’ll get it
Daily Beast, Donald Trump Thinks Cleveland’s Baseball Team Should Keep Its Racist Name

2020 Olympics

Washington Post, Games begin officially with Opening Ceremonies
Washington Post, Among U.S. Olympians, 83 percent are vaccinated against coronavirus
Washington Post, The Tokyo Olympics schedule, day by day

Top Stories

Washington Post Sunday Magazine, Merrick Garland will not deliver your catharsis, David Montgomery, July 24, 2021. Progressives want a dramatic de-Trumpification of the Justice Department. But the attorney general has a different theory of how to heal America.

Merrick Garland, now more than four months into the job of attorney general, is on a quest to slay a monster — a monster that he won’t name and he pretends doesn’t exist.

On March 11, his first day, he stood in the Great Hall of Justice Department headquarters and addressed the agency’s 115,000 employees, most watching virtually. It was a homecoming of sorts for Garland, 68, who started at the department as a 26-year-old lawyer in 1979, rising to lead major investigations including the Unabomber case and the Oklahoma City bombing prosecution in the 1990s before spending the past two decades-plus as an esteemed federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

“The only way we can succeed and retain the trust of the American people is to adhere to the norms that have become part of the DNA of every Justice Department employee,” he said in his first speech as attorney general. “Those norms require that like cases be treated alike. That there not be one rule for Democrats and another for Republicans, one rule for friends and another for foes, one rule for the powerful and another for the powerless.”

Capitol rioter and heavy metal musician Jon Schaffer leaves an Indianapolis courthouse after pleading pleading guilty to federal charges in the pro-Trump Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6, where his actions were captured on video, above right.

Daily Beast, Heavy Metal Guitarist-Turned-Capitol Rioter Has Feces Thrown at Him in Jail, Corbin Bolies, July 24, 2021. Heavy metal band Iced Earth’s guitarist Jon Schaffer, who pleaded guilty to charges related to the Capitol riot, had feces thrown at him and faced death threats during a hellish stint at an Indiana jail, according to his lawyer.

The comments made during a March court hearing were revealed Thursday, prompting Schaffer’s transfer to a Washington, D.C., jail before he was released on bail in April. “My client, who is presumed innocent, has just gone through two months of hell where other people were throwing feces at him and urine at him and threatening his life in a horrible, horrible situation,” Schaffer’s attorney Marc Victor said at the hearing, according to the Indianapolis Star. Schaffer was segregated due to his public status but it led to prisoners tormenting him.

Schaffer, a self-described founding member of the Oath Keepers, became the first insurrectionist to plead guilty and cooperate with the feds. He is expected to face between 3.5-4.5 years in prison.

New York Times, They Waited, They Worried, They Stalled. This Week, They Got the Shot, Julie Bosman, July 24, 2021. On a single day this past week, more than half a million people across the U.S. got vaccinated for Covid-19 after months of reluctance and procrastination.

The Times interviewed dozens of Americans, who revealed a nation at a crossroads as many worried about the Delta variant as well as the available vaccines.

New York Times, Biden Officials Now Expect Vulnerable Americans to Need Booster Shots, Sharon LaFraniere, July 24, 2021 (print ed.). The growing consensus that some will need a booster is partly tied to research suggesting Pfizer’s vaccine is less effective after about six months.

New York Times, Guest Essay: Why I’m Sure Trump Will Run for President in 2024, Michael Wolff (the author of three books about the Trump presidency, most recently Landslide, right), July 24, 2021 (print ed.). To write three books in four years about Donald Trump has been an immersion into his obsessions and fixations. This is why I know the obvious: Donald Trump will run for president again.

This spring, in another of his compulsive bids for attention — indifferent to whether it is good or bad — he hosted me at Mar-a-Lago, even after I had written two unflattering books about him (one whose publication he tried to stop), for an interview and dinner. After dinner, I asked about his plans for a presidential library, the traditional retirement project and fund-raising scheme of ex-presidents. There was a flash of confusion on his uniquely readable face, and then anger, aroused, I figured, by the implication of what I seemed to be saying — that his time in office was past.

“No way, no way,” he snarled, “no way.”

It is an existential predicament: He can’t be Donald Trump without a claim on the presidency.

Washington Post, Biden attacks Trump at Virginia rally, tying McAuliffe’s opponent to ex-president, Sean Sullivan and Karina Elwood, July 24, 2021 (print ed.). After mostly avoiding direct attacks on Trump, President Biden said Friday he “whipped Donald Trump in Virginia” and so will Terry McAuliffe, highlighting a key strategy for Democratic candidates: linking opponents to Trump.

Washington Post, In a city besieged by the Taliban, Afghan military advances disappear with forces stretched thin, Susannah George | Photos by Lorenzo Tugnoli, July 24, 2021 (Interactive video). Elite units are leading the battle to retake territory, but the troops called up to secure those gains have inconsistent support and lack advanced training.

Police Threats, Spyware, & Scandals

Tampa Bay Times, Investigation: Pasco Sheriff’s Office letter targets residents for ‘increased accountability,’ Kathleen McGrory, July 24, 2021. Critics of the agency’s intelligence programs called the letter ‘patronizing’ and ‘offensive,’ and raised continued concerns about civil rights.

It starts like an offer of admission from a prestigious university. “We are pleased to inform you that you have been selected…” it says.

But the four-page letter from the Pasco Sheriff’s Office goes on to tell recipients they will be facing enhanced police scrutiny under the agency’s controversial intelligence program.

“You may wonder why you were enrolled in this program,” the letter continues. “You were selected as a result of an evaluation of your recent criminal behavior using an unbiased, evidence-based risk assessment designed to identify prolific offenders in our community. As a result of this designation, we will go to great efforts to encourage change in your life through enhanced support and increased accountability.”

Last year, a Tampa Bay Times investigation revealed that the Sheriff’s Office creates lists of people it considers likely to break the law based on criminal histories, social networks and other unspecified intelligence. The agency sends deputies to their homes repeatedly, often without a search warrant or probable cause for an arrest.

Targets and their relatives, including four who are now suing the Sheriff’s Office in federal court, described the tactics as harassment and a violation of their constitutional rights. National policing experts drew comparisons to child abuse and surveillance that could be expected under an authoritarian regime.

The Times also found that the agency has a separate program that uses schoolchildren’s grades, attendance records and abuse histories to label them potential future criminals.

Earlier this year, Sheriff Chris Nocco and the Pasco County school district announced they would scale back some features of the school-data program. But the letter signals a broadening of the core program.

The Sheriff’s Office said the letter is part of a new intelligence effort aimed specifically at people whose criminal histories include drug offenses and violent crimes. But critics of the agency’s intelligence efforts, including an alliance of local, state and national organizations known as People Against the Surveillance of Children and Overpolicing, or the PASCO Coalition, said the latest communication raises even more concerns.

“The letter is basically threatening and promising a certain level of harassment and oversight that is in line with the stories we are hearing from the community,” said Raniah Elgendi, of the Council of American-Islamic Relations-Florida.

The Times found being named a Sheriff’s Office target could have serious consequences. Deputies showed up at homes at all hours of the day and night, writing tickets for violations like overgrown grass and making arrests for any reason they could find. By 2020, some 1,000 people had been ensnared. About 100 were 18 years old or younger.

The new letter to so-called “prolific offenders” says its purpose is to communicate the agency’s “sincere desire” to help recipients “begin a new path.” But it also delivers a stern warning: “Our desire to help you will not hinder us from holding you fully accountable for your choices and actions.”

It then says the Sheriff’s Office will share recipients’ names and criminal histories with local, state and federal law enforcement agencies to ensure “the highest level of accountability” for any future crimes they commit.

Washington Post, Indicted Trump ally Thomas Barrack to be released on $250 million bond, must appear in New York next week, Shayna Jacobs, July 24, 2021 (print ed.). A California judge on Friday set bail at $250 million for the billionaire investor and longtime friend of former president Donald Trump who was indicted on a charge of breaking foreign lobbying laws, ordering him to appear in federal court in New York next week.

Thomas J. Barrack, 74, who waived his court appearance for discussion of the prearranged release agreement, was expected to be freed from a jail in Los Angeles later Friday. His ex-wife Rachelle and son Thomas Barrack III were suretors on the bond.

Barrack’s co-defendant, Matthew Grimes, was set to be freed on a $5 million bond. Both men must wear GPS monitoring devices and were ordered to travel to New York for an afternoon proceeding on Monday in federal court in Brooklyn.

They were indicted on charges related to failing to register as lobbyists for the United Arab Emirates, whose government they worked for over two years beginning when Trump campaigned for office in 2016. The pair allegedly sought to influence Trump’s campaign — and later his administration — to advance policies that were favorable to the wealthy Gulf state.

New York Times, Opinion: A Foreign Agent in Trump’s Inner Circle? Michelle Goldberg
Wayne Madsen Report (WMR), Investigative Commentary: Was Pegasus used by Trump and Kushner to blackmail U.S. politicians? Wayne Madsen

Washington Post, FBI official’s romantic relationship broke rules, inspector general says, Devlin Barrett, July 24, 2021 (print ed.). A senior FBI official violated agency policies in her handling of a romantic relationship with a subordinate, according to findings of the Justice Department’s inspector general, and the bureau’s disciplinary office is now weighing what, if anything, to do about the findings, according to current and former law enforcement officials familiar with the matter.

Jill C. Tyson, shown at left during congressional testimony, who has a close working relationship with FBI Director Christopher A. Wray in her role as assistant director for congressional affairs, was criticized in a report issued Thursday by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, right.

The inspector general did not name Tyson, but concluded that “the Assistant Director was engaged in a romantic relationship with a subordinate and failed to timely report the relationship, in violation of FBI policy.”

Multiple people familiar with the matter, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive personnel issue, said the person in question is Tyson, one of the few women in a senior leadership role at the FBI.

The inspector general investigation “also found that the Assistant Director allowed the relationship to negatively affect an appropriate and professional superior-subordinate relationship and to disrupt the workplace by interfering with the ability of other FBI employees to complete their work, and that the Assistant Director participated in a hiring or organizational decision involving the subordinate, all in violation of FBI policy.”

Before coming to the Justice Department, Tyson worked as a prosecutor, a Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman and a congressional staffer. She also was employed at Justice Department headquarters, where she helped shepherd Wray’s 2017 confirmation through Congress.

Wray, right, later hired her to run the FBI’s congressional affairs portfolio — a difficult job at a time when Republicans were frequently accusing the bureau of partisan investigations into President Donald Trump, and Democrats were pressing the agency to more aggressively pursue alleged crimes by Trump or his associates.

Tyson plays a key role inside the FBI, managing its interactions and information-sharing with lawmakers. As part of that job, she prepares Wray for congressional testimony; current and former law enforcement officials said Wray likes and trusts her.

The inspector general’s findings about Tyson come a week after he issued a far longer, blistering criticism of how the FBI bungled the investigation into Larry Nassar, left, a former USA Gymnastics doctor now in prison for sexual abuse of girls who were under his care.

In that case, the inspector general found that FBI agents in Indianapolis failed to investigate allegations against Nassar, and then lied about it when confronted with their shortcomings.

And separately, the FBI has opened an internal investigation into criminal charges filed this week against an FBI agent who is leading the probe and prosecution of an alleged plot by right-wing extremists to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D).

That agent, Richard Trask II, was charged with felony assault. Court papers say his wife told police that he smashed her head into a nightstand after they attended a swingers party at a hotel earlier in the day. According to court papers, she said that after leaving the party, the pair argued and he later attacked her.

Virus Victims, Responses

Daily Beast, Maine GOP Lawmaker Who Blasted COVID Restrictions Tests Positive for Virus, Corbin Bolies, July 24, 2021. ‘I’m really, really sick.’ A Republican Maine state representative who condemned the state’s COVID-19 restrictions has allegedly tested positive for the virus.

Rep. Chris Johansen revealed the news in a phone call to a reporter for Mainer News, declining to talk to him because he was sick. “Listen up, I’ve got COVID and I’m really, really sick and I just don’t have time to talk to you today,” he said in an audio recording.

Johnson’s wife Cindy said on social media that she had also tested positive for the virus. The lawmaker had been a vocal opponent of the state’s preventative measures, organizing a protest outside Gov. Janet Mills’ home last year to reopen the state, refusing to wear masks, and downplaying the need for vaccines. He was eventually removed from a committee position for his remarks.

Washington Post, Alabama’s GOP governor says ‘it’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks’ for covid-19 spike, Timothy Bella, July 24, 2021 (print ed.). When asked what more could be done to encourage Alabama residents to get their coronavirus vaccinations amid the latest spike in infections, Gov. Kay Ivey (R) had run out of ideas for how to persuade people in a state with the lowest vaccination rate in the nation.

“I don’t know. You tell me,” the governor, right, told a reporter in Birmingham on Thursday. “Folks [are] supposed to have common sense.”

She did, however, have one message for her state: “It’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks, not the regular folks. It’s the unvaccinated folks that are letting us down.”

Pointing to the nearly 10,000 new cases of the coronavirus in Alabama over the last two weeks, Ivey blamed the latest infections solely on the state’s unvaccinated population.

“Almost 100 percent of the new hospitalizations are with unvaccinated folks. And the deaths are certainly occurring with the unvaccinated folks,” she told reporters at an event for a tech company. “These folks are choosing a horrible lifestyle of self-inflicted pain.”

Washington Post, Tennessee resumes most vaccine outreach to minors paused after GOP backlash, Timothy Bella and Paulina Villegas, July 24, 2021 (print ed.). Tennessee’s health commissioner said the state would restart its efforts, which include offering the vaccine at events on school property, as early as next week. The state of Tennessee announced Friday that it will resume nearly all forms of coronavirus vaccine outreach for children and teenagers after advocacy was halted this month because of pressure from Republican legislators upset by the state health department’s efforts to vaccinate minors.

Tennessee Health Commissioner Lisa Piercey said at a news conference that the state will jump-start efforts to promote vaccination for adolescents as early as next week, including by offering the shots at events on school property.

“We put a pause on many things, and then we have resumed all of those,” Piercey told reporters, adding that outreach was paused so that the messaging would be directed at parents, not children.

The health department said it would continue to prohibit social media posts promoting vaccination that are specifically aimed at children.

Piercey also announced that health officials will provide vaccinations to minors without their parents’ permission in what she described as “fringed and nuanced” circumstances. Her statement Friday contradicted an announcement this week by state Republicans who claimed that Piercey privately agreed “to stop vaccinating children for covid-19 without parental consent, and to stop marketing to minors,” according to the Tennessean newspaper.

The news is the latest in the controversy over how Tennessee has gone about trying to vaccinate its young people during the pandemic and how political pressure has played a role in that messaging. Michelle Fiscus said she was fired from her job as director of immunization programs at the Tennessee Department of Health last week as retaliation for the department’s efforts to vaccinate teenagers against the coronavirus, a plan that she said angered several state legislators.

Washington Post, Frustration mounts over coronavirus vaccine holdouts, Dan Diamond and Tyler Pager, July 24, 2021 (print ed.). Millions continue to refuse to get shots as the delta variant drives new outbreaks.

Washington Post, CDC warns this is a ‘pivotal moment’ in fight against delta variant, Dan Diamond

New York Times, Why Vaccinated People Are Getting ‘Breakthrough’ Infections, Apoorva Mandavilli, July 24, 2021 (print ed.). The vaccines are effective at preventing serious illness and death, but they are not a golden shield against the coronavirus.

As the Delta variant surges across the nation, reports of infections in vaccinated people have become increasingly frequent — including, most recently, among at least six Texas Democrats, a White House aide and an aide to Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The highly contagious variant, combined with a lagging vaccination campaign and the near absence of preventive restrictions, is fueling a rapid rise in cases in all states, and hospitalizations in nearly all of them. It now accounts for about 83 percent of infections diagnosed in the United States.

But as worrying as the trend may seem, breakthrough infections — those occurring in vaccinated people — are still relatively uncommon, experts said, and those that cause serious illness, hospitalization or death even more so. More than 97 percent of people hospitalized for Covid-19 are unvaccinated.

New York Times, Some Florida Hospitals Have More Covid Patients Than Ever, Patricia Mazzei, July 24, 2021 (print ed.). The number of Covid-19 patients at two hospitals in Jacksonville increased tenfold over the span of five weeks, from 14 to 140 people. The numbers reflect a rapid rise in hospitalizations in parts of the country where the vaccination rate is lagging.

A national uptick in coronavirus cases has led, in sudden and concerning fashion, to a steep rise in hospitalizations in some spots around the country where people have been slower to get vaccinated, a predicament experts hoped might be avoided because the people contracting the infection tend to be younger and healthier.

Nationally, hospitalizations remain relatively low, nowhere near earlier peaks of the pandemic. But in some regions with lagging vaccination rates and rising virus cases — such as Northeast Florida, Southwest Missouri, Southern Nevada — the highly contagious Delta variant has flooded intensive care units and Covid wards that, not long ago, had seen their patient counts shrink.

New York Times, N.F.L. Sets Stiff Penalties for the Unvaccinated, Jolting Teams, Emmanuel Morgan, July 24, 2021 (print ed.). Commissioner Roger Goodell said outbreaks traced to an unvaccinated player or staff member could warrant a game forfeiture for their teams. The announcement prompted a backlash from some players.

Throughout the off-season, the N.F.L. had stopped short of requiring that its players and other team personnel receive a Covid-19 vaccination, instead strongly encouraging inoculation.

With training camps starting in earnest next week and the regular season less than two months away, that approach has shifted.

Commissioner Roger Goodell on Thursday sent a memo to all 32 teams outlining Covid-19 guidelines for the 2021 season that detail drastic penalties for teams with unvaccinated personnel, including the forfeiture of games. Any forfeits could result in players’ not being paid — if their infections are known to have caused an outbreak.

The N.F.L. expects to complete its regular season and its playoff slate within the scheduled time frame, and will postpone contests only under government or medical orders.

If an unvaccinated player or staff member is shown to have caused an outbreak that forces a schedule change, the team experiencing the outbreak will be held financially responsible for the other club’s expenses, the memo said. If the game cannot be rescheduled, the team experiencing the outbreak will forfeit.

For playoff-seeding purposes, that team will be credited with a loss, while the other will be credited with a win. If an outbreak occurs among vaccinated individuals in a “breakthrough” infection, the N.F.L. will try to minimize the competitive and fiscal disruption for both teams. The terms of the memo were agreed upon with the N.F.L. Players Association, said Dawn Aponte, the league’s chief football administrative officer.

Washington Post, 187.6 million U.S. vaccinated, as of July 24, 2021, the number of people who have received at least one dose of the vaccine. This includes more than 162.4 million people fully vaccinated.

Worldometer, World & U.S. Coronavirus Case Totals (updated July 24, 2021, with some governments reporting lower numbers than the totals here and some experts saying the numbers are far higher, as the New York Times reported in India’s true pandemic death toll is likely to be well over 3 million, a new study finds):

World Cases: 194,196,573, Deaths: 4,163,309
U.S. Cases:     35,283,075, Deaths:    626,658
India Cases:     31,332,159, Deaths:    420,043
Brazil Cases:   19,632,443, Deaths:    548,420

U.S. Congressional Battles

Washington Post, Analysis: Trump, now deplatformed, will lack GOP defense on Jan 6. committee, Jacqueline Alemany, July 23, 2021. When House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) pulled all five of his designees from the Jan. 6 selection committee earlier this week, he also inadvertently sidelined his members from defending the former president and de facto leader of the Republican Party during a high profile investigation.

According to a source inside his orbit, Twitterless Trump is likely to be angry if he watches the first hearing of the Jan. 6 committee, or sees wall-to-wall cable news coverage of the proceedings but does not see any Republicans coming to his defense (he continues to regularly spend time watching television every day).

Deplatformed from the most prominent social media outlets, Trump will largely have to rely on email to defend his actions leading up to and on the day of the insurrection on the Capitol.

Technically, the select committee is still bipartisan, as Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), chosen by Pelosi, will serve on the committee. Multiple members told us that Pelosi was considering naming additional GOP members to the panel — like anti-Trump Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.).

U.S. Politics, Health, Governance

Washington Post, A scandal-scarred Senate candidate wants a Trump endorsement. Some GOP advisers worry he’ll get it, Michael Scherer and Josh Dawsey, July 24, 2021 (print ed.). Former Missouri governor Eric Greitens keeps getting questions on the campaign trail about the state of his relationship with former president Donald Trump.

But the scandal-scarred Senate candidate, who is trying to run under the banner of Trump’s “America First” movement, always finds a way to avoid a direct answer.

“We are honored to have so many of Donald Trump’s strongest fighters on our team,” Greitens said last month in one interview on a conservative podcast when asked about the relationship.

The former president has hosted a steady stream of potential candidates, sitting senators and political kibitzers who have tried to keep him from endorsing Greitens, a devoted cheerleader who is trying to use Trump’s grass-roots strength to emerge from disastrous allegations of bound hands and coercive sex that forced his resignation as governor in 2018. Trump advisers aware of the meetings spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect private conversations.

Daily Beast, Donald Trump Thinks Cleveland’s Baseball Team Should Keep Its Racist Name, Blake Montgomery, July 24, 2021. Speaking to an audience in Phoenix on Saturday, former president Donald Trump lamented the fact that Cleveland’s baseball team changed its racist name.

The team formerly known as the Indians is now the Guardians. Trump said, “If I were an Indian, I’d sue! Sue them, Indians! What could be better, especially if you have a good team? It’s one of the greatest names, one of the most incredible logos, people loved it. They are going absolutely crazy in Ohio over the name change. Cleveland Guardians? What’s that all about? The insanity of the Left knows no bounds, and both Indians and baseball fans should be greatly insulted.”

2020 Olympics

Washington Post, Games begin officially with Opening Ceremonies, Ava Wallace, Emily Giambalvo, Simon Denyer and Barry Svrluga, July 24, 2021 (print ed.). The Tokyo Olympics officially begin Friday with the Opening Ceremonies, a four-hour extravaganza of flag-waving, parades, music, lights and cultural celebration that culminates with the lighting of the Olympic cauldron.

Here’s the complete schedule of Olympic events, day by day.

July 23

Top Headlines

New York Times, Why Vaccinated People Are Getting ‘Breakthrough’ Infections
Washington Post, CDC warns this is a ‘pivotal moment’ in fight against delta variant
New York Times, Guest Essay: Why I’m Sure Trump Will Run for President in 2024, Michael Wolff
Washington Post, Editorial : Hey, world, are you noticing? Floods! Fires! Could it be time to do something about climate change?
Washington Post, Opinion: The FBI’s ‘investigation’ of Kavanaugh was laughable, Ruth Marcus

Spyware, Spies & Scandals

Wayne Madsen Report (WMR), Investigative Commentary: Was Pegasus used by Trump and Kushner to blackmail U.S. politicians? Wayne Madsen
New York Times, Opinion: A Foreign Agent in Trump’s Inner Circle? Michelle Goldberg
Washington Post, Indicted Trump ally Thomas Barrack to be released on $250 million bond, must appear in New York next week
Washington Post, FBI official’s romantic relationship broke rules, inspector general says

Virus Victims, Responses

Washington Post, Alabama’s GOP governor says ‘it’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks’ for covid-19 spike
Washington Post, Tennessee resumes most vaccine outreach to minors paused after GOP backlash
New York Times, Some Florida Hospitals Have More Covid Patients Than Ever
New York Times, N.F.L. Sets Stiff Penalties for the Unvaccinated, Jolting Teams, Emmanuel Morgan
Washington Post, 187.2 million U.S. vaccinated
Worldometer, World & U.S. Coronavirus Case Totals, U.S. Deaths: 626,179
New York Times, Rising Rents Threaten to Prop Up Inflation as Pandemic Limits End

U.S. Congressional Battles

New York Times, Opinion: Should Only the Little People Pay Taxes? Paul Krugman
Washington Post, Analysis: Trump, now deplatformed, will lack GOP defense on Jan 6. committee, Jacqueline Alemany
Palmer Report, Opinion: Jim Jordan is at it again, Robert Harrington

Media, Whistleblower, Sports News

Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), Whistleblower Summit and Film Festival, virtual events, begins with screenings starting Friday, July 23, and panel discussions starting Sunday, July 25; DC Pro president joins opening plenary July 26
Washington Post, Cleveland’s MLB team unveils its new name, will rebrand as Guardians

2024 Olympics

Washington Post, Games begin officially with Opening Ceremonies
Washington Post, Among U.S. Olympians, 83 percent are vaccinated against coronavirus
Washington Post, The Tokyo Olympics schedule, day by day

U.S. Law, Courts, Crime

New York Times, The Supreme Court Needs to Be Cut Down to Size, Jamelle Bouie
Palmer Report, Opinion: Legal expert: the indictment coming against Matt Gaetz is going to be “worth the wait,” Bill Palmer

U.S. Politics, Health, Governance

Washington Post, A scandal-scarred Senate candidate wants a Trump endorsement. Some GOP advisers worry he’ll get it
Daily MailOnline, Girl, 10, dies from the plague as cases are confirmed in six Colorado counties

Top Stories

Washington Post, Games begin officially with Opening Ceremonies, Ava Wallace, Emily Giambalvo, Simon Denyer and Barry Svrluga, July 23, 2021. The Tokyo Olympics officially begin Friday with the Opening Ceremonies, a four-hour extravaganza of flag-waving, parades, music, lights and cultural celebration that culminates with the lighting of the Olympic cauldron.

Washington Post, Among U.S. Olympians, 83 percent are vaccinated against coronavirus, Adam Kilgore, July 23, 2021. Roughly 100 U.S. Olympians declined vaccination, but the USOPC’s top medical official expressed satisfaction with a “substantial” vaccination rate.

Not all 613 U.S. Olympic team members have submitted to the USOPC their health histories, which contain vaccination information. But with nearly 600 athletes reporting, 83 percent of them have been vaccinated, Chief Medical Officer Jonathan Finnoff said.

The rate means that from a nation with universal vaccine availability, more than 100 athletes will live in the Athletes Village and compete without having taken the shot. Still, the contingent’s vaccination rate dwarfs the overall U.S. population’s, and the USOPC considered it a success.

Here’s the complete schedule of Olympic events, day by day.

Washington Post, CDC warns this is a ‘pivotal moment’ in fight against delta variant, Dan Diamond, July 23, 2021 (print ed.). Top Biden administration officials on Thursday said that a hyper-transmissible variant of the coronavirus is posing new challenges for the nation’s health system, urging millions of unvaccinated Americans to get shots to protect themselves and their communities.

The delta variant, first detected in India, now represents more than 83 percent of cases circulating in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. People infected with the variant appear to carry a viral load that is more than 1,000 times that of those infected with earlier forms of the virus, allowing the virus to spread rapidly among unvaccinated people, scientists have found.

“The delta variant is more aggressive and much more transmissible than previously circulating strains. It is one of the most infectious respiratory viruses we know of and that I have seen in my 20-year career,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told reporters.

CDC exploring additional vaccine doses for the immunocompromised
Two hundred fully vaccinated D.C. residents have tested positive

New York Times, Why Vaccinated People Are Getting ‘Breakthrough’ Infections, Apoorva Mandavilli, Updated July 23, 2021. The vaccines are effective at preventing serious illness and death, but they are not a golden shield against the coronavirus.

New York Times, Guest Essay: Why I’m Sure Trump Will Run for President in 2024, Michael Wolff (the author of three books about the Trump presidency, most recently Landslide, right), July 23, 2021. To write three books in four years about Donald Trump has been an immersion into his obsessions and fixations. This is why I know the obvious: Donald Trump will run for president again.

“No way, no way,” he snarled, “no way.”

It is an existential predicament: He can’t be Donald Trump without a claim on the presidency.

Washington Post, Editorial: Hey, world, are you noticing? Floods! Fires! Could it be time to do something about climate change? Editorial Board, July 23, 2021 (print ed.). Wildfires are raging across a drought-stricken West. Cities up and down the East Coast are living with poor air quality.Vast swaths of Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland are covered in muck from massive floods. Torrential rain has stricken central China, inundating subway tunnels in Henan province. The toll in death and misery continues to rise.

Yes, it is too early to say for sure that climate change is behind each of these latest instances of alarming weather. But that does not mean humanity can ignore the distinct possibility that they are related. Certainly, these calamities foreshadow life as climate-change-induced disasters become more frequent. Human society is unprepared.

People might think of global warming as just hotter days, but it is far more.

Washington Post, Opinion: The FBI’s ‘investigation’ of Kavanaugh was laughable, Ruth Marcus, right, July 23, 2021 (print ed.). The most laughable — and most telling — part of the FBI’s recent letter to senators about its investigation of sexual assault allegations against Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh (shown above during his U.S. Senate confirmation hearing) comes at the start: “This responds to your letter, dated August 1, 2019 . . . regarding the supplemental background investigation,” FBI Assistant Director Jill C. Tyson writes to Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.).

Then, impressively deadpan and without elaboration, “We apologize for the extended delay in responding.”

Extended delay — ya think? An extended delay in responding to a senatorial inquiry is two months, not almost two years. Whitehouse and Coons had asked for “the courtesy of a response no later than August 30, 2019.” The date of the actual response? June 30, 2021. It’s no coincidence that it took a new administration — and Whitehouse’s incessant prodding of Biden administration nominees — to finally extract some answers.

The letter, which became public Thursday, offers a perfect illustration of the Trump administration’s disdain for congressional oversight, and the way in which the supposedly professional FBI allowed itself to be cowed — and ultimately tarnished — by subservience to the Trump White House.

Spyware, Spies & Scandals

Wayne Madsen Report (WMR), Investigative Commentary: Was Pegasus used by Trump and Kushner to blackmail U.S. politicians? Wayne Madsen, July 23, 2021. Revelations by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that Israeli sales of NSO Group’s Pegasus smart phone surveillance program closely matched the foreign trips of former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu have raised the possibility that Jared Kushner, who participated in Netanyahu’s diplomatic trips to countries using Pegasus, also used Pegasus to eavesdrop on the communications of Republicans who, virtually overnight, became loyalists of Donald Trump.

As more details emerge about the political intelligence uses of Pegasus, the Israeli government and NSO Group are trying to contain the public relations damage caused by Israel’s sale of the surveillance system to some of the world’s most repressive regimes, including Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Hungary, and Morocco. All have close ties to Israel.

Pegasus does not merely allow an eavesdropper to listen in on smart phone conversations but allows the phone’s microphone and camera to be used as an espionage device, even when the phone is turned off. Pegasus has been termed a “digital predator.”

Trump’s possible use of Pegasus to provide surveillance information on those whose Apple and Microsoft data were subpoenaed by Trump’s Justice Department and on those whose data was not subpoenaed opens the door to Trump using embarrassing information to blackmail Republicans who, on a dime, went from being Trump critics to his most loyal supporters. Blackmail in politics usually involves sex, money, or a combination of the two.

Wayne Madsen Report (WMR), Commentary: Mossad has a “Who’s Who?” communications file of world leaders and businessmen thanks to Pegasus malware program
Washington Post, Pegasus Project Investigation: Despite the hype, iPhone security no match for NSO spyware, Craig Timberg, Reed Albergotti and Elodie Guéguen
Washington Post, Key takeaways from the Pegasus Project

New York Times, Opinion: A Foreign Agent in Trump’s Inner Circle? Michelle Goldberg, right, July 23, 2021. Once upon a time, it would have been huge news if the chairman of the former president’s inaugural committee was indicted on charges of acting as an agent of a foreign power.

Donald Trump’s presidency, however, has left us with scandal inflation. At this point many of the leading figures from his 2016 campaign have been either indicted or convicted, even if they were later pardoned. The C.F.O. of Trump’s company was charged with tax fraud less than a month ago.

So when the billionaire real estate investor Tom Barrack, left, one of Trump’s biggest fund-raisers, was arrested on Tuesday and charged with acting as an unregistered agent of the United Arab Emirates along with other felonies, it might have seemed like a dog-bites-man story. Barrack was once described by longtime Trump strategist Roger Stone — a felon, naturally — as the ex-president’s best friend. If you knew nothing else about Barrack but that, you might have guessed he’d end up in handcuffs.

Nevertheless, Barrack’s arrest is important. Trump’s dealings with the Emirates and Saudi Arabia deserve to be investigated as thoroughly as his administration’s relationship with Russia. So far that hasn’t happened. When Robert Mueller, the former special counsel, testified before Congress, Adam Schiff, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, said to him, “We did not bother to ask whether financial inducements from any Gulf nations were influencing U.S. policy, since it is outside the four corners of your report, and so we must find out.” But we have not found out.

Washington Post, Indicted Trump ally Thomas Barrack to be released on $250 million bond, must appear in New York next week, Shayna Jacobs, July 23, 2021. A California judge on Friday set bail at $250 million for the billionaire investor and longtime friend of former president Donald Trump who was indicted on a charge of breaking foreign lobbying laws, ordering him to appear in federal court in New York next week.

Washington Post, FBI official’s romantic relationship broke rules, inspector general says, Devlin Barrett, July 23, 2021. A senior FBI official violated agency policies in her handling of a romantic relationship with a subordinate, according to findings of the Justice Department’s inspector general, and the bureau’s disciplinary office is now weighing what, if anything, to do about the findings, according to current and former law enforcement officials familiar with the matter.

In that case, the inspector general found that FBI agents in Indianapolis failed to investigate allegations against Nassar, and then lied about it when confronted with their shortcomings.

Virus Victims, Responses

Washington Post, Alabama’s GOP governor says ‘it’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks’ for covid-19 spike, Timothy Bella, July 23, 2021. When asked what more could be done to encourage Alabama residents to get their coronavirus vaccinations amid the latest spike in infections, Gov. Kay Ivey (R) had run out of ideas for how to persuade people in a state with the lowest vaccination rate in the nation.

“I don’t know. You tell me,” the governor, right, told a reporter in Birmingham on Thursday. “Folks [are] supposed to have common sense.”

She did, however, have one message for her state: “It’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks, not the regular folks. It’s the unvaccinated folks that are letting us down.”

Pointing to the nearly 10,000 new cases of the coronavirus in Alabama over the last two weeks, Ivey blamed the latest infections solely on the state’s unvaccinated population.

Washington Post, Tennessee resumes most vaccine outreach to minors paused after GOP backlash, Timothy Bella and Paulina Villegas, July 23, 2021. Tennessee’s health commissioner said the state would restart its efforts, which include offering the vaccine at events on school property, as early as next week. The state of Tennessee announced Friday that it will resume nearly all forms of coronavirus vaccine outreach for children and teenagers after advocacy was halted this month because of pressure from Republican legislators upset by the state health department’s efforts to vaccinate minors.

“We put a pause on many things, and then we have resumed all of those,” Piercey told reporters, adding that outreach was paused so that the messaging would be directed at parents, not children.

The health department said it would continue to prohibit social media posts promoting vaccination that are specifically aimed at children.

New York Times, Some Florida Hospitals Have More Covid Patients Than Ever, Patricia Mazzei, July 23, 2021. The number of Covid-19 patients at two hospitals in Jacksonville increased tenfold over the span of five weeks, from 14 to 140 people. The numbers reflect a rapid rise in hospitalizations in parts of the country where the vaccination rate is lagging.

New York Times, N.F.L. Sets Stiff Penalties for the Unvaccinated, Jolting Teams, Emmanuel Morgan, July 23, 2021. Commissioner Roger Goodell said outbreaks traced to an unvaccinated player or staff member could warrant a game forfeiture for their teams. The announcement prompted a backlash from some players.

Throughout the off-season, the N.F.L. had stopped short of requiring that its players and other team personnel receive a Covid-19 vaccination, instead strongly encouraging inoculation.

With training camps starting in earnest next week and the regular season less than two months away, that approach has shifted.

The N.F.L. expects to complete its regular season and its playoff slate within the scheduled time frame, and will postpone contests only under government or medical orders.

Washington Post, 187.2 million U.S. vaccinated, as of July 23, 2021, the number of people who have received at least one dose of the vaccine. This includes more than 162.2 million people (48.8 % of the eligible population) fully vaccinated and 56.4 % with at least one dose.

Worldometer, World & U.S. Coronavirus Case Totals (updated July 23, 2021, with some governments reporting lower numbers than the totals here and some experts saying the numbers are far higher, as the New York Times reported in India’s true pandemic death toll is likely to be well over 3 million, a new study finds):

World Cases: 193,575,749, Deaths: 4,154,755
U.S. Cases:     35,214,399, Deaths:    626,179
India Cases:     31,293,062, Deaths:    419,502
Brazil Cases:   19,524,092, Deaths:     547,134

New York Times, Rising Rents Threaten to Prop Up Inflation as Pandemic Limits End, Coral Murphy Marcos, Jeanna Smialek and Jim Tankersley, July 23, 2021 (print ed.). As people move out on their own again or return to cities, and as tenants find they can’t afford to buy, demand for rentals is rebounding.

If rents continue to take off, it could be bad news both for those seeking housing and for the nation’s inflation outlook. Rents last month rose 7 percent nationally from a year earlier, Zillow data shows. While that was measured against a weak June 2020, the gain was also a robust 1.8 percent from May.

U.S. Congressional Battles

New York Times, Opinion: Should Only the Little People Pay Taxes? Paul Krugman, right, July 23, 2021 (print ed.). I yield to no one when it comes to cynicism about politicians who see tax cuts for the rich as the answer to every problem. Indeed, the claim that tax cuts can perform magic is a prime case of a zombie idea — an idea kept alive, despite overwhelming evidence against it, because its survival serves the interests of wealthy donors.

Yet even I was caught by surprise when Republicans negotiating over a possible infrastructure bill ruled out paying for it in part by giving the Internal Revenue Service more resources to go after tax evasion.

This is a big deal. The Treasury Department believes that there is a “tax gap,” taxes owed but not paid, of more than $500 billion every year; some estimates put the number much higher. And the Biden administration proposes giving the I.R.S. enough resources to reduce this gap as a way to help pay for investment in America’s future.

But if the administration goes this route, it will apparently do so with little if any Republican support.

Just to be clear, I’m not surprised to learn that a significant number of senators are sympathetic to the interests of wealthy tax cheats, that they are objectively pro-tax evasion. I am, however, surprised that they are willing to be so open about their sympathies.

There is, after all, a big difference between arguing for low taxes on the rich and arguing, in effect, that rich people who don’t pay what they legally owe should be allowed to get away with it.

Deplatformed from the most prominent social media outlets, Trump will largely have to rely on email to defend his actions leading up to and on the day of the insurrection on the Capitol.

Palmer Report, Opinion: Jim Jordan is at it again, Robert Harrington, right, July 23, 2021. If Donald Trump had inspired the drooling cretins who follow him to burn down your house, Jim Jordan’s principal complaint would be to wonder why there weren’t enough firefighters to put it out. Before I give you enough time to suppose that might be hyperbole, that’s exactly what he did when he suggested that the January 6th insurrection was Nancy Pelosi’s fault because the Capitol was inadequately defended.

But the analogy is even more outrageous than that, proving the hyperbole was a bridge not far enough. Because, to continue with the analogy, Jordan was also one of the arsonists.

You see, one of the reasons the Capitol was attacked in the first place was because grossly incompetent and irresponsible people just like Jordan supported the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. And because Jordan is a child with a yellow tie and no jacket he is going to blame the most recent person who hurt him. Nancy Pelosi vetoed his membership on the January 6th committee, for much the same reason Vincent Bugliosi kept Charles Manson off the jury. You don’t put criminals in charge of committees making judgments about their crimes.

But Jordan wasn’t content to stop there. In an orgiastic meltdown of whataboutisms Jordan ranted that because America is experiencing mild inflation (exactly what you’d expect in an economy coming out of a pandemic) there should be no inquiry into why the Capitol was attacked by a mob. You see, we can’t talk about anything else until we fix certain problems, according to Jordan’s agenda. Well if that’s true then why did he volunteer to be on the committee in the first place? As a man who represents himself as having a conscience about the good of the people, he surely would be wasting his time being on that committee, would he not?

But if Jordan is really so upset that the Speaker turned him down for the committee, maybe he should blame himself and his fellow Republicans for voting against the bipartisan committee. The reason Nancy Pelosi is calling a select committee is because Republicans blew their chance to put anyone they wanted on a bipartisan one.

You don’t have to go very far or work very hard to demonstrate what a bloviating buffoon Jim Jordan is. Jordan says he was shocked — shocked! — at how inadequate security was. He wasn’t shocked by the broken windows or assaulted police officers, not by the gallows erected to hang the Vice President, not by the fact that Trump dragged his feet about calling in the National Guard, but because Nancy Pelosi didn’t put more DC police around the Capitol. (And let’s face it, brothers and sisters, it wouldn’t matter what she did. It wouldn’t have been enough.)

Media, Whistleblower News

Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), Whistleblower Summit and Film Festival, virtual events, begins with screenings starting Friday, July 23, and panel discussions starting Sunday, July 25; DC Pro president joins opening plenary July 26, Staff Report, July 23, 2021. SPJ DC Pro Chapter is a co-sponsor of the Whistleblower Summit and Film Festival this year, with a panel presentation on July 27. A chapter board member and a chapter Distinguished Service Award honoree will be participating on another panel July 30.

Here is a schedule for panels and screenings (subject to updates). All sessions will be held via Zoom; the film screenings will be streamed online.

Keynote speaker is whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg (shown above in a University of Massachusetts photo), at noon on July 30, in recognition of his role in releasing documents that led to the publication of excerpts in The New York Times of what came to be called the Pentagon Papers, 50 years ago this summer.

DC Pro Chapter President Randy Showstack will represent the chapter during the opening plenary on Monday, July 26, at 10 a.m., joining other sponsors or collaborators. They include:

Panelists:

Marcel Reid, Pacifica Foundation
Michael McCray, ACORN 8
Andrew Kreig (also a DC Pro Chapter member), Justice Integrity Project
Randy Showstack, Society of Professional Journalists Washington, D.C., Pro Chapter
Liz Hemperwitz, Project on Government Oversight
Tom Devine, Government Accountability Project
Siri Nelson, National Whistleblower Center

Indefatigable chapter Recording Secretary and FOI advocate Kathryn Foxhall will moderate the 10 a.m. Tuesday, July 27 panel, “The Perils of PIO,” which is described thus: “Over 20-30 years, it’s become a cultural norm for various entities, public and private, to prohibit staff from communicating with reporters without oversight by authorities, often through public information officers (PIO). The basic part of this is quite fearsome: prohibition against any contact without notifying authorities. However, the rules also create a chokepoint severely limiting the number of contacts. They are also used to deliberately block unwanted contacts and constrain what can be said.

“This hampers whistleblowing by massively reducing reporters’ ability to get to know and be educated by staff; have staff come to trust them; and have confidential conversations. The Society of Professional Journalists has said it believes secrecy caused by these controls led to significantly higher COVID-19 death toll. An analysis by First Amendment attorney Frank LoMonte says the restrictions are unconstitutional and many courts have said so.”

Panelists:

Kathyrn Foxhall (Moderator) The SPJDC.org website has articles about “Censorship by PIO” and resources.
Frank LoMonte, head of the Brechner Center for Freedom of Information at the University of Florida
Haisten Willis, freelance journalist and chair of national SPJ’s Freedom of Information Committee

Ahead of the keynote speech by Ellsberg — at 10 a.m. on Friday, July 30 — DC Pro Chapter board member and attorney Kenneth Jost will join chapter DSA awardee Gene Policinski, chief operating officer of the Freedom Forum Institute and the institute’s First Amendment Center, on a panel looking at the “Ramifications of the Pentagon Papers Today.” The panel description says that the July 3, 1971, publication in The New York Times of what is now known as the Pentagon Papers prompted a series of events that ultimately resulted in the resignation of President Richard Nixon and changed the landscape for American journalism due to a landmark decision on freedom of the press (New York Times Co. v. United States). This informative panel will examine the long-term impact of the publishing of the Pentagon Papers on free speech, whistleblowing, investigative journalism and American society overall.

Panelists:

Gene Policinski, JD (Moderator)
Mark Zaid, JD
Kenneth Jost, JD

Access to streaming of panels and the films is here. More information on the Summit can be found here. Specific questions may be directed to [email protected] or by calling (202) 370-6635. July 30 also is National Whistleblower Appreciation Day. The National Whistleblower Center invites you to register here for its virtual all-day event marking the occasion.

Washington Post, Cleveland’s MLB team unveils its new name, will rebrand as Guardians, Chelsea Janes, July 23, 2021. For the first time in more than a century, Cleveland’s Major League Baseball team will not be called the Indians when it begins play in 2022, the latest prominent institution forced to divorce itself from what many have long considered an offensive name and imagery in the wake of a growing national conversation about race.

U.S. Law, Courts, Health, Governance

New York Times, The Supreme Court Needs to Be Cut Down to Size, Jamelle Bouie, right, July 23, 2021. On Tuesday, the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States sat for its third public meeting. Formed in April by executive order, the 36-member commission exists to hear arguments for and against Supreme Court reform and to analyze and appraise the merits of specific proposals.

President Biden did not run on court reform and rejected “court packing” during the 2020 campaign. But after Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell pushed Amy Coney Barrett through the Senate in a harried bid to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg before the presidential election, he could not resist calls from within the Democratic Party to do something.

The commission is Biden’s something, and it isn’t much to look at. Not only is it not meant to make recommendations or suggest a course of action, but its members come from the upper echelon of the legal elite — exactly the people most comfortable with the institutional status quo on the Supreme Court.

But this doesn’t mean the commission is worthless. It may not offer needed reforms, but in its three meetings so far it has already served as a valuable platform for scholars with a cleareyed view of the court and a powerful critique of its current role within the nation’s constitutional order. If nothing else, the commission has helped elevate important ideas and perspectives the broader public needs to hear. It is interesting, illuminating and worthy of your attention.

Palmer Report, Opinion: Legal expert: the indictment coming against Matt Gaetz is going to be “worth the wait,” Bill Palmer, right, July 23, 2021. Last month federal prosecutors let it be known through the media that they were looking to criminally indict Matt Gaetz sometime in July. Of course we’re now three-quarters of the way through July, leading some observers to wonder if it’s really going to happen. But two things come into play here.

First, prosecutors clearly wanted the public to have the expectation that the Gaetz bust would happen in July. So if the timetable has changed, then prosecutors would likely have let it be known through the media by now.

Second, there’s the fact that Joel Greenberg – a Matt Gaetz associate who recently pleaded guilty to many of the same crimes that Gaetz, right, is being investigated for – recently asked for and received a delay in his sentencing hearing so he could get credit for the results he’s helping to produce. So this directly points to big things happening soon as a result of Greenberg’s cooperation.

In a tweet today, former New York Assistant Attorney General Tristan Snell cited Greenberg’s delayed sentencing hearing and said that when it comes to the Matt Gaetz indictment watch, “I think this is going to be worth the wait.”

We’re inclined to agree. We all know that federal prosecutors tend to work methodically to build the kind of comprehensive case that they believe will result in a near-guaranteed conviction, before bringing charges. The fact that the Matt Gaetz criminal case has taken this long to build is not an indicator that there’s something wrong with the case. Instead, particularly when accounting for the Greenberg situation, it’s an indicator that the Feds are likely building a massive case against Gaetz.

U.S. Politics, Health, Governance

Washington Post, A scandal-scarred Senate candidate wants a Trump endorsement. Some GOP advisers worry he’ll get it, Michael Scherer and Josh Dawsey, July 23, 2021. Former Missouri governor Eric Greitens keeps getting questions on the campaign trail about the state of his relationship with former president Donald Trump.

But the scandal-scarred Senate candidate, who is trying to run under the banner of Trump’s “America First” movement, always finds a way to avoid a direct answer.

“We are honored to have so many of Donald Trump’s strongest fighters on our team,” Greitens said last month in one interview on a conservative podcast when asked about the relationship.

Daily MailOnline, Girl, 10, dies from the plague as cases are confirmed in six Colorado counties, Adam Manno, July 23, 2021. Colorado health authorities are investigating after a 10-year-old girl died from the plague this month, the first fatality from the insect-borne disease in the state since 2015.

The plague, caused by bacteria often spread by fleas, has been confirmed in six counties: San Miguel, El Paso, La Plata, Boulder, Huerfano and Adams, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health. The girl lived in La Plata County in the southwestern part of the state.

‘We are so sad for the loss of this young Coloradan and our deepest condolences go to the family,’ said state veterinarian Dr. Jennifer House in a statement published by the Associated Press. ‘Public Health is doing an epidemiological investigation and wants Coloradans to know that while this disease is very rare, it does occur sometimes, and to seek medical care if you have symptoms.’

The state reported 22 cases of the plague between 2005 to 2020.

Nine of them were in La Plata County.

In 2015, four people died of the plague nationwide, including two from Colorado: an adult in Pueblo County and a teenager in Larimer County, according to Colorado Public Radio.

Antibiotics are highly effective against the disease, but they should be administered within 24 hours of the first symptoms

July 22

Top Headlines

New York Times, President Biden predicted that the F.D.A. would give final approval quickly for coronavirus vaccines
Washington Post, White House officials debate masking push as virus spikes
Washington Post, Southern California cities rebel against new mask mandate, hinting at delta variant drama to come
Washington Post, Death toll in China floods climbs to 33 as rains spread and more cities call for help

U.S. Congressional Battles

New York Times, Pelosi Bars Trump Loyalists From Jan. 6 Inquiry, Prompting a Boycott
Washington Post, Opinion: On Jan. 6, Pelosi chose truth. McCarthy chose theater, Jennifer Rubin

Investigations

Palmer Report, Opinion: The Brett Kavanaugh scandal just got even uglier, Ron Leshnower
Wayne Madsen Report (WMR), Commentary: Mossad has a “Who’s Who?” communications file of world leaders and businessmen thanks to Pegasus malware program, Wayne Madsen
Proof via Substack, Investigation: All Trumpworld Figures Who Have Been Criminally Investigated, Criminally Referred, Impeached, Arrested, and/or Convicted, As Well As Those Who Are Presently Fugitives From Justice, Seth Abramson
Palmer Report, Opinion: Tom Barrack’s arrest rises to the level of espionage – and it’s time for Donald Trump to panic, Bill Palmer

Virus Victims, Responses

New York TImes, Live Covid Updates: Amid Rising Cases, C.D.C. Director Warns U.S. at ‘Another Pivotal Point,’
USA Today, Scientists discover more than 30 viruses frozen in ice, most never seen before
Washington Post, 187.2 million U.S. vaccinated
Worldometer, World & U.S. Coronavirus Case Totals, U.S. Deaths: 625,808
Washington Post, Unemployment claims jumped to 419,000 last week, a sudden increase that shows labor market remains unsettled

More On Pro-Trump Insurrection, Finances

Washington Post, In new Capitol riot guilty plea, Tampa man admits intending to block Congress with Oath Keepers
Washington Post, Allen Weisselberg resigned from the top of the Trump Organization. So who’s running the company now?

U.S. Law, Politics, Governance

Washington Post, Republicans threaten to hold up debt ceiling days before deadline, raising potential for political showdown
Palmer Report, Opinion: Bad news for Kyrsten Sinema, Bocha Blue
Washington Post, Biden will launch into campaigning to back McAuliffe in Virginia

World News

New York Times, A top political prisoner dies of Covid in Myanmar, with others in critical condition

Media News

New York Times, Harry Rosenfeld, Who Saw News in a ‘Third-Rate Burglary,’ Dies at 91

Top Stories

New York Times, President Biden predicted that the F.D.A. would give final approval quickly for coronavirus vaccines, Jim Tankersley, Updated July 22, 2021. The president also defended his opposition to eliminating the Senate filibuster, even though it is being used to block voting rights legislation he has championed.

President Biden said on Wednesday that he expected the Food and Drug Administration would give final approval quickly for coronavirus vaccines, as he pressed for skeptical Americans to get vaccinated and stop another surge of the pandemic.

Speaking to a town hall audience in Ohio, Mr. Biden (shown in a file photo) said he was not intervening in the decisions of government scientists, but pointed toward a potential decision soon from the F.D.A. to give final approval for the vaccines, which are currently authorized for emergency use. Many medical professionals have pushed for the final approval, saying it could help increase uptake of the vaccines.

“My expectation talking to the group of scientists we put together, over 20 of them plus others in the field, is that sometime maybe in the beginning of the school year, at the end of August, beginning of September, October, they’ll get a final approval” for the vaccines, Mr. Biden said.

The president also said he expected children younger than 12, who are not currently eligible to receive the vaccine, to be cleared to get it on an emergency basis “soon, I believe.”

In an hourlong discussion with a largely friendly crowd and moderator, CNN’s Don Lemon, at Mount St. Joseph University, Mr. Biden fielded questions about the economy, gun violence, the opioid crisis, immigration, the virtues of bipartisan compromise, the pandemic and online misinformation about vaccines. In typical Biden fashion, he frequently veered into personal stories and punctuated answers with “I’m serious,” and he sometimes did not give direct answers in the process.

Washington Post, White House officials debate masking push as virus spikes, Annie Linskey, Dan Diamond, Tyler Pager and Lena H. Sun, July 22, 2021 (print ed.). The high-level discussions reflect rising concerns across the administration about the threat of the delta variant.

Top White House aides and Biden administration officials are debating whether they should urge vaccinated Americans to wear masks in more settings as the delta variant causes spikes in coronavirus infections across the country, according to six people familiar with the discussions.

The talks are in a preliminary phase and their result could be as simple as new messaging from top White House officials. But some of the talks include officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who are separately examining whether to update their masking guidance, according to a Biden administration aide and a federal health official.

Officials cautioned that any new formal guidance would have to come from the CDC, and they maintained that the White House has taken a hands-off approach with the agency to ensure they are not interfering with the work of scientists. But the high-level discussions reflect rising concerns across the administration about the threat of the delta variant and a renewed focus on what measures may need to be reintroduced to slow its spread.

Washington Post, Southern California cities rebel against new mask mandate, hinting at delta variant drama to come, Erica Werner, July 22, 2021. Regional uproar shows how government response to the dominant coronavirus variant is dividing even liberal Southern California, a brawl that could play out all over the country.

Los Angeles County’s new mask mandate is infuriating officials in the sprawling region, leading to angry denunciations as some irate local leaders demand resignations and threaten to cut ties and form their own public health departments.

“The county cannot handle our current situation,” said Councilman Tony Wu of West Covina, a town of about 110,000 in the eastern part of the county. “We are absolutely not going to enforce nothing about this BS.”

The municipal mess reflects the growing national tension over how to respond to the coronavirus’s new delta variant, which has led to a sizable rebound in cases and caught many government officials and business leaders by surprise. It is reviving tensions about vaccination levels and mask rules at a moment when many Americans had thought the virus was behind them.

Washington Post, Death toll in China floods climbs to 33 as rains spread and more cities call for help, Pei Lin Wu and Rebecca Tan, July 22, 2021. Smaller cities and towns warned that embankments protecting residents from the flooding from torrential rains were barely holding, and meteorologists said the rain is likely to intensify in some areas.

The death toll from torrential rains lashing China’s central Henan province rose to 33 on Thursday, local officials said, with at least eight people still missing and 3 million affected.

As rainfall abated in the hard-hit city of Zhengzhou, where at least 12 died in submerged subway cars, state meteorologists warned that precipitation is likely to intensify in other parts of Henan and in the neighboring province of Hebei.

Desperate appeals for help mounted in the smaller towns and cities surrounding Zhengzhou, with many saying that embankments protecting residents from the floods were barely holding.

“The most, most crucial thing is that we don’t have food at the moment. We haven’t eaten since the morning,” said Li Xiqin, chief of the Gongji Hospital of Huixian city, where flooding has left her stranded on the hospital premises with 380 nursing home residents, 150 patients and 150 staff members.

She shared videos of the scene, including one showing employees wheeling bed-bound patients through muddy waters while medical supplies floated by. In another video, about a dozen staff members are shown pushing down a brick wall on the west side of the hospital campus to let water escape.

New York Times, ‘Please Save Us!’ Grim Scenes in China as Flood Inundates a Subway

U.S. Congressional Battles

New York Times, Pelosi Bars Trump Loyalists From Jan. 6 Inquiry, Prompting a Boycott, Luke Broadwater and Nicholas Fandos, July 22, 2021 (print ed.). Democrats said Representatives Jim Banks and Jim Jordan, who amplified Donald J. Trump’s lies of a stolen election and opposed investigating the assault, could not be trusted to scrutinize it.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (shown above in a file photo) moved on Wednesday to bar two of former President Donald J. Trump’s most vociferous Republican defenders in Congress from joining a select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, saying their conduct suggested they could not be trusted to participate.

In an unusual move, Ms. Pelosi announced that she was rejecting Representatives Jim Banks of Indiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio, both of whom amplified Mr. Trump’s false claims of election fraud, joined their party’s efforts to challenge President Biden’s victory on Jan. 6 and have opposed efforts to investigate the assault on the Capitol by Trump supporters. She agreed to seat the other three Republicans who had been chosen for the panel.

But Ms. Pelosi said she could not allow the pair to take part, based on their actions around the riot and comments they had made undercutting the investigation. Mr. Banks, who has equated the deadly attack to unrest during the racial justice protests last summer, said the Jan. 6 inquiry was created to “malign conservatives and to justify the left’s authoritarian agenda.” Mr. Jordan, one of the biggest cheerleaders of Mr. Trump’s attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the 2020 election, pressed Mr. Trump’s false claims of election fraud on the House floor as protesters breached the Capitol, and has called the select committee “impeachment Round 3.”

The speaker’s decision drew an angry response from Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, left, the minority leader, who announced that Republicans would boycott the panel altogether. He seized on Ms. Pelosi’s intervention as confirmation of his charge that the investigation was nothing more than a political exercise to hurt the G.O.P.

The partisan brawl, unfolding even before the select committee has begun its work, underscored the difficult task it faces in scrutinizing an attack on the lawmakers now charged with dissecting it. It was also the latest evidence of how poisonous relations have become between the two parties, especially in the House, in the aftermath of Mr. Trump’s defeat and the violent bid to block certification of the outcome.

Many Democrats no longer wish to work with or hear from Republicans who helped spread Mr. Trump’s lie of a stolen election, especially those who led the effort and have sought to downplay the severity and significance of the assault that it inspired. Some said allowing two of the most prominent defenders to serve on a panel examining the attack was akin to allowing criminals to investigate their own crimes.

Democrats received high-profile backing from Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, right, Mr. McCarthy’s former No. 3 whom Ms. Pelosi appointed to the committee after she was ousted from her leadership position in May for criticizing Mr. Trump.

“The rhetoric that we have heard from the minority leader is disingenuous,” Ms. Cheney told reporters on the steps of the Capitol. “At every opportunity, the minority leader has attempted to prevent the American people from understanding what happened, to block this investigation.”

She said Ms. Pelosi had been right to bar Mr. Jordan and Mr. Banks from the panel, saying that Mr. Jordan was a potential “material witness” and Mr. Banks had “disqualified himself” with recent comments disparaging the committee’s work.

But that was too much for the MAGA Republicans, whose lack of concern for our democracy and the truth makes them unfit to serve in any elected body. Senate Republicans filibustered the commission.

Washington Post, Key federal aid programs running out of time — and cash — as new coronavirus variant spreads, Tony Romm, July 22, 2021 (print ed.). While the economic effects of the delta variant are unclear, a worsening pandemic again threatens to crimp travel and tourism, reduce traffic to storefronts and restaurants, and displace workers from their jobs.

Investigations

Palmer Report, Opinion: The Brett Kavanaugh scandal just got even uglier, Ron Leshnower, July 22, 2021. Donald Trump’s recently revealed rant about Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, shown at right in a photo from his confirmation hearing, triggered renewed interest in how Kavanaugh escaped any meaningful vetting at his Senate confirmation hearing. Now, an alarming letter to Democratic senators from the F.B.I. raises even more questions about what happened.

According to Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency by Michael Wolff, an exasperated Trump exclaimed, “Where would he be without me? I saved his life,” referring to Kavanaugh. “He wouldn’t even be in a law firm. Who would have had him? Nobody. Totally disgraced. Only I saved him.” What did Trump learn about Kavanaugh to make him say this?

We now have more insight, and the answer seems to be quite a bit. Nearly two years after Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse and Chris Coons asked the F.B.I. about how it reviewed Kavanaugh’s background, Assistant Director Jill C. Tyson wrote back. In the letter, dated June 30 and disclosed today by Whitehouse, Tyson did not say whether the F.B.I. ever pursued any of the most “relevant” of the 4,500 tips it received into Kavanaugh’s background.

However, Tyson indicated that these potentially critical tips were simply passed along to Trump White House lawyers, who could then handle them as they pleased. (Picture staffers lifting up a MAGA rug for lawyers to sweep the tips neatly underneath.) As Whitehouse pointed out, the Trump White House Counsel’s Office “was the very office that had constrained and directed the limited investigation” into Kavanaugh in the first place.

In an interview with the New York Times, Whitehouse, left, described the sham process as a “fake tip line that never got properly reviewed, that was presumably not even conducted in good faith.” In a series of tweets today, Whitehouse also pointed out that it’s “[n]o wonder so many witnesses were so frustrated when they tried to bring evidence forward” and that individuals like Dr. Blasey Ford were denied a “sincere and thorough investigation.”

Last night, Whitehouse and Coons, along with five other Democratic senators on the Judiciary Committee — Sens. Dick Durbin, Patrick Leahy, Richard Blumenthal, Mazie Hirono, and Cory Booker — wrote to F.B.I. Director Chris Wray to demand details about this shady arrangement. The truth about Kavanaugh and his sham investigation must come out. As Whitehouse summed things up quite perfectly: “Everyone deserves real answers, not cover-ups.”

Wayne Madsen Report (WMR), Commentary: Mossad has a “Who’s Who?” communications file of world leaders and businessmen thanks to Pegasus malware program, Wayne Madsen, left, July 22, 2021. Mossad has a “Who’s Who?” communications file of world leaders and businessmen thanks to Pegasus malware program

Chalk it up as a given that Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency has back door access to smart phone users whose devices were penetrated by the malware Trojan horse called Pegasus by its Israeli vendor, NSO Group.

As is always the case when Israel gets caught spying, they have denied doing anything wrong in selling Pegasus to various brutal regimes around the world to spy on journalists, opposition politicians and activists, and businessmen.

Pegasus resembles a modern version of another backdoor-surveillance tool modified by a company linked to Israeli intelligence. Investigations in the 1980s revealed that Hadron, a firm headquartered in northern Virginia, illegally procured from INSLAW, Inc. a case tracking database system called PROMIS (Prosecutors’ Management Information System) and throughout the 1980s and 90s distributed a backdoor-friendly version of it to law enforcement and intelligence agencies around the world.

Wayne Madsen is a columnist, author of 20 books and former Navy intelligence officer and NSA analyst. His 1980s projects included Navy service investigating former Navy analyst Jonathan Pollard, who was later convicted of functioning as a spy for Israeli who seriousy harmed the United States and its personnel. This week Madsen’s latest book, Cafe Vaterland, was republished in an expanded edition that includes his columns about revelations in recent books regarding the Trump family’s admiration of German Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and his fascist followers. Cafe Vaterland, drawing heavily on archival research about pro-Nazi operations and leaders n the United States during the 1930s, is a dystopian novel portraying what the United States would have been like if fascists had won World War II and their admirers like the Trumps had been able to achieve even more political power.

Proof via Substack, Investigation: All Trumpworld Figures Who Have Been Criminally Investigated, Criminally Referred, Impeached, Arrested, and/or Convicted, As Well As Those Who Are Presently Fugitives From Justice, Seth Abramson, left, July 21-22, 2021. The staggering number of ties that Donald J. Trump has to individuals who have run afoul of the criminal justice system underscores that Mr. Trump is a career criminal.

If anyone with whom you’re in conversation ever doubts that Donald Trump ran the most corrupt presidential administration in American history, send them this list.

And remind them, too, that this is very much a partial and incomplete list—as it was nearly impossible to bring “Trumpworld” figures to justice during Trump’s presidency, and the initial edition of this list is being published just months into President Joe Biden’s administration. More time will be needed to see the full scope of Trump’s corruption. The List: Convicted (16)….

Palmer Report, Opinion: Tom Barrack’s arrest rises to the level of espionage – and it’s time for Donald Trump to panic, Bill Palmer, right, July 22, 2021. Given Tom Barrack’s ties to the Trump administration, the Trump family, and the Middle East, his arrest this week surely has a whole lot of people in Trump world staying up at night. It’s not just that Barrack could end up cutting a plea deal against everyone. It’s where this investigation might be headed, with or without Barrack’s help.

When people are charged with violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act, it means they took foreign money that was legal in and of its own right, but they illegally failed to inform the U.S. government that they were doing so; it’s a crime of omission and misrepresentation.

But it turns out Tom Barrack, right, wasn’t charged with a FARA violation. Instead he was charged with being “an agent of a foreign government.” That may not sound much different, but as legal expert David Laufman has pointed out, it’s an espionage-type charge that’s been used against people like Maria Butina. Or as legal expert Daniel Goldman summed it up, “Barrack is charged for being a spy for the UAE.”

If these charges are proven, it’ll mean Donald Trump had an actual spy for a Middle Eastern government serving as his Middle East money man while he was running for, and serving as, President of the United States. The best case scenario would be that Trump naively and idiotically didn’t know Barrack was a spy – and that’s the best case.

Any other scenario would involve Trump having known that Barrack was a spy for the UAE government, and using him anyway. Whether Barrack flips or not, you can only imagine where this investigation is going. If the Feds have proof that Barrack was a spy, then you’d better believe they’re investigating everyone who was closely allied with him, to see whether or not they knew Barrack was a spy – in the same way that the Feds examined every inch of Maria Butina’s boyfriend’s life.

Virus Victims, Responses

New York TImes, Live Covid Updates: Amid Rising Cases, C.D.C. Director Warns U.S. at ‘Another Pivotal Point,’ Staff Reports, July 22, 2021. After the World Health Organization detailed plans to re-examine laboratories in the city where the first coronavirus cases appeared, senior Chinese officials denounced the idea as “shocking.” Here’s what you need to know:

House Republicans soft-pedal push for Covid vaccinations amid rising infections.
Here’s why even vaccinated people are getting ‘breakthrough’ infections.
Italy will require proof of vaccination or a negative test for many social activities.
As European nations look to national health passes, can the U.S. learn any lessons?
China denounces the W.H.O.’s call for another look at the Wuhan lab as ‘shocking’ and ‘arrogant.’
With half the country in lockdown, Australia’s prime minister apologizes for slow vaccine rollout.
YouTube pulls videos by Bolsonaro for spreading misinformation on the virus.

USA Today, Scientists discover more than 30 viruses frozen in ice, most never seen before, Jordan Mendoza, July 22, 2021 (print ed.). A group of scientists discovered ancient viruses frozen in two ice samples taken from the Tibetan Plateau in China, and most of them are unlike anything ever seen before.

The findings, published Wednesday in the journal Microbiome, came from ice cores taken in 2015 that scientists said began to freeze at least 14,400 years ago.

“These glaciers were formed gradually, and along with dust and gases, many, many viruses were also deposited in that ice,” Zhi-Ping Zhong, lead author and researcher at the Ohio State University Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center, said in a statement. “The glaciers in western China are not well-studied, and our goal is to use this information to reflect past environments. And viruses are a part of those environments.”

When researchers analyzed the ice, they found genetic codes for 33 viruses. Of the 33, genetic codes for four of them showed they are part of virus families that typically infect bacteria. Up to 28 were novel, meaning they had never before been identified.

The group said it doesn’t believe the viruses originated from animals or humans but came from the soil or plants. The scientists said roughly half of them survived because of the ice.

“These are viruses that would have thrived in extreme environments,” said Matthew Sullivan, co-author of the study and director of Ohio State’s Center of Microbiome Science. “These viruses have signatures of genes that help them infect cells in cold environments – just surreal genetic signatures for how a virus is able to survive in extreme conditions.”

Washington Post, 187.2 million U.S. vaccinated, as of July 22, 2021, the number of people who have received at least one dose of the vaccine. This includes more than 162.2 million people (48.8 % of the eligible population) fully vaccinated and 56.4 % with at least one dose.

Worldometer, World & U.S. Coronavirus Case Totals (updated July 22, 2021, with some governments reporting lower numbers than the totals here and some experts saying the numbers are far higher, as the New York Times reported in India’s true pandemic death toll is likely to be well over 3 million, a new study finds):

World Cases: 192,974,202, Deaths: 4,145,502
U.S. Cases:     35,146,476, Deaths:    625,808
India Cases:     31,257,720, Deaths:    419,021
Brazil Cases:     6,054,711, Deaths:     151,501

Washington Post, Unemployment claims jumped to 419,000 last week, a sudden increase that shows labor market remains unsettled, Eli Rosenberg, July 22, 2021. White House officials and economists are watching to see the delta variant’s impact on economy. The number of new claims grew to 419,000 from 360,000, the third time in six weeks that they had ticked up, according to data from the Department of Labor.

More On Pro-Trump Insurrection, Finances

Trump advisor Roger Stone poses at center with leaders of the Oath Keepers.

Washington Post, In new Capitol riot guilty plea, Tampa man admits intending to block Congress with Oath Keepers, Spencer S. Hsu, July 22, 2021 (print ed.). A Tampa man pleaded guilty Tuesday to joining a “stack formation” of Oath Keepers members and associates who allegedly breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, becoming the latest to cooperate with prosecutors and the first among the formation to specify that he intended to hinder Congress that day using intimidation and coercion.

Caleb Berry, 20, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy and one count of obstructing an official proceeding.

In a plea deal, prosecutors agreed to request lowering an estimated prison term of 51 to 63 months under federal guidelines for Berry, who has no criminal record and is one of the youngest defendants charged in the Capitol riots, in exchange for his substantial assistance.

U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta of Washington accepted the plea after Berry acknowledged that he coordinated plans and discussed the need to bring firearms for Jan. 6 in the nation’s capital with Oath Keepers members.

In plea papers, Berry admitted driving to Washington from Florida with other co-conspirators, meeting them the morning of Jan. 6 at a rally for President Donald Trump at the White House Ellipse and marching to the Capitol. They later walked single-file up the Capitol steps in camouflage, body armor and tactical gear and forced entry through the East Rotunda doors about 2:40 p.m., Berry admitted.

At least two other Oath Keepers associates — Graydon P. Young, 55, of Florida, who also admitted being part of the “stack,” and Mark Grods, 54, of Mobile, Ala., who said he entered minutes later — have also pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against others, describing encrypted communications and efforts to bring and store firearms at a hotel in nearby Arlington, Va.

The timing of Berry’s plea — he was charged July 9 under seal — could also be calculated to step up pressure on remaining defendants. Seven U.S. prosecutors entered appearances in Berry’s case, from offices including the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington and the Justice Department’s national security division.

U.S. prosecutors have now charged all but one of 14 people associated with the “stack” or just trailing behind them, including Berry and Young, according to an online group of Internet sleuths calling itself Capitol Terrorists Exposers that has provided information to journalists and investigators that prosecutors have cited in court filings.

Some have said they were in Washington to provide security for Republican VIPs including Roger Stone, or to support Trump in case he invoked the Insurrection Act and mobilized a citizen militia to pursue his unfounded claim that the election was stolen.

U.S. Law, Politics, Governance

Washington Post, Republicans threaten to hold up debt ceiling days before deadline, raising potential for political showdown, Tony Romm and Seung Min Kim, July 22, 2021 (print ed.). “There really is no other way,” Sen. Rubio says, but Democrats insist they have no plans to negotiate.

Senate Republicans on Wednesday threatened to vote against an increase to the debt ceiling unless Congress first agrees to new spending cuts or other reforms, raising the potential for a major political showdown that could carry vast implications for both the global economy as well as President Biden’s agenda.

The new ultimatum marked a reversal for Republicans, who agreed to address the debt ceiling — the statutory amount the government can borrow to pay its bills — multiple times to advance policies under now-former President Donald Trump that helped add $7 trillion to the federal debt during his term.

“We had a pandemic that drove a lot of [spending], but what’s been added on top of it, and what [Democrats] plan to spend moving forward on top of that, I think it calls for some level of sanity,” said GOP. Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.).

The renewed Republican threats arrived only 10 days before a current agreement that suspends the debt ceiling is set to expire. If Congress cannot reach a deal to raise or suspend the debt ceiling by month’s end, the U.S. government then would have only a few weeks to sustain itself using “extraordinary measures,” as it is known — though the Treasury Department has not provided an exact date when its spending would be at risk.

The drama intensified earlier Wednesday, after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told Punchbowl News that his party is unlikely to vote for an increase.

Palmer Report, Opinion: Bad news for Kyrsten Sinema, Bocha Blue, July 22, 2021. For politicians, sometimes bad news comes in their polling numbers. And for Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona (shown above emphasizing her moderate credentials by a “thumbs down” gesture in the Senate in voting against a $15 minimum wage), the numbers aren’t pretty.

Sinema is one of the Democratic senators who have, thus far, not budged on getting rid of the filibuster. And people are NOT happy about it, as evidenced by her horrific polling numbers.

In a new poll by Mother Jones and Data for Progress, Sinema is viewed in a positive light by a miserable 38 percent of voters. Not good news at all.

But the news is even worse than that. Just 42 percent of Democrats view her positively. In comparison, Senator Mark Kelly, also of Arizona, has an astonishing 75 percent approval from Democrats.
President Biden’s approval among Arizona Democrats is at 95 percent!

In the same poll, 66 percent of our Democratic friends in the Grand Canyon state said they would vote for a different Democrat in a 2024 primary. The poll was conducted from June 28th to July 6th.

So, what do these numbers mean for Sinema? The meaning is clear and undeniable. Voters are pissed.

Her own constituency is pissed. If Sinema wants to have a long-term career in the Senate, she will have to reevaluate her outlook on several core issues, the filibuster being one of them. One thing is certain. The numbers show she’s in trouble. And if she doesn’t improve upon her numbers, she will be VERY vulnerable to a primary challenger.

Washington Post, Biden will launch into campaigning to back McAuliffe in Virginia, Sean Sullivan, July 22, 2021. The president will make his first candidate-specific foray onto the campaign trail on Friday to support the Democratic nominee for governor in a state seen as a testing ground for his midterm message.

Terry McAuliffe, right, had just won the Democratic nomination for governor in Virginia last month when he got a call from President Biden.

“Terry, I’m all in,” Biden told him. “What do you want?”

“I need you to come in and, you know, help campaign,” replied McAuliffe, who recalled the conversation in an interview.

“I’m there,” Biden replied.

Biden will make his first candidate-specific foray onto the campaign trail as president on Friday, a quick hop across the Potomac River to Arlington to stump for McAuliffe in the year’s marquee election, a contest that is stoking some Democratic nervousness. The race is shaping up as a pivotal first test of the appeal of Biden’s agenda, as well as whether the moderate, suburban-led coalition that propelled him into office will endure or evaporate in the post-Trump era.

“Virginia is a perfect petri dish for the president to test-drive his midterm and any reelection messaging,” said Dan Sena, former executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

The central questions, said Sena — whose firm now works for Del. Hala S. Ayala of Prince William County, the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor — are whether suburban voters are still driven by antipathy toward former president Donald Trump and how much they will credit Biden for his efforts to combat the pandemic.

Friday’s event kick-starts what Biden’s friends and associates expect to be an aggressive schedule this election cycle as Democrats try to transcend the historical pattern of a president’s party getting pummeled in midterm elections.

TMZ, Rachel Uchitel says Seeking Arrangement dropped her like a bad habit as spokesperson for the dating site in the wake of the Matt Gatez scandal … so she claims in a new lawsuit, Staff report, July 22, 2021. In docs, obtained by TMZ, Uchitel says she and Seeking Arrangement entered into a 6-month deal back in February to be the company’s spokesperson. She says the deal called for $20k per month in return for de-stigmatizing the sugar daddy concept.

Uchitel says she did her job just fine … and got paid the first few months. But, then came Gaetz’s investigation by the feds over allegations he paid young women for sexual encounters with an underage female … linking him with Seeking Arrangement and alleging he’s a member of the site.

Uchitel says she had no connection to Gaetz, and the honchos at Seeking Arrangement told her to stay mum on Gaetz during interviews. She says she was told the scandal was “a very serious crisis for the company.”

She says the CEO asked her to get 4 young women who used the site to make videos attesting that the site wasn’t exploiting them. She says she followed orders but was then told the company was going through a re-branding and that required terminating her contract.

Uchitel says 6 days after terminating her contract the company came back to her and said they would pay her in full if she signed an NDA. Uchitel told them to pound sand, presumably because she didn’t want in any way to become part of the Gaetz scandal.

She’s suing Seeking Arrangement for the balance owed, along with damages for tarnishing her reputation. She also wants money for emotional distress. We reached out to Seeking Arrangement … so far, no word back.

World News

New York Times, A top political prisoner dies of Covid in Myanmar, with others in critical condition, Hannah Beech, July 22, 2021 (print ed.). The death of U Nyan Win, a lawyer for Aung San Suu Kyi who was locked up for months after a February coup, pointed to the growing toll of Myanmar’s outbreak.

Media News

New York Times, Harry Rosenfeld, Who Saw News in a ‘Third-Rate Burglary,’ Dies at 91, Sam Roberts, July 22, 2021. He assigned Woodward and Bernstein to follow the Watergate break-in for The Washington Post and fended off efforts to supplant them.

Harry M. Rosenfeld, who injected his brash brand of journalism into The Washington Post, where he oversaw the two reporters who transformed a local crime story into the national Watergate corruption scandal that toppled the Nixon administration, died on July 16 at his home in upstate Slingerlands, N.Y. He was 91.

The cause was complications of Covid-19, his daughter Amy Rosenfeld Kaufman said.
Those We’ve Lost
Read about other people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic here.

As The Post’s assistant managing editor for metropolitan news, Mr. Rosenfeld directly supervised Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein as they mined secretive sources in their follow-the-money unraveling of the Watergate break-in, which President Richard M. Nixon’s press secretary had described as a “third-rate burglary attempt” and which led to Mr. Nixon’s resignation in 1974.

At one point Mr. Rosenfeld shielded the two reporters from attempts to remove them from the story once its broad implications became apparent. The Post’s editor, Benjamin C. Bradlee, had sought to replace “Woodstein,” as the duo were nicknamed, with Post veterans steeped in government and politics.

As quoted in Mr. Woodward’s and Mr. Bernstein’s book “All the President’s Men” — a line delivered by Jack Warden playing Mr. Rosenfeld in the 1976 movie version — Mr. Rosenfeld defended the reporters by asking Mr. Bradlee a rhetorical question.

“They’re hungry,” he said. “You remember when you were hungry?”

July 21

Top Headlines

New York Times, India’s true pandemic death toll is likely to be well over 3 million, a new study finds
Washington Post, Driven by covid deaths, U.S. life expectancy dropped by 1.5 years in 2020
Washington Post, Thomas Barrack, Trump ally who chaired inaugural committee, indicted in foreign lobbying case

U.S. Congressional Battles

Washington Post, Pelosi rejects GOP’s Banks, Jordan for Jan. 6 select committee, saying they may jeopardize ‘integrity of the investigation‘
Washington Post, Opinion: On Jan. 6, Pelosi chose truth. McCarthy chose theater, Jennifer Rubin
Washington Post, Key federal aid programs running out of time — and cash — as new coronavirus variant spreads
New York Times, Republicans are set to block an infrastructure bill in the Senate, pleading for more time for bipartisan talks

Investigations

Proof via Substack, Investigation: All Trumpworld Figures Who Have Been Criminally Investigated, Criminally Referred, Impeached, Arrested, and/or Convicted, As Well As Those Who Are Presently Fugitives From Justice, Seth Abramson
New York Times, Investigation: How an Unproven Alzheimer’s Drug Was Approved, Pam Belluck, Sheila Kaplan and Rebecca Robbins
Washington Post, The Pegasus Project Global Investigation, Among 50,000 phone numbers, the Pegasus Project found those of hundreds of public officials, Craig Timberg, Michael Birnbaum, Drew Harwell and Dan Sabbagh
Palmer Report, Opinion: No one in Trump world is safe now, Bill Palmer

Virus Victims, Responses

New York Times, Republican Lawmakers Let Vaccine Skepticism Flourish
Washington Post, Growing number of Republican lawmakers urge vaccinations amid delta surge
Washington Post, In latest clash over Wuhan lab, Fauci tells Sen. Rand Paul: ‘You do not know what you’re talking about,’
Washington Post, 186 million U.S. vaccinated
Worldometer, World & U.S. Coronavirus Case Totals, U.S. Deaths: 625,363

More On Pro-Trump Insurrection, Finances

Washington Post, In new Capitol riot guilty plea, Tampa man admits intending to block Congress with Oath Keepers
Washington Post, Allen Weisselberg resigned from the top of the Trump Organization. So who’s running the company now?

U.S. Law, Politics, Governance

Washington Post, Republicans threaten to hold up debt ceiling days before deadline, raising potential for political showdown
Washington Post, Biden to nominate Big Tech adversary Jonathan Kanter to helm Justice Dept. antitrust division
Washington Post, Federal judge blocks Arkansas ban on nearly all abortions
Washington Post, Justice Dept. seeks 50-year bar to release of grand jury material
Washington Post, Paul Gosar was a beloved dentist. Now he’s a MAGA congressman. His former patients wonder what happened to him

World News

New York Times, Bezos and Blue Origin Crew Land After Short Flight to Space
Washington Post, Rescue efforts launched after record floods in central China displace 1.2 million
New York Times, ‘Please Save Us!’ Grim Scenes in China as Flood Inundates a Subway
New York Times, A top political prisoner dies of Covid in Myanmar, with others in critical condition

Religion, Media, Sports

Washington Post, Milwaukee Bucks win their first NBA title since 1971 as Giannis Antetokounmpo scores 50
Washington Post, Top U.S. Catholic Church official resigns after phone data is used to track him on Grindr and to gay bars
Washington Post, ‘Sleepy Tom’ Brady and the Tampa Bay Bucs come to the White House for a very normal visit

Top Stories

New York Times, India’s true pandemic death toll is likely to be well over 3 million, a new study finds, Karan Deep Singh, July 21, 2021 (print ed). A comprehensive effort to estimate excess deaths in the country during the pandemic produced figures 10 times the government’s official coronavirus toll.

The number of people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic in India so far is likely to exceed three million — nearly 10 times the official Covid-19 death toll — making it one of the worst human tragedies in the nation’s history, according to a new study.

In a comprehensive examination of the true toll of the pandemic in the sprawling nation of 1.4 billion, the Center for Global Development, a Washington research institute, attempted to quantify excess deaths from all causes during the pandemic based on state data, international estimates, serological studies and household surveys.

“True deaths are likely to be in the several millions, not hundreds of thousands, making this arguably India’s worst human tragedy,” said its authors, one of whom is a former chief economic adviser to the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The official government numbers have been called into question repeatedly. Even as funeral pyres lit up the night sky and bodies washed up on the Ganges River, with death all around, the Indian government was widely underreporting the scale of the devastation.

A chorus of experts have said the country’s official estimates are a gross understatement.

Washington Post, Driven by covid deaths, U.S. life expectancy dropped by 1.5 years in 2020, Allyson Chiu, Lindsey Bever and Ariana Eunjung Cha, July 21, 2021. The decline, which is the largest seen in a single year since World War II, reflects the pandemic’s sustained toll on Americans, particularly the disproportionate impact of covid-19 on communities of color.

Life expectancy in the United States dropped by a year and a half in 2020 — a continuation of a worrisome decline that was observed in the first half of last year as the coronavirus pandemic ravaged the country, according to federal data released Wednesday.

The decline, which is the largest seen in a single year since World War II, reflects the pandemic’s sustained toll on Americans, particularly the disproportionate impact of covid-19 on communities of color. Black Americans lost 2.9 years of life expectancy while Latinos, who have longer life expectancy than non-Hispanic Blacks or Whites, saw a drop of three years. There was a decrease of 1.2 years among White people.

‘I just pray God will help me’: Racial, ethnic minorities reel from higher covid-19 death rates

“It’s horrific,” said Anne Case, a professor emeritus of economics and public affairs at Princeton University. “It’s not entirely unexpected given what we have already seen about mortality rates as the year went on, but that still doesn’t stop it from being just horrific, especially for non-Hispanic Blacks and for Hispanics.”

Washington Post, Thomas Barrack, Trump ally who chaired inaugural committee, indicted in foreign lobbying case, Shayna Jacobs, Josh Dawsey and Devlin Barrett, July 21, 2021 (print ed.). Thomas J. Barrack, a longtime friend to former president Donald Trump and a billionaire businessman, was arrested Tuesday in California and charged with violating foreign lobbying laws, obstructing justice and making false statements, officials said.

Barrack, whose primary residence is in Los Angeles, was indicted on foreign lobbying charges related to his dealings with the United Arab Emirates, according to an indictment unsealed Tuesday afternoon.

He and two other defendants are accused of acting and conspiring to act as agents of the UAE between April 2016 and April 2018. Officials also alleged that Barrack lied to FBI agents in 2019 during an interview about his dealings with the UAE.

Barrack was in federal custody Tuesday and was expected to appear in court in Los Angeles in the afternoon. His spokesman released a statement that said: “Mr. Barrack has made himself voluntarily available to investigators from the outset. He is not guilty and will be pleading not guilty.” The 45-page indictment charges Matthew Grimes, an employee of Barrack’s investment firm, with helping in the lobbying effort. Grimes was also arrested, officials said. A third man charged, Rashid Alshahhi, is a citizen of the UAE who lived for a time in California.

U.S. Congressional Battles

Washington Post, Pelosi rejects GOP’s Banks, Jordan for Jan. 6 select committee, saying they may jeopardize ‘integrity of the investigation,’ Marianna Sotomayor and Jacqueline Alemany, July 21, 2021. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) (shown above in a file photo) has rejected two of Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) picks to serve on the Jan. 6 select committee, saying the outspoken Republicans may jeopardize “the integrity of the investigation.”

McCarthy, left, announced Monday that he would recommend Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Banks (R-Ind.), noting that the two Republicans and three others represent an array of viewpoints and opinions. Both Jordan and Banks voted against certifying the election of President Biden.

“With respect for the integrity of the investigation, with an insistence on the truth and with concern about statements made and actions taken by these Members, I must reject the recommendations of Representatives Banks and Jordan to the Select Committee,” Pelosi said in a statement. “The unprecedented nature of January 6th demands this unprecedented decision.”

Pelosi, who as speaker has final say on who can serve on a committee that is set to hold its first hearing Tuesday, said that she was “prepared to appoint Representatives Rodney Davis, Kelly Armstrong and Troy E. Nehls.” All three members were seen arriving to McCarthy’s office in the Capitol for a huddle shortly after Pelosi released her statement.

A crowd of Trump supporters surrounded a newly erected set of wooden gallows outside the Capitol Building on Jan. 6. “Hang Mike Pence!” members of the crowd shouted at times about the Republican Vice President who had announced that he could not comply with the president’s call to block election certification that day. The wooden gallows near the Capitol Reflecting Pool was just one example of the racist and anti-Semitic imagery on display at the riot. The noose is a racist symbol of the lynching of Black Americans. (Photo by Shay Horse via NurPhoto / Getty).

Washington Post, Opinion: On Jan. 6, Pelosi chose truth. McCarthy chose theater, Jennifer Rubin, right, July 21, 2021. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), whom the insurrectionists tried to hunt down on Jan. 6, is deadly serious about getting to the bottom of the day’s events and exposing all groups and individuals who played a role in the attempt to overthrow our democracy. She was willing to have a bipartisan, evenly divided Jan. 6 commission. But that was too much for the MAGA Republicans, whose lack of concern for our democracy and the truth makes them unfit to serve in any elected body. Senate Republicans filibustered the commission.

Pelosi then decided to form a select committee, chose Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) to participate and even offered House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the disgraced former president’s chief apologist, the opportunity to name five members. McCarthy picked three who participated in the attempt to overthrow the election results, including one who immediately trashed the committee after his appointment.

Pelosi, who could have let Republicans expose themselves as unhinged, unpatriotic provocateurs, rejected two of those appointments. In a fit of pique, McCarthy said he would pull all five of his people, hysterically threatening on Wednesday to run his own investigation. That, of course, would highlight only how unserious and untrustworthy his party truly is. Pelosi is free, of course, to appoint additional, responsible Republicans, such as Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) who condemned the insurrection, voted to impeach the instigator in chief and supported a bipartisan commission.

Cheney gave a thumbs-up to Pelosi’s decision. “At every opportunity the minority leader has attempted to prevent the American people from understanding what happened [on January 6], to block this investigation,” Cheney said Wednesday. “I agree with what the speaker has done.” For good measure, she added: “Any person who would be third in line to the presidency must demonstrate a commitment to the Constitution and a commitment to the rule of law, and Minority Leader McCarthy has not done that.”

New York Times, Republicans are set to block an infrastructure bill in the Senate, pleading for more time for bipartisan talks, Emily Cochrane, July 21, 2021. Republicans were poised on Wednesday to block action on an infrastructure measure in the Senate, raising doubts about the fate of bipartisan efforts to strike a compromise on a nearly $600 billion bill to address the nation’s aging roads, bridges and other public-works projects.

Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, right, opted to force the vote even though the bill was unfinished and negotiators were still haggling over key details, in an effort to keep pressure on to finalize a deal that is a major piece of President Biden’s agenda. With Democrats expected to back the move, at least 10 Republicans would have to join them to reach the 60-vote threshold to move past a filibuster and take up the measure.

But Republicans and some Democrats toiling to hammer out a final agreement urged him to hold off, saying a premature vote risked scuttling their chances of success. In a last-ditch move to delay the process, 11 Senate Republicans were readying a letter to Mr. Schumer pledging to vote to allow the debate to go forward on Monday if a deal had been finalized by then.

“This vote is not a deadline to have every final detail worked out — it is not an attempt to jam anyone,” Mr. Schumer said on the Senate floor ahead of the vote. “The bipartisan group of senators will have many opportunities to make their agreement the base of the bill, even if they need a few more days to finalize the language.”

Still, in the absence of final legislation, Republicans warned on Tuesday that they would block the infrastructure debate.

Washington Post, Key federal aid programs running out of time — and cash — as new coronavirus variant spreads, Tony Romm, July 21, 2021. While the economic effects of the delta variant are unclear, a worsening pandemic again threatens to crimp travel and tourism, reduce traffic to storefronts and restaurants, and displace workers from their jobs.

Investigations

Proof via Substack, Investigation: All Trumpworld Figures Who Have Been Criminally Investigated, Criminally Referred, Impeached, Arrested, and/or Convicted, As Well As Those Who Are Presently Fugitives From Justice, Seth Abramson, left, July 21, 2021. The staggering number of ties that Donald J. Trump has to individuals who have run afoul of the criminal justice system underscores that Mr. Trump is a career criminal.

If anyone with whom you’re in conversation ever doubts that Donald Trump ran the most corrupt presidential administration in American history, send them this list.

The List: Convicted (16)….

New York Times, Investigation: How an Unproven Alzheimer’s Drug Was Approved, Pam Belluck, Sheila Kaplan and Rebecca Robbins, July 21, 2021 (print ed.). Though some of its own senior officials said there was little evidence of benefit for patients, the F.D.A. nonetheless greenlighted Biogen’s Aduhelm, or aducanumab.

Two months before the Food and Drug Administration’s deadline to decide whether to approve Biogen’s controversial Alzheimer’s drug aducanumab, a council of senior agency officials resoundingly agreed that there wasn’t enough evidence it worked.

The council, a group of 15 officials who review complex issues, concluded that another clinical trial was necessary before approving the drug. Otherwise, one council member noted, approval could “result in millions of patients taking aducanumab without any indication of actually receiving any benefit, or worse, cause harm,” according to minutes of the meeting, obtained by The New York Times.

“It is critical that the decision be made from a place of certainty,” the minutes said.

The session, whose details have not been reported before, represented at least the third time that proponents of approving aducanumab in the F.D.A. had received a clear message that the evidence did not convincingly show the drug could slow cognitive decline.

On June 7, the F.D.A. greenlighted the drug anyway — a decision that has been met with scathing rebuke from many Alzheimer’s experts and other scientists and calls for investigations into how the agency approved a treatment that has little evidence it helps patients.

How and why the F.D.A. went ahead and approved the drug — an intravenous infusion, marketed as Aduhelm, that the company has since priced at $56,000 a year — has become the subject of intense scrutiny. Two congressional committees are investigating the approval and the price. Much is still unknown, but an examination by The Times has found that the process leading to approval took several unusual turns, including a decision for the F.D.A. to work far more closely with Biogen than is typical in a regulatory review.

Washington Post, The Pegasus Project Global Investigation, Among 50,000 phone numbers, the Pegasus Project found those of hundreds of public officials, Craig Timberg, Michael Birnbaum, Drew Harwell and Dan Sabbagh, July 21, 2021 (print ed.). Spies for centuries have trained their sights on those who shape destinies of nations: presidents, prime ministers, kings.

And in the 21st century, most of them carry smartphones.

Such is the underlying logic for some of the most tantalizing discoveries for an international investigation that in recent months scrutinized a list of more than 50,000 phone numbers that included — according to forensics analyses of dozens of iPhones — at least some people targeted by Pegasus spyware licensed to governments worldwide.

The list contained the numbers of politicians and government officials by the hundreds. But what of heads of state and governments, arguably the most coveted of targets?

Fourteen. Or more specifically: three presidents, 10 prime ministers and a king.

None of them offered their iPhones or Android devices to The Washington Post and 16 other news organizations that scrutinized the list of phone numbers. That means the forensic testing that might have revealed infection by NSO’s signature spyware, Pegasus, was not possible. Nor was it possible to determine whether any NSO client attempted to deliver Pegasus to the phones of these country leaders — much less whether any succeeded in turning these highly personal devices into pocket spies capable of tracking a national leader’s nearly every movement, communication and personal relationship.

But here’s who’s on the list: Three sitting presidents, France’s Emmanuel Macron, Iraq’s Barham Salih and South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa. Three current prime ministers, Pakistan’s Imran Khan, Egypt’s Mostafa Madbouly and Morocco’s Saad-Eddine El Othmani.

Seven former prime ministers, who according to time stamps on the list were placed there while they were still in office: Yemen’s Ahmed Obeid bin Daghr, Lebanon’s Saad Hariri, Uganda’s Ruhakana Rugunda, France’s Édouard Philippe, Kazakhstan’s Bakitzhan Sagintayev, Algeria’s Noureddine Bedoui and Belgium’s Charles Michel.

And one king: Morocco’s Mohammed VI.

Palmer Report, Opinion: No one in Trump world is safe now, Bill Palmer, right, July 21, 2021. Earlier this week a false and since-corrected story from the Associated Press claimed that Merrick Garland’s DOJ had decided to let Wilbur Ross off on perjury charges. It created a new round of doomsday panic among liberal pundits who are somehow more certain than ever that Donald Trump and his associates are going to “get away with it all no matter what.”

But the real world came crashing down on that doomsday delusion yesterday when Thomas Barrack – a key Trump administration operative