The law enforcement arm of Indiana’s Department of Natural Resources released a report Thursday, the product of investigations after an alleged attempted lynching on July 4.
Continue reading “READ: Indiana Authorities Release Initial Report On Alleged Attempted Lynching”
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) said Thursday that the White House’s efforts to discredit Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has emerged as a critical scientific voice on the Coronavirus Task Force, was probably “one of the biggest mistakes they’ve made.”
In an interview with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, Hogan condemned what he called an “attack” and a “campaign” waged against the top infectious diseases expert by the White House as one of the biggest blunders that the Trump administration has made in its ongoing mishandling of the pandemic.
Hogan defended Fauci, who he said “has been the most respected most trusted voice and the guy we’re getting the most honest information from throughout this entire crisis.”
Fauci has been the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for the past 36 years.
Hogan’s comments come after a memo was distributed by the White House to media outlets over the weekend with a list intending to smear Fauci while purporting to identify “the number of times Dr. Fauci has been wrong on things.”
In an interview with The Atlantic that was published on Wednesday, Fauci said the list “was a major mistake” and failed to “do anything but reflect poorly on them.”
The President sought to deepen public doubt about the health official by sharing a tweet on Monday from former game show host Chuck Woolery, who accused the government’s medical experts of “lying” about the virus. In a CBS interview on Tuesday night, the President defended the tweet by saying he was re-posting a sentiment “that a lot of people feel.”
Hogan’s backing of Fauci follows an op-ed that he wrote in the Washington Post on Thursday ripping President Trump for what Hogan describes as a “bungled effort” and “hopeless” response to the coronavirus crisis.
Hogan said that the essay is an excerpt from his forthcoming book, “Still Standing: Surviving Cancer, Riots, a Global Pandemic, and the Toxic Politics that Divide America,” in which he critiques Trump in greater detail for failures made earlier on in the pandemic.
Hogan told Mitchell that the President was “wrong” to exclude Fauci from recent briefings from the Coronavirus Task Force, and also rebuked the President for ignoring some of the advice from his own team of experts.
The GOP governor, who is chairman of the National Governors Association, has been a prominent critic of Trump who he accused of playing a game of “pinball” and “mixed messaging” that often goes against the wisdom of science and is played out in threats and tweets.
“We just need the President to lead and focus on these issues and maybe not worry so much about his twitter account,” Hogan said.
The Trump campaign held a brief but emotional meeting Thursday where outgoing campaign manager Brad Parscale passed the torch to his successor, Bill Stepien, according to Politico.
The meeting came the morning after Trump abruptly announced the shakeup, which reportedly caught the President’s family off guard. Continue reading “Emotional ‘Pass The Torch’ Meeting Held After Trump Dumped Parscale”
Florida’s restrictions on ex-felon voting will likely remain in place at least for August’s primary, after the Supreme Court on Thursday refused to remove a hold on a trial judge’s ruling that those restrictions are unconstitutional.
An attorney representing the St. Louis couple who waved their guns at non-violent Black Lives Matter protesters marching near their home last month told TPM on Thursday that he has been having discussions with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows amid the St. Louis prosecutor’s investigation into the incident.
Continue reading “Gun Couple’s Lawyer Says He’s Been Talking To WH Amid Prosecutor’s Probe”
You saw Gov. Kemp’s (R-GA) order prohibiting cities and counties in Georgia from requiring people to wear masks. Look at this chart – apologies in advance that it’s a bit messy.
Let me direct your attention to this very important photo:
https://twitter.com/priaribi/status/1283563122243100677
This is a remarkable statistic I had not seen. 31.1% of Florida children (people under 18) who have been tested for COVID have been positive. That is about three times higher than the rest of the population.
It’s not entirely clear what to make of this statistic. Only about 50,000 people under the age of 18 have been tested, out of about 2.8 million tests in the state. So it seems quite possible that the percentage is so high because the kids who are being tested are either clearly symptomatic or living with parents who are positive. In other words, an artifact of the testing protocol itself. Still, it’s a high number. And the public health director in Palm Beach County is warning that we simply don’t know what kind of long term damage these infections could be doing.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) piled on her criticism of President Trump’s handling of the coronavirus crisis during a press conference on Thursday. Continue reading “Pelosi: Trump Is ‘Like A Man Who Refuses To Ask For Directions’ On COVID-19”
As was reported yesterday, the White House has taken the collection of COVID data out of the hands of the CDC and given it over to a private medical data company in Pittsburgh. On its face the company doesn’t seem obviously scammy. It’s not some fly-by-night set up by Brad Parscale’s uncle. So we don’t know quite what the angle to this is, not the specifics. My best guess is that it is simply to maintain a tighter hold on information and keep it out of the hands of the CDC, which even under its stalwartly Trumpian current leadership has shown some recent signs of bucking the President’s demands for COVID denial and no-holds-barred school reopenings.
What we can say more definitively is that at the moment the full weight of the federal government appears harnessed toward covering up and denying the bad news about the resurgent epidemic and force-marching the economy and the nation’s schools into a dead cat bounce that will salvage the President’s flagging reelection prospects.
