NEW YORK (AP) — Walmart will require customers to wear face coverings at all of its namesake and Sam’s Club stores, making it the largest retailer to introduce such a policy that has otherwise proven difficult to enforce without state and federal requirements.
Continue reading “Walmart Becomes Largest Retailer To Require Masks In Its Stores”
From TPM Reader SA …
I’m a long-time TPM reader (back to 2002 or something) and one of the original prime members and also a TPM insider. I live in NYC, most of the time. My wife and I are both professors at a university in New York City and we have small children (ages 6 and 4). We are overall extremely lucky: no one got sick and we are not in much danger of losing our jobs. But, the lack of child care, and the *uncertainty* around child care, has just been really tough.
About a month ago we were in a zoom meeting with the school where our smallest is registered for pre-K when we were blindsided by the sudden realization that ***they were really contemplating not opening the schools full time.***
When ABC News chief anchor George Stephanopoulos asked Mary Trump in an exclusive interview on Tuesday what she would say if given the opportunity to address her uncle, her answer was clear: “Resign.”
“He is utterly incapable of leading this country, and it’s dangerous to allow him to do so,” Mary Trump told Stephanopoulos in her first televised interview on Tuesday since she was released from a court gag order to speak freely about her blockbuster tell-all book that hit shelves on July 14.
Mary Trump, who is a clinical psychologist, said that the president grew up in a “dysfunctional” family that believed “money stood in” for acts of love and one whose patriarch used his own kin as “pawns.” She said that the backdrop of the nation’s leader, who is seeking a second-term, has created a “quite dangerous situation” for Americans since he was elected to office in 2016.
In the interview, Mary Trump delved into her family history, describing her grandfather, Fred Trump, as a “sociopath” who pushed his children — including the president — to “succeed at all costs,” to view people as “expendable,” and to “do anything to get attention, financial rewards, and to ‘win.’”
Donald Trump’s father “was incredibly driven in a way that turned other people, including his children [and] wife, into pawns to be used to his own ends,” Mary Trump said.
Her book, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” which was released after a legal battle she fought alongside publisher Simon & Schuster, takes an intimate dive into the president’s family life and upbringing from her own memories, conversations with family members, and legal, financial and family documents.
The White House has condemned the book as a money-grubbing move.
“Mary Trump and her book’s publisher may claim to be acting in the public interest, but this book is clearly in the author’s own financial self-interest,” the White House said in a statement obtained by ABC News.
The White House has also denied a claim in the book that was hotly discussed after the detail was leaked ahead of the book’s released — that the president had allowed someone else to take the SAT exam on his behalf. While the White House dismissed the book as a work full of “falsehoods” and “absurd allegations,” Mary Trump defended the claim in her Tuesday interview, saying that she was, “absolutely confident” that someone else took the SAT exam for her uncle, and that she learned what happened from “a source very close to Donald.”
Mary Trump’s uncle Robert, the president’s younger brother, pressed a court to block the book’s release, citing a 20-year-old confidentiality agreement she had signed in a settlement regarding her grandfather’s will. In another attempt to prevent Mary Trump for promoting or speaking publicly about the book, a New York judge sided with Mary Trump on Monday enabling her to launch full-scale promotion and to discuss the contents of her controversial tell-all.
She had charged herself with using the book to alert the public based on her firsthand knowledge of the president, saying she has witnessed “the collateral damage” that can be come from allowing someone to act “without accountability.” In her view, it is “striking” to watch those attitudes continue to play out on “a much grander scale.”
From TPM Reader CF …
I’m a US citizen in Australia – haven’t lived in the US since 2005 (was in Europe for a number of years and I’m married to a european), but all my family is in New England (specifically in an area with pretty low Covid rates). Reading the commentary on the editor’s blog from all the CA residents really brought home the dissonance between how Americans are experiencing this pandemic and how I am down here.
TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) — A judge on Wednesday halted the execution of a man said to be suffering from dementia, who had been set to die by lethal injection in the federal government’s second execution after a 17-year hiatus.
Wesley Ira Purkey, convicted of a gruesome 1998 kidnapping and killing, was scheduled for execution Wednesday at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, where Daniel Lewis Lee was put to death Tuesday after his eleventh-hour legal bids failed.
Continue reading “Judge Halts Planned Federal Execution Of Inmate Who Suffers From Dementia”
Ivanka Trump is in hot water over a photo she tweeted of herself holding up a can of Goya beans on Tuesday night, which could violates ethics rules banning the use of public office to endorse products.
The tweet from the president’s daughter includes Goya’s slogan, “If it’s Goya, it has to be good,” in both English and in Spanish. She also posted the image to her Facebook and Instagram pages.
The White House escalated its smear campaign against its own COVID-19 task force member, Dr. Anthony Fauci, on Tuesday with a caustic USA Today op-ed about the doctor penned by White House trade adviser Peter Navarro.
HONG KONG (AP) — The New York Times said Tuesday it will transfer some of its staff out of Hong Kong because of uncertainties about practicing journalism in the Chinese territory under its newly imposed national security law.
The Times reported that it will move its digital team of journalists, about a third of its Hong Kong staff, to Seoul, South Korea, over the next year. Correspondents will remain to cover the city, it said.
Other departments, including print production, advertising and marketing staff, are expected to remain.
Hong Kong, which was handed over to China by the British in 1997, has long been seen as China’s last bastion of press freedom and is a base for many foreign news outlets reporting on Asia and mainland China.
But uncertainty about press freedom has followed Beijing’s imposition of a security law on June 30 aimed at curbing dissent in the city after months of anti-government protests last year.
The law states that the Hong Kong government will “strengthen public communication, guidance, supervision and regulation over matters concerning national security” for a variety of institutions, including the media and internet.
The New York Times said some of its employees have faced challenges in securing work permits for Hong Kong, which until recently had rarely been an issue in the city and was an obstacle mostly faced by journalists working in mainland China.
“China’s sweeping new national security law in Hong Kong has created a lot of uncertainty about what the new rules will mean to our operation and our journalism,” the newspaper quoted management as saying in a memo to staff on Tuesday. “We feel it is prudent to make contingency plans and begin to diversify our editing staff around the region.”
“Hong Kong has been a leader in supporting the rights of a free press in Asia for decades,” New York Times spokesperson Nicole Taylor said in a statement. She said it was “essential” that the city continues to do so, given how the independent press is treated in mainland China, and especially amid the coronavirus pandemic.
In Beijing, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said there was no need to worry about the new law.
“Hong Kong citizens and foreign agencies and personnel in Hong Kong enjoy various rights and interests that are not affected in any way. As long as they abide by the law and report in accordance with the law and regulations, I don’t think there is any need to worry,” Hua said at a daily briefing.
The national security law is not the first time that press freedom in Hong Kong has come under scrutiny.
In 2018, Hong Kong denied Financial Times journalist Victor Mallet a working visa for chairing a talk involving a pro-independence figure. Later, Mallet was also denied entry into Hong Kong as a tourist.
Jeff Sessions lost an Alabama Senate Republican primary runoff on Tuesday to former college football coach Tommy Tuberville, a major blow to the former attorney general who spent much of the race battling opposition from President Donald Trump.
Tuberville, who won about 60% of the vote, according to the Associated Press, was endorsed by the President, will now take on incumbent Alabama Democratic Sen. Doug Jones in the general election in November for a seat that is widely seen as the most vulnerable. The race in Alabama – which is known to be a deeply red state – is likely to be the GOP’s best chance for flipping a Democratic seat.
Sessions had been fighting to win back his old Senate seat after being forced out of his role as attorney general by Trump when he opted to recuse himself from the FBI investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
Although Sessions was the first senator to endorse Trump in the 2016 presidential race, his recusal from the Russia probe set off a series of vicious attacks from the president to thwart his campaign efforts for Senate.
The President endorsed Tuberville in March, calling the former Auburn University football coach in tweets “a REAL LEADER who will never let MAGA/KAG, or our Country, down!”
Days before the primary Trump made his final efforts to undermine the former DOJ official, calling Tuberville a “winner” and Sessions a “disaster who has let us all down.”
Throughout the primary race, Tuberville grilled Sessions over the decision to recuse himself from the Russia probe, saying in one ad that he “quit on the President” and “failed Alabama.” Sessions responded by proclaiming his support for the Trump saying that he “protected the rule of law” and contributed to Trump’s “exoneration.”
Trump was quick to celebrate Tuberville’s victory in tweets on Tuesday night, saying that Tuberville “WON big against Jeff Sessions. Will be a GREAT Senator for the incredible people of Alabama.” In the same tweet Trump called Jones “a Super Liberal puppet for Schumer & Pelosi” saying that he represented Alabama “poorly.”
Despite the President’s repeated attempts to lash out at Sessions, in remarks delivered in Mobile after his defeat on Tuesday, the former attorney general urged members of his party to “listen to the Donald Trump agenda.”
Sessions insisted throughout his attempted comeback and again in defeat that his recusal was required by law since he was a potential subject and witness due to campaign ties to the president. “Let me say this about the president and our relationship: I leave with no regrets,” Session said, adding that he was “extraordinarily proud of the accomplishments we had as attorney general.”
Sessions repeated that he was right to step away from the investigation, saying that he “did the right thing” and “saved the president’s bacon in the process.”
He insisted that any action he could have taken to try to undermine the investigation would have been futile.
“I leave elected office with my integrity intact,” Sessions said.
Sessions commended his primary opponent on Tuesday.
“He is our Republican nominee, and we must stand behind him in November,” Sessions said.
Former White House physician Ronny Jackson, who was once President Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of Veterans Affairs, won the GOP congressional primary race in Texas’ 13th District on Tuesday night.
Continue reading “Ex-Trump Physician Ronny Jackson Wins Texas GOP House Primary”
