President Donald Trump and his siblings fought to block a tell-all book by Mary Trump, the daughter of his late brother Fred Trump Jr. On Tuesday, a judge granted the Trumps' attempt to block the book from being released. The judge agreed that the tell-all violates a non-disclosure agreement that Mary Trump signed after the settlement of Fred Trump Sr.'s estate.
It's an early decision and a tentative win for the president and his siblings, who were being outed for the way that they fought over their father's money leading up to his death.
Among other things in the book, Mary Trump fesses up to being the source of tax documents that the New York Times printed from the president, who has refused to turn over his financial documents. Ms. Trump also claims that the president was involved in “fraudulent” tax schemes and had scored more than $400 million in cash (in today's dollars) from his father estate after he died. Trump has claimed that he made his fortune after his father gave him just $10 million.
The book, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man was set to be released in August. This ruling merely puts a pause on the release until the case is ultimately decided.
An earlier case was dismissed by a judge, who suggested the Trump family take the suit to the state Supreme Court.
According to the Daily Beast, Robert Trump "took the advice, and submitted a new request for a Temporary Restraining Order in Robert Trump’s home turf of Dutchess County, in upstate New York."
“Pending the hearing and determination of Petitioner Robert S. Trump’s within motion for a preliminary injunction, Mary L. Trump and Simon & Schuster, Inc., together with their respective members, officers, employees, servants, agents, attorneys, representatives and all other persons acting on behalf of or in concert with either or both of them, are hereby temporarily enjoined and restrained,” the jurist ordered according to the Beast. “From publishing, printing or distributing any book or any portions thereof including but not limited to the book entitled: ‘Too Much and Never Enough, How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man,’ in any medium containing descriptions or accounts of Mary L. Trump’s relationship with Robert S. Trump, Donald Trump, or Maryanne Trump Barry.”
This Tuesday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) chastised Dr. Anthony Fauci, saying it’s a “fatal conceit” to believe that any one person or group of people have the “knowledge necessary to direct an economy or to dictate public health behavior.”
Many took exception to Paul's remarks, saying that he was out of place to question Fauci's expertise.
An Indiana priest compared Black Lives Matter protesters to "maggots and parasites" during his weekly message.
Father Theodore Rothrock, of St. Elizabeth Seton Catholic Church in Carmel, denounced the civil rights movement and the destruction of monuments honoring Confederate leaders and other historic figures, reported the Indianapolis Star.
"The only lives that matter are their own and the only power they seek is their own," Rothrock wrote to parishioners. "They are wolves in wolves clothing, masked thieves and bandits, seeking only to devour the life of the poor and profit from the fear of others. They are maggots and parasites at best, feeding off the isolation of addiction and broken families, and offering to replace and current frustration and anxiety with more misery and greater resentment."
He warned that the church must oppose the Black Lives Matter movement and "Antifa," which has drawn outsized attention for their role in the demonstrations, and questioned whether Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr. would have marched with the demonstrators.
"Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and the other nefarious acolytes of their persuasion are not the friends or allies we have been led to believe," Rothrock wrote. "They are serpents in the garden, seeking only to uproot and replant a new species of human made in the likeness of man and not in the image of God."
The message has since been taken down, and the newly-formed Carmel Against Racial Injustice group wants the Bishop of the Diocese of Lafayette-in-Indiana to remove Rothrock.
Mayor Jim Brainard, an active member of the church, declined to comment on the pastor's message or calls for his removal.
President Donald Trump's economic crisis as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak is finally trickling down to those who can't afford their rent after losing their jobs.
“I will tell you, I think landlords are going to take it easy," Trump said at the end of March. "We may put out a statement on that. I think a lot of people that are owed money are going to take it easy. They don’t sort of have a choice."
He added that "a lot of concessions are made" and said, "a lot of positive things are happening."
But the unemployment rate is still 13.3 percent and those who have been laid off due to the coronavirus or whose businesses closed are depleting their options to stay in their homes.
BuzzFeed reported that a mass eviction crisis is on the horizon. While some evictions were paused during the early days of the outbreak, those protections have come to an end despite sagging employment numbers.
“It’s shocking and unconscionable,” said National Low Income Housing Coalition CEO Diane Yentel.
The COVID-19 Eviction Defense Project (CEDP), formed by a coalition of economic researchers, crafted a model to estimate the eviction risk nationwide and by state. Their findings show the next crisis that the US will face.
According to their projections, "19 million to 23 million renters, or 1 in 5 people who live in renter households, are at risk of eviction by Sept. 30," BuzzFeed quoted the Aspen Institute. "The people most likely to be evicted are those in vulnerable financial circumstances. They include Black and Latinx people, single mothers, people with disabilities, formerly incarcerated people, and undocumented people."
Princeton's Eviction Lab spokesperson, Alieza Durana explained to BuzzFeed that a major reason it's exacerbated is from longtime racist housing laws and regulations that still persist in some communities.
If evictions are predicted to reach such high levels, it likely won't be long before people also start defaulting on their mortgages and the country could experience another foreclosure crisis akin to what homeowners faced during the 2007-2008 recession.
Every state's eviction rules are different, but BuzzFeed continued their report with a guide to help people who need to know their rights. Read it here.
President Donald Trump's campaign has canceled plans to hold a rally in the deep-red state of Alabama after state officials expressed concern that the rally would accelerate the spread of COVID-19.
CNN reports that the campaign had been planning to have the president campaign in Alabama with GOP Senate candidate Tommy Tuberville, whom the president endorsed earlier this year in a major snub to former Trump Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who is also running for the Senate seat.
CNN's sources say that "plans were called off as state officials voiced concerns about a mass gathering and campaign officials ultimately decided against it."
Additionally, the network reports that "a person close to the campaign said there are currently no rallies on the horizon, but aides are scoping out possible venues for when they decide to host them again."
Trump's big comeback rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma was a notorious disaster for the president, as the 19,000-person arena the rally was held in wasn't even filled to half capacity.
"They let this case collect dust for three years. And they decide today, four months out from Election Day, that 'early voting is not a fundamental right' in the middle of a pandemic. Just outrageous."
A panel of three federal judges on Monday upheld a slate of Republican-authored restrictions on early voting and absentee ballots in Wisconsin, a decision rights groups warned could suppress votes and heighten the risk of spreading Covid-19 in upcoming elections.
The trio of Republican-appointed judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago overturned a 2016 lower court decision and ruled that a Wisconsin law restricting early voting to just two weeks before an election must be reinstated.
"Right-wing judicial activists just gave their Republican allies in Wisconsin's legislature a green light to suppress votes."
—John Nichols, The Nation
"Early voting is not a fundamental right in itself; it is but one aspect of a state's election system," Judge Frank Easterbrook, a Reagan appointee, wrote in the 27-page ruling. "As we have stressed, Wisconsin's system as a whole is accommodating."
The panel also ruled that faxing and emailing absentee ballots to prospective voters is unconstitutional and said people must live in a district for at least 28 days, rather than 10, before voting there.
The court did not explain why its ruling came more than three years after it first heard Wisconsin Republicans' 2017 appeal of a lower court ruling that struck down several voting restrictions the state GOP enacted after taking full control of the legislature in 2011.
"They let this case collect dust for three years," tweeted Courtney Beyer, communications director for the Wisconsin Democratic Party. "And they decide today, four months out from Election Day, that 'early voting is not a fundamental right' in the middle of a pandemic. Just outrageous."
In a series of tweets Tuesday morning, advocacy group Common Cause Wisconsin called the ruling "a huge blow to voting rights in a state that already had among the most restrictive and extreme voting laws in the nation, and not to mention just weeks before the next election in August."
"One positive is that the judges ruled that expired photo student IDs can be used as proof of identity to vote," the group noted.
John Nichols, national affairs correspondent for The Nation and a Wisconsin native, tweeted that "right-wing judicial activists... just gave their Republican allies in Wisconsin's legislature a green light to suppress votes."
"If there is a Covid-19 surge," warned Nichols, "the court's decision will make voting more dangerous."
In the case of Pence, Politico’s report states that the vice president, with a possible eye on his own future as the COVID-19 health crisis drags down Trump's re-election numbers, has become increasingly worried about exploding infection rates from his perch as the head of the White House task force overseeing government efforts.
"The striking shift in the vice president’s tone — from zealously defending Trump’s push to reopen the U.S. economy to complimenting governors on Monday for halting their states’ reopenings — underscores Pence’s thorny position as he works to balance his and Trump’s political futures, which largely rely on convincing voters an economic rebound is on the horizon, with ensuring an appropriate response to an unwieldy new phase in the coronavirus pandemic," the report states.
Politico goes on to report that there is still a battle within the administration over how much information to share with the public, with some White House aides saying the focus should be on getting the economy back on its feet to help the president's re-election prospects.
But, as the report notes, getting people out of their homes could have a cost which is why the president's 2020 campaign is watching Oklahoma after the president's sparsely-attended rally in Tulsa two Saturdays ago.
"One senior administration official said the Trump campaign has been nervously monitoring data out of Oklahoma to determine whether the president’s June 20th rally, which the local fire department estimated 6,200 people attended, leads to apparent surge in surrounding counties over the next two weeks," the report states.
According to one official, “There is definitely an acknowledgment that a surge is happening,” across the country.
Of note, and of great concern to the White House, Oklahoma is experiencing its largest spike with 585 COVID-19 cases, beating a previous high of 450.
New York on Tuesday doubled to 16 the number of US states whose residents must go into quarantine if they visit, Governor Andrew Cuomo said amid surging coronavirus infection rates.
Cuomo said visitors from California, Nevada, Georgia, Iowa, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee must now quarantine for 14 days if they travel to New York.
This expands a travel advisory he and the governors of New Jersey and Connecticut announced last week which related to virus hotspots Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Utah and Texas.
We now have 16 states that meet the formula for quarantine," Cuomo told local television news channel NY1.
The development comes as COVID-19 cases in New York -- once the epicenter of the global pandemic, where more than 20,000 people have succumbed to the disease -- trend downward while infection rates spike elsewhere.
The travel restrictions highlight a sharp turnaround in the nature of the coronavirus spread in the United States, where just months ago several states were mandating quarantine for visiting New Yorkers.
Cuomo has said the the advisory is aimed at keeping infection and hospitalization rates in the New York area low as the region slowly re-opens businesses and activities.
He explained last week that any visitors found violating self-quarantine rules would be subject to a judicial order and self-funded mandatory quarantine, as well as potential fines of $2,000 for a first violation and $5,000 for a second.
Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont tweeted that his state had also expanded its list to 16 under the "regional travel advisory."
The lower-than-expected attendance at President Trump’s rally in Tulsa on June 20 was attributed, at least in part, to an online army of K-pop fans who used the social network TikTok to organize and reserve tickets for the rally as a means of pranking the campaign.
Social media has enabled protests and meaningful political action by capturing public attention, and by its decentralized nature, which makes it easier for activists to evade censorship and coordinate actions. K-pop fans’ action through TikTok spanned more than a week and stayed off the radar of mainstream media.
TikTok teens and K-pop fans took over anti-Black Lives Matter hashtags such as #WhiteLivesMatter and drowned out the anti-Black Lives Matter messages with GIFs and memes. When people on social media platforms look for these hashtags, they’re met with seemingly unending images and fan videos of popular K-pop groups such as Twice and EXO.
This, in turn, leads algorithms on social media platforms to classify such trending hashtags as K-pop trends rather than political trends, thwarting the anti-Black Lives Matter activists who tried to use the hashtags to promote their messages.
K-pop fans likewise responded to a call from the Dallas Police Department, who were trying to collect information about Black Lives Matter protesters from social media, and bombarded them with images and videos of their favorite K-pop stars.
Together, these mechanisms provide a wide audience to both influencers and their followers who are enmeshed in densely connected online networks. As my research shows, once a meme, hashtag or video goes viral, passive sharing can turn into active broadcasting of the trending idea.
For example, when celebrity Jane tweets in support of a viral hashtag such as #BlackOutTuesday, if fan Alyssa retweets this, it is more likely to be retweeted by people like Alyssa. Jane’s influence is magnified by Alyssa’s ability to influence her social connections. The resulting activism spirals into a large-scale online movement that is hard to ignore.
Social media and political campaigning
Social media’s opinion-making power and preference for like-minded connections also lead to online filter bubbles, echo chambers that amplify information people are predisposed to agree with and filter out information that contradicts people’s points of view. Recent elections in the U.S. and the Brexit vote in the U.K. might have been influenced by filter bubbles.
Social media also makes it easier to narrowly target classes of voters. In 2016 Hilary Clinton’s presidential campaign significantly outspent Donald Trump’s campaign, and the effectiveness of the Trump campaign has been attributed to its ability to target specific groups of Clinton voters with negative ads.
With online advertising in general, and with the ability to micro-target voters via social media based on detailed demographic data, social media can both help and hinder political campaigns’ ability to target their voters.
Also, political campaigns need good data to create models of likely voters, which they use to get voters to turn out and persuade likely voters to vote for their candidates. It looks like TikTok users produced a deluge of bad data for the Trump campaign. This kind of activity forces campaigns to spend time and money cleaning up their data.
Social media and election integrity
The power of social media also poses a challenge for election integrity. An entity linked to the Russian government was reportedly responsible for spreading a massive disinformation campaign that likely influenced the 2016 elections. A Senate committee concluded that “these operatives used targeted advertisements, intentionally falsified news articles, self-generated content, and social media platform tools” to intentionally manipulate the perceptions of millions of Americans.
Likewise, the Tulsa phenomenon underscores that if it’s this easy for a group of teens to influence turnout in a campaign rally, how easy would it be for a foreign actor to interfere in the election process? The election process, including how campaigns and observers gather political information, is vulnerable to misinformation and coordinated trolling.
Social media amplifies both the reach and range of actions available to well-organized, engaged and networked political actors, whatever their intentions. With the pandemic significantly increasing society’s dependence on the internet, these concerns are likely to increase. The question is, when combined with algorithmic filters and disinformation, how will these forces shape the politics of protest and democratic action in the years ahead?
Speaking to lawmakers on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee this Tuesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci reiterated the need for states to enforce guidelines to help stem the spread of coronavirus, saying that "if we are going to contain this, we've got to contain it together."
Later in the hearing, Fauci was subjected to a rant from Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who said it's a "fatal conceit" to believe that any one person or group of people have the "knowledge necessary to direct an economy or to dictate public health behavior."
"I think government health experts during this pandemic need to show caution in their prognostications," Paul said. "It's important to realize that if society meekly submits to an expert, and that expert is wrong, a great deal of harm may occur when we allow one man's policy or one group of small men and women to be foisted on an entire nation."
If President Donald Trump is reelected in November, he will do it with a lot of help from white voters — especially older white males in rural areas and small towns. But journalist David A. Graham, in a June 30 article for The Atlantic, asserts that Trump’s support among white voters is decreasing — and the top reason, Graham argues, is race.
“When video of the police killing of George Floyd first emerged, Trump condemned it,” Graham writes. “But he quickly reverted to his standard rhetoric, seeing a chance to exploit and exacerbate divisions over race. It’s hard to believe that anyone is surprised: while not every offensive Trump comment has reached the same wide audience or been interpreted the same way, the president’s most widely covered remarks have touched on race. What is different this time is the way people are responding.”
Many pundits have attributed Trump’s poor performance in recent polls to, among other things, the state of the U.S. economy and the president’s botched response to the coronavirus pandemic.
“Voters might be feeling bleak and turn against an incumbent at this moment for any number of reasons — just look around,” Graham explains. “A pandemic has killed nearly 130,000 Americans, with no end in sight. And the economy is in the deepest recession in decades, with millions out of work — also without a clear end in sight. But these are not the issues where Trump is hurting the most in recent polls.”
Race, according to Graham, has become the issue that is doing the most to move some white voters away from Trump and in the direction of former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee.
“As the political scientist Michael Tesler writes, there’s evidence of real shifts in public opinion on race over the past six weeks or so,” Graham observes. “While views on policing are moving in response to a wide range of incidents, it’s clear that the Floyd case — brutal, senseless and captured in excruciating clarity on video — has captured white attention in a way other deaths at the hands of police have not. One reason for that may be the coronavirus. Ashley Jardina, a political scientist who studies racial attitudes among white people, told me that she suspects because people are stuck at home due to the pandemic, they’re consuming more news and changing their views on race.”
Trump’s overall approval ratings have never been very high, but Graham notes that when it comes to race relations, they are especially bad now.
A recent New York Times/Siena College poll found Trump trailing Biden by 14%. Graham notes that only 33% of voters in that poll approved of the way in which Trump has handled race relations — and only 29% approve of the way Trump has handled the Floyd protests.
“The driving factor for Trump’s collapse appears to be race,” Graham writes. “Polls have consistently shown that Americans disapprove of his response to protests of police violence and believe that he has worsened race relations…. If reluctant Trump voters from 2016 are undergoing a change on their view of race relations, it could have seismic implications for his reelection.”
Donald Trump Jr. on Tuesday suggested that attendees of the Republican National Convention will be encouraged to wear masks even though President Donald Trump has refused to do so.
During an interview on Fox Business, host Maria Bartiromo noted that the party's convention will be held in Jacksonville, Florida -- where coronavirus cases are surging.
"We're still two months out from the convention so we have a little bit of time to get everything in order," the president's son opined. "We're going to make sure that everything is done in a safe and appropriate manner."
"You know, I don't think it's too complicated to wear a mask," he continued, "or wash your hands, follow basic hygiene protocols. We're just going to do whatever we can to make sure that the people that are there in attendance as well as the people from the RNC and the campaign are safe, enjoyable and have an awesome time."
Bartiromo also pointed out that presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden is besting the president in poll after poll.
Donald Trump Jr., however, said that the polls cannot be believed.
"I'm not entirely buying it," he explained. "I think there is probably a component of it that's accurate because if you look at the coverage of these things, they're trying to blame all on this on President Trump."
According to Trump, the media is trying to "throw blame" on the president for his coronavirus response and the social unrest in the country.
"I also do think there's a large element like [2016] and perhaps greater that because of that response, because of the media reaction, because of some of the craziness that has gone on, between the looting and the rioting and the attacks, people aren't going to be as apt to say, 'I'm voting for Trump,' because they're not sure where someone else is coming from," he said.
Trump added: "The fact is, these days you're not allowed to just be apolitical, you have to be woke. If you're not woke enough, if you just want to stay apolitical, you get cancelled anyway. We've seen that cancel culture become very pervasive throughout society."
Carl Reiner, a revered and versatile comedy entertainer who won nine Emmies and stayed active into the 1990s with roles in movies such as the "Ocean's Eleven" franchise, has died at the age of 98.
Showbiz friends of the writer, actor, director and producer confirmed his death, which news reports said came Monday night of natural causes at his home in Beverly Hills.
For many Americans, the Bronx-born Reiner was perhaps best known for the 1960s TV sitcom "The Dick Van Dyke Show," which he created and performed in as an irascible comedian. It won five Emmies.
In his early years Reiner worked with comedy legends such as Syd Caesar and Mel Brooks, a close friend. In one hugely popular skit with the latter, Reiner played a straight man interviewer to Brooks's "2001 Year Old Man."
In later years his film credits as director include "Oh God,” starring George Burns, in 1977; “The Jerk,” with Steve Martin in 1979; and “All of Me,” with Martin and Lily Tomlin, in 1984.
The father of director and activist Rob Reiner, Reiner Sr. did other movies with Martin, including "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" and "Man with Two Brains."
In 1995, Reiner received the Writers Guild’s lifetime achievement award for a career in TV writing. In 2000, he won the Mark Twain Prize for Humor, presented by the Kennedy Center.
Just three days before his death, Reiner tweeted a message of gratitude for the full life he had.
"Nothing pleases me more than knowing that I have lived the best life possible by having met & marrying the gifted Estelle (Stella) Lebost---who partnered with me in bringing Rob, Annie & Lucas Reiner into to this needy & evolving world."
Condolences for Reiner poured in, including a tweet from New York governor Andrew Cuomo.
"Carl Reiner, Bronx born and bred, made TV comedy that endures to this day. He made America laugh — a true gift," Cuomo wrote.
Another US TV comedy legend, Alan Alda, also paid tribute.
"My friend Carl Reiner died last night. His talent will live on for a long time, but the loss of his kindness and decency leaves a hole in our hearts. We love you, Carl," Alda tweeted.
