July 2, 2020

Trump, in a hole, digs deeper into racial incitement

President Trump on Wednesday suggested that painting the words “Black Lives Matter” on New York City’s Fifth Avenue would amount to a “symbol of hate,” complaining that such an action would be “expensive” and “denigrating [to] this luxury Avenue.”

That came shortly after a threat by the president to veto the Pentagon’s budget legislation should it include a measure to take the names of Confederate generals off military bases, which he denounced as being sponsored by “Elizabeth ‘Pocahontas’ Warren (of all people!).”

That came only hours after his declaration that he “may END” a federal housing regulation aimed at desegregating neighborhoods, which he claimed has had “a devastating impact” on America’s suburbs.

And that came roughly a day after he re-tweeted a video of supporters in an almost entirely white Florida retirement community shouting “white power” from a golf cart.

Sinking further behind former Vice President Joe Biden in presidential election polls, Trump in recent days has indulged in a string of blatant appeals to racism.

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-07-01/trump-digs-deeper-racial-incitement

July 2, 2020

John Roberts has gone full Anthony Kennedy

At least for the moment, the conservative dream of a solid majority on the Supreme Court is dead. The trio of recent votes by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. siding with the court’s four liberal justices shows that Roberts has gone full Kennedy — that is, following in the disappointingly centrist footsteps of previous swing justice Anthony M. Kennedy.

Roberts’s votes — striking down an abortion law, overturning the Trump administration’s effort to end the DACA program for young immigrants, and expanding the federal ban on employment discrimination to cover gay and transgender workers — mark the death knell for conservative hopes that Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s replacement of Kennedy would finally produce a reliably conservative court. Short of adding a sixth GOP appointee to the court, the best conservatives can hope for is that Roberts’s drift stops short of the example set by Justice David Souter, who was trumpeted by advisers to President George H.W. Bush as a “home run” for conservatives but who turned out to be a liberal in disguise.

Roberts has disappointed conservatives before, most notably in his contorted effort to save the Affordable Care Act, when he provided the decisive vote to uphold the law in 2012, and has been doing so more often of late. Last year, he blocked the Trump administration’s effort to add a citizenship question to the census, and in April, he helped thwart a challenge to New York City’s stringent gun-control rules. Roberts’s opinion Tuesday allowing Montana parents to use a state scholarship program to send their children to religious schools improved his conservative scorecard record to one win and four losses on the major culture war issues addressed by the court this term. But it did little to change the perception that the chief justice’s drift away from conservative jurisprudence is accelerating.

Roberts would disagree. He claimed in his concurrence in the abortion case that his hand was forced by a 2016 decision striking down a similar Texas law. But the chief justice’s reverence for precedent is situational. A 2007 case, in which Roberts voted with the court’s majority to uphold a federal ban on partial-birth abortion despite a 2000 precedent striking down a similar Nebraska ban, is just one example.

The chief justice’s invocation of precedent is the latest instance of his wont to take an ostensibly narrow and moderate approach that nonetheless yields a politically correct result sure to win praise in the nation’s leading editorial pages and law schools.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/john-roberts-has-gone-full-anthony-kennedy/2020/07/01/3640fd6a-bbdd-11ea-bdaf-a129f921026f_story.html

July 2, 2020

Mary Trump once stood up to her uncle Donald. Her book describes a 'nightmare' of family dysfunction

Mary L. Trump was embroiled in a feud over her inheritance two decades ago when her uncle Donald Trump and his siblings punched back in classic style. In an obscure court filing, they belittled her, alleging that she “lives primarily off the Trump income” and is “not gainfully employed.”

Actually, Mary Trump had embarked on a new career. She studied patients with schizophrenia at Hillside Hospital on Long Island for at least six months during this period, meeting with an array of people who were delusional, hallucinatory and suicidal.

Over time, she deepened her studies of the disorder, contributed to a book on treating schizophrenia, wrote a dissertation on stalkers, and became a clinical psychologist. But not since she became part of the lawsuit in 2000 against her uncle has she spoken in detail about what she sees as the disorders of Donald Trump.

Now her silence could be coming to an end. Her book about her uncle — “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man” — is slated to be published next month.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mary-trump-once-stood-up-to-her-uncle-donald-now-her-book-describes-a-nightmare-of-family-dysfunction/2020/06/25/be52d7f2-b4ba-11ea-9b0f-c797548c1154_story.html

This book is bound to be a bestseller.

July 2, 2020

Trump supporters hope to use anger at Chief Justice Roberts to energize troubled campaign

The White House is trying to capitalize on conservative anger at Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. over his latest decisions by telling evangelical leaders and other activists that they need to turn out voters for President Trump so he can use a second term to continue nominating conservative judges to the nation’s highest court.

Some recent polls have shown a weakening in support for Trump among evangelicals, who have long been among the president’s strongest supporters. But Roberts’s role in cases advancing both gay and abortion rights is now seen in the White House as an opening to shore up that part of Trump’s political base.

Ralph Reed, the founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, said there is frustration and disappointment in evangelical ranks about Roberts’s rulings. But he said he and others are not going to walk away from Trump.

“Voters of faith know that that project to shift the court in a more conservative direction is on the 5-yard line and it’s a strategic imperative to get President Trump reelected,” Reed said. “The Louisiana decision has brought the life issue into fuller relief and reminded us why we have to give the president the chance to nominate more justices.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-john-roberts-abortion-supreme-court/2020/06/30/34513f92-bae8-11ea-80b9-40ece9a701dc_story.html

July 2, 2020

Fed warns stock market of a second recession if the coronavirus pandemic isn't brought under control

Before this latest spike in cases, some Fed officials saw ‘a substantial likelihood of additional waves’

The Federal Reserve is a lot more worried about the economy than the stock market or the president are. Officials and staff economists at the Fed caution that a second wave of recession could sweep over the country later this year if the coronavirus pandemic isn’t brought under control, according to a lengthy summary of the Fed’s policy meeting held on June 9-10.

The consensus forecast of Fed policy makers calls for a gradual recovery in the economy over the next several years, but the minutes of that June meeting released on Wednesday indicate that a more pessimistic projection was judged as “no less plausible than the baseline forecast,” by the staff economists who work up the most detailed (but classified) forecast of the economy.

It’s all going to depend on the health of the American people. The meeting took place before the latest surge of infections that have derailed or delayed plans to further open up businesses in several states.

The stock market, however, has broadly shrugged off those infections. The S&P 500 index SPX, +0.50% rose 0.5% on Wednesday after surging 20% in the second quarter, which ended Tuesday.

The minutes indicate that a surge like the one that’s now taken hold in many states was a major downside risk that was discussed behind the closed doors of the Fed in early June.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/fed-warns-stock-market-of-a-second-recession-if-the-coronavirus-pandemic-isnt-brought-under-control-2020-07-01

July 2, 2020

Trump set to headline high-dollar fundraising dinner at a private Florida home next week

President Trump is set to hold a high-dollar dinner at a private residence in Hillsboro Beach, Fla., next week to raise money for his campaign and the Republican National Committee, according to an invitation sent to top GOP donors, his first in-person fundraiser since mid-June.

The invitation does not name the owner of the home hosting the $580,600-per-couple event. Campaign manager Brad Parscale, RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and other senior RNC fundraisers are listed as hosts of the event.

The Trump campaign and the RNC declined to comment.

The fundraiser would inject millions of dollars into Trump’s reelection coffers at a time when putative Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s high-dollar fundraising is ramping up. But it could also bring the president additional scrutiny for holding an event in a coronavirus hotspot while the country is reeling from the virus’s renewed spread.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-set-to-headline-high-dollar-fundraising-dinner-at-a-private-florida-home-next-week/2020/07/01/3568ff28-bbce-11ea-86d5-3b9b3863273b_story.html

Will the attendees be wearing masks? It would be a real shame if there's a Covid outbreak there.

July 2, 2020

John Wayne's heroism was fake. Take his name off Orange County's airport

This is not as momentous an issue as tearing down monuments to Confederates who took up arms against the United States, removing the Confederate stars and bars from state flags, or striking the names of racists from universities, but, yes: It’s time to get John Wayne’s name off the Orange County airport.

That’s the view of the Democratic Party of Orange County, which passed a resolution to that effect on June 26.

“An airport name should reflect our values, and white supremacy isn’t one of them,” party Chair Ada Briceño stated after the vote. “If an honorary name does not reflect our ideals and values anymore, why not change it?”

The movement to take Wayne’s name off an airport that it has adorned since 1979 last erupted in February 2019. That was in the wake of the rediscovery of an interview that the action movie star had given to Playboy in May 1971. I reported then that the interview bristled with Wayne’s contempt for Black people, Native Americans, gay people, and those he labeled leftists, socialists, and communists.

The movement to rename the airport went dormant for more than a year. It has become revived with the Black Lives Matter movement and the nationwide reconsideration of which figures from American history we choose to honor in bronze and granite. For some reason, some Republicans are standing firm against this reconsideration.

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-07-01/john-wayne-airport

Renaming the airport for John Wayne was a big "fuck you" to liberal California, just as renaming Washington National after Reagan was to liberal America. Republicans manufactured Reagan as some hero to counteract the country's reverence of FDR.

July 2, 2020

How the Fed is driving savers to riskier investments

The Federal Reserve is getting lots of love from the financial markets because it’s lowered the short-term rates that it controls to just about zero, and has figured out inventive ways to drive long-term rates to ultralow levels and get some formerly troubled parts of the financial system working smoothly again.

The stock market has risen sharply in the past three months, in large part because of the Fed, with the S&P 500 erasing most of the terrifying 34 percent, five-week drop that it suffered from its mid-February all-time high to its March 23 low.

And even though retail sales are still well below where they were before the pandemic struck and the unemployment rate is much higher, they’re are a lot better than they were not long ago, in large part because of the stimulus created by ultralow interest rates and various pieces of bailout legislation.

But despite the benefits that our economy and stock market have gotten from the Fed, I’ve got a problem with the “We’re not even thinking about thinking about raising rates [for the next few years]” policy of Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/06/30/stocks-interest-rate-fed/

I'm getting nervous about what the next year portends, too. I'm in a capital preservation mode these days and moving money out of stocks and into bonds, because I'm very concerned of the effects of lower tax revenues -- despite what my advisor is telling me (that it looks like gradual economic improvement for the time being).

July 2, 2020

Pfizer reports encouraging early coronavirus vaccine data

Source: Washington Post

In a small trial, an experimental vaccine triggered immune responses similar to those in recovered patients

An experimental coronavirus vaccine being developed by pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and the German firm BioNTech triggered stronger immune responses in recipients than those seen in people naturally recovering from an infection in a small study published online Wednesday.

The work has not yet been peer-reviewed, and it is still unclear what level of immune response will protect a person from getting sick. But outside scientists praised the company for publishing the data on 45 people, and said the results support moving to a larger clinical trial to test whether the vaccine is safe and effective.

“It’s the first positive data I’ve seen coming out of Operation Warp Speed,” said Peter Jay Hotez, dean for the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, referring to the U.S. government effort to speed up the development, testing and production of multiple coronavirus vaccines. “I’m really happy Pfizer took the initiative to publish it, whereas the others haven’t. I think we need to see more of this.”

The 45 participants were randomly assigned to receive injections of one of three different dose levels of the experimental vaccine, or a placebo. Three weeks after the initial shot, they received a second one.

Hotez said the company shared key data showing the boost in people’s blood levels of antibodies capable of neutralizing the virus after the second shot was given. Those virus-fighting antibodies increased to levels greater than those seen in the blood plasma of patients who have recovered from covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/07/01/pfizer-reports-encouraging-early-covid-19-vaccine-data/

July 2, 2020

House Republican leaders support GOP nominee open to QAnon conspiracy theory

Republican leaders stood by the upset winner of the GOP primary in a competitive House seat despite the gun rights activist’s openness to the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory.

The National Republican Congressional Committee, overseen by top GOP leaders, embraced Lauren Boebert as their nominee Wednesday following her defeat of five-term Rep. Scott R. Tipton (R-Colo.), whom she characterized during the campaign as insufficiently supportive of President Trump.

“Lauren won her primary fair and square and has our support. This is a Republican seat and will remain a Republican seat as Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats continue to peddle their radical conspiracy theories and pushing their radical cancel culture,” Rep. Tom Emmer (Minn.), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said in a statement.

Boebert is the ninth individual to win the Republican nomination for a seat in the House or Senate who is either a full supporter of the QAnon movement or has voiced support for some of its tenets, none of which have a foundation in truth. Conspiracy theory experts consider it a webbed network filled with activists who wrongly believe a secret group of elites inside of and outside of government is working against Trump, as well as other false allegations of pedophilia among top Democratic officials.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/house-republican-leaders-support-gop-nominee-open-to-qanon-conspiracy-theory/2020/07/01/e660348c-bbaf-11ea-8cf5-9c1b8d7f84c6_story.html

Of course they embrace her. She's one of them.