EPA approves first two cleaning sprays that kill the coronavirus in 2 minutes
July 8
The Environmental Protection Agency has approved two Lysol Disinfectant Sprays that can effectively kill SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) in just two minutes, the government agency announced Monday.
Lysol Disinfectant Spray and Lysol Disinfectant Max Cover Mist are the first two disinfectants to be approved for their ability to kill the virus. In May, the CDC recommended that people clean homes with common EPA-registered household disinfectants, which were expected to kill SARS-CoV-2, “harder to kill” viruses and other types of coronaviruses. However, the EPA’s new announcement names two products that are specifically effective against SARS-CoV-2.
NYC closes down stretch of Fifth Avenue at Trump Tower to paint Black Lives Matter mural
When the Black Lives Matter mural was announced, the president called it a "symbol of hate."
U.S. Broadcasting Agency Will Not Extend Visas For Its Foreign Journalists
July 9
Dozens of foreign nationals working as journalists in the U.S. for Voice of America, the federal government's international broadcaster, will not have their visas extended once they expire, according to three people with knowledge of the decision.
Michael Pack new CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global MediaWhere’s Trump’s Financial Disclosure? The White House Blames the Pandemic
The annual report was due last week under federal ethics rules, but the White House says it needs more time. The president was already given a 45-day extension.
President Trump’s annual financial disclosure report was due to be released more than a week ago. But the filing, the only official public document detailing his personal finances, was not published, and neither the White House nor federal ethics officials offered a public explanation.
The report, required under federal ethics rules, provides a partial view of the president’s assets and debts and the performance of his family business. It was originally due in May, but Mr. Trump and all White House employees were given a 45-day extension until June 29 because of the pandemic.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/2020-Financial-Disclosure-Extension-Memo.pdf
Last week’s deadline passed without any word from the White House or the Office of Government Ethics, beyond the release of a separate disclosure report by Vice President Mike Pence. In past years, the ethics office has posted Mr. Trump’s filing online the day after the deadline.
Supreme Court Says Trump Not 'Immune' From Records Release, But Hedges On House Case
Though the subpoenas in both cases were for similar information, the victory in the grand jury case was a clean kill for the New York District Attorney, giving his investigators and the grand jury immediate access to a broad range of documents that had been subpoenaed from Trump's accountants and banks that have loaned his businesses billions of dollars.
In contrast, the court sent the congressional subpoena case back to the lower courts for further findings. That ensures that the public will not see any of the subpoenaed material until after the election.
Trump's personal attorney Jay Sekulow took a more optimistic tone in his response to the Supreme Court rulings on the president's financial information.
Trump has taken out multibillion-dollar loans from Deutsche Bank, but the relationship extends beyond that, according to Enrich. The bank also managed his assets and "provided matchmaking services that connected Trump with wealthy individuals, including some very wealthy, well-connected Russians who were looking to invest in American real estate," Enrich says.
I Cited Their Study, So They Disavowed It
If scientists retract research that challenges reigning orthodoxies, politics will drive scholarship.
Heather Mac Donald
Psychologists Joseph Cesario of Michigan State and David Johnson of the University of Maryland analyzed 917 fatal police shootings of civilians from 2015 to test whether the race of the officer or the civilian predicted fatal police shootings. Neither did. Once “race specific rates of violent crime” are taken into account, the authors found, there are no disparities among those fatally shot by the police. These findings accord with decades of research showing that civilian behavior is the greatest influence on police behavior.
My June 3 Journal op-ed quoted the PNAS article’s conclusion verbatim. It set off a firestorm at Michigan State. The university’s Graduate Employees Union pressured the MSU press office to apologize for the “harm it caused” by mentioning my article in a newsletter. The union targeted physicist Steve Hsu, who had approved funding for Mr. Cesario’s research. MSU sacked Mr. Hsu from his administrative position. PNAS editorialized that Messrs. Cesario and Johnson had “poorly framed” their article—the one that got through the journal’s three levels of editorial and peer review.
https://twitter.com/i/events/1281253789350019076 Large swath of eastern Oklahoma upheld as a Native American reservation, Supreme Court rules
Much of eastern Oklahoma, including Tulsa, is affirmed as native land for purposes of federal criminal law, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday. The court ruled in favor of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, finding that federal courts cannot prosecute tribe members for crimes that take place on their native land.
Sleeping Giants founders split
Nandini Jammi is leaving the activist organization she helped build with Matt Rivitz over a dispute about titles, credit, and equality.
Since 2016, copywriter Matt Rivitz and marketer Nandini Jammi have run Sleeping Giants, a social media campaign group that has pressured companies to stop financially supporting far-right media. They persuaded more than 4,000 companies to pull ads from Breitbart. They helped drive Bill O'Reilly from Fox News. They have independently run affiliates in nearly a dozen countries.
They soon developed a rough division of labor. Rivitz ran the Twitter account, which today has nearly 300,000 followers, and Jammi the smaller Facebook page, which today has more than 71,000. Along with a small group of volunteers, they began notching victories, pressuring major advertisers from Audi to Zillow to add Breitbart to their advertising blacklists. In April 2019, Steve Bannon, the former executive chair of the site, said Breitbart’s ad revenues fell 90% as a result of the campaign.
“I’m still going to be here working everyday to solve the issues we first brought awareness to when we first started this campaign,” Jammi said. “I will still be here supporting the activists and organizations who are fighting this fight around the world.”
This article has the origin story. Matt started Sleeping Giants but Nandini independently started a similar effort at the same time.
Facebook bans accounts linked to Roger Stone and far-right Proud Boys
https://www.axios.com/facebook-roger-stone-proud-boys-8fe7cd2e-3ff2-4a42-b92a-4832cb83aaef.html
32% of U.S. households missed their July housing payments
About 19% of Americans made no housing payment at all during the first week of the month, and 13% paid only a portion of their rent or mortgage.
That’s the fourth month in a row that a “historically high” number of households were unable to pay their housing bill on time and in full, up from 30% in June and 31% in May. Renters, low-income and younger households were most likely to miss their payments, Apartment List found.
About 36% of renters, who are more likely to work in industries devastated by the coronavirus, missed their July housing bill, compared to 30% of homeowners.
Jacksonville attorneys file lawsuit to block city from hosting Republican National Convention amid pandemic
The complaint, filed in Duval County, lists many reasons against Jacksonville hosting the event, including that it would be "a nuisance injurious to the health (and) welfare" of the city's community. The complaint has yet to be recorded by the court clerk in Duval County's Circuit Court, according to attorney Jim Blecke.
Supreme Court says eastern half of Oklahoma is Native American land
The 5-4 decision was authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch.
The decision means that only federal authorities, no longer state prosecutors, can lodge charges against Native Americans who commit serious alleged crimes on that land, which is home to 1.8 million people. Of those people, 15% or fewer are Native Americans.
“Today we are asked whether the land these treaties promised remains an Indian reservation for purposes of federal criminal law,” Gorsuch wrote.
“Because Congress has not said otherwise, we hold the government to its word,” he wrote.
“Congress persuaded the Creek Nation to walk the Trail of Tears with promises of a reservation — and the Court today correctly recognized that that this reservation endures,” said Gershengorn, a partner at the firm Jenner & Block.
The cases decided Thursday are formally known as McGirt v. Oklahoma, No. 18-9526, and Sharp v. Murphy, No. 17–1107.
Landowners hopeful, but wary after cancellation of Atlantic Coast Pipeline
FERC said it has no jurisdiction over the easements, but Greg Buppert, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, said, “I think it’s a bad idea to keep a pipeline right of way in that area on the books.”
Dominion had not installed the pipeline on the route in Virginia, although construction was much more advanced in West Virginia and parts of North Carolina. Buppert estimates the company had cleared about 35 miles of the route in Virginia.
Gary Larson published the first new Far Side comics in 25 years
‘Please remember, I’m just exploring, experimenting, and trying stuff’
Rudy Giuliani Calls New York Police After Being Pranked by Sacha Baron Cohen
Still don't know what Cohen would have been charged with as "irritating Rude Rudy" is not a crime.
Jack Posobiec’s Rise Tied to White Supremacist Movement
Jack Posobiec, a correspondent for One America News Network (OANN) whose work has been embraced by President Trump, collaborated for years with white supremacists, neo-fascists and antisemites, a Hatewatch investigation has determined.
Posobiec’s ties to far-right extremists travel beyond borders into Europe. His connections to white supremacy are too numerous to compile into one article, so Hatewatch is running a series of stories on the correspondent’s ties to the movement and promotion of it. This first story in the series lays out how Posobiec rose from being a pseudonymous Game of Thrones blogger to linking up with such white supremacists as Richard Spencer and a neo-Nazi who endorsed terrorism while using the online handle @PureWhiteEvil.
Scamocracy in America
Angelo Codevilla
https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/1280539419968143369 1. This letter perfectly illustrates my issue with the "cancel culture" trope. The signatories of this letter have bigger platforms and more resources than most other humans. They are not being silenced in any way
2. Supposedly, the signatories are concerned about other people facing "retribution" for speech.
I agree that some people are fired unjustly.
But what concrete proposals do they offer to fix that?
Nothing.
3. If the signatories really cared about making it more difficult to fire people, the letter would discuss more due process rights for workers or perhaps reforms to increase unionization
But many of the signatories actively oppose things like that
Cancel culture is a real problem. But not for the people warning about it.
I signed the free speech letter in Harper’s. And then I realized the central paradox of the debate.
https://us.macmillan.com/author/phoebemaltzbovy/ https://phoebemaltzbovy.weebly.com/ Phoebe Maltz Bovy is the author of The Perils of "Privilege" (St. Martin's Press, 2017), and is represented by Inkwell Management. She lives in Toronto, and can be reached on Twitter (@tweetertation) or via email (maltzp@gmail.com).
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250091222 THE PERILS OF "PRIVILEGE"
Why Injustice Can't Be Solved by Accusing Others of Advantage
Phoebe Maltz Bovy
Top 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction in 2017–The Washington Post
“Privilege”—the word, the idea, the accusation that is nearly impossible to disprove—is the new rhetorical power play. From social media to academia, public speech to casual conversation, the word is utilized to brand people of all kinds with a term once reserved exclusively for those who came from wealth and old money—inherited advantage.
Today “privileged” applies to anyone who enjoys an unearned advantage in life, inherited or not. White privilege, male privilege, straight privilege—those conditions make everyday life easier, less stressful, more lucrative, and generally better for those who hold one, two, or all three designations. But what about white female privilege in the context of feminism? Or fixed gender privilege in the context of transgender? Or weight and height privilege in the context of hiring practices and salary levels? Or food privilege in the context of widening inequality for single-parent families?
In The Perils of “Privilege,” Phoebe Maltz Bovy examines the rise of this word into extraordinary potency. Does calling out privilege help to change or soften it? Or simply reinforce it by dividing people against themselves? And is privilege a concept that, in fact, only privileged people are debating? The Perils of “Privilege” explores how this word is deployed, and offers ways to begin anew so many of the conversations it has silenced.
“Okay, I did not sign THE LETTER when I was asked 9 days ago,” Richard Kim, the enterprise director of HuffPost, said on Twitter, “because I could see in 90 seconds that it was fatuous, self-important drivel that would only troll the people it allegedly was trying to reach — and I said as much.”
“Donald Trump is the Canceler in Chief,” he said. “But the correction of Trump’s abuses cannot become an overcorrection that stifles the principles we believe in.”
Scamocracy in America
Angelo Codevilla
Sports Illustrated’s Owner Goes to War With the Magazine’s Publisher
“I don’t care whether or not they make us money,” one employee said during the all-staff diversity and inclusion meeting. “It’s morally wrong to continue platforming a site that advocates for the fascistic oppression of all Americans but especially black people, other POCs, LGBTQ, and the disabled.”
DeSantis Is Said to Quietly Hinder Fund-Raising for Trump Convention
The governor’s two closest advisers — his wife, Casey DeSantis, and his chief of staff, Shane Strum — had already soured on Ms. Wiles earlier in 2019. Too many operatives for the state’s Republican Party were seen as Wiles loyalists. The DeSantis camp helped push out the party’s executive director and install Peter O’Rourke, Mr. Trump’s former veterans affairs secretary. (Mr. O’Rourke resigned from the party post in March.)
Facebook’s Decisions Were ‘Setbacks for Civil Rights,’ Audit Finds
An independent audit faulted the social network for allowing hate speech and disinformation to thrive — potentially posing a threat to the November elections.
SAN FRANCISCO — Auditors handpicked by Facebook to examine its policies said that the company had not done enough to protect people on the platform from discriminatory posts and ads and that its decisions to leave up President Trump’s inflammatory posts were “significant setbacks for civil rights.”
https://about.fb.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Civil-Rights-Audit-Final-Report.pdf
The 89-page audit put Facebook in an awkward position as the presidential campaign heats up. The report gave fuel to the company’s detractors, who said the site had allowed hate speech and misinformation to flourish. The audit also placed the social network in the spotlight for an issue it had worked hard to avoid since the 2016 election: That it may once again be negatively influencing American voters.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/17/technology/indictment-russian-tech-facebook.html
Now Facebook has to decide whether its approach to hateful speech and noxious content — which was to leave it alone in the name of free expression — remains tenable. And that decision puts pressure on Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, who has repeatedly said that his company was not an arbiter of truth and that it would not police politicians’ posts.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/02/technology/zuckerberg-defends-facebook-trump-posts.html
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