Laura Clawson

The Trump administration plans to withdraw its nomination of a racist conspiracy theorist to the No. 3 job at the Pentagon. Just one Republican senator had announced opposition to Retired Army Brig. Gen. Anthony Tata’s nomination as undersecretary of defense for policy, and Sen. Kevin Cramer wasn’t upset about Tata’s racism and Islamophobia—he was upset about a group of sailors he feels should be added to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

Reopening schools is a major workers’ issue in multiple ways. There are the workers inside schools: not just teachers but paraprofessionals, librarians, custodial workers, nurses. Their lives are at stake in the push to reopen schools without regard for safety. Then there are the parents whose ability to work rests in part on their kids not being at home, needing them every three minutes.

The death of Rep. John Lewis has a lot of Republicans giving lip service to Lewis’ decades of “good trouble, necessary trouble,” even as they block the legislation that would honor his memory the most fully.

One of the week’s big must-reads was How Trump is helping tycoons exploit the pandemic, by The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer. Specifically, Ronald Cameron, the owner of the massive poultry processing company Mountaire. Cameron is a major Trump donor, and he’s on a White House advisory board about the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

The United States lost one of its great living heroes Friday night with the death of Rep. John Lewis. Lewis, 80, had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in December 2019.

Lewis was first elected to the House in 1986, but he first came to national prominence in the 1960s as a civil rights activist. He was a Freedom Rider in 1961, a speaker at the March on Washington in 1963, beaten and arrested repeatedly without ever giving up the fight.

State and local budgets are an emergency as the coronavirus economy hits them hard, reducing revenues and straining resources. The new fiscal year started July 1 in most places, with state and local governments waiting to hear from Congress, which is on recess for two weeks. The House passed $1 trillion in help for state and local governments back in May, but Sen. Mitch McConnell’s Senate has done nothing.

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has refused to release children and parents from crowded, dangerous detention facilities, even as COVID-19 was discovered at one of the jails. And it’s happening without meaningful oversight, thanks to the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General deciding to cut off most in-person inspections of the facilities.

NFL teams have been strong in their commitment to keeping Colin Kaepernick off the field, but the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback continues to expand his influence and voice as a civil rights activist. Walt Disney announced a new deal with Kaepernick’s production company Monday morning, starting with an ESPN documentary on Kaepernick’s life. Former ESPN Jemele Hill will be involved in that project.

But the deal doesn’t stop there.

The renewed spread of coronavirus across the United States—and, in particular, into battleground states—is not doing Donald Trump any favors. That’s appropriate, since Trump’s early refusal to treat the pandemic seriously and his repeated failures since have gotten us to this point. It’s almost like Trump may face a consequence at some point.

Unemployment remains sky-high (no matter what Donald Trump tries to tell you), and four million workers have had their pay or hours cut due to the pandemic. For people who are still on the job, there’s some good news in some cities and states in the form of minimum wage increases that went into effect on July 1.

In Illinois, the minimum wage went from $9.25 an hour to $10. In Oregon, it went from $11.25 to $12.

Donald Trump’s reelection faces a lot of challenges, but the biggest among them is probably Donald Trump. Many Republican strategists are sounding the alarm publicly, while Trump’s advisers are reportedly warning him privately that he needs to change his ways.

Joe Biden released diversity data on his campaign staff and, in the words of She the People founder Aimee Allison, it’s “not terrible.” The numbers aren’t embarrassing, in other words, but there’s work to be done. Biden will be “more successful having a set of top advisers who relate to and can connect with the very communities they are dependent on to win,” Allison told The Washington Post.

According to government statistics, the wage gap between white men and Black men has shrunk dramatically since the 1950s. But that’s only true, The New York Times’ David Leonhardt points out, if you compare workers—and the problem is, a lot of Black men have been pushed out of the workforce, in significant part by mass incarceration. When comparing Black men and white men, regardless of if they work, the wage gap is about the same as it was in 1950.

News broke last week that meatpacking companies exported a record amount of pork to China after using warnings of shortages to get Donald Trump to order them to stay open despite massive coronavirus outbreaks in their plants. Sens. Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren are not letting that issue go, sending a letter to the CEOs of top meatpacking companies.

Warren and Booker have questions for those CEOs about exports and price increases.

Normal presidential campaign stuff like debates seems really, really far away in this pandemic-and-protest era, but former Vice President Joe Biden has confirmed he’ll participate in three debates with Donald Trump and his vice presidential nominee will debate Mike Pence.

Two weeks after Georgia’s primary election debacle (or voter suppression success, depending how you look at it), Kentucky is up, and there are worrying signs. Interest in voting is clearly sky-high, with more than one in four registered voters in the state having requested absentee ballots and thousands having voted early. Those are good things—but the worry is about Tuesday, and how polling places will handle a possible rush of voters.

Schools are a huge part of the economy—not just a place teachers and support staff and clerical workers and custodians work, but a place parents rely on to care for their kids so they can go to work. That means, as National Education Association President Lily Eskelsen García said in a statement, “The American economy cannot recover if schools can’t reopen.

The military is reportedly hard at work investigating two different uses of aircraft over protests in Washington, D.C., at the beginning of June, but so far things are looking murky.

One date change and one unsuccessful legal challenge later, Donald Trump’s return to campaign rallies is still scheduled for Saturday in Tulsa, Oklahoma. How, though? Why is Trump having a rally at the site of a 1921 race massacre on a date when, despite the rally’s move off of Juneteenth itself, Black Tulsans will still be celebrating independence?

J.C.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has revoked its emergency use authorization for hydroxychloroquine, the unproven coronavirus treatment Donald Trump repeatedly boosted and even (said he) took himself. That emergency use authorization came under pressure from Trump, with whistleblower Dr. Rick Bright saying he was removed from his job for pushing back. Trump owns the promotion of this risky treatment at official levels.

Congress needs to pass $1 trillion in aid to local and state governments slammed by coronavirus. Why $1 trillion? Because, the Economic Policy Institute explains, “Each dollar in state and local spending cuts triggers a multiplier effect as governments end contracts with local businesses and public-sector employees see income drops and, in turn, pull back on their consumption spending.” Without federal assistance, that is projected to translate to 5.

Congress needs to pass $1 trillion in aid to local and state governments slammed by coronavirus. Why $1 trillion? Because, the Economic Policy Institute explains, “Each dollar in state and local spending cuts triggers a multiplier effect as governments end contracts with local businesses and public-sector employees see income drops and, in turn, pull back on their consumption spending.” Without federal assistance, that is projected to translate to 5.

Right-wing media is elevating hoax after hoax and misleading report after misleading report in its ongoing effort to make antifa the big deal Donald Trump wants it to be. Antifa may be a literal footnote to an intelligence bulletin on protest-related violence, but if you follow Fox News, Blaze TV, the Daily Caller, you’re hearing constantly what a giant scary threat it is.

Donald Trump is all about branding and he’s been very in love with his whole “Space Force” plan. But somehow those two things didn’t come together competently enough for the Department of Defense to edge out Netflix when it came to global trademarks for the term “Space Force.