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MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
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By Dan Diamond @ Politico Magazine, June 4
For months, health experts told Americans to stay home. Now, many are encouraging the public to join mass protests
By Alexander Bolton @ TheHill.com, June 4
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) on Thursday praised former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’s scathing rebuke of President Trump as “true and honest and necessary” and admitted she is “struggling” with whether to vote for the president.
“I thought General Mattis’s words were true and honest and necessary and overdue,” Murkowski, the chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said on her way to a vote in the Capitol Thursday.
“When I saw Gen. Mattis’s comments yesterday I felt like perhaps we’re getting to the point where we can be more honest with the concerns we might hold internally and have the courage of our convictions and speak up,” she told The Washington Post's Paul Kane, who pooled the remarks and sent them to other Senate reporters.
Asked if she could vote for Trump in the 2020 election, Murkowski admitted, “I am struggling with it. I have struggled with it for a long time.”
She noted that Trump is “our duly elected president” and said “I will continue to work with him” and “I will continue to work with this administration.”
But she said she doesn’t know how to fully respond to Trump’s controversial handling of social justice protests [....]
By Justine Coleman @ TheHill.com, June 4
Dozens of officers from the Louisville Metro Police Department walked out on the city’s Mayor Greg Fischer (D) on Wednesday as he tried to address them. Video obtained by the Courier-Journal showed the Louisville, Ky., mayor standing in the middle of a room as officers and detectives walked out without a word.
The move comes as tensions have risen between the mayor's office and the police department following the death of Breonna Taylor, an unarmed black woman who was shot and killed by officers in her Louisville apartment on March 13 [....]
“Police are shaking their heads because he used to be a stand-up guy who backed law enforcement,” one top official said.
By Marc Kaputo and Natasha Korecki @ Politico.com, June 4
[....] “Clearly, he’s made a lot of changes the way candidates do during the primary process, but he kept moving left and fell off the deep end,” said Bill Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, the umbrella organization for Police Benevolent Association chapters.
“For Joe Biden, police are shaking their heads because he used to be a stand-up guy who backed law enforcement,” Johnson said. “But it seems in his old age, for whatever reason, he’s writing a sad final chapter when it comes to supporting law enforcement.” [...]
Though many police tend to lean to the right politically, the criticism from the National Association of Police Organizations is new. NAPO endorsed Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 because of Biden’s presence on the ticket, Johnson said.
But the Obama-Biden reelection in 2012 marked a watershed political year in the relationship between law enforcement and the Democratic Party. More than eight months before Obama’s reelection, the Black Lives Matter movement began in response to the shooting death of a black Florida teenager [...] BLM made police brutality, systemic racism and the 1994 crime bill top issues for progressives in the 2016 and 2020 Democratic presidential primaries.
While under fire from the left, police increasingly became more Republican, said Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police and former in-house lobbyist for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, who worked closely with Biden on the crime bill and other legislation.
“There are two evolutions in two directions. On law-and-order issues, Biden was right of center: the ‘94 crime bill, the Brady law and enhanced penalties. But as time has gone by, his positions have moderated, moderated, moderated to where we are today, where he would not be considered a law-and-order guy in the sense that law enforcement sees it,” Pasco said.
“Also, as time has gone by, the law enforcement community — especially the rank and file — has become far more conservative. Today, the FOP and other labor groups are far less open to addressing gun control issues, things that traditionally they supported and that Biden worked very closely and successfully with them on.” For instance, Pasco said, [....]
By Katelyn Burns @ Vox.com, June 3
A black trans woman from Minneapolis, Minnesota, was brutally attacked by a group of men Monday, according to a video circulating on social media this week.
The video, which we’ve chosen not to post or link to due to its graphic nature, shows a group of 20 to 30 cisgender men hitting a woman, Iyanna Dior, outside a convenience store while calling her a homophobic slur. Dior was eventually able to escape behind the counter of the store and through the back of the building, according to the video, while bystanders (and possibly employees) stood between her and her attackers [....]
[....] Gold's Gym [....] Hertz [....] JCPenny [....] J. Crew Group [....] Neiman Marcus [....] Tuesday Morning [....]
By Justin Curto @ Vulture.com, June 3
When the coronavirus pandemic caused entertainment venues to close, small, independent theaters looked to be in the most danger. Now, with venues in most states still closed nearly three months in, the giants of the industry are beginning to worry, too. AMC Theatres, the largest movie-theater chain in the country, reported in a financial filing on June 3 that the company had “substantial doubt” about its ability to stay in business once movie theaters could reopen, according to CNN. “We are generating effectively no revenue,” the company wrote of its second quarter in the filing, while estimating first-quarter losses between $2.1 billion and $2.4 billion. In April, AMC had a cash balance of $718.3 million. While the company said it had the resources to reopen “this summer or later,” AMC wrote in the filing, “Our liquidity needs thereafter will depend, among other things, on the timing of a full resumption of operations, the timing of movie releases and our ability to generate revenues.”
Even if movie theaters are able to reopen across the country in coming months, it’s likely that they’ll operate at a reduced capacity to maintain social distancing [....]
By A.P. via Marketwatch.com, June 3, 10:54 pm
WASHINGTON — Ousted State Department Inspector General Steve Linick on Wednesday told members of three congressional committees that before he was abruptly fired, he was investigating Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s treatment of staffers as well as the secretary’s decision to approve a multibillion-dollar arms sale to Saudi Arabia.
Democrats are investigating President Donald Trump’s firing of Linick — one of several inspector generals he has recently ousted — and whether it was a retaliatory move [....]
By A.P. via Marketwatch.com, June 3
All positive cases were asymptomatic, an encouraging development
In Russia, President Putin’s approval rating has fallen to an all-time low.
Russia, like many countries, is suffering acute economic hardship after weeks of coronavirus lockdown.
Amid rising unemployment, there are signs of growing disillusionment with the Kremlin. Our correspondent Steve Rosenberg has been to Vladimir Putin’s home city of St Petersburg to gauge the mood.
VIDEO Produced by Will Vernon, camera/editing Matthew Goddard.
By Alexander Burns & Maggie Haberman @ NYTimes.com, June 3
President Trump is facing the bleakest outlook for his re-election bid so far, [....]
“There is no obvious strategy in terms of message,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican strategist based in California. “The president defaults to base messages regardless of strategy, thus the campaign becomes a base-driven campaign.”
Signs of anxiety inside the Trump team are evident across the electoral map. Over the past few weeks, the president’s operation has spent about $1.7 million on advertising in just three states he carried in 2016 — Ohio, Iowa and Arizona — that it had hoped would not be competitive at all this year. Much of that sum went to a concentrated two-week barrage in Ohio, according to the media-tracking firm Advertising Analytics.
The spending in Ohio startled many Republicans, given that four years ago Mr. Trump defeated Hillary Clinton there by eight percentage points [....]
A set of state-level polls released on Wednesday by Fox News found Mr. Biden leading Mr. Trump in Arizona by four percentage points, and slightly ahead of Mr. Trump in Ohio as well. The former vice president held a nine-point lead in Wisconsin, where Mr. Trump eked out a win over Mrs. Clinton in 2016 [....]
“I don’t think anybody will dispute the fact that if Trump loses Ohio, there’s no path at all,” Mr. Pickrell said. “We’re not going to be a tipping-point state this time, but I think Joe Biden can win here and I think the Trump campaign sees that.”
Polls released on Wednesday show another troubling sign for Mr. Trump: His numbers have flagged recently among white voters, driven by a continued erosion of support from those with college degrees. The latest Monmouth survey found Mr. Trump with the support of just 52 percent of white voters nationwide — five percentage points lower than his share in 2016, according to exit polls [....]