Day: June 27, 2020

A growing number of Americans of both political parties believe the worst of the coronavirus pandemic is over, even as the number of daily new cases is rapidly increasing nationwide.

A new survey from the Pew Research Center found that 40 percent of Americans now believe the worst of Covid-19 is in the past, up from 26 percent in early April. That number includes the majority of Republicans, 61 percent of whom said the country has already suffered the worst of the pandemic.

Overall, the survey — taken June 16 to 22, featuring 4,708 American adults and a 1.8 percentage …

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday directing federal law enforcement agencies to prosecute people who damage federal monuments — and to withhold portions of federal funding to cities that don’t protect statues from demonstrators.

The order marks the latest in Trump’s ongoing battle against protesters who have pushed for the removal of monuments and statues that memorialize Confederate leaders, and other figures who supported slavery, white supremacy, or colonialism. Several monuments have been torn down or removed in recent weeks amid protests against police brutality and racism, including statues of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Alabama and …

Immigrant children held in US family detention centers must be released by July 17 due to concerns about the coronavirus pandemic, a federal judge ruled Friday.

It’s the first time in the longstanding legal battle over the detention of migrant children that a court has set a deadline for their release, a situation spurred on by reports of increasingly dangerous conditions in the centers.

According to the court order, as of June 25, 11 people at a family detention center in Karnes City, Texas have tested positive for Covid-19. Results are pending from tests at another center in Dilley, …

The past week gave America an ugly reminder that the threat of the coronavirus pandemic is far from over. Cases are rapidly rising again. The nation on Wednesday hit a new record for daily new infections, and then hit another record the next day.

There’s some debate about whether this is the “second wave” of infections, or whether it’s a continuation of the first wave that began in early 2020 and never really ended. But what’s clear is the US is now suffering from a rapid rise in coronavirus cases. So far, that’s yet to translate to a rising death …

The circumstances of Elijah McClain’s death are as horrifying as any of the killings now infamous in the age of Black Lives Matter. Last year, McClain lost his life less than a week after encountering police on a walk home in Aurora, Colorado. McClain, who was anemic, regularly wore a ski mask because he quickly grew cold. Last August, a resident spotted him wearing his mask while returning home from the store, called the police, and reported him as “sketchy.”

According to video from body camera footage and news reports, when officers arrived, they immediately marched up …

Last Friday, Attorney General Bill Barr announced that the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey Berman, was “stepping down” from his position.

The announcement caught everyone by surprise, including Berman, who quickly denied that he had any plans to resign. But the following day Barr announced that Trump had dismissed Berman, putting an end to the bizarre standoff (though Trump, later in the day, claimed he was “not involved” in Berman’s firing).

In any other administration, the firing of a US attorney who had been conducting investigations of the president’s allies would be scandalous. But …