Crooked Media - What A Day: Bleach for America

The Trump administration has found a way to advance its anti-immigration agenda and its suck-it-up-and-live-with-the-plague agenda in one stroke, freeing up valuable time for whatever personal revenge President Trump is plotting against Bob Woodward.
 

• On Monday, ICE announced that international students won’t be permitted to stay in the country if the institutions where they’re enrolled hold online-only courses in the fall. Those students will have to either leave the country or scramble to transfer to schools holding in-person classes; and if they don’t, they could be deported. The new rules will impact around one-million visa holders, and could cost U.S. colleges $41 billion.
   
• Finding schools with in-person offerings will be easier said than done. A growing number of colleges will only allow 40 to 60 percent of students to return to campus at any one time, but very few are offering tuition discounts. Harvard announced that only freshmen and students who are unable to complete online coursework at home will be invited back to campus in the fall. All courses will take place online, and tuition will remain the same. 
   
• The ICE rule serves two of Trump’s purposes at once: Taking advantage of the pandemic to slice away at legal immigration, and putting pressure on colleges to resume in-person classes, lest they lose their international students who typically pay full tuition. The Trump administration is also pushing hard for K-12 schools to reopen as a cornerstone of its Live, Laugh, Love Coexisting With a Deadly Virus campaign. Here’s the president with a finely-honed argument on Monday: "SCHOOLS MUST OPEN IN THE FALL!!!" Today the White House held a day of programming around that goal, with Trump announcing his intention to lean on governors to make it happen.

If only Trump hadn’t spent the last four months making it much more difficult for schools to reopen safely, and in an economically viable way. 
 

• A short parable: Last week in California, dozens of administrators from a Santa Clara school district had to self-quarantine after attending a school-reopening meeting, because one attendee later tested positive for coronavirus. Surging infection numbers aside, Republican stonewalling of additional relief for state governments means that school districts across the country are facing budget cuts and layoffs, when resuming in-person classes would require supplying expensive protective equipment, and hiring nurses, and counselors on top of existing expenses. 
   
• Trump’s political pressure forced states to reopen businesses prematurely, creating the catastrophic outbreaks we see now, and he intends to do the same to schools. Already, Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran has issued an executive order requiring all of Florida’s public schools to fully reopen in August. Meanwhile, Florida just recorded a record-high positivity rate of 16.27 percent, Miami-Dade County reimposed public-health restrictions, and a high-risk 17-year-old girl died of COVID-19 after attending a church event with 100 other kids and taking hydroxychloroquine on the advice of her parents. 
   

Closed schools and childcare facilities take a monstrous toll on working parents, and reopening them should be a national priority. But not by forcing teachers and students into unsafe, understaffed schools, or dangling foreign college students over a volcano. Each shortcut Trump thinks he’s found toward economic recovery pushes it further into the distance, while imperiling more American lives.

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At least 40 lobbyists with ties to President Trump helped their clients secure over $10 billion in coronavirus funding. Those lobbyists included five former administration officials whose work potentially violated Trump’s own ethics policy, as well as donors to Trump’s campaign and bundlers for his fundraising committees. (Drain! The! Swamp!) Perhaps by sheer coincidence, Trump allies were also the recipients of hefty PPP loans: Jared Kushner’s family raked in millions through their hotels and publishing company, as did Trump-friendly conservative media outlets, and a Dallas megachurch whose pastor is a vocal Trump supporter was approved for a loan worth worth $2 million to $5 million. PPP loans are intended to finance paychecks for workers, even ones who work at big companies. But policymakers capped the size of the program creating a mad scramble for limited funds, and it sure smells bad that rich, Trump-connected individuals and businesses got their share while genuinely struggling small businesses had a much harder time. 

• Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has tested positive for coronavirus, after catastrophically downplaying the pandemic for months. 
   
• The Trump administration notified Congress and the U.N. that the U.S. will formally withdraw from the World Health Organization, as Trump threatened back in May. The withdrawal will take effect on July 6, 2021, which means that electing Joe Biden could stop it from happening.
   
• Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg met with the civil rights leaders who rallied hundreds of companies to join a Facebook advertising boycott, and what do you know, the Facebook execs stuck to their public relations talking points instead of addressing the groups’ demands. 
   
• Atlanta Mayor (and veep contender) Keisha Lance Bottom has tested positive for coronavirus, though has not experienced any symptoms thus far. 
   
• TikTok will pull out of Hong Kong amid concerns over the new national security law. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo suggested the Trump administration is thinking about limiting American users’ access, so just in case, watch this one real quick.
   
• The Trump administration has awarded the vaccine maker Novavax $1.6 billion to expedite the development of a coronavirus vaccine. It’s the largest award yet from Operation Warp Speed, to an obscure company that’s never brought a drug to market.
   
• In her book set for publication next week, Mary Trump alleges that Donald paid someone to take the SAT for him, asserts that he meets the clinical criteria for being a narcissist, and recounts his own sister calling him a clown at the start of his campaign. A former Melania Trump confidante also has a tell-all on the way.
   
• Hundreds of Post Office delivery trucks have caught on fire in the last few years, the result of a decades-old fleet and a manufactured budget crisis at the Postal Service. Sure, we’re all worried about a mail-in election going up in flames, let’s get some literal flames in there.
   
• New York regulators fined Deutsche Bank $150 million for failing to flag Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal operation.
   
• If anyone heard what sounded like a primal howl with a Boston accent, be advised that Dunkin’ announced it will permanently close 450 locations by the end of the year. 

The Trump administration has begun to force federal employees back into their offices, jeopardizing progress in one of the few regions of the country where coronavirus cases have steadily declined. Several government agencies have taken their cues from President Trump over the objections of local health experts, with 20 percent of employees at the Energy Department, and up to 80 percent of Defense Department employees, authorized to return. Workers who are worried about coronavirus but don’t have medical risk factors would still be required to return, some on as little as a week’s notice. State and local officials in Washington, DC, Maryland, and Virginia have urged the Trump administration to continue encouraging telework wherever possible, and many private employers in the area have closed their offices, but federal agencies have refused to slow down back-to-work orders.

The Movement for Black Lives has introduced the BREATHE Act, a set of proposed legislative changes that would overhaul the country’s criminal justice system. 

Gov. Charlie Baker (D-MA) signed a bill allowing all Massachusetts voters to vote by mail this fall.

There's an emerging group of voters that greatly disliked both presidential candidates in 2016, but who feel comfortable voting for Joe Biden.

Richmond, VA, removed a monument to Confederate Gen. J.E.B. Stuart, the city's third major statue to come down in less than a week.