Crooked Media - What A Day: 10 Things I Hate About Q

President Trump and his Fox News allies wasted no time in launching a clumsy barrage of sexist and racist attacks against Kamala Harris, providing an island of predictability in these uncertain times. Alas, it is an island with Sean Hannity on it. 
 

• Within hours of Joe Biden announcing he’d selected Harris as his running mate, Trump was back in the 2016 vault dusting off the word “nasty,” Tucker Carlson repeatedly mispronounced Harris’s name on Fox News and then threw a tantrum when a guest corrected him, and other Fox hosts bonked headfirst into the RNC with contradictory messaging over whether Harris is the “most liberal” senator, or despised by progressives for not being progressive enough. It’s unclear how she’ll ever recover.
   
• Fortunately for all of us, one issue where Harris has picked an undeniably progressive fight is on coronavirus relief. In May, she joined Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Ed Markey (D-MA) in introducing the Monthly Economic Crisis Support Act, which would provide monthly $2,000 payments to most Americans during the pandemic. Harris has also pushed for free testing and masks for all Americans, and proposed the creation of a task force to address racial disparities related to the pandemic. 
   
• Less fortunately for all of us, Biden and Harris haven’t been elected yet. Congress is no closer to passing the next round of coronavirus stimulus, thanks in part to Trump’s worse-than-useless executive orders. On Tuesday the White House clarified that Trump’s enhanced unemployment plan won’t require states to kick in $100 a week for residents to qualify—states, after all, can’t afford it. The upshot is that Trump has slashed millions of workers’ federal unemployment payments in half, to just $300 a week. It’s such a solid plan that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose constituents have noticed he’s thrown them to the wolves, is now urging Democrats and administration officials to restart negotiations.

Sure, Republicans have politicized coronavirus aid into oblivion, but at least all GOP leaders have finally put the mask wars aside and gotten serious about slowing this thing down, right?
 

• Hahaha, no. The Cherokee County School District in Georgia just closed one high school and has over 1,100 students and staff in quarantine, a whopping eight days into the school year. As of Tuesday, the school district had a total of 59 confirmed cases. The district’s superintendent recommended that students wear masks to prevent more schools from closing, but hasn’t issued a mask mandate. Shout out to Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) for making this discretionary.
   
• But wait, it gets loonier: In Florida, another state with no mask requirement that just shattered its records for coronavirus hospitalizations and deaths, a Marion County sheriff has gone so far as to bar deputies from wearing masks in the office. Sheriff Billy Woods’s policy also prohibits civilians from wearing masks while visiting the building. All in a hard day’s work keepin’ the community safe!

It’s easy to lose track of it in the noise, but the U.S. has averaged over 1,000 coronavirus deaths a day for the last 16 straight days. We can’t get used to that, and we can’t survive another four years without the kind of response Biden and Harris have outlined. Trump can relive his 2016 campaign all he wants—you’ve got to do something different. 

In the first episode of Obama Speechwriters Break Down Convention Speeches, our newest perfectly named series, Jon Favreau and Jon Lovett break down what goes into a major party nominee's convention speech and reflect on Barack Obama's 2008 acceptance speech. Check it out on our YouTube and kindly smash that subscribe button →

QAnon supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene won her Republican House primary runoff in Georgia, and will almost certainly be elected to Congress. A spokesperson for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who has called Greene’s comments “appalling” but otherwise sat on his hands through the primary, said that Greene would be seated on committees and welcomed into the Republican conference if elected. In addition to her promotion of a lunatic conspiracy theory that the FBI has labeled a domestic terrorism threat, Greene has put forth hours of videos in which she makes racist, Islamophobic, and antisemetic remarks. She had this to say about Nancy Pelosi in her victory speech on Tuesday night: “We’re going to kick that bitch out of Congress.” Anyway, you’ll be gobsmacked to learn that President Trump congratulated her on her win and called her a “future Republican Star.” Welcome to the future of the GOP.

• Joe Biden and Kamala Harris made their first appearance as running mates in Delaware, where they took the opportunity to jointly excoriate President Trump’s handling of the coronavirus crisis.
   
• Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) won her House primary against a well-funded challenger in Minnesota, making her the third member of the Squad to successfully defend her seat. 
   
• Thirty-four current and former members of a federal health-advisory committee warned in a letter that the Trump administration’s new system for collecting coronavirus data has put extra stress on hospitals and will have “serious consequences on data integrity.”
   
• The parents of Elijah McClain have sued the city of Aurora, CO, and Aurora police officers over his death. McClain died in August 2019 after police restrained him with a chokehold and paramedics injected him with ketamine. There are three separate investigations into his death underway: by the federal government, the Colorado attorney general’s office, and the city of Aurora.
   
• Federal prosecutors have charged three men with threatening and intimidating women who accused R. Kelly of abuse, including one man suspected of setting fire to an SUV outside a home where one of Kelly’s victims was staying in Florida. 
   
• RIP, VOA.
   
• A Duke University face-mask study has been making the rounds with headlines proclaiming that wearing a neck gaiter is worse than wearing no mask at all, but there’s an important caveat: researchers tested out each mask type (including the gaiter) on one (1) guy. Gaiters: certainly not the best mask option around, not necessarily the mask of Satan. 
   
• Andrew Lloyd Webber volunteered to get an experimental COVID-19 vaccine in order to, uh, save live theater? “I’ll do anything to prove that theatres can re-open safely.” No idea what this means, but Webber is the man who brought us Cats, so we won’t look too hard for a plot here.

Kanye West met privately with Trump advisor Jared Kushner in Colorado last week, lest there be any lingering doubt that West’s candidacy is a Trump campaign scheme. West has now filed petitions to appear on the ballot in ten states, but has so far only secured a spot in Oklahoma. That’s on account of all the fraud: Election officials in multiple states have determined that the majority of the signatures West’s campaign submitted (often with the help of GOP operatives) were invalid. It’s deeply gross to watch Trump Republicans take advantage of someone struggling with mental illness in an attempt to divert Black votes away from Joe Biden, but the good news is, no one seems to be falling for it. A new Politico/Morning Consult poll found that West has just two percent support overall (seven points behind “no opinion”), and isn’t doing any better among Black voters. 

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Lincoln Center has begun hosting free mini-concerts for medical workers, teachers, and other essential workers. 

A federal judge blocked a Trump administration rule that would have rolled back protections for migratory birds, in a ruling that quoted To Kill a Mockingbird.

A (different) federal judge ruled against an Idaho law that bars transgender people from changing the gender on their birth certificates. 

The Biden campaign raised $26 million in the day following Biden's announcement of Kamala Harris as his VP pick.