FEATURING LABONI HOQ – President Donald Trump has been relentless in his attacks on immigrants from the very start of his candidacy for President and then during his Presidential tenure. From the “Muslim ban” that he enacted right from the start, to continuous demands to build a border wall, heart breaking family separations of thousands of undocumented children, record breaking detentions, the decimation of refugee programs, the turning away of asylum seekers, and the cancelation of DACA, Trump has made very clear that immigrants are not welcome in the US. 

Now, under cover of the coronavirus pandemic, he has launched his latest attack, on legal immigration of US citizens’ family members of the kind that his wife Melania Trump used to bring her parents to the US. He has also banned a large number of work visas including H-1B and other types of visas that help Americans have access to foreign-born health care professionals, engineers and more. 

Laboni Hoq, Law Office of Laboni A. Hoq, consulting attorney with Justice Action Center. Her expertise is in immigrants’ rights, workers’ rights and government transparency.

FEATURING HUWAIDA ARRAF – When Minneapolis police officers killed George Floyd in a videotaped incident that made international headlines and sparked nationwide uprising across the US, Palestinian Americans noted the disturbing similarity between the manner of Floyd’s killing and how Palestinians are treated by Israeli forces. The similarity is not a coincidence however as activists working closely on the Israeli occupation of Palestine have pointed out that US police departments have trained with Israeli soldiers for years and learned their deadly tactics. 

While the US-Israel relationship has been taken for granted as part of US foreign policy, in recent years younger lawmakers have been questioning it. That was most recently seen in the primary election defeat of long-time pro-Israel Congressman Eliot Engel by newcomer Jamaal Bowman in New York. 

Huwaida Arraf, is the Palestine and Refugees correspondent for Rising Up With Sonali. She’s a Palestinian American lawyer and human rights activist, and co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement. She is also the former Chair of the Free Gaza Movement.

The United States recorded its highest single-day total of new Covid-19 infections on Wednesday, a result that health experts had predicted just weeks ago when the federal government under President Donald Trump’s leadership encouraged states to reopen businesses prematurely. State health department reports totaled 38,115 new cases of infections, higher than the last single-day record of 34,203 set on April 25. The states most impacted are Texas, Florida, and California. Ignoring this alarming milestone, President Trump is moving to end federal financial support for Covid-19 testing sites in states as demand for tests grows. While infection rates have spiked, death rates are so far lower than before but health experts worry that it will not be long before death rates spike as well. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who was among the most enthusiastic Trump-supporting leaders to embrace a return to normal is shaken by the infections and has paused his state’s reopening plan. Abbott said in a statement, “The last thing we want to do as a state is go backwards and close down businesses.” He also advised Texans, “to do their part to slow the spread of COVID-19 by wearing a mask, washing their hands regularly and socially distancing from others.” But this advice is in direct contradiction to Trump’s messaging that masks are not necessary. 

Hospitals around the country are dangerously at capacity with Houston, Texas, reporting that pediatricians may have to start taking adult patients. The state of California has seen a whopping rise of 69% in infections over just two days and Los Angeles County leads the nation in the number of cases at 88,500, however the county is the most populous in the nation. Hospitalizations in LA are up and the Intensive Care Units are at 30% capacity. In New York City, which had been the first epicenter of the disease in early spring, hospitalizations fell below 1,000 for the first time since mid-March. The states of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut have now imposed a 2-week quarantine on visitors from states where Covid-19 rates are high. As per CNN, the quarantine so far applies to visitors from, “Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah and Texas.” New analysis shows that parties, not protests are the main events where infections spread. Scientists surmise that is because protests generally take place outdoors and most participants wear masks, compared to parties that are indoors without much mask-wearing. Indeed one

Several states that held primary elections on Tuesday are reporting preliminary results. In New York, where tens of thousands of absentee ballots are yet to be counted, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez survived her first primary after beating Joe Crowley two years ago. She won her race by a landslide pulling around 70% of the vote against multiple challengers from the left and right – this in spite of one of her competitors garnering large numbers of donations from Wall Street executives who see an enemy in the young progressive lawmaker. Elsewhere in New York, in a race reminiscent of Ocasio-Cortez’s upset victory over Crowley, a middle school principle turned political candidate Jamaal Bowman appears to have beaten long-time incumbent Eliot Engel. Bowman, who was backed by Justice Democrats, the same organization at Ocasio-Cortez, earned endorsements from Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Representative Engel has drawn the ire of progressives for his hawkish foreign policy among other things. Two other insurgent political candidates Ritchie Torres, in the Bronx, who sits on the city council, is leading in the race for a seat being vacated by representative Jose Serrano, and Mondaire Jones is ahead in a race for a seat that had been held by retiring Representative Nita Jones. New York’s preliminary results show the public’s hunger for progressives of color in particular. 

In the Presidential primary, former Vice President Joe Biden handily won 67% of the vote as the only actively campaigning candidate remaining in the race. In spite of ending his campaign, Senator Bernie Sanders remained on the ballot and still garnered an impressive 19% of the vote – which progressive Democratic voters hope will give them greater say over Biden’s platform. Biden also won in Kentucky, bringing his total number of delegates to 2,304, past the 1,991 needed to cinch the nomination. A high-profile Democratic primary in Kentucky over who will challenge Senator Mitch McConnell in November appears to have resulted in victory for Amy McGrath. State Representative Charles Booker has challenged McGrath from the left for the Democratic Party’s Senate nomination and Booker had in recent weeks won high-profile endorsements from progressives. But in preliminary results McGrath is leading Booker although absentee ballots could potentially change the outcome. Voting rights advocates denounced the massive cuts to Kentucky’s polling places especially in minority areas that kept people waiting in line for hours to vote. 

In other election news, President Trump suffered at least two political losses on Tuesday when candidates that he backed in Republican primaries lost. According to AP, “In western North Carolina,

FEATURING TARSO RAMOS – The Washington Post this week conducted an analysis of who engaged in property damage during the nationwide police protests after George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis and concluded that people identifying themselves as “antifa” were not involved in spite of President Trump’s constant claims to the contrary. 

Instead the paper reported, “Four people who identify with the far-right extremist “boogaloo” movement are among those facing the most serious federal charges.” The findings were consistent with a new report by Political Research Associates called Mapping Paramilitary and Far-Right Threats to Racial Justice. 

Read the report HERE. Tips about far right groups can be emailed to [email protected]. 

Tarso Ramos, Executive Director of Political Research Associates, has produced investigative research and analysis on the U.S. Right to support social justice advocates and defend human rights.

FEATURING SHAUN RICHMAN – The coronavirus pandemic brought new attention to the role of low-wage labor in the United States. While most Americans were quick to praise the courage of so-called “essential workers” and call them heroes, few questioned why those working to keep us alive and fed were not earning living wages. Fewer still linked the poor state of labor rights in the US to the waning power of unions. 

Now, a new book has issued a fierce call for workers to understand the limits of organizing under existing models and laws and demands a new way of thinking about union organizing, how to expand unions, and make them more politically powerful. 

Shaun Richman, author of Tell the Bosses We’re Coming: A New Action Plan for Workers in the Twenty-First Century. Richman spent a decade and a half as a union organizer and representative. He is the Program Director of the Harry Van Arsdale Jr. School of Labor Studies at SUNY Empire State College. His writing has been published in The American Prospect, In These Times, Jacobin, The New York Daily News and the New York Times.

The nation’s top infectious diseases expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, along with other government health officials testified to the House Energy and Commerce committee about the White House’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. Democrats on the committee asked Dr. Fauci if there had been a slowdown in Covid-19 testing as per President Donald Trump’s recent public claim. Dr. Fauci said there was no decline in testing. When reporters asked Trump if he was joking about demanding that testing be slowed down he said he had been serious. When asked to assess the US’s approach to the coronavirus, Fauci said this. He warned that the next two weeks would be critical to take the kinds of action he described. In addition to Dr. Fauci, other officials testifying include Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Stephen Hahn, head of the Food and Drug Administration; and Brett Giroir, assistant secretary for health.

Covid-19 infections are surging in some parts of the country particularly in the states of Texas, Florida, and Arizona. Reuters explained that surge as, “The United States saw a 25% increase in new cases of COVID-19 in the week ended June 21 compared to the previous seven days.” Health experts trace the jump in cases to Memorial Day when many states began relaxing their lockdown requirements. In southern states in particular, cases are rising fast among young Americans, in their 20s and 30s who may have gotten infected from congregating at bars and nightclubs on or after Memorial Day. Even in California there is an increase in cases with the nation’s most populous state reporting 6,000 new cases on Tuesday – a single-day record. Meanwhile a study of Medicare and Medicaid enrollees has confirmed that race is a strong predictor for who is likely to get infected and that Black Americans are the most vulnerable. But the study found that Medicaid recipients – whose incomes are so low that they qualify for government assistance, are far more likely than the general population to get infected, indicating that poverty is also a predictor. 

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has warned that hand sanitizers manufactured by a Mexican company Eskbiochem is extremely dangerous as it has high levels of methanol. Sales of hand sanitizer have shot up since the pandemic was declared. In an indication of how weak the US’s regulatory systems are, the Washington Post reported that “The FDA stated that it contacted Eskbiochem on June 17 to recommend removing its hand sanitizers from the market. ‘To date, the company has not taken action’ to do so, the agency wrote Friday.”

The US economy continues to remain weakened by the pandemic and now more than 700 cities say they are putting off critical infrastru...

FEATURING BETH ROTMAN – In 1973 President Richard Nixon’s government ordered the US Attorney General to fire the special prosecutor investigating him. When that didn’t work and the Attorney General resigned and then his deputy also resigned, and finally the third in command at the DOJ conducted the firing that Nixon wanted. That series of events, playing out on a single Saturday came to be known as the Saturday night massacre. Just days ago the Trump administration attempted to carry out what many are now calling a “Friday night massacre.” 

On Friday, Attorney General William Barr announced US Attorney Geoffrey Berman was stepping down. Berman said he was doing no such thing. So Barr told him the President fired him, but Trump said he was not involved. Berman had investigated many of Trump’s associates and was in the middle of investigating Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani when he was fired. 

Beth Rotman, Money in Politics & Ethics Program Director for Common Cause.

FEATURING MICHAEL POWELSON – The Trump White House is refusing to divulge which corporations received more than $500 billion in taxpayer-backed loans during the coronavirus. From the documentation that exists, media outlets have found dozens of massive publicly traded companies that are flush with cash having received loans through the Paycheck Protection Program that Congress enacted to address the economic collapse due to the coronavirus pandemic. Federal Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has claimed the list of loan recipients is “proprietary.”

Meanwhile as cities lift quarantine orders, a new poll by AP/NORC shows that Americans have differing opinions on whether the economy is reviving depending upon their political affiliation. Republicans are more likely to claim the economy is improving. Latinos and African Americans are most likely to say their personal economic bottom line has been deeply impacted. 

The bailout of corporations over people was entirely predictable if history is any indication. We turn now to a historian to remind us how past financial crises provided cover for corporate bailouts. 

Find Propublica’s bailout list from the 2008-2009 recession here: https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/list.

Michael Powelson, teaches at LA Valley College and Cal State University Channel Islands. His book is Swindlers All, a Brief History of Government Business Frauds from Alexander Hamilton to AIG.

President Donald Trump’s first political rally since the pandemic, held in Tulsa, Oklahoma on Saturday was anti-climactic. The president’s reelection campaign had boasted that about a million people had requested tickets to attend the event at the 19,000-seat BOK Center. In the end, fire marshals estimated that about 6,200 people attended. According to the New York Times, Trump, “was stunned, and he yelled at aides backstage while looking at the endless rows of empty blue seats in the upper bowl of the stadium.” Ahead of the rally, six staffers working on Trump’s reelection campaign in Tulsa tested positive for the coronavirus. An overflow stage to accommodate the large crowd that the Trump campaign expected to gather outside, remained empty and the campaign announced that a planned second rally would be canceled. In private, Trump is reportedly livid at his reelection campaign head Brad Parscale but publicly Trump blamed protesters. Campaign spokesperson Tim Murtaugh said the low turnout was due to, “radical protesters, coupled with a relentless onslaught from the media,” who “attempted to frighten off the president’s supporters” with their warnings about the pandemic risk. Young online activists including Kpop fans and TikTok users took credit for sabotaging the Trump rally saying they had reserved tickets with no intention of showing up.

During his speech Trump was predictably low on policy and high on rhetoric. He whipped up racist fervor referring to the Black-led movement for racial justice as filled with “thugs” – a code word for criminalizing Black Americans. And he referred to the toppling of confederate-era and colonial-era statues as an assault on “our heritage,” i.e. the heritage of white supremacy. He also used a derogatory term for the coronavirus. Only a few months ago Trump spokesperson Kellyanne Conway expressed shock that anyone in the White House could use the term “kung flu” and when confronted by reporters said, “of course that’s offensive,” while demanding to know who used the phrase. Trump also resorted to his favorite talking point about the coronavirus pandemic – that the reason infections in the US are rising sharply is because there are more tests being conducted.

Lawmakers expressed shock at Trump’s open expression of wanting to obscure the true extent of the disease by reducing testing. But Trump’s White House trade advisor Peter Navarro said the President’s comments were “tongue-in-cheek.” But Trump has made such comments many times before, undercutting the claim that he was just joking. Now, Democratic Senators are pointing out that a deliberate slowdown in testing may be already in the works as the Trump administration has