This week, the pandemic continued to worsen,  with many states seeing new highs and the death toll starting to rise.  By week’s end, the U.S. registered an unthinkable nearly 70,000 new  daily coronavirus cases. Amid the surge, issues that plagued the April  wave of cases in New York and elsewhere, like shortages of PPE and  testing, reappeared, making it clear the federal government had done  nothing to address or plan for a new surge. Trump continued to deny the  severity of the virus, falsely claiming “99 percent of [cases] are  totally harmless,” and then pushing for schools to reopen.

This week Trump lost a landmark case, with the  Supreme Court ruling 7-2 that Trump cannot keep his tax returns and  financial records from the Manhattan U.S. Attorney; however, the ruling  would likely mean the public will not see the documents ahead of the  election. Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman retired from the Army, citing  bullying by Trump after he testified in the impeachment inquiry. Days  later, Trump commuted Roger Stone’s sentence days before his former  associate was set to serve 40 months in prison. Republican Sen. Mitt  Romney called the commuting of Stone’s sentence “unprecedented, historic  corruption,” but he was — as would be typical — the lone GOP voice to  criticize Trump, as an exhausted, outraged country had dejectedly grown  accustomed and normalized to such lawlessness from our budding  authoritarian leader.

Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-191/