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What Is Known about ICE’s Rule Change for Foreign Students

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced this week that international students enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities that switch to online-only courses will have to leave the country or risk deportation. Here’s an overview of what is known about the most recent changes to the Student and Exchange Visitor Program during the pandemic. How many colleges and universities are planning online-only classes?Nine percent of 1,090 U.S. universities — or 98 institutions — are planning for a fall semester exclusively online, according to the Chronicle for Higher Education, which since March has been tracking which colleges and universities will teach online, in person or a hybrid of both.An additional 24% — or 262 — say they are planning a hybrid model (part in class, part online), and 7.2% — or 78 — are undecided or undeclared.Sixty percent – or 654 — say they are planning for an in-person semester. New York University, with the largest population of international students at 19,605, is proposing a hybrid model. Columbia University, the fourth-largest international student population with 15,897, says it is considering multiple options but hopes to return to in-person instruction as soon as it is safe to do so.University of Southern California — with the second-largest population of international students at 16,340 — is planning for online instruction for undergraduates. Twenty-three state universities in California, including University of California-Los Angeles with 11,942 international students, also plan to conduct online-only classes.Northeastern University, with 16,075 international students, is planning a hybrid model, [[  ]] as is Boston University, which has 10,598 foreign scholars.How many students are affected? What is the deadline for them to decide where to live?As of the 2018-2019 academic school year, there were 1,095,299 international students at U.S. colleges and universities, according to the Institute for International Education, which issues an annual report on international students in the U.S. International students make up 5.5% of the higher education population in the U.S., according to IIE.Colleges and universities typically notify applicants of acceptances the first quarter of the year, with most letters going out in early April. Students are expected to commit — including making a deposit to hold their spot — by early May. The COVID-19 pandemic has delayed that process.The states with the largest populations of international students are California, New York, Texas, Massachusetts, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, Michigan and Indiana. Some of those states have been among the hardest-hit by COVID-19.What options do foreign students have if their university goes to online-only? Is there an appeal process?Because the visa and university application process is long and complicated, students cannot easily pivot to other schools.ICE, which oversees the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, is referring international students to a “School Reporting and Procedural Requirements” page on the SEVIS website.Meanwhile, the Association of International Educators (NAFSA) has updated its guidance for the upcoming semester: “Some flexibility will continue for schools that adopt an in-person or hybrid model for Fall 2020, but will not continue for students in the United States studying at schools operating entirely online for Fall 2020.”The association adds that a deadline is looming: “[A]ll schools must update their operational plans with SEVP: Schools that will be entirely online or will not reopen for Fall 2020 must notify SEVP no later than Wednesday, July 15, 2020. Schools that will offer an in-person or hybrid program for Fall 2020 must notify SEVP of their plans by August 1, 2020.”What happens to students if colleges hosting in-person classes are later forced to go to online-only?ICE advises, “Schools should update their information in the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) within 10 days of the change if they begin the fall semester with in-person classes but are later required to switch to only online classes, or a nonimmigrant student changes their course selections, and as a result, ends up taking an entirely online course load.”The ICE website adds: “Nonimmigrant students within the United States are not permitted to take a full course of study through online classes. If students find themselves in this situation, they must leave the country or take alternative steps to maintain their nonimmigrant status such as a reduced course load or appropriate medical leave.”What are the financial implications of this new policy for universities and colleges?Universities already weathering big declines in international enrollment and revenues will suffer another financial hit if foreign students are unable to attend. According to the Brookings Institution, international students account for $2.5 billion in tuition and other revenue to American colleges and universities.But their total contribution to the U.S. economy is far larger. The American Council on Education estimates foreign students have economic impact of $41 billion and support more than 450,000 U.S. jobs. Colleges and universities that have the largest populations of foreign students are California (161,693), New York (124,277), Texas (81,893), Massachusetts (71,098), Illinois (53,724), Pennsylvania (51,818), Florida (45,957), Ohio (37,314), Michigan (33,236) and Indiana (29,083) in 2018-2019.What are universities telling international students about this rule change?Many colleges and universities are expressing dismay and pledging to do what they can to assist foreign students.”We are deeply concerned that the guidance issued today by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement imposes a blunt, one-size-fits-all approach to a complex problem giving international students, particularly those in online programs, few options beyond leaving the country or transferring schools,” Harvard University President Larry Bacow wrote the university community Monday.“Our focus and efforts right now are on analyzing the DHS guidance to provide Stanford students accurate and timely information,” Shalini Bhutani, executive director of Stanford University’s International Center, wrote in a message to international students on Monday. “Please know that the Stanford community is committed to supporting international students.” “With today’s update, students with certain visas must enroll in at least one in person course this fall to enter or remain in the U.S. Students who choose to enroll fully online will still be able to matriculate with UCI this fall from outside the U.S.,” wrote Willie L. Banks Jr., Ph.D., vice chancellor for Student Affairs, and Gillian Hayes, Ph.D., vice provost for graduate education in an email to the University of California-Irvine community Monday.  
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US Formally Starts Withdrawal From WHO

U.S. President Donald Trump has formally started the withdrawal of the United States from the World Health Organization, making good on threats over the U.N. body’s response to the coronavirus, officials said Tuesday. The United States is the largest financial contributor to the WHO – which leads the fight on global maladies from polio to measles to mental health – but it has increasingly been in Trump’s crosshairs as the coronavirus takes a heavy toll. After threatening to suspend the $400 million in annual U.S. contributions and then announcing a withdrawal, Trump has formally informed U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that he has started the U.S. pullout, a State Department spokesperson said. The withdrawal is effective in one year – July 6, 2021 – and Joe Biden, Trump’s presumptive Democratic opponent, is virtually certain to stop it and stay in the WHO if he defeats Trump in the November election. Stephane Dujarric, the spokesman for Guterres, confirmed that the United States gave its notice. Under conditions set when the United States entered the World Health Organization in 1948, Washington has to give a one-year notice to pull out – and meet its remaining assessed financial obligations, Dujarric said. “To call Trump’s response to COVID chaotic and incoherent doesn’t do it justice,” said Senator Robert Menendez, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, who said that Congress was notified. “This won’t protect American lives or interests – it leaves Americans sick & America alone,” he said. Trump has accused the World Health Organization of bias toward China, saying it ignored early signs of human-to-human transmission of the deadly virus. While many public health advocates share some criticism of the WHO, they question what other powers the world body had other than to work with China, where COVID-19 was first detected late last year. Critics say Trump is seeking to deflect criticism from his own handling of the pandemic in the United States, which has suffered by far the highest death toll of any nation.  
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Trump Donors Among Early Recipients of Coronavirus Loans 

As much as $273 million in federal coronavirus aid was awarded to more than 100 companies that are owned or operated by major donors to President Donald Trump’s election efforts, according to an Associated Press analysis of federal data. Many were among the first to be approved for a loan in early April, when the administration was struggling to launch the lending program. And only eight businesses had to wait until early May before securing the aid, according to the AP’s review of data released Monday. The Trump-connected companies obtained the aid through the Paycheck Protection Program, which extends a lifeline to small businesses struggling to navigate the pandemic. Fast-food chains like Muy Brands, oil and gas companies, and white-collar firms were all granted a slice of more than $659 billion in low-interest business loans that will be forgiven if the money is used on payroll, rent and similar expenses. All told, the Trump supporters who run these companies have contributed at least $11.1 million since May 2015 to Trump’s campaign committees, the Republican National Committee and America First Action, a super PAC that has been endorsed by Trump, the AP review found. Each donor gave at least $20,000. There is no evidence the companies received favorable treatment as a result of their ties to Trump, and the businesses account for just a fraction of the overall spending under the program. But the distribution of relief money is coming under heightened scrutiny after the Trump administration initially refused to reveal which companies received loans, only to cave under growing bipartisan pressure from Congress. On Monday, the Treasury Department released the names of companies that received loans that were greater than $150,000, though they didn’t release specific dollar figures and instead gave ranges for the dollar value of the aid. Among the recipients named Monday was the conservative website NewsMax, which was approved for a loan up to $5 million on April 13, the data shows. NewsMax CEO Christopher Ruddy has donated $525,000 to political committees supporting Trump, records show. He did not respond to a request for comment. Muy Brands, a San Antonio, Texas-based company that operates Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and Wendy’s franchises, was approved for a loan worth between $5 million and $10 million. Its owner, James Bodenstedt, has donated $672,570 to Trump since 2016, records show. The company did not respond to a request for comment. Irving, Texas-based M Crowd Restaurant Group, which owns 27 Texas restaurants including the Mi Cocina chain, was approved for between $5 million and $10 million. Ray Washburne, one of the company’s founders, was vice chairman of the Trump Victory Committee in 2016 and donated $100,000 to the PAC last August. The company did not respond to a request for comment. “The PPP was a huge success and saved 51 million American jobs, including at Joe Biden’s old law firm and many companies associated with Obama Administration alums,” said Trump campaign spokeswoman Samantha Zager. “When the rent or mortgage was due, tens of millions of Americans kept receiving paychecks thanks to President Trump’s leadership.” Government watchdog groups say they have little faith in the administration conducting oversight of the program, noting Trump has ousted numerous inspectors general and has broadly resisted efforts to add transparency. “When you don’t have proper safeguards, such as timely disclosure and effective inspectors general, then all these things look more suspicious and raise more questions,” said Larry Noble, a former general counsel at the Federal Election Commission. “When you see these people getting assistance quickly and they have contributed to the campaign, then it is going to raise questions.” Companies typically must have fewer than 500 workers to qualify for the Paycheck Protection Program. About $130 billion was unclaimed as the application deadline closed June 30. With money still available, Congress voted to extend the program just as it was expiring, setting a new date of Aug. 8. The public may never know the identity of more than 80% of the nearly 5 million beneficiaries to date because the administration has refused to release details on loans under $150,000 — the vast majority of borrowers. That secrecy spurred an open-records lawsuit by a group of news organizations, including the AP. Still, the release of the data is the most complete look at the program’s recipients so far. And Trump donors aren’t the only people with ties to the president who have benefited. The Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy in New Jersey, which is named after Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner’s grandfather, was approved for a loan in the range of $1 million to $2 million on April 5. Jared Kushner’s parents’ family foundation supports the school, NBC News reported. Kasowitz Benson Torres, the law firm founded by Trump’s longtime personal attorney Marc Kasowitz, was approved for a loan worth between $5 million and $10 million. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao’s family’s business, Foremost Maritime Co., was cleared for a loan valued between $350,000 and $1 million. She is married to the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. Broadcasting company Patrick Broadcasting, which is owned by Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a firebrand conservative and former talk radio host, received a loan of $179,000, according to Patrick’s senior adviser Sherry Sylvester. Patrick is the Texas chairman of Trump’s presidential campaign. The money was used to cover the payroll and expenses of 13 employees. “The loan did not cover his salary, but he was able to save the jobs of all his employees, many of whom have been with him for decades,” Sylvester said.    
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Trump Cabinet Members Look to Reassure Battleground Voters

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue tromped through a strawberry festival in central Florida, detailing the government’s new trade pact. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo talked about foreign policy at a roundtable in south Florida. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler toured parts of Michigan and Wisconsin, where he boasted of the Trump administration’s efforts to clean up the Great Lakes. And just this past week, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt was listed as a headliner along with White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, Donald Trump Jr. and his girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, a top fundraiser for the president, at an event in Rapid City, South Dakota, where ticket prices started at $250, according to an independent watchdog group, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. FILE – Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, May 19, 2020.With President Donald Trump confronted by skyrocketing joblessness and the coronavirus pandemic as he campaigns for reelection against Democrat Joe Biden, members of his Cabinet are busy making time in pivotal states. They are carrying a message to voters about what the Trump administration is doing for them. At the same time, there are questions about whether these agency heads are running afoul of a law meant to bar overt campaigning by federal officials on the taxpayer tab. These are states in renewed focus after Trump’s narrow 2016 victory. Recent polls in states such as Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania show Biden leading. The lesson of four years ago is crucial, though. Nearly every poll in the three states showed Democrat Hillary Clinton ahead of Republican Trump, before Trump’s base came together in the final weeks of the campaign. Cabinet-level leaders have come to Florida alone more than 30 times this year. Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona have also seen visits from agency and administration chiefs discussing federal funding and initiatives for local interests — and talking up Trump.  Trump is hoping for an energized base to buoy his prospects for a second term. His recent rhetoric seems to reflect that strategy, as he stokes divides over racial injustice and the coronavirus outbreak. It can be hard to spot any local impact that a housing or a health secretary may have on a presidential race when they are in town. But there can be an effect, said Aubrey Jewett, a political science professor at the University of Central Florida, who has been studying presidential politics in the battleground state. Cabinet secretaries usually “aren’t generating the same kind of buzz. But it doesn’t mean that what they do is not important both for policy and also politics for their president,” Jewett said.  A Trump campaign spokesperson did not respond to questions about the Cabinet members’ trips. Biden campaign spokesperson Michael Gwin accused the Trump administration of focusing on “scoring political points, not delivering for the people they work for. With COVID-19 raging unchecked, more than 17 million Americans unemployed, and our country divided, it’s shameful that Trump’s Cabinet is campaigning on the taxpayer’s dime instead of doing their jobs.” A Washington bigwig showing up with assurances on federal policies most vital to Orlando, Florida, or Milwaukee is usually enough to earn an administration a wave of favorable comments, columns and tweets from local leaders. In March, for example, when Perdue went to the strawberry festival in Plant City, in central Florida’s Interstate 4 corridor, he talked about the new U.S. trade pact with Mexico and Canada, and spoke of the importance of the farming community. Afterward, the president of the Florida Strawberry Growers Association, Kenneth Parker, said he was appreciative of “the administration’s commitment … to move forward in helping us in ways to compete.” When the EPA’s Wheeler was in Michigan and Wisconsin last month, he described the administration as a friend of an initiative to clean up the Great Lakes. Never mind Trump’s repeated attempts to kill money for the Obama-era program. GOP lawmakers persuaded Trump, while riding to a Michigan rally last year, to ease up on trying to starve the Great Lakes effort, which is popular across the region, and champion it instead. FILE – Andrew Wheeler, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, speaks on Capitol Hill, May 20, 2020.”Let’s just say we were happy to see him come around on that,” said Laura Rubin of the Healing Our Waters-Great Lakes Coalition, which lobbies for the initiative. And so this spring and summer, Wheeler and the EPA boast of millions of dollars the agency has doled out for Great Lakes regional projects such as cleaning up toxic sites and curbing farm nutrient runoff that feeds harmful algae blooms. Wheeler drew praise during the visits from Republican members of Congress and leaders of business groups. Notably absent were environmentalists, who accused Trump and Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, of taking credit for actions by previous administrations and ignoring Trump’s gutting of environmental and public health protections. Hatch ActCabinet secretaries hitting the road to talk up a president’s record in an election year is a political norm. Donald K. Sherman, deputy director of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington watchdog group, said it can be tough to track the officials closely enough to know whether they are sticking to the Hatch Act, which is meant to bar obvious campaigning by federal officials with taxpayer money. But with the White House rejecting recommendations from the Office of Special Counsel to presidential adviser Conway for violating the act by using her office to talk down Democrats, Sherman said he is not sure Trump Cabinet members deserve the benefit of the doubt when it comes to staying within the law on their stops in select states. “It’s obvious that the administration is doing this for a political reason,” Sherman said. “What’s not obvious is if they’re doing this within the contours of the law or outside of it.” Interior Department spokesmen did not respond to questions this past week about the Rapid City event, which took place the evening before Bernhardt helped open for Trump at a fireworks show at Mount Rushmore, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility said. It was unclear whether the Trump campaign or the federal government paid for Bernhardt’s costs on the trip.  Asked about Hatch Act compliance overall before the latest event, department spokesman Nicholas Goodwin said, “No campaign related activities have taken place on any official travel.” Spokespeople for two Cabinet-level agencies, the Interior Department and the EPA, did not specifically answer questions about whether they were coordinating such trips and funding announcements with Trump’s advisers or with his campaign staff. They said administration officials are doing their job by traveling and are not favoring any areas. Wheeler’s recent visits “have coincided with important agency announcements that positively impact their respective region,” EPA spokesman James Hewitt said in an email. 
 
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Trump Escalates Culture War

U.S. President Donald Trump is firmly planting his flag on one side of the culture war in America.  In a pair of high-profile speeches and in comments on Twitter, Trump rebuffed the growing movement that wants police forces to address racial bias and seeks the removal of monuments and flags of the Confederacy.  Emphasizing patriotism and a traditional narrative of American history, Trump is appealing to his political base and rejecting his opponents as dangerous for the country. With the granite giant heads of four U.S. presidents as his backdrop at Mt. Rushmore on Friday and on the White House South Lawn to celebrate the country’s independence anniversary the following day, Trump warned of a domestic threat from angry mobs composed of anarchists, Marxists and far-left fascists, who are “trying to tear down statues of our founders, deface our most sacred memorials, and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities.” A left-wing cultural revolution, according to Trump, seeks to wage a “merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children.” Public opinion polling has shown broad support among Americans for the Black Lives Matter movement, with about two-thirds of Americans saying they support the movement, including some 60% of white Americans.  FILE – Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden puts on a face mask as he departs after speaking at Alexis Dupont High School in Wilmington, Delaware, June 30, 2020.Over the weekend, a spokesman for the campaign of presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden said the U.S. was suffering as a result of having a “divisive” president who doesn’t “give a damn about anything but his own gain.”  “Our whole country is suffering through the excruciating costs of having a negligent, divisive president who doesn’t give a damn about anything but his own gain – not the sick, not the jobless, not our Constitution, and not our troops in harm’s way,” campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement on Saturday. Some Republican lawmakers are offering praise for the president’s comments.  “I thought the speech was absolutely one of the best that he has given and how appropriate that he reminded the American people and that we are unique and that you can bet on hope or you can bet on fear,” Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee said during an interview on a Fox News show on Sunday.  Trump’s rhetoric is reminiscent of the “American carnage” theme during his 2017 inauguration address. On Monday, he took it even further, assailing the only full-time African American NASCAR race car driver and sharply criticizing the racing organization for its recent racetrack ban on the display of the Confederate flag.  FILE – Bubba Wallace stands by his car before the start of the NASCAR Cup Series auto race at Pocono Raceway, in Long Pond, Pennsylvania, June 28, 2020.Trump pointedly asked whether Black driver Bubba Wallace has apologized for the support NASCAR rendered him after a noose was discovered in an Alabama racetrack garage he was occupying. NASCAR and investigators later determined the rope was being used as a door pull and had been in the garage months before Wallace had use of the space.  Trump, on Twitter, wondered whether Wallace has “apologized to all of those great NASCAR drivers & officials who came to his aid, stood by his side, & were willing to sacrifice everything for him, only to find out that the whole thing was just another HOAX?”  Trump said the ensuing uproar over the rope and NASCAR’s “Flag decision has caused lowest (television) ratings EVER!”    Has @BubbaWallace apologized to all of those great NASCAR drivers & officials who came to his aid, stood by his side, & were willing to sacrifice everything for him, only to find out that the whole thing was just another HOAX? That & Flag decision has caused lowest ratings EVER!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) FILE – President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump host the 2020 “Salute to America” event in honor of U.S. Independence Day, on the South Lawn of the White House, in Washington, July 4, 2020.“Trump would prefer to talk about culture war issues rather than the currently dominant issues of the uncontrolled virus, the economic downturn or the demands to address systemic racism,” according to Texas A&M Associate Professor Jennifer Mercieca, a historian of American political rhetoric.  “Trump has routinely relied on provoking outrage in his followers to keep them attentive and engaged with his messages and it may well continue to work with him,” Mercieca, author of Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump, told VOA. “However, it’s not a message that will do more than solidify his base. It’s hard to get folks concerned about a culture war when their lives are at risk.”  White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Monday was asked by reporters about the president saying 99 percent of COVID-19 cases “are totally harmless.”  According to McEnany, Trump “was noting the fact that the vast majority of Americans who contract the coronavirus will come out on the other side of this.”  According to the World Health Organization, 20 percent of those diagnosed with the infection progress to severe disease, including pneumonia and respiratory failure.  Other administration officials have also shied away from contradicting the president’s comments playing down the severity of the infection.  A White House press secretary during the Bill Clinton administration, Joe Lockhart, said everybody around Trump lives in fear of contradicting the president.  “On his worst comments, they say he was just kidding or being sarcastic,” Lockhart told VOA. “But they will never say he’s wrong. The problem is he is wrong most of the time.”  With Republican voters, Trump’s approval rating has increased to 91 percent but has dropped among independents to 33 percent, while the president gets a positive assessment from just 2 percent of Democratic Party voters in the latest Gallup Poll, released Monday.  “The current 89-point difference between Republicans’ and Democrats’ ratings of Trump is the largest partisan gap Gallup has ever measured for a presidential approval rating in a single survey,” according to the pollster.  
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US Supreme Court Says States May Punish ‘Faithless Electors’

The U.S. Supreme Court has four simple words for members of the Electoral College who fail to back the winner of their state’s popular vote in presidential elections: “We the people rule.”  In a unanimous decision, the nine-member high court Monday ruled that members of the Electoral College, the body that elects the U.S. president, are not “free agents” and that states may penalize them for breaking their pledge. “The Constitution’s text and the nation’s history both support allowing a state to enforce an elector’s pledge to support his party’s nominee — and the state voters’ choice — for president,” liberal Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a 33-page opinion on behalf of the court.   The decision came in a pair of cases involving so-called “faithless electors,” members of the Electoral College who choose someone other than the presidential candidate who carries their state’s popular vote. FILE – Associate Justice Elena Kagan sits with fellow Supreme Court justices for a group portrait at the Supreme Court Building in Washington, Nov. 30, 2018.Although “faithless electors” have never influenced the outcome of a U.S. presidential election, the ruling restores a degree of certainty to the electoral system ahead of another contentious presidential vote in November. Most states compel their presidential electors to take a pledge to support the winner of the statewide vote. Of these, 15 states have laws that fine or remove electors for breaking their promise. The question before the Supreme Court was whether these laws are constitutional. The U.S. method of picking presidents is unique in the world. 2016 schemeWhen Americans cast their ballots for a presidential candidate, they are actually choosing members of the Electoral College, the 538-member body that meets later to formally elect the president. To become president, a candidate needs at least 270 electoral votes.  In November 2016, shortly after Donald Trump’s victory but before the Electoral College voted, a group of Democratic presidential electors concocted a scheme to head off the real estate mogul’s entry to the White House.  With no Republican elector willing to jump ship and pick Hillary Clinton, Democratic electors Peter Chiafalo and Michael Baca figured the only way they could stop Trump was to persuade other electors to “write in” a compromise candidate such as former Secretary of State Colin Powell. Recruiting four fellow Democratic members of the Electoral College, they formed a group they called the “Hamilton Electors,” claiming that American founding father Alexander Hamilton wanted electors to stop an “unqualified demagogue” from taking office. Not a single Republican elector flipped. But when Chiafalo and two fellow Democratic electors in Washington state went ahead and voted for Powell instead of Clinton, the winner of the statewide vote, state authorities fined each $1,000. In Baca’s case in Colorado, another state carried by Clinton, he was removed before he could cast his vote for another Republican candidate.  The Democratic activists then sued their states for disciplining them, setting off a legal chain reaction that ended up before the Supreme Court this year.  ‘Free agents’ or ‘proxies’?The questions before the justices boiled down to this: Are electors “free agents” allowed to vote their minds, or are they “proxies” for the popular will? And can states punish them if they go against the wishes of the voters? During oral arguments in May, lawyers for Chiafalo and Baca argued that while states have the power under the Constitution to appoint members of the Electoral College, they have the right to vote however they please. But lawyers for Washington state and Colorado said that the Constitution gives states the power to both appoint and remove the electors. What’s more, they said, allowing electors to vote as they wish could lead to chaos in presidential elections The Supreme Court sided with the states. Kagan wrote that the U.S. Constitution gives states “broad powers over electors and gives electors themselves no rights.”  “Among the devices states have long used to achieve their object are pledge laws, designed to impress on electors their role as agents of others,” she wrote. “A state follows in the same tradition if, like Washington, it chooses to sanction an elector for breaching his promise.”  When a state tells its electors that they can’t vote against the wishes of the people, Kagan continued, that “direction accords with the Constitution — as well as with the trust of a nation that here, We the People rule.” Historically, faithless voting has been a rarity: In more than two centuries, only 100 or so electors have defected, and they have never changed the outcome of a presidential election. In 2016, seven electors cast “faithless” votes, the most in a century, but well short of what was needed to sway the election. This is the first time in 34 years that the court has decided a case after the July 4th Independence Day holiday. Oral arguments in 10 cases, including those involving the faithless electors, were conducted via teleconference in May after the high court postponed arguments in March and April because of the coronavirus pandemic. 
 
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Gallup Poll: 38% of Americans Approve of Trump’s Performance

A new Gallup poll showed Monday that 38% of Americans approve of President Donald Trump’s White House performance, a figure largely unchanged in the last month but off sharply from early May. Trump, facing a tough reelection contest in November against former Democratic Vice President Joe Biden, tied his personal best approval rating of 49% two months ago. But his standing dropped sharply in late May and early June amid coast-to-coast demonstrations, some of them turning violent, against police abuse of minorities in the wake of the death of African American George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  Trump expressed his support for peaceful protests, while saying Americans wanted law and order, and voiced continued backing for police.   FILE – Democratic presidential candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden speaks at Alexis Dupont High School in Wilmington, Del., June 30, 2020.Four months ahead of the national vote, Trump’s approval rating now stands three percentage points above his personal low of 35% recorded on four separate occasions in 2017. A collection of national polls by the Real Clear Politics website shows Biden leading Trump by an average of nearly nine percentage points. The latest Gallup poll shows an unprecedented political divide in America.  The pollster said its June 8-30 survey showed Republican support of Trump increasing from 85% to 91%, with Democratic approval dropping from 5% to 2%. His support from self-described independent voters eroded from 39% to 33%. Gallup said the 89-point difference between the approval of Trump by Republican and Democratic voters was the largest it had ever recorded in decades of polling. Trump’s decline in approval was apparent across a range of voter subgroups, Gallup said. It said his standing is now less than a majority level among groups “that are typically more favorable to him, including non-Hispanic white Americans, men, older Americans, Southerners and those without a college degree.” The pollster said Trump retains a 57% approval rating among white Americans without a college degree, but the figure is off from 66% earlier in the year. Trump’s overall June standing in a reelection year is similar to that of the only two presidents who lost reelection bids in the last four decades — Jimmy Carter in 1980 and George H.W. Bush in 1992. 
 
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Trump’s Leadership Tested in Time of Fear, Pandemic

Not long after noon on Feb. 6, President Donald Trump strode into the elegant East Room of the White House. The night before, his impeachment trial had ended with acquittal in the Republican-controlled Senate. It was time to gloat and settle scores.
“It was evil,” Trump said of the attempt to end his presidency. “It was corrupt. It was dirty cops. It was leakers and liars.”
It was also soon forgotten. On Feb. 6, in California, a 57-year-old woman was found dead in her home of natural causes then unknown. When her autopsy report came out, officials said her death had been the first from COVID-19 in the U.S.
The “invisible enemy” was on the move. And civil unrest over racial injustice would soon claw at the country. If that were not enough, there came a fresh round of angst over Russia, and America would ask whether Trump had the backs of troops targeted by bounty hunters in Afghanistan.
For Trump, the virus has been the most persistent of those problems. But he has not even tried to make a common health crisis the subject of national common ground and serious purpose. He has refused to wear a mask, setting off a culture war in the process as his followers took their cues from him.  
Instead he spoke about preening with a mask when the cameras were off: “I had a mask on,” he said this past week. “I sort of liked the way I looked … like the Lone Ranger.”  
These are times of pain, mass death, fear and deprivation and the Trump show may be losing its allure, exposing the empty space once filled by the empathy and seriousness of presidents leading in a crisis.  
Bluster isn’t beating the virus; belligerence isn’t calming a restive nation.  
Angry and scornful at every turn, Trump used the totems of Mount Rushmore as his backdrop to play on the country’s racial divisions, denouncing the “bad, evil people” behind protests for racial justice. He then made a steamy Fourth of July salute to America on the White House South Lawn his platform to assail “the radical left, the anarchists, the agitators, the looters,” and, for good measure, people with “absolutely no clue.”
“If he could change, he would,” said Cal Jillson, a presidential scholar at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. “It’s not helping him now. It’s just nonstop. It is habitual and incurable. He is who he is.”
Over three and a half years Trump exhausted much of the country, while exhilarating some of it, with his constant brawls, invented realities, outlier ways and pop-up dramas of his own making. Into summer, one could wonder whether Trump had finally exhausted even himself.
Vainglorious always, Trump recently let down that front long enough to ponder the possibility that he could lose in November, not from the fabricated voting shenanigans he likes to warn about but simply because the country may not want him after all of this.  
“Some people don’t love me,” he allowed.
“Maybe.”Victory Lap
On Feb. 5 in the White House residence, Trump had watched all the Republican senators, save Mitt Romney of Utah, dutifully vote to acquit, ending the third impeachment trial in U.S. history.  
His rambling, angry, 62-minute remarks the next day were meant to air out grievances and unofficially launch Trump’s reelection bid — with the crucible of impeachment behind him, his so-so approval ratings unharmed, Republicans unified and the economy roaring.
The president’s advisers also watched, relieved that the shadow of impeachment — which loomed first due to Russia’s U.S. election interference, then his Ukraine machinations — was now behind them, letting them focus on the reelection battle ahead.  
The plan was taking shape: a post-trial barnstorming tour, rallies meant to compete with the Democratic primaries and a chance for the president to dive into the reelection fight that had animated so many of his decisions thus far in his term, according to some of the 10 current and former administration and campaign officials who requested anonymity to speak candidly for this story.
A few days earlier, the first coronavirus death outside China had been recorded, in the Philippines. Known cases of the disease in the U.S. were under a dozen. The U.S. had declared a public health emergency and restricted travel to and from China. But this was not something Trump wanted to talk about in the glow of acquittal and fog of grievance, and events had not yet forced his hand.
The day was meant to mark a new chapter in Trump’s presidency. It did. But not the one the president and his people expected.  The Longest Day 
Trump’s whirlwind trip to India was meant to be a celebration and in some ways was. He addressed a rally crowd of 100,000 and visited the Taj Mahal.  
But in a quick talk to business people at the U.S. ambassador’s residence, he felt compelled to address the virus, which had begun rattling the foundation for his argument for another four years in office: the economy.
Fighting jet lag and anxiety about a dive in the stock market, Trump was up much of the previous night on the phone with advisers, peppering them with questions about the potential economic fallout of the outbreak, according to the officials who spoke with The Associated Press.
“We lost almost 1,000 points yesterday on the market, and that’s something,” Trump told the two dozen or so business leaders. “Things like that happen where — and you have it in your business all the time — it had nothing to do with you; it’s an outside source that nobody would have ever predicted.”
The virus was “a problem that’s going to go away,” he said. “Our country is under control.”  
But the markets fell again the next day, creating their biggest two-day slide in four years. When Trump boarded Air Force One well after sundown in India, he was in a rage about the virus and his inability to slow the market tumble with reassuring words, according to the officials.  
Trump barely slept on the plane as it hurtled back to Washington overnight, landing early in the morning Feb. 26 after more than a dozen hours in the air, creating the effect of one endless day. He then quickly tore into aides about Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, who had publicly predicted that the virus’ impact would be severe.  
It was already too late to pretend otherwise, not that Trump stopped trying. Warning signs had been missed. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention failed in an early attempt at a coronavirus test. Trump had refused to turn up the pressure on China for fear of alienating Xi Jinping and scuttling a trade deal.
His conventional weapons failed him. The virus doesn’t have a Twitter account.
“Trump was elected to burn down the system and entertain,” said Eric Dezenhall, a crisis-management consultant who has followed Trump’s business, TV and political careers.
“When things get terrible, people don’t want a leader to burn down the system and entertain. We actually want a system. And you can’t bully a disease, which has been his one maneuver for 74 years.”
The president returned to the West Wing to watch the market fall yet again and told aides that, later that day, he would take the podium and preside over the coronavirus task force briefing for the first time. This would become a daily ritual for Trump to try to force his belief that the virus was under control even as infections surged and the death toll mounted.
The virus was not the only exterior event shaping his week. Three days later, Joe Biden began his remarkable political comeback by trouncing Bernie Sanders in the South Carolina Democratic primary.
Trump’s assumption that he would be running on the back of a strong economy against a socialist had been flipped on its head.  
Coronavirus cases were about to soar.The Briefing 
At an April 23 briefing that would live in infamy and make some comedy careers, Trump wasn’t really listening. By this day about 50,000 Americans had died from COVID-19.
Trump has long had trouble focusing in meetings, hearing one piece of information and often going off on tangents, frequently a memory from his time in New York real estate.  
Instead, he focused on the televised briefings and relished his jousting with reporters. He scheduled them for the late afternoon or early evening and would tell aides and confidants about the huge ratings they’d get, according to the officials.
The briefings would often stretch more than an hour, the vital health information from public health officials often drowned out by Trump’s attacks on the media and insistence that the pandemic was under control when, in late April, it decidedly was not.
 
Trump’s aides had already begun counseling the president to scale back or stop altogether his appearances at the briefings, nervously watching polls that found his scattershot performances were eroding support, particularly among older people, the group most vulnerable to COVID-19.
Trump refused. He told aides that his successes in politics were from dominating the stage and he was not going to give that up, particularly when his beloved campaign rallies were suspended and he couldn’t run the race against Biden that he wanted.
But in the task force meeting that April 23, Trump only somewhat heard or understood a discussion about a study detailing the use of light and disinfectants to help kill the coronavirus on surfaces.
He then began a dialogue with William Bryan, acting head of science at the Department of Homeland Security, who said the “virus dies quickest in sunlight.” Trump had a thought or two about that.
“So supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it’s ultraviolet or just a very powerful light — and I think you said that hasn’t been checked because of the testing,” Trump said in a helpful tone. “And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or some other way, and I think you said you’re going to test that, too.”
“Then I see the disinfectant,” he continued, even more perilously. “Knocks it out in a minute.” Perhaps an “injection inside or almost a cleaning.”
“It would be interesting to check that.”
The uproar was instantaneous, the White House’s attempted cleanup futile. Soon, the briefings would be canceled, the president surrendering his pulpit in the midst of sinking poll numbers and growing questions about his fitness for the job.
What might have worked for Trump before the pandemic stopped working as the death toll mounted and the president looked increasingly out of his element, Jillson said.
“People would watch Trump and see the instability … the emergencies of his own making he would then claim to have taken care of, and be mildly entertained or at least not deeply worried,” he said. But now? “A lot of that ‘Am I still amused?’ quickly gets to a ‘No’ answer.
“You’re never going to come out a major natural disaster unscathed but you can mitigate the damage by an empathetic response that describes the path out of this. That’s what Trump is literally incapable of doing.”The Bunker 
The chants could be heard inside the White House residence.
George Floyd, a Black man, had died under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer, igniting several nights of protests in the Twin Cities. Trump had said little about the death but was quick to denounce the violence that accompanied some of the demonstrations. “When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” he tweeted, a threat flagged by the social media company and pilloried by Democrats because it reprised the language of a racist Miami police chief in the 1960s.
That Friday afternoon, May 29, as racial unrest now gripped the country and the virus death toll stood at more than 100,000, Trump spoke to reporters from the Rose Garden about China. He did not mention Floyd’s name.
That night, the protests reached Trump’s front yard.  
Thousands of people descended on Lafayette Square, clashing with law enforcement and overwhelming the security perimeter hastily set up just a few hundred yards from the front fencing of the White House. The size and energy of the protest had caught the Secret Service off guard and Trump, along with members of his immediate family, were rushed to an underground bunker, usually used to protect presidents during possible terrorist attacks.
The president’s tweeting continued, threatening a further crackdown against the protests, which he depicted as unlawful even though the vast majority were peaceful. When the bunker story became public, Trump reacted in a rage, screaming at aides to find the leaker, whom he deemed a traitor, and angry that it made him look weak, according to the officials. In the days that followed, Trump argued unconvincingly that he was only in the bunker to inspect it.
It was that anger — and a reflexive desire to align himself with law enforcement even when polling indicated widespread support for the protests — that led Trump to make one of the defining decisions of his term. He authorized the clearing of the square so he could walk across to the nearby “Church of the Presidents,” which was damaged during the protests, and hold up a Bible.
The photo op went terribly wrong. Democrats likened it to the actions of an authoritarian while Republicans dissociated themselves from the spectacle. Aides cast blame on each other and even Trump privately admitted that he did not expect the fierce blowback.
Trump issued an executive order directing the government to establish a national database tracking police officers who lose their jobs for misconduct and freeing grant money to improve policing practices. With these steps, Trump “turned justified anger into meaningful action,” said deputy White House press secretary Sarah Matthews.
She spoke of a “whole-of-America response to this pandemic” that let states decide when and how to reopen and ensures “the federal government will be there to support states if needed.”
Trump’s instinct, his ability to read a moment, had long been his strength as a politician. But from the bunker to the church to his increasingly lonely defense of Confederate monuments, he appeared out of step even with many Republicans on matters of race and in denial about the ravages of COVID-19.
“In a crisis, when you lack an operational solution, all you are left with is humanity,” Dezenhall said. “This is just a situation where Trump cannot pivot because he views empathy as the equivalent of running down Pennsylvania Avenue in high heels and a tutu.”The Sacred And the Profane 
The empty seats made him angry.
The rally in Tulsa was supposed to signal his comeback, the first mega campaign event since the onset of the pandemic. It was to be a show of political defiance and force in deep-red Oklahoma, reassuring nervous Republicans.
It didn’t turn out that way.
Despite campaign boasts of 1 million ticket requests, only slightly more than 6,000 people came to the indoor rally in a space holding 19,000. An overflow space went unused. Fears of the virus and protests kept many away. But the scant crowd also raised questions about whether the Trump show was wearing thin even with his supporters in red hats.
It was June 20. The virus death toll was closing in on 120,000.
The woebegone rally was part of a bet his campaign was making and still is. It’s predicated on the belief that few voters who don’t like Trump can be persuaded to swing behind him now, so success lies in motivating those who are still with him.
The plan: First, drive up negative opinions about Biden, whom the Trump campaign believes is liked by perhaps 60% of the country, if tepidly.  
Second, on the theory that a largely unwavering 40% of the country likes the president, Trump would serve up policies and rhetoric to generate enough enthusiasm to turn out that slice of the country to vote.
A key recent stop for that plan was Arizona, where Trump in 109-degree Yuma heat marked progress on the border wall central to his 2016 campaign.
Then a speech at a Phoenix megachurch, a nod to evangelicals and a group of avid young Republicans. And when Trump looked out at the rows, he saw none of the empty seats that bedeviled him in Tulsa just three days earlier.
Trump reveled in the crowd, speaking for more than 90 minutes and getting the in-person adulation he had been missing for months. He did not mention that his supporters in the church were placing themselves and others at risk by sitting close together and not wearing masks.
Confirmed infections and hospitalizations in Arizona have hit daily records.
The president boarded Air Force One in an ebullient mood, telling aides to return to scheduling rallies — perhaps in smaller venues than Tulsa, perhaps outside — that could soon again get him in front of a crowd, the officials said.  
No rallies have been held since Tulsa. One is coming up Saturday in New Hampshire, to be held outside at Portsmouth’s airport. The virus has come roaring back in widespread parts of the country, pushing the death toll to about 130,000.
White House counselor Kellyanne Conway acknowledged “it’s a new world” because of the pandemic and many Trump supporters won’t go to a traditional rally because it’s “high risk, low reward for them,” given that they already back the president.
Nonetheless, Trump tried to entice the masses to his July Fourth event, drawing only a scattered crowd to the National Mall for an air show and fireworks while he remained at the White House, hosting several hundred invited guests on the South Lawn.
There his angry words washed over the guests and ricocheted across the country.  
The people in front of him were said to be medical and other front-line workers in the pandemic and law enforcement. But he was speaking really to his most fervent supporters around the country, tapping the divide over race and culture and making it about us versus them — the leftists, the looters and the clueless.
He cast himself as the defender of heritage and the “American way of life.”
He wore no mask. But the Lone Ranger was riding again.
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AP Fact Check: Trump Falsely Says 99% of Virus Cases Benign

President Donald Trump is understating the danger of the coronavirus to people who get it, as more and more become infected in the U.S.  
In his latest of many statements playing down the severity of the pandemic, Trump declared that 99% of cases of COVID-19 are harmless. That flies in the face of science and of the reality captured by the U.S. death toll of about 130,000. Trump also sounded a dismissive note about the need for breathing machines.
Throughout the pandemic, Trump has declared it under control in the U.S. when it hasn’t been. His remarks on that subject and more from the past week:Virus threatTrump: “Now we have tested over 40 million people. But by so doing, we show cases, 99% of which are totally harmless.” — Fourth of July remarks Saturday.The Facts: This statement does not reflect the suffering of millions of COVID-19 patients.
The World Health Organization, for one, has said about 20% of those diagnosed with COVID-19 progress to severe disease, including pneumonia and respiratory failure. Whatever the numbers turn out to be, it’s clear that the threat is not limited to the merest sliver of those who get the disease.
Aside from that, those with mild or no symptoms also can spread the virus to others who are more vulnerable.
Asked Sunday to defend Trump’s claim, Food and Drug Administration commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn declined to do so. He instead urged Americans not to back off the federal government’s public health measures urging social distancing and wearing a mask.
“What I’ll say is that we have data in the White House task force,” Hahn told CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Those data show us that this is a serious problem. People need to take it seriously.”Trump: “Our tremendous Testing success gives the Fake News Media all they want, CASES. In the meantime, Deaths and the all important Mortality Rate goes down. … Anybody need any Ventilators???” — tweet Saturday.The Facts: No, increased testing does not fully account for the rise in cases. People are also infecting each other more than before as distancing rules recede and “community spread” picks up. And as cases surge, so has demand for ventilators once again in parts of the U.S.
“One of the things is an increase in community spread, and that’s something that I’m really quite concerned about,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, testified Tuesday.
Adm. Brett Giroir, the Health and Human Services official overseeing the nation’s coronavirus testing efforts, told Congress on Thursday that the increases can’t be explained by just additional testing. “We do believe this is a real increase in cases because of the percent positivities are going up,” he said.
In areas of the U.S., the demand for ventilators is approaching the highs seen in April. For instance, the number of patients requiring ventilators in Miami-Dade County has increased from 61 two weeks ago to 158 on Saturday, according to Miami-Dade figures posted by the county online. The highest number of patients on ventilators was 198, on April 9.
As for Trump’s point about mortality coming down, Fauci said that is not a relevant measure of what is happening in the moment with infections. “Deaths always lag considerably behind cases,” he said. “It is conceivable you may see the deaths going up.”Trump: “We’ve made a lot of progress; our strategy is moving along well. …We’ve learned how to put out the flame.” — Fourth of July remarks Saturday.  
Trump, describing the COVID-19 threat as “getting under control”: “Some (places) were doing very well, and we thought they (the virus) may be gone and they flare up, and we’re putting out the fires.” — remarks Thursday on a jobs report.Trump: “I think we are going to be very good with the coronavirus. I think that, at some point, that’s going to sort of just disappear, I hope.” — interview Wednesday on Fox Business Network.The Facts: “The virus is not going to disappear,” says Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert. Nor can it be considered “under control” and its flame “put out” as cases have been surging to fresh daily highs.  
The number of confirmed cases in the U.S. per day has roughly doubled over the past month, hitting over 50,000 this past week, according to a count kept by Johns Hopkins University. That is higher even than what the country experienced from mid-April through early May, when deaths sharply rose.
Fauci warned last week that the increase across the South and West “puts the entire country at risk” and that new infections could reach 100,000 a day if people don’t start listening to guidance from public health authorities to wear a mask and practice social distancing.
Arizona, California, Florida and Texas have recently been forced to shut down bars and businesses as virus cases surge. The U.S. currently has more than 2.7 million known cases and many more undetected.
Fauci has said there “certainly” will be coronavirus infections in the fall and winter.Vice President Mike Pence: “While we’re monitoring about 16 states that are seeing outbreaks, it represents about 4% of all the counties in this country.” — interview with CBS aired on June 28.The Facts: That’s a misleading portrayal of the virus threat. More than 20% of Americans actually live in those relatively few counties.
The White House provided The Associated Press with the full list of U.S. counties that reported increases in COVID-19 cases as of a week ago, when Pence and other administration officials repeatedly cited the low county tally. The list showed 137 of the 3,142 counties in the U.S. that were under a higher alert — indeed, about 4% in that snapshot of time.
But measured by population, those counties represent a vastly higher share — more than 1 in 5 people in the U.S.
Altogether there are 68.3 million people living in those 137 counties, while there is a total U.S. population of 322.9 million. That means 21.1% of U.S. residents actually live in the virus “hot spots” identified in the list.Trump on BidenTrump: “Biden was asked questions at his so-called Press Conference yesterday where he read the answers from a teleprompter. That means he was given the questions.” — tweet Wednesday.The Facts: Joe Biden, Trump’s Democratic presidential rival, did not read answers off a teleprompter. Nor did the AP, which asked the first question at the briefing, submit questions in advance.  
Biden used a teleprompter to read prepared remarks that took aim at Trump’s handling of the coronavirus, before the questions and answers started, at which point the teleprompter appeared to have been turned off.  
Biden’s campaign gave him a list of news organizations to call on and he answered questions from reporters on that list as well as some he chose spontaneously. That’s not an uncommon practice when officials give news conferences.  
Video footage shows that during nearly 30 minutes of questions and answers, Biden often looked directly at the reporter, not at the teleprompter. His answers were at times long-winded, without the practiced pauses typically heard in prepared speeches.
Biden campaign national press secretary TJ Ducklo called Trump’s allegation “laughable, ludicrous and a lie.”
Trump’s accusation reflected his tactic of trying to stir doubts about Biden’s mental acuity.Trump: “He wants to defund and abolish police.” — interview Wednesday on “America This Week.”
The Facts: Biden does not join the call of protesters who demanded “defund the police” after George Floyd’s killing.
“I don’t support defunding the police,” Biden said last month in a CBS interview. But he said he would support conditioning federal aid to police based on whether “they meet certain basic standards of decency, honorableness and, in fact, are able to demonstrate they can protect the community, everybody in the community.”
Biden’s criminal justice agenda, released long before he became the Democrats’ presumptive presidential nominee, proposes more federal money for “training that is needed to avert tragic, unjustifiable deaths” and hiring more officers to ensure that departments are racially and ethnically reflective of the populations they serve.
Specifically, he calls for a $300 million infusion into existing federal community policing grant programs.
That adds up to more money for police, not defunding law enforcement.
Biden also wants the federal government to spend more on education, social services and struggling areas of cities and rural America, to address root causes of crime.War in Iraq
Kayleigh Mcenany, White House press secretary: “You have this President who, when Washington was unanimous in saying, ‘We’re going into Iraq,’ this President said, ‘No, that’s not the right decision.'” — news briefing Tuesday.The Facts: That’s false. Trump voiced support for going into Iraq, as much as he and now his press secretary insist otherwise. And Washington was not unanimous in supporting the invasion.
On Sept. 11, 2002, when radio host Howard Stern asked Trump whether he supported a potential Iraq invasion, Trump said: “Yeah, I guess so.”
On March 21, 2003, just days after the invasion, Trump said it “looks like a tremendous success from a military standpoint.”
Later that year, he began expressing reservations.
More than 150 members of Congress voted against the 2002 resolution to authorize President George W. Bush to use military force against Iraq. That is not unanimity.  MemorialsTrump: “We are tracking down the two Anarchists who threw paint on the magnificent George Washington Statue in Manhattan. … They will be prosecuted and face 10 years in Prison.” — tweet Tuesday.Trump: “Since imposing a very powerful 10 year prison sentence on those that Vandalize Monuments, Statues etc., with many people being arrested all over our Country, the Vandalism has completely stopped.” — tweet on June 28.The Facts: Trump does not have the authority to impose prison sentences — a president is not a judge. Nor can he toughen penalties on his own.
Trump signed an executive order last week to protect monuments, memorials and statues, calling on the attorney general to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law any person or group that destroys or vandalizes a monument, memorial or statue.
The order basically instructs the attorney general to enforce laws that already exist.  Associated Press writers Adriana Gomez Licon in Miami, and Alexandra Jaffe, Zeke Miller and Darlene Superville in Washington contributed to this report.
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This Voter Group Could Sway 2020 Election

Ian Martens, a rising junior at Furman University in South Carolina, says President Donald Trump has “done a great job building our economy up,” and he likes the fact that Trump “stands up for Second Amendment rights,” or the right to bear arms. “Most importantly, he is the most pro-life president,” Martens told VOA, calling that political issue for him “a debate between life and death.” While the youth vote — now the largest voting bloc in the U.S. — is predicted to have a significant impact on the 2020 election, young white males like Martens may play an outsized role in determining the election.  Young white males “form a sizable and sometimes disproportionate swath of the American electorate,” reported the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts.  Young white males came out in force in the 2016 presidential election: One million more young white males went to the polls and cast a vote than young white females, and they preferred Republican candidate Trump to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton by 22 percentage points.And two years later in the 2018 midterm elections, while the majority – 60% — of young voters ages 18 to 29 identified with the Democratic Party, more than four in 10 young white men said they favored Trump, according to the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization. They voted more than Latino and Black men in the 2018 midterm elections, according to the Tufts analysis of 2018 Census Current Population Survey (CPS) data, and they make up a larger portion of the population in “some pivotal swing states like Iowa, Ohio, and New Hampshire,” CIRCLE reported.Top issues  Priorities among young white male voters are “Make America Great Again and the gun rights movements,” according to CIRCLE.“I support President Trump because he brought up issues career politicians have neglected for decades, from highlighting working-class men and women all across this country, addressing the needs of farmers to protecting national interests overseas,” Cody Steed, a member of College Republicans at Florida Atlantic University, wrote in an email to VOA.  “I feel that he truly cares for the progression and success of this country,” Steed said.  Gun rights are pivotal for many young voters. In 2018, 77 percent of young American voters said that gun control was an important issue in determining their vote, according to the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics. The anti-abortion movement is important to some young white male voters, as well. Overall, 46% of men overall oppose abortion, according to a 2019 Gallup poll. “The pro-life debate is the most important ‘political’ issue in my opinion, because it is most directly a debate between life and death,” Martens said. “Each abortion is the ending of a life, so that is why I am most passionate about that because I am not in favor of ending precious babies’ lives.”  By comparison, the same poll found 43% of women overall identified as supporting abortion rights, with 62% between the ages of 18 and 29. Forty-six percent of these women identified as “total Hispanic or nonwhite.” Young white men join the ranks of “disaffected, middle-aged, working-class white men [who] were credited with one of the biggest political upsets in American presidential politics,” VOA reported.The Young White Men Who Back Trump

        As he drives along a rural Ohio road where cellphone service can be spotty, Rylee Cupp, 21, reflects on how he overcame reservations about Donald Trump to emerge as a strong supporter of the president. “Looking now, after everything I see that Trump has done,” he says, “and the positives that have happened to the country, with the booming economy, a great pick for the Supreme Court, and of course now, denuclearization talks with North Korea, I can confidently say that I would happily vote for Donald…

At a Trump youth rally in Phoenix June 23, young white men took the stage with President Trump, one of his adult sons, and several other lawmakers and officials – all older white males.Arizona Trump Rally Focuses on Youth Vote Students for Trump event draws an estimated 3,000 conservative voters who belong to the block of 18- to 29-year-olds who may be key to 2020 election “What a day at the @TrumpStudents convention in Phoenix,” tweeted Twitter user @realRyanShear after the youth rally in Phoenix. “So many great speakers and stories. Young conservatives won’t back down to the leftist mob that wants to silence our freedom of thought and speech. #Trump2020”One engine for young white men is S4T, founded in 2015 by Campbell University students Ryan Fournier and John Lambert, that has “over 5,000 volunteers, 280 chapters, and over 13,000 vote pledges,” as of October 2019, it states on its website.  Confidence to act  A 2018 study from CIRCLE showed that young white men’s “self-perceived civic efficacy was relatively high,” 39 percent of them hold a belief that they are “well-qualified” to engage in politics, a higher percentage than that of young white women or of young men and women of color.Despite this, however, a majority of – 60% — “young white men were the least likely subgroup of youth to feel heard by their elected officials.”But these voters do not uniformly echo the concerns of older white men in the Republican Party.  A study done by Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics found that many young Americans support getting rid of the Electoral College as well as private health insurance. Additionally, a “majority” of those surveyed support background checks for assault weapons. “I would also like Trump to support and advance bipartisan legislation protecting clean air and water, investment in infrastructure, and economic support for disadvantaged communities in the form of a system different than our current assistance programs.” Steed said.  “I would very much like to see advanced … his personal promise in 2016 to broaden the overall party to be more inclusive of same-sex marriage and individuals who identify with the LGBT community,” Steed added.  “We are blessed with tremendous freedoms because of our founders, and that is something to celebrate and love, and President Trump does,” Martens said.  A Virginia native, Martens hasn’t campaigned for Trump, but says he likes talking with friends about politics and hopes that “people can see my side of things and I can explain it with compassion and kindness.” What’s needed in the U.S. is a “cultural shift,” Martens says, such as a return to traditional religious values.  “A lot of conservative values are rooted in religion and religious principles and values, but as people move away from religion, we are losing the important aspects religion brings to our communities,” he said.  Conservatives not Republicans  Since the 2018 midterm elections, however, the president has faced criticisms for his handling of a variety of issues, including foreign interference in U.S. politics, but also the more recent coronavirus pandemic and protests caused by racial strife.  Among the critics are some conservative white males — ardent conservatives or Trump supporters four years ago, but who now have taken to social media to explain how they’ve changed their mind in whom they will support this this election year.  “I want to say to every woman, Muslim, member of the LGBTQ+ community, minorities, victims of sexual assault, and many others, I’m sorry,” Zach from North Carolina said in a video tweet from @RVAT2020, who said he voted for Trump in 2016.  “You deserve so much more than a man who … enacts legislation that moves us backwards on social issues and individual liberty,” he said.Trey, an 18-year-old from Texas, said he was “extremely excited to be able to vote for the Republican candidate to finally uphold the conservative values I’ve been raised with and that I believe in.”  “I’ve been waiting for this year for a while,” he explained in a video on Twitter. “The Christian faith that Donald Trump claims to uphold is in no way, shape or form apparent in the way he acts. It’s all meant to be a facade to court the Republican vote, and his policies have steered what Republicanism and conservatism mean in a completely different direction than in what I believe in,” he said. Trey said he would be voting for someone who “upholds character, leadership, the ability to court both sides of the political aisle. … and that is certainly not Donald J. Trump.” “I do think that America can return to that shining city on a hill that (former President Ronald) Reagan once referred to us as,” tweeted @PrestonBrailer, who attends the University of Pennsylvania and describes himself as conservative. “But first, I think, Donald Trump and the current GOP leadership need to be voted out.” 
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Trump-Connected Lobbyists Reap Windfall in COVID-19 Boom

Forty lobbyists with ties to President Donald Trump helped clients secure more than $10 billion in federal coronavirus aid, among them five former administration officials whose work potentially violates Trump’s own ethics policy, according to a report.
The lobbyists identified Monday by the watchdog group Public Citizen either worked in the Trump executive branch, served on his campaign, were part of the committee that raised money for inaugural festivities or were part of his presidential transition. Many are donors to Trump’s campaigns, and some are prolific fundraisers for his reelection.  
They include Brian Ballard, who served on the transition, is the finance chair for the Republican National Committee and has bundled more than $1 million for Trump’s fundraising committees. He was hired in March by Laundrylux, a supplier of commercial laundry machines, after the Department of Homeland Security issued guidance that didn’t include laundromats as essential businesses that could stay open during the lockdown. A week later, the administration issued new guidance adding laundromats to the list.
Dave Urban, a Trump adviser and confidant, has collected more than $2.3 million in lobbying fees this year. The firm he leads, American Continental Group, represents 15 companies, including Walgreens and the parent company of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, on coronavirus issues.  
Trump pledged to clamp down on Washington’s influence peddling with a “drain the swamp” campaign mantra. But during his administration, the lobbying industry has flourished, a trend that intensified once Congress passed more than $3.6 trillion in coronavirus stimulus.
While the money is intended as a lifeline to a nation whose economy has been upended by the pandemic, it also jump-started a familiar lobbying bonanza.  
“The swamp is alive and well in Washington, D.C.,” said Mike Tanglis, one of the report’s authors. “These (lobbying) booms that these people are having, you can really attribute them to their connection to Trump.”  
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.  
Shortly after Trump took office, he issued an executive order prohibiting former administration officials from lobbying the agency or office where they were formerly employed, for a period of five years. Another section of the order forbids lobbying the administration by former political appointees for the remainder of Trump’s time in office.  
Yet five lobbyists who are former administration officials have potentially done just that during the coronavirus lobbying boom:  
— Courtney Lawrence was a former deputy assistant secretary for legislation in the Department of Health and Human Services in 2017 and 2018. She became a lobbyist for Cigna in 2018 and is listed as part of a team that has lobbied HHS, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and at least two other agencies. Cigna did not respond to a request for comment.  
— Shannon McGahn, the wife of former White House counsel Don McGahn, worked in 2017 and 2018 as a counselor to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. She then joined the National Association of Realtors as its top lobbyist and is listed on disclosures as part of a team that has lobbied both houses of Congress, plus six agencies, including the Treasury Department. The Realtors association did not respond to a request for comment.  
— Jordan Stoick is the vice president of government relations at the National Association of Manufacturers. Stoick’s biography on NAM’s website indicates that he is “NAM’s lead lobbyist in Washington,” where he started working after serving as a senior adviser in the Treasury Department. Disclosures indicate that Stoick and his colleagues lobbied both houses of Congress plus at least five executive branch agencies, including Treasury.  
“NAM carefully adheres to the legal and ethical rules regulating lobbying activity, including ensuring that its employees comply with all applicable prohibitions on contacting their former employers,” Linda Kelly, the organization’s general counsel, said in a statement.
— Geoffrey Burr joined the firm Brownstein Hyatt after serving as chief of staff to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. The firm’s lobbying disclosure for the first quarter of 2020 includes Burr on a list of lobbyists who contacted the White House and Congress on coronavirus-related matters on behalf of McDonald’s.
— Emily Felder joined Brownstein Hyatt after leaving the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, where she worked in the legislative office. Felder is listed on a disclosure from the first quarter of 2020 that shows she was part of a team that lobbied Congress and the White House.
A spokeswoman for the firm said both Felder and Burr abide by the Trump administration’s ethics rules, which limit their lobbying to the House and the Senate.  
“We are confident that our lobbyists are in compliance with all lobbying rules and applicable prohibitions and did not violate their Trump Administration pledge,” spokeswoman Lara Day said in a statement.  
Public Citizen’s Craig Holman, who himself is a registered lobbyist, said the group intends to file ethics complaints with the White House. But he’s not optimistic that they will lead to anything. Last year, he filed more than 30 complaints, all of which were either ignored or rejected.
“There does not appear to be anyone who is enforcing the executive order,” Holman said.
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Young White Males Formidable at the Polls

Ian Martens, a rising junior at Furman University in South Carolina, says President Donald Trump has “done a great job building our economy up,” and he likes the fact that Trump “stands up for Second Amendment rights,” or the right to bear arms. “Most importantly, he is the most pro-life president,” Martens told VOA, calling that political issue for him “a debate between life and death.” While the youth vote — now the largest voting bloc in the U.S. — is predicted to have a significant impact on the 2020 election, young white males like Martens may play an outsized role in determining the election.  Young white males “form a sizable and sometimes disproportionate swath of the American electorate,” reported the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts.  Young white males came out in force in the 2016 presidential election: One million more young white males went to the polls and cast a vote than young white females, and they preferred Republican candidate Trump to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton by 22 percentage points.And two years later in the 2018 midterm elections, while the majority – 60% — of young voters ages 18 to 29 identified with the Democratic Party, more than four in 10 young white men said they favored Trump, according to the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization. They voted more than Latino and Black men in the 2018 midterm elections, according to the Tufts analysis of 2018 Census Current Population Survey (CPS) data, and they make up a larger portion of the population in “some pivotal swing states like Iowa, Ohio, and New Hampshire,” CIRCLE reported.Top issues  Priorities among young white male voters are “Make America Great Again and the gun rights movements,” according to CIRCLE.“I support President Trump because he brought up issues career politicians have neglected for decades, from highlighting working-class men and women all across this country, addressing the needs of farmers to protecting national interests overseas,” Cody Steed, a member of College Republicans at Florida Atlantic University, wrote in an email to VOA.  “I feel that he truly cares for the progression and success of this country,” Steed said.  Gun rights are pivotal for many young voters. In 2018, 77 percent of young American voters said that gun control was an important issue in determining their vote, according to the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics. The anti-abortion movement is important to some young white male voters, as well. Overall, 46% of men overall oppose abortion, according to a 2019 Gallup poll. “The pro-life debate is the most important ‘political’ issue in my opinion, because it is most directly a debate between life and death,” Martens said. “Each abortion is the ending of a life, so that is why I am most passionate about that because I am not in favor of ending precious babies’ lives.”  By comparison, the same poll found 43% of women overall identified as supporting abortion rights, with 62% between the ages of 18 and 29. Forty-six percent of these women identified as “total Hispanic or nonwhite.” Young white men join the ranks of “disaffected, middle-aged, working-class white men [who] were credited with one of the biggest political upsets in American presidential politics,” VOA reported.The Young White Men Who Back Trump

        As he drives along a rural Ohio road where cellphone service can be spotty, Rylee Cupp, 21, reflects on how he overcame reservations about Donald Trump to emerge as a strong supporter of the president. “Looking now, after everything I see that Trump has done,” he says, “and the positives that have happened to the country, with the booming economy, a great pick for the Supreme Court, and of course now, denuclearization talks with North Korea, I can confidently say that I would happily vote for Donald…

At a Trump youth rally in Phoenix June 23, young white men took the stage with President Trump, one of his adult sons, and several other lawmakers and officials – all older white males.Arizona Trump Rally Focuses on Youth Vote Students for Trump event draws an estimated 3,000 conservative voters who belong to the block of 18- to 29-year-olds who may be key to 2020 election “What a day at the @TrumpStudents convention in Phoenix,” tweeted Twitter user @realRyanShear after the youth rally in Phoenix. “So many great speakers and stories. Young conservatives won’t back down to the leftist mob that wants to silence our freedom of thought and speech. #Trump2020”One engine for young white men is S4T, founded in 2015 by Campbell University students Ryan Fournier and John Lambert, that has “over 5,000 volunteers, 280 chapters, and over 13,000 vote pledges,” as of October 2019, it states on its website.  Confidence to act  A 2018 study from CIRCLE showed that young white men’s “self-perceived civic efficacy was relatively high,” 39 percent of them hold a belief that they are “well-qualified” to engage in politics, a higher percentage than that of young white women or of young men and women of color.Despite this, however, a majority of – 60% — “young white men were the least likely subgroup of youth to feel heard by their elected officials.”But these voters do not uniformly echo the concerns of older white men in the Republican Party.  A study done by Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics found that many young Americans support getting rid of the Electoral College as well as private health insurance. Additionally, a “majority” of those surveyed support background checks for assault weapons. “I would also like Trump to support and advance bipartisan legislation protecting clean air and water, investment in infrastructure, and economic support for disadvantaged communities in the form of a system different than our current assistance programs.” Steed said.  “I would very much like to see advanced … his personal promise in 2016 to broaden the overall party to be more inclusive of same-sex marriage and individuals who identify with the LGBT community,” Steed added.  “We are blessed with tremendous freedoms because of our founders, and that is something to celebrate and love, and President Trump does,” Martens said.  A Virginia native, Martens hasn’t campaigned for Trump, but says he likes talking with friends about politics and hopes that “people can see my side of things and I can explain it with compassion and kindness.” What’s needed in the U.S. is a “cultural shift,” Martens says, such as a return to traditional religious values.  “A lot of conservative values are rooted in religion and religious principles and values, but as people move away from religion, we are losing the important aspects religion brings to our communities,” he said.  Conservatives not Republicans  Since the 2018 midterm elections, however, the president has faced criticisms for his handling of a variety of issues, including foreign interference in U.S. politics, but also the more recent coronavirus pandemic and protests caused by racial strife.  Among the critics are some conservative white males — ardent conservatives or Trump supporters four years ago, but who now have taken to social media to explain how they’ve changed their mind in whom they will support this this election year.  “I want to say to every woman, Muslim, member of the LGBTQ+ community, minorities, victims of sexual assault, and many others, I’m sorry,” Zach from North Carolina said in a video tweet from @RVAT2020, who said he voted for Trump in 2016.  “You deserve so much more than a man who … enacts legislation that moves us backwards on social issues and individual liberty,” he said.Trey, an 18-year-old from Texas, said he was “extremely excited to be able to vote for the Republican candidate to finally uphold the conservative values I’ve been raised with and that I believe in.”  “I’ve been waiting for this year for a while,” he explained in a video on Twitter. “The Christian faith that Donald Trump claims to uphold is in no way, shape or form apparent in the way he acts. It’s all meant to be a facade to court the Republican vote, and his policies have steered what Republicanism and conservatism mean in a completely different direction than in what I believe in,” he said. Trey said he would be voting for someone who “upholds character, leadership, the ability to court both sides of the political aisle. … and that is certainly not Donald J. Trump.” “I do think that America can return to that shining city on a hill that (former President Ronald) Reagan once referred to us as,” tweeted @PrestonBrailer, who attends the University of Pennsylvania and describes himself as conservative. “But first, I think, Donald Trump and the current GOP leadership need to be voted out.” 
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On July 4th, Trump Kicks Off ‘Law & Order’ Campaign

U.S. President Donald Trump spent the 4th of July weekend at Independence Day celebrations in South Dakota and Washington. He used both events to deliver a strong message on law and order, the platform that his campaign is focusing on ahead of the November election. White House correspondent Patsy Widakuswara traveled with Trump to South Dakota and brings us the story. 
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Trump, Biden Fight for Primacy on Social Media Platforms

On an average day, President Donald Trump sends about 14 posts to the 28 million Facebook followers of his campaign account. His Democratic rival, Joe Biden, delivers about half that many posts to an audience of just 2 million.The numbers are similarly skewed in other spheres of the social media landscape.On Twitter, Trump’s 82.4 million followers dwarf Biden’s 6.4 million. The president has spent years cultivating a ragtag digital “army” of meme makers and political influencers who retweet campaign messages hundreds of times daily. Trump is outspending Biden on Google and YouTube advertising by nearly 3 to 1.  As his reelection bid faces growing obstacles, his primacy in the dizzying digital world is one of his top advantages, giving him a massive platform to connect with supporters and push a message that ignores his vulnerabilities related to the pandemic, unemployment and race relations. Biden and his allies are now working feverishly to establish a social media force of their own.  For the first time, Biden outspent Trump on Facebook advertising in June, pouring twice as much money into the platform as the president. His campaign is recruiting Instagram supporters to hold virtual fundraisers. And it’s plotting ways to mobilize the power of hundreds of teens on TikTok who reserved tickets for Trump’s recent Oklahoma campaign rally and took credit for sinking the event by artificially inflating the crowd count before it began.  But Trump’s head start may be tough to overcome.”Vice President Biden and Trump have very different challenges right now,” said Tara McGowan, the founder of liberal digital firm Acronym and former digital director for the Democratic super PAC Priorities USA during the 2016 campaign. “Trump needs to hold his base … and Vice President Biden needs to define and in a lot of ways introduce himself to you new voters, and potential supporters.”But Trump’s unimpeded access to the digital microphone is facing its limits.Twitter is beginning to fact check Trump’s posts, including one that made unfounded claims that mail-in voting would lead to fraud. The company also alerted users when the president posted a manipulated video, and it hid his Twitter threat about shooting looters in Minneapolis.Under pressure in June as major companies yanked advertising from its site, Facebook promised it would label Trump posts when they break rules around voting or hate speech. Video messaging platform Snapchat last month also said it would keep the president’s account active and searchable but would stop showcasing his profile on the platform. And in a move to clamp down on hate and violent speech, the online comment forum Reddit decided to ban one of the president’s most prolific fan forums, The_Donald.FILE – Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden speaks during a campaign rally at Renaissance High School in Detroit, Michigan, March 9, 2020.Trump and Biden have strikingly divergent tactics on social media.A centerpiece of Trump’s digital efforts is the Team Trump Online! nightly live broadcasts streamed on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Twitch, an online streaming platform. The broadcasts feature top Trump surrogates including daughter-in-law Lara Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.Trump also tweets with far greater velocity, sending more than 160 Twitter messages during a seven-day period starting June 14, an Associated Press analysis of Trump and Biden’s accounts reveals. More than 50 of Trump’s posts were retweets from an assortment of users that included the U.S. Army, far-right meme makers, conservative news outlets, little-known congressional candidates and anonymous accounts that in some cases promoted conspiracy theories.  The president’s steady retweets of everyday users helps fans feel connected to him, said Logan Cook, a Kansas internet meme maker whose work Trump has regularly promoted on his social media accounts.  “President Trump’s team, they’re blending in with social media culture, which is also why they’re getting into so much trouble,” said Cook, whose Twitter account @CarpeDonktum was permanently suspended last week for copyright violations. His memes are controversial because he alters videos to mock Trump’s political rivals, including Biden.  Twitter users celebrate being retweeted by the president, or his inner circle, like the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., who has more than 5 million followers.  Trump’s followers see producing sardonic memes or videos as a game where the ultimate prize is a retweet from the president, said Misha Leybovich, a tech entrepreneur who produces social media engagement products that support Democratic candidates and causes.  “The fan base is having a blast,” Leybovich said. “If they never gave the fans the ability to be amplified by the president, the stakes would be lower.”Biden has stuck to a more conventional approach, tweeting nearly 60 messages during that same time, only a handful of which were retweets from verified accounts, like former President Barack Obama, or established news outlets. Every video Biden tweeted out over that week in June was produced by his own campaign.But the effectiveness of campaign messaging isn’t just about numbers, said Jennifer Mercieca, a political rhetoric professor at Texas A&M University.  “If you want to compare the attention and engagement metrics, it might look like Trump is way ahead, but that attention and outrage isn’t always good,” Mercieca said. “When a child is throwing a tantrum, you’re giving them attention, but it’s not because you approve of their behavior.”Indeed, the Biden campaign argues that despite being outmatched on social media, their engagement is strong.”The way that they treat their supporters, it’s about distraction. It’s about keeping them angry,” said Rob Friedlander, Biden campaign digital director. “For us it’s about, how do we make you feel like you’re brought into the campaign.”The campaign is creating Facebook groups, holding virtual events on Instagram and partnering with social media influencers who create posts in support of the campaign.  One such group is an Instagram account called Bake for Biden, which bakes bread and ships sourdough starters across the country in exchange for donations to Biden. The group was born out of what Brooklyn marketing executive Domenic Venuto first saw as an inadequate response from Biden’s campaign to Trump’s taunts and conspiracy theories.  Venuto said he’s come to understand the campaign’s digital strategy of ignoring Trump’s attacks.  “They’ve been very good at promoting values and shying away from being baited into the same tactics (as the Trump campaign),” Venuto said. 
 
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On 4th of July, Trump Kicks Off ‘Law & Order’ Campaign

U.S. President Donald Trump spent the 4th of July weekend at Independence Day celebrations in South Dakota and Washington. He used both events to deliver a strong message on law and order, the platform that his campaign is focusing on ahead of the November election. White House correspondent Patsy Widakuswara traveled with Trump to South Dakota and brings us the story. 
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Kanye West Wants the Oval Office

Kanye West announced on Twitter on Saturday that he intends to run for president of the United States this year.“We must now realize the promise of America by trusting God, unifying our vision and building our future. I am running for president of the United States,” the entertainer posted on his Twitter account with the hashtag #2020VISION.We must now realize the promise of America by trusting God, unifying our vision and building our future. I am running for president of the United States 🇺🇸! #2020VISION
— ye (@kanyewest) July 5, 2020It was not immediately clear if West, who is married to internet maven Kim Kardashian, is ready to actually mount a serious campaign against U.S. President Donald Trump and the presumptive Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, in the November election.West has previously been an outspoken supporter of Trump, even meeting with him in the Oval Office at the White House.West has mentioned on several occasions that he would like to run for the country’s highest office.West’s friend and car mogul Elon Musk has endorsed West: “You have my full support!,” Musk posted on Twitter.You have my full support!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 5, 2020
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Mississippi Could Drop Jim Crow-era Statewide Voting Process

Mississippi just ditched its Confederate-themed state flag. Later this year, the state’s voters will decide whether to dump a statewide election process that dates to the Jim Crow era.Facing pressure from a lawsuit and the possibility of action from a federal judge, legislators are putting a  state constitutional amendment on the ballot in November.  The amendment would simplify elections for governor and other statewide officials by erasing an Electoral College-type provision from Mississippi’s 1890 constitution — one that was written to dilute Black voting power and maintain white control of state politics.Mississippi Lawmakers Vote to Remove Rebel Emblem From State FlagIt’s the last state flag that included a Confederate symbol that many people condemn as racistMississippi is the only state with such a system for state elections.If voters adopt the amendment, a statewide candidate receiving a majority of the popular vote would win. If nobody receives that in a race with at least three candidates, the top two would go to a runoff.Legislators’ final action to put the amendment on the ballot happened Monday, a day after they took historic votes to retire a 126-year-old state flag  that was the last in the U.S. with the Confederate battle emblem. Amid widespread protests over racial injustice, Mississippi faced growing pressure to drop a symbol that’s widely condemned as racist.A commission will design a new Mississippi flag without the rebel symbol and with the phrase, “In God We Trust.” Voters will be asked to accept or reject the new flag Nov. 3, the same day the amendment and the presidential race are on the ballot.Mississippi Center for Justice is one of the groups representing plaintiffs in a 2019 lawsuit against the state. The center’s president, Vangela M. Wade, said documents show the complex electoral process was created to uphold white supremacy.”As you go back through these documents, there’s language that clearly shows intent to circumvent the rights of African Americans,” Wade said Thursday.About 38% of Mississippi’s residents are Black. The lawsuit — backed by former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder — argues that Mississippi’s election system violates the principle of one-person, one-vote.The Mississippi Constitution currently requires a statewide candidate to win a majority of the popular vote and a majority of electoral vote. One electoral vote is awarded to the candidate receiving the most support in each of the 122 state House districts.Mississippi Takes Step Toward Dropping Rebel Image from FlagState lawmakers vote to file a bill to change the flag If no candidate wins both the popular vote and the electoral vote, the race is decided by the state House. But representatives are not obligated to vote as their districts did, so arm-twisting could decide the outcome.The process was written when white politicians across the South were enacting laws to erase Black political power gained during Reconstruction. The electoral vote was promoted as a way for the white ruling class have the final say in who holds office.Plaintiffs argued that Mississippi’s history of racially polarized voting means that candidates preferred by Black voters must receive a higher share of the statewide vote to win a majority of House districts.U.S. District Judge Daniel P. Jordan III wrote last November that he has “grave concern” about the constitutionality the electoral vote provision. Jordan wrote that the plaintiffs’ argument about violation of one person, one vote is “arguably … their strongest claim.”Jordan put the lawsuit on hold in December, saying he would give legislators a chance to remedy the system by putting a proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot. The amendment will need approval from a simple majority of voters.  The last time a governor’s race was thrown to the Mississippi House was 20 years ago. Nobody received the required majorities in a four-person race for governor in 1999. The top two candidates were white, and each won 61 electoral votes. In January 2000, House members chose Democrat Ronnie Musgrove, who led the popular vote, over Republican Mike Parker. At the time, the House was controlled by Democrats. It is now controlled by Republicans.Some Democrats thought the electoral provision might come into play in a tight 2019 governor’s election, but Republican Tate Reeves easily defeated Democrat Jim Hood and two lesser-known candidates.  
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Trump Plans Large Fireworks Display in Washington Despite City’s Concerns

The Trump administration is planning a large Independence Day fireworks display in Washington Saturday despite the city’s concerns about the coronavirus.  US Continues to Lead in COVID CasesUS has nearly 2.8 million of the globe’s more than 11 million casesInterior Secretary David Bernhardt outlined plans for the July Fourth celebrations, which include a milelong firing of 10,000 fireworks that he called “the largest in recent memory.”Bernhardt said in a statement that Defense Department flyovers would give a “one-of-a-kind air show” and said, “President Trump’s 2020 Salute to America will be a patriotic tribute to our men and women in uniform.”Trump Address Mount Rushmore Crowd Without a MaskPresident says radical left needs to be stopped to preserve American way of lifeInterior Department officials say they will have 300,000 face masks on hand to be given to spectators who come to the National Mall for the festivities, although there is no indication that people will be required to wear them.   Bernhardt said visitors would be encouraged to wear masks and keep a six-foot distance from one another.D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has criticized the plans, saying they go against established health guidelines.  “We know this is a special event for the Department of Interior. We’ve communicated to them that we do not think this is in keeping with the best CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and Department of Health guidance,” she said.  She noted the event would take place entirely on federal property, which means she does not have the right to shut down the holiday festivities.  Bowser has asked city residents to avoid large crowds and to celebrate July Fourth near their homes.  President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump plan to host events Saturday from the White House South Lawn as well as the Ellipse.New Study Shows Fireworks May Present Health HazardResearchers say explosions release toxins into the airMany other U.S. cities have canceled or scaled back their firework displays this year because of the pandemic and concerns of large groups of people gathering.The organizers of the Macy’s July 4th firework display in New York City canceled the traditional one-night festivities and instead are holding short nightly shows in each borough that began June 29. Video of the displays will be aired on television Saturday night.Americans planning to throw their own celebrations will be banned from several popular beaches, including some in South Florida, Southern California and the Texas Gulf Coast.COVID-19 Spreading in US Too Fast to Control, CDC Expert Says Dr. Anne Schuchat calls the surge in new cases just “the beginning” In the northeast U.S., where coronavirus cases have generally been subsiding, beaches are open. However, government officials are urging people to avoid crowding. The CDC advised Americans who do go to the beach to wear face coverings.Sales of fireworks have been strong, indicating that many Americans are planning to celebrate the holiday in their backyard, according to the Associated Press.    
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Can Trump’s Anti-Mail-Voting Crusade Hurt Him in Key States?

President Donald Trump’s campaign and allies have blocked efforts to expand mail-in voting, forcing an awkward confrontation with top GOP election officials who are promoting the opposite in their states.  The rare dissonance between Trump and other Republican elected officials also reflects another reality the president will not concede: Many in his party believe expanding mail-in voting could ultimately help him. Trump’s campaign has intervened directly in Ohio, while allies have fired warning shots in Iowa and Georgia, aimed at blunting Republican secretaries of state in places that could be competitive in November.  “There is a dimension to legislatures underfunding or undercutting election officials that could ironically backfire and hurt Republicans,” said Michael McDonald, a University of Florida professor and director of the nonpartisan United States Election Project. Action by these three secretaries of state, who are the top election officials in their states, was designed to make ballot access easier during the coronavirus pandemic. Trump has repeatedly made the unfounded claim that voting by mail could lead to fraud so extensive it could undermine the integrity of the presidential election. In OhioIn Ohio last month, senior Trump campaign adviser Bob Paduchik weighed in on Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s proposal, insisting to GOP legislative leaders that they drop a provision to allow voters to file absentee ballot applications online, according to Republican officials involved in the discussions. The GOP officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal communications regarding the legislation. FILE – Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRoseOhio already allows the secretary of state to send absentee ballot requests to every registered voter. The provision was aimed at allowing a faster processing option, while making mail-in application processing available.  Paduchik, Trump’s 2016 Iowa campaign director, insisted there be no substantive changes ahead of the November election in Ohio, which Trump won in 2016 by 8 percentage points under the existing rules, according to the GOP officials.  Trump campaign aides did not respond to requests for comment.  “This bill didn’t do everything I wanted it to do. In fact, there’s several things I wanted to get done that are not included in this bill,” LaRose said in a video statement this month, promising to try “to get some of those other changes made in the future.” Trump has railed against expanding vote by mail, arguing without evidence that the practice, despite being the primary voting method in Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington and Utah, is ripe for widespread fraud. On Sunday, he renewed the criticism, tweeting “Mail-In Voting, on the other hand, will lead to the most corrupt Election is USA history. Bad things happen with Mail-Ins.”  That claim is part of a pattern. He also has incorrectly equated a secretary of state widely distributing absentee ballot requests with the ballots themselves in Michigan. In Iowa, GeorgiaFILE – Iowa Secretary of State Paul PateLast week, after Iowa voters broke a 26-year-old statewide primary election turnout record, the Iowa Senate’s GOP majority pressed to bar Secretary of State Paul Pate from sending absentee ballots to all 2 million registered voters this fall, as he did before the June 3 primary.  Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Trump ally, last week signed compromise legislation requiring Pate and his successors to seek approval from a partisan legislative council for similar future actions. The GOP-controlled council unanimously rejected Pate’s request to widely send absentee ballot applications this fall.  “My goal was to protect Iowa voters and poll workers while finding ways to conduct a clean and fair election,” Pate said last month. “I stand by my decisions.”  FILE – Georgia Secretary of State Brad RaffenspergerHis Georgia counterpart, Brad Raffensperger, faced a similar fate after he, too, sent absentee ballot applications to nearly 7 million registered voters ahead of the state’s June primary. Although Raffensperger objected to proposed limits being put on his authority, legislation to do that died when the legislature adjourned and after he said he would not repeat the move this fall.  Trump carried Georgia, Iowa and Ohio comfortably in 2016. To win again, he would likely need to match his sizable winning margins in their rural counties, home to many in his older, white base. Support for mail-in ballotsPresumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has backed mail-in voting, saying it would make it easier for people to vote this November amid the coronavirus pandemic.  Some longtime GOP activists say expanded vote by mail is essential for older voters who are accustomed to voting in person but hesitant to during the pandemic and who are unfamiliar with the process. Ann Trimble Ray, a veteran Iowa GOP activist, voted in June by mail and says Pate made the right call, especially for the many older voters in her rural home in Sac County, which Trump carried with 72% of the 2016 vote. “Reducing their exposure by voting absentee, we think, was a considerate thing to do,” she said. “I was grateful for Secretary of State Pate’s mailing and encouragement for absentee voting.” Rural votersConsolidation of rural polling places, shrunken election staff and long lines may deter rural voters vital to Trump, said University of California Irvine professor Richard Hasen, chair of a committee of U.S. scholars that has recommended changes ahead of the 2020 elections.  “The voters Trump is hurting are likely his own when he’s making these comments against mail-in balloting,” said Hasen, “because it’s a safe and generally effective way to cast a ballot, especially in the midst of a pandemic.” The check on ballot request steps in Iowa and Georgia also could threaten rural votes from being counted, based on McDonald’s study.  Though Ohio counts all mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day, a number of absentee ballots came in late for the March 17 primary, including 4,000 in Greene County in southeast Ohio, a county where Trump won 60% of the vote.  Understaffed election offices and longer processing time between rural areas and metro postal centers could leave some rural voters unable to mail their ballots on time, McDonald said.  “I’m pretty convinced that ballot request step is hurting rural voters,” McDonald said.  
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Biden Slams Trump on Russia Bounties in Foreign Policy Contrast

Presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s rebuke of President Donald Trump’s handling of allegations that Russians paid bounties for the killing of American soldiers reflects his longstanding criticism of the president on national security and foreign policy. However, on closer inspection the two presidential rivals are not that far apart on key issues, such as ending foreign wars, protecting American jobs, and countering China’s aggression.On Tuesday, Biden slammed Trump’s passive response to intelligence reports that Russians paid Taliban fighters to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan, claiming he was not briefed, and the reports were not credible.“The idea that somehow he didn’t know or isn’t being briefed, it is a dereliction of duty. If that’s the case, and if he was briefed and nothing was done about this, that’s a dereliction of duty,” Biden said to reporters in Wilmington, Delaware on Tuesday.The White House has disputed a New York Times report on Friday that a Russian military intelligence unit had offered bounties to Taliban fighters in Afghanistan for U.S. and allied soldiers, saying it has “not been verified, and there is no consensus among the intelligence community.”FILE – American soldiers wait on the tarmac in Logar province, Afghanistan.Brink of warBiden, who served as President Barack Obama’s vice president, has been highly critical of what he says is Trump’s “deference” to Russian President Vladimir Putin and other authoritarian leaders, his “haphazard” handling of national security threats, and his “America First” foreign policy.In January, Biden said Trump put the U.S. on the brink of war, after the president authorized a U.S. airstrike that killed top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad, after deadly Iranian backed attacks on Americans in Iraq.  “The failure to consult with our allies or Congress and the reckless disregard for the consequences that would surely follow was, in my view, dangerously incompetent,” Biden said in New York Jan. 7. Calls for “harsh revenge” during Soleimani’s massive funeral in Tehran raised concerns that military conflict with the United States could escalate, but tensions have eased after Iran retaliated with a non-lethal missile attack against a U.S. military base in Iraq.Biden agenda  In contrast to Trump’s reliance on personal diplomacy and unilateral action to confront U.S. security threats, the former vice president said he would organize a summit of democracies to strengthen alliances in the face of growing authoritarianism around the world, and would prioritize negotiation over confrontation. Biden wants to restore military ties with NATO in Europe after Trump strained relations by demanding increased defense spending. Trump recently ordered the military to withdraw about 10,000 U.S. troops from Germany, unless Berlin increases its NATO contributions.  The Trump administration has also demanded steep cost sharing increases for basing U.S. troops in Germany, South Korea and Japan.However, the Democratic presidential candidate is closer to Trump’s position on ending U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan and Syria, continuing negotiations with North Korea to end its nuclear program, and confronting China’s suppression of human rights in Hong Kong and military buildup in the South China Sea.  
On Thursday, Biden issued a statement denouncing China’s crackdown on democracy protests in Hong Kong and as said as president he would prohibit U.S. companies from “abetting repression” in Hong Kong and impose sanctions on China for human rights abuses.NEW: Statement by Vice President Joe Biden on China’s Human Rights Abuses
Biden’s most comprehensive statement to date on China human rights, including several steps he’ll take as President. pic.twitter.com/jlwWYR31We
— Ely Ratner (@elyratner) FILE – Vice President Joe Biden and President Barack Obama wave to the delegates at the conclusion of President Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention, September 6, 2012.Obama eraBiden would likely rejoin the Iran nuclear deal, negotiated by the Obama administration, that Trump pulled out of because it did not limit ballistic missile development and support for Iranian backed militias.He would recommit the U.S. to the Paris climate accord, signed by nearly 200 countries and designed to cut greenhouse gas emissions from cars and factories to counter global warming.But Biden said he would not rejoin the Obama-era Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade pact, which Trump pulled out of in early 2017, until stronger protections for labor and American jobs are added.  “There is no going back to business as usual on trade,” Biden said on his campaign website. But he also argues in favor multilateral trades agreements to improve fair trade practices and democratic values in the developing world.  
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Advertisers Boycott Facebook, Demand Changes

Companies such as Coca-Cola, Adidas, Ford and Lego are boycotting Facebook this month, pulling ads that appear on the social network in the United States. Some advertisers are part of an organized boycott demanding the company do more to crack down on hate speech, conspiracies and misinformation on its site on topics such as voting. Facebook has responded with some changes but will it be enough? Michelle Quinn reports.
Camera: Deana Mitchell
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Biden Rebukes Trump on Bounty Allegations, in Foreign Policy Contrast

Joe Biden, the Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, has rebuked President Donald Trump for his handling of allegations the Russians paid bounties to kill American soldiers. It’s a reflection of Biden’s longstanding criticism of Trump’s national security and foreign policies. But as VOA’s Brian Padden reports, the two men aren’t actually all that far apart on many key issues. Produced by: Brian Padden
 
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Biden Rebuke of Trump on Bounty Allegations Highlights Foreign Policy Differences

Joe Biden, the Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, has rebuked President Donald Trump for his handling of allegations the Russians paid bounties to kill American soldiers. It’s a reflection of Biden’s longstanding criticism of Trump’s national security and foreign policies. But as VOA’s Brian Padden reports, the two men aren’t actually all that far apart on many key issues. Produced by: Brian Padden
 
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Amid Record Daily New COVID Infections, Trump Says ‘Millions of Lives’ Saved

As the country continues to set daily records for new COVID-19 infections, U.S. President Donald Trump is again praising his administration’s response to the pandemic, taking credit for saving “millions of lives.” “In many cases, we’ve done an incredible job,” Trump said. More than 50,000 new coronavirus infections were reported in the country on Wednesday, the highest total since the start of the pandemic. Six states set daily records for new cases: Alaska, Arizona, California, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas. White House officials stress the rapidly rising coronavirus case numbers are due, in large part, to enhanced testing, and note that the percentage of patients dying from the disease continues to decline.The record number of new infections in the United States is accompanied by a new high for current hospitalizations in eight states, which has created a crisis for some medical facilities that are reporting they are near capacity.“The president is so eager to declare victory and pat himself on the back that he’s ignoring reality completely,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, asserting that the record number of new coronavirus cases “is more important” than the latest jobs numbers. Closing Bars to Stop Coronavirus Spread is Backed by ScienceAlcohol lowers inhibitions, so people forget precautions, Natalie Dean, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Florida saysCalifornia’s increasing rate of infections prompted Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday to revive the sweeping restrictions imposed statewide at the start of the outbreak -— shutting bars and theaters, and halting indoor dining in 19 counties.New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has put on hold plans to reopen indoor dining rooms because of a possibility of infected people from elsewhere flocking into the city. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf issued a statewide order Wednesday mandating that everyone wear face masks.Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told a U.S. Senate committee this week that the current rate of new infections could more than double to 100,000 a day if the current surge is not contained.The United States has recorded nearly 2.7 million cases of COVID-19 infections. More than 128,000 deaths are attributed to the viral disease.  
 
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Pelosi Accuses White House of Trying to ‘Con’ US Public on Intelligence

Leading Democratic lawmakers are slamming the White House, one of them accusing the president and his aides of trying to trick the American public into believing intelligence on an alleged Russian plot to pay for attacks on U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan is not serious.The criticism from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi followed a classified briefing Thursday by the directors of the CIA and the National Security Agency and the recently confirmed director of national intelligence.CIA Director Gina Haspel arrives to brief U.S. congressional leaders on reports that Russia paid the Taliban bounties to kill U.S. service members in Afghanistan, on Capitol Hill, July 2, 2020.While Pelosi refused to comment on the intelligence itself, she said efforts by President Donald Trump and his staff to minimize the seriousness of the information were a disservice to U.S. forces in the region.“You got the con. The White House put on a con that if you don’t have 100% consensus on intelligence, it shouldn’t rise to a certain level,” she told reporters.“Don’t buy into that, and neither does the intelligence community,” Pelosi added. “They have enough intelligence to know where we have to go next with it.”Pointing to CIA brieferTop White House officials, including national security adviser Robert O’Brien, have repeatedly defended the decision not to brief the president on intelligence indicating Russian intelligence was paying bounties to Taliban-aligned militants for deadly attacks on U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan.O’Brien on Wednesday placed responsibility for that decision on Trump’s CIA briefer, telling reporters, “She made that decision because she didn’t have confidence in the intelligence that came out.”Trump on Wednesday took to FILE – President Donald Trump speaks during a news briefing at the White House, in Washington, July 2, 2020.”We never heard about it because intelligence never found it to be of that level,” the president said.”The intelligence people, many of them didn’t believe it happened at all,” he added. “I think it’s a hoax based on the newspapers and the Democrats.”But Pelosi said not only was it clear to her that the president should have been briefed, but that intelligence officials were negligent for failing to keep Congress in the loop.“It was of a consequential level that the intelligence community should have brought it to us,” Pelosi said.’Not close to tough enough’Pelosi and fellow Democrat Chuck Schumer, the House minority leader, also called on Trump to take a tougher line on Russia and its leader, President Vladimir Putin.”I believe the president is not close to tough enough on Vladimir Putin,” Schumer told reporters after leaving the briefing earlier.They also raised concerns about what they described as Trump’s soft approach to Russia despite evidence of a threat to U.S. troops; his request for the removal of proposed sanctions on Russia’s intelligence and defense sectors; and his suggestion that Russia should be invited to rejoin the G-7, a group of the world’s top industrialized nations.Despite the assertions by the Trump administration and the Pentagon that the intelligence on the alleged Russian bounty plot remained uncorroborated, officials said the threat was not taken lightly.FILE – Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe leaves after briefing senators on Capitol Hill about reports of Russia paying bounties for the killing of U.S. troops in Afghanistan July 1, 2020, in Washington.Officials from the White House and the CIA said the information was shared with U.S. intelligence agencies, the military and U.S. allies in Afghanistan, and that precautions were put in place.White House officials also said there was no evidence any U.S. troops were harmed.”We always act in the best interest of our troops,” press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters late Wednesday.“The Defense Department has said they do not know of any Americans that have been killed in relation to this unverified intelligence that’s currently being assessed,” she added.Longtime concernU.S. defense and intelligence officials have long been concerned about Russian interference in Afghanistan, complaining repeatedly that Moscow has been providing the Taliban with weapons and training.A new Pentagon report released Wednesday, while making no mention of the alleged bounties, warned that Russian involvement was growing.“Russia has politically supported the Taliban to cultivate influence with the group, limit the Western military presence, and encourage counter-ISIS [Islamic State terror group] operations, although Russia publicly denies their involvement,” the report said.FILE – Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks during a news conference at the State Department, July 1, 2020, in Washington.U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday tried to downplay concerns.“The fact that the Russians are engaged in Afghanistan in a way that’s adverse to the United States is nothing new,” he said. “The Russians have been selling small arms that have put Americans at risk there for 10 years. We have objected to it.”“When we see credible information that suggests that the Russians are putting American lives at risk, we’re responding in a way that is serious,” he added.VOA’s Katherine Gypson and Steve Herman contributed to this report.
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US Supreme Court Keeps Hold on Secret Russia Investigation Material

The Supreme Court is denying Congress access to secret grand jury testimony from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation through the November election.The justices agreed on Thursday to hear the Trump administration’s appeal of a lower court order for the material to be turned over to the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives. The high court’s action will keep the documents out of congressional hands at least until the case is resolved, which is not likely to happen before 2021.Arguments themselves might not even take place before Americans decide whether to give President Donald Trump a second term.The delay is a victory for Trump, who also is mounting a Supreme Court fight against congressional efforts to obtain his banking and other financial records. Those cases are expected to be decided in the coming days or weeks.The court’s action also could mean the justices never have to reach a definitive ruling in a sensitive dispute between the executive and legislative branches of government, if either Trump loses reelection or Republicans regain control of the House next year. It’s hard to imagine Democrat Joe Biden’s administration would object to turning over the Mueller documents or House Republicans would continue to press for them.The House wants previously undisclosed details from the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.The federal appeals court in Washington ruled in March that the documents should be turned over because the House Judiciary Committee’s need for the material in its investigation of Trump outweighed the Justice Department’s interests in keeping the testimony secret.  Mueller’s 448-page report, issued in April 2019, “stopped short” of reaching conclusions about Trump’s conduct, including whether he obstructed justice, to avoid stepping on the House’s impeachment power, the appeals court said.  The committee was able to persuasively argue that it needed access to the underlying grand jury material to make its own determinations about the president’s actions, the court said.The materials initially were sought last summer, but by the time the appeals court ruled in March, Trump had been impeached by the House and acquitted by the Senate.The Justice Department said in its Supreme Court filings that the court’s action was needed in part because the House hasn’t given any indication it “urgently needs these materials for any ongoing impeachment investigation.”The House had opposed the delay on the grounds that its investigation of Trump was continuing and that time is of the essence because of the approaching election. The current session of the House will end Jan. 3, and lawmakers elected in November will take their seats.Democrats have suggested that the grand jury materials could reveal new misconduct that could potentially form the basis of new articles of impeachment, but such a course would have been unlikely so close to the 2020 election even if the court had allowed the material to be turned over immediately.The House impeached Trump for his efforts to get Ukraine to dig up dirt on Biden, but the Republican-controlled Senate acquitted the president in February.It is also unclear how many new, or incendiary, revelations might be contained in the grand jury transcripts. Mueller’s report, though redacted in parts, revealed more than a year ago significant information about the president’s efforts to choke off the investigation and raised substantial questions about whether he had committed obstruction of justice.Besides, many of the witnesses closest to Trump appeared voluntarily before Mueller’s team of prosecutors, and the Justice Department in recent months has released written — albeit redacted — summaries of those interviews. That means the public already has insight into the accounts of key Trump associates including son-in-law Jared Kushner and advisers like Steve Bannon and Hope Hicks.   
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