memeorandum: Trump administration finalizing plan to withdraw 4,000 troops from Afghanistan (CNN)

4:55 PM ET, June 27, 2020

Top Items:

Workers removed thousands of social distancing stickers before Trump's Tulsa rally, according to video and a person familiar with the set-up — In the hours before his rally in Tulsa, President Trump's campaign directed the removal of thousands of “Do Not Sit Here, Please!” …

Princeton University News:

President Eisgruber's message to community on removal of Woodrow Wilson name from public policy school and Wilson College — President Eisgruber's message to community on removal of Woodrow Wilson name from public policy school and Wilson College — Board of Trustees concludes …

Discussion: Politico, Gothamist, The US Sun, 6abc, New York Post and Outside the Beltway

Bryan Pietsch / New York Times:

Princeton Will Remove Woodrow Wilson's Name From School — University trustees concluded that Wilson's “racist thinking and policies make him an inappropriate namesake for a school or college,” Princeton's president said on Saturday. — Princeton University will remove Woodrow Wilson's name …

Princeton University News:
Search Sites & People ×

Discussion: CNN, Talking Points Memo, Just The News and The Hill

Rashaan Ayesh / Axios: Princeton drops Woodrow Wilson's name from school due to “racist thinking”

Washington Post:

Russian operation targeted coalition troops in Afghanistan, intelligence finds — A Russian military spy unit offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants to attack coalition forces in Afghanistan, including U.S. and British troops, in a striking escalation of the Kremlin's hostility toward …

Discussion: Raw Story, DCReport.org, Task & Purpose, Daily Kos, New York Times, The Daily Caller, Outside the Beltway, Alternet.org, Mediaite, The Guardian, Wall Street Journal, Radio Free Europe/Radio …, Balloon Juice and DownWithTyranny!

Jamie Doward / The Guardian:

Russia offered bounty to kill UK soldiers — Moscow accused of trying to give money to the Taliban as part of its campaign to destabilise America and its allies — The Russian intelligence unit behind the attempted murder in Salisbury of the former double agent Sergei Skripal secretly offered …

Discussion: New York Post, The Mahablog and Just The News

CNN:

Trump administration finalizing plan to withdraw 4,000 troops from Afghanistan — Washington (CNN)The Trump administration is close to finalizing a decision to withdraw more than 4,000 troops from Afghanistan by the fall, according to two administration officials.

Meena Venkataramanan / The Texas Tribune:

Texas Republicans move forward with plans for an indoor convention in Houston, the state's biggest coronavirus hot spot — Gov. Greg Abbott is allowing limits on outdoor crowds — but not indoor gatherings. His party's convention — with an expected attendance of 6,000 — so far will not require attendees to wear face masks.

CNN:

Measures to protect Trump from coronavirus scale up even as he seeks to move on — (CNN)President Donald Trump appears ready to move on from a still-raging coronavirus pandemic — skipping the first White House task force briefing in months and moving the event out of the White House itself.

Discussion: Lawyers, Guns & Money and Raw Story

Brittany Shammas / Washington Post:

Mississippi governor says he would sign bill to remove Confederate emblem from state flag — Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves (R), who has long insisted voters should decide whether to remove the Confederate emblem from the state's flag, said for the first time Saturday that he would sign a bill to change the banner if one is sent his way.

Discussion: Tate Reeves, The Hill and TheBlaze

Geoff Pender / Mississippi Today: House passes first step to change state flag

Emily Wagster Pettus / Associated Press:
Mississippi could strip Confederate symbol from state flag

Discussion: Axios, Associated Press and NBC News

NBC News:

New U.S. coronavirus cases break record; Pence cancels campaign events in Arizona, Florida — The U.S. set a new grim record in the number of new coronavirus cases in a single day, with reports of nearly 46,000 on Friday. — The 45,942 single-day increase was driven by more than 8,000 …

Discussion: CBS News, The Texas Tribune and The Daily Beast

Aamer Madhani / Associated Press:
What to wear: Feds' mixed messages on masks sow confusion

Discussion: Fox News and CNN

Ari Levy / CNBC:

Trump fans are flocking to the social media app Parler — its CEO is begging liberals to join them — Parler's user base has grown to 1.5 million from 1 million in about a week, CEO John Matze said. — Republican politicians and conservative pundits have flocked to the app …

Discussion: Mediaite

Politico:

The Lincoln Project is trolling Trump. But can it sway voters? — The moment President Donald Trump started tweeting at 12:46 a.m. about the “RINO Republicans” at the Lincoln Project who'd just run an ad attacking his response to the pandemic, Reed Galen knew his hunch was right …

Discussion: Raw Story and Political Wire

Harry Enten / CNN:

Candidates who recover from Trump-like deficits are rarely incumbents — (CNN)The polls are fairly unanimous: Former Vice President Joe Biden holds a significant advantage over President Donald Trump. On average, he's up by 10 points nationally and in the pivotal battleground state of Wisconsin.

New York Times:

How the World Missed Covid-19's Silent Spread — Symptomless transmission makes the coronavirus far harder to fight. But health officials dismissed the risk for months, pushing misleading and contradictory claims in the face of mounting evidence. — MUNICH — Dr. Camilla Rothe …

Kim Barker / New York Times:

The Black Officer Who Detained George Floyd Had Pledged to Fix the Police — Alex Kueng is one of four former officers accused of crimes in the killing of Mr. Floyd, which happened on his third shift. His decision to join the force had frayed friendships.

Discussion: New York Post

Isaac Chotiner / New Yorker:

What Activities Are Safe as the Coronavirus Continues to Spread? — On Tuesday, Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, testified before Congress that the U.S. is seeing a “disturbing surge” in coronavirus cases.

Michele L. Norris / Washington Post:

George and Martha Washington enslaved 300 people. Let's start with their names. — Since this moment of reckoning has led to a prickly discussion about our Founding Fathers' slave-owning pasts, let us take a moment, starting with George Washington, to think about the people they enslaved.

New York Times:

‘PizzaGate’ Conspiracy Theory Thrives Anew in the TikTok Era — The false theory targeting Democrats, now fueled by QAnon and teenagers on TikTok, is entangling new targets like Justin Bieber. — WASHINGTON — Four minutes into a video that was posted on Instagram last month …

Mayor Lori E. Lightfoot / The White House:

President Donald J. Trump's Letter to the Governor of Illinois and Mayor of Chicago — Dear Governor Pritzker and Mayor Lightfoot: — I write to you today to call your attention to and urge action on the devastating violence in Chicago. While I have been heartened to see crime reductions nationally …

Discussion: The Root, The US Sun, Chicago Sun-Times and WGN-TV

Evan Semones / Politico:

Grassley chides Trump, Fox News for answer on second term agenda — Sen. Chuck Grassley laid blame on Fox News — and President Donald Trump — on Saturday over failing to articulate what his administration's second term priorities would be during a recent interview with the news organization.

Discussion: The Hill and Fox News

Ben Domenech / The Federalist:

Trump Calls For Tougher Republican Response To ‘Political War’ — In an Oval Office interview with The Federalist's Ben Domenech, President Trump calls on Republicans to stand strong and unite against lawlessness. — In a wide-ranging interview in the Oval Office Friday …

Associated Press:

Nurses, doctors feel strain as virus races through Arizona — PHOENIX (AP) — They saw the ominous photos: Crowded hospitals, exhausted nurses, bodies piling up in morgues. It was far away, in New York, northern Italy and other distant places. — Now, after three months of anxiously waiting …

New York Times:

How Trump and the Black Lives Matter Movement Changed White Voters' Minds — A majority of American voters support demonstrations on police brutality, and many see the president as ill-equipped on racial justice. — A majority of American voters support the demonstrations against police brutality …

Yascha Mounk / The Atlantic:

Stop Firing the Innocent — As companies and organizations of all sorts have scrambled to institute a zero-tolerance policy on racism over the past few weeks, some of them have turned out to be more interested in signaling their good intentions than punishing actual culprits.

New York Times:

Obamacare Faces Unprecedented Test as Economy Sinks — The battles over the health law have played out during a decade of continuous economic growth. How it performs as a safety net now may help determine its future. — The Affordable Care Act, the landmark health law that has been a subject …

Discussion: Lawyers, Guns & Money and Vox

Tom Lyden / FOX 9 Minneapolis-St. Paul:

Minneapolis Council members get private security after threats — MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) - The City of Minneapolis is spending $4,500 a day for private security for three council members who have received threats following the police killing of George Floyd, FOX 9 has learned.

Discussion: Townhall, Liberty Unyielding, Redstate, The Daily Caller, Twitchy, The Hill, New York Post and TheBlaze

Business Insider:

Trump is going full steam ahead with his Jacksonville GOP convention speech, but the city is a COVID-19 hot spot and locals don't want him there — Foto: Yuri Gripas/Reuters President Donald Trump with RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel. — President Donald Trump and the GOP …

WPEC:

“I will not be muzzled like a mad dog;' face mask debate turns fierce in St. Lucie County — The debate over a proposed mandate for face masks in certain areas of St. Lucie County turned heated. “I will not be muzzled like a mad dog,” said one man during the public comment session.

Discussion: Mediaite and Raw Story

New York Times:

43% of U.S. Coronavirus Deaths Are Linked to Nursing Homes — Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada …

Discussion: Mother Jones