memeorandum: ‘I thought this was a hoax’: Patient in their 30s dies after attending ‘COVID party’ (Gerald Tracy/WOAI)

5:50 PM ET, July 11, 2020

Top Items:

The Roger Stone Commutation Is Even More Corrupt Than It Seems — President Trump's commutation of the prison sentence of his long-time confidante Roger Stone is wholly unsurprising. Indeed, given Trump's repeated teasing of the matter over the life of the case against Stone …

Discussion: New Republic, The Dispatch, Althouse, Reason and The Week

David Frum / The Atlantic:
Stone Walks Free in One of the Greatest Scandals in American History

Discussion: Mother Jones, Rolling Stone, No More Mister Nice Blog, The Root, Al Jazeera, Mediaite, BuzzFeed News and The Guardian

Michael Birnbaum / Washington Post: Reopened schools in Europe and Asia have largely avoided coronavirus outbreaks. They have lessons for the U.S.

USA Today: Resolve after appalling Roger Stone commutation: Don't let Donald Trump break us, America.

Marshall Cohen / CNN:
Debunking 12 lies and falsehoods from the White House statement on Roger Stone's commutation

Discussion: Bloomberg, Vanity Fair, American Thinker, Mediaite and Daily Kos

Jeffrey Toobin / New Yorker:
The Roger Stone Case Shows Why Trump Is Worse Than Nixon

Discussion: Daily Kos

Lawfare:
Trump's Aberrant Pardons and Commutations

Discussion: Bloomberg, Washington Post, Outside the Beltway and New York Times

Veronica Stracqualursi / CNN:
Pelosi blasts Roger Stone commutation as ‘an act of staggering corruption’ as Trump defends move

Discussion: Axios, The Hill and The Gateway Pundit

Adam Shaw / Fox News:
House Democrats promise investigations, legislation after Trump commutes Roger Stone

Discussion: Associated Press, Redstate, POLITICUSUSA, New York Post and Disrn

Emma Newburger / CNBC:
Attorney General Barr told Trump he shouldn't grant Roger Stone clemency

Discussion: National Review, POLITICUSUSA, The Hill, MSNBC and Common Dreams

Lee Moran / HuffPost:
Mitt Romney Slams Donald Trump's Commutation For Roger Stone: ‘Historic Corruption’

Discussion: Washington Post, Breitbart and Bloomberg

Peter Baker / New York Times:
In Commuting Stone's Sentence, Trump Goes Where Nixon Would Not

Discussion: The Week, NBC News, POLITICUSUSA, Mediaite and Redstate

Washington Post:
Trump's commutation of Roger Stone's sentence is an unforgivable betrayal of his office

Discussion: The Guardian, IJR, Common Dreams, Slate, Outside the Beltway, Bloomberg, The White House, The Hill, Reason, New York Times, Mother Jones, Power Line, Balloon Juice, Axios and The Crime Report

Speaker Nancy Pelosi:
Pelosi Statement on Trump Commuting Sentence of Campaign Advisor Roger Stone

Discussion: NPR, The Hill, Politico, CNN and TheBlaze

Max Boot / Washington Post:
The worst president ever keeps getting worse

Discussion: Raw Story

Gerald Tracy / WOAI:

‘I thought this was a hoax’: Patient in their 30s dies after attending ‘COVID party’ — SAN ANTONIO, Texas (WOAI/KABB) - A patient in their 30s died from the coronavirus after attending what is known as a “COVID party,” according to health care officials. Chief Medical Officer …

Discussion: Fox News, Raw Story, HillReporter.com, The Sun, New York Post and Mediaite

Jeremy Kohler / St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Portland Place couple who confronted protesters have a long history of not backing down — ST. LOUIS — When Black Lives Matter protesters marched up Kingshighway on June 28 and turned through an iron gate into the magnificent private street of Portland Place, they encountered a couple who have for years …

Discussion: Daily Kos and Quiz Category

Christine Byers / KSDK-TV:

McCloskeys served with search warrant, police take rifle shown in viral pictures — Sources told 5 On Your Side police seized one of the weapons, the rifle, from the couple and they told police their attorney has the pistol seen in photos. — ST. LOUIS — 5 On Your Side …

Discussion: KMOV-TV, The Gateway Pundit, The Daily Wire, Disrn, The Daily Caller, The Western Journal, Twitchy, The Hill, Power Line, The Federalist, Fox News, TheBlaze and New York Post

Dom Calicchio / Fox News:
Missouri couple who defended home have rifle seized during police search: report

Discussion: Breitbart, Redstate, Twitchy, The Gateway Pundit and Townhall

Nathan L. Gonzales / Roll Call:

Rating changes: Democratic control of Senate more likely because of Trump — Alaska, South Carolina seats in play; McSally an underdog — ANALYSIS — After Donald Trump's unexpected victory in 2016, there's a temptation to avoid making political projections. But one election result shouldn't cause us to ignore the data.

USA Today:
‘Republicans are really fed up’: GOP increasingly splits with Trump as his polls drag

Discussion: Raw Story and POLITICUSUSA

David Smith / The Guardian: Will Republicans ditch Trump to save the Senate as support nosedives?

Jonathan Karl / Washington Post:

It's the duty of the White House press secretary to hold briefings. But not like this. — Jonathan Karl, the author of “Front Row at the Trump Show,” covers the White House for ABC News and is president of the White House Correspondents' Association. — On the Monday following President …

Discussion: Mediaite

Sonny Soleil / WTF Florida?:

Commissioner who Voted Against Masks in Critical Condition with COVID-19 — St. Augustine (WTFF) - St. Johns County Commissioner Paul Waldron caught the coronavirus and went into septic shock after voting against a motion to mandate masks for county employees last week.

Discussion: WJXT-TV and Florida Politics

Frank Bruni / New York Times:

The Republicans Who Want to Destroy Trump — Their party's a lost cause. America isn't. — Should you have any doubt about how passionately George Conway and the other Never Trumpers at the Lincoln Project want to defeat the president, check out their ads.

Discussion: The Moderate Voice

Ryan Goodman / Just Security:

Top Experts: DOJ's Bureau of Prison Blocking Michael Cohen Book about Trump Violates First Amendment — On Thursday morning, Michael Cohen, the president's former lawyer and fixer, was returned to prison. Many readers like myself may have passed over the headlines of this particular event thinking it was unsurprising.

Discussion: Refinery29

Associated Press:

Coronavirus deaths take a long-expected turn for the worse — NEW YORK (AP) — A long-expected upturn in U.S. coronavirus deaths has begun, driven by fatalities in states in the South and West, according to data on the pandemic. — The number of deaths per day from the virus had been falling for months …

Discussion: Outside the Beltway

CNN:

Democrats, it's too soon to cheer Trump's defeat — Opinion by Arick Wierson and Bradley Honan — Arick Wierson, who writes frequently for CNN Opinion, is a six-time Emmy Award-winning television producer and a former senior media adviser to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Discussion: Sputnik News and Instapundit

Veronica Stracqualursi / CNN:

New York Times: Internal CDC documents warn full reopening of schools is ‘highest risk’ for coronavirus spread — (CNN)Internal documents from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that fully reopening K-12 schools and universities would be the “highest risk” …

Discussion: Gothamist, Reason, Chalkbeat and New York Times

Andrew Feinberg / The Independent:

White House insiders are worried that ‘unhinged conspiracy theorists’ are being given more and more powerful roles at the Pentagon — 'It's like these individuals are living in a complete alternate reality,' one source told me, adding that the idea of such people still serving in government was ‘terrifying’

Discussion: Raw Story and Twitchy

WTTG-TV:

Army's ‘Captain America’ who served nearly 12 combat tours dies by suicide after moving to DC — Master Sgt. Andrew “Andy” Christian Marckesano — The enemy could never break him, but what this decorated Green Beret eventually found was that his enemy was within.

New York Times:

'I Couldn't Do Anything': The Virus and an E.R. Doctor's Suicide — Dr. Lorna Breen was unflappable — until she faced a new enemy. — On an afternoon in early April, while New York City was in the throes of what would be the deadliest days of the coronavirus pandemic …

Indi Samarajiva:

American Passports Are Worthless Now (Map) — America is not united anymore and it's barely a state. They have crashed right through failed state into a plague state, unwelcome across the world. This has been predicted, including here. Now it has come to pass. Just look at the map.

Ben Brachfeld / BKLYNER:

Your Absentee Vote May Not Count — Thousands of absentee ballots in Brooklyn and across the city are likely to be invalidated by the city's Board of Elections, after many were not marked with a cancellation notice, or postmark, at post offices in the city.

Michael D. Shear / New York Times:

Leading Homeland Security Under a President Who Embraces ‘Hate-Filled’ Talk — Elaine Duke, a lifelong Republican, was acting secretary of homeland security for four months in 2017. — WASHINGTON — Elaine C. Duke, then President Trump's acting secretary of homeland security …

Discussion: Mother Jones and The Intellectualist

David Rutz / Washington Free Beacon:

NBC Contributor Reveals He Never Had Coronavirus After Network Documented His Recovery — An NBC medical expert who was brought on air nearly a dozen times to detail his struggle with COVID-19 never had the virus, he revealed this week. — After believing he had the coronavirus in spite …