Another week of nonstop news is now in the books. Hopefully you’re managing to rest this weekend. Remember: The fight for justice is a marathon, not a sprint. To make things a little easier, I’ve got a few stories that I worry you might have missed.
Trump campaign demands CNN 'cease and desist' reporting poll with Trump losing to Biden. No, really
By Hunter
This is not a joke and it is not satire. Donald Trump has now gone so batshit loopy that his campaign is now issuing a legal "cease and desist" demand to CNN for ... conducting a poll that shows Donald Trump is losing.
That's it, that's the complaint. The poll shows Donald His Majesty Batshit Von Weirdstance Trump behind challenger Joe Biden, with Biden winning 55%-41%, and the idiot was so infuriated by the poll, which he tweeted was "FAKE," that his campaign had to placate him by threatening CNN with dire legal consequences for bein' mean to him.
CNN responds with a return letter telling the campaign to get well and truly bent
What can I even say about this? How pathetic can they possibly get? Have they no shame?
Louisville police release an ‘almost entirely blank’ incident report on Breonna Taylor's death
By Walter Einenkel
The Journal says the incident report is “almost entirely blank.” It contains Breonna Taylor’s full name, her age, and the residence she had lived at before the police broke into her home and shot her dead. However, under things like the list of her injuries, the report says “none.” Taylor was shot at least eight times by police. The report does list the three officers who reportedly fired into Taylor’s apartment under the “Offenders” section: Sgt. Jon Mattingly, 47; Myles Cosgrove, 42; and Brett Hankison, 44.
The officers did not wear body cameras or provide footage of the event. Kenneth Walker and Taylor’s family say the couple was asleep in bed when they heard a loud banging at their door. Walker says they called out and asked who was there but received no reply. LMPD has claimed that after announcing themselves a number of times, the police used a battering ram to enter the apartment, Walker shot one of the officers, and the officers returned fire. Five minutes after busting through her door, Breonna Taylor was pronounced dead.
This is absolutely shameful. It’s time to arrest Breonna Taylor’s killers. Now.
Pittsburgh newspaper editor defends banning 2 Black journalists from George Floyd protest coverage
By Lauren Floyd
“This person was not taken off a story, but was never on it. And this person does not cover race or protests. There is no such beat. This person covers social media, normally.”
Yet and still, that nameless person, Alexis Johnson, and anyone who supported her tweet in question—including Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Michael Santiago—were in practice taken off of protest-related coverage.
Burris used scathing language in defense of his selectively principled editorial decisions from “tragic fraud” to “simplistic and useless.” He drew parallels that aligned a tweet to a violation of the very principles of journalism.
In that tweet, by the way, Johnson seemed to mockingly point to a very real inequity between common media narratives about Black people and those about their white peers. “Horrifying scenes and aftermath from selfish LOOTERS who don’t care about this city!!!!! .... oh wait sorry. No, these are pictures from a Kenny Chesney concert tailgate. Whoops,” she wrote.
It’s sad how thoroughly unexpected this response is. And yet here we are, yet again.
Overwhelming majority of Americans across party lines want DACA recipients to stay, new polling says
By Gabe Ortiz
New polling from CBS News finds an overwhelming majority of Americans want beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program to stay in the United States. “Support for DACA extends across party lines and demographic groups,” the CBS News report said, including 95% of Democrats, 84% of independents, and 73% of Republicans. Overall, 85% of Americans say DACA recipients’ home is here.
The polling comes as families continue waiting for the Supreme Court to rule on the Trump administration’s termination of the program. No decision came today, with advocates saying we’ll likely know later in the week about the next possible decision date. “There is so much palpable collective pain,” tweeted recipient Reyna Montoya. “No matter the outcome, I pray for every person I’ve met. DACA symbolizes so much hope, not only for recipients, but for our families & loved ones.”
The polling of the last few weeks regarding public opinion in America has been remarkably hopeful. Progressive ideas are gaining more and more support across the board. DACA recipients deserve to stay in this country. They are here to stay.
Trump is even more toast than last week, as his approvals continue to plummet
By kos
As Kerry Eleveld covered just a short while ago, bunker-cowering president Donald Trump’s job approval numbers in a new CNN/SSRS poll have utterly collapsed—down to 38% approve, 57% disapprove. The poll has presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden ahead by a gaudy 55-41 that, if accurate, would have Biden approaching the 400 electoral vote mark.
The daily 50-state tracking poll at Civiqs is showing similar movement. Let me walk you through why Trump’s polling collapse is so significant and why if current trends continue, that 400 EV mark is actually within reach.
To start with, no one is counting any chickens before they hatch. This is a hard race, and things will get uglier the closer we get to Election Day. We have to fight harder than we’ve ever fought. That said, it also makes no sense to fear reality. Yes, 2016 hurt—no one wants a repeat. But this isn’t 2016. Not even close.
Again, no one is counting their chickens, but boy howdy is it looking real grim for our wannabe-fascist-in-chief.
‘Antifa buses!' Panicked armed men hit small-town streets across America to fend off imagined hordes
By David Neiwart
In rural towns across America this past week, men with guns have been roaming the streets, looking out for the threat to their homes they were warned about on Facebook: hordes of ravening “antifa” activists, loaded en masse onto buses and intent on wreaking havoc. Local sheriffs jumped on the bandwagon, too. Nevermind that it was all a hoax.
In at least one case, a suspected “antifa bus” (actually occupied by a multiracial family of four, out for a camping excursion) was surrounded in a parking lot and chased out—then later harassed at their campsite by locals felling trees across their access road in order to trap them.
The hoaxes were primarily spread on Facebook, though some Twitter accounts relayed the fake information as well. A typical post followed the formula used in others: a claim to have “real information” about “antifa” piling into buses from nearby urban centers with the intent of attacking defenseless small towns.
One such hoax circulated in the Midwest, citing the notorious conspiracy-theory operation Natural News, and claiming that “Antifa operatives are organizing a plan to bus large numbers of Antifa terrorists to the vicinity of Sparta, Illinois, where they will be directed to target rural white Americans by burning farm houses and killing livestock. The purpose of the attack, according to sources, is so that Antifa can send a message to white America that “not even rural whites are safe” from the reach of Antifa, and that if their radical left-wing demands are not met, all of America will burn (not just the cities).”
Hoax after hoax after hoax. Make sure no one you know is falling for it.
That’s it for this week, friends. Let us know in the comments if there’s something you wish we were covering more, or if there are any stories that you think we might have missed this week. Be well, and take care of each other.