Schools reject Trump demand to fully reopen . . . President Donald Trump has spent the past two weeks demanding — often in all caps on Twitter — that American schools reopen this fall. But America's biggest school systems are rejecting the president across the country, with one city and county after another opting for virtual education or just a few days a week in school. And the president has little power to do anything about it. The Los Angeles and San Diego school districts announced Monday they will start the upcoming school year with full distance learning. New York City schools will offer a mix of in-person classes and online learning. Politico

Asia ramps up coronavirus curbs as news clusters emerge . . . Australian states tightened borders and restricted pub visits on Tuesday, while Disney prepared to close its Hong Kong theme park and Japan stepped up tracing as a jump in novel coronavirus cases across Asia fanned fears of a second wave of infections. Many parts of Asia, the region first hit by the coronavirus that emerged in central China late last year, are finding cause to pause the reopening of their economies, some after winning praise for their initial responses to the outbreak. Reuters

 

Republicans starting to opt out of going to GOP convention . . . As new cases surge in Florida, including 15,300 reported on Sunday, more Republicans are taking a wait-and-see approach to the event, or deciding to skip it all together. The G.O.P., which moved the convention to Jacksonville from Charlotte, N.C., after balking at health precautions there, now finds itself locked into a state with a far bigger virus problem, and planning an event whose attendance is waning as the pandemic escalates. “Everybody just assumes no one is going,” said Representative Darin LaHood of Illinois, an honorary state co-chairman for the Trump campaign. New York Times

 

 

Hillary Clinton says US must be ready for possibility Trump will refuse to go . . . Hillary Clinton has said the United States needs to 'be ready' for the possibility that Donald Trump will refuse to leave the White House if he loses in November's election. Speaking to Trevor Noah on Monday night's episode of The Daily Show, Clinton said she could not rule out voter suppression and foreign interference in this year's vote. Noah asked whether he may attempt, if he loses, to claim that the election was illegitimate and blame mail-in voting. 'Well, I think it is a fair point to raise as to whether or not, if he loses, he's going to go quietly or not,' she said. 'And we have to be ready for that.' Daily Mail

 

 

 

Trump opposes Washington Redskins name change . . . White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany Monday said President Trump opposed the Washington Reskins changing their name, referring to a Trump tweet last week which she said noted, “These teams out of strength, not weakness,” and  “the Native American community would be very angry” at the name change. McEnany noted polling taken in 2004 which found that 95 percent of Native Americans were not offended by the name. Of course, now that they’ve been told by elite leftists that they should be offended, maybe the polling will be different. White House Dossier

 

 

Two-thirds of voters disapprove of term "Kung Flu" . . . A new poll has found that 66 percent of registered voters find it inappropriate to use the terms “kung flu” or “China virus” when referring to COVID-19, while 34 percent said it is appropriate. The Hill-HarrisX poll, which took place online between July 3 and 4 and surveyed 933 registered voters, also found that 83 percent of Democrat voters and 66 percent of independent voters found the terms to be inappropriate. But 56 percent of Republican voters who took part in the survey said they believe the terms are appropriate. Breitbart

 

 

US rejects Beijing's South China Sea claims . . . The Chinese government’s expansive claims to own most of the South China Sea are illegal under international law, the Trump administration said Monday as it ramped up U.S. efforts to undermine Beijing’s increasingly militarized activities in the strategic waterway. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Washington is committed to standing beside allies across Asia to counter China, which has triggered regional tensions for more than a decade with assertions of sovereignty over most of the resource-rich South China Sea. “We are making clear: Beijing’s claims to offshore resources across most of the South China Sea are completely unlawful, as is its campaign of bullying to control them,” Mr. Pompeo said in a statement. Washington Times

 

UK to purge Huawei from 5G . . . Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered Huawei equipment to be purged completely from Britain’s 5G network by 2027, risking the ire of China by signalling that the world’s biggest telecoms equipment maker is no longer welcome in the West. The seven-year lag will please telecoms operators such as BT, Vodafone and Three (0215.HK) which feared they would be forced to spend billions of pounds to rip out Huawei equipment much faster. But it will delay the roll out of 5G.  The United States has pushed Johnson to reverse his January decision to grant Huawei a limited role in 5G. Reuters

 

Study finds 5.4 million lost health insurance due to coronavirus . . . An estimated 5.4 million Americans have lost their health insurance between February and May after being laid off due to the coronavirus pandemic, a recent study found. The number of newly uninsured in that three-month span dwarfs all prior annual records for workers losing their health coverage. The study conducted by Families USA, a non-partisan healthcare advocacy group, found that 5.4 million American workers became uninsured from February to May of this year as a result of the wave of job losses from the Covid-19 pandemic. Breitbart

 

California lockdown dims hopes for recovery . . . California Governor Gavin Newsom’s decision Monday to reimpose restrictions on bars, restaurants, gyms and even ordinary office work to tamp down a surge of coronavirus infections is dimming economic growth prospects for the nation as a whole. Darkening the outlook further was the decision by California’s two largest school districts - Los Angeles and San Diego - to conduct only online instruction when classes resume next month, a move that will make it challenging for parents of more than 825,000 students to return to work. The Golden State, with 40 million people, employs more workers than any other state in the nation, and its production of goods and services is about equal to the combined output of Florida and Texas, two others states that have also seen resurgences of the virus. Reuters

 

Ghislaine Maxwell tried to flee when feds knocked on her door . . . Ghislaine Maxwell refused to open the front door to the FBI when they raided her $1million home and fled to another room in the house, prosecutors claimed today. The alleged chief recruiter for Jeffrey Epstein fled to another room and was seen 'quickly shutting a door behind her'. The FBI smashed down the door and discovered a mobile phone wrapped in tin foil which prosecutors called a 'seemingly misguided effort to evade detection' by law enforcement. Daily Mail

 

Washington Post editor demands Texas Rangers change their name . . . Washington Post Global Opinions editor Karen Attiah argued on Monday that the Texas Rangers as a team name "must go." Attiah made the case that "to know the full history of the Texas Rangers is to understand that the team’s name is not so far off from being called the Texas Klansmen." Growing up in Dallas, Attiah recalled going to Rangers games with her father as a child, but not realizing at the time that the Rangers "were a cruel, racist force when it came to the nonwhites who inhabited the beautiful and untamed Texas territory." Fox News

 

 

Tucker Carlson offers empathy for chief writer forced to resign and goes on vacation . . . Tucker Carlson on Monday announced he would be taking a vacation just days after his chief writer was forced to resign for secretly posting racist, anti-LGBTQ and sexist comments to an obscure online forum over the past five years. The Fox News host said the break was a 'long planned trout fishing' trip, telling viewers: 'This is one of those years where, if you don't get it in now, you're probably not going to, if something dramatic happens, of course.' Blake Neff posted offensive material over a number of years on an Internet message board called AutoAdmit. He resigned Friday.

Addressing the story Monday, Carlson appeared to defend Neff, saying 'we are all human' and he 'paid a very heavy price'. Daily Mail