Pandemic: With new coronavirus infections at their highest rate yet, states and cities that were pushing to re-open are backing off.

  More than 50,000 new cases were announced yesterday in the US, a one-day record. The 14-day rate of infection is up 87 percent.

  Texas reported 8,000 new cases yesterday and with rising numbers New York City decided not to return to indoor dining. California has backed away from in-restaurant dining for 70 percent of the state and closed the beaches.

  Health authorities are urging Americans to scale back on July 4^th celebrations and avoid large crowds.

  Clinging to wishful thinking rather than action, President Trump said yesterday that he believes the virus is “going to sort of just disappear,” which is what he said when there was only a handful of cases in the US and now there have been 2,686,587 cases with 128,062 deaths. Trump also said he is “all for masks,” although he refuses to wear one in public appearances, claiming it does not look presidential. 

  Not acting presidential has never stopped him before.

Publish or Perish: A New York appeals court ruled that publisher Simon & Schuster could go ahead with its plans to release a tell-all book by Mary Trump, the niece of President Trump, reversing a lower court decision to delay publication.

  The publishing house fought the lower court order, even though it says they didn’t know the author had signed a nondisclosure agreement with the Trump family before they agreed to print the book.

  Simon & Schuster, has already printed 75,000 copies of the book, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.” 

China Syndrome: Nearly 400 people have already been arrested under new laws imposed on the once-autonomous Hong Kong by its parent-country, China. The new law cracks down on anti-government protests under the guise of “national security.” Hong Kong residents are worried that their cultural freedom is going to be oppressed or erased under stricter control by Beijing. 

Storytown: With President Trump claiming that the story of Russians offering the Taliban a bounty for dead American soldiers is “fake news” and “a hoax by the newspapers and the Democrats,” his lawyer Rudy Giuliani said yesterday that whoever leaked the story to the press is a “felon” and “deep state criminal.”

  Soooo … if the story is made up by the press, then there’s no leak and no felony. But Giuliani said the leak is “not quite treason, but it comes close,” evidently confirming that the Russian bounty story is true.

  Our friend Lucian Truscott, a writer and graduate of West Point, posts on Facebook that, “The escalation of leaks surrounding the Russian plot to pay the Taliban to kill Americans in Afghanistan is a kind of soft coup against Trump. Retired generals, retired secretaries of defense, retired national security advisers, and retired State Department officials like Fiona Hill and Bill Taylor may have not conspired together, but they have decided to tell the truth about what Trump is doing to undercut our national security with his connections to Vladimir Putin.”

  Truscott says, “It’s getting serious out there, folks. The word ‘treason,’ as in giving aid and comfort to the enemy, is already being thrown around not only on op-ed pages but in Congress.”

American Graffiti: President Trump tweeted yesterday that painting “Black Lives Matter” on New York’s Fifth Avenue would be “a symbol of hate” and would be “denigrating” to the street outside Trump Tower. 

  New York’s Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered the slogan to be painted in large yellow letters in part to antagonize the president. De Blasio responded to Trump’s tweets by calling them “the definition of racism.”

Late Not Espresso: Seattle police have cleared the so-called “CHOP Zone,” the Capitol Hill Organized Protest area that was taken over by protesters after the death of George Floyd at the hands of the police in Minneapolis. The police had abandoned a station house within the zone and it’s been the site of at least four shootings and two killings in the last month.

Tradeoff: President Trump’s UCMCA trade deal replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement at midnight. The agreement, among other provisions, makes improvements in environmental rules, auto manufacturing, and protections for pharmaceutical companies.

The Bulletin Board: A Fox News internal memo says the company has fired host Ed Henry after investigating a complaint of sexual misconduct brought by a former employee. Henry’s publisher has also cancelled his upcoming book about donating part of his liver to save his sister. The married Henry was previously suspended after having an affair with a Las Vegas cocktail waitress, — Big companies can also catch the coronavirus and end up on life support. NPC International Inc., the largest franchisee of Pizza Hut restaurants in the US, filed for bankruptcy. The  company owns 1,227 Pizza Huts and 393 Wendy’s burger restaurants. — Russian voters approved changes to the constitution that will allow President Vladimir Putin to stay in power until 2036.

Civil War News: As President Trump fights to preserve Civil War statues and the names of Army bases named for rebel officers, a statue of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson on horseback was removed from its pedestal in Richmond, Virginia yesterday. The statue has been one of five honoring Confederate icons on Monument Avenue. 

  Protesters have gathered nearly every night to demand removal of the statues. In early June, they toppled a figure of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy.

 Richmond Major Levar Stoney said, “It’s our job to rip out the systemic racism that is found in everything we do — from government, to health care, to the criminal justice system.”

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