Viral News: On the theory that what you can’t see doesn’t exist, President Trump continues to push the fiction that the US has more cases of the coronavirus than any other country because we test more. He tweeted, “If we tested less, there would be less cases.”

  The virus is surging in Alaska, Hawaii, Missouri, Montana, and Oklahoma, among other states. The US has entered a “new phase” of the pandemic, said Dr. Deborah Birx, who oversees the White House coronavirus response. She told CNN that outbreaks are increasing in both rural and urban areas, touching parts of the country once considered safe because they are so remote.

 “What we’re seeing today is different from March and April,” Birx said. “It is extraordinarily widespread.”

  Congress is still infighting to develop a second national rescue bill.

  Some Americans continue to wave the flag of personal freedom in refusing to recognize how easily the virus spreads. Hundreds of people, many without masks, showed for the 10th annual “White Trash Bash” on the Illinois River in East Peoria. A lot of Trump flags on the boats.

  The NY Times reports that scientists worry about pressure from the Trump administration to develop a vaccine before election day. The paper says vaccine developers fear that the administration will seize on a partially-tested vaccine and declare the problem solved so Trump can get re-elected. 

  So far, 154,860 Americans have died. The three states with the most deaths are California, 9,345; Florida, 7,022; Texas, 6,865.

Seasonal Ailments: Hurricane Isaias has been reduced to tropical storm status as it crawls up the East Coast after grazing Florida. The storm is expected to re-gain hurricane strength heading for the Carolinas.

  On its current track, Isaias will just skirt Charleston and Raleigh before squarely hitting New York City late tomorrow. Parts of the Carolinas and mid-Atlantic could get up to 8 inches of rain.

A-Ok: The first privately-launched round-trip to space orbit ended yesterday when two NASA astronauts in a SpaceX capsule made the first water landing for the US since 1975. Walter Cronkite still anchored CBS News at the time.

  Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico in the Crew Dragon spacecraft. 

  The pair spent 64 days in space. Before they could be picked up, a small flotilla of private boats gathered around the spacecraft, ehindering the capsule recovery. 

Surveillance State: The Department of Homeland Security has removed the chief of its intelligence branch after the discovery that he was monitoring the activity of  reporters covering the unrest in Portland, Ore.

  Brian Murphy, the acting under secretary for intelligence and analysis, had been passing along to law enforcement what were described as  “open-source intelligence reports” containing Twitter posts of journalists, noting they had published leaked unclassified documents.

Semper Fi: Seven Marines and a sailor have been declared dead after an amphibious vehicle sank last week during a training accident off the California coast. The eight men went down in hundreds of feet of water.

  The armored vehicle had been carrying 15 service members. Six got out alive and one died immediately. The cause of the accident with one of the Marines’ workhorse vehicles has not been determined. 

The Bulletin Board: It’s summer! Wildfire has burned at least 20,000 acres outside the San Bernardino National Forest east of Los Angeles. — The Lord & Taylor department store company that dates back 1826 and its new owner, Le Tote, have filed bankruptcy as a result of business loss during the pandemic. Lord & Taylor was already struggling, so you might say it had a pre-existing condition. —  Deutsche Bank has opened an internal investigation into the longtime personal banker of President Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, over a 2013 real estate deal between the banker and a company part-owned by Kushner. The banker and two colleagues bought a condo from Kushner, a violation of the bank’s conflict of interest policy. — The captain and owner of the Liberty Belle, a New York party boat with a capacity of 600 passengers, were arrested after carrying a party of 170 in violation of the state’s coronavirus restrictions. — For the first time, a National Hockey League player knelt during the national anthem.

The Obit Page: Wilford Brimley, the actor with the walrus moustache who’s very presence said, “cantankerous,” has died at age 85. He also had parts in “Absence of Malice,” “The Natural,” and “Cocoon.” 

  Brimley for years was also a pitch man for Quaker Oats and diabetes treatments.

   He tended to be what he played. Director Ron Howard said, “Wilford’s a testy guy, not an easy guy to work with all the time, but he has great instincts.”

Toast and Toe Jelly: Former Jeffrey Epstein sex slave Virginia Giuffre says in a book she’s writing that Britain’s Prince Andrew liked to lick her toes. We’ll just leave you with that this morning. 

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