WHAT'S BREWING
TRUMP ADMIN STIFFED USPS FOR COVID-19 POSTCARD Trump’s administration reportedly has yet to pay the U.S. Postal Service for a postcard it sent out in March prominently displaying the president’s name alongside a series of guidelines for combating COVID-19. The cost of producing and sending the postcards to an estimated 138 million addresses across the U.S. was $28 million, with $4.6 million spent on printing alone. Meanwhile, as the 2020 election approaches, the new postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, has prioritized budget cuts over getting people their mail on time. This could imperil voting by mail. [HuffPost]
VOTER CONFRONTS TRUMP OVER EFFORTS TO UNDERMINE OBAMACARE An undecided voter confronted Trump over his efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act during a town hall event on Tuesday, asking how the White House planned to protect those with preexisting conditions while actively fighting to undermine protections already in place. Ellesia Blaque, an assistant professor, pressed Trump during a tense moment, detailing her experience with a lifelong disease that costs her thousands of dollars annually in insurance co-payments. [HuffPost]
TRUMP CAMPAIGN HIDING PAYMENTS TO ADVISER Trump’s reelection campaign is hiding what it pays a top adviser who claims he speaks to the president daily and who is embroiled in a long-running dispute with a former lover over how much child support he can afford to pay. Jason Miller, who joined the reelection team in late spring after having worked on Trump’s 2016 bid and who served as an informal adviser to him since 2017, has not once appeared in the 2020 campaign’s filings on its expenses with the Federal Election Commission. Also absent from the filings is Miller’s firm, SHW Partners LLC, for which he describes himself as a “principal.” [HuffPost]
WOODWARD: TRUMP DOESN'T SEEM TO KNOW WHAT IS REAL Journalist Bob Woodward, whose new book "Rage" about Trump has sparked outcry in the last week, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that his interviews with Trump left him doubting whether the president can distinguish between what’s real and what is just in his own head. “I don’t know, to be honest, whether he’s got it straight in his head what is real and what is unreal,” the journalist said on Tuesday night. “That is why at the end of the book, I say in totality my judgment is this is the wrong man for the job.” [HuffPost]
POISONED PUTIN CRITIC SHARES HOSPITAL PHOTO Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posted a picture of himself from his hospital bed in Germany where he’s recuperating from being poisoned with a nerve agent, wryly joking about being able to breathe on his own. “Hi, this is Navalny,” he wrote in the Russian-language post on Instagram in the first image of the 44-year-old since he was taken to Berlin’s Charite hospital. The photo shows him being given a hug by his wife Yulia and flanked by his two children as he sits upright in his bed in a hospital gown. [AP]
DOCTOR PERFORMED 'EXCESSIVE HYSTERECTOMIES' ON ICE DETAINEES Several people, including a nurse, expressed alarm at the number of hysterectomies being performed on immigrant women at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Ocilla, Georgia, according to a new whistleblower complaint sent to the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General. Multiple legal advocacy groups filed the complaint on behalf of Dawn Wooten, a licensed practical nurse with a decade of experience. It alleges that officials have fostered unsanitary conditions and allowed for “jarring medical neglect” at the Irwin County Detention Center. [HuffPost] |
