TRUMP WANTS FULL CAPACITY AT CONVENTION
President CHARLOTTE, N. C .» Donald Trump’s demand for a full-capacity Republican convention in August is putting pressure on North Carolina health officials — and local Republicans — as coronavirus cases surge in the host county and statewide.
Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s administration has refused to give in to the pressure, though, responding with a letter demanding a written safety plan from organizers of the Republican National Convention, slated for August in Charlotte. Even local Republican officials have noted Trump doesn’t have the power alone to cancel the convention contract. The convention, with over two years of planning, is scheduled to start in 90 days.
GOP representatives plan to sue Pelosi. Republican leaders plan to sue Speaker Nancy Pelosi and top congressional officials on Tuesday to block the House of Representatives from using a proxy voting system set up by Democrats to allow for remote legislating during the coronavirus pandemic, calling it unconstitutional, according to four people familiarwith the case.
Democrats pushed through the plan this month over unanimous Republican opposition.
Longtime Pentagon watchdog quitting. WA S HING TON»
Glenn A. Fine, ousted by President Donald Trump last month as head of a watchdog panel assigned to oversee how his administration spends trillions of taxpayer dollars in coronavirus pandemic relief, announced Monday he was resigning from his Pentagon job.
His departure came as
Christi A. Grimm — the acting inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services, whom Trump attacked after she released a report about shortages of hospital equipment in the pandemic — issued a strong defense of the system of independent watchdogs.
“We are impartial in what we do,” Grimm said Tuesday before the House Oversight and Reform Committee.
Probe of three senators’ stock trades closed.
WA S HING TON» The Justice Department has closed investigations into stock trading by Sens. Dianne Feinstein of California, Kelly Loeffler of Georgia and Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, according to people familiar with notifications sent to the senators. The senators came under scrutiny for transactions made in the weeks before the coronavirus sent markets downhill.
The developments indicate that federal law enforcement officials are narrowing their focus in the stock investigation to Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C, the former Senate Intelligence Committee chairman.
White woman who called police on black man fired.
The verbal dispute
N EWY O RK» between a white woman with an unleashed dog and a black man bird watching in Central Park might normally have gone unnoticed in a city preoccupied by the coronavirus pandemic. That changed when birdwatcher Christian Cooper pulled out his phone and captured Amy Cooper calling police to report she was being threatened by “an African-American man.”
The widely watched video sparked accusations of racism and led to Amy Cooper getting fired by investment firm Franklin Templeton.