"I'm going to Walter Reed to see some of our great soldiers who have been injured," said Trump on Thursday. "Badly injured. And also see some of our Covid workers, people who have such a great job. And I expect to be wearing a mask when I go into Walter Reed. You're in a hospital so I think it's a very appropriate thing."

"Trump -- who has stubbornly refused to wear a mask in public, ridiculed those who have and done little to encourage his supporters to embrace the common sense public health measure -- has said he will wear a mask during a visit to Walter Reed National Medical Center on Saturday.

"He is also expected to be photographed wearing it, a photo opportunity that some of the President's aides practically begged him to agree to and hope will encourage skeptical Trump supporters to do the same."

It might be too late -- from both a public health perspective and a political one.

"Sometimes, American politics is complicated. Right now, it's extremely simple: the public has reached a harshly negative judgment of the president's handling of the most important issue facing the country, and the issue is so paramount that there's little room to wiggle out of it."

What's remarkable about where Trump finds himself now is that it's almost entirely due to his own personal vanity.

"Cloth face coverings are recommended as a simple barrier to help prevent respiratory droplets from traveling into the air and onto other people when the person wearing the cloth face covering coughs, sneezes, talks, or raises their voice. This is called source control. This recommendation is based on what we know about the role respiratory droplets play in the spread of the virus that causes COVID-19, paired with emerging evidence from clinical and laboratory studies that shows cloth face coverings reduce the spray of droplets when worn over the nose and mouth. COVID-19 spreads mainly among people who are in close contact with one another (within about 6 feet), so the use of cloth face coverings is particularly important in settings where people are close to each other or where social distancing is difficult to maintain."

Given that, why hasn't Trump been wearing a mask? Because he thinks it makes him look weak and/or bad. Not kidding.

What, exactly, do you make of that Trump quote other than that he isn't going to wear a mask because of vanity?

"Wearing a face mask as I greet presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens -- I just don't see it," he said. Why not? Because, based on the science, what an American president would be saying by wearing a mask when meeting with foreign leaders is that he is following best practices to keep himself -- and those around him -- safe.

But of course, that's now how Trump sees mask-wearing. He sees it as a sign of weakness or lack of masculinity.

"He makes a speech and he walks onto the stage wearing this massive mask ... and then he takes it off, he likes to have it hang off usually the left ear. I think it makes him feel good, frankly. He's got the largest mask I think I've ever seen. It covers up a big proportion of his face. And I think he feels he looks good that way."

So, yeah. Because he thinks that masks make him (and people generally) look bad or not manly or tough or something, Trump has resisted wearing one in public for months on end. Which has had a deeply deleterious effect on public health and his own political prospects.

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How Donald Trump's vanity may have doomed his reelection bid - CNN

Last year, POLITICO reported that a top Trump administration health official was using tax dollars to hire GOP consultants to boost her image. Now, an inspector general report confirms the story.

White House officials have said the interviews are a necessary exercise to determine who would be willing to serve in a second term if President Donald Trump is reelected. But officials summoned for the interviews say the exercise is distracting from numerous policy priorities, like working to fight the pandemic, revitalizing the economy or overhauling regulation, and instead reflect the White Houses conviction that a deep state is working to undermine the president.

Its an exercise in ferreting out people who are perceived as not Trump enough, said one person briefed on the meetings.

If theyre spending time trying to hunt down leakers, thats time theyre taking away from advancing an agenda, said a former senior administration official whos spoken with officials undergoing the interviews. And thats irresponsible.

The interview process, along with White House chief of staff Mark Meadows ongoing hunt for leakers, shows how the White House less than four months before the presidential election remains consumed by loyalty and optics despite urgent policy problems such as a raging coronavirus pandemic, nationwide worries about reopening schools and historically high unemployment. This weeks White House drama over Anthony Fauci, the nations top infectious-disease doctor, highlighted the persistent internal concern about whether government officials are in line with Trumps preferred policy approaches such as the presidents desire to downplay the latest coronavirus surges.

The reinterviewing exercise is being led by Johnny McEntee, a 30-year-old who's been a Trump aide since the 2016 campaign and was installed earlier this year as chief of the White House personnel office and is responsible for filling thousands or jobs across the federal agencies.

The interviews can take the form of general questions, such as an appointees career goals, but can also veer into territory meant to test a persons perceived loyalty, like asking for the appointee's thoughts on the U.S. relationship with China or probing questions about why an appointee was chosen for his or her current job. Interviewers have also asked people to give examples of ways they are supporting the administration.

It just seems like you could be a rocket scientist, but all they care about is whether you are MAGA, said one senior administration official familiar with the interview process. It is fair to do something to prepare to fill jobs in a second term, but right now, it is hard to know what the metrics are with this personnel office for being successful. There is no set criteria for what makes a good political appointee.

McEntee, a former body man for Trump, did not respond to a request for comment. A White House official who defended the process said its part of the personnel offices preparations for a second term, including gauging the officials postelection plans.

The head of the presidential personnel office under President Barack Obama called the interviews unusual. I could definitely see that kind of questioning being uncomfortable and creating unease among political appointees, said Rudy Mehrbani, who also vetted appointees while in the White House counsels office under Obama. If you are working in one subject area like Peace Corps or USAID, that does not mean you are signing on to the administrations position on funding for reproductive rights.

Political appointees at the Defense Department, including a top layer of officials undersecretaries are going through reinterviews with the White House personnel office this month, according to a current Defense official and two former officials. During the interviews, the representatives from the personnel office are forcing senior leaders to answer questions about their loyalty to the president with an eye toward keeping their jobs in a second Trump term, the people said.

Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman countered that the interviews with the White House personnel office were set up by the Defense department so that our political appointees could discuss second-term opportunities at the department and throughout the administration.

In other areas of the government, the personnel tests come at a moment when Trump appointees are already struggling to manage portfolios that have ballooned during the pandemic. For instance, HHS staff have now spent more than five months juggling the round-the-clock response to the coronavirus while handling other ongoing policy goals, like the presidents focus on securing lower drug prices before the election a balancing act that officials described as exhausting even before facing de facto loyalty tests.

Five political appointees in disparate roles across HHS said theyd either scheduled their meetings with the personnel office or were awaiting an appointment.

The interviews also have exposed some Trump appointees to unexpected risks: Labor Department officials were forced to quarantine after meeting with a White House personnel staffer who later tested positive for the novel coronavirus, Bloomberg Law first reported.

You would think they would want to shore up the bench in response to the pandemic or start getting ready to fill expected gaps because people get sick or they leave, Mehrbani added. In the run up to a transition, historically, there is lots of turnover. Those are the things the personnel office should be tending to.

For Trumps true believers, the interviews are viewed as a mandatory part of working in the Trump administration.

If were going to extend this amount of capital on you, and push for you, they should ask more questions. Im glad theyre doing it finally, one White House official said. The fact that PPO is finally considering whether people are aligned with the president its long overdue.

Lara Seligman contributed to this report.

More here:

Trump team launches a sweeping loyalty test to shore up its defenses - POLITICO

Donald Trumps campaign promise to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border was vintage Trump: controversial, huge, symbolic. But he also meant a real wall.

"I would build a great wall, and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me, and I'll build them very inexpensively," Trump said when he launched his campaign for the White House. "I will build a great, great wall on our southern border. And I will have Mexico pay for that wall."

Trumps passionate supporters loved when he made that promise in 2015 and applaud that hes talked about the wall through the three and half years of his presidency. If they judge him on changing the conversation in Washington on immigration, the president definitely achieved that.

RELATED:Browse 102 campaign promises individually rated on the Trump-O-Meter

But Trumps election didnt result in an actual wall being built. Trump couldnt get Congress to pass legislation that would have addressed costs or logistics of an actual wall. Mexicos leaders rejected Trumps rhetorical demands to pay for it. And its unclear that the Trump administration has the ability, money or time to complete such a complex project.

The Trump administration was able to reinforce and rebuild about 200 miles of fencing and barriers some of it existing before he took office. Trump has repeatedly referred to these efforts as building a wall along the 2,000 mile border. But this most repeated of his campaign promises is largely unfulfilled. Compared with before Trump took office, the numbers of people apprehended crossing the U.S. Mexican border were down in 2017 and 2018, then increased dramatically in 2019 as families in Central America fled crime and other instability. Crossings are down this year, most likely due to the coronavirus pandemic.

As Trump reaches the fourth anniversary of being nominated as the GOPs candidate for president, PolitiFact offers an account of the progress on 102promises he made in the 2016 campaign. Our Trump-O-Meter promise tracker finds that roughly 49% of Trumps promises can be described as either broken or not achieved.

Among Trumps Broken Promises were to establish the right to carry a concealed weapon in all 50 states; invest $550 billion in infrastructure; repeal Obamacare, and end birthright citizenship.

Trumps unfulfilled campaign promises are broken most often because he would have needed to change laws to achieve his goals but was unable to get action through Congress. (PolitiFact rates campaign promises based on outcomes, not intentions or effort.)

Our tracking project which we have done for 11 years including the promises of President Barack Obama and more than two dozen governors and mayors shows Trump kept roughly 24% of his promises. Typically he achieved progress when he could act on his own without Congress or the promise didnt require complex administrative action. As promised, he took no salary for his presidency. He began the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris climate agreement. He rolled back regulations. He refused to say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas."

His most substantial kept promise: cutting taxes. When Republicans controlled both chambers of Congress in 2017, they passed a wide-ranging bill that lowered taxes for many people and businesses. Trumps promises on taxes were ambitious, and he didnt get everything he wanted in the tax law. But he got enough to earn ratings of Compromise on his tax promises to eliminate the marriage penalty (it was reduced but not eliminated), lower the business tax rate to 15% (it was lowered to 21%), eliminate the estate tax (also reduced but not eliminated) and cut taxes for "everyone."

With roughly five months left in Trumps term, PolitiFact has rated Trumps remaining promises Compromise (about 20%) or Stalled (5%). At a similar point in 2012, Obamas promises were rated Promise Broken at 16%, Promise Kept at 37%, Compromise at 14%, and the rest Stalled (10%) or In the Works (22%).

How much will Trumps policy success or failure matter as voters go to the polls? The coronavirus pandemic has changed the political equation for answering that question. The coronavirus pandemic arrived unexpectedly in the final year of Trumps first term. It is a wild card in assessing his record, given its most direct impact on the day-to-day lives of Americans.

Nevertheless, Trump had three years to achieve his campaign promises before the pandemic. He may yet move more legislation through Congress to address that and other issues. PolitiFact will be updating promise ratings as circumstances warrant. Prior to the Trump-O-Meter, PolitiFact tracked former President Barack Obamas campaign promises for eight years on The Obameter. Obamas final tally was 24% of his promises rated Promise Broken; 48% promises rated Promise Kept, while another 28% of his promises were part of a Compromise.

How Trump achieved progress or fell short

Trump scored legislative victories with the passage of his tax bill, an increase in defense spending, and, with the backing of many Democrats, a criminal justice overhaul.

Trump has also managed to win confirmation of judges at an unusually fast clip, thanks to strong support from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. Trump signed massive spending bills and coronavirus relief packages, which had bipartisan support.

He has not succeeded in his promise to repeal and replace Obamacare, even when his party controlled both chambers of Congress. The Trump administration has not forwarded a repeatedly promised infrastructure bill to Congress. And, even before the enormous outlays required by the pandemic, his promise to cut domestic spending did not happen.

Much like his predecessor,Trump faced obstacles in working with Congress due to intense partisan polarization. But experts suggested he has fueled those very partisan fires that inhibit his own agenda.

"We have not had a president so distant from the legislative process as Trump since at least the 1920s," said Steven S. Smith, a political scientist at Washington University in St. Louis.

Trump tended to punch back against even modest deviations from his position. "He has mean-tweeted virtually every congressional leader at some point," said Gregory Koger, a University of Miami political scientist.

Like Obama, Trump has made stronger use of his executive powers, which dont require the agreement of Congress. Trump has been able to make progress on his environmental agenda by rolling back the actions of his predecessor through executive orders and regulations, rather than winning legislative votes.

"But as for regulatory changes and executive orders, what one president can do, the next president can undo," said John J. Pitney, Jr., a Claremont McKenna College political scientist and author of "Is Congress Broken?"

This means that if Joe Biden wins the 2020 presidential election, he would be able to overturn many of Trumps policies on immigration, the environment, and climate change, among other issues.

Any president has the tools to put their mark on foreign policy, and Trump has done so. Some of his biggest foreign policy promises were kept: pulling out of the Iran nuclear agreement, leaving the Paris climate accord, quitting the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, renegotiating the North American Free-Trade Agreement, providing strong backing for Israel including moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, and curtailing the Obama-era thaw with Cuba.

RELATED:Our only agenda is to publish the truth so you can be an informed participant in democracy. Donate today.

Some of these moves will be hard to reverse, while others could be changed by a Democratic administration.

Some say the biggest impact from Trumps approach may be intangible. "The area that may be irreversible is American leadership in the world," Pitney said. "We have made our allies wary of American leadership during the Trump administration, and they are not likely to again accede to a U.S. leadership role that makes them vulnerable."

Then again, Trump had promised during his campaign to adopt an America First approach. He said he would build the wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, he demanded that U.S. allies pay us for more for their defense, he pledged to impose tariffs on trading partners, and he said he would keep out Muslims and immigration from terrorism-prone countries.

History may question the wisdom of these policies, but Trumps rhetoric during the 2016 campaign gave clear signs that the rest of the world would find fault with some American policies on his watch. Dissatisfaction abroad with U.S. leadership under Trump suggests he has kept that promise.

PolitiFact reporter Miriam Valverde contributed to this report.

RELATED:Read more Trump-O-Meter reports on all 102 of President Donald Trump's 2016campaign promises.

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The Trump-O-Meter: Where President Donald Trump's campaign promises stand in the summer of 2020 - PolitiFact

Ben Meiselas, the lawyer who represented Colin Kaepernick in his case against the NFL, and his two brothers have a knack for delivering viral attack ads aimed at the Trump White House.

Last month, they posted an edited version of Ivanka Trumps commencement speech, which was cancelled by a university in Kansas. They followed up with a video focusing on GOP lawmakers who have dodged questions relating to some of Trumps more controversial tweets and actions.

Now theyre out with another, which has already racked up more than 4 million views overnight:

As you can see, the clip flips Donald Trump Jr.s attacks on Joe Biden Gross negligence! and sheer incompetence around and lobs them at the president. This guy is the epitome of the swamp, he said. The entire family have enriched themselves.

The Meiselas brothers, who run the MeidasTouch.com website, reserved some of their harshest criticisms for a statement that accompanied the video.

Trump children, propped up in this regime by the bizarre and shameless nepotism seen in banana republic dictatorships, represent the blend of incompetence, entitlement, and cringeworthy hypocrisy thats propelled America into disaster were now in under Trump, they wrote.

The #ByeDonJr hashtag blew up over night, as the Twitter haters ate up the clip:

See the original post here:

Sheer incompetence! Donald Trump Jr. shreds his father or at least thats how it appears in this viral clip - MarketWatch

Back on April 29th, Jared Kushner, Donald Trumps son-in-law and senior adviser, gave an interview to Fox News in which he dismissed concerns that the coronavirus pandemic would have a lasting negative impact on the American economy. I always find that we see the leading indicators, and often the media sees the lagging indicators, Kushner said. I think youll see by June a lot of the country should be back to normal, and the hope is that by July the countrys really rocking again.

Kushners statements neatly encapsulated the Trump Administrations economic theory of COVID-19: it would be a sharp but short shock. As states, particularly some that are governed by Republicans, rushed to reopen their economies in May and June, economic activity did rebound. The Labor Departments jobs report for June, which was released on July 2nd, showed that employers added 4.8 million jobs, and the official unemployment rate fell from 13.3 per cent to 11.1 per cent. Trump hailed this as spectacular news. But now it looks as though the employment survey, which was carried out in the second week of June, may well have marked an inflection point for the economy rather than a breakout.

As last month proceeded, the rate of new infections picked up in a number of states, including Arizona, California, Florida, and Texas. Americans took notice and changed their behavior. Some real-time indicators of discretionary consumer spending, including restaurant reservations and credit-card activity, took a dip. Given the threat that the virus presents in confined spaces, it could be argued that the restaurant and bar businesses are special cases. However, there is also evidence from other industries, such as retail and transportation, that the initial hit from the virus may be turning into a long-lasting one.

Last week, the clothing company Brooks Brothers filed for bankruptcy, and United Airlines warned that it may furlough nearly half of its U.S. employees in Octobersome thirty-six thousand people. On Thursday, the Labor Department reported that, during the previous week, another 2.3 million Americans had filed for state or federal unemployment benefits. We are beginning to see the impact of the recession spreading to companies that were not directly impacted by the virus, Andrew Challenger, a senior vice-president at the firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which monitors hiring and firing closely, told Reuters. At the same time, companies that attempted to reopen but were only able to attract a fraction of their pre-COVID customers are closing down again.

In an online appearance with the National Press Club on Monday, Robert Kaplan, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, said that the surge in infections and hospitalizations was having a chilling effect on the economy. Citing high-frequency data that his institution monitors, as well as conversations with businesspeople, Kaplan said, Unfortunately, with this resurgence of disease, it is muting that rebound. It is muting that growth. Other analysts agree. Economists at the investment bank Jefferies & Co. said on Monday that their index of economic activity suggests the recovery is running out of steam.... Most components of our index are now below their mid/late June peaks.

In his remarks, Kaplan emphasized the connection between faster economic growth and following public-safety protocols. He appealed to all Americans to wear masks and social-distance. If we dont do these things, it will be more likely that we have to slow the rate of reopening, he said. In some places, that is already happening. On Monday, Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, ordered restaurants, bars, wineries, movie theatres, museums, and zoos to close their indoor operations statewide. In a number of counties where the virus is spreading the fastest, including Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside, Newsom added additional businesses to the list, including gyms, hair salons, and nonessential offices.

Other states, including Arizona and Texas, have taken some more modest steps to roll back or slow the pace of reopening. What is lacking, and has been lacking all along, is effective national leadership which recognizes that repairing the economy and extinguishing the virusor knocking it down to a very low levelare complementary policies rather than contradictory ones. From China to South Korea to Ireland, other governments have exhibited this type of leadership and resolve. We have a President who reportedly hasnt attended a meeting of his coronavirus task force for more than a month, and who donned a mask in public for the first time on Saturdaynearly five months after the first U.S. case of the virus was confirmed.

On Monday, a number of media outlets reported that the Trump White House is trying to discredit Anthony Faucithe best-known member of the task forcewho has expressed concerns over reopening the economy as the number of cases surges. Appearing on NBCs Meet the Press on Sunday, Admiral Brett Giroir, another member of the task force, said that Fauci looks at it from a very narrow public-health point of view. That may be true; Fauci doesnt pretend to be an economist. And yet, by emphasizing the need to arrest the renewed spread of the virus, he is dispensing advice that jibes with what Kaplan and other economic policymakers, including Jerome Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, have been saying. (The path forward for the economy is extraordinarily uncertain and will depend in large part on our success in containing the virus, Powell told Congress a couple of weeks ago.)

Even as the United States is reporting record numbers of new cases, Trump seems unable or unwilling to accept reality. Until the start of this month, the daily death toll for the country as a whole had been falling, largely due to dramatic declines in New York, New Jersey, and other states in the Northeast, which endured lengthy lockdowns and moved cautiously to reopen. Over the past week, though, the national mortality trend line has ticked up a bit, a Washington Post graphic shows. And, on Friday, Deborah Birx, the cordinator of the White House task force, publicly acknowledged that a rise in the over-all number of deaths is expected as the disease continues to spread in some of our large metro areas where comorbidities exist, the Times reported.

Ultimately, this is a human tragedy. To protect the lives of vulnerable Americans, and also to protect the economy, Trump and Kushner should listen to Fauci rather than try to trash him.

Here is the original post:

Anthony Fauci Is a Better Economist Than Donald Trump or Jared Kushner - The New Yorker

Lake was a notable Georgia GOP voice of opposition to Trump during the 2016 campaign and shortly after. Ahead of Trump's arrival, Loeffler's campaign pointed to a2017 comment from Lake acknowledging that he didn't vote for the president and suggesting that Trump might leave office before his first term was up. Said Loeffler spokesman Stephen Lawson:

"Doug Collins hiring a Never Trumper to lead his campaign affirms how he really feels about our president. Congressman Collins is a career politician who only backed President Trump after his choice candidate was crushed in the primary. His entire campaign is built on lies, and his record as a fake conservative and total fraud is finally being exposed."

The reply from Collins campaign spokesman Dan McLagan:

"Attacking staff is sad. It's also silly since Kelly herself was a Mitt Romney never Trumper and her top strategists have been attacking the President for years. Kelly, Inc. sounds frightened and weak. Like mewling little kittens."

At the same time, the Collins campaign also riposted this morning with news that Loeffler's newly hired legislative director in Washington, Wesley Coopersmith, has an anti-Trump history: "Friends don't let friends vote for con-artists"...here's looking at you Florida #nevertrump," he posted in March 2016.

Loeffler also released thisgauzy digital video welcoming Trump back to Georgia, which he carried by five percentage points in 2016. "He continues to fight for all Americans. He's the only person that can do it again. Joe Biden has no clue what's at stake in this election," Loeffler says.

Meanwhile, Democrat Jon Ossoff, the nominee to challenge Republican incumbent David Perdue in Georgias other U.S. Senate race, welcomed Trump to town in a different way.

Ossoff took aim at the White House'snew policy for hospitals to report coronavirus data directly to the federal government -- and bypass the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Ossoff assailed Trumps decision to ignore, undermine and smear the CDC and called for the White House to guarantee the public uncensored access to the data. Said Ossoff:

"The accuracy, credibility, and transparency of COVID-19 data is essential to our national public health effort. Today's move raises grave concerns that the Administration is placing this information under political control, whereby its credibility will be in doubt, and it could be manipulated to serve partisan ends.

***

Republican congressional candidates Karen Handel (Sixth District) and Rich McCormick (Seventh District) will also be on hand when Trump steps out of Air Force One, we're told.

But GOP congressional candidates still enmeshed in north Georgia runoffs have apparently been left off the invitation list.

In the Ninth District, thats state Rep. Matt Gurtler and firearms retailer Andrew Clyde. In the 14th, construction executive Marjorie Taylor Greene faces neurosurgeon John Cowan.

The decision has at least one advantage: Greene has achieved some renown for her endorsement of QAnon conspiracy theories and racist comments. Having her in the same camera frame with President Trump might be inconvenient.

***

In decades past, when a president is both unpopular and a member of one's own party, there has been a temptation for state leaders to be suddenly called out of town when a presidential visit is announced. But that was then.

In today's polarized climate, there is little upside for a Republican who wants to distance himself or herself from Trump. In fact, refusing the president can be dangerous.

Consider the case of former U.S. attorney general Jeff Sessions hopes for a senatorial comeback were dashed Tuesday by former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville -- and President Trump.

Tuberville had Trumps backing in the Republican primary runoff to take on Alabama Democratic Sen. Doug Jones. During the Alabama campaign,Trump repeatedly criticized Sessions for recusing himself from an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

***

The Trump event will be containedwithin the Hartsfield-Jackson universe, so the impact on Atlanta traffic should be minimal.

***

We told you on Tuesday that the Trump Administration had eliminated the Atlanta-based US Center for Disease Control and Prevention as a first recipient and compiler of coronavirus data from hospitals across the nation.More this morning from The New York Times:

The new instructions were posted recently in a little-noticed document on the Department of Health and Human Services website. From now on, the department not the C.D.C. will collect daily reports about the patients that each hospital is treating, the number of available beds and ventilators, and other information vital to tracking the pandemic.

Officials say the change will streamline data gathering and assist the White House coronavirus task force in allocating scarce supplies like personal protective gear and remdesivir, the first drug shown to be effective against the virus. But the Health and Human Services database that will receive new information is not open to the public, which could affect the work of scores of researchers, modelers and health officials who rely on C.D.C. data to make projections and crucial decisions.

But don't expect Trump to address the coronavirus or the sidelining of the CDC this afternoon. Instead, the president is expected to announce a new federal ruleto speed up the environmental review process for proposed highways, gas pipelines and other major infrastructure. Critics are describing the move as a dismantling of a 50-year-old environmental protection law.

***

ProPublica reports that sincePresident Trump took office, the Comptroller of the Currency has quietly shelved at least six investigations into discrimination and redlining by major banking institutions -- including Atlanta-based Cadence Bank:

Flagstar Bank, a leading lender in Michigan, wrongly charged Black homeowners more through a network of mortgage lending affiliates, OCC officials concluded in 2017. That same year, agency examiners found that Colorado Federal Bank, an online lender, was doing the same to female borrowers.

Another inquiry by OCC officials concluded that Chicago-based MB Financial, a lender acquired by Fifth Third Bank last year, charged Latinos too much on mortgage loans. Cadence Bank, a lender in several Southern states, was turning away minority borrowers in Houston, according to an OCC investigation. Fulton Bank, a lender based in Pennsylvania, had been discriminating against minorities in parts of Richmond, Virginia, and its home state, regulators concluded.

***

National Archives employees working at home during the pandemic have used this time to improvepublic access to black history documents, including records of Martin Luther King Jr. and U.S. Rep. John Lewis.

More than 5,000 documents and photos have been tagged with descriptive keywords to make them more searchable online, the federal agency said. Now that additional records have been identified, archivists are beginning the process of transcribing them.

The trove of documents connected to Lewis includes congressional speeches and resolutions, pictures and even FBI reports of his activity during the Civil Rights Movement.

***

An endorsement of President Donald Trump by state Rep Vernon Jones was rewarded with a trip to the White House on Monday.

Jones, a Democrat who lives in either Lithonia or Atlanta depending on who you ask, was asked to join a roundtable with Trump and other guests "positively affected by law enforcement." The goal of the discussion was to counteract public debate about police brutality and reforms.

Among the other invitees was Jo Etta Northcutt, whose family credits an off-duty officer with saving her grandson from an attempted kidnapping at a Florida hotel. Northcutt said she lives in Atlanta and currently feels less safe -- withcrime on the upswing and protests occurring in the streets.

Jones's remarks centered on his time as DeKalb County CEO, and he spoke about tending to the families of police officers who died in the line of duty. He said most officers are acting honorably and "we have to stand with them."

***

Fulton County's elections office is once again accepting absentee ballot requests submitted by email, the AJC'sMark Niesse and Ben Brasch report.

The county's reversal came quickly after complaints that its refusal to process emailed ballot requests would reduce voting access and violate Georgia voting laws.

Fulton, the most populous county in the state, initially rejected emailed absentee ballot requests following struggles to manage a flood of applications before the June 9 primary election. Many voters in Fulton said they never received their absentee ballots, forcing them to wait in line for hours to vote in person during the coronavirus pandemic.

Voters who emailed absentee ballot requests Monday and part of Tuesday received a response from Fulton asking them to instead send paper applications by mail.

The county on Tuesday restarted processing absentee ballot requests for the Aug. 11 runoff, with some limits meant to avoid problems that surfaced before the primary. Only one absentee ballot application may be attached to each email. Absentee ballot applications submitted by email must be less than 5 megabytes in size, legible and in pdf or jpg file format.

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The Jolt: Jockeying for position ahead of Donald Trump's visit to Atlanta - Atlanta Journal Constitution