As recently as this past Thursday, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany repeated that reasoning to reporters, saying, “The media’s been asking this question for four years, and for four years, the president has said the same thing, his taxes are under audit, and when they’re no longer under audit, he will release them.”
On Sunday morning, the president’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani blew up that excuse once and for all.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Sunday morning couldn’t promise teachers, students and parents that they wouldn’t get sick from coronavirus if schools fully reopen this fall, as the Trump administration has been aggressively pushing for in recent days.
DeVos and President Donald Trump launched a pressure campaign this past week to force and threaten state and local school districts to fully reopen schools for full-time, in-person learning. DeVos herself has said she wants all schools to commit to being open five days a week and steer clear of remote learning, even as the pandemic rages to record levels in the country.
Interviewing DeVos on CNN’s State of the Union, host Dana Bash kicked off the lengthy and at times contentious conversation by immediately pressing DeVos on the fact that the vast majority of states now are seeing higher rates of coronavirus than when schools shut down in March.
Adm. Brett Giroir, the Assistant Secretary for Health who also leads the administration’s coronavirus testing efforts, on Sunday seemingly pushed back against President Donald Trump’s recent criticism of the Centers for Disease Control’s guidelines for reopening schools this fall.
Last week, amid his aggressive pressure campaign to force all local school districts to fully reopen this fall despite a massive surge in coronavirus cases, President Donald Trump complained that the CDC’s guidance on safely reopening schools was “very tough” and “expensive.”
Despite Vice President Mike Pence suggesting new recommendations would be issued in the following days, CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield contradicted the White House, noting that while there would be “additional reference documents” those documents “are not a revision of the guidelines.”
We’re all looking for an escape these days and a campsite or local beach may be the best option. Once you find the perfect place to set up camp, it’s all about staying comfortable for the time you’re there. That involves investing in something to sit on. Portable chairs, whether specifically for the beach or just one that you can bring along, are necessary these days. You can set up your own socially-distanced commune with ease. We’ve rounded up some of the best on the market so you can enjoy the outdoors comfortably and safely.
Officials in Portugal have confirmed to The Daily Beast that they have searched three deep wells near a campground where the prime suspect in the 2007 disappearance of British toddler Madeleine McCann stayed. Authorities are currently examining forensic evidence taken from the wells, though the wells contained lime which can lead to a faster disintegration of human remains. Additional searches in the area are expected this week.
Prime suspect Christian Brueckner is a convicted child rapist who is currently in a German prison on drug charges. He is also fighting charges that he raped a 72-year-old woman at the same resort where McCann disappeared.
Brueckner was named as the chief suspect in McCann’s disappearance in June after a cache of child pornography and littel girls’ swimsuits were found in a residence where he lived after McCann’s disappearance.
If you love The Daily Beast’s royal coverage, then we hope you’ll enjoy The Royalist, a members-only series for Beast Inside. Become a member to get it in your inbox on Sunday.
Prince Andrew likely to have been caught on tape at Epstein home, lawyer says
Prince Andrew is likely to have been caught on tape during one of his visits to Jeffrey Epstein’s homes, a lawyer for the dead sex offender’s alleged victims has claimed.
In the autumn of 1945, just weeks into the postwar era, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer decided to make an epic movie about the invention of the atomic bomb and its use by the United States against two Japanese cities. The film was set in motion when young actress Donna Reed received a letter from Dr. Edward Tompkins, her former high school chemistry teacher back in Iowa, who had worked on the bomb at the top-secret Oak Ridge site in Tennessee. He suggested a Hollywood drama that would reflect the atomic scientists’ fears about further developing the bomb for military purposes, which would likely provoke a nuclear arms race with the Soviets and threaten the future of the planet.
Her husband, Tony Owen, an agent, had taken the idea to MGM chief Louis B. Mayer who predicted that it must become his studio’s “most important” movie ever, an early example of what would become known as the docu-drama genre. Owen and MGM producer Sam Marx met with President Harry S Truman, who offered approval as well as the title for the movie: The Beginning or the End.
Unbeknownst to MGM, the studio was not alone in rushing ahead to make the first atomic epic. Hal B. Wallis, producer of Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon, among others, had been pursuing the idea at Paramount since late September. By the time MGM got moving, he had already engaged a well-known magazine writer to supply a treatment for a film tentatively titled Manhattan Project.
“Look, what beautiful stables!” library director Salih Şahin says with a laugh, the sweep of his hand taking in a scene with nary a trace of hay or manure. Instead of stamping, whinnying steeds, the airy, light-filled chamber is lined with long, gleaming-white study desks. The smooth stone walls and pillars of this grand reading room support a series of graceful arches and ceiling domes that almost float overhead, delicately painted with intricate floral and geometric designs.
It’s hard to find any building in Istanbul that doesn’t have a past life or three, and the early 16th-century structures of the Beyazıt State Library and Manuscript Library—the latest selection for The Daily Beast’s monthly series, The World’s Most Beautiful Libraries—are no exception. Initially serving as the soup kitchen, caravanserai, and stables of the Beyazıt Mosque in the city’s historic center, they were converted into Turkey’s first state library in 1884, later fell into disrepair, and were revived in 2016 with a much-lauded architectural restoration that uncovered additional layers along the way.
When members of the Istanbul-based firm Tabanlıoğlu Architects first visited the library site in 2006 after being commissioned to do the restoration, however, the most visible layers in the old section were of dust, decay, and disarray.
The final round of Poland’s presidential election, which is being held Sunday, has been dominated by incumbent President Andrzej Duda’s efforts to mobilize voters against the country’s LGBTQ people. It has been a very ugly campaign, with the groundwork carefully laid.
Hubert Sobecki, who has been an activist for LGBTQ rights in Poland for more than a decade, says, “I have never seen anything like the harassment of the past one and a half years.”
Naturally, most attention has been focused on the two rivals in the runoff election, Duda and the more liberal mayor of Warsaw, Rafal Trzaskowski, who says he will stand up for minorities. Trzaskowski has taken part in LGBTQ marches, but he also has said he would oppose adoptions by same-sex couples. This is 93-percent Catholic Poland, after all. As the BBC noted, Duda constantly claims Trzaskowski is “in cahoots with Jewish and LGBTQ interest groups.”
Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast
Now that my 44 years on daily newspapers have ended, I’m finally free to admit my biases.
I’m biased toward the facts. Toward compassion. Toward freedom. All basics of our business. All under attack by today’s Republicans.
We reporters pride ourselves on open minds. We’re fiercely independent. We defy sources and editors alike. We try to look past party labels to individuals’ merits. Some of my colleagues at the Cleveland Plain Dealer wouldn’t even vote in Ohio’s primary because of having to declare their parties. So I wasn’t surprised to see a 2017 study in ScienceAdvances showing little bias in our rates of response to news pitches from the two parties.
0
