In Brief: June 19, 2020

Court rejects Trump bid to end young immigrants’ protections

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected President Donald Trump’s effort to end legal protections for 650,000 young immigrants, the second stunning election-season rebuke from the court in a week after its ruling that it’s illegal to fire people because they’re gay or transgender.

Immigrants who are part of the 8-year-old Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program will retain their protection from deportation and their authorization to work in the United States — safe almost certainly at least through the November election, immigration experts said.

The 5-4 outcome, in which Chief Justice John Roberts and the four liberal justices were in the majority, seems certain to elevate the issue in Trump’s campaign, given the anti-immigrant rhetoric of his first presidential run in 2016 and immigration restrictions his administration has imposed since then.

The justices said the administration did not take the proper steps to end DACA, rejecting arguments that the program is illegal and that courts have no role to play in reviewing the decision to end it. The program covers people who have been in the United States since they were children and are in the country illegally. In some cases, they have no memory of any home other than the U.S.

Trump didn’t hold back in his assessment of the court’s work, hitting hard at a political angle.

“These horrible &politically charged decisions coming out of the Supreme Court are shotgun blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves Republicans or Conservatives. We need more Justices or we will lose our 2nd Amendment &everything else. Vote Trump 2020!” he wrote on Twitter, apparently including the LGBT ruling as well.

In a second tweet, he wrote, “Do you get the impression that the Supreme Court doesn’t like me?”

Atlanta police call out sick to protest charges in shooting

ATLANTA — Atlanta police officers called out sick Thursday to protest the filing of murder charges against an officer who shot a man in the back, while the interim chief acknowledged members of the force feel abandoned amid protests demanding massive changes to policing.

Interim Chief Rodney Bryant told The Associated Press in an interview that the sick calls began Wednesday night and continued Thursday, but said the department has sufficient staff to protect the city. It’s not clear how many officers have called out.

“Some are angry. Some are fearful. Some are confused on what we do in this space. Some may feel abandoned,” Bryant said of the officers. “But we are there to assure them that we will continue to move forward and get through this.”

Prosecutors brought felony murder and other charges against Garrett Rolfe, a white officer who shot Rayshard Brooks after the 27-year-old black man grabbed a Taser during a struggle and ran, firing it at the officer, Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard said.

Howard said Brooks was not a deadly threat at the time and that the officer kicked the wounded man and offered no medical treatment for over two minutes as he lay dying. Another officer, Devin Brosnan, who the district attorney said stood on Brooks’ shoulder as he struggled for his life, was charged with aggravated assault and violation of his oath.

Bolton critique of Trump could define tell-all book battles

WASHINGTON — The White House fight with former national security adviser John Bolton is the latest chapter in a lengthy history of Washington book battles, yet it will likely define future cases between the U.S. government and former employees determined to write tell-alls.

The government asked a federal court for a temporary restraining order to prevent the release of the book, claiming it contains classified material. But the book, set to be released Tuesday, is already sitting in warehouses. And media outlets, including The Associated Press, have obtained advance copies and published stories on the book.

The 577-page book paints an unvarnished portrait of Trump and his administration. Bolton writes that Trump “pleaded” with China’s Xi Jinping during a 2019 summit to help his reelection prospects and that political calculations drove Trump’s foreign policy.

From wire sources

Trump on Thursday called the book a “compilation of lies and made up stories” intended to make him look bad. He tweeted that Bolton was just trying to get even for being fired “like the sick puppy he is!”

The two sides are set to face off Friday in U.S. District Court in Washington, adding Bolton’s name to a long list of authors who have clashed with the government over publishing sensitive material. Bolton filed a motion late Thursday to dismiss the government’s complaint, citing “failure to state a claim.”

Decline in new US virus deaths may be temporary reprieve

The number of deaths per day from the coronavirus in the U.S. has fallen in recent weeks to the lowest level since late March, even as states increasingly reopen for business. But scientists are deeply afraid the trend may be about to reverse itself.

“For now, it’s too soon to be reassured that deaths are going down and everything’s OK,” said Dr. Cyrus Shahpar of Resolve to Save Lives, a nonprofit organization that works to prevent epidemics.

Deaths from COVID-19 across the country are down to about 680 a day, compared with around 960 two weeks ago, according to an Associated Press analysis of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The analysis looked at a seven-day rolling average of deaths through Wednesday.

A multitude of reasons are believed to be at play, including the advent of effective treatments and improved efforts at hospitals and nursing homes to prevent infections and save lives.

But already there are warning signs.

Juneteenth: A day of joy and pain – and now national action

In just about any other year, Juneteenth, the holiday celebrating the day in 1865 that all enslaved black people learned they had been freed from bondage, would be marked by African American families across the nation with a cookout, a parade, a community festival, a soulful rendition of “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing.”

But in 2020, as the coronavirus ravishes black America disproportionately, as economic uncertainty wrought by the pandemic strains black pocketbooks, and as police brutality continues to devastate black families, Juneteenth is a day of protest.

Red velvet cake, barbecued ribs and fruit punch are optional.

For many white Americans, recent protests over police brutality have driven their awareness of Juneteenth’s significance.

“This is one of the first times since the ’60s, where the global demand, the intergenerational demand, the multiracial demand is for systemic change,” said Cornell University professor Noliwe Rooks, a segregation expert. “There is some understanding and acknowledgment at this point that there’s something in the DNA of the country that has to be undone.”

AP-NORC poll: Trump adds to divisions in an unhappy country

WASHINGTON — Americans are deeply unhappy about the state of their country — and a majority think President Donald Trump is exacerbating tensions in a moment of national crisis, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

With less than five months until Election Day, the survey offers few bright spots for a president confronting a historic pandemic, a sharp economic decline and national outrage over police brutality against black people. Most Americans — including 63% of Republicans — say the country is heading in the wrong direction. And close to two-thirds — including 37% of Republicans — say Trump is making America more divided.

“Instead of bringing us all together, he’s pulling us all apart,” said Donna Oates, a 63-year-old retiree from Chino, California.

Oates said she was a Republican until March, when her mounting frustration with Trump and the GOP prompted her to change her voter registration to the Democratic Party. Trump’s tenure, she said, has made her “dread getting up to turn on the TV and see any of the news.”

That pessimism poses reelection challenges for Trump in his face-off against Democrat Joe Biden. Presidents seeking four more years in office typically rely on voters being optimistic about the direction the country is headed and eager to stay the course — a view most Americans don’t currently hold.

Curtains for Camelot: Last Kennedy sibling’s death ends era

BOSTON — Camelot’s inner circle is just about gone — though its spirit, some say, is very much alive.

Wednesday’s death of Jean Kennedy Smith, an acclaimed former U.S. ambassador to Ireland and the last surviving sibling of President John F. Kennedy, virtually erases those who were closest to the assassinated 35th U.S. president.

“This is sort of bringing down the curtain on one of America’s three political dynasties — the Adamses, the Roosevelts and now the Kennedys,” said Patrick Maney, a Kennedy scholar and retired professor of history at Boston College.

Only Ethel Kennedy, the 92-year-old wife of JFK’s brother, Robert F. Kennedy — himself felled by an assassin’s bullet five years later amid a mighty struggle for civil rights with echoes reverberating now in 2020 — remains with us.

“The world seems less bright today,” said Victoria Reggie Kennedy, whose husband, former U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy, another JFK brother, died in 2009.