RULING OF THE DAY. HHS rule struck down.”A federal judge on Monday blocked an effort by the Trump administration to erase protections for transgender patients against discrimination by doctors, hospitals and health insurance companies, dealing a blow to the broader legal reasoning it has used to try to roll back transgender rights across the government.”
GOD TESTING ME. Trump talks to Minnesota crowd about his conversations with God: “We built the greatest economy in the history of the world and now I have to do it again. You know what that is? That’s right. That’s God testing me. He said, ‘You know, you did it once.’ And I said, ‘Did I do a great job, God? I’m the only one who could do it.’ He said, ‘That you shouldn’t say. Now we’re going to have you do it again.’ I said, ‘OK. I agree. You got me.’ But I did it once. And now I’m doing it again. And you see the kind of numbers that we’re putting up. They’re unbelievable. Best job numbers ever.”
Trump wonders if the coronavirus might be God's way of punishing him for being a narcissist pic.twitter.com/vuPOiQsKcW
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 17, 2020
FINAL REPORT. Senate Intelligence Committee releases bipartisan report concluding Trump administration obstructed the probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election: ” In a thousand-page bipartisan report released Tuesday, the Senate Intelligence Committee says the Trump administration obstructed its investigation with ‘novel claims’ of executive privilege and paints a portrait of a Trump campaign eager to accept help from a foreign power in 2016.”
GALAPAGOS. 30 new species found at great depths. “For the first time, scientists from the Charles Darwin Foundation, in collaboration with the Galapagos National Park Directorate, the Ocean Exploration Trust and an international team of deep-sea experts have discovered fragile coral and sponge communities hosting thirty deep-sea invertebrate species that are new to science.”
BLOW-OUT. Madonna has no Fs left to give at 62nd birthday party in Jamaica.
TIKTOKER. CNN’s Chris Cuomo flexes, appears shirtless on his daughter Bella’s TikTok.
TOXIC SHOCK. Ellen fires three top producers amid toxic work environment scandal, apologizes again to staffers.
INSTIGATORS. American alt-right is fueling Europe’s anti-mask protests: “HuffPost Spain obtained access to a Telegram group with more than 50,000 members that has become a central place for people to share coronavirus conspiracy theories, organize protests and suggest slogans for upcoming demonstrations. … Much of the news shared via the Spanish Telegram group comes from Breitbart News, the conservative website that has long served as a central clearinghouse for the alt-right’s ideology.”
POLAND. Luca Guadagnino, Margaret Atwood, Pedro Almodóvar, Ed Harris and other sign letter supporting Polish LGBTQ rights amid government crackdown: ‘The letter, published on the website wyborcza.pl, states that homophobia in Poland is growing because of the incumbent socially conservative government, which it claims is using LGBT+ groups as a “scapegoat”. The letter is addressed to European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and calls on the organization to step in and “defend core European values” of “equality, non-discrimination, respect for minorities” which it says are being “blatantly violated in Poland”.’
DNC PERFORMANCE OF THE DAY. Stephen Stills and Billy Porter “For What It’s Worth”.
NEW ZEALAND. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern hits back at Trump after he calls out New Zealand’s “terrible surge” of COVID cases. “On Monday Auckland recorded nine new cases of the virus, and 13 on Tuesday, while the US’s Monday figure was just under 42,000. It is the first time Trump has mentioned New Zealand in a campaign speech. On Tuesday, prime minister Jacinda Ardern responded, saying there was “no comparison” between the situation in the US and her country.”
SPECIAL FORCES. Navy Seals are going full QAnon and it’s a problem. “The larger online conspiracy community is sprawling—the top QAnon groups on Facebook, alone, count more than 3 million combined members, according to an internal Facebook investigation, NBC News reported last week. These theories sometimes overlap in membership, and encompass millions of other people, spanning a range of false claims like that vaccines cause autism to the idea that the world is flat. In a group that large, some will almost inevitably be military or veterans. But QAnon and related conspiracy theories like Pizzagate (both of which baselessly accuse Democrats of child abuse) seem to have an unusually high incidence among ex-SEALs. And some retired SEALs have been vocal in more explicit support for QAnon in particular, even if they have not been tied to the scene of alleged protest-related violence.”
SENGI. Elephant shrew thought extinct for 50 years found alive and well in Djibouti.
EDEN THE DOLL. Transgender YouTuber says she and two friends were attacked by multiple men: “The beauty vlogger, who has been documenting her male to female transition on her channel for years, detailed the attack on her Instagram story along with footage which she obtained after one of the attackers posted it to his social media (yes, really).”
BIZARRE TRAILER OF THE DAY. FU James Comey. “Jeff Daniels and Brendan Gleeson star as former FBI Director James Comey and President Donald J. Trump in this two-part event series that tells the story of two powerful men, whose strikingly different ethics and loyalties put them on a collision course.”
PRETTY IN PINK. The Psychedelic Furs say John Hughes misinterpreted their song: “Butler says that the film’s writer, John Hughes, took the meaning too literally and had the film centre on a woman in a pink dress, while Butler says it actually referred to a wayward girl and her nudity.”
LYRIC VIDEO OF THE DAY. Taylor Swift “The Lakes”.
MUSIC VIDEO OF THE DAY. Orville Peck and Shania Twain “Legends Never Die”.
EARWORM OF THE DAY. ILIRA “Easy”.
TUESDAY TEMPTATIONS. Cedric and co.
