Weekly Review

Herman Cain, a multimillionaire who, shortly before his COVID-19 diagnosis, tweeted, “Masks will not be mandatory for the [Fourth of July Mount Rushmore fireworks] event, which will be attended by President Trump. PEOPLE ARE FED UP!” died of the disease.¹ Bill Montgomery, the 80-year-old cofounder of the conservative youth group Turning Point USA, also died of COVID-19; shortly after his passing, the group’s Twitter account deleted a meme making fun of protective masks that used the hashtag #BigGovSucks.^{2 3} Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas, who is among a group of House Republicans who have often refused to wear masks on Capitol Hill, blamed his COVID-19 diagnosis on his wearing a mask.^{4 5} “I can’t help but wonder if my keeping a mask on and keeping it in place, that if I might have put some germs or some of the virus onto the mask and breathed it in,” Gohmert said in an interview. “Can I answer the question? Can I have just a few seconds [with] the question?” asked William Barr—who was photographed maskless during a meeting with Gohmert, also unmasked, in July—while testifying to the House Judiciary Committee about the use of plainclothes federal agents to pull protesters into unmarked vans without arrest.⁶ The attorney general defended the practice by stating that some protesters use “powerful slingshots” and “pellet guns” that allegedly “penetrated marshals to the bone.” In New York City, an 18-year-old woman was forced into an unmarked van by several police officers, some of whom were not in uniform, while riding her bike at a demonstration; she was later charged with two misdemeanors, criminal mischief and making graffiti.⁷ “Now that’s pretty scary, isn’t it,” said a woman who, at a city council meeting in Springfield, Missouri, compared requirements to wear masks in public to the yellow Star of David in Nazi Germany.⁸

Hong Kong announced that it would delay its upcoming legislative election by one year, citing concerns about the coronavirus, and Donald Trump suggested that the presidential election in November be delayed because of possible inaccuracies caused by “universal mail-in voting.”^{9 10} Two of New York City’s Democratic primary races held in June are still undecided, and other results are in question, because of recounts, unjustly disqualified ballots, ballots that were mailed out so late that they could not be returned before the deadline, and slow ballot processing related to coronavirus precautions.¹² Unsolicited packages of seeds sent from China have prompted 27 states to issue warnings about planting them.¹³ Najib Razak—the former prime minister of Malaysia, whose son and stepson once traveled to the White House along with Leonardo DiCaprio to give Barack Obama a DVD copy of The Wolf of Wall Street—was found guilty of seven counts of corruption related to his role in the 1MDB scandal and sentenced to 12 years in prison.^{14 15} Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon—who is not among the company’s executives who actively participated in bribery and money laundering for 1MDB—DJ’d at a benefit concert in the Hamptons that “egregiously” violated social-distancing rules.¹⁶ A bank manager in Oxford, England, was fired after it was discovered that she had been helping an 86-year-old visually impaired customer open his mail and pay his bills.¹⁷ British courts will not disclose evidence about two members of the “Beatles,” a cell of the Islamic State, to the U.S. Justice Department, and the European Union refused funding to six Polish cities that have declared themselves “LGBT-free zones.”^{18 19} As many as 6,000 macaques, who store their dead in a movie theater that is also their base of operations, have overrun Lopburi, Thailand. “The monkeys are never hungry, just like children who eat too much KFC,” said a Thai wildlife-conservation official.²⁰

At least nine people in India have died after drinking hand sanitizer during the government’s ban on alcohol amid the pandemic.²¹ “This crackdown was part of a wider sellout to make the city tidy for foreign investors and gentrifiers,” said Velvet Steel, a 42-year-old dominatrix, of Berlin’s now-lifted ban on BDSM sex work.²² A plane bound for Australia crashed shortly after takeoff because it was weighed down with 1,120 pounds of cocaine.²³ Red Lobster employees in Ohio saved a blue lobster and gave her to the Akron Zoo.²³ Joe Kennedy III accused his Democratic primary opponent, Ed Markey, of ignoring cities that were inundated during the construction of the Quabbin Reservoir, in 1946.²⁴ King Juan Carlos I of Spain, who is under investigation for corruption, announced that he is leaving the country.²⁵ Trump said that he would give Microsoft or “a big company, a secure company, a very American company” the opportunity to purchase TikTok instead of banning it immediately, and claimed that the U.S. government should get a cut.^{26 27} “And yet, they’re highly thought of—but nobody likes me. It can only be my personality,” said the president while discussing his declining approval ratings.²⁸ Bob Avakian, founder and head of the Revolutionary Communist Party, endorsed Joe Biden.²⁹—Violet Lucca