Friday, July 3 top news briefs
Hello, welcome to The Daily Moth. It is Friday, July 3. Here are some top news briefs.
Washington Redskins to evaluate team name
NFL football team Washington Redskins announced that they would evaluate its team name. The team has been criticized for years about its inappropriate team name, which is considered by many as a slur to Native Americans. Last week the National Congress of American Indians wrote an open letter calling on team players to rip the name off their locker room in the same way a Confederate general statue is ripped off. FedEx said in recent days that they requested the team to change its name. The team owner is Dan Snyder and he has been very resistant to any name changes in the past, but the current antiracist movement is clearly putting great pressure on the team to finally make a change.
Covid-19 cases rising; Texas requires masks
At least 14 states are reporting record highs of Covid-19 cases. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) announced today he is requiring Texans to wear a mask in public in any county with 20 or more cases of Covid-19, and warned that if they didn’t comply, they could be fined $250. President Donald Trump tried to brush off the rising cases by tweeting that there are only more cases because of massive testing. Trump is traveling to South Dakota and will give a speech tonight at Mount Rushmore in front of an expected crowd of over 7,000 people. There are no mask or social distancing requirements for the event.
Fort Hood soldier murdered
A female soldier was murdered with a hammer at a military base in Texas — Fort Hood. Her name was Pfc. Vanessa Guillen. The murder was on April 22. Guillen was missing until her remains were found near a river 26 miles away from the base. Now a suspect has been identified — a soldier named Aaron David Robinson. News reports say the possible motive for the murder is anger over a harassment complaint that Guillen planned to file against Robinson. Robinson killed himself on Wednesday night when police approached him on a road in Killeen. Investigators believe that Robinson worked with a woman named Cecily Aguilar to mutilate and move Guillen’s body. Aguilar is now in jail.
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Trumps mock Biden and interpreter
On Tuesday, Eric Trump, one of President Trump’s sons, tweeted a mocking video of Joe Biden and his interpreter on a PIP screen. Here is the clip.
[Clip]
President Trump retweeted the video on Tuesday as well. I reached out to a political consultant to the Democratic Party about what happened behind the scenes and was told that the interpreter was standing at an area away from the podium and that the interpreter had difficulty with hearing Biden’s voice, possibly because he moved away from the microphone. That’s the story behind the video.
The “Deaf People for Joe Biden” Twitter account criticized President Trump by asking, “Why is he coming to our ASL interpreter? Did you run out of disabled people to mock? Do you even have a disability policy?”
On a personal basis, I feel it is in bad taste for the Trumps to use the PIP interpreter in a mockery because they have not provided an interpreter for their Covid-19 briefings and it doesn’t seem to be a norm for them to provide interpreters for their rallies or campaign events. I have reported about some Trump events where an interpreter was provided, but it’s not on the same par with Democratic campaigns in how they place the interpreters nor the budget they spend. So a mockery is in bad taste, and especially now that it’s the 30 years anniversary of the ADA.
That’s all the top news briefs for today. Please check out a separate video I posted about the DeafVee Journal article on Kappa Gamma, as it is important.
Have a great weekend and stay with the light!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/03/coronavirus-update-us/
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/02/us/vanessa-guillen-fort-hood-disappearance/index.html
https://twitter.com/EricTrump/status/1278089449457487879
https://twitter.com/Deaf4Biden/status/1278354458070695936