British Maj. Gen. Chris Ghika, deputy commander of the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State, told reporters at the Pentagon on Tuesday that "there has been no increased threat from Iranian-backed forces in Iraq or Syria." In a rare rebuke of an allied military leader, U.S. Central Command said Ghika's comments "run counter to the identified credible threats" from "Iranian-backed forces in the region."
But Ghika is hardly alone in his apparent skepticism of recent U.S. warnings about Iran and its unspecified plots against U.S. "interests" in the Middle East.
"Intelligence and military officials in Europe as well as in the United States said that over the past year, most aggressive moves have originated not in Tehran, but in Washington," specifically from National Security Adviser John Bolton, The New York Times reports. One American official told the Times that "the new intelligence of an increased Iranian threat was 'small stuff,'" and "the ultimate goal of the yearlong economic sanctions campaign by the Trump administration was to draw Iran into an armed conflict with the United States."
The Trump administration's "anti-Iran push has proved difficult even among the allies, which remember a similar campaign against Iraq that was led in part by Mr. Bolton and was fueled by false claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction," the Times reports. "Privately, several European officials" suggested Bolton and fellow Iran hawk Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are "pushing an unsuspecting" President Trump toward war with Iran "before the president realizes it."
On Monday, Pompeo "unsuccessfully crashed a gathering of European foreign ministers, hoping to gin up a united front on Iran" but leaving rebuked, Ishaan Tharoor writes at The Washington Post. Spain announced Tuesday it's "withdrawing a frigate from a U.S.-led naval group in the Persian Gulf because Madrid wanted no part in an explicitly anti-Iran mission." Iraqi officials told the Times they are also skeptical of U.S. intelligence Pompeo shared about purported threats to U.S. facilities and personnel. Peter Weber
Neil Young is officially taking the president's 2020 campaign to court.
Young has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit in New York federal court against President Trump's campaign for using his songs at its rallies, with the complaint saying he "in good conscience cannot allow his music to be used as a 'theme song' for a divisive, un-American campaign of ignorance and hate," according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The rock star has repeatedly expressed his disapproval of the Trump campaign's use of his songs, including "Rockin' in the Free World," which USA Today notes the president has played at events going back to his June 2015 campaign announcement. Young last month said in an open letter to Trump that he wouldn't sue since this would potentially distract "from your important work at hand protecting and saving American lives" during the COVID-19 pandemic. Young later said, however, that he was reconsidering this.
"There is a long history to consider and I originally considered it, deciding not to pursue," Young said on his website in July. "But then President Trump ordered thugs in uniform onto our streets. ... Imagine what it feels like to hear 'Rockin’ in the Free World' after this president speaks, like it is his theme song. I did not write it for that." Brendan Morrow
Four former Census Bureau directors say it's a big mistake to cut counting efforts short.
The Census Bureau said last week it would stop its in-person count on Sept. 30, a month earlier than its scheduled end date of Oct. 31. The move left census workers concerned a "massive undercount" is imminent. The former directors, who worked under nine past presidents, reflected that fear in a Tuesday statement, and called for the count's data delivery date to be extended to April 30, 2021, to avoid "seriously incomplete enumerations in many areas across our country."
In-person census interviews are used to count people who didn't respond to a paper or online census, and are essential for counting underrepresented and hard-to-reach populations. The four former directors acknowledged the in-person count was supposed to happen from May 15 through July 31, but was delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic. This rescheduling led the Census Bureau to determine it needed four more months beyond the end of 2020 to tabulate congressional redistricting and apportionment stemming from the count, and the former directors agreed.
"Our expert opinion is that failing to extend the deadlines to April 30, 2021, will result in seriously incomplete enumerations in many areas across our country," the former leaders said, calling on Congress to make those necessary legal extension. In addition, they asked Congress "to require the Census Bureau to continue data collection operations through Oct. 30, 2020." Kathryn Krawczyk
The antiviral drug remdesivir's effectiveness at combating the coronavirus has been one of the biggest breakthroughs since the pandemic began. The catch is that the Gilead treatment is expensive and in short supply. So, a bipartisan group of state attorneys general are looking to the federal government to step in and change that.
In a letter to the heads of the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration, 31 attorneys general asked the agencies to exercise march-in rights granted to them by the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act to increase the supply of the drug and lower the price so it becomes more accessible to Americans.
The bill allows federal agencies to retain patent rights for drugs developed from federal funds, which Gilead received to boost remdesivir during the pandemic, if the manufacturer fails to achieve a reasonable price or "alleviate health or safety needs" of consumers. In this case, the letter argues, "it is clear that Gilead" has not done either of those things. Read the full letter here and more on the issue at USA Today. Tim O'Donnell
Ryan Reynolds has some major regrets about his and Blake Lively's controversial wedding venue.
The actor spoke to Fast Company this week and opened up about criticism he and his wife, Lively, have received for having their 2012 wedding at a former plantation in South Carolina, offering an apology for doing so.
"It's something we'll always be deeply and unreservedly sorry for," Reynolds said. "It's impossible to reconcile. What we saw at the time was a wedding venue on Pinterest. What we saw after was a place built upon devastating tragedy."
Reynolds went on to describe this as a "giant f---ing mistake," which "can either cause you to shut down or it can reframe things and move you into action," also saying that "years ago we got married again at home."
The two actors faced renewed criticism over their wedding earlier this year in light of the nationwide protests over the police killing of George Floyd. In May, they announced they had donated $200,000 to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, at the time saying, "We're ashamed that in the past we've allowed ourselves to be uninformed about how deeply rooted systemic racism is." Brendan Morrow
August is known in the book industry as the "dead zone," when agents and editors take their vacations ahead of one of the busiest months of the publishing calendar, September. But there are no summer doldrums this year: with movies and new television on pause due to the coronavirus pandemic, books have remained one of the few forms of entertainment able to proceed relatively unaffected — and they're successfully filling the void.
On Tuesday alone, a number of notable releases hit the (virtual) shelves, including Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Pulitzer Prize-winner Isabel Wilkerson. "It's an extraordinary document, one that strikes me as an instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far," raved The New York Times. Oprah Winfrey, in announcing Tuesday that Caste is her new book club selection, told CBS This Morning that "all of humanity needs to read this" and that it might be "the most important book" she's ever picked.
On the fiction front, also out Tuesday is Luster, the debut by Raven Leilani, described by BuzzFeed News as "the next great millennial novel." The book has been gaining buzz for weeks — "doesn't it feel like everyone is raving about this debut?" The Millions wrote — but Luster stands out for "the quality of the writing itself." Having read an early copy, I can attest: It deserves all the hype, and more.
Other late summer books have also earned raves — the memoir Wandering in Strange Lands by Morgan Jerkins, Laura van den Berg's short fiction collection I Hold a Wolf by the Ears, the novel Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy, the memoir Memorial Drive by poet Natasha Trethewey — which makes it tempting to correlate the extraordinary summer publishing is having with the pandemic. That might be a stretch though: while some release dates have been moved up, most August releases were set pre-pandemic.
More likely, the lack of noise coming from the other usual spheres of entertainment means the major releases in publishing especially stand out. As Stephanie Meyer, the author of Midnight Sun, a new Twilight novel out Tuesday, offered to the probing New York Times about why this book, why now: "Because I finished it." Plus, "I am really excited when I have a book to read right now, because there's not much else that's exciting." Jeva Lange