MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Madison Ave. Business Sues Cuomo, De Blasio for Riots, Estimates $100M in Damages.

Related: Giuliani’s NYC Is All But Dead, Dems Killed It.

IT IS A RIDDLE WRAPPED IN A MYSTERY INSIDE AN ENIGMA; BUT PERHAPS THERE IS A KEY: Exhausted cities face another challenge: a surge in violence.

NEW YORK (AP) — Still reeling from the coronavirus pandemic and street protests over the police killing of George Floyd, exhausted cities around the nation are facing yet another challenge: a surge in shootings that has left dozens dead, including young children.

The spike defies easy explanation, experts say, pointing to the toxic mix of issues facing America in 2020: an unemployment rate not seen in a generation, a pandemic that has killed more than 130,000 people, stay-at-home orders, rising anger over police brutality, intense stress, even the weather.

Related:

● NYPD limits retirement applications amid 400 percent surge this week.

● New York City Proves You Don’t Have to Defund the Police, You Can Just Demoralize Them.

● Work begins on massive Black Lives Matter mural outside Trump Tower. “A stretch of Fifth Avenue between East 56th and 57th streets was closed to traffic as city Department of Transportation workers began measuring and stenciling the giant yellow letters onto the pavement with spray paint and tape just after 8 a.m. The Mayor Bill de Blasio-sanctioned mural will then be painted by local artists starting at 11 a.m., with Hizzoner expected to show up later….A maintenance worker from Staten Island who would only give his first name, Kevin, ripped the mural as ‘legalized graffiti by de Blasio.’ ‘American lives matter,’ the 63-year-old said. ‘It’s a shame. This is my taxes. I pay $200 to $400 a week in taxes for this? It’s legalized graffiti and a lot of politics.’ ‘It’s an insult to our president,’ Kevin added.”

ROGER SIMON: Renewed USAGM Needs Its Own TikTok to Fight China.

THOUGHTS ON CORONAVIRUS AND HETEROGENEITY: “Again, the point of this email is not that I (or anyone!) knows the answers at this point, but I do think the above two hypotheses are not being discussed enough, largely because nobody feels qualified to reason about them. So everyone talks about mask-wearing or lockdowns instead. The parable of the streetlight effect comes to mind.”

NOT FOR THE BETTER: The internet is changing drastically for Hong Kong’s citizens.

The big picture: It’s only been one week since China passed a controversial national security law that gives it vast new powers over Hong Kong, but the internet has already changed dramatically for people in the semi-autonomous city.

What sort of powers? The law lets mainland Chinese officials operate in Hong Kong for the first time. It also gives Beijing the power to overrule local laws, and it creates a series of vaguely worded new crimes: for example, making it illegal to incite “hatred” toward the Chinese government. Hong Kong police can censor internet content and track citizens online. They can now conduct searches without a warrant, force web platforms to take down or block posts, seize electronic records, and conduct surveillance of suspects without court oversight. Companies that don’t comply with these orders can be fined up to HK$100,000 ($12,903), and employees can face jail terms of up to six months.

The fallout: Effectively, this brings Hong Kong into China’s Great Firewall, a tightly controlled and censored version of the internet that blocks most foreign internet tools and mobile apps. Foreign companies are permitted to operate only if they comply.

It’s time to start shutting Communist Chinese surveillance apps out of Western markets.

COLLUSION: Canadian university starts referring to Taiwan as ‘province of China’ after diplomatic row. Taiwan is a province of China like Canada is a province of the United States.

AIR TANKER LINE UP: A KC-135 Stratotanker and seven KC-46A Pegasus tankers conduct an elephant walk at McConnell Air Force Base, Kansas. Photo taken July 1, 2020.

PLAGIARISM IS AWFULLY ON-BRAND FOR BIDEN: Joe Biden’s Unity Task Force recommendations copy and paste word-for-word from Bernie Sanders quite a bit.

THE FUTURE IS KNOWN. IT’S THE PAST THAT KEEPS CHANGING: History Is Whatever The New York Times Wants It To Be.

ELITE STANDARDS: Getting into Harvard just got a little bit easier. “Harvard University announced that it will not require standardized test scores for the class of 2025. Students are instead encouraged to submit information about their community involvement and high school accomplishments.”

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KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Jill Biden Wants to Trash Her Husband’s Dignity to Be Edith Wilson 2.0. “When Crazy Joe the Wonder Veep’s handlers first began letting him do videos from his quarantine basement, Jill was often sitting at his side, grinning like a proud mother whose idiot underachieving kid had just successfully recited the alphabet for the first time. It was, quite frankly, very creepy to watch.”

ANGELO CODEVILLA: Scamocracy: How a fraudulent ruling class plundered our most precious inheritance. “Our ruling class transformed America’s regime by instituting a succession of scams, each of which transferred power and wealth to themselves. These scams’ blending into one another compel us to recognize them, individually and jointly, as the kind of governance that Augustine called ‘magnum latrocinium,’ thievery writ large. Thievery of power even more than of money—colloquially, scamocracy.”

MADISON AVE. BUSINESS SUES CUOMO, DE BLASIO FOR RIOTS, ESTIMATES $100M IN DAMAGES.

WELL: Obama admin shut down H1N1 testing, complicating Biden’s attacks on Trump’s coronavirus screening: Public health officials disagreed with Obama CDC’s decision.

WELL: House Rep Who Changed Parties After Trump Impeachment Wins Primary.

Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew won his Republican primary Tuesday, beating his challenger, Bob Patterson, by over 60 points, The New York Times reported.

The race was first catapulted into the national spotlight when incumbent Van Drew announced that he was changing his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican in December 2019.

The switch came one day after the House of Representatives voted to impeach President Donald Trump. Van Drew was one of only two House Democrats to vote against both articles presented.

All the smartest people assured me that opposing impeachment was the kiss of death.

DE BLASIO’S NEW YORK: Video shows man spray graffiti outside Manhattan courthouse as NYPD cops watch.

HMM: Brooklyn’s Hasidic Jews are acting like they have herd immunity. Could they be right?

THEY’RE NOT WRONG: Trump campaign rips Univision’s anti-Trump bias, calling it ‘MSNBC en Espanol.’

IT’S AS IF KILLING OR CHASING AWAY BUSINESSES, LARGE AND SMALL, IS ACTUALLY THEIR GOAL: Seattle’s ‘Autonomous Zone’ Is Dead, But Its Amazon Tax Has Come Roaring Back to Life.

THINK OF THE PRESS AS A PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE OPERATION AIMED AT NORMAL AMERICANS AND YOU WON’T GO FAR WRONG: Press Now Plumbs Its Own Depths Of Depravity.

BE CAREFUL OUT THERE: Billions of passwords now available on underground forums, say security researchers. “Usernames and passwords for everything from network administrator accounts and bank details to streaming services and anti-virus software are up for grabs on the dark web – and many are being distributed for free.”