Our Little Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

The "grassroots" anti-government protests against COVID-19 measures to help Donald Trump and sponsored by big GOP interests are of course being used by white supremacist domestic terrorist militias to recruit and to plan further attacks.

America’s extremists are attempting to turn the coronavirus pandemic into a potent recruiting tool both in the deep corners of the internet and on the streets of state capitals by twisting the public health crisis to bolster their white supremacist, anti-government agenda.

Although the protests that have broken out across the country have drawn out a wide variety of people pressing to lift stay-at-home orders, the presence of extremists cannot be missed, with their anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic signs and coded messages aimed at inspiring the faithful, say those who track such movements.

April is typically a busy month for white supremacists. There is Hitler’s birthday, which they contort into a celebration. There is the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, the domestic attack 25 years ago that killed 168 people and still serves as a rallying call for new extremist recruits.

But this April, something else overshadowed those chilling milestones. It was the coronavirus, and the disruption it wreaked on society, that became the extremists’ battle cry.

Embellishing Covid-19 developments to fit their usual agenda, extremists spread disinformation on the transmission of the virus and disparage stay-at-home orders as “medical martial law” — the long-anticipated advent of a totalitarian state.

“They are being very effective in capitalizing on the pandemic,” said Devin Burghart, a veteran researcher of white nationalists who runs the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, a Seattle-based research center on far right movements.

What success the groups have had in finding fresh recruits is not yet clear, but new research indicates a significant jump in people consuming extremist material while under lockdown. Various violent incidents have been linked to white supremacist or anti-government perpetrators enraged over aspects of the pandemic.

The New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness said in March that white supremacists have encouraged followers to conduct attacks during the crisis to incite fear and target ethnic minorities and immigrants. “We have noticed domestic extremist groups taking advantage of the Covid-19 pandemic by spreading disinformation,” Jared M. Maples, its director, said in a statement. The coronavirus has been dismissed as a hoax, painted as a Jewish-run conspiracy and, alternatively, described as a disease spread by nonwhite immigrants, he said.

Last month, the Department of Homeland Security warned law enforcement officials throughout the United States of the mobilization of violent extremists in response to stay-at-home measures, according to a senior law enforcement official and a congressional staff member, who were not authorized to discuss the warning publicly.

A department memo dated April 23 noted the recent arrests of individuals who had threatened government officials imposing coronavirus-related regulations. The memo was distributed to law enforcement “fusion centers” that counter terrorism nationwide and to congressional committees, the officials said.

Extremist organizations habitually try to exploit any crisis to further their aims. While not monolithic, a spectrum of organizations — from anti-immigrant groups to those with a variety of grievances and those that overtly espouse violence — found something to like about the coronavirus.

“They view it as a chance to turn people,” said Megan Squire, a professor at Elon University in North Carolina who tracks online extremist chatter.

At its core is one of the oldest fallacies in the books, the suggestion that COVID-19 is a disease that only kills the inferior. To the white supremacist, it's a tailor-made recruiting tool.

Please note that the biggest proponent of the notion that everything is fine and that everyone is overreacting is our racist-in-chief himself.

But let's not forget the domestic terrorism angle, too.

An emergency proclamation issued Thursday in Stillwater, Oklahoma, requiring the use of face masks in stores and restaurants was amended Friday after threats of violence. 

"In the short time beginning on May 1, 2020, that face coverings have been required for entry into stores/restaurants, store employees have been threatened with physical violence and showered with verbal abuse," Stillwater City Manager Norman McNickle said in a statement. 

"In addition, there has been one threat of violence using a firearm. This has occurred in three short hours and in the face of clear medical evidence that face coverings helps contain the spread of Covid-19." 

Due to the threats of violence the city has decided to amend their emergency order but still want people to wear face masks whenever possible, the statement said. 

The proclamation issued Thursday required, among other things, businesses to require patrons to cover their faces to combat the spread of coronavirus.  

But on Friday, Mayor Will Joyce softened the rule to encourage, not require, face coverings, after several reports emerged of employees being verbally abused and being threatened with physical violence while trying to enforce the order -- all in just three hours of the rule going into effect. 

"Many of those with objections cite the mistaken belief the requirement is unconstitutional, and under their theory, one cannot be forced to wear a mask. No law or court supports this view," said City Manager Norman McNickle in a statement. "It is further distressing that these people, while exercising their believed rights, put others at risk."

It's going to get a lot worse in the weeks and months ahead.

Sunday Long Read: Going Postal

The GOP has been trying to get rid of the US Postal Service and privatize it for decades in order to corrupt the mail and make bank, not to mention rob African-Americans of thousands of postal service jobs, and our Sunday Long Read this week comes to us from Esquire's Jesse Lichtenstein achives from 2013 on why rural America in particular should be going to the pitchforks to keep the USPS.

The letter is mailed from Gold Hill, Oregon. 

The eleven hundred residents of this lingering gold-rush town, mostly mechanics and carpenters and retail clerks in other places, wake with the sun and end their day with a walk to the aluminum mailbox bolted to a post at the edge of their yard. In between, Carrie Grabenhorst heads out of town on highway 99, follows the Rogue River, and turns right on Sardine Creek Road. She turns left at a large madrone tree and heads up a quarter mile of dirt road, takes the right fork, goes past the sagging red barn to a white clapboard house with green trim, where she takes a dog biscuit from her pocket and offers it to the large golden retriever. It's a Monday, about 2:00 p.m. The dog stops barking. This is the usual peace, negotiated after thousands of visits over eighteen years. 

Often Grabenhorst's elderly customers are waiting at the door, or even by the mailbox, for her right-hand-drive Jeep to edge onto the shoulder. Many of them are alone all day. Their postal carrier is that one reliable human contact, six days a week. Some are older veterans. Quite a few have limited mobility, and it isn't uncommon for her to lend a hand with an errand; she's been known to pick up milk in town and bring it along with the mail. Grabenhorst drives seventy miles a day and makes 660 deliveries. On a typical day, that might include fifty packages of medicine. 

Her route is one of 227,000 throughout America. On the South Side of Chicago, carriers walk cracked sidewalks, past empty lots and overfilled projects. In the suburbs of Phoenix, mail trucks deliver to banks of mailboxes outside gated communities. In Brooklyn, they pushed their carts up sidewalks and ducked into bodegas on September 11, as they always do. Residents say they were comforted to see their postal workers still making the rounds, the government still functioning. In rural Alaska, mail comes by snowmobile and seaplane. In chaps and a cowboy hat, Charlie Chamberlain leads a train of postal mules down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, where a tribe of Havasupai Indians lives. Wearing blue trunks and a ball cap, Mark Lipscomb delivers letters by speedboat up and down the Magnolia River in Alabama. 

Want to send a letter to Talkeetna, Alaska, from New York? It will cost you fifty dollars by UPS. Grabenhorst or Lipscomb can do it for less than two quarters: the same as the cost of getting a letter from Gold Hill to Shady Cove, Oregon, twenty miles up the road. It's how the postal service works: The many short-distance deliveries down the block or across the city pay for the longer ones across the country. From the moment Benjamin Franklin was appointed the first postmaster general in 1775, the purpose of the post office has always been to bind the nation together. It was a way of unifying thirteen disparate colonies so that the abolitionist in Philadelphia had access to the same information and newspapers as the slaveholder in Augusta, Georgia. 

Today the postal service has a network that stretches across America: 461 distribution centers, 32,000 post offices, and 213,000 vehicles, the largest civilian fleet in the world. Trucks carrying mail log 1.2 billion miles a year. The postal service handles almost half of the entire planet's mail. It can physically connect any American to any other American in 3.7 million square miles of territory in a few days, often overnight: a vast lattice of veins and arteries and capillaries designed to circulate the American lifeblood of commerce and information and human contact. 

Grabenhorst sports a few blond streaks in her brown bangs, which curl over her forehead, perfectly framing her azure eyes and chiseled cheekbones. Rural carriers don't wear official uniforms, so today she's in shorts and an Oregon State T-shirt. Letters arrive at the post office in Gold Hill already sequenced in the order Grabenhorst will deliver them, but the "flats" — magazines, catalogs, large envelopes — and packages do not, so in the back of the post office she and her two colleagues stand at their own three-sided bank of metal slots, hundreds of them, one for each address, and merge the separate streams — a process called "throwing the mail." 

As the junior carrier, Grabenhorst has the peanut route. Paula Joneikis is the senior carrier, thirty-three years on the job; she took over her route from another lifer named Bev Washburn. That's how these jobs work — when you get a route, you hold on to it, maybe even try to pass it on to someone in your family. Failing that, you take a younger colleague under your wing and share your particular wisdom: the life history of your customers, how this one is related to that one, when so-and-so got to town, when so-and-so split up. Joneikis has a lot of "silver foxes" on her route — she tries to remember who's recently had an operation, and she'll come to the door with the mail. "We're a lifeline to these people," she says. 

"All of these people are family," Grabenhorst adds. She color-codes all 660 addresses for her morning sort: a little pink flag affixed to a slot means the customer is on vacation; a yellow flag means the whole family has moved; an orange flag is for customers who don't want packages left when they aren't home; a green flag means an individual has left the family: moved out, gone to college, divorced, died. 

When she gets to their driveway, she'll put the bundle into their box, her box. By law, only the postal service can put mail into a mailbox. It's a monopoly that ensures every citizen, in every square mile of the country, has the ability to receive mail and that the government can reach every citizen. No branch of government serves us so consistently, so intimately — a federal employee literally touching every house in America every day but Sunday. 

In mid-November, the postmaster general, Patrick Donahoe, reported that the post office had lost $15.9 billion for the year and was operating on just a few days' cash flow, having reached its legal debt limit. He all but begged Congress to take action. Mail was down 5 percent from the year before, and wages and benefits and other worker-related costs were an unsustainable 80 percent of the postal service's $81 billion operating expenses.
But nobody wants to hear that more than 70 percent of those losses were for extraordinary budget obligations mandated by Congress, or that the postal service posted its thirteenth-straight quarter of productivity gains. In a nation obsessed with cutting budgets and government fat, there is no better target than the federal postal worker who will have her route delivering paper mail for life, and then try to pass it on to her daughter. 

Eighty-five percent of America's critical infrastructure is controlled by the private sector. We let private companies fight our wars; we have 110,000 defense contractors in Afghanistan compared with 68,000 American troops. We let private companies lock up 16 percent of our federal inmates and instruct 10 percent of our students. They provide our phone service and Internet access and air travel and hospital care. Surely, many believe, private companies can deliver our mail better and faster and cheaper than the federal government. 

If you work with actual pieces of mail — if you are a carrier, a handler, a clerk, but not an administrator — it is said that you "touch the mail." The postal service has more than half a million full-time workers and a hundred thousand contract employees, the vast majority of which are mail touchers. Each morning, Grabenhorst enters into a ledger she keeps at her workstation exactly how much mail she's thrown and will be delivering that day. In Washington, D.C., they count in billions of pieces, but carriers talk about mail volume in feet — the width of a mail stack laid on its edge, face to flap.
On this unremarkable Monday, she'd written 14.75 feet. She flipped the pages of the ledger back to the previous year, to the same date: 17.5 feet. 

That we're sending less mail is not debatable. Nor is it debatable that the post office as we've known it for the past forty years, one built for speed and brute force in sorting and distributing an ever-surging flood of paper documents, is outdated in our digital world. 

This isn't a story about whether we could live without the post office. 

It's about whether we'd want to.

Seven years later the guy in the Oval Office is trying to destroy the postal service just to hurt the man who owns the Washington Post.

Mississippi Burning (With Fever)

Suddenly, the Magnolia State reopening businesses last Sunday is turning out to be a very, very bad idea.

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves (R) is reconsidering his plan to keep reversing his stay at home order after his state saw its largest spike in COVID-19 cases in one day following his first partial rollback.

“Things can change quickly,” the GOP governor said during a press briefing on Friday. “We have to stay flexible.” 

Mississip State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs, who was also present at the briefing, reported that there were 397 new cases in Mississippi, “the largest number of cases we’ve reported in a single day.” 

Tate, who had issued an executive order that allowed some businesses to reopen effective April 24, told reporters that he had originally planned to announce more reopenings during the press conference, then changed his mind upon hearing about the sudden surge in cases. 

“The increase was a large enough change to make me take a step back, reexamine things and must hold on and reconsider at least over the weekend,” the governor said. “Not to recklessly put people in harms way.”

Two dozen more states have already reopened or are expected to start reopening businesses in the next few weeks, including Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky locally.

Indiana is getting the jump on its neighbors, Ohio and Kentucky, when it comes to reopening restaurants. That’s good news for Steve Van Wassenhove. 

“We miss the day to day,” said Van Wassenhove, owner of Willie’s Sports Café at Hidden Valley Lake. “It’s been extremely challenging at times, but extremely uplifting at times.” 

Van Wassenhove said he and his staff didn’t expect to be back on the job so soon, getting ready for a May 11 reopening after Gov. Eric Holcomb gave the OK, even though they're limited to 50% capacity. 

“We’ve heard from our customers. That’s what they want. They want to be back here, back to normal,” Van Wassenhove said. 

“We want to make sure that everyone that comes here feels as safe as possible and we’re doing everything under the guidelines we can to reopen.” 

That means setting tables and chairs a bit further apart. 

“We’ve set up a floor plan to allow social distancing and allow our customers to be as safe as possible,” Van Wassenhove said.

Holcomb’s announcement came as a surprise, Van Wassenhove said. 

“We were assuming right away we’d be closer to June. Our plans have always been to reopen as soon as we can to get our folks back in here,” he said.

Kentucky is also reopening construction and manufacturing plants on May 11, and Ohio's Mike DeWine is expected to announce a similar schedule on Monday.  Restaurant dining areas aren't expected on the list though, which means the restaurants and eateries over the state line in Indiana are going to be packed with folks from KY and OH here in the Cincy metro area.

It's going to be bad, folks.

Last Call For Giving Them The Business

Small business owners don't want to use the Payroll Protection Program loans to actually keep workers on the payroll. They want to use it to pay off other things, because there's no point in paying workers with no demand.

When a $192,000 loan from the federal government’s small-business aid program arrived in his bank account last month, George Evageliou, the founder of a custom woodworking company, felt like one of the lucky ones.

Under the program’s rules, Mr. Evageliou has eight weeks from the day he received the cash to spend it. But nearly three weeks after the clock started on April 14, he hasn’t used a penny.

His quandary? If Mr. Evageliou wants his loan to be forgiven, he must spend three-quarters of it paying the 16 workers he laid off from Urban Homecraft, his Brooklyn business, in late March. But bringing his workers back now, when they can’t work in their fabrication shop or install woodwork in clients’ homes, won’t help his business. And if New York City remains shut when his eight weeks are up in mid-June, Mr. Evageliou would have to lay off his employees again — something he wants to spare them.

The government has “made this so hard to use,” he said. “It starts to feel like a lose-lose situation.”

The $660 billion Paycheck Protection Program was meant to extend a lifeline to small businesses battered by the pandemic, allowing them to keep employees on the payroll. But it has been dogged by problems. Countless small businesses couldn’t get money, and hundreds of millions of dollars instead flowed to publicly traded companies.

Now many of the small businesses that did get loans are sitting on the money, unsure about whether and how to spend it. That’s compromising the effectiveness of a program meant to help stabilize the country’s reeling economy.

Some owners don’t see the point of hiring back workers when business is so slow. Others chafe at having to use the money within eight weeks, when they would like to keep the financial cushion for longer. And many of the owners are confused about whether they have any flexibility. They would rather use the cash to retool their operations for an altered world or buy protective equipment for workers, but the rules require them to spend it on specific expenses, like payroll.

Owners also say they are afraid of running afoul of the program’s rules, which are complicated, ambiguous and still evolving. Accountants, lawyers and lenders are struggling to understand the nuances and offering clients tentative guidance.

“It’s chaos,” said Howard M. Berkower, a New York lawyer who advises corporate clients. “It’s impossible for businesses to have any degree of comfort that they’re following the rules when the rules are still being written.”

I don't know how I feel about this.

On one hand, I understand that the Trump regime tends to change the rules all they want to as far as enforcement, and I certainly would be wary of taking a PPP loan knowing that the regime could suddenly demand, say, all the money back from all PPP recipients in California or New York because of surprise fine print.

On the other hand, paying your workers would help solve the demand problem, now wouldn't it?

Meet The New Normal, Same As The Old Normal

America is increasingly deciding that stay-at-home orders aren't feasible anymore as cellular metadata shows traffic and grocery shopping patterns are returning to pre-lockdown numbers.

Apple’s Mobility Trends report shows that traffic in the US and other countries like Germany has pretty much doubled in the past three weeks. It had been down up to 72%. And location data provider Foursquare says that gas and fast food visits are back to pre-COVID-19 levels in the American Midwest.

Rural areas are following the same pattern.

“Gas station traffic has returned to pre-COVID-19 levels in the Midwest, and in rural areas throughout the country,” Foursquare said yesterday in a blog post. “Foot traffic to quick service restaurants (QSRs) has risen over the past several weeks.”

Whether governments, medical professionals, and scientists want it to or not, people seem tired of the shutdown and eager to get back to some semblance of normal life.

Another sign of the impending return to normal?

Grocery store visits are down to normal levels, after being 30-40% higher than normal in late March as people tried to stock up for a long shutdown.

While the Apple data is measured by people searching Apple Maps for directions, the Foursquare data is captured by people actually visiting locations. 13 million Americans have granted the company permission to capture their data and use it in privacy-safe ways.

While more people are going more places, it hasn’t impacted a number of hard-hit industries just yet.:
Gyms: still down 65-69%
Clothing stores: still down 72%
Furniture stores: still down 56-60%
Movie theaters: still down 75%

Nail salons, on the other hand, are “only” down 38-42%, and hotels in the Midwest are down just 49%, compared to a 63-70% decline in other regions.

Interestingly, as Apple’s data from Canada shows, while driving and walking are edging back up to normal levels, people are avoiding transit, which is still down 79% from pre-Coronavirus levels. Driving by yourself is safe, apparently, but sitting in a bus or on a train with hundreds of others is not.

The economic damage is starting to come home to roost this month, and  businesses are going to tank very quickly still, but America is clearly done with staying at home.

That remains a serious problem because COVID-19 remains a serious problem.

The World Health Organization extended its declaration of a global health emergency on Friday amid increasing criticism from the Trump Administration about its handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

The move comes exactly three months after the organization’s original decision to announce a “public health emergency of international concern” on Jan. 30. At the time, only 98 of the nearly 10,000 confirmed cases had occurred outside China’s borders. 
But the pandemic continues to grow. More than 3.2 million people around the world are known to have been infected, and nearly a quarter million have died, according to official counts. There is evidence on six continents of sustained transmission of the virus.

All of this has led experts in the W.H.O.’s emergency committee to reconvene to assess the course of the outbreak, and to advise on updated recommendations, said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the organization’s director-general.

“The pandemic remains a public health emergency of international concern,” Dr. Tedros said, adding that the crisis “has illustrated that even the most sophisticated health systems are struggling to cope with a pandemic.”

A rapid rise in new cases in Africa and South America, where many countries have weak health care systems, was alarming, he said. The acceleration is occurring even as the spread of the virus has appeared to slow in many countries in Asia and Europe.

Although people are slowly starting to return to work in China after weeks of lockdowns, businesses, schools and cultural institutions are still shuttered in most parts of the world. The virus has badly damaged the global economy.

But Trump and the GOP are convinced, along with now tens of millions of Americans, that this is 100% over.  And anyone who disagrees in the Trump regime is now being eliminated.

President Trump moved to replace the top watchdog at the Department of Health and Human Services after her office released a report on the shortages in testing and personal protective gear at hospitals during the coronavirus pandemic.
In a Friday night announcement, the White House nominated a permanent inspector general to take the reins from Christi A. Grimm, the principal deputy inspector general who has run the office since January.

The White House nominated Jason Weida, an assistant United States attorney in Boston, as permanent inspector general. The announcement said Weida was chosen because he has overseen “numerous complex investigations in healthcare and other sectors.” He must be confirmed by the Senate.

Grimm’s removal follows a purge of high-profile federal officials and inspectors general whose work has been critical of the president. Inspectors general at large agencies serve at the pleasure of the president, but they are considered independent monitors for waste, fraud and abuse.

Trump laced into Grimm at a news conference in April, after her staff report found “severe shortages” of testing kits, delays in getting coronavirus results and “widespread shortages” of masks and other equipment at U.S. hospitals.

The president demanded to know who wrote the report, calling the findings “wrong.” He then accused reporters of having withheld that Grimm had worked in the Obama administration.

“Where did he come from, the inspector general? What’s his name? No, what’s his name? What’s his name?” Trump responded on April 6, when asked about the report, which he said was politically biased. He then attacked Grimm on Twitter, writing, “Why didn’t the I.G., who spent 8 years with the Obama Administration (Did she Report on the failed H1N1 Swine Flu debacle where 17,000 people died?), want to talk to the Admirals, Generals, V.P. & others in charge, before doing her report.” 

Grimm is a career investigator and auditor who joined the inspector general’s office, one of the federal government’s largest, in 1999 when Bill Clinton was president. She has served in Republican and Democratic administrations and is not a political appointee.

She took over the inspector general’s office in an acting capacity in January from another acting official, who retired.

"Everything's going to be normal in a couple of weeks" is the message now.

All of this will be gone by June.

It's fantasy.

Things are going to get horrific, very quickly.

Not Just Another Day In GunCanada

It took just two weeks from the date of Canada's most lethal mass shooting rampage for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government to ban a number of assault weapons for sale.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced an immediate ban Friday on the sale and use of assault-style weapons in Canada, two weeks after a gunman killed 22 people in Nova Scotia. 

“Canadians need more than thoughts and prayers,” he said, rejecting the reaction of many politicians after mass shootings. 

Trudeau cited numerous mass shootings in the country, including the rampage that killed 22 in Nova Scotia April 18 and 19. He announced the ban of over 1,500 models and variants of assault-style firearms, including two guns used by the gunman as well as the AR-15 and other weapons that have been used in a number of mass shootings in the United States

“You do not need an AR-15 to take down a deer,” Trudeau said. “So, effective immediately, it is no longer permitted to buy, sell, transport, import or use military-grade, assault weapons in this country.” 

There is a two-year amnesty period while the government creates a program that will allow current owners to receive compensation for turning in the designated firearms or keep them through a grandfathering process yet to be worked out. 

Under the amnesty, the newly prohibited firearms can only be transferred or transported within Canada for specific purposes. Owners must keep the guns securely stored until there is more information on the buyback program. 

Mary-Liz Power, a spokeswoman for Canada’s public safety minister, said details of how the buyback program will work will be determined by the government and the other parties in Parliament. 

“We can’t prejudge what the result of the parliamentary process will be. That is when details about grandfathering would be determined,” Power said. 

Trudeau said the weapons were designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to kill the largest number of people in the shortest amount of time. 

“Today we are closing the market for military-grade assault weapons in Canada,” he said.

Imagine a government that responded to a mass shooting with more than "thoughts and prayers", with actual action and taking the time to do it right.

What a fantasy, right?

Canada keeps doing all these things that the right-wing says would be impossible here in a "free democratic nation", and yet the country hasn't imploded into a lawless hellmouth of debauchery and rivers choked with dead babies or whatever.

I kind of expect Trump to impose sanctions just to be an asshole.

Canada has problems, of course.  But Jesus, have you seen their neighbors?

Press The Meat, Con't

It's not just Trump going after the media relentlessly, but Mike Pence too.  If you think for a moment that Pence would be less arrogant, vicious or mean towards the media than Trump, think again.

Vice President Pence’s office has threatened to retaliate against a reporter who revealed that Pence’s office had told journalists they would need masks for Pence’s visit to the Mayo Clinic — a requirement Pence himself did not follow.
Pence’s trip to the clinic Tuesday generated criticism after he was photographed without a surgical mask — the only person in the room not wearing one. The Minnesota clinic requires visitors to wear masks as a precaution against spreading the coronavirus.

Pence’s wife, Karen Pence, said in an interview with Fox News on Thursday that he was unaware of the mask policy until his visit was over.

But Steve Herman, who covers the White House for Voice of America, suggested that there was more to the story after Karen Pence’s interview.

“All of us who traveled with [Pence] were notified by the office of @VP the day before the trip that wearing of masks was required by the @MayoClinic and to prepare accordingly,” tweeted Herman, who covered the trip as part of his rotation as one of the pool reporters, who share information with other reporters in limited-space situations.

The tweet apparently enraged Pence’s staff, which told Herman that he had violated the off-the-record terms of a planning memo that had been sent to him and other reporters in advance of Pence’s trip.

Herman said he was notified by the White House Correspondents’ Association that Pence’s office had banned him from further travel on Air Force Two, although a spokesperson in Pence’s office later told VOA managers than any punishment was still under discussion, pending an apology from Herman or VOA.

VOA is continuing to talk with Pence’s staff, said Yolanda Lopez, the director of VOA’s news center. She said it wasn’t clear how the vice president intended to proceed.

By the way, Mike Pence can actually wear a mask when he's required to and actually wants to.

Vice President Mike Pence was photographed on Thursday wearing a mask while visiting a General Motors plant in Indiana in what appeared to be a tacit acknowledgment of the criticism he has received for traveling the country without one.

Mr. Pence drew intense criticism for flouting the guidelines of the Mayo Clinic, which asks all visitors to its campus in Minnesota to wear masks, during a stop there this week.

It was not the first time he has refused to don a mask since resuming a heavy travel schedule representing the administration at graduations, hospitals and factories across the country. But because he appeared to be defying rules put in place by one of the country’s most renowned medical facilities, it seemed to strike a nerve.

At the time, Mr. Pence explained that because he was tested regularly for the coronavirus, he was not at risk of contributing to asymptomatic spread and therefore did not need to wear a mask — an argument that experts immediately dismissed.

Apparently as long as it's a red state, and Pence's home state, he's willing to play by the rules. Point that out though and you get banned. 

That's what this regime does to the press.

Last Call For One Hell Of A May Day

Everything's fine.

Everything's great.

We'll be back to normal in a couple of months at the most.

Also the Pentagon has ordered another 100,000 body bags because we're fucked.

The federal government placed orders for well over 100,000 new body bags to hold victims of COVID-19 in April, according to internal administration documents obtained by NBC News, as well as public records. The biggest set was earmarked for purchase the day after President Donald Trump projected that the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus might not exceed 50,000 or 60,000 people. 

That batch is a pending $5.1 million purchase order placed by the Department of Homeland Security on April 21 with E.M. Oil Transport Inc. of Montebello, California, which advertises construction vehicles, building materials and electronics on its website. The "human remains pouches" have not been paid for or shipped to the Federal Emergency Management Agency yet, according to the company's marketing manager, Mike Pryor. 

"I hope to God that they don't need my order and that they cancel it," Pryor said in a text message exchange with NBC News. 

Body bag contracts bid by Homeland Security and the Veterans Affairs Department are just one illustration of how Trump's sunny confidence about the nation's readiness to reopen is in conflict with the views of officials in his own administration who are quietly preparing for a far worse outcome. 

Around the same time it wrote the contract for the body bags, FEMA opened up bidding to provide about 200 rented refrigerated trailers for locations around the country. The request for proposals specifies a preference for 53-foot trailers, which, at 3,600 cubic feet, are the largest in their class. 

The cache of internal documents obtained by NBC News includes an April 25 "pre-decisional draft" of the coronavirus task force's "incident outlook" for the response, a summary of the task force leaders' meeting the same day and various communications among officials at several agencies. The documents show that task force members remain worried about several major risks ahead, including insufficient availability of coronavirus tests, the absence of a vaccine or proven treatments for the coronavirus, and the possibility of a "catastrophic resurgence" of COVID-19.

We're still having a 9/11's worth of deaths every day from this virus.  People talk about "plateau" and "the other side" and "we're getting through this" but that is wishful thinking.

It's going to go from disaster to catastrophe, and the Trump regime's cover-up is already underway.

The White House is blocking Anthony S. Fauci from testifying before a House subcommittee investigating the coronavirus outbreak and response, arguing that it would be “counterproductive” for him to appear next week while in the midst of participating in the government’s responses to the pandemic.

The White House issued a statement about Fauci’s testimony shortly after The Washington Post published a story Friday afternoon quoting a spokesman for the House Appropriations Committee, who said the White House was refusing to allow Fauci to appear at a subcommittee hearing next week.


“While the Trump Administration continues its whole-of-government response to COVID-19, including safely opening up America again and expediting vaccine development, it is counterproductive to have the very individuals involved in those efforts appearing at congressional hearings,” said White House spokesman Judd Deere. “We are committed to working with Congress to offer testimony at the appropriate time.”

In fact, Fauci is expected to appear at a Senate hearing related to testing the following week, according to a senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning.

“It’s not muzzling, it’s not blocking, it’s simply trying to ensure we’re able to balance the need for oversight, the legitimate need for oversight, with their responsibilities to handle Covid-19 work at their respective agencies and departments,” said the official, who noted that health risks entailed in moving around in public places were also a factor.

"But it's not a cover-up, he's going to testify before the Senate and he's just too busy."

Sure. Whatever guys.

The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

While it's still a long shot for the Dems, Cook Political Report officially has Sen. Lindsey Graham's seat in SC in play, and Jaime Harrison at least has a shot at the upset.

Harrison has a unique story to be able to reach both black voters and potentially peel off former Graham voters, especially white college-educated women that were Republicans' Achilles heel in 2018. That combination can be targeted with his money and could make this race a closer one than the state's seen in over 20 years.

Born to a single mother in impoverished Orangeburg, Harrison was raised by his grandparents. He went on to attend Yale University and Georgetown Law School. In between those two, he taught at his old high school and worked with an organization to help low-income students attend college. Then he moved to D.C. to work for Rep. Jim Clyburn, serving as his floor director when the longtime congressman first became Majority Whip after Democrats captured the House in 2006. He also lobbied for the Podesta Group — a tie Republicans are eager to highlight — before returning home again to South Carolina. In 2013, he was elected chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, the first African-American ever to hold that post. In 2017, he made a failed bid to be DNC chairman, dropping out to endorse eventual winner Tom Perez. He did get a slot as the national committee's associate chairman, though.

Most impressively, Harrison had a record-setting fundraising haul during the first quarter of this year, bringing in $7.37 million to Graham's $5.68 million (which also would have set the record for the most raised in a quarter in the Palmetto State before Harrison eclipsed it).

Both candidates raised most of their cash from out of state — Graham around 80%, compared to about 92% for Harrison, according to our analysis of FEC reports. And Graham's campaign points out that he suspended fundraising amid the pandemic for the closing weeks of the quarter. The incumbent also still has a cash on hand advantage of about $4.8 million over Harrison.

Graham's political skills should not be underestimated, and he's clearly taking this race quite seriously, as he should. However, we also can't overlook the considerable resume that Harrison also brings to the race, and even South Carolina Republicans admit he is a strong candidate.

One GOP operative in the state told me those fundraising numbers from Harrison's campaign have left Republicans in the state "stunned" and that it is absolutely on track to be the most expensive race in South Carolina history, expected to top upwards of $40 million.

"He's a very dangerous candidate to Sen. Graham," the Republican strategist said, calling Harrison "the best Democratic candidate I've seen here in a very long time."

Others, understandably, remain skeptical, even given Harrison's strengths.

"I just don't think the math works out in Jaime's favor at this point," another South Carolina GOP strategist said. However, the operative did admit that "Lindsey is going to have to work harder than he ever worked before," but that "Jaime would have to run a perfect race, and Lindsey would have to make a lot of mistakes" to win.

Harrison's compelling ads highlight his early biography. He's used his money to run positive spots in every major media market in the state, talking about the challenges his grandparents faced trying to make ends meet in the state's "Corridor of Shame," eventually losing their home; Harrison eventually buys them one. Notably, though, his ads don't mention his party.

I mean with Republican Tim Scott as the state's other senator, that's definitely intentional.

Politics in the South are weird.  Take a look at Georgia, for instance.

An internal poll conducted for the Georgia House GOP Caucus points to troubling signs for Republican leaders: President Donald Trump is deadlocked with Joe Biden and voters aren’t giving the White House, Gov. Brian Kemp or the Legislature high marks for the coronavirus response.

The poll also suggests trouble for U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler, showing the former financial executive with 11% of the vote and essentially tied with Democrats Matt Lieberman and Raphael Warnock. U.S. Rep. Doug Collins leads the November field with 29% of the vote, and outdoes Loeffler among Republicans by a 62-18 margin.

The survey, obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, was conducted by the political polling and research firm Cygnal between April 25-27 and it involved 591 likely voters. The margin of error is 4 percentage points.

Loeffler is toast. Among the poll's findings:

• Voters are evenly split on Trump, but Kemp’s disapproval rating (52%) outweigh his approval rating (43%). Loeffler is deeper underwater after grappling with an uproar over her stock transactions during the pandemic, with an approval of 20% and disapproval of 47%. Collins’ approval rating is about 10 percentage points higher than his disapproval.
• Georgians say their top priority is controlling the spread of the coronavirus and returning life to normal (35%), followed by rebuilding the economy (25%) and providing access to affordable, quality healthcare (17%).
• Trump and Biden are in a statistical tie in the race for president, with Trump at 45% and Biden at 44%. Only about 5% of Georgians are undecided, and another 6% back a third-party candidate.
• U.S. Sen. David Perdue leads Democrat Jon Ossoff 45-39 in a head-to-head matchup, with 12% of voters undecided.
• More Georgians said they were most concerned with public health (60%) than the economic impact (36%) of the pandemic.
• A majority of voters disapprove of the way Trump (51%) and Kemp (54%) are handling the pandemic. The General Assembly barely breaks even on the question, and many voters signaled they don’t know what lawmakers are doing.
• About 58% of voters said Georgia is moving “too quickly” to ease restrictions, though most (54%) back social-distancing measures and business closures.
• A plurality of votes (34%) think the “worst is yet to come” from the pandemic, while only about 22% think the worst is over. About 30% feel “we’re in the middle of the worst right now.”
• Most Georgians feel social distancing policies should continue at least a few more weeks, if not months, and only about 15% contend the state should “open everything now.”

I understand the theory among the right-wing noisemakers is "The people will make social distancing moot and will go back to work, school, and worship as normal in May" but I'm pretty sure after cases and deaths start skyrocketing in red states like Georgia, Florida and Texas -- and that's almost 100% guaranteed at this point -- that things will change very quickly among the Patriot Dot Eagle Freedom crowd.

Rent's Due And The Devil's Too, Con't

It's May 1 and the rent's due for tens of millions without any sort of fallback protections, as the number of unemployment claims has now hit 30 million over the last six weeks, and millions more unemployed are going uncounted because of overloaded systems. Against this backdrop, Florida is reopening businesses and beaches on Monday as the state records its highest number of COVID-19 deaths to date.

Florida will reopen certain businesses throughout much of the state on Monday, Gov. Ron DeSantis said. 

"We will get Florida back on its feet by using an approach that is safe, smart, and step by step," DeSantis said on Wednesday. 

DeSantis said restaurants and retail spaces could let customers inside, but only at 25% capacity, and people must adhere to social distancing guidelines from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

Restaurants can offer outdoor seating if tables are 6 feet apart. 

"Outdoor transmission, as far as we've seen, has been more difficult than the indoor climate controlled transition," the governor said, adding that medical officials recommended the outdoor seating change. 

Movie theaters can't reopen yet. 

"I just think it's practically difficult to do the social distancing," the governor said. "Indoor environments I think are more likely for transmission, so even though you could have done that on phase one, I think prudence dictates that we go a little slow on that."
Bars, fitness centers and places that offer personal services, likes hair styling, also will open later. 

People can schedule non-urgent surgeries again, he said, though it depends on a hospital's ability to handle surges in cases and availability of protective equipment.
Schools will continue to hold online classes, he said. 

DeSantis said the new measures he announced would not include three of the counties hit hardest by coronavirus. They are Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties, which account for about 6.2 million of Florida's residents, according to US Census data. 

Texas too is opening up businesses and public areas starting today, and yes, that state just hit a new high in recorded COVID-19 deaths as well.

Texas reported 50 more COVID-19 deaths on Thursday, the most in any one day since the state reported its first deaths in mid-March.

The state also reported it had added more than 1,000 new positive cases of COVID-19, the biggest one-day increase in infections since April 10.

The numbers came out less than 9 hours before Gov. Greg Abbott was set to lift restrictions on many businesses, allowing malls, movie theaters, retail stores and restaurants to begin operating at 12:01 a.m. Friday. Those types of businesses can only operate at 25 percent of their maximum capacity for the next two weeks under Abbott’s phased re-opening plan. After that, if things are going well, Abbott has said those places can go to 50 percent occupancy.

Abbott’s statewide stay-at-home order expires at the end of Thursday.

Georgia makes three Southern red states.

Gov. Brian Kemp will lift a statewide shelter-in-place order for most of Georgia’s 10.6 million residents starting Friday as he continues to roll back coronavirus restrictions, though he urged Georgians to stay at home when possible to contain the pandemic.

The order requires elderly and “medically fragile” residents to shelter in place until June 12, and it calls for businesses to follow existing restrictions through May 13 in order to remain open.

But Kemp told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that it was time to lift other measures to help revive Georgia’s tattered economy, emphasizing that an increase in testing and greater hospital capacity factored into his decision.

“What we’ve done has worked,” Kemp said in the interview. “It’s given us time to build our hospital infrastructure capacity, get ventilators and ramp up testing. That’s what really drove our decision.”

Democrats and others criticized the move, warning that Kemp’s decision risks spreading a disease that’s already killed more than 1,100 Georgians. Some offered a reminder that President Donald Trump was “totally” opposed to Kemp’s earlier steps.

Pushing back, Kemp said Georgians “can have confidence even if they disagree” with him that he’s relying on advice from health experts to arrive at his decision.

In all three states millions of people, and tens of millions more in the weeks ahead as more states "reopen" like Ohio and Kentucky, must now face the choice of returning to work during an ongoing pandemic or losing unemployment.  For some of them there is no choice.

Somebody still has to take care of the kids.

As of this writing, 43 states have closed schools through the end of the academic year. That list does not include New York state, where Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio continue to joust over the issue. But if you are a tri-state area resident who expects to send your kid to school before the fall, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you.

For most families, there is no child care without school. In America, school is pretty much the only free or subsidized child care our government provides. Without reliable, affordable, and Covid-free child care, going back to work is simply not an option for many parents.

The school closings only deepen a reoccurring problem most parents face: the summer. In a society that has decided to outsource child care responsibilities to the school system, the fact that this system goes on an annual months-long holiday is already a nightmare for working parents.

Now, the coronavirus pandemic is blowing apart the kinds of summer child care relief that parents rely on. Summer school is not happening. Summer camp is not happening. Summer youth sports leagues are not happening. The coronavirus makes it dangerous to dump your little disease vectors with their grandparents. Where the hell are parents supposed to put their kids during long summer days when they’re supposed to go back to work?

Don't know, don't care.  Work's open, daycares aren't. Go to work, wear your mask, pray you don't get sick, cause if you do, you get fired.  Rent's due, serfs. Get to work or you're all out on the streets.

Or maybe, maybe it's time for a general strike.

Just saying.

StupidiNews!

• University of Minnesota infectious disease experts warn the US could be in for up to two years of dealing with COVID-19, until 70% of the population has been infected.
• New White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany will hold her first White House press briefing on Friday afternoon, her predecessor held no press briefings over nearly a year.
• Hundreds of protesters, several armed, stormed the Michigan state capitol building in Lansing, demanding an end to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's shelter-at-home order scheduled through May 15.
• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says states and cities are seeking $1 trillion in direct aid in the next COVID-19 stimulus bill, Senate Republicans warn no legislation may come at all.
• Apple is expected to have new features in the next update to iOS 13 to recognize users wearing masks to unlock phones with FaceID technology.

Last Call For Trump Goes Viral, Con't

Donald Trump is now fully executing the plan to make China the villain in the COVID-19 pandemic so that he can rally the country around an external foe and possibly save his floundering reelection campaign.

Senior Trump administration officials have pushed American spy agencies to hunt for evidence to support an unsubstantiated theory that a government laboratory in Wuhan, China, was the origin of the coronavirus outbreak, according to current and former American officials. The effort comes as President Trump escalates a public campaign to blame China for the pandemic.

Some intelligence analysts are concerned that the pressure from administration officials will distort assessments about the virus and that they could be used as a political weapon in an intensifying battle with China over a disease that has infected more than three million people across the globe.

Most intelligence agencies remain skeptical that conclusive evidence of a link to a lab can be found, and scientists who have studied the genetics of the coronavirus say that the overwhelming probability is that it leapt from animal to human in a nonlaboratory setting, as was the case with H.I.V., Ebola and SARS.
Mr. Trump’s aides and Republicans in Congress have sought to blame China for the pandemic in part to deflect criticism of the administration’s mismanagement of the crisis in the United States, which now has more coronavirus cases than any country. More than one million Americans have been infected, and more than 60,000 have died.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a former C.I.A. director and the administration’s most vocal hard-liner on China, has taken the lead in pushing American intelligence agencies for more information, according to current and former officials.

Matthew Pottinger, the deputy national security adviser who reported on SARS outbreaks as a journalist in China, has pressed intelligence agencies off and on since January to gather information that might support any origin theory linked to a lab.

And Anthony Ruggiero, the head of the National Security Council’s bureau tracking weapons of mass destruction, expressed frustration during one videoconference in January that the C.I.A. was unable to get behind any theory of the outbreak’s origin. C.I.A. analysts responded that they simply did not have the evidence to support any one theory with high confidence at the time, according to people familiar with the conversation.

The C.I.A.’s judgment was based in part on the fact that no signs had emerged that the Chinese government believed the outbreak came from a lab. The Chinese government has vigorously denied that the virus leaked from a lab while pushing disinformation on its origins, including suggesting that the American military created it.

Any American intelligence report blaming a Chinese institution and officials for the outbreak could significantly harm relations with China for years to come. And Trump administration officials could use it to try to prod other nations to publicly hold China accountable for coronavirus deaths even when the pandemic’s exact origins cannot be determined.

The State Department declined to answer questions about Mr. Pompeo’s role. Spokesmen for the White House and the National Security Council declined to comment.

So Trump wants our intel agencies to "find" something on China.  Setting aside the horrific prospect of that, this is exactly what Trump wanted from Ukraine as far as "finding" something on Joe Biden, yes?

Besides, Trump plans to take action to punish China anyway.  He doesn't need justification, apparently.

Senior U.S. officials are beginning to explore proposals for punishing or demanding financial compensation from China for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, according to four senior administration officials with knowledge of internal planning.

The move could splinter already strained relations between the two superpowers at a perilous moment for the global economy.

Senior officials across multiple government agencies are expected to meet Thursday to begin mapping out a strategy for seeking retaliatory measures against China, two people with knowledge of the meeting said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to disclose the planning. Officials in American intelligence agencies are also involved in the effort.

President Trump has fumed to aides and others in recent days about China, blaming the country for withholding information about the virus, and has discussed enacting dramatic measures that would probably lead to retaliation by Beijing, these people said.

In private, Trump and aides have discussed stripping China of its “sovereign immunity,” aiming to enable the U.S. government or victims to sue China for damages. George Sorial, who formerly served as a top executive at the Trump Organization and is involved in a class-action lawsuit against China, told The Washington Post he and senior White House officials have discussed limiting China’s sovereign immunity. Legal experts say an attempt to limit China’s sovereign immunity would be extremely difficult to accomplish and may require congressional legislation.

Some administration officials have also discussed having the United States cancel part of its debt obligations to China, two people with knowledge of internal conversations said. It was not known if the president has backed this idea. Two senior White House economic officials ruled out the possibility of doing so shortly after this story was published.

Administration officials strongly cautioned that the discussions are preliminary and that little formal work has begun on turning these initial ideas into reality. Other administration officials are warning Trump against the push to punish China, saying the country is sending supplies to help the American response.

Performative government for the rubes, I guess.  But he does need to keep his base focused on China rather than his own massive failures.

Oil's Well That Ends Badly

It seems that Mobster-In-Chief Trump continues to quid pro quo everything and make threats for days, even when it comes to the Saudis who basically own his real estate.

As the United States pressed Saudi Arabia to end its oil price war with Russia, President Donald Trump gave Saudi leaders an ultimatum.

In an April 2 phone call, Trump told Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that unless the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) started cutting oil production, he would be powerless to stop lawmakers from passing legislation to withdraw U.S. troops from the kingdom, four sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. 

The threat to upend a 75-year strategic alliance, which has not been previously reported, was central to the U.S. pressure campaign that led to a landmark global deal to slash oil supply as demand collapsed in the coronavirus pandemic - scoring a diplomatic victory for the White House. 

Trump delivered the message to the crown prince 10 days before the announcement of production cuts. The kingdom’s de facto leader was so taken aback by the threat that he ordered his aides out of the room so he could continue the discussion in private, according to a U.S. source who was briefed on the discussion by senior administration officials. 

The effort illustrated Trump’s strong desire to protect the U.S. oil industry from a historic price meltdown as governments shut down economies worldwide to fight the virus. It also reflected a telling reversal of Trump’s longstanding criticism of the oil cartel, which he has blasted for raising energy costs for Americans with supply cuts that usually lead to higher gasoline prices. Now, Trump was asking OPEC to slash output. 

A senior U.S. official told Reuters that the administration notified Saudi leaders that, without production cuts, “there would be no way to stop the U.S. Congress from imposing restrictions that could lead to a withdrawal of U.S. forces.” The official summed up the argument, made through various diplomatic channels, as telling Saudi leaders: “We are defending your industry while you’re destroying ours.” 

Reuters asked Trump about the talks in an interview Wednesday evening at the White House, at which the president addressed a range of topics involving the pandemic. Asked if he told the crown prince that the U.S. might pull forces out of Saudi Arabia, Trump said, “I didn’t have to tell him.” 

“I thought he and President Putin, Vladimir Putin, were very reasonable,” Trump said. “They knew they had a problem, and then this happened.” 

Asked what he told the Crown Prince Mohammed, Trump said: “They were having a hard time making a deal. And I met telephonically with him, and we were able to reach a deal” for production cuts, Trump said.

Saudi Arabia’s government media office did not respond to a request for comment. A Saudi official who asked not to be named stressed that the agreement represented the will of all countries in the so-called OPEC+ group of oil-producing nations, which includes OPEC plus a coalition led by Russia.

To recap, Trump leans on world leaders to help his reelection bid all the time and has done so for years, especially when it directly helps Vladimir Putin.

This is considered "diplomacy".

Any questions?

Flattening The Curve

The good news is that so far, COVID-19 hospital cases haven't overwhelmed the country's hospital bed capacity yet.  That's good news, as it means resources for field hospitals and US Navy hospital ships can be shifted to where they are needed most.

Gleaming new tent hospitals sit empty on two suburban New York college campuses, never having treated a single coronavirus patient. Convention centers that were turned into temporary hospitals in other cities went mostly unused. And a Navy hospital ship that offered help in Manhattan is soon to depart.

When virus infections slowed down or fell short of worst-case predictions, the globe was left dotted with dozens of barely used or unused field hospitals. Some public officials say that’s a good problem to have — despite spending potentially billions of dollars to erect the care centers — because it’s a sign the deadly disease was not nearly as cataclysmic as it might have been.
Many of the facilities will now be kept on standby for a possible second wave of infections. Some could even be repurposed as testing sites or recovery centers.

“It will count as a huge success for the whole country if we never have to use them,” said Simon Stevens, the chief executive of the National Health Service in England, where sparsely used field hospitals have been criticized as costly, unnecessary “white elephants.”

“But with further waves of coronavirus possible, it is important that we have these extra facilities in place and treating patients,” Stevens said.

In Italy and Spain, field hospitals were seen as crucial to relieving strain on emergency rooms as the disease exploded in March. Those countries rank behind only the United States for the largest number of infections and deaths, according to a Johns Hopkins University tally.

Spain built at least 16 field hospitals, ranging from a few beds under tents to one with more than 5,000 beds at Madrid’s big convention center. That facility has treated more than 4,000 patients, accounting for 10% of the total infected population in the disease-ravaged capital.

As the crisis eases and permanent hospitals are able to better manage the load, some of Spain’s field hospitals are scaling back or shutting down. The Madrid facility halved its capacity and could close in two weeks if infection rates hold.

Spanish Health Minister Salvador Illa said the field hospitals have been important and in some cases “essential.”

Surely Republicans will be infuriated at this, but they should be treating this as news that the COVID-19 resources we have on had are working for now, and additional resources are in place should things get truly bad, as I expect a second wave will in places like Georgia, Florida, and Texas.

We'll see if the curve flattens those states back, very soon I would imagine.

StupidiNews!

• Los Angeles is the first major city to offer COVID-19 testing to all residents for no charge, Mayor Eric Garcetti announced the testing program will begin today. 
• Top Trump regime policy advisor Joe Grogan is the latest to be pushed out amid the ongoing COVID-19 disaster, Grogan was an ally of ousted WH Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney.
• Dr. Anthony Fauci says trials of pharmaceutical researcher Gilead Sciences' treatment to lower the severity of COVID-19 are "promising".
• Mexico's legislature has given President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador emergency budget powers, the bill is in response to the country being overwhelmed by COVID-19 economic issues.
• Boeing is the latest major US company to announce thousands of layoffs, the aerospace giant will furlough ten percent of its workforce amid calls for "critical" financial aid to the industry.