The Commentariat -- April 20, 2020

Late Morning/Afternoon Update:

Trump's Evil Plan. Jonathan Chait: "President Trump's current pandemic strategy -- emphasize current; like the cliché about the weather, if you don't like it, wait a few hours -- is a baffling knot of contradictions. He is hurling all responsibility to state governments, leaving it to them to devise effective tests and to decide when to relax social distancing. At the same time, he is starving them of the resources to handle the job. And even as Trump hides behind a policy of deference to governors, he is goading right-wing protesters to force their hand.... Yet there does appear to be a strategy here. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday afternoon that Trump has 'asked White House aides for economic response plans that would allow him to take credit for successes while offering enough flexibility to assign fault for any failures to others.' Trump's seemingly paradoxical stance is an attempt to hoard credit and shirk risk.... On the surface, he is deferring responsibility and blame to the governors. Just below the surface, he is coercing them to resume economic activity as fast as possible, regardless of what public-health officials say." Read on. ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Hating people is a waste of energy. I'm beginning to have trouble not wasting my energy on Trump.

The Washington Post's live updates of coronavirus developments Monday are here. Fauci Puts a Damper on the Trumpendrooler Protests. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation's top infectious-diseases expert, said Monday in response to protests of various states' stay-at-home orders that reopening the economy too early would backfire.... '... unless we get the virus under control, the real recovery economically is not going to happen.'... Fauci on Monday also cautioned against drawing too many conclusions from antibody tests, which determine whether a person was already infected with a virus. Many of the tests in circulation have not been validated or calibrated, he warned. Fauci added that although antibodies for other viruses generally confer immunity upon people who have them, experts have not proved that protection exists for the coronavirus and how long it lasts if it does exist."

Tom Boggioni of RawStory: "According to a report from the Daily Beast, Attorney General Bill Barr appears poised to take the lead and attempt to force governors to re-open their states during the coronavirus pandemic -- even at the risk of ramping up the spread of the virus when it appears to be slowing down. In the process, he could become the face of Donald Trump's failures to stem the COVID-19 health crisis." --s The Daily Beast story is firewalled.

Patrick Wintour, et al. of the Guardian: "US hostility to the World Health Organization scuppered the publication of a communique by G20 health ministers on Sunday that committed to strengthening the WHO's mandate in coordinating a response to the global coronavirus pandemic. In place of a lengthy statement with paragraphs of detail, the leaders instead issued a brief statement saying that gaps existed in the way the world handled pandemics." --s

Justin Wise of the Hill: "President Trump on Sunday lashed out at FBI leadership over the origins of the investigation into Russian election interference, calling investigators who led the probe 'human scum.' Trump made the remarks during a White House briefing after being asked about a pair of his former associates who were sentenced to prison following charges stemming from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. Asked whether he'd pardon Paul Manafort and Roger Stone so they wouldn't be exposed to the coronavirus while in prison, Trump said, 'You'll find out.'" Mrs. McC: If you sometimes think maybe Trump isn't mentally disturbed, he's so often ready to disabuse you of your generous musings.

Damian Carrington of the Guardian: "High levels of air pollution may be 'one of the most important contributors' to deaths from Covid-19, according to research. The analysis shows that of the coronavirus deaths across 66 administrative regions in Italy, Spain, France and Germany, 78% of them occurred in just five regions, and these were the most polluted. The research examined levels of nitrogen dioxide, a pollutant produced mostly by diesel vehicles, and weather conditions that can prevent dirty air from dispersing away from a city." --safari: Seems appropriate to remember that the EPA has stopped enforcing environmental regulations now.

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The New York Times' live updates of coronavirus developments Sunday are here. "President Trump on Sunday said the administration was preparing to use the Defense Production Act to compel an unspecified U.S. facility to increase production of test swabs by over 20 million per month. The announcement came during his Sunday evening news conference, after he defended his response to the pandemic amid criticism from governors across the country claiming that there has been an insufficient amount of testing to justify reopening the economy any time soon. 'We are calling in the Defense Production Act,' Mr. Trump said. He added, 'You'll have so many swabs you won't know what to do with them.... We already have millions coming in.... In all fairness, governors could get them themselves. But we are going to do it. We'll work with the governors and if they can't do it we'll do it.' He provided no details about what company he was referring to, or when the administration would invoke the act." Mrs. McC: IOW, the usual B.S.

** "Incredible Political Sadism." David Wallace-Wells of New York: "Whenever you start to think that the federal government under Donald Trump has hit a moral bottom, it finds a new way to shock and horrify. Over the last few weeks, it has started to appear as though, in addition to abandoning the states to their own devices in a time of national emergency, the federal government has effectively erected a blockade -- like that which the Union used to choke off the supply chains of the Confederacy during the Civil War -- to prevent delivery of critical medical equipment to states desperately in need. At the very least, federal authorities have made governors and hospital executives all around the country operate in fear that shipments of necessary supplies will be seized along the way. In a time of pandemic, having evacuated federal responsibility, the White House is functionally waging a war against state leadership and the initiative of local hospitals to secure what they need to provide sufficient treatment.... We don't know where [the supplies [the federal government seizes] are going. We don't know on what grounds they are being seized, or threatened with seizure." Meanwhile, Trump has repeatedly told governors the states are on their own in securing PPE & other medical equipment.

Daddy Warlocks Hexes Pelosi, Wallace. Nervous Nancy is an inherently 'dumb' person. She wasted all of her time on the Impeachment Hoax. She will be overthrown, either by inside or out, just like her last time as 'Speaker'. Wallace & @FoxNews are on a bad path, watch! -- Donald Trump, in a tweet, reacting to Chris Wallace's interview of Nancy Pelosi ~~~

~~~ Edwin Rios of Mother Jones: "On Sunday, in her first appearance on Fox News since 2017, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi indicated that a new $400 billion relief bill could come 'soon but also slammed ... Donald Trump's 'weak' response to the coronavirus pandemic for failing to put forward science-based plans to address the pandemic. 'He doesn't take responsibility. He places blame -- blame on others,' Pelosi told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday.... She also sharply criticized Trump's leadership when it comes to expanding testing for COVID-19, telling Wallace, 'We're way late on it, and that is a failure. The president gets an F -- a failure -- on the testing.'... Her comments came as Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin indicated on CNN that the Trump administration and congressional Democrats could reach an agreement on yet another aid package would include $300 billion to replenish funds for a federal small business loan program that ran out last week." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "Hurtling from one position to another is consistent with Mr. Trump's approach to the presidency over the past three years. Even when external pressures and stresses appear to change the dynamics that the country is facing, Mr. Trump remains unbowed, altering his approach for a day or two, only to return to nursing grievances.... The president, who ran as an insurgent in 2016, is most comfortable raging against the machine of government, even when he is the one running the country. And while the coronavirus is in every state in the union, it is heavily affecting minority and low-income communities. So when Mr. Trump on Friday tweeted 'LIBERATE,' his all-capitalized exhortations against strict orders in specific states ... were in keeping with how he ran in 2016: saying things that seem contradictory, like pledging to work with governors and then urging people to 'liberate' their states, and leaving it to his audiences to hear what they want to hear in his words.... On Sunday, Mr. Trump again praised the protesters. 'I have never seen so many American flags,' he said." ~~~

~~~ Jim Fallows of the Atlantic republishes a note from Republican Mike Lofgren on what the Trump & Co. astroturf protests/street theater are really about. Here's part of Lofgren's note: "Trump's encouragement of the demonstrators is even more bizarre than commonly depicted.... This is a unique case: the head of the national government egging on residents of the states to illegally impede their state governors from carrying out their lawful, necessary, and proper functions to maintain public safety in a health emergency. So much for 'federalism' under the GOP.... Republican street theater, maybe even (or perhaps especially) when it threatens public safety or human decency, seems always to act like catnip to the mainstream media, who invariably trot out the well-worn tropes of 'economic anxiety.' The U.S. media have done an execrable job on this one." ~~~

~~~ Josh Marshall of TPM: "The protests we've seen in a handful of locations around the country have bamboozled a lot of the national press. Look closely and a lot of the turnout is heavily stocked with militia types and the kinds of groups who turned out for the Charlottesville protests a couple years ago. But the bigger thing is that for now they appear highly orchestrated.... These are basically Trump loyalists supporting Trump at his request and mobilized by key rightist groups. The key question ... is whether what starts here as orchestrated and largely inorganic takes on a life of its own and gains political traction. They now have Fox and an incumbent President cheering them on as a demonstration of political identity." --s ~~~

~~~ James Downie of the Washington Post: "Few on Team Trump are better at deploying up-is-down reasoning to spin news to Trump's benefit [than is mike pence]. But during the vice president's appearances on NBC's and Fox News's Sunday morning talk shows, it was clear that even Pence could not bootlick his way out of the lurch the president's actions leave the rest of us in.... Pence dodged [trying to explain Trump's "LIBERATE" tweets] because the president's actions were indefensible. But Pence can't say that, both because the protests are being cheered by Fox News and like-minded outlets and because Pence wants to stay in the good graces of a president who values loyalty to him above all else." ~~~

~~~ HOWEVER, Piers Morgan, the former CNN & current ITV host, who is so shallow he readily admits to being a friend of Donald Trump's, calls Trump's daily 5 pm propaganda shows "horrifying": ~~~

Hope Yen & Calvin Woodward of the AP: "... Donald Trump is falsely assigning blame to governors and the Obama administration for shortages in coronavirus testing. For much of the week, he was pretender to a throne that didn't exist as he claimed king-like powers over the pandemic response and Congress. But by the weekend, he was again saying governors called the shots and they are the ones to blame -- not the federal government, not him -- for any testing problems. He says governors aren't using all the testing capacity that the federal government has created. It's not true. Meanwhile, Trump denied praising China's openness in the pandemic, when he's on record doing so repeatedly, and declared victory over what he calls relatively low death rates in the U.S. But that's too soon to tell."

Rick Rojas of the New York Times: "Governors facing growing pressure to revive economies decimated by the coronavirus said on Sunday that a shortage of tests was among the most significant hurdles in the way of lifting restrictions in their states. 'We are fighting a biological war,' Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia said on 'State of the Union' on CNN. 'We have been asked as governors to fight that war without the supplies we need.' In interviews on Sunday morning talk shows, Mr. Northam was among the governors who said they needed the swabs and reagents required for the test, and urged federal officials to help them get those supplies. The governors bristled at claims from the Trump administration that the supply of tests was adequate. On NBC's 'Meet the Press,' Vice President Mike Pence said 'there is a sufficient capacity of testing across the country today for any state in America' to go to the first of three phases that the administration says are needed for the country to emerge from the coronavirus shutdown. Mr. Northam, a Democrat, called Mr. Pence's claim 'delusional.'... ​Gov. Larry Hogan​ of Maryland, a Republican, said that it was 'absolutely false' to claim that governors were not acting aggressively enough to pursue as much testing as possible."

Sarah Burris of the Raw Story: "... Donald Trump bragged about ... Abbott Labs for [producing] his 'Quick COVID-19 Test' as 'a whole new ballgame.'... He claimed the lab's test could deliver 'lightning-fast results in as little as five minutes.' This while many leaders are worried about a huge backlog in tests and the need for more testing to discover if social-distancing has stopped the spread or not. Trump's government bought hundreds of devices and sent them out to the states. [BUT] 'In recent days, state and hospital officials found in internal studies that the devices frequently produced inaccurate results, leading at least one hospital to return the devices, they said in interviews,' said the [Wall Street] Journal.... [In addition, according to the WSJ,] 'Most [of Abbott's tests] require a long list of components that come from different producers, including swabs, throwaway polystyrene parts, chemical reagents, glass pipettes, pipette tips and more, resulting in a complex supply chain that easily breaks down when there is a shortage of any particular element.'"

Steve Eder, et al., of the New York Times: "In recent weeks, the United States has seen the first rollout of blood tests for coronavirus antibodies, widely heralded as crucial tools to assess the reach of the pandemic in the United States.... But for all their promise, the tests -- intended to signal whether people may have built immunity to the virus -- are already raising alarms.... Criticized for a tragically slow and rigid oversight of those tests months ago, the federal government is now faulted by public health officials and scientists for greenlighting the antibody tests too quickly and without adequate scrutiny. The Food and Drug Administration has allowed about 90 companies, many based in China, to sell tests that have not gotten government vetting.... But the agency has since warned that some of those businesses are making false claims about their products; health officials, like their counterparts overseas, have found others deeply flawed.... Even as government agencies, companies and academic researchers scramble to validate existing tests and create better ones, there are doubts they can deliver as promised. Most tests now available mistakenly flag at least some people as having antibodies when they do not, which could foster a dangerously false belief that those people have immunity." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Karen DeYoung, et al., of the Washington Post: "More than a dozen U.S. researchers, physicians and public health experts, many of them from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were working full time at the Geneva headquarters of the World Health Organization as the novel coronavirus emerged late last year and transmitted real-time information about its discovery and spread in China to the Trump administration, according to U.S. and international officials.... Senior Trump-appointed health officials ... consulted regularly at the highest levels with the WHO as the crisis unfolded, the officials said. The presence of so many U.S. officials undercuts President Trump's charge that the WHO's failure to communicate the extent of the threat, born of a desire to protect China, is largely responsible for the rapid spread of the virus in the United States." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Dana Milbank first revealed U.S. scientists' presence at the WHO in WashPo his column, also linked here yesterday. Putting the onus on the WHO for not informing the U.S. about what it knew about the spread of Covid-19 is another giant lie Trump has repeated multiple times. As U.S. residents began sickening & dying from Covid-19, Trump repeatedly lied about the mortal danger the virus presented to Americans. As Milbank pointed out, Trump has told 18,000 lies since becoming president*, but hiding the truth about the coronavirus is, as Milbank calls it, "a murderous lie." Impeachable? Yep.

Marilynn Marchione of the AP: "A flood of new research suggests that far more people have had the coronavirus without any symptoms, fueling hope that it will turn out to be much less lethal than originally feared. While that's clearly good news, it also means it's impossible to know who around you may be contagious. That complicates decisions about returning to work, school and normal life.... The head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says 25% of infected people might not have symptoms. The vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. John Hyten, thinks it may be as high as 60% to 70% among military personnel. None of these numbers can be fully trusted because they're based on flawed and inadequate testing, said Dr. Michael Mina of Harvard's School of Public Health. Collectively, though, they suggest 'we have just been off the mark by huge, huge numbers' for estimating total infections, he said."

Amy Goldstein of the Washington Post: "In a nation where most health coverage is hinged to employment, the economy's vanishing jobs are wiping out insurance in the midst of a pandemic." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Common Dreams via RawStory: "Days after the Trump administration threatened Central American countries with visa sanctions if they refuse to accept nationals who are deported from the U.S. during the coronavirus pandemic, the Guatemalan health minister said an estimated 75% of the people on one deportation flight from the U.S. later tested positive for the virus. Health Minister Hugo Monroy's claim raised fears that the U.S. is willfully sending sick people back to the countries they left, creating conditions for larger outbreaks in countries including Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras." --s

#FloridaMorons. Emily Shugerman of the Daily Beast: "The state of Florida passed two milestones in the coronavirus pandemic this week: its deadliest day yet, and the reopening of several public beaches.... Hundreds of people flocked to the beaches in Duval County Friday, some engaging group sports like volleyball or spikeball. Photos of the scene drew outcry on social media, spawning the hashtag #FloridaMorons, as well as disdain from officials elsewhere in the state.... Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, who contracted coronavirus himself, called the reopening in Jacksonville 'very concerning,' adding that Florida was 'not out of the woods yet' and the consequences of reopening too soon were 'very, very scary.'... [Gov. Ron] DeSantis [R-Dimwit] said that a task force would also begin meeting daily next week to work on reopening businesses."

Ohio. Patrick Cooley & Jim Woods of the Columbus Dispatch: "Coronavirus has overtaken a vast majority of the prison population at the Marion Correctional Institution, state officials said Sunday. The Ohio Department of Health reported more than 1,000 newly confirmed cases of the coronavirus across the state Sunday, bringing the total of confirmed and probable cases to 11,602. With 20 additional deaths, there have been 471 confirmed and probable deaths from COVID-19, state officials said. The number of hospitalizations rose to 2,565.... Much of the increase in cases has come from Ohio's prison system.... Overall, the state's prison system has recorded 2,426 positive results among inmates, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction said. That number is 21% of the total confirmed cases in Ohio. The majority of those cases are at the Marion Correctional Institution, where 1,828 inmates -- 73% of the total -- have tested positive for the virus, state officials say. The remaining 667 prisoners now are in quarantine."

Mike Spector & Jessica DiNapoli of Reuters: "Neiman Marcus Group is preparing to seek bankruptcy protection as soon as this week, becoming the first major U.S. department store operator to succumb to the economic fallout from the coronavirus outbreak, people familiar with the matter said. The debt-laden Dallas-based company has been left with few options after the pandemic forced it to temporarily shut all 43 of its Neiman Marcus locations, roughly two dozen Last Call stores and its two Bergdorf Goodman stores in New York. Neiman Marcus is in the final stages of negotiating a loan with its creditors totaling hundreds of millions of dollars, which would sustain some of its operations during bankruptcy proceedings, according to the sources. It has also furloughed many of its roughly 14,000 employees." Mrs. McC: I guess rich people aren't buying up enough cashmere sweatsuits online to shelter-in-comfort.

Boris & Donald, Birdbrains of a Feather. Zachary Basu of Axios: "A 5,000-word exposé by the Sunday Times of London -- '38 days when Britain sleepwalked into disaster' -- finds that Prime Minister Boris Johnson, distracted by personal turmoil and his Brexit victory lap, skipped five early crisis briefings (Cobra meetings) on the coronavirus.... Warnings issued in January and repeated in February fell on 'deaf ears,' according to the Sunday Times, with the lost time potentially costing thousands of British lives.... The U.K. government held its first Cobra meeting on Jan. 24, sensing the looming threat as the virus had spread from China to at least six known countries. Health Secretary Matt Hancock told reporters that the risk to the British public was 'low,' while a spokesperson for Johnson -- who skipped the Cobra meeting -- said the U.K. was 'well prepared for any new diseases.' Johnson went on to skip four more Cobra meetings, distracted by mass flooding, the U.K.'s withdrawal from the European Union, a Cabinet shakeup and a countryside holiday with his fiancée, before finally attending one on March 2." The Sunday Times report is here.

Hyung-Jin Kim of AP: "North Korea on Sunday dismissed as 'ungrounded 'President Donald Trump's comment that he recently received 'a nice note' from the North's leader, Kim Jong Un.... North Korea's Foreign Ministry said in a statement that there was no letter addressed to Trump recently by 'the supreme leadership,' a reference to Kim." --s

Presidential Race

Felicia Sonmez & Dave Weigel of the Washington Post: "... Joe Biden has won the Wyoming Democratic primary, the latest nominating contest to be moved entirely to vote-by-mail amid the coronavirus pandemic. The Wyoming Democratic Party announced Sunday that Biden had won a little over 72 percent of the vote, with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) taking nearly 28 percent. This year marks the first time that Wyoming Democrats have used ranked-choice voting in their presidential nominating contest. The contest has traditionally been an in-person caucus, but because of the coronavirus, the state party switched to a vote-by-mail primary instead. The caucuses had originally been scheduled for April 4."

Washington Post: "A decade ago on April 20, the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig leased by BP was working a mile below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico when a surge in pressure and a blowout triggered a fire that killed 11 crew members and unleashed the largest oil spill in U.S. history.... Today ... attention has shifted to President Trump's efforts to undo safety steps taken by the Obama administration to prevent such a spill from happening again.... Since coming into office..., the Trump administration demonstrated it would roll back those rules by eliminating the need for independent inspectors. That followed the issuance of approximately 1,700 waivers to an industry the administration's Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE).... The United States and other countries remain heavily dependent on deepwater drilling, a daunting engineering challenge in seas so deep that even military submarines cannot venture there.... Despite the potential for another catastrophe, the public appetite for oil has encouraged the petroleum industry to treat those risks as acceptable.... There were 13,187 spills in the federal waters off the Gulf of Mexico from the time of the BP spill through March...."

News Lede

New York Times: "Peter Beard, a New York photographer, artist and naturalist to whom the word 'wild' was roundly applied, both for his death-defying photographs of African wildlife and for his own much-publicized days -- decades, really -- as an amorous, bibulous, pharmaceutically inclined man about town, was found dead in the woods on Sunday, almost three weeks after he disappeared from his home in Montauk on the East End of Long Island. He was 82."

The Commentariat -- April 19, 2020

Afternoon Update:

Steve Eder, et al., of the New York Times: "In recent weeks, the United States has seen the first rollout of blood tests for coronavirus antibodies, widely heralded as crucial tools to assess the reach of the pandemic in the United States.... But for all their promise, the tests -- intended to signal whether people may have built immunity to the virus -- are already raising alarms.... Criticized for a tragically slow and rigid oversight of those tests months ago, the federal government is now faulted by public health officials and scientists for greenlighting the antibody tests too quickly and without adequate scrutiny. The Food and Drug Administration has allowed about 90 companies, many based in China, to sell tests that have not gotten government vetting.... But the agency has since warned that some of those businesses are making false claims about their products; health officials, like their counterparts overseas, have found others deeply flawed.... Even as government agencies, companies and academic researchers scramble to validate existing tests and create better ones, there are doubts they can deliver as promised. Most tests now available mistakenly flag at least some people as having antibodies when they do not, which could foster a dangerously false belief that those people have immunity."

Karen DeYoung, et al., of the Washington Post: "More than a dozen U.S. researchers, physicians and public health experts, many of them from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were working full time at the Geneva headquarters of the World Health Organization as the novel coronavirus emerged late last year and transmitted real-time information about its discovery and spread in China to the Trump administration, according to U.S. and international officials.... Senior Trump-appointed health officials ... consulted regularly at the highest levels with the WHO as the crisis unfolded, the officials said. The presence of so many U.S. officials undercuts President Trump's charge that the WHO's failure to communicate the extent of the threat, born of a desire to protect China, is largely responsible for the rapid spread of the virus in the United States." ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Dana Milbank first revealed U.S. scientists' presence at the WHO in WashPo his column, also linked here yesterday. Putting the onus on the WHO for not informing the U.S. about what it knew about the spread of Covid-19 is another giant lie Trump has repeated multiple times. As U.S. residents began sickening & dying from Covid-19, Trump repeatedly lied about the mortal danger the virus presented to Americans. As Milbank pointed out, Trump has told 18,000 lies since becoming president*, but hiding the truth about the coronavirus is, as Milbank calls it, "a murderous lie." Impeachable? Yep.

Amy Goldstein of the Washington Post: "In a nation where most health coverage is hinged to employment, the economy's vanishing jobs are wiping out insurance in the midst of a pandemic."

Edwin Rios of Mother Jones: "On Sunday, in her first appearance on Fox News since 2017, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi indicated that a new $400 billion relief bill could come 'soon' but also slammed ... Donald Trump's 'weak' response to the coronavirus pandemic for failing to put forward science-based plans to address the pandemic. 'He doesn't take responsibility. He places blame -- blame on others,' Pelosi told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday.... She also sharply criticized Trump's leadership when it comes to expanding testing for COVID-19, telling Wallace, 'We're way late on it, and that is a failure. The president gets an F -- a failure -- on the testing.'... Her comments came as Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin indicated on CNN that the Trump administration and congressional Democrats could reach an agreement on yet another aid package would include $300 billion to replenish funds for a federal small business loan program that ran out last week."

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The New York Times' live updates of coronavirus developments Sunday are here. The Washington Post's live updates for Sunday are here.

Steven Mufson, et al., of the Washington Post: "With the number of the covid-19 tests hovering at an average of 146,000 a day, businesses leaders and state officials are warning the Trump administration that they cannot safely reopen the economy without radically increasing the number of available tests -- perhaps into the millions a day -- and that won't happen without a greater coordinating role by the federal government. Though the capacity of private business to produce those volumes remains unclear, state leaders and health experts say that the administration should move with a greater sense of urgency and could do several relatively easy things to speed the production and distribution of tests. On Friday, the American Association for Clinical Chemistry said there were still critical supply chain issues that stand in the way of ramping up testing, including a lack of protective equipment for technicians who run the tests, and a shortage of swabs and reagents -- chemical solutions required to run the tests.... This week the federal government took one step private industry has been seeking -- Medicare doubled reimbursements from $51 to $100 a test, making covid-19 testing profitable for labs." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

~~~ Keith Collins of the New York Times: "... new estimates by researchers at Harvard University suggest that the United States cannot safely reopen unless it conducts more than three times the number of coronavirus tests it is currently administering over the next month.... To reopen the United States by mid-May, the number of daily tests performed between now and then should be 500,000 to 700,000, according to the Harvard estimates. That level of testing is necessary to identify the majority of people who are infected and isolate them from people who are healthy, according to the researchers.... The researchers said that expanded testing could reduce the rate [of people testing positive] to 10 percent, which is the maximum rate recommended by the World Health Organization. In Germany, that number is 7 percent, and in South Korea, it is closer to 3 percent." ~~~

~~~ Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post: "The sentiment has been mouthed by every fool from Dr. Oz to the Cheetos-dusted flimflam man in the Oval Office: Rather than damage the economy further, we must accept a certain number of coronavirus casualties so the rest of us can go back to restaurants and football games.... There is something deeply suspect about this rush toward sacrificial death for the sake of American dollars, this framing of margin calls as worth dying over.... It's a false moral equation and a false choice. And the people putting it forward smack of panic. How about we ... [take] common-sense measures to prevent the preventable. Such as, a ramped-up national testing and tracing system that would allow Americans to make legitimate personal-risk assessments and reduce the chance of new outbreaks.... It's called informed consent. And right now, we don't have it.... The crudity of the White House's response to the virus resembles nothing so much as [World War I] -- rudimentary, unskilled, disorganized waste with needless carnage, led by a vain martinet kaiser with extravagant hair who never set foot in a trench." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

~~~ David Willman of the Washington Post: "The failure by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to quickly produce a test kit for detecting the novel coronavirus was triggered by a glaring scientific breakdown at the CDC's central laboratory complex in Atlanta, according to scientists with knowledge of the matter and a determination by federal regulators. The CDC facilities that assembled the kits violated sound manufacturing practices, resulting in contamination of one of the three test components used in the highly sensitive detection process, the scientists said.... The Washington Post separately confirmed that Food and Drug Administration officials concluded that the CDC violated its own laboratory standards in making the kits. The substandard practices exposed the kits to contamination.... After the difficulty emerged, CDC officials took more than a month to remove the unnecessary [and contaminated] step from the kits, exacerbating nationwide delays in testing...."

MEANWHILE. Juliet Eilperin, et al., of the Washington Post: "U.S. manufacturers shipped millions of dollars of face masks and other protective medical equipment to China in January and February with encouragement from the federal government, a Washington Post review of economic data and internal government documents has found. The move underscores the Trump administration's failure to recognize and prepare for the growing pandemic threat. In those two months, the value of protective masks and related items exported from the United States to China grew more than 1,000 percent compared with the same time last year -- from $1.4 million to about $17.6 million, according to a Post analysis.... Similarly, shipments of ventilators and protective garments jumped by triple digits.... On Jan. 30, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said on Fox Business that the outbreak could 'accelerate the return of jobs to North America' because companies would move factories away from impacted areas.... 'Instead of taking steps to prepare, they ignored the advice of one expert after another,' said Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Tex.). 'People right now, as we speak, are dying because there have been inadequate supplies of PPE.'"

Campbell Robertson & Robert Gebeloff of the New York Times: "One in three jobs held by women has been designated as essential, according to a New York Times analysis of census data crossed with the federal government's essential worker guidelines. Nonwhite women are more likely to be doing essential jobs than anyone else." The article is an expansion of an item that appears in Saturday's NYT coronavirus live updates. (Also linked yesterday.)

Debbie Cenziper, et al., of the Washington Post: "Forty percent of more than 650 nursing homes nationwide with publicly reported cases of the coronavirus have been cited more than once by inspectors in recent years for violating federal standards meant to control the spread of infections, according to a Washington Post analysis. Since 2016, the nursing homes accrued hundreds of deficiencies for unsafe conditions that can trigger the spread of flu, pneumonia, urinary tract infections and skin diseases." ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: What is the point of "citing" these Petri dishes if you don't shut them down & sue their owners for their last shiny pennies?

Slaughterhouse 50. Michael Corkery & David Yaffe-Bellany of the New York Times: "... meat plants, honed over decades for maximum efficiency and profit, have become major 'hot spots' for the coronavirus pandemic, with some reporting widespread illnesses among their workers. The health crisis has revealed how these plants are becoming the weakest link in the nation's food supply chain, posing a serious challenge to meat production<. After decades of consolidation, there are about 800 federally inspected slaughterhouses in the United States, processing billions of pounds of meat for food stores each year. But a relatively small number of them account for the vast majority of production. In the cattle industry, a little more than 50 plants are responsible for as much as 98 percent of slaughtering and processing in the United States.... More than a dozen beef, pork and chicken processing plants have closed or are running at greatly reduced speeds because of the pandemic." (Also linked yesterday.)

Edward Moreno of the Hill: "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Congress is 'very close' to a deal on additional funding for the small business Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).... Pelosi's comments come as the program's coffers ran dry Thursday and the Senate adjourned without reaching an agreement on the terms of the fourth coronavirus relief package. Congressional Democrats have been negotiating with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin about the amount of additional money that will go into the program in the next stimulus bill."

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#FloridaMoron#1. Morgan Chalfant of the Hill: "President Trump on Saturday offered a fiery defense of his response to the novel coronavirus and the nation's testing capabilities as the administration faces growing pressure to ramp up testing. In a lengthy briefing that covered various topics, Trump attempted to cast the United States' response to the virus as far better than other nations in Europe and elsewhere. Trump both lashed out at Democratic criticism of his response to COVID-19 while hammering the previous administration of former President Barack Obama, a Democrat, for leaving a bare 'cupboard' of medical supplies for him to pull from." Mrs. McC: Sounds as if his show-of-lies has gone into reruns.

David Fahrenthold & Joshua Partlow of the Washington Post: "Thousands of U.S. hotels have volunteered to help local authorities house doctors, nurses and other medical personnel at reduced rates -- or even free -- during the covid-19 pandemic. President Trump's White House has praised these efforts. But so far, none of Trump's own hotels are known to be participating. In five U.S. cities where President Trump's company operates large hotels -- New York, Chicago, Miami, Washington and Honolulu -- local authorities said the Trump hotel was not involved in their efforts to provide low-cost or no-cost rooms to those fighting the virus." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Mary McCord in a Washington Post op-ed: "President Trump incited insurrection Friday against the duly elected governors of the states of Michigan, Minnesota and Virginia. Just a day after issuing guidance for re-opening America that clearly deferred decision-making to state officials -- as it must under our Constitutional order -- the president undercut his own guidance by calling for criminal acts against the governors for not opening fast enough.... It's not at all unreasonable to consider Trump's tweets about' liberation' as at least tacit encouragement to citizens to take up arms against duly elected state officials of the party opposite his own, in response to sometimes unpopular but legally issued stay-at-home orders." McCord argues that when a president* does it, it isn't protected free speech since the power of his bully pulpit is likely to lead to lawless action. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

It's More Than November. Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times: "After years of single-minded devotion, the conservative movement is achingly close to dismantling the New Deal political order and turning the clock back to when capital could act without limits or restraints.... In which case, it makes all the sense in the world for Trump, the Republican Party and the conservative movement to push for the end of the lockdown, public health be damned.... And all of this is happening as one of the most progressive generations in history begins to take its place in our politics, its views informed by two decades of war and economic crisis." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Robert Costa of the Washington Post: "Vice President Pence on Saturday addressed the Air Force Academy's Class of 2020, speaking solemnly about the coronavirus pandemic at a significantly scaled-back ceremony. 'We gather at a time of national crisis,' Pence told the 984 senior cadets before him on the academy's parade field, called the terrazzo, with each of them sitting eight feet apart."

Maggie Severns & Daniel Lippman of Politico: "A senior economist for the White House Council of Economic Advisers, whose nomination to a post overseeing health insurance floundered in the wake of revelations of his financial ties to UnitedHealth Group, is now playing a key role overseeing a $30 billion recovery program being administered by UnitedHealth. The choice of UnitedHealth, a leading health insurer, to serve as a conduit in funneling billions of dollars to hospitals and other providers, surprised many in health care, including employees at the Department of Health and Human Services who had assumed that HHS would administer the program itself. Though UnitedHealth says it will make no profit off of the deal, its role in handing out billions of federal dollars to hospitals could boost its relationships with the White House and the public during a tumultuous year and possibly provide it with valuable health care data, experts say.... After the White House withdrew [Stephen] Parente's nomination in the face of congressional concerns about his relationships with the healthcare industry -- and UnitedHealth in particular -- and omissions about finances that Parente had made on his financial disclosure form, the president appointed him to his current post, which does not require confirmation."

Meredith McGraw & Josh Gerstein of Politico: "As ... Donald Trump uses the bully pulpit to press state and local governments to ease their virus-related lockdowns, conservative activists and religious leaders are urging his administration to go further by unleashing a wave of lawsuits arguing that the measures are intruding on Americans' legally protected rights to worship, protest and buy guns. In a letter sent to Attorney General Bill Barr on Friday, the Conservative Action Project, a group of conservative leaders including Matt Schlapp of the American Conservative Union, Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch and Jenny Beth Martin of Tea Party Patriots, called governors and local leaders 'petty, would-be dictators' who had committed 'rampant abuses of constitutional rights and civil liberties' as part of their response to the coronavirus.... Trump told faith leaders on a call Friday afternoon that while he wants everyone to abide by his administration's guidelines, he affirmed the right of churches to meet and their civil liberties to gather.... The president listened to recommendations from faith leaders, according to the participants, who shared their concerns about getting the economy re-opened."

Adam Gabbatt of the Guardian: "Thousands of people are preparing to attend protests across the US in the coming days, as a rightwing movement against stay-at-home orders, backed by wealthy conservative groups and promoted by Donald Trump, continues to take hold.... While organisers claim the protests are grassroots- and people-driven, a closer look reveals a movement driven by traditional rightwing groups, including one funded by the family of Trump's education secretary, Betsy DeVos.... As with the Tea Party, the anti-stay-at-home movement has been promoted by a rightwing media eager for the economy to reopen, including Fox News which on Friday aired a segment on protests in Virginia, Michigan and Minnesota. Two minutes later, Trump tweeted to his 77.4 million followers the need to 'liberate' those states." ~~~

~~~ Salvador Hernandez of BuzzFeed News has more on the fake grassroots protests.

#Florida Morons. Meryl Kornfield of the Washington Post: "Aerial snapshots of people flocking to a reopened beach in Jacksonville, Fla., made waves on the Internet on Saturday. Local news aired photos and videos of Florida's shoreline dotted with people, closer than six feet apart, spurring #FloridaMorons to trend on Twitter after Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) gave the go-ahead for local beachfront governments to decide whether to reopen their beaches during a news briefing Friday. Duval and St. Johns counties have reopened their beaches, while Miami-Dade County officials said they are considering following suit. On the same day that Florida reported 58 deaths from the coronavirus -- its highest daily toll since the pandemic began -- DeSantis told reporters that it's essential that Floridians get exercise outdoors."

Kansas. AP: "A federal judge on Saturday blocked Kansas from limiting attendance at in-person religious worship services or activities to 10 people or fewer to check the spread of the coronavirus, signaling that he believes that it's likely that the policy violates religious freedom and free speech rights. The ruling from U.S. District Judge John Broomes in Wichita prevents the enforcement of an order issued by Gov. Laura Kelly if pastors and congregations observe social distancing. The judge's decision will remain in effect until May 2; he has a hearing scheduled Thursday in a lawsuit filed against Kelly by two churches and their pastors." Mrs. McC: Broomes is a Trump appointee.

Rebecca Falconer of Axios: "The star-studded Lady Gaga-curated fundraising event 'One World: Together at Home' raised $127.9 million for the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund for WHO and $72.8 million for local and regional responders, organizer Global Citizen said in a statement early Sunday.... Saturday's online event honoring and celebrating those on the front lines of the fight against the novel coronavirus was broadcast worldwide and billed as the biggest concert since the 1985's Live Aid, watched by 1.9 billion people. Former first ladies Laura Bush and Michelle Obama were among more than 70 artists and celebrities to take part from their homes." Mrs. McC: What? No Melanie? ~~~

~~~ Per Capita, This Guy Raised A Lot More. Jennifer Hassan of the Washington Post (April 17): "Last week..., 99-year-old veteran [Capt. Tom Moore] set himself a goal to raise money for Britain's widely cherished but chronically underfunded National Health Service during the deadly coronavirus outbreak. He set up a fundraising page and decided to walk the 82-foot length of his garden back and forth 100 times, using his walker for support. He split the journey into chunks of 10 laps with the idea of completing them before his 100th birthday on April 30. Initially, he wanted to raise 1,000 pounds ($1,250).... As of Friday morning, Moore had raised $23 million for Britain's health-care system.... More than 13,000 people in the United Kingdom have died of the virus, including 27 health-care staff."

Presidential Race

Michael Scherer, et al., of the Washington Post: "President Trump's campaign is preparing to launch a broad effort aimed at linking Joe Biden to China, after concluding that it would be more politically effective than defending or promoting Trump's response to the coronavirus pandemic. The decision by top campaign advisers, which has met pushback from some White House officials and donors, reflects polling showing a declining approval rating for Trump among key groups and growing openness to supporting Biden in recent weeks.... The shift represents a remarkable acknowledgment by aides to a self-described ... 'wartime president,' leading during what might have been a rally-around-the-flag moment, to effectively decide it is better to go on the attack than focus on his ;own achievements." ~~~

~~~ Here's Biden's response, via the Huffington Post:

News Lede

AP: "A man disguised as a police officer went on a shooting rampage in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia on Sunday, killing 13 people, in the deadliest such attack in the country in 30 years. Officials said the suspected shooter was also dead. A police officer was among those killed. Several bodies were found inside and outside one home in the small, rural town of Portapique, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) north of Halifax. Overnight, police began advising residents of the town -- already on lockdown because of the coronavirus pandemic -- to lock their doors and stay in their basements. Several homes in the area were set on fire as well." An update reports 16 people were killed; it's unclear from the report if that number includes the gunman.

The Commentariat -- April 18, 2020

Afternoon Update:

Steven Mufson, et al., of the Washington Post: "With the number of the covid-19 tests hovering at an average of 146,000 a day, businesses leaders and state officials are warning the Trump administration that they cannot safely reopen the economy without radically increasing the number of available tests -- perhaps into the millions a day -- and that won't happen without a greater coordinating role by the federal government. Though the capacity of private business to produce those volumes remains unclear, state leaders and health experts say that the administration should move with a greater sense of urgency and could do several relatively easy things to speed the production and distribution of tests. On Friday, the American Association for Clinical Chemistry said there were still critical supply chain issues that stand in the way of ramping up testing, including a lack of protective equipment for technicians who run the tests, and a shortage of swabs and reagents -- chemical solutions required to run the tests.... This week the federal government took one step private industry has been seeking -- Medicare doubled reimbursements from $51 to $100 a test, making covid-19 testing profitable for labs."

Campbell Robertson & Robert Gebeloff of the New York Times: "One in three jobs held by women has been designated as essential, according to a New York Times analysis of census data crossed with the federal government's essential worker guidelines. Nonwhite women are more likely to be doing essential jobs than anyone else." This article is an expansion of an item that appears in Saturday's NYT coronavirus live updates.

Debbie Cenziper, et al., of the Washington Post: "Forty percent of more than 650 nursing homes nationwide with publicly reported cases of the coronavirus have been cited more than once by inspectors in recent years for violating federal standards meant to control the spread of infections, according to a Washington Post analysis. Since 2016, the nursing homes accrued hundreds of deficiencies for unsafe conditions that can trigger the spread of flu, pneumonia, urinary tract infections and skin diseases." ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: So what is the point of "citing" these Petri dishes if you don't shut them down & sue their owners for their last shiny pennies?

David Fahrenthold & Joshua Partlow of the Washington Post: "Thousands of U.S. hotels have volunteered to help local authorities house doctors, nurses and other medical personnel at reduced rates -- or even free -- during the covid-19 pandemic. President Trump's White House has praised these efforts. But so far, none of Trump's own hotels are known to be participating. In five U.S. cities where President Trump's company operates large hotels -- New York, Chicago, Miami, Washington and Honolulu -- local authorities said the Trump hotel was not involved in their efforts to provide low-cost or no-cost rooms to those fighting the virus."

Slaughterhouse 50. Michael Corkery & David Yaffe-Bellany of the New York Times: "... meat plants, honed over decades for maximum efficiency and profit, have become major 'hot spots' for the coronavirus pandemic, with some reporting widespread illnesses among their workers. The health crisis has revealed how these plants are becoming the weakest link in the nation's food supply chain, posing a serious challenge to meat production. After decades of consolidation, there are about 800 federally inspected slaughterhouses in the United States, processing billions of pounds of meat for food stores each year. But a relatively small number of them account for the vast majority of production. In the cattle industry, a little more than 50 plants are responsible for as much as 98 percent of slaughtering and processing in the United States.... More than a dozen beef, pork and chicken processing plants have closed or are running at greatly reduced speeds because of the pandemic."

Mary McCord in a Washington Post op-ed: "President Trump incited insurrection Friday against the duly elected governors of the states of Michigan, Minnesota and Virginia. Just a day after issuing guidance for re-opening America that clearly deferred decision-making to state officials -- as it must under our Constitutional order -- the president undercut his own guidance by calling for criminal acts against the governors for not opening fast enough.... It's not at all unreasonable to consider Trump's tweets about' liberation' as at least tacit encouragement to citizens to take up arms against duly elected state officials of the party opposite his own, in response to sometimes unpopular but legally issued stay-at-home orders." McCord argues that when a president* does it, it isn't protected free speech since the power of his bully pulpit is likely to lead to lawless action.

Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post: "The sentiment has been mouthed by every fool from Dr. Oz to the Cheetos-dusted flimflam man in the Oval Office: Rather than damage the economy further, we must accept a certain number of coronavirus casualties so the rest of us can go back to restaurants and football games.... There is something deeply suspect about this rush toward sacrificial death for the sake of American dollars, this framing of margin calls as worth dying over.... It's a false moral equation and a false choice. And the people putting it forward smack of panic. How about we ... [take] common-sense measures to prevent the preventable. Such as, a ramped-up national testing and tracing system that would allow Americans to make legitimate personal-risk assessments and reduce the chance of new outbreaks.... It's called informed consent. And right now, we don't have it.... The crudity of the White House's response to the virus resembles nothing so much as [World War I] -- rudimentary, unskilled, disorganized waste with needless carnage, led by a vain martinet kaiser with extravagant hair who never set foot in a trench."

It's More Than November. Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times: "After years of single-minded devotion, the conservative movement is achingly close to dismantling the New Deal political order and turning the clock back to when capital could act without limits or restraints.... In which case, it makes all the sense in the world for Trump, the Republican Party and the conservative movement to push for the end of the lockdown, public health be damned.... And all of this is happening as one of the most progressive generations in history begins to take its place in our politics, its views informed by two decades of war and economic crisis."

~~~~~~~~~~

The New York Times' live updates of coronavirus developments Saturday are here. "From the cashier to the emergency room nurse to the drugstore pharmacist to the home health aide taking the bus to check on her older client, the soldier on the front lines of the current national emergency is most likely a woman. One in three jobs held by women has been designated as essential, according to a New York Times analysis of census data crossed with the federal government's essential worker guidelines. Nonwhite women are more likely to be doing essential jobs than anyone else." ~~~

~~~ The Washington Post's live updates for Saturday are here.

Christina Ng of ABC News & Dr. Mark Abdelmalek: "The first large-scale community test of 3,300 people in Santa Clara County[, California,] found that 2.5 to 4.2% of those tested [for coronavirus antibodies] were positive for antibodies -- a number suggesting a far higher past infection rate than the official count. Based on the initial data, researchers estimate that the range of people who may have had the virus to be between 48,000 and 81,000 in the county of 2 million -- as opposed to the approximately 1,000 in the county's official tally at the time the samples were taken. 'Our findings suggest that there is somewhere between 50- and 80-fold more infections in our county than what's known by the number of cases than are reported by our department of public health,' Dr. Eran Bendavid..., [of] Stanford University who led the study, said in an interview with ABC News' Diane Sawyer."

"Death Pits." Farah Stockman, et al., of the New York Times: "... a nationwide tally by The New York Times has found the number of people living in or connected to nursing homes who have died of the coronavirus to be at least 7,000, far higher than previously known.... Overall, about a fifth of deaths from the virus in the United States have been tied to nursing homes or other long-term care facilities, the Times review of cases shows. And more than 36,500 residents and employees across the nation have contracted it. In interviews with more than two dozen workers in long-term care facilities as well as family members of residents and health care experts, a portrait emerged of a system unequipped to handle the onslaught and disintegrating further amid the growing crisis.... The number of cases at these facilities ... is almost certainly still higher since many facilities, counties and states have not provided detailed information."

Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: I listened to part of the 5 pm Trump Show Friday, and the substantive part, IMO, was this: mike pence said all the states had all the tests they needed; Anthony Fauci followed him & explained why no states were getting all the tests they needed. (Fauci, as is his wont, expressed this in a roundabout way, so some people wouldn't figure out he was saying the veep was lying.) ~~~

~~~ Burgess Everett of Politico: "Senate Democrats exploded in frustration during a conference call with Vice President Mike Pence and Trump administration officials on Friday afternoon, with one normally laid-back senator [Angus King (I-Maine)] asserting it was the most maddening phone call he&'s ever taken part in, according to participants and people familiar with the call. The call between ... Donald Trump's coronavirus task force and Senate Democrats on Friday left the Senate minority 'livid,' according to one Democrat on the call, because of the lack of clear answers about national testing for the disease. Sen. Angus King ... called it a 'dereliction of duty,' said a second person on the call. King added: 'I have never been so mad about a phone call in my life.'"

Mrs. McCrabbie: Anderson Cooper spoke with a couple of doctors to talk about Trump's death-to-Americans plan, and it's as bad as you already guessed. The administration is not just leaving it up to governors to decide when to authorize reopening various facilities in their states; he also is leaving it up to states to conduct & manage their own testing: a prerequisite to deciding what can be reopened. Gov. Andrew Cuomo said New York didn't have the money to do the testing (much less the expertise, I'd guess), and you can be sure most other states are in the same position. Besides the costs of the test kits themselves, testing will take a lot of personnel to conduct the tests & analyze them. States can't run deficits the way the feds can. In addition, testing uniformity throughout the nation is essential to make the results meaningful. As one of the doctors said on CNN, right now testing regimens vary not just from state-to-state but even from hospital-to-hospital within the same county. I'm not saying mike pence would have been a great president, but left to his own devices, it's not possible he would have done a worse job than Trump. Every GOP senator except Mitt Romney is responsible for this disaster. On the cusp of the pandemic, they had a chance to get rid of the worst president* in American history, and they blew it.

Today in Trump Projection. Jesse Byrnes of the Hill: "President Trump went after Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in a tweet late Friday, attacking the Democratic leader as 'an incompetent political hack' and calling on her to return to Washington as lawmakers wrestle over another coronavirus relief bill. Trump shared a tweet criticizing Pelosi over her appearance on 'The Late Late Show' with James Corden earlier this week. In the clip, Pelosi shows off a stockpile of ice cream packed in her kitchen freezer in San Francisco...." Mrs. McC: Apparently Trump is unaware there is long-distance phone service between the coasts. Trump, of course, is an incompetent political hack who spends most of his waking time watching other people do stuff on the teevee.

... the question of the 2020 election, as Trump and his party attempt to frame it: Are you manly enough to sneer at death, like real men do in the movies (which are fake, of course, but never mind that), or are you one of those pusillanimous patsies who quivers under the bed sheets like some avocado toast-eating intellectual, whining that we have to listen to the experts?... Donald Trump and the Republicans are going to turn the election into a red vs. blue culture war battle.... -- Michael Tomasky of the Daily Beast @ 6:28 am ET Friday

LIBERATE MICHIGAN! -- Donald Trump tweet @11:22 am ET Friday

LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege! -- Donald Trump tweet at 11:22 am ET

LIBERATE MINNESOTA! -- Donald Trump tweet @11:28 am ET Friday ~~~

~~~ Michael Shear & Sarah Mervosh of the New York Times: "President Trump on Friday openly encouraged right-wing protests of social distancing restrictions in states with stay-at-home orders, a day after announcing guidelines for how the nation's governors should carry out an orderly reopening of their communities on their own timetables.... His stark departure from the more bipartisan tone of his announcement on Thursday night suggested Mr. Trump was ceding any semblance of national leadership on the pandemic, and choosing instead to divide the country by playing to his political base. Echoed across the internet and on cable television by conservative pundits and ultraright conspiracy theorists, his tweets were a remarkable example of a president egging on demonstrators and helping to stoke an angry fervor that in its anti-government rhetoric was eerily reminiscent of the birth of the Tea Party movement a decade ago." The story includes more on governors' reactions to Trump's guidelines & his stunningly bad behavior. ~~~

~~~ Aaron Rupar of Vox: "... Donald Trump can't help but sow division, even at a time when Americans are largely united in supporting stay-at-home orders and social distancing to slow the spread of the coronavirus.... These posts -- which are among the most dangerous of Trump's tenure -- appear to have been inspired by a segment he saw on Fox News minutes earlier.... Asked on Thursday if he thinks protesters in Michigan should listen to local officials like Whitmer, Trump said that such people listen to him instead. 'I think they're listening. I think they listen to me. They seem to be protesters that like me,' Trump said." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: AND, as Chuck Todd (of all people) pointed out, none of the Democratic-led states Trump targeted, even within the context of the limited testing available to them, has reached the point in the arc of infections & recoveries that Trump himself said yesterday evening must be met before they can be "liberated." Worth remembering, too: some of the protesters in Michigan were carrying confederate flags and sporting swastika tattoos. So yeah, they like Trump. ~~~

~~~ Update. David Smith of the Guardian: "At Friday's White House coronavirus taskforce briefing, Trump played down fears that by crowding together, the protesters themselves could spread the Covid-19 illness. 'These are people expressing their views,' he told reporters. "I see where they are and I see the way they're working. They seem to be very responsible people to me, but they've been treated a little bit rough.'... Some protesters have carried guns, waved Trump and Confederate flags and sought to frame the debate as a defence of constitutional freedoms.... On Friday, Trump also stood by his criticism of the Democratic governors, even though they are following his own federal guidelines." Emphasis added.

~~~ Ben Collins & Brandy Zadrozny of NBC News: "When ... Donald Trump tweeted 'LIBERATE MINNESOTA!' on Friday morning, some of his most fervent supporters in far-right communities -- including those who have agitated for violent insurrection -- heard a call to arms.... Trump's tweets ... pushed many online extremist communities to speculate whether the president was advocating for armed conflict, an event they've termed 'the boogaloo,' for which many far-right activists have been gearing up and advocating since last year. There were sharp increases on Twitter in terms associated with conspiracies such as QAnon and the 'boogaloo' term immediately following the president's tweets, according to the Network Contagion Research Institute, an independent nonprofit group ... that tracks and reports on misinformation and hate speech across social media.... 'The president is fomenting domestic rebellion and spreading lies - even while his own administration says the virus is real, it is deadly and we have a long way to go before restrictions can be lifted,' [Gov. Jay] Inslee [D-Wash.] wrote [on Twitter]."

This Seems Sensible. Lachlan Markay of the Daily Beast: "... Donald Trump unveiled a proposal this week to reopen America's gyms in spite of the coronavirus outbreak after a phone call that included [Bahram Akradi,] the head of the company that owns luxury fitness brands Equinox and SoulCycle, who also happens to be a high-profile Trump supporter. In a memo issued on Thursday titled 'Guidelines for Opening Up America Again,' the White House included gyms among the businesses that would reopen to the general public during 'phase one' of its plan to jump-start the American economy.... Though the document said gyms could open 'if they adhere to strict physical distancing and sanitation protocols,' their inclusion nevertheless struck public health experts as bizarre. 'Gyms are like a petri dish,' said Laurence Gostin ... [of] Georgetown University. 'People are close to one another, they're sweating, they're coughing and sneezing, they're touching multiple surfaces, they're sharing equipment, they're indoors. Literally all of the heightened risk factors for COVID transmission are all entwined together in a gym.'"

Patrick Wintour of the Guardian: "Donald Trump found himself isolated among western leaders at a virtual G7 summit, as they expressed strong support for the World Health Organization after the US's suspension of its funding. Health officials around the world have condemned the US president’s decision to stop his country's funding for the UN agency.... On Thursday, G7 leaders voiced their backing for the WHO and urged international co-operation. Immediately after the hour-long conference call, a spokesman for Angela Merkel said that the German chancellor had argued that 'the pandemic can only be overcome with a strong and co-ordinated international response'. The spokesman said Merkel 'expressed support for the WHO as well as a number of other partners'.... The White House insisted there was support for US criticism of the WHO in the G7 call, saying 'much of the conversation centred on the lack of transparency and chronic mismanagement of the pandemic by the WHO. The leaders called for a thorough review and reform process.'" (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

~~~ Dana Milbank of the Washington Post: This week, Donald Trump accused "the World Health Organization of 'covering up the spread of the coronavirus' and failing to 'share information in a timely and transparent fashion.'... The next day he called the WHO a 'tool of China' and floated the vile conspiracy theory that the WHO deliberately concealed the danger of the virus.... This is a damnable and murderous lie. As Trump surely knows..., 15 officials from his administration were embedded with the WHO in Geneva, working full time, hand-in-glove with the organization on the virus from the very first day China disclosed the outbreak to the world, Dec. 31.... In the weeks that followed, they and other U.S. government scientists engaged in all major deliberations and decisions at the WHO on the novel coronavirus, had access to all information, and contributed significantly to the world body's conclusions and recommendations. Everything that the WHO knew, the Trump administration knew -- in real time. As congressional investigators who requested WHO documents and communications are now learning, senior Trump administration officials ... consulted with the WHO throughout the crisis."

Michael Warren of CNN: "Just as cases are starting to plateau in some big cities and along the coasts, the coronavirus is catching fire in rural states across the American heartland, where there has been a small but significant spike this week in cases. Playing out amid these outbreaks is a clash between a frontier culture that values individual freedom and personal responsibility, and the onerous but necessary restrictions to contain a novel biological threat....The bump in coronavirus cases is most pronounced in states without stay at home orders. Oklahoma saw a 53% increase in cases over the past week, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Over same time, cases jumped 60% in Arkansas, 74% in Nebraska, and 82% in Iowa. South Dakota saw a whopping 205% spike. The remaining states, North Dakota, Utah and Wyoming each saw an increase in cases, but more in line with other places that have stay-at-home orders. And all of those numbers may very well undercount the total cases, given a persistent lack of testing across the US."

Isaac Stanley-Becker & others of the Washington Post report on what various governors are doing to lift restrictions and what the Trump administration is doing to help them (nothing).

From the New York Times' live updates. Friday: "Facing mounting economic damage and with encouragement from President Trump, governors of some states have started to announce plans for businesses to tiptoe back into operation on May 1, even as cases surge in some parts of the country.... Beaches in Duval County, Fla., where infections appear to be flattening, will reopen with restrictions at 5 p.m. on Friday.... Gov. Tony Evers of Wisconsin said on Thursday that golf courses could open with certain restrictions and that for-hire lawn care could be carried out if it was performed by one person. Stores selling materials to make face masks can open for curbside pickup, he said." (Also linked yesterday.)

California. Weird News. Jon Passantino of CNN: "... Gov. Gavin Newsom responded Thursday to Tesla CEO Elon Musk's claim that the company had delivered more than 1,000 ventilators to the state's hospitals treating a surge of coronavirus patients.... The governor's office told CNN the state's hospitals had not received ventilators promised last month by the Tesla CEO. Included in [a series of] tweets from Musk was a partial list of hospitals that he said had been sent ventilators.... He said the donations were 'based on direct requests from their ICU wards, with exact specifications of each unit provided before shipment.' 'I was not personally aware of that list,' Newsom said at a press conference. '... I look forward to learning more about where they went and am grateful for his support.' CNN contacted 10 California hospitals identified by Musk in the partial list of recipients he posted on Thursday. Of the four hospitals that responded, all said they had received bilevel positive airway pressure (biPAP) or continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machines -- devices that can aid breathing and be used for sleep apnea. None had received ventilators."

Florida. Common Dreams, republished in the Raw Story: "Less than 24 hours after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis relaxed restrictions on social distancing in the state, clearing the way for beaches and parks in some areas to reopen, the city of Jacksonville announced Friday its beaches would reopen at 5pm.... As Miami reporter Brian Entin noted on Twitter, confirmed coronavirus cases in Florida spiked on Thursday as DeSantis issued his order." --s ~~~

~~~ David Smiley of the Miami Herald: "When the Miami Herald sought information from the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner's Office last month about COVID-19 deaths in the epicenter of Florida's coronavirus outbreak, attorneys for the state health department moved to block the records from becoming public.... The Herald ... obtained the information Thursday after the county bucked Florida's Department of Health. But the episode is an example of how the administration of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis often has been unwilling or unable to provide crucial information about its coronavirus response -- and at times has actively tried to shield critical details about the depths of the crisis from becoming public.... In recent weeks, Florida's Agency for Health Care Administration has refused to name the nursing homes experiencing coronavirus outbreaks, even as the number of cases in longterm care facilities has passed 1,300. The Department of Corrections had until Wednesday declined to acknowledge two inmate COVID-19 deaths at a privately run prison. And the Department of Health has been unwilling to disclose the extent of an undefined backlog of unresolved coronavirus tests at private labs." (Also linked yesterday.)

Illinois. Flying Under the Radar. Frank Main of the Chicago Sun-Times (April 14): "Gov. J.B. Pritzker is planning to obtain millions of masks and gloves from China and bring those supplies back to Illinois on charter jets -- but he's keeping the details secret out of fear the Trump administration might seize the cargo for the federal stockpile, sources said Tuesday." ~~~

~~~ Chris Tye of CBS Chicago: "A massive shipment of supplies to help fight COVID-19 arrived at [Chicago's] O’Hare [Airport Thursday afternoon].... One state insider called this a wild west kind of mission. Another asked CBS 2 to keep quiet on the landing until it was completed, four minutes ahead of schedule. And now two dozens pallets of the most crucial supplies are headed to Illinois' front lines.... A second flight with similar cargo scheduled for next week. Dubbed by some as secret flights to keep Washington from muddying the pricey delivery. 'It is true that the federal government seems to be interrupting supplies that are being sent elsewhere in the nation,' [Gov. J.B.] Pritzker [D] said. 'And so I wanted to make sure we receive what we ordered.'" ~~~

~~~ One Reason Pritzker Had to Sneak in the Masks. Chris Boyette & Caroline Kelly of CNN (March 31): "Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Monday that the federal government sent the wrong type of medical masks in a shipment that his state recently received. Pritzker, a Democrat, said at a news conference that the White House told him the state would receive 300,000 N95 masks from the federal government. The N95 respirator mask is what doctors wear when treating individuals infected with a virus. Instead, what Illinois received were surgical masks, which are not considered respiratory protection by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and are not totally effective in preventing coronavirus transmission."

Michigan. Susan Demas of Michigan Advance writes an excellent column on the protest in Lansing, Michigan, against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. (Also linked yesterday.)

New York. Anna Gronwold of Politico: "Gov. Andrew Cuomo embarked on a 20-minute stemwinder during his press briefing Friday, hitting back on a series of presidential tweets accusing him of overreacting to the coronavirus pandemic. Cuomo, who has for weeks said he doesn't want to fight ... Donald Trump, couldn't resist lobbing a few verbal grenades after Trump tweeted during Cuomo's Friday appearance that the governor 'should spend more time "doing" and less time "complaining."'" ~~~

Rachel Seigel & Thomas Heath of the Washington Post: "Stocks flashed green around the world as investors clung to early reports that an antiviral medicine appeared to successfully treat severe symptoms for coronavirus patients. The Dow Jones industrial average initially surged 600 points at Friday's open but was up 350 points, or 1.5 percent, within the hour. The Standard & Poor's 500 jumped 1.5 percent and Nasdaq composite climbed 0.85 percent. U.S. markets appeared headed toward their second straight week of gains, bouncing back from March lows that ended the 10-year bull market. The rally came a day after dismal economic numbers showed the United States had erased all job gains of the past decade due to the pandemic, which continues to force tens of millions of Americans to stay home and disrupt entire industries.... On Thursday, STAT news reported that severely ill coronavirus patients were responding well to remdesivir, a Gilead Sciences drug, at a Chicago hospital. The trial involved only 125 people and the preliminary results were not peer reviewed, but it was welcome news for investors looking for light at the end of the pandemic tunnel, and the economic recovery that will come with it. Gilead shares spiked nearly 8 percent after the open." A CNBC story is here. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Update. Mrs. McCrabbie: Elizabeth Cohen, CNN's medical correspondent was pretty unenthusiastic about the Gilead trial of remdesivir. She said what was reported was some doctors who were paid by Gilead speaking enthusiastically about the results. While it's possible the product will work well to curb symptoms, it's just as possible it won't. Remdesivir was initially designed to work to mitigate Ebola symptoms, and it didn't work.

The Majority of Americans Are Not as Dumb as Donald. Philip Bump of the Washington Post: "New polling from Pew Research Center suggests that Americans are more likely to side with the experts than with Trump. By a 2-to-1 margin, they are more concerned that distancing measures will be rescinded too quickly than too slowly. There's a partisan split on the question, but not as big as you might think. Among conservative Republicans, views are about split. Among moderate Republicans, a large majority is more worried about moving too quickly than too slowly.... Americans also generally give Trump low marks on his handling of the pandemic -- particularly in terms of his presentation of its risks. A majority think that Trump has made the coronavirus outbreak seem better than it is.... Two-thirds of Americans, according to Pew's polling, think that Trump was too slow to take major steps to address the pandemic." The Pew report is here. (Also linked yesterday.)

Also Not as Dumb as Dr. Phil. Katie Shepherd of the Washington Post: "After Anthony S. Fauci, the nation's leading infectious disease expert, explained the White House's new guidelines for states to slowly reopen their economies in a three-phase process, Fox News host Laura Ingraham ... turned to Phil McGraw, better known as Dr. Phil, television psychologist to the masses. He acknowledged that the novel coronavirus is killing Americans — more than 33,000 as of early Friday -- but also wondered why the economy would shut down over the pandemic but continues to function as people die from lung cancer, car crashes and pool drownings. (Unlike coronavirus, none of the causes of death listed by Dr. Phil are contagious.) The conflicting views, one from the most qualified source available on the topic and the other from a talk-show host with questionable credentials, highlighted again how expert advice on the novel coronavirus has frequently been undermined by celebrity doctors with little to no infectious disease experience." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: For those of you who thought Oprah Winfrey should run for president, let me remind you that she made Dr. Phil's career as a teevee personality.

Presidential Race (Sort of)

** The Money Launderer. S.V. Date of the Huffington Post: "President Donald Trump's campaign is secretly paying one Trump son's wife and another one's girlfriend $180,000 a year each through the campaign manager's private company.... Kimberly Guilfoyle, the girlfriend of eldest son Donald Trump Jr., and Lara Trump, wife of middle son Eric Trump, are each receiving $15,000 a month.... [The payments] ... are being made by campaign manager Bradley Parscale through his company rather than directly by either the campaign or the party in order to avoid public reporting requirements. 'I can pay them however I want to pay them,' Parscale told HuffPost on Friday, but then declined to comment any further....Stuart Stevens, a top aide to 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney's campaign, was ... blunt: 'That's why Parscale has the job. He's a money launderer, not a campaign manager.'... Trump campaign and the RNC have been getting around [FEC rules] by routing many of their payments through Pascale's private companies. In all, Parscale's firms ― Giles-Parscale and Parscale Strategy LLC ― have been paid $38.9 million by Trump's campaign, the RNC, joint fundraising committees and a pro-Trump super PAC between the day Trump took office through February 2020[.]" --s

News Lede

Hill: "Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill died early Saturday at his home in Pittsburgh at the age of 84, his family told The Wall Street Journal. O'Neill had been undergoing treatment for lung cancer, and his death was unrelated to the coronavirus. O'Neill, who also worked as Alcoa's chief executive, was known for an independent streak that at times led to clashes with former President George W. Bush, in whose Cabinet he served." ~~~

     ~~~ Update. O'Neill's New York Times obituary is here.