In Wisconsin, statewide elections proceeded after the conservative state Supreme Court blocked an emergency two-month postponement of in-person voting by Gov. Tony Evers. Risking infection, voters were forced to line up "literally around the block" at the few still-open polling places despite social distancing rules—which will likely lead to elevated COVID-19 infections two weeks from now. "Welcome to the Shit Show," tweeted Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes.
In a move indistinguishable from parody, the Republican speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly assured voters that "you are incredibly safe to go out" to vote—while wearing a facemask and full surgical gown.
In other pandemic news:
• Donald Trump today ousted the Pentagon inspector general in a clear move to erase oversight of the $2 trillion pandemic relief funding provided by Congress, which had designated that inspector general as the top watchdog for the funds. The administration’s impetus for eliminating public oversight of how the money is spent, for a president recently impeached for attempting to exchange congressionally controlled funding to demand a foreign government provide him personal favors, remains self-evident.
• In a now-familiar attack on anyone who presents or compiles data conflicting with his own propaganda-laced statements to the public, Donald Trump lashed out at the Health and Human Services inspector general for a report summarizing the severe challenges hospitals are facing in responding to the pandemic.
• The federal government’s role in providing medical supplies during the pandemic continues to be ill-defined, with Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner having a particularly ill-defined role in an effort that so far has seemed to actively hinder states' own efforts to get those supplies.
• Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly resigned today, one day after issuing an apology for an address to the crew of the USS Theodore Roosevelt demeaning and insulting their former captain, who had been removed by Modly for authoring a letter urgently requesting quarantine facilities for COVID-19-infected crew members and the temporary removal of most ship personnel.
• A crew member of the USNS Comfort, dispatched to provide relief for overcrowded New York City hospitals, has tested positive for the virus.
• It is becoming increasingly clear that official counts of COVID-19 victims are substantially understating the true death toll, either intentionally or through confusion. This may be especially true in locations like New York City, with now-overwhelmed hospital systems.
• Former President Barack Obama singled out Sen. Elizabeth Warren for providing "a cogent summary of how federal policymakers should be thinking about the pandemic in the coming months."
• Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer named a longtime aide to Sen. Warren to the Congressional Oversight Commission responsible for monitoring pandemic relief funding.
• Even Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro warned the White House, on Jan. 29 and Feb. 23, that there was an elevated risk of the virus "evolving into a full-blown pandemic, imperiling the lives of millions of Americans." These memos, which also warned of equipment shortages, appear to also have been ignored.
• As the Trump administration response to the pandemic continues to be sluggish, incompetent, lie-filled, self-serving, and possibly motivated by Trump and Kushner's personal and business interests, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi noted that "what we need is a central command" in the pandemic response, and "we don't have that."
• Donald Trump took to Twitter to bash the World Health Organization in yet another provably dishonest attempt by the impeached president and his team to deflect blame for allowing the pandemic to take hold in the United States, despite at least two months of prior warnings.
• Trump is now identified as having a personal stake in the company that manufactures a drug he has been praising, without evidence, as potentially beneficial for COVID-19 patients.
• Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell reversed himself, yet again, to propose additional money for small business lending programs included in previous pandemic relief legislation. But the current small business program has swiftly become a fiasco, with both banks and borrowers "overwhelmed and confused" by the near-invisible, mostly unexplained program.
• In a discovery that will further complicate social distancing efforts—and further highlights the need for near-universal testing before those efforts can be lifted—a new paper estimates that 80% of the COVID-19 cases in the pandemic's presumed origin point, China's Hubei province, were contracted via contact with people who showed either light or no symptoms of infection.
• As the Wisconsin legislature continued to swerve between incompetence and outright malevolence in its own decision-making, state community organizers and voting rights groups had to quickly convert to "digital and phone-based operation" to respond to the pandemic, not only providing election information but "letting people know about resources for things like food."
• COVID-19 cases in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers continue to climb—but are likely higher than reported amid suspected ICE attempts to "fudge the numbers." The American Civil Liberties Union is now suing ICE for the release of vulnerable detainees from crowded California detention facilities.
• In Pennsylvania, Japanese American survivors of the U.S. internment camps of World War II are urging the release of immigrant families held at the notorious Berks County Residential Center.
• A new Justice Collaborative and Data for Progress report urges local officials to "quickly reduce jail populations to slow the spread" of the virus.
• Discovered in the previously passed $2 trillion federal relief package: a provision that allows churches and faith-based organizations to be designated as "businesses," thereby granting them access to the relief package's small business loans. Granting such funds would appear to directly conflict with the First Amendment.
• Farm workers are "essential labor" during the pandemic, and are continuing to work through the crisis. But they're still being left out of congressional relief efforts.