From my frequent “GNR Annex” on Good News Roundup, the shape of a new set of themes is taking shape, none good for Trump. They trash Trump and stupid Rethug governors, and The Senate trashes Barr, and Trump trashes himself. This is coming together in ways that will effect the election, and as I note about 538 below, it’s already beginning to show up in th epolls. . There is an awful lot here, so I turned it into a diary.
This is, I think, an important set of themes that is coming together in a huge hurry. Sorry it’s so long. There is so much to cover. Did Trump get the virus? He sure did. It got him in the neck.
The question of Trumpf’s huge advantage from having two hours of free air time every day at the press briefings keeps coming up. That would be an issue under normal circumstances, but Trumpf keeps acting like the sociopathic, lying incompetent that he is, and huge numbers of people are noticing. Trumpf himself is spectacularly reinforcing the concept that this is “Trump’s Pandemic.” People are seeing that in real time, andit is showing up in the polls. The 538 composite is out to 8.9% unfavorable, from 3.9% when the crisis first became public.
projects.fivethirtyeight.com/...
I have little doubt that it will be breaking up over 9%, and then beyond, from the idiocy and panic in Trump’s own commentary. When a reporter asks a smart question, and he attacks with a stupid response, my insides get a little warmer. (Hooray for the seemingly shy Yamiche Alcindor. Trump doesn’t realize what a warrior she can be with her seemingly innocent questions that get him in the neck.) Two major events on that in the last two days, the demotion of his vaccine-hunting chief for telling the truth, and one of Trump’s other experts being forced to reduce the impact of his comment about another big problem coming in the fall/winter, assuming that COVID comes back at the same time as the flu.
www.nytimes.com/...
Health Dept. Official Says Doubts on Hydroxychloroquine Led to His Ouster
Rick Bright was abruptly dismissed this week as the director of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority.
What is the difference between Trump and his former head of Vaccine testing? One of them is not Bright.
President Donald Trump began his Wednesday news conference by asking CDC Director Robert Redfield to explain how he was "misquoted" in recent coverage of a Washington Post interview in which warned that a second wave of COVID-19 could prove tougher than the current iteration because it may line up with the start of flu season.
Redfield affirmed he was "accurately quoted" in the publication, after trying to explain differences among "more difficult," "worse" and "more devastating."
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Meanwhile, we have “awful news as political good news” all over the place. The idiotic, sycophantic governors who never shut down, such as Nebraska and the Dakotas, are seeing really sharp spikes in cases. The governors who open way to soon or who open badly—Florida, Georgia, Tennessee—are going to have awful data on new cases in a real hurry. These states will all follow the Louisiana model: party one time, and see huge increases in new cases about three weeks later. The data is going to destroy a bunch of Republican governors. Sad that so many innocents will be hurt or killed in the process.
As far as a new spike in the fall is concerned, I have little doubt that governors like Hogan, who heads the NGA, and Cuomo, who has had such a crisis to fight, will be getting the key governors together to prepare for a second onslaught. And 10 or so idiotic Rethug governors will pretend that it isn’t important to join. By the fall, there will be vastly better testing, at least some contact tracing, and a huge network of PPE, masks and ventilators. But it won’t be every state or every governor.
And the pattern of massive new numbers of cases at meat packing plants will only get worse—eventually creating meat distribution problems. Pork farmers are already beginning to worry about where they will send their livestock, during “Trump’s Pandemic.” Plus, the utter intransigence f a handful of governors in responding to this new crisis is becoming obvious to people in their states, and written up in the local press. That includes Nebraska, The Dakotas, and Iowa, so far.
Meanwhile, in a huge list of stories:
First, Vox shows Trump to be an utter, self aggrandizing liar, yet again:
www.vox.com/…
Trump just said the US has done more coronavirus testing than the rest of the world. Not even close.
He’s making it up as he goes along.
President Donald Trump made a number of false and misleading claims on Tuesday to advance his case that the US is not only over the worst of the coronavirus outbreak, but nearing the point of being ready to reopen for business.
Most concerning was his insistence that the US has mastered what public health experts say must be step one to reopening: widespread testing. The US’s daily testing capacity has been flat for about a month, and experts say it needs to triple before it’ll be truly safe to reopen businesses.
To hear Trump tell it, however, the US has actually conducted more tests than all other countries combined.
“I think I read yesterday a report that we’ve done more than everybody — every other country — combined,” Trump said on Tuesday, adding later: “We’ve tested more than every other country in the world even put together.”
And the rush to reopen in a number of states is going to cause more cases and deaths, right quick. The only “good news” from this is that it translates to the data with remarkablke speed, and everyine will be seeing it happen. In WaPo:
States rushing to reopen are likely making a deadly error, coronavirus models and experts warn
Closing America was hard. Science suggests reopening amid coronavirus will be even harder.
By the end of the week, residents in Georgia will be able to get their hair permed and nails done. By Monday, they will be cleared for action flicks at the cineplex and burgers at their favorite greasy spoon.
And it will almost certainly lead to more novel coronavirus infections and deaths.
As several states — including South Carolina, Tennessee and Florida — rush to reopen businesses, the sudden relaxation of restrictions will supply new targets for the coronavirus that has kept the United States largely closed down, according to experts, math models and the basic rules that govern infectious diseases.
“The math is unfortunately pretty simple. It’s not a matter of whether infections will increase but by how much,” said Jeffrey Shaman, a leading epidemiologist at Columbia University.
Closing America was hard. But it came with one simple instruction: Everyone stay at home.
Imagine being a Democratic mayor in a Southern city right now
No matter how hard it is to be mayor of a major city during the covid-19 pandemic, at least mayors in states such as Illinois, Washington, Michigan, California, New York or New Jersey can find support to enforce social distancing and protective measures and, to a large degree, follow the course set by competent governors. But if you are a Democratic mayor in a Southern city with already vulnerable residents (e.g. poor populations with worse health, elderly in nursing homes), you may have a mess on your hands.
“I am beyond disturbed,” Van R. Johnson, mayor of Savannah, Ga., said on CNN after Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp announced that gyms, salons, tattoo parlors and bowling alleys in the state could reopen Friday as long as customers obeyed social distancing guidelines.
Johnson called the governor’s order “reckless, premature and dangerous,” and asked businesses in his city to show “common sense” by staying closed.
He said Savannah still lacked the wide-scale testing that public health experts say is necessary before shops and businesses can safely reopen.
He is hardly alone. Other Southern mayors are trying to protect their cities from rash decisions from governors — decisions that may conflict not only with advice from public health officials, including from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but also common sense.
thehill.com/...
Poll: Biden leads Trump by 4 points in Florida
Joe Biden is leading President Trump by 4 percentage points in Florida, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released on Wednesday, giving the former vice president a narrow yet not insignificant edge in the nation’s largest swing state.
The poll shows Biden with 46 percent support in the Sunshine State, while Trump trails at 42 percent.
In NY Post, of all places, a strong story on a Quinnipiac poll in Florida that shows locals hating their own governor’s behavior:
A large majority of Florida voters say the Sunshine State should not loosen social distancing rules by the end of April, with an even larger number saying that the state’s economy should only reopen after public health officials consider it safe, a new poll said Wednesday.
Florida voters said by 72 percent to 22 percent that the state should not relax social distancing rules by the end of April, the Quinnipiac University survey found.
And about three quarters of registered voters, 76 percent, said that the state’s economy should only reopen when public health officials believe it safe, compared to 17 percent who say it should reopen even if public health officials warn against it.
Meanwhile, the early warning of COVID-19 cases started earlier than had been thought
www.nytimes.com/...
A Coronavirus Death in Early February Was ‘Probably the Tip of an Iceberg’
The startling discovery that the virus was responsible for a Feb. 6 death in California raises questions about where else it might have been spreading undetected.
Back on meat processing, with key companies beginning to realize that they have to shut down, even if the governor shuts up
www.npr.org/...
Tyson Foods, one of the biggest meat producers in the U.S., is suspending work at its pork processing plant in Waterloo, Iowa. Officials in Black Hawk County, where the plant is located, say at least 150 people with close connections to the plant have tested positive for the coronavirus, according to Iowa Public Radio.
The Waterloo plant, which employs 2,800 people, is just the latest U.S. meatpacking plant to shut down or reduce production. Other closed plants include a Smithfield Foods pork processing facility in Sioux Falls, S.D., which has been linked to over 900 infections, and a JBS beef plant in Greeley, Colo. Other plants are open but operating at a slower pace because many workers are absent.
However, another Tyson plant in Iowa resumed "limited operations" this week after suspending work two weeks ago. Tyson Foods says it is supplying workers at the Columbus Junction site with face masks to wear on the job, installing dividers between workspaces and providing more break-room space. And the company says employees at its Waterloo plant can return later this week to be tested for the coronavirus.
According to Steve Meyer, a pork industry economist with Kerns & Associates, about 25 percent of U.S. pork production is now either idled or working slowly. That leaves some hog farmers with no place to ship their market-ready animals.
On the nursing home count that Trump doesn;t want:
www.wsj.com/...
Coronavirus Deaths in U.S. Nursing, Long-Term Care Facilities Top 10,000
Industry says more testing is needed to detect and curb outbreaks, and some states boost efforts
And on scientists saying it is too early to open, in WaPo
It’s Too Soon to Reopen States. The Coronavirus Is Not Under Control.
Leaders are overestimating how far we’ve come and are underestimating what it will take to manage Covid-19 in a near-normal world.
Georgia, Tennessee and South Carolina are eager to ease social-distancing restrictions. They believe they are over the worst of their local outbreaks. Some of their assurance is because they’ve been looking at models that show that once an outbreak has peaked, it resolves about as quickly as it began.
But evidence from Western Europe is not fitting this pattern. Governors should rethink decisions to loosen restrictions anytime soon.
Models are useful for the Covid-19 pandemic because they help us plan and make decisions. They also help us to predict the future. Most of the models that have caught the country’s attention are nicely symmetric. They show cases and deaths rising rapidly, peaking and then coming down just as fast. The report from the Imperial College in Britain that seemed to make much of the country snap into focus in March outlined a variety of strategies that we could take to mitigate the spread of the infection; almost all showed a rise and fall that mirrored each other.
Models from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, known as I.H.M.E., which reportedly caught the attention of the White House weeks later, showed a similar pattern. Cases and infections go up relatively smoothly, slow, and then come down smoothly.
These two models use different methodology. Imperial College runs calculations based on how many people are susceptible, exposed, infected, and then recover (S.E.I.R.). Different models can include variables — like how infectious or how deadly the virus is — to change outcomes. If, for instance, we engage in social distancing, which dramatically lowers the chance that one is exposed, a model will show that we can expect a very different course.
And, and interesting story of a private equity fund saying that they want no part of stupid behavior at Victoria’s Secret:
www.nytimes.com/...
Victoria’s Secret Sale at Risk as Buyer Blames Virus Response
A private equity firm acknowledged the “international tragedy and health emergency,” but said it didn’t excuse actions taken by the lingerie chain’s parent company, including closing stores.
The plan to sell Victoria’s Secret to a private equity investor appears to be in trouble, with the buyer saying on Wednesday it wanted to terminate the deal because of the retail chain’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Sycamore Partners, which agreed to buy a majority of Victoria’s Secret from its embattled owner, L Brands, in February, argued its case in a Delaware court filing. The move sent the company’s shares plummeting by about 20 percent before trading of the stock was temporarily halted.
L Brands, which also owns Bath & Body Works, said in a statement that it believed Sycamore’s attempt to terminate the acquisition was “invalid,” and that it planned to “vigorously defend the lawsuit” and work toward closing the deal.
And good stuff from Krugman. I forgot what an incompetent wacko Trump’s economist”—Moore—is.
The Right Sends In the Quacks
Covid-19 highlights the conservative reliance on fake experts.
Over the past few days there have been noisy, threatening demonstrations at various statehouses demanding an end to Covid-19 lockdowns.
The demonstrations haven’t been very big, with at most a few thousand people, and involve a strong element of astroturfing — that is, while they supposedly represent a surge of grass-roots anger, some of them have been organized by institutions with links to Republican politicians, including the family of Betsy DeVos, the secretary of education.
And polls show that an overwhelming majority of Americans — including half of Republicans — are more worried that restrictions will be lifted too soon than that they will be kept in place too long.
But the demonstrators have received huge favorable coverage from right-wing media; Donald Trump called them “very responsible people”; and they were praised by White House economic adviser Stephen Moore, who compared them to Rosa Parks.
That last bit caught my eye, and not just because some of the demonstrators were waving Confederate flags. The grotesqueness of the comparison aside, why are we still hearing from Stephen Moore?
After all, Moore — whom Trump tried but failed to install as a member of the Federal Reserve Board — isn’t just a bad economist with a history of misogynistic outbursts. More to the point, he’s a quack, with a long history of misrepresenting or inventing facts to support his ideological agenda.
And huge new news on a Senate committee going after Barr about Russia—there is just so much “stuff.”
www.alternet.org/...
A Senate committee dropped a bombshell on Bill Barr and the right wing’s favorite Russia probe conspiracy theories
If you don’t follow rightwing news, you might be unaware of the fact that its purveyors are absolutely salivating at the prospect of U.S. Attorney John Durham’s imminent indictment of former CIA Director John Brennan for his role in launching the Trump-Russia investigation. Here is just a sampling:
- “All The Russia Collusion Clues Are Beginning To Point Back To John Brennan” by Margot Cleveland at the Federalist,
- “The Brennan Dossier: All About a Prime Mover of Russiagate” by Aaron Maté at RealClearPolitics,
- “Durham’s On the Way” by R. Emmett Tyrrell at the American Spectator, and
- “John Durham investigation intensifies focus on John Brennan” by Jerry Dunleavy at the Washington Examiner.
All of those authors focus on Brennan’s role in the January 2017 U.S. intelligence community assessment (ICA) describing Russian interference in the 2016 election, which was commissioned by then-President Obama. This is the statement in that assessment that they find most objectionable (emphasis mine).
It is hard to imagine a more thorough debunking of the insinuations we’ve heard from Barr and Trump’s media enablers. The Republican Senators who signed on to this report include Richard Burr, James Risch, Marco Rubio, Susan Collins, Roy Blunt, Tom Cotton, John Cornyn, and Ben Sasse, making claims that it was a partisan smear job completely untenable.
Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman made headlines on Tuesday and Wednesday as she called the closing of businesses due to the COVID-19 pandemic “insanity.” In an interview with Las Vegas’ local NBC affiliate News 3 Goodman wondered aloud whether we stop driving just because we have vehicle accidents. Asked how and when Las Vegas should “re-open,” Goodman told the news station that she would allow private businesses to open if they wanted to because that would mean those private businesses “had a plan” on how to reopen. “And if your business has too many cockroaches on the floor, then you aren’t going to have any business.”
Yup—the interview continued on exactly as coherently as that. Mayor Goodman brought this conservative no-plan, no-ideas approach to CNN in an interview with Anderson Cooper Tuesday night. Cooper tried to get Goodman to explain what her plan was, and the results were … something to watch.
Cooper acknowledged the devastating economic toll stay-at-home orders are having on Las Vegas’ economy. But what exactly was Mayor Goodman’s plan for keeping people safe while reopening Las GODDAMN Vegas while this pandemic was raging around the country, with no therapeutics or vaccines in sight? Explaining that if she was a hotel or casino owner (“I wish I were!” she chirped), she would “have the cleanest hotel, with six feet figured out for every human being that comes in there.”
Without screaming, Cooper (to his credit) attempted to walk Goodman through the logic of her … idea.
www.alternet.org/...
Trump was enraged and wanted to fire the official who first told the truth about the coronavirus: report
In a deeply reported Wall Street Journal piece on Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar’s mishandling of the coronavirus crisis, a bombshell detail buried in the story cast light on President Donald Trump’s own disastrous instincts.
According to the report, Trump wanted to fire Dr. Nancy Messonnier — the official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who first shared the gravity of the pandemic with the American people.
On Feb. 25, after Trump had spent a month downplaying the outbreak and defending China’s honesty in its response, Messonnier sent a clear signal about just how bad things could get.
“We expect we will see community spread in this country,” she said. “The disruption to everyday life might be severe.”
This statement rocked the stock market. That day, the Dow dropped 800 points, the beginning of a massive downward slide we still haven’t recovered from.
She was, of course, right. But Azar tried to walk her concerns back, saying the virus was “contained” — which it quite clearly wasn’t. Since that time, there have been many accusations recriminations about how institutions responded to the early days of the pandemic, particularly the media and the Trump administration. But while the case of the media is complicated, the failures of the Trump administration — especially Trump himself — to warn the public are undeniable.
Since that time, there have been many accusations recriminations about how institutions responded to the early days of the pandemic, particularly the media and the Trump administration. But while the case of the media is complicated, the failures of the Trump administration — especially Trump himself — to warn the public are undeniable.
Trump was “furious” about Messonnier’s comments, the Journal reported, and he “called Mr. Azar and threatened to oust Dr. Messonnier.” She has been sidelined since.
And also from Stiglitz, on the Alternet:
Robert Reich, former secretary of labor for the Clinton Administration, and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman aren’t the only major economists who are highly critical of President Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. Joseph Stiglitz is voicing his displeasure as well, and as the Nobel prize-winning economist sees it, Trump’s response to the crisis has been a failure from both a health/safety standpoint and an economic standpoint.
Stiglitz made some grim predictions for the United States during an interview with The Guardian — including an economic depression and unemployment that could reach 30%. And the U.S., Stiglitz laments, doesn’t have the social safety net needed to address such economic conditions.
“The numbers turning to food banks are just enormous and beyond the capacity of them to supply,” Stiglitz told The Guardian. “It is like a third world country. The public social safety net is not working.”
In the U.S., Stiglitz noted, coronavirus has been especially hard on those who are least able to cope it.
“The safety net is not adequate and is propagating the disease,” Stiglitz warned. “There is very weak unemployment insurance, and people don’t think they can rely on it.”
The Great Recession of the late 2000s and early 2010s was the worst economic downturn in the U.S. since the 1929 crash and the Great Depression of the 1930s. And
From Salon, about the lying and cheating thingie:
www.alternet.org/...
Trump’s compulsion to lie and cheat is thwarting his best chance at re-election
In recent days, Donald Trump’s go-to excuse for why the federal government hasn’t done more to ramp up efforts to test Americans for the novel coronavirus — even though such tests are necessary for the economy to successfully reopen — is that this should be the responsibility of state governments.
“Governors must be able to step up and get the job done,” Trump tweeted Saturday afternoon, while also weirdly declaring that the U.S. was the “King of Ventilators.” Is he going to start selling them in late-night infomercials?
When governors complain that they can’t ramp up coronavirus testing, because there’s nowhere near enough capacity, Trump denies it, claiming that governors “don’t want to use all of the capacity that we’ve created.” When asked why testing rates have stayed mostly flat for the past month, Trump of course turns it around and pins blame on the governors, falsely claiming they haven’t asked for help.
It should be obvious what’s going on: The Trump administration is doing everything possible to hamstring states’ capacity to perform the large-scale testing that would be needed to end the lockdowns safely and reopen the economy. When Trump is called out for this, he lies about it. He literally doesn’t want more testing. But why?
Maryland’s Republican governor, Larry Hogan, told Jake Tapper of CNN, “Every governor in America has been pushing and fighting and clawing to get more tests,” and said it was “absolutely false” to claim there’s enough testing capacity…
So why is Trump doing whatever he can to prevent the very thing that would give him the best chance of saving the economy and boosting his re-election chances? Why is a notorious narcissist whose only plausible motivation is his own self-interest not doing the one thing that would benefit him in this crisis?
Because Trump isn’t capable of seeing widespread testing — and more accurate information about the spread of the virus — as being in his self-interest. He sees it this way: The more tests that are done, the more confirmed cases are counted, and his impulse is to conceal that larger number if he possibly can. So he’s trying to keep the official case count as low as possible through the only method he understands: Lying and cheating. In this case, by preventing testing such that no accurate count is possible.
It’s not like he’s hidden this desire from the public.
And this juicy new strory on Alternet:
Melania Trump’s immigration lawyer slams president’s ’embarrassing’ response to COVID-19 pandemic
Melania Trump’s immigration attorney blasted the president’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
Michael Wildes — who helped secure U.S. citizenship for the first lady and her parents Viktor and Amalija Knavs, as well as a green card for her sister Ines — questioned President Donald Trump’s immigration ban in response to the pandemic, reported The Daily Mail.
“Embarrassing, embarrassing, I think it’s embarrassing,” Wildes said. “But I think we have to not criticize, we have to step up and all hands on deck are needed, whether it’s the medical professionals in our hospitals and our first responders in people’s homes.”
Wildes, who is also mayor of Englewood, New Jersey, said history would judge the nation’s response to the crisis.
“We have an opportunity in November to elect somebody different if we don’t feel that the president ought to continue that trust, but right now he is our president in the midst of a COVID-19 campaign,” he said.
“It’s our job — you, me, others — to make sure that those people with accents in this country feel the same sense of hospitality that our founding documents and parents have envisioned and that we realize that it’s that golden experiment, that regeneration of America’s dream and immigration is a huge part of that DNA that will help right this ship,” Wildes added. “I can judge, but it’s not for me to say, right now it’s for me to do.”
And “Trump as wacko” at his Wednesday press conference:
Trump lashes out at female reporter while trashing a member of his own administration
At Wednesday’s coronavirus press briefing, President Donald Trump was asked by CBS News’ Weijia Jiang about Dr. Rick Bright, the official who was mysteriously reassigned after warning against the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19.
The president cut her off aggressively, then, even while acknowledging he knew little about Bright, spoke dismissively of him, saying “Why do you say he has great gifts? Do you know him? Have you reviewed him?”
When Jiang pointed out he had extensive experience developing vaccines, Trump said, “That doesn’t mean he has gifts. I know a lot of people who play baseball who can’t hit .150.”
Got that? Experts who disagree with Trump are idiots. Riiiight.
Finally, 4.4 million more unemployed, bringing the 5 week total in “Trump’s economy” to 26 million.
Trump is in massive trouble, and he knows it. It is showing up almost every day at the so-called “press briefings.”
www.alternet.org/...
Ignore the false dichotomy: It’s not a choice between human lives and the economy.
Donald Trump and his allies desperately want people to believe there’s a conflict between saving lives and saving the economy. In Trump’s daily propaganda dump disguised as a “coronavirus briefing,” the runner-up in the 2016 popular vote spends much of his time fantasizing about how he will soon “reopen” the economy and hinting that governors have overreached by instituting mandatory lockdowns to prevent the coronavirus from spreading. Republican politicians are assisting Trump is promoting this vapid dichotomy, demanding congressional investigations into the shutdowns and claiming that letting people die is a reasonable price to pay for (supposedly) rescuing the economy.
This effort at pitting lives against jobs is bolstered, of course, by Fox News and other right-wing pundits, who are hyping the idea that we need to let the coronavirus run rampant through the country in order to save the economy. Over the past week, right-wing astroturf groups linked to the DeVos family and other big donors have staged anti-lockdown protests, aimed at reinforcing this economy vs. lives framework. Trump and Fox News unsurprisingly jumped in, cheering on the protesters and using these tiny groups of knuckleheads as evidence that the country must make a stark choice.
Spoiler alert: This “choice” between saving lives and saving the economy is a false dichotomy. In fact, it isn’t a choice at all. You can’t do one without the other.
But Trump’s idiotic sychophantic Rethug governors don’t understand this. His smareter friends do (yes, they exist)
Btw, there is this: Piers Morgan is panicking about Trump’s panicking.
Trump’s old friend Piers Morgan watches briefings ‘with mounting horror,' urges president to stop ‘self-aggrandizing’
Piers Morgan, the outspoken host of “Good Morning Britain,” issued a personal plea to his old friend on Sunday, asking the president to stop “playing petty politics” with the coronavirus pandemic and to “stop making it about yourself.”
Appearing on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” with host Brian Stelter, the longtime Trump ally said he had been watching Trump’s daily coronavirus briefings “with mounting horror.” Trump, he said, couldn’t seem to stop blaming governors or attacking Democrats, and kept wasting time quarreling with reporters.
The whirlwind news conferences were becoming “almost like a rally to him — almost like what’s more important is winning the election in November,” Morgan said.
“No it’s not, Donald Trump. What is more important right now is saving American lives,” he said.
“Mr President @realDonaldTrump, you won’t want to watch this, but I hope you do,” Morgan wrote. “Please drop your angry, petty, disingenuous, blame-gaming, self-aggrandising daily briefing antics & start being a proper wartime president.
Trump as proper wartime president? Leopard, meet spots. Tiger, meet stripes.
Have a great day. I really think that the themes coming out of this muuch-too-long story (sorry) are a big freakin’ deal about a presidency falling apart.
Have a nice, safe day. Especially if you are in one of the states run by an idiotic Rethug governor.
Thursday, Apr 23, 2020 · 1:49:32 PM +00:00 · Mrmuni12
And an important new theme from “Governing”: what do we do with prisoners during “Trump’s pandemic?
No One's Sentenced to Die in a Pandemic': Debating Prisoner Release
Thousands of inmates are infected with the coronavirus and dozens have already died. Some governors have released prisoners for public health reasons, but there's always a risk they'll reoffend.
ALAN GREENBLATT, SENIOR STAFF WRITER | APRIL 23, 2020 | ANALYSIS
Earlier this month, Cook County Jail in Chicago was home to the nation’s largest outbreak of coronavirus cases. It’s since been surpassed by Marion Correctional Institute in Ohio, which has more than 2,100 cases, including three-quarters of its inmate population.
It’s a problem all over the country. In Arkansas, prisoners accounted for 262 of the 304 new coronavirus cases reported throughout the state on Tuesday. More than 4,000 prisoners are infected at more than 50 prisons in Florida. More than four dozen federal and state prisoners have died.
The risk from the disease spreading through jails, prisons and immigration detention centers has led to hunger strikes, prison protests and numerous lawsuits. It’s also touched off one of the thorniest policy debates of the coronavirus crisis — whether releasing inmates early (or not incarcerating them to begin with) is necessary to protect public health, or whether early releases pose too great a risk to society.
Already, dozens of inmates released in response to outbreaks have reoffended, including at least one alleged case of murder in Florida. A half-dozen prosecutors in New York City — where at least 50 released prisoners have been arrested again for committing new crimes — warned that “across-the-board” release policies “pose a high risk of public safety.” One Iowa prosecutor took to Facebook to complain that defense attorneys were employing the pandemic as a “get out of jail free” card.