James.galbraith

Carnival Cruise Line, after “missing out” on the original set of big business bailouts, is going to get some of that American taxpayer money. Turns out Carnival Corporation was never missing out on any of the scam spending by Trump and Mnuchin and our country’s federal reserves. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Fed’s March push to throw tons of money into the markets was a nice way of bailing out Carnival by creating a cheap lending market to move the failing company’s debt around.

According to WSJ, the cruise line company was dead in the water when it began looking to borrow billions in high-interest loans. They found a crew of hedge funds (called “the consortium”) willing to offer up $4 billion to $6 billion at “an annual interest rate exceeding 15% and potentially give the lenders a stake in the company.” But when the Fed entered, offering up billions that now included “loans to companies with investment-grade ratings as well as purchases of their bonds,” Carnival, and others, were able to lower those interest rates and grab a ton of taxpayer money by way of lender investment.

Trump made it clear weeks ago that if you were a business buddy or sponsor of the Donald Trump experience in any way, he was going to get you some bailout money. Not you dumb MAGA-hat-wearing idiots. No, the people getting bailout money don’t wear trashy propaganda produced by a fake billionaire con man. They wear their own trashy propaganda and Trump jumps as high as they tell him. And the Senate made it clear in the first coronavirus stimulus package that they had no interest in letting anyone know how they were going to spend $450 billion in corporate bailout money.

On his business news show today, CNBC’s Jim Cramer—not known for being a wide-eyed socialist—called the bailout of Carnival Cruise Line a “disgrace,” explaining that if the government is arguing it has a finite amount of resources for bailing out our economic engines of business, why would someone give money to a failure of a cruise ship business? Asking out loud what the logic was, Cramer wondered if big bailouts from the Federal Reserve were “limited to companies run by Micky Arison.”

Arison is the chairperson of the Carnival Corporation and a longtime sponsor of Donald Trump’s career. After all of this bailout talk, Fortune reports that the “Miami-based” but Panama-incorporated company has no plans to come back to America and, you know, pay some taxes. Why should they when they’re already getting the “America First” treatment?

One of the issues presented by a global pandemic is that it affects the entire world. That means that every functioning government official is paying attention to it because in some shape or form, it has the potential to create enormous disruptions in every walk of life. The Washington Post is reporting “more than a dozen classified briefings prepared for President Trump in January and February,” at a time when we all remember Donald Trump explaining how the virus would just “disappear” and “go away.”

According to the Post, Trump seems to have somehow missed the “more than a dozen” briefings placed in his President’s Daily Brief (PDB), which covered the wide range of political, economic, and public health crises that a global pandemic might create. This isn’t a single session with the Centers for Disease Control, but a prolonged attempt by many in the government, worried about issues of national security, to try and impart crucial information to the dumbest man to have this much power in the history of the world. 

The PDBs are a daily synthesis of global events and issues. They are supposed to help the president of the United States get a clear view of the pressing problems we face as a country, and hopefully inform their list of priorities. For example, a growing worldwide pandemic will lead to enormous issues across not only our country, but the world. Examples of some of the things that can happen due to a global pandemic can be seen right now; we are living it because Donald Trump and his administration failed to act early enough, and subsequently hasn’t been able to get on top of it.

But Trump skips most of his daily briefings, and supposedly can barely handle the even more dumbed down “oral summary he now takes two or three times per week.” The Office of the Director of National Intelligence told the Post that “The detail of this is not true.” Whatever that means? The official reportedly did not “explain or elaborate,” though I imagine he just jumped out of his office window and into a car to speed off into the desert.

The Trump administration will say Trump wasn’t briefed, or at the very least Trump himself will say he wasn’t briefed. Or maybe he will say he was and he clearly did everything possible, but some magical person from the past thwarted his efforts. Who knows? Whatever Trump ends up saying, you can put your money on one thing: it won’t be the truth.

One week ago, Trump boasted that his administration was only going to have 60,000 dead Americans on its hands. As of Monday, April 27, we are about to blow past that number.

From the “We Tried To Tell You” files comes a cautionary tale from North Carolina. On April 21, North Carolina’s MAGA contingent took to the streets to demand businesses reopen and get back to business as usual despite the fact that COVID-19 cases are still surging, there are still no reliable antibody tests, no vaccine, and most importantly, the body count is still climbing. With the help of a shady network of right-wing organizations promoted by Fox News, these “reopen” events took off nationwide.

Now one of the “Reopen NC” organizers says she tested positive for the novel coronavirus. According to ABC 11, Aubrey Whitlock shared the news on the “Reopen NC” Facebook page, which can only be viewed by members. Whitlock said her 14-day quarantine period ended on Sunday and she was asymptomatic, but when contacted by ABC 11’s Jonah Kaplan about whether Whitlock had attended rallies the last two Tuesdays, Whitlock simply said, “No comment.” If she did attend, she risked the lives of hundreds of her fellow neighbors. Whitlock did confirm that she planned to attend a rally this week.

The News & Observer reports Whitlock was upset she was forced to quarantine after her positive diagnosis. Whitlock had some nerve to compare her predicament to those with other disabilities. 

“I have been told not to participate in public or private accommodations as requested by the government, and therefore denied my 1st amendment right of freedom of religion,” Whitlock wrote. “If I were an essential employee, I would be denied access to my job by my employer and the government, though compensated, those with other communicable diseases are afforded the right to work. It has been insinuated by others that if I go out, I could be arrested for denying a quarantine order. However, the Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits discrimination by employers, places of public accommodation, and state and local government entities. Where do we draw the line?”

Where do we draw the line? We draw the line at people like Asymptomatic Aubrey running around infecting an untold number of her neighbors because of her own selfishness. The worst part is, each of these infections and all these nonsense rallies only spread the disease wider and further delay openings. 

FOX News commentators and vocal Trump supporters Diamond & Silk (aka Lynnette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson) have lost their gig on the FOX Nation streaming service after pushing too many lies about COVID-19.

ICYMI: FOX News Commentators ‘Diamond & Silk’: Rising Coronavirus Death Toll is a Media Conspiracy Meant to Hurt Donald Trump — WATCH

The Daily Beast reports: “The sudden split comes after the Trump-boosting siblings have come under fire for promoting conspiracy theories and disinformation about the coronavirus. ‘After what they’ve said and tweeted you won’t be seeing them on Fox Nation or Fox News anytime soon,’ a source with knowledge of the matter told The Daily Beast.”

Diamond & Silk asserted that the coronavirus death toll was false, that the disease was made in a lab, caused by 5G networks, and was a product of the “deep state.” They pushed for people to expose themselves to the virus to make themselves immune to it.

The post Conspiracy Theorist Trump Fans ‘Diamond & Silk’ Have Been Canned by FOX News: REPORT appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

Chris Burns, writing for SlashGear: This morning the official Disney+ Twitter account suggested that Star Wars fans could celebrate the next big holiday with the biggest brand in the galaxy. "Celebrate the Saga," they said, "Reply with your favorite #StarWars memory and you may see it somewhere special on #MayThe4th." The follow up to this message with a bit of lawyer language. "By sharing your message with us using #MayThe4th," said the account, "you agree to our use of the message and your account name in all media and our terms of use here: disneytermsofuse.com."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Republicans have their new coronavirus-era talking point in order to derail the next stimulus package: “No blue state bailouts!” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell’s state of Kentucky has led the nation in bleeding it financially dry. But they’re not the only ones. And other Republicans are lining up to betray their hostility to the idea of a United States of America. 

This is all the new GOP talking point to head off the second stimulus package that would further help individuals, companies, veterans, the United States Postal Service, and cities and states impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. Republicans are lining up to tsk tsk those darn blue states, what with their ridiculous ideas of getting disaster relief in a time of disaster. 

Kansas’ other senator, Jerry Moran, echoed Sen. Pat Roberts above, “I don’t think it’s the responsibility of Kansas taxpayers to help states and localities to recover from their ill-advised poor judgment of spending more money than they are capable of affording.”

Florida, king of disaster relief, is in on the act. 

And of course, it’s coming straight from the top. 

Shall we start with Kansas? Just last year, in the wake of massive and destructive flooding and hurricanes, the federal government sent $19 billion in disaster relief to the states of Kansas and Florida (among others). The vote? A bipartisan 354 to 58 in the House, and the no-votes weren’t Democrats! No, Democrats weren’t whining about “poorly run” red states who didn’t save for a rainy day. Nope. Democrats happily voted yes on disaster relief because we believe in the United States of America. 

Even Moran, who suddenly is so concerned about disaster relief for blue states, was all excited about that government bailout: “I do not remember a time where flooding in my state has been worse . . . I urge you to approve this request.” 

Does anyone remember when a deadly global pandemic has been worse in New York, New Jersey, Illinois, and other states? I doubt even Moran is that old. 

And Florida. Oh Florida. Land of hurricanes, Florida. Given that Scott was a former governor of the state, did he save up a rainy day fund to pay for disaster relief as the state gets increasingly hammered by hurricane after hurricane? That disaster bill above funded the reconstruction of Florida’s panhandle. And that was just 2019. In 2017, Florida got a significant chunk of a $50 billion rescue bill in the wake of Hurricane Maria. 

In fact, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that hurricanes cost the economy $28 billion per year, the U.S. federal government picks up $18 billion of that tab, and 55% of that spending goes to Florida, 13% to Texas, and 9% to Louisiana (red state, red state, and red state). Thanks to climate change, that’s estimated to increase to $39 billion by 2075, So we’re talking annual bailouts to those gulf coast red states. And no Democrats were complaining about it, because we’re not assholes. 

Then, of course, there’s the annual red state budgetary bailout. In 2018, Florida got $25 billion more in those sweet, sweet federal dollars than it contributed in taxes. Kansas got $5.6 billion more. 

And who is paying the tab? New York. New Jersey. Connecticut. Massachusetts. Connecticut. Colorado. In fact, once you filter out Maryland and Virginia, homes of our nation’s hyper-expensive national security apparatus and much of the rest of the federal government, the next 14 states with the biggest disparities between what they pay in federal taxes and what they get back in federal spending, and 19 of the next 20, were all red states in the 2016 election. 

Red states clearly think they can keep up this bullcrap—pretending to be budgetary stalwarts in the face of profligate Democratic spending, claiming that it’s Democratic states and cities (i.e. Black Americans), that are sucking the budget dry. Yet the reality is the exact opposite. 

And yet Democrats, with their desire to help people, were far too tolerant of this misinformation. No more. 

Republicans don’t want disaster relief for the states hit hardest by the virus? Then no more disaster relief for states hit with hurricanes and floods and droughts. 

Republicans want to shrink the budget deficit, and don’t want to raise taxes on the rich? Fine. Kentucky, you go first. You too, Kansas and Florida and every other red state. Texas wants to bail out its energy sector, crushed by the virus and geopolitical maneuverings by Saudi Arabia and Russia? Tough shit. If every state has to fend for itself, then do it. But we can dispense with this idea that we’re one nation, indivisible. It means that the time for a serious look at splitting this country in pieces might make the most sense. 

Or we can act like a united country, just like it says there, in our fucking name. 

The Food and Drug Administration is dealing with a flood of inaccurate coronavirus antibody tests after it allowed more than 120 manufacturers and labs to bring the tests to market without an agency review.

The tests, which look for antibodies that indicate whether a person has been exposed to the virus, have been eyed as a tool to help reopen the country by identifying people who may have immunity. Antibody data could also help determine the true extent of the U.S. outbreak by finding cases that were never formally diagnosed.

Normally, the FDA does its own quality check before allowing tests on the market. Agency leaders have said they tried to create more flexibility for makers of antibody tests to help inform discussions about when people can safely return to work and school, and to identify survivors whose antibody-rich blood could help treat the sick.

But many of the tests available now aren’t accurate enough for such purposes. Some are giving too many false positive results, which could mislead people into thinking they have already been infected.

The problem has gotten so bad that the New York City Health Department warned health providers last week against using the tests to determine whether someone is infected with the coronavirus or has developed immunity through exposure.

Public health experts say the FDA shouldn’t have waived its reviews of antibody tests and are calling on it to crack down. To date, the FDA has granted a formal emergency use authorization, in which it reviews data from manufacturers, to just seven of the tests.

"We're facing a public health epidemic," David Kessler, who led the FDA under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton and is now advising former Vice President Joe Biden on the coronavirus, told POLITICO. "If FDA is not looking at validation studies, then FDA is not doing its job."

On Friday, the House Oversight Committee released a report on antibody testing that said “numerous companies appear to be marketing fraudulent tests” — and that the FDA had “failed to police the coronavirus serological antibody test market.”

Current FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn, told POLITICO that the agency has discussed changing the current policy, which allows manufacturers to validate the quality of their own products as long as they include a disclaimer with test results. The FDA is trying to balance concerns about quality with its desire to allow innovative tests to reach the market quickly during a pandemic, he said.

It is not clear how any changes to the agency’s existing policy would affect more than 155 antibody tests now available.

The FDA formally warned health care providers on April 17 of the concerns surrounding the bulk of the antibody tests available for sale, explaining that it “does not review the validation, or accuracy, data for these tests unless an EUA is submitted.”

Hahn told POLITICO that an emergency-use authorization “is the process that gives us confidence in a test.” It is still faster and less rigorous than securing FDA approval for a new diagnostic test. That process typically takes more than a year, from the initial test development to the agency’s final decision, and involves significantly more data.

FDA observers say the weak standards for antibody tests appear to be a response to critics who said the agency was too slow to approve coronavirus diagnostic tests in the early months of the outbreak.

Former FDA lawyer Coleen Klasmeier said the agency swung too far the other way. She said FDA needs to set tougher quality standards for specificity — which measures how often a test correctly produces positive results — and sensitivity, which measures how often a test correctly produces negative results.

Another approach would be to require companies to regularly submit data to prove their tests are accurate, said Klasmeier, now a partner at the law firm Sidley Austin.

Scott Becker, the CEO of the Association of Public Health Laboratories, has criticized the FDA for allowing “crappy” antibody tests onto the market without adequate review. "Ideally they would scrap the current policy and start over, but I don't think that's practical given this crisis,” he said. “The best we can hope for is a rigorous and expansive evaluation."

And that might be coming. The FDA recently launched a program with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Cancer Institute and National Institutes of Health that allows test manufacturers to have their products independently assessed for accuracy.

FDA diagnostics chief Tim Stenzel said several companies are already participating. “We will make results known as soon as we find a way to do that,” Stenzel said on a webinar Wednesday. “We will just say that some of this information is proprietary.”

Stenzel also said the FDA has “nearly completed” a template to make it easier for antibody test developers to apply for an emergency use authorization. The template will set out some minimum standards for sensitivity and specificity, he added.

Efforts to improve antibody tests also got a boost from the coronavirus aid package signed into law Friday, which provides the NCI with $306 million to help develop, assess and improve the tests.

The Trump administration is also considering ways to more immediately address the accuracy concerns. Hahn and Stenzel have floated the idea of using two antibody tests per patient to increase the accuracy of results. “The development of antibodies takes time after an infection,” Hahn told POLITICO. “It may require us to do more than one test.”

But not everyone thinks the FDA’s approach has been wrong-footed. Liise-anne Pirofski, chief of the infectious-diseases division at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Medical Center and a spokeswoman for the Infectious Disease Society of America, said she saw no reason for the agency to change how it handles antibody tests. Pirofski also said scientists and health experts could learn a lot from comparing the wide array of tests on the market.

And lawmakers in Congress seem divided over how the FDA should move forward.

House Energy and Commerce ranking member Greg Walden (R-Ore.) told POLITICO that Hahn briefed his committee last week on FDA’s efforts to validate antibody tests. “FDA is aggressively pursuing companies that do not follow the labeling guidelines,” Walden said.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), ranking member of the Senate health committee, said she’s watching the FDA’s next steps closely. “We need to make sure we don’t get into a situation where people are making critical health decisions based on unreliable antibody tests,” she said.

In the meantime, several companies are working to expand the reach of antibody testing. Quest Diagnostics is rolling out its own antibody testing service, using tests from Abbott and Euroimmun — both of which are seeking emergency authorization from the FDA. Quest expects to scale up to 150,000 tests per day by early May.

But making tests available quickly, while important, should not be the top priority, said Deepak Nath, president of laboratory diagnostics at Siemens Healthineers.

"What’s most important from our standpoint,” he said, “is quality tests that can produce reliable results to aid clinical decisions — decisions that will be used to aid in reopening our economy.”

In his role as Donald Trump's do-little secretary of state, Mike Pompeo has appeared to devote most of his diplomacy to trolling the rest of the world on Donald's behalf. Such is the case yet again, as Pompeo prepares to unveil a new argument that Well Actually the United States remains a "participant" in the Iranian nuclear deal that Trump loudly (very loudly) withdrew from, and which the Trump team continues to insist no longer applies, and which the Trump team has been continuously pressuring all international allies to also treat as invalid, issuing various threats to those that continue to deal with Iran under the accord's guidelines.

As reported by The New York Times, this techno-legal nevermind is narrowly focused. Very narrowly focused, in fact. By arguing that the United States is still "participating" in the nuclear deal despite an entire administration's worth of public claims that no we absolutely are not, Pompeo will argue that the United States still has the authority to forcibly "snapback" harsher world sanctions on Iran that were lifted after the deal was inked, sanctions that the Trump administration will in turn argue are binding on all United Nations members. Most specifically, the Trump administration will argue that the world must re-impose sanctions prohibiting conventional arms sales to Iran, after the current such ban expires in October.

Yes, it's a complete troll move and everybody knows it. The United States is now known on the world stage for being the world's greatest exporter of bullshit, and Pompeo's performances have been reliably Trumpian in their ... unsubtlety. You can't presume we're not part of an international accord simply because we've said repeatedly that we have withdrawn from it! Maybe we were lying! We probably were lying!

As bizarre as it sounds, then, this is not exactly new behavior from Pompeo. The Trump administration has argued that the deal no longer applies, because they say so—but when it comes to the sanctions imposed by the deal, threatened by the deal, or reversed by the deal, Pompeo and team have argued that all of those sanctions should now apply because Reasons. It's only the U.S. obligations that have gone by the wayside; on everything else, the world remains obligated to Do What Donald Says.

The Times repeatedly refers to the Pompeo plan as an "intricate strategy," part of the Times' continued insistence on portraying the Trump team's endless reversals and dishonesty as strategic, rather than flailing. The plan does not seem terribly "intricate," however. It is just petty.

Having failed to convince even our close international allies to abandon the Iranian nuclear deal on Donald Trump's say-so, overall administration "strategy" toward Iran still remains the same. It is centered around forcing Iran to itself break the accord by putting it under such untenable sanctions and military pressure that they are all but obliged to do so, at which point Mike Pompeo will jump to his feet to triumphantly declare that see, that nation over there cannot be trusted, just like we told you.

Presuming Mike Pompeo stays in the position long enough to say so, that is. The man is getting a bit old in the tooth, in an administration defined by Donald Trump's eagerness to pin each failed policy on whichever sucker next walks into the room. He must be a spectacular suck-up, in private, because his public performances leave him looking like an untrained terrier who's been entered in a dog agility competition but has no earthly idea what to do.

He's definitely eager to please, you've got to give him that. Maybe if he just flails around randomly he'll accomplish whatever his owner intended here?

President Barack Obama is greeted by Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor, center, and Elena Kagan, right, as he enters the House Chamber to give his State of the Union address on Tuesday, February 12, 2013. | Melina Mara/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Maybe the judicial Obamacare wars are fading?

On Monday, the Supreme Court voted 8-1 to reject a Republican effort to sabotage parts of the Affordable Care Act. The upshot of this decision is that health insurers will receive payments owed to them under Obamacare’s “risk corridor” program.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s majority opinion in Maine Community Health Options v. United States, relies on “a principle as old as the Nation itself,” according to the opinion. That principle: “The Government should honor its obligations.”

The vote in Maine Community was not close. Eight justices joined all or nearly all of Sotomayor’s opinion, leaving Justice Samuel Alito in a lonely dissent. That’s a bit of a surprising outcome given what was at stake in the case, which involved a $12 billion Republican scheme to sabotage Obamacare.

And yet, after years of litigation seeking to destroy the Affordable Care Act, and after many more years of partisan rancor bitterly dividing the two major political parties on whether Obamacare should continue to exist, only Justice Alito was willing to endorse this particular effort to undercut President Obama’s primary legislative accomplishment.

The other eight justices all agreed that the risk corridors program should be preserved.

Risk corridors, briefly explained

Insurance operates on a fairly basic model. People who fear some kind of unfortunate event agree to pay premiums to the insurer. If that event happens, the insurer pays at least some of the customer’s costs.

This model necessarily involves risk for insurance companies. If they set premiums too high, they won’t be able to attract customers. But if they set premiums too low, an insurer can potentially be obligated to pay for costs that vastly exceed the amount of money they’ve brought in. For this reason, insurers are often reluctant to enter new markets because they might not know enough about that market to set the right premiums.

But the whole point of the Affordable Care Act was to provide insurance to populations that historically have struggled to obtain health coverage. As Chief Justice John Roberts noted during oral arguments in Maine Community, the law seeks to benefit people “who were otherwise uninsurable.” So, absent some sort of enticement, insurers would be particularly reluctant to enter the Obamacare markets because they were being asked to take on a considerable amount of risk.

Risk corridors are one enticement that the Affordable Care Act provides to bring these reluctant insurers into the Obamacare exchanges. Under this program, insurers that set their premiums too high paid a percentage of their excess profits to the government. And insurers who set their premiums too low are reimbursed a percentage of their losses. That way, insurers enjoy some cushion against catastrophic loss if they set premiums too low.

The risk corridors were a temporary program, which expired after 2016. But many insurers that were entitled to payments under the risk corridor program never received those payments — to the tune of about $12 billion — largely due to a Republican effort to undermine the program.

Beginning in 2013, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) began pushing for legislation to end the risk corridor payments. Eventually, Congress enacted a provision in its appropriations bills for 2014, 2015, and 2016 — known as a “rider” — seeking to prevent the federal government from making most of the payments it owes under the risk corridors program. The core issue in Maine Community is whether this rider actually cut off these payments.

If Congress wants to repeal one of the government’s financial obligations, it must do so clearly

To understand why the rider did not successfully cut off the risk corridor payments and why the Supreme Court sided with the insurers in Maine Community, it’s useful to dig into the text of the Affordable Care Act itself, and the text of the riders.

The Affordable Care Act’s language governing the risk corridors is written in mandatory terms. It states that the government “shall pay” a fraction of the costs of insurers that qualify for relief under the risk corridor program. “Shall” is a strong word. It suggests that the government must do the thing that Congress has instructed it to do.

Moreover, as Sotomayor writes, Obamacare creates something very akin to a contract between insurers and the federal government. The Affordable Care Act “imposed a legal duty of the United States that could mature into a legal liability through the insurers’ actions—namely, their participating in the healthcare exchanges.”

That is, insurers were told that they would be entitled to benefit from the risk corridor program if they agreed to sell plans on the Obamacare exchanges. If the government were to back out of this arrangement after an insurer upheld its part of the bargain, it would not honor its legal obligation.

But what of the rider? That provision, which was attached to appropriations bills laying out much of the federal government’s spending appropriations for 2014-2016, provides that “none of the funds made available by this Act” from certain health care-related appropriations “may be used for payments under section 1342(b)(1) of Public Law 111–148 (relating to risk corridors).”

The key words here are “by this Act.” Though the rider prohibits money appropriated under these specific spending bills from being used to fund risk corridors, it does not prevent the government from making these payments from a different source of funds. And, as it turns out, there is another source of funds that the government can use to make the risk corridor payments — the “Judgment Fund,” which “pays court judgments and compromise settlements of lawsuits against the government.”

Much of Sotomayor’s opinion focuses on prior precedents establishing that courts should be very reluctant to read one federal law as implicitly eliminating an obligation laid out by another law. “Repeals by implication are not favored,” Sotomayor writes, quoting from a 1974 Supreme Court decision. When confronted with two laws that seem to pull in different directions, courts should “‘regard each as effective’—unless Congress’ intention to repeal is ‘clear and manifest.’”

Thus, because it is possible to read the rider narrowly, to still preserve the government’s original obligations under the risk corridor program, that rider should be read narrowly. The risk corridor program survives.

Are the Obamacare wars finally coming to a close?

If this case involved any other law, it would be unremarkable. Sotomayor’s opinion is a straightforward application of longstanding precedent, and a fairly uncontroversial one at that. Nearly every member of the Court, after all, agreed with her.

But the Maine Community case is significant because it involved the Affordable Care Act. The history of Obamacare has, to a large extent, been the story of Republican lawyers coming up with ways to challenge the law in court that are widely dismissed as ridiculous — right up until those lawyers start to prevail before sympathetic federal judges. The Maine Community opinion suggests, however, that most of the Supreme Court is fully capable of separating their personal political views from what the law requires in an Obamacare-related case.

The big test of whether the judicial Obamacare wars are coming to a close, however, will come when the Supreme Court hears California v. Texas next fall. That case asks the courts to repeal Obamacare under a legal theory that is rejected even by many leading conservative scholars and other opponents of the Affordable Care Act.

If the justices approach the California case with the same wholly legal approach they took in the Maine Community case, this latest attack on Obamacare will also be rejected by a lopsided vote.

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President Donald Trump was widely criticized for comments about disinfectant injections at a coronavirus briefing on April 24, 2020. | Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images

It doesn’t work like that.

President Donald Trump’s new thing appears to be using implausible claims of “sarcasm” to explain away his embarrassing public statements.

On Sunday, for the second time in three days, Trump said something ridiculous, was widely mocked for it, and then tried to walk it back by saying his original comment was meant sarcastically. Notably, the most recent incident came amid a full-day Twitter meltdown that stood out even by Trump’s standards.

That meltdown happened on a day in which more than 1,000 Americans died from the coronavirus. It was also first lady Melania Trump’s birthday. But after attending a virtual Catholic Mass, President Donald Trump spent his Sunday raging on Twitter.

Perhaps his most unhinged tweet of the day came in a thread in which he demanded that reporters who had received “Noble Prizes” for their work on the Russia investigation have them taken away. Not only was Trump confusing Nobel Prizes with the Pulitzer Prize — an award given to journalists and writers — but he managed to pull off two errors in a single word by misspelling “Nobel.”

Trump concluded this thread by basically trying to crowdsource frivolous lawsuits against media outlets that reported stories about the Russia investigation he didn’t like. Here’s a screencap:

Trump is shameless about many things, but these tweets apparently crossed a line even for him. He ended up deleting them about three hours later — but in doing so he posted another insisting people just weren’t picking up on his “sarcasm.”

“Does anybody get the meaning of what a so-called Noble (not Nobel) Prize is, especially as it pertains to Reporters and Journalists? Noble is defined as, ‘having or showing fine personal qualities or high moral principles and ideals. Does sarcasm ever work?” he wrote.

In this case, it definitely didn’t. And if Trump really meant to be sarcastic, then he had no reason to delete the tweets.

This disaster happened just 48 hours after another gaffe resulted in Trump using a “sarcasm” self-defense.

On Friday, as Trump was widely mocked for comments he made during a briefing the day before about the possibility that disinfectant injections could be a miracle cure for the coronavirus, he claimed he was just being “sarcastic” when he made them — even though video of the briefing showed beyond a shadow of doubt he was lying.

Not only is Trump so undisciplined that he’ll publicly riff on the possible therapeutic qualities of bleach or post woefully ignorant tweets about “Noble Prizes” to his 79 million followers without having someone first take a look at them, but he’s incapable of just admitting he messed up. And he also clearly wants to talk about anything but the ongoing public health crisis taking place across the country.

Trump’s tweets paint a picture of an extremely undisciplined man

Trump posted more than 40 tweets or retweets just in the 12 hours between noon Sunday and midnight. The word “coronavirus” was mentioned in one of them.

Trump’s Sunday of tweets began with a post in which he insisted, ridiculously, that “[t]he people that know me and know the history of our Country say that I am the hardest working President in history.” (In reality, despite having very little on his schedule these days, Trump reportedly can’t be bothered to attend the White House coronavirus task force meetings and hence shows up for the briefings unprepared.)

Trump followed that up with another thread in which he falsely claimed he hasn’t “left the White House in many months,” even though just last month he went on a weekend-long vacation at Mar-a-Lago that included a golf outing with the Washington Nationals. He’s also traveled to eight political rallies since the first US coronavirus cases were reported on January 20.

That thread concluded with Trump lamenting that “I will often be in the Oval Office late into the night & read & see that I am angrily eating a hamburger & Diet Coke in my bedroom. People with me are always stunned. Anything to demean!” (Trump originally misspelled “hamburger” as “hamberger” before deleting and reposting.)

After posting a string of tweets attacking Fox News for not covering him in a fawning enough manner, Trump went on a retweet binge where he amplified lies about the Russia investigation and a post characterizing his impeachment as a “failed coup attempt.” The president retweeted Candace Owens describing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) as “a racist, radical communist” and shared a deep fake video of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.

Trump then began his Monday with more overheated attacks on the media.

And attacks on blue states led by governors who have been critical of the federal coronavirus response.

With White House officials reportedly hoping to curtail Trump’s public appearances after the disinfectant injections fiasco, the president may be relying even more on Twitter to get his message out. The one he’s conveying now is of a president too preoccupied with his personal grievances to spend much time thinking about the pandemic, let alone responding to it.

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Every day at Vox, we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you, and our audience around the world, with information that has the power to save lives. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower you through understanding. Vox’s work is reaching more people than ever, but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn. Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation, but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles, videos, and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires. Please consider making a contribution to Vox today.

Inconsistent deficit hawk and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell. | Win McNamee/Getty Images

The US needs trillions more in spending to get out of this recession. No one should care about the deficit right now.

There comes a time in every recession when people, for reasons both sincere and cynical, start to get really worried about the federal budget deficit. Recessions lead to a collapse in tax revenue and increased use of safety net programs, and typically require extensive fiscal stimulus — all of which pushes up the deficit in the short run.

This last arose in early 2010, when unemployment was nearly 10 percent, and Barack Obama to his discredit encouraged the shift, having presided over the massive (and still inadequate) $787 billion recovery plan the previous year.

Now the shift is happening again, in the wake of the major $2 trillion stimulus bill signed by President Trump — and barely a month after mass unemployment began to set in due the Covid-19 crisis. “Record debt load poses risk of fiscal ‘tipping point’” blared a Washington Post headline, printed on the front page, above the fold, of the print edition.

More ominously, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell forcefully rejected the idea of offering aid to states and local governments that are hundreds of billions of dollars underwater, saying, “given the extraordinary numbers that we’re racking up to the national debt … we need to be as cautious as we can be.”

“We can’t borrow enough money to solve the problem indefinitely,” he told reporters.

This is, to be frank, an outrageous time to give a shit about the federal budget deficit, or about the debt (the accumulated total of past deficits, plus interest). The US in the very early stages of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, and he true unemployment rate is likely around 15 to 20 percent. In Michigan alone, unemployment claims amount to over 35 percent of total employment.

Congress’s stimulus measures to date have been helpful, but clearly inadequate in the face of the crisis before us. The US needs investment on the scale of the New Deal or greater to meet this challenge, and worrying about deficits promises to strangle the recovery in the crib.

To be sure, there are times when worrying about the debt makes sense. Countries like the US that print their own currency can in principle always pay their debts, but there’s a risk that doing so would involve printing so much money that hyperinflation ensues. If that were a real danger, the US should be thinking twice about massively expanding the deficit.

But inflation, let alone hyperinflation, is not a real danger at this moment. According to the Fed’s preferred measure, inflation was well below its 2 percent target even before coronavirus hit. Inflation is thus too low to get unemployment to where we need it to be, as has been true for quite some time. The Fed’s preferred measure of inflation excludes food and energy, but oil prices have fallen to historic lows too.

Another way to tell if the deficit is a problem is by checking Treasury yields, or the interest rate that investors earn on bonds they buy from the federal government. If the federal government had to pay, say, 10 percent annual interest (plus inflation) on new borrowing, that could quickly force it to either eat up much of its budget on interest payments, pay the debt off by printing money (thereby risking hyperinflation), or else cut spending/raise taxes to pay off the debt the traditional way.

But that is not happening with Treasury yield. For 30-year loans — the longest in term and thus riskiest of US government bonds, which force investors to predict what the federal government will be capable of paying back in 2050 — yields are now literally negative. That means the federal government could theoretically borrow $1 trillion entirely in its highest-yield bonds, to be paid back over three decades, and have to pay back less than $1 trillion.

Treasury Department, via FRED

Investors are literally paying the US governments to run deficit rights now. They are practically begging Congress to take out more and bigger loans.

McConnell’s refusal to oblige will likely mean that fiscal stimulus is much smaller than it should be, gravely endangering the recovery. This happened the last time around, too, and the consequence was an austerity-provoked slowdown in growth, with mass unemployment the consequence. The same happened across Europe, and some politicians, including former British finance official George Osborne, are already urging austerity measures.

Austerity is not just a bad strategy for the United States. It could — ironically — also be bad for Mitch McConnell and his party. A deep persistent depression would arguably be fatal for Trump’s and the Senate GOP’s reelection prospects. Big, ambitious stimulus could stave off that fate. Democrats are willing to work with them on it, so this really would be a self-inflicted wound if the Republicans insist on not doing more on the stimulus front.

By worrying about the deficit prematurely and not shoveling even more money to aid the recovery, McConnell and his fellow conservatives may end up hurting millions of Americans’ lives — and their own political future.

The last deficit turn, and this one

You can already see a turn toward deficit scolding emerging among the usual suspects.

Robert Samuelson, a Washington Post columnist and career deficit scold, has been railing against mainstream economists’ emerging consensus that sustained budget deficits aren’t particularly bad. The coronavirus makes him want to return to Gilded Age-era borrowing practices, where debt was only undertaken to fight wars and buy Alaska. “Except for the Great Depression, this consensus generally served the country reasonably well,” he concludes. Cool!

GOP senators are even blunter. “Our annual deficit this year will approach $4 trillion. We can’t continue on this course,” Rand Paul admonished. And a hard line was recently taken in a news analysis in the New York Times. “The spending surge has implications beyond the usual deficit tug of war,” wrote the Times’s Carl Hulse. “It could prompt inflation, and it also leaves the nation far less prepared in the event of another emergency.”

Some of DC’s most venerable deficit hawks are, to their credit, urging deficit spending is the near term. “Combating this public health crisis and preventing the economy from falling into a depression will require a tremendous amount of resources — and if ever there were a time to borrow those resources from the future, it is now,” Maya MacGuineas of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) admonished.

But groups like CRFB are already laying the groundwork for a pivot back to austerity, arguing, “just as World War II was followed by years of fiscal responsibility to restore debt to historic levels, it will be important after the crisis and recovery to ensure that debt and deficits return to more sustainable levels.” This kind of mentality, expressed so early in our economic crisis, can only threaten to cut short any recovery efforts much too soon.

This all feels very familiar. In late 2008, as the US was spiraling further into its worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, Christina Romer, the UC Berkeley economist whom Barack Obama had selected as his chief economist, prepared a memo of stimulus options for Obama to review.

To fully repair the economy by the first quarter of 2011, she estimated, would require a “combination of spending, taxes and transfers to states and localities … costing about $1.8 trillion over two years.”

The memo did not make it to Obama. According to Noam Scheiber’s book The Escape Artists, when Romer showed her estimate to fellow Obama adviser Larry Summers, he dismissed the number as too high. She then prepared a memo where the most expensive option was $1.2 trillion. Summers still thought it too high, telling her, per Scheiber, “$1.2 trillion is nonplanetary.” That was his way of saying “ridiculous” or “out of this world.” Congress eventually passed, and Obama signed, a $787 billion package.

Summers reportedly wanted the $1.8 trillion in stimulus as much as Romer did — he just thought Congress would reject it as a joke, and prevent the Obama administration from getting anything. This was his calculation when Democrats were set to have 59 out of 100 Senate seats and a big House majority.

And Summers was probably right about the political prospects of a $1.8 trillion bill. Obama’s much-too-small stimulus package was roughly $100 billion smaller than it was originally going to be because Republican Sens. Susan Collins (ME), Olympia Snowe (ME), and Arlen Specter (PA) demanded it be made smaller in exchange for their votes, out of concern about the deficit.

In the wake of the stimulus passing, the Obama administration went from being forced into austerity by Congress to acquiescing to austerity of its own volition. There was an internal battle between Romer and Summers, who urged Obama to focus on the recovery, and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and budget chief Peter Orszag, who urged him to pivot to austerity.

Geithner and Orszag won. In February 2010, Obama appointed centrist Democrat Erskine Bowles and former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson to run a commission meant to slash the deficit. The administration proposed a budget slashing deficits by $1.2 trillion over 10 years, including a freeze on domestic spending for three years.

“We simply cannot continue to spend as if deficits don’t have consequences; as if waste doesn’t matter; as if the hard-earned tax dollars of the American people can be treated like Monopoly money; as if we can ignore this challenge for another generation,” Obama admonished. “We can’t.”

Obama was wrong. The austerity regime augured by his budget proposal and further entrenched under pressure by the new Republican House majority in 2011 deeply hurt the economic recovery. In the third quarter of 2009, per the Hutchins Center at the Brookings Institution’s estimates, fiscal policy added 2.78 percentage points to GDP growth, fueling the recovery. All of that came from the federal government; states in the grip of austerity politics actually reduced growth.

But by the third quarter of 2011, with austerity politics ascendant at the federal level as well, fiscal policy was reducing growth by 2.15 points.

Put another way, in the third quarter of 2011, the economy grew at an annual rate of 0.9 percent. If it hadn’t been for austerity, it would’ve grown by 3 percent. The recovery would have proceeded much, much faster, and millions of people would have been spared the physical and mental suffering of unemployment, without an austerity regime.

We know what happens when we allow austerity to happen during a deep recession. There’s no excuse for Congress to allow this pattern to repeat itself, especially when Mitch McConnell and his party would stand to gain from additional stimulus.

In 2009, Republicans at least had the excuse of facing off against a Democratic administration — sabotaging the recovery would help them politically. That was a rational strategy to take then.

It’s not a rational strategy to take now. Forget the deficit, Republicans. The economy and the people who make it run need help now. Who knows — taking bold action now may even help you in November.

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Every day at Vox, we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you, and our audience around the world, with information that has the power to save lives. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower you through understanding. Vox’s work is reaching more people than ever, but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn. Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation, but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles, videos, and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires. Please consider making a contribution to Vox today.

A health care worker in protective gear at a drive-through coronavirus test site in Berlin holds up a testing stick toward the camera on April 23. | Britta Pedersen/Picture Alliance via Getty Images

Regulatory approval of challenge tests and money for redundant manufacturing would help.

The value of getting a coronavirus vaccine quickly is so high that we should let volunteers risk their lives for the cause, and the US should be willing to “waste” billions on manufacturing candidate vaccines that turn out not to work.

Scientists all around the world are racing to develop a vaccine with financial support from philanthropists and governments, but we need to be thinking much bigger. This is an unprecedented situation that demands far bigger sums of money and bolder approaches to testing and licensing.

Covid-19 is currently killing thousands of people a day. The vast majority of the world’s population has no acquired immunity to the disease. And the economy is grinding to a halt to curb its spread. Given the dire situation, the value of even marginally speeding the widespread availability of a vaccine is incredibly high and warrants much more attention and more extreme measures.

The federal government should do two things immediately: Throw huge sums of money at mass production of candidate vaccines that may not pan out, and explicitly authorize “human challenge” trials in lieu of the conventional FDA approval process.

To be clear: Doing these things with the correct amount of urgency will waste billions of dollars on producing ineffective medicine and almost inevitably get some people killed. But the world does not currently have options that don’t involve substantial losses of both money and lives. The cost of an all-out race to a vaccine is high, but the benefits in terms of lives and money saved would be much higher.

The conventional road to a vaccine is long. We can try to speed it up.

NIH official Anthony Fauci has repeatedly cited a timeline of 12 to 18 months for creating a vaccine, which is frustratingly slow to the bulk of the public. But experts say it is extremely optimistic relative to past vaccine work.

It’s not possible to know what scientific breakthroughs will or won’t happen in the future or on what timeline. But the reason insiders are confident that vaccine development will be slow is that the normal process takes a long time even once you’ve developed the vaccine that works. That’s because there’s a multi-step process that’s inherently time-consuming:

FDA

• First you do trials in animals to test your candidate with minimal risk to humans.
• Then come Phase I trials in a small group of humans designed to ensure the vaccine is safe.
• Then you do Phase II trials, also with a small group, focused on checking that people who get it really do develop antibodies like you were hoping.
• Next is a Phase III trial in which you give the vaccine to a bunch of people and give other people a placebo. Then you need to follow the whole group for a long time as they go about their lives. That lets you see whether the vaccinated group is less likely to get sick than the placebo group in a statistically meaningful way.
• Then if your Phase III trials go well enough to get licensed, it’s time to start actually setting up factories, making vaccines, and shipping them places.

The fastest that this has ever been done is four years, but experts in the US government and World Health Organization think that given the urgency of the situation, a conventional process could be undertaken in something like 18 months. That’s still not very fast because the Phase III trial, in particular, is inherently slow.

On any given day any particular person’s odds of getting sick are relatively low whether or not they have a vaccine. Obtaining statistically meaningful information about whether or not the vaccine is working requires a large-scale study and a lot of time.

Making vaccines is also slow. The US is going to want to immunize 200 million or more Americans. And of course there will be global demand for a vaccine. It’s a humanitarian imperative to push a workable coronavirus vaccine out globally, and it’s in the self-interest of the United States and other countries doing vaccine research to curb spread of Covid-19 in poorer countries.

But we can try to speed the process up.

Challenge trials can greatly speed our knowledge

The easiest way to get around the inherently time-consuming nature of a Phase III trial is to do a “human challenge” trial.

Just like in a regular Phase III trial, you give some of your subjects the vaccine and some others a placebo. But instead of just having them go about their daily lives (daily lives that these days would involve social distancing and other steps designed to minimize the risk of infection), you deliberately expose them to the disease. The downside is that some test subjects are going to get sick. The vaccine may not work, after all, and even if it does, many in the trial were deliberately given a placebo. And if people get sick, some of them may die.

This is anathema to conventional medical ethics (“first do no harm”), which holds that you should not do something deliberately injurious like give someone a fake vaccine and then expose them to a deadly virus for which there is no cure. Human challenges are used sometimes for malaria vaccine candidates. But doctors consider that acceptable because high quality malaria treatment is very effective, while that’s not the case for Covid-19 so far.

Experts advocating human challenge trials — like Nir Eyal, Marc Lipsitch, and Peter G. Smith in an influential article in the Journal of Infectious Diseases — note that it’s possible to minimize the risk. If you only allow young people with no known major risk factors to volunteer based on everything we currently know about Covid-19, the risk of death is very low. Volunteers should also be segregated from the general population, in comfortable conditions, and assured of absolutely top-notch care. To further assuage ethical concerns, volunteers could be drawn from high-risk geographical areas or professions.

Real world ethics trumps medical ethics

Contemporary medical ethics is haunted by the legacy of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment. A group of marginalized African American men were deceived by researchers into participating in a study where their syphilis infections went untreated despite the availability of effective treatment. The goal was primarily to satisfy researchers’ curiosity about what would happen.

You do not need a special canon of medical ethics to see this as a moral failing, a deep betrayal of the patients who put themselves in the doctors’ care.

The medical community should recognize that the current situation involves some different risks. Allowing well-informed volunteers to put their lives on the line to help society in a crisis situation is not particularly out of the ordinary. This is the entire basis of fire departments, the military, and indeed the routine celebration of the health care workers who are on the front lines treating Covid-19 victims. To say that a doctor or nurse should be lauded for risking her life to help a handful of Covid-19 patients, but prohibited from risking their life to help end the pandemic entirely is hard to fathom.

The organization One Day Sooner which is trying to recruit volunteers for hypothetical challenge studies already has over 1,700 signups without much in the way of official encouragement. But allowing — and indeed encouraging — people to sign up is a no-brainer.

Congress and the Trump administration should act decisively to clarify that the FDA would welcome human challenge trial data as part of an accelerated vaccine licensing process. They should appropriate money to help recruit and inform potential volunteers, to establish suitable facilities, and to hail the volunteers as heroes much as they celebrate first responders, front-line medical workers, and soldiers during wartime.

Despite warnings from David Brooks and others that a coronavirus pandemic would likely kill human compassion, in practice the pandemic has brought forth a lot of positive social behavior. Unfortunately, the typical person without medical expertise simply can’t do that much to help beyond donating to charity and sewing cloth face masks. A relatively small number of challenge trial volunteers could have a huge impact on the world, and the government should encourage them to sign up if the risks are deemed acceptable.

We need redundant, wasteful vaccine manufacturing

A conventional business view is that no company is going to manufacture a vaccine at large scale until it’s been approved for use. Demand for a coronavirus vaccine would be off the charts, but it doesn’t make a ton of economic sense to invest in creating enough manufacturing capacity to meet the whole world’s vaccine demand in a short time frame and then be left with a bunch of idle factories. The economically rational approach, in other words, will lead to a situation where only a fraction of the needed vaccine is available at any point in time, with plenty of wrangling over prices paid and who exactly gets the medicine.

Bill Gates has a better idea, as Kelsey Piper has explained — just start manufacturing any promising candidate before it gets licensed:

Gates’s proposal is to build seven factories, for all the leading vaccine candidates, and manufacture lots of each of them. It will mean some wasted money, but it’ll be worth it to get a vaccine to patients sooner. He estimates this will cost billions. Though the foundation hasn’t disclosed how much it will personally be spending, a project of this magnitude will require other stakeholders — as have most of Gates’s public health projects.

“Billions” is a lot in the world of global poverty health philanthropy, which is normally dominated by earnest people helping poor people in developing countries. But we’re now living in a world where Congress is slapping together small-business support programs that cost hundreds of billions of dollars and are still inadequate to the size of the need. Spending extra money on accelerated vaccine manufacturing would be “waste” only if we ignore the genuinely crushing cost of not having a vaccine.

That burden is rightly calculated not only in terms of the (massive) economic cost of depressed business conditions, but also the seemingly large long-term harm to American children of prolonged school closures.

At the moment, interest rates on government bonds are less than the rate of inflation so anything with an economic benefit down the road is essentially free. It’s great that Gates is offering to kick in some of his own considerable personal fortune to help with this. But Congress should just pay whatever it takes, perhaps letting Gates save his charity money for work in developing countries that Congress is unlikely to fund.

Every week counts

The current debate over “opening up” the country is increasingly fantastical.

Even if limited reopening can be pulled off in a safe way (a big if), huge segments of the economy — mostly those directly related to travel and lodging, but also formal and informal supports for white-collar office work — will likely be offline, and children will likely remain out of school. “Vulnerable” populations, including senior citizens and significant swathes of the non-senior population, will have to remain in a state of isolation, even as things open up.

As far as best-case scenarios go, this is an extremely costly one. And yet the most realistic outcomes, which involve periodic surges in cases and renewed periods of near-total shutdown, are considerably grimmer than that. There are currently about 2,000 people dying per day, and while that number may be trending downward, the impulse in several large states to start lifting restrictions without any ability to do comprehensive contact tracing suggests it will rise again in the future.

The only real way out of this bind appears to be getting people vaccinated. Speeding this process up by a few months — or even a few weeks — would be an incredible boon to the country and the world. Ideas for how to do that are currently kicking around on a volunteer and philanthropic basis, but accelerating our way out of this disaster takes leadership from the federal government.

Doing what it takes to get to vaccination as fast as possible will have real costs, but every day of delay is unimaginably more costly than the price of speeding up.

(206): Gov of Georgia is going to allow massage therapists to return to work.
(405): Gives a new meaning to 'Happy Endings'.

The coronavirus pandemic may have hastened the long-overdue marginalizing of some of the most deplorable of the deplorables. Last month, for example, Alex Jones lost his last mainstream platform when Google nuked the InfoWars Android app. This came after Jones disputed the need for social distancing to combat coronavirus, and suggested that natural methods existed to treat the disease.

Another deplorable may be on the verge of joining him: televangelist preacher Jim Bakker. You may recall that he touted a colloidal silver solution as a treatment for coronavirus. In the past few weeks, he’s lost the ability to take credit card payments and may be on the verge of being effectively pushed off television.

In the space of a few days in March, the state attorneys general of New York and Missouri, as well as the federal FDA and FTC, told Bakker in no uncertain terms to stop billing his “Silver Sol” as a coronavirus cure. Missouri’s attorney general, Eric Schmitt, even filed a civil suit against him. Schmitt’s move was critical, as it knocked the bottom out of any attempt on Bakker’s part to claim the deep state was ganging up on him. It would be one thing if it were just New York’s Letitia James, as well as the FDA and FTC, coming after him. But Schmitt is a no-questions-asked conservative.

In the face of the worst pressure and press he’d received since his salad days in the 1980s, Bakker quietly pulled Silver Sol. He subsequently announced it would not return. But while in one breath saying that he wanted to avoid the appearance of evil, he also claimed his hand was forced by spiritual warfare. 

Apparently that hasn’t been enough to keep the wolves away from Bakker’s door. Last week, Bakker wailed that his credit card processing company has dropped him, and as a result he won’t be able to take plastic for awhile. This is probably because Schmitt is still pursuing his civil suit against him in Missouri state court to make him think twice about peddling snake oil again. He claimed that this was because “somebody told a lie about us” billing Silver Sol as a cure for coronavirus. and for now any donations and purchases at his store have to be made the old-fashioned way—by check.

Um, Jim? It’s on tape.

This week, Bakker’s pleas have grown increasingly desperate. He now claims that he may be on the brink of filing bankruptcy. Given Bakker’s past, this should be taken with a grain of salt. But Bakker really is in trouble on another front. Last week, according to the Springfield News-Leader, DirecTV pressed seven channels that carry Bakker to “carefully review” his show in order to make sure it meets DirecTV standards.

This came after Faithful America started a petition urging DirecTV and Dish Network to drop Bakker. It also urged Roku to delete Bakker’s “PTL TV Network” channel from its platform. Last week, one of those channels, World Harvest Television, decided to unload him. 

As I note at RDTDaily, this could potentially be a lethal blow to Bakker. He draws the bulk of his audience from satellite. If he loses that, then at best he becomes no different from Jones. At worst, it could literally drive him out of business. 

At least three channels that carry Bakker have a weak spot that can easily be exploited. Christian Television Network, Daystar and GEB also own over-the-air television stations. If they don’t have the good sense to drop Bakker, license challenges are definitely in order.

If Bakker is indeed on life support, it’s long overdue. Remember, he would be spending the rest of his life in prison if the judge at his 1991 trial, “Maximum Bob” Potter, hadn’t gotten one of the most infamous cases of diarrhea of the mouth in the history of American jurisprudence. Now it looks like the bill is coming due, and Bakker is on the verge of being relegated to the margins where he long since belonged.

The abject failure of Republicanism—you cannot call it conservatism at this point, whatever that term once meant is null and void now—can be seen in nearly every detail of this nation's failed pandemic response. Scientists and public health experts ignored, or demeaned; institutional planning efforts shunned in favor of the partisan instincts of a seemingly unending list of designated incompetents; everything from testing to messaging in absolute shambles.

The only remaining instinct appears to be reflexive, twitching racism.

Yet again, every White House and Senate Republican meeting still seems to go something like this:

"Well, we're getting hammered for the latest incompetent or uncaring thing we did in full view of everybody, and blaming the press didn't work. Ideas?"

"More racism?"

"Yeah, gotta go with racism on this one."

"No fair, I was going to say that too."

And so we get travel bans, long after the virus has already travelled. We get attempts to rebrand the virus the "China virus", to give the party's ignorant yahoos something to focus their ire on while Dear Leader upturns actual government response efforts to focus instead on supplying lupus medication somebody somewhere heard good things about or muse about how maybe we should try to get the healing power of sunlight involved here, but put it inside people somehow.

That brings us to Sen. Tom Cotton, one of innumerable poster children for Republican Party decay, a man who would have to go to college for the next ten years to elevate himself anywhere near dumb as a post territory. Posts are useful. You can hang a sign from a post. You can hang a sign warning, for example, to beware the raging idiot lurking just behind the post. You cannot hang a sign from Tom Cotton. He wouldn't stand for it. It's the one goddamn thing in life he might turn out to be good at, and yet he refuses.

On Fox News this morning, actual Republican Senator Tom Cotton was not able to provide many ideas on how to make the Donald Trump Memorial Coronavirus Pandemic Response suck ever so slightly less. He was, however, eager to froth that what we really need to do around here is ban Chinese students who come to America from learning about science.

Because, you see, the "Chinese Communist Party" wants to be "the country that claims credit" for finding an eventual vaccine for the virus, and so are looking to steal that vaccine from us, if we developmentate it first. That plot includes science-minded Chinese Communist students, who are coming to America to "steal our property" and "design weapons and other devices that can be used against the American people."

"So I think we need to take a very hard look at the visas we give Chinese nationals to come to the U.S. to study, especially at the postgraduate level, in advanced scientific and technological fields," says the still-unsigned Tom Cotton.

"You know, if Chinese students want to come here and study Shakespeare and the Federalist Papers, that's what they need to learn from America. They don't need to learn quantum computing and artificial intelligence from America.”

There is a lot that could be said about this. On the plus side, Cotton doesn't leave you guessing on his xenophobic theories, he hangs it out there for all to see. On the minus side, he for some reason seems to credit America with "Shakespeare." That is either yet another sign of his gobsmacking stupidity, or Cotton equating "America" with anything white and English-speaking, or both.

And then there’s the question of whether we intend to withhold an eventual vaccine from China, even assuming we are the nation that first produces one. Or what Cotton’s stance would be if China withheld a China-developed vaccine from us.

Whatever the case, the stupidest people in America, Republicans one and all, continue to take take action on the street against any American who might look Asian and who therefore has now been hastily scrawled into the Republican Party's enemies list. We have two pandemics going on right now: stupidity was the first, and the virus is the second. To halt the first, social distancing should suffice. To halt the second we might need to quarantine the Republican base en masse.

We should do it sooner rather than later, as well, or Tom Cotton's pissant little brain thoughts are almost certainly going to get someone killed.

He won't care if that happens, of course. He intends to put a target on Chinese students; he intends them to be the new Republican scapegoats of the day.

But the rest of us should.

An anonymous reader quote Hot Hardware: If you're looking for the best gaming CPU or the best CPU for desktop applications, there are only two choices to pick from: AMD and Intel. That fact has spawned an almost religious following for both camps, and the resulting flamewars, that make it tricky to get unbiased advice about the best choice for your next processor. But in many cases, the answer is actually very clear. In fact, for most users, it's a blowout win in AMD's favor. That's an amazing reversal of fortunes for the chipmaker after it teetered on the edge of bankruptcy a mere three years ago, making its turnaround all the more impressive as it continues to upset the entrenched Intel that enjoyed a decade of dominance... Pricing is the most important consideration for almost everyone, and AMD is hard to beat in the value department. The company offers a plethora of advantages, like bundled coolers and full overclockability on all models, not to mention complimentary software that includes the innovative Precision Boost Overdrive auto-overclocking feature. You also benefit from the broad compatibility of Socket AM4 motherboards that support both forward and backward compatibility, ensuring that not only do you get the most bang for your processor buck, but also your motherboard investment. AMD also allows overclocking on all but its A-Series motherboards (see our article on how to overclock AMD Ryzen), which is another boon for users. And, in this battle of AMD vs Intel CPUs, we haven't even discussed the actual silicon yet. AMD's modern processors tend to offer either more cores or threads and faster PCIe 4.0 connectivity at every single price point. "We're not covering laptop or server chips," the article notes, adding "There's a clear winner overall, but which brand of CPU you should buy depends most on what kind of features, price and performance are important to you." Still, it's noteworthy that AMD beats Intel in 7 out of 10 comparisons. The three in which Intel won were gaming performance ("only because we measure strictly by the absolute top performance possible"), drivers and software ("the company has an army of software developers [and] a decade of dominance also finds most software developers optimizing almost exclusively for Intel architectures"), and overclocking, where Intel "has far more headroom and much higher attainable frequencies. "Just be prepared to pay for the privilege."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Stacey Abrams speaks to reporters before the November 20 Democratic presidential debate in Atlanta, Georgia. | Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Abrams says she has the experience and temperament needed to be successful in the role.

Stacey Abrams, who rose to national prominence as the Democratic candidate for Georgia governor in 2018, made her case to be presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s running mate Sunday, arguing that her work advocating for voters’ rights — and her executive experience — make her perfectly suited to the role.

In appearances on NBC’s Meet the Press and CNN’s State of the Union Sunday, Abrams full-throatedly endorsed Biden’s bid for the White House, and explained why she has been openly campaigning to be the former vice president’s running mate while others reportedly under consideration have declined to do so.

“As a young black girl growing up in Mississippi, I learned that if I didn’t speak up for myself no one else would,” she said on Meet the Press. “I was raised to tell the truth, so when I’m asked a question, I answer it as directly and honestly as I can. So my mission is to say out loud, if I’m asked the question, yes, I would be willing to serve.”

On State of the Union, Abrams said she sees her campaign for the vice president role as being mostly about drawing attention to her qualifications, as well as the qualifications of other people of color.

“If you don’t raise your hand, people won’t see you and they won’t give you attention,” she said. “But it’s not about attention for being the running mate. It is about making sure my qualifications aren’t in question. Because they’re not just speaking to me, they’re speaking to young black women, young women of color, young people of color, who wonder if they too can be seen.”

Abrams went on to list a number of those qualifications in her NBC appearance.

“For the last year and a half, I have run three national organizations including Fair Fight 2020, which is in 18 states protecting the right to vote,” Abrams said. “I’ve been traveling the country promoting a census that is accurate and that helps us prepare for the next pandemic and for redistricting. And I’ve been working to make certain that poor families, especially those in the South, but around the country, have the services they need.”

And prior to her gubernatorial run, Abrams served as her party’s minority leader in the Georgia House of Representatives. She is reportedly on Biden’s list of potential vice presidential candidates — and he has said he will select a woman for his running mate. There is pressure from certain Democratic corners for Biden to select Abrams, particularly among black Democrats. She was among the women Rep. James Clyburn — who is credited with Biden’s primary win in South Carolina — named when asked who he believes Biden should choose, and Rev. Al Sharpton is expected to endorse her specifically.

Despite this, Abrams said Sunday she does not think of herself as having secured the position, noting Biden “has no shortage of good candidates to choose from.”

As Vox’s Ella Nilsen has reported, Biden will have many considerations to take into account when making his selection. His political calculations include finding someone with whom he is ideologically aligned, and who can help him appeal to certain voter groups. For example, as Nilsen writes, some advisers are publicly pushing Biden to select a woman of color, in part because voters of color, and especially black women, are stalwart Democratic voters.

There remains an open question regarding how important a veep pick actually is — particularly during such a contested election year, and especially in the midst of a pandemic that upended the race entirely. But Biden, who, at 77, would be the oldest first-term president ever, has signaled he is actively looking for someone who would fit in well in the Oval Office.

“The most important thing is that there has to be someone who, the day after they’re picked, is prepared to be president of the United States of America if something happened,” Biden has said.

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We interviewed four Airbnb “superhosts”—and more than a dozen frequent rental guests—to determine the top 24 items to invest in for an overnight rental. The common theme we heard was that guests expect any rental to be as well-equipped as the typical hotel room. Having new, high-quality towels, a good mattress, a nice coffee setup, and more can make the difference between a happy guest and a meh review.

A double-oven range isn’t as spacious or versatile as a double wall oven—but it can still be a good way to add extra cooking convenience to a kitchen that’s set up for a regular 30-inch stove.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is trying to block a New Jersey jail that has been testing all inmates for COVID-19 from releasing any testing information regarding immigrants detained there, a local official told NJ.com. “We were officially notified today that ICE has prohibited us from reporting any information regarding their detainees including all of our test results,” Essex County Chief of Staff Philip Alagia said. “Our attorneys are reviewing that notification.”

Why would federal immigration officials try to block this information? Probably because of all the cases there among immigrant detainees. “A total of 115 ICE detainees had been tested as of Monday,” the report said. “The vast majority (89) either tested positive or had ‘developed immunity to the virus after exposure,’ according to the county.”

BuzzFeed News’ Hamed Aleaziz wrote last week that the more inmates Essex County has tested, “the higher the numbers of positive cases. Of the 61 detainees tested thus far, 9 have tested positive and and another 34 have antibodies present.” Roughly 500 ICE detainees continue to remain jailed there as the numbers have increased, but rather than reducing numbers, ICE wants to reduce transparency.

“An ICE spokesman did not immediately respond to questions about why they were blocking the information, if they were going to release information on their own, or if coronavirus tests would continue,” the report continued. While 85 ICE detainees have been released in past weeks, “ICE is also blocking the county from saying how many have been released going forward.”

There have already been plenty of worries that ICE, an agency with a track record of lies and deception, has been actively fudging testing numbers. “For weeks, ICE repeatedly told me that ZERO detainees in their custody in Florida have COVID-19,” Miami Herald’s Monique O. Madan said earlier this month. “However, the agency got around having to disclose sick detainees because they were technically no longer on the premises,” having been released to a hospital. 

Meanwhile, Texas Observer reports that while workers inside facilities in the state have also tested positive, ICE hasn’t reported them because they’re third-party contractors. “This means the list of infected employees who are potentially interacting with detained persons and facility staff is incomplete,” Texas Observer tweeted.

The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey last month sued for the release of two people from Essex. “Both men, the complaint states, sleep in dormitories at the jail that they share with several other men, some of whom they claim have had flu-like symptoms,” NorthJersey.com reported. “The men said they have limited access to soap and other hygiene products. Given the close quarters at the Essex County Correctional Facility, it's impossible to engage in effective social distancing, they allege.”

Following NJ.com’s report, Aleaziz tweeted updated numbers from Essex that excluded information on ICE’s detainees. “Essex County Jail is continuing to release reports that block out info on ICE detainees and making it clear ICE is the reason,” he wrote.

In a statement late Friday, Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman renewed her call for the city’s economy to reopen, saying she guesses the “desert heat” will “deter [COVID-19’s] ferocity.”

Said Goodman: “Although, it has not been clearly determined as to the effect that extreme warmth will have on the virus, it is assumed that it will deter its ferocity. We certainly are looking forward to having our desert heat provide that required substantiation.”

My statement on safely reopening Las Vegas. pic.twitter.com/3nDKzco0HO

— Carolyn G. Goodman (@mayoroflasvegas) April 24, 2020

Added Goodman: “Las Vegans are smart and courageous. We need to act first…and we will. What I ask is that our brothers and sisters throughout America, the governments in both Carson City and Washington, D.C. and our healthy and vibrant free press show us both love and support as we, judiciously, reopen America’s city…for the wellbeing of us all.”

Goodman appeared on several news programs during the week calling for the city to reopen, among them Anderson Cooper’s AC360, where Anderson balked when she called him an “alarmist” for calling out her plan to invite people from all over the world to hang out in crowded casinos.

Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman calls for businesses to reopen, while saying she won't provide social distancing guidelines on how to do so safely.

"They better figure it out. That's their job. That's not the mayor's job." https://t.co/kktKtDonFZ pic.twitter.com/R93lgQxDis

— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) April 23, 2020

The Hill adds: “Her argument that heat will help stop the spread of coronavirus comes a day after officials at the White House coronavirus task force briefing presented the results of a study that showed the virus deteriorates more quickly when subjected to higher temperatures and humidity. However, the finding quickly drew skepticism from other experts on social media and cable television given outbreaks in a number of places with warm climates, such as Singapore and Brazil. A study by French researchers earlier this month also found that the virus was able to survive in 140-degree Fahrenheit temperatures typically used to disinfect research labs. A National Academies of Sciences panel also warned the White House in early April that summer weather was unlikely to significantly slow the spread of the virus, as was initially believed.”

The post Las Vegas Mayor Renews Call to Reopen City: ‘We are Looking Forward’ to Proving That Our ‘Desert Heat’ Can ‘Deter’ the Coronavirus appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

Dad of former Trump administration hate-angel Sarah Huckabee, Mike Huckabee was on television Thursday night. Speaking with right-wing wraith Laura Ingraham, Huckabee was talking about how reopening the country sooner rather than later to deal with our economic woes—as opposed to creating meaningful litigation and federal aid avenues for Americans—was the best way to preserve the “American way of life.”

Ingraham brought on Steve Forbes. Forbes is this guy. You might remember him from ZZzzzzzzzzZZZ … Wait, where was I? Right. After Forbes explained that we had to make sure we didn’t tax the rich (that’s honestly what he was brought on to say), Ingraham asked Mike Huckabee to give us an opinion on what the founding fathers of our Constitution thought about … Stay-at-home orders and the novel coronavirus pandemic?

LAURA INGRAHAM: We keep hearing about, “We have to defeat the virus we have to defeat the virus and then we can go back to normal,” but what about what our founders think about the the essential nature of freedom? And very few people are talking about civil liberties or freedom. They say, “oh, how, those can come later.” Is that really the case, when you see such a massive intrusion upon every aspect of American life, in the absence of data, or for changing data or shifting data?

Yes. That was something of a question. But if you are going to ask a truly ridiculous question, you need a truly ridiculous person like Mike Huckabee to answer it.

MIKE HUCKABEE: Well, and letting the decisions be made by a handful of people who are never elected by anybody.

Is he talking about medical professionals, scientists, and infectious disease experts? Because the “founding fathers” didn’t know the term “infectious disease experts,” FYI.

HUCKABEE: Look, I take this all seriously, I truly do. The virus is a real threat. We get it. But at the same time, it's a bigger threat to lose our way of life, our prosperity, our government, our constitutional freedoms, and rights. These are precious and America was made great because people took risk.

This is a good point. I remember reading about the Boston Tea Party where colonists jumped on a boat, licked all of the teabags on the boat, and then died of the bubonic plague. It was super sad, and now I spell “theater” as “theatre.” But Mike Huckabee wants you to know that dying from the bubonic plague as opposed to escaping to the Americas and running from the plague is the American way!

HUCKABEE: There are certain levels of risk that we all have to take: whether it's walking across the street in New York City—

What a hack.

HUCKABEE:—or whether it’s perhaps being exposed to some germ or virus that might make us sick and could even kill us. Just, that's life.

C'est la vie! But Ingraham, feeling the bile building up in her soul, can only breathe if she is able to expel every awful feeling and thought she has. That’s the deal she made at the crossroads.

INGRAHAM: Loss of life is, unfortunately, a part of life. And we mourn every person who's lost their life in this horrific horrific virus but man, I'm hearing from a lot of people who feel like they're losing their lives bit by bit every day now.

I know. It’s almost like a stimulus package that gave relief to most Americans instead of mostly the richest businesses might help those people you keep “hearing from.” But, Ingraham is being honest. In order for her to make money, people need to die, and more importantly, people need to realize that for the business world and people like Huckabee and Ingraham (and Forbes), there is a tier system in how important some people’s lives are—and you Fox News viewer are not “essential” human beings.

Ingraham’s show has been a who’s who of worthless television “doctors” and other pundits lying to the American people about the nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the actual risks of lifting mitigation policies too early. At this point, Ingraham has been able to distinguish herself along side other Fox News luminaries such as Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity in her ability to spew truly unhealthy and mean shit to her audience.

On CNN’s State of the Union Sunday, Jake Tapper grilled Dr. Deborah Birx, Coronavirus Response Coordinator for the Trump Administration’s White House Coronavirus Task Force, on Donald Trump’s remarks suggesting that UV rays or injecting disinfectant could be an effective treatment against coronavirus. Birx did not denounce Trump’s remarks, but criticized the media.

ICYMI: Trump Ready to Dump HHS Secretary Alex Azar, Considering Deborah Birx as Replacement: REPORT

Said Tapper: “I understand the importance of that study that the DHS official was discussing, from the lab in Maryland about the effect of sunlight on having or even, more effectively, the life of coronavirus. The effect of disinfectants on non-porous solids like doorknobs. But that’s not what the president was musing about. He was talking about ways to take that science and somehow turn it into injecting UV light or disinfectants into the human body, which as you know, especially with disinfectants, can be lethal. And the CDC had to issue a statement, Lysol had to issue a statement. I understand that you’re taking a generous approach to this when it comes to President Trump musing aloud, but this is potentially dangerous. Poison control centers got calls from people and they had to issue statements saying do not internally use disinfectants.

As a doctor does that bother you that you even have to spend any time discussing this?

“I think it bothers me that this is still in the news cycle,” Birx replied. “Because I think we’re missing the bigger pieces of what we need to do as American people to continue to protect one another, and we should be having that dialogue.”

“It bothers me that this is still in the news cycle,” Dr. Deborah Birx says about Pres. Trump’s disinfectant remarks. “I worry that we don’t get the information to the American people that they need when we continue to bring up something that was from Thursday night" #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/eu9n1jCVkO

— State of the Union (@CNNSotu) April 26, 2020

Birx also criticized the media on FOX News Saturday rather than denounce her boss.

Said Birx: “I think the media is very slicey and dicey about how they put sentences together in order to create headlines. We know, from millennials and other studies, that some people may only read the headlines and if there’s not a graphic, they’re not going to look any further than that. We have to be responsible about our headlines. I think often the reporting may be accurate in paragraph three, four, and five, but I’m not sure how many people actually get to paragraph three, four and five. And I think the responsibility that the press has is to really ensure that the headlines reflect the science and data that is in their piece itself.”

Dr. Birx slams media for being “very slicey and dicey about how they put sentences together in order to get headlines” pic.twitter.com/JFAIaDCNh9

— TV News HQ (@TVNewsHQ) April 26, 2020

The post Asked if Trump’s Coronavirus ‘Disinfectant’ Remarks Bother Her as a Doctor, Deborah Birx Replies, ‘It Bothers Me That This is Still in the News Cycle’ — WATCH appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

Some Windows users are reporting serious problems after downloading Microsoft's latest update for Windows 10, according to Forbes: The problems those users are reporting to the Microsoft support forums and on social media have included the installation failing and looping back to restart again, the dreaded Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) following a "successful" update and computers that simply refuse to boot again afterward. Among the more common issues, in terms of complaints after a Windows 10 update, were Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity related ones. But there were have also been users complaining that after a restart, all files from the C drive had been deleted. Microsoft has stated that it has "not seen these issues reflected in telemetry, support data, or customer feedback channels," but is aware of social media reports that mention Bluetooth, a stop error with a blue screen, and other related issues. "We continuously investigate all customer feedback and are closely monitoring this situation," Microsoft said in the known issues section of the update notes. "On social platforms like Twitter and Reddit, PC users are reporting photos, documents and apps are disappearing without a trace..." reports Komando.com. "Some things never change... Microsoft can't deliver a stable update to save its life!"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

America's generally pro-Trump media site Fox News felt compelled to report today that "Some poison control centers reported a spike in calls following President Trump's suggestion that injecting disinfectant might help people infected with coronavirus." The comment alarmed medical professionals around the world. The president subsequently claimed on Friday that he was being "sacrastic," although at the press conference he was soberly addressing health experts on the coronavirus task force, urging them to launch a study. Lysol parent company Reckitt Benckiser issued a statement Friday reminding people that "under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion or any other route)." In Maryland, the Emergency Management Agency received over 100 calls inquiring about the president's suggestion, forcing the service to issue an alert to remind citizens that "under no circumstances should any disinfectant product be administered into the body through injection, ingestion or any other route." Washington State's Emergency Management Division similarly issued a public statement to remind people to not "drink bleach" or "inject disinfectant." More concerning, though, is the number of people who actually went ahead with the suggestion. In New York City, the Daily News reported that the Poison Control Center saw 30 cases of "exposure to Lysol, bleach and other cleaners in 18 hours after Trump's suggestion" that cleaning products might be used to treat coronavirus. NYC Poison Control saw only 13 such cases in a similar period last year. Anna Sanders, who wrote the Daily News article, reported that no one died or was hospitalized as a result. "After raising the idea of putting disinfectant inside people's bodies, Trump cautioned Thursday that he's not a medical expert," reports one New York-based news site. " 'Maybe you can. Maybe you can't. I'm not a doctor. I'm, like, a person who has a good you-know-what,' Trump said, pointing to his head."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As of 48 hours ago, few people knew that Kentucky was the nation’s leading recipient of federal largess, and certainly had no clue just how much the state received compared to the rest of the country. Then, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Republican from Kentucky, started whining about “Blue state bailouts,” and the shit has hit the fan. 

Looks like it’s time to reexamine Kentucky’s privileged status. 

Blue states have been happy to carry the burden of funding red states for … kinda forever. California, New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, in particular, have pumped untold hundreds of billions over the last several decades into mostly rural red states. 

That dynamic carries forth in states themselves, with large urban centers paying for rural regions, like the upstate-downstate divisions in Illinois and New York, or Philly-central Pennsylvania. 

And that would be fine! Liberals are okay with helping out those that are less well off. Liberals have no problem with the federal government subsidizing telephone and mail service to rural areas—services that would not be justified by capitalistic math. We’re okay subsidizing rural health care. We’re okay subsidizing rural education, or opioid treatments, or transportation networks (e.g. roads). 

The problem here isn’t our willingness as liberals to help our disproportionately rural Conservative brothers and sisters. The problem is twofold: 1) the bullshit pretense that these same people are “anti-government” and that urban liberals are somehow feeding off the government trough, and 2) the refusal of these same assholes  to help when blue states get hit with catastrophe. Instead, Mitch McConnells and his asshole buddies suddenly discover the evils of the budget deficit—a deficit that wouldn’t be so large if Kentucky wasn’t bleeding the country dry. 

Still, once upon a time, liberals and Blue states were like “whatever, we’ve got it good, we’re the United States of America. We’ll help.” But McConnell’s toxic brew of greed and cruelty has shattered that pretense. 

Conservatives have pretended for far too long that it is they, the “heartland,” the “real America,” that supposedly makes this country great, and it is the cities, the Brown and Black people, the feminists, the liberals, who are dragging it down. Yet it is us paying for their infrastructure, for their health care, for their Medicare and Medicaid and food stamps and aircraft carriers and all the things that make their society functional.

They wouldn’t last a week without our assistance. Yet not only is there zero appreciation, but they act like they’re the ones being screwed over. 

If Republicans want to finally acknowledge that we are all in this thing together, that we are a United States of America, then great, we can continue being generous. 

But that’s not what’s happened. Quite the opposite. Their divisive up democratic talk, in fact, has sown the seeds for a national breakup. 

And so now, Kentucky’s largess is firmly in the sights of Democratic lawmakers. No more flying under the radar. No more free ride. I’m going to embed this tweet one more time for effect: 

No more red-state bailouts. 

So every time Mitch McConnell mentions the deficit? Kentucky first. 

Mitch McConnell doesn’t want state bailouts? Kentucky first. Return the $148 billion in extra money it received the last five years. 

Mitch McConnell wants to rail against the evil federal government? Then by all means, Kentucky, return that evil tainted federal cash. 

Mitch McConnell wants to rail against New York or California? Return the money paid by New York and California taxpayers. 

The red-state anti-government scam is fully exposed. No more.

Protesters demonstrate outside the Orange County Administration Building demanding the end of stay-at-home orders and the reopening of Florida businesses. | Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

How ignorance, privilege, and anti-black racism is driving white protesters to risk their lives.

Last weekend, thousands gathered in Washington, Michigan, Texas, Maryland, and California to protest lockdown orders resulting from the coronavirus pandemic. Some marched with rifles draped across their backs and handguns resting on their hips, while others shared conspiracy theories about Bill Gates and his involvement with the Covid-19 vaccine.

Even in larger, less-rural cities in California, groups waved “Trump 2020” flags and marched the streets with signs that read, “No Liberty. No Life.” And these protests only seem to be picking up steam: On Friday, thousands stormed the Wisconsin State Capitol, carrying flags and wearing Tea Party regalia.

But what has been most glaringly obvious about these protests isn’t the far-right theatrics. It’s that almost everyone marching to end stay-at-home orders is white. And if they do return to “regular life” and refuse to distance themselves, their overt disregard will impact the population most vulnerable to the virus — black people.

It’s easy to dismiss the anti-lockdown protests as business per usual in the land of right-wing Trumpism. But there is a much larger issue at play that existed long before President Donald Trump took office, and that he has learned to artfully exploit. It’s why it’s not surprising that in some areas, protesters waved Confederate flags or held signs that read, “Give me liberty or give me Covid-19.” The protests are symptomatic of the profound presence of whiteness and white supremacy in America.

On the surface, the protests are about the contentious debate over reopening the economy during a pandemic, when more commerce risks more infections and the overwhelming of our hospital systems. Trump and other Republicans who have pushed to scrap lockdown orders sooner rather than later argue that doing so will prevent the country from going into economic collapse.

“You’re going to lose more people by putting a country into a massive recession or depression,” said Trump during a press conference on March 24, when he first began pushing the idea of reopening the economy, only one week into the lockdown. “You can’t just come in and say let’s close up the United States of America, the biggest, the most successful country in the world by far.”

But if states open back up, it will come at whose expense? In the US, black Americans are dying of Covid-19 at disproportionate rates to other racial and ethnic groups. According to an American Public Media Research Lab report published this week, almost 50,000 people have died of Covid-19 in the country. Data for about three-fourths of those deaths reveals that the mortality rate for blacks is 2.7 times higher than for whites. Although blacks make up only 13 percent of the population, they represent 30 percent of Covid-19 patients in the US. The data continues to reveal which Americans face the greatest risk if the country is reopened.

To be fair, some protesters have expressed a deep financial need to return to work, to keep their lights on and a roof over their heads, which is understandable given that 26 million Americans have lost their jobs — skyrocketing the unemployment rate. As the first of the month quickly approaches, many Americans are wondering how they’ll pay their rent and only 80 million of 171 million Americans have received their CARES act stimulus checks so far.

But these protests are also attended by Trump supporters who have been convinced by conservative media pundits like Fox News contributor Bill Bennett, who during an April 13 interview on Fox, argued that the virus is actually less deadly than the seasonal flu and that “this was not and is not a pandemic.” Before Covid-19 began to ravage our country in February, the Trump administration doubled down on claims that the virus was no more deadly than the seasonal flu, and that containment was “airtight.” These claims were made despite the CDC warning that community spread was inevitable and the country would most likely experience severe interruptions in daily life.

Admittedly, I might also be eager to return to swapping germs, if I thought the virus was nothing worse than a cold and if I lived far away from the cities experiencing widespread infection, as many of the protesters do.

But this isn’t just happening in rural areas. Protests are also happening in wealthy, elite, and yes, very white cities and suburbs too. Residents of Newport Beach and Huntington Beach, two Southern California coastal cities in Orange County, aired their grievances by the hundreds last week. Protesters were seen socializing and laughing, wearing pro-Trump baseball caps while standing far less than the advised six feet apart.

Huntington Beach and Newport Beach have some of the highest numbers of confirmed cases in Orange County, yet the residents’ eagerness to end social distancing orders feels informed and motivated by the reality of who is most impacted by Covid-19 — black communities. Both of these cities are predominantly white and affluent; Newport Beach’s median income hovers around $123,000 while Huntington Beach’s is about $88,000, compared to the national median income of $62,000.

While it might seem ludicrous that whiteness and income level would somehow make people immune to infection, there is some truth to such beliefs. In the event that these rich white folks find themselves with a cough and fever, they are more likely to have the reassurance and privilege of access to local testing centers and quality, unbiased health care. Meanwhile, black people do not have access to quality and racially unbiased health care. Between 2010 and 2018, blacks were 1.5 times more likely to be uninsured compared to whites.

Black people also have a higher prevalence of heart disease and high blood pressure, and black men have the shortest life expectancy of all other racial and gender groups — and racism and discrimination are the drivers of these poor health outcomes and inequities. In fact, disparities such as these have never been more apparent than in this pandemic: Doctors have expressed concern that Covid-19 testing is not as accessible to black communities. Meanwhile, blacks and Latinos also make up the largest number of essential workers, who are most at risk of infection.

Race and socioeconomics do absolutely play into who is most vulnerable to getting Covid-19 — and who is most likely to die.

Oppression 101

On Twitter earlier this week, I saw a meme about whites feeling oppressed by the current lockdown order, which I knew had to be a joke (boy, was I wrong). During an interview on Fox & Friends, Michigan Conservative Coalition Chair Meshawn Maddock shared that residents of Michigan “feel oppressed” and “there are certain businesses and workers that should be able to safely get back to work right now.”

Oppressed is an interesting word choice. Let’s start first with what racist oppression is. Oppression is not getting a job, a promotion, a business loan, or approved for your dream home solely based on your race — things black people deal with regularly. On the other hand, oppression is not staying in the comfort of your home, with a full fridge, health care, and a 401k. Oppression is also not a term that should be used willy-nilly, at the first feeling of discomfort, crying it to get your way — putting other people’s health and lives at risk. Many of us are uncomfortable right now. But please do not conflate discomfort with oppression.

Being white is the default identity in America. Whiteness is our cultural tapestry. It’s America’s norm, against which all others are measured, and there is a special kind of security that comes along with being the norm. So when you suddenly do not have free rein to go about your business unchecked, it can feel like a massive threat. And in turn, protesters have taken to the streets to fight to keep that security. That feeling of “oppression” these white protesters have voiced is the residual effect of living in a country that has been shaped to cater to their racial majority status, and consequently, their perceived loss of power and privilege.

Ironically, some of these same conservative white groups that want to be liberated now also vehemently fought tooth and nail against movements such as Black Lives Matter and did not understand the value nor the need for blacks to speak out against their actual oppression. Some of these whites fear the same oppression they have inflicted on people of color, and we’re seeing a glimpse of that fear, without any self-awareness, in the pandemic.

To be clear, most Americans, white people included, are sitting tight at home and obeying social distancing and shelter-in-place orders. But as anti-lockdown protests become more politicized, outrage might begin to grow and others may inevitably join the chorus. This could prove to benefit Trump come election time as he plays to his base, targeting states with Democratic governors who have imposed social distancing orders.

But while it’s natural to marvel at how reckless Trump’s tweets are — like the ones that called for residents of Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia to “LIBERATE” themselves — the discussion about the president’s Twitter fingers inciting social and racial upheaval is low-hanging fruit. Trump is not the root cause of America’s ongoing saga with racism and white privilege. His rhetoric simply brings to life white supremacist and racially privileged perspectives that have existed for centuries — and have been given the opportunity, in a deeply stressful time, to surface loudly, donning MAGA hats, and exercising their right to bear arms.

Dr. Maia Niguel Hoskin is a college professor of graduate-level counseling, freelance writer, public speaker, and a researcher of all things race, mental health, and social media.

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Support Vox’s explanatory journalism

Every day at Vox, we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you, and our audience around the world, with information that has the power to save lives. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower you through understanding. Vox’s work is reaching more people than ever, but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn. Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation, but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles, videos, and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires. Please consider making a contribution to Vox today.

On Saturday, there is no scheduled White House briefing on the COVID-19 crisis. This follows an abbreviated Friday session in which Donald Trump made only brief remarks and left without taking question. And that follows a Thursday session in which Trump suggested drinking or injecting disinfectant as a possible treatment. As well as finding a way to put a bright UV light “inside the body.” All of which makes it seem that, after allowing Trump to spew unchecked for hour after hour, he may finally have said something so obviously awful that even Trump may feel … what is that feeling … that strange, strange feeling … is it … embarrassment?

Maybe. But it’s certainly anger. Because the hunt for someone else to blame goes on. 

Trump’s first go-to in the search for someone to take the fall went to his standard fall guys, with the current kinda-sorta press secretary Kayleigh McEnany calling out the press for taking Trump  “out of context” while claiming that Trump never tried to give medical advice. The only problem with that is that there was no “context,” other than the context of how the networks have been broadcasting Trump’s increasingly off the rails press events in full. Actually, that’s not the only problem, because McEnany’s statement also requires ignoring the dozens of other times Trump tried to dispense advice.

Right-wing media, both on Fox News and radio, tried to help out by coming up with the pretense that Trump was talking about some new and radical treatment—something too cool to be known by plain old medical doctors like Deborah Birx or Anthony Fauci. Are they supergenius messiahs? No! Then how can they be aware of the brilliance of ideas like a Clorox vape? There doesn’t yet seem to be a body count attached to this particular effort to own the libs … but it’s early.

Meanwhile, the White House seems to have pinned down a new scapegoat for Bleachgate. As The Washington Post reports, the whirling finger of blame has landed on Department of Homeland Security undersecretary William Bryan. And what did Bryan do? He had a briefing for Trump in which he discussed how UV light and disinfectants were effective in removing coronavirus from surfaces. Apparently, when giving this information to Trump, Bryan neglected to say that surfaces doesn’t include the interior of lungs or veins.

Apparently, a number of White House officials had deep concerns about this demonstration of cleaning something being taken in front of Donald Trump. Several people seemed to believe that Bryan had a lot of information in his presentation, and that the whole thing “was not ready” to go in front of Trump. Dr. Fauci seems to have predicted where Trump would take it, with worries the presentation might be taken as “the cure for humans.” 

Of course, it’s understandable that Trump had to be given a briefing on how things are cleaned. For Trump, a can of Lysol or a jug of Clorox are arcane objects he has never handled in his life. He may have glimpsed such things being wielded by invisible people who scurried in to clear away the remains of his latest donuts and taco salad conquest. Or he made demand that those people only come out at night. Anyway, it’s an easy bet that he’s never used any such product in his entire life.

Really, people should understand that Trump has never used a disinfectant, never swiped a cleaning cloth, and never even contemplated whether a load of laundry needs a shot of bleach. These things are all new to him. Exotic. It shouldn’t be surprising that Donald Trump had to be given a briefing on how to clean a counter top, or that he had no understanding of the chemicals involved. After all, he’s not a plain old fool. He’s a rich fool.

If you’ve ever wondered why there were warning levels on the side of consumer products, the answer appears to be: Donald Trump.

Warning: Not to be taken internally. Keep refrigerated after opening. Do not place toaster in the oven.

Francois Clemmons, who played Officer Clemmons on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood for 25 years, has published a new memoir in which he reveals that the popular kids show host urged him to stay in the closet and possibly marry a woman after Rogers learned Clemmons was gay.

“One day he was called into Rogers’ office at the studio,” People reports.

Clemmons wrote in his new memoir Officer Clemmons, that Rogers told him he had to stay in the closet: “Franc, you have talents and gifts that set you apart and above the crowd. Someone has informed us that you were seen at the local gay bar downtown. Now, I want you to know, Franc, that if you’re gay, it doesn’t matter to me at all. Whatever you say and do is fine with me, but if you’re going to be on the show as an important member of the Neighborhood, you can’t be out as gay.”

Clemmons told People: “I could have his friendship and fatherly love and relationship forever. But I could have the job only if I stayed in the closet. I was destroyed. The man who was killing me had also saved me. He was my executioner and deliverer. But, at the same time, I knew that he would know how to comfort me. I didn’t have another mother or father to comfort me. I had no one to go and be a boy with. I was just vulnerable. He got in a few slaps, some tough love, a good spanking. But I was not kicked out of the family.”

Rogers reportedly told Clemmons that it would ruin his dream as a kids’ show host if Clemmons came out and said he needed to stay in the closet to safeguard his own job, suggesting Clemmons marry a woman, which he did. He later divorced her and came out.

But Clemmons said he forgives Rogers and calls him “the spiritual love of my life.”

The post Mister Rogers Urged Gay Cast Member ‘Officer Clemmons’ to Stay in the Closet and Marry a Woman, Which He Did appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.