James.galbraith

Federal lawmakers have reached a bipartisan agreement for a $2 trillion stimulus package aimed at ameliorating the public health and economic crises wreaked by the coronavirus. But in one critical respect, the deal is a colossal failure: it includes less than one-fifth of what is needed retrofit our voting systems for a nationwide pandemic in time for the November election.

Unless Congress remedies this failure quickly, the coronavirus will add our democracy to its casualties.

Don’t be lulled into complacency by the fact that there are seven months until November. The country needs to start making significant changes to our national election infrastructure now, or else it will be nearly impossible to hold a safe and fair election in the fall. Election officials across the country must have the funding to begin the enormous project before them. A bipartisan group of over 50 state and local election officials toldcongressional leaders this week that they face “unprecedented challenges” in carrying out their responsibility to “protect every voter and every vote.” To ensure a safe and secure election during the pandemic, these essential workers must receive significant financial assistance — immediately.

The necessary changes will vary state by state, but in every jurisdiction they will require an enormous amount of resources. State and local election officials will have to upgrade and expand online voter registration to ensure every American has the option of casting their vote by mail. They will need to expand early voting while modifying in-person voting so that it doesn’t jeopardize the health of voters and poll workers. Fortunately, the stimulus package contemplates each of these adjustments to ensure a safe and fair election this year and provides $400 million to these ends. But that’s only a tiny down payment on preserving our democracy, as we estimate conservatively that it will cost at least $2 billion to get the job done across the more than 8,000 election jurisdictions in the United States. And we are quickly running out of time.

There are three steps in particular that all elections officials need to start taking now.

Expand online registration. In any presidential year, millions of Americans change their registration information or register for the first time—often well before November. Quarantines, closures, and social distancing will make it difficult for voter registration to proceed as usual. The 39 states that already have online registration systems will need to bolster them to accommodate a surge. States that do not have these capabilities will need to set up systems immediately, or take other costly measures to ensure their registration rolls are adequate and up to date. These upgrades must happen now to meet the demand from people who want to vote.

Building a new, secure online registration system will take months. Edgardo Cortes, former Commissioner of the Virginia Department of Elections (and an election security advisor to the Brennan Center) notes that in 2013 it took his state three months to implement an online registration system, and another four months to upgrade it after a surge of users crashed it in 2016.

Expand mail ballots. To protect public health, every American must have the option to vote by mail. That requires radically overhauling our voting system so that it can process many tens of millions of additional mail ballots -- no small task, particularly for the many states where mail voting is not the norm. It will require new systems for accepting and processing ballot applications; ballot tracking software; new ballot drop-off systems; equipment and structures for holding, sorting, processing and counting such ballots; and finding or building secure storage space for all of it. According to print vendors, for example, if full ballot printing orders are not placed by early summer, the ballots will not be ready by November.

Reconfigure polling places. While a dramatic expansion of mail voting is necessary to ensure Americans can vote safely, states will also need to reconfigure polling place voting, especially for those who cannot use or experience problems with mail balloting. To prevent crowding, they will need to expand early voting days and hours, find larger polling locations, and procure sanitation supplies for poll workers and voters. They will also need to recruit a new workforce as backup for the inevitable cancellations by election workers. Washington state, for example, typically hires 500 temporary election workers two months before each election, even without the virus.

Election officials across the country stand ready to make these and other critical adjustments. The key will be ensuring they have the resources to implement them in time. The date of November’s election cannot and will not change.

So far in this country’s history, we have held elections no matter what; a civil war, the Spanish flu, Hurricane Katrina, and other disasters haven’t stopped us. We can hold a functional election this November, too, but only if Congress acts quickly. The full $2 billion needed to protect our elections is a drop in the bucket, a mere one-tenth of 1 percent of the stimulus package. The $400 million they allocated is badly needed, but it sells our democracy and the American people short.

(317): His dick is social distance approved
(1-317): Social distance approved?
(317): big enough for me to fuck from six feet away.

Here's the motion for a preliminary injunction; here's the heart of the argument (I hope to also post key parts of the state's brief, when that is filed):

Here, in terms of the burdens, the Attorney General's current enforcement threat operates as a ban, whether for all abortions or for all abortions after ten weeks. The Executive Order is in effect for at least thirty days, and in fact could remain in effect for months, which would push many abortion patients past the legal limit for an abortion in Texas. Moreover, even if some patients affected by the order are able to obtain an abortion if the order is lifted sooner than anticipated, they will still suffer increased risks to their health by the delay in access to abortion care. Thus, the Executive Order overwhelmingly harms individuals seeking an abortion.

These harms vastly outweigh any potential benefits from the Executive Order as interpreted by the Attorney General. The State asserts two interests—neither of which is furthered by the Attorney General's interpretation. On its face, the Executive Order is intended to preserve hospital capacity and PPE. Plaintiffs share those interests, but a blanket abortion ban does not serve either one and, in fact, as so interpreted the Executive Order is more likely to aggravate than alleviate the public health crisis arising from the pandemic. As to the first interest, legal abortion is safe, and complications associated with abortion—including those requiring hospital care—are exceedingly rare. Nearly all abortions in Texas are provided in outpatient facilities, such as Plaintiffs' abortion facilities and ambulatory surgical centers, not hospitals. Thus, Plaintiffs' provision of abortion would not deplete hospital capacity.

Regarding the second interest stated in the Executive Order—to preserve PPE—even in the absence of the Attorney General's threat to ban procedural abortion, Plaintiffs have already taken steps to preserve PPE, including by, for example, limiting the number of individuals allowed into the facility and during a procedural abortion and postponing other in-person, non-essential visits that may require PPE. Plaintiffs are exploring additional measures to preserve PPE, such as washable masks and gowns. Moreover, Plaintiffs either do not use N95 masks or do so only rarely, and this is the PPE that appears to be in shortest supply in battling the COVID-19 pandemic in Texas and around the country. As such, banning abortions does little to nothing to prevent the "deplet[ion]" of the personal protective equipment needed "to cope with the COVID-19 disaster."

Even before the Executive Order, Plaintiffs had taken steps to preserve PPE by minimizing the number of encounters a patient needs for care, but Texas law restricts this flexibility. Plaintiffs could make further progress in preserving PPE, as well as reducing overall contagion risks during the pandemic, were Defendants willing to consider temporarily waiving medically unnecessary abortion restrictions that limit their ability to adapt to this crisis—such as Texas's requirement that patients make an extra trip to the health center and receive an ultrasound before returning for an abortion.

Indeed, far from being necessary to address the COVID-19 crisis, an interpretation of the Executive Order that broadly prohibits abortion could well exacerbate the COVID-19 crisis, including by forcing patients to attempt to travel to other states to try to access abortion care, and potentially using public transportation, even though public health experts have advised the public to minimize activities outside the home. Moreover, the Executive Order may delay access for patients experiencing health problems because providers are uncertain as to whether these problems meet the Executive Order's emergency exception, which could endanger those patients and potentially require that they receive more invasive care (with attendant use of PPE) or even hospital-based care. Finally, delaying patients in accessing abortion ultimately requires increased use of PPE. Even if the Executive Order is ultimately limited to thirty days, this delay will push patients early in pregnancy now beyond the time for which they would be legally eligible for medication abortion (PPE is not needed to hand a patient pills), instead requiring one-day aspiration procedures. For some patients, the delay will push them into two-day D&E procedures, which necessarily require more PPE than a single visit or a medication abortion.

Even if banning or restricting abortion during the COVID-19 crisis would result in some small, temporary preservation of PPE, the harm to patients from not being able to access abortion for a month or more, if ever, is extreme and simply cannot be outweighed by any benefits of Defendants' application of the Executive Order. While Plaintiffs are mindful of the need for everyone in Texas and around the country to do their utmost to mitigate the effects of COVID-19 on our health systems, the reality is that very little, if any, PPE would actually be conserved by banning or restricting abortion. Most procedural abortions in Texas are single-day procedures, where a patient encounters either one or two clinicians, who each wear, at most, a paper mask (not an N95 respirator), two-to-three pairs of gloves, and a gown. However, patients forced by Defendants to wait until the middle of the second trimester or later might be forced to undergo a two-day procedure, which would mean two consecutive trips to a health center; twice as much contact with health care providers; and at least twice the amount of PPE used—for a total of three visits.

For my Wednesday post on the general issue, see here.

There are all kinds of issues one might have with the coronavirus emergency relief bill. However, one of those issues is obviously not going to be earmarking money to go to medical facilities that are dealing directly with COVID-19 cases. But that is exactly what Florida Man Matt Gaetz did on Wednesday, when the congressman decided to try and score some racist dogwhistle points with fellow faux-fiscal conservatives. 

“Education is important- but a $13 million check to Howard does not belong in COVID-19 relief.” Attacking a prestigious HBCU is the kind of racism that bigots like Gaetz consider a salient point. Unfortunately for Mr. Florida Man, intelligence, facts, and the use of those two things are not a strong suit of Rep. Gaetz. 

Steve Hofstetter is a comedian and comedy writer, and his response to Rep. Gaetz took off almost instantly since it was so well-written. 

If you cannot read that, here’s the text.

Dear Rep. Matt Gaetz,

Why is Howard University in the relief bill? Great question!

Howard University's hospital is a COVID-19 treatment facility. It is within walking distance from your office.

Hope this helps, you dumb fuck.

It is sort of the best thing you might ever read in response to anything Rep. Gaetz does. Matt Gaetz has put his foot in his mouth so many times he could probably shine everybody in Congress’ shoes with the polish he’s ingested. After the tweet took off, Hofstetter gave it a nice little follow up.

Even though Steve Hofstetter won Twitter on Wednesday, Rep. Gaetz’s bullshit racism brought out all kinds of great responses.

The simple.

The simple visual.

A U.S. senator even decided to give Matt a math lesson. Liberals and their “elite” educations and all that.

And finally.

Apple's new 2020 iPad Pro models are equipped with an A12Z Bionic processor that's remarkably similar to the A12X chip in the 2018 ‌iPad Pro‌ models, offering little in the way of performance improvements.


The A12Z does, however, feature an 8-core GPU while the A12X includes a 7-core GPU, which sets them apart, but new evidence shared by NotebookCheck suggests that the A12Z Bionic is simply a renamed A12X chip with a latent GPU core enabled.

According to NotebookCheck, teardown site TechInsights confirmed that the 2018 A12X chip physically has 8 GPU cores and not the 7 GPU cores that Apple includes in tech specs. One of the cores of the A12X is disabled.

The A12X and the A12Z appear to be the same physical chip on the surface, with the same number of physical CPU and GPU cores rather, suggesting the A12Z is not a new design. AnandTech has also speculated that the A12Z is a re-binned variant of the A12X.

There can be several speculative reasons as to why Apple chose to do this. It is not uncommon to see chip makers disabling physical cores and enabling them in higher SKUs. For instance, the NVIDIA Titan RTX has all 4,608 CUDA cores enabled while the RTX 2080 Ti offers only 4,352 cores despite both using the TU102 GPU.

The other likely explanation is that Apple's decision to disable one GPU core in the A12X could have been deliberate. Enabling the latent core in an interim refresh like the A12Z would save them from having to develop an A13X and instead, directly focus on the (5 nm?) A14X that is slated to debut with the 5G ‌iPad Pro‌ later this year.

In the future, TechInsights is planning to conduct a floorplan analysis to determine for certain whether there are any differences between the A12X and the A12Z in the new ‌iPad Pro‌ models.

NotebookCheck speculates that Apple is saving an updated chip design for future ‌iPad Pro‌ models, and there are indeed rumors of a second ‌iPad Pro‌ refresh this fall that could bring mini-LED displays and 5G connectivity.
This article, "A12Z Bionic Chip in iPad Pro Allegedly a Renamed A12X With Extra GPU Core Enabled" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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As city morgues begin to reach capacity in places like New York City and Atlanta because of COVID-19, Donald Trump’s campaign team sent cease and desist letters demanding the removal of this ad, which is a compilation of Donald Trump’s own incompetent words taken directly from his briefings and public appearances. In a cease and desist letter to individual television stations nationwide, the Trump-Pence campaign whines the ad is “deceptive” and networks should take it down to “avoid costly and time-consuming litigation.” 

The president is threatening to sue television stations for airing an ad that is little more than a clip of the president’s own words. Patrick McHugh of Priorities USA responded on Twitter, saying, “Trump's Super PAC & now Trump's campaign are resorting to desperate threats to keep Americans from hearing the truth about his failed COVID response that's put us all at risk. The ads are still running & @prioritiesUSA will continue ensuring voters hear the truth.”

MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace, a longtime Republican operative who worked on John McCain’s 2008 campaign, said there was no cause to take the ad down. “I’ve worked on 3 presidential campaigns and have a decent sense of where the line is - there is no case for taking this down - it’s literally Trump’s own words - in fact, you could cut a NEW one after each WH briefing with Trump’s disinformation and defiance of science.”

What’s the ad Trump is so worried about airing on your local channels? You’ve probably seen it before, and you can see it again below. And if you think this one is setting him off, wait until you see the one Joe Biden just released—also included below. 

And if Donald Trump has his fee-fees hurt over that one, just wait’ll he sees this one:

Donald Trump’s team of snake oil salesmen is out and about, trying their darndest to shift all blame for the continuing incompetent federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic onto everyone from China to the Obama administration, while also saying things aren’t so bad. Trump’s Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy Peter Navarro hit up a few cable news networks to talk about the overtaxed supply chain and how the Trump administration is strong like bull and there’s nothing to see here, and if there is something to see here it’s China’s fault … or maybe Joe Biden’s fault. However, like all con men, Navarro loses his cool when pressed on actual facts, and his interview on CNN with host Brianna Keilar was something to see.

After listening to Navarro explain how great the Trump administration is, Keilar asked Navarro about the ability of the federal government—under Trump—to produce and supply the hundreds of thousands of ventilators that will be needed in hospitals across the United States. Ventilators that will hopefully save people’s lives. It is here that Navarro, taking the racist Republican party line that the coronavirus and the subsequent inability of the United States government to be prepared for a pandemic is somehow all China’s fault.

After it became clear that Navarro wasn’t even going to approach talking about what the supply chain he oversees was going to be able to do for Americans in need, Keilar cut him off. “Peter, why are you wasting your time on this and not solving the problem that we have?”

To this, Navarro attempted to explain that he was explaining his racist bullshit rant, so Keilar once again interrupted him to reiterate the question he was supposed to be answering: ”I am asking you are we able to get a million ventilators.”

Navarro went in again on how these goddamn Chinese people have unleashed a 500-year “flood” and we were only prepared for a “100-year flood.” But, the Chinese, right? To which Keilar, to her credit, cut him off again to say, ”You're wasting everyone's time with this. It's 2020. The president was elected in 2016. Can you get to a million ventilators?”

Navarro begin whining about being cut off, asking if he could be allowed to finish and then literally being allowed to finish the phrase “can you let me finish,” enough times that he could have performed a monologue in an acting class by the time he was done whining. Once he realized no one was talking except him, Navarro began to question how many ventilators we really need. So Keilar had to interrupt him again. “Peter if you think speaking in facts and truth is frightening to people, you have a problem.”

Navarro then took the tack that Keilar was being unfair and too critical. So Keilar let him have the floor, to answer, for the last time, how many ventilators and when could they be delivered to people fighting COVID-19 around the country.

Navarro’s only response was to once again go with the Trump administration’s childlike insistence that nothing is their fault. “We all as a country got dealt a bad hand by China.” Keilar looked stupefied by this profoundly worthless statement from the U.S. director of trade and manufacturing. She decided to end the interview right there saying “Peter, that is just a waste of time to say that. I’m gonna leave it there. Peter Navarro—“

Navarro tried to interrupt here, but Keilar had had enough, “No, Peter Navarro, we’re out of time, we’re out of time and that is just ridiculous.”

 And the end of the interview after Navarro’s ran out of half-baked excuses.

Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments

So isn't it time to say your health coverage shouldn't be tied to your job?

Flanked by Vice President Mike Pence and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, President Donald Trump speaks during a press briefing on the coronavirus pandemic on March 25, 2020, at the White House. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Trump details plans to use increased testing and surveillance in a letter to state governors.

President Donald Trump sent a letter to state governors on Thursday saying that his administration is developing new, more relaxed social distancing guidelines for state and local officials, even as the country deals with the worsening coronavirus pandemic.

In the letter, Trump praised the governors for their role in tackling challenges brought on by the Covid-19 crisis and acknowledged the “long battle ahead” — before pivoting to his desire to return to normal. He noted:

In furtherance of this shared goal, my Administration is working to publish new guidelines for State and local policymakers to use in making decisions about maintaining, increasing, or relaxing social distancing and other mitigation measures they have put in place.

Trump’s vision for relaxing social distancing involves using expanded testing to identify those infected and robust surveillance to monitor the spread of the virus, as well as tailoring restrictions on a geographic basis. “Using these data-driven criteria, we will suggest guidelines categorizing counties as high-risk, medium-risk, and low risk,” the letter reads.

While testing capacity in the US has increased in recent days, it still lags far behind other developed countries, according to public health experts. While drive-through testing sites and laboratories continue to work overtime, increasing demand for tests means providers are still rationing them, which could ultimately put a crimp in Trump’s social distancing timeline.

Trump, however, seems eager to relax restrictions, and said in the letter that Americans are “hoping the day will soon arrive” when things can return to normal. He said on Tuesday that he hoped to “restart the economy” by Easter Sunday, which is on April 12. He said he chose the date because he “thought it was a beautiful time. A beautiful timeline,” he told reporters, suggesting that he wanted to see full churches for Easter services.

Trump’s letter comes a day after more than 14,000 cases of coronavirus were reported in the US, the highest number of new cases reported in a single day in any country since the pandemic began. As of March 26, there are more than 76,000 confirmed cases in the US, resulting in upwards of 1,000 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker.

The virus has hit larger urban centers, like New York City, particularly hard. States have had varying experiences with coronavirus thus far, and each have taken varying steps, from statewide shelter-in-place orders to closing schools and nonessential businesses in order to mitigate the effects of the pandemic and “flatten the curve.”

But without robust testing to trace and isolate exposed individuals, many public health officials have warned that easing social distancing guidelines too early would result in more infections — and subsequently more deaths — from Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

There’s danger in easing social distancing too early

While the economy has been devastated by policies aimed at stopping the spread of the coronavirus, epidemiologists say that ending social distancing too early could trigger a large spike in cases. That could not only damage the economy but also make it much more likely that an already strained medical system could collapse, as Vox’s Brian Resnick explained:

It’s understandable that some — maybe most — people want life to go back to normal already. Trump is anxious too, saying he hopes to reopen the country by Easter, April 12.

But that could be dangerously too soon. “It’s a nightmare scenario for epidemiologists and health care workers,” says Tara Smith, who studies emerging infectious diseases at Kent State University. “Imagine the mixing of populations that would happen at Easter if given the ‘all clear’ — people who may be carrying the virus without knowing it, hugging their loved ones, spending hours in close contact, and then everyone going back home afterward.”

As when a doctor asks you to consult them before ending a medication, we cannot end social distancing abruptly and without expert advice. (Think about when you’re on a course of antibiotic medication — you have to complete the whole regime of pills even when you start feeling better. Social distancing is a little like that.)

And like vaccines, the distancing isn’t just for you (although data shows that all age groups and people without preexisting risk factors can fall critically ill from the disease). It crucially protects vulnerable people from the disease. Without it, they become vulnerable again.

“If we all just went right back to how things were before, transmission would start again with the same intensity,” says Caitlin Rivers, a professor at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “It’s hard to experience so many restrictions, and so many hardships, and not feel like it’s not working. We need to recognize that we are doing the right things. You just have to be a little bit patient.”

Kious Kelly, an assistant nursing manager at Mount Sinai West in Manhattan, has died from coronavirus, after reportedly being exposed to the disease due to a lack of personal protective equipment.

Worker at NYC hospital where nurses wear trash bags as protection dies from coronavirus https://t.co/kTM56rAMA6 pic.twitter.com/wQLFbfUTGD

— New York Post (@nypost) March 25, 2020

The New York Post reports: The shortage of safety gear at one Manhattan hospital is so dire that desperate nurses have resorted to wearing trash bags — and some blame the situation for the coronavirus death of a beloved colleague. A stunning photo shared on social media shows three nurses at Mount Sinai West posing in a hallway while clad in large, black plastic trash bags fashioned into makeshift protective garb. … Meanwhile, staffers at the hospital near Columbus Circle on Wednesday tied the lack of basic supplies there to the death of assistant nursing manager Kious Kelly, who tested positive for coronavirus about two weeks ago. Kelly, 48, was admitted to Mount Sinai’s flagship hospital on the Upper East Side on March 17 and died Tuesday night, the workers said.

Andy Humm memorialized Kelly at Gay City News: Just five weeks ago — before all of this — I was sent by New Alternatives for Homeless LGBT Youth, where I’m on the board, to look in on a client hospitalized in Mount Sinai who was in terrible pain and not getting proper care. The nurses and doctors were pleasant enough, but they were not giving the young man the relief he needed as he was in constant agony and could not even sip water. After about five hours of advocacy, Kious Kelly, the assistant nursing manager, showed up with a rainbow pin and a calm, caring manner and made things happen for the young man — getting him pain relief and pulling him back from the brink of wanting to take his own life. He was an angel to this troubled, homeless, African-American kid. On Wednesday, I read that due to a lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) — something that was a problem at Mount Sinai before all this — Kious was infected with COVID-19 two weeks ago and died the day before. … Today I’m mourning Kious Jordan Kelly, a 48-year old gay nurse manager who died from caring. I was only with him for 15 minutes, but it was enough to see his unique power of healing. An unforgettable character. Honor his memory by not letting even one more health care worker die.

Kelly’s sister, Marya Patrice Sherron, posted a heartbreaking response to his death:

Kelly’s nursing colleagues also remembered him fondly, and called for action. Read their posts below.

The post Gay NYC Nursing Manager Dies from Coronavirus Due to Lack of Personal Protective Equipment: Reports appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

The 3.3 million new unemployment insurance claims that the Labor Department reported Thursday is likely a significant undercount, experts say, because laid-off workers have been calling into state unemployment agencies much faster than the agencies can process their requests.

"There is reason to believe ... that even the 3.283 million figure understates the case," said Richard Moody, chief economist at Regions Financial Corporation. "Many states have reported their systems for processing claims have crashed under the weight of unprecedented volumes."

A tidal wave of workers trying to file claims has overwhelmed websites and jammed phone lines at state unemployment agencies, leaving states scrambling to hire more staff.

The disparities between unemployment claims reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and ground-level reports from state agencies can be enormous.

More than 1.7 million calls were placed last week to the New York State Labor Department seeking unemployment benefits, the department reported Wednesday on Twitter. But according to DOL's count, only 80,334 New Yorkers applied for benefits.

New York is ground zero for the coronavirus pandemic, accounting for half of all reported cases nationwide.

"If you have been unable to get through our phone and/or online system this week, please keep trying," New York's labor agency tweeted Wednesday in an attempt to assuage growing concerns. "You will still receive full UI benefits back to your date of unemployment."

The department said one week ago that it was averaging 250,000 logins per day on its website. It is hiring 200 additional staff, has upped server capacity, and has dedicated 700 people to answering calls.

In Texas, the state's workforce commission said it received calls last week from more than 800,000 people trying to file unemployment claims, The Dallas Morning News reported Wednesday. But DOL reported only 155,657 new claims there.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday that the state received more than 1 million claims over the past two weeks. But last week, DOL only tallied 186,809 new claims there for the past week.

AFL-CIO Chief Economist Bill Spriggs noted that some states "make it particularly hard to get unemployment insurance," and that layoffs are heavily concentrated in the service industry, "where workers are typically discouraged from applying from benefits."

Also left out of DOL's count is the large swath of unemployed workers who aren't eligible for jobless benefits, like independent contractors ("gig workers"), those who don’t make enough to qualify, and those who haven't worked long enough at a new job to qualify.

The $2 trillion Senate coronavirus package passed late Wednesday would create a new fund to extend eligibility to those uncovered workers, and would kick in an extra $600 per week.

Marie French contributed to this report.

Since there has been absolutely nothing even resembling consistent federal guidance on the coronavirus, states have been acting on their own. In many locations, counties and even cities have been forced to create their own rules to turn the vague discussion of “social distancing” into practical decisions. Should schools be closed? What constitutes an essential business? Should stores enact special periods for seniors? What has come from Donald Trump is nothing but a lot of talk about how great his response has been.

But now Trump is preparing to move. He has made it clear that he’s unhappy with the way that Americans’ stubborn desire to keep on breathing is affecting the numbers on his precious Dow. He declared that he wants to “reopen” the nation and get rid of those pesky social distancing rules so much that he never got around to making actual rules. And he’s sent a letter to the nation’s governors letting them know that he’ll take away their pesky problems of trying to protect the people of their state, and provide direction—right down to the county level.

Trump’s letter is, like everything from Trump, mostly about Trump. In fact, it begins not by talking about the actual crisis, but by saying: “As you know I published my” coronavirus guidelines. Somewhere out there is a nation and thousands of people in critical condition, but neither of those things allow Trump to say I, me, and my sufficiently.

According to Trump, his prescient actions are “already paying dividends.” That’s clearly true, since the U.S. now has more active cases of COVID-19 than Italy and China combined. Despite this wonderful triumph, Trump says he just knows that everyone wants to join him in hustling America back to “normal economic, social, and religious lives.”

So Trump is, at last, ready to issue policy guidelines to state and local authorities. Policy guidelines that are all about not shutting things down, but opening them up. Trump plans to classify each individual county as low, medium, or high risk. He doesn’t explicitly say that he will then lean on governors to open the nation on a county-by-county basis. He doesn’t explicitly say that governors who fail to follow these guidelines should think twice about asking for federal assistance. He doesn’t explicitly say that he expects cooperation … or else.

Of course, he doesn’t have to. Michael Cohen might have informed the nation about how they needed to listen to what Trump doesn’t say as well as what he says, but no one could miss the message here.

The Trump campaign tries to kill a TV ad airing his own disastrous words.

Ant-abortion activists protest during a demonstration outside the Supreme Court in Washington on March 4, 2020, as the Court hears oral arguments regarding a Louisiana law about abortion access. | Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

At least four states have banned most abortions or passed anti-trans legislation.

A group of anti-abortion activists wants Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar to have abortion care providers cease operations during the novel coronavirus pandemic.

In a Tuesday letter, signed by the heads of 52 anti-abortion advocacy groups including Susan B. Anthony List, National Right to Life, and the Family Research Council, the groups called for restrictions on medication and surgical abortion providers in order to “free up much needed medical equipment” and ease an alleged strain on emergency rooms stemming from patients with complications from abortion care. (Complications from abortion care are rare, according to medical research.)

But the letter illustrates a broader trend: While many people are seemingly coming together to try to survive the virus — the Senate, for example, unanimously passed a $2 trillion relief package Wednesday — the pandemic hasn’t erased politics entirely.

House Democrats, for example, proposed environmental reforms for industries receiving a coronavirus bailout. (The House’s bill has been dropped, however; the chamber plans to vote on the Senate’s version Friday). Meanwhile, social conservatives have taken advantage of the pandemic to further many politically divisive policies, like state-level bans on “elective” abortions, under the guise of protecting the interests of public health. But a closer look at the policy demands being made by anti-abortion conservatives shows that this is just politics as usual.

The letter contains five specific demands for HHS during the pandemic: ensuring that emergency response funds are not given to abortion providers, urging abortion providers to cease operations in order to preserve personal protective equipment (PPE) for treating Covid-19 patients, not expanding telemedicine for medication abortion access, continuing actions to stop mail-order abortion prescriptions, and promoting “medically accurate” information to abortion care patients.

“By ceasing both surgical and chemical abortions now, Planned Parenthood will free up much needed medical equipment and decrease the demand placed on ER’s due to complications from both medical and surgical abortion,” the letter states.

Abortion rights advocates pushed back on the claims, stressing that abortion care is essential and time-sensitive. “A public health emergency is not the time to play politics,” said Alexis McGill Johnson, acting president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, in a statement Tuesday. “Delays or additional barriers to care can make it more difficult or even impossible for some patients to access safe, legal abortion.”

It’s unclear what effect, if any, Tuesday’s letter will have on HHS policy during the pandemic; a spokesperson for HHS did not respond to a request for comment. But it’s far from activists’ and lawmakers’ only effort to seize on the uncertainty the crisis has created to further a political agenda.

At least four states have restricted abortions or passed anti-trans bills in recent weeks

Conservative governors in several states have gone even further in advancing cultural priorities during the pandemic.

Ohio, Mississippi, and Texas officials all announced that most abortions were considered “non-essential” and suspended the procedure under state-wide orders to suspend unnecessary surgeries during the coronavirus pandemic. Mississippi’s governor, Tate Reeves, made the decision to do so despite rejecting a shelter-in-place order for the state. “Mississippi’s never going to be China,” he said at a press conference Monday. He later clarified that the state would take a “wait and see approach” toward a possible future shelter-in-place order.

Several abortion providers in Texas, including Planned Parenthood and the Center for Reproductive Rights, promised to fight back on behalf of their patients, announcing they were filing a federal lawsuit against the state in order to continue offering abortion care.

“It’s unconscionable that the Texas Attorney General is exploiting this pandemic to end abortion in the state,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, in a statement. “Abortion care is time-sensitive and essential health care that has a profound impact on a person’s health and life, which is why it is protected as a constitutional right. Texas is abusing the state’s emergency powers and we are filing suit today to stop it.”

Author and abortion rights activist Robin Marty explained how easily the legal right to abortion was pushed aside during the pandemic in an op-ed for Time Tuesday:

In the end, it didn’t take the Supreme Court to end Roe. All it took was one public health crisis to show exactly what we already knew: as long as abortion as a legal right is centered on the clinic or medical person providing it — not the person seeking to end the pregnancy — it is a “right” that could easily be ripped away just by ending the ability to provide that care.

Abortion rights groups also decried a provision in the Senate coronavirus relief bill which would expand the Hyde amendment, which bans federal taxpayer dollars from funding abortion care. The funds in the bill are meant to help local, state, and tribal health officials meet their health care needs however they see fit; however, the Hyde language places an unneeded restriction on those funds.

“Our communities across the country are doing everything we can to keep ourselves and our families safe, and our elected officials should be doing the same — not blocking health care for communities that already face significant barriers,” Kelsey Ryland, director of federal strategies for reproductive justice advocacy group All* Above All told Vox in a statement.

While Republicans accused House Democrats of inserting progressive political goals, such as parts of the Green New Deal, into the House’s latest coronavirus bill, social conservatives seem to be pushing for a much broader array of policies, even beyond limits on reproductive health access.

In Idaho, the state legislature passed the first two state-level anti-transgender bills in the country last week, even as the pandemic continued to spread. HB 500, which bans trans girls and women from high school and college women’s sports, and HB 509, which bans gender changes on birth certificates issued in Idaho, both passed the legislature and were sent to Gov. Brad Little’s desk. The deadline for either signing or vetoing the bills was extended to March 31, which just so happens to be International Trans Day of Visibility.

The governor hasn’t signaled whether or not he will sign the bills, but five former Idaho state attorneys general urged him to veto the bills in an op-ed earlier this month.

The South Carolina state legislature scheduled a hearing for March 19 on a bill that would require high school trans athletes to compete in the gender designated on their birth certificate.

The timing of the hearing meant that families with trans kids were forced to risk infection in order to travel to the state capitol to advocate for their own civil rights.

Elsewhere, the US Department of Justice filed a statement of interest in a federal lawsuit seeking to overturn the Connecticut high school athletic association’s transgender participation policy.

In some cases, conservatives are using the pandemic to further their long-stated goals, especially in restricting access to abortion care. In others, like their anti-trans actions, they’re moving quickly to pass their agenda while everybody else is rightly focused on dealing with the pandemic.

Either way, a pandemic is no time to be taking decisive political action on long-standing and highly contentious social issues.

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I swear, Onanymous is (1) not a typo, and (2) comedy gold.

Today's News:

Donald Trump is angry. The Democratic Super PAC Priorities USA assembled an ad that features the sound bites of Trump and Trump only, and guess what? Turns out he’s an unhinged maniacal liar who’s gotten everything about the coronavirus wrong. That may not be news to you, but it is apparently news to Trump. And his dangerously factless musings on the coronavirus over the past several weeks have not worn well. 

So on Wednesday, a Trump campaign attorney released a cease and desist letter demanding that TV stations across the nation pull the ad immediately. “On behalf of Donald J. Trump for President, Inc., President Trump’s principal campaign committee, this letter notifies you that your station is airing a patently false, misleading, and deceptive advertisement,” wrote Alex Cannon, special counsel to Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. “Because [the] ad’s central point is deliberately false and misleading, your station has an obligation to cease and desist from airing it immediately to comply with FCC licensing requirements, to serve the public interest, and to avoid costly and time-consuming litigation.” Um, yeah, the ad simply regurgitates all Trump’s falsehoods on the virus, sound bite by sound bite. So if it’s “patently false” and “misleading,” that’s because Trump narrates the entire thing in his own words. 

But you know what this all means, right? You absolutely must watch it below and share it far and wide.

Is the problem with the Trump administration that it’s staffed by incompetents, bootlickers, and industry lobbyists with no experience at disaster response, or is the problem with the Trump administration that it’s barely staffed at all? Both, actually.

The New York Times runs through some of the key vacancies and numbers: 20 of the top 75 jobs at the Department of Homeland Security are vacant or “acting.” At the Defense Department, it's 21 of 60 top civilian positions. The Department of Veterans Affairs doesn’t have a second in command or a head of emergency preparedness. The Internal Revenue Service is seriously understaffed as the federal government launches an effort to get stimulus payments to people using the IRS taxpayer database. But as troubling as the numbers are, some of the details reported by The Times are worse.

Here’s one of the worst sentences I have read even during this terrible time for our nation: “At the Department of Veterans Affairs, workers are scrambling to order medical supplies on Amazon after its leaders, lacking experience in disaster responses, failed to prepare for the onslaught of patients at its medical centers.”

They were unprepared for a pandemic even with months of warnings, so they’re trying to shop on Amazon, which is swamped with orders and notoriously running low on key supplies for the pandemic. And it’s the Department of Veterans Affairs, which runs its own major health care system. That right there tells you so much of what you need to know about this administration when it comes to basic competence and preparedness.

Not that we lack other examples: Take Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf’s inability, in late February, to tell a Senate committee how many cases of coronavirus there were in the U.S., how many respirators and ventilators were available, or how the disease was even transmitted. Or the hours-long lines at airports as Wolf’s department was unprepared to handle the flood of people trying to get home from Europe after Donald Trump’s hasty and unclear announcements of travel bans.

Then again, even an administration fully staffed with competent people might have been unable to overcome the lies and denial at the top.

Fox & Friends host Ainsley Earhardt suggested Thursday morning that the U.S. should reopen its economy, despite the growing spread of COVID-19, so that her friends can get their hair and nails done.

“Every day, we’re talking about different topics, because we’re moving in hopefully the direction of getting where China is now, or South Korea is now, and just getting some improvement,” Earhardt said, adding that she lives in New York City, but doesn’t want to return there because it is an epicenter for the virus.

“If you bought clothing before all this happened, if you want to return it, are stores gonna waive that 30-day period where you can get your money back?” Airhardt wondered. “This not a priority, but women have to get their hair done. I saw someone tweet out, you’re going to see what color our real hair is, because our roots are going to grow in. All my friends are saying — this is not a priority, people are dying, and I realize that — that they can’t get their nails done.”

Watch it below.

Fox News pivots to need to open economy for women despite coronavirus because we need to return clothing items within 30-day window, get our roots touched up, and get our nails done. pic.twitter.com/3SrbACKnU6

— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) March 26, 2020

The post ‘Fox & Friends’ Host Suggests We Need to Reopen the Economy So Women Can Get Their Nails Done: WATCH appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

A pharmacist wearing a protective mask shows a box of hydroxychloroquine, known by the brand name Plaquenil, on March 25, 2020, in Paris, France.  | Chesnot/Getty Images

It might not be the “game changer” Covid-19 treatment the president promised.

President Donald Trump continues to tout hydroxychloroquine, a common anti-malaria drug, as a potential treatment for Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus — even though there is no evidence as to whether it is effective or even safe to use in these cases.

In televised press conferences and on his Twitter account, he’s sought to promote the drug as a treatment when coupled with the antibiotic azithromycin, also known as “Z-Pak.”

“HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE & AZITHROMYCIN, taken together, have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine,” he tweeted Saturday.

Trump’s boosting has sent many Americans clamoring for the drug, creating shortages for patients who need it, including those with autoimmune disorders who are inherently vulnerable to Covid-19, and encouraging people to self-medicate without understanding the potential benefits or risks.

A man in Arizona died after he and his wife drank a poisonous fish tank cleaner that contained the same active ingredient; his wife said she recognized the chemical name when Trump talked about hydroxychloroquine on TV.

Clinical trials are underway, but there is so far little firm evidence that hydroxychloroquine, also known by its brand name Plaquenil, is effective in treating coronavirus: One study in France found that patients who took the drug along with an antibiotic cleared the virus from their bodies more quickly. A study that tested the drug in a randomized controlled trial in China did not find a difference in recovery rates, but like the French study, it involved only a small group of patients,

There are a lot of reasons why doctors are hoping hydroxychloroquine can treat coronavirus: It has already been approved by the Food and Drug Administration as a treatment for malaria and certain autoimmune diseases, including lupus, and there are relatively cheap, generic versions of the drug available. That would make it easier to produce and disseminate on a wide scale.

Even if the drug were definitely effective, though, scientists have known for decades that the drug carries adverse psychiatric side effects and can also cause deadly heart complications. Only clinical trials can clarify who would benefit and who would be at too big a risk.

Prescribing the drug now is “kind of a ‘last resort’ measure for those with severe disease,” Joshua Michaud, associate director for global health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told Vox, later adding: “I would be more concerned about having large numbers people, including those without symptoms or only mild symptoms, taking this drug because of the risk of negative side effects and unclear benefits at this point.”

But Americans aren’t waiting to stock up on hydroxychloroquine — hurting people who rely on it to treat other conditions.

Trump has touted hydroxychloroquine as a “game changer” ready for immediate use

Hydroxychloroquine, a derivative of chloroquine, is one of the options being tested as doctors seek effective treatments for Covid-19.

At least 13 clinical trials around the world are in progress or have been announced, giving researchers the opportunity to try to evaluate its effects on patients with the virus.

The research is still in very early stages. Far more studies would need to be done before it could even be deemed effective, let alone widely prescribed to patients.

Still, Trump has repeatedly and confidently talked about hydroxychloroquine coupled with azithromycin as a potential treatment for the virus, retweeting news stories about a French doctor who claimed that he had a 100 percent cure rate by treating patients with the two drugs.

Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity have also been touting the drug on their shows, dismissing experts’ concerns and claiming that there isn’t enough time for robust clinical trials.

“At my direction, the federal government is working to help obtain large quantities of chloroquine,” Trump said during a press conference on Monday. “We think tomorrow, pretty early, the hydroxychloroquine and the Z-Pak I think is a combination is looking very, very good and it’s going to be distributed.”

But any broad distribution of hydroxychloroquine would need far more evidence that it is both safe and effective. Hydroxychloroquine is still in the first phase out of three of clinical trials, and the majority of drugs for infectious diseases that seem promising in the first phase don’t ultimately make it to market.

Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, has said that he has no data to rely on that the drug is safe for people who’ve tested positive for coronavirus, nor any data that proves it is effective. He’s dismissed the idea that there is a “magic drug.”

In an appearance on Fox News, he said he would consider taking the drug himself as a potential coronavirus treatment, but only in a controlled, clinical trial setting.

“If I had a situation where I need a drug, I would look around to see if there was a clinical trial that would give me access within the contours of a clinical trial,” he said.

Some preliminary studies on hydroxychloroquine are hopeful — but they’re very, very preliminary

Experts have expressed skepticism of preliminary studies about the effectiveness of the drug.

Trump tweeted the study from France, which was widely publicized but controversial: It found the presence of the virus in patients’ blood dropped after they received the drug, some in combination with azithromycin.

But that study, done on only 26 patients, has been criticized: “The issues with these studies go beyond their small size or the fact that early promises, in research, often don’t pan out,” Stat News’s Matthew Harper wrote. “It goes to one of the big truths about how doctors, eager to see a new drug succeed, can subconsciously lie to themselves with clinical studies: To be trustworthy, these studies often need to be randomized,” and the French study was not.

A more recent study from China, which was randomized but still very small, found that those who received the drug were no better off in fighting the virus than those who didn’t.

On Tuesday, additional clinical trials began in New York, a hotspot of infection. The governor’s office announced that it had obtained 70,000 doses of hydroxychloroquine, along with 750,000 doses of chloroquine, another closely related malaria drug, and 10,000 doses of azithromycin.

The potential adverse side effects of hydroxychloroquine are well-documented. The drug, which is a less toxic version of chloroquine, can carry adverse psychiatric side effects that can occur even after just a single dose, though it’s more common after high doses. Those manifest differently among patients, ranging from anxiety, insomnia, and nightmares to paranoia, hallucinations, personality changes, and suicidal ideation.

In combatting malaria, doctors have accepted these potential side effects in cases where patients would otherwise die.

“The risk of psychosis is of little relevance if one is dead, the thinking goes,” Remington Nevin, an epidemiologist who specializes in drug safety, tweeted.

Hydroxychloroquine can also disrupt normal heart functions, increasing what’s called the “QT interval” — the time it takes for the heart to contract and relax when pumping out blood. If that interval becomes too long, it can cause an irregular heartbeat or arrhythmia that can lead to fainting and, in serious cases, sudden death, putting patients at higher risk of strokes and heart failure.

The antibiotic azithromycin, which has been used alongside hydroxychloroquine in studies to treat coronavirus, also carries these potential cardiac side effects. For elderly patients and those with preexisting conditions that make them susceptible to complications from Covid-19, these risks are particularly acute.

It’s not a complete shot in the dark, however: Hydroxychloroquine does have certain anti-viral properties (though it’s not clear whether those properties make it effective against the coronavirus), and some lab cell culture studies have shown that the drug can work against SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for Covid-19. But scientists haven’t tested it adequately in humans — and we already know what can go wrong.

“We want to make sure the negative side effects don’t outweigh any positive effects,” Michaud said. “There really is no substitute or short cut around doing trials to answer the safety and effectiveness questions.”

Soaring demand for hydroxychloroquine is putting patients who already take it at risk

None of this has stopped Americans from seeking out hydroxychloroquine — sometimes in dangerous or potentially illegal ways.

BuzzFeed reports that a man died after self-medicating with a fish tank cleaning solution that shared some of the same ingredients. Other reports suggest there’s a run on the drug itself, with some even crossing the border to buy it from Mexican pharmacies.

ProPublica reported that pharmacists are running out of the drug because, in some cases, doctors appear to be prescribing it for themselves or their family members, calling in high numbers of prescriptions simultaneously or asking for more tablets than usual. One pharmacist described it as “fraud.”

Even some hospitals have started stockpiling the drug and prescribing it to patients on an off-label basis.

All of this has made it harder for people who need the drug to get it.

BuzzFeed reported that Kaiser Permanente, a major health care network, informed patients that it would stop filling their hydroxychloroquine prescriptions in order to maintain a supply for the “critically ill with COVID-19,” thanking them for their “sacrifice.”

Patients who are already prescribed have started stocking up too, worried about shortages.

“After I heard my medication mentioned on the news, I rushed to obtain a 90-day supply,” Stacy Torres, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of California at San Francisco who takes the drug for a condition known as Sjogren’s syndrome, wrote for the Washington Post. “A sympathetic pharmacist told me, ‘You’re exactly the person I want to get this medication to’ — before breaking the news that pills are on back order.”

Some states are working to prevent this. Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak blocked the use of anti-malaria drugs for coronavirus patients to protect against stockpiling. Now, Nevadans can only obtain prescriptions for a 30-day supply to ensure it’s available for “legitimate medical purposes,” such as treating lupus and arthritis.

The run on hydroxychloroquine stems from fear: Americans are facing a frightening pandemic and looking for hope. Trump is talking up an as-yet-unproven drug to try to give it to them.

But the consequences of his rhetoric and the accompanying hype for hydroxychloroquine are being felt by people with autoimmune conditions like lupus, who will be even more vulnerable to complications from Covid-19 if they can’t get the medication.

“For those with grave autoimmune diseases,” Francisco wrote, “not having access to this medication might be fatal.”

Walmart pharmacists allegedly begged their corporate office to investigate concerns that doctors were using them to supply pill mills. Despite this, the company kept doling out deadly doses of prescription opioids, almost earning it a criminal prosecution, according to the news nonprofit ProPublica. Count on President Donald Trump to repeatedly bail out his wealthy and unscrupulous peers. Federal prosecutors investigated Walmart's opioid practices for nearly two years, unearthing what they described as especially damning evidence, only for top Trump staffers at the Department of Justice to intervene, ProPublica reported.

The pharmacists who pleaded with Walmart's corporate office came from Maine, North Carolina, Kansas, and Washington, among other states, and they detailed hundreds of thousands of opioid prescriptions that raised red flags. In one alleged case, a Florida doctor sent patients to Walmart locations in more than 30 states, ProPublica reported. Instead of refusing prescriptions from the doctor, Walmart officials allegedly told the pharmacists that they could do no such thing. One compliance manager for the company said it plainly in an email that ProPublica obtained, saying the company's priority should be "driving sales."

Uttam Dhillon, acting administrator at the Drug Enforcement Administration, reportedly said after a presentation of the information: "Jesus Christ. Why aren’t we talking about this as a criminal case?"  There had been a criminal investigation led by Joe Brown, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Texas. Heather Rattan, who worked on Brown’s team, told Walmart she intended to indict the company for breaching the Controlled Substances Act, a practically inconceivable action for a billion-dollar Fortune 500 company, according to ProPublica. Walmart, however, wasted no time in bringing their story before top officials at the Department of Justice. As a result, Trump officials told the company the department wouldn't be prosecuting the case, the news agency reported.

Read the Walmart letter ProPublica obtained here.

But when up against persistent urgings by Texas prosecutors to the DOJ to pursue criminal charges, Walmart leaned on the law firm Jones Day, which formerly represented Trump's campaign, according to CNN. For a while, Walmart allegedly tried to at least appear to be addressing its opioid practices and appeared open to a civil settlement, but the company determined prosecutors weren't acting in good faith and stopped making nice in 2018, according to ProPublica. How dare prosecutors actually attempt to prosecute what they suspected was a deadly crime? Walmart attorneys cried to Washington that Texas prosecutors were trying to "embarrass" the company with talk of criminal charges only to extort a hefty civil fine, ProPublica reported.

Walmart spokesman Randy Hargrove called the potential criminal charges "meritless" and the behavior of prosecutors "improper" in a statement to ProPublica. "EDTX's investigation rested on a flawed legal theory that Walmart should have taken actions that not only were not required by federal law, but were contradicted by multiple state laws," he said in the statement. "We strongly deny any criminal wrongdoing and believe the Department's decision not to prosecute was mandated by a fair application of the law and the facts and the justice Department's rules." 

Hargrove went on to say: "We are proud of our pharmacists and compliance experts who continue to serve the best interests of our customers despite complex and often conflicting direction from federal and state regulators and prescribers."

Brown also released a statement to ProPublica following Hargrove’s claims:

Drug Enforcement Agency investigations of multiple opioid overdose deaths in the Eastern District of Texas resulted in our office opening parallel civil and criminal investigations of Walmart’s pharmacy practices. These investigations have been handled appropriately, and according to Department of Justice policy. These investigations, which we would typically not confirm or deny, but do so now because of Walmart’s statement, continue. Accordingly, it would be inappropriate to comment further on the specific facts of the case.

Walmart chooses now to attack the investigators, a tried and true method to avoid oversight. We are confident that once all of the facts in this matter are public the hollowness of this criticism will be apparent. It is not the goal of our office to embarrass Walmart. Walmart’s behavior in dispensing opioid medication in the middle of a public health crisis should embarrass Walmart.

Moreover, having any tie to such a company should embarrass the president. Instead, he’s aided Walmart in what prosecutors can only hope will be a civil settlement at best. Four years after the civil case first opened, that settlement still hasn’t been reached, ProPublica reported.

The Republican Party’s anti-science arrogance is one of the defining characteristics of their craven anti-environmentalism, anti-labor, anti-education, pro big business platform. But as time has gone on, that anti-science sensibility has led to dozens of Republican officials being truly ignorant and stupid when it comes to scientific information. This doesn’t mean that these Republicans are not scientists—it means that their grasp of even basic information, the stuff put in the simplest layman’s terms, flies far over their heads as they search for conspiracies with their tiny racist minds. Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana is one such party official. 

On Tuesday, Sen. Kennedy went on Fox News to explain how, after he and other Republican officials did nothing, tried nothing, and pretended nothing was happening in the world around them, suddenly Louisiana has a very serious outbreak of COVID-19. As of March 24, Louisiana says they have 1,388 cases and 46 deaths due to the virus. This is literally what he said:

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: Well, we’re a hotspot. And it started in New Orleans and it’s moving into the rest of the state. I think it has had a lot to do with Mardi Gras.

Well, that makes sense. Mardi Gras is a big event with lots of people in close proximity. Mardi Gras came at the end of February, and as a senator, surely Kennedy was briefed on how much the virus had already spread around the world. In fact, you can read my colleague Mark Sumner’s many posts about the virus from February 25. But either way, Mr. Kennedy, could you possibly make this somewhat coherent statement into something more cuckoo bananas?

SEN. KENNEDY: I think our friends in China were worried about their image, more than the world’s health and they sat on this news about the virus for longer than they should have. We held Mardi Gras, people flew in from all over the world, we were in close quarters. One or two had too much to drink and lowered their immune systems—diminished their immune systems—and we got a problem!

Maybe Sen. John Kennedy was too busy in February pushing the frequently debunked, and now disappeared, conspiracy theory that Ukraine was behind the 2016 election interference to really focus on the crafty Chinese leaders hiding that virus information. (The same information that seemed to be readily available in February to anyone willing to type the word “coronavirus” into Google.)

Sen. Kennedy is doing what Trump and the rest of the Republican leadership is doing: trying to pass blame onto China for the Republican Party’s ineptitude. And since the Republican Party deals primarily in being racist, they are being super racist about it. It’s hard to even go into the true silliness of the idea that “one or two had too much to drink and lowered their immune systems” and was “patient zero” at Mardi Gras. From what we’ve seen, there seems to be more than one patient zero infiltrating America by way of Donald Trump and the Republican Party’s official gatherings.

The responses to this bit of stupidity were fast and furious.

Sometimes you just have to laugh.

And here’s some science for you:

Trump speaks at the White House on March 25, 2020. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images

He’s pushing to end social distancing before experts say it’s safe to do so.

Even as American coronavirus cases continue to spike to the point where hospitals are nearing the point of being overwhelmed, President Donald Trump continues to push for some sort of economic reopening by Easter. But his reasons for thinking this is a good idea remain overtly political instead of based on the public good.

During the White House coronavirus news conference on March 24, CBS reporter Paula Reid asked Trump to respond to the fact that experts “on both sides of the aisle have said that reopening the country by Easter is not a good idea.” Indeed, public health experts broadly agree that Trump’s Easter timeline is premature, given that the coronavirus outbreak is nowhere near under control in America and relaxing social distancing at this stage could make things even worse.

Trump, however, is undeterred. Instead of addressing the substance of Reid’s question, he went on the attack against her and suggested experts who think his timeline is a bad idea are motivated by politics.

“I think there are certain people that would like it to not open so quickly, I think there are certain people that would like it to do financially poorly, because they think that would be very good as far as defeating me at the polls,” Trump said.

As Reid tried to ask a followup, Trump bulldozed her by saying, “I think it’s very clear that there are people in your profession that write fake news. You do.” He added, absurdly, that “you’re lucky that you have this group here right now for this problem, or you wouldn’t even have a country left,” and then moved on without ever really responding to her question.

Watch:

Reid’s question referenced a tweet Trump posted shortly before the press conference in which he bashed the “LameStream Media” for purportedly being the “dominant force” in trying to persuade him “to keep our Country closed as long as possible” because it might be “detrimental to my election success.” But as Reid alluded to, that assertion is at odds with the reality that not a single public health expert, including ones on his White House coronavirus task force, has endorsed his push to relax social distancing guidelines in time for churches to be packed on Easter.

“The real people want to get back to work ASAP,” Trump tweeted, even though polling released on March 25 indicates 74 percent of registered voters either somewhat or strongly support the imposition of even more stringent distancing measures than the ones currently prevailing in most states.

It appears Trump’s false claim that public opinion is behind his reckless push to prematurely relax social distancing measures may become one of his lies that’s impervious to correction. Just before he walked away from the podium on Wednesday, he repeated it, telling reporters that “our country wants to get back to work.”

In reality, Americans would like his government to get the pandemic under control first. Trump, however, seems to realize that the timeline necessary to do that puts his reelection hopes in jeopardy — even if he doesn’t want to admit as much.

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The news moves fast. To stay updated, follow Aaron Rupar on Twitter, and read more of Vox’s policy and politics coverage.

OMFG—are you kidding me? 

Bernie Sanders doesn’t need to drop out. He can do whatever he wants. But there’s also no reason for Joe Biden to indulge in Bernie’s egocentric charade of a crusade and participate in another debate. If this was a close race, that would be a different matter. But Sanders would need to win about 60% of the vote for the duration of the campaign, when he has barely gotten 30% so far. It ain’t happening.

When asked about his presidential plans a couple of days ago, a testy Sanders replied, “I’m dealing with a fucking global crisis. You know, we’re dealing with it, and you’re asking me these questions.” Well, he should listen to his own words and focus his efforts on saving our country from catastrophe, not distracting the party and our nominee in a hopeless cause.

For reasons decipherable only to them, two members of the House, Republican Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana and Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts are looking to pass a nonbonding resolution blaming China for the COVID-19 pandemic.

The resolution, which would be purely for show and have no legal bearing on any damn thing, seeks to express "the sense of the House of Representatives that the Government of the People's Republic of China made multiple, serious mistakes in the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak that heightened the severity and spread of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, [...]"

Will there be another resolution condemning the government of the United States for literally and precisely making similar "multiple, serious mistakes?"

"[...] which include the Chinese Government's intentional spread of misinformation to downplay the risks of the virus,"

Like telling their citizens that there were only "fifteen cases, soon to be zero?" Like claiming that Americans worried for the stock market should "buy on the dip?" Like claiming that warnings about the potentially disastrous results of a spreading hoax were a "hoax" being peddled by opposition voices and "fake news?"

"[...] a refusal to cooperate with international health authorities, internal censorship of doctors and journalists,"

Like a new order for top government pandemic experts to stop giving information in public unless they get prior permission from the vice president? Like refusing to answer questions from certain reporters due to the government being angry with the stories being produced by that outlet?

"[...] and malicious disregard for the health of ethnic minorities."

Like ignoring the world-recognized official name of the disease causing the current pandemic, instead calling it the "China virus" or "Chinese virus” in a blatant attempt to shift blame for an incompetent domestic response to an overseas target? A move that is putting ethic minorities in danger nationwide as the party leader's rhetoric goads the public into hate crimes against those minorities?

Piss off with this. Either pair it with a near-identical resolution condemning the Trump administration for their own "multiple, serious mistakes," their own rampant and now-deadly misinformation, and their own attempts to shift blame by scapegoating others or piss off with this. It serves only to further escalate racist attacks and paper over the catastrophic administration non-response to the emerging pandemic, a collapse of leadership that squandered all possibility of gaining control over the virus before it was spread, undetected and untested-for, nationwide.

Stop playing games in the biggest national emergency the United States has faced since the Spanish flu. You know, the Spanish flu—the one that originated in the United States, in Kansas.

Read 26 remaining paragraphs | Comments

New York City’s morgues are nearing capacity, and they expect to reach full capacity by next week according to a new report from Politico. Sources tell the news outlet that Department of Homeland Security officials have been briefed on this harsh reality. However, it’s clear to anyone seeing makeshift morgues begin to pop up outside of major hospitals in the city that capacity has already been reached at some hospitals due to the spread of COVID-19.

A FEMA spokesperson confirmed on Wednesday that New York City, Hawaii, and North Carolina have asked for federal “emergency mortuary assistance.” FEMA says that these requests are still under “review” and nothing has been approved yet. New York City already has just under 18,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 at the time of writing, with almost 200 dead as a result of the virus.

Dealing with growing numbers of dead Americans due to this infectious disease means that hospitals and funeral homes have to change how they normally run. It’s not simply a matter of housing the remains of those we love, but how to do that safely. New York City has been hit very hard by the virus and has been asking for—and not receiving, so far—enough aid from the federal government.

Donald Trump has told outlets he hopes the United States can pretend nothing is happening by Easter, while New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has criticized the President’s weak response. “You want a pat on the back for sending 400 ventilators. What are we going to do with 400 ventilators when we need 30,000 ventilators?” 

The longer it takes for federal testing equipment, hospital equipment, and life-saving equipment to arrive in states like New York, the more emergency mortuary assistance is going to be needed.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) feels the unemployment insurance provided in the coronavirus stimulus will discourage people from returning to work. | Alex Edelman /AFP via Getty Images

Their pushback on its unemployment insurance provisions could cause delays to the bill’s passage.

A handful of Senate Republicans think the unemployment insurance provided in the coronavirus stimulus is too generous to laid-off workers — and they’re now pushing an amendment that could cap it.

It’s a move that could further delay the passage of the $2 trillion package, which senators and the White House negotiated in marathon sessions over five days to provide rapid financial relief for workers, small businesses, and affected industries.

The core of the senators’ complaint is something they’re referring to as a “drafting error,” even though it was an intentionally crafted part of the legislation. They worry that the amount of money guaranteed by the bill’s expansion of unemployment insurance surpasses how much some workers make on a weekly basis at their current jobs.

They say that the expanded funds — though they would only be temporary — disincentivize workers from keeping or returning to those jobs. (It’s worth noting that people who leave their jobs voluntarily without good cause would not be eligible for unemployment insurance in the first place.)

“This bill pays you more not to work than if you were working,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who along with Republican Sens. Ben Sasse (NE), Tim Scott (SC), and Rick Scott (FL) expressed concerns about the amount of money workers would be able to secure from unemployment insurance. They’re pushing for a vote on an amendment that would cap the amount of unemployment support workers could receive so it’s limited to 100 percent of their previous salaries.

As currently agreed upon, the unemployment insurance provision of the bill guarantees a major expansion of the program — a move that lawmakers see as necessary given the sizable layoffs that have already taken place as a result of businesses shuttering to combat the coronavirus and the many more that could follow. According to a Moody’s Analytics estimate provided to Fortune, there could be as many as 6 million workers who become unemployed in March alone.

As Vox’s Dylan Matthews reports, the unemployment insurance in the Senate deal would ensure that every recipient receives an additional $600 a week. On average, a person on unemployment insurance currently receives $385 per week, so this boost is significant. Those claiming unemployment insurance would be able to secure this expanded support for up to four months.

Graham and other Republican opponents fear that these funds — though they’ll be temporary — will be enough to disincentivize workers from either staying or returning to their jobs when the coronavirus crisis is over.

As a Republican aide told The Hill, lawmakers opted to do an across-the-board increase of unemployment insurance because every state has a different set-up for how to implement its program, and the proposed policy — if universal — could be executed more quickly. Additionally, the aide noted, a person that voluntarily leaves their job is not eligible for unemployment insurance, which people can only claim if they’ve been “unemployed through no fault of your own,” according to the Department of Labor.

The position of this group of Republicans is also one that fails to consider just how much workers are hurting because of the economic fallout that’s resulted from the coronavirus and the much-needed public health measures that are being taken to curb its spread. It’s also one that seems to disregard the temporary nature of the program, which is designed explicitly to make sure that workers could continue to cover basic costs if they’ve been laid off or if they need to stay home and aren’t able to work because of the coronavirus during this specific time.

The senators’ efforts could cause delays in the upper chamber’s passage of the coronavirus stimulus. They don’t seem to have the votes necessary to actually stop the stimulus from being passed, but for now, the lawmakers say they’d like consideration of their amendment before a vote on the final package, a move that could mean the bill isn’t able to get fast-tracked through the Senate just yet.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has also said he’ll put a hold on the legislation, and press for stricter restrictions on corporate assistance that’s included in the stimulus, if Republicans don’t drop their opposition.

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Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Wade Fagen-Ulmschneider made a set of interactive charts to track confirmed coronavirus cases. Switch between regions and scales. See the data normalized for population or not. See trends for active cases, confirmed cases, deaths, and recoveries.

Usually this much chartage and menu options would seem overwhelming. But by now, many of us have probably seen enough trackers that we’re ready to shift away from consumption into exploratory mode.

The data behind this tracker, like many others, is from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering (JHU CSSE). They’ve been updating their repository daily on GitHub.

Tags: coronavirus, Johns Hopkins, tracker, Wade Fagen-Ulmschneider