The Commentariat -- May 27, 2020

Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: I'm back and none the worse for wear. Thanks so much to safari for keeping Reality Chex going.

Afternoon Update:

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

Maggie Fox of CNN: "Antibody tests used to determine if people have been infected in the past with Covid-19 might be wrong up to half the time, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in new guidance posted on its website. Antibody tests, often called serologic tests, look for evidence of an immune response to infection. 'Antibodies in some persons can be detected within the first week of illness onset,' the CDC says." Mrs. McC: So, um, useless.

Michael Scherer of the Washington Post: “A growing chorus of Republicans are pushing back against President Trump's suggestion that wearing cloth masks to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus is a sign of personal weakness or political correctness. They include governors seeking to prevent a rebound in coronavirus cases and federal lawmakers who face tough reelection fights this fall, as national polling shows lopsided support for wearing masks in public. 'Wearing a face covering is not about politics -- it's about helping other people,' Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) said Tuesday in a plea over Twitter, echoing comments by North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (R) last week. 'This is one time when we truly are all in this together.' Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) posted a photograph on Instagram of himself in a mask Tuesday night. Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), who faces a tough reelection fight, has added '#wearyourmask' to his Twitter handle.... The comments come as Trump continues to treat face masks as something to mock, refusing to wear one in public and joining his staff and family in ridiculing his Democratic rival Joe Biden for doing otherwise.... For Biden, the debate with the president over masks is a stand-in for their deeper disagreements over Trump's handling of the pandemic.... On Tuesday Biden made his Twitter avatar a picture nearly identical to the one Trump mocked." ~~~

~~~ Eric Bradner of CNN: "Joe Biden called ... Donald Trump 'an absolute fool' on Tuesday for sharing a tweet that mocked the former vice president for wearing a mask Monday at a Memorial Day ceremony. In an interview with CNN's Dana Bash in Delaware -- Biden's first in-person interview since being knocked off the campaign trail by the coronavirus pandemic -- the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee said Trump is fueling a cultural opposition to wearing masks when 'every leading doc in the world is saying we should wear a mask when you're in a crowd.... This macho stuff, for a guy -- I shouldn't get going, but it just, it costs people's lives. It's costing people's lives,' Biden said. Trump's position amounts to 'stoking deaths,' he said. He added: 'Presidents are supposed to lead, not engage in folly and be falsely masculine.'"

Michael Grynbaum & Marc Tracy of the New York Times: "Even President Trump's most stalwart media defenders have recoiled at his baseless smears against the MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, whom Mr. Trump has all but accused of killing a former staff member two decades ago despite a total lack of evidence. The president ... is now facing an unusual chorus of reproach from the media platforms he relies on for comfort. The New York Post, Mr. Trump's first read in the mornings, lamented in an editorial on Tuesday that the president 'decided to suggest that a TV morning-show host committed murder. That is a depressing sentence to type.'... And the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, a bellwether of establishment conservative thought, called Mr. Trump's unfounded accusation against Mr. Scarborough 'ugly even for him.'... If this week's blowback affected Mr. Trump, the president has not shown it: He taunted Mr. Scarborough again on Wednesday in a tweet that referred to a 'Cold Case.'" ~~~

~~~ After whacking lefties for spreading the conspiracy story that Joe Scarborough murdered an intern, the right-wing Washington Examiner Editors write: "... it is ... unfortunate that the latest person to trumpet and repeat this vile slander is the president supposedly leading this nation through a time of crisis. Whatever his issues with Scarborough, President Trump's crazed Twitter rant on this subject was vile and unworthy of his office. Some will undoubtedly shrug it off as Trump being Trump, but one could hardly be blamed for reading it and doubting his fitness to lead.... Observers might even someday look back at this incident as the instant when things began to unravel."

Gotcha. Gotcha Again. Steve Contorno of the Tampa Bay Times: "For a week, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany has defended ... Donald Trump's assault on vote-by-mail, insisting, like her boss, that it invites election fraud. But, also like her boss, McEnany has taken advantage of its convenience time and time again. In fact, the Tampa native has voted by mail in every Florida election she has participated in since 2010, according to a Tampa Bay Times review of her voting history. Most recently, she voted by mail in the state's March 2020 presidential primary, just as Trump did after he made Florida his new permanent home.... In a statement emailed after the story published, McEnany said: 'Absentee voting has the word absent in it for a reason. It means you're absent from the jurisdiction or unable to vote in person. President Trump is against the Democrat plan to politicize the coronavirus and expand mass mail-in voting without a reason, which has a high propensity for voter fraud....' However, Florida does not have absentee voting. Anyone can vote by mail here without a reason." ~~~

~~~ The Upside-down World of Donald J. Trump. Jerry Lambe of Law & Crime: "... Donald Trump got a reality check on Tuesday..., when Twitter began flagging the president's false or misleading tweets and providing links to factually accurate information.... The president responded by attacking the social media platform, claiming the privately owned company was 'stifling free speech,' a statement which many legal experts saw fit to fact-check as well.... The platform's new fact-checking mechanism appeared when Trump tweeted a series of false and unsubstantiated claims about the prevalence of voter fraud in relation to mail-in absentee ballots.... The link, which urged people to 'Get the facts about mail-in ballots,' directed readers to a brief statement explaining the untrue nature of the claims and a list of bullet points rebutting several individual falsehoods.... '... Twitter is completely stifling FREE SPEECH, and I, as President, will not allow it to happen!' [Trump tweeted.]... The First Amendment protects 'subjects and citizens from government action.' Twitter is not the government. The irony of the president complaining that a non-state actor was violating his right to free speech -- only to threaten to use his government position to prevent that non-state actor from continuing to operate in such a way (which would be a violation of Twitter's First Amendment rights) -- was not lost on legal experts. Anti-Trump Harvard Law School Professor Laurence Tribe ... called Trump's tweet's 'insane.' [Actually 'INSANE.']" ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Beyond the stupid, there's a double irony here. Trump is using the very platform he criticizes & threatens to criticize & threaten that platform. In addition, as Larry Tribe writes (and anyone who has read the Bill of Rights knows), a person does not have a First-Amendment right to express opinions on a private platform. It's true that governments can regulate these platforms, and the platforms could violate U.S. law, for instance by limiting access to white Christian men.

~~~ Zeke Miller of the AP: "The president can't unilaterally regulate or close the companies, and any effort would likely require action by Congress. His administration shelved a proposed executive order empowering the Federal Communications Commission to regulate technology companies, citing concerns it wouldn't pass legal muster. But that didn't stop Trump from angrily issuing strong warnings. [After his initial threats, Trump later] tweeted without elaboration, 'Big Action to follow.'... [Trump's] 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, said Twitter's 'clear political bias' had led the campaign to pull 'all our advertising from Twitter months ago.' Twitter has banned all political advertising since last November."

The New York Times is live-updating the SpaceX launch. "With gray clouds above and choppy waves in the Atlantic, NASA called off a rocket launch that was to be the first to take American astronauts to orbit from American soil in nearly a decade. The next opportunities to launch are Saturday at 3:22 p.m. Eastern time and Sunday at 3 p.m. The launch of two NASA astronauts on a rocket built by SpaceX, the rocket company started by billionaire Elon Musk, would mark the start of an era of human spaceflight that extends beyond national space agencies."

Daniel Lewis of the New York Times: "Larry Kramer, the noted writer whose raucous, antagonistic campaign for an all-out response to the AIDS crisis helped shift national health policy in the 1980s and '90s, died on Wednesday morning in Manhattan. He was 84. His husband, David Webster, said the cause was pneumonia."

     ~~~ Update of a story linked below. Sarah Nir of the New York Times: "... the encounter [between Christian Cooper & Amy Cooper (not related) in Central Park's Ramble], which was recorded on video, took an ugly turn. As the man, Christian Cooper, filmed on his phone, the woman, clutching her thrashing dog, called the police, her voice rising in hysteria. 'I'm going to tell them there's an African-American man threatening my life,' she said to him while dialing, then repeated to the operator, twice, 'African-American.' The video, posted to Twitter on Memorial Day by Mr. Cooper's sister, has been viewed more than 30 million times.... Within 24 hours, the woman, identified as Amy Cooper..., had given up her dog, publicly apologized and been fired from her job. Mr. Cooper, 57, a Harvard graduate who works in communications, has long been a prominent birder in the city and is on the board of the New York City Audubon Society.... Ms. Cooper had been a head of insurance portfolio management at Franklin Templeton, according to her LinkedIn page, and graduated from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. On Tuesday afternoon, Franklin Templeton announced that she had been fired."

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** Julia Carrie Wong & Sam Levine of the Guardian: "Twitter for the first time took action against a series of tweets by Donald Trump, labeling them with a warning sign and providing a link to further information. Since ascending to the US presidency, Trump has used his Twitter account to threaten a world leader with war, amplify racist misinformation by British hate figures and, as recently as Tuesday morning, spread a lie about the 2001 death of a congressional aide in order to smear a cable news pundit. Throughout it all, Twitter has remained steadfast in its refusal to censor the head of state.... Trump responded on Tuesday evening with a pair of tweets that repeated his false claims about voting and accused Twitter of 'interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election'.... Federal law protects the rights of internet platforms to moderate the third-party speech they publish." --s ~~~

~~~ Maggie Astor & Davey Alba of the New York Times: "The widower of Lori Klausutis, whose death President Trump has used to smear the MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, is asking Twitter to remove the president's tweets on the subject. Twitter said on Tuesday that it would not. In a letter to Jack Dorsey, the chief executive of Twitter, last week, Timothy Klausutis said Mr. Trump had violated Twitter's terms of service by falsely suggesting that Mr. Scarborough murdered Ms. Klausutis in 2001 when he was a congressman and she was an intern in his office. Ms. Klausutis, 28, actually died as a result of a heart condition that caused her to collapse at work and hit her head on her desk. 'An ordinary user like me would be banished from the platform for such a tweet,' Mr. Klausutis wrote in the letter..., 'but I am only asking that these tweets be removed.' Mr. Trump has repeatedly promoted the conspiracy theory against Mr. Scarborough.... In a series of tweets over the past several weeks, Mr. Trump has urged law enforcement in Florida to 'open a cold case' and suggested falsely that Mr. Scarborough 'got away with murder.' He had tweeted about the same false conspiracy as far back as 2017.... Nick Pacilio, said in a statement in response to Mr. Klausutis's letter[,] 'We've been working to expand existing product features and policies so we can more effectively address things like this going forward....' Mr. Pacilio did not elaborate on what changes the company would make...."(Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

~~~ Kara Swisher of the New York Times: "The real issue is the very serious collateral damage of this fight, which is the post-mortem libel of Ms. Klausutis and the ensuing suffering of her husband and family. They are the victims, of Mr. Trump and of Twitter's inability to manage its troubled relationship with him." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

~~~ Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post: "The president of the United States has no decency. It is time for the social media platform he uses to spread vile conspiracy theories to show some -- or at the very least, to follow what it claims to be its policies and the rules that it enforces where others are concerned.... To Trump, suggesting that [Joe] Scarborough had something to do with [Lori Klausutis's] death is just another way of stoking his political base, which feasts on his lies. But the real pain has fallen on the late woman's family, and especially her widower, Timothy J. Klausutis.... Twitter ... is a private company that regularly blocks or bans users for abuses far less offensive than the ones Trump commits on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis.... By taking one small step in the interest of decency -- removing those tweets that soil the memory of Lori Klausutis -- Twitter has an opportunity to show that its supposed standards actually mean something." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

~~~ (Right-wing) National Review Editors: "... Trump's series of tweets the last two weeks about MSNBC host Joe Scarborough has been grotesque even by his standards.... It's unworthy of a partisan blogger, let alone the president of the United States." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

** Aaron Rupar of Vox: "President Donald Trump's impromptu news conference late on Tuesday afternoon began with him musing about taking insulin just for fun and ended with him explaining his opposition to mail-in voting by characterizing voting as 'an honor' (it's actually a right). The stuff he said in between wasn't any less wacky.... The first question Trump fielded was from Jeff Mason of Reuters, who asked him to explain a retweet he posted on Monday seemingly mocking ... Joe Biden for wearing a mask during a public appearance earlier in the day.... 'He was standing outside with his wife, perfect conditions, perfect weather -- when they're inside they don't wear masks,' Trump said. 'And so I thought it was very unusual he had one on.'... Then, as Mason tried to ask a follow-up question, Trump cut him off and asked him to remove his mask. Mason refused, prompting Trump to dismiss mask-wearing as an effort to be 'politically correct.' 'You want to be politically correct,' Trump said. 'No sir, I just want to wear the mask,' Mason responded." --s

Brian Mann of NPR: "When President Trump took office in 2017, his team stopped work on new federal regulations that would have forced the healthcare industry to prepare for an airborne infectious disease pandemic like COVID-19. That decision is documented in federal records reviewed by NPR. 'If that rule had gone into effect, then every hospital, every nursing home would essentially have to have a plan where they made sure they had enough respirators and they were prepared for this sort of pandemic,' said David Michaels, who at the time served as head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. There are still no specific federal regulations protecting healthcare workers from deadly airborne pathogens like influenza, tuberculosis or the coronavirus." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Alex Ward of Vox: "Trump has framed the fight against the coronavirus as a war against an 'invisible enemy.' But if this is a war, Trump has been a disastrous commander in chief.... Americans must not only suffer the indignity of being drafted into Trump's war, then, but also suffer the indignity of losing it.... It's as outrageous as if Trump had sent actual troops into an actual war with no war plan.... On top of that, Trump is already declaring victory despite the war being far from over." --s

Jesse Byrnes of The Hill: "Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)& late Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit from House Republicans seeking to block the chamber from holding proxy voting, in which members vote for colleagues remotely on the House floor. Pelosi issued a statement calling the lawsuit a 'sad stunt' aimed at distracting from new efforts for an additional relief bill amid the coronavirus pandemic.... The House is slated to hold its first remote votes on Wednesday afternoon." --s

Alyssa Fowers & William Wen of the Washington Post: "A third of Americans are showing signs of clinical anxiety or depression, Census Bureau data shows, the most definitive and alarming sign yet of the psychological toll exacted by the coronavirus pandemic.... The findings suggest a huge jump from before the pandemic. For example, on one question about depressed mood, the percentage reporting such symptoms was double that found in a 2014 national survey.... Th[e]se answers provide a real-time window into the country's collective mental health after three months of fear, isolation, soaring unemployment and continuing uncertainty." --s

Robin Respaut & Deborah Nelson of Reuters: "New diagnoses of one of the deadliest cancers fell by one-third in March and April as U.S. physicians and patients halted appointments and screenings during the COVID-19 outbreak.... The findings are particularly alarming because colorectal cancer is the nation's second-leading cause of cancer deaths, according to the American Cancer Society." --s

Morgan Chalfant & Jordan Chainey of The Hill: "President Trump on Tuesday evening urged House Republicans to vote against a surveillance bill that will be brought to the floor this week after lawmakers reached an agreement to vote on a key provision." --s

Bloomberg: "Three years after Donald Trump campaigned for president pledging a factory renaissance, the opposite appears to be happening. Manufacturing made up 11% of gross domestic product in the second quarter, the smallest share in data going back to 1947 and down from 11.1% in the prior period, a Commerce Department report showed Tuesday." --s

Heather Vogell of TPM: "A decade ago, loan filings showed Trump Towerin New York City had a reported profit of about $13.3 million. But when the tower refinanced its debt soon after, the profits for the same year -- 2010 -- somehow appeared higher. A new lender listed the profits as $16.1 million, or 21% more than they had been recorded previously. The next year's earnings for the building also 'improved' between the two filings. Profits for 2011 were listed as 12% higher under the new loan than the old, according to reports by loan servicers and data provider Trepp.... The discrepancies in the tower profits match a pattern described in a whistleblower complaint filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which ProPublica revealed this month.... The SEC has not taken any public action in response to [the] complaint; the agency declined to comment. Altering past profits without providing an explanation is 'highly questionable,' [said] John Coffee, a professor at Columbia Law School and an expert in securities regulation[.]" --s

Sara Morrison of Vox: "Elon Musk is about to send humans into space. The billionaire's rocket ship company SpaceX is scheduled to launch its first crewed spaceflight on Wednesday. If all goes as planned, Crew Dragon Demo-2 will be the first time humans have taken off for space from American soil since the NASA Space Shuttle program's final mission in 2011. It will also be the first crewed spaceflight from a private company, ever. The stakes are high. A successful mission may begin a new era of space exploration, taking it out of the hands of governments ... and into the hands of private businesses. If Demo-2 fails, it could be a long time before crewed spaceflights return to the United States." --s

Kathryn Watson of CBS: "Top Senate Republican Chuck Grassley said Tuesday that he isn't satisfied with the White House's explanation for the president's recent dismissal of multiple inspectors general. In a span of six weeks, the president removed five officials from posts leading their respective agencies' inspector general offices. Grassley had demanded the White House provide reasoning for the president's decision to fire or replace the inspectors general, beyond the explanation that the president has the prerogative to do so. But in a letter to Grassley on Tuesday, White House counsel Pat Cipollone simply underlined the president's authority to oust inspectors general without providing novel information about why the watchdogs were removed." --s

Summer Concepcion of TPM: "The Justice Department's investigation into Sen. Richard Burr's (R-NC) pre-coronavirus stock trading activity continues, despite dropping similar stock sale probes into three other senators. According to a Wall Street Journal report on Tuesday, federal prosecutors are informing attorneys who represent Sens. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA), Jim Inhofe (R-OK) and Diane Feinstein (D-CA) that the Justice Department is closing its investigations into their trading that began two months ago." --s ~~~

~~~ Joel Elbert of the Nashville Tennessean: "With a global pandemic threatening to hit the United States earlier this year, U.S. Rep. Phil Roe made hundreds of financial transactions, buying stocks in companies now working on vaccines and selling other shares before a historic market plunge in March, according to a review of his financial records by The Tennessean, part of the USA TODAY Network.... Roe ... announced in January he is not seeking reelection[.]" --s

Presidential Race/Elections 2020

Matthew Yglesias of Vox: "Former Vice President Joe Biden ... is a mainstream Democrat, and as the Democratic Party has grown broadly more progressive in recent years, he is now running on arguably the most progressive policy platform of any Democratic nominee in history.... It's a detailed and aggressive agenda that includes doubling the minimum wage and tripling funding for schools with low-income students. He is proposing the most sweeping overhaul of immigration policy in a generation, the biggest pro-union push in three generations, and the most ambitious environmental agenda of all time. If Democrats take back the Senate in the fall, Biden could make his agenda happen." --s

Alabama. Kim Chandler of the AP : "Alabama's requirement to have witnesses sign an absentee ballot is not a violation of the Voting Rights Act, the U.S. Department of Justice argued in a brief Monday. The [Bill Barr] Justice Department filed the statement of interest in a lawsuit that contends Alabama's election procedures jeopardize the health of voters -- especially older and black voters and those with disabilities -- during the coronavirus outbreak. The Justice Department said Alabama's absentee witness requirement does not violate the Voting Rights Act." --s

California. William Cummings of USA Today: "The Republican Party launched a legal battle to block California Gov. Gavin Newsom from sending all voters in his state mail-in ballots for the general election, arguing the move is unconstitutional and invites voter fraud. The Republican National Committee, National Republican Congressional Committee and California Republican Party filed a lawsuit Sunday against Newsom and Secretary of State Alex Padilla in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Florida. Mark Stern of Slate: "The first thing you need to understand about Florida's poll tax -- which U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle sharply limited on Sunday -- is that the state has no idea how to implement it.... The scheme might function properly if Florida could identify residents with unpaid court charges and calculate how much they owe.... [T]he state ... does not know who owes courts money or how much they owe.... This chaos gives people with felony convictions two choices. They can register to vote and hope that state prosecutors do not later dig up court debts and bring criminal charges against them. Or, to avoid risking jail time, they can surrender their constitutional right to vote. On Sunday, in a 125-page decision, Hinkle ruled this predicament unconstitutional." --s ~~~

~~~ New York Times Editors: "The opinion, by Judge Robert L. Hinkle of U.S. District Court, is 125 pages long, but nearly everything you need to know is summed up in its opening sentence: 'The State of Florida has adopted a system under which nearly a million otherwise-eligible citizens will be allowed to vote only if they pay an amount of money.' That system violates at least two provisions of the Constitution, Judge Hinkle ruled: the Equal Protection Clause and the 24th Amendment, which bans poll taxes.... In the 2018 midterms, when Floridians overwhelmingly voted to amend the State Constitution to eliminate a lifetime ban on voting by people with a criminal conviction who had completed their sentences.... It was one of the biggest one-time enfranchisements in American history and part of a decades-long trend in dozens of states to make it easier for people with criminal records to get their voting rights back.... [Republican legislators responded by passing] S.B. 7066, on the grounds that the amendment restored voting rights upon the completion of 'all terms of sentence, including parole and probation.'... Floridians who believe in a fair and open democracy must spread the word, help their fellow citizens register and ensure as many of them as possible get to the polls, both in November and in the years to come."

Beyond the Beltway

California. Scott Stedman of Forensic News: "Forensic News can exclusively report that a District Attorney's office in Central California is considering a slew of charges against a businessman, Yorai Benzeevi, and his associates who hired the Israeli intelligence company Psy Group to intervene in a 2017 local hospital board election, according to multiple sources directly involved. Psy Group itself is under criminal investigation as well, and the sources say that charges may be filed in the coming weeks.... To date, more than 50 search warrants have been executed." --s

Minnesota. Jared Goyette of the Guardian: "Hundreds of protesters gathered in the city [of Minneapolis] on Tuesday evening to demand justice after [George] Floyd, who was African American, was killed when a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck as he lay on the ground during an arrest. Footage of the incident showed Floyd shouting 'I cannot breathe' and 'Don't kill me!'...The FBI and authorities in Minnesota announced on Tuesday they had launched an investigation into Floyd's death, and the incident is being investigated by the FBI for possible civil rights violations. Four police officers involved in the incident have been fired." --s ~~~

~~~ Christine Hauser of the New York Times: "The F.B.I. and Minnesota law enforcement authorities are investigating the arrest of a black man who died after being handcuffed and pinned to the ground by an officer's knee, in an episode filmed by a bystander and denounced by the mayor on Tuesday. The arrest took place on Monday evening, the Minneapolis Police Department said in a statement, after officers responded to a call about a man suspected of forgery.... The bystander video that circulated widely on social media Monday night shows a white Minneapolis police officer pressing his knee into a black man's neck during an arrest, as the man repeatedly says 'I can't breathe' and 'please I can't breathe.'" An NBC News story is here. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

New York. Amir Vera & Laura Ly of CNN: "A white woman has apologized for calling police on a black man bird-watching in Central Park on Monday morning after the two argued about her unleashed dog. Amy Cooper told CNN she wanted to 'publicly apologize to everyone.'... She was walking her dog Monday while Christian Cooper (no relation) was bird-watching at a wooded area of Central Park called the Ramble. They both told CNN the dispute began because her dog was not on a leash, contrary to the Ramble's rules, according to the park's website. Christian Cooper recorded video of part of their encounter and posted it on Facebook, where it has since been shared thousands of times and became a trending topic on Twitter. 'I'm taking a picture and calling the cops,' Amy Cooper is heard saying in the video. 'I'm going to tell them there's an African American man threatening my life.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Way Beyond

Australia. Calla Wahlquist of the Guardian: "A sacred site in Western Australia that showed 46,000 years of continual occupation and provided a 4,000-year-old genetic link to present-day traditional owners has been destroyed in the expansion of an iron ore mine [by Rio Tinto]. The cave in Juukan Gorge in the Hammersley Ranges, about 60km from Mt Tom Price, is one of the oldest in the western Pilbara region and the only inland site in Australia to show signs of continual human occupation through the last Ice Age. It was blasted along with another sacred site on Sunday.

Hong Kong. Helen Davidson & Verna Yu of the Guardian: "Thousands of armed police have flooded the streets of Hong Kong in an unprecedented show of force to prevent protests against a law criminalising ridicule of China's national anthem.... Opponents say the anthem bill is another step towards authoritarianism, and could be weaponised against pro-democracy activists and legislators.... [T]he vote is scheduled for 4 June -- the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre and another source of controversy given Hong Kong's vigil this year won't be allowed. On Sunday thousands joined an unauthorised protest against both the anthem bill and Beijing's plan to impose national security laws, which was quickly cracked down on by police." --s

U.K. Antony Cuthbertson of the Independent: "The UK now has the highest rate of confirmed deaths from Covid-19 worldwide, averaging close to 5 in every million people per day. Figures from the last seven days show that the average death rate in the UK is now more than that of France and Italy combined. The second highest death rate over the last seven days is in Sweden, where the government decided against imposing a lockdown to prevent the spread of the deadly virus." --s

The Commentariat -- May 26, 2020

Afternoon Update:

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

Brian Mann of NPR: "When President Trump took office in 2017, his team stopped work on new federal regulations that would have forced the healthcare industry to prepare for an airborne infectious disease pandemic like COVID-19. That decision is documented in federal records reviewed by NPR. 'If that rule had gone into effect, then every hospital, every nursing home would essentially have to have a plan where they made sure they had enough respirators and they were prepared for this sort of pandemic,' said David Michaels, who at the time served as head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. There are still no specific federal regulations protecting healthcare workers from deadly airborne pathogens like influenza, tuberculosis or the coronavirus."

Maggie Astor & Davey Alba of the New York Times: "The widower of Lori Klausutis, whose death President Trump has used to smear the MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, is asking Twitter to remove the president's tweets on the subject. Twitter said on Tuesday that it would not. In a letter to Jack Dorsey, the chief executive of Twitter, last week, Timothy Klausutis said Mr. Trump had violated Twitter's terms of service by falsely suggesting that Mr. Scarborough murdered Ms. Klausutis in 2001 when he was a congressman and she was an intern in his office. Ms. Klausutis, 28, actually died as a result of a heart condition that caused her to collapse at work and hit her head on her desk. 'An ordinary user like me would be banished from the platform for such a tweet,' Mr. Klausutis wrote in the letter..., 'but I am only asking that these tweets be removed.' Mr. Trump has repeatedly promoted the conspiracy theory against Mr. Scarborough.... In a series of tweets over the past several weeks, Mr. Trump has urged law enforcement in Florida to 'open a cold case' and suggested falsely that Mr. Scarborough 'got away with murder.' He had tweeted about the same false conspiracy as far back as 2017.... Nick Pacilio, said in a statement in response to Mr. Klausutis's letter[,] 'We've been working to expand existing product features and policies so we can more effectively address things like this going forward....' Mr. Pacilio did not elaborate on what changes the company would make...." ~~~

~~~ Kara Swisher of the New York Times: "The real issue is the very serious collateral damage of this fight, which is the post-mortem libel of Ms. Klausutis and the ensuing suffering of her husband and family. They are the victims, of Mr. Trump and of Twitter's inability to manage its troubled relationship with him." ~~~

~~~ Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post: "The president of the United States has no decency. It is time for the social media platform he uses to spread vile conspiracy theories to show some -- or at the very least, to follow what it claims to be its policies and the rules that it enforces where others are concerned.... To Trump, suggesting that [Joe] Scarborough had something to do with [Lori Klausutis's] death is just another way of stoking his political base, which feasts on his lies. But the real pain has fallen on the late woman's family, and especially her widower, Timothy J. Klausutis.... Twitter ... is a private company that regularly blocks or bans users for abuses far less offensive than the ones Trump commits on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis.... By taking one small step in the interest of decency -- removing those tweets that soil the memory of Lori Klausutis -- Twitter has an opportunity to show that its supposed standards actually mean something." ~~~

~~~ (Right-wing) National Review Editors: "... Trump's series of tweets the last two weeks about MSNBC host Joe Scarborough has been grotesque even by his standards.... It's unworthy of a partisan blogger, let alone the president of the United States."

William Cummings of USA Today: "The Republican Party launched a legal battle to block California Gov. Gavin Newsom from sending all voters in his state mail-in ballots for the general election, arguing the move is unconstitutional and invites voter fraud. The Republican National Committee, National Republican Congressional Committee and California Republican Party filed a lawsuit Sunday against Newsom and Secretary of State Alex Padilla in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California."

Minnesota. Christine Hauser of the New York Times: "The F.B.I. and Minnesota law enforcement authorities are investigating the arrest of a black man who died after being handcuffed and pinned to the ground by an officer's knee, in an episode filmed by a bystander and denounced by the mayor on Tuesday. The arrest took place on Monday evening, the Minneapolis Police Department said in a statement, after officers responded to a call about a man suspected of forgery.... The bystander video that circulated widely on social media Monday night shows a white Minneapolis police officer pressing his knee into a black man's neck during an arrest, as the man repeatedly says 'I can't breathe' and 'please I can't breathe.'" An NBC News story is here.

New York. Amir Vera & Laura Ly of CNN: "A white woman has apologized for calling police on a black man bird-watching in Central Park on Monday morning after the two argued about her unleashed dog. Amy Cooper told CNN she wanted to 'publicly apologize to everyone.'... She was walking her dog Monday while Christian Cooper (no relation) was bird-watching at a wooded area of Central Park called the Ramble. They both told CNN the dispute began because her dog was not on a leash, contrary to the Ramble's rules, according to the park's website. Christian Cooper recorded video of part of their encounter and posted it on Facebook, where it has since been shared thousands of times and became a trending topic on Twitter. 'I'm taking a picture and calling the cops,' Amy Cooper is heard saying in the video. 'I'm going to tell them there's an African American man threatening my life.'"

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The New York Times' live updates of coronavirus developments Monday are here. The Washington Post's live updates for Monday are here. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Today's he great vampire squid is the Trump administration, & the giant sucking sound you hear is the vampire squid hosing up your money & tossing it with all eight arms to the rich. ~~~

~~~ ** Jesse Drucker, et al., of the New York Times: "The Department of Health and Human Services has disbursed $72 billion in grants since April to hospitals and other health care providers through the bailout program, which was part of the CARES Act economic stimulus package. The department plans to eventually distribute more than $100 billion more. So far, the riches are flowing in large part to hospitals that had already built up deep financial reserves to help them withstand an economic storm. Smaller, poorer hospitals are receiving tiny amounts of federal aid by comparison. Twenty large recipients ... have received a total of more than $5 billion in recent weeks, according to an analysis of federal data by Good Jobs First, a research group. Those hospital chains were already sitting on more than $108 billion in cash, according to regulatory filings and the bond-rating firms S&P Global and Fitch.... After the CARES Act was passed in March, hospital industry lobbyists reached out to senior Health and Human Services officials to discuss how the money would be distributed.... The department then devised formulas to quickly dispense tens of billions of dollars to thousands of hospitals -- and those formulas favored large, wealthy institutions.... Hospitals that serve a greater proportion of wealthier, privately insured patients got twice as much relief as those focused on low-income patients with Medicaid or no coverage at all...." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Michael Corkery, et al., of the New York Times: "Along with nursing homes and prisons, meatpacking facilities have proven to be places where the [corona]virus spreads rapidly. But as dozens of plants that closed because of outbreaks begin reopening, meat companies' reluctance to disclose detailed case counts makes it difficult to tell whether the contagion is contained or new cases are emerging even with new safety measures in place. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said there were nearly 5,000 meatpacking workers infected with the virus as of the end of last month. But the nonprofit group Food & Environment Reporting Network estimated last week that the number has climbed to more than 17,000. There have been 66 meatpacking deaths, the group said.... The meat companies are not legally required to disclose how many workers are sick. But legal experts say privacy [-- which the companies often invoke --] is not a valid reason for keeping the numbers from the public. The lack of full disclosure also demonstrates the industry's sway as a major employer in the Midwest and the South." ~~~

~~~ Taylor Telford of the Washington Post: "Tyson Foods, the largest meat processor in the United States, has transformed its facilities across the country since legions of its workers started getting sick from the novel coronavirus. It has set up on-site medical clinics, screened employees for fevers at the beginning of their shifts, required the use of facial coverings, installed plastic dividers between stations and taken a host of other steps to slow the spread. Despite those efforts, the number of Tyson employees with covid-19 has exploded from under 1,600 a month ago to more than 7,000 today, according to a Washington Post analysis of news reports and public records. What has happened at Tyson -- and the meat industry overall -- shows how difficult getting the nation back to normal is, even in essential fields such as food processing."

Axios: "The World Health Organization is temporarily pausing tests of the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a coronavirus treatment in order to review safety concerns, the agency's director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesu said Monday.... The decision comes after a retrospective review published in The Lancet found that coronavirus patients who took hydroxychloroquine or its related drug chloroquine were more likely to die or develop an irregular heart rhythm that can lead to sudden cardiac death, compared to those who did nothing.... President Trump has touted the drug as a 'game-changer' and revealed last week that he had been taking it as a preventative against the coronavirus after consulting with the White House doctor." (Also linked yesterday.)

Will Weissert of the AP: “Joe Biden made his first in-person appearance in more than two months on Monday as he marked Memorial Day by laying a wreath at a veterans park near his Delaware home.... Biden and his wife, Jill, laid a wreath of white flowers tied with a white bow, and bowed their heads in silence at the park. He saluted. 'Never forget the sacrifices that these men and women made,' he said after.... 'I feel great to be out here.' Biden told reporters, his words muffled through his black cloth mask. His visit to the park was unannounced and there was no crowd waiting for him. But Biden briefly greeted a county official and another man, both wearing face masks and standing a few feet away. Biden also yelled to another, larger group standing nearby, 'Thank you for your service.' His campaign says Biden has gone to the park for Memorial Day often in the past, though services were canceled Monday in the pandemic." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Via AZ Spot on Tumbler.

To your right: the Legacy of Donald J. Trump, the Worst President* in U.S. History. Thanks to RAS for the find. (See Sunday's Commentariat for context). ~~~

~~~ ** Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post: "The long Memorial Day weekend gave the pandemic an indelible visual image: President Trump, wearing a ball cap but no mask, enjoying himself on his Northern Virginia golf course. Last week, you will recall, Trump declared it was 'essential' that Americans be able to spend Sunday at church services. He chose to head for the links instead. Primary blame for those 100,000 deaths must go to the killer itself -- the novel coronavirus.... But not all of covid-19' victims had to die. Some responsibility must be laid at the feet of a president who ignored the threat until it was too late, who failed to mount an adequate response and who still, after so many lonely deaths and socially distanced funerals, insists that the enemy will somehow just magically disappear."

Darlene Superville of the AP: "... Donald Trump honored America's fallen service members on Monday as he commemorated Memoria Day in back-to-back appearances in the midst of the pandemic. 'Together we will vanquish the virus and America will rise from this crisis to new and even greater heights,' Trump said during a ceremony at Baltimore's historic Fort McHenry.... [At Arlington National Cemetery,] Trump, maskless as always in public, gave no remarks. He approached a wreath already in place, touching it and giving a salute. Trump then traveled to Baltimore, to the chagrin of the city's mayor, and noted that tens of thousands of service members and national guard personnel are currently 'on the front lines of our war against this terrible virus.... No obstacle, no challenge and no threat is a match for the sheer determination of the American people.'" Mrs. McC: Trump accidentally forgot to remember any of the 100,000 Americans who have died from Covid-19. Not even medical personnel & others who contracted the virus & died performing their essential jobs during the pandemic. On Memorial Day. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

~~~ Tom Porter of Business Insider: "... Donald Trump shared a tweet mocking ... Joe Biden for wearing a protective face mask when he attended a Memorial Day ceremony. 'This might help explain why Trump doesn't like to wear a mask in public. Biden today,' read the message by Brit Hume, a Fox News political commentator, alongside a message of Biden wearing a black mask and sunglasses. Biden wore the mask when he appeared in public for the first time in more than two months to lay a wreath at a military memorial in Delaware. His decision contrasted with Trump's ongoing refusal to wear one, despite the US recording the most coronavirus infections in the world." ~~~

~~~ Golf War, Ctd. John Bowden of the Hill: "President Trump on Monday resumed his attacks aimed at former Vice President Joe Biden and former President Obama, a day after Biden slammed him on Twitter for golfing as the coronavirus pandemic rages across America. Trump tweeted Monday morning that the mainstream news media covered his Virginia golf club trip this weekend like it was a 'mortal sin' while ignoring what he said were his opponent's shortcomings: 'Sleepy Joe's poor work ethic, or all of the time Obama spent on the golf course.'" (See also the video Biden released Saturday, embedded under Presidential Race below.) ~~~

     ~~~ Daniel Dale & Holmes Lybrand of CNN: "Trump denounced the media, which he called 'sick with hatred and dishonesty,' for supposedly failing to mention that Saturday was his first time golfing in three months. (CNN, among other outlets, did note that it was his first golf outing since March 8.) Trump also accused the media of failing to talk about 'all of the time Obama spent on the golf course, often flying to Hawaii in a big, fully loaded 747, to play. What did that do to the so-called Carbon Footprint?' Trump has spent much more time playing golf than Obama did through this point of the term -- after repeatedly attacking Obama's golfing and claiming he would not play if he got elected himself. Just Trump's airplane trips to his Mar-a-Lago Club and residence in Florida, from which he has often taken a motorcade ride to a nearby golf course he owns, have required far more air travel than Obama's once-a-year Hawaii vacations did through this point in the term." ~~~

~~~ More Projection. Trump did take time out on Memorial Day "to call a sitting congressman and Marine Corps veteran 'an American fraud.' In the Monday afternoon tweet, Trump also misspelled Democratic congressman Conor Lamb's name, calling him 'Connor Lamm.'..." ~~~

~~~ AND that's how Donald Trump spent his Memorial Day. Plus this: ~~

~~~ Alex Isenstadt & David Cohen of Politico: In a series of four tweets, "Donald Trump on Monday morning threatened to move August's Republican National Convention out of [Charlotte,] North Carolina unless there are guarantees the state will let everyone attend.... The tweet[s] amounted to a threat. The GOP convention is expected to draw tens of millions of dollars to North Carolina's economy, which has been devastated by the coronavirus. [Gov. Roy] Cooper [D] is facing reelection this fall, and his handling of the pandemic -- and his ability to bolster the state's economy -- is likely to be a key issue. Monday morning's tweets fit with the president's trend of attacking states governed by Democrats via Twitter over restrictions in those states and requests for federal assistance.... Mecklenberg County, which encompasses Charlotte, has emerged as a hot spot for the virus and the area has been reporting a growing number of cases." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

      ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Trump wrote that "@RoyCooperNC is still in Shutdown mood." Either he can't spell "mode" or he was thinking "MOOM."

"Much Very Good Information." Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post: "After a morning of golf, President Trump was up late Sunday night tweeting, this time about the reopening of America's schools.... At 10:41 p.m., Trump tweeted: 'Schools in our country should be opened ASAP. Much very good information now available. @SteveHiltonx @FoxNews'... Shortly before Trump tweeted, Steve Hilton of Fox News [was] urging schools to reopen 'schools now before you do even more needless damage.' He said wearing masks was 'fine' but compulsory temperature checks were 'unscientific nonsense' and 'totally pointless,' and social distancing rules were 'over-prescriptive' and 'arbitrary.'" A Daily Beast item is here. Mrs. McC: As far as I can tell from the Googles Hilton is not an epidemiologist or an educator or anything but a former British political hack. But much very good information. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Paul Waldman of the Washington Post "... review[s] what our president has been up to in the past few days [all of which we've covered on Reality Chex].... The truth is that Trump is not much more despicable of a human being than he has always been; it's just that standard Trumpian behavior becomes more horrifying when it occurs during an ongoing national crisis. It is reality that changed around him, and he was incapable of responding to it.... In the future, when we look back on this dark period, we should resist the temptation to focus solely on Trump himself. To do so would be to excuse [Republicans] who know exactly what he is but pretend they can work to keep him in office and remain unsullied. They cannot, and their moral culpability becomes clearer every day."

Akhilleus has a very good post in yesterday's Comments section linking the Trumpocalypse to the infamous 1971 Powell Memo.

Tom Nichols of the Atlantic: "... since his first day as a presidential candidate, I have been baffled by one mystery in particular: Why do working-class white men -- the most reliable component of Donald Trump's base -- support someone who is, by their own standards, the least masculine man ever to hold the modern presidency?... Courage, honesty, respect, an economy of words, a bit of modesty, and a willingness to take responsibility are all virtues prized by the self-identified class of hard-working men, the stand-up guys, among whom I was raised. And yet, many of these same men expect none of those characteristics from Trump, who is a vain, cowardly, lying, vulgar, jabbering blowhard.... Trump ... is not manly because he is not a man. He is a boy. It should not be a surprise then, that Trump is a hero to a culture in which so many men are already trapped in perpetual adolescence.... I think that working men, the kind raised as I was, know what kind of 'man' Trump is. And still, the gratification they get from seeing Trump enrage the rest of the country is enough to earn their indulgence."

Anne Kim of the Washington Monthly: "Trump is unlikely to get the kind of robust [economic] rebound he's hoping for -- in large part due to sabotage inflicted by his own policies.... As a consequence [of the Trump/Republican massive tax break for corporations & the super-rich], America entered the Covid-19 pandemic already financially crippled. Now, in the face of the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, it is ill-positioned to aid its citizens, let alone rebuild for the future.... The only thing the [2017 tax bill] really accomplished was to blow a crater-sized hole in the federal budget, which until then had seen six straight years of declining deficits under President Barack Obama. By 2019, the federal budget deficit had ballooned to nearly $1 trillion, double the level in 2015.... Now, the nation is plunging into an even vaster chasm of debt to finance its recovery. Since the passage of the first tranche of coronavirus relief bills..., the federal budget deficit is projected to reach a whopping 17.9 percent of GDP this year, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a level unmatched since World War II. Public debt, meanwhile, will exceed the size of the entire economy, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB)."

Rishika Dugyala of Politico (May 24): "The Trump administration on Sunday announced that it was restricting entry for travelers from Brazil, which ranks only behind the United States in the number of coronavirus cases, according to a Johns Hopkins University database. In a White House proclamation..., Donald Trump said he was restricting nearly all non-U.S. citizens from coming to the U.S. if they were physically present in Brazil during the 14-day period prior to travel. Green card holders, close relatives of U.S. citizens and flight crew members are exempt.... Vox recently reported that [Brazil's president Jair] Bolsonaro mishandled the outbreak by downplaying the seriousness, vocally opposing state governors' decisions to impose lockdown measures, pushing for businesses to reopen and personally attending anti-lockdown protests. The Brazilian president also touted the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, which has potentially lethal side effects. Many of his positions align with what Trump himself has championed in the U.S." Mrs. McC: The last time Brazil sent a rep to meet with Trump, the envoy was a coronavirus carrier. ~~~

~~~ Pedro Fonseca of Reuters: "Brazil daily coronavirus deaths were higher than fatalities in the United States for the first time over the last 24 hours, according to the country's Health Ministry. Brazil registered 807 deaths over the last 24 hours, whereas 620 died in the United States."

North Carolina. Dave Jamieson of the Huffington Post: "The hair salon SmartCuts reopened its doors in Wilkesboro, North Carolina, on Memorial Day weekend after a long closure due to the coronavirus. But ...a sign posted on the shop window [read]: 'Due to the number of Tyson employees who have tested positive for Covid19, and given the close contact experienced during our services, we are unable to serve Tyson employees....' The local Tyson poultry processing plant is one of the largest employers in the area. Like other poultry, beef and pork facilities around the country, it has become a hotbed for the coronavirus ― with 570 workers recently testing positive out of around 2,200... Amy McGinty, a ... 13-year Tyson employee said people look at her and her colleagues 'like a disease.... They're getting our food, but they won't service us,' McGinty told HuffPost." Mrs. McC: It's probably worth noting that hair salons are also coronavirus hot spots.

Presidential Race

Paul Krugman of the New York Times: "Last week Joe Biden made an off-the-cuff joke that could be interpreted as taking African-American votes for granted. It wasn't a big deal -- Biden, who loyally served Barack Obama, has long had a strong affinity with black voters, and he has made a point of issuing policy proposals aimed at narrowing racial health and wealth gaps. Still, Biden apologized. And in so doing he made a powerful case for choosing him over Donald Trump in November. You see, Biden, unlike Trump, is capable of admitting error.... In some ways Trump is a pitiful figure -- or would be, if his character flaws weren't leading to so many deaths.... In some ways Trump is a pitiful figure -- or would be, if his character flaws weren't leading to so many deaths."

This Twitter ad, released Saturday, is one of the many things that irritated Donald Trump this past weekend:

Nearly 100,000 lives have been lost, and tens of millions are out of work.

Meanwhile, the president spent his day golfing. pic.twitter.com/H1BVNtgVjA

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) May 24, 2020

Congressional Race, California. Kevin McCarthy Pretends to Have Some Principles. Ally Mutnick of Politico: "House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is rescinding his endorsement of GOP congressional candidate Ted Howze after Politico uncovered dozens of derogatory social media posts from his accounts. 'In light of Mr. Howze's disappointing comments, Leader McCarthy has withdrawn his endorsement. As the Leader has previously stated, hateful rhetoric has no place within the Republican Party,' Drew Florio, a McCarthy spokesperson, said in a statement Monday."

Meet Bob & Doug. Christian Davenport of the Washington Post: "Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley are about to fly together in one of the most important launches NASA has attempted in years: a crewed test flight of SpaceX';s Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station, set for Wednesday, if the weather cooperates. On Monday, the Space Force's weather office at Cape Canaveral predicted a 60 percent chance weather would prevent a launch. The mission would be the first launch of NASA astronauts from U.S. soil since the space shuttle was retired in 2011, and the first by a private company of people to orbit." The Guardian has a related brief story here.

Forgotten Heroes. Katie Hafner of the New York Times: "They never met, but their early lives ran a strikingly similar course. They were both Chinese-American women who thwarted layers of prejudice and preconception to become World War II pilots. One died young, while transporting a fighter plane. The other lived to 89 and went on to become a scientist. Their names were Hazel Ying Lee and Maggie Gee, and they were WASPs, or Women Airforce Service Pilots. In 1942, as the Air Force faced a dearth of male pilots to sustain the war effort at home, the pilot Jacqueline Cochran persuaded the chief of the U.S. Army Air Force to recruit female pilots. More than 25,000 women applied. Only 1,830 were accepted into flight training. Of those, 1,074 completed the training."

Way Beyond the Beltway

U.K. Charlie Cooper of Politico: "A junior minister in Boris Johnson's government resigned on Tuesday over top aide Dominic Cummings' alleged breach of the U.K.'s lockdown guidelines, saying he could not 'in good faith' tell his constituents that the advisers' actions were justifiable. Douglas Ross, under secretary of state for Scotland, wrote to Johnson saying that the public reaction to reports of Cummings' 260-mile drive from London to Durham in late March demonstrated that the adviser's 'interpretation of the government guidance was not shared by the vast majority of people who have done what the government asked.'" ~~~

~~~ Simon Murphy of the Guardian: "Boris Johnson should sack Dominic Cummings over his 264-mile lockdown Durham trip, according to the chair of a leading doctors' association who has highlighted that medics are outraged at the actions of the prime minister's top aide. Dr Rinesh Parmar ... said Johnson's defence of his adviser risked undermining public trust and prompting people to use it as an excuse to break the rules themselves.... Downing Street is coming under increasing pressure over Cummings's behaviour, first revealed by a joint Guardian and Daily Mirror investigation, as the adviser now faces a possible police investigation.... One NHS doctor who works in a Covid-19 ward has pledged to resign by the end of the week if Cummings does not -- warning that others may follow suit." (Also linked yesterday.)

The Commentariat -- May 25, 2020

Afternoon Update:

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

Today's great vampire squid is the Trump administration, & the giant sucking sound you hear is the vampire squid hosing up your money & tossing it with all eight arms to the rich. ~~~

~~~ ** Jesse Drucker, et al., of the New York Times: "The Department of Health and Human Services has disbursed $72 billion in grants since April to hospitals and other health care providers through the bailout program, which was part of the CARES Act economic stimulus package. The department plans to eventually distribute more than $100 billion more. So far, the riches are flowing in large part to hospitals that had already built up deep financial reserves to help them withstand an economic storm. Smaller, poorer hospitals are receiving tiny amounts of federal aid by comparison. Twenty large recipients ... have received a total of more than $5 billion in recent weeks, according to an analysis of federal data by Good Jobs First, a research group. Those hospital chains were already sitting on more than $108 billion in cash, according to regulatory filings and the bond-rating firms S&P Global and Fitch.... After the CARES Act was passed in March, hospital industry lobbyists reached out to senior Health and Human Services officials to discuss how the money would be distributed.... The department then devised formulas to quickly dispense tens of billions of dollars to thousands of hospitals -- and those formulas favored large, wealthy institutions.... Hospitals that serve a greater proportion of wealthier, privately insured patients got twice as much relief as those focused on low-income patients with Medicaid or no coverage at all...."

Axios: "The World Health Organization is temporarily pausing tests of the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a coronavirus treatment in order to review safety concerns, the agency's director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesu said Monday.... The decision comes after a retrospective review published in The Lancet found that coronavirus patients who took hydroxychloroquine or its related drug chloroquine were more likely to die or develop an irregular heart rhythm that can lead to sudden cardiac death, compared to those who did nothing.... President Trump has touted the drug as a 'game-changer' and revealed last week that he had been taking it as a preventative against the coronavirus after consulting with the White House doctor."

Will Weissert of the AP: “Joe Biden made his first in-person appearance in more than two months on Monday as he marked Memorial Day by laying a wreath at a veterans park near his Delaware home.... Biden and his wife, Jill, laid a wreath of white flowers tied with a white bow, and bowed their heads in silence at the park. He saluted. 'Never forget the sacrifices that these men and women made,' he said after.... 'I feel great to be out here.' Biden told reporters, his words muffled through his black cloth mask. His visit to the park was unannounced and there was no crowd waiting for him. But Biden briefly greeted a county official and another man, both wearing face masks and standing a few feet away. Biden also yelled to another, larger group standing nearby, 'Thank you for your service.' His campaign says Biden has gone to the park for Memorial Day often in the past, though services were canceled Monday in the pandemic."

Darlene Superville of the AP: "... Donald Trump honored America's fallen service members on Monday as he commemorated Memorial Day in back-to-back appearances in the midst of the pandemic. 'Together we will vanquish the virus and America will rise from this crisis to new and even greater heights,' Trump said during a ceremony at Baltimore's historic Fort McHenry.... [At Arlington National Cemetery,] Trump, maskless as always in public, gave no remarks. He approached a wreath already in place, touching it and giving a salute. Trump then traveled to Baltimore, to the chagrin of the city's mayor, and noted that tens of thousands of service members and national guard personnel are currently 'on the front lines of our war against this terrible virus.... No obstacle, no challenge and no threat is a match for the sheer determination of the American people.'" Mrs. McC: Trump accidentally forgot to remember any of the 100,000 Americans who have died from Covid-19. Not even medical personnel & others who contracted the virus & died performing their essential jobs during the pandemic. On Memorial Day. ~~~

~~~ AND that's how Donald Trump spent his Memorial Day. So far. Plus this: ~~~

~~~ Alex Isenstadt & David Cohen of Politico: In a series of four tweets, "Donald Trump on Monday morning threatened to move August's Republican National Convention out of [Charlotte,] North Carolina unless there are guarantees the state will let everyone attend.... The tweet[s] amounted to a threat. The GOP convention is expected to draw tens of millions of dollars to North Carolina's economy, which has been devastated by the coronavirus. [Gov. Roy] Cooper [D] is facing reelection this fall, and his handling of the pandemic -- and his ability to bolster the state's economy -- is likely to be a key issue. Monday morning's tweets fit with the president's trend of attacking states governed by Democrats via Twitter over restrictions in those states and requests for federal assistance.... Mecklenberg County, which encompasses Charlotte, has emerged as a hot spot for the virus and the area has been reporting a growing number of cases." ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Trump wrote that "@RoyCooperNC is still in Shutdown mood." Either he can't spell "mode" or he was thinking "MOOM."

"Much Very Good Information." Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post: "After a morning of golf, President Trump was up late Sunday night tweeting, this time about the reopening of America's schools.... At 10:41 p.m., Trump tweeted: 'Schools in our country should be opened ASAP. Much very good information now available. @SteveHiltonx @FoxNews'... Shortly before Trump tweeted, Steve Hilton of Fox News [was] urging schools to reopen 'schools now before you do even more needless damage.' He said wearing masks was 'fine' but compulsory temperature checks were 'unscientific nonsense' and 'totally pointless,' and social distancing rules were 'over-prescriptive' and 'arbitrary.'" A Daily Beast item is here. Mrs. McC: As far as I can tell from the Googles Hilton is not an epidemiologist or an educator or anything but a former British political hack. But much very good information.

AND contributor RAS came across this commentary on Trump's Memorial Weekend response to the nation's losses of life (see yesterday's Commentariat for context):

Via AZ Spot on Tumbler.

Simon Murphy of the Guardian: "Boris Johnson should sack Dominic Cummings over his 264-mile lockdown Durham trip, according to the chair of a leading doctors' association who has highlighted that medics are outraged at the actions of the prim minister's top aide. Dr Rinesh Parmar ... said Johnson's defence of his adviser risked undermining public trust and prompting people to use it as an excuse to break the rules themselves.... Downing Street is coming under increasing pressure over Cummings's behaviour, first revealed by a joint Guardian and Daily Mirror investigation, as the adviser now faces a possible police investigation.... One NHS doctor who works in a Covid-19 ward has pledged to resign by the end of the week if Cummings does not -- warning that others may follow suit."

~~~~~~~~~~~

New York Times Editors: There are "10 United States military installations across the South that were named for Confederate Army officers during the first half of the 20th century.... The namings reflect a federal embrace of white supremacy that found its most poisonous expression in military installations where black servicemen were deliberately placed under the command of white Southerners.... As the military opened more and more such bases across the country, the history notes, it 'actually spread federally sponsored segregation into areas where it had never before existed with the force of law.' In other words, the base names were part of a broad federal sellout to white supremacy that poisoned the whole of the United States.... Bases named for men who sought to destroy the Union in the name of racial injustice are an insult to the ideals servicemen and women are sworn to uphold -- and an embarrassing artifact of the time when the military itself embraced anti-American values. It is long past time for those bases to be renamed." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

~~~ Ellen Berry of the New York Times on veterans who survived World War II but died at the Holyoke Soldiers' Home in Massachusetts. "With scarce protective gear and a shortage of staff, the facility's administrators combined wards of infected and uninfected men, and the virus spread quickly through a fragile population. Of the 210 veterans who were living in the facility in late March, 89 are now dead, 74 having tested positive for the virus. Almost three-quarters of the veterans inside were infected. It is one of the highest death tolls of any end-of-life facility in the country."

The New York Times' live updates of coronavirus developments Sunday are here. The Washington Post's live updates for Sunday are here. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Jennifer Medina & Robert Gebeloff of the New York Times: "The [coronavirus] devastation ... has been disproportionately felt in blue America, which helps explain why people on opposing sides of a partisan divide that has intensified in the past two decades are thinking about the virus differently. Democrats are far more likely to live in counties where the virus has ravaged the community, while Republicans are more likely to live in counties that have been relatively unscathed by the illness, though they are paying an economic price. Counties won by President Trump in 2016 have reported just 27 percent of the virus infections and 21 percent of the deaths -- even though 45 percent of Americans live in these communities...."~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: So if you're wondering why Trump doesn't care about Covid-19, other than assuring that he himself doesn't get it, it's because the virus is killing more Democrats than Republicans. I wish I were kidding.

Justin Wise of the Hill: "Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Stephen Hahn on Sunday warned that the U.S. has to yet to contain the novel coronavirus, as states gradually reopen and people flock to parks and beaches during Memorial Day weekend.... 'It is up to every individual to protect themselves and their community,' he [said]. 'Social distancing, hand washing and wearing masks protect us all.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

~~~ Adam Kelsey of ABC News: "As Americans continue to emerge from quarantines and stay-at-home orders amid the coronavirus pandemic, ... Donald Trump declared this week that 'we are not closing our country' if the United States is hit by a second wave of infections. But in an interview on ABC's "This Week" Sunday..., [Dr. Deborah Birx] said it is 'difficult to tell' whether such a step may be necessary." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

~~~ Eleanor Mueller of Politico: "Places of worship 'may not be safe for those with preexisting conditions' despite orders from ... Donald Trump that they be allowed to reopen immediately, White House coronavirus coordinator Deborah Birx said Sunday. 'Although it may be safe for some to go to churches and social distance, it may not be safe for those with pre-existing conditions," Birx told Chris Wallace on 'Fox News Sunday.' 'That's why in "phase one" and "phase two," we've asked for those individuals with vulnerabilities to really ensure that they are protected and sheltering in place while we open up America.'" Mrs. McC: Doctor Debbie is still trying to find a balance between reality & trumpity. It's not working very well. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Mariel Padilla of the New York Times: "Environmental health and rodent control programs may see an increase in service requests related to 'unusual or aggressive' rodent behavior, the agency said on its website on Thursday. 'The rats are not becoming aggressive toward people, but toward each other,' Bobby Corrigan, an urban rodentologist who has both a master's degree and Ph.D. in rodent pest management, said on Sunday. 'They're simply turning on each other.'" Akhilleus was surprised to discover this story was not about the Trump Family Vermin.

Alan Suderman of the AP: "Nearly two weeks ago the White House urged governors to ensure that every nursing home resident and staff member be tested for the coronavirus within 14 days. It's not going to happen. A review by The Associated Press found that at least half of the states are not going to meet White House's deadline and some aren't even bothering to try. Only a handful of states, including West Virginia and Rhode Island, have said they've already tested every nursing home resident."

Arkansas. Zack Budryk of the Hill: “Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) defended the steps his state has taken to reopen even as it saw its largest single-day increase in coronavirus cases Thursday. 'We have to manage the risk,' Hutchinson said on 'Fox News Sunday.' 'We take the virus very seriously, it's a risk, it causes death, but you can't cloister yourself at home, that is just contrary to the American spirit.'" Mrs. McC: Huh. Apparently a shrug qualified as a defense. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

North Carolina. Jordan Green in the Raw Story: "The husband of the woman who leads the Reopen NC movement says people should be willing to kill, if necessary, to resist the 'New World Order' and emergency orders imposed by state government to contain the coronavirus pandemic.... [Adam] Smith said in ... videos [he posted to Facebook] that he feels called by God and by his understanding of the Constitution to prepare for a violent showdown.... Ashley Smith, the cofounder of Reopen NC and the movement's most visible leader, is organizing simultaneous rallies in five cities -- Raleigh, Charlotte, Greensboro, Asheville and Wilmington -- on Monday to commemorate Memorial Day and protest Gov. Roy Cooper's [D] handling of the coronavirus response. The rallies have attracted considerable support from Republican politicians...." (Also linked yesterday.)

More "Unusual & Aggressive" Rodent Behavior: ~~~

~~~ Annie Karni of the New York Times: "On a weekend when the nation was bracing for the approaching toll of 100,000 lives lost to the coronavirus and honoring the many more people who have died in wars, President Trump amplified a series of demeaning personal attacks from a supporter with a history of racist and sexist online commentary. Mr. Trump reposted eight tweets from John K. Stahl, a conservative former political candidate, including attacks on Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Stacey Abrams.... Among the posts Mr. Trump retweeted on Saturday, one accused Ms. Pelosi of wearing dentures and drinking 'booze on the job.' Another mocked Ms. Abrams's appearance by saying that she 'visited every buffet restaurant in the State' during her unsuccessful campaign for Georgia governor, and that [Joe] Biden would be 'a racist if he doesn't pick her' as his running mate. Mr. Trump also retweeted another post from Mr. Stahl that referred to Mr. Biden as 'Malarkey the Racist' and called Hillary Clinton ... 'HRC the Skank.'" ~~~

~~~ Anne Gearan of the Washington Post: "As the death toll in the coronavirus pandemic neared 100,000 Americans this Memorial Day weekend, President Trump derided and insulted perceived enemies and promoted a baseless conspiracy theory, in between rounds of golf.... He made little mention of the sacrifice Americans honor on Memorial Day or the grim toll of the virus.... Although Trump on Friday had called for worshipers to return to church in person this holiday weekend, the president did not. He played golf on Sunday morning.... A few protesters gathered at the golf club's exit on Sunday, chanting 'Stop killing us!' and holding up the arresting image of the front page of Sunday's New York Times: Rows of names of the coronavirus dead. Trump had also played golf at the club Saturday, the first time he had done so since early in the pandemic. During that outing, Trump was photographed without a mask and standing closer to golfing partners than recommended by health officials." A Vox story is here. ~~~

~~~ Craig Pittman of the Washington Post: The 2001 accidental death of Lori Kaye Klausutis "has captured the attention of the country's most prominent purveyor of conspiracy theories -- the president of the United States -- who has without evidence speculated that she might have been murdered and that the case should be reopened. The reason for President Trump's fixation: At the time of her death, Klausutis was working for ... [Then Rep.] Joe Scarborough [R-Fla.] ... who today, as host of MSNBC's Morning Joe, is a fierce critic of Trump.... 'A lot of interest in this story about Psycho Joe Scarborough,' Trump tweeted Sunday, the latest in a string of recent tweets on the matter in which the president has unleashed a torrent of false allegations, mischaracterizations and baseless rumors.... As with many such eruptions from the White House, there will probably be little if any consequence beyond, in this case, the collateral suffering of a private family...." ~~~

~~~ Justine Coleman of the Hill: "Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) called on President Trump to stop promoting the 'completely unfounded conspiracy' theory regarding the death of an intern for MSNBC 'Morning Joe' anchor Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman from Florida. The president on Sunday morning urged his followers in a tweet to read an article from conservative website True Pundit, which claimed that evidence showed foul play in the death of Lori Klausutis, 28, in 2001. 'Just stop,' Kinzinger responded.... 'Stop spreading it, stop creating paranoia. It will destroy us.'... Scarborough's wife and co-host, Mika Brzezinski, tweeted last week that she was going to speak to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey about getting the president banned from the platform in an apparent reaction to Trump's tweets about her husband."

Lapdogs, Not Watchdogs. Lisa Rein & Tom Hamburger of the Washington Post: Five times in the past two months, "Trump, chafing from oversight he perceived as criticism, replaced a career investigator with an appointee considered more loyal to the president. In three of the cases, Trump has installed new leadership drawn from the senior ranks of the agencies the inspectors general oversee. For the first time since the system was created in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, inspectors general find themselves under systematic attack from the president, putting independent oversight of federal spending and operations at risk as over $2 trillion in coronavirus relief spending courses through the government."

Back to Fox "News"? Thibault Larger of Politico: "Richard Grenell will step down as U.S. ambassador to Berlin in a few weeks, according to a report from German outlet Die Welt based on information from the German Press Agency.... Donald Trump in February called Grenell back to Washington to take over as head of U.S. intelligence on an interim basis, replacing former acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire. Grenell's term as Trump's top intelligence official is coming to an end. Last week, the U.S. Senate confirmed Texas Rep. John Ratcliffe to succeed Grenell in the job. In early March, the Daily Wire reported that Grenell had informed the White House that he did not wish to return to Berlin once his interim role in Washington was over." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Scott Stedman & Eric Levai of Forensic News: "According to documents exclusively obtained by Forensic News, a US government agency board member [David Zolet] working on a state-of-the-art communications network with Trump administration officials simultaneously served as a US Director for NSO Group, the infamous Israeli spyware company whose surveillance tools have been used by governments across the world to spy on dissidents and journalists.... NSO Group's tools include Pegasus, the most advanced mobile spyware in the world, as well as Phantom, a virtually identical tool built for the United States market.... [There has been] no available explanation why one of the directors of a foreign cyber-intelligence firm whose primary product is the most effective spyware tool in the world, would simultaneously be serving at a US government agency building a nationwide encrypted communication network, without disclosing that potential counterintelligence issue to the American public." --s ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: So is Zolet a spy for the U.S. or for Israel? For both, in a kind of economy-of-spies savings plan?

Elections 2020

Déjà vu All Over Again. Holly Otterbein of Politico: "Pennsylvania could determine the presidency. But it might not be clear for days who won the state on Nov. 3. Election officials throughout the critical battleground, which is implementing no-excuse mail-in voting for the first time ever amid a pandemic, say they are unlikely to finish counting those ballots the night of the general election.... Less than two weeks away from the state's [June 2] primary, some election officials in the state said they lack the needed funding and staff to handle the massive influx of mail-in ballots they've received for that race. They also said the fact that they legally can't start counting those ballots until the morning of Election Day is complicating matters. In addition to delaying a final tally, the chaos and confusion could sow distrust ahead of the general election and give fodder to those seeking to discredit its results." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: The odds are high that we won't know the presidential (and many other) election results the day after the election. And if you think the Florida vote count in 2000 was crooked (it was), we ain't seen nothin' like what we can expect from Trump & his team of rabid acolytes (Supremes included) during the time between the polls' closing & results being announced.

Senate Race. Alabama. Trump Projects Again. Justine Coleman of the Hill: "President Trump said in a new interview that Jeff Sessions wasn't 'mentally qualified' to be attorney general, and was a 'disaster' while in office." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Speaking of stuff named after famous confederates, it seems Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III is named after not one but two prominent traitors: confederate president Jefferson Davis & confederate general Pierre (P.G.T.) Beauregard. Luckily, Jeffbo has a vice of reason & rectitude to support him: ~~~

     ~~~ Rosemary Rossi of the Wrap: "Ann Coulter went on an early Sunday morning Twitter tear, calling ... Donald Trump 'the most disloyal actual retard that has ever set foot in the Oval Office.' The far-right media pundit and former Trump defender was triggered by the president's Friday tweet in which he called for Alabama voters to 'not trust Jeff Sessions' and instead put their support behind Sessions' Republican Senate seat challenger, football coach Tommy Tuberville.... And that set off Coulter, who called Trump a 'moron,' 'retard' and 'lout,' who was incapable of 'pretending to be' a 'decent, compassionate human being.'"

Florida. Amy Gardner of the Washington Post: "A federal judge has gutted a Florida state law requiring felons to pay all court fines and fees before they can register to vote, clearing the way for thousands of Floridians to register in time for the November presidential election. Republican lawmakers and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) pushed the measure after Florida voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment in 2018 to expand voting rights to felons who have completed 'all terms of their sentence including probation and parole.'... The law, critics said, had made it virtually impossible for most felons to register, either because of an inability to pay or because the state offered no way for them to know what they owed or whether they had already paid. U.S. District Judge Robert L. Hinkle agreed, likening the restrictive legislation to a tax and concluding that the state had not created a system that would allow felons to identify their financial obligations."

Way Beyond the Beltway

Hong Kong/China. Zen Soo of the AP: "Hong Kong police fired tear gas and a water cannon at protesters in a popular shopping district Sunday, as thousands took to the streets to march against China's move to impose national security legislation on the city. Pro-democracy supporters have sharply criticized a proposal, set to be approved by China's rubber-stamp parliament this week, that would ban secessionist and subversive activity, as well as foreign interference, in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory. The pro-democracy camp says the proposal goes against the 'one country, two systems' framework that promises Hong Kong freedoms not found in mainland China." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

~~~ Jacob Knutson of Axios: "White House national security adviser Robert O'Brien said on NBC's 'Meet the Press' Sunday that the U.S. government will likely impose economic sanctions on Hong Kong and China if Beijing moves ahead with a proposed national security law for Hong Kong that could constrain the special region's autonomy." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

~~~ Anna Fifield of the Washington Post: "The United States should abandon its 'wishful thinking about changing China' and stop pushing the two countries 'to the brink of a new Cold War,' Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Sunday, trying to position Beijing as the grown-up in an increasingly fractious relationship.As tensions between the world's two largest economies mount by the day, Wang used a news conference during the annual piece of political theater known as the National People's Congress to send a direct message to Washington.... In a nod toward President Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who have repeatedly suggested that the ruling Chinese Communist Party is a threat to the world, Wang said American politicians 'are taking China-U.S. relations hostage and pushing our two countries to the brink of a new Cold War.'"

Israel. David Halbfinger of the New York Times: "The long-awaited opening of proceedings in the matter of the State of Israel v. Benjamin Netanyahu took the prime minister and the country into uncharted and dangerous territory. Few sitting national leaders since Charles I of England have stood trial on criminal charges brought over their official acts. Mr. Netanyahu, who broke with tradition by not resigning to defend himself, is Israel's first. He is charged with bribery, breach of trust and fraud, accused of performing official favors worth a great deal to wealthy businessmen in exchange for two kinds of gifts. The material ones, including expensive cigars and Champagne, ran to hundreds of thousands of dollars in value, prosecutors said. The less-tangible ones -- control over how he was covered by two leading news outlets -- were, to a polarizing and image-conscious politician, priceless. The trial is expected to last a year or more, with the first witnesses not expected to testify for months."