By midweek the crisis in southern and western states was clear. Arizona testing centers were slammed and unable to process all the test requests: The United States’ coronavirus testing capacity has begun to strain as the pandemic continues to spread, with over 35,000 cases recorded Tuesday. Across the country, more than a dozen public laboratories say they are now “challenged” to meet the demand.
And Texas halted its reopening plan. And then reversed its reopening, by closing bars. As did Florida.
The New York Times has to add a “Reversing” designation to its tally of lockdown categories for the states.
Other News
Regarding Bolton’s book, Ignatius writes that “the Turkey story — featuring the American president assuring Erdogan he would “take care of things” in an ongoing federal criminal investigation — may be the clearest, most continuous narrative of misconduct by Trump that has yet surfaced.” He quotes a key passage from Bolton’s book: Trump “then told Erdogan that he would take care of things, explaining that the Southern District prosecutors were not his people, but were Obama people, a problem that would be fixed when they were replaced by his people.” On Oct. 15, as the Ukraine scandal was brewing, Berman’s office indicted Halkbank. Eight months later, Trump fired Berman, just as he had his predecessor Bharara. No explanation was given.
The Halkbank case continues — Trump’s assurances to the Turkish president notwithstanding.
David Frum explains this week’s twist in the Trump-Russia scandal: Aaron Zelinsky, who was a career prosecutor in the Department of Justice, testified on Wednesday in the House of Representatives. Reading his prepared statement, Zelinsky spoke about the Department of Justice’s handling of the case of Roger Stone, a close political associate of President Donald Trump. Back in February, Stone was convicted on seven counts of witness tampering, lying to Congress, and obstruction of a proceeding. Following federal sentencing guidelines, prosecutors requested a punishment of seven to nine years. President Trump immediately erupted in Twitter outrage. The next day, senior officials in the Department of Justice withdrew the original sentencing memo and substituted a replacement requesting a substantially lighter sentence. Zelinksy and the three other prosecutors resigned from the case.
The normal mind thinks that way because it cannot readily absorb the combination of recklessness, arrogance, and cluelessness at the core of the Trump presidency. But here we are, June 24, 2020, confronted with it again: sworn congressional testimony that, yes, the attorney general overruled career prosecutors to protect a person whose testimony might implicate the president—delivered on the same day as one of Trump’s appointees to the federal appellate bench delivered an opinion overruling a trial judge, allowing the Department of Justice to protect another Trump associate from his own previous guilty pleas on charges of lying to the FBI.
Watergate produced a saying: The cover-up is worse than the crime. But what if there is no cover-up? The president is staring the country in the eye and acknowledging: “Sure I did it. I’ll do it again. And again. Because nobody’s going to stop me. Cover-ups are for losers.”
In the New York Times: Two Justice Department officials recounted to Congress in stinging detail on Wednesday how political appointees had intervened in criminal and antitrust cases to advance the personal interests of President Trump and Attorney General William P. Barr.
The New York Times reported that Barr ordered a review of the Michale Cohen case after he came on as Attorney General even though that case had already been tried.
With Roger Stone set to report to prison next week, a prosecutor testified before the House on Tuesday: Senior law enforcement officials intervened to seek a more lenient prison sentence for President Trump’s friend and ally Roger J. Stone Jr. for political reasons, a former prosecutor on the case is expected to testify before Congress on Wednesday, citing his supervisor’s account of the matter. “What I heard — repeatedly — was that Roger Stone was being treated differently from any other defendant because of his relationship to the president.”
This is an important account of Trump clearing out America’s pro-democracy propaganda networks: Libby Luie president of Radio Free Asia… She’s a great resource for any U.S. administration; this should have been her moment in the sun. Instead, on Wednesday of last week, she was fired. So were her senior colleagues at Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks—the groups that, together, constitute the U.S. Agency for Global Media.
Trump got is 200th federal judge this week, the last vacancy available in his term. one-fifth of the federal bench have now been appointed by Trump and McConnell.
One week after the Trump campaign demanded a retraction an apology from CNN for a poll that said Biden was 14 points ahead of Trump, a New York Times poll found the same result.
In Russia News
All three major papers–New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post–reported this weekend that US intelligence believes that Russia’s GRU paid Taliban to kill American soldiers: The intelligence finding was briefed to President Trump, and the White House’s National Security Council discussed the problem at an interagency meeting in late March, the officials said. Officials developed a menu of potential options — starting with making a diplomatic complaint to Moscow and a demand that it stop, along with an escalating series of sanctions and other possible responses, but the White House has yet to authorize any step, the officials said.
On Saturday the White House press secretary released this: “the C.I.A. director, national security adviser and the chief of staff can all confirm that neither the president nor the vice president were briefed on the alleged Russian bounty intelligence.” This was widely disbelieved.
Trump issued an executive order on policing, seen by most reformers as weak.
The White House threatened to sue Bolton to stop the release of his book.
Excerpts of Bolton’s book were published in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday: Mr. Bolton describes several episodes where the president expressed a willingness to halt criminal investigations “to, in effect, give personal favors to dictators he liked,” citing cases involving major firms in China and Turkey. “The pattern looked like obstruction of justice as a way of life, which we couldn’t accept,” Mr. Bolton writes, saying that he reported his concerns to Attorney General William P. Barr.
The Supreme Court overturned Trump’s attempt to end DACA, meaning that the Dreamers are protected for now. Roberts wrote: “We do not decide whether DACA or its rescission are sound policies,” the chief justice wrote. “We address only whether the agency complied with the procedural requirement that it provide a reasoned explanation for its action.”
Here are Peter Bakers 5 takeaways for the New York Times.
Trump fired Geoffrey S. Berman, the United States attorney for SDNY. First Barr fired him on Friday, but Berman refused to step down becasue Barr is not authorized. Then on Saturday Barr said Trump fired him, and Berman agreed to step down because his trusted deputy will take over in his place and continue current cases free of political interference.
Trump’s rally in Tulsa was his first since early March. It was widely under-attended, with only about 6,000 supporters showing up.
According to the New York Times: President Trump and several staff members stood backstage and gazed at the empty Bank of Oklahoma Center in horror…. The campaign had hoped to use the Tulsa event as a reset after the president’s slide in the polls in the wake of his administration’s failures responding to the coronavirus
Facebook on Thursday removed advertisements posted on its platform by the Trump campaign that prominently featured a symbol used by Nazis to classify political prisoners during World War II, saying the imagery violated company policy.
Personal Log: Our daycare opened this week, with strict social distancing measured including only 10 people in a class; we are opting not to attend until maybe the fall. New Jersey allowed other businesses to open this week, including outdoor dining. I saw chain restaurants in north and south Jersey setting up tents and tables in parking lots with diners being seated by masked waiters.
Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff apologized for joining Trump in the Lafayette Square photo op: “I should not have been there. My presence in that moment, and in that environment, created the perception of the military involved in domestic politics.”
The New York Times got a hold of interviews and other documents about the use of the National Guard to suppress protests in D.C.: “Senior Army leaders — in an effort to prevent what they feared would be a calamitous outcome if President Trump ordered combat troops from the 82nd Airborne Division holding just outside city limits to the streets — leaned heavily on the Guard to carry out aggressive tactics to prove it could do the job without active-duty forces. Along with the troops, National Guard units from other states brought weapons and ammunition. Tens of thousands of rifle and pistol rounds were stored in the D.C. Armory and partitioned in pallets, labeled by their state of origin, to be used on American citizens in case of emergency.”
Kara Swisher in the New York Times has one of the clearest descriptions of recent events: “Readers may miss a critical frame of reference when there are so many frames to choose from. And some public figure may take advantage of that, slipping in and out of frames like the portraits at Hogwarts, without being tagged for revolting behavior in one when moving to the next.
Consider the master at this: President Trump. He has perfected a sick performative art form of playing the worst troll in Twitter’s history, even as he struts on the world stage with a flag backdrop and a White House podium playing a great leader.
While sometimes he crosses the streams — like in the recent bizarre Bible-prop photo op — he is expert at obscuring the links between extremely offensive and pure crazy. Thus, the dirty work is done on Twitter, and the modestly cleaned-up version is presented elsewhere by him and in talking points of his many minions.
Mr. Trump did it Tuesday with a truly hideous tweet aimed at the 75-year-old Buffalo protester who was knocked to the ground by the police. We all saw the video, but rather than deplore the over-the-top behavior, Mr. Trump shared a tin-foil-hat conspiracy theory that included Antifa, jamming police radios and I don’t even know what other cockamamie ideas.”
On Wednesday “A retired federal judge accused the Justice Department on Wednesday of a “gross abuse of prosecutorial power” and urged a court to reject its attempt to drop the criminal case against Michael T. Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser.”
Trump will resume his rallies next week: The sign-up page for tickets to President Trump’s campaign rally in Tulsa next week includes something that hasn’t appeared ahead of previous rallies: a disclaimer noting that attendees “voluntarily assume all risks related to exposure to COVID-19” and agree not to hold the campaign or venue liable should they get sick.
After many peaceful protests on Sunday, there was more violence at night. Here is a round up of the clashes.
While many cops are running amuck indiscriminately firing rubber bullets and tear gas on both people who are and are not protesting, others are kneeling along with protestors as a sign of solidarity: “The scenes offered a stark contrast to images of officers ignoring the pleas of protesters in other instances, and at times resorting to the use of overwhelming force, sometimes seemingly unprovoked by the crowds before them. In numerous cities, including New York and Los Angeles, police vehicles were filmed plowing into throngs of people.”
There have been many report of police targeting journalists: The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker and a writer for the Bellingcat website have each tracked about 100 instances of reporters being harassed or injured at the protests.
Experts on policing said that the videos showed, in many cases, examples of abrupt escalation on the part of law enforcement that was difficult to justify.
There was serious unrest and protests outside of the White House Sunday night. And word spread over the weekend that Trump was taken into the White House bunker Friday night due to protests near the White House.
On Wednesday in New York City, police were enforcing the 9pm curfew: The police were quicker to enforce the clampdown than they had been before, moving swiftly to disperse demonstrators from rainy city streets and to arrest those who failed to clear out. The curfew was lifted over the weekend.
According to the Washington Post: Barr was tapped by President Trump to direct the national response to protests.
Even before the photo op George Will wrote a blistering column calling for voters to sweep Trump and the Republican Senate out of power: The person voters hired in 2016 to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” stood on July 28, 2017, in front of uniformed police and urged them “please don’t be too nice” when handling suspected offenders. His hope was fulfilled for 8 minutes and 46 seconds on Minneapolis pavement.
Trump made a Rose Garden address where he said: “If a city or a state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them.” Mr. Trump told the Army on Monday to deploy active-duty military police to Washington. “I am dispatching thousands and thousands of heavily armed soldiers, military personnel and law enforcement officers to stop the rioting, looting, vandalism, assaults and the wanton destruction of property.” He also had a call with governors in which he argued for swift and strong breaking of the protests: “When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it,” Mr. Trump said. “Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak.”
“And just before the city’s 7 p.m. curfew went into effect, they were hit with flash-bang explosions and doused with tear gas.
It was because the president, who spent part of the weekend in a secure bunker as protests roiled, wanted to have his picture taken holding a Bible at a battered church just beyond the gates.”
“He did not pray,” the bishop, Mariann E. Budde, said in an interview. Referring to the death of the black man in police custody that set off the protests, she added: “He did not mention George Floyd, he did not mention the agony of people who have been subjected to this kind of horrific expression of racism and white supremacy for hundreds of years. We need a president who can unify and heal. He has done the opposite of that, and we are left to pick up the pieces.”
After the photo-op, the Mayor of DC tweeted: I imposed a curfew at 7pm. A full 25 minutes before the curfew & w/o provocation, federal police used munitions on peaceful protestors in front of the White House, an act that will make the job of @DCPoliceDept officers more difficult. Shameful!
Here is some before and after video. The Washington Post has a minute by minute account of the attack on protestors.
Here is how NPR covered it: Trump’s Rose Garden remarks came as just across the street, law enforcement officers deployed tear gas and shot rubber bullets to forcefully disperse peaceful protesters. Washington, D.C., had set a curfew Monday of 7 p.m. ET.
The protesters were removed from the Lafayette Square area across from the White House, apparently to clear the way for the president to walk to St. John’s Church, where he posed briefly for photographers, holding a Bible.
Yglesias point out the significance of the timing:
But starting at 7 pm, a group of officers forcibly expelling protesters from the park would have been enforcing the law.
Doing it at 6:36 pm or so served no real purpose except to make the law enforcement action flagrantly abusive. And that itself sends a powerful message.
Washington Post: Hundreds of protesters were pushed away from Lafayette Square, where they were protesting the police killing of George Floyd, by the National Guard, U.S. Park Police and Secret Service. The ambush began half an hour before the city’s newly imposed curfew of 7 p.m. went into effect. When the crowds were cleared, the president walked through the park to visit the historic St. John’s Episcopal Church, which had been set on fire Sunday…. the scene in front of the White House when federal law enforcement descended was far from the “violent mobs” Trump described in his speech. The gathering was smaller and calmer than previous evenings, with people dancing and singing to a woman playing a guitar instead of knocking over barricades. … The FBI, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Marshals and Bureau of Prisons were all involved in the federal response, according to a Justice Department spokeswoman.
The Washington Post reports: Attorney General William P. Barr personally ordered law enforcement officials to clear the streets around Lafayette Square just before President Trump spoke Monday, a Justice Department official said, a directive that prompted a show of aggression against a crowd of largely peaceful protesters.
The DOJ had activated riot police from the Bureau of Prisons to gather in unmarked gear in Washington DC.
Administration Response
Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper initially tried to send home a small portion of the 1,600 active-duty troops on Wednesday, only to have Mr. Trump order him to reverse course during an angry meeting. The president finally acquiesced on Thursday, according to an administration official who asked not to be named discussing internal deliberations, but it did not appear the two men spoke directly.
Military and IC Response
The Washington Post rounds up interviews with CIA analysts and people who have covered dictatorships, who say what they have seen this week in the US has shaken them: “It reminded me of what I reported on for years in the third world,” CIA analyst Polymeropoulos said on Twitter. Referring to the despotic leaders of Iraq, Syria and Libya, he said: “Saddam. Bashar. Qaddafi. They all did this.” Former intelligence officials said the unrest and the administration’s militaristic response are among many measures of decay they would flag if writing assessments about the United States for another country’s intelligence service.
Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mike Mullen spoke out in a piece in the Atlantic: I am less confident in the soundness of the orders they will be given by this commander in chief, and I am not convinced that the conditions on our streets, as bad as they are, have risen to the level that justifies a heavy reliance on military troops. Certainly, we have not crossed the threshold that would make it appropriate to invoke the provisions of the Insurrection Act.
Mattis released a statement on Wednesday: Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside. We must reject any thinking of our cities as a “battlespace” that our uniformed military is called upon to “dominate.” We do not need to militarize our response to protests. We need to unite around a common purpose. And it starts by guaranteeing that all of us are equal before the law. Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.
Below is a monthly update, marking key metrics and commentary in from mid-May to mid-June, the third month since lockdowns began.
Polling Round Up
According to Gallop tracking polls, the number of Americas who are worried about catching the virus has declined for the second month in a row, from a high of 57% in mid-April to 49% in mid-June. However the drop was only two points this month, compared to 6 points last month. A more significant shift was need in the financial hardship question. Last month the number of Americans somewhat-to-very worried about financial hardship increased five points over the month before. This month that number dropped 9 points. Only 44% are concerned about their personal financial situation, down from 53% last month.
In the fivethirtyeight average of polls, there was a similar decline in the number concerned about catching the virus (64% down 3.7%). On the larger questions of Americans concerned about economy: 84% are some/very concerned, down 1.9% from last month.
Disapproval of Trump’s response continues to climb, with disproval/approval at 54%/42%. The disapproval margin is now 12.1%, up from -9.2% in Mary and -1.1 in April.
Political Weirding
The most significant event this month was the police murder of George Floyd on Memorial Day and the ensuing weeks of protest that brought huge crowds into the streets across the country and sparked debate over how serious the COVID-19 lockdowns and social distancing measures can be going forward.
However, in the week before that, here is some of what the conversation was about:
A New York Times piece on Biden moving toward a more expansive agenda: Democratic leaders say that if they hold power next January, they must be prepared to move to pump trillions more into the economy; enact infrastructure and climate legislation far larger than they previously envisioned; pass a raft of aggressive worker-protection laws; expand government-backed health insurance and create enormous new investments in public-health jobs, health care facilities and child care programs…. “There is a recognition that this event is more transformative than 2008, more transformative than 9/11, more transformative than the fall of the Berlin Wall,” said Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, a centrist Democrat.
The Republican governor of Ohio Mike Dewine wrote this on Twitter Monday May 18: We are marshaling all the resources at our disposal to assemble a large contingent of law enforcement and health officials from across state agencies and from our local communities. We will coordinate with them as part of the Department of Public Safety’s Ohio Investigative Unit. They will surge in to conduct safety compliance checks in crowded bars and restaurants.
Nursing homes where those groups make up a significant portion of the residents — no matter their location, no matter their size, no matter their government rating — have been twice as likely to get hit by the coronavirus as those where the population is overwhelmingly white.
Here is an account of what one New Jersey town is doing to successfully contact trace 90% of their COVID-19 cases.
Early June saw new stages of reopening across the country, including Las Vegas: Vegas reopened casinos over the weekend: Dealers and players are separated by Plexiglas, dice are doused in sanitizer after every throw, and guests, encouraged though not required to wear masks, are subject to mandatory temperature checks.
In NYC, the first phase of reopening began on Monday, with construction cites and retail stores. The case count is low enough “for New York City’s corps of contract tracers, who began work last week, to try to track every close interaction and, officials hope, stop a resurgence of the virus.”
News of increasing case counts in certain states: Since the start of June, 14 states and Puerto Rico have recorded their highest-ever seven-day average of new coronavirus cases since the pandemic began, according to data tracked by The Washington Post: : Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, Kentucky, New Mexico, North Carolina, Mississippi, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah.
The second week of June as a time of great (pessimistic) reflection on our collective battle against the virus.
Douthat: With this last turn, we’ve reached the end of the progression, because it means the original theory behind a stern public health response — that the danger to life and health justified suspending even the most righteous pursuits, including not just normal economic life but the practices and institutions that protect children, comfort the dying, serve the poor — has been abandoned or subverted by every faction in our national debate. … [which] does signal that there will be no further comprehensive attempt to fight the virus. Trump and conservatism won’t support it, the public health bureaucracy won’t be able to defend it, and we didn’t use the time the lockdowns bought to build the infrastructure to sustain a campaign of actual suppression.
Writing in The Atlantic: These numbers all reflect infections that likely began before this week of protest. An even larger spike now seems likely. Put another way: If the country doesn’t see a substantial increase in new COVID-19 cases after this week, it should prompt a rethinking of what epidemiologists believe about how the virus spreads…. If so, it won’t be because the United States made concerted, coordinated decisions about how to balance the horrors of the pandemic and the frustration of pausing everyday life. Instead, the United States has moved from attempting to beat the virus to managing the harm of losing.
Trump got pushback from some allies for continuing to tweet accusations that Joe Scarborough killed an aide in the 90s.
Pressure was put on Twitter to delete the tweets, which they declined to do.
The widow sent a letter to Twitter’s CEO asking him to take down the tweet: “I’m asking you to intervene in this instance because the president of the United States has taken something that does not belong to him — the memory of my dead wife — and perverted it for perceived political gain.” They declined to do so.They declined. However, they did start fact checking Trump’s tweets.
Trump responded with an Executive Order limiting liability protections for social media companies.
George Floyd was killed by strangulation by police on Monday, Memorial Day, setting off protests that spread across the country throughout the week.
Twitter blocked a Trump tweet for violating its rules.
Here is the tweet: ….These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!
Here is a gut-check by a New York Times critic on the fake censorship Trump has been complaining about from Twitter, and the actual censorship of a black CNN reporter who was arrested on camera by police in Minneapolis.
In Russia News
Friday night a record of Flynn’s 2016 calls with Kislyak were leaked.
Washington Post reports on the State Department IG firing: “I have learned that there may be another reason for Mr. Linick’s firing,” Rep. Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.), the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement sent to me. “His office was investigating — at my request — Trump’s phony declaration of an emergency so he could send weapons to Saudi Arabia.”
This is connected to this story by the New York Times which came out over the weekend about the Saudi arms deals.
The IG had also “begun an inquiry into Mr. Pompeo’s possible misuse of a political appointee to perform personal tasks for him and his wife, according to Democratic aides. That included walking the dog, picking up dry-cleaning and making restaurant reservations, one said — an echo of the whistle-blower complaint from last year.”
Here is a line from a New York Times piece on intelligence briefings for Trump: Mr. Trump rarely absorbs information that he disagrees with or that runs counter to his worldview, the officials said. Briefing him has been so great a challenge compared with his predecessors that the intelligence agencies have hired outside consultants to study how better to present information to him.
The Trump Administration withdrew from a key arms control accord.
More family separation of immigrants are happening. Here is more from a New York Times report.
Trump Pivot 3: Trump and Task Force first admits over 100,000 may die. “It’s absolutely critical for the American people to follow the guidelines for the next 30 days. It’s a matter of life and death.”; a lot fo talk about urgent need for testing, including Trump downplaying need in the states, and reporting on why testing was delayed due to FDA/CDC mistakes; Trump reversal of call for Easter opening; Navy captain fired for Covid-19 help request; CDC says Americans should wear face masks; Highest daily death count yet; jobless claims at 16 million, rising to 26 million; Round of major papers writing about poor Trump response in early days of the pandemic; daily press briefings continue, making Republicans nervous about Trump’s performance; Trump Pivot 4: blame shifting and push to re-open the country by May 1; failed business group task force; small business loan ran out of money; small lock down protests are first held; Trump road-testing an anti-lockdown message; Senate renews money for small business loan; some states are easing lockdowns; House passed new stimulus; Trump’s daily press briefings continue, and on 4/23 he says UV light or disinfectants might be used to kill the virus internally; talk of ending the press briefings over the weekend.
This dip–relatively low compared to the other 19 dips–is the result of two factors happening simultaneously: 1) the swift deflation of the temporary approval spike to 45.8% that corresponded with the onset of the crisis; 2) a negative news cycle going into the second month of national lockdowns where there was a lot of discussion of early missteps that got us to this point. When Trump was at his high point mentioned above there were only 1,246 dead, but by the end of this dip there were 48,816 dead.
This dip brings him closer to his homeostasis point fo 42-43%, where he has been for much of the second half of his term. The dip stalled out at around 43% for the next 4 weeks. At which point events in May and June brought on the 21st approval dip…
Below is a monthly update, marking key metrics and commentary in from mid-April to mid-May, the second month since lockdowns began.
Polling Round Up
A majority of 53% is still somewhat-to-very worried of contracting the virus, compared to 47% who are less worried. This is a worry decrease of 4 point from a month ago when it was 57%.
The country is split 50/50 on worried versus not worried about financial hardship. This is a 2% increase worry rating from last month, when 48% were worried about financial hardship.
Still, slightly more people are worried about getting sick than losing their livelihood.
The partisan split:
Generally, Democrats’ opinions reflect the general populace in seeing the sickness and finances as equal threats. While Republicans see the financial threat as more serious by nine point margin. This is a change from polling a month earlier when Democrats viewed the virus as more of a threat than the economy, and Republican’s viewed the threat equally.
By a ratio of two to one, those surveyed by Monmouth University in a poll released in the first week of May were more concerned about lifting restrictions too quickly rather than too slowly. And 56 percent said the more important factor should be making sure as few people get sick as possible, while 33 percent said it was more important to prevent the economy from sinking into a profound downturn.
The vast majority of laid-off or furloughed workers — 77 percent — expect to be rehired by their previous employer once the stay-at-home orders in their area are lifted, according to a nationwide Washington Post-Ipsos poll.
WaPo-Ipsos Poll: A 74 percent majority of Americans overall say the United States should keep trying to slow the spread of the coronavirus even if it means keeping many businesses closed, while 25 percent say the country should open up businesses and get the economy going again, even if the result would be more infections. Yet there is a significant partisan divide on this question. More than 9 in 10 (92 percent) Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say they favor closures to deal with the virus, while Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are split almost evenly, with 49 percent saying closures should be the top priority and 50 percent saying businesses should be opened up again.
A majority of Americans (61%) say the federal government is mostly (40%) or entirely (21%) responsible in making sure there are enough COVID-19 tests available to the public. About four-in-ten (37%) say this responsibility at least mostly falls on the state government.
In the fivethirthyeight aggregate of polls:
Americans Worried Concerned about infection declines 5.6 points to 68%
Americans Concerned about economy stayed the same at 86%
Disapproval of Trump’s response climbed above a majority this month for the first time: 52%. The approve-disapprove spread expanded from 1 point to 9 points more disapprove.
Scope of the Challenge& Government Response
Here are expert predictions about how long it will take to produce a vaccine.
On a federal effort, the calls continue for more action: “We need a national commitment to get this [contact tracing and testing] done in order to defeat the virus,” said Michael Leavitt, a former Republican governor of Utah and health secretary in the George W. Bush administration.
In some cases the FDA is making it harder to do contact tracing and testing, by ordering a pause on a promising Seattle program: The program involved sending home test kits to both healthy and sick people in the hope of conducting the kind of widespread monitoring that could help communities safely reopen from lockdowns. Researchers and public health authorities already had tested thousands of samples, finding dozens of previously undetected cases. “Please discontinue patient testing and return of diagnostic results to patients until proper authorization is obtained,” the F.D.A. wrote in a memo. By the end of February, those researchers ended up doing some testing anyway, discovered the first case of community transmission in the region and provided key evidence that the virus had most likely been circulating for weeks…. The issue in the Seattle case appears to be that the test results are being used not only by researchers for surveillance of the virus in the community but that the results are also being returned to patients to inform them. A Harvard Global Health Institute report last week estimated that the United States needed to be conducting at least 900,000 tests daily, but tracking reports indicate the country is doing about one-third that amount.
The White House raised numerous objections to the CDC report on how to reopen sectors of society. A brief history of the CDC recommendations. First from the Washington Post: “April 16, when Trump and Birx released their guidelines for a slow and staggered return to normal in places with minimal cases of the coronavirus, many of the details fine-tuned by the CDC were stripped out. The CDC circulated a 17-page document with strong recommendations, but many in the White House resisted, particularly when it came to restricting parishioners from singing in choirs or sharing hymnals and offering plates, and suggesting that restaurants use digital menus and avoid salad bars. The document has not been made public and is still in the editing process.” That was Saturday. By Thursday, it was reported that the CDC report would not be released at all due to White House objections.”
The White House shelved the CDC plan for reopening safely: “White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany said Friday that the documents had not been approved by CDC Director Robert Redfield. The new emails, however, show that Redfield cleared the guidance.”
Fauci testified before the Senate on May 12: What I’ve expressed then and again is my concern that if some areas, cities, states or what have you jump over those various checkpoints and prematurely open up without having the capability of being able to respond effectively and efficiently — my concern is that we will start to see little spikes that might turn into outbreaks.”
According to David Grahm, in mid May: Yet the Trump administration still has no plan for dealing with the global pandemic or its fallout. The president has cast doubt on the need for a vaccine or expanded testing. He has no evident plan for contact tracing. He has no treatment ideas beyond the drug remdesivir, since Trump’s marketing campaign for hydroxychloroquine ended in disaster. And, facing the worst economy since the Great Depression, the White House has no plan for that, either, beyond a quixotic hope that consumer demand will snap back as soon as businesses reopen.
Political Weirding
The New York Times editorial pages two leading progressive columnists, both equating the current crisis to the Great Depression with the potential for 21st Century labor’s New Deal.
Goldberg: “We are going to be faced with a national rebuilding project at a scale that has never existed in our lifetimes,” said Yang. The biggest battle in politics now is over who will control that project, and whom it will prioritize.
Bouie: It’s true these actions have been limited in scope and scale. But if they continue, and if they increase, they may come to represent the first stirrings of something much larger. The consequential strike wave of 1934 — which paved the way for the National Labor Relations Act and created new political space for serious government action on behalf of labor — was presaged by a year of unrest in workplaces across the country, from factories and farms to newspaper offices and Hollywood sets.
J.V. Last compares the impact of COVID-19 with Vietnam: But the most striking similarity is the presence of other large-scale societal changes that threaten to interact with the pandemic…. These trends move only somewhat independently of one another. In the months ahead, COVID-19 is going to shape and be shaped by all of them in some ways that can be foreseen. But mostly in ways that cannot…. three months into the COVID-19 crisis, most Americans have yet to internalize the magnitude of the change that could come from it.
In Edsell’s early May round ups, he quotes political scientist Eric Kaufman: “My view is that Covid-19 weakens national populism because it reduces cultural threat. a) cuts immigration, b) cuts globalization, c) raises the profile of health care and the economy, two material issues, and reduces the profile of culture war issues which drive right populism, d) compels faith in experts, making it riskier to entrust “burn it all down” populists with power and e) focuses on the (relatively diverse and foreign-born) health care workers as heroes.”
There was also more discussion this month of COVID-19 and racism.
Bouie on COVID-19 protests and race: The vast majority of these protesters — like the vast majority of those who want to prematurely reopen the economy — are white. This is in stark contrast to the victims of Covid-19 (who are disproportionately black and brown), as well as those who have lost their jobs as a result of the pandemic (who are also disproportionately black and brown), as well as those who have been or will be forced to work — or work more — as a result of reopening (the service workers and laborers who are again disproportionately black and brown). More than just burdensome, the restrictions become an intolerable violation of the social contract as these Americans understand it. They run against the meaning of their racial identity, of the freedom and autonomy it is supposed to signify. And they resolve the violation by asserting the other aspect of white freedom, the right of control.
Sewer on the same topic: Over the weeks that followed the declaration of an emergency, the pandemic worsened and the death toll mounted. Yet by mid-April, conservative broadcasters were decrying the restrictions, small bands of armed protesters were descending on state capitols, and the president was pressing to lift the constraints. In the interim, data about the demographics of COVID-19 victims began to trickle out. On April 7, major outlets began reporting that preliminary data showed that black and Latino Americans were being disproportionately felled by the coronavirus.
This is a very old and recognizable story—political and financial elites displaying a callous disregard for the workers of any race who make their lives of comfort possible. But in America, where labor and race are so often intertwined, the racial contract has enabled the wealthy to dismiss workers as both undeserving and expendable. White Americans are also suffering, but the perception that the coronavirus is largely a black and brown problem licenses elites to dismiss its impact. In America, the racial contract has shaped the terms of class war for centuries; the COVID contract shapes it here.
Finally, on Saturday night May 16 Obama delivered a brief national high school commencement address in which he gave his take on the current situation:
“All of which means that you’re going to have to grow up faster than some generations. This pandemic has shaken up the status quo and laid bare a lot of our country’s deep-seated problems — from massive economic inequality to ongoing racial disparities to a lack of basic health care for people who need it. It’s woken a lot of young people up to the fact that the old ways of doing things just don’t work; that it doesn’t matter how much money you make if everyone around you is hungry and sick; and that our society and our democracy only work when we think not just about ourselves, but about each other.”
It’s also pulled the curtain back on another hard truth, something that we all have to eventually accept once our childhood comes to an end. All those adults that you used to think were in charge and knew what they were doing? Turns out that they don’t have all the answers. A lot of them aren’t even asking the right questions. So, if the world’s going to get better, it going to be up to you.
…do what you think is right. Doing what feels good, what’s convenient, what’s easy — that’s how little kids think. Unfortunately, a lot of so-called grown-ups, including some with fancy titles and important jobs, still think that way — which is why things are so screwed up.
Questions Going Forward
When will the need for massive federal intervention in the crisis become apparent to most Americans, if at all?
Polling on this quoted above indicates the public believes in this need.
When will economic fears overcome fears of the virus? Will fears of the virus–and thus support for the lockdowns–fade?
Fear is moving away from the virus and toward economy, though majorities still fear the virus.
Will the anti-lockdown protests grow to Tea Party size and cultural status?
Protests seemed to have fizzled, though nearly all governors regardless of political persuasion are moving slowly toward reopening. No Tea Party moment yet.
A mini outbreak of Coronavirus is happening in the Trump Administration.
By Monday everyone in the White House (except for Trump and Pence) were required to wear a mask when not at their desk. Trump also gave a press conference saying that “America leads the world in testing” and “we have met the moment and we have prevailed,” and “if somebody wants to be tested right now, they’ll be able to be tested.” The New York Times pints out: Though the United States has ramped up testing from 150,000 tests per day from a month ago to 300,000 per day recently, the current rate still remains far behind the five million daily target he himself set last month.
Two of the federal government’s top health officials painted a grim picture of the months ahead on Tuesday, warning a Senate committee that the coronavirus pandemic was far from contained… Dr. Fauci’s remarks, along with those of Dr. Redfield, contradicted Mr. Trump’s growing insistence that the nation has put the coronavirus behind it.
Meanwhile, “Over Mother’s Day and then through Monday—and who knows, perhaps continuing today—Trump has fired off hundreds of rounds of weapons-grade lunacy on Twitter.” Including something called “Obamagate.”
According to Tim Miller in The Bulwark: Trump’s allies in the conservative media and the Justice Department are taking #Obamagate very seriously. This conspiracy theory is informing our foreign policy, millions in tax dollars are being spent in an effort that is going “full throttle” to prove that it is correct, and countless Americans are being fed a faux history involving a crime that supposedly “makes Watergate look small time.”
Senator Burr stepped down from the Senate Intelligence Committee as news broke this week that the FBI issued a warrant for his cell phone and other records over his stock trading scheme.
On Saturday there was a 2020 Graduation ceremony broadcast on all the networks. Obama gave the closing remarks.
Trump fired the State Department Inspector General on Friday night.
In Russia News
More Flynn drama this week. The FBI investigator whose notes the DOJ used to say the Flynn interview was improper did an interview with DOJ about the matter that was not shared with the Judge: That interpretation was wrong, Mr. Priestap told the prosecutors reviewing the case. He said that F.B.I. officials were trying to do the right thing in questioning Mr. Flynn and that he knew of no effort to set him up. Media reports about his notes misconstrued them, he said, according to the people familiar with the investigation.
The judge in the Flynn Case, Emmet Sullivan, appointed a former judge to asses whether Flynn lied and committed perjury: He is essentially bringing in an outsider to represent the point of view of the original prosecutors in the case, who believed Mr. Flynn had committed a crime before Mr. Barr intervened and essentially replaced them with a prosecutor willing to say he had not.
