Month: April 2020

Fauci says it’s coming:

A second round of the coronavirus is “inevitable,” the nation’s top infectious disease doctor says, but just how bad it is will depend on the progress the US makes in the coming months.”If by that time we have put into place all of the countermeasures that you need to address this, we should do reasonably well,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said.

“If we don’t do that successfully, we could be in for a bad fall and a bad winter.” If states begin lifting restrictions too early, Fauci says he predicts the country could see a rebound of the virus that would “get us right back in the same boat that we were a few weeks ago,” adding that the country could see many more deaths than are currently predicted.

So far, more than 1 million Americans have been infected and at least 58,965 have died. A leading model predicts more than 72,000 people will die in the US by early August. The sobering numbers come as some states move to reopen despite warnings from federal health officials.

Being able to test for the virus, track cases and isolate every infected American will be key factors in ensuring that second wave isn’t as deadly, Fauci says. The US continues to lag behind in testing, according to a new report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The nation has performed 16.4 tests per 1,000 people, according to the report. Spain and Italy, with the second and third highest number of cases after the US, have conducted 22.3 and 29.7 tests per 1,000 people respectively.

Fauci says the federal government needs to provide strategic guidance and assistance to help states up their number of conducted tests. He hopes he can guarantee everyone who needs a test can get one by the end of May or early June.”The truth is that we’re going in the right direction,” he said. “But we need to continue to partner in a very active collaborative way with the states, we need to help them the same way they need to do the execution.”

States are rushing to re-open. Tests are not available. It’s going to happen.

And sadly, for the most part the whole point of rushing this is for GOP-led states to save money:

As states begin to reopen their economies after weeks of stay-at-home orders, some are warning employees that they will lose unemployment benefits if they refuse to return to their jobs, according to The Hill — even if they fear contracting the coronavirus.

In Iowa, Governor Kim Reynolds (R) said failing to return to work would be considered a “voluntary quit,” which would terminate an employee’s benefits.

“If you’re an employer and you offer to bring your employee back to work and they decide not to, that’s a voluntary quit,” Reynolds said Friday. “Therefore, they would not be eligible for the unemployment money.”

The governor also said employers should file a report with Iowa Workforce Development if they encounter workers who refuse to come back to their jobs.

Beginning on May 1, the state will start lifting social distancing restrictions in 77 of its 99 counties, The Hill reported, which will allow “restaurants, fitness centers, malls, libraries, race tracks, and certain other retail establishments to reopen in a limited fashion with public health measures in place.”

We’re going to see this all over the country. They need to reduce their expenditures on unemployment insurance so they’re going to force people back to work. Most will go, some will refuse, some will get sick and some will die. That’s the deal they are making.

If you think it’s strange that they are doing this in spite of the almost sure rebound of the disease, I think we can safely assume they are indulging inTrumpian magical thinking. Maybe his magical cure will become available before then. Yesterday he said he thinks it’s just “going to go away.” Sure, it could happen …

If it doesn’t work out, well, that’s too bad. Republicans simply cannot go along with these pointy-headed scientists telling them to take it slow.

Gabe Sherman at Vanity Fair gets an inside look at Jared Kushner’s influence on the response to the crisis. It’s not reassuring:

Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, shared Trump’s view that the media and Democrats were hyping the crisis for political purposes. And for both of them, the biggest worry was how the response to the coronavirus might impact the health of the economy. According to sources, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, a fierce China hawk, and deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger, a former China-based Wall Street Journal reporter who’d covered the 2003 SARS pandemic, argued to officials in mid-January that the White House needed to shut down incoming flights from China.

Kushner pushed back. “Jared kept saying the stock market would go down, and Trump wouldn’t get reelected,” a Republican briefed on the internal debates said (a person close to Kushner denies this). Kushner’s position was supported by Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin and National Economic Council chief Larry Kudlow. Trump sided with them. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Trump minimized the threat in his first public comments. “It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control,” he told CNBC. (The White House and Treasury Department deny Mnuchin and Kudlow were against closing flights.)

When the coronavirus exploded out of China, Kushner was the second most powerful person in the West Wing, exerting influence over virtually every significant decision, from negotiating trade deals to 2020 campaign strategy to overseeing Trump’s impeachment defense. “Jared is running everything. He’s the de facto president of the United States,” a former White House official told me. The previous chief of staff John Kelly, who’d marginalized Kushner, was long gone, and Mick Mulvaney, a virtual lame duck by that point, let Kushner run free. “Jared treats Mick like the help,” a prominent Republican said.

“Jared kept saying the stock market would go down and Trump wouldn’t get reelected.”

Kushner’s princely arrogance had been a fixture in the West Wing since Trump’s inauguration. “The family has a degree of trust and protection that no one else enjoys,” the former West Wing official said. Kushner can appear mild-mannered, but, like his father-in-law, he seemed to relish the power he derived from crushing adversaries. After Trump’s acquittal, Kushner helped orchestrate a purge of national security officials that testified against the president. According to a source, Kushner provided the White House’s 29-year-old personnel director, John McEntee, with a list of names to be fired. (“In no way shape or form did Jared provide a list to Johnny McEntee on people to be fired,” a source familiar with the matter said).

During his time in the West Wing, Kushner had become hardened to a degree that was sometimes shocking. The days of selling the notion that he and Ivanka were moderating forces were long gone—combat was everything. A New York business executive recalled a meeting with Kushner at the White House last fall. “I told Jared that if Trump won a second term, he wouldn’t have to worry about running again and you can really help people. Jared just looked at me and said, ‘I don’t care about any of that.’” The executive came away shaken. “I wanted to tell Jared you don’t say that part out loud, even in private,” he later said. (A source close to Kushner says he has no recollection of making the comment.)

Kushner had an enemies list as long as Trump’s, and at times it played into his response to the crisis. He scoffed when his old nemesis, Steve Bannon, launched a podcast called War Room: Pandemic in January. “Steve’s a dead man. Last he was seen, he was standing on the side of the FDR Drive with the squeegee guys,” Kushner told a Republican around this time.

Kushner also had a famously unshakable belief in his own judgment. According to sources, Trump’s former Homeland Security adviser Tom Bossert told Kushner in early March that the White House needed to step up its coronavirus response. “Tom tried sounding the alarm with Jared,” said a person who spoke to Bossert at the time. (Bossert denies this.) Kushner, according to the person, dismissed Bossert’s concerns. Bossert later published his advice in a Washington Post op-ed. “Tom was hammering him: ‘You have to get on this.’ No one listened, so he wrote the op-ed,” a former West Wing official said. Bossert later told people that Kushner icily told him the op-ed was a mistake. (Bossert denies this.)

[…]

On March 11, the World Health Organization declared coronavirus a global pandemic, and Trump agreed to broadcast an Oval Office address to the nation. But even then, Kushner advised Trump to tread lightly. One source briefed on the internal conversations said Kushner told Trump not to declare a national emergency during the address because “it would tank the markets.” The markets cratered anyway, and Trump announced the national emergency later in the week. “They had to clean that up on Friday,” the source said. (A person close to Kushner denies this version of events.)

Even as the crisis was tearing through New York, with emerging problems in Louisiana, Michigan, and Illinois, Trump obsessed over the future, fixating on the fall and his reelection. He took time to call NFL owners and urge them not to preemptively cancel football season. “Trump begged them not to cancel,” said a source briefed on the call.

“This is going to be 9/11 and Pearl Harbor combined. People are going to be covering their asses for years.”

Increasingly, Kushner was in control of Trump’s response. Looking to keep him close, Pence’s chief of staff Marc Short recruited Kushner to officially join the coronavirus task force on March 12. “Pence people look at Jared apprehensively. Pence treats Jared as a peer,” said Sam Nunberg, the former Trump aide. Kushner quickly assembled a shadow network of coronavirus advisers that became more powerful than Pence’s official team. He even worked on Shabbat, a source who spoke with him on a Saturday said. (A person close to Kushner says working on Shabbat is accepted for Orthodox Jews if it’s “to save someone’s life.”) “On balance, Pence wanted Jared involved because it guarantees Trump is focused,” an executive who Kushner consulted recalled.

Azar was still the necessary scapegoat. Kushner blamed him for the criticism Trump received about the delays in testing, according to a person in frequent touch with the West Wing. “This was a total mess,” Kushner told people when he got involved. Kushner had no medical experience, but that didn’t seem to matter. “To be honest, when I got involved, I was a little intimidated. But I know how to make this government run now,” Kushner said, according to a source. “The arrogance was on full display.”

Kushner advocated for the iconoclastic public-private approach he had used for his Mideast peace plan. He reached out to business leaders like Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, according to a source. With bravado only partly grounded in reality, he promised Trump that Google was rolling out a testing website. He also made a point of bypassing normal channels, phoning Wall Street executives and asking for advice on how to help New York, people briefed on the conversation said. A former West Wing official said Kushner’s involvement wrought chaos: business leaders wanting to contribute masks or ventilators didn’t know who in government to call. According to two sources, Kushner told Trump about experimental treatments he’d learned of from executives in Silicon Valley. “Jared is bringing conspiracy theories to Trump about potential treatments,” a Republican briefed on the conversations told me. (A person close to Kushner said he brought COVID testing ideas to Trump.) Trump could be a receptive audience.

Another former West Wing official told me: “Trump is like an 11-year-old boy waiting for the fairy godmother to bring him a magic pill.”

There’s a lot more at the link.

He’s just as bad as Trump.

Almost 60K people dead in a month @foxandfriends, that’s a very morbid measure of success even for Kushner! #watchwhattheydonotwhattheysaypic.twitter.com/vB2r7NgXI9

— Isabel G (@maisgar57) April 29, 2020

If you saw Ron DeSantis sitting with dear Leader yesterday bragging about how well Florida has done in the pandemic, you might be interested to see this:

The state of Florida has now stopped its medical examiners from releasing numbers about people who have died from COVID-19.

The Tampa Bay Times reports that Florida’s state health department intervened earlier this month to suppress the medical examiners’ reports, which regularly showed death totals that were 10 percent higher than the official tallies put out by the state.

For the past nine days, no reports from the medical examiners have been made available to the public, and there’s no indication of when they will be released in the future.

Dr. Stephen Nelson, the chairman of the state Medical Examiners Commission, tells the Tampa Bay Times that state officials have told him they’re planning to remove probably causes of death from the examiners’ report, which would make it impossible to tell how many people the examiners believe have died from coronavirus.

“This is no different than any other public record we deal with,” Nelson said. “It’s paid for by taxpayer dollars and the taxpayers have a right to know.”

The Tampa Bay Times also notes the Florida state government has shown a pattern of suppressing information about the disease.

“Last month, it tried to persuade the medical examiner’s office in Miami-Dade County to restrict access to its death records, according to the Miami Herald and correspondence between the two agencies obtained by the Times,” the paper writes.

He doesn’t want to see his numbers go up dontcha know?

Here’s DeSantis’s rabidly defensive comment yesterday:

REPORTER: Governor DeSantis, you did face quite a bit of criticism for not closing your state as soon as some did.

GOV. RON DESANTIS: What have the results been?

You’re looking at some of the most draconian orders issued in some of the states — and compare Florida in terms of our hospitalizations per 100,000, in terms of our fatalities per 100,000. You go from D.C., Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, you name it, Florida has done better.

I’m not criticizing those states, but everyone in the media was saying Florida would be like New York or Italy and that has not happened because we understood we have a big, diverse state, we understood the outbreak was not uniform throughout the state. And we had a tailored and measured approach that not only helped our numbers be way below what anybody predicted, but also did less damage to our state going forward. I had construction going on, the road projects, but we did it in a safe way and we did it I think in a way that is probably more sustainable over the long term.

So, I think people could go back and look at all the criticism and then look now and nobody predicted that Florida would —

We have challenges, it’s not an easy situation. We have had people in the hospital. I’m now in a situation where I have less than 500 people in a state of 22 million on ventilators as of last night. And I have 6,500 ventilators that are sitting idle, unused, throughout the state of Florida.

REPORTER: My question is, you face that criticism, you have these numbers are sharing. Are you concerned at all about another outbreak coming this summer or this fall and not being ready?

GOV. RON DESANTIS: Of course, that’s why the whole thing was doing is, this is a novel virus, it’s unpredictable. But we are in a situation we have so many more tools to be able to detect. One of the things I was talking to Dr. Birx about, our Florida Department of Health, we have a fully integrated health care system with the counties. We have been doing contact tracing from the very beginning.

Sure, once the outbreak gets to a certain point, the mitigation is really what you do, the contact tracing is not going to be able to stop, like what was going on in New York City. In Florida we have such an uneven outbreak, we were doing contact tracing throughout this whole time and parts of the state that the outbreak wasn’t as severe. They limited the spread and did that very effectively. That’s going to be a huge part of what we are doing going forward. We think that can be successful, and we are going to have so many more opportunities with sentinel surveillance, with the nursing homes. Nothing is going to change on the nursing home testing. Until this virus goes away, this is the population that is most at risk.

In Florida, we have close to 85% of the fatalities that have been age 65 or older. Most of them have some co-morbidities. These are the types of facilities that are the most at risk. We are going to continue protecting the elderly. We have messaged that very early, about the risky, how they should stay home. I wasn’t going to arrest and elderly if they left their house. But we told them, limit contacts because you are more at risk. You go to a place like The Villages, there were articles written saying, “Oh, The Villages is going to crash and burn,” all this other stuff. They have like a 2.5% infection rate. We tested 1200 a sum to medic and none were found to have the virus. This is the message of understanding, the risks are different for different parts of our communities, and age and health, and continuing. I think you will see however we move forward, I will announce that soon. You are going to see even more attention paid to the vulnerable. I think that’s what we need to be doing.

Yeah, all those “numbers” he’s rattling off are very impressive.

If true…

Back in the middle of March, Ron Klain, the man President Obama charged with handling the Ebola crisis in 2014, appeared on MSNBC’s “All In With Chris Hayes” to discuss the plight of governors around the country who were begging the federal government for help dealing with the coronavirus and hitting roadblocks at every turn. Klain made this observation:

I listen to you talk to Gov. Murphy [of New Jersey], and I feel like we’re in 1786 under the Articles of Confederation here. I mean, you know, the governors are getting together to solve problems. I got great respect for Gov. Murphy, Gov. Cuomo, Gov. Lamont, Gov. Wolf. It’s great they’re doing that.

But we have a federal government for a reason. We passed the Constitution and created a country for a reason. And that’s particularly when this kind of nationwide threat faces ourselves that the government, the federal government mobilizes.

Recall that the Articles of Confederation, which governed the newborn United States from 1781 to 1789 — when the Constitution was ratified — called for no president, no federal judiciary and essentially no federal government. The states operated as sovereign entities, with the Congress as the only national body. The founders decided they needed to reform the system after realizing they needed a stronger central government to protect the fragile new country they’d created.

Over the years Congress has abdicated much of its own power to the president in times of war, leading to the situation where the president has the ability to wage war almost singlehandedly. That was certainly not the intention and that power has been abused terribly. But the idea that a federal government is necessary to protect the entire country, whether it be an invasion or, say, a pandemic, is intrinsic to the U.S. Constitution.

Donald Trump has been blustering about his “power” since he was elected, even fatuously declaring, “I have an Article II, where I have to the right to do whatever I want as president.” More recently, he argued that he had “total authority” to make states withdraw their stay-at-home orders, before backing off.

But from the moment the coronavirus hit our shores, Trump has actually been impotent in every important way. Sure, he has called himself a “wartime president” and has been on TV almost every day blathering about what a great job he’s doing. But in fact he has abdicated the primary job of being president, which is to lead the country during a time of crisis.

Trump has said bluntly that the federal government is not a “shipping clerk” and is only there to back up the individual states. He didn’t deploy the Army Corps of Engineers or the VA, and had to be arm-twisted into sending the two Navy hospital ships to provide medical backup to America’s two largest cities, New York and Los Angeles.

Trump had a massively powerful tool at his disposal called the Defense Production Act, which the New York Times pointed out he had already used “hundreds of thousands of times” as president:

Chemicals used to construct military missiles. Materials needed to build drones. Body armor for agents patrolling the southwest border. Equipment for natural disaster response. A Korean War-era law called the Defense Production Act has been used to place hundreds of thousands of orders by President Trump and his administration to ensure the procurement of vital equipment, according to reports submitted to Congress and interviews with former government officials.

Yet as governors and members of Congress plead with the president to use the law to force the production of ventilators and other medical equipment to combat the coronavirus pandemic, he has for weeks treated it like a “break the glass” last resort, to be invoked only when all else fails.

“You know, we’re a country not based on nationalizing our business,” Mr. Trump said earlier this month. “Call a person over in Venezuela, ask them how did nationalization of their businesses work out? Not too well.”

Instead of using the act to procure desperately needed medical equipment, Trump told state governors last month, “Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment — try getting it yourselves.” This led to bidding wars and cloak-and-dagger black market purchases. He complained mightily that they weren’t doing their jobs. But it was he who wasn’t doing his.

As far as the coronavirus pandemic is concerned, the United States doesn’t have a president. There’s just a man who comes on TV and does a bit of performance art, kind of like that installation of Ivanka Trump vacuuming. But he doesn’t actually do anything.

So the states have had to stop operating under the Constitution and, as Klain says, have instead reverted back to the Articles of Confederation. Here’s what your new map looks like:

Seven weeks ago, I went on @allinwithchris and told @chrislhayes that — given Trump's weak leadership — we were headed to an "Articles of Confederation" response to this crisis. Well….. https://t.co/X04ya2Q0kP

— Ronald Klain (@RonaldKlain) April 28, 2020

Because of the lack of national leadership, governors are forming regional compacts in order to try to facilitate a response that makes sense. Despite all the endless rhetoric about how you can’t have a one-size-fits-all process, the fact is, as the cliché goes, the virus doesn’t respect borders. If one state decides to throw caution to the wind and open everything up without regard to casualties, while its next-door neighbor tries to keep everything locked down to prevent more deaths, it will be almost impossible to prevent the spread from getting out of hand.

As New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham told the New York Times, “If one state doesn’t get the resources and materials they need, the entire nation continues to be at risk.”

Since we really don’t have any kind of national plan or guidance beyond telling people to wash their hands and stay six feet away from each other, states and localities are working together regionally to try to create plans for reopening that won’t result in massive infections spreading from one to another.

It seems to be the best they can do under the circumstances. Unfortunately, even their best efforts are probably going to fail unless we get a massive dose of good luck. Just because Trump has decided it’s the 1780s again doesn’t mean that it actually is. And as much as we are politically divided, this isn’t strictly a matter of red states vs. blue states, as the rising caseload in more rural, conservative areas should make clear.

We are one country, intertwined in so many ways we couldn’t separate if we wanted to. People and goods travel unimpeded between the states, and so does the virus.

If we had a national testing process and a systematic plan for gradual reopening, perhaps this could be mitigated in a comprehensive way. But this is all going to be done ad hoc, with the various actors just hoping that the hospitals and mortuaries don’t get overrun again, and that the supply chain that’s keeping us fed and functioning doesn’t break down due to a sickened workforce.

This is why the Constitution replaced those Articles of Confederation in the first place — so the central government, led by a president, could enact policies that would protect the whole country. Sadly, we have a president who doesn’t know how to do that, and isn’t interested in learning.

All he has, even after all we’ve been through, is magical thinking:

Trump on why he thinks it's a good idea for states to reopen economies without a coronavirus vaccine or even effective treatments available: "I think what happens is it's going to go away." pic.twitter.com/0hyIQ0GqV3

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 28, 2020

My Salon column reprinted with permission.

Wikipedia describes how lemon laws compel manufacturers to honor express and implied warranties on their products :

Lemon laws are American state laws that provide a remedy for purchasers of cars and other consumer goods in order to compensate for products that repeatedly fail to meet standards of quality and performance…. Although the exact criteria vary by state, new vehicle lemon laws require that an auto manufacturer repurchase a vehicle that has a significant defect that the manufacturer is unable to repair within a reasonable amount of time.

About now, one wonders how this concept might apply to a hopelessly defective president. But two columns this morning raise the question of what redress we have as citizens when saddled with a defective government and economic system.

Slate’s Ben Mathis-Lilley examines the massive stimulus passed to address an economy collapsed by the global pandemic. What Americans who have avoided needing a social safety net are finding is that, well, it doesn’t work as advertised. Web sites crash; the haves deplete available funds before the have-nots can get someone to answer the phone; etc.

“How are you going to pay for it?” goes out the window when the right people are in need. Funny, how that works. And still it doesn’t.

Nearly a third of Americans had not paid their rent earlier this month. What the stimulus package offers, Mathis-Lilley writes, is deferment rather than forbearance. It allows you to skip payments rather than add them to the end of your rental agreement. The bill expects you to pay back skipped payments as a lump sum after months with no income. Instead of getting evicted now for nonpayment, you get evicted later.

Failures like this are not a bug, Mathis-Lilley believes, but a feature of how our government safety net operates:

That’s because government programs in the United States—even those supported by the purportedly pro-government party—are not designed to solve problems. Rather, they are designed to solve a given problem only to a degree—and that degree can’t require an amount of spending that would necessitate financial sacrifice on the part of high-income taxpayers. This is not a leftist conspiracy theory, but the overt position of the party’s leaders, who believe they will not be able to achieve crucial voting margins in upscale suburbs if they authorize too much taxation and spending.

Even when we shove deficit concerns aside, it’s how we do business.

Now an unprecedented number of Americans born into a comfortable, albeit tenuous, social strata get to experience firsthand the “half-a-loaf style” of the safety net’s faulty design. “To put it cynically,” Mathis-Lilley writes, “the job of much Democratic legislation is to make liberal voters of means feel good that something is being done for the less fortunate, not necessarily to actually do that thing.”

One might call such legislative products lemons.

Slate’s Nicole Karlis interviewed Lauren Sandler, author of “This Is All I Got: A New Mother’s Search for Home” about how capitalism is failing those Mathis-Lilley describes as having “made the dubious personal decision to be born into one of the bottom wealth quintiles.”

Sandler enters the world of Camila, 22, a single mother in New York City searching for affordable housing. We think of the homeless as people sleeping on the streets, Sandler explains. In fact, there were 20,000 sleeping in New York’s shelters when she moved there in 1992.

A large proportion are people “you would not recognize as stereotypically homeless in any way.” Women in Camila’s shelter worked at Applebee’s or the Gap or as home healthcare aides. Even when Camila’s name comes up in an affordable housing lottery, she still cannot afford it “because it’s not affordable for people who are poor.”

It is simply untrue, Sandler found, that “homeless people are homeless because they couldn’t make it, and that we live in a country where everyone has a shot.” She continues:

I mean, it’s hard to imagine someone working harder or being more determined or more organized or more tenacious than Camilla was. And it didn’t matter. So anyone in that shelter would tell you that the most foundational need that they have is housing. There’s a million other things that are needed as well. But without that most basic element of stability, the rest of it is impossible. And what it means to get stable housing, not just in this city, but in this country, is something that is systemically impossible because of our policies.

A homeless outreach organizer in Seattle asks in a Zoom meeting, “Everyone’s so appalled with price gouging about hand sanitizer. Why is no one appalled about price gouging about housing?”

Why indeed? A safety net exists on paper, but as with features of the pandemic stimulus, it is impossible to access.

The notion that this isn’t completely rigged, the notion that you can somehow supersede the extent of systemic injustice, unless you’re born into a family that can help you do it, it’s all just the inheritance game. And it is impossible. And it’s a tragedy. And it’s a tragedy that people don’t see it.

Also tragic is that those now experiencing these structural defects will forget about them as quickly as things “get back to normal.” No one will demand we make lemonade from legislative lemons. No one will insist democracy and capitalism make good on their express and implied warranties. No one (almost no one) will demand “big, structural change.”

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.
Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way by June, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.

Politico reports:

As appetite mounts on Capitol Hill to go after China, Sen. Ted Cruz is set to introduce a bill targeting film studios’ efforts to accommodate the country’s restrictive censors.

The legislation, called “The Stopping Censorship, Restoring Integrity, Protecting Talkies Act” (SCRIPT Act), would block cooperation between the U.S. Defense Department and any film studios that edit or alter their movies for audiences in China.

“For too long, Hollywood has been complicit in China’s censorship and propaganda in the name of bigger profits,” the Texas Republican said in a statement. “The SCRIPT Act will serve as a wak-up call by forcing Hollywood studios to choose between the assistance they need from the American government and the dollars they want from China.”

The senator plans to introduce the bill when the Senate is next in session, according to his office.

Film studios often edit their films before they air in China, as they seek to court audiences there by pacifying the country’s strict censorship rules. For instance, a scene about Freddie Mercury’s sexuality disappeared from the version of Bohemian Rhapsody that played for Chinese audiences, as the AP detailed. The cuts came after a government-linked TV association called homosexuality “abnormal” and admonished studios not to depict it, per the wire service. And MGM re-edited its remake of Red Dawn to depict the North Koreans, rather than the Chinese, as occupying America. They made the overhaul because of concerns about angering China’s censors, according to The Los Angeles Times. Chinese government censors also frown upon a host of other topics that appear commonly in American movies, including some depictions of violence, according to Cnet, and –– per CNN –– “excessive smoking” and cleavage.

China isn’t the only country that requires movie censorship; countries like Saudi Arabia (which only started allowing public movie screenings in 2018) and Kuwait have also demanded concessions from Hollywood. But China is uniquely important to the movie industry because of its huge and growing economy.

Hollywood’s relationship with the Pentagon, meanwhile, is old and deep. According to a report in The Independent, DOD has helped Hollywood make more than 800 movies since 1917, including blockbusters like Iron Man and The Terminator. Studios benefit from access to military facilities and equipment, and from consultation with the Pentagon’s experts. But that support is never guaranteed; in 2012, Wired reported that the Pentagon decided against helping Marvel Studios make The Avengers because officials there didn’t understand how S.H.I.E.L.D. fit into the military chain of command. And the Pentagon yanked assistance to the makers of The Hurt Locker because of a scene “the government believed portrayed troops unflatteringly,” according to LAT.

This is a savvy move. Not only does it hit China, it hits the dreaded liberal Hollywood which I’m sure Cruz has railed against throughout his career for its “indecency.” And, of course, he’s backing the right’s new censorship move against the internet.

So, you know, fuck him.

It looks like there was quite an argument today on the DC Court of Appeals. Judging from this, I’m almost hopeful they rule in favor of the Republicans since it will give a Democratic president many more tools to fix this damage. On the other hand, we know that presidents won’t always be Democrats . And we know that monarchy isn’t going to work well for us.

Anyway, this twitter thread is from WNYC’s Andrea Bernstein:

Some thoughts on this morning’s arguments in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals in the House’s cases against McGahn (because of his refusal to answer Congress’ subpoena re: Mueller) and Mnuchin, because of his approving spending on the border wall after Congress didn’t.

The words “king” “monarch” “revolution” and “gun battles, were uttered.

 Essentially, the DOJ is arguing that Congress can’t sue the president because for the courts to rule would mean they would favor either the executive branch or the legislative branch and the very fact of their ruling would violate separation of powers.

The DOJ lawyer, Hash Mooppan said: “If a president violates all laws, the proper solution is removal from office, in no case is it for congress to file lawsuits.”

This produced quite the series of hypothetical questions from Judge Merrick Garland (who you remember, Obama nominated to the Supreme Court but McConnell blocked).

Garland’s 1st hypothetical: After defeat of a health care bill, the president instructs the Treasury to pay for health care insurance for any American who cannot get it. Would there be standing?

“No, your honor,” Mooppan said.

Garland’s 2nd hypothetical: “If, after PPP fails, the President instructs Treasury to spend 1K a month until the pandemic ends? No standing, right?”

Mooppan offered that there might be criminal law violations, which would be a deterrent.

To which Garland said…

Garland: So the president orders them not to bring a case, and issues pardon for any behavior. What’s the check now?

Mooppan answers, for the DOJ, that Congress could refuse to act on legislation or that the House could persuade the Senate (!) not to approve nominations.

One of Garland’s colleagues picked up on this:

“If a president in his first year in office redoes the separation of powers… nothing can be done until the next presidential election other than revolution?”

Essentially, the answer is Yes.

In his own arguments, the House Attorney, Douglas Letter, said:

“Surely nobody thinks…the House should go out and arrest people? Maybe we should have gun battles between the Sargeant-at-arms and the and security detail?”

He added that the White House counsel had argued during Senate impeachment proceedings that subpoenas issued by the House could be ignored because the House should have gone to court to enforce subpoenas. (Which is precisely what it is doing now and DOJ says it can’t do. )

 To recap the admin’s position is

1 The House can issue subpoenas, but can’t enforce them.

2. POTUS can violate appropriations law and the only remedy is the next election.

3. A sitting President has absolute immunity from prosecution, even if he shoots someone on 5th Ave.

12/ Okay, that last one is from Trump v. Vance, which SCOTUS will hear next month.

More updates on the future of the rule of law then, and on upcoming episodes of the Trump Inc. Podcast.

Trump, Inc.: Episodes | WNYC Studios | PodcastsWho’s profiting from this administration and at what cost? http://TrumpIncPodcast.Org

This should be a wake up call for the right wing but it won’t be:

Dozens of pastors across the Bible Belt have succumbed to coronavirus after churches and televangelists played down the pandemic and actively encouraged churchgoers to flout self-distancing guidelines. As many as 30 church leaders from the nation’s largest African American Pentecostal denomination have now been confirmed to have died in the outbreak, as members defied public health warnings to avoid large gatherings to prevent transmitting the virus.

Deaths across the US in areas where the Church of God in Christ has a presence have reportedly stemmed from funerals and other meetings among clergy and other church staff held during the pandemic.

The tragedy among one of the largest black Pentecostal groups follows a message of defiance from many American churches, particularly conservative Christian groups, to ignore state and local government mandates against group gatherings, with police increasingly called in to enforce the bans and hold preachers accountable.

Yet despite the climbing death toll, many US church leaders throughout the Bible Belt have not only continued to hold services but have urged worshippers to continue paying tithes — including recent stimulus checks — to support their mission.

Bishop Gerald Glenn, founder and leader since 1995 of the New Deliverance Evangelistic Church in Chesterfield, Virginia, was the first black chaplain of the town’s police. He had vowed to continue preaching “unless I’m in jail or the hospital” before his death from coronavirus earlier this month.

The bishop told his congregation that he believes “God is larger than this dreaded virus” just days before Virginia Governor Ralph Northam urged people to avoid “nonessential” group gatherings. During a 15 March service, which nearly 200 people attended, the bishop said: “I’m glad to be in the Lord’s house. It didn’t have to be this way. The government could have said we couldn’t gather at all. Just imagine if the government had the authority to say, you and me, we can’t go to church. Aren’t you glad you were free to get up and come?”

Most congregations are following stay-at-home guidelines, according to recent polling that found that nearly 90 per cent of congregations have closed their churches and been encouraged to worship at home.

But 20 per cent of parishioners say they’re encouraged to attend in-person services, and another 17 per cent continue to do so. The survey found that evangelicals were more likely to report worshipping in person. In states with restrictions on attending church as well as those without, nearly a third of church-attending evangelicals said they continued to attend in person.

Though many Christians have continued to practise their faith at home or by watching live-streamed services held in empty churches, places of worship across the US have been linked to several outbreaks. A report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed how religious services in particular can be deadly vectors for the disease.

The CDC illustrated how a Chicago funeral became a “super-spreader event” that “played a significant role in transmission” of the virus.

Among several people who became ill following the service, one patient who developed Covid-19 symptoms two days after attending the funeral was hospitalised a week later and put on a ventilator. The patient later died.

The article goes on with example after example — and Republicans cynically pumping the story for their own political gain.

I would just remind you of a moment from the Angel of Death, Laura Ingraham:

LAURA: Right now we have no freedom of worship, public worship to go, to gather, we have no real freedom of assembly, not even freedom of movement, given what some of the states are doing. What can you tell our viewers tonight about what the Justice Department will do after this limited period, to ensure that our civil liberties are balanced properly against the need to protect the public? […] Governor Cuomo spoke out this week very forcefully, this Holy Week for Christians, obviously Passover as well for Jewish Americans, about the importance of not gathering together to celebrate, and I want you to listen.
 
GOV. ANDREW CUOMO//ALBANY, NY/TODAY: Now is not the time for large religious gatherings. We paid this price already. We have learned this lesson //// you do no one a service by making this worse and infecting more people.
 
LAURA: At what point in time do Americans feel like they’re going to be able to have that right back and that the federal government will stand up if local officials continue this all out prohibition going forward?

LAURA:  Would there become a time in the future, perhaps after this April 30th date, where a state somewhere or local official who declares no religious services with no accommodation, that there’s a lawsuit filed, federal civil rights lawsuit against that government action, whether it’s by executive decree locally or statewide or whether it’s by the federal government? I mean, when would that happen? Would it take a lawsuit? Or would you take action? 

She hectored him over and over again and he even said that you can’t claim a violation of the 1st Amendment if you are treating all gatherings the same way and not singling out religious services. She didn’t seem to like that much.

I point this out to show that the likes of Ingraham and Hannity have been pushing the idea that religious services are so sacred that people should be allowed to defy any and all legal orders to stay distanced from one another.

Fox News has been pushing people to ignore even Donald Trump’s own task force’s mitigation strategies. They have been telling people to take unproven drugs. They’ve flogged this “freedom of religion” nonsense into a sanctioned form of ritual suicide.

They have spent hours and hours playing down the severity of the virus, even to the point where we had this atrocity last night:

Tucker Carlson says there is no scientific justification for quarantine, says the curve flattened but quarantine had nothing to do with it, "the virus just isn't nearly as deadly as we thought it was" pic.twitter.com/stNvDJwlOa

— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) April 28, 2020

One of Trump's top advisers warned on February 23 that coronavirus could kill 2 million Americans. Four days later, Trump said publicly the virus would go away on its own "like a miracle." https://t.co/NWKrAJroJD https://t.co/Ge1ZO4RsqM

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 28, 2020

JON KARL: Were you warned about coronavirus back in January?

TRUMP: "I think probably a lot more than the Democrats. A month later, Pelosi was saying, 'Let's dance in the streets of Chinatown'" … most people thought this was going to blow over." (Both of those claims are lies) pic.twitter.com/eTYxWHDurp

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 28, 2020

I just want to remind everyone of this. The article was written in April so “last month” refers to March:

During one task force meeting in the Situation Room last month, Trump turned to Fauci and challenged him.

It was the day the administration was adding Ireland and the United Kingdom to its travel restrictions, and Trump wanted to understand why talk of “herd immunity” — allowing the coronavirus to sweep a nation largely unchecked, with the belief that those who survived would then be immune — was such a bad idea.

“Why don’t we let this wash over the country?” Trump asked, according to two people familiar with his comments, a question other administration officials say he has raised repeatedly in the Oval Office.

Fauci initially seemed confused by the term “wash over” but became alarmed once he understood what Trump was asking.

“Mr. President, many people would die,” Fauci said.

Honestly, I think this is where we’re headed anyway. The premature opening of certain states without adequate testing means that infected people are going to be traveling all over the country spreading it around again. I just saw a CNN segment that showed a packed plane full of New Yorkers many without masks, crammed into coach. Apparently, that’s not unusual since they’ve curtailed so many flights — they’re filling the planes to capacity.

We are one country whether we like it or not. If infected people are traveling, there is little hope of containing the virus in certain places that are failing to follow the science.

Let’s just hope they come up with some workable treatments and a vaccine more quickly than anticipated.

Somebody is in his ear about this:

President Donald Trump on Monday urged the nation’s governors to “seriously consider” reopening schools as part of his push to restart the economy, though many states have already recommended against resuming the school year.

“Some of you might start thinking about school openings, because a lot of people are wanting to have school openings. It’s not a big subject, young children have done very well in this disaster that we’ve all gone through,” Trump told the governors on a teleconference call, according to audio of the call obtained by CNN.

He continued, “So a lot of people are thinking about the school openings. And I think it’s something, Mike (Pence), they can seriously consider and maybe get going on it.”

But this late in the school year, it’s unlikely that many students will return to the classrooms in the immediate future.

I haven’t heard of anyone specifically pushing this schools thing but there has to be someone. And I don’t know exactly who might benefit from it. Has someone put it in his head that this will save the states money? Inquiring minds…

Meanwhile, it’s idiotic, of course. Young people can get the virus and they are notorious spreaders to everyone they come in contact with. There is no reason to open schools this year.

Why can’t he just stay out of this? Or just do what the experts are telling him and take credit. Why is he determined to do the wrong thing every single time?