In the early days of the pandemic, a doctor at a University of Washington lab, Dr. Helen Chu, was the first to find community spread of the coronavirus in the U.S. She was studying the flu and in late January she requested permission to test her samples for the coronavirus as well. She couldn’t get federal or state approval. A month later, her team began testing without approval and found a positive test in a local teenager. Once the state approved further testing, the FDA put a stop to it. Part of this was because of privacy and permission issues, but part of it was the inability of our government to see the value of testing. And because of that, we still don’t have a solid test nor a test strategy to help us move forward.

Here’s what happened in politics during the week ending April 26…

Shootings This Week:

1. There were 6 mass shootings in the U.S. this week (defined as killing and/or injuring 4 or more people). Shooters kill 5 people and injure 24 more.
2. For the first time in over six decades, Miami goes six weeks straight without a homicide.
3. After last week’s mass murder in Nova Scotia, Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promises gun safety legislation.

Russia:

1. The Senate Intelligence Committee releases another report confirming the findings by our intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in our 2016 elections to help elect Trump. They confirm that Putin directed the efforts.

• • The committee is chaired by Republican Senator Richard Burr, who praised our intelligence community’s strong tradecraft and analytical reasoning.
  • This is the fourth of five reports to be released by the committee.
  • The bipartisan committee approved the report unanimously.
  • The report says that the officials who wrote the original intelligence community assessment of Russia’s meddling were not subject to political pressure.
  • This report contradicts the report issued by House Republicans in 2018, which claimed there were significant failings in the intelligence agencies and that they couldn’t conclude Putin favored Trump.

2. After an appeals court ruled that the DOJ must hand over documents from the Mueller investigation to Congress, the DOJ asks for a stay while it takes the case to the Supreme Court.

Courts/Justice:

1. Attorney General Bill Barr threatens to take legal action against governors who impose strict stay-at-home measures to help slow the spread of the coronavirus. States and the Trump administration are all struggling to define a safe approach to reopening. (Tip: The CDC has a plan.)

Coronavirus:

1. Church leaders and televangelists encourage churches to continue holding religious gatherings despite the social distancing guidelines, and now at least 30 pastors across the Bible Belt have died from COVID-19. 
Church services and funerals have been the vector for several outbreaks across the U.S.
2. The Navy recommends that Captain Brett Crozier be reinstated to his post as commander of the USS Theodore Roosevelt. Defense Secretary Mark Esper is holding it up.
3. There are currently 26 Navy warships with confirmed coronavirus cases aboard.
4. Trump suggests to a very uncomfortable Dr. Deborah Birx that we could treat COVID-19 with ultraviolet light, either through the skin or injection. He goes on to muse about injections or cleaning the lungs with disinfectant.

• • Heat and humidity studies are inconclusive and show no evidence that heat will slow it down the way it does the flu.
  • It turns out that the leader of Genesis II, a group peddling a bleach-based coronavirus cure, wrote to Trump to tell him about how it can kill 99% of the pathogens in the body. 30 supporters of the group wrote to Trump as well.
  • Just days before Trump suggested disinfectant as a cure, the FDA banned Genesis II from selling its bleach cure.
  • After this whole exchange, Trump says he has a very good “you know what,” pointing to his head and apparently forgetting the word for “brain.”
  • Dr. Deborah Birx defends Trump, saying that he just wanted to “talk that through.” Tip: When the president wants to just throw shit out to see what sticks, he should do it in private, not in public.

5. Polling data comes out that shows Biden ahead of Trump as the presidential favorite. The data also shows that the American people generally don’t approve of Trump’s response to the pandemic. The campaign team shows the data to Trump to get him to stop his daily briefings.
6. After the kerfuffle over UV light and disinfectant, Trump plans to stop appearing at daily press briefings and have fewer, shorter briefings instead. Trump has fought this, saying that the briefings get good ratings.
7. The manufacturer of Lysol issues a statement warning not to use Lysol internally: “As a global leader in health and hygiene products, we must be clear that under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion or any other route).”
8. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) launches a series of audits on the administration’s coronavirus response. They’ll oversee the administration of relief packages as well as the overall response to the pandemic, including testing, medical supply distribution, and nursing home infections.
9. Dr. Anthony Fauci says that we should be able to double the number of coronavirus tests completed in the next few weeks.
10. The FDA approves a new at-home coronavirus test kit.
11. There’s one cruise ship still out at sea with passengers, and the plan to dock it gets scuttled because of the weather. There are no infections on board. I don’t know why they wouldn’t just stay there.
12. Hydroxychloroquine is linked to higher rates of death for VA patients hospitalized with COVID-19. VA researchers look at people who received HCQ, people who received HCQ plus an antibiotic, and people who didn’t receive HCQ. Death rates are nearly double for patients receiving HCQ alone or in combination with other drugs.
13. The FDA issues a warning against using hydroxychloroquine unless specifically prescribed by your doctor.
14. Dr. Rick Bright, director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), claims he was removed from his position and demoted for resisting Trump’s efforts to push hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19. He’ll file a whistleblower complaint. He says that science, not politics or cronyism, needs to lead the way in solving this crisis.
15. Hospitals in New York are testing plasma treatments on their sickest patients. This involves transfusing them with blood plasma from patients who’ve recovered from the disease.
16. Thousands of email addresses and passwords are stolen from the NIH, WHO, CDC, and Gates Foundation, all of which are targets of a conspiracy theory that alleges these groups are profiting off any vaccines or treatments for COVID-19 and that they’ll implant us with tracking devices through the vaccine.

• • Neo-Nazis and white supremacists publish the information extensively across the web, calling for a campaign to harass the exposed individuals.
  • The Gates Foundation is the target of a conspiracy theory that Bill Gates is trying to control the world through his response to the coronavirus. Meanwhile, the Gates Foundation has pledged $150 million to fight the virus, holds no patents for vaccines, and won’t be inserting microchips into any of us.

17. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo says the curve in the state is “on its way down” and some hospitals can start performing elective procedures again. The state’s peak was pretty much as predicted.
18. Missouri sues China for its role in the pandemic, saying the country’s communist regime covered up information about the pandemic and didn’t do enough to stop the spread.
19. People are avoiding regular doctor visits due to fears around the pandemic, and that means that kids are falling behind on their vaccines. This puts them at risk for measles, whooping cough, and more.
20. Even though Trump says one preventable death is too many, he pushes states to reopen. In reality, until there’s a vaccine or cure, reopening means trading some lives for economic gain. On the other hand, people will start dying from other things caused by the shutdown, so it’s a balancing act.
21. A day after Mike Pence says that Veterans Affairs isn’t seeing an increase in coronavirus numbers, the department has its largest one-day increase and now has over 6,000 cases. The number of COVID-19 deaths in the VA has been rising steadily since March 22, and is at 391. There are 1,895 VA employees who’ve tested positive and 20 have died from COVID-19.
22. The VA has been deploying teams of employees to help out with nursing homes on the East Coast.
23. The State Department strips references to the World Health Organization from its coronavirus fact sheets, and Mike Pompeo tells department employees to cut the WHO out of initiatives the U.S. supports. The U.S. will try to reroute funds, but that might require congressional approval.

• • The Trump administration is delaying a UN Security Council resolution in response to the pandemic because it objects to language supportive of the WHO.
  • The White House is also imploring our allies to question the credibility of the WHO.
  • European officials complain that they can’t find common ground with the U.S. on this.

24. Millions of people across the globe are more vulnerable to the coronavirus pandemic because of cuts to U.S. foreign aid under Trump. Those cuts have forced clinics to close and reduced available supplies for other clinics. Aid groups express concern about the absence of U.S. leadership.
25. Doctors start to notice that COVID-19 causes strokes in some younger adults (in their 30s and 40s). Several die or are left debilitated by it. Doctors see rapid clotting in some of these patients (that is, they go in to fix one clot and can see others already forming).
26. California is the first state to recommend testing for some people without symptoms or contact with people infected with the coronavirus.
27. Despite conspiracy theories to the contrary, scientists say that all available evidence indicates that the coronavirus originated in animals and was not produced or modified in a lab. The Trump administration has asked intelligence agencies to find evidence that it was created in a lab or escaped from one.
28. ER doctors worry because the number of visits to the ER is down drastically as people worry about catching the virus in an ER or taking a bed needed by a COVID-19 patient. Health officials change their warnings to remind people that ERs can still treat you safely.
29. West Point’s graduation was postponed because of the pandemic, but Trump wants the graduates to all come back in June so he can give a commencement speech. To the surprise of everyone at West Point, he announces he’ll definitely do that.
30. The day after a brief clash between CNN reporter Kaitlin Collins and Trump, the White House tries to force her to trade her front-row seat at the press briefings with someone in the back row. Both reporters refuse to move because the White House doesn’t determine the seating chart. Trump briefs the press for only 22 minutes after that and refuses to take any questions. It’s the shortest coronavirus briefing so far, during a week where we surpassed 50,000 deaths in the U.S. and are coming up on a million confirmed cases.
31. After Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston started requiring all staff to wear masks in March, new coronavirus infection diagnoses dropped by more than half. In early April, they mandated that patients must wear masks as well.
32. After CDC Director Robert Redfield says we could see an even more difficult second wave of COVID-19 in the fall that we need to prepare for, Trump expresses doubt that it’ll happen. That’s how every single pandemic in the past 100 years has played out, but looking at the news and social media, lots of folks believe him instead of history.

• • In a briefing, Trump says Redfield was totally misquoted by The Washington Post on that. When asked about it moments later, Redfield says, “I’m accurately quoted in The Washington Post.”

33. Trump says the U.S. (which has tested around 4.2 million people) has tested more than the rest of the world put together (they’ve tested around 18.5 million people).
34. Ben Carson has a council to focus on restoring black and Hispanic communities to full economic health following the pandemic.
35. It’s likely that the numbers for COVID-19 infections and deaths will rise quite a bit, based on the high number of excess deaths we have over the typical number of deaths for the past 6 weeks plus COVID-19 deaths.

• • For example, there were 15,400 more deaths than typical for the period between March 1 and April 4. 8,128 were from COVID-19. Some of the remaining 7,000 plus were deaths also likely from COVID-19.

Shortages:

1. People have criticized the Trump administration for delivering medical equipment to China in February, but it turns out that the shipment of nearly 18 tons of medical equipment from the U.S. to China came from charitable organizations. The State Department arranged transportation only.
2. The last COVID-19 patient being treated on the USNS Comfort is discharged. The hospital ship arrived at the end of March and treated 182 people. The ship was set up for up to 500 COVID-91 patients, but the stay at home orders slowed down the spread enough that not all beds were needed.
3. Medical employees at VA hospitals say they don’t have enough protective gear and that some of what they have is being diverted to the national stockpile.
4. A New York nurses union sues the state for not providing enough protection for front-line workers from the coronavirus.

Exposures:

1. Remember two weeks ago when the Supreme Court, Wisconsin GOP legislators, and the Wisconsin Supreme Court forced voters who hadn’t received a mail-in ballot to go vote in person? At least 40 of the people who either showed up to vote or worked the polls have tested positive for coronavirus

• • But still, GOP lawmakers in the state sue Governor Tony Evers to stop his stay-at-home orders, saying the orders have created immense frustration. Well, no shit. We’re all pretty frustrated.

2. The Santa Clara County medical examiner discovers that one county resident died from COVID-19 on February 6 and another on February 17, much earlier than we thought the first death occurred in the U.S. The examiner sent tissue to the CDC at the time but the CDC’s strict testing rules prevented testing until calls were made to federal authorities.

• • Washington state health officials found two COVID-related deaths on February 26, three days earlier than we previously thought the first death in the U.S. occurred.
  • The CDC believes that as more tissue is tested, we’ll find more deaths earlier than we thought.

• • Genetic analyses suggest that early COVID-19 cases on the East Coast came from Europe and not China. They also suggest that it was spreading around Seattle weeks earlier than we thought.
  • Accurate epidemiology modeling relies on knowing the start date

3. A man in Wuhan, China, tested positive for the coronavirus in February. Even though he doesn’t have any symptoms, he’s still testing positive. Several people appear to recover but continue to carry the virus. Some people have a lot of antibodies following their infections, but some have relatively few. In South Korea, there are reports of people becoming reinfected.
4. The Trump administration says the U.S. won’t participate in a global initiative to develop, produce, and distribute drugs and vaccines against the coronavirus. In a more normal administration, the U.S. would be a global leader in this effort.
5. There’s concern that the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in January might have been a coronavirus spreader event. This could explain why certain areas around San Francisco saw early cases and deaths.
6. Mike Pence says the coronavirus will ebb in the summer months and much of the pandemic will be behind us.
7. Tyson Foods suspends operations at its largest pork processing plant in Waterloo, Iowa after a number of their employees test positive for coronavirus. They previously had to shut down a different hog slaughterhouse in Iowa for the same reason.
8. Smithfield Foods has one of the country’s biggest outbreaks at a processing plant in South Dakota. A big issue is that their employees speak 40 different languages. However, the CDC provides information packets in most languages.

• • According to the CDC, in March workers were promised extra money if they showed up for work during the pandemic.
  • Smithfield Foods blames “living circumstances in certain cultures” for one of the largest COVID-19 clusters at one of its plants. South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem says that 99% of the spread was happening outside the plant.

9. Nursing homes and jails continue to be trouble spots for COVID-19 outbreaks, but New York and New Jersey order nursing homes to accept COVID-19 patients who have been discharged from the hospital even though they’re still recovering. California had a similar directive, but ended it in late March. Some nursing homes reopen empty wings to serve COVID-19 patients.

Closures:

1. As some states consider reopening, public health officials warn that that states shouldn’t open up unless they have the ability to test, to detect new outbreaks, and to quash them by contact tracing. States must also have hospital capacity to handle flare-ups.

• • Here’s an interesting model of when states are predicted to be able to start relaxing restrictions.

2. Tennessee plans to reopen by May 1.
3. South Carolina also has plans to lift some restrictions this week. They don’t meet the guidelines either, but their rates are fairly low.
4. New Jersey announces a blueprint to opening the state back up, but they have yet to see their peak.
5. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp starts reopening businesses in the state. Mayors and health officials criticize the decision, and even Trump, who it could be argued egged Kemp on, says it’s too soon. #ThrewHimUnderTheBus

• • Kemp opens gyms, fitness centers, bowling alleys, body art studio, barbers, cosmetologists, hair designers, nail care artists and massage therapists.
  • Theaters, private clubs, and restaurant dine-in services can resume next week.
  • The state has an increase of around 4,000 cases this week, with over 140 deaths, and definitely doesn’t meet the federal guidelines for beginning to reopen.
  • Members of Kemp’s coronavirus tax force were taken by surprise with his announcement, including those tasked with informing the public.
  • Georgia ranks close to the bottom of states as far as testing rate.
  • It’s kind of amazing that Georgia is the home of the CDC.

6. Six Republican governors in the Southeast form a coalition to plan their reopening, similar to others formed in the Northeast, Midwest, and West.
7. South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Texas, and Tennessee announce limited easing of restrictions of businesses, recreation, and social gatherings. None of these states have met the federal guidelines for beginning to open. Some even continue to have upward trends in COVID-19 cases and deaths.
8. Some mayors in these states say they’ll keep their orders in place.
9. Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman gives a wild interview with Katy Tur and says she wants to reopen the city’s casinos and assume that everyone is already a carrier. Her rationale is that competition will destroy any businesses that spread the virus. She says we’ll learn the facts afterward.
10. Some countries, like Ghana are also opening back up, and Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro participated in anti-lockdown protests. Wait a minute! Is he protesting himself? Just like Trump.
11. European countries begin to slowly reopen. Austria is already planning to open bars and restaurants in a few weeks, while Spain and Italy are taking it slower.
12. With deaths in Italy decreasing over a few days, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte releases a plan to manage the outbreak there, including:

• • Continuing with social distancing, masks, and gloves until there’s a remedy or vaccine.
  • Girding up the healthcare system.
  • Creating hospitals specifically for COVID-19.
  • Antibody testing and contact tracing.

13. On the other hand, Netherlands bans large events until at least September.
14. New Zealand starts to lift its strict lockdown after a highly successful response by the government led by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. She has an 80% approval rating over her handling of the crisis.
15. The U.K. Parliament votes unanimously to hold the rest of their sessions virtually over web conferences. The U.S. House, on the other hand, scraps a plan to just vote on handling their business remotely due to Republican opposition.
16. The United Automobile Workers union issues a statement saying that May is too early to start reopening automobile plants because it’s not safe enough yet for workers.
17. Air Canada suspends flights to the U.S. until May 22.
18. Wimbledon is canceled for the first time since World War II.
19. Some California counties open their beaches with social distancing guidelines still in place. A heatwave brings large crowds to the beaches, making it impossible to enforce social distancing.
20. The never-ceases-to-amaze-me Lt. Governor of Texas, Dan Patrick, defends reopening by saying that “there are more important things than living.”
21. After a phone call with the head of the company that owns luxury gyms like Equinox and SoulCycle, Trump proposes reopening gyms.

Protests:

1. Kentucky has a spike in coronavirus cases the week after protests broke out against the state’s stay at home restrictions. Also in Kentucky, a pastor files a lawsuit against Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, which asserts that not allowing religious gatherings on Easter Sunday violates the constitutional right to religious freedom.
2. A mother in Idaho sparks a protest when she’s arrested for refusing to leave a playground with her children. Turns out it was a publicity stunt for her group, Idahoans for Vaccine Freedom (obvs an anti-vaxx group). Even Ammon Bundy got involved in the protest.
3. The protests popping up across the country against social distancing restrictions aren’t spontaneous, grassroots protests. They’re being pushed by a group of conservative individuals and organizations largely funded by Republican large donors.

• • The Convention of States, which promoted the protests through Facebook ads, is funded by Robert Mercer’s family foundation (you might remember him as the guy who owned companies involved in the Russia investigation). Cabinet members Ken Cuccinelli and Ben Carson have both supported the group in the past. The Convention of States’ purpose is to reduce federal power.
  • A vast majority of Americans support the social distancing measures.

• • The Koch network, which funded or launched some of the conservative groups supporting the protests, declines to support or assist with the protests.

4. An attorney pulls a knife on a news team covering an anti-lockdown protest in Huntington Beach, CA, and then forces them into their news van and orders them to erase any footage in which he appears. He’s now in jail for kidnapping and exhibiting a deadly weapon. He claims he wasn’t protesting, just watching. He didn’t want people to associate him with the protest.
5. Healthcare workers in Denver block people protesting the lockdowns. While they silently block traffic, people in the cars yell at them and call the virus a hoax.
6. 60% of Americans oppose these protests.

Numbers:

1. There are more than 1,000 cases of coronavirus in the Navajo Nation, with more than 40 deaths.
2. Here are the numbers by the end of the week:

• • 939,053 (up from 735,086 last week) people in the U.S. are infected so far (that we know of), with 52,189 (up from 32,922 last week) deaths.
  • 2,834,750 people worldwide have been infected, with 205,326 deaths.

Healthcare:

1. So far, 12 states have tried to restrict abortion access using the pandemic as an excuse. They’ve had mixed results.

• • Texas authorities withdraw from their push to include abortion in the list of nonessential medical procedures to be suspended during the pandemic. As this has gone through the courts, chaos ensued with facilities unsure of whether to cancel procedures or allow them. Texas residents have traveled to nearby states to have the procedure.
  • A federal court rules that Arkansas can enforce its ban on surgical abortions during the pandemic. Medical abortions are still allowed.
  • A federal judge rules that all abortions can resume in Oklahoma, granting a preliminary injunction stopping the states abortion ban.

International:

1. Where’s Kim Jong Un? No one really knows, but there are reports that he’s had heart surgery, which caused him to miss a major national event.
2. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his opposition leader Benny Gantz agree to form a national emergency government. The deal is supposed to help them handle the coronavirus crisis, but could break the year-long political deadlock in Israel. I’ve lost count of the number of elections they’ve held over that year.
3. Tehran launches its first military satellite, so Trump directs the Navy to “shoot down and destroy” any Iranian gunboats that harass our ships. He issues the directive in a morning tweet, so who know if it’s binding.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

1. Trump suspends the issuance of new green cards while we deal with the pandemic, temporarily halting immigration to the U.S. He says it’s to protect U.S. jobs for U.S. workers.

• • White House adviser Stephen Miller says that this temporary ban will become permanent as part of a bigger strategy to reduce immigration.
  • Specifically Miller wants to stop family-based migration. Just another way this administration finds to separate families.

2. Betsy DeVos orders higher education institutions to withhold emergency funds from DACA recipients.
3. The CARES Act blocks relief aid not only to tax-paying immigrants with no legal status, but also to U.S. citizens who are married to a non-citizen and file joint tax returns using a TIN instead of an SSN.

• • California Governor Gavin Newsom establishes a relief fund for migrants and authorizes payments of up to $500 for workers denied aid by the administration due to their legal status.
  • A man sues Trump for discriminating against Americans who are married to immigrants.

4. The Trump administration is rewriting parts of the ACA to get rid of protections for LGBTQ patients against discrimination by health workers and staff.
5. A judge orders the swift release of migrant minors still being held in detention centers partly because the continued detention violates the Flores Agreement and partly because congregate living (like detention centers) are hotbeds of coronavirus outbreaks.

Climate/Environment:

1. Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Texas get hit by flooding and a series of tornadoes that kill at least seven people, destroy several homes, and leave thousands without power.
2. The Supreme Court rules against the Trump administration’s interpretation of the Clean Water Act, ruling that a wastewater treatment plant in Hawaii can’t pollute nearby waterways. The Trump administration had been arguing that there was a loophole in the act that allows them to get around the rule. The plant wanted to discharge the pollutants into groundwater.
3. And by the way, Happy Earth Day.

Budget/Economy:

1. The demand for food assistance from food banks has soared, but the USDA let tons of food rot instead of rapidly reconfiguring the supply chain to redirect the food to federal programs. Farmers lost their typical markets with the shutdown of restaurants and other institutions, but the USDA took more than a month to start buying up extra produce.
2. Even though Europe lost jobs during their shutdowns, jobs haven’t disappeared. That’s because the governments are paying a percentage of lost wages. They also aren’t losing healthcare coverage because they have national health services.
3. Another 4.4 million Americans filed jobless claims last week. Over the past five weeks, 26 million people have filed new claims.
4. The Fed warns large companies not to apply for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans under the Small Business Administration. A few large companies were awarded those loans already, but some announce they’ll return the loans.
5. The Senate passes another relief bill to provide $484 billion for things like expanding aid to small businesses and more money for hospitals and testing. This replenishes the PPP, which ran out of money last week.
6. Some retailers and grocers increase worker pay by a few dollars an hour to make up for the risk they’re taking by being in public every day.
7. Oil prices continue to tank after hitting $0.00 earlier in the week. Oil prices were still recovering following the oil glut caused by the Russia/Saudi pissing match.
8. Workers in more than half of U.S. states will receive more in unemployment benefits under the CARES Act than they would through wages if they continued working. In only 15 states are wages the same or more than the relief amount.
9. Trump signs a new $500 billion relief bill into law, but pushes back against funding the United States Postal Service unless it raises its shipping rates 4 times (so that package you’d normally send for $8 would be $32, if Trump has his way).

• • The USPS expects to run out of funds in September.
  • Congress approved a $10 billion line of credit for the USPS earlier this month.

10. Global economist and Nobel prize winner Joseph Stiglitz says the U.S. handling of the coronavirus crisis makes us look like a third-world country.
11. While governors are requesting federal aid with their economic shortfalls as a result of the pandemic closures, Senator Mitch McConnell says they should just declare bankruptcy. In doing so, he drops a dog-whistle to the pension trope, indicating that he’s referring to Democratic states like CA, IL, and NY.

• • States don’t currently have the ability to declare bankruptcy.
  • Republican Rep. Peter King responds:

“To say that it is ‘free money’ to provide funds for cops, firefighters and healthcare workers makes McConnell the Marie Antoinette of the Senate.”

• • New York Governor Andrew Cuomo isn’t having any of that either:

“New York state puts much more money into the federal pot than it takes out. Okay? At the end of the year, we put into that federal pot $116 billion more than we take out. Okay? His state, the state of Kentucky, takes out $148 billion more than they put in. Okay?… Senator McConnell, who’s getting bailed out here? It’s your state that is living on the money that we generate. Your state is getting bailed out. Not my state.”

• • Here are a few resources about that:
    • Wallethub
    • USA Today

12. The Trump Organization requests rent release from the Trump administration for the Trump International Hotel.

Elections:

1. Republicans believe that Trump’s erratic handling of the coronavirus pandemic along with his rambling press briefings are behind his low polling numbers. GOP Senators in Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina and Maine who tied their boat to Trump are also trailing in polls. His recent comments about disinfectant and UV light were a breaking point for many.
2. Politico obtains a memo sent out by the National Republican Senatorial Committee to GOP campaigns. The memo urges candidates to blame their opponents for not being tough on China, to reject the notion that calling the coronavirus the “Chinese virus” is racist, and to blame the virus on China. You can read it in its entirety.
3. Unsurprisingly, prominent scientists and climate experts endorse Joe Biden for president.

Miscellaneous:

1. It’s now legal in New York to get married via Zoom.
2. When a reporter reminds Trump that he held campaign rallies and February and March, Trump responds by saying he hasn’t left the White House in months. I’m not sure he fully understands public records.

Polls:

1. Voters trust their own governors more than Trump to determine when and how to reopen businesses.
2. 54% of Americans rate Trump’s response to the pandemic as poor.
3. 61% of Americans support stay-at-home orders as well as other efforts to slow the spread.
4. 70% say the top priority should be slowing the spread, even with the economic pain.
5. 60% say Trump isn’t listening to the experts closely enough.