Crooked Media - What A Day: He WHO smelt it

As governors get to work planning how and when to reopen their states safely, President Trump’s advisors are focused on how to manage the political fallout of relaxing national guidelines too early. If only there was some way to minimize fallout...by simply doing the right thing...ah, forget it, a crazy idea.
 

• Trump has his heart set on declaring the country ready to start reopening on May 1. This would result in many Americans dying, so his aides are naturally scrambling to change his mind diffuse the blame by getting business executives and economists to sign onto the White House’s eventual plan, giving Trump political cover. 
   
• The Washington Post got ahold of part of a reopening strategy drafted by the CDC and FEMA, which calls for a phased reopening of institutions, starting with schools and child-care facilities, so parents can go back to work. The document says that any community’s reopening must meet certain conditions, including the existence of a “well functioning” monitoring system (which remains out of reach nationwide), and warns that even a phased, cautious reopening “will entail a significant risk of resurgence of the virus.”
   
• Speaking of useless blame deflections, Trump’s decision to halt funding to the World Health Organization has been met with criticism from the likes of world leaders, the U.N., health experts, and Bill Gates. Trump accused the WHO of being too quick to believe information from the Chinese government, after he himself repeatedly praised China’s handling of the virus, and ignored U.S. intelligence reports, which warned of a brewing crisis. 

Trump’s narcissism has slowed down the government’s response more than we may ever know.
 

• We do know this: Tens of millions of people's stimulus checks are likely to be delayed because Trump needed his name to be printed on them. The president isn’t an authorized signer of checks issued by the Treasury, so Trump is just slapping his signature in the memo line. (Here’s how to track your IRS payment status.)
   
• As the virus was spreading across the country in early March, Trump excitedly proposed starting a White House talk-radio show that he would host for two hours per day, every day. He then changed his mind, not because coordinating a federal response to a deadly pandemic would demand his full time and attention, but because he didn’t want to compete with Rush Limbaugh. Thankfully, he’s found a way to waste just as much time through his daily televised propaganda briefing/campaign rallies.
   

There’s a growing conservative protest movement against states with strict social-distancing rules, and Trump and his allies have fueled it by contradicting the advice of public health experts. It’s already boiling over in states like Michigan, and when governors who maintain stay-at-home orders find themselves at odds with the White House’s recommendations, that tension will only get worse.

According to the CDC, we all need to be wearing masks whenever we leave our homes for essential activities, but not the medical ones—those are for the people on the frontlines. So we made three packs of reusable non-medical masks on the Crooked Store. 100% of the proceeds go to our Coronavirus Relief Fund. Find them on crooked.com/store → 

The Trump administration opted not to set stricter national air-quality standards, despite growing evidence linking air pollution to increased risk of death from respiratory illnesses like COVID-19. EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said the agency won’t change its current standard for fine particulate matter (or, soot), against the recommendation of the EPA’s staff scientists last year. Poor and minority communities tend to be exposed to more air pollution, including soot, which has increased the risks they face from the coronavirus and other contagions. Trump has bemoaned the disproportionate death toll among African Americans, and claimed he wants to find out why. A good place to start would be with his own administration’s policies that have exacerbated the problem, and its refusal to alter them.

• President Trump threatened to use his executive power to adjourn both chambers of Congress, to allow him to make recess appointments. He only has that power if the House and Senate disagree on when to adjourn, and no president has ever used it. What better time for a constitutional crisis!
   
• Coronavirus deaths at U.S. nursing homes have surpassed 3,800, and that’s likely a dramatic undercount.
   
• The Pentagon’s inspector general couldn’t rule out that the White House influenced the awarding of a $10 billion Defense Department cloud computing contract to Microsoft over Amazon, to advance President Trump’s vendetta against Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, because several officials claimed their conversations fell under “presidential privilege.”
   
• Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) has issued an executive order requiring all New Yorkers to wear a mask while in public. Hey New Yorkers—we gotchu.
   
• Elizabeth Warren has endorsed Joe Biden for president, continuing the party’s beautiful week of unification. 
   
• Kentucky’s GOP legislature has enacted a voter-ID law, while ID-issuing offices are closed on account of the ongoing lethal pandemic (attn: Marc Elias). Not to be outdone on plague-based voter suppression, Texas’s attorney general argued against a court’s expansion of mail-in voting by saying that a fear of contracting COVID-19 is not a valid reason to request an absentee ballot. A good day to call Congress → 
   
• The CIA privately warned its workforce that hydroxychloroquine has potentially dangerous side effects, including sudden cardiac death, while Trump encouraged the public to ingest the drug. 
   
• The White House missed Congress’s deadline to explain Trump’s firing of Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson.
   
• Rep. Justin Amash (I-MI) said he’s considering running for president as a libertarian, which could be a very cool way to make Republicans regret kicking him out of the party.
   
• A student at Liberty University has sued the school for its handling of the coronavirus crisis, alleging the college profited by dangerously deciding to keep the school open, and refusing to refund thousands of dollars in campus services. 
   
• Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) classified professional wrestling as an essential service, and explained that this is necessary to help people who are “starved for content.” The WWE’s owners have a super PAC that just dumped $18.5 million into pro-Trump advertising in Florida, but sure, let’s stick with “reruns are the real virus.”

Doctors around the world suspect that COVID-19 may be causing serious damage beyond the lungs. Evidence suggests that in severe cases, the virus can also cause heart inflammation, acute kidney disease, neurological malfunction, blood clots, intestinal damage, and liver problems. (Six more compelling reasons to stay inside.) Around half of the people hospitalized with coronavirus show signs of early kidney damage, and New York ICUs have been flooded with patients requiring dialysis. One review of seriously ill patients in China found that 40 percent suffered from an irregular heart rhythm, and 20 percent had some kind of cardiac injury. 

It’s still unclear how much organ damage is directly caused by the virus, and how much might stem from factors like respiratory distress, medications, and cytokine storms (an immune system response that attacks the body). It’s also unclear how long the problems last: Physicians have begun to see lingering damage after patients have recovered, and are increasingly concerned that the harm may be long-term. The earliest victims in China are only about three months removed from their illnesses, and it may take years to know the extent of survivors’ ongoing health concerns.

Stay home. Order online. Get powerful cleaning delivered with Dropps. Save 25% with code WHATADAY →

New York City has launched a $170 million program to provide meals to residents, and deliver them directly to seniors and people with health conditions.

California will provide $125 million in stimulus checks to undocumented workers, and all Los Angeles residents with coronavirus symptoms can now get same- or next-day tests.

Apple will donate a portion of sales from Project Red products to the Global Fund’s COVID-19 Response.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert DeNiro are offering the chance for a walk-on role in Martin Scorsese’s next movie, to raise money for the All In Challenge.

The Brands are divulging their secret recipes for people to make at home.