What A Day: Libertweets and justices for all

President Trump’s vague guidelines for reopening the economy acknowledge that governors have the authority to set their own safe timetables, but without a huge, federally funded ramp-up in testing, no such timetable exists. Never fear: Trump has sprung into action by watching TV and fomenting resistance against three Democratic governors for taking action to save lives.
 

• Trump started openly egging on conservative demonstrators today, in a string of tweets declaring “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd amendment.” The tweets started moments after Fox News reported on protests against stay-at-home orders implemented by those states’ Democratic governors. That’s less than a day after Trump backed off his claim of “total authority” by telling governors they would “call [their] own shots” about when to start relaxing restrictions, a position that administration officials said is mostly designed to shield Trump from blame if there are new outbreaks after states reopen.
   
• New outbreaks will be all but inevitable, because Trump wasted weeks denying that widespread testing was necessary to reopen the country. Part of the point of social distancing was to buy time to scale testing up to the necessary level, and because states with limited resources were left to accomplish that on their own, it hasn’t happened. According to the COVID Tracking Project, an average of fewer than 150,000 people were tested per day in the past week, which is better than in early March, but not better than the week before. Experts say the U.S. needs a minimum of 500,000 tests per day, and some have called for much more than that.
   
• Right now about one in five Americans tested for COVID-19 is found to have it, a very high “test-positivity rate” that hasn’t gone down as testing expands. That high rate a) underscores that we’re still only testing people who are likely to have the virus, and b) suggests that the plateau in new cases only reflects the plateau in our testing capacity. Some states aren’t near a plateau of any kind: Cases started to spike in rural states this week, with the most pronounced surges in states without stay-at-home orders. Those outbreaks have already shut down multiple food-processing plants, and could have a rippling effect through the country’s food supply. Yesterday, Trump spitballed some of those rural states as examples of places to reopen first.

There is one area where Trump has his eye on the ball, and that’s using the pandemic to target his political enemies. 
 

• Trump tapped nearly 100 lawmakers to serve on a bipartisan task force to reopen the country, and only one GOP senator was left off the list: Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT)—the only Republican senator who voted to convict and remove Trump for committing high crimes. Like Trump’s Economic Council of Monopoly Men to Provide Political Cover, the congressional task force was thrown together hastily, with invited members scrambling to figure out what it was.
   
• On the oversight front, there is currently One Guy tracking the implementation of CARES Act funding, who is truly on his own after Trump interfered with the other oversight bodies that the law created. Bharat Ramamurti, a former policy adviser to Elizabeth Warren, has serious concerns about the lack of conditions on lending programs. Mitch McConnell tapped Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) to serve on the panel today, but most members have yet to be selected. 

There can be no safe reopening without a national effort to increase testing, and Senate Democrats who pressed Vice President Mike Pence about it today came away frustrated and alarmed. Here’s Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), with the takeaway every American needs to hear: “They are just working towards trying to survive the news cycle, not figuring out what the country needs and working towards that. And it’s crystal clear that they are giving up and saying ‘we’ve failed here, so governors, you figure it out.’”

On today's America Dissected: Coronavirus: Abdul dissects the scenarios we have for getting out of social distancing and why we still need COVID19 testing. Later he interviews Dr. Rishi Desai, a former CDC disease detective who recently went viral (the good kind!) for his recent appearance on Fox News. Listen and subscribe → 

An Interior Department official helped to direct billions of dollars in coronavirus relief allocated for Native American tribes to a group of wealthy corporations, including one that used to employ her. Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Tara Sweeney is part of a small group of officials advising the Treasury Department on how to distribute $8 billion that Congress set aside for Native American tribes. Sweeney used that influence to ensure that 200 for-profit Alaska Native corporations wound up in the list of eligible recipients, which could divert over half of the available funding away from tribes, which desperately need the help. Sweeney is a former executive at one of those corporations, and still has a financial stake in it. At least one tribal association has called for her resignation, and several tribes sued the Treasury today in an effort to keep the relief funds out of the hands of corporations.

• China has revised the death toll in Wuhan up by 50 percent, adding 1,290 fatalities. Officials say the new number accounts for people who had died at home, but the change seems to come in response to growing questions about the credibility of China’s reported data.
   
• The first large-scale coronavirus antibody study in California found results indicating a much higher past infection rate than the official count. Researchers found that up to 4 percent of those tested in Santa Clara County were positive for antibodies, which would mean the county had 80 times more infections than previously known.
   
• A federal judge rejected Roger Stone’s request for a new trial, after he accused the jury in his case of misconduct. All 12 jurors in Stone’s trial have written statements saying they now fear for their safety after Trump and the right-wing media criticized them for convicting Stone, and do not want their personal information revealed.
   
• In other Trump’s-convicted-flunkies news, Michael Cohen will be released from prison early due to the pandemic. He’ll serve the rest of his sentence from home confinement. 
   
• A New York woman with coronavirus symptoms died after a doctor prescribed her a hydroxychloroquine drug combo over the phone. She was never tested for COVID-19, or for heart problems that would increase the risk of potentially serious side effects. 
   
• Justice Dan Kelly, who just lost his Wisconsin supreme court election to liberal challenger Jill Karofsky, says he might unrecuse himself (not a thing judges do) from a case that could result in a mass voter purge before vacating his seat. Voters booted him overwhelmingly in large part to stop that purge.
   
• Dr. Phil is the latest in a string of TV doctors to spew bad coronavirus opinions on Fox News, though he bears the distinction of not being a licensed doctor of any kind. 
   
• Fiona Apple’s new album Fetch the Bolt Cutters received the first perfect score from Pitchfork in a decade. It has also received a perfect score from What A Day, which many people are saying is a much bigger deal.
   
• The Los Angeles Times riled up the whole internet today with a piece about dressing “like the adult you’re paid to be” while working from home (Fetch the Belt Cutters, amirite), so here is a Minnesotan city council member who attended a North Oaks city council meeting from his hot tub. 

A study of pregnant women admitted at New York City hospitals, all of whom were tested for COVID-19, found that 88 percent of those who tested positive had no symptoms. The study looked at 215 women who were admitted to deliver babies between March 22 and April 4. Four of the women had COVID-19 symptoms and tested positive, but so did 29 women with no symptoms at all. Only three developed one or more symptoms before they left the hospital. The findings provide clues to unanswered questions about how widespread the virus truly is in New York City, and what percentage of people who have the virus are asymptomatic. They imply that infection rates in “hot spots” might be much higher than previously believed. The study group was too small to draw huge conclusions, but a similar trend has emerged in another microcosm: About 60 percent of the more than 600 sailors aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt who have tested positive for COVID-19 have been asymptomatic.

The World Central Kitchen, led by José Andrés, has launched a pilot program to help feed vulnerable communities across the country, while helping over 400 restaurants rehire their staffs.
 

Colin Kaepernick has launched a coronavirus relief fund to aid communities of color. 
 

Netflix has put several documentaries on YouTube for students to access for free, along with accompanying educational resources for teachers.

Michelle Obama will host a weekly story-time for kids. (Extremely Steve Buscemi voice) How do you do, fellow kids?