Crooked Media - What A Day: Cuz I'm the vax man

President Trump said he will not extend federal social-distancing guidelines that are set to expire at midnight, and at least 31 states will partially reopen over the next few days. By contrast, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) has ordered all Orange County, CA, beaches closed after last weekend’s impromptu Spring Break 2.0.
 

• Over 3.8 million Americans filed for unemployment last week, bringing the known new-jobless total over the last six weeks to 30.3 million. That’s roughly one in five American workers; by comparison, unemployment at the peak of the Great Depression was one in four. The U.S. economy shrank by 4.8 percent from January through March, and Fed Chair Jerome Powell said he expects the economic data from the second quarter to be worse than any in history.
   
• To shore up Trump’s campaign strategy of blaming China for coronavirus, senior administration officials have been pressuring spy agencies to find evidence supporting the conspiracy theory that the coronavirus escaped a Wuhan lab. That evidence doesn’t seem to exist, and some intelligence analysts are worried that the pressure to back up Trump’s chosen theory will distort reports on the virus, so he can use them as political weapons against China. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a veteran of torpedoing international relationships for Trump’s political purposes, has reportedly taken the lead in that effort. Officials have also begun kicking around ideas about how to retaliate against China for, uh, duping the president into ignoring warnings from his own aides, intelligence briefers, and international allies? 
   
• Trump is also trying to bend vaccine research to his political will, which couldn’t possibly end in catastrophe. Frustrated with health officials’ stated timeline of 12 to 18 months before we have a coronavirus vaccine, Trump has been pushing for an initiative called Operation Warp Speed, a development program to make one widely available by the end of the year. That could easily result in a faulty, dangerous vaccine, but Trump likely thinks the appearance that a vaccine is close at hand will help him win reelection, and isn’t too worried about whether it “works.” According to one administration official, the main thrust of the program would be to protect major drug companies from liability if their rushed vaccines cause sickness or death. What could go wrong?

In Congress, Democrats are reportedly prepared to throw hands over the next coronavirus relief bill.
 

• Nancy Pelosi said Democrats will propose $1 trillion in aid for state and local governments, and haven’t budged on Mitch McConnell’s demand to condition that on liability protections for businesses. Trump has said he won’t approve funding for states with sanctuary cities unless they change their immigration policies to align with his agenda—a wholly unprecedented form of extortion—which means it is time to a) take a drink and b) help defeat the GOP senators who voted to keep him in office. 
   
• The Pentagon announced it will spend $75.5 million in Defense Production Act funding to ramp up production of nasal swabs. Puritan Medical Products will build a new manufacturing facility in Maine, and start cranking out swabs in May—mere months after that should have happened!
   

Last week, as U.S. coronavirus deaths continued to rise, Trump reportedly berated and threatened to sue his campaign manager when he was presented with internal polling that showed him losing to Joe Biden. Over the last few days, he has ranted unendingly about the FBI’s handling of Michael Flynn’s case, including during a White House meeting about the coronavirus. Trump is pathologically uninterested in anything other than himself and his own re-election prospects, and it has fatally compromised his response to the pandemic.

In the latest episode of Six Feet Apart with Alex Wagner, Alex gets into America’s criminal justice system as prosecutors and inmates alike manage unprecedented challenges. Throughout the series, she has covered the way coronavirus has impacted sports, our food supply—even drug use. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts →

As states were left to fend for themselves, New York paid a Silicon Valley engineer $69.1 million for ventilators that never materialized. Yaron Oren-Pines, an electrical engineer who had 75 Twitter followers, replied to one of President Trump’s tweets with, “We can supply ICU Ventilators, invasive and noninvasive. Have someone call me URGENT.” Three days later, on the recommendation of the White House coronavirus task force, New York state paid him $69.1 million for 1,450 ventilators, at least triple the standard price. Not a single ventilator was delivered, and New York is now trying to get its money back. The absence of any federal coordination to create and distribute critical supplies created utter chaos and forced desperate states to scramble for deals with shady and unqualified vendors.

• Joe Biden has announced his vice-presidential vetting committee, formally kicking off the process of selecting his running mate. Nancy Pelosi said today that she’s satisfied with Biden’s response to Tara Reade’s allegation, though called it “a matter that he has to deal with.”
   
• Newly released FBI documents suggest there was an Israeli effort to help Trump win in 2016. Roger Stone was in contact with well-connected Israelis during the height of the campaign, one of whom warned Stone that Trump was “going to be defeated unless we intervene,” and told him “we have critical intell [sic].”
   
• Trump’s appointees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau manipulated the agency’s research on pay-day loans to justify revising a rule that would have sharply restricted them, according to a memo sent by an economist at the bureau on his last day of work.
   
• Brazil’s official coronavirus death toll now stands at more than 5,000, and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is still shrugging off the problem. Bolsonaro responded to the news of Brazil’s death toll surpassing China’s like he was being told his dog messed up someone’s yard: “So what? What do you want me to do?” 
   
• A New York City funeral home began storing bodies on ice in U-haul trucks after running out of space, a headline which you might think would deter people in other states from protesting to be allowed to go to Outback Steakhouse, but you would be wrong. 
   
• Karen “Mother” Pence claimed Vice President Mike Pence didn’t know about the Mayo Clinic’s mask policy until after he left, which contradicts what the Mayo Clinic said in a now-deleted tweet, and does not address how Pence failed to notice that everyone around him was wearing a mask, or that he was in a hospital, or that there is a pandemic happening.
   
• Former national security adviser John Bolton’s book release has been pushed back again, until at least late June, while the National Security Council continues to pretend to comb through it for classified material.
   
• New York City will shut down the subway overnight to thoroughly disinfect all trains, to ensure essential workers can get to their jobs safely. 
   
• Britney Spears casually announced that she burned down her home gym, in an incredible Instagram video to be known henceforth as Portrait of a Lady’s Home Gym on Fire. 

Sweden hasn’t implemented a strict lockdown to mitigate its coronavirus outbreak, and conservatives have held its policy up as a model for the U.S. Schools are still in session, restaurants can stay open as long as they maintain social-distancing, and yet, Sweden’s death toll, at around 2,500, is higher per capita than per capita deaths in other Scandinavian countries and even the U.S. While the vast majority of Swedes seem to have followed the government’s voluntary guidelines and stayed home, plenty of people didn’t, and Sweden’s public health officials now say that 26 percent of Stockholm’s residents will be infected by May 1. Trying to skip a lockdown was pretty clearly a mistake. 

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South Korean officials say that positive coronavirus tests of patients who previously recovered from the disease are likely false positives caused by dead virus fragments, and not second infections or reactivations. That’s very good news for the prospect of establishing that coronavirus antibodies confer immunity.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) announced the "Futures for Frontliners” initiative, which will grant tuition-free college to Michigan frontline workers.

Los Angeles, CA, has become the first city to offer free coronavirus testing to all residents, with or without symptoms.

Cleaner air in Europe during lockdown will lead to 11,000 fewer deaths from pollution over time, according to a new study. Could be a neat thing to recreate without a pandemic!