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Dr. Rick Bright, the ousted director of the federal agency developing a coronavirus vaccine, testified before a House subcommittee today that the Trump administration’s early inaction cost American lives. Bright warned that if the U.S. doesn’t start preparing for a resurgence of the virus now, we’re in for a devastating winter: “Our window of opportunity is closing.”
- Bright testified that he pushed for months to ramp up the production of critical supplies after receiving a message from a medical supplier about the “completely decimated” supply of N95 masks: “We are in deep shit, the world is.” High-level officials at the Department of Health and Human Services ignored those warnings, and here we remain, in the deepest of shit. Bright added that health-care workers are still at greater risk than they should be, due to that early negligence.
- Bright said he thought the 12-18 month timeline for a vaccine was overly optimistic, and underscored the need to get our act together as a nation before the virus returns in the fall. He outlined a path forward, which would require the federal government to take four essential actions: Establish a national testing strategy, increase public education about basic safety measures (and actually model those behaviors), ramp up production of essential equipment and supplies, and set up a system to fairly distribute those supplies, so states aren’t in a WWE cage match for medical gowns.
- As he wrote in his whistleblower complaint, Bright testified that he was removed from his post as retribution for resisting an effort to make unproven, dangerous chloroquine treatments widely available to Americans who weren’t under close supervision by physicians, and who may not have been confirmed to have the virus. Republicans used their questioning time to chivalrously defend the honor of hydroxychloroquine, and, ahead of the hearing, President Trump once again dismissed Bright as a “disgruntled employee,” adding that he “should no longer be working for our government!” Nothing like a direct threat to shut down the question of whether Bright was retaliated against, once and for all.
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While Bright was testifying about his removal, we learned of another key coronavirus-response official who was abruptly fired this week.
- Jennifer Santos, the Pentagon’s point person for executing the Defense Production Act to ramp up supply production, has been fired and reassigned to a role in the Navy. The decision reportedly came not from her immediate boss, but from the White House. One former defense official said the change was so the Pentagon could identify someone “who has a stronger background in DPA-related issues,” while a former Pentagon official suggested Santos’s work was hindered by the administration’s reluctance to fully use the DPA. Jennifer...please let us know where to send this.
- A Financial Times investigation of the administration’s early response found yet more evidence for what seems outrageously obvious: Trump was reluctant to prepare for the pandemic—to scale up testing and start ordering ventilators—out of fear that it would spook the stock market. That advice came from none other than Jared Kushner, in a dazzling kickoff of the response effort he would continue to drive headlong into the ground.
Shortly before Bright’s testimony began, Trump appeared on Fox Business and once again offhandedly shifted the goalposts for the U.S. death toll, saying “we're gonna lose over 100,000 perhaps.” According to one estimate based on calculations by a Harvard statistician, we already have. The overwhelming majority of those deaths could have been averted, and while Trump tries to change the subject by tweeting all-caps conspiracy theories, the window to save more lives is about to slam shut.
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Have Happy Hour plans tomorrow? Now you do! Tomorrow we’re trying something new—Extremely Online Trivia, streaming live on our YouTube channel. Akilah Hughes, Priyanka Aribindi, and Sarah Lazarus (hi, that’s me) will go head to head...to head...to see who knows the internet the best. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to watch Extremely Online Trivia live and play along with us on Friday at 5pm ET/2pm PT → crooked.com/trivia
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Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) will step down as chairman of the Senate intelligence committee while the FBI investigates him for insider trading. Burr made a series of huge stock trades days before coronavirus sent markets into a tailspin, just after he received a classified Senate briefing on the pandemic. The FBI served Burr a search warrant and seized his cell phone on Wednesday, marking a major escalation in the investigation. Interestingly, Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA), who also dumped millions of dollars in stock beginning the very day of the briefing, doesn’t seem to be under the same level of federal scrutiny. As head of the Senate intelligence committee, Burr has been on Trump’s blacklist since signing off on a subpoena for Donald Trump, Jr., and conservatives who want to bury the Senate’s forthcoming report on Russian interference in the election have been calling for Burr’s head. Between what we know about Trump’s vindictive tendencies, his penchant for coverups, and his thorough corruption of the Justice Department, it’s worth asking whether Burr is being selectively prosecuted while other insider traders who’ve been more loyal to him get off scot free.
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- Crowds packed into bars in Wisconsin on Wednesday night after the state’s Republican-dominated supreme court threw out Gov. Tony Evers’s (D-WI) stay-at-home order. In Michigan, armed protestors gathered at the Capitol again, demonstrating against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s (D-MI) stay-at-home order.
- The Postal Service has launched a review of its package-delivery contracts, under pressure from President Trump to hike its prices, and the last senior official who wasn’t appointed by Trump has announced his resignation.
- Judge Emmet Sullivan, who oversees Michael Flynn’s case, has suggested he might not accept the government’s motion to dismiss its charges against Flynn, and raised the question of whether Flynn could be held in contempt of court for perjury. Flynn told the judge under oath that he is both guilty and innocent, which, now that you mention, does have that faint whiff of perjury about it.
- A federal appeals court has ruled that a lawsuit alleging Trump’s for-profit hotels place him in violation of the Constitution's emoluments clauses can proceed. The lawsuit, filed by Maryland and Washington, DC, alleges that the Trump International Hotel has an unfair advantage over competing businesses in the area. Unless the Supreme Court stays the ruling, those attorneys general will have a green light to start gathering evidence directly from the Trump Organization.
- On a related note, taxpayers have footed the bill for at least $970,000 in room rentals at Trump’s properties since he took office.
- The Senate passed a bill to reauthorize the Patriot Act, after an amendment to prohibit the FBI from spying on Americans' web-browsing data without a warrant failed by one vote.
- California regulators have waived a $200 million fine that Pacific Gas & Electric was meant to pay as punishment for causing a series of deadly wildfires. That should, uh, teach them a lesson.
- The Trump campaign has been plotting how to proceed with rallies this summer, and the RNC has said it’s committed to holding an in-person convention.
- Mary-Kate Olsen requested an emergency order to file for divorce from Olivier Sarkozy, giving us all a rare opportunity to pause and reflect on their 2015 wedding, which featured “bowls and bowls filled with cigarettes.”
- What is it like to be quarantined with a ghost, you ask?
"It's scary." -The New York Times
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The Trump administration has opted not to regulate a rocket-fuel chemical that contaminates water and has been linked to brain damage. For sure, makes sense. Perchlorate is a toxic chemical compound used in rocket fuel that’s been linked to fetal and infant brain damage. The EPA is under court order to establish a safe drinking-water standard for perchlorate by the end of June, but the agency’s administrator Andrew Wheeler has creatively decided, instead, to not do that. The Obama administration announced in 2011 that it planned to regulate the chemical for the first time, but the Defense Department and military contractors fought back hard, and the regulations weren’t finalized. Now the Trump administration plans to simply revoke the EPA’s finding that perchlorate presents serious health risks. Still finding new ways to endanger public health during a botched pandemic, you love to see it.
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Nicole Soret and Mya Abdelwahab, two Queens, NY, teenagers, convinced New York City’s Department of Education to distribute menstrual products at school meal hubs.
A Boston Red Sox reporter has been auctioning off his collection of signed baseball cards, raising over $57,000 for coronavirus-related charities.
A national study found that convalescent plasma seems to be a safe treatment for COVID-19 patients, an important step towards answering the next question: whether it works.
The Plaza, an independent movie theater in Atlanta, is hosting free, private screenings for health-care workers and their families.
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