Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Wednesday made an extensive pitch for Americans to don face masks as a means to begin returning the country to normalcy while the coronavirus remains a threat. “There’s no stigma attached to wearing a mask. There’s no stigma attached to staying six feet apart,” the Kentucky Republican said at…
The same denial leading ridiculous numbers of people to ignore the reality that social distancing and mask-wearing protects everyone during a pandemic seems to be prevailing when it comes to a potential vaccine for the novel coronavirus. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll finds the only about half of Americans would get…
On Wednesday, the United States officially passed the grim milestone of 100,000 deaths from the COVID-19 virus. While Donald Trump marked the occasion by attacking members of the media and floating conspiracy theories on Twitter, Joe Biden released a somber, heartfelt message to the families of the 100,000 Americans who fell victim to this deadly virus,…
On May 21, Timothy Klausutis wrote a letter to Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter. In it, Klausutis pleaded with Dorsey to excise a conspiracy-laden, fact-free tweet the president of the United States sent out over Memorial Day weekend, a tweet that implied Klausutis’ deceased wife, Lori, was secretly murdered by then-Congressman Joe Scarborough. Klausutis explained that there was no one with…
The United States crossed a brutal threshold on Tuesday: 100,000 Americans have now officially lost their lives to COVID-19. That’s likely an undercount of the true number, but it’s the number we have right now, and it’s a staggering toll in just a matter of months. It’s also news that comes the day after Memorial Day—a month…
Donald Trump has a new testing plan, released in a report to Congress and called “COVID-19 Strategic Testing Plan.” It is, of course, neither strategic nor a plan. It’s telling the states to do it, and “holds individual states responsible for planning and carrying out all coronavirus testing.” Congressional Democratic leaders are not impressed. “After six…
President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden amped up their ongoing spat over wearing face masks in public on Tuesday with Biden calling the president an “absolute fool” for stoking controversy around the use of masks. The beef began Monday evening, when the president retweeted an image that appeared to mock Biden wearing…
Night Owls, a themed open thread, appears at Daily Kos seven days a week Dr. Janis Petzel, a psychiatrist from Islesboro, Maine, is a climate ambassador for Physicians for Social Responsibility. At Common Dreams, she writes—Let’s Pay Attention to What COVID-19 Is Trying to Tell Us About Climate Change: […] As a physician, I believe in the…
The Justice Department is dropping its investigations into controversial stock trades made by Sens. Kelly Loeffler, Dianne Feinstein and Jim Inhofe in the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, their offices confirmed Tuesday. The decision comes after the FBI served Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) a search warrant and seized his cellphone earlier this month, as…
In September 1985, the Soviet State Security Committee (KGB) informed other Warsaw Pact foreign intelligence agencies that it had launched a new, major disinformation campaign. “We are carrying out a complex of [active] measures in connection with the appearance in recent years of a new dangerous disease in the USA known as AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency…
LONDON — Never mind whether Boris Johnson should get rid of Dominic Cummings, the real question is whether he can. To the U.K. prime minister, his top aide — whose lockdown journey from London to Durham has dominated headlines for days — is more than just an effective political adviser. He is the linchpin of…
This is an updated reprise of a previous Memorial Day essay. Georgia State Flag, 1956-2001 The year my mother moved the two of us out of southwest Georgia—1956—was the same year the legislature there chose to unfurl a new state flag in defiance of the desegregation mandate of the Supreme Court’s unanimous Brown v. Board…
Senate Democrats led by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer are pressing the Trump administration to stop targeting Planned Parenthood affiliates that got emergency small business loans designed to keep workers employed during the pandemic. Forty-one members of the Senate Democratic Caucus sent a warning to the Treasury Department and Small Business Administration after it was revealed…
President Donald Trump on Monday morning threatened to move August’s Republican National Convention out of North Carolina unless there are guarantees the state will let everyone attend. “I love the Great State of North Carolina, so much so that I insisted on having the Republican National Convention in Charlotte at the end of August. Unfortunately,…
OAKLAND, Calif. — The Republican Party has thrown its full weight behind challenging California’s move to a mail-ballot November election during the coronavirus pandemic. A lawsuit from the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee and the California Republican Party seeks to invalidate Gov. Gavin Newsom’s order that county election officials mail every registered…
TALLAHASSEE — A federal judge on Sunday dismantled Florida’s restrictive felon voting rights law in a ruling that could open the door to hundreds of thousands of new voters being added to rolls just ahead of the 2020 presidential election. U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle declared key portions of the state’s felon voting law unconstitutional,…
Sam Barnes racked his brain one chilly morning in January 1944, wondering what he might have done wrong. Barnes, a popular African American petty officer working at Great Lakes Naval Training Station in Illinois, had been in the Navy for 15 months and had never been disciplined. Why, he wondered, was he being ordered to…
(GENEVA) — World Health Organization officials have renewed praise for China in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, citing its “openness” to the prospect of scientific inquiries involving foreign experts into the origins of the novel coronavirus. Dr. Michael Ryan, the WHO’s emergencies chief, pointed to “day-to-day” discussions with colleagues in China. He said the U.N….
China’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic is akin to the Soviet Union’s response to Chernobyl, President Donald Trump’s national security adviser Robert O’Brien said Sunday. "The cover-up that they did of the virus is going to go down in history along with Chernobyl," O’Brien told Chuck Todd on NBC’s "Meet the Press," referring to the…
Y’all, the president sure lost his mind this week, didn’t he? I mean granted, it’s more likely that he never had it to begin with. But boy howdy was this one a doozy. Buckle up—this is what you might have missed. Idiot president peddles conspiracy theories, threatens retaliation against U.S. state By Hunter So here…