After acknowledging in March that one lone member of the U.S. Secret Service had contracted the novel coronavirus, Yahoo News now reports that the virus has been much more widespread throughout the agency. According to DHS documents that Yahoo News says they have received a report on, the U.S. Secret Service are currently dealing with 11 active…
Paging former president Barack Obama: You are cordially invited to the class of 2020 commencement. Thousands of students throughout the country took to Twitter to express their desire to have Obama deliver a nationwide commencement speech after one high school senior from Los Angeles posted a tweet asking the former president to speak. Within five…
Everyone involved with modern conservatism is a stone-cold idiot and the COVID-19 pandemic is nature’s latest brute-force effort to scrape them into mass graves so that everyone else can get on with their lives without coal-rolling and misspelled signs. What? We’re supposed to give details? Still? Fine. In the latest version, The Washington Post brings…
With #BlueLivesMatter trending Sunday, Twitter users pointed out just how much protesters fighting coronavirus stay-at-home orders sound like activists advocating for the basic human rights of Black people, minus the part about Black people of course. “MY RIGHTS DON’T END WHERE YOUR FEAR BEGINS,” one sign read at an anti-quarantine protest in California. “STOP TYRANNY,” another demanded. Those are…
On Monday, Republican Gov. Greg Abbot of Texas told the world that he would be allowing the state’s stay-at-home order to expire on Thursday, April 30. Alongside other historically awful Texas officials, Gov. Abbott made an attempt at oration, saying, “Now it’s time to set a new course, a course that responsibly opens up business in Texas.”…
Ed Yong/Atlantic: Why the Coronavirus Is So Confusing A guide to making sense of a problem that is now too big for any one person to fully comprehend Why do some people get really sick, but others do not? Are the models too optimistic or too pessimistic? Exactly how transmissible and deadly is the virus? How many people have actually been…
Navy officials have officially recommended the Department of Defense reinstate Captain Brett Crozier as the commander of the USS Theodore Roosevelt and return him to duty aboard the nuclear aircraft carrier after he was fired for writing a letter detailing the spread of coronavirus among the sailors onboard. According to The New York Times, Defense Secretary Mark Esper wants more…
When several Republican governors initially refused to implement social distancing orders, they invoked a sort of red state exceptionalism. “South Dakota is not New York City,” Gov. Kristi Noem quipped in early April. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey agreed, asserting: “We are not California.” That sentiment also appears to have trickled down into more conservative-leaning regions of…
Donald Trump was bound to politicize the distribution of critical medical supplies in the midst of a pandemic and he clearly has. While Democratic governors have repeatedly been shorted on critical equipment they need to fight the novel coronavirus in their states, Republican governors appear to have gotten most or even all of what they asked…
As congressional Republicans face fundraising woes, money is pouring into the coffers of Democratic candidates in some key Senate races. In fact, Democrats considerably out-raised their Republican counterparts in Maine, Arizona, Colorado, South Carolina, Kansas, and—wait for it—Kentucky! And we’re not talking chump change here. In all those states, Democratic fundraising eclipsed Republicans fundraising by varying degrees of millions,…
No pandemic is going to stop the Trump administration from pouring billions of dollars into building a needless border wall, apparently. And once you’re blowing through money at the rate of $20 million per mile, why not up it to $30 million per mile and send that money to a construction company owned by big…
Students of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, are suing the school over withholding refunds and credits to students for services not being administered during the COVID-19 pandemic. The lawsuit accuses the school of misleading students and their families into believing that the campus was still fully functioning when they were deciding whether or not to…
With thousands of Americans dying each day from an epidemic that Donald Trump could have prevented if he had only acted just a little sooner, the White House has now moved on to the most important part of any Trump operation: finding scapegoats. All through January, February, and the first half of March, Donald Trump was continually…
Though the novel coronavirus has Americans more reliant on package delivery than ever—including for prescription medications—it has put the future of the U.S. Postal Service in danger. Not distant, far-in-the-future danger, but could-stop-operating-in-June danger. And the Trump administration, which wants to bail out foreign-flagged cruise lines, is saying the postal service is on its own. “I spoke…
On March 2, the United States reached 100 confirmed cases of COVID-19. Three weeks later, the country had 34,000 cases, over 400 deaths, and was rocketing toward a massive, uncontrolled epidemic that has, so far, taken the lives of over 16,000 Americans. But three weeks after New Zealand hit 100 cases of COVID-19, there are…
The latest Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll highlights how disruptive the COVID-19 crisis has been to people’s daily lives, and how unhappy the populace is becoming with Donald Trump’s response to it. Writing at Axios, Drew Altman, president and CEO of KFF, highlights the disconnect the American public is experiencing: 60% say that the federal government should…