Officials from Florida to Missouri are hurriedly rewriting their disaster plans, worried that crowding large groups of evacuees in shelters could spread coronavirus during what’s expected to be a busy hurricane and tornado season. Firefighters in Colorado are working social distancing into their strategy for tackling long-duration wildfires. And New York City is spending $55…
Aides to President Donald Trump are considering a plan to shift the government’s global response to future infectious disease outbreaks to a new unit inside the State Department, according to documents obtained by POLITICO. The proposal, discussed during a National Security Council deputies committee meeting on Thursday, already has set off a turf battle between…
Eric Trump, the president’s son, spewed his usual nonsense on Fox News Sunday, this time to advocate for the senior Trump’s all-so-important right to campaign during the coronavirus pandemic. During the interview, Eric Trump, executive vice president of The Trump Organization, accused Democrats of trying to “milk” needed coronavirus lockdowns for “everything they can.” “And you…
This past Monday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was a lying sack of crap. “They claim pandemics only happen once every hundred years but what if that’s no longer true? We want to be early, ready for the next one, because clearly the Obama administration did not leave to this administration any kind of game…
In the wake of Donald Trump’s executive order demanding the reopening of the nation’s meat processing plants, a new Bloomberg News analysis shows that the COVID-19 pandemic is now spreading at “more than twice the national rate” in counties with major plants. COVID-19 infections are rose 19% in the week after Trump’s April 28 order….
The Trump White House is now a coronavirus hotspot. With the news of Mike Pence press secretary Katie Miller (wife of white nationalist Stephen Miller) and Donald Trump’s military-provided personal valet (read: Diet Coke deliverer) testing positive, as well as unidentified Secret Service members, that much seems clear. Food and Drug Administration commissioner Dr. Stephen…
As Donald Trump declares victory, pushing for an end to pandemic control measures even while acknowledging it will cause many more Americans to die, and Republican governors declare victory, writing pompous self-laudatory editorials while COVID-19 deaths in their own states escalate, two things are now evident. One: The number of American deaths in the COVID-19…
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…
A new Washington Post report gives more detail on Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s COVID-19 “response” efforts, and it is just about the most depressing and insane thing you will read all week. That government effort to obtain vital medical supplies needed for the pandemic that has now killed 70,000 Americans, and only continues to grow? It was staffed…
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…
A 59-year-old home health aid who earns less than $13 an hour is the lead plaintiff in a proposed class action lawsuit filed against the Education Department, as well as Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, as covered by Politico. The suit, filed by the Student Defense and the National Consumer Law Center in a federal Washington,…
The United States today topped 60,000 COVID-19 deaths, a milestone once suggested by Donald Trump as a potential “success,” if the pandemic’s toll could be held to just that. It shows no evidence of being held to just that; instead, the 60,000 deaths marker came over three months sooner than the White House-cited pandemic model used…
After initially denying the mask he wore was a Confederate flag, a Michigan state senator later apologized for wearing his “choice of pattern” during a Senate meeting, adding that he did not support “the things this pattern represents.” “I’m sorry for my choice of pattern on the face mask I wore yesterday on the Senate…
As the White House flails in their attempts to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, Donald Trump and his top advisers continue to make matters worse. Trump is, according to news reports, fully devoted to “re-opening” American businesses on May 1 regardless of pandemic status, a move which would assuredly kill more Americans and which is…
President Donald Trump announced Tuesday night that he is halting funding to the World Health Organization while his administration reviews the group’s handling of the coronavirus, accusing it of bungling the response and failing to communicate the disease’s threat. The move follows weeks of Trump’s escalating attacks on the U.N. health organization as he has…
On Monday, April 13, former Ronald Reagan Cabinet member Bill Bennett went on Fox News to give his expert opinion on COVID-19. Bennett is probably best known as a right-wing moral “crusader,” who, it turns out, was full of shit. But just because you spew mostly methane doesn’t mean you can’t get a place to speak to…
A weekend New York Times report lays out key dates, meetings and documents to prove a devastating case. Donald Trump was indeed warned, repeatedly, of the true dangers of the likely pandemic. Even in January, Trump was warned that without action, a half a million Americans could die in the pandemic. The Times’ evidence appears…
If California was a country, it would be the fifth largest economy in the world. It is the global hub for both entertainment and technology, while also providing a majority of the nation’s people food (as opposed to corn for cattle)—a third of all vegetables, and two-thirds of all fruits and nuts. Oh, and the wine…
In Wisconsin, statewide elections proceeded after the conservative state Supreme Court blocked an emergency two-month postponement of in-person voting by Gov. Tony Evers. Risking infection, voters were forced to line up “literally around the block” at the few still-open polling places despite social distancing rules—which will likely lead to elevated COVID-19 infections two weeks from…