Summary
- California is loosening its stay-at-home order for counties that meet certain criteria in containing the virus, allowing them to reopen some offices. But it seems Los Angeles is likely to extend its stay-at-home order through July. and California State University has announced it will cancel most in-person classes this fall.
- Aimee Stephens, the plaintiff in a landmark case about LGBTQ rights that was in the process of being heard by the US Supreme Court has died. She was awaiting the court’s decision on whether federal civil rights law protects transgender people, which is expected in late June.
- The White House coronavirus task force is to be expanded soon, the White House press secretary confirmed. Meanwhile, public health officials Anthony Fauci, Steven Hahn and Robert Redfield announced they would return to the White House despite being exposed to coronavirus, because they are essential workers.
- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the next $3 trillion financial rescue bill. The White House and Senate Republicans have signaled they won’t support it as is.
- At a Senate health committee hearing, Republican Mitt Romney slammed the US’s track record on early coronavirus testing. The CDC’s Redfield admitted that the US failed in its chance to contain the coronavirus at the start of the pandemic, being left instead with only mitigation efforts.
- Fauci said that coronavirus is not yet under control in the US, months into the crisis, and warned of “serious consequences” if the US rushes to reopen prematurely. Fauci said the US death toll from coronavirus was likely higher than the official toll of 80,000 dead so far.
- The supreme court heard arguments in the cases from the House of Representatives and New York investigators that seek access to Donald Trump’s taxes and other financial records. The court is in its second week of working remotely because of the coronavirus pandemic, hearing arguments through video call.
Twitter will allow its employees to work from home “forever”, chief executive officer Jack Dorsey said in a company-wide email Tuesday.
The Guardian’s Kari Paul reports:
A spokesperson from Twitter confirmed the decision to the Guardian, saying the company was “one of the first companies to go to a work-from-home model” due to Covid-19, but does not anticipate being one of the first to return to its offices.
“We were uniquely positioned to respond quickly and allow folks to work from home given our emphasis on decentralization and supporting a distributed workforce capable of working from anywhere,” the company said in a blogpost.
“The past few months have proven we can make that work. So if our employees are in a role and situation that enables them to work from home and they want to continue to do so forever, we will make that happen.”
Twitter has “strongly encouraged” working from home since 2 March and mandated employees to work from home starting 11 March. Employees who prefer to work remotely can now do so indefinitely, Twitter said in its statement. Those who want to return to the office will probably need to wait until at least September.
“When we do decide to open offices, it also won’t be a snap back to the way it was before,” the company said. “It will be careful, intentional, office by office and gradual.”
The FBI inadvertently revealed the identity of a Saudi Embassy official suspected of supporting al-Qaida hijackers involved in the 11 September terror attacks in a court filing.
Yahoo News reports:
The disclosure came in a new declaration filed in federal court by a senior FBI official in response to a lawsuit brought by families of 9/11 victims that accuses the Saudi government of complicity in the terrorist attacks.
The declaration was filed last month but unsealed late last week. According to a spokesman for the 9/11 victims’ families, it represents a major breakthrough in the long-running case, providing for the first time an apparent confirmation that FBI agents investigating the attacks believed they had uncovered a link between the hijackers and the Saudi Embassy in Washington.
It’s unclear just how strong the evidence is against the former Saudi Embassy official — it’s been a subject of sharp dispute within the FBI for years. But the disclosure, which a senior U.S. government official confirmed was made in error, seems likely to revive questions about potential Saudi links to the 9/11 plot.
It also shines a light on the extraordinary efforts by top Trump administration officials in recent months to prevent internal documents about the issue from ever becoming public.
“This shows there is a complete government cover-up of the Saudi involvement,” said Brett Eagleson, a spokesman for the 9/11 families whose father was killed in the attacks. “It demonstrates there was a hierarchy of command that’s coming from the Saudi Embassy to the Ministry of Islamic Affairs [in Los Angeles] to the hijackers.”
Still, Eagleson acknowledged he was flabbergasted by the bureau’s slip-up in identifying the Saudi Embassy official in a public filing. Although Justice Department lawyers had last September notified lawyers for the 9/11 families of the official’s identity, they had done so under a protective order that forbade the family members from publicly disclosing it.
Now, the bureau itself has named the Saudi official. “This is a giant screwup,” Eagleson said.
California State University system to cancel in-person classes in fall
The California State University system — the largest. in the nation — plans to cancel almost all classes in the fall, chancellor Timothy White announced.
Most classes will be taught online, with a few exceptions. “Our university when open without restrictions and fully in person… is a place where over 500,000 people come together in close and vibrant proximity,” White said at a meeting of Cal State’s Board of Trustees. “That approach sadly just isn’t in the cards now.”
“Our university, when open without restrictions and fully in person, as is the traditional norm of the past, is a place where over 500,000 people come together in close and vibrant proximity with each other on a daily basis,” White added. “That approach, sadly, just isn’t in the cards now as I have described.”
Although many universities have gone out of their way to say that they will hold in-person classes in the fall, CSU’s cautious approach comes as public health officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, warn against reopening too soon
A special election in California’s 25th Congressional district is technically today. But the voting is happening mostly by mail, due to the Pandemic. The Guardian’s Sam Levine reports that the president has contradicted himself and falsely accusing Democrats of trying to “steal” the election:
Donald Trump falsely accused Democrats of trying to “steal” Tuesday’s special election in California amid the Covid-19 pandemic by adding a polling place in one of the most diverse sections of a district.
But the county actually added the polling location at the request of the area’s Republican mayor.
In a move that could foreshadow his approach to November’s presidential election, Trump said Democrats were deliberately adding one of the few polling locations over the weekend in Lancaster, a city North of Los Angeles, where it was likely to benefit Democratic voters. “They are trying to steal another election. It’s all rigged out there. These votes must not count. SCAM!,” he tweeted.
Today’s election is taking place largely by mail, common in California, and the state mailed a ballot to all registered voters in the district. Still, there will be some opportunity for in-person voting. But though Democrats complained that the lack of a polling location in Lancaster would harm minority voters, officials added the additional location after R Rex Parris, the city’s Republican mayor, requested it.
Though he thinks it’s dangerous to vote in person during the Covid-19 pandemic, Parris told the Guardian he made the request after realizing a nearby city had two polling locations, while his city had none. While he believes elections can be rigged and understood why it might have appeared that way to Trump, he said adding the polling location was not a Democratic power grab.
Carlos Ernesto Escobar Mejia had lived in the United States for four decades. Last week, he became the first person to die from Covid-19 in immigration custody.
Mejia’s death in San Diego last week was preventable, his sister says, as coronavirus has infected hundreds in Ice detention.
Escobar Mejia, 57, came to the US as a teenager, having fled El Salvador after his brother’s murder during the war. He died on Wednesday in San Diego, after complaining for weeks that he was sick and that his history of diabetes, high blood pressure, heart problems and an amputated foot put him at high risk of succumbing to Covid-19 inside the Otay Mesa detention center.
“He was weak, he should have been released,” his sister Rosa Escobar told the Guardian. “They were refusing to take him to see a doctor. He was begging and screaming for medical attention. He was so scared.”
Escobar Mejia’s death comes as Covid-19 has infected hundreds of detainees in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) jails. A long history of substandard conditions, overcrowding and unsanitary practices in some facilities, as well as the US government’s refusal to release many detainees at particular risk of developing Covid-19 complications, has led to a rapidly escalating crisis, advocates say.
“These facilities don’t care about the people or the facts of their lives,” Rosa said by phone days after her brother’s death, speaking in Spanish. “These are private institutions making money off of immigrants.”
Updated
The New York Times’ science and health reporter Donald McNeil was unsparing in his assessment of the US response to the coronavirus in an interview with Chistiane Amanpour.
McNeil said the CDC “is a great agency but it’s incompetently led, and I think Dr Redfield should resign”. The federal government’s delayed response to the crisis has been roundly criticized by Democrats and public health experts around the world. But it is unusual for a Times journalist to call for the resignation of a US official and so bluntly share an opinion about the US leaders.
Donald G. McNeil Jr: The CDC “is a great agency but it’s incompetently led, and I think Dr Redfield should resign.” pic.twitter.com/7tUPDGsE86
— Christiane Amanpour (@camanpour) May 12, 2020
In a statement, the Times said that McNeil had gone “too far in expressing his personal views.”
In a statement, The New York Times told me that McNeil had gone "too far in expressing his personal views." But it appears to indicate that a talk was the extent of it. pic.twitter.com/tZDXEXezLa
— ErikWemple (@ErikWemple) May 12, 2020
Fauci, Redfield and Hahn will return to the White House for meetings as needed
Although they were exposed to the coronavirus,Dr. Robert Redfield, the CDC director; Dr. Steve Hahn, the FDA commissioner; and Dr. Anthony Fauci, who’s leading the US coronavirus response, will return to work in person, so long as they’re asymptomatic, according to a statement from the officials.
Like doctors, nurses and medical staff around the nation, Redfield, Hahn and Fauci are “critical infrastructure workers” and will return to work while wearing face masks and maintaining a six-foot distance from others, according to the statement.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have together determined that government entities working in support of the COVID-19 response efforts are providing essential services and the current guidelines for critical infrastructure workers apply. Therefore, providing that they are asymptomatic, screened, and monitored for fever and other symptoms, wear a face covering, and maintain a distance of at least six feet from others, Drs. Redfield, Hahn, and Fauci can and will participate in meetings on the White House complex when their attendance is needed.
The announcement is a reversal for Fauci, who earlier this week told CNN he would begin a “modified quarantine” after he made “low risk” contact with a White House staffer who tested positive for Covid-19.
A federal judge has ruled that Andrew Cuomo should have a sign-language interpreter available for his TV briefings. The New York governor must have “in-frame ASL interpretation” during his daily updates, which garnered national attention as New York became a hotspot for coronavirus cases.
Until now, those who needed ASL interpretation needed to go online to access it. Starting Wednesday, Cuomo’s office said an interpreter will be visible on TV as well.
California is loosening its stay-at-home order for counties that meet certain criteria in containing the virus, allowing them to reopen some offices, schools and dine-in restaurants, governor Gavin Newsom announced Tuesday.
As of Tuesday morning, only the rural counties of Butte, north of Sacramento, and El Dorado, south of Tahoe National Forest, have gotten state approval to reopen more of their economy, but Newsom predicted that at least two more would receive the go-ahead by the end of the day.
Butte county has a population of about 219,000 and El Dorado county has a population of about 193,000. Butte has had a total of 20 cases and El Dorado has had a total of 56. Both counties had to file attestments that they met the state’s readiness criteria.
The debate around local variance to modifications to the stay-at-home order has raged around the state even before Newsom brought California into phase two of the crisis on 8 May and reopened 70% of its economy under certain guidelines. It once again highlights the difficulties that come with governing a state as large and varied as California. While rural counties that have not seen high rates of infection argue that they could loosen up restrictions before the rest of the state, harder hit regions are adhering to stricter measures than the state’s order, much to the dismay of business owners like Elon Musk.
Los Angeles county’s stay-at-home order, for example, will “with all certainty”be extended through July. Los Angeles has had 32,258 positive cases and 1,569 deaths - more than half the deaths in the entire state.
Afternoon summary
It’s been a busy day in US politics and coronavirus news so far today and there’s more action to come. My colleague Maanvi Singh on the west coast will take over now and bring you the major developments over the next few hours.
Here are the most recent items this afternoon:
- Looks like Los Angeles County will extend its stay-at-home order through July in order to slow the spread of coronavirus.
- Aimee Stephens, the plaintiff in a landmark case about LGBTQ rights that was in the process of being heard by the US Supreme Court has died.
- The White House coronavirus task force is to be expanded soon, though no details yet, press sec Kayleigh McEnany confirmed. Donald Trump was going to wind it down, then reversed course after public uproar.
- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the next $3 trillion financial rescue bill, though the Republican-controlled Senate will flay it alive.
- It was an action-packed morning with a crucial Senate health committee hearing in which top US public health expert Anthony Fauci warned against serious consequences in a hasty reopening, and at the Supreme Court oral arguments were heard on the power to subpoena Donald Trump’s tax records. Here’s the previous summary.
The big case before the Supreme Court
Oral arguments today in the big case about Donald Trump’s tax returns were somewhat overshadowed by the illuminating hearing on public health in the Senate.
But Reuters has published a useful wrap on the case.
In a major showdown over presidential powers, Supreme Court justices appeared divided over Trump’s bid to prevent congressional Democrats from obtaining his financial records, but seemed more open toward a New York prosecutor’s attempt to secure similar records.
The court’s conservative majority signaled concern about improper “harassment” of Trump by three Democratic-led House of Representatives committees seeking his records.
In the New York case, the conservative justices joined the court’s liberals in indicating skepticism toward broad arguments by Trump’s lawyer for complete immunity from criminal investigation for a sitting president.
All the subpoenas were issued to third parties - an accounting firm and two banks - and not to the Republican president himself, though he sued to block them.
There’s a chance the court won’t simply allow or disallow enforcement of the subpoenas but rather impose tighter standards for issuing subpoenas for the personal records of a sitting president and send the matter back to lower courts to reconsider, which could push matters beyond the election.
This course of action could delay an ultimate decision on releasing the records until after the election.
Chief Justice John Roberts asked questions suggesting skepticism about unchecked subpoena power when applied to a sitting president but also concern about a president evading scrutiny altogether.
Conservative and liberal justices asked a lawyer for the House, Doug Letter, to explain why the subpoenas were not simply harassment and whether Congress should be limited in issuing subpoenas so as to not distract a president or frustrate his official duties.
Even liberal justices raised concerns about an unfettered ability by lawmakers to subpoena a president’s personal records.
The House committees have said they are seeking the material for investigations into potential money laundering by banks and into whether Trump inflated and deflated certain assets on financial statements - as his former personal lawyer has said - in part to reduce his real estate taxes.
New York prosecutor Cyrus Vance Jr wants to know more about Trump’s payoffs to women who claimed affairs with him, and whether such hush money payments involved the falsification of business records.
Justice Elena Kagan said where personal records are concerned “the president is just a man.”
In the New York case, Kagan told Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow it is a “fundamental precept of our constitutional order that the president is not above the law.”
Rulings are likely within weeks.
Trump pauses Mar-a-Lago dock plan
With coronavirus playing havoc with local councils’ business, the president is holding back on a proposal for a dock at his private resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
Trump has temporarily withdrawn a controversial dock proposal at his Palm Beach resort that had raised larger questions about the legality of the change of his official residency from New York to Florida.
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) May 12, 2020
The decision comes three days after a WaPo report. https://t.co/GmNM3zzDkO
The Washington Post writes that the decision was disclosed in a letter sent to the Palm Beach mayor and town council on Monday, comes three days after the Post published a story that outlined assertions by local attorneys who argue that agreements Trump entered into with the town prevent him from living at the resort, and may have precluded him from legally registering to vote in Florida.
(Trump has said he voted by mail in Florida’s Republican presidential primary this year.)
Trump had come under scathing criticism from his Palm Beach neighbors and their attorneys who accused him and his legal team of attempting to jam through the dock request at the Mar-a-Lago resort while the nation’s attention is focused on the coronavirus pandemic and the town’s council is only able to hold meetings electronically, the Post continues.
In the letter withdrawing the proposal, Trump’s Palm Beach attorney, Harvey Oyer III, cited “the extraordinary circumstances that we find ourselves in” as a reason for the decision. But he makes no specific mention of coronavirus. The proposal had been scheduled to be heard on Wednesday by the Palm Beach Town Council.
Updated
Los Angeles County ‘with all certainty’ will keep stay-at-home orders in place through July
That’s the news breaking in the LA Times.
The newspaper writes:
Los Angeles County’s stay-at-home orders will “with all certainty” be extended for the next three months, county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer acknowledged during a Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday.
Ferrer, though she didn’t issue an official order, said that timeline would only change if there was a “dramatic change to the virus and tools at hand.”
“Our hope is that by using the data, we’d be able to slowly lift restrictions over the next three months,” she said. But without widely available therapeutic testing for the coronavirus or rapid at-home versions that would allow people to test themselves daily, it seems unlikely that restrictions would be completely eased.
Ferrer’s comments came shortly after Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, warned Congress that states that push too quickly to ease orders could undo progress that would trigger an outbreak. Fauci said a 14-day decline in cases is the major checkpoint that states should meet before reopening.
In L.A. County, confirmed cases and deaths have continued to rise, even though beaches in the county are set to reopen on Wednesday, just days after the county lifted restrictions on hiking trails, parks and golf courses and allowed curbside pickup at nonessential businesses. But Ferrer warned Tuesday that further loosening of the rules will be slow.
But how people can use the sand will look different. Face coverings will be required when not in the water, and sunbathing won’t be allowed. Only active recreation — surfing, running, walking and swimming — will be permitted. Coolers, chairs, umbrellas and any of the other accessories that typically dot the shoreline should be left at home.
The update to L.A.’s stay-at-home orders comes as officials try to satisfy two needs: restarting the economy under a new normal while also ensuring that the resurgence in activity doesn’t upend progress in the fight against the coronavirus.
Trump and Tesla
Elon Musk reopened Tesla’s San Francisco Bay Area factory on Monday and Donald Trump is supporting that decision. Photograph: Ben Margot/AP
Donald Trump earlier today urged that Tesla Inc be allowed to reopen its electric vehicle assembly plant in California, joining CEO Elon Musk’s bid to defy county officials who have ordered it to remain closed.
“California should let Tesla & @elonmusk open the plant, NOW. It can be done Fast & Safely!” Trump wrote on Twitter.
Musk tweeted “Thank you!” in response
On Monday, Musk said production was resuming at the automaker’s sole US vehicle factory, defying an order to stay closed and saying if anyone had to be arrested, it should be he.
Tesla shares were up 1.1% at $820.44 in late trading, Reuters notes.
At Tesla’s factory in Fremont, California, employee parking lots that were deserted on Friday were packed with cars today.
Trucks could be seen driving in and out of the factory grounds.
About a dozen workers, some masked, some not, were seen standing by a red food truck on the factory grounds.
At the factory’s outbound logistics parking lot, where only a dozen Tesla cars stood on Friday, hundreds of Tesla vehicles were seen today.
The company, which on Saturday sued Alameda County, where the plant is located, over its decision that the plant should stay closed, did not officially comment on Trump’s tweet. The conflict heated up at the weekend.
Late yesterday, county health officials said they were aware Tesla had opened beyond the so-called minimum basic operations allowed during lockdown, and had notified the company it could not operate without a county-approved plan.
A county health official on Friday said the county had asked all manufacturers, including Tesla, to delay operations by at least another week to monitor infection and hospitalization rates.
California Governor Gavin Newsom yesterday said he had spoken with Musk several days ago and that the Tesla founder’s concerns helped prompt the state to begin its phased reopening of manufacturing last week.
Updated
Woman at center of Supreme Court case dies
Aimee Stephens, the plaintiff at the center of the most important LGBTQ rights case to come before the US supreme court since it ruled in favor of marriage equality in 2015, has died.
With heavy hearts, we must share the news that Aimee Stephens, whose landmark case was the first case about the civil rights of transgender people to be heard by the Supreme Court, died today at her home in Detroit with her wife, Donna Stephens, at her side. She was 59.
— ACLU (@ACLU) May 12, 2020
Her congresswoman, Rashida Tlaib, also tweeted about the sad news.
This is a sad day for our district and the country. Aimee was courageous and a champion for equality. She will always be our hero. https://t.co/wNf9LncsKY
— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) May 12, 2020
Here’s my colleague Dominic Rushe on the case, and the woman behind it:
“Transition to greatness”
At the White House yesterday, Donald Trump predicted that the third quarter of 2020 will be an economic “transition to greatness” as the US comes out the other side of the coronavirus crisis.
That may be what Elizabeth Warren this morning referred to as “magical thinking” about where the pandemic is going in the US.
This is Joe Biden’s take:
That’s the plan.https://t.co/Hy8C4mIL2M https://t.co/sT6yrlzeXj
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) May 12, 2020
Coronavirus task force update
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany just confirmed that there will be additional members appointed to the coronavirus task force.
She did not confirm who that would be or when that would be made public. McEnany was also asked when we might see task force leader Anthony Fauci and coordinator Deborah Birx back at the press briefing podium (where McEnany is standing now).
They used to present to the public every day until the president effectively took over the briefings and turned them into, many days, two-plus hour-long grievance sessions with a side helping of medical misinformation, which eventually began to turn off his voters.
But since Trump stopped the daily briefings after the climax where he mused to his own experts that injections of disinfectant could be looked at as a treatment for coronavirus, the experts’ briefings stopped too.
McEnany said Fauci and Birx are doing plenty of interviews that that’s great (to paraphrase), so no prospect of them giving official briefings again any time soon.
McEnany pointed out that we spent a lot of the morning hearing from Anthony Fauci in the Senate health committee hearing.
The Trump administration has blocked Fauci from testifying in the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives.
But the hearing in the Republican-controlled Senate was sufficiently devastating, as witnesses and experts exposed the extent to which the US delayed vital testing early on and that the coronavirus is not at all under control in the US.
The White House press briefing has now finished.
Updated
The White House press secretary is repeating Donald Trump’s boast that the US is now doing more coronavirus testing that South Korea.
But Senators ranging from Democrat Tim Kaine to Republican Mitt Romney demolished the administration’s arguments during the health committee hearing this morning.
As a reminder, Romney said a little earlier that the administration’s boasts “ignored the fact that they [South Korea] accomplished theirs at the beginning of the outbreak, while we treaded water during February and March.”
Romney added: “And as a result, by March 6, the US had completed just 2,000 tests, whereas South Korea had conducted more than 140,000 tests, so partially as a result of that they have 256 deaths and we have 80,000. I find our testing record is nothing to celebrate whatsoever.”
And he concluded:
“The fact is their [South Korea’s] test numbers are going down, down, down, down now because they don’t have the kind of outbreak we have, ours are going up, up, up as they have to. That’s an important lesson for us as we think about the future.
Updated
We’re waiting for a White House briefing from press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, which was billed to start at 2pm ET.
Here we go. You can watch it live, here.
Updated
Early afternoon summary
There’s a White House press briefing in a moment, but meanwhile, here’s how the morning went.
- At the Senate health committee hearing, Republican Mitt Romney slammed the US’s track record on early coronavirus testing.
- The federal agency the CDC admitted that the US failed in its chance to contain the coronavirus at the start of the pandemic, being left instead with only mitigation efforts.
- Top public health chief Anthony Fauci said that coronavirus is not yet under control in the US, months into the crisis.
- The supreme court heard arguments in the cases from the House of Representatives and New York investigators that seek access to Donald Trump’s taxes and other financial records.
- At the Senate hearing, Bernie Sanders demanded that if (hopefully when) there is a vaccine to innoculate against Covid-19 that all Americans will have access regardless of their circumstances.
- Anthony Fauci said the US death toll from coronavirus was likely higher than the official toll of 80,000 dead so far.
- Fauci warned of “serious consequences” if the US rushes to reopen prematurely.
Updated
Pelosi reveals $3tn House stimulus bill
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – She Who Would Turn America Communist, according to Donald Trump this morning – has released Democrats’ new coronavirus economic stimulus bill. It would cost more than $3tn and provide nearly $1tn of aid for states, cities, local governments and essential workers and more cash payments to individual Americans.
The White House has said repeatedly that it’s not interested and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has said there is no urgency to act. Nonetheless, the Associated Press reports:
“The House is expected to vote on the package as soon as Friday … the so-called Heroes Act would provide nearly $1tn for states, cities and tribal governments to avert layoffs and additional $200bn in “hazard pay” for essential workers, according a summary.
It will offer a fresh round of $1,200 direct cash aid to individuals, increased to up to $6,000 per household, and launches a $175bn housing assistance fund to help pay rents and mortgages. There is $75bn more for virus testing.
It would continue, through January, the $600-per-week boost to unemployment benefits. It adds a 15% increase for food stamps and new help for paying employer-backed health coverage. For businesses, there’s an employee retention tax credit.
Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said the bill “will be ready” to call lawmakers back to Washington for the vote.
There’s also more in there for the small business Paycheck Protection Program, for the US Postal Office and more.
But, to stress, Trump has already signed around $3tn of stimulus spending into law and he doesn’t want to do more and has floated things like payroll tax cuts and concessions on immigration policy as the price of action, prospects Democrats do not like in the slightest.
McConnell has called the Democratic bill a “big laundry list of pet priorities” and said: “I don’t think we have yet felt the urgency of acting immediately.”
In turn, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer has warned that if Trump and congressional Republicans “slow walk” more aid they will repeat President Herbert Hoover’s inadequate response to the Great Depression of the 1930s.
US unemployment is now at Great Depression levels, so the comparison was apt.
Senate health committee hearing wraps
Committee chairman Lamar Alexander concluded by asking rhetorically what can the US can learn to prepare for the next pandemic? What can we learn about the federal stockpile? Hospitals having beds ready? Better buying channels for personal protective equipment?
The chairman, Republican of Tennessee, thanked the members and witnesses who took part in what was a very calm and simultaneously devastating hearing that exposed the extent that America is still in the grip of the virus and systems are not in place yet to prevent many more people dying and a potential second wave of the disease.
And public health expert and witness Anthony Fauci warned that if America rushes to reopen without declining infections and proper countermeasures in place for testing, quarantining those affected, contact tracing, hospital capacity, etc, we run “the real risk we will trigger an [further] outbreak that we will not be able to control”.
GOP's Romney slams US testing record
The hearing is winding up now, but not before Republican Senator Mitt Romney, of Utah, described scathingly how he is not impressed with the US’s early testing track record on coronavirus.
He addressed assistant health secretary and admiral, Brett Giroir, a witness at the hearing today, who was also presenting in the White House rose garden last night, alongside the president, lauding how much testing the US is doing for Covid-19.
“I understand that politicians are going to frame data in a way that’s most positive politically, but of course I don’t expect that from admirals,” Romney said.
“But yesterday you celebrated that we had done more tests, and more tests per capita, even, than South Korea, and you ignored the fact that they accomplished theirs at the beginning of the outbreak, while we treaded water during February and March,” Romney said.
“And as a result, by March 6, the US had completed just 2,000 tests, whereas South Korea had conducted more than 140,000 tests, so partially as a result of that they have 256 deaths and we have 80,000. I find our testing record is nothing to celebrate whatsoever.”
Romney concluded:
“The fact is their [South Korea’s] test numbers are going down, down, down, down now because they don’t have the kind of outbreak we have, ours are going up, up, up as they have to. That’s an important lesson for us as we think about the future.
Here’s the clip:
Sen. Mitt Romney criticizes the Trump administration’s progress on access to coronavirus vaccines: “I find our testing record nothing to celebrate whatsoever.” https://t.co/Wj0PoWurQ9 pic.twitter.com/vCbDzcim9l
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) May 12, 2020
CDC admits the US missed chance to contain Covid-19
Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, just made a devastating confirmation of what most already realized.
He admitted to the Senate health committee hearing underway in Washington that the US failed to contain the coronavirus, thus preventing the fast spread that occurred across the country and so far has killed at least 80,000 people in America.
Instead, the US had to move almost directly to the mitigation stage - to try to reduce the severity of the crisis, having failed in late February and early March to prevent the crisis.
CDC Director Redfield tells Tim Kaine that because the US moved so slowly, we “lost the containment edge” and had to shift to “mitigation” as the coronavirus swiftly outflanked the nation; it meant shutting down the non-essential economy while we calculated the damage. https://t.co/h9k0c2uo5m
— Khanoisseur 🐶🤦🏻♂️🌎 (@Khanoisseur) May 12, 2020
Back in early March, Redfield had almost but not quite given up on the holy grail of containment.
"We have been working on mitigation for the whole nation... this nation should not give up on containment," says Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on the current state of the coronavirus outbreak in the US. https://t.co/rujJTqJAPH pic.twitter.com/msqd9WoSYG
— CNN (@CNN) March 7, 2020
This will continue to be essential reading from my colleagues Ed Pilkington and Tom McCarthy.
Senator: US missed 'critical month' for testing
Virginia Democratic Senator Tim Kaine complained that while the federal government is ramping up coronavirus testing now, it was far behind where it should have been in the vital early stages as the disease was beginning to spread in the US.
Last evening at the White House, Donald Trump was talking of “victory” and “prevailing” in the testing test, if you will. There was a banner in the rose garden talking of America leading the world on testing.
But Kaine just reminded those at the hearing and those listening in, that in “the critical month of March”, the US was testing its citizens at a rate 40 times less than one of the countries leading the fight against coronavirus, South Korea, was.
And he added that the Trump administration’s own experts say the US needs to be conducting 1.3 million tests a day. “Yesterday there were 300,000 tests,” Kaine said. Senator Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire also spoke on that issue.
.@SenatorHassan: "The key distinction between South Korea and the United States is not how many tests per capita over a certain amount of time we've done, but the fact that at the onset of this pandemic SK was much more able to do a lot more tests per capita than we were." pic.twitter.com/7bZ54sIW8a
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 12, 2020
Updated
Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina, aske Anthony Fauci for advice on reopening.
He says that in his state they have seen a little less than 8,000 cases and 350 deaths. Scott says the state has plans to test widely and by the end of this month “we will have tested 100% of nursing home residents”, and says South Carolina is increasing contact tracing.
“We are taking every measure to protect older Carolinians and those with underlying health conditions,” he said.
He said the state did not set out to keep quarantine in place until there was a vaccine.
“We are too often faced with a false dichotomy, saving the economy or saving lives.” He said there is a lot of despair as people wait for good news. As we start to reopen what else would you suggest we do to protect our vulnerable population?”
Fauci: “You have put things in place that would optimize your ability to reopen. The vulnerable [people] should be the protected right up to the end” of the process of reopening.
Fauci says virus not under control in US
Massachusetts Democratic Senator and recent 2020 candidate Elizabeth Warren just took the proverbial (remote) stage.
She said: “In the last 16 weeks over 1.3 million Americans have been infected with coronavirus, 80,000 people have died and 30 million people have lost their jobs. Dr Fauci you have advised six presidents, do we have coronavirus contained?”
The US top public health expert Dr Anthony Fauci, testifying remotely, responded starkly: “If you mean ‘do we have it under control?’, no.”
Fauci pointed out that new cases and deaths are declining in New York, the country’s (and indeed the world’s) most serious coronavirus hotspot in April, but “in other parts of the country we are seeing spikes,” he said.
Numbers in some places are coming down, he said, and added that the US is “going in the right direction - but it does not mean by any means that we have it under control.”
Fauci confirmed Warren quoting that the US is seeing 25,000 new infections a day and 2,000 deaths a day right.
Warren said: “We know it’s possible to get this virus under control.”
She said South Korea was the best example. But she said that “we are three months in and we continue to set records for cases and deaths.”
Fauci warned again that if there are not sufficient systems put in place by the fall, for testing, contact tracing and other measures, that there will “inevitably” be a second wave of illness in the US.
Warren concluded: “The time for magical thinking is over, we are running out of time to save lives.”
More from the supreme court
Justice Sonia Sotomayor in oral arguments earlier told Trump lawyer Patrick Strawbridge: Counsel, there is a long, long history of Congress seeking records and getting them ... from presidents,” The AP reports.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Justice Steven Breyer have brought up requests for documents during Watergate and Whitewater.
Justice Elena Kagan says in the past Congress and the president have been able to come to agreements.
Trump is asking the justices to put an end to subpoenas issued by congressional committees and the Manhattan district attorney for tax, bank and other financial records.
Rulings against the president could result in the release of information during Trumps campaign for reelection.
Justice Breyer asks why not treat the president just like everybody else when it comes to these subpoenas. https://t.co/mvnuG0ZK7O
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) May 12, 2020
And this:
"There is an obvious need to focus on the President's financial records to determine if the president is subject to foreign leverage," the top lawyer for the House said. "It is obvious that it ties in with that legislative purpose." https://t.co/IUm2Fgcg3h
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) May 12, 2020
Updated
Supreme court heard arguments on Trump's taxes
Oral arguments just finished in the (remote) session, hearing cases about Donald Trump’s tax records and finances.
Supreme Court justices are asking whether there is any limit to Congress’s ability to subpoena records related to the president.
Here’s invaluable background from my colleague Martin Pengelly, who wrote earlier:
When Trump ran for president in 2016, he bucked tradition by refusing to release such information. Saying he was under audit, which would not in fact have precluded action, he promised to release his returns in due course. He has not.
Details of the president’s tax affairs have been reported by various outlets, the New York Times winning a Pulitzer in 2019 for a wide-ranging investigation which the prize committee said “debunked [Trump’s] claims of self-made wealth and revealed a business empire riddled with tax dodges”.
But Trump’s taxes remain one of the most tantalising mysteries in American politics.
This morning, the court heard cases originating in Congress and New York state. Both seek records from Mazars USA, Trump’s accountants.
Scotus is taking up Trump’s bid to shield his bank and financial records from Congress, The AP reports.
Several justices want to know whether there’s a limit to ensure subpoenas aren’t used to harass the president.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked a lawyer arguing Tuesday on behalf of the House of Representatives: The concern has been expressed that Congress could be using this subpoena power to harass a political rival ... so what is the limiting principle?”
Justice Brett Kavanaugh is one of Trump’s two nominees to the court. Kavanaugh asked the lawyer for the House: The question then boils down to how can we both protect the House’s interest in obtaining information it needs to legislate but also protect the presidency. How can the court balance those interests?
Trump is fighting subpoenas by congressional committees and Manhattan prosecutors for tax records. The court is hearing arguments by phone because of the coronavirus.
Updated
There are few senators in the actual hearing room on Capitol Hill.
One instantly-recognizable character is libertarian Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky. He’s not wearing a mask, instead wearing a chunky beard. Paul, of course, had coronavirus early in the epidemic and was the first senator to be so diagnosed, in later March.
Also in the room is Republican Susan Collins, of Maine, also not waring a mask. Senators and the few staff present are sitting very far apart from each other.
Also visible Democratic Senator Tim Kaine, of Virginia, who is generally known to be a stronger senator than he was a veep pick for Hillary Clinton in 2016. The ticket was not a smash-hit. Many are hoping Joe Biden will make a much more exciting choice.
It cannot fail to be observed that Kaine looks like an old-fashioned highway robber, with a colorful bandanna tied around his face. But at least he, like many of the small numbers of staff dotted around the periphery of the room, is wearing a face covering.
He greeted Republican (and masked) Senator Richard Burr with an elbow bump, though Burr may have later taken his mask off, per the Twitterverse.
Some others are not complying, or are showing spotty adherence....
Sanders demands any vaccine be available to all Americans
Bernie Sanders just pressed Senate hearing witness Brett Giroir, assistant secretary of health, that if (hopefully when) a successful vaccine is developed to immunize people against Covid-19 that it reaches all Americans “regardless of income” or any health situations.
Giroir said it was his office’s job to serve “all segments of society”. When Sanders pressed him again on whether everyone would get the vaccine, Giroir began to say “they should, I do not represent..”
But Sanders cut him off, saying: “You represent an administration that makes that decision.”
Giroir asserted that, yes, all Americans would have access to the vaccine regardless of ability to pay, or any health factors.
Death toll likely higher than official number – Fauci
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders just asked Dr Anthony Fauci about the death toll from the coronavirus in the US, which now officially stands a little over 80,000.
To begin with, however, Sanders, who recently dropped out of the 2020 election race to be the Democratic nominee, said: “It is sad to say we have a president who from day one downplayed the dangers of the pandemic.”
He added that Donald Trump “told us the crisis would be over in a few months and we didn’t need to worry, he fired members of the government who wanted to move aggressively and he cut funding to the World Health Organization (WHO).”
Sanders then said that the official statistic is that 80,000 Americans have died, but there are some leading epidemiologists who believe the real death toll is higher, perhaps even 50% higher, what did Fauci think of that, he asked.
Fauci said: “I’m not sure if it’s going to be 50% higher, but most of us feel the number of deaths are likely to be higher.”
Fauci said that especially in New York City [where the official death toll has surpassed 20,000] there may have been people who died at home who died of Covid-19 but were not counted as Covid deaths.
“The number is almost certainly higher,” Fauci said.
Updated
Fauci warns of 'serious' consequences in any rush to reopen
Washington state Senator Patty Murray just said to Anthony Fauci: “You’ve warned of needless suffering and death but the president is giving the opposite message” and asked him for his view on reopening the US.
Fauci said: “What we have worked out is a guideline framework for how you safely open America again ... I get concerned if you have a situation where you are not seeing gradual, over 14-day, decrease [in new cases of coronavirus].”
If such a decrease is seen, that may allow an early phase of gradual reopening, Fauci said, with further phases and “checkpoints” on elements such as hospital capacity, testing and other measures to deal with a subsequent new outbreak.
“If places jump over those checkpoints and prematurely open up without being able to respond, we will start to see little spikes” that could turn into larger outbreaks, Fauci warned.
Murray asked: “So if they don’t go by the guidelines consequences could be dire?”
Fauci said: “The consequences could be serious.”
Updated
Senate health committee chairman, Lamar Alexander, just asked public health expert Anthony Fauci: “Let’s look down the road three months”, what should happen when there will be about 5,000 campuses across the country and 20,000 public schools waiting to welcome millions of students back in August?
Fauci: “I would have to be very realistic...in this case the idea of having treatments available or a vaccine to facilitate the re-entry of students would be a bit of a bridge too far.”
Fauci said that remdesivir, the drug recently given emergency approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), showed some efficacy but it was “modest” and used in patients severely ill in hospital.
So Fauci has no definitive solution for students and teachers eager to get back to a normal education system.
Even as Donald Trump urges getting people back to work and reopening the economy, analysis shows thousands of people are getting sick from Covid-19 on the job.
Recent figures show a surge of infections in meatpacking and poultry-processing plants, The Associated Press reports.
There’s been a surge of new cases among construction workers in Austin, Texas, where that sector recently returned to work.
The White House has proved vulnerable, with staff testing positive.
The developments underscore the high stakes for communities nationwide as they gradually loosen restrictions on business.
“The people who are getting sick right now are generally people who are working,” Dr. Mark Escott, a regional health official, told Austin’s city council. “That risk is going to increase the more people are working.”
There are plenty of new infections outside the workplace in nursing homes, and among retired and unemployed people, particularly in densely populated places such as New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia and urban parts of New Jersey and Massachusetts.
Yet of the 15 US counties with the highest per-capita infection rates between April 28 and May 5, all are homes to meatpacking and poultry-processing plants or state prisons, according to data compiled by the AP.
The county with the highest per-capita rate was Tennessee’s Trousdale County, where nearly 1,300 inmates and 50 staffers recently tested positive at the privately run Trousdale Turner Correctional Center.
The No. 2 county on AP’s list is Nobles County in Minnesota, which now has about 1,100 cases, compared to two in mid-April. There and Nebraska’s Dakota County and Indiana’s Cass County are home to huge meat-processing industries.
Also hard hit by recent infections are counties in Virginia, Delaware and Georgia where poultry-processing plants are located.
In New York, the hardest-hit state during most of the pandemic, people staying at home are still getting sick.
Meanwhile in Pennsylvania, of 2,578 new cases between May 4 and May 6, more than 40% were people living in long-term care facilities.
And across the country many health workers were among the earliest Americans to test positive. They continue to be infected in large numbers.
CDC director Robert Redfield says about the US’s coronavirus crisis: “We are not out of the woods yet.”
He said the CDC has conducted a state by state examination of testing capacity. “We’re working directly with the states’ public health leaders” to find out what they’re doing and what they need, Redfield said.
This may be an allusion to reports last week that after the Trump administration shelved the CDC’s big report on recommendations for how to reopen the US safely, especially in relation to businesses and schools, that CDC officials were prepared to skirt Washington and take their advice direct to state governors and their public health departments - presumably those that were willing to listen, at least.
“Rapid, extensive, widely available and timely testing is essential,” Redfield said.
Updated
Fauci hopes successful results from vaccine trials in coming months
Fauci said that clinical trials are underway in the US now. They will move to the next phases of testing in the lates spring and early summer.
“If we are successful, we hope to know that by late fall or early winter,” he said.
That doesn’t mean a vaccine is ready for the public, that means results from the clinical trials.
Fauci just avoided repeating his warnings from last night about opening the country up too soon.
Now it’s onto the CDC director Robert Redfield’s opening statement.
Fauci testifies
Fauci has opened by summarizing the fourfold strategic plan the public health experts are executing: improve knowledge, develop new diagnostics, finding new therapeutic treatments, and develop a vaccine.
There are a number of vaccine programs working hard to find a way to inoculate against Covid-19.
He’s now going into some medical details.
Senator: 'Families across the country are counting on us for the truth'
Patty Murray, Democratic Senator of Washington State, has opened with a blistering statement. She said that families across America are counting on Congress to tell them the truth about coronavirus.
“It’s clear they will not get it from President Trump. Lives are at stake. The president is not telling the truth,” she said
She called on Congress to “dig into the facts” of what went wrong in the handling of the coronavirus crisis in the US.
She called the federal government’s response “a disaster on its own”, citing “delay, allowing inaccurate antibody tests to flood the market” as well as “political interference’ in the procurement of medical equipment, and an administration that “promoted dangerous, unproven treatments” - by which she probably means the president touting hydroxychloroquine as a “miracle” treatment and then musing at a White House press briefing whether taking disinfectant internally could be looked at by his health experts as a treatment - which disinfectant manufacturers promptly warned is potentially deadly.
She then added that the CDC spent weeks preparing guidance for safely reopening the county “and the Trump administration tossed it in the trash can for being ‘too prescriptive’.
“Since the committee last heard from these witnesses on March 13 we have seen over 80,000 deaths nationally...still Trump continues to ignore the facts and the experts who say we are nowhere near where we need to be to safely reopen,” she said.
Updated
'We underestimated this virus'
That’s what Senate committee chairman Lamar Alexander just said. He warned against “finger pointing”, saying that “most of us” underestimated the viciousness of coronavirus and just how very contagious it is.
CNN flashed up a stark note last night. On March 11, the death toll from coronavirus in the US was 38. In just two months it went from that number to the death toll by May 11 of 80,000 souls in America.
“Even the experts underestimated Covid-19,” Alexander said.
“We also intend to prepare for the next pandemic, which we know is coming.”
Updated
The hearing has begun. Committee chairman Senator Lamar Alexander is chairing the hearing remotely, from home in Tennessee, and has just popped up on our screens.
Weirdly, the screen just flashed to Bernie Sanders trying to jam earphones into his ears in order, like the rest of us, to tune in remotely. There are no members of the public permitted in the hearing room on Capitol Hill, which looks sparse and sad!
We’re awaiting Anthony Fauci’s opening statement, in expectation that he is going to double down on his stance, which splits dramatically with Donald Trump (his ultimate boss) on the pace at which the US should reopen for business and societal movements.
Fauci is expected to warn, as he emailed to the New York Times last night, that “needless suffering and death” will result if states open too soon.
We’re getting ready to cover the Senate health committee hearing at 10am ET, where public health experts Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Stephen Hahn, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and Brett Giroir, assistant secretary for health will all testify.
At 2pm ET, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany plans a press briefing.
Yet more from the president:
Remember this, every Governor who has sky high approval on their handling of the Coronavirus, and I am happy for them all, could in no way have gotten those numbers, or had that success, without me and the Federal Governments help. From Ventilators to Testing, we made it happen!
This tweet may have been sent in response to a Washington Post piece this morning, which said “Governors collectively have been winning widespread praise from the public for their handling of the coronavirus outbreak, often with the kind of bipartisan approval that has eluded President Trump. But a large-scale Post-Ipsos poll finds that some Republican governors who have embraced reopening their states are struggling to achieve that consensus.”
It’s fair to say there isn’t much of a consensus, anywhere, over the federal government being a help to governors facing down the coronavirus crisis.
Just for one example, the Democratic governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, recently told a Daily Beast podcast, The New Abnormal with Rick Wilson and Molly Jong-Fast, about a call to the White House which convinced her she needed to strike out on her own:
That was the moment where I realized we’ve got to set up a global procurement office in our state emergency operations center. We’ve had to step up and do things that none of us ever contemplated, using powers that had rarely ever been used, trying to solve problems that are exacerbated because of the lack of national strategy.
Just for another example, Larry Hogan of Maryland, a Republican, has spoken publicly about having to hide test kits bought from South Korea, in case the federal government tried to take them.
It's also Trump's taxes day at the supreme court…
…in case anyone had found themselves distracted by, well, the utter chaos everywhere else.
The justices are working remotely like the rest of us and today they will hear questions regarding attempts by Congress and New York state to obtain Donald Trump’s financial records, regarding whether he is profiting off the presidency and whether hush money payments to women who claim affairs with him involved the falsifying of business records.
Trump’s lawyers say he doesn’t have to surrender such records while in office, and indeed cannot be prosecuted for anything while in office, even shooting someone on Fifth Avenue. It means they think the president is above the law and it’s a, uh, controversial claim.
But the court has a conservative majority and there are off-ramps available short of stoking an all-out constitutional crisis over the power of the presidency in a democracy, as this fine analysis from Amelia Thomson-Deveaux at fivethirtyeight.com points out.
I previewed the day for the Guardian, and contacted Sidney Blumenthal, formerly an aide to Bill Clinton during his impeachment drama, now a biographer of Abraham Lincoln, for comment:
The case is potentially an existential threat to Trump. He’s a desperate man on the run, one step ahead of the law. If he were to lose the election he would likely face prosecution for a variety of crimes including financial fraud. His immunity would end the moment that Joe Biden becomes president.
Here’s the whole piece:
Vice President Mike Pence is reportedly to maintaining distance “for the immediate future” from Donald Trump, after consulting with the White House medical unit, a senior administration official told CNN, which adds that it’s not yet clear exactly how long Pence will stay away from the president.
It is not yet clear exactly how long Vice President Pence will stay away from President Trump. The decision stops short of the CDC's recommended self-quarantine guidelines after Pence's press secretary tested positive for coronavirus. https://t.co/xBt6rJY82B
— CNN (@CNN) May 12, 2020
Pence’s office did not respond to a CNN request for comment, the news network reports.
Pence did not turn up to Trump’s press conference in the White House rose garden last evening. Trump apparently will keep in touch with his Veep mainly by telephone.
Meanwhile, there’s this:
Participants at a food supply roundtable convened by Mike Pence in Iowa on Friday removed their face masks before Pence arrived, according to video from the event posted online. https://t.co/Mr7DuRbFqn
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) May 12, 2020
And here’s a comment from Jeremy Diamond, who was one of the bylines on the CNN story:
In an awkward balancing act between taking necessary precautions and trying to avoid undercutting Trump's back-to-business messaging, Pence is merely taking half-measures that fall short of the administration's own guidelines.
— Jeremy Diamond (@JDiamond1) May 12, 2020
A/ @Kevinliptakcnn https://t.co/SqRHkQagJi
Updated
Pence to 'maintain distance' from Trump to prevent infection - report
Vice President Mike Pence is going to adjust his movements following the news last Friday that his press secretary Katie Miller tested positive for coronavirus.
It’s emerging right now that Pence will now avoid close contact with Donald Trump, maintaining distance from the president after Pence’s possible exposure. There were reports over the weekend that Pence would go into quarantine, but then reports to the contrary, CNN just reported.
Pence has not been wearing a mask in public around the White House. It’s not clear if he was exempted from the new rule put in place yesterday that those entering the West Wing must wear a mask. Trump was exempted.
Updated
Biden on coronavirus, 'Obamagate', Tara Reade
Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, has been speaking to ABC News’ Good Morning America.
If there was (were?) ever a gamut of issues to be run, he has been running it.
- On Donald Trump’s claims about his administration’s coronavirus response, particularly over the availability of testing: “The truth is the truth … anyone can’t get a test around the country. ... He knew about this crisis all the way back in January and February. He’s been incompetent the way he responded.”
- On campaigning in a pandemic and whether he should leave his basement in Delaware: “We’re on the campaign trail now. And everybody says you know Biden’s hidin’. Well let me tell you something – we’re doing very well! We’re following the guidelines of the medical professionals.”
- On Trump’s attempts to make “Obamagate” a real thing: “I was aware that [the FBI] asked for an investigation [of Michael Flynn] but that’s all I know about it. Think about this, can you imagine any other president focusing on this at a moment when people are just absolutely concerned about their health, the health of their families? … We have an economic crisis, a health crisis, this is all about diverting attention. Focus on what’s in front of us. Get us out of this, Mr President.”
- On people who believe Tara Reade, the former Senate staffer who has accused him of sexual assault, and therefore will not vote for him: “That’s their right … At the end of the day, the truth is the truth. And truth is, this never happened.”
Also this morning, former Georgia gubernatorial candidate, voting rights campaigner and contender to be named Biden’s vice-president Stacey Abrams is out with her endorsement of the former veep.
Here’s Daniel Strauss with more on the Reade story and how it is, to a degree, deepening splits in Democratic ranks:
McConnell to Obama: keep your mouth shut
An extraordinary intervention from Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, who has told former president Barack Obama to “keep his mouth shut” over criticism of Donald Trump.
Last week, remarks by Obama were leaked to Yahoo News.
Speaking to alumni of his administration, the 44th president said he was worried about the “rule of law”, in light of the justice department’s decision to drop its case against former national security adviser Michael Flynn. That’s the issue at the heart of Trump’s attempts to gin up an “Obamagate” scandal, which on Tuesday morning he again claimed “makes Watergate look small time!”
Obama also said the response to the coronavirus pandemic had been “an absolute chaotic disaster”.
McConnell was speaking to Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump in an online fundraiser on Monday night. Asked about Obama “slamming” the administration for its response to the coronavirus outbreak, he said: “I think President Obama should have kept his mouth shut.
“You know, we know he doesn’t like much this administration is doing. That’s understandable. But I think it’s a little bit classless frankly to critique an administration that comes after you.
“You had your shot. You were there for eight years. I think the tradition that the Bushes set up of not critiquing the president who comes after you is a good tradition.”
There is indeed a tradition of former presidents not commenting on or attacking their successors in the Oval Office, but Trump is, to put it lightly, not part of the informal club which currently includes Obama, George W Bush*, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter and has regularly attacked those who went before.
Plus, Obama’s views of Trump are pretty well known, if by indirect routes. For example, in a Hulu documentary about Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign against Trump, the Virginia senator Tim Kaine is seen to say the then president thinks Trump is a fascist.
In the remarks leaked to Yahoo News, Obama said he would be hitting the campaign trail for Joe Biden this fall. Biden leads Trump in swing states and national polls and Obama is a proven campaigner, to say the least. McConnell is presiding over a Republican Senate majority that looks increasingly at risk. Everything is politics, folks.
*Fun George W Bush note: the 43rd president is widely reported, while on the podium at Trump’s inauguration, to have leant over to a neighbour after the new president’s dystopian “American Carnage” speech and labelled it “some weird shit”. Which counts as commenting on a successor, if not, granted, in public
Updated
CBS News said it is fully backing its reporter Weijia Jiang, amid controversy after Donald Trump told Jiang, who is Asian American, to “ask China” about coronavirus deaths.
“We fully support Weijia Jiang, the WH team, and every journalist at CBS News,” CBS said in a statement, reported by CNN’s Brian Stelter. Their work is critical to democracy and furthers understanding for the American public every day.”
I asked @CBSNews for comment re: Trump's reaction to @Weijia's Q. Spox said: "We fully support Weijia Jiang, the WH team, and every journalist at CBS News. Their work is critical to democracy and furthers understanding for the American public every day." (https://t.co/iVyS2OjoEE)
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) May 12, 2020
Trump’s comment to Jiang, which was condemned as racist by some commentators, came after the CBS journalist asked Trump why he continued to claim – wrongly – that the US was performing better than other countries in terms of testing for coronavirus.
“Why does that matter?” asked Jiang, who was born in China. “Why is this a global competition when, every day, Americans are still losing their lives?”
“They’re losing their lives everywhere in the world,” Trump said. “And maybe that’s a question you should ask China. Don’t ask me, ask China that question, OK?”
Shortly after the interchange, Trump abruptly ended the press conference.
On Tuesday morning Trump tweeted, perhaps in response to the incident:
Asian Americans are VERY angry at what China has done to our Country, and the World. Chinese Americans are the most angry of all. I don’t blame them!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2020
Trump did not provide evidence regarding the anger of Asian Americans, or Chinese Americans.
More on Fauci
More on Dr Anthony Fauci’s email to the New York Times and the prospects for the top public health expert’s Senate testimony today.
“The major message that I wish to convey to the Senate … committee,” Fauci wrote, “is the danger of trying to open the country prematurely. If we skip over the checkpoints in the guidelines to ‘Open America Again’, then we risk the danger of multiple outbreaks throughout the country. This will not only result in needless suffering and death, but would actually set us back on our quest to return to normal.”
As Sheryl Gay Stolberg put it in her report, “It is a message starkly at odds with the things-are-looking-up argument that President Trump has been trying to put out: that states are ready to reopen and the pandemic is under control.
Remember a few weeks ago, when Fauci confirmed reporting about a White House ignoring warnings about Covid-19 and we all thought the 79-year-old, just about the most trusted man in America having served Democrats and Republicans since 1984, was about to be fired?
I do, just about, and he wasn’t fired then. But as we know, Donald Trump is not a man who likes to be upstaged and to see others’ profiles grow larger than his, let alone see them played on Saturday Night Live by Brad Pitt while the president gets eviscerated by Alec Baldwin, again.
And though Fauci will testify remotely today, due to those White House coronavirus cases, he will be on a very big stage indeed.
Dr Stephen Hahn of the Food and Drug Administration and Dr Robert Redfield of the Centers for Disease Control and Protection will also testify remotely at the hearing, which will be chaired remotely by Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican who had a staffer test positive and who made headlines on Sunday by questioning the administration’s ambitious timeline for a vaccine.
Here’s one Republican response to Fauci. It’s from Andy Biggs, a congressman from Arizona, a state which is pressing on with reopening despite, according to an NYT database, cases continuing to rise:
Dr Fauci has continually used his bully pulpit to bring public criticism on governors who are seeking to open up their states. The Fauci-[Dr Deborah] Birx team have replaced faith w/ fear & hope w/ despair. The remedy is to open up our society & our economy. Trust & respect our freedom.
Good morning…
…and welcome to another day of coronavirus coverage in the US. The politics of it in a minute – the president is up and tweeting – but first as ever the figures from Johns Hopkins University:
- US cases: 1,347,765
- US deaths: 80,679
- New York cases: 337,055
- New York deaths: 26,988
I’ve singled out New York as the hardest-hit state but it is getting less hard hit, as Governor Andrew Cuomo said yesterday, outlining reopening plans for some regions, as Lauren Gambino reports here.
There’s news this morning too. As states try to reopen their economies, egged on by the administration, Dr Anthony Fauci, the public health expert who is in isolation after an outbreak of cases at the White House, will testify before the Senate today, remotely of course and to senators in masks, sitting six feet apart.
Fauci has told the New York Times: “The major message that I wish to convey … is the danger of trying to open the country prematurely. If we skip over the checkpoints in the guidelines … then we risk the danger of multiple outbreaks throughout the country. This will not only result in needless suffering and death, but would actually set us back on our quest to return to normal.””
Trump’s not going to like that, but it’s always nice to single out some non-Trump work before I get to him, so here’s Tom McCarthy on the race for a vaccine… and how Trump’s “America First” approach is slowing the global effort.
Try again: Richard Luscombe on the threat to Florida’s greyhounds. And Sam Levin from Los Angeles on a shocking case of death in the US immigration system:
And so to Trump.
He’s tweeting this morning on familiar subjects: “Obamagate” (here’s David Smith’s explainer), how Bill Maher “sucks” and how NBC host Chuck Todd “fails again”, and something about strong borders and “182 miles of Border Wall already built”. (That’s the wall that he said Mexico would pay for and, to put it very simply, isn’t being built along the whole border, which runs nearly 2,000 miles.)
Two key tweets for now: responding to conservative columnist John Solomon, he of the Ukraine affair, noting that Nancy Pelosi would be third in line to the presidency if Trump and Pence fell to Covid-19 – “Then we must be very careful. Crazy Nancy would be a total disaster, and the USA will never be a Communist Country!” – and calling reporters to whom Trump responded in a Rose Garden presser by walking out “Fake Journalists!”
Those were the salient lines of a chaotic Monday in Washington: after a rash of cases and with top experts isolated, the White House has instituted new rules including regarding the wearing of masks, but that does not apply to Trump.
And the press conference – a new low in Trump’s use of such occasions to bully, browbeat, distort or break the truth and attract accusations of racism, or if you support him, another successful battle with a perfidious foe.
It’s an election year, and some reports have Trump worried about his polling and considering campaign shakeups, so it will only get hotter from here.
