Kari Paul here, logging off for the night. Here are the top news stories of the last few hours to take you into your weekend.
- Trump wants to beat Russia and China with a “super duper missile”, whatever that means.
- NFL teams may start opening their facilities as of 19 May, the league has ruled, as long as they stay in accordance with local laws.
- The number of coronavirus deaths in the US are expected to exceed 100,000 by 1 June, according to the CDC.
- Researchers warned the Iowa governor, Kim Reynolds, that reopening the state could cause more deaths from coronavirus in early May. Businesses reopened across the state on Friday anyway.
- The US House passed temporary changes on Friday that will allow members to vote remotely for the first time in its 231-year history.
- Retailer JC Penney filed for bankruptcy on Friday, making it the latest business to hit bottom amid the economic slowdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
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Retailer JC Penney filed for bankruptcy on Friday, making it the latest business to hit bottom amid the economic slowdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
US retail sales tumbled by a record 16.4% from March to April as business shutdowns caused by the coronavirus kept shoppers away, threatened the viability of stores across the country and further weighed down a sinking economy.
The Covid-19 fallout represented a final blow to the company, which had been struggling for some time. Many brick-and-mortar retailers are struggling, according to a report from the Associated Press.
In the past two weeks, J Crew, Neiman Marcus and Stage Stores have filed for bankruptcy protection. JC Penney with its 850 stores and almost 90,000 workers followed them on Friday into bankruptcy. UBS estimates that roughly 100,000 stores could shutter over the next five years.
“The whole economic model is unraveling,” Neil Saunders, the managing director of GlobalData Retail told the Associated Press. “This is going to be very painful. For some, it’s going to be fatal.”
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House passed temporary changes on Friday that will allow members to vote remotely for the first time in its 231-year history.
Now legislators will be able to cast roll-call votes in the House and participate in committee hearings remotely.
The final vote on the change was 217-189. It comes as Congress attempts to adjust its responsibilities to the global coronavirus pandemic.
Weeks ago researchers at University of Iowa warned the governor, Kim Reynolds, that reopening the state would increase the spread of coronavirus, documents released Friday showed, as the state proceeded to lift closures this week.
Researchers, including some of the state’s top epidemiologists and infectious disease experts, found that even if businesses remained closed, hundreds of residents would likely die through the end of May. They said reopening restaurants and churches would exacerbate the problem, documents released Friday show.
“Evidence shows that Covid-19 will continue to spread in Iowa, likely at an increasing rate,” the team led by Dr Joseph Cavanaugh, the head of the university’s biostatistics department, concluded in a 4 May paper.
Reynolds has downplayed such models as she continues her push to reopen the economy, despite surging numbers of deaths this week. Restaurants, gyms, barber shops and salons reopened Friday in 22 counties, including the state’s largest metropolitan areas, where they had been closed for two months.
She on Friday she is relying on real-time data from hospitals and testing to manage the state’s pandemic response and warned that not reopening the state would have a “social cost”, including high unemployment, rising domestic abuse and food insecurity.
The Iowa Department of Public Health had asked experts at the UI College of Public Health for technical assistance forecasting the pandemic’s severity in Iowa.
In a paper dated 4 May, the researchers found that the virus was still likely spreading in Iowa communities. They said that school and business closures and ban on gatherings of more than 10 people had strongly mitigated the amount of infection but nonetheless were not “sufficient to prevent uncontained spread” by themselves.
“The State of Iowa is sufficiently interconnected that we expect continued growth of Covid-19, even in the absence of any measures to relax social distancing or to reopen previously closed businesses and religious institutions,” they wrote. “Importantly, even though much of the recent spread in Iowa has been attributed to clusters (eg, workplaces, long-term care facilities), continued increase in community spread is expected.”
The researchers said the state’s observed deaths, which jumped by 18 to 336 on Friday, closely tracked their projections from an earlier paper. That research forecast a median outcome of 747 deaths by 28 May.
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The number of deaths in the US from coronavirus are projected to exceed 100,000 by 1 June, according to the CDC director, Robert Redfield.
The agency came to this conclusion through tracking 12 different forecasting models, which all forecast at least 100,000 deaths.
Trump previously said the number would be lower than 100,000 deaths, a claim these models counter. Deborah Birx of the White House coronavirus task force has repeatedly asserted the number of deaths by 1 June will be between 100,000 and 240,000 – if mitigation strategies continue.
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National Football League teams can begin to reopen their facilities starting 19 May, a memo from the commissioner Roger Gooddell obtained by the Washington Post stated.
The NFL, in its memo, departs from previous stance teams' facilities will reopen only when all 32 can reopen at once. Today's memo says teams unable to reopen facilities May 19 can do so whenever they can, under state and local guidelines, and are in compliance with protocols.
— MarkMaske (@MarkMaske) May 15, 2020
NFL teams must be in compliance with local and state laws as well as league protocols, the memo said. There had been speculation the NFL season, which generally starts in early September, would be postponed or cancelled.
According to the memo, “coaches and players not permitted to be in teams’ facilities, at this point, even if they reopen beginning May 19”. It is unclear when fans would be allowed back in stadiums to view games.
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Trump took the trucker protest today as a sign of support, saying as the sounds of horns honking wafted into the Rose Garden today, “Those are friendly truckers. They’re on our side. It’s almost a celebration in a way.”
CNN’s Daniel Dale responds:
It's not a celebration. It's a protest of problems facing truckers, which the protesters want the president to deal with. They aren't happy Trump is alternately lying that their protest is not a protest at all or that it is a protest to support Trump. https://t.co/VNCqpm2NVX
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) May 15, 2020
Unveiling the flag for his new space force in the Oval Office on Friday, Donald Trump said the US was developing a “super duper missile” to outpace military rivals including Russia and China, writes the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly:
“We have no choice, we have to do it with the adversaries we have out there. We have, I call it the super duper missile and I heard the other night [it’s] 17 times faster than what they have right now,” the president said, sitting at the Resolute desk.
“That’s right,” said the defense secretary, Mark Esper, standing to Trump’s right.
“You take the fastest missile we have right now,” Trump said. “You heard Russia has five times and China’s working on five or six times, we have one 17 times and it’s just got the go-ahead.”
Hello, readers! Kari Paul here in sunny Oakland, California, to bring you the news over the next few hours. Stay tuned for updates.
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Late afternoon summary
Thanks for tuning in for the day’s US politics and coronavirus news so far. The Guardian’s Kari Paul is taking the over the blog from the west coast now, to cover developments over the next few hours. The White House just wrapped another rose garden event and Donald Trump is headed to Camp David.
Here are the main events so far today:
- Truckers on their 15th day of protest about insufficient working conditions disrupted Donald Trump’s afternoon press conference by blasting air horns throughout the Rose Garden ceremony.
- Despite an FDA alert warning the coronavirus testing kit used in the White House may be providing false positives, Donald Trump said it is a “great test”.
- Illinois senator Tammy Duckworth has entered the veep race after being backed by a veteran’s group. Duckworth, a veteran, is the first senator to give birth while in office.
- Never Trump Republicans are holding a rival gathering during the Republican National Convention this year, reports the Washington Post.
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Terrorism charge over threat to governor
A man accused of making credible death threats against Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer and state attorney general Dana Nessel has been charged on a terrorism count, the Wayne County prosecutor’s office said this afternoon.
Robert Tesh made the threats via a social media message to an acquaintance on April 14 and authorities concluded the message amounted to “credible threats to kill,” prosecutor Kym Worthy said Friday in a news release, the AP reports.
Worthy didn’t provide any detail about the threats or how they were determined to be credible. Further details will be presented during court proceedings, she said.
Detroit police officers arrested the 32-year-old man the same day at his home. He was arraigned April 22 on a threat of terrorism charge. If convicted, Tesh could face up to 20 years in prison.
“Emotions are heightened on all sides now,” she told the Associated Press. “These threats ... they are not funny. They are not jokes. There is nothing humorous about it. Even if you don’t carry it out, we’re going to charge you criminally.”
The threats from Tesh were not specific to Whitmer’s stay-at-home order issued in March in an effort to stem the spread of Covid-19 in the state, according to Maria Miller, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office.
Whitmer has been the target of protests and rallies over her executive order which shut down most businesses in the state. The order is effective at least until May 28.
“The alleged facts in this case lay out a very disturbing scenario,” Worthy said. “We understand that these times can be stressful and upsetting for many people. But we will not and cannot tolerate threats like these against any public officials who are carrying out their duties as efficiently as they can.
Protests in Lansing yesterday were led by Michigan United for Liberty, a conservative activist group that has sued Whitmer and organized or participated in several rallies since early April.
During a rally last month, some armed protesters entered the Capitol building.
Tesh was released from jail on April 29 after posting a $50,000 bond. He has been placed on a GPS tether. Comment has been sought from his attorney.
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The Guardian’s Mario Koran writes in about Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey announced that he will donate $10 million for computers and internet access to help close the digital divide in Oakland:
Dorsey dropped the news after Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf tweeted a video of one of the estimated 25,000 students who lack access to the internet. “Every student deserves the ability to learn from home”, wrote Schaaf. The mayor also spotlighted a $12.5M plan “to close the digital divide for good.”
@jack quickly answered the call.
Roughly two months into the switch from brick-and-mortar schools to online education, millions of families with school-aged children still remain offline.
The need persists even in the shadow of Silicon Valley. As schools shut down, and educators hustled to equip students with devices, the need for internet access was often unmet. Back orders mounted, compounding wait times for unconnected students.
The same families without internet often face food scarcity or unstable living conditions — both of which have been exacerbated with businesses closed and parents out of work.
Dorsey’s donation, by itself, won’t be enough to close the digital divide in Oakland. But will certainly help. Schaaf called Dorsey’s announcement a “game changer”.
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Long-haul trucking industry website, The Trucker, has a deeply reported look at the truckers’ protest movement, which has been active for 15 days.
The protest was thrust into the global spotlight on Friday, when trucker’s air horns provided a disruptive soundtrack to Donald Trump’s afternoon press conference. Trump said the horns were a show of support – “They love their president,” he said – but he was wrong.
Truckers began a protest in Washington DC at the beginning of the month. They have not received targeted support in any stimulus package and have said they don’t have adequate access to protective equipment and healthcare. They have also voiced serious concerns about the rates they are getting through brokers who connect them with people needing to ship goods.
On Wednesday, White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, met with the protestors for nearly 15 minutes. The Trucker said this gave some people enough hope to return to work, though many also decided to return to work simply because they can’t afford to take more unpaid leave.
The Trucker’s report from Wednesday detailed the meeting with Meadows and Michael Landis, founder and CEO of the United States Transportation Alliance, who acted as a spokesman for the group:
Meadows offered his personal email and promised that if Landis puts together a list of priorities and sends it to him, Meadows will act. The wary Landis, who has personally heard years of promises of action from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) and others in Washington, responded, “We’d like to hear that from the president.”
Meadows was unfazed by the comment and accompanying jeers, responding, “Let me just tell you, having the (president’s) chief of staff come out with my security detail and everything else is something that really doesn’t normally happen. So, I promise you I’m speaking on behalf of the president of the United States.”
Debate is underway for the $3tn House stimulus bill – the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Act, or HEROES Act.
Members have two hours to discuss the bill, after they spent the morning voting on rules.
The bill includes assistance to state and local governments, hazard pay for frontline health care workers, forgiveness of student debt and boosts to the health insurance programs, Medicaid and Medicare.
Trump has threatened to veto the bill, but more progressive Democrats have also said they would vote against it.
Scenes from the White House press conference
A reporter asked McEnany why Donald Trump accused Barack Obama of committing a crime this week and asked McEnany to name the crime.
After listing issues with people in office while Obama was president, she said it was reporters responsibility to “answer the question” of what Obama did that was against the law.
She ignored the reporter pointing out it is the White House press secretary’s duty to respond to questions about something the president said.
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White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany began today’s White House briefing with a theatrical dismissal of the pandemic plans Barack Obama’s administration left the Trump White House.
McEnany is responding to questions about gaps in the Trump administration’s readiness by criticizing the Obama administration.
McEnany repeats White House complaint that the Obama administration left the national stockpile empty without explaining why the Trump administration then didn't do anything to replenish it over three years.
— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) May 15, 2020
A reporter asks about one of today’s top issues - that the FDA has issued concerns about the type of test kit being used in the White House. McEnany said the issue raised about the kits, false negatives, have been tied to user error and that if people get a negative but are presenting symptoms like fever or coughing, they will be tested again.
Never Trump Republicans are holding a rival gathering during the Republican National Convention this year, reports the Washington Post.
It will take place in the same city as the RNC – Charlotte, North Carolina – and happen on the same days:
The Convention on Founding Principles grew out of an event Trump critics held at the National Press Club this year, concurrent with the Conservative Political Action Conference. Organizers were pleasantly surprised when more than 300 people attended their counter-conference, prompting a move to a larger room.
The August event, said McMullin, would more closely resemble an actual political convention. There will be debates and voting on a statement of the attendees’ principles, and a vote on whether they supported a particular candidate for president — presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, or a “well-known third-party candidate.” (Michigan Rep. Justin Amash, who is seeking the Libertarian Party’s nomination for president, has been praised by many anti-Trump conservatives.)
Add a new name to the list of possible running mates for Joe Biden.
The VoteVets pac has floated Illinois senator Tammy Duckworth as their pick for the vice presidency. Duckworth, a veteran, is the first senator to give birth while in office.
“We seem to have this view that paid family leave is some sort of touchy-feely women’s only policy,” Duckworth told the Guardian in 2018. “This isn’t just an entitlement. It’s really an economic imperative for our nation.”
.@JoeBiden should consider a veteran to be his running mate, and Tammy Duckworth should be top of the list. Here's why: pic.twitter.com/byWbmeQ0O4
— VoteVets (@votevets) May 15, 2020
Thanks to Guardian senior politics correspondent, Lauren Gambino, for the tip. Her insights on the Veep race from earlier this month, here:
If you would like to experience the sound of a trucker protest, Newsday White House correspondent Laura Figueroa Hernandez has you covered:
As Trump delivers briefing on vaccines in Rose Garden you can hear loud honking from outside WH grounds. pic.twitter.com/RuJ6ZgDZO9
— Laura Figueroa Hernandez (@Laura_Figueroa) May 15, 2020
And NBCNews White House Correspondent, Geoff Bennett, shared a photo of the impressive line-up of trucks near the White House.
Here’s a pic of the protesting, honking truckers you can hear during this Rose Garden presser. They are parked along Constitution. (Took this pic on my way home last night.) pic.twitter.com/sNZloRxR5T
— Geoff Bennett (@GeoffRBennett) May 15, 2020
Donald Trump says he “assumes” the reported coronavirus death toll in the US is accurate.
A reporter asked if he was worried it could be higher, and he said “or lower.”
But, despite concerns Trump would try and downplay the death toll, he said the number should be accurate. Then, he launched into a tirade against China.
“I’d be happier if they were lower... this should never have happened ... this came from China.”
Trump is now taking questions from the press.
He’s insisting the US has “no ego” when it comes to vaccine trials and that the US will work with other countries to create a vaccine. Other countries have said this is not happening.
A reporter asks if the president is concerned about the Abbott Labs’ coronavirus test, which is being used in the White House but has been reported to show false positives. He says it’s a “great” test and is not concerned.
Trump says he gave his task force the option to where masks, which is why some of them are wearing them and some are not. He noted they are outside and standing at a distance from each other.
Truckers disrupt Trump press conference
During the president’s remarks, a low hum can be heard on the video feed.
Trump said the sound was truckers “showing support,” but the honking may have actually been a protest.
Earlier this month, a convoy of trucks in Washington DC blasted their air horns to protest low shipping rates, which truckers say threaten their livelihoods.
Trump pauses his remarks on vaccine development to note that the loud honking in the background is from truckers who are protesting in favor of him, calling it a “sign of love.”
— Rebecca Ballhaus (@rebeccaballhaus) May 15, 2020
The truckers are protesting low shipping rates during the pandemic and are seeking gov’t support.
The Washington Post covered the protests earlier this month:
Just two weeks ago, President Trump had personally extended his gratitude to truckers, welcoming representatives of the industry to the White House and calling truckers “the foot soldiers” in the war against the novel coronavirus.
But now, “the American truck driver needs help, and we need it now,” said Santiago, a 21-year veteran of the industry from New Jersey. “This is our distress call to our commander in chief to address the problems we are facing. He has called us heroes — his heroes need his help now.”
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Trump is talking about Operation Warp Speed.
He compared it to the Manhattan Project, the US government project which produced the first atomic bombs.
Trump is drumming up the US government’s work to support vaccine trials, but is short on specifics. He says the operation is “risky, it’s expensive” but assures people the vaccine has to be tested and approved before it is distributed.
“They’d better come up with a good vaccine, because we’re ready to deliver it,” Trump said.
He says the US is going to emerge from the coronavirus stronger than ever before. Trump said: “We are going to have a tremendous year, next year.”
Donald Trump has arrived at the White House rose garden.
Members of the coronavirus task force, Dr Deborah Birx and Dr Anthony Fauci, are standing behind the president with masks on. The president doesn’t have a mask on.
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Afternoon summary
We’re minutes away from Donald Trump’s remarks on an attempt to secure a vaccine (while we wait, I strongly recommend this brilliant piece about vaccines by the Guardian’s Tom McCarthy).
Before Trump takes the stage, here’s a look what has happened so far today:
- The House is set to vote on a $3tn, 1,800-page stimulus package which has been criticized by the right as well as progressives. At the moment, members are still voting on procedural aspects of the bill vote.
- The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has warned the Covid-19 testing kit used at the White House may be missing positive cases.
- Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, said he was wrong earlier this week when he claimed Barack Obama’s administration did not leave a plan for Donald Trump on how to handle a pandemic.
There is also this excellent read from correspondents across the globe writing on how the US response to coronavirus is viewed from abroad:
The Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt has examined how figures on the right are denying the country’s rising coronavirus death toll. And how Donald Trump could soon formally join their ranks.
Trump is said to be questioning whether the death toll is lower than officially stated. He has stopped short of saying so in public, but in April he retweeted a man who mused of Democrats: “Do you really think these lunatics wouldn’t inflate the mortality rates by underreporting the infection rates in an attempt to steal the election?”
Trump has consistently under-predicted how many people will die from the virus. In February he said there would soon be “close to zero” cases. On 20 April, he suggested “50 to 60,000” could die. The US passed that figure nine days later. More than 85,000 have now died.
In fact, epidemiologists including Dr Anthony Fauci, the government’s top public health expert, say more people have died from coronavirus than has been reported.
The situation is beginning to resemble the other major disaster his administration failed to respond adequately to: Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.
While numerous studies pin the number of deaths from the hurricane at nearly 3,000 people - Trump has consistently disputed the figure.
Medical journal editorial calls on Americans to vote Trump out in November
An editorial in the prominent medical journal, The Lancet, called for Americans to vote Donald Trump out of the White House in November because of his response to the coronavirus crisis.
The editorial highlighted how the the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the country’s premier public health agency, has been sidelined in the response:
The Administration is obsessed with magic bullets—vaccines, new medicines, or a hope that the virus will simply disappear. But only a steadfast reliance on basic public health principles, like test, trace, and isolate, will see the emergency brought to an end, and this requires an effective national public health agency. The CDC needs a director who can provide leadership without the threat of being silenced and who has the technical capacity to lead today’s complicated effort.
The Trump administration’s further erosion of the CDC will harm global cooperation in science and public health, as it is trying to do by defunding WHO. A strong CDC is needed to respond to public health threats, both domestic and international, and to help prevent the next inevitable pandemic. Americans must put a president in the White House come January, 2021, who will understand that public health should not be guided by partisan politics.
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Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, said he was wrong earlier this week when he claimed Barack Obama’s administration did not leave a plan for Donald Trump on how to handle a pandemic.
“I was wrong — they did leave behind a plan. So I clearly made a mistake in that regard,” McConnell said in an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier on Thursday.
“As to whether or not the plan was followed and who’s the critic and all the rest, I don’t have any observation about that because I don’t know enough about the details of that, Bret, to comment on it in any detail.”
In a YouTube interview on Monday with Trump 2020 senior adviser Lara Trump, McConnell said the Obama administration “did not leave to this administration any kind of game plan for something like this.”
His comments were criticized by former members of the administration, including Obama’s former deputy national security advisor, Ben Rhodes.
The maddening thing is Obama left them a WH office for pandemics, a literal playbook, a cabinet-level exercise, and a global infrastructure to deal with "something like this" https://t.co/zUSysamqVC
— Ben Rhodes (@brhodes) May 12, 2020
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Nearly six in 10 people who are working outside their homes despite the lockdowns said they were concerned that they could be exposed to coronavirus and infect the people they live with, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll.
The survey of more than 8,000 US adults in late April and early May painted a broader picture of the Americans still at work.
For black and Hispanic workers, seven in 10 were concerned about this issue.
Of the people still going to work, 13% said they lack health insurance. And more than one third of those going to work said they our a household member had a serious, chronic illness.
A slew of Guardian correspondents from across the globe to report on how the US response to coronavirus is seen abroad. It’s not good.
Views of the US handling of the coronavirus crisis are uniformly negative and range from horror through derision to sympathy
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has warned the Covid-19 testing kit used at the White House may be missing positive cases.
The agency issued the formal warning on Thursday after New York University researchers found the Abbot Labs’ test kit was missing a third to almost half of positive cases. Their study was not peer-reviewed and the FDA said it would find other methods of testing the kits accuracy.
“We are still evaluating the information about inaccurate results and are in direct communications with Abbott about this important issue,” said Tim Stenzel, director of the Office of In Vitro Diagnostics and Radiological Health at the FDA, in a statement.
Abbott Labs refuted the NYU study in a statement. “While we understand no test is perfect, test outcomes depend on a number of factors including patient selection, specimen type, collection, handling, storage, transport and conformity to the way the test was designed to be run,” the company said Thursday.
Hello and happy Friday,
The House is set to vote on a $3tn, 1,800-page stimulus package today. If it makes it through, however, it is unlikely to get much support in the Senate. Donald Trump has also threatened to veto the bill if it gets through Congress.
This has left Democratic leadership in the House with the job of convincing their members to vote for a bill that won’t become a law. Buried in the 1,800 pages are also points in the bill progressive members of the party don’t think go far enough.
House majority leader, Nancy Pelosi, said the bill was a “starting point” for negotiations.
It includes provisions such as allowing undocumented immigrants, who pay billions in taxes each year, to collect a $1,200 government stimulus check and funding for the beleaguered US Postal Service.
While Congress bickers over the bill, Trump is due to make remarks at two events this afternoon, including a noon briefing about the development of a coronavirus vaccine.
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