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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Sam Levin in Los Angeles, Joan E Greve in Washington and Martin Pengelly in New York

California to reopen some businesses this week as lockdowns ease across US – as it happened

A sign about keeping the farmers market safe is posted on a vendor’s tent during the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market in San Francisco.
A sign about keeping the farmers market safe is posted on a vendor’s tent during the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market in San Francisco. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Live reporting on the coronavirus in the US continues on Tuesday’s blog:

Summary

That’s all for today, thanks for following along. A recap of the day:

Updated

Elizabeth Warren says Joe Biden is 'credible and convincing'

Senator Elizabeth Warren said today she believed Joe Biden’s comments on the sexual assault allegation were “credible and convincing”.

“I saw the reports of what Ms [Tara] Reade said, I saw an interview with vice-president Biden. I appreciate that the vice-president took a lot of questions, tough questions. And he answered them directly and respectfully. The vice-president’s answers were credible and convincing,” the senator and former presidential candidate said, according to a CNN reporter.

Warren has said she would accept an offer to be Biden’s running mate.

The latest from the Guardian’s David Smith on Tara Reade:

Updated

Arizona has also announced moves to ease the state’s coronavirus restrictions, with the governor announcing that barbers, salons and additional retailers can reopen this Friday.

Indoor service at restaurants will resume on Monday, 11 May. Gyms, pools and bars remain closed.

The state has released guidances for restaurants, saying they should accommodate physical distancing, limit parties to no more than 10 people and operate at reduced capacity.

Updated

Field organizers for Joe Biden’s campaign have ratified a union contract, the first time in history that a major party’s presumptive nominee has a union agreement for staff.

The contract covers organizers across the country and gives workers a $15 minimum wage, overtime pay and a grievance process, HuffPost reported today. The campaign said the agreement would lead organizers’ annual pay to increase by an average of $1,900 and that it currently covers roughly 100 staffers, according to the news site.

Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, has defended her decision not to expand rapid testing for members of Congress in a CNN interview, saying the tests will remain prioritized for frontline workers.

Following criticism about the fact that rapid testing was not available to Congress, Trump told Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, and Pelosi that Capitol Hill could have access to rapid testing.

But the two leaders declined. “Our country’s testing capacities are continuing to scale up nationwide and Congress wants to keep directing resources to the frontline facilities where they can do the most good the most quickly,” McConnell and Pelosi said in a joint statement over the weekend. The White House has access to rapid testing.

Updated

More states across the US have made moves to ease Covid-19 restrictions today.

  • In Mississippi, the governor, Tate Reeves, announced that starting Thursday, restaurants can fully resume outdoor dining and indoor dining if servers wear masks and there is no more than 50% capacity. Additionally, groups of 20 people will now be allowed to gather. Barbershops and salons remain closed.
  • In Florida, a wide range of sectors reopened today, including indoor dining, beaches and non-essential retailers. The reopening excluded three hard-hit counties, Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach. Health experts have warned the state’s moves were premature, and today officials reported 819 new cases and 20 more deaths.
  • In Washington state, the governor announced today that some businesses could reopen as early as this week with a new order allowing smaller counties to apply for exemptions from ongoing lockdowns if they have a population of less than 75,000 and have not had a Covid-19 case in the last three weeks.
  • In Kentucky, the state is easing healthcare restrictions, allowing hospitals and clinics on Wednesday to resume outpatient surgeries and other invasive procedures that have been on hold.

Updated

Three people are facing charges in the fatal shooting of a Michigan security guard who refused to let a customer enter a Family Dollar store without a mask.

Calvin Munerlyn was shot Friday at the store north of downtown Flint after telling Sharmel Teague’s daughter she had to leave because she lacked a mask, according to Genesee county prosecutor David Leyton. Teague, 45, argued with Munerlyn, 43, before leaving. Two men later came to the store, the AP reported, and Teague; her husband, Larry Teague, 44; and Ramonyea Bishop, 23; are now charged with first-degree premeditated murder and gun charges. From the AP:

Larry Teague was also charged with violating governor Gretchen Whitmer’s executive order mandating that all customers and employees must wear face coverings inside grocery stores, Leyton said.

Witnesses identified Bishop as the man who shot Munerlyn in the back of the head, Leyton said.

Sharmel Teague has been arrested. Police were looking for her husband and son. No information has been released about the daughter, who has not been charged in the shooting.

The tragic shooting happened after armed protesters gathered inside the state capitol to oppose Covid lockdowns. More from my colleague Lois Beckett:

The influential Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington (IHME), has revised a key piece of coronavirus modeling - almost doubling its prediction of the number of Americans likely to be killed by coronavirus, forecasting at least 134,000 deaths in the US by early August. Previously it had predicted just over 74,000 deaths.

The IHME’s modeling has been cited by the White House coronavirus task force at its once-frequent briefings, which petered out last week.

Christopher Murray, director of the IHME, said the team is gathering data about Americans’ mobility and pointed out that, among other factors influencing the upward trajectory, key data are being studied and processed to “reflect the effect of premature relaxation of social distance, which has a substantial effect”. The university is planning to issue further details, as many states coast to coast plan partial a reopening of society and business.

The IHME revision comes as reports on the White House’s internal projections have raised questions about the safety of reopening strategies across the country.

More from the Guardian on coronavirus modeling:

In the last two weeks, Trump’s public death toll predictions have jumped from 50,000 to 60,000 to 70,000 to potentially as high as 100,000, CNN notes in this helpful timeline:

While death toll predictions can be challenging for experts, who are often forced to revise projections as the pandemic continues, Trump’s public statements suggest he is “more concerned with shaping perceptions in the current moment than with how something might be perceived in the future”, CNN noted. That means “offering projections that seem unrealistically low from the moment he utters them”.

Notably, in late February, the president said the spread of Covid-19 in the US was not inevitable and the danger to Americans “remains very low”. He predicted that the number of cases diagnosed in the country, just 15 that time, could fall to zero in “a few days”.

French president Emmanuel Macron said he is confident that the United States will join a global pledge for research to find a vaccine against the new coronavirus.

World leaders, organizations and banks on Monday pledged to give 7.4 billion euros ($8 billion) during a videoconference summit hosted by the European Union. The US, along with Russia, were notably absent from the event, the AP writes.

Macron, who donated 500 million euros on behalf of France, noted that the US “are on the sidelines” but added that it doesn’t compromise or slow down the initiative.
Speaking from the Elysee palace in Paris, he said he discussed the issue with President Donald Trump and is convinced that the US will at some point join the initiative, consisting in finding a vaccine as quickly as possible and making it available to all countries.

Macron added that his government is in permanent dialogue with the Trump administration and with American companies. The Guardian has covered more on this topic in our global coronavirus live blog.

Hi all - Sam Levin here in Los Angeles, taking over our live coverage for the rest of the day. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is scaling back its policy of allowing Covid-19 blood tests to hit the market without first proving that they worked.

The FDA is now requiring that companies show their tests or could otherwise have them pulled from the market, the AP reports. The move comes amid growing concerns that some sellers have made false or misleading claims about the accuracy of their tests:

Under pressure to increase testing options, the FDA in March essentially allowed companies to begin selling tests as long as they notified the agency of their plans and provided disclaimers, including that they were not FDA approved. The policy was intended to allow “flexibility” needed to quickly ramp up production, officials said.

“However, flexibility never meant we would allow fraud,” Dr. Anand Shah, an FDA deputy commissioner, said in a statement. “We unfortunately see unscrupulous actors marketing fraudulent test kits and using the pandemic as an opportunity to take advantage of Americans.”

Here’s my colleague Maanvi Singh’s recent explainer on the coronavirus antibody tests and how they work:

California to reopen some businesses on Friday

The Guardian’s Vivian Ho reports on the latest developments in California:

Some California retailers will be allowed to reopen their businesses starting on Friday, governor Gavin Newsom said at his daily briefing.

Shops selling books, clothing, sporting goods, flowers or anything else that a customer can purchase through curbside pickup will have to follow certain modifications, but they will be able to open and operate once again, Newsom said.

“We are entering into the next phase this week.” he said. “End of the week, with modifications, we will allow retail to start operating across the spectrum.”

“This is a very positive sign and it has only happened for one reason: the data says it can happen,” Newsom said.

Newsom acknowledged that some regions of that state will require stricter guidelines than the state guidelines, while other regions will not. The six Bay Area counties that led the charge in becoming the first to issue a stay-at-home order in the nation has experienced a much higher rate of infection than more rural areas of the state. Last week, Yuba and Sutter counties, located north of Sacramento, issued a measure that defied the state’s order and reopened businesses starting Monday. Modoc county, located on the Nevada border, was the first to begin pushing for a reopening.

“Our rural lifestyle and the fact that many of our residents have been abiding by the guidelines has kept us at zero,” said Modoc county sheriff Tex Dowdy in a statement. “We are the perfect choice to pilot a reopening in the state.”

Today so far

That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Sam Levin, will take over the blog for the next few hours.

Here’s where the day stands so far:

  • An internal White House document suggested the daily coronavirus death toll could nearly double by June, according to the New York Times. But the expert who created the referenced projection said that it showed a range of possibilities and should not be taken as a forecast, although he emphasized that relaxing social distancing too quickly could put the country on a dangerous trajectory.
  • The Senate returned to session today, despite lingering concerns about having members return to Washington. The House is expected to return next week.
  • The Supreme Court heard oral arguments remotely for the first time in history. The nine justices asked questions via telephone hookup, and the audio of the arguments was streamed on C-SPAN, marking another first for the court.
  • The secretary of the Senate said it had “no discretion” to release an alleged complaint filed against Joe Biden. The presumptive Democratic nominee asked the Senate to release any details it has on Tara Reade’s allegation of sexual assault, which Biden has denied, but the secretary’s office said it does not have the authority to do so.

Sam will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

Updated

A divide is emerging among congressional leaders on whether Capitol Hill should start using rapid coronavirus testing as lawmakers start returning to Washington.

Following criticism about the fact that rapid testing was available to the White House but not to Congress, Trump told Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and House speaker Nancy Pelosi that Capitol Hill could have access to rapid testing.

But the two congressional leaders jointly declined that offer this weekend. “Our country’s testing capacities are continuing to scale up nationwide and Congress wants to keep directing resources to the front-line facilities where they can do the most good the most quickly.,” McConnell and Pelosi said in a joint statement.

Trump then sent a tweet this morning suggesting he disagreed with the two leaders’ decision. In an interview today, House minority leader Kevin McCarthy said, “I do believe it would be critical to have the testing here because there will be a flare-up. Remember how many people from other parts of the country come to this location.”

The testing question will likely only intensify next week, as House members return to Capitol Hill. The attending physician of the Capitol has said he does not have enough tests to proactively test every member of the Senate, which returned to session today.

The Washington Post has more context about that internal White House document on the country’s projected coronavirus death toll.

The New York Times reported earlier today that an internal doucment showed the country’s daily death toll was expected to nearly double by June 1, from 1,750 to 3,000.

Here’s what the Post adds on the projection:

The White House and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention quickly disavowed the report, though the slides carry the CDC’s logo. The creator of the model said the numbers are unfinished projections shown to the CDC as a work in progress.

The work contained a wide range of possibilities and modeling was not complete, according to Justin Lessler, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who created the model. ...

‘I had no role in the process by which that was presented and shown. This data was presented as an FYI to CDC … it was not in any way intended to be a forecast,’ he said.

Lessler insisted, however, the numbers show how moving to reopen the country could spiral out of control. He said 100,000 cases per day by the end of the month is within the realm of possibility. Much depends on political decisions being made today.

The president has praised states that have start to take steps to reopen their economies, but public health experts have warned the loosening of restrictions could cause a surge in infections.

Man in the mask

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell is seen here wearing a mask as he returns to the Senate to resume the body’s regular business today.

More financial relief in the face of the coronavirus pandemic may be top of many Americans’ minds, but there is routine business on the chamber’s agenda, too.

The Senate will take up the nomination of Robert Feitel to be the next inspector general for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission today, NPR reports.

Tomorrow, the Senate intelligence committee will hear from Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, Republican Texas Representative John Ratcliffe.

Senators will also work on the confirmation of more federal judges and they’ll hold hearings.

All kinds of social distancing measures are now in place at the Capitol, with meetings, formal lunches and other business in many cases being switched to larger venues.

A protester holds a sign outside the US Senate East Front steps, on Capitol Hill today.
A protester holds a sign outside the US Senate East Front steps, on Capitol Hill today. Photograph: Michael Reynolds/EPA

Updated

Another anti-shutdown protest has popped up outside the Massachusetts capitol in Boston, with hundreds of demonstrators gathering to denounce the state’s stay-at-home order and closure of nonessential businesses.

Photos of the protest appeared to show participants standing closely together as speakers denounced the stay-at-home order as akin to communism.

The pictures raised concerns that the protesters could be unknowingly spreading coronavirus as they ignored recommendations on physical distancing.

It’s important to note that most Massachusetts residents support the steps taken by governor Charlie Baker to limit the spread of the virus. The Republican governor is enjoying an approval rating of 80%.

Virginia governor Ralph Northam signaled he would be able to ease the state’s shutdown of nonessential businesses order starting May 15.

The Democratic governor said he was extending the order to keep nonessential businesses closed, which was set to expire Friday, for another week until at least May 14.

But Northam said he expected to be able to start the process of reopening by that point. “Everything you have done has truly made a difference. We flattened the curve [of coronavirus cases] and our hospitals have not been overwhelmed,” Northam said.

“I am keenly aware that it has come with a tremendous cost. Now we can start to move into a new phase of our response,” he added.

Northam has been working with Maryland governor Larry Hogan and Washington mayor Muriel Bowser to coordinate the DC region’s response to coronavirus, but it was unclear if Maryland and the District would take similar steps to start easing restrictions.

“Each state has their own situation, their own challenges,” Northam said. “As you know, Maryland, Washington and specifically northern Virginia are in very densely populated areas, so we do communicate. We’re probably not going to do everything on the exact day but we’re working as close as we can.”

Northam’s separate stay-at-home order is currently supposed to remain in effect until June 10.

Signs on Capitol Hill are being used to remind senators of social distancing recommendations, as the chamber returns to session this afternoon for the first time in nearly six weeks.

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has said members will limit congestion on the floor and use larger hearing rooms to limit the potential spread of coronavirus.

However, the Republican leader chose not to make mask usage mandatory for senators, although members are encouraged to cover their faces.

A prominent public advocacy group is calling on Gilead, the pharmaceutical company behind a potential Covid-19 treatment, to price its drug at $1 per day. Gilead is well known for pricing its Hepatitis C drug, Harvoni, at $1,000 per pill. The initial price helped fuel early criticism of drug company pricing, and strained state budgets.

“If Gilead intends to price remdesivir at more than $1 per day, Gilead must fully disclose its research and development costs and all public contributions associated with remdesivir’s development,” said Peter Maybarduk, director of access to medicines at advocacy group Public Citizen. “Then payers and independent experts can analyze again what constitutes fair pricing in a pandemic.”

Early trials of the Gilead drug remdesivir have found it could help treat severe cases of Covid-19, though conflicting data remains. Data from the trials being conducted by the US National Institutes of Health are still preliminary, though researchers have said they show promise. The US Food and Drug Administration gave emergency use authorization for doctors to use the drug for severely ill patients.

Maybarduk said Gilead has benefitted from $60m in taxpayer-funded trials and research throughout remdesivir’s development. Researchers at the University of Liverpool has suggested a price of $0.93 per dose would cover Gilead’s cost of manufacturing and provide the company with a reasonable profit.

“Gilead should commit its patents and know-how to the public domain so that researchers around the world can help bring manufacturing to scale,” said Maybarduk.

New Jersey schools will remain closed for the rest of the academic year, governor Phil Murphy announced at a press conference earlier today.

The Democratic governor said, “As I have noted before, we are working with the principle that public health creates economic health, or in this case, public health creates educational health.”

The decision is unsurprising, considering New Jersey has been one of the states hit hardest by coronavirus. New Jersey has confirmed 126,744 cases of coronavirus, and 7,871 people have died in the state.

Murphy’s announcement comes three days after New York governor Andrew Cuomo announced the neighboring state would also cancel in-person instruction for the rest of the academic year.

The Guardian’s Sam Levine reports:

Texas attorney general Ken Paxton said Friday that fear of contracting Covid-19 was an “emotional condition,” and was an insufficient reason to request a mail-in ballot in his state.

Texas severely restricts the use of mail-in ballots to certain groups of voters, including those who have a sickness or physical condition. Even amid the Covid-19 pandemic, the state is refusing to budge on that requirement -- something Paxton, a Republican, reiterated Friday in a letter to local election officials.

“A person ill with COVID-19 would certainly qualify as having a sickness. However, a reasonable fear of contracting the virus is a normal emotional reaction to the current pandemic and does not, by itself, amount to a ‘sickness,’ much less the type of sickness that qualifies a voter to receive a ballot by mail,” he wrote in a letter to the officials.

Democrats and civil rights groups are suing the Texas to force it to allow anyone to vote with a mail-in ballot. A judge in Travis County ruled last month that voters who risked getting Covid-19 by voting in person could request a mail-in ballot. Texas is appealing that ruling.

Paxton reiterated earlier guidance from his office that anyone who advised a voter to apply for a mail-in ballot because they feared contracting Covid-19 could face “criminal sanctions.”

Democrats are closely focused on Texas, long seen as a solid Republican state, because they believe that an increasingly racially diverse electorate could tip the state in their favor. In addition to placing severe restrictions on mail-in ballots, Texas also has no online voter registration and closely regulates how registration drives are conducted.

White House contradicts report of internal death toll projection

The White House has issued a statement pushing back against the New York Times report that an internal document suggests the country’s daily coronavirus death toll will nearly double by June 1.

“This is not a White House document nor has it been presented to the Coronavirus Task Force or gone through interagency vetting,” White House spokesperson Judd Deere said in the statement.

“This data is not reflective of any of the modeling done by the task force or data that the task force has analyzed. ... The health of the American people remains President Trump’s top priority and that will continue as we monitor the efforts by states to ease restrictions.”

According to the Times, the projections were “based on modeling by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and pulled together in chart form by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.”

Today so far

Here’s where the day stands so far:

  • The White House expects the country’s daily coronavirus death toll to nearly double by June 1, according to an internal document obrained by the New York Times. The CDC projection indicates the country may be losing 3,000 Americans a day by early next month.
  • The Supreme Court held oral arguments remotely for the first time in its history. The justices posed questions via telephone hookup, and the audio of the arguments was live-streamed by C-SPAN, representing another first for the court.
  • The Senate will return to session today, despite lingering concerns about members returning to Washington. The House is not expected to return until next week.

The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

New York governor Andrew Cuomo said it is “disrespectful” of people not to wear masks when necessary, and that the measure is “not that hard”. He recommended local communities enforce the order to wear face masks whenever social distancing cannot be maintained

“I think it is disrespectful of people not to wear masks,” said Cuomo. He said people who refuse to wear masks are effectively disrespecting the work of nurses and doctors. ”They went to work so all of us could stay safe and go home,” Cuomo said, arguing that wearing a mask was the least New Yotkers could do for frontline workers.

NYPD officers giving away free masks to all pedestrians at Domino Park in Williamsburg neighborhood in the Brooklyn borough during the COVID-19 Outbreak in New York City.
NYPD officers giving away free masks to all pedestrians at Domino Park in Williamsburg neighborhood in the Brooklyn borough during the COVID-19 Outbreak in New York City. Photograph: Adela Loconte/REX/Shutterstock

“We owe each other a certain amount of reasonableness and respect in society,” said Cuomo. “Do I think local governments should be enforcing it, and should there be sanctions? Yes, yes. Because it is a public health emergency.”

The governor added, “You could literally kill someone because you didn’t want to wear a mask. How cruel and irresponsible would that be.”

New York Governor Cuomo said reopening New York’s economy will take place on a region-by-region basis, and in phases.

“This can’t be, we want to get out of the house, we’re going: No,” said Cuomo.

Four factors will dictate when regions can open: availability of tests, contact tracing, hospital capacity and monitoring of virus transmission. Cuomo’s executive order closing the state’s economy expires on May 15.

Businesses will also open in phases, beginning with construction, manufacturing and curbside pick-up for some retail stores. If transmissions do not spike, the phases could continue with some professional services such as retail, following by restaurants in the third-phase with restaurants, and finally large events such as sports.

“We need businesses to reimagine how they’re going to do business, and get ready to protect their workforce,” said Cuomo. He later added, “Putting all these systems in place is an incredible task.”

Dr Deborah Birx, the coordinator for the White House coronavirus response, addressed the projected US death toll from coronavirus yesterday in a a Fox News interview.

Trump said late last month that the projected death toll had fallen to between 50,000 and 60,000. He revised that in his Fox News town hall last night, saying, “We’re going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100,000 people.”

Birx said yesterday that the original projections “have always been between 100,000 and 240,000 American lives lost, and that’s with full mitigation and us learning from each other of how to social distance.”

Nearly 68,000 Americans have now died of the virus, and an internal document obtained by the New York Times suggests the daily death toll could rise to 3,000 by June 1.

The New York Times has obtained an internal document from the Trump administration that projects the country’s daily death toll from coronavirus will nearly double by June 1.

However, Nate Silver, the editor-in-chief of the analysis and polling website FiveThirtyEight, suggested the numbers should be taken with a grain of salt.

Trump administration predicts daily death toll will double next month - report

Even though Trump is encouraging states to start the process of reopening, his administration has privately predicted that the country’s daily coronavirus death toll will double next month, according to a new report.

The New York Times reports:

[The Trump administration] is privately projecting a steady rise in the number of cases and deaths from coronavirus over the next several weeks, reaching about 3,000 daily deaths on June 1, according to an internal document obtained by The New York Times, nearly double from the current level of about 1,750.

The projections, based on modeling by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and pulled together in chart form by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, forecast about 200,000 new cases each day by the end of the month, up from about 25,000 cases now.

The numbers underscore a sobering reality: While the United States has been hunkered down for the past seven weeks, not much has changed. And the reopening to the economy will make matters worse.

During his Fox News interview last night, the president doubled his estimate of the expected US death toll from what he said just two weeks ago.

“We’re going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100,000 people,” Trump said. “That’s a horrible thing. We shouldn’t lose one person over this.”

It would be an understatement to say Mitch McConnell’s suggestion that state and local governments should declare bankruptcy rather than seek more federal funding went down like a lead balloon. It was a rare instance of the Senate majority leader overplaying his hand.

It also showed that Donald Trump is not the only figure embodying liberal nightmares in the time of coronavirus. When historians contemplate a death toll in the tens of thousands and an economy fallen off a cliff, they will pay close attention to the president’s most important ally.

“I think Mitch McConnell is the guy to be watching and focusing on in terms of what’s going on,” said Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota. “His messaging around the coronavirus has been tone deaf.

“It’s not just the fact that McConnell was remarkably brutal in pairing Americans into red and blue states at a time of national crisis – that is pretty shameless – but I think it was also politically inept because he’s got his colleagues in tough races in blue states.”

Although the Senate will return to session today, House Democratic leadership has delayed members’ return to Washington.

House majority leader Steny Hoyer initially said the House would also return today, but he quickly reversed that decision after a consultation with the attending physician of the Capitol.

But House minority leader Kevin McCarthy has expressed criticism of that decision, saying it is time for lawmakers to get back to work to help address the coronavirus crisis.

“I think the American people deserve leaders who work day in and day out for them, who can upstand the test, could be able to do it in a safe, smart, steadfast manner,” McCarthy said last week. “We’re essential.”

This morning, the California Republican released a proposal for how the House could safely return to session, which included a phased return of committees and a modification of House floor procedures.

But McCarthy, who has voiced opposition to a Democratic proposal to allow voting by proxy for the duration of the pandemic, said the House should be cautious about deploying new technological measures. “In our view, technology should only be deployed in a ‘crawl, walk, run’ progression,” McCarthy said.

Senate to return today

The Senate will also return to session for the first time in almost six weeks today, despite lingering concerns about reconvening as the Washington metropolitan region sees a rising number of coronavirus cases.

Roughly half of senators are 65 or older, putting them at increased risk for becoming severely ill if they contract coronavirus.

The attending physician of the Capitol has also warned senators that he does not have enough coronavirus tests to proactively test all of them.

Trump offered to give Congress access to rapid testing, which has been put to use at the White House, but Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and House speaker Nancy Pelosi jointly declined that offer because they did not want it to be appear like Congress was getting special treatment.

“Congress is grateful for the Administration’s generous offer to deploy rapid COVID-19 testing capabilities to Capitol Hill, but we respectfully decline the offer at this time,” the two leaders said in a joint statement.

“Our country’s testing capacities are continuing to scale up nationwide and Congress wants to keep directing resources to the front-line facilities where they can do the most good the most quickly.”

This morning, Trump appeared to question that decision. “Interesting? By Congress not wanting the special 5 minute testing apparatus, they are saying that they are not ‘essential’,” the president wrote in a tweet.

The first Supreme Court oral arguments to ever be live-streamed are officially underway, with the justices posing questions about a case focusing on a trademark dispute.

The court’s chief marshal, Pamela Talkin, called the court to order by pronouncing, “Oyez, oyez, oyez,” before turning things over to chief justice John Roberts.

Today’s arguments kick off two weeks of oral arguments to be heard via telephone hookup, marking the first time justices have not met in person. Oral arguments were repeatedly delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic before the court decided to proceed with remote arguments.

Secretary of Senate says it has 'no discretion' to release alleged Biden complaint

The secretary of the Senate said in a new statement that it cannot release any potential complaints filed against Joe Biden, despite the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee’s request to do so.

The statement says the office has “no discretion to disclose any such information” as requested by Biden last week, after he denied Tara Reade’s allegation of sexual assault.

Reade has said Biden sexually assaulted her 27 years ago, and she has told reporters that she filed a complaint about the issue at the time. But she has said the complaint did not explicitly accuse Biden of sexual harassment or assault.

“I remember talking about him wanting me to serve drinks because he liked my legs and thought I was pretty and it made me uncomfortable,” Reade told the AP. “I know that I was too scared to write about the sexual assault.”

Some of Biden’s former staffers have said they have no memory of a complaint being filed.

Supreme court to stream arguments live for first time

Today will be historic for the Supreme Court, which is scheduled to hear oral arguments via telephone hookup, with the audio livestreamed over C-SPAN, for the first time in its history.

The court has been ardently against allowing cameras in the courtroom, so this represents a rare chance for Americans to hear the justices’ questions in real time.

This will also be the first time that the justices will hear arguments remotely rather than in person. The change in format was deemed necessary amid the pandemic, especially considering the age of some of the court’s members. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the oldest Supreme Court justice, is 87 years old.

The court will hear oral arguments over the next two weeks, and one of the cases to be heard centers on Trump’s efforts to block Congress and federal prosecutors from accessing his financial records. That case, which was originally supposed to come before the court in March, will be heard next week.

Updated

Most Americans are understandably pessimistic about the state of the US economy, as many businesses have been forced to temporarily close their doors and lay off workers because of the pandemic.

A new Gallup poll found that 42% of Americans say the economy is now in a recession, and another 30% say the economy is now in a depression.

Americans are slightly more optimistic about the economy’s six-month outlook, with 51% of poll respondents saying they expect the stock market to go up over the next six months.

More than 30 million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits in the past six weeks, as many families report a job loss or wage decrease in their households.

This is Joan Greve, taking over for Martin Pengelly.

The president has once again given himself high marks for his response to the coronavirus crisis, despite widespread criticism of some comments he has made about the virus, including his infamous suggestion that Americans ingest disinfectants to help protect their health.

“Getting great reviews, finally, for how well we are handling the pandemic, especially our strong production of desperately needed ventilators, the building of field hospitals & beds, and soon, the great things we are doing on testing,” Trump wrote in a tweet. “People are really working well together!”

The president has continued to boast about the country’s production of ventilators, even as the focus of the coronavirus response has shifted to testing. Public health experts have warned that the US will need to dramatically ramp up coronavirus testing to effectively reopen the economy.

It’s also worth noting that most Americans do not agree with the president’s assessment of how he has handled the crisis. A poll taken last week showed 53% of Americans disapproved of his response to the pandemic.

More from the Associated Press, on a controversy in San Francisco which placed the coronavirus response on a particularly jagged fault line in US society, thus:

“San Francisco’s police chief said the city’s rank and file will wear neutral face coverings to defuse a controversy that was sparked when officers sent to patrol a May Day protest wore masks adorned with the ‘thin blue line’ flag.

In a picture from July 2016, a flag with a blue and black stripes in support of law enforcement officers, flies at a protest in Somerville, Massachusetts.
In a picture from July 2016, a flag with a blue and black stripes in support of law enforcement officers, flies at a protest in Somerville, Massachusetts. Photograph: Charles Krupa/AP

“The police union ordered and distributed the masks emblazoned with black-and-white American flag with a blue stripe across the middle. The symbol is associated with the Blue Lives Matter movement, a response to the national Black Lives Matter movement [which protests police brutality towards people of colour].

“In an email obtained by KTVU-TV, Chief Bill Scott told his officers Friday he considered the blue flag and stripe ‘a meaningful expression to honor fallen officers’. However, he worried that some may perceive the symbol as ‘divisive and disrespectful’.

“A retired civil rights lawyer told the San Francisco Chronicle the masks, which also include the logo for the San Francisco Police Officers Association, violate a long-standing policy that bars police from expressing political opinions while wearing their uniforms.

“ ‘The thin blue line is a political symbol,’ John Crew said. ‘And it’s a POA-branded mask. It’s like wearing a political button.’

“The police union president, Tony Montoya, said the union had shown the masks to Scott’s command staff, and several had asked for more than one. The blue line ‘represents law enforcement’s separation of order and chaos,’ he said.”

Here’s more from the Guardian on Black Lives Matter:

Back to the media frenzy. Don Lemon of CNN, a frequent target of Trump’s ire and that of his family and supporters, addressed the president directly on Sunday night after Trump retweeted a conspiracy theory about Barack Obama.

“In a time when we need leadership,” Lemon said, “when we need compassion, this is the crap that you’re peddling? Conspiracy theories?”

Trump’s retweet, he said, was “a new low from a president who goes low all the time”.

Lemon continued:

What is it about President Obama that really gets under your skin? Is it because he’s smarter than you? Better-educated? Made it on his own, didn’t need daddy’s help? Wife is more accomplished? Better looking?

I don’t know, what is it, what is it about him? That he’s a black man that’s accomplished being president? That he punked you on the whole birth certificate thing? What is it about him? Just wondering.”

For the record, the tweet which Trump retweeted said “Evidence has surfaced that indicates Barack Obama was the one running the Russian hoax” and was by David J Harris Jr, an African American conservative. The piece opens: “In the new releases it appears to be saying that Operation Hurricane was being run from the Oval Office. This would be huge if true.”

That’s a reference to Operation Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI’s investigation of Russian election interference.

Harris’s Apple podcasts bio says he’s “an entrepreneur, founder of UncorkedLiving.com, a healthy lifestyle supplement company, and a speaker” and Trump has retweeted him before.

So there’s that. No response yet from Trump, though he has attacked MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mike Brzezinski.

To take a break from the president’s Twitter feed, the Associated Press has a moving report from Denver, where “a retired Colorado paramedic who died from coronavirus after volunteering to help combat the pandemic in New York City was being honored on Sunday.”

Ambulnz paramedics and Aurora firefighters salute as the casket carrying the body of paramedic Paul Cary is removed from a plane at Denver International Airport.
Ambulnz paramedics and Aurora firefighters salute as the casket carrying the body of paramedic Paul Cary is removed from a plane at Denver International Airport. Photograph: Helen H Richardson/AP

Here’s the rest of the AP report:

Paul Cary, 66, who worked 32 years as a firefighter paramedic in the Denver suburbs, died on 30 April, a month after he began working in New York. He was part of a wave of out-of-state medical technicians, doctors and nurses who came to the city to help relieve a healthcare system being overwhelmed by the virus.

Governor Jared Polis said Cary had “heroically” served his community and country and traveled thousands of miles to help others.

A large procession of fire trucks, EMS and other emergency vehicles drove from the airport after Cary’s body was returned on Sunday night.

“He risked his own health and safety, and stepped up to do what he could,” Polis said. “I can never express just how grateful I am for people like Paul, and all our emergency responders who are on the front lines of this virus.”

When he volunteered, Cary was working with a private ambulance company, Ambulnz, from which 75 employees had volunteered to work in New York, according to company spokesman Josh Weiss.

Cary responded from a location in the Bronx to calls ranging from patient transfers to 911 calls. He was planning to stay for a second, one-month tour before he got sick, Weiss said. He spent his final days on a ventilator at Montefiore Medical Center.

The procession of emergency vehicles makes its way out of Denver International Airport.
The procession of emergency vehicles makes its way out of Denver International Airport. Photograph: Helen H Richardson/AP

Updated

In the words of that meme with the dog with the coffee in the burning room, “this is fine”:

It’s barely dawn on a Monday in the middle of a pandemic which has killed 67,000 Americans and the president is up and about, not apparently to work on stopping the virus but to bait two breakfast hosts on MSNBC who on Friday, as it happens, interviewed Joe Biden about the allegation of sexual assault against him, an allegation the presumptive Democratic nominee denies and which Trump, who denies numerous such allegations himself, reportedly thinks is “bullshit”.

I’m tired from typing that sentence. It’s true, for what it’s worth, that Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman, and his wife, Mika Brzezinski, were once on friendly terms with then-candidate Trump. I remember a call-in where they were wearing pyjamas and Trump, by then president-elect, seemed to threaten nuclear apocalypse.

Not friends now, anyway, and not for a very long time.

Good morning…

…and welcome to another day of coverage of the coronavirus outbreak, and the politics around it, in the US. I always start with the basic figures, from Johns Hopkins University in Maryland:

  • US cases: 1,157,875
  • US deaths: 67,677
  • New York cases: 316,415
  • New York deaths: 24,708

New York is the hotspot, other states are badly hit: New Jersey (7,871) and Michigan (4,053) and Massachusetts (4,004) have had the next most deaths.

The weekend saw Donald Trump lead his country through the crisis mostly by retweeting conspiracy theories and tweeting complaints before staging on Sunday night a Fox News town hall which saw more of the latter.

Fox News put the event at the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, prompting the 45th president to complain that he had been treated worse by the press than the 16th – who, remember, guided the Union through a horrific civil war, managed to legislate slavery out of existence and was shot dead on a trip to the theatre.

Among other points, Trump boosted efforts in more than half of the states to reopen their economies despite warnings from public health experts that it could well be too soon to do so safely; said there would no more stimulus aid for struggling states without a payroll tax cut, a controversial move to say the least; and said he had “saved hundreds of thousands of lives” before projecting a final death toll of around 100,000, up from his previous estimate of 65,000 (see 67,677 figure above).

Earlier, White House task force member Dr Deborah Birx told Fox News Sunday: “Our projections have always been between 100,000 and 240,000 American lives lost, and that’s with full mitigation and us learning from each other of how to social distance”.

Trump also said “We may have to put out a fire”, when asked if he was worried about a coronavirus resurgence in the fall.

And he said the administration would present evidence for its claim the virus originated in a Chinese laboratory “at the right time”. The right time obviously wasn’t ABC’s Sunday talkshow earlier, where secretary of state Mike Pompeo made the claim and said he’d seen evidence, but didn’t of course provide any.

Later the vice-president, Mike Pence, admitted his mistake in not wearing a mask while visiting the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota last week – a rare enough step in this administration.

Anyway, that Lincoln quote. I’m a Lincolnhead, so indulge me. But it’s quite something:

They always said Lincoln – nobody got treated worse than Lincoln. I believe I am treated worse.

Paging Harold Holzer.

Here’s some more reading as the day gets going: Bryan Armen Graham on what Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer had to say about anti-lockdown protests which Trump has supported. It’s a striking headline…

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