Summary
Here’s a look at today’s main stories:
- Trump tees up controversy as he plays golf in a pandemic. The president visited his own golf club in Virginia as the US coronavirus death toll approaches 100,000
- Missouri hairstylist may have exposed 91 people to Covid-19, officials say. The stylist worked at a salon on eight different days while experiencing symptoms after the state’s governor allowed businesses to reopen
- North Dakota governor on brink of tears as he decries ‘mask shaming’. Republican Doug Burgum called out ‘senseless dividing line’ between Americans over whether masks should be worn in public
After Donald Trump said on Friday that he believes places of worship should be deemed as essential services, Minnesota’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz, issued an executive order addressing the issue. Places of worship in the state will now be able to open at 25% of capacity. Individuals or households in the buildings must maintain six feet distance.
Walz said he still encouraged citizens to worship remotely. “I am under no illusion whatsoever: Every move we make that loosens up increases the risk,” Walz said.
President Trump’s slapdash order to temporarily suspend most travel from Europe to the US in an effort to contain the spread of Covid-19 in March was widely criticized for the mayhem it prompted at airports and border entry points. But a new Washington Post story reveals how that decision and the muddled messaging surrounding it may well have sealed the country’s coronavirus fate.
While Trump points to his travel ban of China as evidence of his proactive response, mounting evidence indicates the outbreak was “driven overwhelmingly” by Europe:
The images [of airport chaos] showed how a policy intended to block the pathogen’s entry into the United States instead delivered one final viral infusion. As those exposed travelers fanned out into U.S. cities and suburbs, they became part of an influx from Europe that went unchecked for weeks and helped to seal the country’s coronavirus fate.
Epidemiologists contend the U.S. outbreak was driven overwhelmingly by viral strains from Europe rather than China. More than 1.8 million travelers entered the United States from Europe in February alone as that continent became the center of the pandemic. Infections reached critical mass in New York and other cities well before the White House took action, according to studies mapping the virus’s spread. The crush of travelers triggered by Trump’s announcement only added to that viral load.
And about that China ban, which has become the bulwark of Trump’s defense of his administration’s response:
When Trump moved to block travel from China in January, there were few indications of disruption at affected airports. But while the president has depicted that decision as one he made before anyone else recognized it was necessary, in reality major airlines were forcing his hand.
Delta and American had announced on Jan. 31 they were suspending routes to China before Trump announced the restrictions. United informed the White House it had already decided to do the same but was willing to hold off on announcing it publicly if Trump was prepared to act swiftly in issuing an order, officials said. Eager to claim credit for acting to contain the virus, Trump’s announcement came within hours.
Trump arrived back at the White House following this morning’s golf outing at 2.41pm, according to a pool report.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have reported 1,595,885 cases of coronavirus, an increase of 24,268. The number of deaths had risen by 1,852 to 96,002.
The figures, which have just been announced, were correct as of 4pm ET on Friday, and compared with the same count a day earlier.
If you’re wondering about any discrepancies, it’s possible that the CDC figures do not reflect cases reported by individual states.
Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson has warned of a second peak of Covid-19 in the southern state nearly 30 days after the first during his coronavirus response media briefing on Saturday in Little Rock.
The state’s health department reported 163 new coronavirus cases with two more lives lost in the last 24 hours, he said. That’s the third straight single-day increase of 150 or more, which includes a single-day high of 455 new cases on Thursday.
The Republican governor has come under criticism in recent weeks from critics who claim the state is rushing to reopen, though on Saturday he stressed the second peak can be attributed to record levels of testing across the state.
Much has been made of armed protesters descending on state capitols in the US, demanding the easing of lockdown restrictions. But there is unrest in Europe too, with protests against the prospect of mass vaccinations against Covid-19 (should one be developed) and the tightening of civil liberties.
The Guardian’s Philip Oltermann has more details:
For the ninth week running, thousands gathered in European cities to vent their anger at social distancing restrictions they believe to be a draconian ploy to suspend basic civil rights and pave the way for “enforced vaccinations” that will do more harm than the Covid-19 virus itself.
Walking towards the focal point of the protests down the Straße des 17. Juni boulevard, one woman said she believed the Covid-19 pandemic to be a hoax thought up by the pharmaceutical industry.
“I’d never let myself be vaccinated,” said the woman, who would give her name only as Riot Granny. “I didn’t get a jab for the flu either, and I am still alive.”
The alliance of anti-vaxxers, neo-Nazi rabble-rousers and esoteric hippies, which has in recent weeks been filling town squares in cities such as Berlin, Vienna and Zurich is starting to trouble governments as they map out scenarios for re-booting their economies and tackling the coronavirus long term.
Even before an effective vaccine against Covid-19 has been developed, national leaders face a dilemma: should they aim to immunise as large a part of the population as possible as quickly as possible, or does compulsory vaccination risk boosting a street movement already prone to conspiracy theories about “big pharma” and its government’s authoritarian tendencies?
You can read the full article below:
The Trump administration has repeatedly criticized China’s handling of the pandemic and the vice-president, Mike Pence, continued with that line today during an interview with Breitbart News.
“China let the world down and the World Health Organization was their willing partner in withholding from the United States and the wider world vital information about the coronavirus that would have made it possible to stand up a national response sooner,” Pence said. “... Make no mistake about it that China will be held accountable for what the world has gone through because of their lack of transparency.”
Trump has already threatened to withhold funding for the WHO unless it makes unspecified reforms. Most countries have pushed back against Trump’s criticisms, many of which were later proved to be incorrect.
“This is the time for solidarity,” said the European commission’s spokeswoman Virginie Battu-Henriksson. “It is not the time for finger-pointing or undermining multilateral cooperation.
In normal times, basketball fans would be fearing up for the start of the NBA finals. However, the season has been on hiatus since March as the sports world has shut down during the pandemic. The latest plan to restart involves the NBA playing at Disney’s ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in Orlando, Florida in late July. The complex has three arenas as well as several hotels that could house players, coaches and support staff, enabling them to isolate from the general population.
“The NBA, in conjunction with the National Basketball Players Association, is engaged in exploratory conversations with The Walt Disney Company about restarting the 2019-20 NBA season in late July at Disney’s ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in Florida as a single site for an NBA campus for games, practices and housing,” Bass said. “Our priority continues to be the health and safety of all involved, and we are working with public health experts and government officials on a comprehensive set of guidelines to ensure that appropriate medical protocols and protections are in place.”
Players and other staff would be subject to regular testing to ensure Covid-19 did not spread through the league.
A few sports in the US have started to resume already: Nascar and UFC have held events without live audiences, while Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson will team up with NFL legends Tom Brady and Peyton Manning in a charity golf tournament tomorrow.
Elsewhere, Hall of Fame player and current Georgetown coach Patrick Ewing confirmed he is being treated in hospital after contracting Covid-19.
“I want to share that I have tested positive for Covid-19. This virus is serious and should not be taken lightly,” the 57-year-old Ewing said in a statement. “I want to encourage everyone to stay safe and take care of yourselves and your loved ones. Now more than ever, I want to thank the health care workers and everyone on the front lines. I’ll be fine, and we will all get through this.”
Ewing was one of the most dominant players of his generation, and played for the New York Knicks from 1985 to 2000. He also won two Olympic gold medals for the US, including as a member of the famed 1992 Dream Team.
Hertz is the latest high-profile company to file for bankruptcy during the pandemic. The car-rental company’s business has been hit by the downturn in travel during the pandemic, particularly at airports, where it does much of its trade. Hertz said it hoped that by declaring bankruptcy it can continue to operate.
“The impact of Covid-19 on travel demand was sudden and dramatic, causing an abrupt decline in the company’s revenue and future bookings,” said the company in a statement. Hertz added that it did not know when activity would return to normal.
Hertz has been in the car rental business since 1918, when it began offering Model Ts to customers. Other well known business that have declared bankruptcy during the pandemic and subsequent economic problems include JC Penney and clothing company J Crew.
Chad Wolf, acting secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security, has issued an exemption for some foreign athletes who compete in professional sporting events in the United States from entry bans imposed because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“In today’s environment, Americans need their sports,” Wolf said in a statement issued by the department announcing the exemption. “It’s time to reopen the economy and it’s time we get our professional athletes back to work.”
Reopening the economy in a safe manner is a critical part of the United States’ response to the COVID19 pandemic. United States professional sports leagues and associations either suspended their seasons or postponed the start of their seasons in response to the spread of COVID-19, but now certain professional sporting groups organizing the United States’ largest sporting events, including Major League Baseball (MLB), the National Basketball Association (NBA), the Professional Golfers’ Association Tour (PGA Tour), the National Hockey League (NHL), the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) and the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA), are prepared to resume sporting events with limited attendance and other public safety measures.
Professional sporting events provide powerful first- and second-order benefits to the national economy, even if attendance is curtailed, due to advertising and broadcasting revenue, hospitality and food service requirements, and commercial cleaning needs. In addition, the sporting organizations that manage the professional leagues are situated to do so in a controlled manner, as they act as a single point of contact to manage player movement and the scheduling of events, and can take other measures to ensure player, staff, and fan safety is appropriately addressed. Professional live sporting events also provide intangible benefits to the national interest, including civic pride and national unity.
Based on the benefit live sporting events provide to the national economy, and the need for these sporting events to have full access to their athletes, support staff, and team and league leadership, I hereby determine that it is in the national interest to except from Proclamations 9984, 9992, 9993, and 9996, aliens who compete in professional sporting events organized by certain professional sporting groups, including their professional staff, team and league leadership, spouses, and dependents.
I will work with the professional sporting groups, including MLB, the NBA, the PGA Tour, the NHL, the ATP and the WTA, to identify the specific athletes, essential staff, team and league leadership, spouses, and dependents covered by this exemption. This exemption does not exempt those identified individuals from inspection by Customs and Border Protection or any other agency requirements, to include flight funneling enhanced medical screening if applicable as outlined in previously issued Federal Register Notices, when applying for entry into the United States. I may add or remove athletes, essential staff, team and league leadership, spouses, and dependents from the list to which this exemption applies based on my assessment of whether an exemption for such individuals is in the national interest, including the plans of the relevant professional sporting groups to support sporting events in the United States that do not cause an unnecessary risk to the public health.
Video has emerged of Trump’s long-awaited return to the links on Saturday at Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia.
WATCH: President Trump golfs on Saturday at his Virginia golf club. pic.twitter.com/L8SJf0wKzo
— The Hill (@thehill) May 23, 2020
Our Martin Pengelly has more on the president’s first time back at one of his private golf courses in 75 days, which even critics would admit projects a sense of normalcy with more than 1.6m confirmed coronavirus cases in the US and the death toll approaching six figures.
“There’s a lot of things to think through,” coronavirus taskforce member Dr Deborah Birx said on Friday. “I know you can do this. I know the American people can do it. Please, as you go out this weekend, understand you can go out.
“You can be outside, you can play golf, you can play tennis with marked balls, you can go to the beaches if you stay 6ft apart. But remember that that is your space, and that’s a space that you need to protect and ensure that you social distance for others.”
Earlier, I mentioned North Dakota governor Doug Burgum’s tearful plea for unity over the need to wear a mask in public, in which he lamented “ a ... senseless dividing line” in US society. Here’s the video:
…and here, again, is Poppy Noor’s report on the subject:
The Navajo Nation, which spans parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, reported 95 new Covid-19 cases on Friday, bringing the total number of positive cases to 4,529 with 149 deaths, CNN reports.
On Monday this week, the Nation surpassed New York state for the highest Covid-19 infection rate per 100,000 people in the whole US. The Nation is now in another 57-hour weekend lockdown, with all residents required to stay home, except essential workers, first responders and healthcare workers.
This week, Poppy Noor spoke to Larry Jackson, 16, who is doing much to raise national awareness of the situation in his community:
Thirty per cent of people in the Navajo Nation still don’t have clean running water or electricity,” he said. “We are being told to regularly wash our hands but for a lot of people that’s a 40 miles-plus trip. Plus our resources are really low on the Navajo Nation – there are only six hospitals.”
The Guardian’s own reporting revealed the Navajo Nation received its relief package six weeks after it was promised – only receiving it after suing the federal government. Meanwhile, Indian Country reports that the $8bn relief package set aside for almost 600 Native American Tribes is “woefully inadequate”.
Here’s the full piece:
New York governor Andrew Cuomo says the number of hospitalizations, intubations and new coronavirus cases are down over the past 24-hour period in his daily briefing from the executive mansion in Albany.
Crucially, a total of 84 people have died of Covid-19 – 62 in hospitals and 22 in nursing homes – down from 109 yesterday. This marks the first time the daily death toll in New York state has fallen under 100 since 24 March.
“In my head, I was always looking to get under 100,” he says. “For me, it’s just a sign that we’re making real progress.”
Cuomo says the seven-county Mid-Hudson region will open on Tuesday after satisfying the state’s measurements for controlling the coronavirus outbreak and being able to resume business. Long Island could follow on Wednesday if the deaths continue to decline, which would leave only New York City on lockdown.
A Missouri hair stylist may have exposed 91 customers and coworkers to coronavirus, public health officials said, after the governor allowed businesses, including salons, to reopen on 4 May.
The hair stylist who later tested positive for Covid-19 had been working at a hair salon in Springfield on eight different days,while experiencing coronavirus symptoms.
Because the stylist and the customers had worn face coverings, health officials said on Friday, they hoped the interactions would lead to “no additional cases”. The people potentially exposed would be contacted and offered testing, officials said.
The potential exposures started a little more than a week after Missouri allowed salons to reopen.
As some states across the US begin to loosen public health restrictions, barbershops and hair salons have become a political flashpoint among conservative Americans, with some owners reopening in defiance of public health measures.
In Michigan, one barber who refused to close his shop despite shelter-at-home orders staged a hair cutting protest at the state capitol, dubbed “Operation Haircut”, the Lansing State Journal reported.
In Texas, a hair salon owner who was briefly jailed after keeping her business open in defiance of public health orders, and who then refused to apologize in court for what she had done, has been championed by Republican leaders, with Texas senator Ted Cruz visiting her salon for a haircut.
In Missouri, county health officials said local residents who had been in the same location as the hair stylist with coronavirus, but who had not had direct contact, were “believed to be at very low risk”.
While infectious, the same individual also visited a Walmart and a Dairy Queen and made three visits to a local gym, they said.
Updated
Trump is at his golf club in Sterling, Virginia, the pool confirms. Again, White House coronavirus taskforce member Dr Deborah Birx said yesterday playing golf is OK as states seek to reopen, as long as social distancing is observed.
But Trump’s decision to play (if indeed he tees off) for the first time since early March is sure to cause controversy.
His passion for golf, after all, usually does:
Trump … plays golf?
Donald Trump has no public events on his schedule today, remember, and here’s something interesting in the circs, via CBS News:
NEW: @realDonaldTrump was spotted in his typical golf wear of white polo shirt and white baseball this AM by the pool before he departed the WH to TBD location.
— Fin Gomez (@finnygo) May 23, 2020
POTUS last golf outing was on March 8th – at Trump Intl Golf Club in West Palm Beach per @markknoller
The first White House pool report of the day, from John Fritze of USA Today, read thus:
Good morning from the White House.
Pool is being gathered at the Palm Room doors at 9.37am as a damp and cloudy morning gives way to beautiful blue skies.
More detail when we have it.
Of course, as we all know, there is both a pandemic on and an all-out assault on Barack Obama, and There Is Always A Tweet from before Trump was president:
President Obama has a major meeting on the N.Y.C. Ebola outbreak, with people flying in from all over the country, but decided to play golf!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2014
For what it’s worth, public health expert Dr Deborah Birx said at the White House on Friday that it was OK for the public to go play 18 holes:
“You can all make your decisions about going outside and social distancing, potentially playing golf,” she said. “If you’re very careful and you don’t touch the flags and all of those issues, playing tennis with marked balls with just one other person. So you’re only touching your ball.
“We found really people who enjoy sports have been able to really adjust to social distancing, but you can see … Maryland, the District, and Virginia … there is still significant virus circulating here.”
No word yet from the pooler on whether Trump was socially distancing from his caddie or partners, if indeed golf was on the menu. Monitoring.
North Dakota governor in tearful plea over mask divisions
It has been widely reported – by the Guardian, here – that the wearing of masks or not has become a new front in the US culture war.
In very, very general terms, extraordinarily general terms, Democrats wear them and Republicans don’t. In more specific terms, Donald Trump is notoriously unwilling to cover his mouth and nose in public, although he did wear a mask in non-media-facing parts of a tour of a Ford plant in Michigan this week.
In North Dakota on Friday, though, Republican governor Doug Burgum was so keen to urge citizens not to politicise the issue that he was moved to tears.
“This is a … senseless dividing line,” Burgum said, according to a Washington Post report, “and I would ask people to try to dial up your empathy and your understanding.
“If someone is wearing a mask, they’re not doing it to represent what political party they’re in or what candidate they support. They might be doing it because they’ve got a five-year-old who’s been going through cancer treatments.”
The Post report added that Burgum “began to choke up”, and continued:
They might have vulnerable adults in their life who … currently have Covid-19 and are fighting. So again, I would just love to see our state, as part of being ‘North Dakota smart,’ also be ‘North Dakota kind,’ ‘North Dakota empathetic.’”
North Dakota does not require residents to wear masks in public settings, as some states have. Federal health authorities have recommended that Americans cover their faces in public when social distancing is difficult – for example, in grocery stores.
Some officials have nixed mandates that people wear masks in stores, with one city’s leaders citing threats and harassment against employees. Clashes over masks have also turned deadly: prosecutors say a Family Dollar security guard was shot and killed in Flint, Michigan, this month after telling a customer her child had to wear a mask to enter.
According to Johns Hopkins, by Saturday North Dakota had recorded 2,317 coronavirus cases, and 52 deaths. Burgum allowed reopening to start from 1 May.
The Associated Press, helpful as always, considers reactions to Trump’s constitutionally incontinent demand that governors reopen churches and other houses of worship.
As the AP notes, “following Trump’s announcement, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released new guidelines for communities of faith on how to safely reopen, including recommendations to limit the size of gatherings and consider holding services outdoors or in large, well-ventilated areas.”
But “in-person religious services have been vectors for transmission of the virus. A person who attended a Mother’s Day service at a church in northern California that defied the governor’s closure orders later tested positive, exposing more than 180 churchgoers. And a choir practice at a church in Washington state was labeled by the CDC as an early ‘superspreading’ event.”
Elsewhere, the AP is reporting from Germany that “several members of a congregation” in Frankfurt have fallen ill, with six in hospital, after attending a service.
But Trump is attempting to reassure his evangelical supporters. The AP continues:
“…Churches around the US have filed legal challenges opposing virus closures. In Minnesota, after Democratic governor Tim Walz declined to lift restrictions on churches, Roman Catholic and some Lutheran leaders said they would defy his ban and resume worship services. They called the restrictions unconstitutional and unfair since restaurants, malls and bars were allowed limited reopening.
“…Some hailed the president’s move, including Kelly Shackelford, president of the conservative First Liberty Institute.
“The discrimination that has been occurring against churches and houses of worship has been shocking,” he said. “Americans are going to malls and restaurants. They need to be able to go to their houses of worship.”
But Rabbi Jack Moline, president of Interfaith Alliance, said it was “completely irresponsible” for Trump to call for a mass reopening.
“Faith is essential and community is necessary; however, neither requires endangering the people who seek to participate in them,” he said. “The virus does not discriminate between types of gatherings, and neither should the president.”
Rhode Island governor Gina Raimondo, a Democrat, made clear churches and other houses of worship will not resume in-person services in her state until at least next weekend.
“It’s reckless to force them to reopen this weekend. They’re not ready,” she said. “We’ve got a good plan. I’m going to stick with it.”
New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu, a Republican, said he would review the federal guidance while maintaining a decision rests with him.
“Obviously we’d love to get to the point where we can get those open, but we’ll look at the guidance documents and try to make some decisions rather quickly, depending on what it might say,” he said. “It’s the governor’s decision, of course.”
Trump maintains attacks on Biden over black voters comments
Donald Trump has no public events scheduled today or tomorrow – which, briefing fans, means, at the moment, no briefing – but he is busy tweeting. Among his early targets is of course Joe Biden, his presumptive opponent in the election in November.
On Friday, Biden told an African American radio host if black voters “have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black”.
Controversy spread like brush fire and Biden swiftly apologised, telling the US Black Chambers, a business group, he “shouldn’t have been such a wise guy” and “shouldn’t have been so cavalier”.
Biden also said he would never “take the African American community for granted” but Republicans obviously hope he will, or that such voters will think he will, given comments like this.
And so, with the Trump campaign having pounced, launching a website and selling t-shirts featuring their new and gifted slogan, here comes the president.
First on Saturday, he touted “All things that I have GOTTEN DONE, including Criminal Justice Reform!”.
That bipartisan legislative achievement was indeed supported by many in the African American community, a part of the US population disproportionately affected by draconian sentencing, as indeed it has been disproportionately hit by the coronavirus.
Then: “Sleepy Joe cannot bring us to greatness. He is the reason I’m here!”
For good measure, Trump also repeated his Friday night attacks on Dean Baquet, the first African American executive editor of the New York Times who the president claims has “long been considered one of the dumbest men in the world of journalism”.
Trump’s attacks on Baquet and the Times are familiar, however, and not generally considered part of the president’s own long history of racially tinged invective.
On the flip side of all this, Biden is indeed strongly supported by African American voters, who do heavily favour the Democrats. Biden is also considering prominent African American women to be his running mate and he does have in his corner the first African American president, Barack Obama.
“You rarely have a former president that is more popular than the now-sort-of-nominee,” Democratic pollster Cornell Belcher tells Daniel Strauss in the following piece. “Barack Obama is the most popular political figure in America right now.”
More about Donald Trump and hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malarial drug some claim can be used to treat or guard against coronavirus, which the president says he has been taking but which studies suggest is unproven regarding Covid-19 and potentially lethal to people with pre-existing health problems.
At the White House on Friday, public health expert Dr Deborarh Birx was asked about a new global study from the Lancet which says the drug has increased deaths in hospitals around the world during the coronavirus pandemic.
“I think the FDA has been very clear on their website about their concerns about hydroxychloroquine,” Birx said. “What I take home from the Lancet study, and I hope everyone here does in addition to what you just commented on, it clearly shows the comorbidity that puts individuals at more risk.
“I think it’s one of our clearest studies because there were so many, tens of thousands of individuals involved that the doctors clearly annotated who had heart disease and who had obesity. You can see dramatically the increase risk for that.”
Reporters were not able to press the point, as press secretary Kayleigh McEnany stepped in. But here’s the thing: by the results of his last published physical Trump is according to federal standards obese, as House speaker Nancy Pelosi pointed out this week.
Back in November, meanwhile, an unexplained visit to hospital led the president and the White House doctor to stress that Trump had not had a heart attack, as rumoured.
Trump, 73, said then he had started his annual physical, which would be completed in January. But since then… crickets.
In early March, he was asked when he would complete his physical exam.
“I’m going probably over the next 90 days,” he said. “I’m so busy, I can’t do it.”
In April, Trump said he would finish the tests “at the appropriate time … but I feel very good.”
No results have been released.
Some raw politics now: on Friday night Donald Trump told Alabamans not to trust Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, Jeff Sessions for short, their former senator who became Trump’s first attorney general, recused himself from the Russia investigation, lost his boss’s support, clung on for more than a year in the face of presidential rage and humiliation, was finally fired and then decided to run for his old seat in Congress.
Unusually, Sessions snapped back at the president. More usually, he did so while still being supportive of Trump – because you have to be if you’re a Republican seeking election in Alabama, as Sessions’ infamous “hostage tape” campaign ad showed.
Here’s what Sessions wrote on Friday night:
Look, I know your anger, but recusal was required by law. I did my duty and you’re damn fortunate I did. It protected the rule of law and resulted in your exoneration. Your personal feelings don’t dictate who Alabama picks as their senator, the people of Alabama do.”
Sessions also attacked his Trump-endorsed opponent in the forthcoming Republican run-off, former college football coach Tommy Tuberville, as a coward who did not support Trump’s agenda as faithfully as Sessions.
Tuberville is however leading in the polls, and looks set to be the man to take on Doug Jones, the Democrat who won an upset victory over Judge Roy Moore in December 2017, in November’s election.
The full report is here:
Good morning …
… and welcome to another day of coverage of the coronavirus outbreak in the US, and the politics around it. Bryan Armen Graham will be here to take you through the day later, but for now, I’m your guide.
According to researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, the US has now recorded 1,601,260 cases and 96,002 deaths.
Rates are slowing in some states hard-hit in the first part of the outbreak, New York notably among them, and increasing elsewhere. Nonetheless, most states are attempting some form of economic reopening – nearly 40m Americans have filed for unemployment under lockdown, after all – and debate is raging over whether those states moving fastest are moving too fast for safety.
It’s Memorial Day weekend, the traditional start of the American summer, and the title of this piece by Amanda Holpuch, Nina Lakhani and Khushbu Shah rather sums up the question: America begins to unlock for summer – but is it inviting a disastrous second wave?
Donald Trump doesn’t think so, and on Friday at the White House he invoked powers he doesn’t have to say governors should reopen all places of worship and if they didn’t, he would. Once again, he can’t, or couldn’t if it came to it, do that. Tenth amendment, etc. As for the motivation behind Trump’s curt announcement, there are reports that his support among evangelicals is slipping.
That would be intensely worrying for Trump in a re-election year already marked by economic meltdown. On the upside for the president, on Friday a gaffe by his notoriously gaffe-prone opponent, Joe Biden (if he were a British football manager, he would’ve earned the standard honorific “the Gaffer” many years ago), showed how swiftly and ferociously the Trump campaign machine still runs.
Some say Biden needs only to stay in his Delaware basement to beat Trump. But on Friday, from his basement, the former vice-president told an African American radio host if you “have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black”. Biden apologised as the Trump campaign pounced – and liberals too.
So there’s that, and any resultant fallout, to consider along with all things coronavirus-related.
In the meantime, some further reading. Khushbuh Shah reports from Georgia, a Republican state turning slightly more Democratic, on how one’s view of how soon to reopen depends largely on the way one votes:
