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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Julia Carrie Wong in Oakland (now), and Joan E Greve in Washington, Lauren Gambino in Washington and Martin Pengelly (earlier)

Coronavirus US: FDA approves experimental drug remdesivir for emergency use – as it happened

Paramedic Jennifer Sommers performs a swab test for Covid-19 on a staff member at a BFAIR shared living home in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
Paramedic Jennifer Sommers performs a swab test for Covid-19 on a staff member at a BFAIR shared living home in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Photograph: Stephanie Zollshan/AP

Live coronavirus reporting continues in Saturday’s blog:

Evening Summary

Thanks for following along. Here’s a rundown of the day’s biggest news:

  • The FDA has approved remdesivir for emergency use on hospitalized coronavirus patients. A drug trial of remdesivir showed a positive effect on coronavirus patients’ recovery time and survival rate. Dr Anthony Fauci said earlier this week, “The data shows that remdesivir has a clear-cut, significant, positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery. ... What it has proven is that a drug can block this virus.”
  • White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany held her first daily briefing. It was the first time in more than a year that a White House press secretary had held a formal briefing. McEnany promised to never lie from the White House podium, but she went on to share several false or misleading statements about sexual misconduct allegations against Trump and the FBI investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, among other things.
  • Joe Biden denied Tara Reade’s allegation of sexual assault. The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee said in an MSNBC interview, “I’m saying unequivocally, it never, never happened.”
  • Donald Trump said he expects up to 100,000 Americans will die of Covid-19. “Hopefully we’re going to come in below that 100,000 lives lost, which is a horrible number nevertheless.” The president had previously said he expected 60,000 - 70,000 fatalities in the US.
  • New York schools will remain closed for the rest of the academic year, governor Andrew Cuomo announced. The news was unsurprising considering the state reported another 1,000 new coronavirus hospitalizations yesterday, but the daily death toll has fallen slightly to 289.
  • Trump said Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer should “make a deal” with anti-stay-at-home protesters. The president’s suggestion came one day after demonstrators, some of them carrying assault rifles, swarmed the Michigan state capitol to protest Whitmer’s stay-at-home order. Whitmer rejected the idea of making a deal during a public health emergency, but said some outdoor work will be allowed to resume next week.
  • The White House blocked Dr Anthony Fauci from testifying before a House subcommittee looking into the coronavirus response. Former CDC director Tom Frieden will testify instead.
  • California governor Gavin Newsom promised “meaningful” adjustments to stay-at-home orders in the coming days. Meanwhile, protesters gathered in the capital of Sacramento and in Orange county’s Huntington Beach.

Read our full reports on the day in Washington, the latest from California, and the emergency use authorization of the new coronavirus drug here.

And stay up to date with all the latest news with our global live blog, which continues here:

Fact check: voter fraud

Donald Trump is back on Twitter, where he is misleadingly linking voting by mail to “rigged elections”.

There is no evidence of widespread voting fraud. The non-partisan Brennan Center for Justice found in 2017 that the risk of voting fraud is between 0.00004% and 0.0009%. Moreover, Trump’s own voting integrity commission found no evidence to support claims of widespread fraud.

Mail ballot fraud is also very rare.

In North Carolina, an election was overturned in 2018 after a Republican political operative was alleged to have directed workers to collect and mail in other people’s absentee ballots during the 2018 Republican congressional primary and during the 2016 general election.

But states can avoid that sort of fraud by implementing ballot tracking, providing prepaid postage and setting ballot boxes and drop-off sites. Five states already conduct their elections entirely by mail, and have found ways to ensure the integrity of ballots.

Although the president now says he opposes voting by mail due to fraud conerns, he previously said efforts to make it easier to vote would mean “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again”.

Read more:

The House hearing on the coronavirus response will go on without Fauci, however.

Dr Tom Frieden, who served as the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) during the Obama administration, will testify.

Representatives Nina Lowey and Rosa DeLaura, chairs of the House appropriation committee and Labor-HHS-Education subcommittee, issued the following statement:

Congress and the American public deserve a clear-eyed view of the path forward for responding to the Covid-19 pandemic. In the short-term, that entails what our federal government is doing on surveillance, testing, contact tracing, quarantining, social distancing, and the production and distribution of personal protective equipment. Over the medium-term, we need to understand the viability of therapeutics and vaccines in development, their dissemination, and how the influenza season could affect the ongoing pandemic in the Fall. And over the long-term, we need ensure lasting investments in our public health infrastructure are made instead of reacting to public health crises when they arise. The people of this country deserve a federal government that is up-to-date, modernized, and prepared to protect lives.

We look forward to the hearing next week with Dr. Tom Frieden, former Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and one of the world’s foremost public health experts.

The White House is blocking Dr Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease doctor, from testifying before Congress next week.

Evan Hollander, a spokesman for the House appropriations committee, told the Washington Post that the committee had asked Fauci to appear on 6 May, but was rebuffed by the White House.

The White House confirmed the report to Reuters, saying in a statement: “While the Trump administration continues its whole-of-government response to Covid-19, including safely opening up America again and expediting vaccine development, it is counter-productive to have the very individuals involved in those efforts appearing at congressional hearings. We are committed to working with Congress to offer testimony at the appropriate time.”

Fauci is the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. A respected and accomplished scientist, he has at times drawn the ire of Trump supporters for advocating for public health measures or contradicting Trump.

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer said Friday that Michigan will remain under stay-at-home orders through 15 May, despite Republican lawmaker in the states refusing to extend her emergency declaration, the AP reports.

The order will allow for some outdoor work, such as forestry, power equipment maintenance and construction, to resume next Thursday.

Earlier today, Donald Trump tweeted that Whitmer should “give a little” and “make a deal” with a small group of protesters, some of them armed, who have held demonstrations at the state capital urging a reopening of the state.

“The governor of Michigan should give a little, and put out the fire,” Trump said in a tweet on Friday morning. “These are very good people, but they are angry. They want their lives back again, safely! See them, talk to them, make a deal.”

Whitmer called the protests “disturbing” and said that the presence of swastikas, Confederate flags, nooses and assault weapons “do not represent who we are as Michiganders”.

“We’re not in a political crisis where we should just negotiate and find some common ground here. We’re in a public health crisis,” she said. “We’re in the midst of a global pandemic that has already killed almost 4,000 people in our state.”

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has released additional information about its emergency use authorization (EUA) for remdesivir, the anti-viral drug that has shown some promise as a treatment for patients with Covid-19. Donald Trump announced the EUA earlier today.

Use of the drug will be authorized for adults or children who are hospitalized with suspected or confirmed Covid-19 and whose condition is “severe”, meaning they have low blood oxygen levels, need oxygen therapy, or are on a mechanical ventilator, the FDA said.

“Based on evaluation of the emergency use authorization criteria and the scientific evidence available, it was determined that it is reasonable to believe that remdesivir may be effective in treating COVID-19, and that, given there are no adequate, approved, or available alternative treatments, the known and potential benefits to treat this serious or life-threatening virus currently outweigh the known and potential risks of the drug’s use,” the FDA said in its statement.

The EUA also includes information about possible side effects, which include “increased levels of liver enzymes, which may be a sign of inflammation or damage to cells in the liver; and infusion-related reactions, which may include low blood pressure, nausea, vomiting, sweating, and shivering”. It also notes that there may be other serious side effects that have not been discovered yet.

The EUA requires hospitals to monitor patients’ liver enzymes through blood tests before the treatment is started and every day that treatment is ongoing.

Patients who receive the drug will be provided with a fact sheet, which is available here. The drug is administered through an IV once a day for up to 10 days.

Donald Trump appears to have revised upward to 100,000 his expectations for the number of Americans who will die of Covid-19.

“Hopefully we’re going to come in below that 100,000 lives lost, which is a horrible number nevertheless,” Trump said at a White House event to honor people who are doing work related to the coronavirus pandemic, according to Reuters.

On Monday, Trump had said that the death toll would likely be between 60,000 and 70,000. As of Friday, it stand at 64,198.

Trump has changed his predictions over time. On Friday, he claimed that the White House’s actions had saved “maybe millions of lives”.

The last patient has left the field hospital that was erected in New York City’s Javits convention center, the AP reports.

The emergency facility was erected by the members of the US military to alleviate strain on the city’s hospital system at the height of the outbreak. It ultimately treated 1,095 patients, the last 8 of whom left the hospital today.

The closure of the emergency hospital is another hopeful sign that conditions in New York are improving, though the crisis is by no means over. On Friday, New York governor Andrew Cuomo reported a daily death toll of 289.

Hello everyone, this is Julia Carrie Wong in Oakland, California, picking up the blog for the rest of the day.

As we head into the weekend, and with the weather improving around the country, the question of whether people should be allowed to go to beach is inspiring debate and protest.

In California, where Governor Gavin Newsom ordered the closure of beaches in Orange County, hundreds of people staged a protest in Huntington Beach.

Meanwhile, in Florida, the beaches have been opened, and not everyone is happy about it.

This local lawyer, who dressed as the Grim Reaper, granted an interview to a local TV reporter, and argued that it is simply too soon for the beaches to be open.

My colleague Sam Levin spoke to several experts about the potential risks and rewards of allowing people to go to beaches during this pandemic. You can read his full report here:

Today so far

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

Here’s where the day stands so far:

  • The FDA has approved remdesivir for emergency use on hospitalized coronavirus patients. A drug trial of remdesivir showed a positive effect on coronavirus patients’ recovery time and survival rate. Dr Anthony Fauci said earlier this week, “The data shows that remdesivir has a clear-cut, significant, positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery. ... What it has proven is that a drug can block this virus.”
  • White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany held her first daily briefing. It was the first time in more than a year that a White House press secretary had held a formal briefing. McEnany promised to never lie from the White House podium, but she went on to share several false or misleading statements about sexual misconduct allegations against Trump and the FBI investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, among other things.
  • Joe Biden denied Tara Reade’s allegation of sexual assault. The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee said in an MSNBC interview, “I’m saying unequivocally, it never, never happened.”
  • New York schools will remain closed for the rest of the academic year, governor Andrew Cuomo announced. The news was unsurprising considering the state reported another 1,000 new coronavirus hospitalizations yesterday, but the daily death toll has fallen slightly to 289.
  • Trump said Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer should “make a deal” with anti-stay-at-home protesters. The president’s suggestion came one day after demonstrators, some of them carrying assault rifles, swarmed the Michigan state capitol to protest Whitmer’s stay-at-home order.

Julia will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn was careful to note that remdesivir has not received FDA approval as a coronavirus treatment and has only been approved for emergency use on severely ill coronavirus patients who have been hospitalized.

FDA approval requires a much more lengthy review process, while an emergency use authorization is issued more quickly after the agency weighs the potential risks and potential benefits of a treatment option to help address an emergency situation.

“Today’s action is an important step in our efforts to collaborate with innovators and researchers to provide sick patients timely access to new therapies where appropriate, while at the same time supporting research to further evaluate whether they are safe and effective,” Hahn said in a statement.

“There’s tremendous interest among all parties to identify and arm ourselves with medicines to combat COVID-19, and through our Coronavirus Treatment Acceleration Program, the FDA is working around-the-clock and using every tool at our disposal to speed these efforts.”

The Guardian’s Lois Beckett reports on the latest from California:

As many as 1000 people rallied against California governor Gavin Newsom’s stay-at-home measures in Sacramento, the state’s capitol, as hundreds more protested in conservative Huntington Beach.

In his Friday news conference, Newsom said he empathized with the protesters’ “frustration and concern and deeply understandable anxiety about the economy and the fate and future of their families.”

Asked about his response to protesters calling him a tyrant and a fasicst, Newsom was gentle. “All I ask for is: Take care of yourself,” he said. “Wear a face covering. Do justice to physical distancing. You don’t want to contract this disease.”

The governor said that law enforcement officials were responsible for deciding how to respond to protesters violating social distancing orders, and that he could not possibly monitor every protest happening across the state.

“I have confidence in local law enforcement, incredible confidence,” Newsom said, passing on responsibility for the fraught question of whether people violating social distancing guidelines at protests should be arrested.

In Sacramento, where many protesters were flouting social distancing guidelines, at least one person had been arrested, according to a Sacramento Bee reporter.

Newsom promises 'meaningful' adjustments soon amid anti-shutdown protests

The Guardian’s Lois Beckett reports on the latest from California:

California governor Gavin Newsom promised “meaningful” adjustments to the state’s stay-at-home order in “many days, not weeks,” as small rallies to reopen the economy attracted hundreds of people in the state’s capital and in Huntington Beach, a more conservative city south of Los Angeles.

Demonstrators protest against California’s stay-at-home order.
Demonstrators protest against California’s stay-at-home order. Photograph: Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images

Newsom said that the state was “getting very close” to making changes that would affect how businesses, including restaurants, could operate, and urged residents to be patient.

More than 2,000 people have died of coronavirus in California so far, including 91 people in the previous day, but the number of patients in intensive care units stayed flat, and the total number of hospitalizations had fallen slightly, both signs of progress, Newsom said in his Friday press conference.

But, Newsom said, “We can screw all that up and set all that back by making bad decisions.”

The positive signs in the number of hospitalizations and ICU patients was only possible “because people have done an incredible job in their physical distancing.”

“Thousands of people congregating together, not practicing social distancing or physical distancing,” could undermine the current progress in preventing the spread of the virus, Newsom said.

“If we can avoid that, we can get to the other side with modifications a lot quicker,” the governor added.

Gilead, the company that makes remdesivir, said it would donate 1.5 million doses of the drug to the US now that it has been approved for emergency use on hospitalized coronavirus patients.

FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn said the drug’s approval for emergency use represented “an important clinical advance” in the fight against coronavirus.

Gilead CEO Daniel O’Day said earlier today that his company has already ramped up production of the drug and hopes to make millions of treatment courses available by the end of the year.

“I think it’s important to note that this is a medicine for the most severe patients,” O’Day told the “Today” show. “What we see here is really, of course, not a cure but a very, very significant and important treatment for patients.”

US to allow emergency use of remdesivir for hospitalized coronavirus patients

Trump told reporters that the drug remedesivir has been approved for emergency use to treat coronavirus patients.

FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn clarified that the drug had specifically been cleared for emergency use on hospitalized coronavirus patients.

The president said the approval represented a “very promising situation” in the country’s fight against coronavirus, and Dr Deborah Birx added, “I think this really illustrates what can happen in such a short time.”

The emergency approval comes days after Dr Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, expressed cautious optimism about the results of a remdesivir drug trial.

“The data shows that remdesivir has a clear-cut, significant, positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery,” Fauci said earlier this week. “What it has proven is that a drug can block this virus.”

The Guardian’s Nina Lakhani reports on a multi-state lawsuit to protect the country’s waterways:

A coalition of states is suing the Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over its so-called “dirty water rule,” which eliminates legal protections for hundreds of thousands of streams, creeks and wetlands across the country.

The lawsuit claims that the Trump administration’s new rule contradicts the 1972 Clean Water Act, supreme court precedent and the EPA’s own scientific findings. Trump’s “navigable waters protection rule”, which was published in January, narrows the definition of waterways to exclude ephemeral streams, wetlands, creeks and other headwaters which do not have visible water 365 days a year because they run intermittently or temporarily underground. For example, 90% of streams that connect to the Colorado river, which supplies water to seven western US states and two in northern Mexico, run only after rainfall or snowmelt.

The rule, which has attracted widespread criticism from scientists, environmentalists, and the tourism sector, replaces an Obama era regulation that strengthened protection for about 60% of the nation’s interconnected waterways. But it goes much further than just repealing Obama’s 2015 rule, by allowing landowners and developers to dump directly into hundreds of thousands of waterways, and to destroy or fill in wetlands for construction projects.

“Access to clean water is a fundamental right for all Americans. Trump’s dirty water rule ignores the law and science and is a reckless rollback of clean water protections … which benefits industry polluters and harms countless Americans,” said Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, at a virtual press conference today.

The lawsuit argues that the new rule will result in more pollution, flooding, and harm to fish and wildlife across the country — undermining decades of work to protect and enhance water resources - and will result in widespread economic losses.

“We’re going into this fight with our three most reliable allies: the facts, science and the law,” said Xavier Becerra, California’s attorney general. In California, more than 40% of streams and half of all wetlands have been stripped of protection under the new definition, said Becerra. “Even during the coronavirus pandemic, the administration hasn’t stopped.” He added, “The latest actions come at a time when the nation’s health and economy can least afford it.”

The lawsuit, co-led by New York and Califnronia, was filed today in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. Also suing are the attorneys generals of Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, the District of Columbia and the City of New York.

Donald Trump has passed further comment on the allegation against Joe Biden, in an interview with Fox News commentator and podcast host Dan Bongino.

“I would just say to Joe Biden, ‘Just go out and fight it,’” Trump said, adding in typically contradictory style: “He’s gonna have to make his own decision, I’m not going to be telling him what to do. Biden is gonna have to go out and fight his own battles.”

Trump also said he found Tara Reade’s allegation of an assault in 1993 “credible” and said that when he has to deal with such allegations, he likes “to get in front of it and I just deny it.”

More than 20 women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct or assault, allegations he denies.

At the White House on Friday, new press secretary Kayleigh McEnany was asked about the accusations against Trump. She responded by scolding the media, saying “the president has swiftly denied all of these allegations that were raised four years ago” and claiming questions about the allegations were “asked and answered in the form of the vote of the American people”.

“Leave it to the media to really take an issue about the former vice-president and turn it on the president,” she said.

In fact, accusations against Trump have surfaced since the 2016 election: the advice columnist E Jean Carroll said he raped her at a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s:

Carroll took Trump to court. So did Summer Zervos, a former contestant on The Apprentice.

The National Archives has responded to Joe Biden’s interview with MSNBC and lengthy statement denying the allegation of sexual assault against him, telling HuffPo’s Amanda Terkel:

“Any records of Senate personnel complaints from 1993 would have remained under the control of the Senate. Accordingly, inquiries related to these records should be directed to the Senate.”

Biden said the National Archives would hold such records, if they existed. The following is from Lauren Gambino’s report:

Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski repeatedly asked Biden if he would authorize a search of his Senate papers, as a matter of transparency. He declined, insisting the records “do not contain personnel files”.

“They’re not there,” he said.

Asked if he was confident no such complaint existed, Biden offered a qualified response: “I know of no one who was aware any complaint was made.”

He also said there were no non-disclosure agreements from his time in public office that would prevent women from speaking out.

“There are no NDAs signed,” he said. “Period. None.”

Here’s the full report:

Another important note about the sexual misconduct allegations against Trump: it is not accurate to say the issue is years-old, as press secretary Kayleigh McEnany claimed.

“You’re bringing up issues ... from four years ago that were asked and answered, and the American people had their say in the matter,” McEnany said. “Leave it to the media to really take an issue about the former vice president and turn it on the president.”

But advice columnist E Jean Carroll said in June that Trump raped her in the mid-1990s, an allegation that the president has denied, and a defamation lawsuit from one of Trump’s accusers is currently on hold in New York.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany has just concluded her first daily briefing, and she made a point to bring up the case of former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

The president has signaled interest in a potential pardon for his former adviser, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in 2017.

McEnany said the FBI’s handling of Flynn’s case “should scare every American,” insisting there was an “unfair target” on the former official’s back.

But just to reiterate: Flynn himself pleaded guilty to lying to investigators about his contact with the former Russian ambassador to the US.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said of Joe Biden’s interview this morning about Tara Reade’s claim, “We are pleased that Joe Biden decided to go on the record.”

But when asked about the fact that Trump has been accused of sexual misconduct by dozens of women, McEnany accused the media of unnecessarily resurrecting a years-old issue.

“The president has swiftly denied all of these allegations that were raised four years ago,” McEnany said, going on to argue that questions about the allegations were “asked and answered in the form of the vote of the American people.”

More than a dozen women have accused the president of sexual misconduct, and the “Access Hollywood” tape included audio of Trump describing grabbing women’s genitals.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany reacted to Trump’s claim that Tara Reade, who has accused Joe Biden of sexual assault, was more compelling than the women who accused now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct.

McEnany responded by saying Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings were a “grave miscarriage of justice,” and she claimed that the allegations against him were “salacious, awful and verifiably false.”

It is not accurate to say that the allegations against Kavanaugh were “verifiably false.” In her Senate testimony, Christine Blasey Ford extensively detailed an allegation of sexual assault against Kavanaugh, and it was not proven to be “verifiably false.” The Republican-led Senate confirmed Kavanaugh in the closest Supreme Court vote in history.

Asked about possible retaliatory measures the US might take against China for its handling of coronavirus, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said she did not want to get ahead of Trump on that.

But McEnany added, “It is no secret that China mishandled this situation.”

The press secretary was also pressed on the president’s claims of having seen evidence that coronavirus was created in a Chinese government lab. The office of the director of national intelligence said yesterday the intelligence community “concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the Covid-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified”.

“Intelligence is just an estimate,” McEnany said.

McEnany to reporters: 'I will never lie to you'

This one is worth keeping for future reference: White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany pledged to never lie from the briefing room podium.

“I will never lie to you,” McEnany told journalists after one reporter asked if she would make such a pledge. “You have my word on that.”

The promise is notable considering one of McEnany’s predecessors, Sean Spicer, began his tenure by sharing false and outlandish claims about the size of the crowd at Trump’s inauguration.

McEnany holds her first White House daily briefing

Kayleigh McEnany, the president’s new press secretary, is now holding her first White House daily briefing since assuming her role last month.

This is also the first formal briefing held by a press secretary in more than a year. Trump and the White House coronavirus task force have held regular briefings since the start of the crisis, but the president’s press secretary has not held a briefing since March 2019, when Sarah Huckabee Sanders suspended the practice.

McEnany began by detailing the $12 billion being distributed to 395 hospitals as part of the most recent coronavirus relief bill.

Senator Mitt Romney is intrdoucing legislation to give essential workers hazard pay, arguing those on the front lines of the pandemic deserve more financial assistance from the government.

Romney proposed giving essential workers an additional $12 an hour for the months of May, June and July. The Utah Republican said employers would cover a quarter of the cost, while the federal government would cover the other three quarters.

“Health care professionals, grocery store workers, food processors, and many others—the unsung patriots on the frontline of this pandemic—every day risk their safety for the health and well-being of our country, and they deserve our unwavering support,” Romney said in a statement. “Patriot Pay is a way for us to reward our essential workers as they continue to keep Americans safe, healthy, and fed.”

In an interview with the Washington Post, Romney noted that some essential workers, such as grocery store employees, may be making less money than those who are receiving unemployment benefits.

“That’s not fair, number one,” Romney said. “And number two, it would create an anomaly, of course, for people to be taking additional risk of their health and have someone else not working making more than they are.”

The executive director of the World Health Organization reiterated that the group believes coronavirus came about naturally, despite Trump’s dubious claims that he has seen evidence it was created in a Chinese government lab.

“We have listened again and again to numerous scientists who looked at the sequences and looked at this virus and we are assured that this virus is natural in origin,” WHO executive director Michael J. Ryan said Friday.

Just yesterday, Trump claimed he had seen evidence that coronavirus was made in a lab in China’s Wuhan region, which saw the first outbreak of the virus. Asked what evidence he had seen, Trump said, “I can’t tell you that. I’m not allowed to tell you that.”

The president’s comments came hours after the office of the director of national intelligence said in a statement that the intelligence community “concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the Covid-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified”.

Updated

Michael Cohen was also separately told yesterday that he must cease writing a tell-all book about his time working for Trump, according to ABC News.

ABC News reports:

Cohen received a letter from lawyers representing the Trump Organization demanding Cohen halt writing a ‘tell-all book’ about his time working for the president, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Charles Harder, the attorney representing the company, writes that Cohen signed a non-disclosure agreement when he joined the Trump Organization and thus it would prohibit him from disclosing certain information about the president, his family and the company.

Cohen worked for Trump as a lawyer and fixer, and he was deeply involved in a scheme to pay hush money to women who alleged they had extramarital affairs with the president before he ran for office.

Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, has reportedly had his approval for early release from prison reversed.

ABC News reports:

Two weeks ago, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) had notified Cohen that he would be released early from prison due to the COVID-19 outbreak, Cohen’s attorney Roger Adler told ABC News at the time.

Cohen is serving a 3-year sentence at the federal prison camp in Otisville, New York, where several staff and inmates have tested positive for the novel coronavirus. ...

It appears that all of the prisoners at Otisville who were granted home confinement have lost those privileges, according to the sources. The BOP has not responded to requests for comment from ABC News.

Cohen, who pleaded guilty in 2018 to tax fraud, campaign finance violations and lying to Congress, was originally scheduled for release in November 2021.

The Trump campaign accused Joe Biden of applying a double standard after the presumptive Democratic nominee denied Tara Reade’s sexual assault allegation.

Erin Perrine, the Trump camapign’s principal deputy communications director, said in a statement, “The only thing Joe Biden did today was dig himself a deeper hole.”

Perrine noted Biden previously demanded that former Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg release women from non-disclosure agreements about claims of sexual harassment at his company.

“Biden has a different definition of transparency than he sets for others.” Perrine said. “The double standard exhibited by Biden, prominent liberal women’s groups, and Democrat elected officials – some of whom want to be Biden’s running mate – is glaring and cannot be allowed to stand.”

A number of anti-sexual assault groups have called for a full investigation of Reade’s claim, while applauding Biden for directly addressing the allegation, unlike the president.

Today so far

Here’s where the day stands so far:

  • Joe Biden denied Tara Reade’s allegation of sexual assault. The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee told MSNBC, “It is not true. I’m saying unequivocally, it did not happen and it didn’t.”
  • Trump said Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer should “make a deal” with anti- stay-at-home protesters. The president’s comments came one day after protesters, some of them carrying assault rifles, swarmed the Michigan state capitol.
  • New York schools will remain closed for the rest of the academic year, governor Andrew Cuomo announced. The news is unsurprising considering the state is still seeing 1,000 new coronavirus hospitalizations a day, and another 289 New Yorkers died of the virus yesterday.

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

Anti-stay-at-home protesters have gathered in front of New York’s state capitol, where governor Andrew Cuomo just wrapped up his daily briefing on the state’s coronavirus response.

The demonstrators are protesting Cuomo’s statewide stay-at-home order, which is currently in effect until May 15. The governor has declined to say when he will make a decision on whether to extend the order.

Similar protests have been popping up across the country, even though polls show most Americans support the restrictions that local leaders have enforced to limit the spread of the virus.

Trump said earlier today that Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer should “give a little” and “make a deal” with the protesters who swarmed the state capitol’s yesterday, some of whom were carrying assault rifles.

The Guardian’s Kenya Evelyn has a recap of New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s daily coronavirus briefing:

In addition to announcing that schools across the state will remain closed for the rest of the academic school year, the governor confirmed New York state is still seeing roughly 1,000 new covid-19 hospitalizations per day.

There were 289 deaths in the last 24 hours, the first time New York saw less than 300 daily deaths in weeks.

“New Yorkers changed reality,” Cuomo said, crediting changes in social behaviors for a decline in overall hospitalizations since the peak of the outbreak.

When asked to assess his own performance amid the pandemic, Cuomo responded, “I tried my best.” He then pivoted to give credit to state residents for how they have followed social distancing guidelines. “New Yorkers did an extraordinary job,” he said.

Cuomo then announced he had directed insurers to waive co-pays, deductibles and other costs for mental health services for essential workers throughout the coronavirus crisis.

The governor said he had spoken to too many families who said they would seek counseling but felt it was too expensive. “Just wipe that reason away and get the help that you need,” Cuomo said.

The governor also shared that the state saw a 15% jump in domestic violence calls in March and a 30% increase in April, which Cuomo described as a “dramatic” and “frightening” trend.

Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin said private schools with large endowments should return any loans they received from the Paycheck Protection Program.

Some private schools with millions of dollars in their endowments received large loans from the program, even as small businesses with little capital at their disposal struggled to get their loan applications approved.

Some of the private schools have already returned the loans, mirroring the actions of publicly traded companies like Shake Shack and Ruth’s Chris Steak House, which have also said they would return the funds they received from the program.

The New York Times has more details:

The Latin School of Chicago, which has counted the Illinois governor’s children among its students, returned the money. Sidwell Friends in Washington, the alma mater of President Obama’s daughters, decided to keep it. So did others, like St. Andrew’s Episcopal School in Potomac, Md., where President Trump’s youngest son is a student.

Across the country, dozens of elite private preparatory schools are facing a vexing decision: They qualified for federal funds for small businesses hit by the coronavirus pandemic, but administrators are considering whether the scrutiny of taking government assistance outweighs the benefits.

New York schools to remain closed for rest of academic year

New Yorks schools will remain closed for the rest of the academic year, and educators will continue to practice distance learning, governor Andrew Cuomo has just announced.

The Democratic governor added that he would make a decision about whether summer school will be possible at the end of the month.

Another 289 New Yorkers died of coronavirus yesterday, representing a slight decrease from the day before, but new hospitalizations appear to have plateaued at around 1,000, which Cuomo has described as alarmingly high.

The maker of the drug remdesivir said his company, Gilead, is working closely with the FDA to get the drug authorized as a coronavirus treatment.

Gilead CEO Daniel O’Day said his company has already significantly expanded production capacity for the drug and hopes to make millions of treatment courses available by the end of the year.

“I think it’s important to note that this is a medicine for the most severe patients,” O’Day told the “Today” show. “What we see here is really, of course, not a cure but a very, very significant and important treatment for patients.”

O’Day’s comments come days after Dr Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious diseasee expert, said the results of a remdesivir drug trial, which showed a positive effect on patients’ recovery time and survival rate, was “quite good news.”

“The data shows that remdesivir has a clear-cut, significant, positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery,” Fauci said. “What it has proven is that a drug can block this virus.”

Publicly traded companies have received more than $1 billion from the Paycheck Protection Program for small businesses, according to a new analysis from the Washington Post.

The Post reports:

Nearly 300 public companies have reported receiving money from the fund, called the Paycheck Protection Program, according to the data compiled by The Post. Recipients include 43 companies with more than 500 workers, the maximum typically allowed by the program. Several other recipients were prosperous enough to pay executives $2 million or more.

After the first pool of $349 billion ran dry, leaving more than 80 percent of applicants without funding, outrage over the millions of dollars that went to larger firms prompted some companies to return the money. As of Thursday, public companies had reported returning more than $125 million, according to a Post analysis of filings.

Companies like Shake Shack and Ruth’s Chris Steak House have been criticized for taking money from PPP as the program was rapidly running out of money, which eventually forced both companies to return the funds.

The treasury department recently said in updated guidance about the program that publicly traded companies would likely not meet the financial burden requirement to obtain funds, and the government has encouraged large companies to return the money they received.

Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin also said earlier this week that the department would be auditing any loan worth more than $2 million.

New test could identify pre-infectious Covid-19 carriers

Scientists working for the US military have designed a new Covid-19 test that could potentially identify carriers before they become infectious and spread the disease, the Guardian has learned.

In what could be a significant breakthrough, project coordinators hope the blood-based test will be able to detect the virus’s presence as early as 24 hours after infection – before people show symptoms and several days before a carrier is considered capable of spreading it to other people. That is also around four days before current tests can detect the virus.

The test has emerged from a project set up by the US military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) aimed at rapid diagnosis of germ or chemical warfare poisoning. It was hurriedly repurposed when the pandemic broke out and the new test is expected to be put forward for emergency use approval (EUA) by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) within a week.

“The concept fills a diagnostic gap worldwide,” the head of Darpa’s biological technologies office, Dr Brad Ringeisen, told the Guardian, since it should also fill in testing gaps at later stages of the infection. If given FDA approval, he said, it had the potential to be “absolutely a gamechanger”.

The nation’s largest anti-sexual assault organization has also issued a statement about Tara Reade’s allegation against Joe Biden.

After the presumptive Democratic nominee denied sexually assaulting Reade 27 years ago, the group RAINN called for a “rigorous investigation” of the allegation.

“We appreciate Vice President Biden finally addressing Tara Reade’s allegations,” RAINN’s vice president of communications said in the statement.

“These allegations deserve a rigorous investigation, and we urge Vice President Biden to release any and all records that may be relevant, including those housed at the University of Delaware, in addition to any Senate records housed at the National Archives. We urge him, his campaign, and former staff to cooperate fully and provide complete transparency.”

But the University of Delaware has said officials are still curating the collection of Biden’s papers and the documents will not be publicly available until next year, after the presidential election.

The president and CEO of TIME’S UP Now has issued a statement in response to Joe Biden’s interview about Tara Reade’s allegation of sexual assault.

Tina Tchen, who leads the anti-sexual harassment group, applauded Biden for directly addressing the allegation, unlike Trump, and called for “complete transparency” into Reade’s claim.

“Today, Vice President Joe Biden sat down and directly addressed the allegation against him with the seriousness it deserves, something that the current president has never done,” Tchen said in the statement.

“Vice President Joe Biden needed to address Tara Reade’s allegation today. We call for complete transparency into this claim and the multiple claims against President Donald Trump. As we go forward, American voters are entitled to a full understanding of all allegations of this nature. Women should be heard, treated respectfully, and their allegations taken seriously.”

Tchen’s statement underscores the difficult spot that Democratic women are in as they address Reade’s allegation. The Democratic party has prided itself on taking allegations of sexual misconduct seriously since several women accused Trump of inappropriate touching. Now Reade is asking those same Democrats who rallied around Trump’s accusers to grant her the same treatment.

Senior White House adviser Kellyanne Conway criticized Joe Biden’s response to Tara Reade’s sexual assault allegation.

After Biden denied Reade’s allegation in an interview this morning, Conway accused the presumptive Democratic nominee of applying a different standard to himself than he has to other politicians accused of sexual misconduct. “Believe all women means all women — you don’t get to choose,” Conway said.

The White House adviser also called on Biden to unseal any records related to Reade’s allegation. “You should unseal them anyway if you want to run for president,” Conway said.

Commentators were quick to point out that Trump has not released his tax returns, making him the first president not to do so, raising some questions about Conway’s demand for transparency.

There is a 2pm ET press briefing on the White House schedule – not from Donald Trump, who has other events today at which he may speak about the coronavirus pandemic, but by the new press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany.

Although the White House coronavirus task force has regularly held briefings in recent weeks, it’s been more than a year since the Trump’s press secretary held such a formal briefing.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump’s second press secretary, dropped the practice which made her predecessor Sean Spicer (in)famous and her successor, Stephanie Grisham, never held one.

So that’ll be something else to watch today…

Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer extended her state’s coronavirus emergency declaration yesterday after the Republican-led legislature moved to end the declaration.

As anti-stay-at-home protesters swarmed the state capitol, Michigan’s Republican legislators pushed to not only end the declaration but also empower the chambers’ leaders to sue Whitmer if she extended the order.

Despite those efforts, Whitmer chose to sign an executive order ending the original declaration and then issue another order that established a state of emergency until May 28. Those orders come a week after Whitmer extended the state’s stay-at-home order until at least May 15.

The clash between the Democratic governor and the Republican legislators could lead to an intense legal battle over how the state responds to the pandemic.

Trump received criticism last month after he called to “liberate” three states that are currently under stay-at-home orders, including Michigan, echoing messaging from far-right protesters.

In one tweet about the stay-at-home orders, Trump wrote, “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!”

Many of the president’s critics accused the president of inciting violence against Democratic governors and lawmakers, and tweets about a potential armed conflict against the government skyrocketed in the hours after Trump’s “liberate” tweets were sent.

Now the president has weighed in on the protests again, suggesting Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer should “make a deal” with the demonstrators, even though health experts have warned states could see a surge in coronavirus cases if stay-at-home orders are relaxed too quickly.

Michigan has been particularly hard hit by the virus, which has already claimed more than 3,000 lives in the state.

Trump says Michigan governor should 'make a deal' with protesters

Trump is once again weighing in on the anti-stay-at-home protests that have been popping up across the country, suggesting Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer should “make a deal” with the demonstrators.

“The Governor of Michigan should give a little, and put out the fire,” Trump wrote in a tweet. “These are very good people, but they are angry. They want their lives back again, safely! See them, talk to them, make a deal.”

The president’s tweet comes one day after protesters descended on the Michigan capitol in Lansing to rail against Whitmer’s stay-at-home order. A number of the demonstrators were photographed carrying assault rifles, causing alarm among the legislators who were at the Capitol.

This is Joan Greve, taking over for Lauren Gambino and Martin Pengelly.

The United States’ coronavirus testing capacity is so low that even the Capitol’s attending physician reportedly doesn’t have enough tests for all US senators, who are scheduled to return to Washington on Monday.

Politico reports:

The Capitol’s attending physician said Thursday that coronavirus tests will be available for staffers and senators who are ill, but not enough to proactively test all 100 senators as the chamber comes back in session, according to two people familiar with the matter.

In a conference call with top GOP officials, Dr. Brian Monahan said there is not sufficient capacity to quickly test senators for coronavirus — a contrast with the White House, where any people meeting with President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence are tested for the disease. Monahan said test results in the Senate will take two or more days, while the White House has rapid testing.

The inability to proactively test all senators will only intensify fears about the chamber returning to work on Monday, which has already caused alarm.

About half of all US senators are over 65, putting them at a higher risk of becoming seriously ill from coronavirus, and a number of congressional staffers and other Capitol employees have expressed anxiety about reporting to work as the number of coronavirus cases in the Washington metropolitan region continues to rise.

Here is what Biden has previously said about Christine Blasey Ford and women coming forward with sexual assault and harassment claims.

“[Ford] deserves to be treated with dignity. It takes enormous courage for a woman to come forward, under the bright lights of millions of people watching, and relive something that happened to her, assert that something happened to her. And she should be treated with respect ... [She] should be given the benefit of the doubt and not be, you know, abused again by the system. [Time Magazine]

He also said:

For a woman to come forward in the glaring lights of focus, nationally, you’ve got to start off with the presumption that at least the essence of what she’s talking about is real, whether or not she forgets facts, whether or not it’s been made worse or better over time. But nobody fails to understand that this is like jumping into a cauldron.” [Washington Post.]

The Morning Joe interview ends with a request for Biden to address the nation’s public health care workers, which he happily obliges before signing off.

Biden was asked what he meant by his comments and a fundraiser on Thursday night, that he views himself as a “transition candidate”.

“My job is to ... bring the Mayor Petes of the world into this administration, bring it into the administration, and even if they don’t come in, their ideas come into this administration,” he said. “You got to get more people on the bench that are ready to go in, put me in coach, I’m ready to play. Well, there’s a lot of people that are ready to play, women and men.”

He said he wasn’t implying anything specifically, for example, that it his intention to be a one-term president. But he said he views his job as the presumptive nominee to lift up young people in the party. “We have not given a bench to the younger people in the party.”

The portion of the interview about the sexual assault allegation has finished. Joe Scarborough has joined the panel – the tough questions were left to Brzezinski – and are asking Biden about Trump’s coronavirus response.

Again pressed on his comments supporting Blasey Ford and Reade, he said the facts in this case are different. “The facts of this case do not exist. There are so many inconsistencies in this case. I assure you it did not happen. Period. Period.”

Asked if he is “absolutely” sure there is no record of a complaint, Biden qualifies his response. “I know of no one who was aware of any complaint was made,” he said.

Why not approve a search of her name in the University of Delaware records? Biden is adamant personnel records would not be there. “I don’t understand the point you’re trying to make. There are no personnel records by definition.”

He said they are not being made public because those records contain information about his personal, private conversations with world leaders and the president.

Asked about his apparent discrepancy in his comments on Christine Blasey Ford, who accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault during his Supreme Court nomination hearing, and his denial of Reade’s claims, Biden says women should be believed.

“Women have a right to be heard,” he said. “In any case the truth matters and in this case the truth is the claims are false.”

“I’m not going to question her motive. I don’t know why she is saying this. I don’t know why after 27 years this is being raised. I don’t understand it,” he said.

“Why is it real for Dr. Ford and not for Tara Reade?” Biden is asked.

“I’m not saying she doesn’t have the right to come forward. ... But only the truth matters,” she said.

He also says he has “never asked anybody to sign an NDA. There are no NDAs period in my case.”

Asked by Mika Brzezinski on Morning Joe whether the allegation is true, Biden replies: “No it is not true. I’m saying unequivocally, it did not happen and it didn’t.”

Biden says his campaign has not reached out to Reade. He does not answer a question about whether he remembers her. He also says he does not believe a complaint exists but asks the National Archives to look for any such document.

“This is an open book. There’s nothing for me to hide - nothing at all,” he said.

Updated

Biden on assault allegation: 'They aren’t true. This never happened.'

Joe Biden has emphatically denied a sexual assault allegation against him, breaking weeks of silence to address the accusation that has roiled his campaign.

“They aren’t true. This never happened,” he said in a statement, released moments before his Friday appearance on Morning Joe.

Tara Reade accused Biden of sexually assaulting her in the basement of an office building on Capitol Hill in 1993, when she was an aide in his Senate office. His campaign refuted the allegation in a statement, but this is Biden’s first public comment on the accusation.

He also calls on the National Archives to release any record of a complaint Reade said she filed.

Here is the statement in its entirety:

April was Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Every year, at this time, we talk about awareness, prevention, and the importance of women feeling they can step forward, say something, and be heard. That belief – that women should be heard – was the underpinning of a law I wrote over 25 years ago. To this day, I am most proud of the Violence Against Women Act. So, each April we are reminded not only of how far we have come in dealing with sexual assault in this country – but how far we still have to go.

When I wrote the bill, few wanted to talk about the issue. It was considered a private matter, a personal matter, a family matter. I didn’t see it that way. To me, freedom from fear, harm, and violence for women was a legal right, a civil right, and a human right. And I knew we had to change not only the law, but the culture.

So, we held hours of hearings and heard from the most incredibly brave women – and we opened the eyes of the Senate and the nation – and passed the law.

In the years that followed, I fought to continually strengthen the law. So, when we took office and President Obama asked me what I wanted, I told him I wanted oversight of the critical appointments in the Office on Violence Against Women at the Department of Justice and I wanted a senior White House Advisor appointing directly to me on the issue. Both of those things happened.

As Vice President, we started the “It’s on Us” campaign on college campuses to send the message loud and clear that dating violence is violence – and against the law.

We had to get men involved. They had to be part of the solution. That’s why I made a point of telling young men this was their problem too – they couldn’t turn a blind eye to what was happening around them – they had a responsibility to speak out. Silence is complicity.

In the 26 years since the law passed, the culture and perceptions have changed but we’re not done yet.

It’s on us, and it’s on me as someone who wants to lead this country. I recognize my responsibility to be a voice, an advocate, and a leader for the change in culture that has begun but is nowhere near finished. So I want to address allegations by a former staffer that I engaged in misconduct 27 years ago.

They aren’t true. This never happened.

While the details of these allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault are complicated, two things are not complicated. One is that women deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, and when they step forward they should be heard, not silenced. The second is that their stories should be subject to appropriate inquiry and scrutiny.

Responsible news organizations should examine and evaluate the full and growing record of inconsistencies in her story, which has changed repeatedly in both small and big ways.

But this much bears emphasizing.

She has said she raised some of these issues with her supervisor and senior staffers from my office at the time. They – both men and a woman – have said, unequivocally, that she never came to them and complained or raised issues. News organizations that have talked with literally dozens of former staffers have not found one – not one – who corroborated her allegations in any way. Indeed, many of them spoke to the culture of an office that would not have tolerated harassment in any way – as indeed I would not have.

There is a clear, critical part of this story that can be verified. The former staffer has said she filed a complaint back in 1993. But she does not have a record of this alleged complaint. The papers from my Senate years that I donated to the University of Delaware do not contain personnel files. It is the practice of Senators to establish a library of personal papers that document their public record: speeches, policy proposals, positions taken, and the writing of bills.

There is only one place a complaint of this kind could be – the National Archives. The National Archives is where the records are kept at what was then called the Office of Fair Employment Practices. I am requesting that the Secretary of the Senate ask the Archives to identify any record of the complaint she alleges she filed and make available to the press any such document. If there was ever any such complaint, the record will be there.

As a Presidential candidate, I’m accountable to the American people. We have lived long enough with a President who doesn’t think he is accountable to anyone, and takes responsibility for nothing. That’s not me. I believe being accountable means having the difficult conversations, even when they are uncomfortable. People need to hear the truth.

I have spent my career learning from women the ways in which we as individuals and as policy makers need to step up to make their hard jobs easier, with equal pay, equal opportunity, and workplaces and homes free from violence and harassment. I know how critical women’s health issues and basic women’s rights are. That has been a constant through my career, and as President, that work will continue. And I will continue to learn from women, to listen to women, to support women, and yes, to make sure women’s voices are heard.

We have a lot of work to do. From confronting online harassment, abuse, and stalking, to ending the rape kit backlog, to addressing the deadly combination of guns and domestic violence.

We need to protect and empower the most marginalized communities, including immigrant and indigenous women, trans women, and women of color.

We need to make putting an end to gender-based violence in both the United States and around the world a top priority.

I started my work over 25 years ago with the passage of the Violence Against Women Act. As president, I’m committed to finishing the job.

Read it here:

Updated

Good morning …

…and welcome to another day of coverage of the coronavirus outbreak – and politics, both concerning the pandemic and tilted towards the election in November – in the US.

The main news of the morning is that Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, will appear on MSNBC’s Morning Joe to answer questions for the first time about an allegation of sexual assault against him.

In advance of the interview, Biden issued a statement:

I recognize my responsibility to be a voice, an advocate, and a leader for the change in culture that has begun but is nowhere near finished. So I want to address allegations by a former staffer that I engaged in misconduct 27 years ago: They aren’t true. This never happened.

In the statement, Biden asks the National Archives to release and make public any record of a complaint that Reade says she filed at the time. Biden said the record of the document would be kept at the National Archives, and not at the University of Delaware, where his Senate papers are housed and not open to the public.

Biden has faced mounting calls from some Democrats to make a public statement, even as the party’s leadership stands behind him. Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, on Thursday stressed her support for Biden’s nomination while Republicans seized the opportunity to attack Biden and his record ahead of a general election against Donald Trump, who has been accused of sexual assault and misconduct by more than a dozen women, all of which he has denied.

“We need to make putting an end to gender-based violence in both the United States and around the world a top priority,” Biden said. “I started my work over 25 years ago with the passage of the Violence Against Women Act. As president, I’m committed to finishing the job.”

In terms of the coronavirus outbreak, here are the latest figures from researchers at Johns Hopkins University:

  • US cases: 1,069,866
  • US deaths: 63,014
  • New York cases: 304,372
  • New York deaths: 23,587

New York is of course the US hotspot but other states have been hit terribly hard too. More than 7,000 people have died in New Jersey, Michigan and Massachusetts are approaching 4,000 deaths.

The total death toll passed that of Americans in the Vietnam war this week, a fact widely remarked, only for the White House to trumpet its success, attack China and continue to seek to prepare the country to open back up.

Here’s some first further reading:

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