Heather Cox Richardson

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April 8, 2020 (Wednesday)

Today’s biggest breaking news was that Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders suspended his campaign for the Democratic nomination for president. He will keep his name on the rest of the primary ballots, intending to get as many delegates as possible for the Democratic National Convention to enable him to have a say in the party platform.

This is disappointing to his supporters, but a good move for him and his ideas. Sanders’s strength has always been in inspirational rhetoric rather than in the coalition-building necessary to get legislation passed, and this will enable him to get his ideas into the Democratic argument for the 2020 election while leaving to others the wheeling and dealing it takes to get those ideas into legislative development. Sanders reminds me of Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner of the Civil War era, whose speeches inspired his supporters to take on the institution of human enslavement when few others wanted to touch it, but whose skill set was never in the gritty work of getting legislation passed.

After Sanders dropped out of the race, former vice president Joe Biden issued a statement complimenting Sanders on creating a movement, “a good thing for our nation and our future,” changing the national conversation on income inequality, universal health care, climate change, and free college tuition. For his part, Sanders called Biden “a very decent man, who I will work with to move our progressive ideas forward.”

While Biden is now the presumptive Democratic nominee and Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee, neither nomination seems to me a done deal. The novel coronavirus has changed every equation in modern life, and it seems possible it will change the election equation, too.

The 2020 presidential battle will be fought largely over suburban white women who supported Trump in 2016 but have turned away from him. Both parties will be trying to show they care about women’s issues: Biden has already pledged to pick a woman as a running mate. Although we have no clear signals yet who that will be, we can narrow the field pretty easily because a vice presidential candidate has to bring something to the table to cover a key weakness in the presidential candidate, but has to be a credible option to step into the presidential office if necessary. It also seems quite possible that Trump will jettison Vice President Mike Pence for a different running mate. There is speculation that will be former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, but there are other options. In both cases, the candidates will be signaling what they see as the future of their political party.

The rest of today’s news has either been a follow up to older news or has been too confusing to comb into an understandable shape.

We learned that the trip of former acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly to Guam on Monday to harangue the sailors of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, there to clean the ship of coronavirus and to help the crew infected with it, cost taxpayers $243,151.65, according to estimates by a Navy official. He flew in a modified Gulfstream jet that costs $6,946.19 an hour to fly. The flight time to and from Guam was 35 hours.

Eight senators from both parties, led by Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), a staunch proponent of inspectors general, have asked Trump to explain by April 13 the “clear, substantial reasons for removal” of the Intelligence Committee Inspector General Michael Atkinson last Friday. Atkinson was the one who warned the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff (D-CA) that then acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire was illegally withholding an urgent and credible whistleblower complaint, although we did not learn until later it was about the president’s July phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.

While Trump’s letter informing Congress of the firing said Trump had lost confidence in Atkinson, the president over the weekend said: “I thought he did a terrible job. Absolutely terrible… He took a whistleblower report, which turned out to be a fake report—it was fake. It was totally wrong. It was about my conversation with the President of Ukraine. He took a fake report and he brought it to Congress, with an emergency. Okay? Not a big Trump fan—that, I can tell you.”

The senators’ letter notes that Congress has made it clear “that an expression of lost confidence, without further explanation” does not meet the legal requirement for removal. Congress intended “that inspectors general only be removed when there is clear evidence of wrongdoing or failure to perform the duties of the office, and not for reasons unrelated to their performance, to help preserve IG independence.” The letter also asked Trump to explain “how the appointment of an acting official prior to the end of the 30 day notice period comports” with the law.

If those older stories were straightforward, more confusing was a story from the L.A. Times, which yesterday pulled together a number of reports that have been circulating about the seizure of masks and PPEs coming into the country. It reported that, after telling states to get their own medical supplies to fight the coronavirus, the federal government is intercepting and seizing those supplies from states and hospitals that had ordered them. Reporter Noam N. Levey talked to officials from seven states, who said their materials had been taken and they’ve had no information about when or if they will ever get them back.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is not publicly reporting this activity, although a FEMA representative said the agency was working with the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Defense to identify “needed supplies from vendors” and distribute them fairly. But, Levey notes, FEMA refused to supply any more information about how it determined which supplies should be seized or where they are going. One state official told Levey: “Are they stockpiling this stuff? Are they distributing it? We don’t know…. And are we going to ever get any of it back if we need supplies? It would be nice to know these things.”

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April 9, 2020 (Thursday)

There were a whole bunch of variations today on the theme of the Trump administration mismanaging the pandemic crisis as it tries to consolidate power. And there was a really interesting political twist that made me sit up and take notice.

Shortages of supplies for our hospitals and health-care providers continue to plague our response to the novel coronavirus. A report from Representative Katie Porter (D-CA) has documented that as late as March 2, the administration was urging American businesses to take advantage of the booming market to export such supplies to other countries. If Trump had invoked the Defense Production Act, he could have kept masks, ventilators, and PPEs at home. Porter’s office examined export records to show that in February 2020, “the value of U.S. mask exports to China was 1094% higher than the 2019 monthly average.”

Even more disturbing are investigations into what is happening to the supplies hospitals and states are ordering. In the absence of federal masks, PPEs, ventilators, and so on, the president urged states to get what they needed themselves. They have bought supplies on the open market, only to have the federal government confiscate them.

While state and hospital officials from New Jersey, Colorado, Kentucky, and Massachusetts have all gone on record accusing federal authorities of confiscating supplies, the Federal Emergency Management Agency denies it is taking shipments. Vice President Mike Pence told governors on Monday that the administration is simply redirecting supplies to areas that need them most. “We have the visibility on medical supplies that are moving into this country and available to vendors in this country,” he said.

But, as Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo, who is on this story, reports, officials will not share the formula by which they are making those decisions. More and more stories are emerging that allege that the supplies are being redistributed by Jared Kushner or Trump based on political partisanship. Trump friends get supplies; others don’t. It seems likely that at least some of the confusion is simply poor management and people see a conspiracy in the chaos. But the suggestion that leading administration officials are trying to create political capital out of this crisis seems in keeping with their usual patterns.

It would also explain that bizarre exchange between Jared Kushner and a reporter, when Kushner said, “The notion of the federal stockpile is that it’s supposed to be our stockpile. It’s not supposed to be the states’ stockpiles that they then use.” When CBS News reporter Weijia Jiang later asked Trump what Kushner meant by “our stockpile,” Trump said it was a “gotcha” question. “You know what ‘our’ means? United States of America,” he said. “We take that – ‘our’ – and we distribute it to the states.” “[W]e need it for the federal government,” Trump said. “To keep for our country because the federal government needs it too, not just the states.” “It’s such a basic and simple question and you try and make it sound so bad,” he added. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

Certainly, the administration is trying to leverage the president’s daily coronavirus briefings for political gain. Today we learned that Pence, who is in charge of the administration’s communications about the virus, has been prohibiting doctors Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx, two top health officials dealing with the pandemic, from appearing on CNN. Trump likes the coverage the briefings get, often boasting of his ratings on Twitter, and the network has stopped broadcasting the briefings in full. CNN says Pence’s office told it the ban would last until they restored the full briefings. After the story broke, Pence’s office relented and permitted CNN access to the administration’s medical team.

As unemployment claims skyrocket and the stock market drops, Trump continues to worry about the effect the plummeting economy will have on his reelection. He and his economic advisors are pushing to reopen the country by May 1, against the advice of health experts. Today U.S. infections continued to climb to more than 466,000 confirmed cases and close to 17,000 deaths. Health experts say we need to be able to conduct mass testing, contact tracing on a massive scale, and targeted quarantines—none of which we currently have the capacity to do-- before we lift restrictions. Those restrictions are imposed by state governors, so it is unclear how much authority Trump can exercise, although certainly his advice would carry weight.

One of the people weighing in on the question, surprisingly, was Attorney General William Barr. In an interview yesterday on the Fox News Channel, he warned that “we need to be very careful that the draconian measures that are being adopted are fully justified.”

Barr said much more in that interview. He told FNC personality Laura Ingraham that the president was right to fire the Intelligence Community’s Inspector General, Michael Atkinson, and that the investigation into Russia’s intervention in the 2016 election had no basis and was an effort to “sabotage the presidency.” Indeed, he said, it was “one of the greatest travesties in American history.” The inspector general of the Department of Justice, Michael Horowitz, concluded that the investigation was legitimate and that the FBI did not act with political bias. Barr has appointed his own special inspector, John Durham, to reexamine the issue. Barr continued: “My own view is that the evidence shows that… there is something far more troubling here, and we’re going to get to the bottom of it.”

For all that the administration appears to be consolidating power, there were signs that Trump is afraid. A new CNN poll shows presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden leading him by 53% to 42%. In the New York Times today, Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman wrote a piece entitled: “Trump Keeps Talking. Some Republicans Don’t Like What They’re Hearing.” The subtitle read: “Aides and allies increasing believe the president’s daily briefings are hurting him more than helping, and are urging him to let his medical experts take center stage.” Yesterday, the conservative Republican group The Lincoln Project endorsed Biden, tweeting “As America contends with unprecedented loss, we need a leader who can steady the ship, heal our common wounds, and lead us into our next national chapter. Joe Biden has the humanity, empathy and steadiness we need in a leader.” The Lincoln project has already begun airing devastating attacks on the president.

And in California, Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom announced that he was done begging for supplies and was going to use the purchasing power of California as a “nation-state” to get its own supplies, perhaps even “exporting” them to other states. These terms suggest that Newsom has decided to stand up to the administration once and for all with a threat to follow through on the state’s rights the Republicans have championed when it suited their agenda. This will complicate Trump’s political life, especially if other wealthy states follow suit.

But for all this news, the thing that jumped out at me today was an op-ed published last night in the Washington Post by Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri. In it, Hawley calls for Congress to invest in America by covering 80% of wages for US workers, offering bonuses for rehiring workers, strengthening supply chains at home, and cracking down on Wall Street profiteering. He wants anti-trust enforcement and corporate transparency rules. This op-ed reads to me like Hawley thinks the radical anti-government fever that took over the Republican Party in the last generation is going to break under Trump, and Hawley is betting that a political future, even for a Republican senator, depends on embracing government activism.

That is news indeed.

[milliefink]

April 10, 2020 (Friday)

The number of known coronavirus cases in the U.S. today topped 500,000, with death tolls Friday evening at 18,637. At least two thousand people died here of Covid-19 today. While infections and deaths appear to be leveling off in New York, it appears the worst is yet to come elsewhere, including Texas and Florida.

Nonetheless, this week the stock market rallied from its decline of the past few weeks, as investors looked past the skyrocketing number of unemployment claims of almost 17 million in the past three weeks and instead focused on Federal Reserve plans to provide up to $2.3 trillion in loans to support businesses and local governments. Investors bet that a recovery will be quicker than looked possible two weeks ago, and their investments made the Dow Jones Industrial Average rise about almost 13% this week, one of its best weeks in history.

In a briefing today, Trump again pushed the idea of “reopening” the economy in the next few weeks, contrary to the medical advisors’ advice. He insisted he has “absolute authority” to force states to end social distancing and reopen shuttered businesses. (He doesn’t. States are currently shuttered under the orders of governors and local officials.)

Trump and his economic advisors seem to think that the president’s announcement that it is time to end social distancing and restart the economy, accepting the consequent increase in deaths, will help Trump’s popularity. But Trump’s blustering briefings are actually hurting his poll numbers rather than helping them. While he talks to the cameras, state governors are emerging as the nation’s leaders in this crisis, with approval ratings about 27% higher than Trump’s. And, as Paul Waldman noted in the Washington Post this evening, the governors who earn high marks are not the ones who have downplayed the crisis and refused to take necessary precautions. They are the ones who took strong steps early, and are being honest with their citizens.

This pattern has nothing to do with party. Democratic governors who have taken the coronavirus seriously are popular. According to an ABC News-Ipsos poll released today, governors like New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, Washington state Governor Jay Inslee, and California Governor Gavin Newsom are all popular, at 81%, 74%, and 79% respectively. But Republicans who have bucked the president are at least as popular as their Democratic colleagues. Maryland’s Governor Larry Hogan and Ohio’s Governor Mike DeWine, both Republicans, were proactive in shutting down their states while the president was downplaying the seriousness of the virus. Now Hogan’s approval rating is at 84% and DeWine’s at 83%. Trump’s approval is 33% in Maryland and 49% in Ohio. In Kentucky, a Republican stronghold, Democratic Governor Andy Beshear shut down his state quickly and has given popular factual daily briefings. Elected by just 5,000 votes last November, he now enjoys an 81% approval rate.

The popularity of politicians who are giving their constituents bad news and asking sacrifices of them seems to me to reveal a public craving for honesty from its politicians after three years of gaslighting. We are tired of having the ground shifting incomprehensibly under us and most of us want facts and reason in the face of deadly pandemic rather than a constantly shifting narrative.

And on that front, Congress is trying to get to the bottom of the confusion over the seizure of medical supplies and their subsequent redistribution, apparently for political ends. The heads of two House committees— the Committee on Homeland Security and the Committee on Oversight and Reform-- have asked Peter Gaynor, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to explain the seizure of medical supplies from states. They have also asked him to clarify Jared Kushner’s role in handling supplies, especially given rumors that distribution depends on personal connections. They have asked FEMA to provide all documents related to these two issues by April 15.

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[milliefink]

April 11, 2020 (Saturday)

As the novel coronavirus has burned its way across America, it has highlighted the searing inequality that has lurked just below the surface of the economic boom of the past generation. It has revealed that self-serving politicians are indifferent to the lives of their constituents, that racial disparities in healthcare and poverty have created a deadly caste system, and that political partisanship has become so toxic that some people would literally rather die than listen to leadership from a member of another party.

At the same time, the pandemic has also revealed the extraordinary character of ordinary people, who have sacrificed their jobs, their personal freedoms, and even their lives to save both their neighbors and strangers they will never know. It has shown that our essential workers are not CEOs, but rather the farm workers and fishermen and janitors and teachers and postal carriers and tradespeople who keep society functioning. It has proved that reordering our priorities and adjusting our lives can renew the ailing planet.

When this deadly crisis passes, we will be faced with the task of building a new era. What it will look like is ours to choose.

In this year’s difficult season of liberation and rebirth, my best wishes to those who celebrate Passover, Easter, and the light overcoming the darkness.

[milliefink]

April 12, 2020 (Sunday)

Yesterday, the New York Times ran an op-ed by Elizabeth Goitein and Andrew Boyle of the highly-regarded Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School, calling our attention to the fact that Trump has at his disposal extraordinary emergency powers. The authors tell us what they have been able to discover about a highly classified series of documents called “presidential emergency action documents,” or PEADs.

These documents are drafts of laws, executive orders, and proclamations that could be used in case of emergency. The government began to hold these drafts during the Eisenhower administration out of fear that a nuclear attack would require an immediate response. We know very little about what is in them, but the declassification of a few of them has revealed that, if implemented, they would allow the president to arrest people at will, jail “subversive” citizens, and declare martial law.

While people are alarmed at the revelation that such PEADs exist, it’s actually no secret that the president can unleash extraordinary powers in times of emergency through other means. Even without the PEADs, the president can seize assets, have people arrested, shut down electronic communications, and so on, and there is little limit to how and when these powers can be used. Under the National Emergencies Act, passed in 1976, in any emergency declaration the president has to specify which powers he intends to use, and tell Congress every six months how much the government has spent on the emergency. Congress can override the president’s declaration and must reauthorize it every six months, and the emergency declaration expires after a year unless the president renews it. But the system has permitted “emergencies” to take root unchecked. Currently, more than thirty emergency declarations are in effect in America, and Congress has made no effort to end them.

Emergency powers are not necessarily a bad thing: a nation’s leader must be able to respond quickly to a crisis. The problem is the existence of emergency powers that have no legal guardrails. Indeed, the authors of the New York Times op-ed are not necessarily against the draft orders; they simply want Congress to oversee these secret PEADs.

And that’s the rub. The problem the op-ed identifies is not really the PEADs. The problem is that Trump is the man who has them at his disposal.

Throughout his presidency, Trump has worked to expand his power, and the novel coronavirus crisis is encouraging this inclination.

Just recently, he has fired the intelligence community inspector general Michael Atkinson, admitting openly that he did so to retaliate because Atkinson alerted House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff that then-acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire was withholding a whistleblower complaint that, by law, he had to turn over to Congress.

Trump has announced he will not comply with the oversight provisions in the $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief package.

His lawyers are currently arguing that the president and those who work for him do not have to comply with subpoenas to turn over his financial records to Congress or to a New York official investigation because the president is immune from a criminal investigation while in office—even if he shoots someone on Fifth Avenue (yes, one of the judges who rules on the issue asked about that, specifically).

Trump demands that White House officials praise him in public and won’t put up with criticism. Just tonight he retweeted a tweet calling for the firing of top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci, who recently said that the administration’s slow response to the novel coronavirus has cost lives.

Last week, complaining about the media coverage of his administration’s response to the novel coronavirus, he said that Democrats “want to make Trump look as bad as they can, because they want to try and win an election that they shouldn’t be allowed to win based on the fact that we have done a great job.”

“An election that they shouldn’t be allowed to win.”

It seems clear that emergency powers in the hands of such a man could enable him to destroy our democracy.

But here’s what’s key to remember: Our system has a built-in remedy for a president who abuses his power. Our Constitution requires Congress to check a runaway president. The House of Representatives is trying hard to do so, but the Republican Senate refuses.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has consistently supported Trump as he has attacked our democracy, and a terrific piece by Jane Mayer in the New Yorker today explores why. In a piece entitled “How Mitch McConnell Became Trump’s Enabler-in-Chief,” Mayer argues that McConnell is determined to wield power above all else, and believes that the only way to do that is to control huge financial resources to get his party’s candidates elected. To gather those resources, he needs to work with wealthy donors, including business leaders for whom he does favors.

McConnell is virtually shutting down Congress to avoid taking up anything that would upset Republican donors. At the end of 2019,” Mayer writes, “more than two hundred and seventy-five bills, passed by the House of Representatives with bipartisan support, were sitting dormant on McConnell’s desk.” These included an enormously popular bill for lowering the costs of prescription drugs, but McConnell, who gets more contributions from the pharmaceutical industry than any other senator, refused to take it up, saying he opposes “socialist price controls.” Political scientist Norm Ornstein of the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute says McConnell “will go down in history as one of the most significant people in destroying the fundamentals of our constitutional democracy.” He told Mayer, “There isn’t anyone remotely close. There’s nobody as corrupt, in terms of violating the norms of government.”

McConnell is no fan of Trump, but needs him. McConnell is enormously unpopular in his home state of Kentucky. Voters there love Trump, though, and McConnell’s ratings go up whenever he bolsters the president. So while he works to keep money flowing into the coffers of Republican Party leaders, McConnell is careful not to cross Trump, no matter what he does. In turn, his fellow Republicans cannot buck McConnell without losing access to the money and favors that will keep them in office.

It is indeed dangerous that Trump has such sweeping emergency powers at his disposal, but the problem is not the emergency powers. The problem is the president and the Republican senators, who could check Trump’s increasing authoritarianism at any time, if only they wanted to.

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[milliefink]

April 13, 2020 (Monday)

It might be fair to say that today’s events started on Saturday, when the New York Times published an in-depth examination of “Trump’s Failure on the Virus,” with the heading: “He Could Have Seen What Was Coming.” Six reporters dug into emails, interviews, documents, and reports to reveal that “the president was warned about the potential for a pandemic” beginning in January, “but that internal divisions, lack of planning and his faith in his own instincts led to a halting response.”

Also this weekend, Trump vowed to “reopen” the country, despite warnings from his public health advisors that ending measures to slow the rate of coronavirus infection could be deadly. He is eager to restart the economy, the health of which he sees as key to his reelection, by May 1. On Sunday night, he tweeted: “Governors, get your states testing programs & apparatus perfected. Be ready, big things are happening. No excuses! The Federal Government is there to help. We are testing. More than any country in the World. Also, gear up with Face Masks!” (We are not testing more than any country in the world.)

But while the president can order federal workers back to their jobs, decisions about state closures and public health belong to state governments, not the president, and state governors have been saying so. This morning, Trump tweeted: “For the purpose of creating conflict and confusion, some in the Fake News Media are saying that it is the Governors decision to open up the states, not that of the President of the United States & the Federal Government. Let it be fully understood that this is incorrect…. It is the decision of the President, and for many good reasons.” He has said that he would announce his “Opening the Country” economic task force Tuesday.

Alarmed at Trump’s repeated insistence that the nation needs to end the physical distancing that has slowed Covid-19, state governors on both the east and west coasts announced today they have made pacts to work as a unit to manage the return to normalcy “in a safe, strategic, responsible way,” based on facts and science, as California Governor Gavin Newsom put it. New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Rhode Island, and Connecticut in the East, and California, Washington, and Oregon in the West, have agreed to cooperate, and they have invited other states to join them.

This was a huge shot across Trump’s bow. He repeatedly told governors they were on their own to manage the coronavirus then set up a system in which the federal government often seized their supplies when they tried to do so. Last week, Newsom made it clear he was through trying to work with Trump. He referred to California as a nation-state and suggested he would work with other states to get medical supplies. Now states are organizing to operate without the president.

When he gave his briefing today, Trump was visibly angry at both the New York Times story and at the governors’ pact. He began by playing a video for the reporters that celebrated his handling of the coronavirus crisis and blamed the media for downplaying the seriousness of the pandemic in its early days. CBS News reporter Paula Reid pointed out “Your video had a complete gap. What did your administration do in February…?” She refused to let up. He called her fake. With 23,000 Americans dead from the coronavirus—that have been officially counted; many more are dying without an official diagnosis—Trump refused to admit he had made a single mistake. Instead, he blamed his predecessor, President Barack Obama, for the lack of masks in the strategic national stockpile and the lack of testing kits and insisted, “I saved tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of lives.”

Then he took on the question of whether he or the governors got to reopen the states. Trump repeatedly asserted that right was his, and his alone. “When somebody is President of the United States,” Trump said, “the authority is total.” When a reporter asked what provisions of the Constitution gives the president the power to open or close state economies, he could not name one, but answered: “Numerous—numerous provisions. We can give you a legal brief if you want.” “The federal government has absolute power. It has the power. As to whether or not I’ll use that power – we’ll see … I have the absolute right if I want to.” Trump’s repeated assertion of dictatorial power actually sounded desperate to me, as if he were trying to regain control of the governors. Trump does not, in fact, have the power to do anything he is asserting, and his bluster will not hold up unless the governors relent. Trump repeatedly emphasized that he had a great relationship with the state governors, and was hoping to be able to work with them.

There were other bad signs for the president today, too. The evening before last week’s election in Wisconsin, the US Supreme Court ruled that the election must go forward despite the fact that many absentee ballots had not been delivered and that the virus had forced closures of the majority of polling places in Democratic districts. At stake was a contested seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which will be deciding a key voter suppression case before the 2020 election. Wisconsin Republicans had worked hard to tilt the playing field to throw the election to their candidate. They failed. The Republican incumbent Daniel Kelly, appointed by Republican Governor Scott Walker and endorsed by Trump, lost badly to Democratic challenger Jill Karofsky. While the court will keep its conservative majority, Karofsky will likely help to kill the voter suppression measure. The triumph of a Democrat in this election, despite all the efforts to rig it, should worry Trump.

So should the fact that Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders today endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden for president. Sanders will have gotten concessions from Biden just as other candidates did, which should help the process of building a broad coalition for the Democrats in 2020. Also troublesome for the Republicans in 2020 is that Virginia Governor Ralph Northam has signed laws to expand voting in his state. Higher voting numbers help Democrats. “Voting is a fundamental right, and these new laws strengthen our democracy by making it easier to cast a ballot, not harder,” Northam said. “No matter who you are or where you live in Virginia, your voice deserves to be heard.”

The Supreme Court announced today it will hear the cases concerning Trump’s finances after all. The justices were supposed to hear oral arguments in March on the question of whether the president and his financial advisors must obey subpoenas from the House of Representatives and a New York prosecutor. Trump is arguing that a president cannot be investigated for criminal activity while in office. The case got postponed by the pandemic, but it’s now back on the table.

And finally, today NPR followed up the New York Times article with an investigation of how successful Trump has been in fulfilling the promises he made a month ago when he declared a national emergency to fight the spreading infections. It concluded that those promises were largely unfilled. Tonight the White House responded to the story, saying that the president had taken “bold and decisive actions” to lead the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.

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[dfaris]

Take all your overgrown infants away somewhere
And build them a home, a little place of their own.
The Fletcher Memorial
Home for Incurable Tyrants and Kings.

[milliefink]

April 14, 2020 (Tuesday)

There is little news from the day that cannot wait, so tonight’s is a good post to skip if you need a break from politics.

For the rest of you, there is a little news.

Late last night, Massachusetts joined the eastern consortium of states pledging to work together to end the coronavirus physical distancing orders. That’s a big deal because, as near as I can tell, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker is the first Republican to break ranks and join the coalition of states with Democratic governors. Baker is a highly popular Republican governor of a Democratic state who enjoys a favorability rating in the 70s. For him to join with the Democrats made sense—he is the popular governor of a state that dislikes the president—but it shows that Trump’s power over all Republicans is cracking.

This morning, Trump continued the fight between him and state governors who have decided to go their own way. “Tell the Democrat Governors that “Mutiny On The Bounty” was one of my all time favorite movies,” he tweeted. “A good old fashioned mutiny every now and then is an exciting and invigorating thing to watch, especially when the mutineers need so much from the Captain. Too easy!”

This was likely designed to gin up trouble. In the film Trump referenced, of course, Captain Bligh is a mentally unstable autocrat who rules by cruelty and whose men finally overthrow him, although they are hanged for their challenge to authority. Trump’s reference to it was likely just an attempt to stir up his opponents. Indeed, Trump’s talk yesterday about having absolute authority to do as he saw fit on the coronavirus shutdowns was probably the same: bluster to encourage his base to blame Democratic governors for shutting down the economy, rather than him for mismanaging the response to the coronavirus, when the economy continues to sputter over the summer.

Trump has no power to override the governors’ decisions about the health regulations of their states; the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution reserves to the states or the people all powers not enumerated in the Constitution, and there is nothing in the Constitution conferring the power Trump claims on the president. Even if he declares an emergency, it is unlikely the Supreme Court would back his commandeering of state governments.

His bluff called by the governors, today at his briefing Trump walked back his statements about “total authority” and instead said he was working with the governors, who would be reopening their states very early, he said, maybe earlier than he had originally wanted.

Stymied by the governors, Trump pivoted to attack another target over which he does have control. He blamed the World Health Organization for the coronavirus pandemic and is withholding US funds from it even as it is in the midst of fighting Covid-19. He has accused the WHO of doing precisely what opponents accuse him of: failing to identify the crisis early, wasting time, and shielding China from blame in the spread of coronavirus, although of course the WHO both identified and warned about the disease, and provided test kits the US declined to use, pushing our response to the coronavirus weeks behind that of other nations. Trump says he is withholding funds “while a review is conducted to assess the World Health Association’s role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus.”

We also learned today that stimulus checks from the coronavirus relief package are being delayed so Trump’s name can be printed on them. This is unprecedented: normally, Treasury checks are signed by civil servants so they remain non-partisan. When the Treasury delivered economic rebate checks under the George W Bush administration in 2001, for example, the White House asked the IRS to mention to taxpayers that the administration was “giving you your money back” and the IRS commissioner refused, saying such a move was too political.

Perhaps the biggest news today is that former President Barack Obama endorsed his former Vice President, Joe Biden, for president. The endorsement itself is a no-brainer, but Obama did not stop there. He praised Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders for moving the national political conversation to address economic inequality, and went on to call for Democrats to move the country toward a more progressive society. Republicans are “not interested in progress,” he said, “they’re interested in power.” “Our country’s future depends on this election,” he said. “This crisis has reminded us that… good government matters.” He called “Americans of all political stripes” to reclaim American principles.

(And with that, it appears I will be in bed before midnight for the first time since I can remember! Woo, hoo!)

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[milliefink]

Yan, the director of the Center for Skeletal Muscle Research at UVA’s Robert M. Berne Cardiovascular Research Center, compiled an in-depth review of existing medical research, including his own, looking at an antioxidant known as “extracellular superoxide dismutase” (EcSOD). This potent antioxidant hunts down harmful free radicals, protecting our tissues and helping to prevent disease. Our muscles naturally make EcSOD, secreting it into the circulation to allow binding to other vital organs, but its production is enhanced by cardiovascular exercise.

A decrease in the antioxidant is seen in several diseases, including acute lung disease, ischemic heart disease and kidney failure, Yan’s review shows. Lab research in mice suggests that blocking its production worsens heart problems, while increasing it has a beneficial effect. A decrease in EcSOD is also associated with chronic conditions such as osteoarthritis.

Research suggests that even a single session of exercise increases production of the antioxidant, prompting Yan to urge people to find ways to exercise even while maintaining social distancing. “We cannot live in isolation forever,” he said. “Regular exercise has far more health benefits than we know. The protection against this severe respiratory disease condition is just one of the many examples.”

[milliefink]

April 15, 2020 (Wednesday)

The biggest news today was Trump’s announcement that, unless the Senate resumes confirming his nominees, he will adjourn both chambers of Congress and make recess appointments to fill the slots. Trump claimed he has “constitutional authority” to do this, likely referring to Article 2, Section 3 of the Constitution, which deals with the relationship of the president to Congress. That section gives the president the power to convene Congress in an emergency—as presidents have done—and also to adjourn them “to such time as he shall think proper.” But there is another clause in that sentence providing that he can adjourn them only “in case of disagreement between [the Houses], with respect to the time of adjournment.” There is no such disagreement between the House of Representatives and the Senate; they have agreed to end the session on January 3, 2021.

Trump is unhappy because members of Congress have left Washington due to the pandemic, and the Houses are staying open through “pro forma” sessions. These sessions are “in form only,” and consist of members showing up simply to indicate that their Chamber is still open. They have attracted political controversy for years because these sessions stop a president from making recess appointments.

Trump wants to make such appointments to insert into office people who would not win Senate approval, like his current nominee for Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe (R-TX), who had to withdraw the first time Trump considered him because he was unqualified. “The current practice of leaving town while conducting phony pro forma sessions is a dereliction of duty that the American people cannot afford during this crisis,” Trump said at the day’s coronavirus briefing. “It’s a scam.”

Most of the vacancies that require Senate confirmation are empty not because the Senate is refusing to take them up, but because Trump has not nominated anyone.

Because Senate confirmations take time, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has been focusing on confirming Trump’s judges. Under Trump, the Republican Senate has been packing the courts with judges sympathetic both to business interests and to a strong theory of the unitary executive. The Republican Party is using the government to promote business and protect the wealthy, and they are cementing their cause in the courts where judges can protect their ideology even if the American people turn emphatically against it. To this end, McConnell blocked President Barack Obama’s judicial appointments—including one to the Supreme Court—and has rushed through Trump’s, enabling Trump to appoint almost as many federal judges in three years as Obama did in eight.

Trump’s judges also tend to adhere to a strong theory of the unitary executive, a theory that puts the president out of reach of any check from Congress or the courts because that would impinge on the separation of powers, and any check from the FBI or the Department of Justice because those are within the Executive branch. With today’s announcement that the Supreme Court on May 12 will take up the question of whether or not Congress or a state prosecutor has the power to investigate Trump’s finances, his need for judges who believe in a virtually untouchable executive is likely on his mind.

Trump’s belief that the courts will side with him was clear in the briefing. “They know they’ve been warned and they’ve been warned right now. If they don’t approve it, then we’re going to go this route and we’ll probably be challenged in court and we’ll see who wins,” he told reporters.

Still, this was likely an empty threat. The unprecedented step of trying to adjourn Congress would spark a fierce backlash among lawmakers of his own party, among others. Trump’s sudden attention to an often-forgotten power in the Constitution’s Article 2, Section 3 would undoubtedly call to mind the famous duty the same section requires of the president: “he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”

Trump’s dramatic assertion of his authority is likely in part because he remains determined to “reopen” the country against the advice of health professionals, and his insistence yesterday that he had “absolute authority” over the states to do so met with a swift backlash. Reports say that Trump thinks a recovering economy is his best hope for reelection, and is keen to get us back up and running.

But business leaders he has recruited as part of the effort are warning him that the country needs more testing before Americans will feel safe enough to resume normal lives. “Unless people feel safe and secure and confident around the virus, the economic impact will continue in some way, shape or form,” Goldman Sachs chief Executive David Solomon has told the president. Polls bear Solomon out: a Fox News poll this week showed that 80% of voters want the federal government to issue a national stay-at-home order, and 47% of them thought Trump was not taking the virus seriously enough. “We have the best tests in the world,” Trump said today, then told reporters that states were “much better equipped” than the federal government to perform such tests. (There is, in fact, a great shortage of tests.)

Still, Trump’s right-wing advisors insist that the economy will only deteriorate unless the economy opens back up and business resumes. Reopening, they say, will cause coronavirus deaths but prevent suicides. This message is resonating among Trump’s supporters, who blame Democrats for overreacting to the pandemic.

People showing Trump signs and flying Confederate flags organized “Operation Gridlock” in Michigan’s capital of Lansing to protest the shelter-at-home orders lasting until April 30 imposed by Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat. Michigan has the third-highest number of Covid-19 cases among the states and the lockdown has lowered infections, but Republican state legislators and congress members have criticized the sweeping order. Drivers of several thousand cars blocked the Lansing streets to protest what they see as an infringement of their liberty.

This dynamic enables Trump to divert attention from his mishandling of the virus by blaming Democrats for the faltering economy. Trump frequently attacks Whitmer, and today’s protesters shouted “Lock her up.” (Interestingly, CNN ran a story today noting that the world’s female leaders have been far more effective at managing the coronavirus than the world’s male leaders.)

The Michigan protesters say they are worried about paying their bills, which should bring attention to today’s news from the nonpartisan congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, noting that Senate Republicans added a provision to the $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief bill that wealthy investors, especially real estate investors, have wanted since 2017. In addition to the more than $500 billion already in the package, the provision will allow unlimited deductions for businesses losses, a rule that is retroactive for the past five years and which will cost taxpayers about $90 billion in 2020 alone. More than 80% of the benefits of the change will go to those who earn more than $1 million a year. Alan D. Viard of the right-leaning think tank the American Enterprise Institute wrote that the measure “gives businesses badly needed liquidity during the coronavirus pandemic while also reducing the tax penalty on risky business investments.”

An op-ed in the Washington Post today from the leaders of the Lincoln Project urged Republicans to desert Trump in 2020. Five prominent Republicans (or former Republicans), including lawyer George Conway III and Republican strategist Steve Schmidt wrote “We’ve never backed a Democrat for president. But Trump must be defeated.” Their op-ed praised former Vice President Joe Biden for putting country over party, and called Trump Biden’s “photonegative.” “Unlike Trump,” they wrote, “Biden is not an international embarrassment, nor does he demonstrate malignant narcissism. A President Biden will steady the ship of state and begin binding up the wounds of a fractured country. We have faith that Biden will surround himself by advisers of competence, expertise and wisdom, not an endless parade of disposable lackeys.”

They went on: “We are in a transcendent and transformative period of American history. The nation cannot afford another four years of chaos, duplicity and Trump’s reality distortion. This country is crying out for a president with a spine stiffened by tragedy, a worldview shaped by experience and a heart whose compass points to decency.”

Tomorrow Trump will unveil new federal guidelines to begin the process of reopening the country.

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Also available as a free newsletter at heathercoxrichardson.substack.com

[Mindysan33]

@milliefink

The unprecedented step of trying to adjourn Congress would spark a fierce backlash among lawmakers of his own party

I hope so, but we keep thinking that, and they keep backing him, no matter what…

@milliefink

Interestingly, CNN ran a story today noting that the world’s female leaders have been far more effective at managing the coronavirus than the world’s male leaders.

But also…

[milliefink]

@Mindysan33

But also…

Do you object to all uses of “female” for women, both noun and adjective? I consider the former a problem, but not the latter, especially when used by a (ha) female.

[Mindysan33]

It’s more a joke in this case… I don’t really have much of a problem how she used it (especially since she used male as well).

[milliefink]

April 16, 2020 (Thursday)

It seems to me that lately we get a day with relatively little news, then we get swamped, then there is little. After yesterday’s firehose, today had only one piece of news that jumped out.

First, some follow-ups to older stories.

This evening, as promised, Trump announced new federal guidelines for reopening the country. After all the brouhaha all week about his “absolute authority” to reopen the states, the guidelines are simply vague recommendations for reopening businesses, schools, and restaurants and so on, based on the criteria doctors and state governors had emphasized: testing, cases, and hospital capacity. Trump also acknowledged that governors were in charge of the situation in their states; he has abdicated any role for the federal government, despite the need for the widespread testing he promised weeks ago.

While we have tested only about 1% of our population, there is apparently no national testing strategy. There is still a serious shortage of tests, and Trump has refused to use the Defense Production Act to get manufacturers to produce them. He says states should handle testing themselves. “You’re going to call your own shots,” Trump told governors today.

And they are doing so. Today a bi-partisan group of governors from Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky announced that, like the governors who have made pacts in the West and the East, they will work together to reopen their states. With some of these governors under pressure from protesters aligned with Trump in their belief that there is no need for physical distancing, the Midwest governors’ group made it a point to say “We will make decisions based on facts, science, and recommendations from experts in health care, business, labor, and education.”

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican who is the head of the National Governors Association, said today that reopening the country right now is not an option. “It’d really be the worst possible time for us to try to put more people out there and endanger them,” he said this morning.

In other news, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson rejected Trump friend Roger Stone’s appeal for a new trial on the grounds that the jury forewoman was tainted. In November, a jury convicted Stone of lying to Congress. Jackson pointed out that there was no evidence the juror was biased or had lied when she was chosen for the jury. The judge pointed out that Stone’s lawyers had had plenty of time to disqualify the forewoman at trial if they had wished. Jackson has ordered Stone to report to prison when told to do so by the U.S. Probation Office.

If all that information simply wraps up stories we already knew, there was one story that jumped out. It, too, is a follow-up to an earlier story: that of the Wisconsin election of last week. At stake in that election was a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, a crucial seat because there is a case before the court concerning the purging of 240,000 voters from the Wisconsin rolls before the 2020 election. Wisconsin is a key state for Electoral College victories, and Trump won it in 2016 by fewer than 23,000 votes.

The court’s split on the voter purge case stands at 3-3, and Daniel Kelly, who had been appointed to a seat on the court by Republican Scott Walker, recused himself from voting until the election had passed. Despite a transparent attempt to rig the election in his favor by insisting on holding the election in person despite the pandemic, thus driving down the turnout that favors Democrats, Kelly lost. His Democratic opponent, Jill Karofsky, won 55.3% of the vote to his 44.7%. Ignoring this overwhelming message from voters, Kelly is now indicating he will vote on the case which is once again before the court, arguing that since the election is over, there is no longer any need to recuse himself. He has asked the parties involved in the case to voice their opinions on whether or not he should participate.

That the Wisconsin voter purge is still on the table after last week’s dramatic vote is a dangerous sign. In a democracy, it is not legitimate for members of a political party to rig the mechanics of elections so that their opponents cannot win. Trying to do so shows a fundamental rejection of the principle of equality in favor of a belief that some people are better than others, and should retain power by any means necessary.

“I should like to know, if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle, and making exceptions to it, where will it stop?” asked Abraham Lincoln in 1858. In his era, southern slaveholders argued that a few rich men were better than the “mudsills,” the ordinary workers, who made up the vast majority of the nation. Those wealthy leaders should rule the country, they said, because if mudsills had political power, they would demand more of the capital their labor produced. In 1859, in response to their argument, Lincoln articulated a powerful vision of human equality “which opens the way for all” in a speech at an agricultural fair in Milwaukee.

“I suppose… I shall not be mistaken, in assuming as a fact, that the people of Wisconsin” preferred his vision to that of a world in which a few men ruled, he concluded.

---

Also available as a free newsletter at heathercoxrichardson.substack.com

[milliefink]

April 17, 2020 (Friday)

Today’s main story was Trump’s morning tweets:

“LIBERATE MINNESOTA!”

“LIBERATE MICHIGAN!”

“LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!”

The media has been on fire ever since. A president advocating a violent overthrow of three states with Democratic governors is unprecedented, and quite possibly illegal—Mary McCord, acting US assistant attorney general for national security from 2016-2017 pointed out that “advocating overthrow of government” is a federal crime. It is also a state crime in Minnesota, Michigan, and Virginia.

What is behind these tweets? After all, just last evening, Trump announced that it was not yet time to open state businesses, and that state governors should make their own decisions about when to restart their economies during the novel coronavirus pandemic. So why is he now telling people to overthrow those governments?

It is, in part, diversion. The response of the Trump administration to the pandemic crisis has been bumbling, inadequate, and quite possibly corrupt—the apparently political distribution of crucial medical supplies and now the Payroll Protection Program loans designed to help small businesses is drawing scrutiny. The economy, on which Trump pinned his hopes for reelection, is in free fall. As his approval rating drops, Trump wants to energize voters to focus not on his handling of the coronavirus, but instead on blaming Democratic leaders for the economic crisis.

But there is a larger story behind Trump’s incendiary tweets. Since the 1980s, the Republican Party has retained power by insisting that its leaders were defending America from dangerous “liberals,” who wanted to redistribute wealth from hardworking, religious, usually white, taxpayers, to “special interests.” In the years since President Ronald Reagan, there has been less and less nuance in that narrative and, by the time of President Barack Obama, no room to compromise. The division of the nation into “us” versus “them” has come to override any attempt at actual problem solving; Republican lawmakers simply address national problems with what their ideological narrative requires: cuts to taxes, regulation, and social welfare programs.

The coronavirus pandemic requires us to unite for our own safety, but members of the Republican Party can only see the world in partisan terms. Boston College political scientist David Hopkins notes that “The contemporary Republican Party has been built to wage ideological and partisan conflict more than to manage the government or solve specific social problems.” Republicans remain so consumed by their war on Democrats and liberals they cannot fathom working together to fight the pandemic.

Instead, they have continued to prioritize “owning the libs” over public safety. After first calling concern about the virus a Democratic hoax, then refusing to shut down states, Republicans are now calling Democratic governors trying to limit social contact authoritarians. Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, the man who oversees our entire intelligence community-- the community that repeatedly tried to get Trump to take the novel coronavirus seriously in January and February-- tweeted a picture of the US Constitution with the heading: “SIGNED PERMISSION SLIP TO LEAVE YOUR HOUSE.”

Trump’s tweets are part of this larger political narrative, one that the Fox News Channel is instrumental in driving. The protest this week against Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan was not organic; it was organized by a political group, the Michigan Conservative Coalition, and it garnered attention far beyond its small numbers thanks to right-wing media. FNC personality Jeanine Pirro said of the Michigan protesters: “God bless them, it’s going to happen all over the country.” FNC personality Laura Ingraham tweeted a video of it, saying: “Time to get your freedom back.” FNC personality Tucker Carlson interviewed a representative of the MCC on his show; the person got another interview on “Fox & Friends” the next day. Indeed, Trump’s “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” tweet came just after a program on the Fox News Channel ran a story on protests at the Minnesota governor’s office by a group called “Liberate Minnesota.”

The goal of this enterprise is to keep Republicans in office in 2020. The latest filing for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) leadership committee shows that four of the top five donors are executives for the Fox News Channel. Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch, Viet Dinh, FNC’s Legal Adviser and Policy Director, and the president of 21st Century Fox all gave $20,600.

Like Republican policies in general right now, though, the attack on physical distancing is not popular. Polls show that at least two-thirds of Americans are worried that states will lift restrictions on physical distancing too quickly, while only 32% worry they will reopen too slowly. While no one wants the economy to crash, we are generally in agreement that lives should come first, and that to reopen the economy we need widespread testing, low case numbers, and sufficient hospital capacity, just as Trump himself said yesterday.

Without those conditions, getting people to reengage in the public sphere is going to be a hard sell. But we don’t have the tests we need, and the federal government has abdicated its role in obtaining them. (A call on Friday with Vice President Mike Pence about the lack of testing left Senate Democrats “livid.” And even-keeled Independent Maine Senator Angus King reportedly said “I have never been so mad about a phone call in my life.”)

And so we are back to Trump’s central political problem: the pandemic requires a party and a president that can unite with Democrats and can implement policies to solve a deadly crisis. That is not today’s Republican Party or its current leader.

Stirring up violence against Democratic governors would address the problem by feeding the culture wars that stoke base Republican voters. The nation would appear bitterly divided, and the need for a strong leader to restore order would seem apparent to those who might otherwise be sliding away from the erratic president. As any powerful person does, Trump wields influence over certain of his supporters, and his words are terribly dangerous. When he repeatedly called CNN “the enemy of the people,” for example, someone sent bombs to CNN’s studios.

Former Republican governor of New Jersey Christine Todd Whitman tweeted: “This [president] is now truly getting out of control. In talking about “liberating” the states, he is using language that could well lead to rioting. No one has done more to undermine our constitution and destroy our country’s values than [Trump].”

But while Trump’s supporters are trying to hold on to power by sparking a dramatic struggle with Democratic leaders, it may be that the coronavirus has the last word. While cases are leveling off in states that shut down, new hotspots are emerging in states that do not have stay-at-home orders. In the past week, cases in Oklahoma rose 53%. Arkansas cases went up 60%, Nebraska’s 74%, and Iowa’s 82%. South Dakota’s cases went up by 205%.

[milliefink]

April 18, 2020 (Saturday)

I’m too tired tonight to be coherent. Don’t worry, though, there was no news that cannot wait until tomorrow.

Just one thing:

I hear from folks again and again that they are tired, unsettled, and scared.

That is pretty darned reasonable. When I first read about the coronavirus in early January, I wrote about it and then deleted the paragraph because I decided my readers were already too stressed out to have to worry about a deadly disease and, really, it was too dystopian to think that, on top of everything else going on, we might have to face a pandemic.

And now, here we are.

And still, as our deaths mount, the rest of our crises have not backed off. News continues to come relentlessly of political maneuvers that seem to threaten our democracy, our society, and our planet.

It is altogether reasonable to be concerned.

But here is the thing:

Being concerned is half the battle. It means you’re paying attention, and that, in turn, means you can stand up for what you believe in. It’s when no one is paying attention that we are helpless to change the course of events.

It is also true that while politics, society, and the economy throughout history always change, our family, our friends, and our faith-- in democracy, religion, or whatever you believe in—continue to abide.

Enjoy a respite from the craziness. I’ll be back up and running tomorrow.

[milliefink]

April 19, 2020 (Sunday)

The big news for two days has been the “protests” of state governors’ stay-at-home orders and mandatory business closings to try to contain the novel coronavirus which, as of today, has taken more than 40,000 American lives. The protests started last week in Lansing, Michigan, on Wednesday, April 15, when demonstrators descended on the state Capitol to protest the “statists” they say are destroying the economy and taking away their liberties. On Friday morning, Trump tweeted that people needed to “LIBERATE” Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia, all states with Democratic governors. Then, Saturday, the Fox News Channel advertised “emerging rallies/protests to reopen economy” and, lo and behold, there they were on television tonight: protests in Colorado, Illinois, Florida, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Washington.

These protests are a classic example of trying to control politics by controlling the national narrative.

The protests are backed by the same conservative groups that are working for Trump’s reelection. The Michigan Conservative Council, one of the organizers of the Michigan protest, was founded by a pro-Trump couple active in state Republican politics. Another organizer was the Michigan Freedom Fund, whose leader, Greg McNeilly is a Republican political operative who worked for Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’s family.

Protests in Wisconsin were organized by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, founded by Republican pro-Trump economists Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore, and by FreedomWorks, a training group for conservative activists that grew out of a political organization founded by David and Charles Koch. FreedomWorks is most famous for its organization of the Tea Party movement in 2009. Its president, Adam Brandon, told Vox reporter Jane Coaston that “this has the same DNA [as] the Tea Party movement.” It “just so happened a lot of our activists were organizers.”

The Fox News Channel personalities cheered on the events, with Jeanine Pirro saying of the Michigan protesters: “God bless them, it’s going to happen all over the country;” Laura Ingraham tweeting a video of it, saying: “Time to get your freedom back;” and Tucker Carlson interviewing a representative of the Michigan Conservative Council on his show before the person did another interview on “Fox & Friends” the next day. On Saturday, FNC ran graphics showing where protests were planned across the country from April 18 to May 2.

These are not spontaneous, grassroots protests. They are political operations designed to divert attention from the Trump administration’s poor response to the pandemic. Even more, though, they are designed to keep the American public divided so that we do not protest the extraordinary economic inequality the pandemic has highlighted.

These protests have diverted the national conversation by turning a national crisis into partisan division along the lines the Republican Party has developed since the 1980s. But in reality there are few actual protesters: two-thirds of Americans are worried that lockdowns will end too early, not too late. People began to separate physically even before governors required it, and say they will not stop distancing until they are certain they are safe, no matter the official government stance.

Still, the focus on partisan division is slowing down talk of the administration’s failure to provide the testing we need before it is safe to reopen businesses and stop the stay-at-home orders. Testing enables public health officials to identify and shut down hot spots; we need hundreds of thousands more tests a day. Trump says the states have enough tests to reopen. “They don’t want to use all of the capacity that we’ve created. We have tremendous capacity,” Trump said during a White House briefing. “They know that. The governors know that. The Democrat governors know that. They’re the ones that are complaining.” But Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, the chair of the National Governors Association and a Republican, says this is “absolutely false.” Hogan told CNN today “It’s not accurate to say there’s plenty of testing out there and the governors should just get it done. That’s just not being straightforward.”

The change of subject protects not just Trump but also the ideology at the heart of his Republican Party. Since 1981, Republicans have argued that the economy depends on wealthy businessmen who know best how to arrange the economy—the makers-- and that it is vital to protect their interests. Under their policies, wealth in America has moved upward. The pandemic has highlighted how these policies have removed economic security for ordinary people. They cannot pay their bills, and they might well turn against an ideology that uses our tax dollars to bail out corporations while they must risk their lives to pay their rent.

The $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief package highlighted the protection of big business at the expense of ordinary Americans. It expanded unemployment benefits with an additional $600 per week for up to four months and provided a one-time $1200 payment per person for those who make less than $70,000. It also provided for $350 billion in loans for small businesses to cover expenses. But those benefits are meager compared to the policies of other developed countries, which are covering 75-90% of the wages of workers affected by shutdowns. Unemployment benefits are hard to get in general as systems are overwhelmed, but in Florida, where the $275 cap for unemployment is among the lowest in the country, former Republican Governor Rick Scott deliberately made the unemployment application process difficult to keep the unemployment numbers low. “The system was designed to fail,” an advisor to current Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told reporters. Now, “it’s a sh— sandwich.”

The $350 billion in loans for small businesses, known as the Paycheck Protection Plan (PPP), is already gone. Its distribution raised eyebrows. Handed out on a first-come, first-served basis, the loans often went to big businesses rather than small ones. Ruth’s Chris Steak Houses, for example, which has more than 5000 employees and had $468 million in revenue last year, got $20 million (the limit was supposed to be $10 million, but it applied from two divisions). The allocation of the money was also uneven, leading to accusations of political favoritism, although there is still too little public information about the loans to verify what really happened.

The benefits for big businesses and the wealthy from the bill are clearer. Democrats had to battle to get oversight for the $500 billion allocated for big businesses, but when Trump signed the bill he issued a statement saying he would not honor the oversight provisions. He said the administration “would not treat spending decisions as dependent on prior consultation with or the approval of congressional committees.” Then we learned that Senate Republicans had inserted into the bill a tax loophole that will deliver a $70.3 billion tax cut in 2020 to just 43,000 individuals, 82% of whom make more than $1 million a year. The argument for the cut was to free up financial liquidity during the pandemic, but Republicans have wanted the change since the 2017 tax cut passed. The tax break “is so generous that its total cost is more than total new funding for all hospitals in America and more than the total provided to all state and local governments,” Representative Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) said.

For people eager to retain our current government and its policies, ginning up a media frenzy over alleged partisan divisions is a welcome diversion. It helps distract us from the growing sense that our government “of the people, by the people, and for the people” has lost its way.

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Also available as a free newsletter at heathercoxrichardson.substack.com

[milliefink]

April 20, 2020 (Monday)

There was a moment in President Herbert Hoover’s term when it began to seem as if he could do nothing right. When he was elected in 1928 with 58.2% of the vote to his opponent’s 40.8%, Americans thought their prosperity was inexhaustible, and they credited Hoover and his Republican Party for that prosperity. Then the stock market crashed in 1929 and sparked the Great Depression. At first, people hoped Hoover could handle the crisis. But he couldn’t, and his party lectured that the government needed to reassure investors rather than help ordinary people. Americans turned on Hoover. Eventually, they claimed that dogs instinctively disliked him and flowers wilted when he walked by. By the end of his term, people blamed him for everything, even things outside his control.

The story of how the tide turned against Hoover came to mind today, as one story after another skewered President Trump.

There were three big stories during the day. The first was the lockdown protests around the country, which appear to have been orchestrated by Trump supporters to mobilize key right-wing groups. Their goal is not to defend the president, but to make it look like Democrats are unpopular—a key distinction showing just how weak a hand Trump’s campaign thinks he currently holds.

We knew the Michigan protests were organized by groups largely funded by Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’s family, and that the activist groups FreedomWorks was behind others. Today we learned that five of the largest Facebook groups protesting restrictions were set up by Chris, Ben, Aaron, and Matthew Dorr, four brothers whose pro-gun and anti-abortion Facebook groups bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. The brothers not only solicit donations and memberships in their enterprises, but also harvest emails and user data. Minnesota’s Senate Republican Caucus called them “scammers.” Ben Dorr says claims that his work is a scam is “fake news” and that he will continue doing what he does.

Despite being pushed by personalities on the Fox News Channel, and despite the president’s encouragement, the protests have not been well attended. Most Americans do not feel safe ending physical distancing until there is enough testing to identify and shut down hot spots before they spread, and we are still woefully short of tests. A recent poll shows that 60% of Americans oppose the protests, while only 22% support them. Even Republicans oppose the protests, 47% to 36%. Only 25% of Americans agree with Trump’s tweets calling for people to “LIBERATE” Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia, all states with Democratic governors.

Another story today got more traction than the protests. The clamor over the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) is growing, as it appears much of the money went to large corporations rather than the small businesses it was supposed to help. A company based in California has already filed a class-action lawsuit against the Wells Fargo bank charging it with prioritizing businesses applying for large amounts rather than processing them on a first-come, first-served basis, as the government established was the correct procedure.

Restaurant and hotel chains did particularly well in the program, and Shake Shack, which is worth more than $1.5 billion, is returning the $10 million it received. Its founder and CEO both said they had no idea the program would run out of money and understood why people were upset. “If this act were written for small businesses,” they wrote in an online letter, “how is it possible that so many independent restaurants whose employees needed just as much help were unable to receive funding?”

Although it was money not allocated through the PPP, almost $8.7 million in federal aid for coronavirus relief will go to Harvard despite its $40 billion endowment. Harvard says its endowment is largely restricted in the way it can be used, and that the coronavirus has caused “substantial costs” to colleges and universities.

Taken together, these stories of the coronavirus relief package reinforce that people think Trump’s government is protecting the wealthy at the expense of ordinary Americans. The letter from the heads of Shake Shack shows a keen sense of which way the wind is blowing.

A third big story was the dramatic collapse of the price of oil. The worldwide economic shutdown has killed the demand for oil, while a production war between Saudi Arabia and Russia has flooded the market. Today, briefly, the price of oil futures went into the negative numbers, an astonishing and unprecedented event that bodes ill in the short term for the U.S. economy. Although the oil markets have been almost entirely outside of Trump’s control, this price crash reflected badly on him because he had publicized as a personal victory an April 12 agreement between Russia and Saudi Arabia, along with other oil producing nations, that was supposed to prop up the price of oil and save American jobs.

Obviously, it did neither, but I thought of Hoover and his wilting flowers when Bob McNally, the head of the Rapidan Energy Group, tweeted that nothing like this price collapse has ever happened before, not even in the Depression or the early years of the Civil War, the lowest points for petroleum before this. Since the first commercial oil well in the United States was drilled in 1859, and the Civil War began in 1861, it seems a bit of a stretch to hang that crisis around Trump’s neck.

Apparently, I am not alone in thinking that people are turning against the president. After the day’s three big stories, tonight, just after 10:00 pm, Trump tweeted: “In light of the attack from the Invisible Enemy, as well as the need to protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens, I will be signing an Executive Order to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States!” It is not clear that such an Executive Order would be either legal or possible, but that’s not the point: immigration restriction is the key issue that has always rallied Trump’s base to him. That he has thrown this into the mix late in the night in the midst of a pandemic that is collapsing the economy suggests he is worried that his supporters are sliding away.

It also suggests that, as pressure mounts, he will continue to test the boundaries of his power.

Finally, news broke late tonight that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is gravely ill after surgery on April 12 to address cardiovascular issues brought on by “excessive smoking, obesity, and overwork,” according to an online newspaper based in South Korea. He has missed a number of important public events, but it is entirely possible that this information is wrong, according to experts. It is simply too hard to get information out of North Korea to know for sure.

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[milliefink]

April 21, 2020 (Tuesday)

Today, once again, the Senate Intelligence Committee reaffirmed that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help elect Donald Trump president. The Senate Intelligence committee is chaired by North Carolina Republican Richard Burr, and the report released today was approved by the committee unanimously. It was the fourth volume in the intelligence committee’s review of Russian attacks on the 2016 election, and it was a “Review of the Intelligence Community Assessment with Additional Views.”

The report supports the conclusion of the intelligence community that Russia worked to help Trump, and that partisan politics was not part of the driving force behind the FBI’s investigation of the Russian interference. The heavily-redacted report contradicts Trump’s frequent assertions that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that attacked America in 2016, and throws the weight of the Senate Intelligence Committee behind the intelligence community even as Trump calls FBI agents “human scum.”

This is a developing story. According to committee member Angus King (I-ME), the fifth volume from the committee will focus on “whether or not there was in fact some relationship between the Trump campaign and the Russians.” Also, Judge Reggie Walton, who is personally reviewing the unredacted Mueller Report to judge the good faith of Attorney General William Barr, whose redactions seem self-serving, got access to that report on Monday. We’ll see what he has to say about it. I have wondered if Trump’s angry rehashing of the probe lately has something to do with that review.

Overshadowing this news today, though, was a razor sharp observation made yesterday by George Chidi, a Georgia journalist and former staff writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Chidi examined Georgia Governor Brian Kemp’s decision to reopen gyms, fitness centers, bowling alleys, tattoo parlors, barbers, nail salons, restaurants, theaters, and massage therapists, among other businesses, next week.

Kemp said the businesses would be required to screen workers for illness, increase sanitation rules, separate workspaces by at least six feet, telework where at all possible, and have staggered shifts. He also said that more restrictive local rules could not override his order.

Kemp told reporters that his concern was to protect small businesses, hurt by the economic shutdown, but Chidi had a different interpretation. “It’s about making sure people can’t file unemployment,” he wrote.

The state’s unemployment fund has about $2.6 billion. The shutdown has made claims skyrocket—Chidi says the fund will empty in about 28 weeks. There is no easy way to replenish the account because Georgia has recently set a limit on income taxes that cannot be overridden without a constitutional amendment. It cannot borrow enough to cover the fund either, because by law Georgia can’t borrow more than 5% of its previous year’s revenue in any year, and any borrowing must be repaid in full before the state can borrow more.

By ending the business closures, Kemp guarantees that workers can no longer claim they are involuntarily unemployed, and so cannot claim unemployment benefits. Chidi notes that the order did not include banks, software firms, factories, or schools. It covered businesses usually staffed by poorer people that Kemp wants to keep off the unemployment rolls.

Kemp threw onto businesses responsibility for reassuring customers that reopening was the right thing to do. He warned that “The private sector is going to have to convince the public that it’s safe to come back into these businesses,” Kemp said. “That’s what a barber is going to have to do. It’s what a tattoo parlor is going to have to do.” He also acknowledged that cases of Covid-19 would rise, but noted that the state had expanded its hospital bed capacity.

Chidi’s observations are shocking, and believable. The modern Republican program calls for the end to business regulation, social welfare programs, and infrastructure development, with the idea that freedom from restraint will allow businesses to thrive and the country will prosper in turn.

To bring their ideology to life, Republicans have slashed regulation, taxation, and social programs. Under such a regime, a few individuals have done very well indeed, while the majority of Americans has fallen behind. Georgia has been aggressive in putting the Republican program into action. Now, the lack of a social safety net in Georgia has stripped the veneer off this system. Far from spreading prosperity as “makers” stimulate the economy, it appears that the determination to keep taxes low and social welfare systems small is now forcing workers to risk their lives in a deadly pandemic.

This is the logical outcome of an ideology of radical individualism: as one Tennessee protester’s sign put it “Sacrifice the weak/Reopen T[ennessee].” In 1883, during a time of similar discussions over the responsibility of government to provide a social safety net, Yale sociologist William Graham Sumner wrote a famous book: What Social Classes Owe to Each Other. Sumner’s answer was… nothing. Sumner argued that protecting the weak was actually bad for society because it wasted resources and would permit weaker people to dilute the population. Far from helping poorer Americans, the government should let them die out for the good of society.

Sumner wanted the government to stay out of social welfare programs, but thought it should continue to protect businesses, which men like Sumner believed helped everyone.

Today, corporations are asking Congress to protect them from lawsuits from employees and customers who might get infected with the novel coronavirus when they begin to reopen. According to Republican Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana, a member of Trump’s congressional task force on the economy, “There’s been a lot of discussion among conservative Republicans…. On the Republican side, I think there would be broad support, probably near-unanimous support.”

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[milliefink]

April 22, 2020 (Wednesday)

I’m going to start tonight with an important story that slipped under the radar on a day when one outrageous performance after another grabbed headlines.

On its surface, the story doesn’t seem terribly important. A number of congressional committees have asked the Office of Personnel Management for updates on how the OPM is handling working conditions for federal employees during the coronavirus crisis. OPM is declining to answer the requests. “It has always been difficult to get information from this administration, but the refusal to provide Congress with a basic briefing during a pandemic is especially egregious,” said a Democratic Senate aide to Politico reporter Daniel Lippman. “We’ve never been denied a briefing like this before.”

But the story is actually very significant. The OPM oversees the 2 million workers in the federal government. In mid-February, after Republican Senators acquitted him in his impeachment trial, Trump set out to purge the federal workforce of civil servants, whom he sees as “snakes,” and replace them with political appointees loyal to him.

To head the Presidential Personnel Office, which recruits candidates for the executive branch, Trump brought in John McEntee, who had been fired from a former position in the White House by former chief of staff John Kelly over a security clearance. On March 17, McEntee forced the director of the Office of Personnel Management, Dale Cabaniss, who had significant personnel experience, to resign. Michael Rigas, formerly of the right-wing Heritage Foundation, took her place. (Phew. I know… but this is going somewhere important.)

The change from Cabaniss to Rigas at the head of OPM transpired just as the novel coronavirus pandemic hit the nation hard.

Rigas has said he believes the 1883 Pendleton Act is unconstitutional. Congress passed the Pendleton Act, also known as the Civil Service Act, after a mentally-ill office seeker shot President James Garfield in 1881. Until then, government positions had been handed out to political loyalists, regardless of their capacity to do the job, but the assassination created a public outcry. Charles Guiteau shot Garfield with the expectation that, once elevated to the presidency, Garfield’s vice president would give Guiteau the position his delusions made him think he deserved. The assassination built momentum behind the idea that government should be non-partisan, and that positions should be filled by people actually equipped to do the job. This sentiment has ruled the nation ever since.

Non-partisan civil service has proved a blessing to the nation in two ways. First of all, over time, as more and more positions came under the act, the government got much more efficient. Second, a non-partisan corps of officials has kept the nation stable since they give their loyalty to the country’s government, rather than to any particular president. Administrations come and go, but government bureaucrats keep the nation on an even keel.

Now, Rigas, the man at the head of the federal government’s 2 million workers, wants to get rid of that system and make all employees of the executive branch political appointees, loyal not to the country but to Trump. Rigas is working with McEntee at the PPO. As of a few weeks ago, agencies now have to submit job openings to the PPO to see if they have anyone they want in the position before they can submit their own choice for it. PPO is filling positions with keen regard for their loyalty: recently it has hired four college seniors to become administration officials.

OPM is the office that is refusing to tell Congress what it’s up to.

Today offered some guesses. Dr. Rick Bright, the director of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, claimed that he was let go from his job for crossing Trump. BARDA is charged with protecting us from pandemic influenza and emerging infectious diseases (EID) and Bright is a specialist in those areas. He headed the federal agency developing a coronavirus vaccine, and refused to use the agency’s significant budget to promote hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malarial drug Trump has been pushing as a treatment for the coronavirus. Bright was transferred to a less central position at the National Institutes of Health, but has refused to resign his position at BARDA.

Bright and his lawyers say his removal is retaliation and that he will be filing a whistleblower complaint. “I believe this transfer was in response to my insistence that the government invest the billions of dollars allocated by Congress to address the Covid-19 pandemic into safe and scientifically vetted solutions, and not in drugs, vaccines and other technologies that lack scientific merit,” he said in a statement. “I am speaking out because to combat this deadly virus, science — not politics or cronyism — has to lead the way.”

Bright’s defense of science over politics got a boost with Tuesday’s news that hydroxychloroquine is not only ineffective against Covid-19, but possibly worsens the outcome for those who take it. A study of 368 patients at Veterans Affairs showed that those given the drug were more likely to die than those who weren’t. After much hyping of the drug, Laura Ingraham and other Fox News Channel personalities have suddenly gone quiet on it. Trump, who hailed the drug as a “game-changer” but who has stopped talking about it lately, said he did not know of the bad report, “but we’ll be looking at it.”

Demanding loyalty to Trump is about cementing the power of the president, and service to that power means he will sacrifice his loyalists whenever necessary to protect himself. People are noting that Trump tossed Georgia Governor Brian Kemp under the bus today over Kemp’s reopening of certain Georgia businesses against the advice of public health officials. After a week of calling for states to reopen, Trump told reporters that he “disagree[s] strongly” with Kemp’s decision to start that process.

But Kemp and Trump have clashed before—Trump wanted Kemp to appoint key Trump supporter Doug Collins to the Senate seat that Kemp gave to Kelly Loeffler (now in trouble for insider trading)—so it’s not a huge surprise that Trump hung Kemp out to dry.

Today’s more significant underbussing was that of Alex Azar, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, who was skewered in a piece in the Wall Street Journal for what appears to have been extraordinarily inept handling of the coronavirus crisis. My guess is that he is shortly going to be out of a job, taking the blame for the White House’s poor response to the pandemic.

Considering that Trump’s OPM wants to remove qualified civil servants from the government in favor of political cronies, the piece of the Azar story that has attracted the most outrage is ironic. Azar tapped a key aide with little experience or education in public health, management, or medicine to head up the response of Health and Human Services to the coronavirus crisis.

Before going to work for Azar, the aide, Brian Harrison, was a dog breeder who specialized in labradoodles.

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