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At nursing home 13 residents died, 70 employees got sick, as others waited for virus test; Trump’s mismanagement helped fuel coronavirus crisis

At nursing home 13 residents died, 70 employees got sick, as others waited for virus test; Trump’s mismanagement helped fuel coronavirus crisis

The New York Times reports: A week after a deadly coronavirus outbreak was reported inside a nursing home in the Seattle suburbs, officials from the long term care center said on Saturday that 70 staff members were out sick with symptoms resembling coronavirus and six residents were also ill. A federal strike team of nurses and doctors arrived Saturday to support the staff at the long-term nursing home, Life Care Center of Kirkland, Wash., where officials have announced the deaths…

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Trump’s immigration policies may put people at risk of coronavirus

Trump’s immigration policies may put people at risk of coronavirus

The Guardian reports: Since 2017, Donald Trump has pushed a hardline immigration agenda that has sown confusion, fear and distrust among immigrant communities. Now, as the world deals with a public health emergency in the shape of the coronavirus outbreak, experts worry his immigration policies may put everyone at risk. There is a widespread fear that the president’s policies have sown such fear of deportation and wariness of any contact with US authorities among immigrants – who also have greater…

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Rainbow Coalition comes full circle as Jesse Jackson endorses Bernie Sanders

Rainbow Coalition comes full circle as Jesse Jackson endorses Bernie Sanders

Ryan Grim writes: Michigan holds a special place in the memory of Jesse Jackson and the supporters of his insurgent 1988 presidential campaign. It was Jackson’s Nevada, the moment that the party establishment realized this campaign it had long written off might just seize the nomination. At a rally in Michigan on Sunday, Jackson will endorse Sanders ahead of a do-or-die primary for the Vermont senator. The Michigan contest in 1988 fell on March 27. After more than three dozen…

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The world is experiencing a new form of autocracy

The world is experiencing a new form of autocracy

Tim Horley, Anne Meng, and Mila Versteeg write: In March 2018, Donald Trump, addressing a crowd of donors at his Florida estate, told what sounded like a joke. He was talking about the recent amendment of China’s constitution to remove presidential term limits, allowing Xi Jinping to serve in that office indefinitely. About Xi, Trump said: “He’s now president for life, president for life. And he’s great. And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe…

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How the Trump administration squandered time instead of confronting the coronavirus crisis

How the Trump administration squandered time instead of confronting the coronavirus crisis

The Washington Post reports: This portrait of the precious weeks that President Trump and his administration frittered away in trying to deal with the coronavirus is the result of interviews with 16 current and former administration officials, state health officials and outside experts, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to share candid assessments. Public health experts and officials faced a deluge of challenges, almost from the beginning. First there were the problems with the initial coronavirus test…

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‘I didn’t know people died from the flu,’ said Trump, apparently ignorant of his own family history

‘I didn’t know people died from the flu,’ said Trump, apparently ignorant of his own family history

The Washington Post reports: In Atlanta on Friday, President Trump talked about the number of people infected with the novel coronavirus in other countries vs. the United States. He also compared coronavirus disease with influenza. “Over the last long period of time, you have an average of 36,000 people dying” a year, the president said, gesturing toward National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony S. Fauci, who nodded confirmation. Trump continued: “I never heard those numbers. I would’ve…

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Erik Prince recruits ex-spies to infiltrate groups that oppose Trump regime

Erik Prince recruits ex-spies to infiltrate groups that oppose Trump regime

The New York Times reports: Erik Prince, the security contractor with close ties to the Trump administration, has in recent years helped recruit former American and British spies for secretive intelligence-gathering operations that included infiltrating Democratic congressional campaigns, labor organizations and other groups considered hostile to the Trump agenda, according to interviews and documents. One of the former spies, an ex-MI6 officer named Richard Seddon, helped run a 2017 operation to copy files and record conversations in a Michigan office…

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Trump is counting on the Supreme Court to rescue him

Trump is counting on the Supreme Court to rescue him

David Frum writes: Sometime before June 29, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court will either plunge the United States into the severest constitutional crisis of the Trump years—or save Americans from that crisis. Three different committees of Congress, as well as New York State prosecutors, have issued subpoenas to President Donald Trump’s accountants and bankers for his tax and business records. Trump has sued to stop the accountants and bankers from complying. He has lost twice at the district-court level and…

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How Trump siphons U.S. tax dollars into his own company

How Trump siphons U.S. tax dollars into his own company

The Washington Post reports: President Trump’s company charged the Secret Service $157,000 more than was previously known — billing taxpayers for rooms at his clubs at rates far higher than his company has claimed, according to a new trove of receipts and billing documents released by the Secret Service. Many of the new receipts were obtained by the watchdog group Public Citizen, which spent three years battling the Secret Service over a public-records request from January 2017. When added to…

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Is anti-Zionism the new anti-Semitism?

Is anti-Zionism the new anti-Semitism?

  Zionism, or the belief in the Jewish right to self-determination in the land of Israel, has been the topic of contentious global debate for decades. And while the United States government is making moves to strengthen its special relationship with Israel, such as relocating the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, scrutiny of Israel and its government looms large in American politics. Is it possible to distinguish anti-Zionism from anti-Semitism? For the Motion: Bret Stephens – Op-Ed Columnist,…

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Trump’s strategy for combating coronavirus was destined to fail

Trump’s strategy for combating coronavirus was destined to fail

Time magazine reports: The Trump Administration’s strategy to combat COVID-19, the novel coronavirus, began with a relatively simple focus: keep it out of the United States. In service of that goal, the White House issued drastic travel restrictions, imposed mandatory quarantines, and repeatedly told the public that these steps were working. “We have contained this. I won’t say airtight but pretty close to airtight,” White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said in a television interview on Feb. 25, echoing Trump’s…

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Strong evidence that America is botching coronavirus testing

Strong evidence that America is botching coronavirus testing

The Atlantic reports: It’s one of the most urgent questions in the United States right now: How many people have actually been tested for the coronavirus? This number would give a sense of how widespread the disease is, and how forceful a response to it the United States is mustering. But for days, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has refused to publish such a count, despite public anxiety and criticism from Congress. On Monday, Stephen Hahn, the commissioner…

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Put Elizabeth Warren in charge of writing the Democratic platform

Put Elizabeth Warren in charge of writing the Democratic platform

John Nichols writes: Elizabeth Warren won the ideas primary, and on Thursday she claimed that victory. “A year ago, people weren’t talking about a two-cent wealth tax, universal childcare, canceling student loan debt for 43 million Americans while reducing the racial wealth gap, breaking up big tech, or expanding Social Security. And now they are,” she told her supporters. “And because we did the work of building broad support for all of those ideas across this country, these changes could…

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Elizabeth Warren says ‘organized nastiness’ and doxing cannot be justified by political disagreements

Elizabeth Warren says ‘organized nastiness’ and doxing cannot be justified by political disagreements

  Senator Elizabeth Warren talks with Rachel Maddow about the ugliness and doxing she saw online from Bernie Sanders supporters and the problem of online abuse broadly in American political discourse, and the need for political leaders to find new creative solutions to put an end to it for the sake of a healthy democracy.

Bernie’s revolution stalled, but his movement can still win

Bernie’s revolution stalled, but his movement can still win

Eric Levitz writes: In states across the nation on Tuesday, pluralities of Democratic primary voters expressed a favorable opinion of “socialism.” In revealing that a candidate could secure a hammerlock on 20 percent of the Democratic electorate, and ownership of a historically powerful online fundraising apparatus, by embracing radical social-democratic reform, Sanders changed the ideological incentives facing his co-partisans and the terms of the Democratic debate. In the 2020 field, the “moderate” candidates supported a public option strong enough to…

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Federal judge calls Barr’s handling of Mueller report ‘distorted’ and ‘misleading’

Federal judge calls Barr’s handling of Mueller report ‘distorted’ and ‘misleading’

The New York Times reports: A federal judge on Thursday sharply criticized Attorney General William P. Barr’s handling of the report by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, saying that Mr. Barr put forward a “distorted” and “misleading” account of its findings and lacked credibility on the topic. Mr. Barr could not be trusted, Judge Reggie B. Walton said, citing “inconsistencies” between the attorney general’s statements about the report when it was secret and its actual contents that turned…

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