"Seven counties in the greater San Francisco Bay Area issued sweeping orders Monday that will force most businesses to close and residents to “shelter-in-place” inside their homes — the nation’s most stringent public health measures yet as state and local governments strain to rein in the coronavirus." Wait, there are dentists with public relations officers?
"The House on Monday night passed a bill containing technical corrections to the coronavirus relief bill it passed over the weekend, sending it to the Senate to be considered for a vote at some point this week… Earlier in the day, Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, held up the process because he insisted on reading them, a Democratic leadership aide confirmed Monday. He spoke on the floor Monday night and said that the technical corrections make the bill better and he withdrew his objection to pass the measure by unanimous consent." Do the homework, Louie. We're tired of trying to help you keep up.
"Here is a look at major elements of the legislation."
"Even as Congress has yet to sign off on a second, major package to address the coronavirus crisis, lawmakers are starting talks on a new, massive emergency funding plan to address some of the country's increasingly dire economic concerns." Hey, I know, let's take those billions the president redirected to build his wall and redirect them again.
"In Ohio and Massachusetts they closed restaurants and bars, in Florida they closed beaches and at least 32 states closed schools… The emergency measures brought in across America to combat coronavirus have all been slightly different from state to state – but for weeks they have had one thing in common: nobody was acting on guidelines issued by the federal government, because there weren’t any."
It's buzzed, but… "The report, published by the Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team on Monday night, found that the strategy previously being pursued by the government — dubbed 'mitigation' and involving home isolation of suspect cases and their family members but not including restrictions on wider society — would 'likely result in hundreds of thousands of deaths and health systems (most notably intensive care units) being overwhelmed many times over'." Oopsie.
"Canada is closing its borders to noncitizens because of the coronavirus pandemic, but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau noted that the ban does not apply to U.S. citizens 'for the moment.'"
"With the markets in free fall despite emergency action by the Fed over the weekend, Trump is waking up to the reality that’s been clear to everyone: Coronavirus poses a once-in-a-hundred-years threat to the country. 'In the last 48 hours he has understood the magnitude of what’s going on,' a former West Wing official told me. As Trump processes the stakes facing the country—and his presidency—he’s also lashing out at advisers, whom he blames for the White House’s inept and flat-footed response. Sources say a principal target of his anger is Jared Kushner. 'I have never heard so many people inside the White House openly discuss how pissed Trump is at Jared,' the former West Wing official said." I guess he shouldn't have gone to Jared(s).
"An article circulating on social media claims COVID-19 did not originate in China. We rate this claim FALSE because it is not supported by research. The consensus among experts researching the virus places the beginning of its spread at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China." Welcome to the information wars.
"As the coronavirus has worsened, members of the task force President Donald Trump has assigned to combat the pandemic have reached out to prominent conservative social-media 'influencers' and right-wing TV and radio stars to offer them private briefings and information sessions with Vice President Mike Pence and other top administration officials, The Daily Beast has learned." And now our domestic information warfare gets kicked into overdrive.
"President Donald Trump drew backlash Monday night after posting a tweet using the phrase "Chinese Virus… Many officials, including the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have criticized the phrase as inaccurate and potentially harmful in promoting racist associations between the virus and those from China." The president is a racist (he's also trying to make sure the blame for fucking up our country's response doesn't land on him).
"NASA has removed the Lunar Gateway from its 'critical path' to return humans to the moon by 2024, according to a SpaceNews report. But the agency has assured that it isn't casting aside its plan for a moon-orbiting space station."
"Italian archaeologist Vittoria Dall’Armellina stumbled upon the blade in a monastery-turned-museum during her tenure as a graduate student at Venice’s Ca’ Foscari University in 2017. Billed in its display as medieval—perhaps several hundred years old at most—the sword struck Dall’Armellina, an expert in Bronze Age artifacts, as something far more ancient." Ooo. (Grokked from Deborah Beale)
"The Justice Department on Monday dropped its two-year-long prosecution of a Russian company charged with conspiring to defraud the U.S. government by orchestrating a social media campaign to interfere in the 2016 presidential election… The stunning reversal came a few weeks before the case — a spinoff of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe — was set to go to trial." I'm sure that this administration's decision to drop the charges against the Russians after a classification change to some of the evidence is purely and totally legit. (Waves to my Russian friends)
"Five former city employees and a former Trump Organization employee say the company used middlemen to pay New York City tax assessors to lower building assessments and pay less taxes in the 1980s and 1990s." (Grokked from Joy Reid)
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