US politics live with Joan E Greve
Coronavirus outbreak

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Coronavirus US live: Trump administration reportedly expects daily death toll to double in June

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The New York Times has obtained an internal document from the Trump administration that projects the country’s daily death toll from coronavirus will nearly double by June 1.
However, Nate Silver, the editor-in-chief of the analysis and polling website FiveThirtyEight, suggested the numbers should be taken with a grain of salt.

Trump administration predicts daily death toll will double next month - report

Even though Trump is encouraging states to start the process of reopening, his administration has privately predicted that the country’s daily coronavirus death toll will double next month, according to a new report.
The New York Times reports:
[The Trump administration] is privately projecting a steady rise in the number of cases and deaths from coronavirus over the next several weeks, reaching about 3,000 daily deaths on June 1, according to an internal document obtained by The New York Times, nearly double from the current level of about 1,750.
The projections, based on modeling by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and pulled together in chart form by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, forecast about 200,000 new cases each day by the end of the month, up from about 25,000 cases now.
The numbers underscore a sobering reality: While the United States has been hunkered down for the past seven weeks, not much has changed. And the reopening to the economy will make matters worse.
During his Fox News interview last night, the president doubled his estimate of the expected US death toll from what he said just two weeks ago.
“We’re going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100,000 people,” Trump said. “That’s a horrible thing. We shouldn’t lose one person over this.”
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David Smith 
It would be an understatement to say Mitch McConnell’s suggestion that state and local governments should declare bankruptcy rather than seek more federal funding went down like a lead balloon. It was a rare instance of the Senate majority leader overplaying his hand.
It also showed that Donald Trump is not the only figure embodying liberal nightmares in the time of coronavirus. When historians contemplate a death toll in the tens of thousands and an economy fallen off a cliff, they will pay close attention to the president’s most important ally.
“I think Mitch McConnell is the guy to be watching and focusing on in terms of what’s going on,” said Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota. “His messaging around the coronavirus has been tone deaf.
“It’s not just the fact that McConnell was remarkably brutal in pairing Americans into red and blue states at a time of national crisis – that is pretty shameless – but I think it was also politically inept because he’s got his colleagues in tough races in blue states.”
Although the Senate will return to session today, House Democratic leadership has delayed members’ return to Washington.
House majority leader Steny Hoyer initially said the House would also return today, but he quickly reversed that decision after a consultation with the attending physician of the Capitol.
But House minority leader Kevin McCarthy has expressed criticism of that decision, saying it is time for lawmakers to get back to work to help address the coronavirus crisis.
“I think the American people deserve leaders who work day in and day out for them, who can upstand the test, could be able to do it in a safe, smart, steadfast manner,” McCarthy said last week. “We’re essential.”
This morning, the California Republican released a proposal for how the House could safely return to session, which included a phased return of committees and a modification of House floor procedures.
But McCarthy, who has voiced opposition to a Democratic proposal to allow voting by proxy for the duration of the pandemic, said the House should be cautious about deploying new technological measures. “In our view, technology should only be deployed in a ‘crawl, walk, run’ progression,” McCarthy said.

Senate to return today

The Senate will also return to session for the first time in almost six weeks today, despite lingering concerns about reconvening as the Washington metropolitan region sees a rising number of coronavirus cases.
Roughly half of senators are 65 or older, putting them at increased risk for becoming severely ill if they contract coronavirus.
The attending physician of the Capitol has also warned senators that he does not have enough coronavirus tests to proactively test all of them.
Trump offered to give Congress access to rapid testing, which has been put to use at the White House, but Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and House speaker Nancy Pelosi jointly declined that offer because they did not want it to be appear like Congress was getting special treatment.
“Congress is grateful for the Administration’s generous offer to deploy rapid COVID-19 testing capabilities to Capitol Hill, but we respectfully decline the offer at this time,” the two leaders said in a joint statement.
“Our country’s testing capacities are continuing to scale up nationwide and Congress wants to keep directing resources to the front-line facilities where they can do the most good the most quickly.”
This morning, Trump appeared to question that decision. “Interesting? By Congress not wanting the special 5 minute testing apparatus, they are saying that they are not ‘essential’,” the president wrote in a tweet.
The first Supreme Court oral arguments to ever be live-streamed are officially underway, with the justices posing questions about a case focusing on a trademark dispute.
The court’s chief marshal, Pamela Talkin, called the court to order by pronouncing, “Oyez, oyez, oyez,” before turning things over to chief justice John Roberts.
Today’s arguments kick off two weeks of oral arguments to be heard via telephone hookup, marking the first time justices have not met in person. Oral arguments were repeatedly delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic before the court decided to proceed with remote arguments.

Secretary of Senate says it has 'no discretion' to release alleged Biden complaint

The secretary of the Senate said in a new statement that it cannot release any potential complaints filed against Joe Biden, despite the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee’s request to do so.
The statement says the office has “no discretion to disclose any such information” as requested by Biden last week, after he denied Tara Reade’s allegation of sexual assault.
Reade has said Biden sexually assaulted her 27 years ago, and she has told reporters that she filed a complaint about the issue at the time. But she has said the complaint did not explicitly accuse Biden of sexual harassment or assault.
“I remember talking about him wanting me to serve drinks because he liked my legs and thought I was pretty and it made me uncomfortable,” Reade told the AP. “I know that I was too scared to write about the sexual assault.”
Some of Biden’s former staffers have said they have no memory of a complaint being filed.

Supreme court to stream arguments live for first time

Today will be historic for the Supreme Court, which is scheduled to hear oral arguments via telephone hookup, with the audio livestreamed over C-SPAN, for the first time in its history.
The court has been ardently against allowing cameras in the courtroom, so this represents a rare chance for Americans to hear the justices’ questions in real time.
This will also be the first time that the justices will hear arguments remotely rather than in person. The change in format was deemed necessary amid the pandemic, especially considering the age of some of the court’s members. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the oldest Supreme Court justice, is 87 years old.
The court will hear oral arguments over the next two weeks, and one of the cases to be heard centers on Trump’s efforts to block Congress and federal prosecutors from accessing his financial records. That case, which was originally supposed to come before the court in March, will be heard next week.
Updated 
Most Americans are understandably pessimistic about the state of the US economy, as many businesses have been forced to temporarily close their doors and lay off workers because of the pandemic.
A new Gallup poll found that 42% of Americans say the economy is now in a recession, and another 30% say the economy is now in a depression.
Americans are slightly more optimistic about the economy’s six-month outlook, with 51% of poll respondents saying they expect the stock market to go up over the next six months.
More than 30 million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits in the past six weeks, as many families report a job loss or wage decrease in their households.
This is Joan Greve, taking over for Martin Pengelly.
The president has once again given himself high marks for his response to the coronavirus crisis, despite widespread criticism of some comments he has made about the virus, including his infamous suggestion that Americans ingest disinfectants to help protect their health.
“Getting great reviews, finally, for how well we are handling the pandemic, especially our strong production of desperately needed ventilators, the building of field hospitals & beds, and soon, the great things we are doing on testing,” Trump wrote in a tweet. “People are really working well together!”
The president has continued to boast about the country’s production of ventilators, even as the focus of the coronavirus response has shifted to testing. Public health experts have warned that the US will need to dramatically ramp up coronavirus testing to effectively reopen the economy.
It’s also worth noting that most Americans do not agree with the president’s assessment of how he has handled the crisis. A poll taken last week showed 53% of Americans disapproved of his response to the pandemic.
More from the Associated Press, on a controversy in San Francisco which placed the coronavirus response on a particularly jagged fault line in US society, thus:
“San Francisco’s police chief said the city’s rank and file will wear neutral face coverings to defuse a controversy that was sparked when officers sent to patrol a May Day protest wore masks adorned with the ‘thin blue line’ flag.
In a picture from July 2016, a flag with a blue and black stripes in support of law enforcement officers, flies at a protest in Somerville, Massachusetts.
 In a picture from July 2016, a flag with a blue and black stripes in support of law enforcement officers, flies at a protest in Somerville, Massachusetts. Photograph: Charles Krupa/AP
“The police union ordered and distributed the masks emblazoned with black-and-white American flag with a blue stripe across the middle. The symbol is associated with the Blue Lives Matter movement, a response to the national Black Lives Matter movement [which protests police brutality towards people of colour].
“In an email obtained by KTVU-TV, Chief Bill Scott told his officers Friday he considered the blue flag and stripe ‘a meaningful expression to honor fallen officers’. However, he worried that some may perceive the symbol as ‘divisive and disrespectful’.
“A retired civil rights lawyer told the San Francisco Chronicle the masks, which also include the logo for the San Francisco Police Officers Association, violate a long-standing policy that bars police from expressing political opinions while wearing their uniforms.
“ ‘The thin blue line is a political symbol,’ John Crew said. ‘And it’s a POA-branded mask. It’s like wearing a political button.’
“The police union president, Tony Montoya, said the union had shown the masks to Scott’s command staff, and several had asked for more than one. The blue line ‘represents law enforcement’s separation of order and chaos,’ he said.”
Here’s more from the Guardian on Black Lives Matter:
Back to the media frenzy. Don Lemon of CNN, a frequent target of Trump’s ire and that of his family and supporters, addressed the president directly on Sunday night after Trump retweeted a conspiracy theory about Barack Obama.
“In a time when we need leadership,” Lemon said, “when we need compassion, this is the crap that you’re peddling? Conspiracy theories?”
Trump’s retweet, he said, was “a new low from a president who goes low all the time”.
Lemon continued:
What is it about President Obama that really gets under your skin? Is it because he’s smarter than you? Better-educated? Made it on his own, didn’t need daddy’s help? Wife is more accomplished? Better looking?
I don’t know, what is it, what is it about him? That he’s a black man that’s accomplished being president? That he punked you on the whole birth certificate thing? What is it about him? Just wondering.”
For the record, the tweet which Trump retweeted said “Evidence has surfaced that indicates Barack Obama was the one running the Russian hoax” and was by David J Harris Jr, an African American conservative. The piece opens: “In the new releases it appears to be saying that Operation Hurricane was being run from the Oval Office. This would be huge if true.”
That’s a reference to Operation Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI’s investigation of Russian election interference.
Harris’s Apple podcasts bio says he’s “an entrepreneur, founder of UncorkedLiving.com, a healthy lifestyle supplement company, and a speaker” and Trump has retweeted him before.
So there’s that. No response yet from Trump, though he has attacked MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mike Brzezinski.
To take a break from the president’s Twitter feed, the Associated Press has a moving report from Denver, where “a retired Colorado paramedic who died from coronavirus after volunteering to help combat the pandemic in New York City was being honored on Sunday.”
Ambulnz paramedics and Aurora firefighters salute as the casket carrying the body of paramedic Paul Cary is removed from a plane at Denver International Airport.
 Ambulnz paramedics and Aurora firefighters salute as the casket carrying the body of paramedic Paul Cary is removed from a plane at Denver International Airport. Photograph: Helen H Richardson/AP
Here’s the rest of the AP report:
Paul Cary, 66, who worked 32 years as a firefighter paramedic in the Denver suburbs, died on 30 April, a month after he began working in New York. He was part of a wave of out-of-state medical technicians, doctors and nurses who came to the city to help relieve a healthcare system being overwhelmed by the virus.
Governor Jared Polis said Cary had “heroically” served his community and country and traveled thousands of miles to help others.
A large procession of fire trucks, EMS and other emergency vehicles drove from the airport after Cary’s body was returned on Sunday night.
“He risked his own health and safety, and stepped up to do what he could,” Polis said. “I can never express just how grateful I am for people like Paul, and all our emergency responders who are on the front lines of this virus.”
When he volunteered, Cary was working with a private ambulance company, Ambulnz, from which 75 employees had volunteered to work in New York, according to company spokesman Josh Weiss.
Cary responded from a location in the Bronx to calls ranging from patient transfers to 911 calls. He was planning to stay for a second, one-month tour before he got sick, Weiss said. He spent his final days on a ventilator at Montefiore Medical Center.
The procession of emergency vehicles makes its way out of Denver International Airport.
 The procession of emergency vehicles makes its way out of Denver International Airport. Photograph: Helen H Richardson/AP
Updated 
In the words of that meme with the dog with the coffee in the burning room, “this is fine”:
It’s barely dawn on a Monday in the middle of a pandemic which has killed 67,000 Americans and the president is up and about, not apparently to work on stopping the virus but to bait two breakfast hosts on MSNBC who on Friday, as it happens, interviewed Joe Biden about the allegation of sexual assault against him, an allegation the presumptive Democratic nominee denies and which Trump, who denies numerous such allegations himself, reportedly thinks is “bullshit”.
I’m tired from typing that sentence. It’s true, for what it’s worth, that Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman, and his wife, Mika Brzezinski, were once on friendly terms with then-candidate Trump. I remember a call-in where they were wearing pyjamas and Trump, by then president-elect, seemed to threaten nuclear apocalypse.
Not friends now, anyway, and not for a very long time.

Good morning…

…and welcome to another day of coverage of the coronavirus outbreak, and the politics around it, in the US. I always start with the basic figures, from Johns Hopkins University in Maryland:
  • US cases: 1,157,875
  • US deaths: 67,677
  • New York cases: 316,415
  • New York deaths: 24,708
New York is the hotspot, other states are badly hit: New Jersey (7,871) and Michigan (4,053) and Massachusetts (4,004) have had the next most deaths.
The weekend saw Donald Trump lead his country through the crisis mostly by retweeting conspiracy theories and tweeting complaints before staging on Sunday night a Fox News town hall which saw more of the latter.
Fox News put the event at the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, prompting the 45th president to complain that he had been treated worse by the press than the 16th – who, remember, guided the Union through a horrific civil war, managed to legislate slavery out of existence and was shot dead on a trip to the theatre.
Among other points, Trump boosted efforts in more than half of the states to reopen their economies despite warnings from public health experts that it could well be too soon to do so safely; said there would no more stimulus aid for struggling states without a payroll tax cut, a controversial move to say the least; and said he had “saved hundreds of thousands of lives” before projecting a final death toll of around 100,000, up from his previous estimate of 65,000 (see 67,677 figure above).
Earlier, White House task force member Dr Deborah Birx told Fox News Sunday: “Our projections have always been between 100,000 and 240,000 American lives lost, and that’s with full mitigation and us learning from each other of how to social distance”.
Trump also said “We may have to put out a fire”, when asked if he was worried about a coronavirus resurgence in the fall.
And he said the administration would present evidence for its claim the virus originated in a Chinese laboratory “at the right time”. The right time obviously wasn’t ABC’s Sunday talkshow earlier, where secretary of state Mike Pompeo made the claim and said he’d seen evidence, but didn’t of course provide any.
Later the vice-president, Mike Pence, admitted his mistake in not wearing a mask while visiting the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota last week – a rare enough step in this administration.
Anyway, that Lincoln quote. I’m a Lincolnhead, so indulge me. But it’s quite something:
They always said Lincoln – nobody got treated worse than Lincoln. I believe I am treated worse.
Paging Harold Holzer.
Here’s some more reading as the day gets going: Bryan Armen Graham on what Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer had to say about anti-lockdown protests which Trump has supported. It’s a striking headline…
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