Reading archive 2020-04-28

President’s intelligence briefing book repeatedly cited virus threat

Those UFO videos are real, the Navy says, but please stop saying ‘UFO’

The U.S. plans to give $500 billion to large companies. It won’t require them to preserve jobs or limit executive pay.: The Fed’s coronavirus aid program lacks restrictions Congress placed on companies seeking financial help under other programs

Reading archive 2020-04-25

A Virginia preacher believed ‘God can heal anything.’ Then he caught coronavirus.: Landon Spradlin went to Mardi Gras to save souls. He never made it home.

Covid-19 has killed multiple bishops and pastors within the nation’s largest black Pentecostal denomination

Why Did Fox News’s Laura Ingraham Relentlessly Push Hydroxychloroquine?: “Now, I'm not a doctor, I don't play one on TV, but…”

'A phantom plague': America's Bible Belt played down the pandemic and even cashed in. Now dozens of pastors are dead: Right to worship emerges as battleground in looming culture war as many congregations hit hard by coronavirus

Reading archive 2020-04-24

‘Complete disbelief’: Governors blindside front-line staff with abrupt reopening plans

One country, one system: The week that China shredded its promise on Hong Kong

Reading 2020-04-24

Trump owes tens of millions to the Bank of China — and the loan is due soon: The president's financial dealings with the state-owned bank complicate his attacks on Biden.

Trump suggests 'injection' of disinfectant to beat coronavirus and 'clean' the lungs: A Homeland Security official, under questioning from reporters, later said federal laboratories are not considering such a treatment option.

Reading archive 2020-04-23

As protesters swarm state capitols, much of the coronavirus backlash is coming from within

Cable news stars like Hannity make headlines. But more people are watching David Muir’s ABC newscast.

A mysterious blood-clotting complication is killing coronavirus patients: Once thought a relatively straightforward respiratory virus, covid-19 is proving to be much more frightening

States rushing to reopen are likely making a deadly error, coronavirus models and experts warn: Closing America was hard. Science suggests reopening amid coronavirus will be even harder.

Reading archive 2020-04-22

How ‘Mrs. America’ gives Shirley Chisholm her due — and exposes the limits of 1970s feminism

Trump instructs the Navy to ‘shoot down and destroy’ Iranian gunboats that ‘harass’ U.S. ships

Senate committee unanimously endorses spy agencies’ finding that Russia interfered in 2016 presidential race in bid to help Trump

CDC director warns second wave of coronavirus is likely to be even more devastating

How a Pandemic Might Play Out Under Trump: It’s not clear that the next administration is ready to deal with an outbreak of Ebola, flu, or other emerging diseases.

Fox News falls out of love with hydroxychloroquine

Meet the minds behind the bizarre, truth-bombing Steak-umm Twitter account

The anti-quarantine protests seem spontaneous. But behind the scenes, a powerful network is helping.

Reading archive 2020-04-21

The NCAA saved money in case of a canceled March Madness. Then it spent it.

Is North Korean leader Kim Jong Un gravely ill? Not true, says South Korea.

Coronavirus has largely spared Wyoming, so far. Amid protests to open up, some worry the worst is yet to come.

Gov. Brian Kemp sets Georgia on aggressive course to reopen, putting his state at center of deepening national debate

Reading archive 2020-04-20

'A Perfect Storm': Extremists Look For Ways To Exploit Coronavirus Pandemic

U.S. Supreme Court abolishes split jury verdicts; dozens of convictions voided

Smugglers sawed into Trump’s border wall 18 times in one month in San Diego area, records show - "Nearly all of the 158 miles of new barriers completed as of April 10 are in areas where the new design is replacing smaller, older fencing. Just two miles of new fencing have been added to areas that previously had no structure whatsoever, according to the latest construction figures from CBP and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which oversees the project."

Dan Crenshaw’s viral defense of Trump’s coronavirus response isn’t all it’s cracked up to be

Reading archive 2020-04-17

A health-care worker took a covid-19 test and then attended parties. It came back positive, frustrated mayor says.

Reading archive 2020-04-16

We’ve never backed a Democrat for president. But Trump must be defeated.

Assessing Tara Reade’s allegations

Reading archive 2020-04-15

As humans stay indoors, wild animals take back what was once theirs

Reading archive 2020-04-14

State Department cables warned of safety issues at Wuhan lab studying bat coronaviruses - "As my colleague David Ignatius noted, the Chinese government’s original story — that the virus emerged from a seafood market in Wuhan — is shaky. Research by Chinese experts published in the Lancet in January showed the first known patient, identified on Dec. 1, had no connection to the market, nor did more than one-third of the cases in the first large cluster. Also, the market didn’t sell bats."

China’s bid to repair its coronavirus-hit image is backfiring in the West

Beijing tried to make German officials praise China over coronavirus outbreak – report

Anti-malarial drug touted by Trump was subject of CIA warning to employees

Reading archive 2020-04-13

How false hope spread about hydroxychloroquine to treat covid-19 — and the consequences that followed

Sexual assault allegation by former Biden Senate aide emerges in campaign, draws denial

Trump’s latest rage-fest is one of his most absurd and dangerous yet

The long and winding evolution of Dr. Drew, back in the spotlight after a coronavirus controversy

The GOP has caught autocratic fever: The number of conservative Republicans favoring fewer checks and balances on a president has doubled since last year.

How Mitch McConnell Became Trump’s Enabler-in-Chief: The Senate Majority Leader’s refusal to rein in the President is looking riskier than ever. - "Finally, someone who knows him very well told me, 'Give up. You can look and look for something more in him, but it isn’t there. I wish I could tell you that there is some secret thing that he really believes in, but he doesn’t.'
...
"According to '60 Minutes,' McConnell and Chao helped another coal company skirt responsibility for one of the biggest environmental disasters in U.S. history. In 2000, Jack Spadaro, an engineer for the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, began conducting an investigation in Martin County, Kentucky, after a slurry pond owned by Massey Energy burst open, releasing three hundred million gallons of lavalike coal waste that killed more than a million fish and contaminated the water systems of nearly thirty thousand people. Spadaro and his team were working on a report that documented eight apparent violations of the law, which could have led to charges of criminal negligence and cost Massey hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines. But, that November, George W. Bush was elected President, and he soon named Chao his Labor Secretary, giving her authority over the Mine Safety and Health Administration. She chose McConnell’s former chief of staff, Steven Law, as her chief of staff. Spadaro told me, 'Law had his finger in everything, and was truly running the Labor Department. He was Mitch’s guy.' The day Bush was sworn in, Spadaro was ordered to halt his investigation. Before the Labor Department issued any fines, Massey made a hundred-thousand-dollar donation to the National Republican Senatorial Committee. McConnell himself had run the unit, which raises funds for Senate campaigns, between 1997 and 2000.
...
"Under McConnell’s leadership, as the Washington Post’s Paul Kane wrote recently, the chamber that calls itself the world’s greatest deliberative body has become, 'by almost every measure,' the 'least deliberative in the modern era.' In 2019, it voted on legislation only a hundred and eight times. In 1999, by contrast, the Senate had three hundred and fifty such votes, and helped pass a hundred and seventy new laws. At the end of 2019, more than two hundred and seventy-five bills, passed by the House of Representatives with bipartisan support, were sitting dormant on McConnell’s desk. Among them are bills mandating background checks on gun purchasers and lowering the cost of prescription drugs—ideas that are overwhelmingly popular with the public. But McConnell, currently the top recipient of Senate campaign contributions from the pharmaceutical industry, has denounced efforts to lower drug costs as 'socialist price controls.'

"Norman Ornstein, a political scientist specializing in congressional matters at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, told me that he has known every Senate Majority Leader in the past fifty years, and that McConnell 'will go down in history as one of the most significant people in destroying the fundamentals of our constitutional democracy.' He continued, 'There isn’t anyone remotely close. There’s nobody as corrupt, in terms of violating the norms of government.'"

Reading archive 2020-04-09

China’s investigative journalists offer a fraught glimpse behind Beijing’s coronavirus propaganda

Coronavirus-wracked nursing home evacuated after most of staff failed to show for two days

Reading archive 2020-04-06

Inspector general who handled Ukraine whistleblower complaint says ‘it is hard not to think’ he was fired by Trump for doing his job

Trump’s coronavirus commentary bolsters attack ads questioning his fitness to lead

Great Barrier Reef suffers its most widespread mass bleaching event on record

The Book That Predicted President Trump’s Coronavirus Response: Two years ago, Michael Lewis’ The Fifth Risk detailed the impact that Trump was having on the government’s ability to protect us from danger. Why didn’t we listen?

Reading archive 2020-04-04

The U.S. was beset by denial and dysfunction as the coronavirus raged: From the Oval Office to the CDC, political and institutional failures cascaded through the system and opportunities to mitigate the pandemic were lost. - "'This has been a real blow to the sense that America was competent,' said Gregory F. Treverton, a former chairman of the National Intelligence Council, the government’s senior-most provider of intelligence analysis. He stepped down from the NIC in January 2017 and now teaches at the University of Southern California. 'That was part of our global role. Traditional friends and allies looked to us because they thought we could be competently called upon to work with them in a crisis. This has been the opposite of that.'"

Reading archive 2020-04-03

Jared Kushner’s coronavirus briefing debut sparks outcry, confusion - "In a scathing op-ed titled 'Jared Kushner Is Going to Get Us All Killed,' New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg described Kushner’s current role as 'dilettantism raised to the level of sociopathy.'"

They survived the HIV crisis. Now New York’s aging gay population is confronting another plague.

Trump fires intelligence community watchdog who told Congress about whistleblower complaint that led to impeachment

Reading archive 2020-04-01

If you could see my hospital, you would know the horror of covid-19