Thursday Reads

Woman reading a newspaper by Partosh Sen

Good Morning Sky Dancers!

I’m still not handling the news very well. I’ve pretty much tried to tune it all out since my last post on Tuesday. It was probably a mistake to start reading The Stand, by Stephen King; but now I’m hooked, and I was already freaked out by the pandemic in real life anyway. So this post is going to be a quick one so I can go back to trying to maintain my sanity in this time of Trump and Covid-19.

Massachusetts is starting to open up, and people will be allowed to go to beaches beginning on Memorial day. I don’t think that’s a very good idea, but I have nothing to say about it. We are still seeing more than 100 deaths a day here. I’m planning to keep on staying home except for grocery shopping. I’m considering getting my hair cut in June. The hair salons are opening on the May 26th, with lots of restrictions. I got an email from my hairdresser explaining all the rules:

APPOINTMENTS
We appreciate your patience as some service providers may have limited availability. Due to the scheduled shifting of the Service Providers, your scheduled appointment may not stand as it was previously scheduled, however, you will be notified. We have limited phone staff that will be working to accommodate the many changes that have occurred.

If you are experiencing any of the following symptoms; Fever (>100.4) or Feverish, Cough, Sore Throat, Shortness of Breath, Unusual Fatigue, Chills, Body Aches, we ask that you stay home and call us at 617-489-7733 to reschedule. Let’s all stay healthy.

UPON ARRIVAL
We ask that you arrive for your appointment at the time of your appointment and no earlier. Please wait in your car outside the salon for your appointment. We will text/call you when to enter. Please limit personal belongings to payment methods and cell phones. Please do not bring any guests with you and please do not bring children to your appointment at this time.

CONTACTLESS CHECKOUT
Before you arrive for your appointment, we ask that you call and provide a credit card for us to securely store on file – the same way you might store it with Amazon or Netflix. After your appointment, we can simply charge your card through our system – no buttons to press, no screens to touch, no unnecessary physical contact required. Just safe & healthy service.

So it’s going to be pretty complicated. But I’m getting desperate.

Here are the news stories that caught my attention today.

This one isn’t really news to anyone, but it’s a reminder of Trump’s limited cognitive abilities and his deteriorating mental condition. The article is a response to Trump’s claims that intelligence briefers didn’t warn him adequately about the coming pandemic.

Man Reading Newspaper c.1918 – Hugo Scheibe

The New York Times: For Spy Agencies, Briefing Trump Is a Test of Holding His Attention.

Mr. Trump, who has mounted a yearslong attack on the intelligence agencies, is particularly difficult to brief on critical national security matters, according to interviews with 10 current and former intelligence officials familiar with his intelligence briefings.

The president veers off on tangents and getting him back on topic is difficult, they said. He has a short attention span and rarely, if ever, reads intelligence reports, relying instead on conservative media and his friends for information. He is unashamed to interrupt intelligence officers and riff based on tips or gossip he hears from the former casino magnate Steve Wynn, the retired golfer Gary Player or Christopher Ruddy, the conservative media executive.

Mr. Trump rarely absorbs information that he disagrees with or that runs counter to his worldview, the officials said. Briefing him has been so great a challenge compared with his predecessors that the intelligence agencies have hired outside consultants to study how better to present information to him.

Working to keep Mr. Trump’s interest exhausted and burned out his first briefer, Ted Gistaro, two former officials said. Mr. Gistaro did not always know what to expect and would sometimes have to brief an erratic and angry president upset over news reports, the officials said.

The simple truth is that Trump is a childish, narcissistic jerk with no interest in serving the American people. He’s never been particularly bright, and now he’s sinking into dementia. But the media continues to try to normalize him. It’s frightening how hard they work at it.

Woman reading a newspaper, Todros Geller, 1944

Mother Jones on the person who is supposedly leading the administration’s response to the pandemic: Jared Kushner Had One Job: Solve America’s Supply Crisis. He Helped Private Companies Instead.

On March 29, President Trump held a press briefing to tout “Project Airbridge,” the administration’s new effort to organize and pay for airlifts of personal protective equipment and other medical supplies from abroad. The first of Project Airbridge’s “big, great planes” coming from Asia had landed in New York that day, Trump said, bringing in “2 million masks and gowns, over 10 million gloves, and over 70,000 thermometers,” which would be distributed to virus hot spots across the country. The heads of some of the country’s biggest medical supply distributors joined him at the podium to pay tribute to the administration and talk about the project. “They’re big people,” Trump declared of the executives working together with the administration to deliver “record amounts of lifesaving equipment.”

The origins of Project Airbridge lie with MIT experts, who originally proposed a government led and funded airlift of supplies, according to the Washington Post. But it was seized upon by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who ran a volunteer shadow coronavirus task force that included his former roommate and people from private-equity companies and consulting firms like McKinsey. (“Young geniuses” Trump called them.) Unhappy employees at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) dubbed them “the children.”

Yet less than two months later, after many glowing PR hits, the administration decided to put an end to Project Airbridge as members of Congress and the media started demanding answers about how the supplies were being distributed, who received them, and whether the White House was making distribution decisions based on politics rather than public health. On April 21, 10 Democratic senators, led by Elizabeth Warren, asked the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services to investigate the project. “The novelty and complexity of this arrangement demands heightened scrutiny and transparency,” they wrote in a letter. “However, the administration’s implementation of Project Airbridge has been completely opaque.”

The short-lived Project Airbridge is an example of how the Trump administration has taken advantage of the pandemic to boost some of the country’s biggest companies while doing little more than offer hard-hit states photo ops and the chance to compete against each other to pay exorbitant prices for PPE. And while the project did little to ameliorate national shortages of PPE, it may have a lasting impact on everything from health care costs to the consolidation of corporate power.

Read the rest at Mother Jones.

Jeffrey DeVore, Woman reading newspaper

Gabriel Sherman on Trump’s “Obamagate” obsession: “With Obama He’s Going for the Jugular”: As Trump Goes After Obama, Some in Trumpworld See a “Big Risk.”

On May 7, Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, tweeted a GIF of the Death Star firing its planet-destroying laser to announce the start of the campaign’s war on Joe Biden. Parscale’s choice of pop-culture ephemera was widely mocked. But the meme’s biggest weakness was that it bore no resemblance to the campaign’s messaging, which so far has been all over the place. During a week when America’s COVID-19 death toll approached 90,000, Trump allies floated smears that Biden was a tool of China, an invalid eating from a spoon, and even a pedophile, none of which caused damage. Sources close to Trump said the president has vented to friends about the lack of focused firepower coming out of the campaign. “There is deep frustration that there is no overarching message,” an unofficial campaign adviser told me. (The White House and Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment.)

According to sources, Trump believes the answer to the message weakness is to declare all-out war on Biden’s former boss: Barack Obama. “Trump knows Biden is only popular because he was Obama’s V.P.,” a prominent Republican told me. Which is why, a few days after Parscale’s Death Star tweet, Trump accused Obama of unnamed crimes under the umbrella of “Obamagate.” “Obama is going to be on the campaign trail in a big way. He’s the most popular Democrat of the past four decades. Trump knows you have to neutralize him, and he’s frustrated Brad didn’t think of that,” the campaign adviser said. “Trump feels he’s doing it all alone.”

But Trump’s targeting of Obama has been causing consternation among Republicans, who fear he is pursuing a base-incitement strategy when he needs to appeal to crucial suburban voters in must-win battleground states. “Going after Obama is a big risk,” a former West Wing official said. “Obama is seen as trustworthy and reasonable. If you attack him and people don’t buy it, then you have a huge swing and a miss in front of the entire country.” Another prominent Republican agreed: “Trump cannot draw Obama into this. Obama can’t be ‘softened’ up. American people know him and like him.”

Read the rest at Vanity Fair.

Painting by Armand Schönberger (Hungarian, 1885–1974)

It looks like Trump country is soon going be in deep trouble from the pandemic. The Daily Beast: White House’s Own Data Crunchers: Southern Counties About to Get Hit Hard.

A new analysis being reviewed by the White House shows southern states that moved too quickly to relax social distancing guidelines face significant risk for a resurgence of the coronavirus over the next several weeks. In several cases, counties will see hundreds of additional cases by June 17.

The study, which was put together by PolicyLab at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, is part of a data set being reviewed by top coronavirus task force officials and people working with the team, The Daily Beast reported earlier this month. A previous model by the PolicyLab predicted that if officials moved too quickly and too aggressively to reopen in mid-May, individual counties could witness hundreds, if not a thousand-plus, more coronavirus cases reported each day by August 1.

The new model shows that in southern counties, particularly in Texas, Florida, Alabama, and Virginia, the risk for resurgence is high over the next four weeks. These states have moved to reopen, at least partially, since the team published its last model in April.

The data set now takes into consideration current levels of social distancing rather than projections about what would happen when local communities reopened. It also includes data for more than 200 additional counties across the country. The findings indicate that the risk for large second waves of outbreaks remains low if communities continue to implement cautious, incremental plans to reopening that limit crowding and travel to non-essential businesses. Doctors working on the study said that without vigilance in masking, hygiene, and disinfection, certain southern counties will remain high risk.

The new data, which has been presented to members of the White House’s coronavirus task force, is likely to validate fears by doctors and scientists, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease official in the administration, that opening states too soon could have disastrous health consequences.

That’s all I have the strength for today. I’m going to spend the rest of the day trying to pull myself out of my current funk. It’s hard not to feel despairing when the world is upside down and we have zero leadership on the national level.

Take care of yourselves Sky Dancers!

Thursday Reads: News Overload and Spring Flowers

Good Morning!!

There is so much news today that I can’t possibly get to all of it, but I’ll do my best.

This morning Dr. Rick Bright, the latest whistle blower to challenge Trump’s version of reality, is testifying in the House. The hearing in The energy and Commerce Committee’s Health Subcommittee is happening right now.

CNN: Dr. Rick Bright, ousted director of key vaccine agency, to testify before House panel Thursday.

Dr. Rick Bright, the ousted director of a crucial federal office charged with developing countermeasures to infectious diseases, will testify before Congress on Thursday that the US will face “unprecedented illness and fatalities” without additional preparations to curb the coronavirus pandemic.

“Our window of opportunity is closing,” Bright is expected to testify, according to his prepared remarks provided to CNN. “Without clear planning and implementation … 2020 will be (the) darkest winter in modern history.” [….]

Before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce’s health subcommittee, Bright is expected to urge the Trump administration to consider a number of actions, including increasing production of essential equipment and establishing both a national test strategy and a national standard of procurement of supplies. He calls on top officials to “lead” through example and wear face coverings and social distance.

Bright, now a senior adviser at the National Institutes of Health, claims that the administration “missed early warning signals” to prevent the spread of the virus and blames the leadership of the Health and Human Services for being “dismissive” of his “dire predictions.”

Read more at CNN.

Arum, irises and mimosa, Blue vase with flowers on a blue tablecloth, 1913, Henri Matisse

More from Raw Story: A Trump official tried to fast-track funding for his friend’s unproven COVID-19 ‘treatment’: whistleblower Rick Bright.

Last November, Rick Bright, then the director of a federal office that approves funding for medical emergencies, sat in on a meeting between his boss and two men — a pharmaceutical and biotech consultant and an Emory University professor — seeking millions of dollars for an unproven drug.

Bright wrote in a whistleblower complaint filed last week that he was wary as professor George Painter and consultant John Clerici described the drug “as a ‘cure all’ for influenza, Ebola, and nearly every other virus.” The team came back in February with an updated pitch after the coronavirus outbreak, suggesting its antiviral medication could be a treatment for COVID-19.

Painter, a pharmacology professor and CEO of a nonprofit biotech company, had already received $30 million from the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense for small-scale clinical trials. But as Bright described in his complaint, Painter sought more money from Bright’s office, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA). Instead of going through Bright’s formal application process, Painter and Clerici sought funding through a separate, more “opaque” program created by Bright’s boss, Robert Kadlec — a Trump administration appointee and friend of Painter’s. Kadlec’s program was designed to support products, equipment and technology, Bright said, and lacked the expertise to evaluate drug development.

Bright said Kadlec looked favorably on the proposal from the beginning, but Bright urged caution, as Painter had no data on the drug’s effects in humans. For instance, Bright said he’d noted during the November meeting that other compounds similar to this drug had toxic effects, as the lab animals treated with those chemicals gave birth to offspring that were “born without teeth and without parts of their skulls.”

Bright said Kadlec tried to “circumvent” him to find funding for Painter’s drug, EIDD-2801, though he was ultimately unsuccessful.

It looks like Senator Richard Burr is in serious trouble over those suspicious stock trades he made after receiving a top secret briefing about the coming pandemic.

The Los Angeles Times: FBI serves warrant on senator in investigation of stock sales linked to coronavirus.

Federal agents seized a cellphone belonging to a prominent Republican senator on Wednesday night as part of the Justice Department’s investigation into controversial stock trades he made as the novel coronavirus first struck the U.S., a law enforcement official said.

Flowers in a Vase, 1866, Edvard Munch

Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, turned over his phone to agents after they served a search warrant on the lawmaker at his residence in the Washington area, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a law enforcement action.

The seizure represents a significant escalation in the investigation into whether Burr violated a law preventing members of Congress from trading on insider information they have gleaned from their official work.

To obtain a search warrant, federal agents and prosecutors must persuade a judge they have probable cause to believe a crime has been committed. The law enforcement official said the Justice Department is examining Burr’s communications with his broker.

Such a warrant being served on a sitting U.S. senator would require approval from the highest ranks of the Justice Department and is a step that would not be taken lightly. Kerri Kupec, a Justice Department spokeswoman, declined to comment.

A second law enforcement official said FBI agents served a warrant in recent days on Apple to obtain information from Burr’s iCloud account and said agents used data obtained from the California-based company as part of the evidence used to obtain the warrant for the senator’s phone.

The emoluments case against Trump is alive again.

Politico: Appeals court greenlights emoluments suit against Trump.

A lawsuit accusing President Donald Trump of violating the Constitution by accepting foreign government money through his luxury Washington hotel can proceed to fact-gathering about Trump’s profits, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.

Lilacs in a window, Mary Cassatt, c. 1880-83

The Richmond-based 4th Circuit Court of Appeals voted, 9-6, to reject Trump’s bid to shut down the lawsuit the governments of Maryland and the District of Columbia brought alleging violations of the Constitution’s emoluments clauses.

Trump, who has vigorously fought a series of similar lawsuits for years, will now need relief from the Supreme Court if he wants to block Maryland and D.C. from pressing demands for his business records as his re-election campaign gets into full swing….

The 4th Circuit’s full bench essentially split along ideological lines with the Democratic appointees turning down Trump’s attempt to halt discovery ordered by a federal district court judge in Maryland and the Republican-appointed ones siding with Trump.

Chief Judge Roger Gregory, who was recess appointed by President Bill Clinton and got a permanent appointment under President George W. Bush, ruled against the president.

An all GOP-appointed panel of the 4th Circuit had previously voted unanimously to shut down the suit the Maryland and D.C. attorneys general filed back in 2017.

Two other appeals courts have reached disparate rulings on similar suits filed in other courts.

Read more at Politico.

Trump and Bill Barr have run into a snag in their efforts to exonerate Michael Flynn.

The Washington Post: Court asks retired judge to oppose Justice Dept. effort to drop Michael Flynn case, examine whether ex-Trump adviser committed perjury.

Michael Flynn’s sentencing judge Wednesday asked a former federal judge to oppose the Justice Department’s request to dismiss the former Trump national security adviser’s guilty plea and examine whether Flynn may have committed perjury.

Dahlias, Berthe Morrisot, 1876

The judge requested a nonbinding recommendation on whether Flynn should face a criminal contempt hearing for pleading guilty to a crime of which he now claims to be innocent: lying to the FBI in a January 2017 interview about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador to the United States.

U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan’s appointment of retired New York federal judge John Gleeson comes one day after Sullivan put on hold the Justice Department’s bid to drop charges against Flynn, saying he expects independent groups and legal experts to argue against the move.

The unusual move by the court plunges the Flynn case even deeper into uncharted legal waters, in which the Justice Department has taken a posture more common to defense lawyers by saying that the former three-star general should never have been interviewed in an investigation and therefore his lies were immaterial. The case also presents novel legal twists as the judge has appointed a former judge to determine whether other crimes occurred and the president’s supporters demand the immediate dismissal of the entire case.

More articles on the Flynn case to check out:

The New York Times: Ex-F.B.I. Official Is Said to Undercut Justice Dept. Effort to Drop Flynn Case.

Politico: Federal judge mulls contempt charge against Michael Flynn.

The New York Times: Trump White House Rewrites History, This Time About Flynn.

Anthony Fauci’s days in the Trump administration may be numbered.

The New York Times: Trump Pointedly Criticizes Fauci for His Testimony to Congress.

President Trump on Wednesday criticized congressional testimony delivered a day earlier by Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, who had warned against reopening the country too quickly and stressed the unknown effects the coronavirus could have on children returning to school.

Claude Monet Vase of Flowers

“I was surprised by his answer,” Mr. Trump told reporters who had gathered in the Cabinet Room for the president’s meeting with the governors of Colorado and North Dakota. “To me it’s not an acceptable answer, especially when it comes to schools.”

The president’s desire to reopen schools and businesses in order to bring back the economy has often led to public clashes over the guidance provided by Dr. Fauci, who has warned that taking a cavalier attitude toward reopening the country could invite unnecessary suffering caused by a virus scientists are still struggling to understand. He reiterated that position on Tuesday in testimony before a Senate committee.

“He wants to play all sides of the equation,” Mr. Trump said on Wednesday, before bragging that the economy next year would be “phenomenal.”

Dr. Fauci also told the Senate panel that a vaccine for the coronavirus would almost certainly not be ready in time for the new school year, and warned of the dangers of the virus to children.

“I think we better be careful, if we are not cavalier, in thinking that children are completely immune to the deleterious effects,” Dr. Fauci said. “You’re right in the numbers that children in general do much, much better than adults and the elderly and particularly those with underlying conditions. But I am very careful, and hopefully humble in knowing that I don’t know everything about this disease. And that’s why I’m very reserved in making broad predictions.”

Read the rest at the NYT.

More stories of interest:

The Daily Beast: Trump Feared Testing Too Many People for Virus Would Spook Stock Markets, Says Report.

Edward Luce at The Financial Times: Inside Trump’s coronavirus meltdown.

Time: There Are Sensible Ways to Reopen a Country. Then There’s America’s Approach.

Nicholas Kristof at The New York Times: America’s True Covid Toll Already Exceeds 100,000.

Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic: The Conspiracy Theorists Are Winning. America is losing its grip on enlightenment values and reality itself.

Adrienne La France at The Atlantic: The Prophecies of Q. American conspiracy theories are entering a dangerous new phase.

A little humor from Alexandra Petri at The Washington Post: Obamagate was the worst crime ever committed and here is what it was.

I’ve tried to touch on the high points of today’s news, but I’m sure there’s plenty I’ve left out. What stories are you following today?