Light News

Justice Department lawyers still studying whether Trump actually has the legal authority (he doesn't) to unilaterally suspend new green cards as part of an order that caught DOJ and DHS off guard
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/21/us/politics/coronavirus-trump-immigration-ban.html

Donald Trump offered Julian Assange a pardon if he would say Russia was not involved in leaking Democratic party emails, a court in London has been told.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/feb/19/donald-trump-offered-julian-assange-pardon-russia-hack-wikileaks

Conservative and right-wing voices play an outsized role in spreading mis- and disinformation online about the coronavirus pandemic worldwide. This is despite their diminishing share of the overall online discussion between January and March of this year. This is according to a new report released today by Graphika, a company that specializes in using artificial intelligence for digital marketing and the study of online disinformation. Graphika’s findings show that the U.S. right-wing’s share of Twitter discourse about coronavirus peaked in February but declined in March as more mainstream voices began to take up the issue. Nonetheless, the U.S. right-wing has played a particularly important role in the rise and spread of various forms of coronavirus disinformation.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/seanlawson/2020/04/21/right-wing-responsible-for-pushing-coronavirus-disinformation-on-twitter-worldwide-new-report-says/#15a6ea25597f
https://graphika.com/reports/the-covid-19-infodemic/

World-renown canals in Venice have become so crystal clear since the coronavirus lockdown a jellyfish has been seen majestically floating through the water.
https://www.9news.com.au/world/jellyfish-spotted-in-crystalclear-venetian-canals-amid-covid19-lockdown/4b2c57f7-fc45-4734-8801-a4a4aa2cb35d

Meanwhile billion-dollar war games continue over the South China Sea
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-security-malaysia/australia-joins-u-s-ships-in-south-china-sea-amid-rising-tension-idUSKCN2240FS

Air pollution falls by unprecedented levels in major global cities during coronavirus lockdowns
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/22/world/air-pollution-reduction-cities-coronavirus-intl-hnk/

Air-conditioning spread the coronavirus to 9 people sitting near an infected person in a restaurant in China, researchers say. It has huge implications for the service industry.
https://www.businessinsider.com/air-conditioning-spread-coronavirus-restaurant-can-service-industry-open-again-2020-4

Muslims kill 52 villagers in Mozambique
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mozambique-insurgency/islamist-insurgents-kill-52-villagers-in-mozambique-police-say-idUSKCN2233AV

As people stay home, Earth turns wilder and cleaner | As people across the globe stay home to stop the spread of the new coronavirus, the air has cleaned up, albeit temporarily. Smog stopped choking New Delhi, one of the most polluted cities in the world, and India’s getting views of sights not visible in decades. Nitrogen dioxide pollution in the northeastern United States is down 30%. Rome air pollution levels from mid-March to mid-April were down 49% from a year ago. Stars seems more visible at night. People are also noticing animals in places and at times they don’t usually. Coyotes have meandered along downtown Chicago’s Michigan Avenue and near San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. A puma roamed the streets of Santiago, Chile. Goats took over a town in Wales. In India, already daring wildlife has become bolder with hungry monkeys entering homes and opening refrigerators to look for food. “It is giving us this quite extraordinary insight into just how much of a mess we humans are making of our beautiful planet,” says conservation scientist Stuart Pimm of Duke University. “This is giving us an opportunity to magically see how much better it can be.”
https://apnews.com/726ff63bb43bdca65e41625b1e223040
https://apnews.com/63ee696610ad351a088c76cba1db80d3
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/drop-in-air-pollution-over-northeast
http://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Copernicus/Sentinel-5P/Air_pollution_remains_low_as_Europeans_stay_at_home
https://www.republicworld.com/amp/world-news/rest-of-the-world-news/puma-found-roaming-chiles-capital.html
https://www.republicworld.com/amp/world-news/rest-of-the-world-news/puma-found-roaming-chiles-capital.html
https://apnews.com/cd382ba2870a9ad8911bc034cdcafb5f
https://nicholas.duke.edu/people/faculty/pimm

World Cup 2006 corruption trial about to pass statute of limitations: Former top officials from Germany's DFB and FIFA are on trial for tax evasion and receiving suspicious payments. But now the process looks set to end without a ruling as the statute of limitations runs out next week.
https://www.dw.com/en/world-cup-2006-corruption-trial-to-quietly-pass-statute-of-limitations/a-53201962

.@PressSec, ever since the day he lied about my daughters murder and blamed it on the Russia investigation, he became nothing more than the current occupant of the White House. As for his name, he loves to hear that, and so I wont say that either. I will say President @JoeBiden.
https://twitter.com/fred_guttenberg/status/1252550144572166144

Trump said on Wednesday he had instructed the U.S. Navy to shoot down Iranian ships that harass it at sea, a week after 11 vessels from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN) came dangerously close to American ships in the Gulf.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-iran-military/trump-instructs-u-s-navy-to-destroy-iranian-gunboats-if-they-harass-our-ships-at-sea-idUSKCN2241UK

Distraction. Notice yesterday was the immigration "ban" that never happened and since that didn't distract the media from his failures during this covid19 crisis, he is now threatening war to distract the media again.

The Bronx, long a symbol of American poverty, is now New York City’s coronavirus capital | The Bronx is not just the poorest borough in the city. The 15th District, or NY-15, its chief congressional district, is the poorest in the nation. Of all the unsettling data points to have surfaced during the pandemic, one is front of mind among many of the 1.5 million people who live here: Of New York state’s 62 counties, the Bronx ranks dead last by most every measure. NY-15 has a median income of $30,483, and the state’s worst rates for asthma, diabetes, hypertension and obesity, putting residents at a disproportionately high risk of death should they develop covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Even before the crisis, life expectancy here was 75 years old, 10 years lower than that of the most affluent pockets of Brooklyn and Manhattan. “Poverty ages you,” said Ritchie Torres, 32, a member of the New York City Council who was raised in one of NY-15’s tens of thousands of public housing units and spent much of his youth hospitalized for asthma and has been chronically underweight. He recently recovered from a confirmed covid-19 infection. “I was born into a leaky and moldy apartment,” said Torres. “That was not a decision. That was a circumstance imposed on me.” His mother still lives in public housing there. As in other struggling communities throughout the country, the coronavirus crisis could hardly have come at a worse time for the Bronx, which had seen its high unemployment come way down and was nearing the outset of Yankees baseball season — the six-month window each year that drives a huge share of the local economy, especially for low-wage workers. Major League Baseball has delayed the start of its season and, even once sectors of the U.S. economy do begin to reopen, faces the prospect of playing in empty stadiums. Díaz is quick to note that in January the unemployment rate here dipped below 5 percent for the first time in decades. Now, he added, “It’s our whole workforce that keeps getting hit hard because the essential workers are the bus drivers, the train conductors, the people working for minimum wage, the delivery industry, the food industry. That’s us. That’s blacks. That’s Latinos. Those are Bronxites.” This congressional district is home to nine garbage-transfer sites, plus at least three medical-waste sites. CitiBike, the city’s bike-sharing program, debuted in the Bronx only last year, six years after launching in Manhattan. A briar patch of four highways, diesel truck traffic and manufacturing operations combine to form what’s known locally as the South Bronx’s “Asthma Alley.” A covid-19 testing site was announced for the neighborhood this month, but Manhattan — the city’s least affected borough with less than half the Bronx’s infection rate — has converted its Javits Center convention hall and a piece of Central Park into makeshift hospitals. What about the Bronx?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/bronx-new-york-yankee-stadium-coronavirus/2020/04/21/3b38b460-8182-11ea-a3ee-13e1ae0a3571_story.html
https://www.cityandstateny.com/articles/politics/new-york-state/ny-has-richest-poorest-smallest-most-unequal-congressional
https://www.welcome2thebronx.com/2019/03/20/still-62-the-bronx-is-once-again-the-unhealthiest-county-in-new-york-state/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/02/28/what-you-need-know-about-coronavirus/?tid=lk_inline_manual_10&itid=lk_inline_manual_10
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/29/health/life-expectancy-nyc-chi-atl-richmond.html
https://www.si.com/mlb/yankees/news/yankees-milestones-delayed-2020-canceled-season
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/apr/04/new-york-south-bronx-minorities-pollution-inequity
https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page

Relentless record heat roasts south Florida while most of the Gulf Coast also is cooking | Miami spiked to 97 degrees Monday, the city’s warmest April temperature observed | From South Texas to South Florida, all along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, temperatures in the spring frequently have leaped ahead to summer-like levels. South Florida, in particular, has turned downright hot, obliterating long-standing records. On Monday, Miami experienced its hottest April day recorded, soaring to 97 degrees. Meteorologists say the steamy weather is linked to abnormally warm temperatures in the adjacent waters of the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean and a persistent high pressure zone heating the air. But both the extent and intensity of the warmth is unprecedented in many areas and would likely not be happening without the influence of human-induced climate change. | The heat hasn’t been restricted to Miami. Virtually every coastal city in the Florida Panhandle and peninsula has seen its warmest or second-warmest start to the year on record. In addition, the National Centers for Environmental Information noted that the past month was the state’s warmest March on the books. | The hot weather has swelled west of Florida all along the Gulf Coast. According to rankings from the Southeast Regional Climate Center, most Gulf Coast areas have seen one of their top five warmest years. Brownsville, Tex., is having its second-warmest year, Houston has warmed into the top three, while the heat has been unprecedented in New Orleans.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/04/22/record-april-heat-miami-florida-gulf-coast/

President Barack Obama presents Vice President Joe Biden with the Presidential Medal of Freedom with Distinction during a tribute to the Vice President in the State Dining Room of the White House, Jan. 12, 2017. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy) [2,000 x 1,333]
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Joe_Biden_Receives_Presidential_Medal_of_Freedom.jpg

Republicans want everything re-opened so they can terminate the $2.5 trillion dollar coronavirus bailout, which Republicans are calling "Blue State Bailouts", even though most of the money has gone to Red States (and red states received most federal "welfar"e....), ultra-wealthy individuals, and big wealthy businesses

Ahmed Hussein-Suale Divela uncovered corrupt judges & pastors who preyed on disabled children. But his report on the Ghana Football Association may have cost his life. Learn more in the Journalists Memorial:
Undercover investigative journalist Ahmed Hussein-Suale Divela took on dangerous assignments for Tiger Eye Private Investigations, an award-winning news service in Ghana. He reported on drug dealers, pastors preying on disabled children, and corrupt judges. While pursuing a story on ritual murders in Malawi, he was attacked by villagers who mistook him for one of the killers. But a report on widespread corruption by Ghanaian soccer referees may have cost him his life. After the 2018 documentary aired, the Ghana Football Association was dissolved, and top government officials were linked to the scandal. A member of the country’s parliament who said Hussein-Suale should be hanged appeared on television with a photo of the reporter, urging viewers to “beat him.” Six months later, Hussein-Suale was driving to visit a sick nephew in Accra when he was shot three times. He was 31. Anas Aremeyaw Anas, head of Tiger Eye, vowed to continue his work. “Come what may, we will never stop.”
https://www.freedomforum.org/journalists-memorial/browse-the-memorial/#main/honoreedetails/5e976b0c9c086706bc2b6910/

Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders vow joint climate work as part of endorsement
https://www.axios.com/joe-biden-bernie-sanders-climate-change-endorsement-139d348d-978b-409b-9559-1e68bc72a809.html

Democrats aren’t "refusing" to return from vacation. All of Congress is in recess until May 4 to avoid transmitting coronavirus and practice social distancing,
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/14/congress-extends-recess-until-at-least-may-4-185792

First off, the decision to pause funding to the organization that is coordinating the global fight against a pandemic in the middle of a pandemic is hugely damaging. If they do move forward with fully cutting off funding, that doesn’t just disrupt COVID response; it disrupts a lot of different things the U.S. government relies on WHO to do, like polio eradication, or cholera in Yemen, or extinguishing the Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo. The fact that the U.S. didn’t need to deploy a massive Ebola response effort in eastern Congo, like we did to West Africa in 2014, is a direct outflow of our investment in WHO’s emergency capacity. If we undermine those investments, then that just puts more work on our plate. | Let’s start with what they actually did. WHO received initial notice from China on December 31. By the 5th of January, WHO put out a notice about a reported pneumonia of unknown cause and a cluster of cases requiring hospitalization. At that point, they didn’t have much more to go on than what the affected country gave them. That is by design. What people don’t understand, and what the U.S. government is willfully ignoring, is what WHO can and cannot do is governed by something called the International Health Regulations. That is a binding international agreement amongst WHO member states that lays out the requirements for providing notice to WHO and the authorities that WHO has when there is a novel outbreak like this. When WHO gets a report from the Chinese government, WHO doesn’t really have the latitude to say, “We don’t believe you.” That’s how member states want it, and you can imagine why. If the U.S. were providing outbreak information to WHO, the U.S. would not take kindly if WHO said, “We don’t believe you.” The information WHO received from China, we now know, was somewhat misleading and incomplete. The thing that has gotten WHO in hot water the most seems to be a tweet from January 14, where they said, “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission.” Right there, you’ve got that hedged in two ways. It’s characterized as “preliminary investigations” — it’s not drawing a final conclusion; it’s sharing an initial impression. And it’s saying “no clear evidence,” which does not mean it’s not happening. It means there’s an absence of evidence, rather than evidence of absence. There was a press conference later that same day about the discovery of a case in Thailand, and WHO was more forward-leaning in that press conference and noted that there was the potential for human-to-human transmission. Bear in mind, this is all within about two weeks of the world even coming to understand that this virus even existed. On the 20th and 21st of January, China agreed to let WHO personnel go to Wuhan to assess the situation there. That mission came back and confirmed that there was human-to-human transmission occurring. To go from “based on preliminary information we don’t have evidence” to “It is happening, we do have evidence” in a week is not unreasonable. | On the merits, did the WHO warn the world at the time? I think you have to say they did. Whatever the initial garbles that they got from China, by the 23rd of January, they had put out a pretty accurate picture of this virus to the world. At a point when this really had not hit the rest of the world, the world knew the basic picture of this virus and they knew it via the WHO. The notion that WHO failed to tell the world that it was transmitting human to human, or failed to tell the world how dangerous it was, is just absurd. It totally ignores what they were actually saying in January. Another thing that the administration gets wrong is the accusation by the president and Secretary Pompeo that WHO should have somehow investigated China. WHO has no power to investigate a member state! Zero. There is no authority or mechanism that WHO member states have given them to unilaterally launch an investigation. It’s crazy. Then there’s the fourth point. Fundamentally, this is not about what WHO did or did not do. It’s not about what WHO did or did not say. What it’s about is turning WHO into a political scapegoat to distract from this administration’s failures to prepare. WHO’s own information, WHO’s level of alarm, WHO’s characterization of the risk, were always well out ahead of the Trump administration. At a time when the U.S. government was still saying the risk to the American public was low, WHO was saying that this absolutely had pandemic potential. | WHO is not critical of any of its member states in public. Ever. Has WHO been deferential to China? Yes. Is that unique to China? Not at all. The U.S. is the epicenter of the global epidemic now on an enormous scale, we have screwed up our domestic response badly. Has WHO publicly criticized us for that? Of course not. During the Ebola epidemic in eastern Congo, the Congolese government made huge missteps. It politicized that outbreak. The president used it as a pretense to cancel elections in several opposition held areas with no public health basis whatsoever. WHO did not support that decision, but they didn’t criticize it publicly. If they are not going to criticize the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is hardly a powerful member state on the order of China or the United States, I think that tells you this is not unique to China. It’s just absurd. I think what the administration also gets wrong is if you’re afraid that China is instrumentalizing an international organization, you don’t respond by abandoning that organization. You’re just conceding the playing field to China. You respond by engaging further. The point of the multilateral system is a place for all states to engage regardless of politics. If you’re worried that China has too much influence, the solution is not to abandon your own influence. | Absolutely. It’s an attempt to change the subject. The administration is clearly grasping for anything it can to distract from its own poor performance. If they can blame this on WHO, or if they can blame this on a lab accident in China, that somehow alleviates them of their responsibility. That is very clearly the play. The lab thing is a useful target for them because it can’t be disproven. We will probably never know with 100 percent certainty whether this was a natural spillover or a lab spillover. But what we can say is, the fact that you can’t disprove one or the other doesn’t mean that they are equally plausible. The natural spillover is drastically more plausible than a lab spillover scenario. If you look at the ledger on each side, what you have on the ledger of the natural spillover scenario, is basically every significant global outbreak has been a natural spillover. Natural spillovers happen all of the time. Biology points to a natural event. It points to — though we don’t know for sure — the virus probably jumped from bats to another intermediate animal before jumping to humans. | On the lab side of the scenario, you basically have no affirmative evidence linking it to a lab origin. What you have is a lot of speculation based on the proximity of the lab to the market and based on a few incomplete allegations of poor safety practices at one of the labs in Wuhan. That is not a lot to go on. There is no indication that this virus was in that lab, which was working on other bat coronaviruses. There is no indication that this one was there. The fact that we knew that they had other coronaviruses and we didn’t know that they had this one feels notable. There was an interview with an American scientist who had done work with the Wuhan lab where she said if they had this virus, they probably would have published about it pretty rapidly. If you find this kind of a novel coronavirus, you would want the world to know about it. The fact that they did not do that raises questions about the viability of the lab spillover scenario. You can look at this through a biology lens and you can look at this through a political lens. If you look at the biology, basically everything about the biology says that the likelier scenario is that this was a natural origin, not a lab spillover. If you look at this through the politics, yes, the Chinese government is being opaque about what was going on in that lab, and they have not wanted to share that with the outside world. But at the same time, the U.S. government is obviously doing everything it can to spin this up as a story. The National Security Council is reportedly pushing the intelligence community very hard to try and find anything that would suggest that the lab was the origin. We have the administration trying to put the story out into the ecosystem, pushing it through favorable media outlets and personalities on the basis of very little. If they had something stronger, we would see it. They wouldn’t be sitting on it.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/how-trumps-coronavirus-blame-for-who-and-china-falls-flat.html
https://nypost.com/2020/03/20/who-haunted-by-old-tweet-saying-china-found-no-human-transmission-of-coronavirus/

The Church isn't some building, the Church is in You. You don't have to put yourself or others at risk for some false notion of faith, your faith is YOUR OWN not handed out by some fancy dressed proselytizer.

Trump's Earth Day plans? Ignore science, exploit a pandemic to roll back environmental protections, and hand out favors to the fossil fuel industry. Let us celebrate the 50th Earth Day by pledging hard to vote DEMOCRAT straight down the ballot November 2020. Our children and grandchildren not only deserve a habitable planet. They deserve a thriving economy and a nation that leads the world in taking on the climate crisis. VOTE BLUE ALL THE TIME.

This pandemic is devastating the Navajo Nation, which already struggled with poverty, lack of running water and inadequate medical care. Indigenous communities like the Navajo Nation cannot be neglected any longer. Congress must provide full federal support to make them whole.
https://twitter.com/NBCNewsNow/status/1252366960974630913

We have trillions in funding for endless wars. We can damn well find the money to make sure our people are able to feed their families and pay their bills: Congress Must Cover Paychecks of Every US Worker Says Sanders as Laid-Off Americans Struggle to Obtain Benefits
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/04/20/congress-must-cover-paychecks-every-us-worker-says-sanders-laid-americans-struggle

Trump shouldn’t be using his 2020 electoral map to make life-or-death decisions & distributing medical supplies based on which friends & allies need a favor. We want an investigation into Trump's bungled COVID-19 response.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/04/elizabeth-warren-trump-coronavirus-investigations

The CARES Act provides foreclosure & forbearance protections for homeowners with federally-backed mortgages, but many homeowners may not realize they qualify. We want the major mortgage servicers to notify eligible homeowners about these protections.
https://money.yahoo.com/democrats-homeowners-need-to-know-about-forbearance-protections-213139984.html

This blatant corruption in the middle of a public health and economic crisis is just mind-boggling. VOTE BLUE STRAIGHT DOWN THE BALLOT. WHEN A SEAT HAS NO BLUE, SKIP.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/21/business/trump-hotel-coronavirus.html

On the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, former Secretary of State John Kerry and former Ohio Governor John Kasich join The Washington Post to discuss World War Zero, their partnership to mobilize citizens and address Earth's climate crisis.
https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1252975499153936385

An Earth Day Reminder of How the Republicans Have Forsaken the Environment | A great deal of money has changed hands to help change minds; according to the Web site Open Secrets, which tracks federal campaign contributions, the oil-and-gas industry contributed nearly twenty-four million dollars to House and Senate Republicans during the past election cycle, compared with five million to Democrats. But, according to Turner and Morton, money is only part of the equation; the other part is votes. For Republican politicians, there’s no incentive to, say, back legislation to limit climate change: “Neither their corporate donors nor evangelicals nor the struggling Rust Belt workers who voted for Trump in 2016 see any advantage to it.” The situation is such that, as Aaron Huertas, who works with WeCanVote.US, recently pointed out, were Democrats inclined to pass meaningful climate legislation, they’d need to win not just the Presidency this fall but also a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Can this situation be changed? Certainly the hour is late and the facts—if you happen to be concerned about such things—are stark. What the original Earth Day showed is that, when Americans are mobilized, remarkable things are possible. What the past few years have shown is that Americans can be mobilized by the most remarkable falsehoods. To say that the future of the world depends on which of these tendencies prevails is at this point, unfortunately, no exaggeration.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/an-earth-day-reminder-of-how-the-republicans-have-forsaken-the-environment
https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/summary.php?ind=E01&cycle=2018
https://twitter.com/aaronhuertas/status/1252566881195757573

As Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro minimizes the severity of the COVID-19 virus, one city is digging mass graves for victims of the global pandemic. Bolsonaro was seen joining a rally protesting virus-driven lockdowns, openly ignoring guidance by public health experts.
https://twitter.com/CBSEveningNews/status/1253014520106307586

MLB's report finds that the Red Sox were illegally stealing signs in 2018 – on a lesser scale than the Astros in 2017 – and holds the team's replay operator responsible. The Sox will lose a second-round pick in 2020.
https://twitter.com/TheAthletic/status/1253035926638362624

#RedSox penalties: *Loss of 2020 2nd-round pick. *Ban of replay operator J.T. Watkins through 2020 playoffs and from doing same job in ‘21. *Ban of Alex Cora through ‘20 playoffs, but only for conduct with #Astros. Story with @EvanDrellich :
https://twitter.com/Ken_Rosenthal/status/1253033743444586496

Former Red Sox manager Alex Cora will be suspended through the end of the 2020 season, though that penalty is for his actions with the Houston Astros and not his time as Red Sox manager. All in all, Boston escapes significant discipline and Cora gets same penalty as Hinch/Luhnow.
https://twitter.com/JeffPassan/status/1253037103799250946

MLB's investigation into the Boston Red Sox's sign stealing during 2018 revealed a far lesser scheme than the Houston Astros, with penalties accordingly less severe: Only a loss of a second-round pick and a replay operator banned, as @Ken_Rosenthal and @EvanDrellich reported.
https://twitter.com/JeffPassan/status/1253036635115192320

People Are Still Being Evicted During The Coronavirus Pandemic. Housing Lawyers Fear A “Tsunami” Of Cases When State Moratoriums End. Legal aid lawyers say they’re still seeing illegal evictions, and expect a surge in need from millions of newly unemployed tenants once state and local moratoriums end. | There are moratoriums preventing landl/rds from evicting residents in all but five states at the state or local level due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to the Eviction Lab at Princeton University. But lawyers who work with low-income clients told BuzzFeed News that despite moratoriums and stay-at-home orders intended to stop the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, landl/rds and property owners are still trying to force people out. | “There’s no official waiver of late fees, rent is still owed, and our clients are very low-income,” Erkert said. “They need their stimulus money to buy food and diapers and pay for basic living expenses. It won’t go very far if you have no other source of income right now. I just can’t fathom how most of my clients are going to be able to pay back one, two, or three — who knows how long this will go on — months of rent.”
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetillman/coronavirus-illegal-evictions-moratorium-rent-lawyer-aid

Can all the lawmakers who are Very Concerned About The National Debt please weigh in on this use of money? The Pentagon plans to dispatch the Navy's Blue Angels and the Air Force's Thunderbirds in a multi-city effort to "champion national unity" amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to defense officials and a memo I obtained today.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2020/04/22/pentagon-plans-dispatch-blue-angels-thunderbirds-coronavirus-response/

Math models show Georgia is one of last states that should be reopening. More than 830 deaths. Less than 1% of residents tested. Positive results 23% of time.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/04/22/reopening-america-states-coronavirus/

Trump threatened to fire CDC's chief of respiratory diseases in February
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/494187-trump-threatened-to-fire-cdcs-chief-of-respiratory-diseases-in
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-wanted-to-fire-cdc-doctor-for-raising-alarm-on-coronavirus-wsj-2020-4

Rick Bright, former director of the U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, said in a statement Wednesday that he believes he was removed from his role this week after clashing with HHS leadership over his attempts to limit the use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine to treat the coronavirus. The news was first reported by the New York Times.
https://www.axios.com/hydroxychloroquine-coronavirus-vaccine-doctor-02f1430c-6c44-43fc-abab-56f2716c6d5a.html
https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/21/rick-bright-out-at-barda/
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/us/coronavirus-live-coverage.html

The country just watched Congress hand out $6 trillion (feds injected economy with $2 trillion twice, plus the $2.5 trillion dollar bailout.....), but can't protect their pensions?

A lot of buzz right now: the SCOTUS decision on Title VII, which will determine whether LGBTQ people are protected under federal civil rights law, will come down either Thursday or Monday morning.

Reminder that someone else's "chain migration" may be your wife's mother and father. And don't forget about all of the anchor babies: Tiffany is the only child who had an American mother. His four other children (Ivana, Don Jr, Eric, Baron) were born to an illegal immigrant and a visa holder
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/melania-trumps-parents-become-naturalized-us-citizens-amid-the-presidents-hostility-toward-chain-migration/2018/08/09/646a4f62-9bf9-11e8-b60b-1c897f17e185_story.html

For most Americans, this disease is deeply personal, and its victims are anything but nameless. And because they see it spreading rapidly, they don’t believe it has been contained, at least not yet. According to a recent poll from the Pew Research Center, 73% of Americans believe that the worst is still to come, compared with 26% who believe that the peak of the disease is behind us. Evidence from around the world suggests that the risks to children are minimal and that it would be safe for them to return to school. But because the risks rise steadily with age, the same cannot be said for their teachers and administrators. Nor are statistics likely to reassure parents, for whom their children are infinitely precious and irreplaceable, not abstract ciphers in a medical journal. No one enjoys perfect safety, anytime, anywhere—a reality underscored by the rash of mass shootings in U.S. schools. Schoolchildren in Newtown, Conn., and Parkland, Fla., eventually returned to class, but only after schools hardened their defenses and administrators convinced parents that children would be as safe as possible. The country will be required to go through a similar process—group by group, community by community, sector by sector—as it gradually moves to a safe-enough normal. There is a further complexity, classically stated by the 19th-century English philosopher John Stuart Mill. When individuals contemplate actions that affect only themselves, there is a strong case that they should be allowed to choose for themselves, even if they end up acting in ways that reasonable observers would judge unreasonable or even self-destructive. But when a person’s actions have substantial negative effects on others, Mill says that intervention is justified in principle and may be advisable in practice—especially, I would add, when those affected have no say in the matter. In the broadest sense, Americans face the same challenge as in 1933: restoring confidence. For this to happen, citizens must trust what leaders are telling them, and policies must be consistent with what the people can see for themselves.
https://www.people-press.org/2020/04/16/most-americans-say-trump-was-too-slow-in-initial-response-to-coronavirus-threat/ 

Pelosi did not hold a "rally" in SF Chinatown, as Trump just claimed. She walked through Chinatown, spoke to the media, and urged people to visit as usual. She also didn't call for a "parade," "street fair," "parties," or a "march" in Chinatown, as Trump has previously claimed.

It is pathetic to hear Trump whine about his coverage instead of focusing on the challenge in front of the country. It has to be about him.

Las Vegas Mayor (Republican) Embarrasses Herself During Absolutely Batshit Coronavirus CNN Interview
https://www.thedailybeast.com/las-vegas-mayor-carolyn-goodman-embarrasses-herself-during-batshit-coronavirus-interview-with-anderson-cooper

There are many exemptions in Trump's illegal immigration order, which was just released. Temp workers, family, those in the national interest, investors, military, adopted children. This order is illegal and will be tossed by a court.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/21/trump-immigration-green-card-coronavirus-198498

Only word garbage coming out of this surgeon general. Just trying to deflect from the big lie. N95 face masks do provide protection from coronavirus, but you can't have one because we haven't bothered to get any.

Clean hydrogen ship completes 9,000 km Atlantic crossing
https://plugboats.com/clean-hydrogen-ship-9000-km-atlantic-crossing/

Some banks provided highly personalized, so-called concierge service to their richest clients by enlisting representatives to walk them through every step and submit their paperwork.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/business/sba-loans-ppp-coronavirus.html

.@senatemajldr McConnell’s dismissive remark that States devastated by Coronavirus should go bankrupt rather than get the federal assistance they need and deserve is shameful and indefensible. To say that it is “free money” to provide funds for...
https://twitter.com/RepPeteKing/status/1253115927517900802

...cops, firefighters and healthcare workers makes McConnell the Marie Antoinette of the Senate.
https://twitter.com/RepPeteKing/status/1253115992110137348

Belated outrage after years of complicity. I'm unimpressed.

As wages have dried up, half a million people are estimated to have left cities to walk home, setting off the nation’s “largest mass migration since independence,” said Amitabh Behar, the chief executive of Oxfam India. | The world has never faced a hunger emergency like this, experts say. It could double the number of people facing acute hunger to 265 million by the end of this year. | Already, 135 million people had been facing acute food shortages, but now with the pandemic, 130 million more could go hungry in 2020, said Arif Husain, chief economist at the World Food Program, a United Nations agency. Altogether, an estimated 265 million people could be pushed to the brink of starvation by year’s end.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/world/africa/coronavirus-hunger-crisis.html
https://www.fsinplatform.org/sites/default/files/resources/files/GRFC_2020_ONLINE_200420.pdf

Dallas hotel magnate Monty Bennett laid off 95% of his staff, then he and his father got a $2M dividend. Now companies affiliated with him are getting $46M in PPP loans — more than any public company | But during the crisis, Mr. Bennett and other preferred shareholders still got paid millions of dollars in preferred dividends. At one of the companies, Ashford Hospitality Trust, payments to third-party preferred shareholders were declared by its board of directors, of which Mr. Bennett is chairman. At the trust’s adviser, Ashford Inc., where Mr. Bennett serves as chief executive and chairman, the board announced a preferred dividend payment to Mr. Bennett and his father. | The $30 million was about eight times the average amount a public company received, the Journal’s analysis shows.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/dallas-hotel-owner-is-biggest-beneficiary-of-coronavirus-loan-program-11587568827