Walter Shaub wrote a column in the form of a Twitter thread yesterday, and USA Today published it as a column today.

Oversight began only after the Democrats took the House. But Trump’s hold on the Senate was absolute. We don’t know what assurances he received behind the scenes, but we saw even longtime Republican senators abandon previously espoused principles to protect him in plain sight. With that protection, Trump engaged in a previously unthinkable level of resistance to congressional oversight. The collapse of this constitutional safeguard was a potentially mortal wound for our system of checks and balances.

I still don’t know why this happened. I still don’t understand why it’s worth it to all those longtime Republican … Read the rest

Well this is horrifying.

Aerial footage above South Florida shows hundreds of residents risking possible coronavirus exposure — lining up to get paper applications for unemployment benefits as the state tries to fix problems with online filing. https://t.co/5pZApEVjY4 pic.twitter.com/DdiLX2YLrd

— ABC News (@ABC) April 8, 2020

… Read the rest

I’ve just realized something about this whole situation – something very obvious and that we already knew, but I hadn’t quite noticed the issue before. I was doing yet another self-rebuke, of the kind I’m sure we’re all doing (Trump and the generic trumps excepted): the kind that goes “oh shut up, everyone’s in the same boat, stop whining, just shut up and get on with it”…and I realized there’s nothing to get on with. All we can “get on with” is being passive and hunkered down and distant. All we can psych ourselves up to do is stay inside and wait.

It’s seriously weird to give yourself or anyone else a shake and an order to stop complaining and … Read the rest

More glorious Trump in his glory.

Trump announces that the US is freezing contributions to the World Health Organization, which doesn't seem likely to help with the next pandemic pic.twitter.com/6Lrjy9ENDw

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 7, 2020

Why is he doing that? Because “they missed the call. They coulda called it months earlier, they woulda known, and uh…they should of known, they probably did know, so we’ll be looking into that very carefully.”

Yes, it’s the WHO that knew about the pandemic and did nothing. Not Donald Trump, no no, the WHO.

"The captain should not have written a letter. He didn't need to be Ernest Hemingway" — Trump on Captain Crozier, who wrote a letter expressing concern that his

MediaMatters on Kayleigh McEnany:

In Donald Trump’s White House, dishonesty and antagonism toward the press are requirements for the press secretary. And considering those requirements, no one is better suited for the job than former CNN commentator and Trump 2020 campaign spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany.

This all by itself is an out of the Nazi playbook type of thing. It’s reminiscent of the Museum of Decadent Art: appoint people “press secretary” who are dedicated liars who despise real journalism. It’s bad in itself and it’s also a poke in the eye to everyone who isn’t a monstrous liar and misanthrope.

McEnany has a long history of defending anything Trump says, no matter how brazen the lie may be. She couples

Another sudden dunking in the pool of shit.

Trump's new press secretary was a birther https://t.co/AWmKu50Jjc

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 7, 2020

Her profile says she’s the national press secretary for Trump’s campaign, and it cites Phil 4:6, so I looked up Phil 4:6.

Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.

In other words, don’t bother Trump, just ask god for help.… Read the rest

Kyle Cheney and Connor O’Brien on Trump’s attack on the people overseeing the pandemic response:

President Donald Trump has upended the panel of federal watchdogs overseeing implementation of the $2 trillion coronavirus law, tapping a replacement for the Pentagon official who was supposed to lead the effort.

…

Fine’s removal is Trump’s latest incursion into the community of independent federal watchdogs — punctuated most dramatically by his late Friday ouster of the intelligence community’s inspector general, Michael Atkinson, whose handling of a whistleblower report ultimately led to Trump’s impeachment.

You know, if they’re really independent watchdogs, it should be impossible for the president to get rid of them.

Trump has also begun sharply attacking Health and Human Services Inspector

Trump keeps saying nobody knew. People did know. People around him knew, and they told him.

On Tuesday, Axios published internal White House memos that make the statements from President Donald Trump downplaying the coronavirus before it became a full-blown crisis look even more willfully ignorant.

[In] A February 23 memo labeled as a “MEMORANDUM TO PRESIDENT” sent through the National Security Agency, then-acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, and the Covid-19 task force warns in its very first sentence that “[t]here is an increasing probability of a full-blown COVID-19 pandemic that could infect as many as 100 million Americans, with a loss of life of as many as 1-2 million souls.”

Three days later, however, Trump held a

Arwa Mahdawi on the Kushner threat:

On Thursday, Kushner, who has taken on vast responsibilities in the Trump administration’s response to Covid-19, made his first public appearance at the White House daily coronavirus briefing. His moment in the spotlight seemed to serve as a wakeup call for the US. All of a sudden, it was glaringly obvious how dangerous Kushner’s hubris is…

…Kushner was supposedly at the press briefing to explain the work he has been doing. However, despite him repeating the word ‘“data” 13 times, it quickly became clear that he has no idea what he is doing. He doesn’t even seem to know what the purpose of a federal stockpile of medical equipment is. “It’s

Horribly sad and also terrifying.

Major supermarket chains are beginning to report their first coronavirus-related employee deaths, leading to store closures and increasing anxiety among grocery workers as the pandemic intensifies across the country.

You can see how it’s both. Horribly sad for the workers and terrifying for all of us (the workers included) because how will we get food.

A Trader Joe’s worker in Scarsdale, New York, a greeter at a Giant store in Largo, Maryland, and two Walmart employees from the same Chicago-area store have died of covid-19 in recent days, the companies confirmed Monday. In March, a Seattle neighborhood grocer died from the effects of COVID-19.

Though more than 40 states have ordered nonessential businesses to

Another rally.

Trump on hospital workers suiting up and going in: "It's like no different than you watch the war movies or you watch the old clips of war, running up hills. To me, it's the same thing."

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) April 6, 2020

Yes. That’s right. It’s like movies. War isn’t actually a real thing, with real bullets and explosions and death and mutilation, it’s a thing you watch, with suited up guys running up hills. Then you have cookies and milk and go to bed.

Trump: "Even governor Pritzker from Illinois is happy." He adds that Pritzker may not be happy when he talks to the press, but in reality, he's happy, he's a happy man.

Johnson and his people have been lying a blue streak.

There was a rumor on Thursday that he was on the point of going into hospital, but they denied it.

Johnson’s aides were emphatic. His condition had not deteriorated, he still had only “mild symptoms”, he hoped to be at work from Friday when his coronavirus isolation period was up – and he had not been admitted to St Thomas’ hospital for treatment. When on Monday evening it emerged that contrary to reassurances about him getting on with his red box, he was being admitted to intensive care, the denials were coming under increasing scrutiny.

FDR and polio. Kennedy’s extremely bad health and addiction to uppers. Reagan’s dementia. Woodrow … Read the rest

Back in 1918…

NHS workers could do worse than examine the experience of another London hospital during the Spanish influenza pandemic just over 100 years ago. Today, that hospital is named St Charles and offers walk-in care at the northern end of Ladbroke Grove, Kensington. But in 1918 it was known as St Marylebone Infirmary and had 744 beds for the “sick poor”, many of whom had tuberculosis and other chronic lung conditions.

In October 1918, as a second wave of Spanish influenza spread across Britain, its wards were inundated with pneumonia cases…

“All training, and indeed every sort of trimming, went by the board,” Hood recalled in his notebook 30 years later. “The staff fought like Trojans to

Boris Johnson is now in intensive care.

CNN: British PM Boris Johnson is being moved to intensive care as a spokesperson for the PM says his condition "has worsened and, on the advice of his medical team, he has been moved to the Intensive Care Unit at the hospital."

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) April 6, 2020

Nebraska is still open.

Nebraska doctors beg Governor Pete Ricketts for a stay at home order.

He apparently thinks everything will be fine without one, though? maybe? sure. why not. why rush. what's the big deal anyway.https://t.co/3t2OFzxRmd

— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) April 6, 2020

… Read the rest

The pretend Secretary of the Navy says his speech to the sailors was fine.

NEW: Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly says, “I stand by every word,” after reportedly calling Captain Crozier "too naive or too stupid” to be in command. pic.twitter.com/Qcbf3JQKqb

— Geoff Bennett (@GeoffRBennett) April 6, 2020

The crew doesn’t seem to have agreed with the pretend secretary.… Read the rest

CNN tells us:

The Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly blasted the now ousted commander of the USS Theodore Roosevelt as “stupid” in an address to the ship’s crew Monday morning, in remarks obtained by CNN.

Modly told the crew that their former commander, Capt. Brett Crozier, was either “too naive or too stupid” to be in command or that he intentionally leaked to the media a memo in which he warned about coronavirus spreading aboard the aircraft carrier and urged action to save his sailors.

Who is Thomas Modly? A businessman who has served as Acting United States Secretary of the Navy since November 24, 2019. A whopping four months in the job and the highly relevant … Read the rest

Watch Trump physically prevent Fauci from answering a question about hydroxychloroquine.

"I answered this 15 times. You don't have to answer." — Trump prevents Dr Fauci from answering a question about hydroxychloroquine pic.twitter.com/8R1K1hDsaX

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 6, 2020

… Read the rest

Trump is still insisting on noisily promoting a drug that’s untested for use against the virus.

With millions of citizens desperate for safe information and trustworthy medical orientations, the President of the #UnitedStates continues to sell medical drugs with unknown consequences on prime time. Beyond surreal. Follow @atrupar's thread. #COVID19 #COVID19Pandemic https://t.co/xxGUYRNLUF

— Alexandre Krauss (@AlexandreKrausz) April 5, 2020

Ooh ooh ooh I know the answer to that one. Sometimes the powerful drugs kill things you DO want living within your body and you wind up dead.

Trump on why he's giving medical advice even though he's not a doctor: "What really do we have to lose? … we don't have time to go and say, 'gee, let's take