Pence’s spokesperson, who is also Stephen Miller’s marriageperson, has tested positive for the virus.

Katie Miller, a spokesperson for Vice President Mike Pence, has tested positive for coronavirus, according to two people with knowledge of Miller’s diagnosis.

Miller’s positive diagnosis for Covid-19 puts the potential threat of the infection squarely into the president’s inner circle. Miller serves as the vice president’s top spokesperson, traveling with him frequently and attending meetings by his side. She is also married to another top White House aide and senior adviser, Stephen Miller, who writes the majority of Trump’s speeches and spends copious amounts of time around the president, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.

Do we dare to hope that the princess and prince … Read the rest

Aaron Rupar watched the Fox News segment where they talked to Trump on the phone so that we won’t have to.

Americans on Friday awoke to the worst jobs report in recorded history, one that showed the unemployment rate surging up to 14.7 percent. The main driver of that, of course, is the coronavirus pandemic, which resulted in more than 2,500 Americans dying in a 24-hour period ending late Thursday, pushing the death toll above 76,000, with no end in sight.

2500. Normal is 8000 so yes, that’s massive for a single new disease.

Those are huge, interrelated problems that are causing people a lot of pain and anxiety. But President Donald Trump’s nearly hour-long call into Fox &

… Read the rest

Zing

Trumpism, explained in one 3-second video clip pic.twitter.com/kin2I6mTbC

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 8, 2020

… Read the rest

More on the Georgia lynching: from the Guardian Wednesday:

According to a police report obtained by the New York Times, Gregory McMichael, a former police officer and district attorney’s investigator, told investigators the incident began when he spotted Arbery from his front yard “hauling ass” down the street.

I.e. running, aka jogging. Running is a thing that people do. It’s a popular form of exercise. Furthermore, it seems to me, that kind of running looks quite different from running to escape a threat or the cops. Exercise running is systematic in a way that fleeing danger is not. You’d think it would be recognizable as such even to a former DA’s investigator.

But then it’s widely known that there’s … Read the rest

ABC reports:

Two men have been arrested and charged with murder and aggravated assault for the February shooting of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

Gregory McMichael, 64, and his son, Travis McMichael, 34, were arrested on Thursday and will be booked into the Glynn County Jail.

Cellphone video showing the moment Arbery was killed has prompted national outrage since surfacing online this week, but his mother said she can’t bring herself to watch it.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be in a mental state where I can actually watch the video. I had others that watched it that shared what they saw and that just was enough,” Wanda Cooper-Jones told ABC News in an

… Read the rest

Updating to add: the two white men have been arrested.

Then there’s the murder of Ahmaud Arbery.

Georgia prosecutor has called for a grand jury investigation into the shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black man who was killed after being chased by two white men in February while out running in a residential neighborhood outside Brunswick, a city on the state’s southeast coast.

It’s unclear why those two white men have not been arrested to this point, unless it’s just as simple as “Well they are white men you see.”

Advocates have likewise expressed alarm over the way the shooting has been handled by police, and the lack of criminal charges thus far brought against his

… Read the rest

A dark day.

https://twitter.com/waltshaub/status/1258491873607536647

Flynn pled guilty to lying to the FBI about his illicit Russian contacts.

His lies do not now become truths.

This dismissal does not exonerate him.

But it does incriminate Bill Barr.

In the worst politicization of the Justice Department in its history.

— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) May 7, 2020

So Trump doesn’t need to pardon Flynn; Barr dropped the charge to which Flynn had pled guilty. This is a foretaste of what a second Trump term would be like—the entire executive branch weaponized to help Trump’s friends, punish his enemies, and undermine the rule of law.

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) May 7, 2020

So, he's colluding again. https://t.co/S6cWptGcpq

— Mimi Rocah (@Mimirocah1) May 7, 2020

… Read the rest

What’s the problem.

https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1258493374623109128 https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1258494242156097543 https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1258495369161441283 https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1258504108270551040

We’re toast.… Read the rest

And now filthy Barr’s filthy Justice Department has dropped the charges against filthy Michael Flynn, who confessed to them twice.

Breaking News: The Justice Department is dropping charges against the former Trump aide Michael Flynn, a stark reversal for a defendant who has pleaded guilty twice.https://t.co/0rGTWklHnN

— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 7, 2020

Drop It Now is the new Lock Her Up.

Joining @msnbc now to talk about this outrageous decision by the Justice Department.

— Neal Katyal (@neal_katyal) May 7, 2020

Justice Department drops Flynn case, arguing that the interview in which by his own admission he lied should never have been conducted in the first place. The decision comes after enormous pressure from Trump to

… Read the rest

It’s almost as if they can’t make their case without lying and failing to define terms. Meredith Farkas at American Libraries Magazine:

In February, the controversial Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF) booked a room at Seattle Public Library (SPL) for a public event. WoLF denies the existence of transgender individuals and portrays trans women as dangers to cis women.

One: anything can be called “controversial.” Farkas’s article is “controversial.” Feminism is “controversial.” Libraries are “controversial.” Two, WoLF does not “deny the existence of transgender individuals.” It denies that trans people can literally change their sex. Three, trans women are men, so of course they are potentially dangers to women. Four, there is no such thing as “cis” women, there are … Read the rest

Bloomberg April 28:

Trump signed an executive order Tuesday that compels slaughterhouses to remain open, setting up a showdown between the giant companies that produce America’s meat and the unions and activists who want to protect workers in a pandemic.

Which is more important – the continued ability to eat far more meat than is either necessary or healthy, or the survival of people who work in meatpacking plants? Tough question, isn’t it.

Using the Defense Production Act, Trump is ordering plants to stay open as part of the critical infrastructure needed to keep people fed amid growing supply disruptions from the coronavirus outbreak. The government will provide additional protective gear for employees as well as guidance.

The government … Read the rest

NBC has a slightly different account of what Trump & goons did about the CDC report on re-opening: NBC says they sent it back to the CDC requesting revisions, as opposed to shelving it. Maybe different unnamed officials are telling different reporters different things.

The White House sent back guidelines it received from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month on how businesses, schools and other organizations should reopen with a request for revisions, two administration officials said. The White House coronavirus task force, which is headed by Vice President Mike Pence, viewed the CDC’s advice as overly restrictive and in some cases thought it undercut the White House’s three-phase guidelines for opening up the country, released

… Read the rest

Meanwhile Trump’s concern for everyone else’s health and safety continues to not exist. AP reports:

The Trump administration has shelved a document created by the nation’s top disease investigators with step-by-step advice to local authorities on how and when to reopen restaurants and other public places during the still-raging coronavirus outbreak.

Nah, they said. Too much trouble, they said. Too protecty. We want to get all those proles back to work now, not baby them and pamper them and wrap them in cotton.

The 17-page report by a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention team, titled “Guidance for Implementing the Opening Up America Again Framework,” was researched and written to help faith leaders, business owners, educators and

… Read the rest

Oops.

One of President Donald Trump’s personal valets, who works in the West Wing serving the president his meals among other duties, has tested positive for coronavirus, the closest the virus is known to have come to the president, said a White House official.

But Trump has since tested negative, Hogan Gidley hastens to assure us.

The White House did not say when the person developed symptoms or when the president was last exposed to the individual, who[m] Gidley described as a military official. It can sometimes take several days for the virus to appear on a test once a person has been infected.

…

“This guy is close” to the president throughout the day in terms of

… Read the rest

Oh of course they are. Trump and his goons are “questioning” the stats. Naturally.

President Trump has complained to advisers about the way coronavirus deaths are being calculated, suggesting the real numbers are actually lower — and a number of his senior aides share this view, according to sources with direct knowledge.

It’s actually about 30 deaths total, and a few hundred cases. Way less than the flu, and less than falling off the barn while taking a selfie.

A senior administration official said he expects the president to begin publicly questioning the death toll as it closes in on his predictions for the final death count and damages him politically.

In other words someone in Trump’s gang expects … Read the rest

No disgruntled people allowed.

Trump said Dr Rick Bright, the vaccine expert who has said he was demoted for refusing to promote hydroxychloroquine as a potential coronavirus treatment, is a “disgruntled guy.”

“I never met him, I know nothing about him, but he’s a disgruntled guy,” the president told reporters in the Oval Office.

If he never met him how can he know he’s a disgruntled guy?

“I never met him, I know nothing about him, but he’s a disgruntled guy,” the president told reporters in the Oval Office. “And I don’t think disgruntled people should be working for a certain administration.”

But everyone who works for Trump is disgruntled. They’re all disgruntled at Democrats, uppity women, uppity … Read the rest

It’s a tough job but other people have to do it.

President Donald Trump fixed his course on reopening the nation for business, acknowledging that the move would cause more illness and death from the pandemic but insisting it’s a cost he’s willing to pay to get the economy back on track.

Because he’s confident that he won’t be the one paying it. (He has no reason to be confident of that, especially given the way he keeps gathering people around him with not a mask in sight, but he doesn’t bother with reasons.)

On his visit to a Phoenix Honeywell International Inc. factory producing medical masks, Trump encouraged Americans to think of themselves as “warriors” as they consider

… Read the rest

Sigh.

There is still time to nominate an outstanding female pharmacy professional here: https://t.co/sH5t0wHYBU pic.twitter.com/CP6zUWzb4W

— PJ Careers (@PJ_Careers) May 5, 2020

Sounds good! But wait.

Hi, We are referring to an individual who is born female and identifies as female and/or an individual born male and now identifies as female. Thanks, SK

— Royal Pharmaceutical Society (@rpharms) May 6, 2020

So it’s open to men, so bang goes yet another award intended for women.… Read the rest

One Texas boss is telling the workers: no masks allowed.

That’s what a back-of-the-house employee at a Hillstone Restaurant Group establishment in Dallas was told last week, as restaurants prepared to reopen at 25% capacity, according to CBS Dallas.

That employee, who did not want to be identified publicly, expressed discomfort and was told to think about it—and then was removed from the schedule, the employee told CBS Dallas’ Brooke Rogers.

If you’re not willing to die on the job, you’re fired.

The employee said management also told her that face masks don’t complement the restaurant group’s style or level of hospitality.

Oddly enough that’s true of pretty much all restaurants, as well as shops, bars, theaters, offices, schools … Read the rest

Wut?

I asked ⁦@realDonaldTrump⁩ why he didn’t wear a mask at the Honeywell plant yesterday. He said he had worn one. I said we did not see him wearing one. He said he wore one backstage and the Honeywell chief said it was not necessary to wear in the plant. pic.twitter.com/4KYvq3J6yE

— Jeff Mason (@jeffmason1) May 6, 2020

So…he wore one somewhere behind the scenes where no reporters could see him, but not in the plant he was there to visit.

I’m gonna call that a brazen lie, on the grounds that what the fuck would be the point of wearing it “backstage” and not wearing it in the plant where he could infect the workers or vice … Read the rest