The Abbreviated Pundit Round-up is a regular feature of Daily Kos.

Harold Meyerson at The American Prospect writes—Which Are the Real Mismanaged States?

Republicans seem bent on finding a way to punish the blue states in the next tranche of emergency legislation coming from the Congress. Rick Scott, the former governor and current senator from Florida, has contrasted his state’s low budgets with those of blue New York and California (all of which were in balance before the pandemic struck), while President Trump has claimed that “Republican states are in strong shape.” Trump has also chastised states with Democratic governors for their presumed tardiness in lifting shelter-in-place orders. “There just seems to be no effort on certain blue states to get back into gear,” he has lamented.

The real difference between blue states and red, if I may borrow a term from the anti-choice movement, is that the blue states are pro-life while the red states are largely indifferent to same. 

That’s certainly clear from the divide we’re seeing on the readiness to open states up at a time when the rate at which COVID-19 is spreading is still increasing in most parts of the country. It’s also true when it comes to matters budgetary. Allegedly well-managed Florida has had perhaps the most inefficient unemployment insurance system in the country. As of mid-April, more than 850,000 Floridians had filed for unemployment, while a bare 34,000 had actually received checks. The number of applicants has now grown to 1.9 million, of whom just 28 percent have received their UI from the state. Had Scott and his Republican successor as governor, Ron DeSantis, invested a sufficient level of public funds to create a more well-run system, Floridians wouldn’t now be subjected to this breakdown in necessary state services.

Emily Bazelon and Eric Posner at The New York Times writes—There Used to Be Justice. Now We Have Bill Barr:

It’s easy to grow numb to the abuses of the Trump era. But Mr. Barr’s intervention in the Flynn and Stone cases is a deviation even from the standards at the outset of Mr. Trump’s presidency. The corrosion at the Justice Department from the beginning to the homestretch of Mr. Trump’s first term illustrates a long-term problem of maintaining the independence of a department with unrivaled powers of investigation and prosecution. [...]

The attorney general, whom the president hires and can fire, is supposed to advise the president and advance his or her policies. But he is also obligated to enforce the law impartially and not to use it to shield the president’s allies or punish his enemies.

Nancy LeTourneau at The Washington Monthly writes—Why Aren’t More Newspapers Calling on Trump to Resign?

Much of the country seems to have grown complacent about the massive failures, criminal violations, and ubiquitous lies coming from Donald Trump. It would be an overwhelming task to chronicle all of them, but Joe Lockhart made an attempt to highlight the most egregious.

After three years of political and actual carnage under Trump, including Robert Mueller’s description of acts that amounted to, he told Congress, obstruction of justice; Trump’s “fine people on both sides” reaction to a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville where a counter-protester was killed; his rampant conflicts of interest and credible accusations of his violations of the emoluments clause of the Constitution; his close to 17,000 false statements; a travel ban that primarily targets mostly Muslim-majority countries;impeachment for alleged extortion of a foreign government (he was acquitted in the Republican Senate), and the gross mishandling of a deadly pandemic, you’d think somebody on an editorial board might say it’s time for the President to leave.

That was part of a column by Lockhart in which he attempted to answer the question of why more newspaper editorial boards haven’t called for Trump’s resignation. For some historical precedent, he notes the following.

By the height of the Watergate scandal in 1974, virtually every major newspaper in America had called for President Richard Nixon’s resignation. During the investigation and impeachment of Bill Clinton in 1998, more than 100 newspapers called for him to resign.

Given that both Woodward and Bernstein have said that Trump’s Ukraine scandal alone was worse than Watergate, it is an important question to ask. 

Leanna S. Wen at The Washington Post writes—We’re retreating to a new strategy on COVID-19. Let’s call it what it is:

The administration has yet to use these words, but it appears that we’re adopting a strategy that I recognize from other aspects of public health: harm reduction.

Harm reduction was initially developed as a public health approach to reduce the negative consequences of drug use. It recognizes that while stopping drug use is the desired outcome, many people won’t be able to do that. For those individuals, needle-exchange programs can reduce their risk of acquiring HIV and hepatitis and transmitting these infections to others. Such programs do not promote or condone drug use, as some critics contend. Rather, they face the reality that if a behavior with harmful consequences is going to happen regardless, steps should be taken to reduce the risk for both individuals and others around them. Think, too, of safe-sex campaigns, or motorcycle helmet laws.

And this seems to me where we are with covid-19: We’re no longer trying to eliminate the virus. Instead, we are accepting that Americans will have to live with it.

Mindy Isser at Jacobin writes—The Post Office Is a National Treasure. We Can’t Let the Privatizers Destroy It:

On May 6, President Trump appointed longtime GOP donor Louis DeJoy, a North Carolina businessman, as the new postmaster general. Curiously absent from DeJoy’s résumé is any experience working in the USPS — the first time in nearly two decades the postmaster general has not been selected from the postal service’s ranks. In a statement on DeJoy’s appointment, the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) — one of four unions that represent postal employees — said that if DeJoy pursues an agenda of privatization, he “will be met with stiff resistance from postal workers and the people of this country.”

There’s plenty of reason to suspect DeJoy will do so, falling in line with the man who selected him.  [...]

The USPS is the second largest employer in the country — topped only by the federal government — with over 600,000 workers. A little more than one-third of postal employees are women; 18 percent are veterans. A source of well-paying, union jobs, the USPS is also an engine for racial justice. Nearly a quarter of all postal workers are black, and the postal service has long been a means for black Americans to access decent pay and stable working conditions. As early as 1861, federal employment in the postal service was open to African Americans, and since the end of the Civil War it has provided a home for black workers throughout the country. As William Burrus, the first black president of the American Postal Workers Union, has warned, a successful assault on the postal service would “put an end to the relationship between people of color and their opportunity to climb up the ladder of success in our country … The post office has permitted millions of African-Americans to better themselves.”

Amanda Marcotte at Salon writes—Trump flunkies try to scapegoat Anthony Fauci — but we all know who's really to blame:

Just a month ago, I predicted that Donald Trump and his lickspittles in Congress and right-wing media were setting up Dr. Anthony Fauci as their scapegoat for Trump's massive failures. (That admittedly wasn't difficult, since the far right has been attacking Fauci all along.) Now here we are, with the death toll from the novel coronavirus soaring past 83,000 and the unemployment rate at 15% (and likely closer to 20%) and, sure enough, some of the worst Trump flunkies are looking to blame the sober-minded infectious disease expert who's been working tirelessly on the coronavirus problem, despite having the worst possible boss imaginable.

Some on the right, in their ludicrous efforts to depict Trump as blameless (and almost hapless), are painting Fauci as an all-powerful mastermind who is somehow controlling the government against the president's will — and even suggesting he's faking the scientific understanding of how contagious the coronavirus is. [...]

This is the paradox of Trumpian authoritarianism. On one hand, Trump ran on the promise that "I alone can fix it", but from the second he set foot in the Oval Office, he and his supporters have depicted him as a helpless child being controlled by a nefarious "deep state" that is working against him. Now the narrative forming against Fauci holds that he somehow manipulated Trump or controlled his decisions on handling the coronavirus.

Kim Kelly at The Baffler writes—Barely Necessities:

ONE OF THE DEFINING PORTRAITS of the coronavirus crisis has been that of the heroic, self-sacrificing “essential worker”—the doctor, nurse, janitor, transit operator, grocery store worker, farmworker, or meatpacking plant worker—who valiantly reports to their job each day, often swathed in public accolades instead of PPE, and gives their all to keep society running smoothly. Many of them are paid minimum wage and lack health insurance and other benefits. In New York City, the current epicenter of the pandemic, they’re even greeted with a nightly round of applause and pot clanging.

Many writers—and workers themselves—have pointed out the cognitive dissonance that comes with treating essential workers with the forehead-scraping reverence usually reserved for battered troops returning from one of our imperialist forever wars. It’s even more awkward for those who are still putting in hours at businesses that have been deemed “essential” but are really anything but, from print shops to pet grooming salons. These reluctant heroes are yet another example of how the United States values capital over labor, and how bosses can (and will) exploit any legal loophole they find, even amid a global public health crisis, in their pursuit of the almighty dollar.

William Rivers Pitt at TruthOut writes—The HEROES Act Is a Vital Step Toward Ending COVID, So of Course It Is Doomed:

On Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) unveiled the beginnings of an answer to this crisis. The $3 trillion Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Act, or HEROES Act, would be the largest relief package ever passed in the U.S. if it actually sees the light of day. It is incomplete in a number of vital areas, but it is a stupendous improvement over Trump’s whistle-past-the-overflowing-graveyard plan of pretending none of this is actually happening. [...]

The centerpiece of the bill is another $1,200 direct payment to individuals — up to $6,000 per household. As with the previous relief package, this would also be a one-time payment, and that has led to some appropriately vigorous argument from the progressive wing of the Democratic party.

Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), Ilhan Omar (D-Minneapolis) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Massachusetts) co-signed a letter to Speaker Pelosi urging the HEROES Act be modified to make such payments a recurring monthly phenomenon. There was talk of doing just that in the early stages of the bill’s drafting — Senators Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont), Kamala Harris (D-California) and Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts) proposed legislation guaranteeing a $2,000 monthly payment to citizens for the duration of the pandemic — but those ideas did not survive the final draft.

Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg writes—Republican Deficit Hawking Is About to Backfire:

Republicans, then, are not guilty of hypocritically caring about the deficit only when they are out of office. They never care about the actual budget deficit, while always caring about their specific positions on spending and revenue. It’s true that they deploy the rhetoric of deficit reduction when they believe it will help them politically (which, of course, is the way political parties always use words).

But while the emphasis sometimes changes, the policy usually doesn’t. They favor lower taxes, especially for the wealthy, lower spending on many social programs and higher spending on programs for the military, among a few other things, more or less all the time. What’s striking about the mainstream Republican position is consistency, not hypocrisy. Even during the pandemic, they resisted Democratic efforts to spend money on hospitals and expanded coronavirus testing. Yes, they supported funding to support failing businesses, but again: Republicans don’t consider all government spending to pump up the deficit — just spending on things they don’t like.

Now Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other congressional Republicans are reluctant to agree to any new pandemic relief and stimulus money. Because, they say, of the deficit. I don’t think this means they expect to lose power in November, as at least one political scientist has speculated, or that they’re bluffing; it just needs translation. When they say they care about deficits, it just means that they oppose this particular kind of spending — in this case, aid to state and local governments, extended unemployment benefits, money for health care and the post office, and more.

Michael H. Fuchs at The Guardian writes—Trump is making America an obstacle in the global fight against Covid-19: 

President Donald Trump’s incompetent handling of the Covid-19 pandemic is not only exacerbating the death and destruction caused by the virus in the US. It is also crippling the global response to the crisis, and the costs could be even deadlier.

When global crises hit, American leadership is essential. Whether it was launching the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar) or marshaling efforts to respond to the 2014 Ebola outbreak, the US has played a central role in tackling many of the world’s deadliest health crises. American leadership is far from perfect, but it is necessary to tackle threats of a global magnitude.

This pandemic is one of the greatest challenges the world has faced since the second world war. [...]

A successful global effort to defeat the pandemic will require a robust American response. Instead, Trump is making it harder for the world to address the crisis.

Mark Hertsgaard at Covering Climate Now writes—The COVID-19 Stimulus Debate Is a Pivotal Climate Story:

Of course, it’s neither desirable nor feasible to keep economies on permanent lockdown in the name of climate stability. Which may explain why variations of a Green New Deal, an idea first pressed by climate activists, are garnering support from more and more pillars of the establishment. The European Union, the International Monetary Fund, the mayors of 33 of the world’s biggest cities, the leaders of Europe’s two biggest economies, Germany and France, a coalition of investors who manage more than $32 trillion worth of assets—these are just some of the voices arguing that the government stimulus programs being devised to revive pandemic-stricken economies must be green.

Covid-19 recovery programs “should not be a return to ‘business as usual’—because that is a world on track for more than 3 degrees C of overheating,” warned a statement by the mayors of New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris, São Paulo, Seoul, and 27 other cities with a combined population of 750 million people. Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of England, has argued that instead of ploughing trillions of dollars into fossil fuel energy sources and infrastructure, countries “should try to leapfrog ahead” by investing in solar and wind power and emulating the UK government’s plan to phase out gasoline and diesel engine cars by 2035.

A study led by Nicholas Stern, former chief economist at The World Bank, and Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University found that green stimulus programs outperform their opposites. The economists’ examination of more than 700 stimulus programs launched after the 2008 global financial crisis found that investing in energy efficiency—for example, by retrofitting buildings—and renewable energy yielded more jobs and higher monetary returns than traditional stimulus programs.

Nick Martin at The New Republic writes—Is the Supreme Court Scared of Tribal Sovereignty?

In 2003, writing a concurrent opinion in United States v. Lara, a case that determined an individual can be charged with the same crime in tribal and federal court, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas described the contradictory nature of federal case law as it relates to Indigenous policy: “In my view, the tribes either are or are not separate sovereigns. And our federal Indian law cases untenably hold both positions simultaneously.” This week, nearly 20 years removed from Thomas’s assessment, the high court’s institutional inability to grasp the basics of tribal sovereignty was once again on full display.

On Monday morning, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in McGirt v. Oklahoma, a case concerning whether the Muscogee (Creek) Nation’s 1866 treaty reservation boundaries are still legally in place. The MCN reservation was never officially dissolved by Congress, meaning that a large swath of what is now Oklahoma, formerly Indian Territory, is still technically under MCN jurisdiction, even if it is effectively governed by the state. The appealing party, Jimmy McGirt, is currently serving a life sentence for sex crimes he committed against a child. The case is not concerned with his guilt, which was well established, but rather the jurisdictional issues that arise from the fact that McGirt’s crimes were committed on what is still technically MCN land, but he was tried in state court. (Typically, federal courts have jurisdiction over major crimes committed on sovereign Native soil.)

The issue was initially argued in Murphy v. Carpenter last spring, but because Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, had heard the case when he was sitting on the Tenth Circuit, he had to recuse himself, leading to a 4–4 split. Seeking to bring in Gorsuch to answer the question definitively, the court took on McGirt, which quickly became one of the most intriguing tests of the United States Indian Country legal framework in recent memory. Listening to the arguments, as the public is now able to do because of the pandemic, it was clear that most of the justices had a staggering but sadly unsurprising lack of knowledge on the basic tenets of sovereignty and Indian Country.

Jonathan Chait at New York magazine writes—Obamagate’ Is Trump’s Name for the Crimes He’s Trying to Commit Himself:

President Trump likes to accuse his political antagonists of crimes, almost always imaginary, and his favorite target is President Obama. Trump claims Obama illegally persecuted him, though the details of the accusation have changed. Three years ago, he claimed the crime was a “tapp” of his phones (“How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process.”) The charge evolved to claiming Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, committed a crime by “unmasking” Trump officials surveilled in talks with foreign leaders.

Trump seems to return to the charge in times of stress. He has renewed the charge, calling it “OBAMAGATE!” When asked by a reporter what crime he was claiming Obama had committed this time, Trump replied, “You know what the crime is. The crime is very obvious to everybody.” [...]

For Trump, “Obamagate” is a wish-fulfillment fantasy. He believes every president does, and should, use the Department of Justice as a weapon to protect his friends and harass his rivals. The greatest ire he has reserved for any of his underlings is the yearslong grudge he’s held against Jeff Sessions for the sin of following the black-letter law requiring his recusal from the Russia investigation, and refusing Trump’s entreaties to violate the law by un-recusing himself.

The Abbreviated Pundit Round-up is a regular feature of Daily Kos.

Noah Feldman at Bloomberg writes—Coronavirus Shouldn't Delay Justice in California:

In a little-noticed move over the weekend, California’s judicial council unanimously took some worrisome steps away from constitutional principles. Drawing on emergency powers conferred by state law and an executive order by the California governor, the council changed the deadline of 48 hours for arraigning arrestees to as much as a week. It also extended the date for a mandatory preliminary hearing in criminal cases from 10 days to 30 days; and it added an extra 30 days to the “speedy trial” deadlines for both misdemeanors and felonies.

These measures deserve close scrutiny on their own merits. Fast arraignments, hearings and trials are cornerstones of judicial due process. California is the most populous state in the union, and the changes will affect many arrestees.

But the measures also need a close look because they may set a trend. Throughout the coronavirus crisis, California has been at the leading edge of adopting new measures. San Francisco and other Bay Area counties were the first to adopt formal shelter-in-place orders; and California was the first state to adopt a statewide movement-restricting order. Both of these became influential models. What California does today in criminal justice may soon be followed by other states.

The measures were enacted through a worrisome legal mechanism. California’s emergency law empowers the governor to suspend any state statute temporarily during the duration of the emergency and for some days beyond. You read that right: the law allows the governor to strike laws off the books temporarily. (It doesn’t extend to the state constitution or, of course, to the federal Constitution.)

Charles M. Blow at The New York Times writes—The Racial Time Bomb in the Covid-19 Crisis:

This was the third death I’d heard about of someone with a connection to my college or a friend who went there. All relatively young, all black men, all diabetics. The two others were in New Orleans, another emerging hot spot.

I recalled an arresting article I’d read from “Undark,” a Knight Foundation-funded, science-oriented digital magazine in Cambridge, Mass. (I’m on the advisory board of the magazine.) As the article pointed out, the virus may prove most devastating in the South because of “poorer health, curbed health care access and skepticism of government.”

What the article doesn’t state outright, but I read in the subtext, was that the virus is more likely to be deadly to black people. Most black people in America still live in the South. The states with the highest percentage of black people are in the South.

We may be waiting for a racial time bomb to explode with this disease.

In the early days of the virus, the relatively few cases on the African continent, I believe, gave black people in America a false sense of security, that black people may be somehow less susceptible to it.

But that is not true, and African-Americans should not look to Africa as the model. 

Sarah Polito at The Guardian writes—Why is Instacart making its contract workers risk their health to do their job?

These days, simply leaving your home to buy food is a gamble. That’s why countless people are calling services like Instacart, which delivers groceries, to spare them a trip to the supermarket. I’ve been an Instacart worker for nearly two years in the Newark/New York area and I’ve never experienced such stress, chaos and craziness. My stomach goes into knots before going into stores because I never know if today will be the day I contract Covid-19 or, worse, spread it to a customer. That is why many of us are striking for better working conditions, including paid sick leave.

Right now, contract workers who shop and deliver orders to customers’ homes are risking our health by doing our jobs. Hand sanitizer, wipes and hazard pay should be given to anyone who is working right now under these conditions, but that is not the case. While Instacart has no problem giving these protections to so-called “in-store shoppers” – Instacart employees who are based in stores, and get orders ready for customers for pick up – they have completely looked past the contract workers like me, called full service shoppers, who travel to the store, shop the order and deliver it to customers.

Without shoppers, Instacart is nothing but an app. 

Kate Bahn at Barron’s writes—The Good Economics Behind Generous Unemployment Benefits:

The United States is already on the lower end of the benefit spectrum among developed countries. The rationale is partially to keep costs low, but it is also to reduce what economists call “moral hazard,” the idea that people will not want to work unless they are incentivized to find a job due to economic hardship associated with unemployment. But when used as a justification for stinginess in social programs, moral hazard often fails to appreciate the crucial role payments play in maintaining aggregate economic activity and household financial security. Low-wage workers spend more of their income rather than saving it, known as their “marginal propensity to consume,” so increasing their take-home pay has a multiplier effect in the economy, generating more economic activity. Paying lower-wage workers less just keeps them from spending.

As policymakers look forward to fostering an economic recovery following the public-health crisis, empirical research shows ambiguous support for the conventional wisdom of minimizing payouts. Prior to the current crisis, economists have researched and debated optimal levels of unemployment insurance generosity, with estimations generally ranging from 50% of prior earnings up higher estimations of 100% for up to 32 weeks. Prior to the passage of the Cares Act, Sen. Lindsey Graham claimed it was a flaw of the bill to be so generous: “We have done the worst thing we could do to the economy, and have incentivized people to not go back to work.” But this idea is questionable even in the best economic circumstances.

Dana Milbank at The Washington Post writes—Republicans were warned. Yet they persisted in defending Trump:

During impeachment, public servants and Democrats warned that Trump was putting his political interests (an announced probe of his opponent) over national security (by withholding military aid to an ally in distress) — and Republicans stood by him. Likewise, as the virus spread, experts and many Democrats pleaded for more urgency. But Trump put his political interests (stock market gains) ahead of public health (by playing down the virus danger). And Republicans averted their gaze.

In the middle of the impeachment trial, on Jan. 26, Schumer demanded that the administration declare a public health emergency so that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention could access more funds. “Should the outbreak get worse, they’re going to need immediate access to critical federal funds that at present they can’t access,” Schumer said. “We aren’t here to propel panic or stoke fear, but to rather keep a good proactive effort by the CDC from going on [un]interrupted.”

Certainly, the virus got less media attention because of impeachment. And few in either party anticipated the scale of the outbreak here. But Senate Democrats point to 32 other warnings, requests and statements they made seeking action against the virus — all while the Senate impeachment trial was underway. It begins with Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on Jan. 17 releasing a letter to Azar about steps “should this outbreak escalate,” and includes several requests to increase preparedness and to reinstate the National Security Council directorate for pandemics that Trump had dissolved.

Daniel F. Becker and James Gerstenzang at The New York Times write—Climate Progress Stalls Again, Thanks to Trump’s New Auto Rules:

President Trump’s rollback on Tuesday of stringent automobile mileage and emissions standards torpedoes the biggest single step any nation has taken to fight the climate crisis. In dispensing with Obama-era rules in the name of imaginary regulatory reform, he will damage the health of the planet, our pocketbooks and even the very auto industry he thinks will benefit. [...]

Under the Trump plan, which is almost certain to face a court challenge by states and environmental groups, including ours, by 2040, vehicles will burn 142 billion additional gallons of gasoline and emit as much as 1.5 billion more tons of pollutants that warm the planet, an Environmental Defense Fund analysis found. That’s the equivalent of the pollution of 68 coal plants operating for five years, according to the E.D.F.

Robert Reich at The Guardian writes—Ignore the bankers – the Trump economy is not worth more coronavirus deaths:

It may seem logical to weigh the threat to public health against the accumulating losses to the economy, and then at some point decide economic losses outweigh health risks. As Stephen Moore, who is advising the White House, warns: “You can’t have a policy that says we’re going to save every human life at any cost, no matter how many trillions of dollars you’re talking about.”

But this leaves out one big thing. The “trillions of dollars” of economic losses don’t exist on any balance sheet that can be tallied against human lives. An “economy” is nothing but human beings. So it matters whose losses we’re talking about – whose losses of life, and whose losses of dollars. [...]

The bankers and billionaires now urging Americans get back to work possess a huge share of that stock market. The richest 1% of the population owns roughly half of the value of all shares of stock. (The richest 10% own more than 80%.)

So when they recommend Americans get back to work for the sake of the “economy”, they’re really urging that other people risk their lives for the sake of the bankers’ and billionaires’ own stock portfolios.

Martin Longman at The Washington Monthly writes—How Internet Thermometers Are Helping During This Pandemic: 

Seemingly everything is a potential invasion of our privacy these days, which is precisely why I’d ordinarily be about the last person to buy an internet-connected thermometer. But it turns out that it’s a very good thing that this product exists. Made by a company called Kinsa Health, the thermometers allow us to pick up hot spots where an unusual number of people are running fevers.

Kinsa’s thermometers upload the user’s temperature readings to a centralized database; the data enable the company to track fevers across the United States.[...]

This serves as a better early warning device than anything the government possesses. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tries to pick up on flu outbreaks through a clunky reporting system that relies on doctors’ offices and hospitals, but people don’t generally go to see a doctor on the first day that they’re running a fever. The thermometer data come in quicker and are easy to sort.

The thermometers are now serving another valuable purpose. Quarantines and self-isolation have been in place in enough places for enough time for Kinsa to measure their effectiveness. The good news is that our disruptive safety precautions seem to be working.

Molly Roberts at The Washington Post writes—What ‘essential’ really means in the stay-at-home era:

When we say “essential," what do we mean? There’s what individuals need to survive physically, and what they need to survive mentally, or emotionally, or spiritually, or however else you refer to what’s in our heads and hearts. There’s what a city needs to survive economically, which is more or less a material measure, and what a community needs to survive, which has something to do with mutual trust.

We’re figuring out which bricks we can yank out of Maslow’s pyramid without the whole thing toppling. It’s a way of announcing what we value too much to give up, and what we don’t. Our values are hardly objective, so the outcome may vary from state to state or town to town — depending in part on politics. Gun stores can stick around, but goodbye to abortions in Republican enclaves, unless judges keep coming to the rescue. Marijuana dispensaries get the green light in Los Angeles, but goodbye most everywhere to libraries and bookstores, to playing basketball with a group of friends, to eating peanut butter straight out of the jar and, of course, to handshakes and hugs.

These goodbyes matter. Everything feels so flipped over today that it’s easy to believe we’ll never turn right-side-up again, that this is our new always. Yes, we may return to some kind of normal, but that normal is likely to be a little bit different. Many of these changes will stick.

David Dayen at The American Prospect writes—Unsanitized: It’s the First of the Month:

I’m not really a fan of April 1 in general, with its rollout of amateur comedians and brand social media campaigns. But I’m really not a fan of this April 1, the first day since the coronavirus crisis really rocked America that most residential and commercial rents and mortgages are due. This is the biggest financial expense for most ordinary people and businesses. None of the relief in the $2.2 trillion survival aid package passed last week has gone out the door. And many have spent several weeks without salaries or revenues; those in the underground or cash economies will likely get little or no relief.

The CARES Act does include some protections for borrowers and renters, though it does show the particular biases in our politics. Foreclosures on “federally-backed loans” (defined broadly, that’s about two-thirds of all mortgages, though it could be as low as 20 percent by other counts) are supposed to be frozen for 60 days, and homeowners can obtain up to one year of forbearance, where payments are suspended and tacked on the back end. Landlords that seek forbearance on their multi-family properties cannot evict their tenants, which is a solid protection. Many states have also implemented various foreclosure moratoria and mortgage forbearance protections, listed here. Here’s an example: New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy announced a 90-day grace period on mortgage payments for those affected by the crisis, without fees.

Shuja Haider at The Nation writes—Covid-19 Shows America’s Class Divide Is Untenable:

Dystopian fiction is often characterized by societies with rulers in remote locations, securing protection from the threats of both nature and the global masses. As it happens, that is the world we already live in, one where eight men own as much wealth as half of the world’s population. Needless to say, this divide affects our access to security and safety in the midst of crisis. As Americans isolate themselves in fear and uncertainty—in some cases, exhibiting Covid-19 symptoms but being told to stay out of the ER unless they can’t breathe—reports have poured in about certain citizens’ getting tested. Ostensibly, these tests are unavailable to those who cannot supply direct contact tracing. Yet supermodel Heidi Klum, online influencer Arielle Charnas, Senators Mitt Romney, Rand Paul, and Lindsey Graham, and other high-profile figures have flaunted their results. [...]

To date, eight NBA teams have been tested, including the Jazz, in spite of Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt’s admission that the state was “critically low on test kits.” It is hard not to wonder how tests became so easily available to the rich and famous, when they have been largely inaccessible for those who need them most: health care workers, the critically ill, and the elderly. In February, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney described news of the virus at the Conservative Political Action Conference, where an attendee was later discovered to have been infected, as a political maneuver by the president’s enemies. He had already been tested.

In The Atlantic, Adam Harris writes that a former insurance industry executive offered him a stark explanation for this disparity: “the health-care system in the United States is built for the elite.” Wendell Potter, once a communications director for industry giant Cigna, is now an advocate for universal health-care. “We hear politicians say all the time that we have the best health-care system in the world,” he told The Atlantic. “We have fabulous doctors and health-care facilities, but they’re off-limits to a lot of people because of the cost.”

Sam Adler-Bell at The Outline writes—There was always a way to pay for the programs we need:

So why couldn’t Bernie have responded to Chris Cuomo’s funding question in February the way Biden did last week? “We, out of the treasury, will pay for it.”

Stephanie Kelton, the former chief economist for Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee and an advisor to Bernie’s 2016 campaign, says he could have.

“This was always bullshit,” Kelton told me, “The last eight months of listening to Democrats in the primaries put forward ambitious ideas and always be confronted with this, ‘How will you pay for it? How will you pay for it?’ We never had a real policy discussion because we got so bogged down in the numbers and the math. It’s all a distraction.”

Why? Because the government doesn’t really pay for stuff with tax revenue. This is one of the central insights of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), of which Kelton is a proponent. Instead of raising taxes to pay for government spending, the order of operations is flipped. The government spends money by creating it — in our day and age, with the click of a button — and it taxes it out of circulation. When Congress passes a bill, it sends instructions to the Federal Reserve (our central bank), and the Federal Reserve makes payments on behalf of the Treasury, crediting whichever accounts are beneficiaries of the spending—whether or not the spending is offset by taxes. “You write a bill, you pass the bill, you send instructions to the Fed, the Fed carries out the payments,” says Kelton. “That’s how it works. In war time, in peace time. That’s just how it works.”

Camille Baker at In These Times writes—In the Time of Coronavirus, the Decimation of Local News Outlets Could Have Lethal Consequences: 

To understand why the pleas of experts and officials seem not to have gotten through to many people, we should recall that the virus has arrived in this country at a time when the field of journalism has been significantly eroded. There are many forces involved here, but news organizations are one of the most powerful tools we have for understanding and acting on the virus.

Consider that in Italy, France and Spain, where the governments have imposed extraordinary restrictions and closures to try to slow the spread of the virus, newsstands have been allowed to stay open, alongside grocery stores and pharmacies, because access to news and information was deemed essential. But in many parts of the U.S., even in ordinary times, you couldn’t go out and buy a local newspaper if you wanted to.

In recent decades, local news organizations, which investigate things national outlets don’t, have been decimated. Part of the problem is corporate media consolidation: As of 2018, just 25 companies owned two-thirds of the country’s daily newspapers, according to a report from PEN America. These corporations, driven by a profit motive, produce content that is increasingly homogenous, de-prioritize local reporting, and make decisions to cut staff or close papers altogether from distant big-city boardrooms. Since 2004, over 1,800 newspapers in the U.S. have closed. Over 500 of those were in rural areas.

The Abbreviated Pundit Round-up is a daily feature at Daily Kos.

Twenty Questions: Here’s a quiz asking how much you agree on certain issues with each of the Democratic presidential candidates.

Pema Levy at Mother Jones writes—Warren Landed the Night’s Biggest Blow on Bloomberg:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) landed what may prove to be the toughest blow against Michael Bloomberg in the Nevada Democratic debate Wednesday night when she pressed him to release female employees who had accused him of harassment and discrimination from non-disclosure agreements. Bloomberg refused.

“Mr. Mayor, are you willing to release all of those women from those non-disclosure agreements so we can hear their side of the story?” she asked, standing beside him on stage.

Bloomberg began to respond, saying, “we have a very few nondisclosure agreements” when Warren cut in. “How many is that?” she said.

Allegations that he made sexist remarks and created a hostile work environment have dogged Bloomberg’s campaign. But Bloomberg, who has chalked up his past behavior to “bawdy humor,” has been unwavering in refusing to release multiple women from the confidentiality agreements they signed when settling legal actions against his company.

Warren dug the knife in on the debate stage when she argued that the behavior wasn’t just problematic but that it also undercut Bloomberg’s electability—the ability to defeat President Donald Trump that Democratic voters are searching for in their nominee.

Nathan Robinson at The Guardian writes—Michael Bloomberg was mercilessly attacked in his first debate – and he flopped: 

Before Wednesday night’s debate, Michael Bloomberg’s critics had been furious with the Democratic National Committee for changing its rules to allow Bloomberg on the debate stage. But it turned out the critics should have been thanking the DNC. Bloomberg was absolutely terrible. His campaign may not literally have ended on the debate stage, but it’s hard to see how any viewer could come away believing his pitch that he is “the best candidate to take on Trump.”

Bloomberg was ill-prepared, uncharismatic, and unlikable. The other candidates ran rings around him. Elizabeth Warren sank her teeth in early, interrupting Bloomberg’s opening statement to point out how his long history of sexist comments about women made him a lot like Donald Trump. Warren landed even more brutal blows later in the debate, when she challenged Bloomberg to release women from the non-disclosure agreements his company had forced them to sign in sexual harassment lawsuits. Bloomberg mumbled some lame excuse about how the agreements were consensual, but was clearly caught off-guard, and Warren wouldn’t let the issue go.

Bloomberg looked feeble, and after the debate some Democratic bigwigs were already reportedly concluding that “Bloomberg isn’t the answer.”

Karen Tumulty at The Washington Post writes—Bloomberg’s best debate moment came five minutes before it started. Then things went downhill:

Mike Bloomberg’s best moment Wednesday night came about five minutes before the Democratic presidential debate started. It was when one of his ubiquitous television ads ran on MSNBC.

From there, things went pretty much downhill for him.

The former New York mayor who appeared onstage in Las Vegas with five other contenders for the Democratic nomination was not the confident and commanding figure that we are constantly seeing and hearing in the $409 million worth of television, radio and online advertising his campaign has produced.

Bloomberg seemed to disappear for much of the debate. When the camera caught him on a split screen as someone else was talking, he looked annoyed and, occasionally, lost.

Elizabeth Warren's greatest trait is her ability to think big and small at the same time she has breathtakingly inspiration, transformative visions for what this country could be come AND granular wonky detailed schematics on how to execute them step by step

� Claire Willett (@clairewillett) February 20, 2020

Alex Shepherd at The New Republic writes—How Michael Bloomberg Owned New York Media. The billionaire is skyrocketing in the presidential polls—thanks to tricks he learned as mayor:

Bloomberg was first elected without much media scrutiny at all. When stories initially emerged about his long history of misogynistic comments and the climate of sexual harassment at his company Bloomberg LP, they did not get much traction. In the summer of 2001, Democrat Mark Green was the clear front-runner, and Bloomberg was considered something of an afterthought. “Every sign,” The New Yorker’s Elizabeth Kolbert wrote just before Election Day, “points to his being a Pantalone-like figure who is parted from a great deal of money and humiliated in the bargain.” But by the late fall, Bloomberg was narrowly leading in the polls—and the media was understandably focused on the September 11 attacks, not on the mogul who would be mayor.

Bloomberg deployed the same formula in his three mayoral campaigns that he is relying on now as he seeks the Democratic nomination: Spend so much money on advertising that it overwhelms any negative reporting. The amount of money he was tossing at the election was unprecedented, but the media largely ignored it. Voters’ opinions were shaped by a relentless ad campaign rather than stories about Bloomberg.

“The free media missed the story, and missed challenging the story being propounded in paid-for media partly because it found it awkward to talk about the overriding issue of the paid-for-media story, which was money,” Michael Wolff noted two weeks after Bloomberg won his first election. “The commercials, or his ability to afford them, was, in some sense, the Bloomberg platform. They were his credentials. Precisely because he could buy this time, he was taken seriously. The Times didn’t scrutinize him because they would have had to scrutinize what, to their minds, legitimized him. Money was the record he was running on.”

Jumaane Williams at USAToday writes—Michael Bloomberg is not the candidate who can beat Donald Trump:

Wherever you’re reading this, there’s probably a Bloomberg ad running alongside it.

These ads have amplified, across the country, a Bloomberg who was an ally of teachers and education equity, was dedicated to expanding affordable housing, was a champion of the working class and will build on those successes to “rebuild America.”

Bloomberg, the Great and Powerful.

Take it from someone who lived under Bloomberg, who served with him, who fought against him — if you look behind the curtain, as I hope millions will in tonight's debate, that image begins to melt away.

His advertisements hide his failures on housing — the termination of Section 8, the capitulation to a real estate industry that led to rents rising and neighborhoods falling, the drastic increase in homelessness that was met with an oblivious response. Mayor Bloomberg’s policies created an affordable housing and homelessness crisis in New York City that has extended and exacerbated far beyond his tenure, creating a city that is the most expensive it has ever been.

If, even now, this insane idea of putting Ric Grennell in charge of the American intelligence community doesn't convince Democrats to get serious about this election, then we're truly fucked.

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) February 19, 2020

Becky Z. Dernbach at Mother Jones writes—No, Amy Klobuchar Is Not Responsible for Minnesota’s High Voter Turnout:

In her opening shot at Wednesday’s Democratic primary debate, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) claimed credit for Minnesota’s high voter turnout, citing it as evidence of her ability to beat Donald Trump. “I am the one on this stage that had the highest voter turnout of any state in the country when I led the ticket,” she said.

It’s true that Minnesota topped the list for voter turnout nationally in 2018 when Klobuchar ran for re-election. But Minnesota voters also led the country in voter turnout in 2016, when Klobuchar wasn’t on the ticket. (That year, Minnesota regained its regular position on top of the chart from a blip in 2014, when it fell to sixth.)

“For nine election cycles in a row, Minnesota voters turned out to the polls more than any other state in the nation,” MinnPost reported in 2016. “In fact, the state actually holds the all-time record for turnout, when 78 percent of registered voters showed up to cast a ballot in the 2004 election.” Minnesota has led the nation in voter turnout since 1980, according to MinnPost. Klobuchar wasn’t elected to statewide office until 2006.

Covering Climate Now writes—Making the 2020 elections a climate-emergency story:

Four years ago, ahead of the 2016 elections, there was climate silence. Only one of the hundreds of questions journalists asked during Democratic and Republican presidential debates addressed climate change—and that was one more than in 2012, 2008, or any of the preceding presidential elections—even as scientists, activists, and governments around the world implored Washington to help contain the gathering crisis. The nation’s major news organizations treated climate change as a virtual non-issue, and voters acted accordingly, electing an unabashed climate denier who as president has seemingly delighted in boosting fossil fuels and trashing environmental protections, including the Paris Agreement signed by virtually all of the world’s governments, which pledged to “significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change.” America’s journalists must do much better in 2020. There are promising signs so far. Network television—which continues to attract the largest audiences in media, in an era with no shortage of options—is showing new interest in the climate story. The press as a whole seems increasingly aware of climate change and its dangers, even if most outlets still refrain from echoing the thousands of scientists who now call it an “emergency.” Opinion-leading outlets, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and National Public Radio, continue to improve their coverage, while outlets that emphasize climate coverage as part of their brand, such as The Guardian, PBS NewsHour, and Bloomberg, which recently launched Bloomberg Green, continue to light a path for the media writ large. Overall, however, the climate story remains marginal on the American news agenda.

Apparently, Barack Obama didnâÂ�Â�t do shit when IâÂ�Â�m he was in  office. Accoding to Biden, he was the one passing Obamacare, negotiating with China, stopping police brutality in NY, babysitting Sasha & Malia...   Next debate, weâÂ�Â�ll find out he killed Bin Laden with his bare hands.

� michaelharriot (@michaelharriot) February 20, 2020

Cindy Polo in the Miami Herald writes—Florida wants tougher abortion laws, but do victims of rape, incest, trafficking even matter?

In the United States, we have seen state legislatures across the country put forth a wave of anti-abortion bills frighteningly similar to the law in El Salvador. Although just days ago we commemorated the 47th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, it is clear now more than ever that Republican-led state legislatures are trying to strip away a person’s right to make their own reproductive health choices. Florida is one of those states.

A few days into the 2020 legislative session, several bills were filed that would take away reproductive healthcare for millions of people. HB 271 would make it a third-degree felony for anyone who “knowingly or purposefully performs or induces an abortion” if a fetal heartbeat has been detected, which can happen as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. In other words, anyone who has a miscarriage can be imprisoned for up to five years if the state persuades a jury that the miscarriage was caused by a deliberate act.

If enacted, HB 271 could criminalize people in Florida, just like in El Salvador. They would be stripped of any right to terminate a pregnancy if they were raped (including if the rape victim is a teenager or child), or even if their own life were endangered. In addition, anyone who suffers a miscarriage could be charged with a crime.

Will Bunch at The Philadelphia Inquirer writes—House Dems can’t just ignore Trump, Barr crimes. Here’s 3 ways to keep fighting back: 

America is a hot mess right now. Rather than feeling humbled as only the third impeached president in U.S. history, President Trump — with the democracy-dies-in-broad-daylight help of his Roy Cohn-flavored attorney general, William Barr — has been emboldened to not just flout the established rule of law, and 233 years of constitutional norms, but to boast about his various high crimes and misdemeanors on Twitter. [...]

But House Democrats — the one branch of American government not either all or partially under the thumb of Trump — seem to be on the Manfred-Collins futility track of resigned compliance, after impeaching the president yet winning over just one lone Republican vote. The New York Times reported this week that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other top Democrats have agreed that the strategy between now and the November election will be to push an agenda around health care and jobs — and forget all that impeachment stuff.

“Health care, health care, health care,” Pelosi reportedly told a closed-door meeting of House Democrats, saying that the party’s strategy would be laser-focused in winning in the fall and keeping its current majority on the House side of the Capitol. Democratic strategists believe, after all, that largely ignoring Trump’s abuses of power and focusing on health care is how the party gained 40 seats and re-took the House in 2018.

This notion seems wrong on several levels.

How is this headline anything but: "Elizabeth Warren clearly won the #DemDebate"? How is @ewarren not even mentioned when she just dominated on substance and style? NYT WTF. #WarrenMediaBlackout #TeamWarren pic.twitter.com/IShJtswmy3

— Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (@ayanaeliza) February 20, 2020

Martin Longman at The Washington Monthly writes—Bernie Sanders and the Non-Voter Revolution:

A new study of non-voters by the Knight Foundation confirms everything I thought I knew about the prospects for winning a presidential election through heightened voter mobilization. Whatever the intrinsic merits of increased civic participation as an electoral strategy for the Democrats against Donald Trump, it is highly dubious.

The report examined 12,000 “chronic non-voters in America, across the country and in key battleground states.” Their bottom line finding is that if all these people went to the polls, the Democrats would increase their popular vote margin and lose the Electoral College even more decisively than in 2016.

Of all the battleground states, my home base of Pennsylvania had the worst numbers. Trump leads here with non-voters by a 36 percent to 28 percent margin. This is consistent with my impression that most of the untapped vote in the Keystone State is composed of white voters who have little to no higher education. A similar situation holds for Virginia, Florida, and Arizona. Of the nine battleground states where the study questioned non-voters, only Georgia showed an advantage for a generic Democrat over Trump that is outside of the survey’s margin of error.

Another suspicion of mine was confirmed too; Bernie Sanders would fare best among this group largely because he’s not perceived as a typical Democrat and his calls for systemic change match the sentiments of non-voters. It’s this sentiment that explains why Trump does so well with this group and it’s also why more conventional politicians, like Hillary Clinton or Mitt Romney, have little appeal to them.

E.J. Dionne Jr. at The Washington Post writes—Will Trump scare some sense into the Democrats?

While the Democratic presidential candidates tear each other to pieces, President Trump is sending a message to the country: The rule of law means nothing to him. He will weaponize the federal government to his own political purposes, and things will only get worse if he’s reelected.

Trump has said many awful things, but here are his most chilling words yet: “I’m actually, I guess, the chief law enforcement officer of the country.”

Trump as “the chief law enforcement officer” is akin to putting the Houston Astros in charge of policing cheating in Major League Baseball.

It should worry Democrats that as the dangers posed by four more years of Trump (and two more years of a supine GOP Senate) become clearer, their presidential race may be coming down to a choice between a billionaire and a democratic socialist. “ ’Tis the final conflict,” as “The Internationale,” the old anthem of the left, put it. It’s hard to imagine a confrontation more likely to shatter the party.

About 70-90% of all existing coral reefs are expected to disappear in the next 20 years due to warming oceans, acidic water and pollution, scientists say. https://t.co/b3sLawhF1t

— CNN (@CNN) February 20, 2020

The New York Times Editorial Board inquires—When Donald Trump Is the Law, Guess who benefits?

“I’m actually, I guess, the chief law enforcement officer of the country,” President Trump said on Tuesday.

The alarming thing is that he’s right. The nation’s founders put the president in charge of the executive branch, which is tasked with enforcing the law. That is a remarkably broad power, and it can be easily abused. So it’s worth asking: What does Donald Trump understand the law to be?

Well before the events of the past week, Mr. Trump supplied a pretty good idea: The law is something that applies to his adversaries, not to himself or his friends. He regularly turned to the courts to harass and intimidate employees, critics and contractors. But when it has come to his own perceived advantage — whether he was violating federal fair-housing laws to keep black renters out of his apartment buildings, playing shady games with his tax returns, sexually assaulting women, defrauding students of his “university,” raiding his own charity, buying the silence of alleged mistresses on the eve of an election, running his global business empire out of the White House, or thwarting the will of Congress by using foreign aid to advance his re-election — Mr. Trump has always seen the law as just another set of rules to be bent, if not broken.

Americans, meet your chief law enforcement officer.

Victoria Pfau at the Los Angeles Times writes—Sacramento’s army of interns deserves to be paid:

There are interns in almost every office at the Capitol in Sacramento, and very few of them are paid. They answer phones, write press releases, research legislation and track constituent requests. The privilege of gaining experience — and an advantage in their later job hunt — will cost most of them hundreds, even thousands of dollars in living expenses and lost wages from the paying jobs they forgo. Work experience when you’re starting out is theoretically more valuable than a paycheck, but that doesn’t make it any easier to pay rent, student fees or your lunch tab.

In 2019, California passed landmark legislation protecting workers’ rights by expanding collective bargaining and addressing worker misclassification and workplace harassment. Yet the unpaid interns that keep Sacramento lawmakers’ offices running are proof that state government’s commitment to labor rights comes up short inside its very own walls.

No state agency tracks internships, paid or unpaid. Some universities and nonprofits sponsor paid public-service internships; assembly members and senators may, on their own, pay interns as well. But most of this work, especially at the district office level, is unpaid; some internships don’t even include academic credit. [...]

In 2018, the advocacy group Pay Our Interns convinced Congress to pass legislation that created a fund to pay House and Senate interns. Until then, in Washington, as in Sacramento, paid internships were rare, a constant casualty of budget cuts.