The coronavirus was probably brought to Brazil by rich returning holidaymakers but it is threatening to explode in marginal communitiesIn many ways, Washington Castro was a typical resident of Rocinha, the immense redbrick favela that towers over Rio de Janeiro’s Atlantic coast.Industrious, God-fearing and the offspring of migrants from Brazil’s parched and impoverished north-east, he supported two young children by working two separate jobs and wore a suit and tie when attending his local church.“He was a marvellous boy. He worked Monday to Monday,” his grief-stricken father, José Osmar Alves da Silva, remembered as he reflected on his son’s death. “Now there’s this hole inside of me and I just can’t make sense of anything.”Castro died of suspected Covid-19 last Saturday at age 27 – one of at least six Rocinha residents to lose their lives to the coronavirus as it begins what many fear could be a devastating march through some of Latin America’s most vulnerable communities.“He was a cutie … Whenever we met he was always wearing the same smile,” said Cecília Vasconcelos, a childhood friend who grew up with him in this sprawling hillside community of some 100,000 residents in southern Rio.The coronavirus appears to have been brought into Brazil by members of the country’s middle and upper classes as they returned from February holidays in Europe or the United States.In Rio and São Paulo, many of the early infections were concentrated in the richest neighbourhoods, such as Copacabana and Gávea, where Castro had worked as an assistant at an accountancy firm and a poolside waiter at a club for Brazil’s wealthy elites.One of the most famous clusters was Rio’s Country Club, an ultra-exclusive enclave of privilege and power just three miles from Rocinha where at least 60 of the 850 members were infected.But two months after Brazil’s first reported Covid-19 case the disease is making headway in the deprived, densely populated favelas of both cities, with potentially far-reaching political and humanitarian consequences.“You can see that it’s moving towards the urban peripheries – gradually, but it’s getting there,” said Paulo Lotufo, an epidemiologist at the University of São Paulo, warning that its proliferation in such places could exact a terrible human toll on residents lacking access to private healthcare or sometimes even basic sanitation.“I tend to believe that in some places we’re going to see something on the scale of Ecuador,” where hospitals have been overwhelmed and bodies dumped in the streets, Lotufo warned.Pedro Doria, a Rio-based writer, said he believed coronavirus’s spread through the favelas could also carry a heavy political price for Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, who has called for containment measures to be relaxed in an apparent attempt to ingratiate himself with the poor.“Right now what is hurting people [in the favelas] is the economy. So right now Bolsonaro is making a lot of sense to them,” Doria said. But he thought attitudes would change “the moment people we love start dying around us”.“Depending on how the pandemic goes – especially in the the urban peripheries and the favelas – Bolsonaro will lose a lot of his support,” Doria predicted, speculating that it could even end his presidency through impeachment.“People will not forget that he said it was OK to go out on the streets.”So far at least 18 people have reportedly lost their lives to Covid-19 in Rio’s favelas, which house about 20% of the city’s 6.7 million residents.At least 140 cases have been detected, 54 in Rocinha, which is one of the communities closest to the city’s affluent south zone.Other deaths have taken place in some of Rio’s most deprived areas including Acari, Manguinhos and the City of God favela made famous by Fernando Meirelles’s film.Wallace Pereira, a community leader in Rocinha, said he feared a lack of testing meant the true numbers were in fact far higher.“We’re facing a public disaster here,” he said, warning that the political skirmish between Rio’s governor, who has ordered residents to stay at home, and Bolsonaro, who has downplayed the pandemic, was leaving favela residents confused and exposed.“People are getting sick and they have nowhere to go,” Pereira said. “The situation is getting worse because many people are going around saying: ‘This virus won’t get me’ – which is a fantasy.”Across town in the portside Morro da Providência, Rio’s oldest favela, Maurício Rodrigues de Oliveira, 64, was found dead last Tuesday by neighbours who suspect Covid-19 was the cause.“The day before he complained of a temperature and fainted in the street,” said Ladelson Soares, a 41-year-old neighbour.“He was a wonderful person – a waiter in some of Rio’s most famous restaurants,” said Soares, who claimed authorities had taken two days to collect his corpse.The death has left many neighbours – already struggling with the economic impact of lockdown – in panic.“Today I got some money together to buy hand sanitiser because I’ve got two kids at home. But I know that means we won’t have the money to eat,” said Claudene Carvalho, an unemployed local who found his body and has been begging community leaders for help.For Castro’s family the tragedy began on the morning of 6 April when he set off for work on the number 539 bus.Shortly after reaching the office Castro began feeling ill and went to a nearby public health clinic where he was admitted complaining of a headache and breathing difficulties.By then, Covid-19 had already killed more than 500 Brazilians. On Friday the death toll hit 3,670. But – apparently relaxed about his situation – Castro sent his dad a WhatsApp photo in which he appeared wearing an oxygen mask. Nobody imagined what was to come.Two days later Castro was rushed to a hospital for Covid-19 patients in western Rio where he was intubated on arrival. “We’d go there – but we couldn’t see him,” his 56-year-old father remembered. “We only talked to the doctors.”After 10 days in intensive care – and, for relatives, 10 days of prayer – Castro was declared dead about 4.30am on 18 April, the death certificate listing severe acute respiratory syndrome as the official cause of death. He left two children, Maria Clara and Pierre, aged three and seven.Not far from Castro’s former home in Rocinha, another family is also in mourning.Antônio Edson Mariano, a 67-year-old street vendor who sold biscuits on the beach, died on 30 March – three days after first complaining of a stomach ache – and was the first of the favela’s residents killed by the coronavirus.On the day of his cremation, Mariano’s wife, Maria Lúcia Moreira Mariano, was herself taken to hospital, where she was given the same diagnosis and informed of her partner’s death.But as she fights for her own life, Maria has yet to be told of another fatality. One day after her admittance, the couple’s 45-year-old son, Alexandre, also lost his life to Covid-19.

(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump has been determined to talk his way through the coronavirus crisis, but frequent misstatements at his daily news conferences have caused a litany of public health and political headaches for the White House.On Friday, Trump sought to clean up his briefing room riff from the day before about the possibility of fighting coronavirus infection in patients with chemical disinfectant or sunlight -- a dangerous idea that doctors and a manufacturer of cleaning products felt obliged to publicly warn against.By Saturday, Trump suggested the briefings, which have become a televised daily substitute for his campaign rallies, were “not worth the time and effort,” a day after a report that he plans to scale back such appearances. Trump on Friday said he had “sarcastically” suggested Americans be injected with disinfectant. The president’s new spokeswoman also sought to clarify his remarks.“President Trump has repeatedly said that Americans should consult with medical doctors regarding coronavirus treatment, a point that he emphasized again during yesterday’s briefing,” the press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, said in a statement. “Leave it to the media to irresponsibly take President Trump out of context and run with negative headlines.”Trump’s most public response to the U.S. coronavirus outbreak has been the extended news conferences he’s held almost every day, including most weekends, to talk about it. He pulled off his 2016 election upset and survived the Russia investigation and impeachment in part due to his ability to dominate media coverage. But the president has never been known as a detail-oriented leader and his off-the-cuff briefings have left many Americans distrustful of what he says.As questions mounted about Trump’s comments on disinfectant, Trump and his coronavirus task force on Friday evening held their shortest news conference yet, at just 22 minutes. He took no questions.There was no briefing on Saturday but instead, a series of Twitter messages that returned to familiar targets including the media and Democrats. Just 23% of Americans consider Trump a trustworthy source of information on the virus, while 52% trust their state and local leaders, according to poll published Thursday by the Associated Press and NORC at the University of Chicago.Trump’s QuestionsTrump’s remarks on Thursday followed a presentation by a Department of Homeland Security undersecretary, Bill Bryan, who showed White House reporters new research indicating the virus wouldn’t survive as long on nonporous surfaces in higher temperatures and humidity. The research suggested summer heat could help temper the U.S. outbreak, at least temporarily, although places in warm climates such as Singapore are still battling their own outbreaks.After Bryan’s presentation, Trump chimed in, off script.“So I asked Bill a question that probably some of you are thinking of, if you’re totally into that world, which I find to be very interesting. So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous -- whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light -- and I think you said that that hasn’t been checked, but you’re going to test it,” Trump said. “And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way, and I think you said you’re going to test that too. It sounds interesting.”Bryan responded: “We’ll get to the right folks who could.”“Right,” Trump continued. “And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that.”Two-Hour BriefingsEven some Republicans have said Trump would be better served by holding fewer news conferences or speaking less during the events, leaving his medical experts and others to convey the information. But the former reality TV star has until now shown no sign of surrendering the lectern and has repeatedly bragged about his television ratings.In the last month, the White House has held a coronavirus briefing on all but three days, and the last time Trump did not speak at one was late March, according to data compiled by C-SPAN. Of the 47 briefings held since the start of the pandemic response, Trump has spoken at 43 of them -- the most of any administration official, the data show.His marathon public remarks -- the news conferences have extended for as long as two hours and 23 minutes, according to C-SPAN -- have been peppered with false claims, exaggerations and misstatements, opening the president to criticism by Democrats seeking to defeat him in November. Trump’s claims that the virus would “disappear” and that “nobody could have ever seen something like this coming” have been included in political ads arguing he is ill-equipped to combat the pandemic.Even government health authorities have been forced to rebut the president. On Friday, the Food and Drug Administration cautioned against the use of two drugs Trump has promoted to treat coronavirus infection, hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine. The malaria medicine has not been shown to be effective against the virus. Nonetheless, the FDA issued an emergency order last month permitting the drug to be prescribed for hospitalized coronavirus patients, after Trump repeatedly recommended it and directed his administration to procure millions of doses.The medicines “can cause abnormal heart rhythms” as well as “a dangerously rapid heart rate called ventricular tachycardia,” the FDA said Friday. “These risks may increase when these medicines are combined with other medicines” including azithromycin, the FDA said.The U.S. Surgeon General, Jerome Adams, meanwhile tweeted on Friday an admonition against Americans self-medicating without their doctors’ advice.The state of Maryland’s Emergency Management Agency said in a tweet on Friday that it had “received several calls regarding questions about disinfectant use and Covid-10.”“This is a reminder that under no circumstances should any disinfectant product be administered into the body through injection, ingestion or any other route,” the agency said.And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a tweet Friday that household cleaners and disinfectants “can cause health problems when not used properly.”‘Something There’Trump views the daily White House briefings as an opportunity to share his optimistic view of the U.S. effort against the virus and battle critics, according to a person familiar with the matter. That has included insulting and arguing with individual reporters, particularly those from news organizations such as CNN that he considers unfair.The briefings also serve as an outlet for the president, who is no longer able to stage the boisterous political rallies that were the spine of both his 2016 and 2020 campaigns, the person said.But his frequent speaking appearances have also exposed his lack of preparedness. Trump rarely attends the White House coronavirus task force meetings that precede the briefings and does not typically rehearse his opening remarks, often reading them for the first time just minutes before he goes on air, the New York Times reported.After his remarks about light and disinfectant on Thursday, a litany of scientists and doctors called the president’s suggestions dangerous. The maker of Lysol, Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc, issued a statement saying that “under no circumstance” should its disinfectant products be administered into the human body. The company said it felt obliged to issue a statement because it has a “responsibility in providing consumers with access to accurate, up-to-date information as advised by leading public health experts.”In the Oval Office on Friday, Trump was invited to clarify his remarks. “I do think that disinfectant on the hands could have a very good effect,” he said, adding that he’d like the government to research the effect of sunlight, heat and humidity on infected patients.“Maybe there’s something that’s there,” Trump said. “They have to work with the doctors. I’m not a doctor.”For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Small business owners have had a lot of trouble securing loans to help them weather the coronavirus crisis. Gordon Sondland's business didn't.Sondland is the founder of Provenance Hotels, a chain of high-end joints that secured a loan from the Paycheck Protection Program, which will distribute more than $300 billion. But he's probably better known as the former U.S. ambassador to the European Union who played a major role in President Trump's impeachment — and who got his job after making a $1 million donation to Trump's inaugural committee.Provenance Hotels laid off around 1,000 employees, and said it hopes to use the loan to hire them back. Sondland didn't work for the company for the past few years while in the White House, but he'll become its chair again in May after Provenance's president stepped down amid the financial panic. Sondland's wife Katherine Durant remained Provenance's CEO during the ex-ambassador's time in office.The funding for small business loans doled out under the federal COVID-19 relief package ran dry within days of its passage. It has since been revealed that huge national chains, including some with valuations over $100 million, managed to secure loans while far smaller businesses never made it through the long lines to apply.More stories from theweek.com Trump adviser suggests reopening economy by putting 'everybody in a space outfit' Cuomo rips McConnell's 'blue state bailout' by noting 'your state is living on the money that we generate' Small music venues ask Congress for special consideration in coronavirus aid

(Bloomberg) -- A Dallas hotel executive and major donor to President Donald Trump has emerged as the biggest winner from the coronavirus bailout for small businesses.A combined total of $59 million from the small business lending package went to three lodging companies chaired by Monty Bennett, according to regulatory filings. The money went to Braemar Hotels & Resorts, which owns luxury properties including the Ritz-Carlton in St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Ashford Hospitality Trust Inc., which owns more than 100 hotels around the country, and the firm that manages both.The PPP has come under fire after big restaurant chains like Potbelly Corp. and Ruth’s Chris Steak House got loans, while many mom-and-pop firms were left stranded when the initial $349 billion in funding for the program ran out of money last week. The House is expected to vote Thursday on a bill approving an additional $320 billion for the initiative.The loans to Bennett’s companies underscore how large firms were able to take advantage of the small business program because of a loophole nestled in the bailout package that allowed companies with multiple locations to apply for loans that can convert to grants if they maintain employees and payrolls at certain levels.That provision was inserted after lobbyists for hotels and restaurants pleaded with lawmakers designing the program, especially Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, for special consideration. The carveout allowed hotels and restaurants to apply for the funds regardless of how many workers they had, so long as each location employed fewer than 500.Bennett donated $150,000 in the last six months to a fundraising committee for Trump’s reelection campaign and for Republicans, according to Federal Election Commission records. He also gave to Trump in 2016, and has made donations to prominent allies such as House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy and Senator Lindsey Graham.Ashford said in a statement that PPP “is working exactly as intended by providing much needed capital to small businesses and larger businesses that have been the hardest hit -- hotels and restaurants” with fewer than 500 employees per location.Another Trump supporter and hotelier -- Gordon Sondland -- was also a beneficiary of the small-business relief package. Provenance Hotels, the hotel chain he founded, received a PPP loan, according to a spokeswoman. Sondland is the former ambassador to the EU who played a starring role in the Trump impeachment proceedings. The group has more than a dozen properties, including three in Washington state, which has been hard-hit by the virus. The Portland Business Journal reported earlier on Sondland’s hotel group winning a PPP loan.Ashford Hospitality said in a regulatory filing Tuesday that it expects to receive additional loans. The $30 million it received -- the most money disclosed by a public company yet-- was in 42 PPP loans to company affiliates that own hotels. Braemar, which also owns the Ritz-Carlton in Lake Tahoe, California, received $15.8 million in eight loans. Ashford Inc., which manages properties for Ashford and Braemar Hotels, got six loans totaling $12.8 million.Major hotel brands like Marriott International Inc., Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc., and Hyatt Hotels Corp. didn’t apply for the small business loans. The companies make most of their money by selling brand licenses and services to the investors who own hotel properties.Restaurants and hotels together account for less than 10% of the PPP loans, according to the SBA, which administers the program. They’ve said the requirement to use the money in eight weeks to get loan forgiveness isn’t long enough and the program’s emphasis on keeping workers employed doesn’t give them enough flexibility to cover other costs.Brian Crawford, the executive vice president of government affairs at the American Hotel & Lodging Association, said funds are going to industries that have suffered fewer consequences from the pandemic.“Seemingly healthy industries are taking advantage of this program and that’s why we’re running out of money,” Crawford said.A spokeswoman for Marriott, which owns five hotels in the U.S., said that while it didn’t apply as a corporation, some of its franchisees, which could qualify as small businesses, are pursuing loans.Marriott, which has temporarily closed about 1,000 U.S. hotels and furloughed thousands of workers, has had little trouble accessing credit markets. On April 14, Marriott raised $1.6 billion in five-year bonds in a move the company said would substantially replace a $1.5 billion revolving credit facility that the company announced earlier the same day.Hilton and Hyatt have each raised hundreds of millions of dollars in debt since the Federal Reserve pledged to support the corporate bond market earlier this month. The hotel brand companies have a menu of options for raising cash, including selling loyalty points or borrowing against real estate portfolios.A Hilton spokesperson said that the company, which owns no U.S. hotel properties, has no plans to seek financial support from the U.S. Treasury Department. A Hyatt representative also said it has no plans to apply for any small business loans under the SBA program, although some third-party owners of properties it operates have.“What they did was the least expensive, least restrictive option: a simple unsecured corporate bond offering,” said Michael Bellisario, an analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co.(Updates with Trump donation in sixth paragraph)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

As concerns have risen about voter safety in the midst of a global pandemic, the past few weeks have seen proposed solutions put forward by voter-rights organizations, Democratic lawmakers, and almost the entirety of former Vice President Joe Biden’s short list of potential running mates.But Biden himself has held back on endorsing any particular plan for expanding access to mail-in ballots—a decision that campaign sources told The Daily Beast is by design.“Joe Biden throwing his support behind any specific legislation to expand vote-by-mail is as good as drawing a target on it in red ink,” said one person familiar with the campaign’s thinking.Under guidance from Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan is sending absentee ballot applications to all registered voters in the state ahead of its May 5 primary. Last week, Sen. Kamala Harris of California introduced the “VoteSafe Act,” which would require states to permit no-excuse mail-in voting by absentee. In March, Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota introduced the “Natural Disaster and Emergency Ballot Act of 2020,” which would do the same, and reimburse states for additional costs of administering elections during the pandemic. Former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, who created the group Fair Fight to campaign for increased voting access after her narrow loss in 2018, has fought ever since for expanding the use of vote-by-mail in Georgia.“The reality is, if we go ahead and get mail-in ballots to as many voters as possible, you shorten the lines, which means you can move as many people out of needing to be in-person,” Abrams told MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Tuesday, calling the Wisconsin election and its aftermath “a travesty and a tragedy.”Even former first lady Michelle Obama, who has largely eschewed politics since her husband left office, has returned to the political stage to advocate for increased mail-in ballot access.“Americans should never have to choose between making their voices heard and keeping themselves and their families safe,” Obama said in a statement released last week by the voter-access nonprofit When We All Vote.The Wisconsin contest caused concerns from some Democrats that people voting in person could get sick and possibly die from the virus. But Republican leaders in the state resisted efforts to delay the election. ‘I Could Get the Virus If I Vote’: Wisconsin’s Terrifying Election DayAt least 19 cases of COVID-19 in Wisconsin linked to potential exposure during the state’s primary election two weeks ago, according to ABC News, which is why, Abrams continued, “we are all working so hard to ensure that we can not only flatten the curve but ensure our democracy.”Biden himself, however, has taken a slower approach to pushing a specific plan for conducting a national election in the midst of a pandemic, instead making unspecific calls for “voter security” after the Wisconsin election had wrapped. “We have to make sure that we secure for all Americans the right to vote, including options for safe, accessible in-person voting and expanded vote-by-mail and early voting,” campaign spokesperson Bill Russo told The Daily Beast earlier this month, after Biden came out against in-person voting in the Wisconsin primary. “It is imperative that we protect our democracy and every American’s right to vote and we know that is going to be complicated while we are also simultaneously taking the critical steps we need to take to protect our health and get this virus under control.”Two sources familiar with the Biden campaign’s approach on the matter told The Daily Beast that the former vice president is wary of leading the charge on the issue, lest the notion of voter safety in a pandemic become an issue of Democrats vs. Republicans—potentially dooming efforts to pass such measures in Mitch McConnell’s Senate when so-called “Phase Four” relief legislation comes to a vote.“Trump was willing to risk literal impeachment to block Joe’s chances at winning in the general,” said one source familiar with the campaign’s calculus. “You think he wouldn’t be willing to veto COVID relief?”Voting rights have already proven to be a potentially explosive political issue in the Trump era, even before the coronavirus pandemic made the safe casting of ballots a matter of life or potential death. After winning the 2016 general election, Trump has persistently (and baselessly) declared that millions of illegal votes cost him the popular vote victory. Unwilling to let the issue go, a voter fraud commission shepherded by the Trump administration in 2017 quickly turned into a fiasco with little to show for in the way of results. In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic the president, once again returned to a voter fraud conspiracy as he disparaged voting by mail as causing widespread voter fraud.The day of the Wisconsin election, Trump told reporters at a coronavirus briefing that mail-in ballots are “a very dangerous thing for this country ’cause they’re cheaters.”“The mail ballots are corrupt in my opinion,” said Trump, who himself had asked for a mail-in ballot for the Florida primary, according to The Palm Beach Post. “I think mail in voting is horrible. It’s corrupt.”While experts say fraud can occur with mail-in voting, Trump’s claim of such large-scale election corruption is baseless, and he has offered no evidence to back the major fraud charges.It also runs counter to Republican officials who have emphasized absentee voting during the pandemic.  The pandemic has led to voting becoming an even more fraught topic, with Wisconsin’s April contest serving as the starkest example. But even a trio of March 17 contests were plagued  with issues tied to the coronavirus. A fourth contest was supposed to be held that same day in Ohio until the state’s Republican governor made a drastic maneuver at the last minute to keep in-person voting from happening on the originally scheduled day, citing public health concerns. One elections expert told The Daily Beast that voting rights will likely be a major issue in the presidential campaign. “[It’s] something that especially Biden’s vice presidential candidate would be likely to be hammering on as a way of attacking the Republicans,” said Richard Hasen, an expert on election law at the University of California, Irvine. “Biden may be trying to stay above the fray in that sense.”Hasen expects Biden’s "voting rights people” will pick up on the issue more as the sense grows “that steps are going to need to be taken in the fall to assure that people can vote safely.” And the risk of politicization has not stopped figures like Abrams and Klobuchar from advocating for a national solution to the question.“These are both people who have track records in dealing with voting issues for some time and so they may be the logical people to be doing this,” said Richard Briffault, a professor at Columbia Law School specializing in election law. Before the coronavirus pandemic further highlighted the issue, access to voting could be a difficult frontline issue on which to build a campaign—especially for presidential candidates. Worries about the economy and health care can often prove to be more at the top-of-mind for voters, though it’s unclear how the voting issues that have emerged during the pandemic could change that thought process for some. “To be honest, in terms of what resonates with the public, it’s very rarely the No. 1 or No. 2 or No. 3 issue for anybody,” Briffault said.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

(Bloomberg) -- Joe Biden raised $46.7 million in March, his best monthly haul of the U.S. presidential campaign, even though the coronavirus pandemic shut down large swathes of the U.S. and prevented in-person fundraising.Biden ended March with $26.4 million cash on hand, according to his latest filing with the Federal Election Commission. He still lags behind President Donald Trump’s fundraising juggernaut, but coupled with a strong showing by the Democratic National Committee, he has started to gain ground.Biden and the DNC brought in $79.4 million, topping the $63 million that Trump, the Republican National Committee and two supporting committees raised. The GOP still has more cash on hand -- $240 million at the end of March -- than the combined $62.2 million Biden and the DNC had.The DNC raised $32.7 million, topping the RNC’s $24 million and besting its monthly total for the first time in the 2020 election cycle.The strong showing for the Democrats comes after a month in which Biden confirmed his status as the presumptive Democratic nominee with a string of primary victories that forced his remaining rival, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, to drop out of the race.Throughout the nominating contest, Biden was one of the weakest fundraisers among the major Democratic candidates. Through the end of February, he’d raised less than Sanders, the Democrat’s top fundraiser to that point, as well as Senator Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg.Democratic-aligned super political action committees also released their March numbers on Monday. Unite the Country, formed last October to shield Biden from attacks by Trump and his allies during the House impeachment inquiry, raised $10 million, its biggest month of fundraising. That was more than the $9.4 million that Trump’s super-PAC, America First Action, raised in the first quarter.Top donors to Unite the Country included hedge fund manager James Simons, who gave $3 million, Choice Hotels International Chairman Stewart W. Bainum, who gave $2 million, and Baupost Group’s Chief Executive Officer Seth Klarman, who gave $500,000. It spent $4.6 million and started April with $6.9 million in the bank.Priorities USA, which Biden designated last Wednesday as his campaign’s preferred destination for big donors, raised $4 million, spent $4.4 million and ended the month with $21.1 million in the bank.Federal candidates can’t coordinate spending with super-PACs, but they can solicit donations of up to $5,000 for them. Investor Bernard L. Schwartz, an early backer of Unite the Country, donated $100,000 to Priorities in March. The League of Conservation Voters Victory Fund, which gave $2 million, was the biggest donor.Pacronym, which is focusing on digital ads, raised $1.6 million in the same period, spent $1.1 million and ended March with $7.4 million cash on hand. It got a $1.5 million donation from Democracy PAC, a super-PAC whose sole donor is hedge fund manager George Soros.Sanders raised $33 million in March while spending $35 million and ending the month with $16 million cash on hand, his FEC filings show.‘Family Guy’Overall, Sanders took in $201 million for his second presidential run, making him the top fundraiser among Democrats. Most of the money came from contributors giving $200 or less. But Biden’s resurgence in South Carolina and the narrowing of the field before and after Super Tuesday, combined with uncertainty over the resumption of primary season amid the coronavirus pandemic, led Sanders to exit the race on April 8.The DNC’s strong month of fundraising came as it moved to Zoom to host virtual fundraisers amid the coronavirus crisis. It also received a boost from Seth MacFarlane, the creator of the TV series “Family Guy,” who donated $865,000 to a committee that supports the DNC and state parties, and Schwartz, who gave $250,000.The DNC’s biggest contribution was the $18 million transfered to the party by Michael Bloomberg, who put $1 billion into his short-lived Democratic presidential bid, a record-shattering amount for any campaign. The former New York mayor spent $176 million in March as he wound down his operation. His campaign ended the month with $11 million in the bank and $14.8 million in debts.Biden appeared to be on track for the best fundraising month of his career when the pandemic struck, upending campaigns and the primary season. The former vice president said he’d raised $33 million in the first half of March before the virus put the country, including political campaigns, into quarantine.The campaign said 70% of its donations came online, with the average donation coming in at $40.(Disclaimer: Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Representatives Adam Schiff (D., Calif.) and Jerry Nadler (D., N.Y.) requested that Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz investigate attorney general William Barr for defending President Trump’s decision to fire the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community (ICIG) Michael Atkinson.In a Monday letter, the heads of the House Intelligence and House Judiciary committees accused Barr of violating Department of Justice “policies and rules of professional conduct” during an interview with Fox News' Laura Ingraham earlier this month, in which he said the president “did the right thing” in firing Atkinson, who filed the whistleblower complaint that dealt with Trump’s conduct on a call with the Ukrainian president and touched off the president’s impeachment.“From the vantage point of the Department of Justice, he had interpreted his statute, which is a fairly narrow statute, that gave him jurisdiction over wrongdoing by intelligence people and tried to turn it into a commission to explore anything in the government and immediately report it to Congress without letting the executive branch look at it and determine whether there was any problem,” Barr explained.Schiff and Nadler said that Barr “blatantly mischaracterized” the firing, and suggested he was “justifying the President’s retaliatory decision to fire Mr. Atkinson.”“To the contrary, Mr. Atkinson faithfully discharged his legal obligations as an independent and impartial Inspector General in accordance with federal law,” they argue.The two point to “the coordinated efforts” between the DOJ and the White House to keep the whistleblower complaint from being reported, as part of Barr’s “disturbing pattern of misrepresenting facts and falsely alleging misconduct by other government officials in order to defend the President’s own misconduct.”Following initial news of the whistleblower complaint in September, Schiff threatened to sue the White House for access to the complaint, explaining that “we have not spoken directly with the whistleblower.” In October, The New York Times revealed that the whistleblower had communicated with Schiff’s staff before submitting the formal complaint.Schiff and Nadler, who in October warned that Barr’s elevating of John Durham’s Russiagate probe amounted to “a vehicle for President Trump’s political revenge,” also cite U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton’s decision last month for the DOJ to hand over an unredacted Mueller Report, over “grave concerns” about Barr’s “objectivity,” as further proof of bias.“Public confidence in our system of justice depends on the integrity, fairness, and impartiality of DOJ’s leadership,” they close. “It is, therefore, imperative that the Attorney General be held to the same high standard expected of all Department personnel, particularly in matters involving the President’s own interests.”

The Utah senator was the only GOP member to vote for the president’s impeachment in February.

Some good vibes were floating around Sunday, with House Speaker (D-Calif.), Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin expressing optimism that the White House and Congress were closing in on an agreement on the next phase of funding amid the novel COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. There's no reason President Trump's latest tweet squashed any of that momentum, but it did kill the mood. Trump, who often clashes with Pelosi, angrily tweeted about the speaker Sunday afternoon after she appeared on Fox News Sunday to speak with host Chris Wallace. The president, making sure to express his displeasure with Wallace, as well, called Pelosi an "inherently 'dumb' person," and suggested she will soon be "overthrown."> Nervous Nancy is an inherently "dumb" person. She wasted all of her time on the Impeachment Hoax. She will be overthrown, either by inside or out, just like her last time as "Speaker". Wallace & @FoxNews are on a bad path, watch! https://t.co/nkEj5YeRjb> > -- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 19, 2020Earlier in the day, before Trump's latest insult, Pelosi told George Stephanopoulos on ABC's This Week, that she doesn't pay much attention to Trump's tweets, anyway. > Speaker Nancy Pelosi responds as President Trump ramps up attacks against her: "Frankly, I don't pay that much attention to the president's tweets against me. As I've said, he's a poor leader. He's always trying to avoid responsibility." https://t.co/8MWudGIONC pic.twitter.com/haaGWAyDVw> > -- This Week (@ThisWeekABC) April 19, 2020More stories from theweek.com A parade that killed thousands? 5 brutally funny cartoons about Dr. Fauci's Trump troubles America's fake federalism