Author: Kara Hurvitz

This administration’s new approach is that we have a new normal, in which COVID is just part of the backdrop of all of life. Needless to say, there are obvious problems with this approach–namely, a pandemic like this is not normal and the U.S.’s ever-climbing death rate is avoidable. If you feel like you’re being gaslit, that’s probably because you are; this administration is going all-in. That doesn’t mean we have to accept it.

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m mostly summarizing the news within my area of expertise. NNR summaries often contain some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise–I’m a lawyer, not a commuted sentence!–but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. And, of course, for the things that are within my lane, I’m offering context that shouldn’t be considered legal advice. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers.  Onward to the news!   

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

Yet another week of “COVID” and “Not COVID” constitutional crises.  First up, we have more lingering stories from the Russia Investigation, though none of them are what I’d call a fun read.  Here’s what has happened: 

• Stone’s Throw Away.  Trump apparently decided he hadn’t done enough corruption lately with the pandemic slowing him down, so he went ahead and commuted Roger Stone’s sentence a few days before the latter was due to show up to prison.  (It’s hard to keep up with the rogue’s gallery, but you may remember Roger Stone from such greatest hits as “didn’t bother to learn how WhatsApp would incriminate him,” “tried to get the presiding judge removed on the grounds that he wasn’t likable,” and “was found guilty of doing Trump’s dirty work literally seven times.”)  Unsurprisingly, the presiding judge is already examining the order for scope, but it’s unclear whether there will be any leeway there.  Needless to say, this is yet another new height of corruption, because no sitting President has ever pardoned somebody for crimes related to the President’s dirty work before.  I’m sure we’d all be very horrified if we were still capable of the emotion.  

• Vindman Out.   Speaking of corruption, Lt Col Alexander Vindman, who was a key witness in the House impeachment proceedings, announced this week he was retiring from the military despite being due for a promotion to full colonel this year.  He also made it clear that this retirement was in response to a sustained campaign of systemic harassment levied at him for said participation, which was spearheaded by the President.  It’s an ignoble and I’m sure painful end to 21 years of service, particularly considering the bravery of his service this past winter.

On the Disregard of Governing Norms front, we have another week of growing COVID crisis and shrinking leadership.  Here are the stories to know:

• COVID and Immigration. I’ve been meaning to talk for a little while now about the immigration power grab happening during the COVID crisis, which seems designed to make legal immigration more and more impossible. Among the changes during the last month: 1) Closing the borders to asylum seekers from countries with infection on a “public health” basis, even while insisting that our schools need to reopen; 2) A suspension of visas that allow people to enter the U.S. to work, which uses job security for Americans as a rationale and was itself an extension of an earlier order for the suspension of travel to seek lawful permanent residence; 3) A new rule that students on visas will be deported if their schools reopen remotely; 4) Apparently ceasing print of immigration papers after the contract with a private vendor ended; and 5) A broad set of proposed changes to asylum that make it very difficult for anyone to claim asylum at all. That last one has a comment period that ends on Wednesday, by the way, and I strongly encourage folks to write in and yell about it.

• Messed Up Trump Response: COVID Edition. At this point, I think it’s fair to say that the White House has hit rock bottom on COVID response and is starting to dig. Trump spent much of the week pressuring schools to reopen in person, complaining about CDC rules that urged caution and slow reopen. His cronies got into the action too, with Pence claiming new CDC regulations would be forthcoming (spoiler: no they aren’t) and Betsy DeVos following up by saying we don’t have to listen to the CDC anyway (spoiler: yes we do). When none of that worked, Trump started smearing his own head expert for listening to available data and for generally urging responsible pandemic policy. This is all, of course, in addition to the growing rhetoric that the growing infection numbers are part of life and “we need to live with it,” despite the administration also acknowledging that death rates will rise–but more on that below.

Your “Normal” Weird:

• Election Oddities (Again).  In election news, a recent poll reveals that GOP voters don’t trust absentee ballots because Trump says they’re untrustworthy, despite him being pretty untrustworthy himself.  This is alarming to GOP operatives, because the attitude might hurt GOP candidates in the long run.  Of course, I think it’s safe to say Trump doesn’t care what happens to other GOP candidates, as long as he himself gets reelected.

• Confounding Court Cases.   The SCOTUS term wound down this week, and we saw a few more confusing or concerning cases on the way out.  The first was a decision to permit employers to opt out of the birth control mandate of the ACA due to religious objection, which needless to say is disappointing, particularly when many people take hormonal medication for reasons unrelated to contraception.  The other was a set of two related decisions collectively saying that Trump has no executive immunity from subpoena–but Congress can’t have his taxes before November anyway, due to “separation of powers” concerns.  The cases are a mixed bag, but there was at least one positive case as well, which we’ll talk about below.

The Bad:

• State of the COVID-19.*  As I discussed above, we’re really not in great shape COVID-wise.   We’re currently experiencing an unprecedented rate of infection in the United States, with 3.3 million recorded cases and over 135,000 recorded deaths –about one fifth of the entire world’s total cases to date.  True to Dr. Fauci’s prediction that we may see rates of up to 100,000 new cases per day, we’ve already scaled past 63,000 per day at the time that I type this.  Florida saw 15,300 new cases in a single day over the weekend, the single highest number we’ve ever seen, though that apparently didn’t stop Disney World from reopening.  In international news, the leader of Brazil has tested positive and the WHO has acknowledged the risk of airborne transmission.  But hey, at least Trump has finally started wearing masks in public, only three months after his own administration said everyone should!

• Black Lives Matter News.  News on this front was a bit quieter this week, but the Marshall Project did cover the practice of peremptory challenges to jurors who support Black Lives Matter, which is a fancy way of saying “removed from jury service for thinking that extrajudicial killing is bad.”  Meanwhile, San Francisco passed a law against discriminatory 911 calls, which they have amusingly named The CAREN Act, and Amy Cooper was charged with filing a false police report.

The Good:

• Recent Court Resilience. We had some solid court cases this week in addition to the less-solid cases above.  The Supreme Court held that large parts of  eastern Oklahoma are still reservation land that belongs to local tribes.  A federal judge also blocked the Justice Department from resuming federal executions.  And in lawsuit news, several schools are suing Trump over his student visa power move, and seventeen state Attorneys General have joined in.

• Recent Racial Renaming. After last week’s deliberations, the NFL’s Washington team did indeed decide to change its name. The new name won’t be released for a few days yet, which might be because they still need to secure rights, but I’ll keep folks posted.

So that’s what I have for this week, and I’m sorry, there are no news refunds. For making it through, you deserve this important inter-museum content and an eventual better government.  I’ll be back next week with more (and hopefully more tolerable) news, and I hope you will be back as well–but in the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box, which is there for your constructive comments.  Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me more tea because we’re running out!

The main story this week is Attack of the Return of the COVID-19, and that horror movie has just as many bad life choices as you might expect. I think a Twitter user put it quite well: “Any zombie movie that doesn’t have hordes of people running towards the zombies to deliberately get bitten because they’re convinced it’s a liberal hoax is going to look pretty unrealistic now.”

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m mostly summarizing the news within my area of expertise. NNR summaries often contain some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise–I’m a lawyer, not a bounty–but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. And, of course, for the things that are within my lane, I’m offering context that shouldn’t be considered legal advice. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers.  Onward to the news!   

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

Another week of different forms of constitutional crisis, this time mostly under the “COVID” and “Not COVID” categories.  First up, we have what I’m tentatively calling another round of Russia Investigation because it involves Trump being Putin’s favorite puppet yet again.  (If the top story develops further, it may end up its own section though.)

• Bounties for Russia.*  The incredible news broke over the weekend that Russian intelligence officers offered bounties to Taliban agents to kill U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, and that Trump has known about this since March.  Or, more accurately, that Trump should have known about this since March, as that’s when his team was briefed–but intelligence officers had been tackling the issue since late January.  Trump’s initial defense was “nobody told me,” which might actually be true, but belies the obvious problems in the West Wing.

• Roger Stone Trial Updates. The House heard testimony this week from former Roger Stone prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky, who confirmed that prosecutors were pressured to give him a more lenient sentence due to his relationship to Trump.  Perhaps relatedly, Stone himself was ordered to report back to prison on July 14th, denying his request for another two months’ reprieve due to COVID.  (I’m guessing Judge Berman feels that someone so obviously cozy with Trump can go ahead and follow Trump’s guidelines about the crisis.)

On the Disregard of Governing Norms front, we have more COVID crisis and somehow even less leadership than normal.  Here’s what has happened:

• ACA Acrimony (Again). Our illustrious leader has filed an emergency brief asking the Supreme Court to overturn the Affordable Care Act again, because… reasons? I’m honestly not even sure what is motivating him to yank 23 million people’s insurance in literal middle of a re-escalating pandemic, beyond “I must spite Obama even if it kills you.” Recent SCOTUS cases, however, suggest they may not be so inclined to listen to him–but more on that below. In the meantime, House Democrats have introduced legislation to re-expand the Act, presumably just to be on the safe side.

• Messed Up Trump Response: COVID Edition. This was a pretty awful week for learning administrative missteps during the pandemic. News broke that federal officials allowed flawed tests to circulate, despite knowing that they are flawed, because Trump had promised test access that simply wasn’t possible. Outlets also revisited the news that the Treasury sent $1.4B in stimulus checks to over one million dead people. And news broke that the SBA exempted lawmakers from its own ethics rules when administering its $660B loan program. And, of course, there’s the current and unprecedented rate of infection, which this administration is minimizing and we will talk about more below. So, y’know, A++ management all around.

Your “Normal” Weird:

• Primary Colors.  Primary elections were held in several states on Tuesday, and they appear to show a country still figuring out how to balance elections during the COVID crisis. In New York, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez handily won her district, which is fun to note, and progressives appeared to do well in general, though we’re still waiting on a large number of mail-in ballots. (The elections didn’t otherwise seem noteworthy–which is itself noteworthy, given how badly COVID had gripped the state.)  Kentucky closed most of its polling locations and saw huge numbers of absentee ballots as well. This means delays in tabulating results, and with a closely-contested primary for the privilege of running against Mitch McConnell, those results are definitely worth watching.  

The Bad:

• State of the COVID-19.*    As I mentioned above, we’re currently experiencing an unprecedented rate of infection in the United States, with over 2.5 million recorded cases and over 125,000 recorded deaths reflecting new daily high records.  Cases rates are increasing in 32 states, with 14 states holding steady and only a few states experiencing a decreased rate of infection. The infection rate is particularly concerning in Florida, Arizona, and Texas, where lax standards combined with high concentrations of people seem to be creating a perfect storm.  Nonetheless, none of these states are closing back down, though smaller restrictions are being implemented–Texas is limiting gatherings to 100 people (yes, you read that right) and limiting restaurants to 50% in-house dining capacity; Florida is banning drinking in bars (but not in restaurants) and closing some beaches; and Arizona’s only concession appears to be finally allowing municipalities to require masks.  Needless to say, it’s unsurprising that the European Union won’t let us travel there when they reopen their borders on July 1.  Meanwhile, another virus with ‘pandemic potential’ was uncovered in China, and that sound you are hearing is my head hitting my desk repeatedly.

• Black Lives Matter News.   News on this front continues to be one step forward and two steps back.  We have several more stories of gun violence against protesters–white civilians in St Louis brandished guns at peaceful protesters, images of which Trump retweeted, and a photographer died after someone fired a gun into a crowd of protesters in Louisville, KY.  Trump issued an executive order creating a felony charge for vandalizing Confederate statues, and also retweeted videos of someone yelling “White power”.  In more positive news, there’s research indicating that no spike in cases was caused by outdoor protest, and the House passed an expansive police force overhaul bill.

The Good:

• Recent Court Resilience. Adding to our growing list of moderate SCOTUS successes, the court issued a decision today on a Louisiana case regarding abortion, which featured a conclusion that an obviously-unconstitutional law that mimicked a law the Court overturned four years ago was, in fact, unconstitutional, because stare decisis is still a thing. (Poor Justice Breyer probably had to be restrained from writing “I’m sorry, was I writing in Esperanto last time?” when he drafted this opinion.) The Ninth Circuit also found that this administration’s border wall funding was illegal, which is encouraging as well.

So that’s what I have for this week, and I think we can all agree that it’s more than enough. For making it through, you deserve these doggos in bread masks and this happy leopard getting ear scritchesand an eventual better government.  I’ll be back next week with more (and hopefully more tolerable) news, and I hope you will be back as well–but in the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box, which is there for your constructive comments.  Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me promises you’re wearing a mask in public!

The news this week was a wild, wild ride from start to finish, and covered a pretty broad range. If nothing else, the administration’s actions suggest that they really do plan to just go back to business as normal. (Of course, for this administration, “business as normal” means an impressive blend of corruption and incompetence, so the news reflects this accordingly.)

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m mostly summarizing the news within my area of expertise. NNR summaries often contain some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise–I’m a lawyer, not a press release–but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. And, of course, for the things that are within my lane, I’m offering context that shouldn’t be considered legal advice. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers.  Onward to the news!

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

This is the first week in quite some time that we have several different forms of constitutional crisis, as the COVID Road meets Corruption Street and Authoritarian Avenue in the roundabout literally nobody wanted.  First up, we have yet another round of Whistleblowing Ukraine Biden Bingo, despite the impeachment process being over for months, because this is the timeline that good sense forgot.

• Bolton Windows.  John Bolton’s book, “The Room Where It Happened,” is scheduled for release this week, and Trump is big mad about it.  In fact, the administration was so angry about this book that they filed a court case asking a judge to block its release.  The judge denied this request, but did note that Bolton is a piece of work in the opinion.  Among the allegations supposedly included in the book: Trump asked China’s President to help reelect him and definitely tied Ukraine aid to them investigating Hunter Biden.  Needless to say, if the latter is true, Bolton’s testimony would have been appreciated several months ago.

• Retaliatory Firing (Again Again). This weekend, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman received quite a surprise when Attorney General William Barr announced that Berman was stepping down and being replaced by Jay Clayton, who heads the SEC.  Berman quickly issued a statement saying that he was not stepping down, just so that we’re all clear on this point, and by the way did this have anything to do with his investigation of Rudy Giuliani?  After Barr issued Berman a nastygram, Chuck Schumer and Amy Gillibrand refused to approve the swap, and Barr appointed Berman’s deputy like the law says he’s supposed to, Berman did step down.  Needless to say, all of this makes Barr look pretty bad, and he didn’t even get the guy he wanted installed, so I wouldn’t call it a win for him even though Berman is now gone.

On the Disregard of Governing Norms front, we have more-or-less what you might expect, though I can’t say I’m enjoying it–an incompetent and malicious government that breaks or bends rules left and right.  Here’s what has happened:

• Messed Up Trump Response: COVID Edition. Trump sure had some stuff to say about COVID this week, and none of it exactly screamed “competent management.” In addition to his refusal to work with Tulsa on its request to make the rally safer (more on that below), he attracted attention for announcing at his Saturday rally that he asked for less testing so that fewer people would test positive for COVID-19. This is consistent with the $14B earmarked for testing that he hasn’t distributed, and nobody in his camp can give a coherent story on the admission, so it seems very likely to be true. For bonus fun, he also used racist language to refer to the virus while disclosing this, because of course he did. And just to cap the whole thing off, two members of his team who attended the rally have tested positive for COVID, but he’s nonetheless cutting back on checking symptoms for visitors and staff at the White House.

• Messed Up Trump Response: Incitement Edition. Trump’s escalation of his base is truly something to behold this week. The real lowlight was when he ran an actual campaign ad featuring the symbol used by Nazis to mark political prisoners in World War II, which Facebook removed on account of, y’know, literal Nazism. (The same day, Twitter flagged one of his tweets as “manipulated media.”) He also released an insultingly weaksauce police reform order that was conspicuously silent on issues of race. He then immediately followed that by claiming he made Juneteenth famous and insulting Black Americans, who definitely had in fact heard of the 155-year-old holiday, in the process.

Your “Normal” Weird:

• Tulsa Rally Rodeo.   The Tulsa rally, boy howdy, where do I even start?  Trump did indeed hold a completely whackadoodle rally on Saturday.  He prepped beforehand by threatening protesters and announcing they would have a ‘wild evening’ where people didn’t have to wear masks or even follow a COVID safety protocol.  But Generation Z was prepping too, and managed to wildly throw off the campaign’s expectations by mass-requesting tickets with zero intent to show up–leading the Trump team to make decisions that reflected an anticipated larger crowd.  As a result, when fewer than 6,200 people attended in a stadium made to hold 19,000, Trump had a lackluster audience for his stale racist jokes and explanation for why he drinks water funny.  Needless to say, this was a major embarrassment for the campaign, because the optics are really bad, which Trump took about as well as you might expect.

The Bad:

• State of the COVID-19.*    Though this administration is treating COVID like an afterthought, the W.H.O. is cautioning that we’ve entered a “new and dangerous phase” as infections grow in the American South and West.  Cases have also skyrocketed in prisons, which has implications for arrested protesters.  Meanwhile, many restaurants are closing again despite recently reopening for in-house dining, finding their workers are becoming infected. AMC was in the news for announcing that when they reopen next month, moviegoers wouldn’t have to wear masks, though they quickly walked that one back for obvious reasons.  In more positive news, a University of Oxford study found that a commonly-available steroid may save lives in severe COVID cases.  That same university is also reaching Phase 3 of their vaccine study, which may mean we have more information on possible vaccines soon.

• Black Lives Matter News.   As seems to be the trend on this topic, we saw a lot of push and pull on racial equity this week. The former officer who shot Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta last week has been charged with murder, as well as several other things–but several other officers protested the decision.  We still have two Congressional bills active as well as Trump’s toothless order, but negotiations appear stalled as I type this.  And Bubba Wallace, the driver who persuaded NASCAR to ban the Confederate flag at events, found a noose in his Talladega garage stall this week.

The Good:

• Recent Court Resilience. The Supreme Court held this week by 5-4 vote that the Trump administration improperly ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, calling its process “arbitrary and capricious.” It was a very unusual decision that focused on procedural grounds, and left the door open for the administration to try again–which Trump says they will definitely do. But the decision means the DACA program remains in place as we head into the November election, and that’s an unexpected if precarious win with value that cannot be overstated for its roughly 690,000 recipients, all of whom are now safe from legal deportation for the time being.  

So that’s what I have for this week, and I think we can all agree that it’s more than enough. For making it through, you deserve Pokemon drawn to actual size and an eventual better government.  I’ll be back next week with more (and hopefully more tolerable) news, and I hope you will be back as well–but in the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box, which is there for your constructive comments.  Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me pictures from your phone camera!

Somehow, this week managed to be even worse than the last one, which is seriously saying something. I think one Twitter user put it pretty well: “I’m at the global pandemic. I’m at the civil unrest.  I’m at the combination global pandemic/civil unrest.”  (And I can’t even get a personal pan pizza, because this timeline is the worst.)

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m mostly summarizing the news within my area of expertise. NNR summaries often contain some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise–I’m a lawyer, not a curfew–but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. And, of course, for the things that are within my lane, I’m offering context that shouldn’t be considered legal advice. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers.  Onward to the news!   

Constitutional Crisis Corner:

Though our focus is mostly elsewhere right now, we did see a lot of Disregard of Governing Norms–and these things are definitely related, because this administration is still using unrest to consolidate power.  Here are the main things to know:    

• Regulation Free-For-All. We’ve officially reached the point where Trump is doing every garbage regulation change his id desires and claiming it’s necessary for COVID reasons, so this was a hell of a week for proclamations. First up was an order expediting permitting of construction projects, which obviated a lot of environmental review typically done under the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act and National Environmental Policy Act. Then that was followed by a relaxation of the way the Clean Air Act is implemented, and then that was followed by changes making it harder to dispute credit reports. Then he followed that by allowing commercial fishing at a marine sanctuary. All told, it’s a scary amount of regulatory smash-and-grab to squeeze into three business days.

• “Misclassification Error.” News outlets were reporting midweek that the economy was improving, with unemployment rates dropping and stocks increasing. And that is probably true, though we’re by no means out of the woods. But it’s hard to really say, because the numbers reflected from the Bureau of Labor Statistics were apparently flat-out wrong, mislabeling 2.5 million people who returned from furlough as finding new employment. Eventually the Bureau of Labor Statistics addressed this as a “misclassification error,” and experts seem to think this was incompetence rather than falsehood. Honestly, either way, it’s a pretty egregious discrepancy–2.5 million people is slightly less than the total number of jobs reported lost in May.

• Militarization Tango. As you may recall, Trump indicated he would use military force on Monday in a seeming invocation of the Insurrection Act, and then immediately had military police use tear gas to disperse a completely peaceful protest to illustrate the point.  As it happens, many military people did not approve of this, including but not limited to his current Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper.  Esper spoke out against the practice, and apparently also talked Trump down from putting 10,000 military troops on the streets of D.C., though he ultimately caved to pressure and declined to dismiss the hundreds that were deployed.  Another previous Secretary of Defense, Jim Mattis, spoke out against Trump’s protest militarization in general, rightfully saying, “We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution.”  Mattis was backed by 89 former military officials in an op-ed in the Washington Post, and also backed by previous head of White House staff and former general John Kelly.  Eventually Trump backpedaled and ordered the troops to withdraw “now that everything is under control.”

Your “Normal” Weird:

• Other Election Oddities (Again).   With civil unrest comes strange election news, surprising no one.  Joe Biden apparently acquitted himself well in public appearances after the weekend’s riots.  Meanwhile, after weeks of Trump threatening to pull the RNC from Charlotte because they wanted literally any safety precautions, the GOP finally did pull the plug and now it’s anybody’s guess where it’s being held.  On Tuesday, several states and D.C. held freighted and confused primaries while protests raged, with some curfews starting before polling places closed.  (On the plus side, said primaries did result in the first Black woman elected mayor of Ferguson and no more Steve King in Congress.)  A judge in Tennessee ruled that voters must have the option to vote by mail during the pandemic, due to the risk presented by COVID.  And Trump was also in the news for trying to register in Florida despite living in D.C., which is against Florida’s voting rules.    

The Bad:

• State of the COVID-19.*   COVID may be moving to backburner news, but it’s still very much worth tracking.  Florida gained 1,300 more cases in one day on Friday, bringing its total over 60,000.  Texas experienced a surge as well, with Dallas county reporting record highs.  In fact, experts report that 23 states have seen an increase in the rolling seven-day average over the last week, and this seems particularly true in rural areas at the time that I type this.  Numbers are also increasing internationally, particularly in South America, But nonetheless most states are opening back up, including New York as of today.  Meanwhile, Lancet is in the news for retracting the study that raised safety concerns about hydroxychloroquine, apparently due to inability to audit the data.  (The WHO has unpaused its study as a result.)

• Documenting Police Brutality.   Needless to say, one of the biggest stories of the week is the civil unrest which continued for another week.  There are many, many things to track here, so I’m beginning with stories that involve police forces directly.  On the one hand, there were several stories this week about police facing consequences for bad behavior, particularly when it was documented with cameras:  1) Six Atlanta officers face assault charges for dragging two college kids out of their car and stunning them during a protest; 2) All four cops involved in George Floyd’s death are now charged with murder; 3) The ACLU is suing the Minnesota police for their portion of over 149 documented police attacks on members of the press; 4) A Philadelphia officer faces assault charges after beating a Temple student with a baton without provocation; and 5) two officers in Buffalo were suspended for shoving an elderly man on camera.  But for each of these stories, there are seemingly even more new stories about violent police culture without consequences: 6) Officers who shot and killed Breanna Taylor in her own home still have not been charged, although there is now an FBI investigation pending; 7) 57 officers in Buffalo resigned in protest because the videoed assault mentioned above resulted in suspension; 8) Evidence of another asphyxiation-related homicide of a man in custody arose in Tacoma, Washington, with no charges filed; 9) Officers in Chicago assaulted their own police board president, again without any charges filed (though he did file an official complaint); 10) Officers in Asheville destroyed medical equipment and otherwise trashed a medic tent during a protest; and 11) Police in Vallejo fatally shot an unarmed man outside a Walgreens.  An attorney in North Carolina has documented over 300 violent incidents on camera since protests began two weeks ago, which is as disturbing as it is unsustainable.

• Societal Response. Needless to say, all of the above has prompted a lot of response all over the country–some of which was quite positive, honestly, though it doesn’t make up for the overall strain of the past two weeks. A memorial was held for George Floyd, which resulted in thousands of people gathering in cities all over the country, and protests continued all over the world as well. The New York Times had a giant fight about publishing a fascist op-ed from Tom Cotton about the Insurrection Act, which ultimately culminated in the op-ed editor resigning after admitting he hadn’t even read the piece. The NFL Commissioner admitted they were wrong to side against players who knelt during the anthem, apparently prompted by an appeal from the players released by video. A judge in Georgia has advanced the murder trial for three men charged with Ahmaud Arbery’s death. Twitter found itself discussing the Third Amendment for probably the first time ever after the mayor of D.C. tried to remove troops stationed in hotels there. And Kpop fans made the news for spamming police apps and hashtags to make it harder for police to identify protesters.

The Good:

• Recent Regulatory Resilience. Many officials are discussing ways to defund, dissolve, or regulate police forces better in the wake of the last two weeks. Most notably, the Minneapolis city council announced its intent to disband the police department and replace it with citizen patrols, a decision which came only a few days after they agreed to ban chokeholds and neck restraints. Seattle is considering defunding its force as well. Meanwhile, Democrats introduced sweeping police reform legislation in both the Senate and the House.

So that’s what I have for this week, and if things stay this bad we’re getting good news first next week. For making it through, you deserve goat kids visiting otters and Lucasfilm supporting John Boyega and an eventual better government.  I’ll be back next week with more (and hopefully more tolerable) news, and I hope you will be back as well–but in the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box, which is there for your constructive comments.  Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me uninterrupted sleep!

This week was a rough one on a lot of levels–so bad, in fact, that I considered changing the format for this week’s roundup.  In COVID news, we’ve made it to partially open, and now we may be here for a while–though everyone is anxious about a second wave, and we may end up moving backwards before we move forwards.  And in non-COVID news, we have a lot of disturbing official action and a very real reminder that we have a lot of work to do on the issue of police brutality. 

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m mostly summarizing the news within my area of expertise. NNR summaries often contain some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise–I’m a lawyer, not a curfew–but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. And, of course, for the things that are within my lane, I’m offering context that shouldn’t be considered legal advice. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers.  Onward to the news!  

Constitutional Crisis Corner:

Though our focus is mostly elsewhere right now, we did see a lot of Disregard of Governing Norms–and these things are definitely related, because this administration is using unrest to consolidate power.  Here are the main things to know:    

• Social Media Standoff. After three years of honeymoon period, Trump’s now in an ongoing standoff with Twitter that has truly been a sight to behold.  The conflict started brewing over the previous week, when Trump repeatedly falsely claimed Joe Scarborough killed somebody and the deceased person’s widower publicly called on Twitter to delete his tweets.  Though the platform did not in fact delete his claims, this seems to have been some sort of tipping point, because they did fact-check his subsequent tweets about mail-in voting–which they’ve never done before.  Trump went ballistic in response, yelling that this was censorship that violated his First Amendment rights despite that being, y’know, definitionally untrue.  He then passed a bonkers executive order that will probably be successfully challenged in courts.   Twitter, meanwhile, has continued to fact-check his tweets and also started adding warnings to tweets they think are violating their policies by glorifying violence. So needless to say, this has been a very strange backdrop to everything else I’m going to write about today.

• Government Messed Up COVID-19 Response. Before all eyes were on civil unrest, we did manage to see some really messed up COVID news. Trump kicked things off by banning noncitizen travel to and from Brazil, because as we all know the virus definitely cares whether you’re a U.S. citizen. He also started taking concrete steps to force the United States to leave the World Health Organization, though it’s unclear if he legally can.  Meanwhile, the WHO is pausing a global trial on hydroxychloroquine, because it’s run by grownups who care when a drug’s prescription is contraindicated. And speaking of being the grownup in the room, Justice Roberts joined with his liberal colleagues on the Supreme Court to refuse to force governors to open churches during the pandemic, noting in his 5-4 opinion that it “seems quite improbable” that the situation merits the extraordinary remedy of injunctive relief. (Kavanaugh, meanwhile, wrote a tinfoil hat dissent literally claiming it was discrimination to close churches at all.) I’m glad the court came down on the correct side, just barely, but I find it unsettling that four justices wanted to force a governor to walk back restrictions on indoor gatherings during a pandemic.

• The Shifting Position of the Press. Though I’ll talk more about the weekend’s protests below, we need to spend a moment on the shrinking protection of the press, which definitely reflects a disregard of governing norms. Historically, established press members have always been able to cover protests, and even riots, as necessary information sources for what is unfolding–press covered the Stonewall Riots in the 1960s, for example, and the Los Angeles riot of the early 1990s. Given this backdrop, it’s understandable that the sudden arrest of a CNN team in Minneapolis on Friday startled even the journalism team–in the associated video, the reporter can be heard asking “Why am I under arrest?” as he’s being cuffed mid-report in broad daylight. This was escalated dramatically and violently over the weekend, as police action against the press began to seem intentional and systemic. At the time that I type this on Monday, outlets have identified over two dozen incidents around the country: a reporter in Louisville lost her eye when police shot her in the face with a rubber bullet; journalism teams in Denver reported paint balls and tear gas used against them; a team in Detroit took pepper spray to the face while holding up their badges; a team in D.C. report physical assault; several teams in Minneapolis report police threw them to the ground or fired rubber bullets at them; teams in the larger LA area report rubber bullets and tear gas used as well. Many of these incidents occurred after the press had identified themselves, and many of them also have accompanying video. Though violence is part of the landscape right now, we need to pay particular attention to any state action that involves knowingly committing violence against the press, because it has major First Amendment implications.

Your “Normal” Weird:

• Other Election Oddities (Again).  Honestly, it feels weird to even be talking about these stories, because the earlier half of last week feels like a lifetime ago, but here we are.  Joe Biden was in the news for saying Black voters who consider voting for Trump “ain’t Black,” which he of course later had to apologize for saying.  Trump keeps threatening to pull the RNC from Charlotte because…reasons?  Ostensibly he says they might not be open, but there doesn’t seem to be much to support that claim, so I’m guessing he just likes Florida better.

The Bad:

• State of the COVID-19.*   We have officially surpassed 100,000 deaths in this country at the time that I type this, and over 1.7 million cases have been reported. Given this news, combined with high rate of asymptomatic infection and a country that is increasingly reopening, an effective method of contact tracing has become extremely important.  It’s particularly alarming that we’re also seeing news of businesses banning masks and government officials hiding COVID-positive test results.    WHO is warning about a second peak, but Disney World is reopening, and so is New York City–or at least, that was the plan before all the riots; I’m not sure if that changes anything.

• Black Lives Still Matter (Part I).   This was, frankly, a very bad week for civil rights of Black Americans.  The unrest started gaining steam in Minneapolis, where an unarmed man named George Floyd was choked to death by police, with videotape very clearly showing one officer’s knee on his neck for nearly nine minutes.  Protests of the death resulted in even more deaths and mass arrests, and there were fatalities from Louisville protests as well.  Eventually the officer in question was arrested and charged with third-degree murder as we went into the weekend, but the other officers present have not faced charges.  Meanwhile, in New York, a white woman was caught on camera calling 911 and filing a false report that claimed a Black fellow park-goer was assaulting her because he asked her to leash her dog.  So things were a bit of a powder keg by the time we went into the weekend.

• Black Lives Still Matter (Part II). The situation in Minneapolis continued to devolve as more and more awful details about Floyd’s death came out, police response became more brutal, and protesters began setting fires and damaging property. The governor of Minnesota mobilized the National Guard, and the Pentagon put military police on standby. Protests of all types continued to grow in response in over 140 cities all around the world. Increasingly, police escalation and increased violence has been reported, as I noted above–everything from cruisers driving into crowds of protesters to rubber bullets and pepper spray to people being fatally shot. Many cities now have curfews in place in an attempt to get things back under control, but it’s unclear whether that is working. All of this was exacerbated by 45’s response, which has oscillated between bravado (inciting state officials to violence and threatening to declare antifa a terrorist organization) and utter cowardice (literally turning all the White House lights off so he could pretend no one is home). Today, we careened back into bravado, with Trump indicating he would use military force in DC in a seeming invocation of the Insurrection Act. He immediately put his money where his mouth was by having military police use tear gas to disperse a completely peaceful protest, apparently so that he could have a photo op in front of a nearby damaged church. Folks, I know we have become inured over the past few days, but use of military force on a peaceful gathered assembly is definitely not constitutional and it is not the system working as intended. The next few days are going to be very critical on a lot of levels.

The Good:

• Recent Space Resilience. This week did see the first successful space shuttle launch in nearly a decade, as the private company SpaceX had their first launch and rendezvoused with the International Space Station on Sunday. As one Twitter user put it, “Congratulations to the Astronauts that left Earth today. Good choice.”

So that’s what I have for this week, and if things stay this bad we’re getting good news first next week. For making it through, you deserve this stunned koala and animals in swings and an eventual better government.  I’ll be back next week with more (and hopefully better) news, and I hope you will be back as well–but in the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box, which is there for your constructive comments.  Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me uninterrupted sleep!

New week, same holding pattern–we’ve made it to partially open, and now we may be here for a while. That said, given that everyone is anxious about a second wave, I’ll take the holding pattern.

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m mostly summarizing the news within my area of expertise. NNR summaries often contain some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise–I’m a lawyer, not an Obamagate–but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. And, of course, for the things that are within my lane, I’m offering context that shouldn’t be considered legal advice. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers.  Onward to the news!   

Constitutional Crisis Corner:

When compiling this section, I found myself thinking “This is a quiet week for Disregard of Governing Norms“–and that’s on a week when our sitting President had a meltdown about churches and a fourth inspector general was fired.  I guess it’s all relative by now?  At any rate, here’s what is happening:    

• ‘Obamagate’ Investigation. Though William Barr was quick to downplay its importance, Republican Senators are trying to subpoena several Obama-era officials. The request is extremely broad, covering everything from the Carter Page surveillance to Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine–welcome to 2020, where everything’s made up and the points of law don’t matter. They did this, by the way, at the same time that they narrowly voted in a new Director of Intelligence that even said GOP senators wouldn’t endorse in July, forcing his nomination at the time to be withdrawn. (It’s kind of hilarious to compare Rubio’s quote from July with his lukewarm vote of confidence this week.) This does, however, mean we see the retreating back of acting director and MAGA horrorshow Richard Grenell, so that’s something, but it likely has implications for the Obamagate investigation.

• Retaliatory Firing (Again Again). Speaking of investigations, the acting Transportation Department inspector general, Mitchell Behm, was removed from the role over the past week–so that makes four inspectors general removed in two months. And wouldn’t you know it, just like the State Department IG removed, Behm was looking at the conduct of his department’s head–in this case, whether Elaine Chao was improperly favoring Kentucky for project priority. (Chao is the wife of Kentucky Senator and overall nightmare man Mitch McConnell, for those of you playing the home game.) The replacement acting IG, “Skip” Elliott, works in the Transportation Department and literally reports directly to Chao, so that’s nice and normal and in no way an obvious conflict of interest.

• Trump’s Messed Up COVID-19 Response. Trump continued to publicly illustrate his obvious unfitness for office this week, visiting a Ford plant and refusing to wear a mask, then yelling at the state’s Attorney General about it on Twitter. He also refused to close down the country if there’s a second wave of COVID outbreaks on the same tour.  For an encore, he threatened to “hold up” federal funds for states that expand mail-in voting–but only the Democrat-controlled ones. He also implied the official death toll is inflated, and he ended the week by throwing a tantrum about houses of worship, demanding governors reopen them regardless of COVID threat level.

Your “Normal” Weird:

• Election Oddities (Again).  This was another strange week for election news, between Trump’s outburst about mail-in voting and the strange circus surrounding Joe Biden’s shortlist for Vice Presidential candidates.  Georgia also canceled its state election for a seat on its Supreme Court, opting to let its governor appoint someone for the next two years.  And outlets are starting to voice increasing unease about how the election will even work in November if we’re still in the middle of a pandemic–which I am also wondering, so I can’t say I blame them.

The Bad:

• State of the COVID-19.*    Remember how last week, I said that Georgia’s numbers looking more promising than Texas or Florida’s? Yeah, about that: News broke this week that they were doctoring their numbers, which apparently was intended in Florida as well (but their top data scientist refused, and was fired for her efforts.) Current national data suggest that more infections are happening in rural areas, and we are nearing 100,000 deaths at the time that I type this. Over 1.6 million cases have been reported. Given the high rate of asymptomatic infection and a country that is increasingly reopening, an effective method of contact tracing has become extremely important.

• Market Mess Continues.*  The market continues to be…struggling, to put it politely.  The unemployment rate isn’t really slowing, and another 2.4 million Americans filed for the first time in the past week.  Experts worry that these lost jobs may not be coming back–even a White House official has expressed concern, contradicting Trump and probably becoming next week’s retaliatory firing paragraph.  Despite this, Mitch McConnell wants to end unemployment supports, even as our Treasury Secretary says we need another stimulus bill.  There’s growing support in Congress for paycheck subsidy, but the SBA subsidy loans are still a mess, so hopefully any new efforts will be better managed.

The Good:

• Recent Court Resilience. This was another good week for court cases, for the most part! In Florida, a federal judge struck down a law that would prohibit voting for people with outstanding court fees. The court used very clear language when calling the law unconstitutional, noting that it created “a pay-to-vote system” that is reminiscent of poll taxes. And another federal judge ordered the FCC to server logs on its net neutrality public comments, which the New York Times is alleging were fraudulently filed. Progress!

So that’s what I have for this week, and I’m sorry, there are no news refunds. For making it through, you deserve Alexandra Petri reading Rousseau and this bewildered bear investigation and an eventual better government.  I’ll be back next week with more (and hopefully better) news, and I hope you will be back as well–but in the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box, which is there for your constructive comments.  Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me ethical chocolate cause I’m almost out!

The news remains strange and a bit hard to fully process this week, in part because America feels like it’s on two different tracks at once. We’re still not in the clear, COVID-wise, but now we have a bunch of other Trump-era nonsense to contend with as well. It’s exhausting, and a part of “normalcy” that I would have happily left behind, but here we are.

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m mostly summarizing the news within my area of expertise. NNR summaries often contain some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise–I’m a lawyer, not a college campus!–but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. And, of course, for the things that are within my lane, I’m offering context that shouldn’t be considered legal advice. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers.  Onward to the news!   

Constitutional Crisis Corner:

I can’t say I missed the old Disregard of Governing Norms stories, but they’re sure back with a vengeance–so now we get to contend with that as well as the COVID crisis.  Here’s what is happening:    

• Retaliatory Firing (Yes, Again). The biggest story this week is that Trump unceremoniously fired yet another inspector general on Friday evening, this time from the State Department–which makes three watchdogs fired since the COVID crisis began. To make matters worse, said inspector was investigating Mike Pompeo for potential misconduct at the time he was fired, and it would appear that Pompeo was the one to suggest the firing. It’s noteworthy that this inspector general had nothing to do with COVID response, unlike the two before him–it’s a clear indication that the administration has returned to combating entities that combat corruption. Unsurprisingly, House Democrats have opened an investigation into the matter.

• Other Administrative Malfeasance.* It says something about this administration that “we fired the guy who was investigating us for corruption” is only the first sketchy news of the week. A Congressional oversight commission found that a $500B COVID fund basically hasn’t been touched since it was allocated in late March, and the terms of the program have kept changing without any disbursement. (The report is particularly bad because most of this fund was intended for state and local governments, which the administration keeps claiming it doesn’t have to help.) Official White House Son-in-Law Jared Kushner was reluctant to confirm we would have elections in November, which would concern me if it were remotely up to him. And Eric Trump announced that COVID would disappear after the 2020 election, but at least he appeared to believe the election was happening.

• Trump’s Messed Up COVID-19 Response. In case anyone was worried, Trump is continuing to be, well, Trump. He opined that the country should reopen “vaccine or no vaccine,” (no it shouldn’t) but said we’ll have a vaccine by January (no we won’t). Then he said even if we don’t have a vaccine, coronavirus will just go away (what). For an encore, he called testing ‘overrated.’ And just today, he announced he apparently is taking hydroxychloroquine as a COVID prophylactic, which is a bad idea on a truly impressive number of levels–but more on that below.

Your “Normal” Weird:

• Election Oddities (Again).  Election news is a study in contrasts this week.  Despite everything else going on, the RNC is expecting 50,000 people to attend their convention in Charlotte in a few months.  Democrats, conversely, are looking into remote voting for theirs.  And in libertarian news, Justin Amash announced he isn’t running after all, so we’re down to just Trump and Biden again as we head into June.

The Bad:

• State of the COVID-19.*   At the time that I type this, over 90,000 people in this country have passed away from COVID-19 and over 1.5 million people have been infected. The CDC has finally issued some brief guidance after a lengthy fight with the White House about them.  Top health official Anthony Fauci testified before the Senate about the dangers of reopening the country too quickly, and ousted vaccine official Rick Bright’s testimony was similarly dire.  Trump, for his part, called Fauci’s testimony “not an acceptable answer.”  And hydrochloroquine was in the news as potentially killing people with COVID, which makes 45’s life choices interesting to say the least.

• Reopening Rodeo.  Reopening continues to be an unsafe hot mess for a third week, despite how many states have started the process. In Texas, and Florida, cases are already rising, and that’s without full data even available. (Georgia is looking more promising, but again, early data may be incomplete.) In Wisconsin, a state supreme court decision that struck down the governor’s order has created chaos across the state. And scary protests are continuing in Michigan, one of the few states that isn’t reopening–hinting at dangers that exist either way.  Many states lack benchmarks for progressing forward with the opening process, and it seems like something of a free-for-all. I agree with this columnist’s take that we seem to be moving to a harm reduction model of operations.  

• Market Mess Continues.*  Market news is a lot of ups and downs.  House Democrats unveiled and subsequently passed a $3T proposal for coronavirus response, but Trump is threatening to veto it.  Unemployment rates appear to be slowing somewhat, but three million new people still filed this week.  The Dow is riding high after vaccine news made people optimistic, but several news outlets are suing the Small Business Administration over its messy loan practices.  So it’s all kind of a mixed bag.

The Good:

• Recent Court Resilience. There was a lot of promising court actions in the past week. The Supreme Court heard arguments about whether Congress can subpoena Trump’s taxes this week, though a final decision likely won’t be out for some time.  The FBI obtained a search warrant and seized Senator Richard Burr’s phone to investigate his handling of stock trading ahead of the COVID crisis, forcing him to step down from his role as Intelligence Committee Chair.  The Fourth Circuit more-or-less revived the emoluments case about Trump’s D.C. hotel, which is particularly timely given news about 45 making the secret service pay for golf carts this summer (yes, really).  And the judge on Flynn’s case has invited other parties to weigh in, and has appointed someone to argue against dropping charges.  So all of those things are promising!

So that’s what I have for this week, and I’m sorry, there are no news refunds. For making it through, you deserve this otter birthday party and this message from Alice Cooperand an eventual better government.  I’ll be back next week with more (and hopefully better) news, and I hope you will be back as well–but in the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box, which is there for your constructive comments.  Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me a governor who makes better decisions!

The news this week is ten pounds of garbage in a five-pound hat, as the parts of the country reopening bring a wider news cycle with them. Here in New England things remain quiet for now, but that might not remain the case for long. As always, I’ll keep folks posted on what’s going on.

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m mostly summarizing the news within my area of expertise. NNR summaries often contain some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise–I’m a lawyer, not a college campus!–but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. And, of course, for the things that are within my lane, I’m offering context that shouldn’t be considered legal advice. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers.  Onward to the news!   

Constitutional Crisis Corner:

I can’t say I missed the old Disregard of Governing Norms stories, but they’re sure back with a vengeance–so now we get to contend with that as well as the COVID crisis.  Here’s what is happening:    

• Flynn Flyover (and other foul federal news). The Department of Justice truly stunned the legal field this week by dropping charges against Michael Flynn, an unprecedented move given Flynn had pleaded guilty literal years ago. It illustrates just how much William Barr appears to follow Trump’s agenda rather than leading an independent department–a point only punctuated by Trump’s follow-up attack on the head of the FBI, and Trump’s request that SCOTUS block the release of other evidence from the Mueller investigation. Meanwhile, things aren’t great on the federal judicial side either, with the Senate considering McConnell’s truly unqualified protege for an appeals court appointment and the GOP doing its best vulture impression when asked about Justice Ginsburg’s recent hospitalization. Betsy DeVos used a chaotic week to release her new regulations about sexual assault on campus, despite many college campuses housing no students at the moment. And rounding everything out, Trump appointed a Republican fundraiser to head the U.S. Post Office instead of, y’know, someone from the post office. Given the giant pile of everything in this paragraph, it’s hardly a surprise that the House wants to continue investigating Trump for impeachable offenses.

• White House Messed Up COVID-19 Response. Despite our apparent return to commerce, this was a real banner week for White House COVID response–by which I mean, it will make you want to Hulk out and smash something. Trump continued to block coronavirus task force members from testifying before the House because–and I quote–“the House is a bunch of Trump haters.” The White House also threatened to disband the task force entirely, before reversing course and resuming coronavirus briefings instead, and refused to release CDC guidance on safely reopening. Meanwhile, a watchdog agency found that scientist Rick Bright had a credible complaint of retaliation because he was removed from his position when he refused to support Trump’s sudden push for hydroxychloroquine. Trump refused to wear a mask while touring a mask production facility, and Trump’s personal valet and Pence’s press secretary both tested positive for COVID. Trump continued to refuse to wear a mask, saying “the whole concept of tests isn’t great,” and Pence refused to change his patterns on the grounds that he “has tested negative every single day.” There are also, apparently, no plans to keep Trump and Pence apart.

• Reopening Rodeo.  Needless to say, reopening is not smooth sailing on the state level either, despite most states beginning the process as I type this. Data suggests that most reopening states do not meet the criteria put forward by the White House for reopening, and that guidance was more modest than the CDC’s. As if to punctuate the point, a recording of Texas governor Greg Abbott also surfaced this week acknowledging that reopening will increase spread of COVID-19. And early reopening data suggests that official steps don’t make consumers return to their prior patterns anyway, which frankly is pretty understandable given the rest of this paragraph.

Your “Normal” Weird:

• Arrests in Georgia.  Over two months after a Georgian man was killed while jogging, police have arrested two Georgia residents for his murder.  The official action was likely spurred by video of the murder, which was posted to the Internet in the past week–apparently by a local defense attorney.  There is much about this story that is strange or confusing, but one aspect definitely isn’t, and that’s the racist underpinnings of the entire story. 

The Bad:

• State of the COVID-19.*  COVID news is… still not great.  Scientists have begun to study an apparent COVID-related infection that has begun to surface in young kids, though this version thankfully appears treatable.  The food supply chain still has issues, with beef shortages and pork shortages reported, and over a thousand workers have tested positive at Tyson plants in Iowa and Indiana.  Meanwhile, the drug with modest treatment efficacy in trials, remdesivir, is being inconsistently administered to hospitals.  In a silver lining, blood thinners are showing promise as a secondary treatment for patients with severe infection, and the FDA also granted emergency approval for a new antigen test.

• Market Mess Continues.*    Financially speaking, things are still a mess.  Unemployment is continuing to grow at the same rate as previous weeks, resulting in the highest rate since the Great Depression.  Needless to say, this makes federal response in the coming weeks particularly important.  It’s not surprising that several Senators have begun promoting universal base income, introducing a bill that would grant $2K per month for the duration of the crisis.  And speaking of granting funds, the Small Business Administration’s programs are still a total mess–they’re in the news this week for dramatically lowering maximum loan amounts on one of their programs without telling any applicants about it. 

The Good:

• Recent California Resilience. The state of California is suing Lyft and Uber for refusing to classify its drivers as employees under a recent California law that expands worker protections to gig laborers. We’ll have to see what happens, but this is a promising bit of news–given the dire employment news above, this is a way to potentially get more protections without workers taking a hit for it.

So that’s what I have for this week, and I’m sorry, there are no news refunds. For making it through, you deserve this new Waititi-directed Star Wars movie and this 30th-anniversary Good Omens short and an eventual better government.  I’ll be back next week with more (and hopefully better) news, and I hope you will be back as well–but in the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box, which is there for your constructive comments.  Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me sinuses with fewer allergies!