30 Years in Space

Hubble Marks 30 Years in Space With Tapestry of Blazing Starbirth

NASA is celebrating the Hubble Space Telescope's 30 years of unlocking the beauty and mystery of space by unveiling a stunning new portrait of a firestorm of starbirth in a neighboring galaxy.

In this Hubble portrait, the giant red nebula (NGC 2014) and its smaller blue neighbor (NGC 2020) are part of a vast star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, located 163,000 light-years away. The image is nicknamed the "Cosmic Reef," because it resembles an undersea world.

Thirty years ago, on April 24, 1990, Hubble was carried aloft from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard the space shuttle Discovery, along with a five-astronaut crew. Deployed into Earth orbit a day later, the telescope opened a new eye onto the cosmos that has been transformative for our civilization.

Hubble is revolutionizing modern astronomy, not only for scientists, but also by taking the public on a wondrous journey of exploration and discovery. Hubble's never-ending, breathtaking celestial snapshots provide a visual shorthand for Hubble's top scientific achievements. Unlike any space telescope before it, Hubble made astronomy relevant, engaging and accessible for people of all ages. The space telescope's iconic imagery has redefined our view of the universe and our place in time and space.

"Hubble has given us stunning insights about the universe, from nearby planets to the farthest galaxies we have seen so far," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for science at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. "It was revolutionary to launch such a large telescope 30 years ago, and this astronomy powerhouse is still delivering revolutionary science today. Its spectacular images have captured the imagination for decades, and will continue to inspire humanity for years to come."

Unencumbered by Earth's blurring atmosphere, the space observatory unveils the universe in unprecedented crystal-clear sharpness across a broad range of wavelengths, from ultraviolet to near-infrared light.

Hubble's top accomplishments include measuring the expansion and acceleration rate of the universe; finding that black holes are common among galaxies; characterizing the atmospheres of planets around other stars; monitoring weather changes on planets across our solar system; and looking back in time across 97% of the universe to chronicle the birth and evolution of stars and galaxies.

Hubble has yielded to date 1.4 million observations and provided data that astronomers around the world have used to write more than 17,000 peer-reviewed scientific publications, making it the most prolific space observatory in history. Its archival data alone will fuel future astronomy research for generations to come.

Hubble's longevity can be attributed to five space shuttle servicing missions, from 1993 to 2009, in which astronauts upgraded the telescope with advanced instruments, new electronics and on-orbit repairs. The venerable observatory, with its suite of cameras and other instruments, is expected to stay operational through the 2020s, in synergy with the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope.

Elderly voters dying of coronavirus....

Study: Elderly Trump voters dying of coronavirus could cost him in November

An academic journal projects that deaths of 65-and-older Republican voters in several swing states will far exceed those of Democrats.

By CHRISTOPHER CADELAGO

Mass casualties from the coronavirus could upend the political landscape in battleground states and shift contests away from President Donald Trump, according to a new analysis.

Academic researchers writing in a little-noticed public administration journal — Administrative Theory & Praxis — conclude that when considering nothing other than the tens of thousands of deaths projected from the virus, demographic shifts alone could be enough to swing crucial states to Joe Biden in the fall.

“The pandemic is going to take a greater toll on the conservative electorate leading into this election — and that’s simply just a calculation of age,” Andrew Johnson, the lead author and a professor of management at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, said in an interview. “The virus is killing more older voters, and in many states that’s the key to a GOP victory.”

Johnson and his colleagues Wendi Pollock and Beth M. Rauhaus projected that even with shelter-in-place orders remaining in effect, about 11,000 more Republicans than Democrats who are 65 and older could die before the election in both Michigan and North Carolina.

In Pennsylvania, should the state return to using only social distancing to fight infections, over 13,000 more Republican than Democratic voters in that age category could be lost.

The study is based on early fatality projections from CovidActNow.org that are orders of magnitude higher than what's borne out so far in battleground states — a point some outside experts have seized on to inject a dose of skepticism in the study’s findings. In an interview, Johnson acknowledged the high numbers used for the study, but he contended it remains early and that easing of stay-at-home orders could spark more cases and deaths.

William Galston, a Brookings Institution scholar on governance, said the effects are large enough only to affect outcomes in states that are very narrowly divided. But he concluded the study made sense.

Trump supporters, especially in Greater Appalachia, tend to be older and heavier, traits correlated with underlying conditions that make Covid-19 more lethal, he said. Smoking levels — another leading indicator of vulnerability — also tend to be higher in red areas.

The analysis comes as Trump’s handling of the coronavirus increasingly is turning away seniors who buoyed him in 2016, when the cohort supported him over Hillary Clinton by 7 percentage points. Older voters consistently vote at higher rates and have broken in the GOP’s favor for the better part of two decades.

Seniors by significant numbers nationally prioritize defeating the virus over reviving the sputtering economy, a spate of recent polls shows. And Trump himself has started to acknowledge the impact of his policies on the older cohort.

In a tweet Wednesday, the president cheered on states moving to reopen. “Special care is, and always will be, given to our beloved seniors (except me!),” Trump added in his message. “Their lives will be better than ever ... WE LOVE YOU ALL!”

He used similar language late last month, saying. “Seniors will be watched over protectively and lovingly.”

Researchers on the fatality study said they found the virus could also ravage Republicans across Florida and Georgia, where GOP leaders have been pulling back on aggressive defenses. The study looked at total anticipated deaths on a statewide basis, which accounted for spiraling projections of the virus in densely populated urban areas that are home to more Democrats.

Still, there are caveats beyond the death figures used: Researchers used national fatality rates because deaths by state were scant when they started. They similarly applied national percentages of voters by age, not state-by-state figures. But Johnson noted that could actually understate effects in places like Florida, where the GOP relies more heavily on older voters.

Wreck the states

Layoffs wreck the states that lifted Trump to the White House

One of the only major battlegrounds seeing a lower claims rate than the national average is Wisconsin, according to the analysis.

By MEGAN CASSELLA

Battleground states that handed Donald Trump the presidency four years ago are seeing higher-than-average layoffs amid an economic downturn wreaking havoc across the country — a dynamic that could hold major implications for November’s election.

Job losses are piling up in places like Michigan, where more than one in four workers applied for unemployment benefits in the past five weeks, according to a POLITICO analysis of Labor Department data. In Pennsylvania, another key Rust Belt state that voted for Trump in 2016, nearly one-fourth of the workforce has filed an unemployment claim since mid-March. Ohio is seeing more than 17 percent of workers filing jobless claims, outpacing the national average of 16.1 percent, as is Minnesota, a state Trump narrowly lost.

One of the only major battlegrounds seeing a lower claims rate than the national average is Wisconsin, according to the analysis, which compared claims filed to the number of employees on states’ non-farm payrolls in February. But with more than one in eight workers filing for benefits there, it’s still a dramatic rise for a state that for years boasted an unemployment rate of 3.5 percent or lower, trending below the national average.

The numbers are likely to continue rising for weeks, as states work through a backlog of applications and race to dole out benefits to gig workers and others who are newly eligible for aid. They’ll remain elevated as long as restaurants, retail stores and other non-essential businesses remain shuttered. And even once some areas of the country begin to reopen, it could be months or years before Americans are back to work at the same levels as before — undercutting Trump’s plans to hang his re-election bid on leading the economy to a robust recovery.

Instead, Democrats across the country are already working to make the remainder of the 2020 campaign a referendum in part on the economic fallout from the coronavirus, and whether more could have been done to avoid shutdowns that threw more than 26 million Americans out of work in just over a month.

“The economy is in a freefall now. And I don’t think it had to be this bad,” said Lavora Barnes, chair of the Michigan Democratic Party.

Some state-level Republicans, meanwhile, are calling for a staggered reopening of businesses, arguing that continued shutdowns in Michigan and elsewhere are no longer necessary and only making job losses worse. The Trump campaign defended the president for taking decisive action starting in January to combat the coronavirus. Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Matthews said that while economic growth has been "artificially interrupted," Trump is "the best suited to restore it to greatness."

In Florida, the country’s largest battleground state, laid-off workers have consistently encountered issues over the past few weeks trying to file applications for unemployment, struggling to access aid in a state where it was already difficult to do so. A POLITICO analysis shows about 13 percent of workers there have filed for unemployment benefits in the past five weeks, less than the national average. But as of last week, only about 6 percent of applicants had received benefits payments through the broken system, ranking it among the worst in the country for fulfilling claims.

That payout level now sits at less than 16 percent, according to statewide data. Political ramifications have been swift: Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican and close Trump ally, is one of the few big-state governors who has seen his approval ratings drop over his handling of the pandemic.

“It’s the most consistently negative aspect of this whole situation in Florida, the unemployment benefits system not working,” said Susan MacManus, a political analyst in the state and former chair of the Florida Elections Commission. “If you’re a single parent, if you’re a head of a household, you’re not going to forget this.”

DeSantis has said he was “disappointed” in his state’s initial response and sidelined the official in charge of overseeing the unemployment assistance program.

Economic downturns historically have been harmful if not fatal for incumbent presidents, because voters tend to blame them for their change in circumstances. Political scientists point to Jimmy Carter’s failed re-election bid in 1980 and George H. W. Bush’s in 1992 as two modern examples of one-term presidents whose campaigns were plagued by economic woes.

Even states where unemployment claims rates are at or below the national average are still seeing a dramatic uptick in layoffs and furloughs. The major question at this point is whether economic issues and uncertainty persist or worsen by November, or whether they begin to rebound. A turnaround starting by late summer would be the “best-case scenario” for Trump, said Charles Franklin, a pollster and professor at Marquette Law School in Milwaukee.

“It’s really rare for an incumbent administration to get positive credit for bad times,” Franklin said. “The longer this crisis lasts, the more difficult that is for the Trump administration to deal with.”

Franklin cautioned that voters might not blame the Trump administration for the pandemic and related fallout if they feel it’s something that “could hit any president.” But others argue the White House could have done more to prepare — and that earlier action would have avoided the need for widespread shutdowns and allowed for an easier recovery.

Barnes, of the Michigan Democrats, has embraced that approach. “Some of this could have been mitigated with a quicker and better response from the federal government,” she said. She added that now that layoffs have taken place, the Trump administration could still be doing more to help unemployed workers, including by helping them regain access to healthcare.

In Pennsylvania, the state has been divided over how to move forward, with the Republican-led legislature passing a bill to reopen some businesses that Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf vetoed this week. Wolf himself has sought to toe the line between the two parties, saying he “absolutely” supports the idea of getting back to work but emphasizing a need to “make sure that we’re doing this responsibly.”

Other Democrats in the state are less circumspect. “At every opportunity, we will work to remind voters that the president failed to prepare for this,” said Andres Anzola, deputy communications director for the Pennsylvania Democratic Party.

Republicans in Pennsylvania and Michigan have begun to agitate for reopening businesses, and both states are among those seeing protesters gather to call for an end to the shutdown. In Michigan, Republicans are hoping voters will blame the Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, rather than Trump.

Whitmer took “draconian measures” by enacting a sweeping shutdown, said Tony Zammit, communications director for the Michigan Republican Party.

“The governor went above and beyond what other states have done in terms of their shutdown, and it’s caused an excessive amount of unemployment here,” he said.

Much will change in the six-plus months remaining before November’s presidential elections, and many Americans will be able to go back to work once businesses begin to reopen. But a heightened unemployment rate is all but certain to remain an issue in the fall, even under the rosiest of economic forecasts.

An optimistic scenario would have the economy bouncing back in the second half of the year, which is possible if businesses begin to reopen and economic activity picks up, said Heidi Shierholz, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. But even then, she said the unemployment rate nationally would probably remain around 8 percent a year from now, and closer to 10 percent by the election.

“The damage that has been done to the economy is just really, really dramatic,” she said. “It’s going to take some time to get back.”

Not funny...

Crisis Is Coming.....

A Second Covid Crisis Is Coming

If we don’t act now, women and girls will be suffering from the pandemic’s fallout for decades to come.

By DAVID MILIBAND and SHERYL SANDBERG

Early numbers indicate that Covid-19 hospitalizes and kills more men than women. But in terms of its total impact on people’s lives, the virus will hurt women and girls most—especially in the poorest countries, but in the United States, too.

If governments, companies and nonprofits address this reality, we can protect and even advance the gains we’ve made in the global struggle for equality. If not, we will move backward.

First, there’s the caregiving burden. Women represent 70 percent of the global health care workforce, and according to a recent analysis by the International Rescue Committee and the humanitarian organization CARE, women perform more than three times the unpaid care work that men perform. This can be life-threatening; during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014 and 2015, women and girls represented two-thirds of infections because of their increased exposure in caring for family members and patients. It can also be painful in other ways; if a family member fell ill with Ebola, women were stigmatized for keeping an unclean home.

Second, violence against women rises when people are trapped in their homes. A recent assessment in China showed increased gender-based violence during their Covid-19 lockdowns. Spain and France have seen similar spikes in police calls about domestic violence. United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres pointed last week to the “horrifying surge” in domestic violence around the world—a shadow pandemic unfolding behind closed doors.

Third, maternal health risks rise during pandemics. Health providers are overwhelmed by the outbreak, which means fewer doctors and medical supplies available for pregnant women. Plus, many women fear going to the hospital to deliver. It’s been estimated that during the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, there were an additional 3,600 maternal deaths, neonatal deaths and stillbirths due to insufficient care.

While these problems are particularly acute in developing economies, women in the U.S. experience them too. Gender-based violence is on the rise. More than 9,000 health care workers have been infected, nearly three-quarters of whom are women. And the pandemic is buffeting women economically. Research by LeanIn.Org has found that, so far, more than a third of women in the U.S. have experienced a major disruption to their income because of the pandemic—including being laid off, furloughed, receiving a pay cut or having their hours reduced. Black women are twice as likely as white men to report one of these setbacks.

We can combat these trends if we make supporting and protecting women and girls a real priority.

That begins with the basics. Organizations and countries must measure how women and girls specifically are impacted. That won’t always be easy. GBV, for example, is already notoriously underreported, and it’s going to be harder and harder for women to report if they are confined in the same space as their abuser. Furthermore, what is true now in terms of women’s needs might not be true later in the pandemic. For example, women might become less and less likely to access services as health centers get more overwhelmed; psychological support might become more critical as lockdowns drag on and abuse increases. We need to keep asking and knowing what’s going on with women to plan and adjust our response.

To do this effectively, women must be involved in all aspects of the design of coronavirus response programs, to ensure they aren’t just gender-equal, but that they also address the specific needs of women. As the IRC-CARE report put it, “There is neither gender balance nor a gender lens in global Covid-19 decision-making.” That has to change.

Reducing gender-based violence must be part of the emergency response from the start. Too many governments are realizing too late that women dealing with violence at home need extra help, including safe places to quarantine. GBV services must be included in emergency funding. Aid workers who assist survivors of violence must receive personal protective equipment, like masks and gloves. And services like case management for survivors should be moved online, rather than putting them on hold until this is over.

More broadly, humanitarian aid programs aimed at women and girls need to adapt fast. For example, now that many kids are home from school, we need to take extra steps to make sure girls keep learning, instead of being consigned to domestic chores and caregiving. There are also programs that supply “dignity kits” with menstrual pads and extra clothing to girls who can’t afford them. Figuring out how to safely distribute these kits despite lockdowns would mean a lot to girls who depend on them.

Women, too, need access to quality and respectful health care with infection prevention control measures. Governments must ensure that when women give birth, they have somewhere to go that is safe and clean.

And in the United States, we must recognize that when we shortchange paid leave and fail to provide protections for our frontline workers—or a living wage for workers caring for our loved ones—we disproportionately hurt women.

None of this is rocket science. But sometimes it feels like it is. Designing programs with women and girls in mind is still the exception, not the rule. In the United Nations’ recent $2 billion humanitarian appeal focused on stopping Covid-19 from spreading to the world’s most vulnerable communities, the needs of women and girls didn’t get much attention at all. In fact, just one agency, the UN Population Fund, included gender-based violence in its plans—and of the 33 countries that submitted response plans to the UN appeal, only 5 mentioned GBV.

When emergencies strike, vulnerable people suffer most. That almost always means women and girls. Programs that help women and girls need more resources—fast. And everyone—governments, businesses, philanthropies and international agencies—must focus specifically on protecting women against the health, economic and social consequences of Covid-19. This can’t be an afterthought. It must be front and center. Otherwise, women and girls will be dealing with the fallout of the pandemic for years—even decades—to come.

Commits to disclose

Fed, facing pressure, commits to disclose monthly who's getting bailouts

That includes the names of participants, how much they borrowed and at what rate, and the overall costs, revenue and fees for each emergency facility, it said.

By VICTORIA GUIDA

The Federal Reserve on Thursday announced it will reveal every month the names of companies that borrow under its massive emergency lending programs, as it faces intense pressure to be transparent about the use of bailout money.

The central bank said it will disclose “substantial amounts of information” for its emergency facilities that are backed by billions of dollars in funds in the economic relief package passed last month by Congress. That includes the names of participants, how much they borrowed and at what rate, and the overall costs, revenue and fees for each emergency facility, it said.

“The Federal Reserve is committed to transparency and accountability by providing the public and Congress detailed information about our actions to support the economy during this difficult time,” Fed Chair Jerome Powell said in a statement.

Bharat Ramamurti, a former aide to Sen. Elizabeth Warren who was tapped to join the congressional oversight commission created by the coronavirus relief package, is among those who have called on the Fed to be transparent about who is receiving funds.

He welcomed today's announcement.

"This is a significant victory for the public," Ramamurti said in a tweet. "You will now know on a monthly basis which companies are getting support and how much support they're getting. We will need to look carefully at the first report to see if other information is needed but this is a very good step."

The transparency pledge covers potentially trillions in emergency loans that the central bank has said it will offer to large corporations, smaller businesses and municipal governments.

Because the Fed isn’t set up to take on the risk of borrowers defaulting, the Treasury Department will cover any losses with the money set aside by Congress.

The pledge does not cover a group of other Fed programs that aren’t backed by CARES Act funding and are more directed at the proper functioning of financial markets, according to the Fed.

The central bank has been releasing higher-level aggregate data for those lending facilities and is required by law to disclose borrowers one year after the programs cease operations.

The Fed has not decided what type of disclosures it will make under a program where it lends to banks against collateral that includes bundled student loans, auto loans and credit card loans. That program is backed by Treasury funds, but not from the CARES Act, the Fed said.

The disclosures for now also will not cover the Paycheck Protection Program for small businesses, which is conducted by the Small Business Administration and Treasury.

Assail McConnell

‘Really dumb’: Governors assail McConnell over bankruptcy comments

By NICK NIEDZWIADEK

Governors on Thursday assailed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's suggestion that state and local governments should pursue bankruptcy rather than ask for more federal assistance — an approach New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo called "one of the really dumb ideas of all time."

From New Jersey to California, governors facing massive budget gaps said they were flabbergasted by the Kentucky Republican‘s assertion that Congress should refuse aid to cities and states in the next stimulus.

"You want to see the market fall through the cellar?" Cuomo asked during a press conference in the New York state Capitol on Thursday. “Let New York State declare bankruptcy. Let Michigan declare bankruptcy. Let Illinois declare bankruptcy. Let California declare bankruptcy. You will see a collapse of this national economy."

The fiery remarks came a day after McConnell kicked up a firestorm by telling conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that state and local governments should “use the bankruptcy route” rather than receive aid from the federal government that Democrats had unsuccessfully pursued in recent negotiations.

McConnell said he was reluctant to send a “blank check” to localities and worried about adding billions more to the national debt after Congress already agreed to spend nearly $3 trillion to combat the economic challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The majority leader’s office also issued a statement referring to local government assistance as “blue state bailouts” — even though governors of both parties have lobbied for the funding and the Trump administration had remained open to a bailout.

On Thursday evening, however, President Donald Trump wouldn't commit to supporting aid for states and cities, sharply shifting his tone on the issue during a press conference at the White House.

"Yeah, we'll look into it, and I have been looking into it, I've been talking to a lot of the different senators, but I don't want to talk about it now,” Trump said initially.

Pressed repeatedly by reporters about McConnell’s remarks, the president responded, "I'm open to ideas that are great for the people of this country."

"It's interesting that the states that are in trouble happen to be blue,” he said, adding that New York and New Jersey were in trouble before the "plague“ arrived.

Earlier Thursday, McConnell’s bankruptcy idea left some elected officials bewildered. While cities can declare bankruptcy, states cannot under current federal law, and Congress is unlikely to change that standard — in part because of constitutional prohibitions.

Even some Republicans were fuming over McConnell‘s indifference to the growing fiscal crisis in state and cities, where layoffs and drastic cuts to public services are on the table.

“That’s complete nonsense,” Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, the chairman of the National Governors Association, said during a virtual interview with POLITICO Playbook. “These are well-run states. There are just as many Republicans as Democrats that strongly support this.“

Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.) tweeted that he thought the remarks were “shameful and indefensible” and called McConnell the “Marie Antoinette of the Senate.” King is retiring from the House after his current term expires.

The calls for aid from states and municipalities had been growing more dire by the week as the economic fallout from coronavirus-forced lockdowns combines with the costs of fighting the pandemic. While the last federal stimulus bill provided funding to help states with direct costs, to shore up public transit systems and meet other specific needs, none of it was intended to backfill local budgets.

Without help, cities say they’ll need to take drastic steps.

Los Angeles has already dipped into its reserves, and is planning massive cuts to city services and salaries, with Mayor Eric Garcetti calling his upcoming budget “a document of pain.“ New York City is contending with a $7 billion budget gap. And New York state is in the hole some $15 billion. Cuomo predicts 20 percent cuts in state aid to schools and cities.

In New Jersey, where the state budget deadline was pushed back three months, Gov. Phil Murphy laid into McConnell on Thursday, saying that the revenue shortfalls his state faces because of its Covid-19 mitigation efforts apply to “many of our sister states, red and blue alike.”

“Senator, if you are watching, remember that you are from the party of Abraham Lincoln, of Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan; three American presidents who when faced with challenges found ways to meet those challenges, to be greater than the challenges, to rise up,” Murphy, a Democrat, said. “They did not get small. They got big in that moment, and that is the challenge, senator, to you and to all leaders in this country.”

Murphy has repeatedly said New Jersey will require federal block grants to stave off calamity, including “historic” layoffs for a huge swath of the state’s public workforce.

Guidance from the federal Treasury Department for CARES Act funding distributed to state and local governments has states in an even worse position, Murphy said. The guidance, issued on Thursday, specifically bars state and local governments from using the funds as a form of revenue replacement. Murphy said he’d received assurances that the funding would be flexible, but that “those assurances apparently were empty."

“Sadly, the message from Washington to our first responders and to our educators and to others on the frontlines is clear: As you work tirelessly to stop this pandemic, to keep people safe, our national leadership thinks you are not essential and that you should in fact fear for your jobs,” Murphy said.

Cuomo said congressional Democrats should have insisted on having aid for state and local governments in the most recent coronavirus stimulus bill, H.R. 266 (116). He has repeatedly lashed out at his fellow New Yorker, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and the rest of the state's delegation for, in his view, negotiating a series of relief packages that shortchanges New York, the epicenter of the coronavirus crisis with more than 250,000 confirmed cases and 15,000 deaths.

Schumer, who has been trying to secure $150 billion in state and local assistance in the latest stimulus bill, said this week that Republicans had agreed to grant flexibility for that unspent money from previous relief bills to be used for revenue shortfalls.

Meanwhile, in California Gov. Gavin Newsom highlighted the potential damage done to public employees. McConnell's comments were focused in part on public pensions. The Democrat called the remarks “offensive“ and called on him to retract his statements "on behalf of tens of thousands of men and women in uniform, our police officers, our firefighters, our sheriffs, the folks, quite literally saving lives, people putting their lives on the line every single day."

"States are laboratories of democracy; cities are laboratories of innovation,” Newsom said. “You care about democracy and innovation. You care about states, you care about cities. I hope and expect he'll take back his comments."

Wanted 'nationwide' access

Trump team wanted 'nationwide' access to malaria drugs, ousted vaccine chief claims

Dr. Rick Bright says administration’s position would have offered little physician oversight for unproven Covid-19 treatments.

By DAN DIAMOND

The Trump administration pushed for nationwide access to a malaria drug touted by President Donald Trump as a Covid-19 treatment “with limited physician oversight,” according to a person familiar with the allegations of Dr. Rick Bright, the HHS vaccine chief who was ousted from his position earlier this week.

Bright felt such a move was dangerous and responded by pushing for more clinical trials, the person said, but, under pressure from his superiors in the health department, eventually agreed to sign off on an emergency use authorization that allowed the Trump administration to acquire tens of millions of doses of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine and distribute the medicines to some patients hospitalized for Covid-19.

Bright, who was pushed out this week as head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, is now alleging that he was sidelined after pushing back against the administration's demands.

The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to request for comment. POLITICO reported last month that career health officials had concerns about how Trump’s fixation on malaria drugs was undermining the nation’s response to the Covid-19 outbreak and that the White House was pressuring career health officials to prioritize the drug despite scant evidence. The drug was also championed by Trump allies like Oracle founder Larry Ellison and an array of Fox News contributors.

Bright’s lawyers on Thursday said that they would soon file a whistleblower complaint with the HHS inspector general and decried what they said were Trump administration efforts to undercut Bright’s credibility.

“In our filing we will make clear that Dr. Bright was sidelined for one reason only — because he resisted efforts to provide unfettered access to potentially dangerous drugs, including chloroquine, a drug promoted by the Administration as a panacea, but which is untested and possibly deadly when used improperly,” Debra S. Katz and Lisa J. Banks said in a statement. “The facts and concerns raised by Dr. Bright are compelling and well-documented and soon they will be public.”

Administration officials had discussed removing Bright from his post last year amid management complaints, according to interviews that POLITICO conducted in January, prior to the Covid-19 outbreak.

A real meat shortage

Save your bacon: A real meat shortage looms with virus shutdowns

Multiple economists who spoke with POLITICO said May could be when consumers have fewer options when buying meat.

By LIZ CRAMPTON

Americans could start to see shortages of pork, chicken and beef on grocery shelves as soon as May as major packing plants swept by the coronavirus remain shuttered and the nation’s massive stockpiles of frozen meat begin to dwindle.

Any empty shelves to date have been the result of bumps in the supply chain, with stores being unable to restock as quickly as customers are buying. But bacon, pork chops and ham could be the first to face actual shortages: The amount of frozen pork in storage nationwide — more than 621 million pounds — dropped 4 percent from March to April, the USDA reported this week. Slaughter rates are down 25 percent, and 400,000 animals are backed up in slaughterhouses.

And with meat plants of all kinds operating at 60 percent of capacity, shortages loom for beef and poultry as well. That could also lead to higher prices and a financial squeeze for farmers, who are collecting less per animal slaughtered.

“If we start to see more closures and these facilities remain offline for a prolonged period of time, it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which consumers don’t see changes at the supermarket,” said David Ortega, an agricultural economist at Michigan State University.

Multiple economists who spoke with POLITICO said May could be when consumers have fewer options when buying meat.

There is enough — for now. The Agriculture Department’s monthly tally of meat in warehouse freezers showed total pounds of beef — about 502 million — were up 2 percent. Poultry in storage went up 4 percent, to 1.3 billion pounds. The amount of chicken in storage dipped slightly to about 921 million pounds.

But the pipeline bringing meat from farms to stores is slowing. The dip in daily pork slaughter rates “is troubling, especially for producers,” said Scott Brown, a University of Missouri agricultural economist. “If these keep declining at the rate we have seen recently then we need to worry,” he added.

Meatpacking plants have become coronavirus hot spots because workers operate in close conditions and many have not been equipped with adequate protective gear. After cases began to mount, some companies have implemented safety precautions, such as spacing workers along slaughter lines and installing plexiglass barriers.

Hundreds of workers have tested positive for the coronavirus and several have died, as have at least two meat safety inspectors employed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture who worked in the plants.

Unions representing safety inspectors and plant workers have urged the Agriculture Department to step in with specific guidance on how to deal with coronavirus outbreaks in processing plants. But the agency has instead deferred to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and left it to companies to determine their own safety precautions.

Meat processing is so consolidated that shutting down just a handful of plants can cause significant disruptions to the industry.

Tyson Foods announced on Wednesday that it was closing its largest pork plant in Waterloo, Iowa. Together with the prior closure of another Tyson pork plant in Logansport, Ind., that accounts for 7 percent of U.S. pork processing capacity. At least 13 plants have been closed in the last month due to outbreaks, according to the Food and Environment Reporting Network, a nonprofit news organization.

With fewer plants to receive hogs, farmers are being forced to euthanize their pigs because there's a small window of time animals are ready to be processed must be killed. Some economists estimate that the pork industry could lose up to $5 billion throughout the rest of the year.

Tea party-linked group

How a tea party-linked group plans to turbocharge lockdown protests

The Convention of States, an activist network, is working to make the protests more professionalized and media-friendly, advising rally-goers to bring hand sanitizer and not carry guns.

By TINA NGUYEN

The Convention of States, an activist network with tea party origins, did not originate the coronavirus lockdown protests across the country. But it’s got a plan to take them to the next level.

Publicly, the group claims no affiliation with the organizers agitating for state governments to lift social-distancing measures. Yet behind the scenes and on their social media channels, the group’s leaders have made no secret of their desire to boost the protests, if not elevate them to a bigger, more professionalized and media-friendly network with a more broadly appealing message.

Over the past several weeks, the group has scooped up dozens of URLs for sites aimed at organizing future protests in key states — OpenWINow.com, opencalifornianow.com, openfloridanow.com, openarizonanow.com. On private forums, activists affiliated with the Convention of States are coordinating their own protests. And in Facebook livestreams, the organization's leader has been advising protesters to avoid divisive features that marked some early lockdown protests: stand apart from each other, bring hand sanitizer, and, most importantly, do not openly carry guns, even if you’re protesting in an open-carry state.

“You want to create a narrative that says, ‘Those people look like they're using common sense. I want to be one of them,’” said Mark Meckler, president of the Convention of States, in a Tuesday livestream.

The group is also directing protesters to channel their energy into political activity, launching a website, “Open the States,” which allows users to send automated petitions to the White House, Congress, governors and state legislators. The site also links to Facebook groups across the country that are organizing protests, with the largest ones — boasting membership rates into the hundreds of thousands — targeting states run by Democrat governors.

The protest organizers appear to be taking the cues. Many of these Facebook groups include rules that reflect Convention of States recommendations, like not posting coronavirus memes or conspiracy theories.

Taken together, it’s a slate of tactics that indicates protests in the coming weeks may only grow in size, sophistication and coordination. And it reveals an effort among conservative leaders to tap in to growing anger as lockdowns across the country have forced over 26 million Americans to file for unemployment. As the debate intensifies over when and how states should gradually reopen their economies, groups in more than a dozen states are planning rallies for the coming days.

The tactics are reminiscent of the early tea party movement, an inchoate collection of populist anger following the 2008 recession that quickly coalesced into a professionally organized, if loosely built movement fueled by money from conservative donors. Meckler himself was a co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, and pioneered many of these tactics.

“It kind of feels like deja vu to me,” Meckler told POLITICO in an interview. “There's all these groups independently doing their own thing, but at the same time doing the same things and taking cues from each other, clearly”; such as giving themselves the same names, like “Reopen” and “Liberate” these states. “That’s the very definition of a movement—that people start to pick up the same ideas, same terminology.”

All he was doing, he said, was giving them tools and advice.

“When people are engaged in politics, the question is: Do they want to accomplish their goals, or they just want to go out there and do crazy stuff? And so you can have the right end goal, but you can still act crazy in pursuing that goal. I'm not in favor of that.”

But while this push is similar — leveraging an American suspicion of big government and elites dictating individual behavior — it’s a radical departure for the Convention of States. Since its founding in 2014, the group’s goal has been to get Republicans in power in at least 34 state legislatures, persuade them to call a “convention of states” — as outlined in Article V of the Constitution — and rewrite the country’s founding document to reduce the federal government’s power.

“It does strike me as very strange that a group that claims to be devoted to turning power back to the states is protesting in an area where the states are leading rather than the federal government,” said David Super, a constitutional law professor at Georgetown University who has written about the Convention of States’ efforts.

Meckler pushed back against the idea that the group was acting differently. “We've always believed in taking power away from centralized government and returning it to the citizens. And one method for doing that is to take power away from the federal government and return it to the states. But we've also always promoted that people could be involved in their state politics and reclaim their power at the state and local level as well.”

This time, he added, the states were playing the role that he always worried the federal government would. “Unfortunately, the state legislatures and mostly the governors and the municipalities have overstepped their bounds and are doing things that a lot of the people really don't like. “

The Convention of States’ efforts are among several national conservative groups, such as FreedomWorks, that have helped organize anti-lockdown protests across the country. Others, such as the Koch family juggernaut Americans for Prosperity, have declined to participate. “The question is — what is the best way to get people back to work? We don’t see protests as the best way to do that,” Emily Seidel, CEO of Americans for Prosperity, recently said in a statement.

Meckler said he and the groups he supported were not working with the Kochs, and understood why they would publicly decline to be involved, citing his early, underfunded experience in the Tea Party Patriots.

“What happens is when people see something is becoming successful, that's when the wealthier people invest in it. They're smart and they don't invest in something nascent because they're worried it's going to go off the rails,” he recalled, adding that he wouldn’t be surprised if they changed their mind: “At some point, they're going to take advantage of the momentum.”

At the White House, President Donald Trump has mostly backed the protesters, declining to express any concerns about the large rallies, which have not always adhered to the government’s social-distancing guidelines. He has even tweeted out calls to “liberate” certain states, like Virginia and Minnesota, that have had protests targeting Democratic governors.

“They seem to be protesters that like me and respect this opinion, and my opinion is the same as just about all of the governors,” Trump said during a recent briefing.

The medical community, including Trump’s own scientific advisers, have been less sanguine. Public health experts worry that lifting social-distancing guidelines now would result in another spike in coronavirus cases, and, ultimately, an even longer economic recovery period.

“So what you do if you jump the gun and go into a situation where you have a big spike, you’re going to set yourself back," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease specialist and a main medical voice on the White House coronavirus task force, during a recent appearance on “Good Morning America.”

The Convention of States officially encompasses several tax-exempt, 501c(3) nonprofit groups that Meckler runs. It was founded with a $500,000 assist from the conservative megadonor Mercer family. Since then, the organization has received significant funding from Donors Trust, a conservative fundraising network primarily affiliated with the Koch family. And it has gathered a slate of endorsements from high-profile conservative politicians like Sens. Ron Johnson and Rand Paul, popular conservative pundits like Glenn Beck and Ben Shapiro and former Republican Govs. Bobby Jindal and Mike Huckabee, according to a recent copy of their activist handbook.

The group aims to build vast political networks in at least 40 states, across at least 3,000 state legislative districts, each captained by a district coordinator responsible for recruiting at least 100 people to their cause.

Though their regularly stated goal is to relentlessly petition their state legislatures to call for an Article V convention, the coronavirus crisis presents a unique opportunity for their movement, said Jay Riestenberg of Common Cause, who has monitored the group and its involvement with other right-wing groups focused on state legislatures.

“The Convention of States is interested in showing any type of image or anything that shows that people don’t like their government. I mean, that is their end goal, to overthrow the federal government and rewrite the Constitution,” Riestenberg said. “So this is a perfect opportunity for them to show that.”

And Convention of States repeatedly hammers home to its activists that a message goes across better with a degree of professionalism. In recent days, Meckler and his deputies have been dispersing tips on how to protest effectively and present a good image.

During a recent livestream on the Convention of States’ Facebook page, Mark Ruthenberg, executive vice president for the affiliated Center for Self-Governance, told viewers that it was crucial that they maintain a 5-foot distance from each other.

“It looks so much bigger when people are so far spread out,” he said. “So it just makes sense that we maintain our distance, that we show common sense because then the government will most likely say,‘Oh yeah, I guess these guys know what they’re doing.’”

The group has also used the protests to help fundraising.

In recent weeks, Meckler and his affiliated groups have amped up their outreach, launching a campaign in memory of the late senator Tom Coburn to fund their efforts to flip legislatures.

According to one fundraising email, an unnamed donor has offered to match every donation, in addition to an initial $50,000 donation. Meckler himself has started a podcast, where he rails against governors and health officials for being too overcautious. And he launched a private, subscription-only social network for his fans to “keep in touch with other humans” in a place “without the censorship, data mining or trolls.”

In the event that Facebook bans groups for promoting rallies that directly go against public health laws, Rutherberg said that the Open the States project is the organization’s backup plan.

“Should Facebook continue what they're doing — and they're literally working with the governors to find out what the policy is and they're trying to shut [us] down,” he said during a Convention of States Facebook livestream on Tuesday. “So what we're trying to do is we're trying to create other ways to communicate with people about what we're doing.”

As for the URLs, Meckler said that he’d purchased them just in case. “I don't know if we'll ever get around to using those. I don't have an actual purpose for them right now.”

The Open the States project launched its activist forums on Thursday. Already, the Convention of States coordinators have started advertising their own protests.

Joanne Laufenberg, the Wisconsin director of Convention of States, posted that she was organizing a protest in Madison this weekend, as well as several requests to keep things looking orderly.

“Please social distance,” she wrote. “Staying in our cars is even better. We don't need to give the ‘opposers’ any extra ammunition to criticize us. Trust me, I know all the reasons — they are full of it. But let's consider the optics.”