Coronavirus US live: Trump attacks Obama and the media as death toll nears 90,000
The World Health Organization is holding its first global assembly since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. For the Guardian, Lily Kuo reports from Beijing:
Beijing is expected to face new levels of pressure … as dozens of nations push for an independent investigation into the coronavirus outbreak and the US mounts a campaign over Taiwan’s status.
More than 120 countries have backed a draft resolution pushed by the European Union and Australia calling for an investigation into the origins of Covid-19, while a US-led coalition has been aggressively lobbying countries to support Taiwan’s bid to attend as an observer.
…a report in the official news agency Xinhua on Sunday said “the US and other countries” were “determined to discuss Taiwan-related proposals for only one purpose: to politicise health issues and achieve their own interests at the expense of kidnapping the the World Health Assembly and hurting global cooperation”.
…the Covid-19 pandemic, which first emerged in Wuhan last December, has placed China under more scrutiny as critics call for an investigation into how the virus was able to spread across the world. It has now infected more than 4.7 million people and killed 315,000.
The resolution on Covid-19 will be put forward on Tuesday if it gains backing from two-thirds of the 194 members of the assembly.
Here’s the full report:
In the US, Axios reported on Trump’s position on WHO funding on Sunday night:
President Trump is leaning toward preservinghis total funding cut … after being on the brink of announcing he’d restore partial funding to the global health agency, according to three sources familiar with the situation. A fourth source, a senior administration official, cautioned that the decision-making was fluid and was still subject to change.
And today, Reuters reports the following remarks from WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus today: “We all have lessons to learn from the pandemic. Every country and every organisation must examine its response and learn from its experience. WHO is committed to transparency, accountability and continuous improvement.”
Andrew Pulver, film editor for the Guardian website in the UK, reports on what one of the makers of the Matrix thought of Elon Musk and Ivanka Trump twittering on about “taking the red pill”:
Film-maker Lilly Wachowski has responded to Elon Musk and Ivanka Trump after the pair bantered on social media.
After Musk tweeted “Take the red pill” – referring to a key scene in The Matrix, which subsequently gave rise to the phrase “redpilling” as an alt-right, misogynist meme, along with a red rose emoji normally associated with the Democratic Socialists of America, the party to which Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib belong – Trump replied: “Taken!”
Wachowski then pithily responded, “Fuck both of you”, before following up with a tweet supporting the Brave Space Alliance, which describes itself as “the first Black and trans led LGBTQIA center located on the South Side of Chicago”.
Speaking of reopening, or not, here’s a picture from Virginia Beach this weekend:
Warm weather draws crowds to the oceanfront in Virginia Beach. Photograph: Kaitlin McKeown/AP
…and here’s some reporting from the Associated Press:
Warm weather drew crowds to the Virginia Beach oceanfront even though the beach is considered closed under the state’s stay-at-home directives.
Families ordered snow cones, bought hermit crabs and cramped gift shops while bikers pedaled on the boardwalk on Saturday, the Virginian-Pilot reported. Tents, umbrellas and beach blankets were set up near the water.
Under Governor Ralph Northam’s first phase of a gradual reopening plan, retail stores are reopening with limited capacity, but indoor gyms remain closed, beaches are still off-limits and restaurants cannot provide indoor dine-in service. No restrictions have been lifted in northern Virginia, Richmond and Accomack County, which were granted two-week delays after local officials said it was too early to move forward.
The top public health experts in the US, remember, say reopening too soon is a very bad idea indeed. And the beach in the picture above wasn’t open.
Politico’s New York Playbook, meanwhile, has details on beaches in and around the city. In short, city beaches will stay closed while state beaches reopen at reduced capacity, a situation redolent of familiar differences between Mayor Bill de Blasio and Governor Andrew Cuomo (see here from ProPublica this weekend) and seemingly guaranteed to cause confusion…
On the president’s schedule today: no press briefing, either by Trump himself or his fourth press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany. Instead the president will meet restaurant industry leaders and then, with first lady Melania Trump, speak to governors by teleconference at 4pm.
Interesting note from Sunday: an announced visit on Thursday to a Ford plant in Lansing, Michigan, that is now making ventilators.
Point two: Lansing is the Michigan state capital, and it has been the site of angry and in some cases armed protests against Democratic governor and potential Joe Biden running mate Gretchen Whitmer, by rightwingers demanding an end to lockdown. Trump has, controversially, supported such protests.
Point three, as Jason Wilson reports:
Cellphone location data suggests that demonstrators at anti-lockdown protests – some of which have been connected with Covid-19 cases – are often traveling hundreds of miles to events, returning to all parts of their states, and even crossing into neighboring ones.
The data, provided to the Guardian by the progressive campaign group the Committee to Protect Medicare, raises the prospect that the protests will play a role in spreading the coronavirus epidemic to areas which have, so far, experienced relatively few infections.
…One visualization shows that in Lansing, Michigan, after a 30 April protest in which armed protesters stormed the capitol building and state police were forced to physically block access to Governor Gretchen Whitmer, devices which had been present at the protest site can be seen returning to all parts of the state, from Detroit to remote towns in the state’s north.
Full report here:
…and welcome to another day of coverage of the coronavirus epidemic, and the politics around it, in the US. I’m here till 9am ET or so, when Joan E Greve will take over in Washington.
Other states heavily hit include New Jersey, Massachusetts, Michigan, Illinois, California, Pennsylvania and Connecticut. And cases are on the rise away from the more urban states.
The Trump administration spent Sunday continuing its pivot toward opening up the economy, in the face of crippling unemployment in an election year. But on Sunday night one of those independent voices who the president finds so irritating, Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, told CBS’ 60 Minutes, essentially, “Not so fast.”
“This economy will recover,” Powell said, but “it may take a while. It may take a period of time, it could stretch through the end of next year, we don’t really know.”
Powell also said unemployment could reach 25% and said the economy would not fully recover until Americans “feel they are safe”.
Powell said: “Assuming that there’s not a second wave of the coronavirus, I think you’ll see the economy recover steadily through the second half of this year … People will have to be fully confident, and that may have to await the arrival of a vaccine.”
Short points to that end:
Many experts fear a second wave of the coronavirus later in the year – one Trump administration whistleblower said last week the US was facing “the darkest winter in modern history” and spoke of the country being “in deep shit”.
Trump administration predictions about the development and availability of a vaccine are rated by most experts and even the Republican chair of the Senate health committee as hugely ambitious at best.
Powell’s interview would always have seemed likely to stoke the president’s ire – he also urged more stimulus spending by Congress, and though the House passed a $3tn bill on Friday the Republican Senate and White House don’t want it.
And indeed Trump went at CBS on Sunday night. But he was most exercised about the aforementioned whistleblower, Rick Bright, whose interview he said showed CBS and 60 Minutes were “doing everything in their power to demean our Country, much to the benefit of the Radical Left Democrats”.
Trump attacked Bright, while characteristically claiming not to know him, and said “this whole Whistleblower racket needs to be looked at very closely, it is causing great injustice & harm”.
A whistleblower from the intelligence community, remember, triggered Trump’s impeachment over his approaches to Ukraine for help against his political rivals.
Trump tagged Senator Susan Collins, who authoredwhistleblower protection legislation, and said he hoped the Maine Republican was “listening”. He also named the head of CBS, Shari Redstone, and said he hoped she would “take a look at her poorly performing gang”.
In other news on Sunday night, the Axios website reported that Trump is poised to confirm his cut of all funding to the World Health Organization – in the middle of a pandemic. And has been taking cues from Fox News.
