Jeff Zeleny of CNN –
The campaign rallies are a distant memory. The final chapter of the primary calendar is awash in uncertainty. The summer political conventions are in doubt.
Yet it would be a mistake to think the 2020 presidential race is on hold.
Dan Lewis of Now I Know –
On April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. He’d die the next morning.
But also on April 14, 1865, Lincoln signed into law a piece of legislation which created the Secret Service — the law enforcement agency charged with defending the President from, among other things, assassination attempts such as the one that befell Lincoln that evening.
The Economist –
The struggle to save lives and the economy is likely to present agonizing choices.
Planet Earth is shutting down. In the struggle to get a grip on covid-19, one country after another is demanding that its citizens shun society. As that sends economies reeling, desperate governments are trying to tide over companies and consumers by handing out trillions of dollars in aid and loan guarantees. Nobody can be sure how well these rescues will work.
Geoffrey Skelley of FiveThirtyEight –
In total, nearly 30 House members are at some stage of self-quarantine and five senators are self-quarantining.
The outbreak of the coronavirus on Capitol Hill has underscored just how ill-equipped Congress is to govern when its members cannot be physically present. Already five Senate Republicans had to miss Sunday’s vote to pass an emergency economic stimulus package because they were quarantined. And if more members become unable to appear in the Senate or House chambers, we could eventually see a struggle to achieve an in-person quorum.
Technically, the Constitution only requires the Senate and House to have a majority of members present to establish a quorum to pass legislation, but both chambers have rules that require senators and representatives to be physically present to cast votes. Leadership in both chambers also largely oppose allowing members to vote without being physically present, but this hasn’t stopped some legislators from renewing calls for remote voting.
Gregory Krieg, Donald Judd, Jeremy Herb, Daniella Diaz, Ali Zaslav, Marina Carver and Elizabeth Stuart of CNN –
The absence of coherent guidelines from the White House has created a battle among states and hospitals, which have been hooked into bidding wars over key provisions to combat the coronavirus pandemic, driving up their prices and raising worries that regions in desperate need of immediate aid, like New York City, could be squeezed out and patients left to die.
What is not working, political and public health leaders on the front lines say, is the current, scattershot approach which appears to rely on shaky verbal commitments from major companies, which can turn around and shop for higher prices, and rich individuals, who do not have a clear view of where the greatest need for life-saving equipment resides.
Governors, members of Congress, reality TV stars and private business leaders are all swimming in the void. Elected officials, like those in New York, have been pleading publicly for President Donald Trump to intervene as the price of medical equipment soars.
