He Could Have Seen What Was Coming: Behind Trump's Failure on the Virus  —  An examination reveals the president was warned about the potential for a pandemic but that internal divisions, lack of planning and his faith in his own instincts led to a halting response.

White House rejects bailout for U.S. Postal Service battered by coronavirus  —  The pandemic has pushed USPS to the brink, but Trump and Mnuchin shot down emergency aid  —  Through rain, sleet, hail, and even a pandemic, mail carriers serve every address in the United States …

With Each Briefing, Trump Is Making Us Worse People  —  There has never been an American president as spiritually impoverished as Donald Trump.  And his spiritual poverty, like an overdrawn checking account that keeps imposing new penalties on a customer already in difficult straits …

Trump leaves trail of unmet promises in coronavirus response  —  WASHINGTON (AP) — For several months, President Donald Trump and his officials have cast a fog of promises meant to reassure a country in the throes of the coronavirus pandemic.  Trump and his team haven't delivered on critical ones.

Footnotes in watchdog report indicate FBI knew of risk of Russian disinformation in Steele dossier  —  The FBI was warned sections of the controversial Steele dossier could have been part of a “Russian disinformation campaign to denigrate U.S. foreign relations,” according to newly declassified footnotes …

The Costly Toll of Not Shutting Down Spring Break Earlier  —  People got sick — and some died — after attending crowded parties and theme parks in Florida as the coronavirus spread.  —  MIAMI — You could find Beatriz Diaz at this spring's Winter Party Festival in Miami Beach, giving out hand sanitizer.

‘Playing games with numbers’: Florida COVID-19 test backlog worse than state says  —  Florida is significantly under-reporting the state's COVID-19 testing backlog, a blind spot in the data that could obscure the pandemic's size and hamper efforts to decide when it's safe to end restrictions …

Trump administration has many task forces — but still no plan for beating covid-19  —  The Trump administration still has no clear plan for ending the coronavirus crisis, but it does have many task forces.  —  There is the official task force led by Vice President Pence that meets daily …

Life and Death as Hospitals Fight the Coronavirus in the Bronx  —  “If people saw this, they would stay home.”  What the war against the coronavirus looks like inside two Bronx hospitals.  —  This is not a time to die.  —  Terror, pain and loneliness mingle in the air with the coronavirus in the …

EXCLUSIVE: Public given sparse details on deadly outbreak  —  State agencies, hospitals, senior homes hold tight to key details about the coronavirus pandemic  —  Several times a week, Albany's elected leaders and health officials deliver sobering news updates to a besieged community …

Trump's Socially Distanced Campaign Backed by a new loyalist press secretary, the president's coronavirus briefings have replaced reelection rallies.  —  We're committed to keeping our readers informed. … Donald Trump glances up at the TVs on the wall or down at the newspapers on his desk.

‘Unimaginable’ pain: Coronavirus robs Michigan woman of whole family  —  COVID-19 AFFECTED EVERY FACET OF A GRAND BLANC WOMAN'S GRIEF AS SHE DEALS WITH THE VIRUS-RELATED DEATHS OF HER HUSBAND AND ONLY CHILD  —  Grand Blanc — Sandy Brown tried to calm her son, Freddie, alone and scared in a hospital intensive care unit.

Why Ron DeSantis' popularity has taken a hit since the pandemic started  —  The approval ratings of most governors have soared during the crisis.  DeSantis has seen his support plummet amid a confusing, conflicting response.  —  TALLAHASSEE — From New York to Ohio to California …

How a stockpile of 39 million masks was exposed as fake  —  A powerful California union that claimed to have discovered 39 million masks for healthcare workers fighting the novel coronavirus was duped in an elaborate scam uncovered by FBI investigators, the U.S. attorney's office said Friday.

Is Anthony Fauci helping or hurting?  —  Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, recently said, “It's inconvenient from a societal standpoint, from an economic standpoint to go through this.”  It is interesting sometimes that a brief comment …

Slow Start for Rapid Coronavirus Tests Frustrates States  —  Most states received materials to conduct about 100 tests, regardless of population; 'I'm banging my head against the wall'  —  A rapid test for the new coronavirus that was touted by the White House as a game-changing development …

5 Increasingly Hardball Versions of the Next Stimulus  —  The news out of Washington this week made it sound like Democrats are playing hardball on economic relief, blocking a Republican bill that didn't include their top priorities.  But the Democrats aren't really playing hardball.

Dumped Milk, Smashed Eggs, Plowed Vegetables: Food Waste of the Pandemic  —  With restaurants, hotels and schools closed, many of the nation's largest farms are destroying millions of pounds of fresh goods that they can no longer sell.  —  In Wisconsin and Ohio, farmers are dumping thousands …

Furor Erupts: Billions Going To Hospitals Based On Medicare Billings, Not COVID-19  —  Probably few hospital systems need the emergency federal grants announced this week to handle the coronavirus crisis as badly as Florida's Jackson Health does.  —  Miami, its base of operations …

Democrats look at the presidential contest with a new sentiment: Optimism  —  Harvard philosopher Cornel West, a prominent champion of Bernie Sanders's presidential ambitions, defiantly threw his support to the Green Party when Hillary Clinton, a politician he called a “neoliberal disaster,” sealed the Democratic nomination in 2016.

The Most Important 2020 States Already Have Vote by Mail  —  In the states that will likely decide the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump has already lost his newly declared war against voting by mail.  —  All six of the swing states that both sides see as the most probable tipping points allow …

How many missed?  Texas is second-worst in the nation for COVID-19 testing  —  Six times in three weeks, Marci Rosenberg and her ailing husband and teenage children tried to get tested for the new coronavirus — only to be turned away each time, either for not meeting narrow testing criteria …

Trump's coronavirus briefings are too dangerous for news media to show them live  —  I changed my mind about showing Trump live after he encouraged Americans to embrace hydroxychloroquine without mentioning any potential downside.  —  Grizzled journalists have a saying: “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.”

Cruz Slams Feinstein: Trying To Send Millions To Iran, While Blocking Relief To American Businesses  —  Texas Sen. Ted Cruz unloaded on his Democratic colleagues on Friday in response to Sen. Dianne Feinstein sending a letter to President Trump declaring that she is “disappointed” …

Anguished nurses say Pennsylvania hospital risked infecting cancer patients, babies and staff with covid-19  —  Heroic effort to treat patients despite rationing of protective gowns, masks and tests  —  The nurse was pregnant — and worried.  But in mid-March, early in the covid-19 crisis …

India Press: Government Links Hydro Medicine Delivery to Trump's Support of India's H-1B Visa Workers  —  India's president is linking the delivery of U.S.-purchased hydroxychloroquine medicine to his demand that President Donald Trump help India's outsourcing workers stay past the expiration …

Industry scrambles to stop fatal bird flu in South Carolina  —  DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — An infectious and fatal strain of bird flu has been confirmed in a commercial turkey flock in South Carolina, the first case of the more serious strain of the disease in the United States since 2017 …

'IT'S NOT THE END' NY Gov Cuomo channels Winston Churchill and warns re-opening the country too fast will end more lives  —  NEW York Governor Cuomo declared “this is not the end” of the coronavirus crisis as he cautioned against re-opening the country too quickly.

Bernie Sanders Proposes Emergency Version Of ‘Medicare For All’ For The Pandemic  —  Now off the campaign trail, the senator joined Rep. Pramila Jayapal to float a temporary universal health care program.  —  Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is a full-time senator again, and he wants Democrats …

Mike Huckabee Just Sued the County Because It Closed His Beach  —  For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis and more, subscribe to Mother Jones' newsletters.  —  Mike Huckabee has been trying for years to keep people off the beach in front of his $6 million McMansion on the Gulf Coast of Florida.

Inside America's Two-Decade Failure to Prepare for Coronavirus  —  The nation's health secretary was warned about a possible pandemic — and, he admits now, he didn't take that first warning seriously enough.  But he studied with experts at the Centers of Disease Control.  He read papers on virology.

Experts fear ‘national naivete’ on COVID optimism  —  After an unprecedented month of strict social distancing and an economic lockdown that has cost tens of millions of jobs and untold billions in damage, Americans saw the faintest glimmers of hope last week that the worst of the coronavirus crisis may be passing.

Coronavirus In Five States  —  The University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation produces the coronavirus model that currently seems to be getting the most attention.  For now, IHME is sticking with its projection of 61,545 COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. by August 4.