White House, GOP face heat after hotel and restaurant chains helped run small business program dry  —  With program out of money, backlash prompts executives at Shake Shack to return $10 million loan.  —  The federal government gave national hotel and restaurant chains millions of dollars …

Kentucky sees highest spike in coronavirus cases after lockdown protests  —  Kentucky experienced its highest single-day spike in coronavirus cases after protests broke out in the state to lift lockdowns, according to reports.  —  Gov. Andy Beshear announced there were 273 new cases Sunday …

Oil is getting crushed again with one futures contract down 90% to record low under $2  —  Crude oil is collapsing—Five experts on where it could be headed  —  U.S. crude prices plunged to their lowest level in history as traders continue to fret over a slump in demand due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Georgia to allow some shuttered businesses to reopen amid pandemic  —  Gov. Brian Kemp outlined plans Monday to allow some businesses shuttered amid the coronavirus pandemic to reopen by the end of the week, as he starts to ease restrictions that have ravaged the state's economy to stem the spread of the disease.

Man Who Called Ohio's Lockdown Order ‘Bullshit’ Has Succumbed To COVID-19  —  John McDaniel railed against Ohio's Gov. Mike DeWine's lockdown order on social media.  Weeks later he contracted the virus.  A few days ago he died.  —  In March, John McDaniel called Ohio's shutdown order of non-essential businesses “madness.”

Trump, Head of Government, Leans Into Antigovernment Message  —  With his poll numbers fading after a rally-around-the-leader bump, the president is stoking protests against stay-at-home orders.  —  First he was the self-described “wartime president.”  Then he trumpeted the “total” authority of the federal government.

USC-LA County Study: Early Results of Antibody Testing Suggest Number of COVID-19 Infections Far Exceeds Number of Confirmed Cases in Los Angeles County  —  USC and the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (Public Health) today released preliminary results from a collaborative scientific study …

Powerless to help, Donald Trump worries about incompetent pandemic leadership  —  Why was nobody doing anything?  That was the question President Trump kept asking himself, over and over, as he gazed at the United States' response to the covid-19 pandemic.  —  “The states have to step up their TESTING!” he tweeted.

Yahoo News/YouGov coronavirus poll: Most Americans reject anti-lockdown protests  —  An overwhelming majority of Americans, Republicans included, are rejecting right-wing protests — encouraged by President Trump — to immediately “reopen” the country in the midst of the world's largest and deadliest

Stop Airing Trump's Briefings!  —  The media is allowing disinformation to appear as news.  —  Around this time four years ago, the media world was all abuzz over an analysis by mediaQuant, a company that tracks what is known as “earned media” coverage of political candidates.  Earned media is free media.

Trump's support for right-wing protests just got more ugly and dangerous  —  At bottom, President Trump's ongoing support for right-wing agitators who want to own the libs by throwing off the oppression of policies limiting their own exposure to a deadly pathogen should sound unsettlingly familiar.

Poll: Michiganians favor Whitmer's COVID-19 handling over Trump's  —  Michigan residents favor Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's handling of the coronavirus over that of President Donald Trump, according to a poll done for the Detroit Regional Chamber that was released Monday.

It's 5 o'clock.  Do you know where your president is?  —  It happens around happy hour, or what used to be happy hour, before the country shut down.  And like any happy hour, it starts late, runs long, and you end up stuck with some guy who loves to hear himself talk.  —  “Always health.

Gov. Bill Lee won't extend Tennessee stay-at-home order past April 30; many businesses to reopen next week  —  Gov. Bill Lee announced Monday that his stay-at-home order will not be extended past April 30, and that some businesses around the state will begin reopening next week.

Amazon-owned Whole Foods is quietly tracking its employees with a heat map tool that ranks which stores are most at risk of unionizing  — Amazon-owned Whole Foods is tracking and scoring stores it deems at risk of unionizing, according to five people with knowledge of the effort and internal documents viewed by Business Insider.

Misinformation During a Pandemic  —  We study the effects of news coverage of the novel coronavirus by the two most widely-viewed cable news shows in the United States - Hannity and Tucker Carlson Tonight, both on Fox News - on viewers' behavior and downstream health outcomes.

Trump touts testing, relations with governors despite pleas for more federal help  —  President Trump pushed back on Monday to criticism from governors across the country that the White House must do more to help states with testing for COVID-19 before they can ease up on stay-at-home orders …

Smithfield Foods Is Blaming “Living Circumstances In Certain Cultures” For One Of America's Largest COVID-19 Clusters  —  The journalists at BuzzFeed News are proud to bring you trustworthy and relevant reporting about the coronavirus.  To help keep this news free, become a member and sign up for our newsletter, Outbreak Today.

Why Joe Biden needs Elizabeth Warren  —  This is part of a series where I make the best possible argument for each of Joe Biden's possible running mates.  Past entries can be found here.  —  In January, Data for Progress, a liberal think tank, fielded one of the most revealing polls of this election cycle.

Zuckerberg: Some stay-at-home protests organized on Facebook could qualify as ‘harmful misinformation’  —  Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday told ABC's George Stephanopoulos that protests of stay-at-home orders that violate state social distancing rules organized through …

Singapore Seemed to Have Coronavirus Under Control, Until Cases Doubled  —  The spread suggests that it is unrealistic for the United States, Europe and the rest of the world to return to the way they were anytime soon, even if viral curves appear to flatten.  —  Singapore did almost everything right.

Trump surrogates and Fox hosts Diamond and Silk pushed an unhinged 5G coronavirus conspiracy theory  —  Diamond and Silk wonder if “somebody” can use 5G technology to infect people with the coronavirus to fill supposedly “empty” hospitals  —  Right-wing commentators Diamond and Silk …

Dan Crenshaw's viral defense of Trump's coronavirus response isn't all it's cracked up to be  —  President Trump has settled on a new character witness for his coronavirus response: Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Tex.). … Crenshaw jousted over the weekend with liberal HBO host Bill Maher …

Brett Giroir, Trump's testing czar, was forced out of a job developing vaccine projects.  Now he's on the hot seat.  —  Brett Giroir, the federal official overseeing coronavirus testing efforts, says that his experience working on vaccine development projects at Texas A&M University helped prepare him for this historic moment.

A watchdog out of Trump's grasp unleashes wave of coronavirus audits  —  Lawmakers handed President Donald Trump $2 trillion in coronavirus relief — and then left town without activating any of the powerful new oversight tools meant to hold his administration accountable.

U.S. Supreme Court abolishes split jury verdicts; dozens of convictions voided  —  The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday that juries across the nation must be unanimous to convict or acquit a criminal defendant, outlawing the split verdicts that had persisted in Louisiana since openly racist …

We Are Living in a Failed State  —  When the virus came here, it found a country with serious underlying conditions, and it exploited them ruthlessly.  Chronic ills—a corrupt political class, a sclerotic bureaucracy, a heartless economy, a divided and distracted public—had gone untreated for years.

Democrats' momentum puts Senate majority in play  —  Republicans started this election cycle as heavy favorites to keep their Senate majority, with a lineup of elections mostly in red-tinted states and GOP incumbents favored over a slate of relatively unknown and untested challengers.

Newsom's secretive $1-billion mask deal with Chinese automaker sparks bipartisan concerns  —  to spend almost $1 billion in taxpayer funds to buy protective masks drew national attention as an aggressive move by California to solve one of the most nagging problems of the coronavirus crisis.

Defense Department study calls for cutting 2 of the US Navy's aircraft carriers  —  WASHINGTON - An internal Office of the Secretary of Defense assessment calls for the Navy to cut two aircraft carriers from its fleet, freeze the large surface combatant fleet of destroyers and cruisers around current levels …