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 …

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.

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.

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.

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 …

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.

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.

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

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.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan credits his wife, Yumi, with helping secure coronavirus tests from South Korea  —  Maryland owes a debt of gratitude to the people of South Korea, Gov. Larry Hogan (R) said Monday after securing 500,000 coronavirus tests from the country over the weekend.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 …

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'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.

Florida releases unemployment data: 1.5 million claims filed but just 40,193 paid  —  Just 40,193 Floridians who have filed for unemployment since March 15 have received their benefits, according to a new website the state launched Monday.  —  That's less than 3% of the more than 1.5 million …

Bloomberg's final bill: $1 billion for a 104-day campaign  —  The billionaire's failed presidential campaign spent $176 million in March, after he dropped out March 4.  —  Mike Bloomberg.  Yana Paskova/Getty Images  —  Mike Bloomberg ended his ill-fated presidential bid on March 4 …

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.

Banks warn that new small-business funding could evaporate in 2 days  —  Lawmakers are nearing a deal to restart an emergency small-business loan program that exhausted its funding last week — but it may buy only a few days before the program screeches to a halt once again.

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.

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.

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.

Why Trump's efforts to blame Obama for the coronavirus make absolutely no sense  —  Former President Barack Obama meets with Donald Trump in the White House in November 2016, days after Trump won the presidential election.  Win McNamee/Getty Images  —  Trump is attacking Obama …