memeorandum: In the Coronavirus Era, the Force Is Still With Jack Dorsey (Nick Bilton/Vanity Fair)

12:05 PM ET, April 20, 2020

Top Items:

Jonathan O'Connell / Washington Post:

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 …

Discussion: CNN, Wall Street Journal, New York Post, Raw Story and HuffPost

NBC News:

Shake Shack returning $10 million government loan meant for small businesses — With the Paycheck Protection Program already out of money, the burger chain says other restaurateurs need its loan more than it does. — Shake Shack, one of several large restaurant chains that got federal loans through …

Discussion: The Week, Bloomberg and Quartz

Randy Garutti / LinkedIn:

Shake Shack is returning its PPP Loan. Here's why: — A letter from Danny Meyer and Randy Garutti — On March 27, when both branches of Congress and the White House came to an agreement to provide sweeping financial assistance via the $2.2 trillion CARES Act, many of us in the restaurant industry cheered with a big sigh of relief.

Discussion: NPR, Redstate, Axios, courthousenews.com, New York Post, CNBC, Associated Press, The Week and Bloomberg

Judd Legum / Popular Information:
A raw deal — The pandemic has been devastating for small businesses …

Discussion: New York Daily News, Washington Post and CNBC

Derek Wallbank / Bloomberg: Shake Shack Will Return Its Entire $10 Million U.S. Government Loan

Alicia Wallace / CNN:
Shake Shack, Ruth's Chris and other chain restaurants got big PPP loans when small businesses couldn't

Discussion: Redstate and New York Times

Zachary Warmbrodt / Politico:
Shake Shack to return small business loan after uproar

Discussion: Raw Story

Michelle Toh / CNN: Shake Shack returns $10 million emergency loan to the US government

Washington Post:

Pro-gun activists using Facebook groups to push anti-quarantine protests — A trio of far-right, pro-gun provocateurs is behind some of the largest Facebook groups calling for anti-quarantine protests around the country, offering the latest illustration that some seemingly organic demonstrations …

Discussion: The Bulwark, Fox News, VICE, The Smoke Eater, Raw Story, The Gateway Pundit, No More Mister Nice Blog and The Verge, more at Techmeme »

Jennifer Rubin / Washington Post: Cable news outlets fail us in a time of crisis

Washington Post:
‘Go to China if you want communism’: Anti-quarantine protester clashes with people in scrubs

Discussion: POLITICUSUSA, Breitbart, The Hill and Raw Story

Charles M. Blow / New York Times:

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.

Discussion: HuffPost, Raw Story, Mediaite, POLITICUSUSA, Mother Jones and The Daily Caller

Michael Kranish / Washington Post:

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.

Discussion: CNN, The Week and Raw Story

James Arkin / Politico:

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.

Discussion: Raw Story

Daniel W. Drezner / Washington Post:

Everyone is in denial about November — The 2016 hangover — Over the weekend, the hard-working staff here at Spoiler Alerts read a lot of analysis about what the Trump administration was thinking and doing about reelection. What all of this analysis had in common was a refusal to acknowledge some brute facts.

Discussion: Fox News, NBC News, The Nation and The National Interest

Jasmin Barmore / Detroit News:

5-year-old with rare complication becomes first Michigan child to die of COVID-19 — A month ago, 5-year-old Skylar Herbert complained to her parents that she had a bad headache. — On Sunday, after spending two weeks on a ventilator, the Detroit girl died.

Discussion: Fox News and New York Post

Kyle Cheney / Politico:

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.

Discussion: The Daily Caller and Raw Story

Greg Sargent / Washington Post:

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.

Discussion: PRESS RUN, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Common Dreams

Charlie Warzel / New York Times: Protesting for the Right to Catch the Coronavirus

George Packer / The Atlantic:

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.

Discussion: Raw Story

Tom Boggioni / Raw Story:

White House worried Trump-inspired protests will blow up in his face if attendees are stricken with COVID-19: NYT's Haberman — Appearing remotely on CNN's “New Day” New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman claimed that senior officials in Donald Trump's administration …

Justin Wise / The Hill:

Trump calls FBI investigators in Russia probe ‘human scum’ — President Trump on Sunday lashed out at FBI leadership over the origins of the investigation into Russian election interference, calling investigators who led the probe “human scum.” — Trump made the remarks during …

Discussion: Talking Points Memo and PJ Media Home

CNN: Trump won't say whether he will pardon Manafort and Stone, calls FBI investigators ‘human scum’

Marilynn Marchione / Associated Press:

Reports suggest many have had coronavirus with no symptoms — file photo, amid coronavirus concerns, a healthcare worker takes the temperature of a visitor to Essentia Health who was crossing over a skywalk bridge from the adjoining parking deck, in Duluth, Minn. A flood of new research suggests …

Discussion: Associated Press

Beth LeBlanc / Detroit News:

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.

Helen Branswell / STAT:

The months of magical thinking: As the coronavirus swept over China, some experts were in denial — The response to the coronavirus pandemic in the United States and other countries has been hobbled by a host of factors, many involving political and regulatory officials.

Maggie Haberman / New York Times:

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.

Discussion: Mediaite, Deadline, Daily Kos, Raw Story, Redstate, NBC News, Axios, Politico and ABC News

Bloomberg:

Oil in New York Plunges Below $15 as Storage Sites Fill — Texan buyers offering as little as $2 a barrel for some crudes — WTI plummets as much as 22%, though futures expire on Tuesday — Oil plunged below $15 a barrel in New York, a fresh 21-year low, as inventories soar …

Nick Bilton / Vanity Fair:

In the Coronavirus Era, the Force Is Still With Jack Dorsey — Twitter's CEO, last of the Steve Jobs-like tech-founder demigods, was on the verge of being pushed out by private-equity investors. But his will, and wiles—and COVID-19—gave him new purpose. For now.

Discussion: Althouse

Houston Chronicle:

Across nation, masks are the latest political, cultural divide — Kevin Krannawitter won't wear a mask because he just doesn't think it's necessary, whatever the scientists say. Marilyn Singleton won't wear one either - and she's a physician - because she says it's un-American for the government to force people to cover their faces.

Reuters:

South Koreans return to work, crowd parks, malls as social distancing rules ease — Hyonhee Shin, Heekyong Yang — SEOUL (Reuters) - South Koreans are returning to work and crowding shopping malls, parks, golf courses and some restaurants as South Korea relaxes social distancing rules amid …

Patrick Cooley / The Columbus Dispatch:

Coronavirus in Ohio: More than 1,800 inmates at Marion Correctional test positive — Patrick Cooley Jim Woods The Columbus Dispatch — The total number of confirmed cases of coronavirus rose to 11,602 cases on Sunday — Coronavirus has overtaken a vast majority of the prison population …

Discussion: The Hill and New York Post

Mark Sherman / Associated Press:

Supreme Court: Criminal juries must be unanimous to convict — WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled Monday that juries in state criminal trials must be unanimous to convict a defendant, settling a quirk of constitutional law that had allowed divided votes to result in convictions in Louisiana and Oregon.

Discussion: One America News Network

Shannon Watkins / The James G. Martin Center …:

Goodbye Meritocracy, Hello...What? — Is meritocracy just? Just a short time ago, it was commonly accepted that it is the fairest way to determine who wins and who loses in the competition of college admissions. Now, it is one of the most hotly debated questions in higher education.

Discussion: National Review