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 …

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 …

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 …

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

Cable news outlets fail us in a time of crisis  —  It should have been evident weeks ago that President Trump's news conferences contain a whole lot of dangerous disinformation but little “news,” and therefore should not be carried live.  Like moths to a flame, the cable TV news outlets …

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.

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.

'It's beyond frustrating': tensions peak as Hawaii locals urge tourists to stay out  —  Hundreds of travelers, motivated in part by low airfares, are riding out the pandemic in Hawaii - but some islanders see it a disregard for their home  —  A week ago, on the east side of Oahu …

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 …

Live updates: Trump defends U.S. protests against coronavirus restrictions as global lockdowns trigger unrest  —  The Washington Post is providing this story for free so that all readers have access to this important information about the coronavirus.  For more free stories, sign up for our daily Coronavirus Updates newsletter.

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.

Inmates committing crimes after coronavirus release ‘unconscionable’: De Blasio  —  It is “unconscionable” that Riker's Island inmates who were released due to coronavirus concerns are committing new crimes, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday.  —  “I think it's unconscionable just on a human level …

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.

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.

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 …

Jerry Givens, Virginia executioner turned death-penalty opponent, dies at 67 of coronavirus  —  Most of his executions began the same way, with a haircut and a hand placed on the head of the condemned.  Then Jerry Givens prayed — for the prisoner and their families; for the inmate's victims …