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4:40 PM ET, April 20, 2020

memeorandum

 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 …
RELATED:
Randy Garutti / LinkedIn:
Shake Shack is returning its PPP Loan. Here's why:
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 …
Discussion: Vox and Mother Jones
RELATED:
CNBC:
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.
Discussion: Power Line and The Week
Financial Times:
US oil price below zero for first time in history
Discussion: National Review
Washington Post:   U.S. stocks tumble amid steep drop in crude prices
Joe Concha / The Hill:
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 …
RELATED:
Libby Cathey / ABC News:
Coronavirus government response updates: Trump defends protesters defying stay-at-home orders …
Discussion: The Hill and Twitchy
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.
RELATED:
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.
Discussion: Washington Post
Christina Zhao / Newsweek:
Kentucky reports highest coronavirus infection increase after a week of protests to reopen state  —  Democratic Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear announced Sunday that the state had set a grim record with 273 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus, the highest single-day rise to date.
RELATED:
Jackie Salo / New York Post:   Kentucky sees highest spike in coronavirus cases after lockdown protests
Washington Post:
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.
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.
RELATED:
Aaron Blake / Washington Post:
The one poll number that could haunt Trump on coronavirus
Ed Scarce / Latest from Crooks and Liars:
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.”
Discussion: Raw Story
Hayley Peterson / Business Insider:
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.
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.
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: Raw Story, The Week and CNN
Mike Hellgren / CBS Baltimore:
Maryland Acquires 500K COVID-19 Tests From South Korean Lab, Gov. Hogan Wants To Test Up To 20,000 A Day  —  ANNAPOLIS, Md. (WJZ) — Maryland received half a million test kits from South Korea, Gov. Larry Hogan announced Monday, saying his wife First Lady Yumi Hogan helped to close a deal with a laboratory there.
Discussion: Vox and Washington Post
RELATED:
Reuters:   South Koreans return to work, crowd parks, malls as social distancing rules ease
Jennifer Rubin / Washington Post:
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 …
RELATED:
ABC News:
National testing plan a sticking point in reaching small business aid deal
Discussion: The Hill
BFI:
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.
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.
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
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.
Nick Pachelli / The Guardian:
'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 …
Discussion: Raw Story
Hannah Beech / New York Times:
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.
Aaron Rupar / Vox:
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 …
Discussion: Raw Story
Andrew Romano / Yahoo News:
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
New York Post:
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 …
Discussion: Townhall, Power Line and Twitchy
 
 
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 More Items: 
Brooke Singman / Fox News:
Sen. Kennedy urges Barr to deny early prison release for Bernie Madoff, Alan Stanford
Discussion: The Hill
Harrison Smith / Washington Post:
Jerry Givens, Virginia executioner turned death-penalty opponent, dies at 67 of coronavirus
Sen. Marsha Blackburn / Washington Examiner:
A bill to hold China accountable
Discussion: Breitbart
Chuck Ross / The Daily Caller:
FBI Informant Bragged About Links To Russian Spies In Secret Recording Of Trump Aide
Discussion: Redstate and National Review
New York Times:
Zoom's Security Woes Were No Secret to Business Partners Like Dropbox
Axios:
Coronavirus brings clearer skies but darker world to 50th Earth Day
Mark R. Warner / Washington Post:
The national security cost of Trump's politicization of U.S. intelligence
Washington Post:
Live updates: Trump defends U.S. protests against coronavirus restrictions as global lockdowns trigger unrest
Discussion: Raw Story
 Earlier Items: 
New York Times:
‘The Worst-Case Scenario’: New York's Subway Faces Its Biggest Crisis
Nick Bilton / Vanity Fair:
In the Coronavirus Era, the Force Is Still With Jack Dorsey
Discussion: Althouse
Marilynn Marchione / Associated Press:
Reports suggest many have had coronavirus with no symptoms
Discussion: Associated Press and Balloon Juice
Tom Boggioni / Raw Story:
White House worried Trump-inspired protests will blow up in his face if attendees are stricken …
Houston Chronicle:
Across nation, masks are the latest political, cultural divide
Helen Branswell / STAT:
The months of magical thinking: As the coronavirus swept over China, some experts were in denial
Discussion: The Week
Aaron Lorenzo / Politico:
The IRS is drowning in unopened tax refund requests amid pandemic
Discussion: National Review