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 …

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 …

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.

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.

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'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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 …

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 …

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.

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 …

Maryland Acquires 500K COVID-19 Tests From South Korean Lab, Gov. Hogan Wants To Test Up To 20,000 A Day  —  ANNAPOLIS (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.

'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 …

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.

Coronavirus Live Updates: Ohio Prison Is a Major Infection Hot Spot; Oil Prices Plummet  —  As the virus overwhelms the health care system, people with other illnesses are struggling to find treatment.  Congress nears a $450 billion deal to aid taxpayers and businesses, as the outbreak continues to worsen in some parts of the country.

White Nationalist Lawmaker Leads “Reopen Maine” Rally In State Capital  —  Far-right State Representatives use Facebook to spread coronavirus conspiracies, organize anti-quarantine rally in Augusta  —  Almost two hundred anti-quarantine protestors descended on Maine's state capitol …

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 …