On Monday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) warned that President Donald Trump is in danger of adverse reactions to hydroxychloroquine, in part because he is "morbidly obese."
Pelosi's remarks immediately blew up on social media, with commenters noting that her remarks are perfectly calibrated to provoke a reaction from the president.
On Monday, Campaign Legal Center official and former White House Office of Government Ethics Director Walter Shaub walked through the dire consequences of President Donald Trump's attacks on oversight and weaponization of the Justice Department.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis continues to draw criticism for the state's response to the coronavirus pandemic.
"Late last Friday, the architect and manager of Florida's COVID-19 dashboard — praised by White House officials for its accessibility — announced that she had been removed from her post, causing outcry from independent researchers now worried about government censorship," Florida Today reported Monday.
"The dashboard has been a one-stop shop for researchers, the media and the public to access and download tables of COVID-19 cases, testing and death data to analyze freely had been widely hailed as a shining of example of transparency and accessibility," the publication reported. "But over the last few weeks it had 'crashed' and gone offline; data has gone missing without explanation and access to the underlying data sheets has become increasingly difficult."
"The site was created by a team of Florida Department of Health data scientists and public health officers headed by Rebekah Jones, who announced last week her removal as of May 5, in a heartfelt farewell note emailed to researchers and other members of the public who had signed up to receive updates on the data portal," the report noted.
The publication obtained the email Jones sent.
"I understand, appreciate, and even share your concern about all the dramatic changes that have occurred and those that are yet to come," she wrote. "As a word of caution, I would not expect the new team to continue the same level of accessibility and transparency that I made central to the process during the first two months. After all, my commitment to both is largely (arguably entirely) the reason I am no longer managing it."
Following President Donald Trump's remarks on Monday that he is taking hydroxychloroquine as a preventative for coronavirus, despite an absence of any medical evidence it serves this purpose, the White House put out a statement from the president's doctor saying that their medical team had determined the benefits of hydroxychloroquine "outweighed the relative risks."
But commenters on social media couldn't help noticing one thing the letter did not contain: An actual confirmation that the doctor prescribed hydroxychloroquine for the president.
Ultimately, a White House spokeswoman confirmed officially that the president has, in fact, been prescribed hydroxychloroquine.
On Monday, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) announced a vote that would give him open-ended subpoena power to go after former Obama administration officials, as part of President Donald Trump's crusade against everyone involved in the Russia investigation.
But according to Politico, Graham's powers wouldn't stop there. He would also have the ability to investigate two Trump administration officials who pursued the matter.
"His proposal would permit the South Carolina Republican to demand testimony and documents from figures involved in the intelligence associated with the launch of the Russia investigation, including Attorney General Loretta Lynch, former national intelligence director James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey," reported Kyle Cheney. "But it also stretches into the Trump era, with authorization to subpoena current and former figures involved in the investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller — including former deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein and current FBI director Christopher Wray."
Rosenstein has been a favorite villain of Trump allies because he was behind the appointment of former special counsel Robert Mueller, whose investigation of Russian ties to the Trump campaign hung over his presidency for two years. Wray, meanwhile, has endorsed the intelligence community's consensus that Russia sought to make contact with and assist the Trump campaign.
"Trump in recent days has leaned on allies in the Senate, including Graham and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), to ramp up their probes of Obama administration officials, as Trump has sought to level unsupported allegations of criminality by his predecessor against his incoming administration," wrote Cheney. "Graham recently shot down a suggestion by Trump to call Barack Obama himself, an action that Trump's Justice Department has argued is unconstitutional, despite the current president's call."
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On Monday, President Donald Trump said he was taking hydroxychloroquine to protect himself from coronavirus — a measure that is medically inadvisable and was quickly warned against even on Fox News.
But is Trump actually taking the drug? Some commenters on social media are not certain the president is telling the truth.
On Monday, The Daily Beast reported that Lindsey McMichael, the sister and daughter of the men who shot and killed Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, posted pictures of his dead body on Snapchat — reportedly because she is a "huge fan of true crime."
According to the report, Lindsey, 30 years old, disputed this characterization to The Sun, saying, “It was more of a, ‘Holy shit, I can’t believe this has happened.’" She acknowledged that, "It was absolutely poor judgment.”
The report continued: "Lee Merritt, a lawyer for the Arbery family, condemned Lindsay’s actions, saying it was 'very disturbing and very disturbing to the family,' adding, 'it also highlights that there are probably more video and more images of before, during and after Ahmaud’s murder — these images aren’t meant for public consumption in this way. It actually fits in with the pattern of the McMichael family engaging in a weird, violent form of voyeurism.'"
What President Donald Trump had to say about coronavirus in April and the first half of May was considerably different from what he had said about it in January and February. But journalist Edward Luce, in a Financial Times article, stresses that even though Trump’s tone has changed, his response to the crisis has continued to be erratic and unfocused — seriously damaging the United States’ credibility as a world leader.
In early March, Luce recalls, Trump claimed that “within a couple of days, (infections are) going to be down to close to zero.” And after 15 cases had been reported in the U.S., Trump said, “One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”
Trump, Luce notes, later acknowledged how dangerous COVID-19 was, but his response to the crisis was inadequate. Luce writes that for his article, he interviewed “dozens of people,” from Trump associates to World Health Organization officials — and found that “the story that emerged is of a president who ignored increasingly urgent intelligence warnings from January, dismisses anyone who claims to know more than him and trusts no one outside a tiny coterie.”
William Burns, who heads the Carnegie Endowment, told the Financial Times, “America is first in the world in deaths, first in the world in infections — and we stand out as an emblem of global incompetence. The damage to America’s influence and reputation will be very hard to undo.” And Gregg Gonsalves, a health expert at Yale University, asserted that “Trump could have prevented mass deaths, and he didn’t.”
According to Luce, Trump continues to make terrible decisions — from taking Fox News pundits like Laura Ingraham seriously to promoting “miracle cures” to ousting Dr. Rick Bright from vaccine development.
“Rick Bright, the federal scientist in charge of developing a vaccine — arguably the most urgent role in government — was removed after blocking efforts to promote hydroxychloroquine,” Luce explains.
One of the most scathing quotes in Luce’s articles come from a well-known Never Trump conservative: attorney George Conway.
“Trump is caught in a box, which keeps getting smaller,” Conway asserted. “In my view, he is a sociopath and a malignant narcissist. When a person suffering from these disorders feels the world closing in on them, their tendencies get worse. They lash out and fantasize and lose any ability to think rationally.”
Injecting people with a new, experimental drug every eight weeks provides better protection against HIV than daily pills that have revolutionized the fight against AIDS, US government researchers reported Monday.
The National Institutes of Health released the preliminary results of a major clinical trial involving a drug called cabotegravir. The testing began more than three years ago in seven countries -- including the United States, Brazil, Thailand and South Africa -- and looked at men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender women, most of them under age 30.
Those are the two groups at highest risk of contracting the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS. Another clinical trial focusing on women is under way.
For now, the only medication approved for HIV prevention is a drug cocktail called PrEP, which stands for pre-exposure prophylaxis. In the US, it has been marketed under the brand names Truvada and Descovy.
HIV-free people who take PrEP daily see their risk of infection from unprotected sex reduced by 99 percent, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But the fact that these pills must be taken every day is seen as an obstacle, so researchers are looking for less unwieldy alternatives.
The results released Monday stem from a trial involving more than 4,500 people. Half were injected with cabotegravir and took PrEP placebos, while the other half received a placebo injection and real PrEP pills. So everybody taking part in the trial was treated with either cabotegravir or PrEP.
Fifty contracted the AIDS virus, but the breakdown was lopsided: only 12 among those who received shots of cabotegravir and 38 among those who took Truvada became infected.
This means the injections were 69 percent more effective than the Truvada pills, which are already at the heart of the US strategy to end the HIV epidemic. In the US, at least 200,000 at-risk people take Truvada, according to the drug's maker Gilead.
Since the injection test results were so good, the people running the clinical trial halted the blind phase prematurely to allow all participants to benefit from the injections.
“We are thrilled with the results not only because of the high efficacy of cabotegravir but also because we have demonstrated high efficacy in a study that adequately represents some of the populations most disproportionately impacted by HIV," said Kimberly Smith, head of research and development at ViiV Healthcare, a unit of the GSK group.
These population groups are black men having sex with men in the US, young MSM globally and transgender women, she said
© 2020 AFP
A recent filing by retired Judge John Gleeson in the case of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn may spell disaster for President Donald Trump.
Former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner tweeted a screen capture of the filing, noting that it appears Gleeson has questions that require additional information.
"This MAY result in Sullivan issuing subpoenas to DOJ for additional evidence necessary to develop a full record. Stay tuned," tweeted Kirschner.
"Because the Court's order and the government's motion raise important and complex issues, I respectfully request permission to submit a brief on or before June 10, 2020, addressing three issues: (1) the legal framework applicable to the Court's authority with respect to a motion to dismiss brought under Rule 48 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure (including both the constitutional validty of the Court's authorty to deny such a motion and the standard to be applied in deciding one); (2) any additional factual development I may need before finalizint my argument in opposition to the government's motion in this case' and (3) whether, based on the record before the Court, it should order the defendant to show cause why he should not be held in criminal contempt for perjury," the brief says.
Republican Senator Marco Rubio, a strong critic of China and Cuba, was named Monday to chair the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee while previous head Richard Burr is investigated in an insider trading scandal.
"The senior senator for Florida is a talented and experienced Senate leader with expertise in foreign affairs and national security matters," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in announcing the temporary appointment.
"On subjects ranging from China and Russia to Iran and North Korea to tyranny and unrest in our own hemisphere, Senator Rubio has been on the case for years."
Rubio, 48, has been a senator since 2011 and was a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.
The appointment puts him an elite group of Capitol Hill legislators known as the Gang of Eight who receive regular highly classified briefings on threats to the country and other intelligence issues.
He replaces Republican Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, who stepped down temporarily last Thursday after the FBI seized his cellphone in a probe of alleged insider stock trading tied to the coronavirus pandemic.
Burr is under investigation over whether he used his access to highly classified intelligence to sell stocks in February -- before the coronavirus struck the United States, and while Americans were being told the virus's threat was low.
© 2020 AFP
"Robbing from a clean energy future to prop up the dirty energy past."
While giving fossil fuel companies access to relief funds ostensibly meant for small businesses struggling due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Trump administration on Monday slapped solar and wind power firms with retroactive rent bills dating back two years.
The Interior Department is demanding rent payments from renewable energy companies operating on federal lands, two years after it suspended rent for the operators as it investigated whether the Obama administration had charged too much.
The administration plans to collect $50 million in rent this year from 96 companies operating on federal property—the same amount of money that a recent report showed is going to fossil fuel companies in loans through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). As Common Dreams reported earlier this month, the oil and gas companies may not have to pay those loans back.
Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette also admitted last week that the White House pushed the Federal Reserve to open its Main Street Lending Program to the oil and gas industries.
Susan Hassol of the climate research firm Climate Communication wrote that the Trump administration's charging of "huge retroactive rents" for wind and solar operations while simultaneously pushing for tax giveaways and bailouts for the oil and gas companies is "robbing from a clean energy future to prop up a dirty past."
The retroactive rent bills come as the solar, wind, and geothermal industries have seen many projects delayed due to the pandemic. The crisis has left many companies unable to access federal subsidies and has cut the industries' projected growth for this year by as much as 10%.
On Twitter, Doug Parr of Greenpeace UK called the administration's treatment of renewable energy companies versus its insistence on aiding fossil fuels "not just bad" but "pathological."
Earlier this month, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis called any financial aid given to the fossil fuel sector "a complete waste of money," especially after oil prices fell in late April to negative-$37 per barrel and prompted calls for the government to nationalize the industry.
On Monday, after President Donald Trump publicly announced he has been taking the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as part of a discredited coronavirus treatment protocol, Fox News' Neil Cavuto warned his viewers that there was no medical basis for the use of the drug, and that it could cause life-threatening heart problems. He also brought on a doctor and medical professor who emphasized the health risk.
Cavuto's warning quickly exploded across social media, as enraged supporters of President Donald Trump hurled abuse at him. Some promoted a conspiracy theory that the medical establishment is trying to bury hydroxychloroquine because the drug remdesivir — which has been shown to benefit COVID-19 patients in clinical trials — is patented and therefore presumably more expensive.
While Trump's supporters were incensed, Cavuto also received praise from other corners of social media, with some suggesting his prompt warning to Fox News viewers may ultimately save lives.
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