POLITICO NIGHTLY: If you half-open an economy, is it closed?

By Ben White and Renuka Rayasam

Presented by

HALFWAY THERE — At 8:30 a.m. ET Wednesday, the federal government will likely tell us the economy declined somewhere between 3 percent and 6 percent on an annualized basis in the first quarter of 2020. It will only be a light appetizer for the horrible feast to come. Next Friday, we'll learn that the unemployment rate is somewhere close to 20 percent. In July, we'll find out the economy probably is tanking an annualized 30 percent or more in the second quarter. So it makes sense that some states want to reopen for business as fast as possible. Americans, meanwhile, are of two minds. Everyone is sick to death of frozen pizza, Zoom meetings and persistent existential dread. And a new poll suggests nearly 90 percent fear an imminent economic collapse. At the same time, another recent poll shows 70 percent of Americans favor staying at home rather than rushing back to work too fast and risk new coronavirus outbreaks. Lots of businesses will remain shut. Most states now starting Phase One of the reopening process like Colorado, Alaska, Iowa are doing so with provisions that require things like half-filled stores, movie theaters and restaurants. Iowa said it would open horse and dog tracks on Friday but with no spectators. Jets could take to the skies for months or even years with few passengers paying huge prices until there is a Covid-19 vaccine. Only Georgia seems to be going all-in, reopening pretty much everything. President Donald Trump himself rebuked that approach, freaking out other governors. All of this means that any economic recovery, at least in the near-term, will be agonizingly slow. Just because your local gym reopens doesn't mean you'll go there, even if you've packed on the Covid 15. Over half of Americans said in a Reuters/Ipsos poll that places like sports stadiums, movie theaters and concert venues should stay shut until a vaccine emerges. Consumer confidence plunged in April, suggesting Americans are not exactly set to shop until they drop once stores open. We are also likely to run out of some of the federal rescue money by summer as certain expanded unemployment benefits disappear. The small business rescue fund keeps running low on cash . State and local governments are getting crushed. And Republicans, mostly all-in on the reopening approach, indicate they will take a hard line on doling out more federal funds, raising the possibility of a still-staggered economy walking off a coronavirus cliff this fall. At the moment, given our poor preparation and testing capability — coupled with the fact that we have no idea if surviving the virus creates immunity — it appears to be almost an impossible Rubik's cube to solve. New outbreaks would force renewed panic and further lockdowns. That would knock the economy back even further and possibly crush a currently very hopeful — perhaps even irrationally exuberant — stock market. The current situation is unsustainable. People need to work and get out of their homes. But they are afraid to do it. As painful as it seems, maybe staying closed is better than being half-open: Some economists and medical experts suggest the best way forward is to endure a little bit more short-term mental and financial strain, and then, once testing and tracing capacity are dramatically enhanced, turn to something like a fully operational economy. Or maybe they're only half right. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly: Coronavirus Special Edition . If you're curious, here's the backstory of one grocery delivery worker. Reach out with tips: rrayasam@politico.com or on Twitter at @renurayasam.

A message from PhRMA: In these unprecedented times, America's biopharmaceutical companies are coming together to achieve one shared goal: beating COVID-19. We are dedicating our top scientists and using our investments in new technologies to speed the development of safe and effective vaccines. Explore our efforts.

A medical professional works at a drive-thru testing site in Somerville, Mass. | Maddie Meyer/Getty Images

First In Nightly

WAVE OF ANXIETY — Nearly 8 in 10 voters, 79 percent, say it's either very or somewhat likely there will be a second wave of coronavirus cases in the next year, according to this week's POLITICO/Morning Consult poll, Steve Shepard writes. Only 9 percent say it's somewhat or very unlikely there will be a second wave. Almost 3 in 4 voters, 73 percent, say Americans should continue social distancing as long as is needed to curb the spread of the virus, even if it damages the economy — though that's down slightly from 76 percent last week. The full poll will be released Wednesday morning. UNHEALTHY HUMAN SERVICES — The coronavirus outbreak burning its way through the U.S. health system has taken a different kind of toll on the people at the center of the nation's response, writes health reporter Dan Diamond . Officials at the Health and Human Services department headquarters have worked around the clock since mid-January. But the Trump administration's repeated stumbles have provoked a daily deluge of attacks, watchdog probes and open speculation about the future of the department's leader, Secretary Alex Azar. "I don't think people appreciate how tired the department is," said one former Trump HHS appointee. "Your effectiveness wears down after you've been in a fight — and for 100 days, HHS has been kicked in the teeth." Various arms of HHS are urgently searching for a vaccine, struggling to beef up Medicaid, implementing an amorphous new payment scheme to reimburse hospitals for coronavirus treatment, determining whether to approve new drugs under intense pressure from Trump, and trying to jumpstart the perpetually behind-the-curve testing system.

Around the Nation

LEGISLATING FROM HOME — The House dropped its plans to return to Washington, but more than a dozen state legislative bodies have already changed their rules to allow them to hold hearings or even vote remotely, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Two states, Oregon and Wisconsin, had rules on the books enabling them to carry out virtual voting in case of an emergency. In New Jersey, lawmakers voted by phone in recent weeks. In New York, lawmakers can vote via webcam, but they haven't yet actually done so yet. In Utah, the legislature convened its first-ever virtual special session. In Arkansas, the general assembly worked on the state budget and conducted other state business from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock basketball arena, where they socially distanced by spacing out among the seats. More states may follow: In Massachusetts, House lawmakers are set to vote Wednesday on emergency rules that would allow them to start taking phone votes. In Illinois, some lawmakers want to allow remote voting so they can approve their state budget, but to do so they'd first need to meet in-person in Springfield. (h/t our colleagues around the country: Shia Kapos, Stephanie Murray, Katherine Landergan and Bill Mahoney) SIM COVID — Lifting coronavirus restrictions in Georgia a month from now could cause more than 23,000 deaths through the summer, according to a new simulation tool from Massachusetts General Hospital and Georgia Tech. That's compared with fewer than 2,000 deaths if stay-at-home orders are kept in place another three months. The tool looks at case counts and death rates in different states under three scenarios: minimal restrictions, current restrictions and a complete state lockdown. The researchers say they want policymakers to use the tool to figure how and when to end shutdown orders but admit that it's a blunt instrument. States are using more tailored approaches to reopening than the tool permits — they may allow some businesses to open, while others close, or they may allow travel while keeping other restrictions in place.

TOMORROW - A LOOK AT SWEDEN'S UNIQUE APPROACH TO COVID-19: Sweden's coronavirus response allowed many businesses and schools to remain open, drawing much attention from around the world. Join Global Translations author Ryan Heath tomorrow at 10 a.m. EDT for a virtual discussion with Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs Ann Linde about why Sweden took the approach that it did, its view of the World Health Organization, and the role Sweden wants the European Union to play in the recovery. Have questions? They'll answer as many as they can. REGISTER HERE TO PARTICIPATE.

Talking to the Experts

With coronavirus and the presidential election coming in November, what is the nightmare scenario? "I'm worried about large numbers of voters being disenfranchised, through no fault of their own, because it's not safe to vote. You have expanded vote-by-mail for people afraid to vote in public. But what if the mail system collapses? You know, the Postal Service not being funded, the pandemic spreading throughout the postal system, and mail becoming unreliable — there's all kinds of things that could happen. So we need to have in-person voting, and that needs to be safe, or as safe as possible. Preparations need to happen right now. If you're expecting five times the number of absentee-ballot applications — like Wisconsin saw — you're going to need to have a printer set up for that, and you're gonna need to have a procedure set up to mail those ballots out. And if people have to apply for absentee ballots individually, those are all going to have to be processed. Lots needs to happen now that wouldn't ordinarily have to happen quite so early." — Rick Hasen, professor of law and political science at UC-Irvine and author of "Election Meltdown," as told to POLITICO Magazine's Zack Stanton.     Ask The Audience Our question for readers this week: Seeing any interesting, fun or meaningful signs related to the coronavirus? Snap a photo sometime this week and send it to Renu at rrayasam@politico.com, and we'll share the best ones on Friday. An election worker, right, practices social distancing from a voter during the 7th Congressional District special election to replace the late Rep. Elijah Cummings in Windsor Mill, Md. | Julio Cortez/AP Photo The Global Fight NORTHERN EXPOSURE — A fascinating set of parallel polls conducted in the U.S. and Canada by Canada's largest polling firm shows how tough it will be to get some parts of the economy up and running, Ryan Heath writes. Only 1 in 20 Canadians and Americans say they would be comfortable traveling to their neighboring country over the 2020 Christmas season. Fully 54 percent of Canadians would hold off visiting the U.S. until there is a vaccine, no matter how long that takes. Sixty percent of Canadian respondents think the vaccine — when it's ready — should be mandatory, compared to 40 percent of Americans. The World Health Organization enjoys more trust in both countries than either Trump or Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. And overwhelming majorities support continued social restrictions unless new infections have declined significantly. Seven in 10 in both countries say they'll work from home more often after the pandemic is over.   TAKE A BREAK WHILE "WUERKing" FROM HOME: Back by popular demand, POLITICO's Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Matt Wuerker will host an online lesson to introduce the basics of cartooning tomorrow at 12 p.m. EDT. Join Matt to learn the secrets behind drawing good cartoons and how to draw faces in different styles. Have your pens and paper ready for 20 minutes of inky fun followed by a Q&A with Matt. Your kids are encouraged to join the fun! REGISTER HERE TO PARTICIPATE.     Nightly Number $160 billion to $200 billion The amount state revenues will plunge by in fiscal 2021, which begins July 1 in most states, compared to fiscal 2019, Moody's Investors Service said in an analysis. (h/t tax editor Toby Eckert ) Parting Words A CHINESE BRIGHT SPOT, IN ITALY — The medieval city of Prato, near Florence, has the largest concentration of Chinese residents in Europe. Defying the fears of many, the city's Chinese community has been credited with helping to protect Prato from the outbreak. The city has just 479 cases of the coronavirus — fewer than anywhere else in Tuscany. Not a single member of the Chinese community in Prato has tested positive for the virus, according to officials, because of a scrupulous adherence to the rules and a fastidious attention to hygiene. "The Chinese community set a good example, creating a virtuous circle," said Matteo Biffoni, Prato's mayor. "The seriousness of the virus was understood in Prato, perhaps before anywhere else in Italy, and thanks to their example, we all got into line."   A message from PhRMA: In these unprecedented times, America's biopharmaceutical companies are coming together to achieve one shared goal: beating COVID-19. The investments we've made have prepared us to act swiftly: · Working with governments and insurers to ensure that when new treatments and vaccines are approved, they will be available and affordable for patients · Coordinating with governments and diagnostic partners to increase COVID-19 testing capability and capacity · Protecting the integrity of the pharmaceutical supply chain and keeping our plants open to maintain a steady supply of medicines for patients Explore our efforts.   Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.   Follow us on Twitter Renuka Rayasam @renurayasam   Follow us  POLITICO, LLC 1000 Wilson Blvd. Arlington, VA, 22209, USA

RSN: FOCUS: Trump's Judges Are a Giant Step Backward for America

28 April 20

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FOCUS: Trump's Judges Are a Giant Step Backward for America

Shira A. Scheindlin, Guardian UK
Scheindlin writes: "Whether or not he is re-elected, Donald Trump will be revered by conservatives for his judicial appointments. As of March, Trump has appointed 193 judges to the federal bench, with another 39 pending on the floor of the Senate or in the Senate judiciary committee."

After three years of Trump’s appointments, the federal judiciary is 73% white and 66% male, but it will be even more male and pale by the end of his term

 Those nominations will surely be acted on favorably by the Senate before 20 January 2021, when there may be a new president and a new Senate. There are another 38 district court vacancies awaiting nominations. In one presidential term, Trump may appoint up to 270 federal judges, or 31% of the entire federal judiciary. For perspective, Barack Obama appointed 329 in eight years.

There is no doubt that the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, will confirm Trump’s appointments until the very last day of his term. This is of course the same Senate gatekeeper who infamously blocked Obama’s final supreme court nomination, Merrick Garland, for an entire year – on the ground that in the final year of a presidency, the Senate should await “the will of the people” in the upcoming general election. But that was then. The rules have apparently changed. McConnell will pack the courts with “right-thinking” ideologues who will carry out Trump’s agenda long after he has been subjected to the scorn of historical scrutiny.

We now know a lot about Trump’s judicial appointments. Eighty-five per cent are white and 76% are male. This is a significant step backward. Obama’s judicial appointments were 64% white and 58% male. Today, after more than three years of Trump’s appointments, the federal judiciary is 73% white and 66% male, but it will be even more male and pale by the end of his term. Even more troubling is the average age of the Trump judges. According to Brookings, the median age of Trump’s judicial appointments by the beginning of his fourth year in office is 48.2. By the same time in his presidency, the median age of Obama’s appointees was 57.2. This means that Trump judges will serve, on average, for 10 years more than the Obama judges.

Statistics only tell part of the story. More important is the impact of these statistics on the critical issues that face the courts now and in the future. Courts should reflect the people they serve. I served as a federal district judge for 22 years. The vast majority of criminal defendants (in non-white-collar cases) were either African American or Hispanic, as were their family members. Plaintiffs in employment discrimination cases were overwhelmingly women, minorities or persons with disabilities. The same was true in actions involving prisoner rights, voting rights, housing discrimination and public benefits. Not all cases involve big corporations and business disputes.

A diverse bench engenders trust and credibility. Many studies have shown that decision-makers reach better decisions when they bring a variety of experiences to their analysis. A 36-year-old lawyer who has never tried a case, has not represented individual clients, and has not spent years facing life’s challenges is not well-positioned to decide on the length of a prison term, the need for access to healthcare, abortion, food stamps, Medicare or housing, or the impact of pollution or discrimination on working people’s quality of life. It is for this reason the American Bar Association’s standing committee on the federal judiciary insists that a candidate for judicial office have at least 12 years of experience practicing law – not talking about it as a speech writer, lobbyist or media star.

When I was appointed to the bench I was 48. I had been a federal prosecutor, a defense lawyer, and had handled many civil cases in trial and appellate courts. That experience was invaluable. I knew both the substance and procedure of federal practice. The same cannot be said of many of Trump’s nominees, whose only qualifications appear to be their consistently rightwing voting records.

Consider the following four Trump judges, all of whom were appointed in their 30s. What they have in common is not their legal experience, but their outspoken support of Trump’s political agenda. All were members of the Federalist Society or other rightwing organizations, clerked for conservative judges, and have written articles or advocated for legal positions that are vastly out of step with most Americans.

Allison Rushing was 36 when she was confirmed to a seat on the fourth circuit court of appeals, 11 years after graduating from law school, and Trump’s youngest nominee to a circuit court judgeship. She clerked for then-circuit judge Neil Gorsuch and for Justice Clarence Thomas. Her law practice during the remaining nine years was limited to representing big corporations at one of the nation’s largest law firms.

Andrew Brasher was 38 when he was confirmed to a seat on the 11th circuit court of appeals, after serving for only nine months on the district court for the middle district of Alabama. In the years just before his appointment he served as Alabama’s solicitor general, often advocating for rightwing causes.

Justin Walker, best known for his full-throated defense of Brett Kavanaugh (for whom he clerked), was appointed as a district judge in the western district of Kentucky, at 37, just 10 years after graduating law school. He is a protege of Mitch McConnell, who held up debate on a Covid-19 relief bill to attend Walker’s induction ceremony. Less than six months after Walker took the bench, Trump announced that he intended to nominate him for an upcoming vacancy on the DC court of appeals.

Patrick Wyrick was 38 when he was confirmed as a judge for the western district of Oklahoma. Four years after graduating law school he became the solicitor general of Oklahoma. He is a protege of Scott Pruitt, the disgraced former head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

One of these judges could easily end up on the supreme court; two are known to be on the shortlist. All will probably still be on the bench 40 years from now. That alone should make voters think hard about the upcoming presidential election. As the saying goes: elections have consequences.

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RSN: Charles M. Blow | Stop Airing Trump's Briefings!

21 April 20

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20 April 20

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WITHOUT ANY DOUBT RSN WILL TANK WITHOUT REASONABLE SUPPORT - As of 10 AM Pacific we have a total of 9 donations for the day. In the same time 168,375 readers have visited. That’s not reasonable, that’s abusive, absurd and it will without any doubt quickly cause a funding crisis for the organization. Seriously. / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News

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Charles M. Blow | Stop Airing Trump's Briefings!

Charles M. Blow, The New York Times
Blow writes: "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."

The media is allowing disinformation to appear as news.

The firm computed that Donald Trump had “earned” a whopping $2 billion of coverage, dwarfing the value earned by all other candidates, Republican and Democrat, even as he had only purchased about $10 million of paid advertising.

As The New York Times reported at the time, the company’s chief analytics officer, Paul Senatori, explained: “The mediaQuant model collects positive, neutral and negative media mentions alike. Mr. Senatori said negative media mentions are given somewhat less weight.”

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The US Supreme Court building. (photo: Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg)

US Supreme Court Rules That Jury Verdicts Must Be Unanimous
Lawrence Hurley, Reuters
Hurley writes: "The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the constitutional guarantee of trial by jury requires a unanimous verdict in serious crimes, siding with a Louisiana man convicted of murder and paving the way for potentially hundreds of defendants found guilty by divided juries to receive new trials."
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Healthcare workers stand in the street in counter-protest against hundreds of people who gathered at the State Capitol to demand the stay-at-home order be lifted in Denver, Colorado. (photo: Alyson McClaran/Reuters)

US Medical Workers Stand Up to Anti-Lockdown Protesters
Al Jazeera
Excerpt: "At least two Colorado healthcare workers dressed in full scrubs with masks stood silently with their arms crossed on Sunday as they blocked a line of vehicles full of protesters honking their horns and screaming, 'This is the land of the free.'"
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Adm. Brett Giroir, assistant secretary for health in the Department of Health and Human Services, appears with Vice President Pence and members of the coronavirus task force during a briefing on Friday. (photo: Jabin Botsford/WP)

Brett Giroir, Trump's Testing Czar Was Forced Out of Job Developing Vaccine Projects in 2015
Michael Kranish, The Washington Post
Kranish writes: "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. He once said that his vaccine effort was so vital that 'the fate of 50 million people will rely on us getting this done.'"
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Pedestrians walk past closed shops along Lexington Avenue in New York City on April 7. About 1.2 million people in New York alone are now unemployed, in addition to 22 million people nationwide. (photo: John Lamparski/Getty Images)

Getting Unemployment Has Been a Nightmare for Millions of People Across the Country
Ella Nilsen, Vox
Nilsen writes: "Erin Bradford still hasn't been able to file for unemployment insurance - more than a month after she first started trying."
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Men in the capital of Colombia, Bogotá. (photo: Raul Arboleda/AFP/Getty Images)

Colombia: Not Even the Pandemic Halts Killing of Social Leaders
teleSUR
Excerpt: "Colombia's National Agrarian Coordinator denounced that social leader Teodomiro Sotelo was assassinated on Friday while working on his farm in the El Tambo municipality."
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A woman takes a break from collecting waste to read the newspaper at the Dandora municipal dump site in Nairobi, Kenya, on Feb. 15, 2020. (photo: Khadija Farah/The Intercept)

Africa's Exploding Plastic Nightmare
Sharon Lerner, The Intercept
Lerner writes: "Rosemary Nyambura spends her weekends collecting plastic with her aunt Miriam in the Dandora dump in Nairobi."

EXCERPTS: 

But the small amount the group gets for collected plastic on the informal market doesn’t cover the food it gives out through its bank, so Dandora HipHop City has been using donations from its employees and their friends to pay for its programs. The group attempted to get a grant from Coca-Cola, which seemed like a perfect corporate sponsor. Coke, which is valued at more than $200 billion, sees Africa as “one of the core growth engines for the company going forward,” as CEO James Quincey recently put it. And the children of Dandora, who suffer from hunger, neglect, and a variety of health problems related to the dump, clean up many of the company’s bottles — sometimes gathering them when they should be in school.

In the U.S., this externalizing of corporate costs has left municipalities shouldering the collection, carting, and processing of their plastic garbage. For decades, this burden was masked by the export of some 70 percent of the waste to China. But since China closed its doors to most U.S. plastic in 2018, some cities have found that they don’t have the money to recycle and have abandoned the practice, causing widespread inconvenience and a growing awareness of the persistence of plastic.

Dump, Dump, Burn

Even under the best of circumstances, plastic recycling doesn’t work very well. Unlike glass, which can be repurposed infinitely, plastic can be significantly worse for wear after being recycled just once. “Every stage of post-use treatment degrades the functional quality of the polymer,” Kenneth Geiser, emeritus professor at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, explained of the molecules that make up various plastics. “Polymers generally lose strength, stability, and moldability as the linear molecular bonds are severed or broken during recycling processes,” said Geiser, who founded the Center for Environmentally Appropriate Materials. All plastic contains chemical additives, which affect its color, moldability, and other attributes. And those chemicals further complicate the recycling process. “So even if in the laboratory, a polymer can be remelted and reformed, it is not so easily accomplished in actual practice.”

PETCO has a green logo with the infamous triangle of arrows to indicate sustainability and uses the tagline “#do1thing. Recycle.” But it’s not an environmental organization. PETCO has its offices at the Nairobi headquarters of Coca-Cola, one of more than a dozen member companies. And although its formation seems to have quieted talk of a nationwide plastic bottle ban for now, it has clearly not fixed the plastic waste problem. PET bottles that used to hold Coke and other beverages can still be seen littered throughout the country — and projects that intended to use recycled PET plastic report not having enough of the material. That may be because PETCO provided only $385,400 in subsidies for the plastic recycling market in 2019, not enough to make the collection and processing of the plastic waste worthwhile, even for some impoverished Kenyans.

The 1 Percent Solution

The decision to put PETCO forward as a force for environmental good — and a voluntary solution that could preempt binding legislation — parallels the global strategy the plastics industry has taken in response to a growing awareness of the plastics crisis. Last year, major companies involved in plastics manufacturing, including BASF, Chevron Phillips Chemical Company LLC, Covestro, Dow Chemical, Exxon Mobil, and Formosa Plastics, formed the Alliance to End Plastic Waste. The group has pledged $1.5 billion toward ending the flow of plastic waste into the environment, an impressive amount until you realize that the corporate commitment is a mere 1 percent of the estimated $150 billion it will cost to clean plastics from the seas.

And that $150 billion just covers the oceans. In addition to the more than 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic already produced, the industry now churns out an additional 380 million tons a year — roughly the weight of all of humanity — which ends up in all sorts of waterways, as well as in air, soil, and human bodies. The average person replenishes our internal plastics burden by eating some 2,000 tiny microplastic pieces each week, which, taken together, have roughly the same weight as a credit card. While much remains to be learned about the effects of this plastic within us, low doses of some of the chemicals in plastic can affect human development, reproduction, and health.

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