China Calls Claims That Coronavirus Originated In A Lab ‘Purely Fabricated’

BEIJING — China says any claims that the coronavirus was released from a laboratory are “unfounded and purely fabricated out of nothing.”

Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said Thursday the Wuhan Institute of Virology at the center of the allegations “does not have the ability to design and create a new coronavirus, and it has never done so.”

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Trump Threatens CNN Over Coverage Of Michael Flynn, Says Outlet ‘Should Pay A Big Price’

President Donald Trump issued a threatening tweet about CNN late Wednesday night, claiming Michael Flynn, his former national security adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, had suffered “persecution” at the news outlet’s hands.

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Trump Refuses To Believe Polls Showing Him Losing To Biden: ‘Made Up Nonsense’

President Donald Trump won’t accept the fact that Democratic candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden is beating him in the polls.

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The Trump Administration Has Put Federal Workers at Coronavirus Risk, Senators Say

This story first appeared at ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

Democratic senators are questioning the Trump administration about whether it has been doing enough to protect federal workers during the coronavirus pandemic. In a letter sent Monday to the White House, the senators demanded more information about the administration’s policies, and they cited ProPublica coverage detailing how agencies have come up short.

The administration has the “authority and responsibility to make sure that federal agencies have effective and clear policies to protect these employees,” wrote Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and 20 other lawmakers.

Among the issues raised by the senators was the Postal Service’s apparent failure to tell employees whether they’ve been exposed to the coronavirus. As ProPublica has reported, many workers say they weren’t notified about sick colleagues despite the Postal Service’s promise to do so.

The letter — sent to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget as well as the Office of Personnel Management — took the administration to task for not moving more quickly to allow federal employees to work from home: The government “risked the safety of federal employees by waiting so long to issue strong telework guidance.” As the letter notes, the Department of Veterans Affairs barred administrative employees from working from home, a policy that was reversed a day after ProPublica and New Mexico In Depth reported it.

The senators said agencies are still not consistently following through on the policies allowing employees to work from home: “Almost one month after it was put in place, this guidance has still not led to a uniform or rapid shift to telework across all agencies.”

A spokesperson for the VA said that the agency is maximizing telework when possible and that its safety practices “have helped limit Veterans Health Administration COVID-19 employee infection rates to less than 1% of the workforce.” A Postal Service spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The letter raised concerns not just about the administration’s record of protecting federal employees, but also what the plan is going forward. The White House issued a memo last week encouraging federal agencies to allow employees back to the office in low-risk areas.

“Public health experts have expressed serious concerns about these guidelines and warned that there is still not sufficient testing, tracing, or personal protective equipment to know what, where, and when it is safe to relax certain social distancing and quarantine guidelines,” the senators wrote.

A spokesperson with the Office of Management and Budget responded in a statement: “Agencies have been given clear and consistent guidance throughout this crisis to maximize telework, and they are now working to return to normal operations as conditions warrant across each state.”

The White House’s guidance directs agencies to use a series of benchmarks based on coronavirus decline and medical preparedness in their offices’ locations to decide when to return operations to normal. Agency leaders, it says, must “provide federal government leadership and momentum as an impetus toward a broader national return to normalcy.”

The senators asked the administration to answer 12 questions about its implementation of telework and other safety protocols across federal agencies. They asked for a response by May 11.

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GOP-Led County Postures Over NC Guv’s Stay At Home Order And Quickly Retreats

It took only hours for the Republican commissioners of North Carolina’s Gaston County to back off their announcement that county businesses could reopen Wednesday evening despite Gov. Roy Cooper’s (D) stay-at-home order.

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Medical Community Calls Out Fox News’ Favorite New Contrarian Docs

Two doctors and urgent care center owners advocating for the end of California’s “shelter-in-place” order have become Fox News’ latest cause célèbre — even though their conclusions have been roundly dismissed by the medical community.

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Texas Attorney General Helped Donor Fight COVID Lockdown In Colorado County

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — When a small county in the Colorado mountains banished everyone but locals to blunt the spread of the coronavirus, an unlikely outsider raised a fuss: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who called it an affront to Texans who own property there and pressed health officials to soften the rules.

“The banishment of nonresident Texas homeowners is entirely unconstitutional and unacceptable,” Paxton said in a news release April 9, when his office sent a letter asking authorities in Gunnison County to reverse course.

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Governors Are Having A Moment — And Political Hopefuls Are Trying To Grab That Spotlight

In the chasm left by the Trump administration’s chaotic approach to the coronavirus pandemic, governors have stepped into the spotlight.  

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Trump Walks Back Huge Goal For Tests After His Own Testing Chief Said It Was Impossible

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump retracted his claim that the U.S. will soon be able to administer 5 million COVID-19 tests every day after his own testing director on the White House task force, Admiral Brett Giroir, emphatically rejected the possibility of that goal.

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