Out of sight, out of mind.

A TPM reader whose name I will withhold checks in with a reminder on the chaos COVID-19 has unleashed within the criminal justice system. Trump ousting Berman and appointing someone with no prosecutorial experience is bad. Doing it in the middle of the pandemic? Give this a read:

As a man who above all things lacks discipline, Trump always tells on himself. People are rightly focusing on his casual claim to have told “his people” to “slow the testing down” to keep the COVID numbers low. The assumption has been that he’s possibly doing this now. And perhaps he is – we can never underestimate Trump’s depravity. But the US has now actually done a pretty sizable amount of testing relative to other major countries, even on a per capita basis. And the number of tests completed each day continues to creep up. There’s not a lot of clear evidence this is happening now. But there is a lot of evidence and has been for months that this is precisely what happened during the critical early weeks of the pandemic, from late January through the first weeks of March. That was the critical window of time in which the fate of tens of thousands of Americans was sealed.

“I don’t kid.”

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) angry-tweeted it this morning. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is pushing back against the feds over it. Four members of Congress and local officials reached out to the Trump administration expressing “urgent concern” after we broke the news.

Let’s start with one chart that tells one part of the story.

Gov. Abbott is doing some self-reflection.