David Kurtz
Exclusive new reporting from TPM on how the Trump administration’s slow-footed response to COVID-19 is hampering the public health efforts in Washington state (and presumably other states, too). Instead of clearing the way for a more robust state-level response, President Trump is calling Washington’s governor a “snake.”
Today is the last day TPM’s offices will be open for the foreseeable future. The entire staff, including the editorial, tech and business teams, will begin working remotely tomorrow.
A longtime reader who is a CEO in tech manufacturing describes the knock-on effects of COVID-19:
The disruption to our supply chain is … just bewildering. It may be that it is massive. It may be that it is just bizarre? But at the moment, there is just confusion.
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Pausing on reader emails from Seattle for this dispatch from TPM Reader BP in Nashville:
Just wanted to give a heads up on how things are going here in Nashville after last night’s tornado. My home is two miles from the path, so the only issue I have is no power. Besides all the damage and deaths that have been reported, several voting precincts were either damaged, without power, or not reachable. My precinct had no power. Read More
TPM Reader JV offers a view from white collar Seattle:
Hi Josh, thought I’d provide a few anecdotes on how corporate Seattle as a whole is handling the COVID-19 situation. Read More
A Dispatch From The Outbreak Zone
TPM Reader RS sends in this dispatch from Kirkland, Washington:
Thought you might be curious to hear from someone who lives about 500 yards from the nursing care facility and down the street from the hospital at ground zero. Read More
Mike Pence victimized by Trump yet again:
The decision to put Mr. Pence in charge was made on Wednesday after the president told some people that the vice president didn’t “have anything else to do,” according to people familiar with the president’s comments.
Where We Are
We woke up this morning to the news that President Trump is calling his purge of supposed disloyalists within the government good for America AND demanding that Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg recuse from any cases involving Trump.
It recalls the brilliant long-running episodic Slate series: “If It Happened There”
We’ll definitely have more on this soon, but the Justice Department ended up standing by all the sentence enhancement recommendations for Roger Stone that it made in the original sentencing memo it filed in the case, before dramatically repudiating that memo later.
What happened behind the scenes exactly? Why did Barr so badly damage DOJ for so little apparent gain? I’m not sure there are satisfying answers to these questions. More soon.