John Light
In a letter obtained by TPM, Dallas’ mayor asked HHS Secretary Azar to continue federal support for two testing sites in his city. Sens. Cruz and Cornyn have made the same request for seven sites across the state. The incident commander of the Dallas sites is holding out hope that federal support might continue.
But as the COVID outbreak in the state intensifies, the sunset date for federal support — June 30 — is drawing near.
Matt Shuham reports on the situation in Texas as the day approaches.
Something New
Earlier today we put up a new page at TPM: our coronavirus community resource hub. It gathers together all of our latest coverage, along with some valuable resources that have informed our reporting.
Particularly interesting, for me, is a map showing various emails we’ve received from our readers — across America and around the world. These emails give first-hand accounts of what was happening on the ground as the coronavirus spread — first in China, then in Italy, then in Washington state, and now everywhere. Read More
Something Different
Starting last week, and continuing this week, we’ve been publishing a series of articles by historians and legal scholars. Full disclosure: they have nothing to do with the coronavirus. This series was in the works for a few months, and though the crisis has our attention more or less 24/7, it’s sometimes a welcome break to think about something else. Even a democratic crisis.
The basic idea for this series is one shared with us by historian Greg Downs: that even if Democrats retake the Senate in 2020, hold onto the House, and win the presidency, it wouldn’t be enough for the Party to truly control the levers of power. They are, in a sense, not safe at home. The current political system enabled and in many cases ratified the excesses of the Trump presidency. Whoever holds power next must contend with that fact.
TPM reader JH writes in from Asia…
I’m an American (from Colorado), but I split my time between Nepal (where my work is) and Thailand (where my husband lives and works). And both countries exhibit so many of the key challenges that the world is facing as this pandemic expands beyond the developed, and frankly high capacity, countries of China, East Asia, Europe, and the US.
Read More
TPM reader MZ writes from Bratislava:
I am a US citizen but have lived in Slovakia for the past 7 years. I must begin by noting something about the perception of Slovakia (and former Eastern Bloc countries generally) by many “Western” Europeans and North Americans; this is relevant because the response to Covid-19 in Slovakia seems very different from the response west of here.
The largest city in the U.S. is closing up restaurants and bars, restricting them to serving take-out only.
We’ve seen similar moves this weekend by the governors of Washington, Massachusetts, California, Illinois and Ohio.
