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Here’s The Washington Post:
Relatively small protests have broken out in the United States in recent days against the strictures designed to slow the spreading virus. People have a right to protest, if they conduct themselves without endangering others. But leaders have an obligation to point out that the behavior the protesters are encouraging could reignite the virus and cost lives.
And here’s Paul Krugman on the right “send[ing] in the quacks”:
The demonstrations haven’t been very big, with at most a few thousand people, and involve a strong element of astroturfing — that is, while they supposedly represent a surge of grass-roots anger, some of them have been organized by institutions with links to Republican politicians, including the family of Betsy DeVos, the secretary of education.
And polls show that an overwhelming majority of Americans — including half of Republicans — are more worried that restrictions will be lifted too soon than that they will be kept in place too long.
John Cassidy at The New Yorker takes a look at Trump’s constant blame-shifting:
Experience has taught us that whenever Trump senses political trouble his instinct is to retreat to his base while also looking to shift the blame. That is what we have seen in recent days, as he has lashed out at members of the media and posted inflammatory tweets calling for the liberation of several Democratic-run states; simultaneously, he has tried to place the onus, and the responsibility, on the states to make actual policy decisions about reopening the economy. […]
The President will go back on the offensive, of course. But the reality that Morgan pointed to isn’t one that can be wished away with another round of inflammatory tweets, another attack on a reporter, or a few more ginned-up protests.
Asawin Suebsaeng, Erin Banco, and Sam Stein at The Daily Beast report on the disconnect between Donald Trump and his coronavirus task force:
As the country enters its second month of a social lockdown and shuttered economy, the White House’s coronavirus response has diverged into two camps: one that defends whatever the president has chosen to care about or watch on the TV, and another that actively works to ignore and paper over those excesses. […]
“It is a pain in the ass sometimes, for sure,” said a senior official working with the task force. “There isn’t much more [some of us] can do in that, except continue making sound policy recommendations and hope they sink in. Sometimes the president backs off on some things, sometimes he doesn’t. It’s his call.”
On a final note, at The Nation, John Nichols details the next voter suppression:
As the president attacked vote-by-mail plans to increase safety and fairness in the November elections, Wikler warned that what happened in Wisconsin won’t stay in Wisconsin.
But the Democrats are not powerless. They need to demand—with hard bargaining that forces the Republicans’ hand—that funding for safe elections is included in federal stimulus packages and in tight state budgets. They need to conduct a massive education campaign to promote early and absentee voting. And they need to channel the anger of Wisconsinites forced to choose between voting and safety into a clear warning that Trump and his allies will stop at nothing in their deadly pursuit of power.
