America’s leading death cult (also known as the Republicans) continues to reach astronomical new heights of pettiness and depravity. According to CNN Business, on Thursday Vice President Mike Pence’s office delivered and then reversed an edict which banned senior health officials from speaking with CNN on-air, after the network decided to stop airing the entirety of the White House’s long, meandering daily press briefings, including portions in which Pence spoke.
CNN Business reports that Dr. Deborah Birx and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the prominent health officials whose guidance has led much of the national response to covid-19, had not been permitted to appear on the network for several days, with the caveat they could return to CNN if it reversed its editorial guidelines concerning Trump’s press conferences—and air the segments featuring Vice President. Instead of showing the briefings in full, CNN “often only broadcasts President Donald Trump’s question and answer session,” and then “cuts out of the White House briefing to discuss and fact-check what the President has said,” a decision attributed to the “the extensive length of the full briefing that includes Pence, which can run in excess of two hours.”
But then:
After this story was published, Pence’s office allowed for the booking of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Robert Redfield for CNN’s Thursday night coronavirus town hall. Dr. Anthony Fauci was also booked for Friday on “New Day.”
CNN pettily covering this the Vice President’s own unbelievable pettiness is simply too much pettiness for my brain at the moment. That Pence later recanted his edict after it published this story, however, is a fantastic twist in this beef. [CNN]
U.S. Customs and Border Protection acting commissioner Mark Morgan has ramped up deportation efforts, claiming that nearly 10,000 expulsions of immigrants are “not about immigration,” despite Trump’s rampant xenophobia the last few weeks, claiming that immigrants are causing the “viral spread” of covid-19. (Alongside his repeated use of the term “Chinese virus.”)
The Associate PRess reports that 10,000 Mexicans and Central Americans have been expelled to Mexico after rules that took effect on March 21, “allowing the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to ban foreigners if their entry would create ‘a serious danger’ to the spread of communicable disease.” This includes unaccompanied children, as well as people over the age of 65, who are most at risk of infection. [AP News]
Georgia’s elections have been postponed.
Bernie Sanders is standing by his workers.
And now, a word from Melania Trump, who’s been thinking about what she has to share for quite some time now, I imagine!
- Remember Bill O’Reilly, that evil weirdo that used to haunt the television? According to him, coronavirus victims were “on their last legs,” something he’s unafraid to admit because “a simple man tells the truth.” Well, I don’t know exactly how “simple” anyone can be if they require a daily blood sacrifice just to keep their reanimated host body tethered to the mortal plane, lest it get sucked back into the netherworld where they belong. [HuffPost]
- Farms across America are struggling to figure out where they should put all the rotting and spoiled food, now that an incalculable amount of restaurants have closed. It makes me wonder, what plans are there in case farms begin to capsize? Really makes you wish there was a form of living that involved free, nationalized food sources. Wonder when someone will finally think up something like that! [The Guardian]
- Who could have expected that imperialist superpowers would sacrifice the countries they’ve colonized, enslaved, and sucked dry of resources in a rush to save themselves from the pandemic? [New York Times]
- This latest recovery bill from Congress is chock full of horrors, it looks like. [Politico]
- Another 6.6 million Americans filed for unemployment last week. [NBC News]
- Once again, Trump is using the pandemic as an excuse to weaken environmental laws limiting federal gas mileage standards: “The Interior Department has moved forward with several oil and gas lease sales and dozens of other actions in the past month, according to an analysis released Tuesday by the Center for Western Priorities, a conservation group.” [Washington Post]
- Mayors in the South are waging a local war against governors refusing to aid their state’s coronavirus relief efforts. [The Intercept]
- New reports show a rise in covid-19 infections among pharmacists. [ProPublica]
- No surprise, Trump hotels are doing nothing to assist cities in need of volunteers, patients, or first responders. [Politico]