Johns Hopkins Are You Listening?

Virus Watch:  Over the weekend I listened to a Lawfare Podcast featuring Lisa Monaco who was President Obama’s counterterrorism and Homeland Security Advisor in the White House.  Her responsibilites included managing epidemic and pandemic disease events; she was responsible for overseeing the ebola outbreak that ocurred during Obama’s adaministration. Two things she said were striking: first that despite all the other critical issues he confronted, Obama’s administration recognized that a pandemic could present the most existential threat to the country and second, that the Trump administration, in its infinite wisdom, early on made the decision not to have a point person in the White House responsible for dealing with pandemic diseases.   They did that while “hollowing out” senior leadership in many of the other government departments that handle science and health emergencies so that by 2018 the federal government’s entire pandemic response chain of command had been fired.  Those decisions  could explain some tweets sent by Acting Deputy Homeland Security Secretary Ken Cucinnelli yesterday.  Cucinnelli who’s chief qualification for his job is that he hates immigrants as much as Trump’s advisor Stephen Miller is the top member of Trump’s coronavirus task force.  He asked, via twitter, if anyone else was having trouble accessing an online map producted by Johns Hopkins Univesity of the coranovirus spread.  So many things are wrong with that tweet that there is no point in detailing them so I’ll move on.  While Cucinnelli was tweeting the stock markets finally awoke to COVID 19’s impact on world economies, the DOW and NASDAQ closed down 1032 points and 355 points respectively.  For his part Trump, who appears more concerned about the market’s decline and the impact that lower stock prices will have on his 2020 campaign economy spiel than disease related mortality, tweeted from somewhere in India “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”  The administration, which cut CDC funding is now requesting that Congress provide it with $2.5 billion to fight the disease, part of which they’d like to see diverted from other federal programs, including efforts to keep ebola under control because who cares about keeping ebola under control anyway?  While criticizing Trump’s decision to leave critical disease management positions at the NSC and NHS vacant, Speaker Pelosi called the funding request “long overdue aned completely inadequate to the scale of the emergency.” The odds are that we will muddle through this mess, or at least I hope we will, but right about now wouldn’t it be nice to have a leader who actually led, and by led, I don’t mean tweeted.

Court News:  The “MeToo” movement finally caught up with Harvey Weinstein who, though he was acquitted of the most serious charges against him, was convicted of criminal sexual assault in the first degree and rape in the third degree yesterday.  Weinstein was immediately remanded to jail but due to “chest pains” was diverted from Rikers Island to the Bellevue Hospital prison ward.  In other news, Roger Stone still isn’t in jail and given his relationship with Trump may never end up there.  Later today, Judge Amy Berman Jackson who already refused his lawyers’ request that she disqualify herself from his case because she had thanked his jurors for “serving with integrity under difficult circumstances” some of which may well have had to do with a certain tweeting president, will be holding a closed during hearing on their request for a new trial based on allegations of juror misconduct, another hail Mary pass on their part but you never know.  And though it’s unlikely that US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell will ever end up in jail for his questionable foreign lobbying endeavors, at least one Republican Senator Susan Collins has expressed her disapproval about his suitability for the Acting Director of National Intelligence position that Trump has appointed him to assume saying that she would have much preferred that Trump had retained and promoted Joseph Maguire, the guy he fired for actually keeping Congress up to date on Russian election threats.   Collins added that the person in that position needs experience in the intelligence community which “regrettably Ambassador Grenell does not have.”  Notably Collins, who is generally easy to dismiss for her predictable pearl clutching, serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee, is the first Senate Republican to question Trump’s intelligence shake-up and helped write the law creating the position in 2004.  As to people named Collins, over the weekend another one, Republican Congressman Doug Collins, made it clear that he has no interest in the DNI job as he is adamant about running for the Georgia Senate seat.  Just another example of Trump proposing a name for a position without checking with the person first.  Oh, and because he can, Trump is now picking a fight with Justices Sotomayor and Ginsburg triggered by Sotomayor’s comment that her conservative colleagues are rolling over on the Trump administration’s requests to let them proceed with policy changes before they are reviewed by the whole court. Trump wants them to recuse from anything related to his administration.  I want Gorsuch and Kavanaugh to recuse, does that make us even?  

Democrats:  There’s another debate tonight.  It’s likely that Bernie Sanders will be the target of most of the incoming but you never know with this crowd of presidential wannabees, most of whom should have dropped out by now.  Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Andrew Yang are looking wiser every day.  By the way, Bernie is also taking some heat in Florida for praising the late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro’s literacy program. Bernie responded to those remarks last night during a CNN townhall by saying that he has always condemned authoritarianism and ardently believes in democracy but “you know the truth is the truth,” even dictators get it right on some things.  He has a point, Cuba has also done a comparatively okay job with primary health care, another observation that wouldn’t go over well in Florida but Bernie needs to start appealing to a wider base and offending voters in swing states by complimenting dictators who also repress their people isn’t the way to do it.  During the same CNN event Sanders provided a fact sheet explaining that he'd pay for all his new aspirational government programs like Medicare for All and free education through new taxes and massive lawsuits against the fossil fuel industry, as well as by slashing spending on the military and savings on what would become unnecessary administration activities.  His new taxes would include raising corporate tax rates and increasing individual marginal tax rates to as much as 52% for income over $10 million, a level that will cause agita among those making lots of money but will probably raise few eyebrows elsewhere.