Why would they?

So there are no plans if, as seems likely, our 2 top Constitutional Officers die or become incapacitated because of Coronavirus.

Well, it doesn’t matter if there are plans or not. It’s what the Constitution says and Mark Meadows is no Al Haig (and I mean that in a negative way, Haig was an asshole, not an idiot AND an asshole).

No plans for a President Pelosi if Trump, Pence are incapacitated by coronavirus
By QUINT FORGEY, Politico
05/14/2020

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany revealed Thursday there is no procedure in place to facilitate House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s ascension to the presidency should President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence become incapacitated by the coronavirus.

The disease penetrated the president’s inner circle last week after one of Trump’s personal valets and Katie Miller, Pence’s press secretary and the wife of White House adviser Stephen Miller, both tested positive for Covid-19. But McEnany said the administration has not taken action to prepare for the possibility that Pelosi might need to step in as commander in chief.

“That’s not even something that we’re addressing,” she told reporters. “We’re keeping the president healthy. We’re keeping the vice president healthy. And you know they’re healthy at this moment, and they’ll continue to be.”

As speaker of the House, Pelosi (D-Calif.) is second in the presidential line of succession after Pence. Should she fall ill or be unable to perform the duties required by the office, the role of acting president would be passed on to the president pro tempore of the Senate, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa.) Fourth in the line is Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, followed by a slew of other Cabinet officials.

In response to the heightened risk of infection, the White House Management Office issued a memo Monday requiring West Wing staffers to wear masks or other face coverings at all times in the building, except at their own desks.

Trump indicated at a White House event Monday that he and Pence would be communicating by phone, and McEnany said at a news briefing Tuesday that “the vice president has made the choice to keep his distance for a few days.” Pence has no public events scheduled Thursday.

Pressed on whether the prospect of a Pelosi presidency should be under discussion given the new coronavirus cases at the White House, McEnany reiterated: “The president’s healthy. The vice president’s healthy. And I think that’s something all reporters should be celebrating, and the American people, as well.”

Trump was similarly dismissive Wednesday when asked about Pelosi potentially taking his place in the Oval Office, asserting in an interview with Fox Business that “she would be a disaster” as president. “Never going to happen. We’ll keep our vice president very healthy, and I’ll stay healthy. Never going to happen,” he said.

A spokesperson for Pelosi did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday on whether the speaker’s office had discussed or made any recent preparations for her possibly assuming the presidency.

Cartnoon

In the Summer I like to travel, starting around 3 weeks ago, and among my greatest frustrations is that the current situation may prevent even the briefest of journeys. North Lake and By The Sea might not be possible, even though they’re Gilmore.

My Brother tested negative (he went to Griffin which is near where his Girlfriend lives) but the “Instant” tests (some of them) miss 30% of the positives that can be detected by tests that take longer to process.

Still, it’s reassuring. Next door neighbors got cleared too. Me? I have no idea. My seasonal allergies mask any real symptoms (still waiting on my Oximeter) but I can still smell, don’t feel particularly feverish, and don’t have Corona Toe or Red Racoon Eye, so I suppose that’s something. Aches and Pains? I start at 3 (120+, I’m surprised I can move at all) and 10 is passed out. Nothing unusual.

There are places I could go, Georgia for instance would be happy to have me, but I’m disinclined at the moment. Here are some places you didn’t miss before and are therefore unlikely to regret your inability to visit now.

The Breakfast Club (Robin Hood)

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

This Day in History

Colonists go ashore in Virginia to set up Jamestown; Lewis and Clark begin to explore Louisiana Territory; Israel founded; Skylab launched; Movie producer George Lucas born; Singer Frank Sinatra dies.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

The interesting thing about grief, I think, is that it is its own size. It is not the size of you. It is its own size. And grief comes to you.

Stephen Colbert

Continue reading

Mall Rats

I suppose it’s all in how you define “normalcy”.

This is a piece that’s about the coming collapse in Commercial Real Estate of all types but especially in Retail Spaces and Shopping Malls.

Ok, that mostly hurts faceless companies you’ve never heard of unless you hate Mr. Bucksbaum as much as I do, however the big cause is that Brick and Mortar Retail is sinking like…

Well, a Brick.

But it also has a part about the Name Brand Retailers who will probably not emerge unscathed and you may be quite disappointed by the casualties. I for one mourn J.C. Penney’s because they have great Hawaiian Shirts and I’ve finally figured out an underwear size that fits.

US Commercial Real Estate Prices Plunged in April, Mall Prices Collapsed
By Wolf Richter, Naked Capitalism
May 12, 2020

The Price Collapse of Mall Properties Will Continue Because Tenants Are Collapsing

Retail properties have been in a terrible mess for years, as their brick-and-mortar tenants succumbed one after the other to ecommerce. This has already wiped out categories such as CD and video stores, and it is wiping out the icons of American shopping: department stores and clothing stores, with some of the biggest chains having already gotten dismembered in bankruptcy court, including Sears Holdings. And even the survivors have shed tens of thousands of stores over the past three years, as “zombie malls” became a meme on the YouTube.

Now come the lockdowns, and the whole process that would have taken a few more years to play out is condensed into weeks and months. This is reflected in the 45% collapse of prices at mall properties since 2016, amplified by the 20% plunge in April.

The list of retailers now on the verge of filing for bankruptcy or having already filed since the lockdowns is getting longer by the day, as is the list of retailers that have announced permanent store closings since the lockdowns began.

This morning, Stage Stores with over 700 stores announced that it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and plans to liquidate unless it can find a buyer.

Neiman Marcus, a luxury department store that last year still had 45 Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman stores and 24 Last Call stores, filed for bankruptcy last week, latest chapter in a long saga that now involves $5 billion in debt that resulted from a leveraged buyout in 2005 by private equity firms Warburg Pincus and TPG. They sold the retailer in 2013 to Ares Management and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) for $6 billion. Ares and CPPIB have been pummeling creditors with the threat of a bankruptcy filing since early 2017 in order to push them into a debt restructuring where they’d get a large haircut. Now they did.

J.C. Penney is preparing to file for bankruptcy as soon as this week and plans to permanently close about a quarter of its 850 or so stores, sources told Reuters last week. The company missed a $17-million debt payment last Thursday; its grace period expires this Tuesday and would trigger a default. It had already missed a $12-million debt payment on April 15; that grace period expires this Friday. J.C. Penney has long been on my list of bankruptcy candidates, causing me to write in July last year, I’m in Awe of How Long Zombies Like J.C. Penney Keep Getting New Money to Burn. But Bankruptcy Beckons.

Lord & Taylor, which has 38 department stores, said last week that it plans to liquidate its inventory once the lockdown allows it to reopen the stores as it will likely file for bankruptcy where it expects that its remaining assets will be liquidated.

J.Crew Group, which was subject to a leveraged buyout in 2011 by PE firms TPG and Leonard Green & Partners, filed for bankruptcy last week and hopes to avoid liquidation, after having come to an agreement with its creditors to reorganize its debts. Creditors will get 82% of the new company. These types of reorganizations lead to many stores being shuttered, and usually end up back in bankruptcy court for liquidation. Brick-and-mortar retailers are devilishly hard to restructure successfully.

Nordstrom, which has a thriving ecommerce business that was already over one-third of its total revenues before the lockdowns, announced last week that it is planning to shutter 16 of its stores.

It has been an intense litany that will continue. Tenants’ collapsing and disappearing one after the other without replacement has a pernicious impact on property prices. The whole CRE sector of mall properties will have to restructure, and much of it will have to be repurposed, and lenders and holders of commercial mortgage-backed securities will have to take their licks – but instead of having many years or even a decade to deal with it, hoping to get out of them before it happens, they’re caught up in it right now.

Pondering the Pundits

Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Frank Bruni: Nobody Is Protected From President Trump

The simple accessory of a mask tells the story of a presidency and a pandemic.

I’ve heard of Muslim women in America being taunted for wearing hijabs, I’ve heard of Jewish men being mocked for wearing yarmulkes and now I’ve heard it all: A friend of mine was cursed by a passing stranger the other day for wearing a protective mask.

There is, of course, a rather nasty virus going around, and one way to lessen the chance of its spread, especially from you to someone else, is to cover your nose and mouth. Call it civic responsibility. Call it science.

But science is no match for tribalism in this dysfunctional country. Truth is whatever validates your prejudices, feeds your sense of grievance and fuels your antipathy toward the people you’ve decided are on some other side.

And protective masks, God help us, are tribal totems. With soul-crushing inevitably, these common-sense precautions morphed into controversial declarations of identity. What’s next? Band-Aids?

“Wearing a mask is for smug liberals. Refusing to is for reckless Republicans.” That was the headline on a recent article in Politico by Ryan Lizza and Daniel Lippman that noted that “in a deeply polarized America, almost anything can be politicized.”

I quibble only with “almost.” And I submit that the entire story of our scattered, schizoid response to the coronavirus pandemic can be distilled into the glares, tussles, tweets, deference and defiance surrounding this simple accessory.

On Monday the White House belatedly introduced a policy of mask-wearing in the West Wing — but it exempted President Trump. See what I mean about mask as metaphor? Trump demands protection from everybody around him, but nobody is protected from Trump. Story of America.

Michelle Cottle: Trump’s Barefaced Deceptions

He won’t wear a mask, fearing it will project weakness and defeat. Who does he think he’s fooling?

Masks are once again a hot topic.

Don’t worry: Their latest star turn doesn’t involve some new culture war clash over how much protection masks provide, when they should be worn or whether, as some of the more excitable social-distancing opponents charge, they are a form of government tyranny.

Rather, it seems masks are finally getting some respect at the White House. On Monday, the White House Management Office issued a memo requiring all of the staff to wear masks while inside the West Wing except when working at their own desks. Visitors will need to cover their faces as well. [..]

In early April, while announcing the recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that masks be worn in public spaces, Mr. Trump made clear he would not be taking his own administration’s advice. “Wearing a face mask as I greet presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens — I don’t know,” he said. “Somehow, I don’t see it for myself.”

Aides have said that Mr. Trump’s resistance stems in part from not wanting to look ridiculous. From a health standpoint, this is ridiculous. But it comports perfectly with the warped logic of Trumpian machismo: Masks are for the weak — read: losers — and he is all about strength.

Michelle Goldberg: We’re All Casualties of Trump’s War on Science

The administration kneecaps experts as the coronavirus rages.

In 2004, “60 Minutes” aired a segment on what it called “virus hunters,” scientists searching for bugs that can leap from animals to humans and cause pandemics. “What worries me the most is that we are going to miss the next emerging disease,” said a scientist named Peter Daszak, describing his fear of a coronavirus “that moves from one part of the planet to another, wiping out people as it moves along.”

In the intervening years, Daszak became president of the EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit research organization focused on emerging pandemics. EcoHealth worked with China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology to study coronaviruses in bats that could infect humans, and, as Science magazine put it, “to develop tools that could help researchers create diagnostics, treatments and vaccines for human outbreaks.” Since 2014, the EcoHealth Alliance has received a grant from the National Institutes of Health, until its funding was abruptly cut two weeks ago. [..]

This political hit on Daszak’s work is far from the only way that the Trump administration’s contempt for science has undermined America’s coronavirus response. Conservative antipathy to science is nothing new; Republicans have long denied and denigrated the scientific consensus on issues from evolution to stem cell research to climate change. This hostility has several causes, including populist distrust of experts, religious rejection of information that undermines biblical literalism and efforts by giant corporations to evade regulation.

But it’s grown worse under Trump, with his authoritarian impulse to quash any facts, from inauguration crowd sizes to hurricane paths, that might reflect poorly on him.

Katrina vanden Heuvel: The ingenuity keeping indie bookstores going

For nearly half a century, Charis Books was a fixture of Atlanta’s Little Five Points neighborhood. The stuccoed building served as a gathering place for feminist readers to browse, congregate and participate in a litany of events. Before and after the bookstore’s recent move to Agnes Scott College, residents from across the city have relied on Charis Circle, its nonprofit arm, to access everything from homeless shelters to legal assistance.

In the wake of the pandemic, Charis Books has been forced to close its brick-and-mortar operation. Its owners are relying on online orders, gift-certificate sales and donations to their nonprofit to continue paying their staff and operating both the business and nonprofit. So many independent bookstores are in a similar bind. Literary hubs such as the Strand in New York and Powell’s Books in Portland, Ore., had to lay off employees; others like City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco and Marcus Books in Oakland, Calif., are relying on crowdfunding campaigns to stay afloat.

It’s not for a lack of demand. These past few months have seen a surge of interest in books. But the profits, by and large, are being siphoned to Amazon. The corporate behemoth, launched as “Earth’s Biggest Bookstore” in 1995, has dominated the book industry for years. Today, Amazon owns its own publishing unit, literary social platform and line of e-readers. (And Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos owns The Post.) The retailer accounts for more than half of all book sales in the United States, and some have projected that share to grow to 70 percent, based on Amazon’s performance in April.

Now, indie bookstores everywhere, confronted with the twin threats of Amazon and covid-19, are struggling to survive. And in response, readers across the country are banding together to save them.

Amanda Marcotte: Trump doesn’t really care about the economy — he just wants to fake it until November

Don’t be fooled by Trump’s economic happy talk — he’s willing to sell out a long-term recovery for short-term gain

Donald Trump thinks he can trick American voters into believing it’s a good thing that one in six workers is out of a job. That’s according to Nancy Cook at Politico, who reports that the mood in the White House was one of jubilation at hearing that the unemployment rate had soared to 14.7% — the highest since the Great Depression. That mood reflected “happiness that the figure wasn’t as high as it could have been,” Cook writes.

This allows Trump to use a strategy he often rolls out to trick the public into seeing his failures as a win: “Throwing out a huge number — like a future 25 percent unemployment rate, or 2 million deaths from the coronavirus — can, in turn, make lower figures seem like a relief.”

It’s a trick that Trump no doubt developed during his notorious business career, when he often tried to trick investors and banks into backing one failing venture after another by using trickery or outright lying, at least until the whole thing collapsed and he skated away, his personal assets intact, while the business went bankrupt.

Trump is trying to handle the the American economy much the same way he handled his many failed business ventures: By lying about the numbers to make things seem better than they are, while moving money around with accounting tricks in hopes of fooling investors — or voters, in this case — into sticking around just a little longer, buying Trump time to figure out how he can escape personal consequences when the whole thing inevitably collapses.

Who was that Masked Man?

Wrong Brother.

Oh ain’t it lonely
When you’re livin’ with a gun
Well you can’t slow down and you can’t turn ’round
And you can’t trust anyone

You just sit there like a butterfly
And you’re all encased in glass
You’re so fragile you just may break
And you don’t know who to ask

Oh ain’t it lonely
When you’re livin’ with a gun
Well you can’t slow down and you can’t turn ’round
And you can’t trust anyone

You just sit there like a butterfly
You’re well protected by the glass
You’re such a rare collector’s item
When they throw away what’s the trash
You can hang suspended from a star
Or wish on a toilet roll
You can just soak up the atmosphere
Like a fish inside a bowl

When the ghost comes round at midnight
Well you both can have some fun
He can drive you mad, he can make you sad
He can keep you from the sun
When they take him down, he’ll be both safe and sound
And the hand does fit the glove
And no matter what they tell you,
There’s good and evil in everyone

Now I kinda dig the fact that I can now wear a mask everywhere I go because I think the bandana makes me look like a badass gangsta. I also have a problem with ubiquitous video surveillance, so much so I’ve grown a beard even though I don’t much like them (it’s itchy, ok?).

But the truth of the matter is it’s a virtue signal. Unless it’s an N95 or heftier it doesn’t protect you so much as it protects those around you. Same with the gloves.

What you really have to do is wash your hands.

Constantly.

And don’t touch your face.

That’s it. If you do those things you’ll be as safe as can be expected and the more you limit your exposure to other people the better off you’ll be. Since I already live like a Hermit Goatherder it’s not so hard for me.

But the instinct to own the Libs is sooo hard to resist.

Snowflake or safety first? How face masks were drawn into Trump’s culture wars
by Arwa Mahdawi, The Guardian
Wed 13 May 2020

Let’s face it: wearing a face mask is not pleasant. They can fog up your glasses and hurt your ears. If you are cursed with terrible allergies, as I am, they quickly become a disgusting sneeze chamber. They make breathing difficult.

But you know what else makes breathing difficult? Covid-19. So I suck it up and wear a mask, because that is what we are supposed to do now. In New York, where I live, it is also what we have been required to do for the past few weeks. You can’t go into a shop without a face covering and you must wear one whenever physical distancing is not possible.

One minute, wearing a mask made you an outlier; now not wearing one does. I would estimate that 99% of people I see out and about in Manhattan have a mask on. The other 1% are joggers who seem to think that, if they run fast enough, the virus won’t catch up with them.

While most New Yorkers appear to have embraced masks, it is a different story in other parts of the country. Everything is partisan in the US now, even death. As such, masks have become a political statement. Democrats are far more likely than Republicans to say that they will wear one (76% versus 59%), according to a recent poll. Wearing one signals that you believe in science; that you believe in putting the greater good ahead of your individual comfort. To some people, they are a sign of solidarity; to others, they signify that you are a liberal snowflake. They have become the opposite of Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” caps.

This may soon change. While Trump conspicuously eschews masks – he reportedly told advisers that wearing one would “send the wrong message” – his campaign never misses a monetisation opportunity. Last week, Brad Parscale, Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, shared a photo in which he was wearing a Maga mask with a caption announcing that there were “more coming soon!” Knowing Trump, his masks will probably be made in China.

Live Free or Die baby.

Cartnoon

I’d pretty much rank your priority survival needs in this order-

Knife

You just need one. They are hard to make out of nothing and if you have one you can perhaps (not as easy as it looks on TV) improvise everything else.

Fire

Are you stupid? You’re going to drink Raw Water?! You selfish prick, I won’t even be able to eat your parasite infested and disease riddled body!

You need the Fire to process the Water (boil it for a while so it doesn’t kill you) and a container to hold it, but improv because the next thing you instantly need is…

Water!

You need to drink at least a Half Gallon a Day. You can only live 3 Days without it and dehydration is not pleasant at all. It’s about the most critical thing next to Oxygen. You can live without Food for a Month.

The previous two priorities are steps in getting Water, though they have other utility, and you can bypass them if you carry Purification Tablets or a Trail Filter both of which are very light.

I have other Bushcrafty thoughts but those are easily your top 3 needs.

The Breakfast Club (Like A Rock)

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

This Day in History

ope John Paul II shot; English colonists arrive at what becomes Jamestown; Winston Churchill gives his first speech as British prime minister; The U.S. declares war on Mexico; Singer Stevie Wonder born.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

Happy 90th Birthday, Senator Gravel

It’s like going into the Senate. You know, the first time you get there, you’re all excited, ‘My God, how did I ever get here?’ Then, about six months later, you say, ‘How the hell did the rest of them get here?’

Mike Gravel

Continue reading

Not The Only Stupid Argument In The Supreme Court Today

There was also this one-

Religious Freedom Demands That Women Be Denied Birth Control, Trump Administration Tells Supreme Court
by Jordan Smith, The Intercept
May 12 2020

During oral arguments on May 6, before a U.S. Supreme Court working remotely amid the coronavirus crisis, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had one question on her mind: What about the women?

It’s a question that was never really answered in more than an hour and a half of back and forth about statutory construction, administrative rule-making, and religious freedom. And yet it sits at the heart of a legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s mandate that women be provided no-cost contraceptives — a provision that provides birth control access to millions of women.

At issue in the case is whether the Trump administration can exempt any employer that objects on religious or moral grounds from having to provide insurance that covers the full range of birth control.

According to the administration, the religious freedom of employers would be unconstitutionally trampled upon unless they’re exempted from the requirement. According to the state of Pennsylvania, which defended the birth control mandate before the court, the administration’s rules were improperly enacted and go far beyond protecting religious beliefs to the potential detriment of millions.

Among the groundbreaking achievements of the Affordable Care Act was that it required basic health services to be provided at no cost. The Women’s Health Amendment specifically extended the mandate to a suite of reproductive health services, including access to all Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptives.

Prior to the ACA, which also prohibits sex discrimination in health care, women had long paid more in insurance premiums and out-of-pocket costs, particularly for birth control. Because of the law, more than 61 million women have access to no-cost contraceptives, a mandate that saves women roughly $1.4 billion per year.

And it makes sense to cover contraceptives. They reduce unintended pregnancy and encourage birth spacing; they promote gender equality and are linked to higher educational attainment and increased earnings for women — outcomes that directly impact children and families.

Nonetheless, from the start, churches were exempt from having to provide the coverage. Religiously affiliated nonprofits like hospitals and universities subsequently said they should be exempt too. The Obama administration disagreed, saying that exempting them would subject employees to the religious views of their employers. But his administration devised a workaround: An affiliated organization could submit a form to its insurance provider or the federal government saying that it objected to the coverage, which in turn would allow the insurer to provide it directly to the employee. (The accommodation was later extended to closely held for-profit companies after Hobby Lobby sued.)

But many religious organizations still balked. Requiring them to formally object, they argued, would jumpstart a process to provide the coverage they objected to, making them complicit in providing that coverage. The ongoing dispute bounced around in the courts until the spring of 2017, when the Trump administration announced that it would fix things — with a clear indication that it would endeavor to give the objectors exactly what they wanted: a way to disregard the birth control mandate.

But the administration — via various departments that play a role in the ACA, including Health and Human Services — ultimately went further. Under rules rolled out that fall, religious organizations would be allowed to opt out without ever notifying anyone of their intentions — leaving women in the lurch with no notice that their birth control would no longer be covered. On top of that, the administration crafted a second carve-out that allows nearly any employer in the country to deny coverage based on “moral objections,” which could encompass pretty much anything.

Despite the real-world harms to women that would arise from denying access to no-cost birth control, the oral arguments largely focused on other issues, including the role of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in constraining coverage requirements and whether an arm of HHS can decide, at will, to exempt employers — and as such, hold power over who will receive birth control.

Which brings us back to Ginsburg’s question, aimed at each of the lawyers before the court: “You have just tossed entirely to the wind what Congress thought was essential, that is, that women be provided these … services, with no hassle, no cost to them,” she posited to Francisco. “Instead, you are shifting the employer’s religious beliefs, the cost of that, on to these employees who do not share those religious beliefs.”

“And I did not understand RFRA to authorize harm to other people, which is evident here, that … the women end up getting nothing,” she continued. “They are required to do just what Congress didn’t want.”

“I would disagree with the premise of your question because there’s nothing in the ACA … that requires contraceptive coverage,” Francisco responded. “Rather, it delegated to the agencies the discretion to decide whether or not to cover it in the first place.”

Indeed, a main thrust of the government’s argument is that Congress didn’t require birth control coverage specifically, only that women’s health services be provided — Congress directed the health agency to come up with the list of essential services. The government apparently believes that whether contraceptives are essential is a matter of debate, perhaps unsurprising for an administration that has elevated birth control skeptics and proponents of abstinence education to policymaking positions.

Still, the argument seems to have resonated with the newest justice, Brett Kavanaugh, whose hostility to women’s reproductive rights was among the assets that got him the job. There are certainly “very strong interests on both sides” of the case, he said. Kavanaugh suggested that each administration should be free to use its discretion to decide how birth control should be covered since Congress didn’t lay out any particular requirement in the main text of the ACA. “It seems to me the judicial role is not to put limits on the agency discretion that Congress has not put there.”

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Stephen Breyer seemed frustrated by the arguments and in search of some middle ground. “I don’t understand why this can’t be worked out,” Breyer said. Several justices expressed concern that Trump’s legal justifications for the rules “sweep too broadly,” as Roberts put it.

Pondering the Pundits

Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Paul Krugman: How to Create a Pandemic Depression

Opening the economy too soon can backfire, badly.

Last week the Bureau of Labor Statistics officially validated what we already knew: Just a few months into the Covid-19 crisis, America already has a Great Depression level of unemployment. But that’s not the same thing as saying that we’re in a depression. We won’t know whether that’s true until we see whether extremely high unemployment lasts for a long time, say a year or more.

Unfortunately, the Trump administration and its allies are doing all they can to make a full-scale depression more likely.

Before I get there, a word about that unemployment report. Notice that I didn’t say “the worst unemployment since the Great Depression”; I said “a Great Depression level,” a much stronger statement.

To understand why I said that, you need to read the report, not just look at the headline numbers. An unemployment rate of 14.7 percent is pretty horrific, but the bureau included a note indicating that technical difficulties probably caused this number to understate true unemployment by almost five percentage points.

If this is true, we currently have an unemployment rate around 20 percent, which would be worse than all but the worst two years of the Great Depression. The question now is how quickly we can recover.

John Gleeson, David O’Neil and Marshall Miller: The Flynn case isn’t over until the judge says it’s over

John Gleeson served as a U.S. district judge for the Eastern District of New York and chief of the Criminal Division in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in that district. David O’Neil served as the acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York. Marshall Miller served as the highest-ranking career official in the Criminal Division and as chief of the Criminal Division for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District.

The Justice Department’s move to dismiss the prosecution of former national security adviser Michael Flynn does not need to be the end of the case — and it shouldn’t be. The Justice Department has made conflicting statements to the federal judge overseeing the case, Emmet G. Sullivan. He has the authority, the tools and the obligation to assess the credibility of the department’s stated reasons for abruptly reversing course.

The department’s motion to dismiss the Flynn case is actually just a request — one that requires “leave of the court” before it is effective. The executive branch has unreviewable authority to decide whether to prosecute a case. But once it secures an indictment, the proceedings necessarily involve the judicial branch. And the law provides that the court — not the executive branch — decides whether an indictment may be dismissed. The responsible exercise of that authority is particularly important here, where a defendant’s plea of guilty has already been accepted. Government motions to dismiss at this stage are virtually unheard of.

Prosecutors deserve a “presumption of regularity” — the benefit of the doubt that they are acting honestly and following the rules. But when the facts suggest they have abused their power, that presumption fades. If prosecutors attempt to dismiss a well-founded prosecution for impermissible or corrupt reasons, the people would be ill-served if a court blindly approved their dismissal request. The independence of the court protects us all when executive-branch decisions smack of impropriety; it also protects the judiciary itself from becoming a party to corruption. [..]

Flynn’s guilt has already been adjudicated. So if the court finds dismissal would result in a miscarriage of justice, it can deny the motion, refuse to permit withdrawal of the guilty plea and proceed to sentencing.

Charles M. Blow: The Hunger Pains of a Pandemic

Empty stomachs can lead to a dangerous desperation.

Have you ever been hungry? Truly hungry? Not the hunger one gets in anticipation of a meal, but the kind that pinches the stomach when you know no food is forthcoming. It is the kind of pang you take to bed with you, the kind that greets you when you rise. It is a bitter physical deprivation that gnaws at not only the gut but the spirit. It makes you sad. It makes you angry.

I grew up having to stay one step ahead of hunger. It was like running ahead of tireless hounds through a dark wood. [..]

People will be hungry. They already are. And, hunger is not a thing that you simply become inured to. It makes people desperate, and desperation, on the scale that it will likely occur because of this pandemic, is dangerous.

The effect of this pandemic on the vulnerable isn’t limited to America. This is likely to be a world crisis of hunger and instability. As David M. Beasley, executive director of the U.N. World Food Program, wrote last month in The Washington Post:

The coronavirus pandemic “now threatens to detonate an unprecedented global humanitarian catastrophe. Millions of civilians living in conflict-scarred nations will be further pushed to the brink of starvation. The numbers are shocking: On any given day, the World Food Program offers a lifeline to nearly 100 million people. This includes about 30 million people who literally depend on us to stay alive. Most of them are trapped in war zones and can’t leave.”

The United States is far from a war zone, and yet we still tolerate an extraordinary level of food insecurity, one of the worst among developed countries.

Jennifer Senior: Does Anyone Actually Work for Trump?

All the holes and temps in the government have led to a permanent crisis.

This we already know: The president has contempt for expertise. During a national emergency, President Trump’s top economic adviser is a former television host; his supply-chain coordinator is his son-in-law, who majored in nepotism and prioritizes the leads and needs of cronies; the chief of staff at his Department of Health and Human Services is a former breeder of Australian labradoodles, an insolently unqualified choice if there ever was one, though at least the man is well versed in the behaviors of lapdogs.

But here we must pause for a moment to consider why the president has assembled this gallery of boobs. Much of the answer comes down to this: Trump never took staffing the federal workforce seriously. The executive branch is riddled with vacancies, especially at the top. Vice President Mike Pence may speak about a “whole-of-government approach” to the pandemic, but what we truly have is a government of holes.

Sherrilyn Ifill: We must confront the inconsistent laws that allow black lives to be taken with impunity

Sherrilyn Ifill is president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

In his seminal work about the rise and fall of black reconstruction, W.E.B. Du Bois described in chilling detail the use of lynching two decades after the Civil War’s conclusion to control black citizenship. Black people could expect to be subjected to lynching because “they were radical; they had attempted to hold elections; [and] they were carrying arms,” but also just because, in the mind of Southern whites, “they were ‘damn ni–ers.’ ” In other words, for any reason a white supremacist could fathom.

The Feb. 23 killing of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery demonstrates that the use of deadly violence to control black citizenship continues. Arbery was running in a neighborhood where white residents deemed he didn’t belong. A 911 caller simply described Arbery as “a black male running down the street.” Within minutes, he was hunted by white men in a pickup truck, who shot and killed him. A police investigation apparently identified more than a dozen witnesses. Nevertheless, neither the shooter, Travis McMichael, nor any of his accomplices — his father, George McMichael, and apparently one other man — were arrested until a video of the shooting was released two months later, sparking outrage and demands for justice.

Many are skeptical that justice will be served, with good reason. Because in the present-day version of Du Bois’s post-Reconstruction lynching nightmare, the law itself has been hijacked, and it plays a central role in aiding and abetting white people’s ability to kill black people with impunity.

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