This is our first full month of all-COVID tweets, again posted a few days into the next month (sorry!). My March round-up was almost all-COVID, but not quite. Of course, there are a few in here that aren't clearly on the topic, but it's laced throughout my usual topics and underlies even the unrelated jokes. What a month. One thing I note is that there were a lot fewer images among the tweets. Everyone is just too overwhelmed to make cartoons, I guess, or I'm too something to like the nice images I saw so I could share them here.
It's hard to come up with categories, too. In some ways, most of the tweets fit into my usual ones, because so much of the commentary is about the debacle of the Mafia Mulligan presidency, the effects of white supremacy, how it relates to climate change, how it plays out in cities and affects transit...
There are, though, quite a number of general ones about the situation, which includes the general topic of "reopening" society. That's really a Republican and right-wing talking point by now, though, so it starts to merge into other topics, like the economic reform needed to help people weather the stay-at-home orders that are necessary to stop the disease from spread so quickly:
i present to you: the most American photograph:
@dumbandawful
people asking “should we just stay closed forever then” are asking the wrong question, the actual question is “what have we done to make it safe to reopen” and until that answer corresponds with the recommendations of public health experts, yes, we stay closed
dan solomon
Yes, younger people have *reduced* risk of death. That's true! For an older person, COVID is maybe 50, 100, or 200x as lethal as the flu. For a younger person, it's maybe just 2–10x as lethal. WHICH IS STILL A LOT MORE LETHAL. "It only kills people with comorbidities" is such a dumb line. The vast majority of people who die of *any* illness have comorbidities! It's relatively rare for *any* illness to kill young, healthy people completely out of the blue, because the human immune system is awesome!
@lymanstoneky
“The 80 years is long enough” crowd isn’t actually arguing that we have to sacrifice the old and vulnerable for the economy, they’re arguing we have to do it to continue the ideological project of cutting public goods and gutting the state’s capacity to act.
@jbouie
“You have to choose between grandma and the economy” is only on the table because we rejected the other choice, “we’ll run the economy on the full faith and credit of the U.S. government until we have the pandemic fully under control." I think it is important to say that the reason we’re even having this conversation — the reason we’re talking about a trade-off — is because federal policymakers chose not to embrace the open-ended spending that could sustain a lockdown.
@jbouie
So, this will be contentious, but I think we are only 2 or 3 steps away from meat processing plants and other industrial sites becoming forced labor camps where prisoners are being worked to death. These steps are not inevitable. But that's how close we are to that outcome.
Alexandra Erin
I'm not willing to sacrifice senior citizens to COVID-19, but I am increasingly willing to sacrifice the assholes who are willing to sacrifice seniors.
John Scalzi
Tyranny is the government telling you you can't go to a hair salon because there's a plague. Freedom, on the other hand, is the government telling you you have to go back to work at your plague-stricken pork processing plant alongside workers who might be sick.
Chris Hayes
Reminder that disease, an essential tool of genocide, goes hand in hand with concentration camps. From the Second Boer War and the Nazi camps to Uighur concentration camps in China, Gaza strip, the US immigration detainment centers: genocides LOVE plagues because they’re deniable.
Charlie Stross
Refusing to wear a mask in a grocery store betrays a curious interpretation of liberty, virtue, and citizenship. The framers of the Constitution would likely have forcibly put you in the pillory for exercising your liberty thus, and endangering others during an epidemic.
Jason Segedy
It's interesting to watch people be shocked that a country that has shrugged off gun deaths and deaths from police brutality and violence against women isn't treating the death toll from the pandemic any differently. It's like you're new to American history and current events.
Mikki Kendall @Karnythia
Everybody probably has one thing right now that makes this specifically hard. Mine is that visits with my teenage son are not possible under current circumstances. For two years, those visits have grounded me in moments when the entire world seemed insubstantial.
@tomtomorrow
Perversely, Andrew Cuomo has managed to see his popularity among Democrats skyrocket. This despite his utter failures to contain the virus. New York is not a success story, it’s a disaster area. Stop promoting him like he’s doing a good job, or the anti-Trump hero we need.
onekade
Thought I’d draw a more accurate calendar for 2020 so far....
Chaz Hutton
UPDATE: There are 185 public companies that have received PPP loans intended for struggling small businesses. So far SIX have indicated they plan to return the money by submitting a filing with the SEC.
Judd Legum
If people start calling you a hero that means they're about to let you die
@feraljokes
People doing their jobs aren’t heroes. They are workers. They deserve our respect for their work. It’s enough.
Adam Miller
Can't decide if the U.S's failed coronavirus response is like a Sputnik moment where we realize how far behind we are and correct in big way or if it's sign we will continue decline of being the richest nation most resembling poorly-run, corrupt undeveloped country.
kar nels
It blows my mind that 70% of the country believes it's too early to reopen and like 300 people in each state were part of protests organized by 3 dipshit brothers and the entire narrative on reopening has changed.
Wes Burdine
The “Reopen” Movement is really the Reinfect Movement. Dangerous, costly in human lives and economic toll, and a sad cynical politics at the heart of all of it
Mitra Jalali
Significant paper on the cost of misinformation. Basically, one standard deviation more viewership of Sean Hannity (denied seriousness of COVID) versus Tucker Carlson (took the pandemic seriously) is associated with in 20% more deaths at the county-level.
zeynep tufekci (link to the research in the original)
Georgia's death toll increased by 13.8% today (from 681 to 775), so it certainly seems like the right time to reopen the bowling alleys.
Daily Trix
Remember the Bush years when there was a giant news story about one woman on life support possibly being taken off per her own wishes? And now those same people are straight faced asking us to sacrifice a few relatives for the sake of being able to eat at Applebee's? Good times.
@elhijodealli7
We saw this coming. “... at the Marion Correctional Institution, where 1,828 inmates — 73% of the total — have tested positive for the virus... Marion Correctional’s staff has had 109 positive tests and one death reported.” More than 1,800 inmates at Marion Correctional test positive for coronavirus Overall, the state’s prison system has recorded 2,426 positive results among inmates.
Trymaine Lee
To all “outraged” people. Inconvenience is not injustice. Stop equating the horror of Nazi and chattel slavery with not being able throw a BBQ with 200 people. It is not the same
Otis Moss, III
Boomers accused millennials of being soft and entitled and a month in are protesting being unable to eat at Baskin Robbins.
@NotNiloc
Super weird to hear talk of "liberating" states from people who would deny so many citizens of those states their right to vote
David Frum
The thing about social distancing "hawks" vs "doves" is the hawks are just being *consistent*. The virus is a physical thing, it follows physical rules, if you're within six feet of another person you're at risk of inhaling microscopic particles of spit they exhale, that's it
Arthur Chu
Remaining floored by how SOFT all these apocalypse-prepping survivalist conservatives turned out to be. Bruh, you're ready for zombies or nukes but devolve into toddlers when asked to refrain from in-person shopping for a few weeks?
@LouisatheLast
“COVID-19 IS A LIE,” reads the sign of a man wearing head-to-toe protective equipment. Can’t make this stuff up:
Brian Tyler Cohen
Coronavirus is now the country's leading cause of death, killing as many people in a month as the flu typically kills in a year, even AFTER we locked down much of the country. And that is WITH lockdown. COVID-19 is now the leading cause of death in the United States. Thanks to nearly-nationwide lockdowns, coronavirus has only killed about as many people in 1 month as auto fatalities kill in 1 year. Does that answer your question?
@Noahpinion
They tested the entire 4,800 member crew of the Roosevelt. 60% of the positives were asymptomatic. Reopening the economy without universal testing and tracking, and a vaccine, will be a disaster.
@KagroX
Its unfortunate that the only times we hear about latino/immigrants in rural Iowa are when a factory plant is being raided by ICE or when they’ve contracted a global virus in said workplace. Latinos make rural Iowa run. Latinos feed the nation.
@ChismVargas
Other countries got rent freeze, reoccurring finance packages, mortgage freeze, and free universal healthcare, on top of the welfare benefits they already have. WITHOUT asking. The American government got y’all thinking y’all asking for a lot, that’s sad.
@smartlouse
I hate the language of "war." We cannot beat a virus in a war. This is a crisis of care. How do we care for each other, for those who need it most? How do you care for yourself? How should states, systems, businesses care? I don't care how we fight: I care how we care. Framing it as a war justifies military and policing responses; framing it as a crisis of care means you use a lens of expanding care and support.
Rachel Levinson-Waldman
the most hilarious genre is "economists who think it's important they give their blessing to epidemiology"
@Atrios
Corporate America is ready to reopen ... as long as they’re given legal immunity from any consequences if they get their employees killed
Matthew Yglesias
The whole point of making employers liable for risking the lives of their staff is to prevent them from exposing their staff to undue risk. Businesses are asking for the right to expose their workers to fatal risks with no consequences. It’s bad economics and bad policy.
Justin Wolfers
I grew up in a small town. My family is sick, riddled with preexisting conditions, have been taught not to get medical help, trained not to trust science or experts, and their town's medical infrastructure is virtually nonexistent. Tragedy is inevitable.
Jared Yates Sexton
"An estimated 90 percent of the cumulative deaths in the United States from Covid-19, at least from the first wave of the epidemic, might have been prevented by putting social distancing policies into effect two weeks earlier, on March 2."
Glenn Kessler
Covid is at least 20 times deadlier than the flu and up to twice as contagious. Virtually everyone who survives the flu goes back to normal, but a lot of people who recover from covid do so with severe damage to their hearts, lungs, kidneys other vital organs. I get the flu shot.
Lindsay Beyerstein
My brilliant friend said that one of the most exhausting things about coronavirus is having to treat every surface outside of your house like it's made of raw chicken.
Erin Biba
Reported US coronavirus deaths:
Feb. 14: 0 deaths
Mar. 14: 58 deaths
Apr. 14: 25,992 deaths
Ryan Struyk
Coronavirus has revealed that 40% of us can work from home without the world falling apart, and the other 60% should honestly be getting paid a lot more.
Chad Loder
“Wow, the fire is starting to die down. Why did we call out all these fire trucks and spray all this water??”
Alvy Singer
Ending shutdowns too early and demanding that retail and service industry workers go back to work — while white collar workers continue to work remotely, is just full mask-off slaughter of the working class.
ashley fairbanks
Odd that some of the people buying guns and ammo to protect themselves against the "collapse of society" they fear is coming are also the same people pushing the "open for business" nonsense.
Robert Moffitt @justplainbob
The epidemiologists I follow said a few weeks ago "be aware that when our mitigation efforts start to work and projections go down, people are gonna use that as proof we overreacted, not proof that mitigation efforts worked." *looks at twitter* Damn, the experts know their shit.
Kelly Swails
At the grocery. Wearing my mask. Lady behind me, snarky and loud enough to make sure I heard, “don’t guess she realizes that stupid mask won’t do any good.” Me: “Honey, I’m an off duty nurse, I’m wearing it to protect YOU. But, I can take it off if you’d like.” She practically ran.
Emily Annette
Please don’t say ‘the virus doesn’t discriminate...’. People do. Systems do. Institutions do. That’s why certain communities are suffering more than others. Because of systems. Institutions. People.
Nikesh Shukla
So our taxes buy the PPE, Trump ships the PPE to distributors who then sell the PPE to the states based on the highest bids, and those state's taxpayers pay for the PPE a second time. This is corruption in a massive scale.
Dallas Chris
Love every older person coming up with the take that “hey my parents lived through the Great Depression and WWII and they didn’t complain about it.” Really? You think the New Deal came about because no one was mad or protesting in the streets? You think WWII left them unscarred?
@LouisatheLast
we tried to explain the pandemic to our 3-year-old and now he talks like the first chapter of a dystopian young adult novel. "we used to go to the store, before the sickness came." "we have to stay at home, where the sickness can't find us"
Alix E. Harrow
The economy isn’t closed, people. The economic activities we’re doing - childcare, cooking, cleaning etc - just aren’t considered valuable by most economists. #feminist economics
Jen Cohen
Why is the pandemic being framed as a war instead of a public health crisis? It’s not a war. It’s a public health crisis that ballooned to disaster due to failures in governance at every level, especially federal.
Bree Newsome Bass
If we'd taken certain steps in winter - and recognized coronavirus had characteristics we always feared in its balance between transmissibility and lethality - we may be in different position now. Let's not have to say in the fall we wish we'd done more in the spring.
Scott Gottlieb, MD
this crisis is really separating the insomniac depressives from the sleeps-for-twelve-hours depressives
Alison Herman
I don't know what I expected for 2020 but I really didn't think I would be looking forward getting past something called "peak death day"
@PeterBrannen1
I don't think people realize that there is no normal to go back to anymore.
Balaji S. Srinivasan
Remember when the 50 states landed 50 separate armies at the beach in Normandy and the federal government was just the backup and kept most of the military supplies for themselves, remember that.
A.R. Moxon @JuliusGoat
turns out that racism and stupidity are not the skill set needed to fight a global pandemic. look, I'm just as surprised as you
Jeff Tiedrich
it's really strange to see how much what happened in Puerto Rico really did not register as a major early indicator of the federal government's dysfunctional disaster response protocols that could cripple the rest of the US and also result in an incredible number of deaths
@karenkho
Anyone who tries to patent life-saving technology related to COVID-19 should be jailed, at the very minimum.
Existential Comics
Carnival Cruise CEO Arnold Donald wants a bailout:
• They're registered in Panama
• 5% of their workforce are American
• They pay less than 1% federal tax
• Their workers earn $500/mo despite working 12 hour days 7 days a week
This calls for criminal investigation—not a corporate bailout
@QasimRashid
Just to say again, the answer to “who could’ve predicted this?” is everyone who studies infectious diseases.As usual, there were tweets focused on Mafia Mulligan and his administration specifically:
James Hamblin
Today Trump trying to move media off covering his horrific handling of coronavirus by tweeting all morning about convicted felon Michael Flynn. Trump has now shown more concern for criminal Flynn than the families of over 60,000 Americans who have died from the virus.There were a few on the media specifically:
@DeanObeidallah
In ordering the nation’s meat plants to stay open, Donald Trump is in essence marching many meatpacking workers off to slaughter. With his executive order, the president is in effect overruling safety-minded governors andmayors who pressured meat plants into shutting after they became hotspots spreading Covid-19. With such a move, Trump is showing contempt for both workers’ health andpublic health. Chalk this up as yet another Trump administration win for corporate America and yet another loss for America’s workers
Steven Greenhouse
I’m already irrationally angry about the inevitable Trump presser where he takes no responsibility for the bounce-back in coronavirus and pretends like he never pushed the country to reopen prematurely.
Jared Yates Sexton
Jared Kushner’s shadow task force is operating with essentially no transparency, and is filled with health care investors and non-public health experts, who haven’t disclosed their potential conflicts of interest or business ties.
Citizens for Ethics
We all make jokes but man it is just not fucking funny that a malicious man with curdled milk for a brain who thinks he’s a genius is running the country during a pandemic and not ONE person around him steps forward to stop it.
@grudging1
Trump says he was joking about a disease that’s killed 50,000 Americans. You don’t joke about a thing like that. If you are in your right mind, that is.
Stephen King
Not in my wildest, darkest imagination could I have ever imagined, in fact or fiction, a president suggesting injecting disinfectants, household cleaning products, as a pandemic curative.
roxane gay
Yes, China covered up coronavirus for a while. But does anyone really think that if they had blown the whistle earlier, Trump would have reacted? As it was, he dithered for a crucial month.
@Noahpinion
Listen. I’m not a public health expert, but shouldn’t the idiot president who’s already killed several people by pushing an unproven medication probably resist telling Americans to inject and imbibe cleaning chemicals?
Jared Yates Sexton
All y’all had to do was vote for the lady in the pant suit.
@erikajblue
It should be a huge scandal that Donald Trump still has no clue on the amount of testing we are doing. That dwarfs the importance of 95 percent of the things we see on the news, but the media will never mention this fact I'm serious -- think of how many times the media told us about Bernie saying good things about Cuba's health system. Which is more important, in the middle of a pandemic, our president has no clue on how much testing we've done or Sanders small praise of Cuba?
Dean Baker
Trump said that "HUNDREDS of Governors are calling him." We only have 50. Think about that. Take all the time you need.
@rronnilynn
"The top of the FBI was scum ... human scum" -- Trump is still rubbing his own sores about the Russia investigation. It beggars belief that we’ve become numb to this mob boss rhetoric from the president
Aaron Rupar
One thing that genuinely does mystify me, with no snark: Trump is one of the least masculine, least adult people in public life. Needy, whiny, defensive, pleading, scared of women, terrified of more powerful men. I am at a loss about why his base sees him as manly or strong.
Tom Nichols @RadioFreeTom
Someone actually just told my husband on Facebook that it's a good thing Obama isn't president right now because he wasn't a billionaire and wouldn't have been able to afford to give everyone $1200. Seriously. How do trump's supporters find their way home at the end of the day?
@cheristandsup
He never said the FIRE was a hoax. He said the fire ALARM was a hoax. He said the people shouting FIRE! FIRE! in the smoke-filled hallways and trying to alert others were engaged in a hoax to make the landlord look bad. But he never said the fire was a hoax. –Trump supporters
Stonekettle
It is deeply traumatizing to have a clearly unfit person in power and to watch those who are in a position to stop him fail to do so. This is the dynamic of alcoholic and abusive families taking place at a meta level, with implications for the survival of humanity. Surreal.
Leah McElrath
If only the Senate had liberated Trump from his job.
Deborah Roseman
People are dying because we have an incompetent president. This should be the top headline every day.
Adam Miller
you have to be cravenly evil or incredibly stupid or both to watch this guy and not understand he is in serious cognitive decline
@tomtomorrow
omfg he just called herd immunity the "herd mentality"
@tomtomorrow
Ireland has a gay physician as prime minister. And we have this schmuck.
Jon Lovett
If he's going to put his name on stimulus checks, then his name also belongs on every death certificate that resulted from his 70-day delay in taking action.
Chris Lu
Trump, Feb. 28: "The press is in hysteria mode" over coronavirus.
Trump video, April 13: "The media minimized the risk from the start."
@peterbakernyt
The average American family now spends more time plotting their grocery list every week than Donald Trump dedicated to pandemic planning in January or March.
Elise Jordan
when asked how he would know when it was safe to go out in public again, the guy who stared directly into an eclipse and said to rake the forest and waterbomb the cathedral and nuke the hurricane pointed to his big dumb pumpkin head. in other words, we're all going to fucking die
Jeff Tiedrich
Think of this. Over 10,000 humans who were alive 2 months ago are dead because 3 months ago the President did nothing.
@keltickaty
They should turn Trump Tower into a mausoleum
Liz Ziemska
Dumpster fires and shit shows look at Trump’s Coronavirus press conferences and say: “At least we’re not THAT bad.”
michaelharriot
One major factor leading to the spread of coronavirus in the United States was the electoral college.
Frank Conniff
The thing you need to understand about the Trump Administration is that there is no Trump Administration. There's an illusion of a government presented by a collection of criminals whose only concern is further dismantling government to accelerate profit and consolidate power.
Jared Yates Sexton
There’s no one in our senior federal government who should be in their job. Which is great, during a pandemic.
Adam Miller
Every single grocery store employee works harder than the President of the United States.
joshua rush
This should end any presidency:
Mark Elliott
Just so we're clear on how Trump is handling distributing PPE and ventilators:
1) States are buying PPE and ventilators for themselves because they can't get them from the federal government.
2) The federal government is stopping planes on tarmacs to confiscate these shipments.
@RomancingNope
So many things that folks thought were rules or laws turned out to be easily disregarded norms. All it took was a president and a party that believes they are immune from political consequences (thanks to gerrymandering, vote suppression, the US Senate, their own news networks).
David M. Perry @Lollardfish
I can’t believe the most serious crisis of this century is being managed by professional landlords
Jess Dweck
Does anyone doubt that if Trump has control of who gets vaccines and meds that he'd deny them to his detractors and critics?
Cheri Jacobus
Donald Trump wasn't elected to govern. He was elected to destroy government, and we're watching the tragic consequences.
Jared Yates Sexton
For a guy who loves to rant about Hunter Biden, Trump sure does put his useless son-in-law, Prep School Slenderman, in charge of a lot of important shit.
The Volatile Mermaid @OhNoSheTwitnt
Fifty days ago I attended a Homeland Security committee meeting about the coronavirus — and no current Trump administration public health officials bothered to show up. Now more than 5,000 Americans are dead. Their failure to swiftly act cost lives.
Kamala Harris
It seems like before your criminal father-in-law puts you in charge of the federal government you should at least have an understanding of what a federal government is.
Jared Yates Sexton
He was only supposed to kill one guy in the middle of Fifth Avenue. Not 200 thousand across America.
Randi Mayem Singer
why is jared kushner allowed to talk
@RubyGraceLevine
Donald Trump, through malfeasance and by putting his re-election ahead of the fate of the people, damned hundreds of thousands of Americans to agonizing deaths and cratered our economy, ensuring millions would lose their jobs and watch their lives destroyed. The work of the United States for years, if not decades, will be primarily focused on repairing the damage Trump has done and returning the country to an approximation of where it was in 2016. We’re going to lose out on so much.
Jared Yates Sexton
This is one of the biggest stories in modern history and ... you are ceding the stage to a bankrupt steak salesman who couldn’t even make money on a casino.
David M. Perry @Lollardfish
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The largest protests in U.S. history were held against the Trump administration. Women's march, gun reform march, migrants rights march, etc. Sustained protest against ICE. Daily Kremlin Annex protest. Little mainstream media coverage of any of it. But huge coverage for hundreds of pro-Trump protesters.In mid-month there was a flurry of tweets about Trump administration attempts to do away with the U.S. Postal Service, and related ones about voting by mail, including the Wisconsin election:
Sarah Kendzior
Imagine if the media covered Pro-Choice or Women’s Marches the way they’ve covered a few thousand ding-dongs whining about not being able to get a haircut.
kristen johnston
I’m thinking a lot about how media/others would react if the people protesting these stay-at-home orders were black. What would the coverage look like? What would the tone be? I feel strongly that if you’re not noting the timing and racial dynamics, you’re failing somehow.
Ida Bae Wells @nhannahjones
The idea that Andrew Cuomo would be a better president than Jay Inslee is the worst case of New York media provincialism since the retirement of Derek Jeter
Scott Lemieux
It’d be so sick if the left could hold a few protests with a couple hundred people, and then whatever our demands are would be treated by media as some authentic expression of the will of The People and liberal politicians would bend over backward to signal support for us.
Sam Adler-Bell
When was the last time you saw the American media analyze or applaud the ~40% of White people who don’t vote GOP? When have you ever seen them devote as much air time to the motivations of reliable White allies as they give to the teabags and “economically anxious” deplorables?
Propane Jane™ @docrocktex26
If you, a large and influential news organization, try to feign neutrality when powerful leaders inflict egregious harm to their own citizens in a moment of unprecedented global emergency, you are complicit.
Eric Holthaus
Are we finally gonna have an honest assessment of Oprah’s role in unleashing all this quasi-medical metaphysical self help quackery into the public sphere
@daniecal
If "the age of coddling" is indeed "over," I suggest we start with the columnists who, in that era, managed to retain their prestigious and high-profile positions despite not having had a good or original idea for a column in well over half a decade.
Chloe Angyal (responding to a David Brooks column I refused to read on principle)
Do all these privileged white men in media who keep posting variants on "never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined how terrible Trump would be" actually think that makes them sound more empathetic?
Kerry Reid
One thing I was not prepared for was just how obsequious toward those in power large swathes of the press would be even as the body counts mounted.
Julia Carrie Wong
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Bail out the United States postal service instead of cruise shipsThere was no break from racism, white supremacy, police brutality, but instead magnification of it:
Rosanna Arquette
The plan seems to be to not count the dead in Republican counties and not count the vote in Democratic ones.
Timothy Snyder
It's hard to know if Trump's trying to kill a postal service as old as the republic just to avoid mail-in voting, to punish it for not raising Amazon's rates (which it can't actually do) to punish Bezos for owning the Washington Post, or because he is a low energy nihilist.
Walter Shaub
FACT: 130,000 Minnesotans (in 78 of 87 counties) already live in communities with no polling place; they get ballots by mail every election without having to request or apply. We should scale up that system temporarily to put public health first during a pandemic election.
Steve Simon (Minnesota's Secretary of State, who handles elections)
I can't believe the post office needs saving. Like what is even the POINT of a federal government if the don't do the mail?
@BicycleHannah
Let me translate for you. “Widespread voter fraud” really means a lot of "those kinds of people" voting.
Dan Rather
Here’s a thing about the U.S. Postal Service: they deliver everywhere. Everywhere. Mail to a house fifteen miles out of town on a rural delivery route costs the same as a letter mailed city to city. If you really care about Rural America, you have to care about the post office.
Ginger Weil
When America loses its national mail service and immediately devolves 300 years, I really do hope you'll all loudly thank President Trump for it.
Seth Abramson
Why does Trump object to voting by mail? Because, he says, it would cause "levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you'd never have a Republican elected again." The first honest sentence he's ever uttered. When more people vote, Republicans lose. It's that simple.
Robert Reich
You can't make it up: Every Wisconsin Supreme Court justice voted absentee, including the 4 conservatives whose ruling required in-person voting to proceed andblocked postponing the WI Supreme Court election to instead allow for expanded absentee voting
Stephen Wolf
The Supreme Court is simultaneously using the pandemic as an excuse to not even hear the case on Trump's tax returns while telling voters in Wisconsin just now they should be forced to carry on with voting tomorrow with no extension of vote by mail.
Brian Fallon
Supreme Court: We're going to delay oral arguments for the first time since the Spanish flu because this pandemic is an extraordinary time andalso we don't know how to use Zoom. Also Supreme Court: There's no reason people shouldn't still have to show up to the polls in-person.
Miranda Yaver
Republicans in Wisconsin are actually doing us a favor by showing the chaos they'd like to instigate across the country in November. Nobody is allowed to say they didn't see it coming.
Wedge LIVE!™
We held an election in 1864. We sent ballots to soldiers overseas in 1944. Now Republicans from Trump to McConnell to state legislators, hoping for low turnout, are blocking efforts to enable Americans to vote in 2020. It's a disgrace. The word that comes to mind is unpatriotic.
Bill Kristol
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Armed White men are treated as unarmed and peaceful [at the Michigan State Capitol].Patriarchy, misogyny, sexism, and toxic masculinity carried on as usual as well:
Unarmed Black men are treated as armed and dangerous.
Ibram X. Kendi
Even when another popular white guy is the option [Biden], the majority of white American prefer Trump, by 9 points! We must confront how rotten to our core we are.
kar nels (reacting to an April NBC/WSJ poll showing white voters support Trump 51% to Biden 42%)
Before Covid-19 race data came out, there wasn’t a single essay, speech, talking point about personal responsibility. We didn’t examine the health habits of those who died. It was the stealth virus and succumbing to it was no one’s fault. Y’all can pretend race doesn’t matter but I won’t.
Ida Bae Wells @nhannahjones
Black men wearing masks have been escorted out of stores when shopping for essentials. While others have the freedom to show up to state capitols fully armed wearing masks. #2DifferentAmericas
@MichelleDuster
It's amazing to me how many people actually still think the Confederate flag is a Southern symbol and not simply a racist one. White people fly that flag all across the country in states that fought on the Union side because it symbolizes a racial belief, not a regional one.
Ida Bae Wells @nhannahjones
Cops harassing Black people for not wearing masks. Cops harassing Black people for wearing masks. Who could have predicted
Dara M Wilson
Before people realized Black people were suffering from COVID-19 at high rates, the conversation was about testing and care. Now that we're learning how many victims are Black, it's about personal responsibility. This train is never late.
@traceylross
The amount of energy black Americans are having to spend right now repeatedly explaining how much more difficult their lives are is draining beyond expression. Just say you don’t believe us and be done with it.
Eugene Scott
The reason Batman doesn’t cover his whole face is because he needs the police to know he’s white
Randall Otis
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One of the ways patriarchy works is by harassing and threatening women who speak in public into silence. Clearly my inbox and various social media forums are a mess, since right wing media called out their goons yesterday to chastise me for saying ‘fuck Trump supporters.’I found many fewer tweets about climate change and clean energy than usual:
Brittney Cooper @ProfessorCrunk
Ohio is opening offices and retail but not schools and daycares and all the women on my timeline are just like... uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Angie Schmitt
Imagine all those guys protesting in Minnesota today being upset about the government telling them what they can do with their bodies. Bless their hearts.
Randy Bryce @IronStache
Probably the best thing about wearing a mask every time I’m in public is men don’t ask me to smile.
The Volatile Mermaid @OhNoSheTwitnt
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Business as usual is a doomsday machine.There were also many fewer about livable cities and sustainable transportation:
Alex Steffen
When a tree or human or any natural organism reaches full adult size and stops growing we call it "maturity." We would never call it "stagnation". That we routinely use the latter term to describe the economy shows that we have no plan, no end in mind... just perpetual expansion.
Jason Hickel
This Earth Day, remember that it’s not the Earth that we’ll lose to the Climate Crisis — it’s every aspect of our way of life and all the things we take for granted, including our actual lives. The coronavirus has exposed how incredibly vulnerable our society is. Learn from it.
Brent Toderian
With cars now sequestered in garages, air quality around the world has gone through the roof. In March, researchers at Columbia University calculated that carbon monoxide emissions in New York City, mostly coming from vehicles, fell by 50 percent.
WIRED
Days after Harvard researchers released preliminary results of a study showing higher coronavirus death rates in areas with high particulate air pollution, the Trump administration rejected stronger air quality standards to curb deadly soot.
InsideClimate News
"A single cruise ship emits daily pollution equal to a million cars. A passenger’s carbon footprint triples in size when taking a cruise."
@BillLindeke
As cities and states begin to report just who exactly is being hit hardest by coronavirus, health experts are seeing a common refrain: The communities being most impacted by the virus are the same communities most vulnerable to climate change.
InsideClimate News
Today I am ordering that coal oil and gas must shelter in place effective immediately. For everyone's safety.
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin
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So much emphasis on density, not enough emphasis on the fact that we actually outlaw putting stores and offices (the things people need to access) near their homes. Even if density was held constant, we could do a lot to resolve some of the transportation problems we’ve created re suburbanization just but mixing some retail in the existing form, imo.There were just a couple about education:
Angie Schmitt
Tired: Bicycling is the New Golf
Wired: Bicycles are the New Toilet Paper
Peter Flax
Over the past decade, SUVs and pickups have become much bigger with 0-60 speeds on some luxury models less than five seconds. No "plan" needed for that development on city streets. But a bike with a battery can now go a consistent 15 mph? We need a plan for that!
Aaron W. Gordon
Holy crap. California is saving $40 million PER DAY from all the car crashes that aren't happening. $1 billion saved just since shelter-in-place. Car culture costs us so much more than we're even aware.
@mateosfo (link in the original)
A data point to consider for those predicting the end of cities:
Staten Island has the highest rate of infection of all NYC boroughs.
Manhattan has the lowest.
There’s a lot more to this story than density.
Kasey Klimes
"Public transit is not nearly as expensive as we think it is when you compare it to how much money we put into excess capacity for cars. We’ve been building excess capacity for cars for over 50 years and it’s been shockingly expensive."
@mateosfo
Lots of predictions that pandemic will spell the end of urbanism. How much more virus spread happens between the hundreds of people in this suburban Costco compared to the local grocery or hardware store? The inconvenience of making Costco safe (huge lines) could change habits.
Brent Bellamy
Very telling that many cities see the solution to crowded parks as closing the parks, whereas they see the solution to crowded roads as building more roads.
Marcel Moran
Cities are not loud. Cars are loud.
John Riecke
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If you honestly believe that a school can maintain a 6-foot distance between everyone at all times, then you are not qualified to comment on what schools should do.The pandemic shed new light on income and wealth inequality, poverty, and a better way to organize an economy:
Speech Autist
The whole idea of shopping for a school like you’re buying a car or something is kinda bad. We start off the whole discussion from the wrong place.
Angie Schmitt
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The shame of 2020 America, revealed by COVID-19, is that, with the stock market at all time high and billionaires richer than ever, many people didn't earn enough to have ANY savings. They lived paycheck-to-paycheck, with big debts. Now, jobless, they're lined up at food pantries.And — oh, yeah, there's an election coming this fall and a Democrat running:
David Halperin
Individual citizens don't own anything except through laws that are enacted and enforced by the state, and pre-tax income has no special moral significance. (Two weeks later and people are still getting mad at me for this take, but in my view, this is actually a call for pragmatism when it comes to property rights. Since they’re socially and legally constructed, we should just choose the arrangement that leads to the best outcomes.)
James Medlock
Every state is going to be a fiscal mess in 2021 and will be firing enormous number of workers and cutting services, which will extend the total economic misery in scale and duration. This happened in 2009/2010 as well and the GOP pushed austerity in response.
Chris Hayes
Poverty isn’t a static thing, people are constantly falling in and out of it, and over a ten year period, 40% of people experienced at least 1 year of poverty
James Medlock
“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.” ― Ursula K. Le Guin
Drew Dellinger
It really would be great to see patents debated as the major policy issue they are. I think the problem is two-fold. It is too simple for many policy wonks to want to deal with and Pharma would kill to protect their government-granted patent monopolies. Of course every country should just issue a compulsory license so that the [COVID-19 treatment drug] can be sold at near generic prices. We would never do it because our government feels strongly about redistributing money from ordinary people to drug companies. very few people, including economist-type people, realize how much income is redistributed upward through government granted patent monopolies. It is in the neighborhood of $400 billion a year (5 times the food stamp budget) for prescription drugs alone
Dean Baker
It would so refreshing to hear just one politician argue that patents were anti-competitive, anti-free market corporate communism. A few posters with the Sacklers as the Russian Politburo and Martin Skreli as Stalin.
@TBApple
So cool to see the billionaires giving back in a time of crisis. Why don't we make this a regular thing? Perhaps annual? Their 'donation' could even be based on a percentage of their income. Maybe the IRS could oversee it?
Public Citizen
It's very telling that people are so surprised by economic stats like "3 out of 4 individuals make less than $75k/year." This country is set up to discourage class consciousness/solidarity, and one of the key ways it works is misinformation about how much money we all make.
@BostonJerry
I just cannot get over the fact that the universe has foisted upon us the perfect illustration of literally every failing of capitalism and people are still like we can't be communists cuz there won't be enough types of soup
Megan Amram
I hope this pandemic is the official end of the 5 day, 40 hour work week. It was never sustainable and a fixture from a totally different era.
@VivoTranquil0
The more we learn about this crisis, the more it becomes clear that the only way through is with massive redistribution of income and wealth. Governments around the world will have to face up to this fact, or face potential social and political breakdown.
Jason Hickel
I don't see how globalization comes out of this crisis. A national leadership would have to be stunningly naive not to re-establish policies guaranteed to preserve domestic producers in strategically-important industries.
Joseph N. Cohen
Wouldn’t it be crazy if there was a large external shock to our extractive capitalist system that proved without a shadow of a doubt that our entire economy runs on the labor of the working class, not the unseen and immeasurable genius of plucky billionaires?
@fightdenial
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Incredible that people reply to Biden [sexual assault] story with "What about Trump's history of assault?" I want to talk about Trump's assaults. I want to be able to make it a big issue in election. Can't do that effectively if the Democrat is a rapist. Need a nominee who hasn't done same thingThere was also some general criticisms of Republicans:
Nathan J Robinson
A new poll reveals 69% of registered voters support #MedicareForAll. The poll also showed 46% of Republican voters supporting Medicare for All alongside 88% of Democrats and 68% of Independents.
69 percent of Americans want Medicare for All, including 46 percent of Republicans, new poll says
It turns out that the coronavirus epidemic hasn't really increased support for Medicare for All, but it'll still play a role in the upcoming presidential election.
Alexandra Halaby
Many Bernie supporters are not Democratic voters, they're activists and working class independents - part of the 40% of the country that doesn't normally vote. So if you are intent on them voting for Biden then your job is to get Biden's campaign to appeal to them.
David Doel
Biden supporters, I share your objective of ousting Trump. It's just not my only objective. I also want to decrease massive wealth inequality, get money out of politics, get healthcare as a human right, and stop irreversible climate breakdown. Instead of demanding that other people vote a certain way - which is as simple-minded as it is counterproductive - I suggest you get your candidate and your party to move toward these popular positions. Otherwise if he loses in November it's on you.
Peter Kalmus
Every major health insurance company's stock price surged after Bernie dropped out of the race. I feel sick.
@marx_attacks_
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Essentially what [Republicans have] done is segregated themselves into rural/suburban communities full of fearful, paranoid, politically and religiously propagandized people who are self medicating with drugs, guns and fake news then turning to violence/murder/suicide as a last resort. The ONLY solution is VOTING OUT the GOP. We can’t change their voters’ core beliefs, but we can OUTVOTE them on Election Day to protect ourselves from their insatiable nihilism. They may have a death wish but they aren’t entitled to take us down with them when they go.And finally, we get a break with the best of the rest:
Propane Jane™ @docrocktex26
I am getting the feeling that the GOP is trying to suck out as much money from our coffers as they possibly can for themselves and their friends, before giving up the ghost and leaving Dems with the worst possible debacle to clean up. Anyone else feeling that way?
Pam Keith
You'd think the United States being the failure of the world on this would bother someone in the Republican party.
@Rschooley
Huh. Who could have guessed that we shouldn’t elect people who don’t believe in government to run the government?
Adam Miller
To desperately try to prop up the market Fed is buying anything and everything, even junk bonds. But the GOP still doesn’t want to agree to the Democrats proposal to cancel federal student debt...most of which the government already owns! It’s time: #CancelStudentDebt
Alexis Goldstein
W. was a terrible president. 9/11, Iraq War, Katrina, '08 crash. Perhaps it's useful to praise him to diminish Trump, but I don't think so. The party opposed to good government shouldn't be allowed to govern.
David M. Perry @Lollardfish
Private Equity firms originated when a group of businessmen realized that they could make more money dismantling things as opposed to building things. The Reagan administration and its idea that “the market can do no wrong” gave cover to them.
Marcus Tullius
I can't believe conservatives convinced so many people that the federal government, which *prints currency*, needs to have a "balanced budget." It is absurd on its face -- a real testament to the power of money, organization, and repetition repetition repetition.
David Roberts
Are white people done voting Republican yet?
@lacadri34
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Heard hysterical giggling from my 8-year-old’s room. Sent [my partner] to investigate, because hysterical giggles often = trouble. Twitter, he was reading the first Calvin andHobbes collection, that I had slipped into his room long ago and have just been waiting for him to discover.
bag of moons
learning that we call it horseradish bc in german it was meerrettich (sea radish because they grew by the sea) and the English mispronounced it as “mareradish” and then we gender-neutraled it to horseradish; i assumed it just meant “wow that’s a big kinda radish, big as a horse”
Molly Priddy
I was just thinking about things that I've always enjoyed - like traveling and going out to eat regularly. And then I thought about all of the people in this world who have never been able to enjoy those things, and for whom a meal of any kind is viewed with true gratitude. If I never step on an airplane again; if I never eat in another restaurant again, I've been fortunate beyond measure and beyond my deserts. To have health; to have food, clothing, shelter; to have love - that is more than enough.
Jason Segedy
It fills me with constant rage—RAGE—that there is important reporting that needs to be done, no shortage of people to do it, no shortage of people who want to read it, no time more urgent for it—and the shitty, avoidable economic structure of capitalism keeps it from happening
Dr. Steven W. Thrasher
Nothing says “divorce” like a tandem bike on Craig’s List
@rawales2
It's nuts that Americans don't regard the Confederate flag with the same degree of revulsion that Germans regard the Swastika.
Seth Cotlar
If stability was illusory, perhaps economic man, survival of the fittest, and rugged individualism were too.
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin
I believe we have created a society that's based primarily on critique. Some critique is always needed in any society, but we focus far too much of our energy and intelligence on critique. We need to shift back toward creation.
@Noahpinion
One of the pettiest pleasures I will admit to is parents who were smug to me about their first baby being a good sleeper or a good eater or whatever because they “put them on a schedule” or “didn’t give in to pickiness” only to have a second child and realize that all is chaos
Anne Thériault
project “grow more lettuce from the end of some store lettuce” is going great:
@RubyGraceLevine
seems like a good time to just let everyone know that the history of White Castle -- and its distinct sterile white porcelain and stainless steel interior -- is that it was founded in the wake of the 1918 flu pandemic and Upton Sinclair's expose of the meat packing industry.
slavin_fpo
2020 sounded like the most futuristic year and now we’re all like “I traded my neighbor a handkerchief for some carrots”
Jess Dweck
When I get overwhelmed with the bigness and sadness and sheer stupidity and waste and meanness of the connected crises we are experiencing I take that as a signal that it's time to try to find something small and tangible to do that fits with the future I want to live into.
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin
The left needs to go to war for voting rights like we do for universal healthcare. Because we only get the latter with the former.
David M. Perry @Lollardfish
We need a Civil Service Modernization Act. Ain't no damn reason the IRS is functioning on zillion-year-old technology. Could be folded in with anti-corruption too. And ideally strike a blow against the tax prep services.
@csilverandgold
as I always point out, social theorists in the US and UK make gods out of Deleuze, Foucault, etc, but no way would those guys have listed two minutes in pretty much any US or UK academic department
David Graeber
There's gonna be two people left on Earth, one creating a sports page and the other one reading it
Chris Steller
I say this a lot, but if you're not OK with the possibility of having a disabled kid, you probably shouldn't have kids.
Sara Luterman
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