�Թϲ�����

Mitch McConnell is in a tough spot. Many of his fellow Senate Republicans are balking at the additional spending and debt required by the HEALS Act, the pandemic relief bill that is the successor to last spring’s CARES Act. He could appeal to some Democrats for support, but that would require more spending, further eroding GOP support and possibly triggering a showdown with the White House. And all of this is before negotiations with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. So what’s a Senate majority leader to do? The only way to bridge this divide may be to bolster the bill with pro-growth proposals that can win over Senate Republicans without any spending cuts that will make it impossible to reach a deal with House Democrats. (Karl W. Smith, 7/28)

At the moment, Congress has two tasks more important than any others: Providing the resources and leadership needed to defeat the COVID-19 pandemic, and helping the country climb out of the deep recession that the pandemic triggered. Sadly, the long-awaited coronavirus relief package that Senate Republicans released this week falls far short on both fronts. The need for a fourth major congressional effort became clear not long after states abandoned their stay-at-home orders, leading infection rates to skyrocket. The one thing lawmakers should have been able to agree on immediately is a major increase in funding for testing and contact tracing so that states could better identify where and how the disease was spreading. But in addition to being many days late, Senate Republicans are coming to the table many dollars short on this front. Its proposal includes $16 billion for testing, compared to the $75 billion recommended by a number of healthcare analysts and public health experts. (7/28)

Amid the post-lockdown flare-ups, it’s worth revisiting Sweden, which has been widely criticized for never closing businesses and primary schools. Cases have been falling over the past month after a modest uptick in June due to more testing. Only 27 patients have died in the last week, fewer per capita than New York. America’s liberals cite Sweden’s relatively high death rate (56 per 100,000 compared to 45.1 in France and 35.8 in the Netherlands). But two-thirds of deaths have been among those over age 80, and 97% never received intensive-care treatment. Blame Sweden’s socialized health system, which rationed treatment for the elderly even though ICUs were never overwhelmed. The lesson is that the virus won’t disappear anytime soon. Governments may have to impose some business and social restrictions to protect hospitals and the vulnerable. But lockdowns aren’t a miracle cure, and their collateral damage is too severe to sustain. (7/28)

When people ask me about my mood these days, I tell them that I feel like I’m a reporter for The Pompeii Daily News in A.D. 79, and I’m sitting in the foothills of Mount Vesuvius and someone just walked up and asked, “Hey, do you feel a rumbling?” Do I ever. The summer of 2020 could be remembered as one of those truly important dates in American history. Everywhere you turn you see parents who don’t know where or if their kids will go to school this fall, renters who don’t know when or if they will be evicted, unemployed who don’t know what if any safety net Congress will put under them, businesses that don’t know how or if they can hold on another day — and none of us who know whether we’ll be able to vote in November. That is a lot of hot, molten anxiety building up beneath our economy, society, schools and city streets — just waiting to blow the top off our country — because we have so failed at managing the coronavirus. (Thomas L. Friedman, 7/28)

President Donald Trump's return as the face of the Covid-19 response has deteriorated into a misinformation masterclass that explains why America is in such a mess. In an extraordinary performance Tuesday, as the daily death toll again soared toward 1,000 and the number of Americans dead approached a tragic milestone of 150,000, Trump again foreswore the most basic requirements of national leadership in a crisis. (Stephen Collinson, 7/29)

Against the backdrop of countless news stories about the covid-19 pandemic, much of the coverage from elite media centers in New York and Washington can be boiled down to this theme: Republicans generally and President Trump specifically have done a horrible job managing the novel coronavirus while Democrats have fought valiantly to turn the tide where they hold power. Headlines on this newspaper’s website this past weekend focused on Florida — “Coronavirus ravaged Florida, as Ron DeSantis sidelined scientists and followed Trump” — and imperiled Republicans in the Senate — “As pandemic limits scrutiny, GOP fears lesser-known Democratic candidates will steamroll to Senator majority.” (Florida became the state with the second-highest number of cases over the weekend, surpassing New York.) The awful metrics of covid-19 deaths tell a different story, according to data kept current by Johns Hopkins University. (Hugh Hewitt, 7/28)

You can’t take Texas for granted this time. We know you don’t put much stock in independent polls, Mr. President, but a consensus is growing that Texans are losing confidence that you are the person to lead the nation out of the canyon that you and your administration have helped dig. A Morning Consult poll released Monday night shows presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden leading 47-45 in Texas less than 100 days from the Nov. 3 election. An average of five recent polls shows the race as a dead heat in a reliably Republican state that you won by just 9 points in 2016. The signs are pointing to a level of disenchantment in the state that can’t be addressed by a photo-op on an oil rig. The hashtag #TrumpKillsTexas began trending on Tuesday just ahead of the presidential visit. (7/29)

(Mayor Lori) Lightfoot’s reasoning for a self-quarantine rule is that Chicago needs to do all it can to keep control of the outbreak, but that becomes harder when outbreaks in other states are worsening due to lax social distancing. Wisconsin is reporting a surge in COVID-19 cases and the state has no mask-wearing requirement. The federal government has placed Wisconsin on its “red zone” list of states where the virus is spreading aggressively.“ The primary goal is education,” Chicago Public Health Department Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady told reporters Tuesday about the Wisconsin rule. Chicago officials want to make people aware of the risks and urge them to take extra steps to stay healthy and keep others safe. Exactly. The pandemic — deadly as it can be, especially to people with health issues — won’t go gently into that good night. It needs to be wrestled to the ground and pinned there until a vaccine can be developed and widely disseminated. (7/28)

If the virus jumped to humans through a series of human-animal encounters in the wild or in wet markets, as Beijing has claimed, we would likely have seen evidence of people being infected elsewhere in China before the Wuhan outbreak. We have not. The alternative explanation, a lab escape, is far more plausible. We know the Wuhan Institute of Virology was using controversial “gain of function” techniques to make viruses more virulent for research purposes. A confidential 2018 State Department cable released this month highlighting the lab’s alarming safety record should heighten our concern. Suggesting that an outbreak of a deadly bat coronavirus coincidentally occurred near the only level 4 virology institute in all of China—which happened to be studying the closest known relative of that exact virus—strains credulity. (Jamie Metzl, 7/28)

According to the Mayo Clinic, endometriosis is “an often painful disorder in which tissue similar to the tissue that normally lines the inside of [the] uterus — the endometrium — grows outside [the] uterus.” Not so, says Stella Immanuel, a Houston pediatrician and spiritual leader of Fire Power Ministries, a pronouncedly non-orthodox church. Endometriosis and other potentially dangerous gynecological conditions are the residue of sexual intercourse with demons, Immanuel teaches. (David Von Drehle, 7/28)

President Donald Trump's aides almost got him to become a serious leader in this age of pandemic. After they showed him evidence that voters in "our states" (Republican ones, that is) were falling ill and dying -- and that this wasn't good for him politically -- Trump resumed pandemic press briefings and even let himself be photographed wearing a face mask. Alas, the New Trump was not to be. (Michael D'Antonio, 7/28)

As the confirmed death toll from the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S. approaches 150,000, President Trump continues to mismanage the federal response. The president gets tested for COVID-19 frequently — unlike the rest of us — and everyone who works closely with him is tested. But he has only been seen in public once wearing a mask (in a hospital). Trump has been seen ignoring social distancing rules, criticized his own health experts for not allowing faster reopening of businesses, spoken at large gatherings of thousands of people in Oklahoma and South Dakota, shared uninformed and downright dangerous ideas (using household disinfectants on people), and seems determined to open schools no matter what. (Jessica Tarlov, 7/28)

For the last four months, I have been fighting two battles. One against a well-known threat to New York City and the world, Covid-19, and the other against a less visible threat to immigrants nationwide, the systematic attempts by the Trump administration to dismantle Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) -- the program that protects Dreamers, undocumented immigrants like me who came to the United States as children, from deportation. (JC Alejaldre, 7/28)