Coronavirus US live: Obama criticizes Trump in virtual graduation speech

The results of more than 35,000 Covid-19 tests ordered by a Florida-based health care system and performed by a third-party lab are unreliable, the company said Saturday. The Associated Press reports:

According to AdventHealth, a faith-based health care system, the situation has created unacceptable delays. AdventHealth didnt name the third-party lab but said it had terminated its contract with the lab.

The tests were a mixture of positive and negative results, and some had been at the lab for a while. About 25,000 of the unreliable tests were in the central Florida area.

AdventHealth president and CEO Terry Shaw said the company will notify patients who are impacted.

AdventHealth has 49 hospitals in nine states. Company spokeswoman Melanie Lawhorn said two of those states are joint venture systems and were not affected by the unreliable testing.

On Saturday, Florida’s department of health reported more than 600 new coronavirus cases in the past 24-hour period, lifting the overall count to 44,811. A total of 1,964 people have died from the virus, up 47 from Friday.

US swing states such as Michigan and Wisconsin helped bring Donald Trump to power in 2016. How they handle the pandemic may well be crucial at the presidential election this November too, writes my colleague David Smith.

Just as in the 2016, the swing states bring national trends into sharp focus. Democratic governors across the country have generally urged caution, particularly in major cities, citing concerns for public health from a virus that has killed more than 85,000 people in the US – more than any other country in the world.

But Republican governors have tended to err on the side of reopening faster, alarmed that more than 36m Americans have submitted unemployment claims since mid-March and retail sales dipped 16.4% last month. Southern states such as Georgia and Texas were among the first to allow shops and businesses to reopen.

“Vaccine or no vaccine, we’re back,” Trump said in the White House rose garden on Friday while announcing a major US drive to create a coronavirus vaccine.

Polls show Biden beating Trump in battleground states but Wendy Schiller, a political science professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, warns that he still faces political traps.

“The fundamental problem for the Democratic party is that in order to defeat Trump, they almost have to cheerlead for a bad economy and they also have to cheerlead for new [coronavirus] hotspots in swing states. It sounds gruesome, but really that’s so far what they’re banking on to beat Trump.

“And in this case, Trump is absolutely smarter than that and what he is offering, not only his base but voters in swing states, is hope. It’d actually be reminiscent, in a much less articulate way, of Ronald Reagan. He’s basically saying, ‘I got you to the promised land economically once, I will get you back to the promised land economically again’.

While a majority of North American thoroughbred tracks have been shuttered during the pandemic, Churchill Downs and Santa Anita Park resumed live racing on Saturday in what the Associated Press says could be a lifeline for owners and trainers with smaller barns who have been suffering without steady income.

“We’re seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, hopefully,” Maryland-based owner and trainer Linda Gaudet said from Kentucky, where she’s preparing for racing to return Saturday at Churchill Downs. “The owners and the trainers and the riders, they need to get back to work, make a living.”

A mix of government restrictions and positive Covid-19 results stopped racing in Kentucky, Maryland, New York, California and elsewhere in March, and Gaudet said “it’s been a long two months.” Racing without fans continued only at a handful of tracks, including Florida’s Gulfstream Park and Tampa Bay Downs and Arkansas’ Oaklawn Park.

Trainer Norm Casse recently said from Florida that as long as some tracks are running, he’s able to keep his operation going.

“I don’t think there’s probably an industry in the country that’s not affected by this in some way, shape or form,” Norm Casse said. “You take comfort in the fact that you know you’re not alone, that everybody’s going to be making sacrifices. Everybody probably stands to lose a little something from all of this and just be grateful to be in the position we were in to begin with.”

Some are in better position than others.

Deep-pocketed owners and big-time trainers like two-time Triple Crown winner Bob Baffert can handle the reduction in racing. It’s more concerning for the small businesses throughout the industry, from owners and trainers to jockeys, grooms and other employees.

“Those businesses don’t have the financial flexibility, perhaps the cash reserves, to weather this storm for longer than a month or two,” National Thoroughbred Racing Association president and CEO Alex Waldrop said. “If this extends past May into June or July, you’re going to see attrition. You’re going to see people who aren’t going to be able to remain viable business operations.”

Congressmen announces examination of watchdog firing by Trump

Representative Eliot Engel of New York, a Democrat and the chairman of the House foreign affairs committee (as well as a leading figure in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump at the start of the year), announced that the committee would be probing the firing last night of the State Department inspector general, Steve Linick.

In a statement, Engel said: “This firing is the outrageous act of a president trying to protect one of his most loyal supporters, the Secretary of State, from accountability. I have learned that the Office of the Inspector General had opened an investigation into Secretary Pompeo. Mr. Linick’s firing amid such a probe strongly suggests that this is an unlawful act of retaliation.

“This president believes he is above the law. As he systematically removes the official independent watchdogs from the Executive Branch, the work of the Committee on Foreign Affairs becomes that much more critical. In the days ahead, I will be looking into this matter in greater detail, and I will press the State Department for answers.

“I thank Mr. Linick for his distinguished service.”

Barack Obama is due to make a speech today during an online commencement for HBCUs. You can follow the speech here on a livestream.

David Smith has detailed Donald Trump’s obsession with his predecessor. As David puts it: “Observers point to a mix of anti-intellectualism, racism, vengeance and primitive envy over everything from Obama’s Nobel peace prize to the scale of his inauguration crowd and social media following.” You can read the full article below:

New Orleans is making its first steps towards reopening today. Cafes, restaurants and nail salons can serve customers but only those who have made reservations. Casinos, concert venues and bars are still closed, however, and people are still recommended to stay home when possible.

Louisiana has been badly affected by Covid-19 with 2,448 deaths recorded so far. However, fatalities have been falling for some time, prompting the partial reopening.

New Jersey, the state with the second most deaths from Covid-19 in the US, has reported some (relatively) positive news. In Saturday’s press briefing Governor Phil Murphy said hospitalization, ICU occupancy and ventilation rates were all down “dramatically” over the last few weeks.

However, on a more sobering note, he pointed out that more than 10,000 people have died from Covid-19 in New Jersey since the start of the pandemic. Only New York has reported more deaths. “We cannot let those we have lost ever just become a statistic,” wrote Murphy on Twitter. “They were real people, with real families, and with tremendous stories.” He also said that $2.8m has been allocated to mental health services during the pandemic.

Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau has announced an increase to the country’s child benefit, which was introduced four years ago, to help families struggling because of the pandemic.

“To all the moms and dads out there: This means that your monthly CCB payments will go up this July to help you pay for things like food, clothes, and activities you and your family can do together at home. And next week, you’ll get an extra one-time payment of $300 per child,” Trudeau wrote on Twitter.

“You should be able to focus on what matters most right now: raising your kids and keeping your family healthy. And by increasing your monthly CCB payments, we’re making sure that’s exactly what you can do,” he added.

Canada’s death toll has increased to 5,595, up from 5,499, as the country’s number of confirmed coronavirus infections has risen to 74,993 from 73,818, according to Reuters.

Los Angeles has become the first major US city to allow anyone with or without symptoms to be tested for Covid-19 as often as they want.

“So long as COVID-19 spreads, we have to scale up our response – and because this disease can be a silent killer, we have carefully built the capacity to get more people tested,” LA mayor Eric Garcetti said. “No one should have to wait, wonder, or risk infecting others. Don’t leave it to chance. Schedule a test.”

The AP reports:

A website to book a test was quickly swamped by residents in the nation’s second-largest city and the surrounding county who couldn’t get tested under more stringent guidelines and were concerned they were infected or could be asymptomatic carriers unwittingly exposing others.

But despite overbooking to compensate for a third of the people who didn’t show up, the city still has thousands of tests that aren’t being used each week, according to figures provided to the Associated Press by the mayor’s office.

“Wasted tests at a time when we still have insufficient testing is really unfortunate,” said Dr Eric Topol, head of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, a San Diego-based medical research partnership. “I applaud what they’re doing. The more people tested the better.”

Mayor Eric Garcetti’s vow to not let a test go to waste was the result of a partnership with a start-up company that developed an easy-to-administer test that doesn’t rely on scarce supplies. But it was a significant departure from stricter state criteria and guidelines set by the health department the city shares with the county to limit tests to those who need them most.

It comes at a time when expanded testing is a cornerstone of the state’s plan to ease its stay-at-home order and as Los Angeles County has become the epicenter of the virus outbreak and lags progress the rest of the state has shown.

While the virus was initially worse in Northern California, LA County, home to a quarter of the state’s nearly 40 million residents, now accounts for more than half the state’s deaths and a case count growing more rapidly than other major state counties. A large nursing home population, accounting for about half the county’s deaths, and densely housed poor people are two main reasons.

The Trump machine continues to hammer away at presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. Only days after launching a barrage of negative digital ads questioning the former vice-president’s mental acuity, Donald Trump Jr came in hot on Saturday morning with an Instagram post suggesting Biden is a pedophile.

The Triggered author went on to clarify, via Twitter, that it was only a joke.

New York governor Andrew Cuomo reports that hospitalizations, intubations and new coronavirus cases are continuing to trend downward across the state during his daily press briefing from Albany. He adds that 157 people died of Covid-19 in the last 24-hour period, pushing the overall toll past 22,400: “That number has been stubborn.”

Horse racing tracks across New York state will be permitted to open as of 1 June without fans. Same for Watkins Glen International race track in the Finger Lakes region, which clears the way for the Nascar race originally scheduled for August to take place.

“You want to increase economic activity as much as you can without spiking the infection rate,” he says.

Outside the state capitol building, anti-shutdown protesters are making themselves heard.

Ohio’s prison system will resume accepting inmates from county jails to begin their prison sentences beginning on Monday. The practice had been suspended in an effort to reduce overcrowding amid the coronavirus outbreak. The Associated Press reports:

On Monday, the state will take up to 50 inmates a day at the Correctional Reception Center in central Ohio. Authorities will hold inmates a minimum of 35 days before transferring them to facilities around the state based on their security level and other factors.

The agency needs to resume housing inmates as Ohio courts reopen, says JoEllen Smith, spokeswoman for the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.

“Reopening the reception process will be done in a gradual controlled manner while we continue to carefully monitor county jail operations,” Smith said.

The announcement comes even as positive cases of Covid-19 continue to rise in Ohio prisons along with inmate deaths. More than 4,500 inmates system-wide have tested positive or nearly one in 10. Some 60 inmates have died across seven institutions.

Donald Trump’s Friday night delights

The president has a habit – firing watchdogs when the fewest amount of eyeballs are on the news.

Last night it was the turn of Steve Linick at the State Department, although fortunately the Guardian’s world affairs editor, Julian Borger, rests with one eye open and filed this report in short order, which was launch into the public domain by my colleagues in Australia (the Guardian never sleeps, Mr President).

And the Washington Post has noted some of the other recent timings of inspectors general being axed under cover of darkness and relative Friday night torpor among news audiences.

Julian notes in his piece that, according to a Democratic congressional aide, just before his abrupt dismissal last night, Linick had opened an investigation into allegations that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had been using a political appointee at the state department to run personal errands for him and his wife, Susan.

Linick is to be replaced by Stephen Akard, a close ally of the vice-president, Mike Pence, from his home state of Indiana. A state department spokesperson said that Akard, who has been running the office for foreign missions, would take over immediately as acting inspector general.