Wisconsin supreme court strikes down state's stay-at-home order – as it happened

Live reporting on the coronavirus in the US continues on Thursday’s blog:

• Republicans released a list of officials of high-ranking Obama administration members allegedly involved in the “unmasking” of retired general Michael Flynn, in intelligence reports dating from the presidential transition. Joe Biden, former ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, and former FBI director James Comey were on the list. Democrats criticized the move as a ploy to distract from Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
• A Republican took back the California congressional seat vacated by Katie Hill. Mike Garcia will replace Hill, who resigned amid scandal in 2019 after securing the first Democratic victory in the district in decades. The race gained national attention due to the circumstances around Hill’s departure and because Donald Trump waded into the debate about how to conduct fair elections amid a pandemic.
• The Wisconsin supreme court struck down the governor’s extension of stay-at-home orders through March. Republican legislators challenged the state’s Democratic governor’s decision to keep schools and businesses closed in order to limit the spread of disease, raising concerns about the economic toll. Lawmakers and the governor have until next week to come up with an alternative plan to mitigate the coronavirus crisis.
• New Mexico’s government mandated that all residents wear masks while allowing many retailers and faith centers to reopen as long as they adhere to certain safety measures. Retailers will have to keep the number of customers to 25% of the fire code limits and ensure that employees are wearing masks.
• Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon and Rocky Mountain national park will reopen later this month. The reopenings will be partial and phased according to the National Parks Service.

14 May 202019.35 EDT

Analysis: Trump deepened 'Obamagate' conspiracy theory with Biden unmasking move

David Smith

Donald Trump has ratcheted up his “Obamagate” conspiracy theory to implicate Joe Biden and other former White House officials in what critics say is a desperate attempt to distract from the coronavirus pandemic.

Ric Grenell, the acting director of national intelligence, on Wednesday sent Congress a list of high-ranking Obama administration members he alleged were involved in the “unmasking” of retired general Michael Flynn, in intelligence reports dating from the presidential transition.

Alumni of Barack Obama’s staff gave the move short shrift.

“Sideshow to distract from the shitshow,” tweeted David Plouffe, a former Obama campaign manager.

“Rather talk about unmasking than masks,” observed Matthew Miller, an ex-justice department spokesperson.

Trump’s aggressive tactic looks set to deepen fears that he will stop at nothing to damage Obama and his vice-president, Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

It also provides a counter-narrative to criticism of Trump’s handling of the pandemic, which has killed more than 80,000 in the US. Fox News and Fox Business have mentioned Flynn and the FBI more frequently than the virus in recent days, according to data compiled by the Internet Archive and analysed by GDELT.

14 May 202019.17 EDT

Oliver Laughland

Former US congressman and Democratic US Senate candidate for Texas, Beto O’Rourke, has just hosted an online Q+A with leaders of the Students for Biden group.

The meeting, hosted on Zoom, saw O’Rourke talk about the importance of the youth vote in the November election, citing his 2018 senate run against Ted Cruz, which mobilized thousands of young people and bring O’Rourke within a small, 200,000 vote margin of claiming victory.

O’Rourke, who endorsed Biden just before the Texas primary on Super Tuesday in early March, ambitiously predicted that the former VP would win Texas in November and urged Democrats to prioritize the state along with other established swing states in the midwest.

“This will be the first since 1976 since a Democrat has won Texas,” he said, describing Trump as “the most corrupt president in history”.

The former congressman, who also ran a short and unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, argued that Donald Trump would do “everything in his power to steal” the election. He said losing Texas would be a “cataclysmic event for the Republican party” and would signal categorically that Trump had lost.

The online event did not permit questions from reporters.

Everyone in New Mexico will be required to wear a face mask in public, starting this weekend, the state’s governor Michelle Lujan Grisham announced.

Retailers and faith centers will be allowed to reopen, as long as they keep occupancy to 25 percent of the fire code capacity, she said. Employees will have to wear masks and maintain physical distancing whenever possible, Lujan Grisham said. But these new guidelines will not apply in the northwest portion of the state, where “the risk of spread still remains too high,” she said.

Wholesalers and entertainment venues like movie theatres and concert halls will remain closed, for now.

The state’s highest court ruled that governor Tony Evers overstepped his authority by extending Wisconsin’s stay-at-home order through the end of May.

The 4-3 decision, written by the court’s conservative justices, chips away at Evers authority to slow the spread of coronavirus, and will force the Democratic governor to work with the Republican legislature as the state continues to grapple with the outbreak.

The sheltering orders will remain in place until May 20 to give lawmakers time to develop a new coronavirus plan.

Evers issued a stay-at-home order in March, and extended it in late April. Republicans asked the Supreme Court to block the extension, arguing that move required legislative approval.

Nearly seven out of 10 Wisconsin residents support the governor’s “safer at home” order, according to a Marquette University Law School poll. But Republican lawmakers in the state worried about the economic impacts of an extended shutdown.

GOB lawmakers have yet to offer an alternative outbreak response plan.The GOP has not offered any alternative plans. The state’s chamber of commerce proposed allowing all the state’s businesses to open at once, while asking high-risk establishments to take some safety measures.

But top health officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, have warned against reopening too quickly.

Coronavirus could sweep through camps where firefighting crews are stationed, ready to fight wildfires, according to a federal document obtained by the Associated Press.

From the AP:

The U.S. Forest Service’s draft risk assessment predicts that even in a best-case scenario — with social distancing followed and plenty of tests and protective equipment available — nearly two dozen firefighters could be infected with COVID-19 at a camp with hundreds of people who come in to combat a fire that burns for months.

The worst-case scenario? More than 1,000 infections.

Forest Service officials have declined to answer questions about the document other than saying it’s outdated and being redone. They didn’t immediately respond to additional questions Wednesday.

“The report is being reviewed and updated with the most current data and is not ready to share,” the agency said Monday in an email.

The Forest Service declined to release a copy of the draft or say what changes are being made. The AP obtained the document from an official who has access to it and didn’t want to be named.

After a bitter political battle complicated and constrained by the pandemic, Garcia’s win was a blow for Democrats who in 2018 had secured the suburban Los Angeles district for the first time in since 1990. But the candidates will soon have a rematch. Garcia will serve only five months before the seat is up for a vote again in November.

In the election based almost entirely on mailed-in ballots amid stay-at-home orders due to the coronavirus pandemic, the full results likely won’t be clear for days. Officials will accept ballots postmarked by election day, even if they arrive up to three days later.

Special elections are usually plagued with low voter turnout, though early numbers indicated that more people voted in this election than expected. All registered voters were automatically mailed a ballot, making this election a test case for November. California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, recently announced that all Californians would have the option to mail in their ballots during the general election, amid uncertainty over how long the coronavirus crisis will limit people’s ability to safely leave their homes.

But it is wise to avoid projecting too much about the November elections based on this race, said Paul Mitchell, with the campaign research firm Political Data Inc. “To do so would be like predicting the championship based on the results of two-on-two basketball game before the finals,” Mitchell said. He expects the same district will have 80% turnout in November, compared with less than half of that in the special election.

As victory appeared assured in California’s special congressional election, Mike Garcia said his campaign’s “message of lower taxes and ensuring we don’t take liberal Sacramento dysfunction to Washington prevailed”.

This is Garcia’s first time taking public office. He ran unencumbered by a voting record, on a typically conservative platform. Though Democrats tried to paint him as a mini-Trump, Garcia more closely aligns with a new guard of young, moderate Republicans the party has sent out to woo the typically blue state. “California Republicans have to learn to adapt to the local climate,” said Bill Whalen, a Republican campaign strategist based in Sacramento. Garcia’s victory may not guarantee he’ll win a rematch against Smith in November, but it does give him a leg up, Whalen said.

View image in fullscreen

Garcia’s opponent Christy Smith, a state assembly member, lost despite earning the endorsements of Barack Obama and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Hill’s unpopularity in the district, post-scandal, was a hurdle. Prior to the election, the Cook Political Report changed its assessment of the race from “lean Democratic” to a “tossup” as the pandemic shut down traditional campaigning through door-knocking and town halls. Despite the challenges of campaigning, Democrats are still hopeful about Smith’s chances in the general election. “The electorate will be very different then,” said Rose Kapolczynski, a Democratic strategist based in Los Angeles. “And I still think Smith will have a strong chance.”

Joe Biden’s campaign has responded to Republicans’ list of former Obama officials believed to be involved in efforts to “unmask” ousted national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Biden along with other officials, including the former FBI director James Comey and the former director of national intelligence James Clapper were included in the list that Trump’s acting director of national intelligence Richard Grenell sent Republican senators.

“These documents simply indicate the breadth and depth of concern across the American government – including among career officials – over intelligence reports of Michael Flynn’s attempts to undermine ongoing American national security policy through discussions with Russian officials or other foreign representatives,” said Andrew Bates, a Biden campaign spokesperson. He continued:

Importantly, none of these individuals could have known Flynn’s identity beforehand. These documents have absolutely nothing to do with any FBI investigation and they confirm that all normal procedures were followed – any suggestion otherwise is a flat out lie. What’s more, it’s telling that these documents were selectively leaked by Republicans abusing their congressional powers to act as arms of the Trump campaign after having them provided by a partisan official installed for this very purpose. The only people with questions to answer are Grenell, Sen Grassley, and Sen Johnson for their gross politicization of the intelligence process.

The coronavirus that causes Covid-19 could become endemic like HIV, the World Health Organization has said, warning against any attempt to predict how long it would keep circulating and calling for a “massive effort” to counter it. The organization’s emergencies expert, Mike Ryan, said:

It is important to put this on the table: This virus may become just another endemic virus in our communities, and this virus may never go away.

I think it is important we are realistic and I don’t think anyone can predict when this disease will disappear. I think there are no promises in this and there are no dates. This disease may settle into a long problem, or it may not be.

However, he said the world had some control over how it copes with the disease, although this would take a “massive effort” even if a vaccine was found – a prospect he described as a “massive moonshot”.

More than 100 potential vaccines are being developed, including several in clinical trials, but experts have underscored the difficulties of finding vaccines that are effective against coronaviruses.

Ryan noted that vaccines exist for other illnesses, such as measles, that have not been eliminated.

13 May 202017.46 EDT

Hannah Devlin

Are children less susceptible to coronavirus?

There is now a wealth of evidence that children generally experience milder symptoms when they are infected – although there have been rare cases of children becoming seriously ill or even dying. However, it is not yet clear whether they have a lower chance of catching Covid-19. Although fewer children have been picked up in national testing programs, this could be due to fewer being tested. During the early phase of the epidemic in Europe, adult travelers played a dominant role in seeding infections, which also meant, purely for circumstantial reasons, that children would have played a less significant role in spreading infections.

Studies on this question give a mixed picture. One analysis, in the Lancet Infectious Diseases, of households with confirmed Covid-19 in Shenzhen, China, found that children younger than 10 were just as likely as adults to get infected. However, there is other evidence from South Korea, Italy and Iceland suggesting lower infection rates among children. Some of the difference could also be down to differences in social mixing.

Why do children react differently to adults?

For many infectious diseases, there is a U-shaped risk curve, with the youngest and oldest in society being most vulnerable. Covid-19 does not follow this pattern – even toddlers and newborn babies typically only experience mild symptoms. One theory is that children’s lungs might contain fewer of the ACE2 receptors that the virus uses to enter cells. To confirm this, researchers would need to study tissue samples from children. Another possibility is that children’s immune systems respond in a more optimal way to the virus – mounting a strong enough response to get rid of the infection, but without going into overdrive and flooding the body with inflammatory proteins, which are known to sometimes cause problems in adult patients.

Are children invisible transmitters?

Asymptomatic transmission is known to play an important role in the spread of Covid-19 – studies have shown that in general people appear to be at their most infectious in the day or so before symptoms start. This raises the question of whether children are silent spreaders of the virus. A recent German study, which compared the viral load of nearly 4,000 people aged from one to 100 years old, added weight to this idea. It found that regardless of age, people appeared to shed a similar level of virus, suggesting they could be equally infectious. However, a caveat is that the study did not measure real-life transmission in children. As schools reopen and community transmission is tracked closely in some European countries, a clearer answer on this is likely to emerge in the coming months.

Per White House press pool reporters, the president also called Dr Anthony Fauci’s message yesterday cautioning against opening schools too soon “unacceptable”.

“I was surprised by his answer,” Trump said. “To me it’s not an acceptable answer especially when it comes to schools.”

Yesterday, the top public health official contradicted Trump, who urged schools and businesses to reopen and said the White House has set a target of having 100m vaccine doses by the autumn. Fauci disputed that timeline, indicating that neither a vaccine nor treatment could be developed and distributed in time to facilitate the reopening of schools in the fall.

“I think they should open the schools, absolutely,” the president said. “I think they should. It’s had very little impact on young people. And I think that if you’re an instructor, if you’re a teacher, a professor over a certain age like let’s say 65 or maybe even if you want to be conservative, 60, perhaps you want to stay out for a little while longer. But I think you should absolutely open the schools. Our country has got to get back and it’s got to get back as soon as possible, and I don’t consider our country coming back if the schools are closed.”

Hi there, it’s Maanvi Singh – blogging from the west coast.

Donald Trump told reporters that he’s missing Mike Pence.

Trump was speaking with the officials from North Dakota and Colorado in the White House Cabinet Room, where reporters were also present.

Here’s what has happened so far today:

• Republicans released a list of officials, including Joe Biden, who “unmasked” – a term used to describe the routine process of revealing an individual who took part of a conversation subject to surveillance – former national security advisor Michael Flynn.
• A Democrat candidate in a special House election in California conceded to her Republican opponent, flipping the district from blue to red.
• Though the politics of the day may suggest a feeling of normalcy, coronavirus is still in the news. Yellowstone National Park announced that it will experiment with a partial reopen.
• The New York attorney general announced an investigation into whether NYPD has been equally enforcing social distancing measures across the city after reports of racial discrepancies in arrests.

A Republican candidate just won a special election in California’s 25th Congressional District. The House district was formerly represented by Democrat Katie Hill, who stepped down after she was accused of having a relationship with a staffer and nude photos of her were published online.

Democrat candidate Christy Smith, a former school board member, conceded this afternoon to Mike Garcia, a former Navy pilot and defense contractor. Garcia will serve the rest of Hill’s term, which goes until the end of the year, and will have to run again in November.

The district in Southern California has flipped between Democrat and Republican over the last few years. The district voted for Republican Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election, but voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. Hill took the seat of a Republican incumbent in the 2018 midterm elections.

Whether this special election can be used as a litmus test for the possibilities of what’s to come in November is unclear as special elections tend to have lower turnout.