You want schools to open? Close the bars.

Arizona is one of the current virus hot spots. Bill Scheel tweeted that “regular people are starting to boil over.” He included a photo of the obituary for Mark Anthony Urquiza and circled this part:

Mark, like so many others, should not have died from COVID-19. His death is due to the carelessness of the politicians who continue to jeopardize the health of brown bodies through a clear lack of leadership, refusal to acknowledge the severity of the crisis, and inability and unwillingness to have clear and decisive direction on how to minimize risk.

It goes on from there. His daughter also wrote a letter inviting Arizona Gov. Ducey to the burial.

One guy tweeted, “Shame to actually politicise someone's death.” To which Alam Morlock replied:

Man, it's almost as if political decisions created a systemic failure that contributed to his death or something.

Matt Zollerseitz added:

“Don’t politicize this death” is a phrase always spoken by people who know the politicians on their side are either incompetent or treacherous/corrupt, yet lack the moral courage to admit what’s actually happening.

Further down the thread Peter Conley responded:

My parents and I have different ideas on how we want our funerals held. My dad wants a traditional burial. My mom wants to be cremated. I want my lifeless corpse flung via catapult directly into the Rose Garden.

Political operative Roger Stone was given clemency just before going to prison. Justin Miller tweeted an explanation:

This is really simple: Trump ordered Roger Stone to work with Wikileaks. Stone lied to Congress about it, Trump lied to Mueller about it, and Stone protected Trump's lie by choosing prison over flipping. Now Trump has repaid him.

If you need more details Mark Sumner of Daily Kos provides it. The nasty guy wrote a statement justifying his actions. Sumner describes it this way:

Even for the most casual observer, the statement makes clear that Stone isn’t being given a pass because he didn’t commit what Trump calls “process-based crimes,” or even because Stone and Trump have known each other for decades.

Roger Stone’s sentence was commuted directly and openly as a finger in the eye to those who even attempted to investigate Trump, which the statement calls “out-of-control Mueller prosecutors.” The statement makes it astoundingly clear that Trump regards lying to investigators and obstructing justice as just part of the game. After all, if Mueller hadn’t been trying to find something on Stone, Stone wouldn’t have needed to lie. And yes, it says that.

Beau Willimon tweeted a thread about opening schools:

My brother is a 3rd grade teacher at Title I school serving a low-income community of color in a red state. Many of his students have serious pre-existing conditions. As do their parents. So does his wife. The notion that districts like his will be able to open safely is B.S....

Many state guidelines are suggested rather than required. Why only suggested? Because states facing severe deficits due to covid don’t have the budget to fund proper safety protocols. This would require MORE money at a time when they are cutting education budgets...
...
Returning to work at a school where there is no proper funding for safety protocols means placing himself, his wife, his students & their families at risk to keep a job for which he is getting paid less & less. This is the awful position Trump & DeVos are putting teachers in....

The threat of withholding federal funding is even more nefarious because it endangers Title I schools that need such funding most. It’s targeting the poor and it’s targeting people of color. These are communities that are MOST at risk during the pandemic...

Schools where rich kids attend have the means (or can get the means from their communities) to make schools in the time of the coronavirus work. Schools where poor (and mostly black) kids attend do not have the means. Forcing them back into classrooms would be a feast for the virus. Which sounds exactly what the nasty guy wants.

Andy Slavitt, a former Obama health care head, tweeted a thread:

COVID Update July 9: Donald Trump is insisting schools open or he’s threatening withhold federal money.

Forgive me if I’m not convinced of his commitment to kids.

Being pro-child should be a lay-up for a president. I mean, you can start a war but still call yourself the “education president.”

Until Trump it would have seemed you’d have to try pretty hard not to be pro-kid. Not anymore.

Slavitt notes the nasty guy wants to get rid of the ACA (Obamacare) which ensures millions of kids. Under his watch the kids get excellent training in hiding in closets. He has also put kids in cages. He’s definitely not pro-kid.

He (& his sidekick Betsy “3Rs” Devos) are aiming to strawman the other side into being reflexively anti-back to school.

Don’t think he can do that? Here goes.

You want to remove a Civil War stature? WELL, YOU’RE ANTI-HISTORY!

You want to look at the data before you send kids back to school? WELL, YOU’RE ANTI SCHOOL!

It’s a cynical ploy that no one should fall for.
...
One thing I’ve noticed is that while everyone wants kids in schools I don’t hear anyone close to the topic— administrators, teachers, mayors— say they have a plan.

The president and a few governors want this to be a political wedge regardless of who’s at risk.

You want schools to open? Close the bars. Get cases down in RIGHT NOW so August can be manageable. Catch up on testing. Look at the data. Come up with a plan. Stop using kids as pawns.

Nate Cohn tweeted:

If you're struggling to make sense of how Trump has fallen so far, and how he could fall further, then take this analogy further: imagine that this was the president's handling of an actual armed conflict?

COVID is *not* WW2. But the comparison is illuminating. His early comments read like Chamberlain. His fights with govs are like haggling over whether Hawaii should buy defenses for Pearl Harbor. His economy position is like being worried that rationing will hurt civilian economy.

And as in WW2, the inaction positions work against their intent. The do nothing/live with it view is basically appeasement that ensures COVID spreads to an extent we can't live with. Dealing with COVID helps the economy, just as war production helped the economy despite rationing.

Twitter user Nah replied:

It's not that dissimilar. I think folks arguing for the economy to re-open, schools to re-open, etc., are all treating this as like a bad hurricane or earthquake. But if I told you on NYE 2019 that 100K more would die in the US in '20 than '19, what would you think occurred?

It is well known the nasty guy is anti-immigration. And it isn’t just immigrants from Central and South America. He and his minions have found a way to mess up immigration without having to change the law. Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post tweeted a link to an article in that paper with:

How the Trump administration is turning legal immigrants into undocumented ones -- by, uhh, literally turning off the printers that print the documents.

There are 100k+ immigrants here legally, whom USCIS approved for new green cards/work authorizations (or replacements of recently expired documents), and they can't get their "papers" because USCIS literally turned off the printers without telling anyone.

From Bill in Portland, Maine’s collection of late night commentary:

Remember that movie I Know What You Did Last Summer? They should make one about this summer. Only this time the killer is the one not wearing the mask…and he doesn’t use a hook to kill people, he kills people by sneezing on them at a Costco.
—Anthony Anderson, guest hosting on Jimmy Kimmel Live

Black people are asking for equality, not charity. They're not asking companies to hire black people just because they're black. They asking companies to stop not hiring black people just because they're black.
-Trevor Noah

Hug your kids. Learn from Fred Trump’s mistakes.
—Samantha Bee