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From propublica.com ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox. In recent weeks, residents outside Boston have died at home much more often than usual. In Detroit, authorities are responding to nearly four times the number of reports of dead bodies. And in New York, city officials are recording more than 200 home deaths per day — a nearly sixfold increase from recent years. As of Tuesday afternoon, the United States had logged more than 592,000 cases of COVID-19 and more than 24,000 deaths, the most in the world, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. But the official COVID-19 death count may, at least for now, be missing fatalities that are occurring outside of hospitals, data and interviews show. Cities are increasingly showing signs of Americans succumbing to the coronavirus in their own beds. ProPublica requested death data from several major metropolitan areas. Its review provides an early look at the pandemic’s hidden toll. Experts say it’s possible that some of the jump in at-home death stems from people infected by the virus who either didn’t seek treatment or did but were instructed to shelter in place, and that the undercount is exacerbated by lack of comprehensive testing. It’s also possible that the increase in at-home deaths reflects people dying from other ailments like heart attacks because they couldn’t get to a hospital or refused to go, fearful they’d contract COVID-19. Mark Hayward, a sociology professor at the University of Texas-Austin who’s an expert on mortality statistics, said all of those deaths are part of the “overall burden of the pandemic.” He said an uptick in deaths, specifically in ProPublica’s findings for Massachusetts and Detroit, indicates an undercount is occurring. You should think about the official coronavirus death counts, he said, “as just the tip of the iceberg.” The quality of the deaths data will improve as testing expands and fewer people die without getting tested, he added.

Good luck, Marc in collecting that. Nice round number, though.

I disagree. Within the past 48 hours Trump has stated that Article 2 allows him to act unilaterally without the approval of Congress and/or the Senate and/or the Judiciary and/or the states. He has surrounded himself with sycophants who will execute his dictates even if illegal, and have done so already. The American public for the most part and especially the GOP-controlled senate have conceded their responsibility and authority to Trump.

Trump and the GOP have demonstrated repeatedly that they care nothing for either the law or the constitution and have simply ignored any legal restriction they find inconvenient. Trump has hinted broadly that his supporters might use violence if he is unseated and he has already stated that there were many millions of illegal voters, even though his own inquiry found nothing. He has maintained that even afterwards.

And Sophie and the kids were out there prior to the suggested travel restrictions.

Trudeau's wife and children had been at the cottage for three weeks prior to the Easter weekend and he chose to join them by automobile- a different scenario than suggested here.

To re-iterate: there is literally nothing that Trump can do that will cause his slavering followers in the GOP and electorate that will cause them to abandon him. Similarly, there is no depth to which he will sink to defend his record or improve his chances of re-election. Around 1880, the GOP candidate lost the popular vote and the electoral college vote but refused to leave office, claiming voter fraud. His supporters threatened another civil war if he was ousted and the spineless Democrats caved in and let him serve another term, so the precedent has been set. Given Trump's record in business as well as his display as president, it is no stretch to assume that he would threaten the same and exhort his followers to resort to violence. It worked for Hitler, so why not, and Trump's father was a fascist sympathizer and was arrested at a Nazi rally.

I think it would be a lot more interesting to see two "swishy" gay guys drive from Milk River to Peace River in a Volvo with Quebec plates and bumper stickers that say. "We're gay, we voted for Trudeau and we're coming to take your guns away."

Sad to say, Trump's approval has slipped only marginally, according to a CNN poll today- from 42 to 40%. His supporters will follow him right into the abyss- ethnic cleansing, jailing of opposing voices- the whole nine yards.

Ah. Vince has been to the Donald Trump School Of Business. Whoever was dumb enough to invest in the league or hold debts deserve what they got.

His problem was his inconsistency and then Medlock became available.

Trump Spends Easter Asking Confidants: ‘What Do You Think of Fauci?’ WORKING THE PHONES The president called various friends and allies over the weekend to ask for their opinion on the doctor he says he made a “star”—and even retweeted a call for his firing. Asawin Suebsaeng White House Reporter Updated Apr. 13, 2020 4:10AM ET / President Donald Trump spent much of this Easter weekend, his first Easter sequestered at the White House in the midst of a global pandemic and crashing economy, in a rather predictable fashion: working the phones and rage-tweeting at The New York Times and Mike Wallace’s son. At one point, the president even promoted a Twitter post calling for the firing of his top infectious-disease expert in the middle of a deadly pandemic—because he’d said something construed as rude to Trump. Over the weekend, the president picked up the phone and began dialing various close advisers and associates to ask them their opinion on how soon he should “open” the U.S. economy and call for Americans to start resuming business as usual, according to three people familiar with the conversations. The subject of when to ease restrictions and guidelines, as the death toll has risen in the tens of thousands and governors and the federal government have struggled to combat the coronavirus, has been a major point of debate within the upper ranks of the Trump administration. While the president has often advocated highly optimistic and at times even negligent positions on the crisis, certain key members of his coronavirus task force—including Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases—have urged a more cautious, patient approach, particularly on “reopening” the United States for business. And so the doctor appeared to weigh on Trump’s mind this Easter weekend. “What do you think of Fauci?” the president repeatedly worked into his phone conversations over the past few days, the three sources said, as he pulsed his broader network of informal advisers, industry allies, and current staff on their opinions on the news of the day. At one point this weekend, Trump remarked that he’s made Fauci a “star” and that barely anybody would have known who the doctor was were it not for the president putting him front and center in the administration’s coronavirus response, televised press briefings, and media strateg

Former GOP strategist blasts Trump: ‘We’ve never seen a president more visibly failing hour by hour’ Yes, he foisted Sarah Palin on our national politics, which was a little like bringing an uncooked moose to a dinner party instead of a nice insouciant, oaky cabernet. But Steve Schmidt, the veteran Republican campaign strategist who guided John McCain’s 2008 presidential run, now speaks the truth. And he’s not pulling punches when it comes to the ocher abomination. Yesterday, during a panel discussion on MSNBC, Schmidt said what the majority of Republicans still can’t acknowledge. Donald Trump sucks. Hard. So hard, in fact, that he will go down as the worst president in the history of our country. SCHMIDT: “When we look back at history, what we would have seen from Barack Obama back through Harry Truman is an American president calling for an international convention on pandemics, about how we bring the world together, how American leadership can drive toward a solution. Instead, we have the American delegation saying no to a communique because they won’t use the word ‘Wuhan flu.’ So it’s theater of the absurd that tops off every evening at the 6 o’clock follies where the American people are lied to nonstop, where he sows confusion, where he sows division, where he attacks the people who need help the most. We’ve never seen a dereliction of duty, we’ve never seen a level of unfitness for command, we have never seen a president more visibly failing hour by hour to meet the moment, to meet the test of history than we’re seeing with Donald John Trump, the 45th president of the United States. And I think by the time we get to the end of it, someone who will be universally regarded by historians, along with [James] Buchanan, the 15th president, who prefaced the Civil War, as the worst commander in chief in American history.”

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox. In the wake of President Trump’s move to push aside the official who was supposed to lead the coronavirus bailout watchdog group, four other members are just as vulnerable. Trump was able to remove the panel’s chosen head, Glenn Fine, by naming a new Defense Department inspector general and bumping Fine to the No. 2 job at the Pentagon watchdog office. No longer an acting inspector general, Fine was disqualified from serving on the panel he was supposed to lead. Fine’s removal sounded an alarm among Democrats in Congress, who had demanded that spending safeguards be built into the $2 trillion recovery package. House Democrats rushed out a proposed tweak that would stop further removals like Fine’s by opening up eligibility to senior officials in IG offices, not just IGs themselves. “We must not allow President Trump to openly flout the oversight measures that Congress put in place,” Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, along with Reps. Gerald Connolly and Stephen Lynch, said in a statement on Wednesday. “There are literally trillions of taxpayer dollars at stake, and Americans across the political spectrum want those funds to be spent without waste, fraud, abuse, or profiteering.” The four other members of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee who serve in an acting capacity are Mitchell Behm at the Department of Transportation, Sandra Bruce at Education, Richard Delmar at Treasury and Christi Grimm at Health and Human Services. That means they could also be removed by being replaced, just as Fine was.

According to a report from the Daily Beast, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar may soon be exiting the White House for refusing to sugarcoat information about the coronavirus pandemic when speaking with Donald Trump. Azar, who attempted to alert the president about the looming COVID-19 pandemic threat in January, has rarely been invited to the president’s daily coronavirus press briefings which could be a sign that his days are numbered As longtime political observer Eleanor Clift writes, after describing Azar as one possible “hero” in the White House: “Speaking truth to power has its price in the Trump administration. The former Eli Lilly executive was shouted down by White House aides as ‘alarmist’ and sidelined by Jared Kushner, Mike Pence and others willing to give the president a more rosy view. And on Sunday night, Trump lashed out at Azar by name for the first time, following a New York Times report that Azar had ‘directly warned Mr. Trump of the possibility of a pandemic during a call on Jan. 30, the second warning he delivered to the president about the virus in two weeks.’” According to Clift, “After complaining about ‘mayhem’ at the White House, Azar’s future is uncertain but his attempts to get top officials and President Trump to pay attention to the coming pandemic should not be lost in the fog of war as Trump recasts history in his favor.”

For all those who predicted that Trump would kill the messenger, here it is: President Trump delivered his first public rebuke of the nation’s top infectious disease expert and a member of his coronavirus task force on Sunday evening by resharing a tweet that said “Time to #FireFauci.” DeAnna Lorraine, a Trump supporter and former congressional candidate for California, tweeted: “Fauci is now saying that had Trump listened to the medical experts earlier he could’ve saved more lives. Fauci was telling people on February 29th that there was nothing to worry about and it posed no threat to the US public at large.” Trump retweeted Lorraine and commented of her claims, “Sorry Fake News, it’s all on tape. I banned China long before people spoke up.”

You know, it sucks. Here we were poised to steamroll over the rest of the league and challenge for the Cup again, and the whole freaking world shuts down. Not fair, I tell you. Not fair at all.

Top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci acknowledged on Sunday that there was a “lot of pushback” early on by the Trump administration on initiating social-distancing restrictions to slow the spread of coronavirus, noting that “no one is going to deny” that lives could’ve been saved if they had acted earlier. Following The New York Times reporting that Fauci and other top officials attempted to get President Donald Trump to implement closures and physical distancing guidelines back in February, only for the president to resist for nearly a month, State of the Union anchor Jake Tapper asked Fauci why the president was hesitant. “You know, Jake, as I’ve said many times, we look at it from a pure health standpoint,” the White House coronavirus task force member replied. “We make a recommendation. Often the recommendation is taken. Sometimes it’s not. But it is what it is. We are where we are right now.”

Republican Gov. Disputes Trump Claim About Medical Equipment Availability The president on Friday insisted states are in "great shape" and said governors' calls for help have slowed to a trickle. By Ja'han Jones, HuffPost US Gov. Larry Hogan (R-Md.) on Sunday contradicted President Donald Trump’s rosy reviews of the federal government’s ability to provide states with the vital medical equipment needed to combat the coronavirus pandemic. Hogan, chair of the National Governors Association, said on ABC’s “This Week” that governors still have “tremendous needs,” and that it was inaccurate to suggest otherwise. The Trump administration has tried to cobble together a belated response to the pandemic after initially dismissing concerns being raised about the coronavirus as a “hoax” and downplaying its impact. As death and infection numbers have grown and states have shuttered due to stay-at-home orders, Trump and many administration officials have altered their rhetoric to suggest they have been doing all they could to fight it from the beginning. “This Week” host Martha Raddatz asked Hogan about Trump’s claim at a Friday White House briefing that “we’re in great shape with” ventilators and claimed not to have received “any calls” from governors in need of critical medical supplies. Seconds later, Trump said his administration was receiving “very few” calls from governors or “anybody else needing anything.” Hogan disputed that characterization. “Well, I get calls every day” on the need for supplies, he said, adding neither Trump nor Vice President Mike Pence had participated in some of those conference calls with various governors. “I’d hate to say that everybody’s completely happy and that we have everything we need,” Hogan said, while noting the federal response has improved. Everybody still has tremendous needs on personal protective equipment and ventilators and all of these things that you keep hearing about,” he said. “Everybody’s fighting to find these things all over the nation and all over the world.”

Well, that is one Moss that has been gathered.

The office of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis reportedly attempted behind the scenes to crush a public records lawsuit demanding that the state release the names of all elder-care facilities in which someone has tested positive for the novel coronavirus. The Miami Herald, the Florida newspaper behind the planned legal action, reported Saturday that DeSantis’ general counsel called Holland & Knight lawyer George Meros, who has represented the state of Florida in the past, and pressured him to abandon the lawsuit after the Herald notified the state of the pending legal action, as required by law. Shortly after that conversation, the Herald‘s attorney, [Sanford] Bohrer, received a phone call from inside Holland & Knight, instructing him to stand down,” the Herald reported. “They asked us not to file this lawsuit on behalf of the Herald,” Bohrer said. “They did not want Holland & Knight to represent the Herald.” Aminda Marqués González, the Herald‘s executive editor and publisher, said in a statement that the suit will still go forward but under a different law firm. The public records lawsuit will seek only the names of elder-care facilities where someone has tested positive for COVID-19, not the names of individual patients, the Herald said.

MOTHER KNOWS BEST!

If California, Arizona and Texas can declare gun shops as essential services, then why not these?

Well now. That's going to put him on Trump's "Enemies List". Trump will be in a surly mood today (more than usual).