This week opened and closed with Russia: opening  with a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report reaffirming U.S.  intelligence’s January 2017 conclusion that Russia interfered to help  install Trump, and closing with Trump surreptitiously signing an unusual  joint statement with Russian President Vladimir Putin amid the  pandemic.

This week the country passed the tragic  milestone of 50,000 deaths from the coronavirus — more than 1 in 4  deaths worldwide. The country is losing 10,000 Americans every four days  now, and as New York sees its cases and deaths ebb, several other  states surged. Trump flipped from encouraging states to reopen, to  pulling back, to encouraging again. Polling showed the vast majority of  Americans want to stay home, despite the optics of protest rallies, some  fomented by far-right groups or groups with ties to Trump himself. He  and his regime have yet to come up with a plan or strategy to control  the pandemic, as the U.S. continues to be the global epicenter. Data  this week revealed the virus was already in major U.S. cities in  February, quietly spreading undetected to thousands of Americans.

After a major study cautioned against the use of  hydroxychloroquine, Trump later in the week made a remarkable  suggestion to try ultraviolet light or disinfectant. Following the  uproar thereafter, Trump finally backed off from his daily task force  briefings, which had morphed into campaign rallies, some two hours long.  Republicans, Trump aides, and campaign staffers fretted the briefings  and his lack of response to the outbreak have hurt him in 2020 polling  in battleground states, and threaten to drag down not only Trump in  2020, but also Republicans could lose the Senate.

Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-180/