FLORIDA. Governor DeSantis orders statewide 30-day stay-at-home order: ‘Under the order, the governor is requiring “all Floridians to limit movements and interactions outside their home to only those necessary to obtain or provide essential services or conduct essential activities.” The order goes into effect Thursday night at midnight.’
JOE BIDEN. Democratic National Convention may be different this year: “We ought to be able to do what we were able to do in the middle of the Civil War all the way through to World War II — have Democratic and Republican conventions and primaries and elections and still have public safety.”
KELLY LOEFFLER. Senator dumped $19 million in stocks ahead of coronavirus disclosures: “The largest transactions — and the most politically problematic — involve $18.7 million in sales of Intercontinental Exchange stock in three separate deals dated Feb. 26 and March 11. Loeffler is a former executive with ICE, and her husband, Jeff Sprecher, is the CEO of the company, which owns the New York Stock Exchange among other financial marketplaces.”
MARCH TOWARD DESTRUCTION. Trump rolling back fuel efficiency standards which were U.S. government’s strongest attempt to combat the climate crisis.
FRIVOLITY AMID CRISIS. Ansel Elgort’s bulge got him trending on Twitter.
CENSUS DAY PSA. Pete and Chasten Buttigieg.
DETERMINED TO STRIKE IN U.S. 2019 pandemic warning went unheeded by White House: “The 2019 study warned otherwise — specifically urging Americans not to conflate the risks of a typical flu and a pandemic. The existence of that warning undermines administration officials’ contentions in recent weeks that no one could have seen the virus damaging the economy as it has. The study was requested by the National Security Council, according to two people familiar with the matter.”
KARA SWISHER. FOX’s fake news contagion: “Thankfully, Mom had not gone as far as claiming the coronavirus is a plot to hurt President Trump — a theory pushed by some at Fox News heavily at first. While she has been alternately appalled and amused by the president, and often takes his side, she is not enough of a superfan to think that he is any kind of victim here. So, she kept going out with friends to restaurants and shopping and generally living her life as it always had been.”
RUSSIA. Putin working remotely after exposure to infected doctor…
CLOSED. Japan bans entry from 49 additional countries: “Japan’s Prime Minister says Japan has banned entry from 49 more countries, including the U.S., Canada, all of China, South Korea and seven Southeast Asian countries.”
BROUGHT IT IN. 28 University of Texas students test positive after partying on spring break in Mexico.
JAIL LOCKDOWN. Federal inmates will be kept in cells for at least two weeks: “In an effort to tamp down the COVID-19 infection rate across the nation’s corrections system, the Federal Bureau of Prisons announced on Tuesday that starting Wednesday, inmates in all of its institutions across the country will be kept in their assigned cells or quarters, effectively putting them in lockdown.”
BOSTON GLOBE. Donald Trump has blood on his hands: “Rather than making the expected federal effort to mobilize rapidly to distribute needed gowns, masks, and ventilators to ill-equipped hospitals and to the doctors and nurses around the country who are left unprotected treating a burgeoning number of patients, the administration has instead been caught outbidding individual states (including Massachusetts) trying to purchase medical supplies. It has dragged its heels on invoking the Defense Production Act to get scarce, sorely needed ventilators and masks into production so that they can be distributed to hospitals nationwide as they hit their peaks in the cycle of the epidemic. It has left governors and mayors in the lurch, begging for help. The months the administration wasted with prevarication about the threat and its subsequent missteps will amount to exponentially more COVID-19 cases than were necessary. In other words, the president has blood on his hands.”
TORCH BEARER OF THE DAY. George Takei. “I am honored beyond belief to have been selected to be the final torchbearer who will light the Olympic Flame in Tokyo in 2021!
ZOO VISIT OF THE DAY. The Shedd Aquarium penguins visit the Beluga whales.
(ARCHIVED) LIVESTREAM OF THE DAY. Orville Peck. (starts at 5:35)
RETRO PERFORMANCE OF THE DAY. Madonna “Vogue” from the Blond Ambition Tour.
PIC SWAP OF THE DAY. Matt & Dan.
HUMP DAY HOTTIE. Matias Tchomikian.
