Jobless: The pandemic has virtually shut down America and the Labor Department just reported that another 6.6 million Americans filed for unemployment last week. That’s in addition to the more than nine million who filed over the previous two weeks.

  The total comes to more than 16 million Americans out of work. In response, the Federal Reserve announced this morning that it will pump $2.3 trillion into the economy

  The numbers probably do not reflect reality. Unemployment offices around the country are so jammed with applications people can’t even get online to file a claim. Florida and Texas, with 15 percent of the nation’s payrolls, closed non-essential businesses only in the middle of last week, so their numbers won’t be reflected until next week.

Pandemic: Traditionally, flu-like viruses slow their spread when warm weather comes. It’s been one of the hopes for controlling the coronavirus pandemic.

  But the National Academy of Sciences says that there isn’t enough study and reliable science about the novel coronavirus to depend upon it following the pattern.

  The report says that, “Given that countries currently in ‘summer’ climates, such as Australia and Iran, are experiencing rapid virus spread, a decrease in cases with increases in humidity and temperature elsewhere should not be assumed.”

  Nearly two thousand more people in the US died of the coronavirus in the past 24 hours; 1897 dead for a total so far of 14,808.

  In New York City, the hardest hit, at least 41 transit workers have died. New York reports that fewer people are being admitted to the hospital, but many are still dying. The city lost another 562 people in the last 24 hours.

Bernie Bows Out: Despite dropping out of the race and conceding to Joe Biden, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said he will keep his name on primary ballots and collect more delegates so he can influence the Democratic agenda for the fall.

  It’s not like Sanders to cleanly give up and he didn’t. In a live stream announcement Sanders said,  “While this campaign is coming to an end, our movement is not.”

  But he also said,  “I cannot in good conscience continue to mount a campaign that cannot win and which would interfere with the important work required of all of us in this difficult hour.”

  President Trump tweeted with his usual grace, “This ended just like the Democrats & the DNC wanted, same as the Crooked Hillary fiasco. The Bernie people should come to the Republican Party, TRADE!”

  It has been a miraculous turnaround for Joe Biden, who came within one primary of being eliminated. Biden finished 5th in new Hampshire, 4th in Iowa, and second in Nevada.

  Biden issued a conciliatory statement toward Sanders, thanking him for putting “the interest of the nation — and the need to defeat Donald Trump — above all else.’’ 

Mailing it In: In the midst of the national crisis and a push for being able to vote by mail in the remaining primaries and general election, President Trump has amped up the Republican trope that absentee voting is rife with fraud.

  He tweeted, “Republicans should fight very hard when it comes to state wide mail-in voting. Democrats are clamoring for it. Tremendous potential for voter fraud, and for whatever reason, doesn’t work out well for Republicans.”

  Trump has voted by mail in at least three recent elections.

  But yesterday at his briefing he expanded his denunciation of voting by mail without any evidence. He said, “Mail ballots are a very dangerous thing for this country because they are cheaters. They go and collect them, they’re fraudulent in many cases. You’ve got to vote. They should have voter ID, by the way, you really want to do it right, voter ID”

  Blocking mail ballots could help Trump and other Republicans get re-elected.  Republicans are fighting state-level statutes that would expand absentee balloting in Michigan, Minnesota, Arizona. In New Mexico, Republicans are battling moves to have a mail-in-only primary, and they say they will fight expansion of  balloting in Minnesota.

The Obit Page: Linda Tripp, the confidante of Monica Lewinsky who blew the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky affair, has died of pancreatic cancer at age 70. She was diagnosed less than a week ago.

  Tripp, who worked for the Pentagon at the time, made secret recordings of private conversations in which Lewinsky detailed her intimacy with the President. Tripp gave the  tapes to then-Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, leading to Clinton’s impeachment in 1998 on perjury charges for his testimony Lewinsky.

  Tripp was seen as a betrayer of friendship, but she said in 2018 she only regretted “not having the guts to do it sooner.”

Derangement Syndrome: As Americans get sick and die, President Trump is still touting the television ratings for his daily briefings.

   He tweeted, “The Radical Left Democrats have gone absolutely crazy that I am doing daily Presidential News Conferences. They actually want me to STOP!” He said, “the Fake News Media into not covering them, but that effort failed because the ratings are through the roof according to, of all sources, the Failing New York Times, “Monday Night Football, Bachelor Finale” type numbers.”

 Condemnations of Trump are pouring in from commentators on both sides of the political divide. Conservative columnist Max Boot wrote for The Washington Post that “With his catastrophic mishandling of the coronavirus, Trump has established himself as the worst president in U.S. history.”

   David Frum writes for The Atlantic that “For three years, Trump has blathered and bluffed and bullied his way through an office for which he is utterly inadequate. But sooner or later, every president must face a supreme test, a test that cannot be evaded by blather and bluff and bullying. That test has overwhelmed Trump.”

 Frum says, “Trump failed. He is failing. He will continue to fail. And Americans are paying for his failures.”

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