Layoff: Another 3.2 million Americans filed for unemployment last week in the 7^th week of crushing job loss caused by the coronavirus shutdown. This brings the total of job losses to more than 33 million.

  Heaviest hit are the services industries including hotels and restaurant. In many states, 25 percent of workers are unemployed.

  The NY Times reports that, “The country has already suffered its worst decline in gross domestic product in a decade; the worst retail sales report on record; the worst week ever for unemployment claims and two subsequent reports that were twice as bad as that.”

The Stat Board: New York City had only seven coronavirus deaths in the past 24 hours. A month ago, they were losing hundreds.

  Overall, the country lost 2,353 people in the in the past day. Deaths are climbing in New Jersey, now up to 8,549.

  Nationally, deaths are now up to 73,431. Dr. Thomas Frieden, the former chief of the Centers for Disease Control, testified before Congress that he believes deaths will reach 100,000 by the end of this month.

Gloom of Night: Neither rain nor snow stops postal workers from their rounds, but a political appointment might do it. President Trump has appointed a high-rolling political donor and supporter to be the new head of the Postal Service, putting a top ally in charge of an agency that Trump wants drastically changed. 

  The President has previously appointed agency heads to dismantle the agency they run. Louis DeJoy, a North Carolina businessman who is currently in charge of fundraising for the Republican National Convention in Charlotte, will serve as the new postmaster general.

  In particular Trump has claimed that the postal service under charges the online retailers like Amazon, which he hates because the boss Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.  The online retailers, including Amazon, have begun a campaign to convince Republicans to save the Postal Service during the current sharp drop in mail traffic. The coalition describes Trump’s proposal to raise rates on parcel delivery “a massive package tax.” 

The Mercurial Man: Indecisive and contradictory are not a qualities you want in a president, but that’s what we’ve got with President Trump.

  Tuesday, Trump announced that he is winding down the White House Coronavirus Task Force and replacing it with a committee focused on getting Americans back to work. Yesterday he said the coronavirus group will continue indefinitely, although possibly with different members.

  “I thought we could wind it down sooner,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “But I had no idea how popular the task force is until actually yesterday, when I started talking about winding it down. I get calls from very respected people saying, ‘I think it would be better to keep it going. It’s done such a good job.’”

  With the doctors Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx enjoying more credibility than the President, Trump stopped linking his news briefings to task force meetings and no longer surrounds himself with its members.

  But Trump reacts to criticism and he seems to have taken a lot of it with his announcement that he was pulling the plug. 

  Trump said that the coronavirus is worse than the attack on Pearl Harbor and the 9/11 attacks. Both of those resulted in war.

  Peter Wehner, writes for The Atlantic  that, “We are witnessing the steady, uninterrupted intellectual and psychological decomposition of an American president. It’s something the Trump White House cannot hide—indeed, it doesn’t even try to hide it anymore.”  He says, “What this means is that Americans are facing not just a conventional presidential election in 2020 but also, and most important, a referendum on reality and epistemology. Donald Trump is asking us to enter even further into his house of mirrors. He is asking us to live within a lie, to live within his lie, for four more years. The duty of citizenship in America today is to refuse to live within that lie.”

The Bulletin Board: President Trump vetoed a resolution that would have blocked his ability to stage a unilateral attack on Iran, calling the bipartisan bill an “insulting” attack on his presidential powers. — Gap, which also ownsOld Navy,Banana Republic, andAthleta, says it plans  to re-open 800 of its stores by the end of this month. — Los Angeles County announced a limited re-opening of retail business. Florists, car dealers, and shops that  sell toys, music, books, clothing, and sporting will be allowed curbside pickup only. — Researchers in Belgium have found that anti-bodies taken from a llama neutralize the coronavirus in laboratory experiments. — President Trump has ordered that the new sections of border barrier should be painted black at a cost of $500 million or more, The Washington Post reports. He thinks that will make the steel bollards too hot to climb.

Polar Spring: It’s been a cold, wet spring in the East and the chilly weather isn’t over. A polar vortex is bringing a blast of winter air to the East, including snow in some areas of Upper Midwest and New England.

The Obit Page: Florian Schneider, a founder of the German techno band Kraftwerk, has died of cancer at age 73. Kraftwerk made heavy use of electronic beats, synthesizers, and repeated rhythms. The genre was called “krautrock.”

  The title track on their first album “Autobahn,” the German name for its highways, was 22 minutes of the band repeating “Bahn, bahn, bahn, the autobahn.” It helped if you were stoned. 

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