Guidance: After the White House kept it largely under wraps, the Centers for Disease Control quietly released a 60-page document giving guidance on re-opening for schools, businesses, transit systems and industries. 

  It counters the rosy re-opening  outlook of President Trump and might ratchet up tensions between him and the CDC.

  The guidance, which involves a lot of social distancing, limiting customers in bars and restaurants, and shutting down if someone gets infected, tries to balance the damage of shutdown against the risk of returning to normal life.

 Ford Motors, which went back into production along with the other major car companies this week,has already had two work stoppages because of infected workers.

The Stat Board: Up to 83 percent of coronavirus deaths in the US might have been avoided if the country had gone into lockdown on March 1^st,  two weeks earlier than most people began staying home, according to disease modelers at Columbia University.

 Another 1,500 Americans died of the coronavirus in the past 24 hours, bringing the total to 93,439.

  Researchers are watching some areas of the South that are quickly re-opening. They say Dallas, Houston, Southeast Florida’s Gold Coast, and the entire state of Alabama are in danger of a second wave of coronavirus.

Double Disaster: Michigan is dealing with historic flooding and the coronavirus at the same time. In the Midland area, businesses that were looking forward to re-opening are now underwater. 

  The dam that gave way in Edenville had been the subject of safety warnings for years. Federal regulators had said Boyce Hydro Power, the company that owns the dam, had displayed “a pattern of delay and indifference to addressing dam safety requirements.”

 Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said, “It’s hard to believe that we’re in the middle of a 100-year crisis, a global pandemic, and we’re also dealing with a flooding event that looks to be the worst in 500 years.”

Mailing it In: President Trump ranted on Twitter yesterday about the State of Michigan sending out 7.7 million absentee ballots for its primary election “illegally and without authorization by a rogue Secretary of State.” He wrote, “I will ask to hold up funding to Michigan if they want to go down this Voter Fraud path!”

  He tweeted something similar about Nevada.

  Trump is Bible-thumping the long disproven theory that absentee ballots lead to massive voter fraud. Systematic fraud has never been found under any system, despite Republican claims that it’s there. Trump’s own vote fraud commission disbanded after finding nothing.

  Michigan did not send out 7.7 million ballots, as Trump claimed. It sent out applications for absentee ballots and the secretary of state has the legal authority to do that.

   Nevada’s Republican … repeat, Republican … secretary of state declared the June primary to be an all-mail election, and ballots are being sent to voters.

The Numbers Game: It’s a long slog to election day, but a new Quinnipiac University Poll suggests that Joe Biden’s lead over Donald Trump in the November general election has stretched to 11 points.Quinnipiac has the former vice president ahead by 50 to 39 percent among registered voters nationwide. That’s up slightly from 49-41 in April.

  The poll also says Trump’s approval rating is ticking downward. Forty-two percent of voters approve of the job President Trump is doing, while 53 percent disapprove.

  A company called Oxford Economics says the damaged economy will destroy Trump’s chances, predicting he will win just 35 percent of the vote. Before the virus crisis, Oxford predicted Trump would win with 55 percent. 

The Covid Corner: The Census Bureau says 47 percent of  US households have lost jobs or income during the pandemic. — As the pandemic continues to weed out struggling companies, Victoria’s Secret announced that it is closing 250 of its lingerie stores in North America. — Barbers cut hair yesterday on the lawn of the Michigan capitol to protest the state’s coronavirus restrictions.

The Bulletin Board: The Supreme Court temporarily blocked the release of sealed materials from the Special Counsel Report into Russian election interference. The House Judiciary Committee had subpoenaed grand jury materials that the Justice Department had blacked out from the report provided to Congress. This decision means that the unredacted report will likely not be available before the 2020 election. — A gunman opened fire last night at a newly re-opened shopping mall in Glendale, Arizona. At least three people were wounded and the gunman surrendered. — Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen is being let out of prison to serve his time at home. — President Trump has declined to unveil the official portrait of former President Barack Obama at the White House, breaking a 40-year tradition in which first-term Presidents reveal the portrait of their predecessor. And another poke in the eye; Obama is portrayed wearing the infamous tan suit that had critics foaming. 

Confession: Jane Roe, the plaintiff in the landmark Roe v. Wade lawsuit that made abortion legal in the United States and who later became an anti-abortion activist, confesses in a new documentary that she was paid to switch sides.

  Roe, whose real name was Norma McCorvey, died after the documentary was filmed.

  In “AKA Jane Roe” she says, “I took their money and they put me out in front of the camera and told me what to say, and that’s what I’d say.”

  “It was all an act?” the director asks.

  “Yeah,” she says. “I was good at it, too.”

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