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Coronavirus recovery could be quickest in these cities: report

Cities including Austin, Texas, and Durham, North Carolina, are best poised for a quick coronavirus recovery because of their levels of population density and educational attainment, according to a Moody's Analytics report cited by Yahoo Finance.
"The most dynamic recoveries may well bypass traditional powerhouses and take place instead in areas that [weren't] poised to lead the way in 2020 before everything changed," Adam Kamins, senior regional economist at Moody’s Analytics, wrote according to Yahoo Finance.
Moody's highlighted Austin and Durham as well as San Jose, California; Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Seattle, Washington, in the report looking at the top 100 metropolitan areas in the U.S.
"A key difference between this recovery and the last recovery is the population density," Kamins said, according to Yahoo Finance.

In this May 6, 2020 photo, a person sits near a boarded up and closed Arc'teryx outdoor clothing store in downtown Seattle. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

The report predicted quick recoveries for Durham and Madison, Wisconsin, because of the cities' proximities to university hubs, plus Des Moines, Iowa, and Omaha, Nebraska, in part because their locations will allow for a more spread-out population.

NBC admits Chuck Todd's 'Meet the Press' deceptively edited Barr remarks on Flynn

NBC News' Chuck Todd aired a deceptively edited clip of Attorney General Bill Barr discussing the Michael Flynn case during his "Meet the Press" broadcast on Sunday, prompting the network to concede the mistake hours later -- but there is still no word on whether Todd will apologize on-air.
Asked by CBS News' Catherine Herridge how history would judge the DOJ's decision to move to dismiss the Flynn case, Barr initially responded, laughing: "Well, history is written by the winners, so it largely depends on who's writing the history."
After the brief clip aired, Todd remarked that he was "struck by the cynicism of the answer -- it's a correct answer, but he's the attorney general. He didn't make the case that he was upholding the rule of law. He was almost admitting that, yeah, this was a political job."
In the full clip, which the NBC show did not air, Barr immediately went on to state explicitly that, in fact, he felt the Flynn decision upheld the rule of law.
"I think a fair history would say it was a good decision because it upheld the rule of law," Barr said. "It upheld the standards of the Department of Justice, and it undid what was an injustice."
The Daily Caller's Greg Price had called out the edit earlier Sunday.
"Very disappointed by the deceptive editing/commentary by @ChuckTodd on @MeetThePress on AG Barr’s CBS interview," DOJ spokeswoman Kerri Kupec wrote. "Compare the two transcripts below. Not only did the AG make the case in the VERY answer Chuck says he didn’t, he also did so multiple times throughout the interview."
In response, the "Meet the Press" Twitter account posted: "You’re correct. Earlier today, we inadvertently and inaccurately cut short a video clip of an interview with AG Barr before offering commentary and analysis. The remaining clip included important remarks from the attorney general that we missed, and we regret the error."
"'Inadvertently strikes again!'" tweeted independent journalist Mike Cernovich.
But, the show did not say it would apologize on-air. NBC News did not respond to Fox News' request for information about an on-air apology, either.
"A tweet in no way covers the error," wrote The Federalist's Mollie Hemingway. "A lot of people are rightly angry at @chucktodd for willfully lying about AG Barr’s comments on rule of law — but @JoeNBC also did it days ago. These intentional lies in service of false narratives have gone on for years. Infuriating." (That was a reference, in part, to NBC's Joe Scarborough sharing a debunked, deceptively edited clip of Vice President Mike Pence handling boxes of PPE.)
Blogger Jim Treacher and journalist Tim Pool were among many other influential commentators explicitly seeking an on-air apology.
Late Sunday, President Trump tweeted that "Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd" should be fired, saying he "knew exactly what he was doing."
On the recommendation of U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen, who served as an FBI agent for more than a decade, the Justice Department on Thursday moved to drop its case against Flynn. The stunning development came after internal memos were released raising serious questions about the nature of the investigation that led to Flynn’s late 2017 guilty plea of lying to the FBI as his legal fees mounted.
One of the documents was a top official's handwritten memo debating whether the FBI's "goal" was "to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired"; other materials showed efforts by anti-Trump FBI agent Peter Strzok to pursue Flynn on increasingly flimsy legal grounds.
The FBI possessed word-for-word transcripts of Flynn's December 2016 conversations with Russia's ambassador, and publicly admitted to reviewing those transcripts and clearing Flynn of any wrongdoing. The FBI's leak to The Washington Post that claimed the FBI cleared Flynn -- which was published just a day before the Flynn White House interview -- may have been an effort to lower his guard.
Both during and before the Jan. 24, 2017 White House interview that led to Flynn's prosecution for one count of lying to the FBI, the bureau acknowledged having those full transcripts, raising the question of why agents would need to ask Flynn about what he said during the calls with Kislyak, except potentially as a pretext to obtain a false statements charge.
Flynn was accused specifically of giving equivocal and evasive answers to FBI agents in the White House during a casual interview concerning those phone calls, but no transcript of the conversation existed. Instead, after-the-fact FBI notes of the interview with Strzok and Joe Pientka were the primary evidence.
Strzok later was removed from then-Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team when his anti-Trump text messages surfaced, and Pientka has been under scrutiny for his role in various Trump probes.
Pientka has been scrubbed from the FBI website after Fox News asked the bureau about him, and several Republican lawmakers have been seeking to question him.

Andy McCarthy: FBI targeted Flynn because they knew he'd uncover illegitimacy of Russia probe

Former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy told "The Next Revolution" Sunday that the FBI feared former national security adviser Gen. Michael Flynn would uncover illegitimacies surrounding the origins of the Russia probe, and that they "needed to remove him if they wanted to continue this particular investigation."
"I think the best way to look at this is what the FBI and the Obama Administration wanted to do here was really audacious if you think about it in terms of the idea of trying to continue an investigation after a new president has come into power and is in a position to shut down the investigation -- when the president ultimately is the target of the investigation," McCarthy explained.

"In terms of Flynn, it's better to look at him as... something that was obstructing the bureau, rather than their objective in the investigation."
— Andy McCarthy, 'The Next Revolution'

"I think what happened specifically with General Flynn is that while the president brought in a lot of people into his original administration who had various types of expertise, he was kind of short on people with a lot of national security and foreign relations background. General Flynn was an exception," he continued.
The former national security adviser was a "savvy intelligence operator," who posed a threat to the FBI's handling of the investigation focussed on Russian interference in the 2016 election, explained McCarthy.
"He had been the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, he knew how the FBI worked in conjunction with the intelligence community and it is inconceivable to me, if you wanted to continue an investigation of the president during the president's administration, that they could have pulled that off with a sophisticated intelligence actor being the national security advisor and being loyal to the president," McCarthy, a Fox News contributor explained.
The House Intelligence Committee on Thursday released dozens of transcripts of interviews from its Russia probe in 2017 and 2018 following demands by Republicans to make the records public -- after the content was cleared for release by the intelligence community.
The transcripts included testimony from many officials who said they were unaware of evidence showing coordination between the Trump campaign team and the Russians.
"He [Flynn] would necessarily have found out that they had investigated the Trump campaign, he would've found out for example that they were in the FISA court conducting surveillance on Trump campaign advisors," McCarthy added, "and he would've been able to figure out pretty easily that President Trump was the ultimate quarry that they had in connection with the investigation."
The Justice Department has moved to drop its case against Flynn last week after a series of bombshell documents were released exposing an alleged set-up in which top bureau officials indicated that their "goal" was to "to get him [Flynn] to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired."
"I think in terms of Flynn, it's better to look at him as kind of something that was obstructing the bureau rather than their objective in the investigation," McCarthy said. "They needed to remove him if they wanted to continue this particular investigation."

Trump increases attack against Obama with ‘Obamagate’ tweet

President Trump on Sunday intensified his criticism of former President Obama by tying him to the Michael Flynn investigation and blasting his predecessor's recent criticism aimed at his administration's coronavirus response.
Last week, Attorney General William Barr’s Justice Department dismissed the case against Flynn, Trump's first national  security adviser, which was seen as the key prosecution from Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign.
Trump, along with other Republicans, seized on the decision and framed it as an example of a Democrat-manufactured plot to remove him from office.
Trump retweeted  Eli Lake, a columnist at  Bloomberg, who said he has been reviewing the interview transcripts that were recently released in the collusion investigation. Lake wrote, “It’s now clear why every Republican on [Rep. Adam Schiff’s] committee in 2019 called for his resignation. He knew the closed door witnesses didn’t support his innuendo and fakery on Russia collusion.”
Sidney Powell, one of Flynn’s lawyers, told Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” that FBI agents did their best to hide their investigation and attempted to entrap Flynn. She mentioned a meeting on Jan. 5, 2017 at the White House that included Obama, then-FBI Director James Comey, then-Director of  National Intelligence James Clapper and former CIA Director John Brennan.
Powell said the “whole thing was orchestrated and set up within the FBI, Clapper, Brennan and in the Oval Office meeting that day with President  Obama,” she told Maria Bartiromo, the anchor.
Bartiromo asked Powell if she believed the scandal reached up to Obama, and Powell responded, “Absolutely.”
Trump later tweeted, “OBAMAGATE,” indicating that he believes that Obama worked to undermine his presidency.
Obama on Friday told supporters that with regards to  Flynn's case, there “is no precedent that anybody can find for someone who has been charged with perjury just getting off scot-free. That’s the kind of stuff where you begin to get worried that basic — not just institutional norms — but our basic understanding of rule of law is at risk. And when you start moving in those directions, it can accelerate pretty quickly as we’ve seen in other places.”
Obama’s criticism of the DOJ has been echoed by fellow Democrats, who have called out what they see as Trump’s influence over Barr. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the House Judiciary chairman, called the decision to drop the charges against Flynn “outrageous.”
“The evidence against General Flynn is s overwhelming. He pleaded guilty to lying to investigators. And now a politicized and thoroughly corrupt Department of Justice is going to let the president’s crony simply walk away,” he said in a statement.
Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about two separate contacts he had with a former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Rep. Jim Jordan, the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, told Fox News last week that  Comey displayed “arrogance” and “ego” with the way he spoke about the Flynn case. The department said its continued prosecution of Flynn would “not serve the interests of justice.”
Trump said that Flynn was innocent and was targeted in an attempt to take down his presidency. He told reporters that he was unaware that the DOJ was going to drop its case.
“I felt it was going to happen just by watching and seeing, like everybody else does. He was an innocent man. He is a great gentleman. He was targeted by the Obama administration and he was targeted in order to try and take down a president,” he said.
Trump continued, “What they’ve done is a disgrace and I hope a big price is going to be paid. A big price should be paid. There’s never been anything like this in the history of our country. What they did, what the Obama administration did, is unprecedented. It’s never happened. Never happened. A thing like this has never happened.”
Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, told Fox News’ “The Next Revolution”  Sunday that the FBI likely feared that Flynn would uncover illegitimacies surrounding the origin of the Russia probe.
"I think the best way to look at this is what the FBI and the Obama Administration wanted to do here was really audacious if you think about it in terms of the idea of trying to continue an investigation after a new president has come into power and is in a position to shut down the investigation -- when the president ultimately is the target of the investigation," McCarthy said.
Obama told 3,000 members of the Obama Alumni Association that the Trump administration was woefully inept in dealing with the coronavirus outbreak.
“It would have been bad even with the best of governments. It has been an absolute chaotic disaster when that mindset — of ‘what’s in it for me’ and ‘to heck with everybody else’ — when that mindset is operationalized in our government,” he said.
Trump has insisted that his administration was correct in banning flights from China early on in the outbreak, despite being condemned in some segments of the media.
Larry Kudlow,  his national economic council director, told ABC News’ “This Week with George Stephanopolous” that he did not want to engage in a political back and forth with the former president,  but said Trump has worked well in incorporating the private sector and parts of the government in the response.
“I don’t understand what President Obama is saying. It just sounds so darn political to me. Look, what we have done may not be 100 percent perfect. These things happen once every 100 years,” Kudlow said.
Fox News' Joshua Nelson and the Associated Press contributed to this report

Obama White House Cartoons (REMEMBER?)

Virus cases rise in China, South Korea; Obama bashes Trump

ROME (AP) — Both China and South Korea reported new spikes in coronavirus cases on Sunday, setting off fresh concerns in countries where local outbreaks had been in dramatic decline.

Former President Barack Obama, meanwhile, harshly criticized President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic as an “absolute chaotic disaster,” while U.S. states began gradually reopening, even as health officials are anxiously watching for a second wave of infections.

China reported 14 new cases on Sunday, its first double-digit rise in 10 days. Eleven of 12 domestic infections were in the northeastern province of Jilin and one in Hubei, whose capital Wuhan was the epicenter of the global pandemic. The Jilin cases prompted authorities to raise the threat level in one of its counties, Shulan, to high risk, just days after downgrading all regions in the country to low risk.

Authorities said the Shulan outbreak originated with a 45-year-old woman who had no recent travel or exposure history, but spread it to her husband, her three sisters and other family members. Train services in and out of the county were being suspended through the end of the month.

Responding to the latest, cases, the Jilin Communist Party secretary, Bayin Chaolu, the province’s highest official, told local media that “epidemic control and prevention is a serious and complicated matter, and local authorities should never be overly optimistic, war-weary, or off-guard.”

Jilin also shares a border with North Korea, where the virus situation is unclear but whose vastly inadequate health system has been offered help by China in dealing with any outbreak.

South Korea on Sunday reported 34 additional cases as a spate of transmissions linked to clubgoers threatens the country’s hard-won gains in its fight against the virus. It was the first time that South Korea’s daily jump has marked above 30 in about a month.

On Sunday, President Moon Jae-in said citizens must neither panic nor let down their guard, but warned that “the damage to our economy is indeed colossal as well.”

Around the world, the U.S. and other hard-hit countries are wrestling with how to ease curbs on business and public activity without causing the virus to come surging back.

During a conversation with ex-members of his administration, Obama said combating the virus would have been bad even for the best of governments, but it’s been “an absolute chaotic disaster” when the mindset of “what’s in it for me” infiltrates government, according to a recording obtained by Yahoo News.

The United States has suffered nearly 80,000 deaths from COVID-19, the most of any nation.

In Australia, Health Minister Greg Hunt said the government supports a European Union motion for an independent investigation into the origins of COVID-19 in China, a proposal stiffly resisted by Beijing, Australia’s No. 1 trading partner.

“We support the EU motion which includes an independent investigation, regulatory work on wet markets and also the potential for independent inspection powers,” Hunt told Sky News on Sunday.

Ursula von der Leyen, the head of the EU’s executive arm, said last week she would like to see China work together with her organization, and others, to determine how the virus emerged.

While the virus is believed to have originated in Wuhan, most scientists say it was most likely transmitted from bats to humans via an intermediary animal such as the armadillo-like pangolin. That has placed the focus on a wet market in the city where wildlife was sold for food.

However, Trump and allies have expressed confidence in an unsubstantiated theory linking the origin of the outbreak to a possible accident at a Chinese virology laboratory in Wuhan, something Chinese officials and state media have called an attempt to divert attention from U.S. failings through the dissemination of groundless accusations.

China says its too early to launch an investigation into the virus’ origin and angrily rejects accusations that it covered up the initial outbreak and didn’t do enough to prevent the global pandemic.

In New York, the deadliest hot spot in the U.S., Gov. Andrew Cuomo said three children died from a possible complication of the coronavirus involving swollen blood vessels and heart problems.

Three members of the White House coronavirus task force, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, placed themselves in quarantine after contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19.

Worldwide, 4 million people have been confirmed infected by the virus, and more than 279,000 have died, including over 78,000 in the U.S., according to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University. Spain, France, Italy and Britain have reported around 26,000 to 32,000 deaths each.

Businesses in the U.S. continue to struggle as more employers reluctantly conclude that their laid-off employees might not return to work anytime soon.

Some malls have opened up in Georgia and Texas, while Nevada restaurants, hair salons and other businesses were able to have limited reopenings Saturday or once again allow customers inside after nearly two months of restrictions.

About 1,500 opponents of Washington’s stay-at-home order to slow the coronavirus rallied again Saturday at the state Capitol, while some residents who reported stay-at-home violators said they’ve received threats after far-right groups posted their personal information on Facebook. Such protests have drawn relatively small crowds in several states despite encouragement from the White House, which is anxious to see the economy reopen.

The federal government said it was delivering supplies of remdesivir, the first drug shown to speed recovery for COVID-19 patients, to six more states, after seven others were sent cases of the medicine earlier this week.

In the U.S. Southwest, some small Native American villages are embracing extraordinary isolation measures such as guarded roadblocks to turn away outsiders as the virus ravages tight-knit communities.

Italy saw people return to the streets and revel in fine weather and Rome’s Campo dei Fiori flower and vegetable market was also bustling in Rome. But confusion created frustrations for the city’s shopkeepers.

In Spain, certain regions can scale back lockdowns starting Monday, with limited seating at bars, restaurants and other public places. But Madrid and Barcelona, the country’s largest cities, will remain shut down.

___

Gera reported from Warsaw, Poland, and Forliti reported from Minneapolis. Associated Press journalists around the world contributed to this report.

South Dakota Gov. Noem clashes with Sioux tribes over coronavirus checkpoints

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem

Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and the Oglala Sioux Tribe Checkpoints.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem has warned two tribal leaders she will take “necessary” legal action if the tribes don’t remove coronavirus checkpoints on their reservations.
“The State of South Dakota objects to tribal checkpoints on US and State highways regardless of whether those checkpoints take into consideration the safety measures recommended by” the South Dakota Department of Transportation, Noem wrote in letters to leaders of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and the Oglala Sioux Tribe.
“Safety recommendations do not constitute consultation and they certainly do not equal agreement,” Noem added.
Both tribes have been allowing non-resident access to the reservations for essential business only -- with visitors required to fill out a health questionnaire.
Passing through the checkpoints takes “less than a minute," Cheyenne River Sioux Tribal Chairman Harold Frazier told Time magazine.
Noem cited an April memo from the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs in her letters that says tribes must enter into an agreement with the state government before restricting travel on U.S. highways.

“We are strongest when we work together; this includes our battle against COVID-19,” the governor said in a news release. “I request that the tribes immediately cease interfering with or regulating traffic on US and State Highways and remove all travel checkpoints.”
Frazier responded in a statement Friday.
"I absolutely agree that we need to work together during this time of crisis," Frazier wrote, "however you continuing to interfere in our efforts to do what science and facts dictate seriously undermine our ability to protect everyone on the reservation.
“The virus does not differentiate between members and non-members," he added. "It obligates us to protect everyone on the reservation regardless of political distinctions. We will not apologize for being an island of safety in a sea of uncertainty and death."

"We will not apologize for being an island of safety in a sea of uncertainty and death."
— Harold Frazier, chairman, Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe

South Dakota is one of a handful of states that never issued a stay-at-home order, although both tribes have.
“We’d be interested in talking face to face with Governor Noem and the attorney general and whoever else is involved,” Chase Iron Eyes, a spokesman for Oglala Sioux President Julian Bear Runner, said, according to the Argus Leader of Sioux Falls.

Noem “threatened the sovereign interest of the Oglala people when she issued an ultimatum,” Bear Runner said on Facebook on Saturday, according to Time. “We have a prior and superior right to make our own laws and be governed by them."
He added he believes the tribe is in full compliance with the Department of the Interior’s memo because the tribe hasn't "closed non-tribal roads or highways owned by the state of South Dakota or any other government.”
There were at least 169 coronavirus cases among Native Americans out of 3,145 total statewide and 31 deaths as of Friday, according to the health department.