TRUMP GOVERNMENT IS CRUEL 
Trump administration urges Supreme Court to invalidate ‘Obamacare’ even as coronavirus cases surge in South, West

TO IT'S BASE AND TO THE REST OF AMERIKA

Administration’s high-court filing comes on same day government reports that close to half a million people who lost their health insurance amid the pandemic shutdown have gotten coverage through HealthCare.gov

Public health nurse Lee Cherie Booth performs a coronavirus antibody test outside the Salt Lake County Health Department on Thursday. ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: June 26, 2020 By Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — As coronavirus cases rise in more than half of the states, the Trump administration is urging the Supreme Court to overturn the Affordable Care Act.

The administration’s high court filing Thursday came the same day the government reported that close to half a million people who lost their health insurance amid the economic shutdown to slow the spread of COVID-19 have gotten coverage through HealthCare.gov.

The administration’s legal brief makes no mention of the virus.

More than 20 million Americans could lose their health coverage and protections for people with preexisting health conditions also would be put at risk if the court agrees with the administration in a case that won’t be heard before the fall.


House Speaker Nancy Pelosi blasted the administration’s latest move in a partisan battle over “Obamacare” that has stretched on for a full decade since the law’s passage in 2010. Pelosi is planning a floor vote early next week on her own bill to expand the ACA.

“There is no legal justification and no moral excuse for the Trump administration’s disastrous efforts to take away Americans’ health care,” she said in a statement.


Just as the nation seemed to be getting better control over the virus outbreak, states including Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Nevada and Texas are reporting a surge in cases. And more than half the states are seeing case increases.

Anger over problems with “Obamacare” was once a winning issue for Republicans, helping them gain control of the House in 2010 and the Senate in 2014. But the politics of the issue flipped after President Donald Trump failed to deliver in 2017 on his vow to “repeal and replace” the health law. Democrats were energized by their successful defense of the ACA, and that contributed to their winning back the House.

In the case before the Supreme Court, Texas and other conservative-led states argue that the ACA was essentially rendered unconstitutional after Congress passed tax legislation in 2017 that eliminated the law’s unpopular fines for not having health insurance, but left in place its requirement that virtually all Americans have coverage.

Trump has put the weight of his administration behind the legal challenge.


If the health insurance requirement is invalidated, “then it necessarily follows that the rest of the ACA must also fall,” Solicitor General Noel Francisco wrote Thursday.

Other prominent Republicans, including Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, have said Congress didn’t intend to bring down the whole law by striking the coverage penalty.

The Trump administration’s views on what parts of the ACA might be kept or replaced if the law is overturned have shifted over time. But in legal arguments, it has always supported getting rid of “Obamacare” provisions that prohibit insurance companies from discriminating against people on account of their medical history.

Nonetheless, Trump has repeatedly assured Americans that people with preexisting conditions would still be protected. Neither the White House nor congressional Republicans have specified how.

The government report showing rising sign-ups for health coverage under the ACA amid the coronavirus shutdown came from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The figures are partial because they don’t include sign-ups from states that run their own health insurance marketplaces. Major states like California and New York are not counted in the federal statistics.

An estimated 27 million people may have lost job-based coverage due to layoffs, and it’s unclear what — if anything — they’re turning to as a fallback. People who lose employer health care are eligible for a special sign-up period for subsidized plans under the Obama-era law. Many may also qualify for Medicaid.

The Trump administration has been criticized for not doing as much as states like California to publicize these readily available backups. In response, administration officials say they have updated the HealthCare.gov website to make it easier for consumers to find information on special sign-up periods.

Thursday’s report from the government showed that about 487,000 people signed up with HealthCare.gov after losing their workplace coverage this year. That’s an increase of 46% from the same time period last year.

It’s unclear from the government numbers how many of the new enrollees lost their coverage because of layoffs due to the pandemic. CMS also made no estimate of how many people will ultimately seek coverage through the Obama health law as a result of economic shock waves. Generally there’s a 60-day window to apply after losing coverage.

However, the report found a clear connection. “While the magnitude may be unclear, job losses due to COVID-19have led to increased enrollments on HealthCare.gov,” it said.

Watchdog says Trump’s 2019 Fourth of July gala cost taxpayers $13 million

Trump’s desire to have Department of Defense military vehicles participate helped drive up the cost, as did the president’s attendance near the Lincoln Memorial


President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump leave an Independence Day celebration. ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: June 26, 2020 By Associated Press

President Donald Trump’s Fourth of July gala in the nation’s capital last year cost taxpayers more than $13 million, twice as much as previous celebrations, government watchdogs reported Thursday. Trump’s desire to have Department of Defense military vehicles participate helped drive up the cost, as did the president’s attendance near the Lincoln Memorial.

Trump’s military-focused Independence Day event went beyond the traditional concert on the Capitol lawn featuring the National Symphony Orchestra and fireworks near the Washington Monument. Trump altered the lineup last year by adding his own speech from near the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, shifting the fireworks closer to that landmark and summoning an array of tanks and warplanes to entertain the crowds.

A White House spokesman declined to directly address the findings on costs. Responding to Democratic lawmakers’ charges that the president’s spending on the Fourth of July is extravagant and amounts to political activity on the taxpayer’s dime, spokesman Judd Deere said Trump’s celebration “is not about politics.”

“It’s about all Americans coming together to celebrate Independence Day, our great armed forces and their heroic sacrifices, which have preserved our freedoms for generations, and our amazing heritage,” Deere said.

The Interior Department called the 2019 event “an incredible celebration,” but also refused to comment on the costs accrued then or what’s expected for this year’s event.

The White House has said Trump plans to mark the holiday this year by attending a fireworks show July 3 at Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota and then celebrating in the nation’s capital on Independence Day.

Trump and first lady Melania Trump will host the event from the White House’s South Lawn and the Ellipse, with music, military demonstrations and flyovers. The president also is expected to deliver remarks.

The White House has said this year’s event will have a different look because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Government Accountability Office estimated that holiday celebrations from 2016 to 2018 cost from $6 million to $7 million annually. Its estimate for 2019 did not include costs such as the military flyovers of the National Mall.

Three Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee had asked for the GAO investigation of how much the federal government spent on the 2019 festivities.

Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., said in a statement that the findings showed careless use of unbudgeted taxpayer money to meet Trump’s “extravagant demands.”

The senators, in a letter to the GAO that was released Thursday, requested that the agency examine costs for the Trump’s Fourth of July plans this year.

The president “intends to use these Fourth of July celebrations as a way to marshal the resources of federal agencies to conduct de facto political events with official funds,” Udall and Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., wrote congressional investigators.

Extra costs for last year’s fete included a $2.5 million contract to an unidentified private entity for overall event planning, paid out of National Park Service appropriations, according to the congressional investigators.

The presence of Trump and other top government officials required numerous Secret Service agents and overtime, the investigators said.

District of Columbia officials had to consult with engineers on whether city roads, bridges and sewers would stand up to the weight of Bradley Fighting Vehicles, rolled in to serve as props on both sides of musical bands near the Lincoln Memorial

How Fixing a Vintage Honda Made Shasta Smith’s Career
Smith describes the bike as 'a little rocket'

 Alexander Hotz Adam Falk Jan. 22, 2019

Shasta Smith put years into restoring her 1972 Honda, emblazoned with her signature number 5. It inspired a passion for vintage motorcycle restoration that led her to open a repair shop and venue space in Sacramento, Calif. Photo: Ryan Angel Meza for The Wall Street Journal.

https://www.wsj.com/video/series/my-ride/how-fixing-a-vintage-honda-made-shasta-smiths-career/F6FA76A9-34BE-4D84-B5E9-A257E1E40447?mod=wsjvidc_series

House approves bill that would make District of Columbia the 51st state

STATEHOOD OR @UTONOMOUS ZONE

Published: June 26, 2020 By Jonathan Nicholson

Measure won’t advance in Senate, but reflects another way protests have moved agenda 

BUT IT WILL JAN.22 2021

FIRST DC THEN PUERTO RICO!

Washington, D.C. would become a state based on House-passed legislation sponsored by Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton. GETTY IMAGES

Washington, D.C., would become the 51st state in the Union under a bill passed by the House of Representatives on Friday along a mostly party-line vote.

The vote on the statehood bill, part of House Democrats’ last legislative push before a two-week break starting after July 4, was 232 to 180. All Republicans opposed the bill, joined by one Democrat, Rep. Collin Peterson of Minnesota, and Rep. Justin Amash, a Libertarian from Michigan who caucuses with neither Democrats or Republicans.

The legislation is not expected to move in the Republican-held Senate. Its movement to the top of the House agenda was quick, coming in the wake of the George Floyd protests that have roiled the nation. President Donald Trump’s move to bring in out-of-state National Guard troops to quell protests, as well as clearing a square across from the White House to make it easier to appear for a photo opportunity, highlighted the District’s second-tier status, in statehood advocates’ eyes.

The District is not represented in the Senate and its House delegate’s vote, under House rules, is symbolic, only counting as long as that vote would not be the deciding one on the floor. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District’s representative, sponsored the bill.

“The people of Washington, D.C. pay taxes — more important than that, serve in the military, contribute to the vitality of America and the economic strength of our country in a very political way and, what? do not have the right to representation in the Congress of the United States? How could it be? Whose idea was that?” asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at a press conference Thursday.

The bill, which is numbered H.R. 51 as a nod to where D.C. would stand in the order of joining the Union, was assured of House passage, as it had more than 218 co-sponsors before it even came to the floor. It would declare the city a new state, named “Washington, Douglass Commonwealth,” and set up procedures for transferring authority and possession of much of the city’s nonresidential land to the federal government.

The new “Washington, Douglass Commonwealth” moniker would allow the city to still be called “Washington, D.C.” colloquially but also pay homage to Frederick Douglass, the former slave and abolitionist born in Maryland who later lived in the city.

Democrats have long sought representation for the District, whose population was until recently skewed heavily toward African American residents. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Washington’s 705,749 estimated inhabitants as of 2019 were made up almost equally — about 46% each — of white and black residents. The District’s three Electoral College votes are reliably Democratic.

Republicans said the bill would be unconstitutional and suggested other ways to deal with D.C.’s taxation without representation, like exempting residents from federal taxes or giving the land back to Maryland, similar to the retrocession of Virginia land that gave D.C. its current southern border.

“If you want voting rights, it’s simple: do what occurred in 1847 and give the land back to Maryland,” said Rep. Andy Harris, a Maryland Republican. “This is a pure political ploy.”

How Smartphone Cameras Told the Story of Police Brutality
'The smartphone camera is the only thing we have to protect ourselves'

By Joanna Stern WSJ June 12, 2020

In the last decade, the smartphone has become a tool for witnessing police violence toward African Americans. From the 2009 killing of Oscar Grant to the 2020 killing of George Floyd, we reviewed the footage and talked to the people who captured it, to see how the accounts of racial injustice became clearer as the phones evolved. Photo illustration: Preston Jessee for The Wall Street Journal

Bill Gates: Poor U.S. response is making pandemic picture ‘more bleak than I would have expected’

Published: June 27, 2020 By Mike Murphy

In CNN virtual town hall, Microsoft co-founder says he’s optimistic on coronavirus treatments, vaccine

Bill Gates speaks from his Seattle home during All In 

WA: A Concert For COVID-19 Relief on June 24. GETTY IMAGES

“The global picture and the U.S. picture are both more bleak than I would have expected.”

That’s Bill Gates, the Microsoft Corp. MSFT, -2.00% co-founder whose philanthropic foundation has long funded the global fight against infectious diseases, speaking about the coronavirus pandemic Thursday night during a virtual town hall on CNN.

Appearing with anchor Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Gates said the U.S. is “not even close” to doing everything it can to battle the pandemic, and said the global response is worse off because of a lack of leadership from the U.S.

“The U.S. in particular hasn’t had the leadership messages or coordination that you would have expected,” he said. “I’m still pretty disappointed. Without U.S. leadership, it’s been hard to pull together a response, and now the developing countries are bearing the brunt of the burden.”

Gates said he talks regularly to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, and even implied that he talks to Fauci more often than President Donald Trump does. Fauci, who is on the White House coronavirus task force, said earlier this month that he hadn’t spoken to Trump in two weeks.
Gates noted that there has been real progress in treatments for COVID-19, and that should help lower the death toll as the pandemic drags on. He also expressed optimism that a vaccine will be developed, though he warned the biggest problem may be convincing vaccine skeptics to get it.

“It’s a challenge to get that safety database to build up the confidence,” he said, adding that he thinks ultimately most people will choose to get the vaccine.

Dow closes 730 points lower after spike in coronavirus cases forces Texas and Florida to close bars again, while bank stocks sink on stress tests

Social media stocks take a hit as more companies pull ad spending on hate speech concerns

HATE SPEECH IS NOT FREE SPEECH

HATE SPEECH IS VIOLENCE

Published: June 27, 2020 By Mark DeCambre and  Andrea Riquier

Rising cases rattle Wall Street GETTY IMAGES

U.S. stock indexes closed at their lowest levels in about two weeks Friday, after Texas and Florida were forced to backtrack on reopening their economies as coronavirus cases rose further and a record number of new cases were reported nationwide.

Meanwhile, investors were also parsing the results of the Federal Reserve’s bank stress tests which resulted in a cap on dividends and stock buybacks.
How did benchmarks perform?

The Dow Jones Industrial Average US:DJIA closed 730.05 points, or 2.8%, lower at 25,015.55; and the S&P 500 index US:SPX retreated 74.71 points, or 2.4%, to close at 3,009.05, with the S&P’s financial sector XX:SP500 sinking 4.3%, and the energy sector XX:SP500 3.5% lower. All 11 sectors of the S&P 500 closed deep into negative territory on Friday.

Meanwhile, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index US:COMP lost 259.78 points to reach 9,757.22, a fall of 2.6%.

For the week, the Dow lost 3.3%, the S&P 500 notched a 2.9% decline, and the Nasdaq fell 1.9% for the period.

What drove the stock market?

Investors have wrestled with rising daily rates of new U.S. coronavirus cases all week and that again cast a pall over the stock market on Friday.

U.S. states saw a single-day record rise of 37,000 in infections on Thursday, led by Florida, Texas, California and Arizona, surpassing the 36,188 level from April 24, according to analysis of data from Bloomberg.

That case count “blew out any of the previous records,” said Will Geisdorf, senior research analyst with Sarasota, Fl-based Allegiant Private Advisors. “I think the markets are looking at that and starting to discount the potential for a V-shaped recovery.”

As evidence mounts that consumers are losing confidence, there will be pressure on policymakers to deliver another round of fiscal stimulus, Geisdorf said in an interview. “That’s what markets need to get out of this period of consolidation and volatility and continue higher. We’ve had the best 50-day period in market history. Some sort of correction was needed to relieve excessive optimism.”

Governors in Texas and Florida ordered all bars to close again on Friday, making the states the first to reverse some reopening measures after months of lockdowns. Texas reported 6,426 new coronavirus cases Thursday, according to Johns Hopkins University data, and Florida reported over 8,900.


Overall, total cases in the U.S. have topped 2.4 million and that increase, notably in southern and western states in the U.S., has also resulted in business reopening plans being halted in North Carolina, Louisiana and Kansas. However, governors in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut are proceeding with reopening efforts but imposing a 14-day quarantine for visitors from some hard-hit states.

“The market has been threatened by anything that jeopardizes the economic recovery,” Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial, told MarketWatch. “What you are seeing is the market react to the headlines,” she said.

The key for some investors is determining the degree by which the rise in cases results in hospitalizations and deaths, Krosby said. “It will give us a sense of whether the therapeutic treatments are working,” she said.

Investors are also digesting the results of the Federal Reserve’s annual bank stress tests which requires banks to preserve capital by suspending share repurchases and cap dividend payments in the third quarter based on average net income over the past four quarters.


Read: Opinion: The Federal Reserve’s bank stress tests put dividend payments at risk GOOD!DIVIDENDS ARE WAGE THEFT 

However, financial institutions got a boost on Thursday after the Federal Deposit Insurance Commission and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said they are planning to loosen the restrictions imposed by the Volcker rule and allow banks to more easily make large investments into venture capital and similar funds, among other rule rollbacks.

BANKS CAN'T MEET THEIR CAPITAL REQUIREMENTS SO IT MUST BE THE REGULATION'S FAULT

(AYN RAND LOGIC)In U.S. economic data, consumer spending climbed in May to a record 8.2% after tumbling in April, as consumers used government stimulus checks to help Americans deal with job losses during the pandemic. However, personal incomes sank 4.2% last month, reflecting the mass unemployment.

“Consumer demand will probably look good in June as well, supported by the reopening in the Northeast and a still-elevated savings rate,” wrote Jefferies analysts Aneta Markowska and Thomas Simons. “However, stimulus payments are now shrinking and dragging down overall income growth,” the wrote.

In other economic reports, the final results of the consumer-sentiment survey in June slipped to 78.1 from an initial 78.9, the University of Michigan said Friday.

New U.S. COVID-19 cases surpass peak set in April as states rethink strategyNO MORE TYPHOID MARY NOW ITS CORONA-VIRUSA 

AKA COVID-TRUMP

Christopher Wilson Senior Writer Yahoo News•June 25, 2020

As the coronavirus pandemic is about to enter its seventh month, COVID-19 continues to surge in parts of the U.S. — even as it eases in some states and other countries — setting record highs and filling up hospitals across numerous states.

On Thursday, the governor of Texas, one of the hardest-hit states, said he would pause the process of reopening businesses and institutions.

According to tracking from NBC News, Wednesday saw the U.S.’s highest-ever single-day number of new cases, with more than 45,000. The previous peak was on April 26. There is positive news in that the death rate is declining, possibly reflecting the fact that many of the new patients are younger. But deaths lag new cases by several weeks to months, and there is a worrisome sign in the rise in cases requiring hospitalization. According to tracking numbers from Johns Hopkins University, the U.S. has had more than 122,000 deaths and 2.4 million positive cases, far more than any other nation. As cases in Europe fall, calls to ban travel from the U.S. until the virus is under control here have increased.

Among the states setting new daily records this week are California, Arizona, Texas and Florida. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention documents obtained by Yahoo News show that most counties in these states were on a downward trajectory a month ago but now are almost all showing the opposite. Another map, by the Departments of Health and Human Services and Homeland Security, shows that as of June 21, 19 states had at least partially reopened (or never had statewide closures in the first place) while cases were still rising, despite CDC guidelines calling for at least two weeks of falling case numbers before the process was started.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

At this point the virus is not spiking in places that were previously hit hard, such as New York state, where cases continue to drop — despite concerns earlier this month that the massive Black Lives Matter protests would result in a new spike.

TRUMP SABOTAGES TESTING
Multiple outlets reported Wednesday that the White House planned to close 13 federally funded testing sites at the end of the month. This news comes amid reports that testing capacity in some states is “overwhelmed.” The New York Times reported that last Friday the largest lab in Arizona received more than twice as many samples as it could process, and that hundreds of appointments at a large testing facility on the state fairgrounds are reserved within minutes of opening every morning.
Despite the rise in cases across the state, a couple of hundred demonstrators turned out in Scottsdale to protest the city’s new mandatory mask rule. A city councilman, Guy Phillips, removed his mask, saying, “I can’t breathe” — mocking both the public health order and the Black Lives Matter protests over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Republican Gov. Doug Ducey called Phillips’s comments “just flat out wrong” and said that “despicable doesn’t go far enough” in describing them. Ducey has refused to mandate mask wearing, instead merely suggesting that citizens don them. He called it “an issue of personal responsibility” and “[asked] Arizonans to make responsible decisions to protect the most vulnerable in our communities.”

Scottsdale Council member Guy Phillips just addressed the crowd by saying, “I can’t breathe,” the last words of George Floyd before he died at the hands of Minneapolis police, before taking off his mask at this protest. @azcentral pic.twitter.com/jrxSUbHXi9
— Lorraine Longhi 🌵 (@lolonghi) June 24, 2020

Seven of the federal testing sites set to close are in Texas, which has been ravaged by the disease in recent weeks. As some of the state’s ICUs approach full capacity, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order Thursday morning attempting to increase the number of hospital beds in the state’s largest counties by banning elective surgeries. While Abbott has urged Texans to both wear masks and stay home while allowing local authorities to require them for employees and patrons of businesses, he has not issued a statewide mandate.

The Texas Tribune noted that the test positivity-rate benchmark Abbott set when reopening the state in May has been breached, with more than 10 percent of tests coming back positive, a marker he had previously called a “warning flag.” Abbott began reopening Texas on May 1, making him one of the first governors to take that step. On Thursday he announced a “temporary pause” in reopening but will allow businesses already open — including bars, bowing alleys and amusement parks — to remain so.

“The outlook is not good,” said Rebecca Fischer, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Texas A&M University School of Public Health. “We are in a super-dire situation.”

On Tuesday, Florida recorded 5,508 positive tests, shattering the previous single-day high by more than 1,400 and setting a record-high infection rate of 15.9 percent. The state’s hospital beds are beginning to fill. About 81 percent of adult intensive care unit beds were full as of Wednesday.

While the Palm Beach County commissioners voted to make masks mandatory, a clip from their meeting went viral Wednesday showing citizens opposing masks by promoting wild conspiracy theories. 

MODELING BAD BEHAVIOUR 

President Trump at a rally in Tulsa, Okla., last Saturday. 

(Go Nakamura/Bloomberg via Getty Images) 

Tulsa, Okla., also saw a record daily high of new cases on Wednesday, days after President Trump held an indoor rally in the city despite pleas by city health officials to postpone the event, which was held in a 19,000-seat arena that was two-thirds empty. Tulsa Health Department Executive Director Bruce Dart said it was too soon to know the full effect of the rally, but the Washington Post reported Wednesday that dozens of Secret Service officers will be quarantined after two tested positive for the virus.

Trump has taken to minimizing and joking about the pandemic, complaining — illogically, in light of the rising rate of positive tests — that the increase in cases is an artifact of doing more testing, and calling it the “kung flu” to call attention to its origins in China.

At a rally in Arizona Tuesday, he pretended, or admitted, he didn’t understand the name for the disease: “COVID. COVID-19. COVID. I said, ‘What's the 19?’ ‘COVID-19.’ Some people can’t explain what the 19 — give me the — COVID-19. I said, ‘That’s an odd name.’ I could give you many, many names. Some people call it the ‘Chinese flu,’ the ‘China flu.’ Right? They call it the ‘China,’ as opposed to ‘Chi-’ — the ‘China.’ I’ve never seen anything like it.”

The name is a contraction of “coronavirus disease 2019,” reflecting the year the first cases were discovered.

As he has continually done throughout the pandemic, Trump predicted that it and the resulting lockdowns would end soon — his first target date was Easter — and that the economy would bounce back. “But here’s the story: We are going to be stronger than ever before, and it’s going to be soon,” he said.

* Jana Winter contributed reporting.

Startling images reveal coronavirus forming tentacles in cells. It may help identify new treatments.

 OMG! 
ITS NOT A CORONAVIRUS IT'S A CTHULHU-VIRUS 

AKA CTHULHU-19

Mark Johnson, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, USA TODAY•June 26, 2020

MILWAUKEE – Startling, never-before-seen images show that the new coronavirus hijacks proteins in our cells to create monstrous tentacles that branch out and may transmit infection to neighboring cells.

The finding, accompanied by evidence of potentially more effective drugs against COVID-19, published Saturday in the journal Cell by an international team of scientists.

Fluorescence microscopy image of human epithelial cells taken from the colon and infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus, that causes COVID-19. The infected cells produce tentacles, known formally as filopodia ( in white) extending out from the cell surface containing viral particles (M protein in red).

By focusing on the fundamental behavior of the virus — how it hijacks key human proteins and uses them to benefit itself and harm us — the team was able to identify a family of existing drugs called kinase inhibitors that appear to offer the most effective treatment yet for COVID-19.

"We've tested a number of these kinase inhibitors and some are better than remdesivir," said Nevan Krogan, one of more than 70 authors of the new paper, and director of the Quantitative Biosciences Institute at the University of California, San Francisco.

While remdesivir has yet to be approved for use against COVID-19, U.S. regulators are allowing "emergency use" of the drug in hospitalized patients.

Krogan said tests of kinase inhibitors showed some, including Gilteritnib and Ralimetinib, required lower concentrations than remdesivir in order to kill off 50% of the virus.

The new study, which involved experiments using cells from humans and others from African green monkeys, shows that the virus known as SARS-CoV-2 is especially adept at disrupting vital communications. These communications take place both within cells and from one cell to another.

Electron microscopy image of cells from the kidney of a female African green monkey that have been infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Infected cells produce tentacles known formally as filopodia (orange) extending out from the cell surface to enable budding of viral particles (blue) and infection of nearby cells.

(SAME MONKEY SPECIES THAT THEY FIRST DISCOVERED HAD HIV)

"This paper shows just how completely the virus is able to rewire all of the signals going on inside the cell. That's really remarkable and it's something that occurs very rapidly (as soon as two hours after cells are infected)," said Andrew Mehle, an associate professor of medical microbiology and immunology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The communications system known as cell signaling, allows cells to grow, and to detect and respond to outside threats. Errors in cell signaling can lead to such illnesses as cancer and diabetes.

Mehle, who was not involved in the study, said the work shows that scientists are contending with a daunting enemy in the new conronavirus. "These are highly efficient, evolutionarily-tuned machines that will make it very challenging to develop therapeutics," he said.

A different approach

From early in the pandemic, Krogan and his colleagues have taken a different approach from that of many researchers seeking treatments for the new virus.

Many scientists have been screening thousands of drugs already approved for other uses to determine if they can also be used to treat COVID-19.

"We're not doing that," Krogan said. "We're saying 'Let's understand the underlying biology behind how the virus infects us, and let's use that against the virus.' "

In the search for treatments, many scientists have homed in on key proteins in the virus — especially the Spike protein, which allows the viral cells to attach themselves to human cells.

Fluorescence microscopy image of of human epithelial cells taken from the colon and infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Viral N protein (red) hijacks human Casein Kinase II (green; co-localization in yellow) to putatively produce branching filopodia protrusions (white outline boxes) to enable budding of viral particles and infection of nearby cells.

Krogan and his team looked in the opposite direction, focusing on the human proteins, instead of those in the virus. Dozens of human proteins play a critical role in the disease process because the virus needs them to infect people and to make copies of itself.

There is an important advantage to developing treatments aimed at the human, rather than the viral, proteins. Viral proteins can mutate causing them to develop resistance to the drugs targeted to them. Human proteins are far less likely to mutate.

In April, Krogan and his colleagues published a study in the journal Nature showing that 332 human proteins interact with 27 viral proteins.

Feixiong Cheng, a PhD researcher who runs a lab at Cleveland Clinic Genomic Medicine Institute, called the mapping of interactions between these proteins "a novel" and "powerful" strategy for finding existing drugs that might help COVID-19 patients.

In the new study, Krogan's international team looked deeper into the biology, focusing on how the new coronavirus changes a complex process called phosphorylation. This process acts as a series of on-off switches for different cell activities, including growth, division, death and communication with one another.

"What they've done is really a fantastic next step," said Lynne Cassimeris, a professor of biological sciences at Lehigh University, explaining that the work builds on the previous paper and applies knowledge of cell biology gained over the last 30 years.

"It's an amazing leap. We know that the virus has to be manipulating these human proteins. Now we have a list of what is changing over time."

Cassimeris said that mapping these changes allows researchers to seek drugs that can intervene at specific points.

The scientists found that on-off switches changed significantly in 40 of the 332 proteins that interact with the new coronavirus.

The changes occur because the virus either dials up or down 49 enzymes called kinases. The dialing up or down of kinases cause them to alter 40 of the proteins that interact with virus.

Imagine the kinases as guards protecting our health until the new coronavirus turns them against us. In each case, however, the new study identified treatments that can stop the virus from turning guards into assailants.

The virus most powerfully hijacks a kinase called CK2, which plays a key role in the basic frame of the cell as well as its growth, proliferation and death.

This led the scientists to investigate a drug called Silmitasertib. Tests found this drug inhibits CK2 and eliminates the new coronavirus.

Electron microscopy image of cells from the kidney of a female African green monkey, which have been infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Infected cells produce tentacles known formally as filopodia (orange) extending out from the cell surface to enable budding of viral particles (blue) and infection of nearby cells.

They also found that the virus has a dramatic effect on a pathway — a group of kinases that form a cascade a little like falling dominoes. The virus hijacks this cascade so that the end result becomes a dangerous overreaction by our immune system.

The study's finding on this pathway may help to explain the extreme overreaction — a cytokine storm — that causes the immune system to kill both healthy and diseased tissue, leading to more than half of the deaths from COVID-19.

Major COVID-19 killer: UW joins drug trial aimed at stopping haywire immune response

Here too, the scientists were able to identify treatments, including the experimental cancer drug Ralimetinib, which may prevent the immune system overreaction.

Authors of the new study also found that the virus harms a family of kinases called CDKs. These play roles in cell growth and in the response to DNA damage. An experimental drug called Dinaciclib may be effective in thwarting this viral assault.

Finally, Krogan and his colleagues found that the virus also hijack a kinase that helps cells stay healthy in different environments and cleans out damaged cells. A small molecule called Apilimod targets this kinase and has been able to hinder the virus in lab tests.

Krogan, who is also an investigator at the Gladstone Institutes at UCSF, said the strategy of examining the human kinases affected by the virus has proved fruitful.

"The kinases are a very druggable set of proteins in our cells," he said.

Follow Mark Johnson on Twitter: @majohnso

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Coronavirus grows tentacles inside cells, providing clue for treatment


#CTHULHU #CORONAVIRUS

Deportation airline secures $67 million in coronavirus bailout

Alexander Nazaryan National Correspondent, Yahoo News•June 23, 2020

WASHINGTON — Four days before the 2016 presidential election, Republican candidate Donald Trump arrived for a campaign rally at an airplane hangar in Wilmington, Ohio, that belonged to an aviation company called Air Transport Services Group, or ATSG. The company’s chief executive at the time, Joe Hete, was a reliable supporter of the Republican Party.

In his speech, Trump promised to “drain the swamp” and spoke at length about the deleted emails of Hillary Clinton, a favorite topic.

Trump has not been back to Wilmington since then. But his administration has not forgotten about ATSG. Last month, an ATSG-owned charter airline company, Omni Air, secured a $67 million bailout as part of the congressional coronavirus relief package. That came on the heels of a $77.65 million contract with the Department of Defense for “international charter airlift services.”

An Omni Air International Boeing 767. (Liam Allport via Flickr)

In addition, Omni Air has charged the federal government exorbitant prices for “high risk” deportation flights for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency tasked with addressing the plight of millions who live within the United States without proper documentation. The expense was related to the unwillingness of airlines other than Omni Air to conduct such flights.

The case of Omni Air illustrates what the president’s critics have feared would happen with the CARES Act, the $2 trillion relief package passed by Congress in March.

“This brazen betrayal of CARES Act intent needs immediate strong scrutiny,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told Yahoo News. “Congress intended CARES Act grants to keep airline workers on the job, not bankroll the Trump administration’s unconscionable anti-immigration crusade. Trump officials are exploiting a loophole to misuse taxpayer money and continue deportations during a pandemic. Congress should act to help stop it.”

Passenger airlines were devastated by the coronavirus pandemic, which essentially stopped all global travel for several months. Sympathy for airlines did not run especially high, though, in part because Americans were chronically frustrated by the discomfort of flying amid relentless cost cutting and seat shrinking. And in recent years the major carriers had used their profits for stock buybacks, which benefit investors but not employees.

A pilot wearing a protective mask walks through Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Va., on June 9. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The language of the coronavirus relief bill affords Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin a high degree of discretion in the airline-assistance effort, for which Congress allotted $32 billion. “The amount to be received by each air carrier or contractor is based on its payroll expenses” from 2019, the Treasury Department explains on its website.

There are limited details about how those funding determinations were made. The main conditions stipulated by Congress were that airlines receiving coronavirus relief funds could not engage in share buybacks or lay off employees until the end of the current fiscal year on Sept. 30.

“Treasury has not released any details on the process of how they determined award amounts for the airline companies,” says Sean Moulton, a senior policy analyst with the nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight. (After this article was published, a Treasury spokesperson emailed to say that Moulton’s assertion “has no grounding in fact,” noting that Treasury has, in fact, issued a guidance to airlines.)

So far, 427 aviation companies have received coronavirus-related support from the Treasury. Recipients include well-known giants like Southwest ($3.2 billion) and many much smaller companies like Catalina Flying Boats ($569,176). Of those 427 companies, 407 received less money than Omni Air. And of those that did receive more, most are large passenger carriers. And even some of those, including JetBlue, Alaska Airlines and Spirit, received less per aircraft than Omni, which operates only 15 airplanes (it does not appear that fleet size figured into Treasury's calculation, with a spokesperson telling Yahoo News that the $67 million award was based on $88 million of salary and benefit expenditures reported by Omni Air for the relevant period).

Among nonpassenger airlines, the largest grant went to Atlas Air, a cargo carrier that like Omni Air works closely with the Pentagon. It received $406 million from the Treasury Department, even though it also appears not to have lost any business during the pandemic.

“The Trump administration’s idea of saving the economy is giving tens of millions in free tax money to a private airline [like Omni] that already profits massively from doing ICE’s deportation dirty work,” said Kyle Herrig, president of the progressive government watchdog group Accountable.US, which has been tracking how the administration spends coronavirus funds.

“Every dollar wasted like this is a dollar not being spent to help small businesses and workers struggling to make ends meet,” Herrig added. “The White House has reached a new low in their disastrous response to this crisis.”

Paul Cunningham, director of corporate communications for ATSG, the Omni Air parent company, sent Yahoo News a statement confirming the $67 million grant. The statement said the airline, which employs more than 800 people, “must refrain from conducting involuntary furloughs or reducing employee rates of pay or benefits,” while limiting executive compensation and maintaining regular services.

Donald Trump speaks in front of his plane during a campaign event at an Air Transport Services Group hangar in Wilmington, Ohio, on Nov. 4, 2016. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

“I cannot answer questions related to flights or customers,” Cunningham wrote. He also declined to answer questions about the company’s finances, in particular whether Omni Air was experiencing hardship at the time of its request to the Treasury Department.

No aviation expert contacted by Yahoo News had any insight into why Omni Air did so much better than significantly bigger counterparts that employ many more people.

ATSG donates exclusively to Republican candidates through its political action committee. One of its lobbyists is Kevin DeWine, formerly the head of the Ohio chapter of the GOP and second cousin to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican.

The Trump administration has repeatedly vowed that politics has played no part in either this or any other coronavirus-related funding decision. “Political affiliation has absolutely no bearing on the Payroll Support Program, including applicant eligibility, the amount of assistance provided or use of funds,” a Treasury spokesperson told Yahoo News.

Democrats were infuriated by Mnuchin’s recent refusal to reveal who has benefited from a $600 billion small-business loan program (Mnuchin eventually relented and said he would make the information public). Like the airline bailout, the small-business loan program is part of the CARES Act, a complexly cobbled-together set of grants and loans meant to stimulate spending by consumers and keep businesses from laying workers off.

Democrats worry that Trump and his Republican allies on Capitol Hill have used the coronavirus crisis to justify the transfer of millions of taxpayer dollars to well-connected companies like Omni. Republicans, meanwhile, have argued that distributing money as quickly as possible was their sole objective. What their Democratic opponents see as instances of corruption, Republicans regard as nothing more than the natural outcome of an immense effort to rescue the American economy.

A United Airlines plane prepares to land at San Francisco International Airport on June 1. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

But even though the Omni grant may have adhered to the Treasury’s opaque guidelines, the airline and other coronavirus-bailout recipients have faced scrutiny from Congress, in particular the Democratic-controlled House. “It’s troubling, if not surprising, to see a company behave this way,” Jennifer Ahearn of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington told Yahoo News. “This kind of behavior is the reason Congress built oversight into the structure of the CARES Act.”

In addition to disputing suggestions of political influence, the Treasury Department spokesperson explained that the “standard for determining air carrier eligibility was set by Congress on a bipartisan basis, and each applicant’s eligibility is verified by the Department of Transportation before any funds are disbursed.”

A Transportation Department spokesperson said his agency only verified that “carrier applicants” had the proper federal credentials to apply for relief funds, and referred questions back to the Treasury Department. “DOT reported its findings to Treasury, which is responsible for administering the financial assistance provisions of the CARES Act,” the spokesperson told Yahoo News.

Omni Air is hardly a stranger to government funding. The Pentagon contracts the airline to fly uniformed personnel around the world. Omni is also part of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, whose participants — including major civilian airlines like American and Delta — agree to work with the federal government as needed. During the war in Iraq, Omni was one of several airlines to benefit from the constant movement of people and cargo between the United States and the Middle East.

To this day, Omni Air continues to benefit from Defense Department contracts. Last fall, the Pentagon awarded Omni a contract for $77.7 million, which was to go toward “airlift services.”

The airline’s more controversial operations, however, have involved deportation of immigrants.

In March 2018, Omni flew 110 Kenyan, Somali and South Sudanese immigrants from the United States to Nairobi, Kenya, according to press reports from that time. Later that year, Omni earned the ire of the Cambodian-American community when it participated in the expulsion of 46 Cambodian immigrants from the United States. At the time, the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance called that “the largest deportation flight of Southeast Asian refugees in United States history.” In August 2019, Omni flew 40 deported Ghanaians back to their native country, on the western coast of Africa.

An Omni Air DC-10 military charter from Hawaii at Long Beach Airport in California. (John Murphy via Flickr)

According to documents obtained by news outlet Quartz, Omni specializes in “special high-risk charter” flights. The passengers on those flights are immigrants who potentially have significant criminal records.

Other airlines have refused to engage in such transports because outrage over Trump’s hard-line immigration policies has resulted in boycotts of companies that contract with ICE.

Because of this effective monopoly, Omni Air has been able to charge astonishingly high prices, according to reporting by Quartz, which obtained internal ICE records to that effect. Last year, a single Omni flight carrying 163 “high risk” deportees back to Asia cost the federal government $1.8 million, Quartz reported. In May, Omni flew 167 Indian immigrants from the United States to Amritsar, a city in the northern region of Punjab.

ICE did not respond to a request for comment about its work with Omni.

News of Omni’s coronavirus relief package outraged Asian-American organizations, some of which had denounced the airline when it deported the Cambodian immigrants in 2018. “It’s shameful that funds are being diverted from frontline communities on the ground to businesses, like Omni Air International, who are profiting from separating families,” said Aarti Kohli, executive director of the Asian Law Caucus.

But with a low public profile and few disclosures about its operations, the “murky” airline — as Omni has been described by the Center for Human Rights at the University of Washington — has suffered no ill effects from participating in one of the most controversial policies of the Trump administration.

To the contrary, Omni has proved a profitable entity for ATSG. When the parent company released its first-quarter earnings in May, it noted that “revenues were up 12 percent, or $41.1 million, to $389.3 million.” The increased revenue was the result “mainly from growth in Omni Air” and another subsidiary, Air Transport International.

Two weeks later, ATSG got more good news when the Treasury Department announced that Omni Air would be awarded its $67 million grant. That means that in the last eight months it has received more than $140 million from Washington, not counting the millions it continues to charge for deportation flights no other airline is apparently willing to conduct.

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